Questions remain....

Will the truth behind Nick Berg's murder ever be known?

American businessman Nicholas Berg's body was found on May 8 near a Baghdad overpass; a video of his supposed decapitation death by knife appeared on an alleged al-Qaeda-linked website (www.al-ansar.biz) on May 11. But according to what both a leading surgical authority and a noted forensic death expert separately told Asia Times Online, the video depicting the decapitation appears to have been staged.

[...]

While the circumstances surrounding both the video and Nick Berg's last days have been the source of substantive speculation, both Simpson and Nordby perceived it as highly probable that Berg had died some time prior to his decapitation. A factor in this was an apparent lack of the "massive" arterial bleeding such an act initiates.

[...]

And Berg is seen on the beheading videotape in what appears to be US military prison-issue clothing, sitting in what appears to be a US military-type white chair, virtually identical to those photographed as used at Abu Ghraib prison....

The article raises other questions and inconsistincies, too, not the least of which is that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the individual blamed by the Bush administration for beheading Berg, was reportedly killed long before Berg's death.

Complete article here.

It's official: we've been had...

An urgent investigation has been launched in Washington into whether Iran played a role in manipulating the US into the Iraq war by passing on bogus intelligence through Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, it emerged yesterday.

Some intelligence officials now believe that Iran used the hawks in the Pentagon and the White House to get rid of a hostile neighbour, and pave the way for a Shia-ruled Iraq.

According to a US intelligence official, the CIA has hard evidence that Mr Chalabi and his intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib, passed US secrets to Tehran, and that Mr Habib has been a paid Iranian agent for several years, involved in passing intelligence in both directions.

[...]

"It's pretty clear that Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch and dinner," said an intelligence source in Washington yesterday.

Complete story here.

FBI nabs the wrong Muslim (again!)....

Brandon Mayfield just appeared live on CNN. He has been exonerated of any involvement in the Madrid train bombings. The FBI is now admitting that they mistakenly identified a fingerprint as belonging to the Porland, Oregon-resident, attorney, and convert to Islam, who spent two weeks in prison as a result of their error.

Complete story here.

Kerry-Pelosi '04...?

Criticalviewer makes a strong case for nominating Nancy Pelosi to the Kerry ticket.

I'd enthusiastically vote for her! Pelosi has long stood out from among lackluster, apologist Republican-lite Democrats.

Spread the word: Pelosi for V.P.

Remember freedom of speech...?

E.L. Doctorow, one of the most celebrated writers in America, was nearly booed off the stage at Hofstra University Sunday when he gave a commencement address lambasting President George W. Bush and effectively calling him a liar.

Booing that came mainly from the crowd in the stands became so intense that Doctorow stopped speaking at one point, showing no emotion as he stood silently and listened to the jeers. Hofstra President Stuart Rabinowitz intervened, and called on the audience to allow him to finish. He did, although some booing persisted.

Apparently, it was mostly parents and relatives who objected to criticism of Bush. Said one enlightened man, "If this would have happened in Florida, we would have taken him out."

Ah, such respect for the First Amendment! And who says fascism is dead?

Complete story here.

First casualty of war...

The Pentagon seems to be hoping that if they keep denying that the U.S. military massacred an Iraqi wedding party, Americans will come to believe them. Sadly, they may be right.

"There was no evidence of a wedding: no decorations, no musical instruments found, no large quantities of food or leftover servings one would expect from a wedding celebration," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said Saturday. "There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations, too."

"Bad people"? In addition to the callousness of his remarks, such simplistic vilification does nothing to win over the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

The general's denials are contradicted by every other piece of independent evidence: reporters on the scene, information from hospitals, accounts of survivors and a wedding video that just turned up. On the video, for example, a stocky man with close-cropped hair can be seen playing an electric organ at a wedding. Then in another tape filmed a day later in Ramadi, the same musician is lying dead--his face clearly visible in a burial shroud, dressed in the same tan shirt as he wore when he performed.

A CNN anchor this morning threw in a line that militants may have been hiding out among the wedding party. Even if this were true, would "neutralizing" several suspected militants justify killing 11 women and 14 children (at last count)?

Initially, the military denied that any women or children were killed. With bodies piling up, however, Kimmitt was forced to admit that a "handful of women" - perhaps four to six - were "caught up in the engagement...They may have died from some of the fire that came from the aircraft."

May have died?

One survivor, Haleema Shihab, 32, hid out the night, wounded and bleeding, in a bomb crater with her stepdaughter. She said that American soldiers showed up and one, laughing, kicked her to see if she were alive. "I pretended I was dead so he wouldn't kill me," she said.

According to the Guardian, American commanders remain unrepentant.

Major General James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, was scathing of those who suggested a wedding party had been hit. "How many people go to the middle of the desert ... to hold a wedding 80 miles (130km) from the nearest civilization? These were more than two dozen military-age males. Let's not be naive."

When reporters asked him about footage on Arabic television of a child's body being lowered into a grave, he replied: "I have not seen the pictures but bad things happen in wars. I don't have to apologize for the conduct of my men."

Bad things do indeed happen in war. Mattis would do well to remember, howver, that U.S. soldiers are subject to the Geneva Convention and not immune from legal prosecution for war crimes.

Complete stories here and here.

Nick Berg's father calls for Peace...!

...George Bush never looked into my son's eyes. George Bush doesn't know my son, and he is the worse for it. George Bush, though a father himself, cannot feel my pain, or that of my family, or of the world that grieves for Nick, because he is a policymaker, and he doesn't have to bear the consequences of his acts. George Bush can see neither the heart of Nick nor that of the American people, let alone that of the Iraqi people his policies are killing daily.

[...]

So what were we to do when we in America were attacked on September 11, that infamous day? I say we should have done then what we never did before: stop speaking to the people we labelled our enemies and start listening to them. Stop giving preconditions to our peaceful coexistence on this small planet, and start honouring and respecting every human's need to live free and autonomously, to truly respect the sovereignty of every state. To stop making up rules by which others must live and then separate rules for ourselves.

[...]

George Bush's ineffective leadership is a weapon of mass destruction, and it has allowed a chain reaction of events that led to the unlawful detention of my son which immersed him in a world of escalated violence. Were it not for Nick's detention, I would have had him in my arms again. That detention held him in Iraq not only until the atrocities that led to the siege of Fallujah, but also the revelation of the atrocities committed in the jails in Iraq, in retaliation for which my son's wonderful life was put to an end.

My son's work still goes on. Where there was one peacemaker before, I now see and have heard from thousands of peacemakers. Nick was a man who acted on his beliefs. We, the people of this world, now need to act on our beliefs. We need to let the evildoers on both sides of the Atlantic know that we are fed up with war. We are fed up with the killing and bombing and maiming of innocent people. We are fed up with the lies. Yes, we are fed up with the suicide bombers, and with the failure of the Israelis and Palestinians to find a way to stop killing each other. We are fed up with negotiations and peace conferences that are entered into on both sides with preset conditions that preclude the outcome of peace. We want world peace now.

Complete statement here.

Bush budget stalls....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republicans retreated Thursday and decided to postpone a Senate vote on their $2.4 trillion budget until at least next month, GOP aides said, averting a certain defeat by party moderates demanding curbs on future tax cuts.

The decision, described by aides on condition of anonymity, was an election-year embarrassment for both the Republicans who control Congress and President Bush. [Emphasis mine.]

When asked what might make moderate Republicans change their minds and support the budget, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said, "Some of us could get killed in tragic accidents.''

Whoa. I'd be careful what I said around the bunch in the White House.

Complete story here.

Sad, sad news....

David Reimer, a Canadian man who was raised as a girl in a controversial case that drew international attention to issues of gender and biology, took his own life last Tuesday.

According to press reports, Reimer, 38, had been depressed following a series of personal and professional setbacks, including the loss of his job, separation from his wife and the death of his identical twin brother two years ago.

David's story was the subject of the book, "As Nature Made Him," The Boy Who Was Raised a Girl," by journalist John Colapinto.

As I can vouch, being gender-variant in this narrow-minded world can take a toll on a person. I'm very sad that David reached a point where he felt he couldn't soldier on.

Complete story here.

Horrific....

RAFAH REFUGEE CAMP, May 20 — As a throng of Palestinians marched in protest here today, an Israeli tank and helicopter gunship opened fire, leaving at least nine people dead, including children, and dozens wounded, witnesses said.

The incident began when more than a thousand Palestinians responded to a public committee's call to demonstrate this afternoon by walking down a central avenue toward the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood on Rafah's outskirts, where Israeli forces seized control Tuesday in what the Army called a hunt for militants.

As the leading edge of the crowd of men and boys approached an Israeli tank position, two thunderous explosions rang out, interspersed with jackhammer blasts of machine gun fire. Clouds of dust rose in the air as debris and blood sprayed across the road. The Palestinians turned to flee, some carrying bleeding children in their arms.

[Complete story here.]

The Palestinian death toll in the military sweep the Israeli army is nauseatingly dubbing "Operation Rainbow," stands at 33 in two days, and will probably go higher.

I am sickened and feel complicit in that the carnage could not be taking place without U.S. arms sales and tax dollars.

Most Americans feel otherwise, if they care at all. One woman I used to work for who describes herself as a "tax and spend liberal," says she might vote for Bush in November due to his support for Israel and strong "war on terrorism."

Tragically, she is not alone. (See here.)

In a somewhat heated argument, she justified to me her utter lack of sympathy for Palestinians by saying, "But they are killing my children!" speaking in the larger sense of Jewish family.

What confounds me is how this intelligent, caring mother of four can feel no compassion for murdered Palestinian children.

Not only that, but how can she fail to see that our support for "Israel no matter what" puts us at risk of terrorist attack? Incidents like "Operation Rainbow," in which American-made helicopters and missiles mow down Palestinians are precisely why Arab extremists consider the U.S. a legitimate military target.

I support Israel's right to exist, as I do a viable Palestinian state. If Bush truly wanted to protect Americans from terrorism, he would make all aid to Israel contingent on an immediate and just resolution of the Palestinian question.

And more....

Not only did the policy to torture detainees originate at the highest levels of the U.S. government, but Bush and his officials knew damned well that what they were doing was wrong!

May 17 - The White House's top lawyer warned more than two years ago that U.S. officials could be prosecuted for "war crimes" as a result of new and unorthodox measures used by the Bush administration in the war on terrorism, according to an internal White House memo and interviews with participants in the debate over the issue.

And they should be tried for war crimes, for actions in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Complete story here.

Abu Ghraib....

If you still believe the torture at Abu Ghraib was a case of privates and sergeants gone amok, rather than policy ordered from above, check this out:

...Top military officials have claimed the abuse seen in the photos at Abu Ghraib was limited to a few MPs, but Provance says the sexual humiliation of prisoners began as a technique ordered by the interrogators from military intelligence.

"One interrogator told me about how commonly the detainees were stripped naked, and in some occasions, wearing women's underwear," Provance said. "If it's your job to strip people naked, yell at them, scream at them, humiliate them, it's not going to be too hard to move from that to another level."

Complete story here.

Stranger and stranger....

...According to Berg, his son was taking a course a few years ago at a remote campus of the University of Oklahoma near an airport. He described how on one particular day, his son met "some terrorist people -- who no one knew were terrorists at the time."

At one point during the bus ride, Berg said, the man sitting next to his son asked if he could use Nick's laptop computer.

"It turned out this guy was a terrorist and that he, you know, used my son's e-mail, amongst many other people's e-mail who he did the same thing to," Berg said.

Government sources said Berg gave the man his password, which was later used by Moussaoui, the sources said.

The sources said the man who used Berg's e-mail knew Moussaoui, now awaiting trial on federal charges that could bring a death sentence. But the sources would not disclose details of how the men were connected.

So, are we to assume that Nick Berg was accessing his email on a moving bus using what, his cell-phone? I know you can do it, but was it really that easy and reliable a "few years ago"?

Complete story here.

Prosthetic leg...?

The mystery of who really killed Nick Berg deepens:

"From Iran Zarqawi traveled to Iraq in May 2002, where his wounded leg was amputated and the limb fitted with a prosthetic device. He spent two months recovering in Baghdad, at which time "nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there." (From here.)

The quote is originally from the National Review Online.

According to people who have seen the video, the person beheading Berg did not seem to have a prosthetic leg.

Michael Berg, Nick's father, blames the Bush administration in no uncertain terms, not for directly wielding the knife, but for delaying his son so long that he could not safely exit Iraq.

"My son died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. This administration did this," Berg said in an interview with radio station KYW-AM.

Full story here.

Were U.S. forces responsible for Berg’s gruesome death?


I’m blogging again after a long hiatus.

The reason? Despite a schedule that leaves me no time, I just can’t stay silent any longer.

The precipitating factor is the Nicholas Berg tragedy. As usual, mainstream media coverage is infuriatingly inadequate.

Contrary to the official storyline, family and friends insist that Berg was held in detention in Iraq not by the Iraqis but by U.S. forces.

…The Berg family last month filed a habeas corpus petition against Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, saying Berg was being illegally detained by the U.S. military without probable cause. Berg was released a day later, April 6.

According to the petition, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, the family said it understood, based on information provided by the FBI and the State Department, that while Berg had originally been detained by Iraqi police in Mosul, he was later transferred to U.S. military custody.

The petition said the FBI had been involved in "investigating and confirming Nicholas Berg's identity and to ensure that the individual detained was Nicholas Berg based on a concern of possible identity theft."

The Bergs added that the FBI had recommended that their son be released from custody, and that the State Department had told them it no longer had power to intervene or to bring him home because the son "had been turned over by the Iraqi police to the United States military."

[Full story here.]

One day after the family filed the lawsuit on 4/5, Berg was released from custody in Mosul. He told friends when he got back to Baghdad that, due to his Jewish name and an Israeli stamp in his passport, he'd been suspected of being an Israeli agent. He checked out of his Baghdad hotel on 4/10 and vanished, until U.S. forces found his decapitated body on 5/15.

Allegations are flying that Berg was picked up at the behest of U.S. forces due to the mistaken supposition that he was an antiwar activist. Why would someone think that the Bush supporter was actually against the U.S. invasion of Iraq and do such a thing? Because his father, Michael Berg, signed an anti-war petition that ended up on a Rightwing website that called for reprisals against the petition’s signatories.

Furthermore, speculation that Berg’s actual murderers were not al Qaeda operatives was given substance by Wolf Blitzer’s interview on CNN yesterday of Rend Rahim Francke (or Rend al-Rahim), the Iraqi Governing Council’s representative to Washington. Rahim stated categorically that the U.S. translation of the horrific video showing Berg’s murder was inaccurate. The expression translated as “al Qaeda,” she said, actually referred to a similar sounding Arabic expression meaning roughly “those who sit by and do nothing” (think, “apathetic,”), a mistake native Arabic speakers would never make. Moreover, she said the speaker did not have a Jordanian accent, as would be expected if he were actually Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who U.S. authorities and the C.I.A. are blaming for actually cutting off Berg’s head.

I can’t find a live link to the CNN story (I saw the segment as it aired yesterday) and it hasn't been picked up by any other news outlet I've seen.

Other websites and threads are commenting on the light-skins of the hooded men in the video, the military stances they held, their buff physiques and possession of weapons not usually found in the hands of al Qaeda operatives. Ignorant as I am of military habits and paraphernalia and not having viewed the video, I can’t comment on any of this.

What is blatantly obvious is that Berg’s tragic and grisly murder has shifted the attention of American voters away from the torture of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib, the mounting American death toll and escalating financial costs of the war. Once again, “Us against them” war hysteria is running at fever pitch among the suseptible and renewed determination to “stay the course,” is strong in America.

Am I actually suggesting that the Bush administration would cold-bloodedly sacrifice a 26-year-old American citizen’s life purely for political gain?

What do you think?

Just call me pessimistic....

Boy, even if you didn't know it was an election year, the number of empty promises flying out of the White House would tell you something was up.

The latest is about space.

President Bush will make a speech next week outlining a major space initiative, the White House said last night.

Administration officials said they expected that Mr. Bush would propose a research and development program with the aim of establishing a base on the moon, as a prelude to a longer-term goal of sending humans to Mars.

Excuse me if I postpone celebrating until I see the actual funding for such an expensive initiative.

Bush loves to go about pronouncing, then promptly underfunding or ignoring. He promised to fight the global AIDS epidemic, make the U.S. safer from terrorist attacks, support the troops, improve American air and water quality, leave no child behind, capture Osama bin-Laden and make Halliburton pay back what it overcharged U.S. troops in Iraq.

He hasn't followed through on those--and countless other promises--he's made to date. I see no reason to expect follow through on this latest enticement, timed to capitalize on the success of America's Spirit Mars landing.

Complete story here.

Unbelievable....

Oh, yeah, we have the highest level of unemployment since the Great Depression, a staggering federal budget deficit that the IMF worries will bring down the global economy if something isn't done, 495 dead American soldiers in Iraq and counting with no "weapons of mass destruction" to be found, global warming threatening the extinction of one-quarter of all plants and animals by 2050, and this is a crucial issue.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, trying to limit the fallout from negative comments he made four years ago, said Friday he ``didn't really understand the Iowa caucuses'' when he said they were dominated by extremist special interests.

Dean is scrambling to "stem fallout from comments" made on a Canadian talk-show four years ago, criticizing the Iowa caucuses. Comments which, from what little I know, are true.

Meanwhile, Bush is given an almost free-ride in the media on his boondoggle of a war in Iraq, presidential culpability for 9/11, the ballooning deficit, soaring unemployment, a host of broken campaign promises ranging from tax relief for working people to cleaner water to “no child left behind.” The outing of an undercover CIA operative Valeria Plame alone would have been enough to prompt Right-Wing pundits to scream for Bill Clinton’s impeachment.

The New York Times should be ashamed they gave this story prominent position on their website.

Carnivorous cows and vegetarian salmon....

Salmon raised in ocean feedlots, the main source of supply for American consumers, contain such high levels of PCBs, dioxins and other probable cancer-causing chemicals that people should not eat it more than once a month, according to a large-scale study to be reported Friday in the journal Science.

Read all the way to the end of this article and you'll see that the industries who brought you "mad-cow disease" by feeding rendered beef to cattle are now searching for ways to turn carnivorous salmon into vegetarians.

While I think it's a worthy goal to lower dangerously high levels of contaminants in food (the result of feeding processed small fish to farmed salmon), I can't help but worry that turning carnivores into vegetarians could create unforeseen problems in the same way that turning cows into cannibals did.

Among other things this article fails to mention is that farmed salmon are also fed pellets made from rendered beef, chicken, lamb, etc.

Complete story here.

Whatever happened to campaign finance reform...?

Will Bush purchase the office he stole last time?

WASHINGTON — President Bush's reelection campaign raised a record $130 million last year, officials said today, a show of financial muscle aimed at unnerving Bush's Democratic rivals.

The figure eclipsed the $100 million that Bush raised for the 2000 election and was more than triple what former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, the top fund-raiser among the contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, amassed in 2003.

While the Democrats must spend their money now in pursuit of their party's nomination, Bush, who faces no Republican opposition, entered the year with $99 million in the bank. He can save that money for a big spending blitz once his Democratic opponent is determined.

But the president isn't resting. This week, he raised an estimated $2.8 million at a $2,000-a-ticket St.. Louis fundraiser - the largest amount raised at a single event in Missouri history - and is due to attend fund-raisers in Knoxville, Tenn. and Palm Beach, Fla. on Thursday.

And the money keeps rolling in. Bush is expected to raise a whopping $200 million in the end.

Meanwhile, Gephardt, Kerry and Lieberman continue to sling mud at Dean, and to a lesser extent Clark, making Bush's re-election that much surer. Are the Democrats stark raving mad? Or simply selfish, egotistical, immature and short-sighted?

If democracy is to survive in this country in any form, Bush must be defeated in 2004.

Story here.

More on Republican hypocrisy....


This time on Ed Gillespie and the RNC.

Here.

So who's pandering now...?

When former California Governor Gray Davis signed into law a bill granting undocumented immigrants the right to California drivers' licenses, his opponents in the recall race (including current Governor Arnold Schwarznegger) howled that he was pandering to Latino voters.

I supported Davis' bill and I generally support improving the status and conditions of immigrant workers.

What irks me is the hypocrisy of a Republican Party that lambasts a sitting Democratic governor then turns right around and introduces their 2004 version of the Bracero Program.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 — President Bush offered a plan today that he said would help millions of illegal immigrants working in the United States while also making the country more secure and prosperous and living up to its finest ideals.

"By tradition and conviction, our country is a welcoming society," Mr. Bush said at a special ceremony in the White House. "We welcome the talent, the character and the patriotism of immigrant families."

While Mr. Bush said again that he opposed amnesty, which he said would only encourage lawbreaking and perpetuate illegal immigration, his proposals would nonetheless effectively grant a measure of amnesty to illegal immigrants with jobs.

Bush has amply demonstrated in his 3 years in office that he could care less about the plight or rights of immigrant workers. The real reason for this too little too late PR ploy is to (1) garner Latino votes in November, and (2) hopefully score Brownie points in his upcoming meeting with Mexican President Vicente Fox.

Complete story here.

A problem to dwarf all others...

While President Bush and his coterie drag their feet, maintaining that global warming is a hoax, time is running out for hundreds of plants and animals.

Hundreds of species of land plants and animals around the globe could vanish or be on the road to extinction over the next 50 years if global warming continues, scientists warn.

The researchers concede that there are many uncertainties in both climate forecasts and the computer models they used. But they said their prediction could come to pass if industrial nations do not curtail emissions of greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.

[...]

They found that more than one-third of the 1,103 native species they studied could disappear or approach extinction by 2050 as climate change turns plains into deserts or alters forests.

Complete story here.

Why aren't the Democrats jumping on this...?

I know this is old news to those of us who haunt alternative news-sites. But why aren't the Dems going after Bush?!

...George W. Bush is going to run in 2004 on the idea that his administration is the only one capable of protecting us from another attack like the ones which took place on September 11. Yet the record to date is clear. Not only did they fail in spectacular fashion to deal with those first threats, not only has their reaction caused us to be less safe, not only have they failed to sufficiently bolster our defenses, but they used the aftermath of the attacks to ram through policies they couldn't have dreamed of achieving on September 10. It is one of the most remarkable turnabouts in American political history: Never before has an administration used so grisly a personal failure to such excellent effect.

Never mind the final insult: They received all these warnings and went on vacation for a month down in Texas. The August 6 briefing might as well have happened in a vacuum. September 11 could have and should have been prevented. Why? Because Bush knew.

Complete piece here.

Happy 2004....

May it be the year we kick George W. Bush out of the office he so undeservedly occupies!

Sorry about my absence these past days. I've been packing up and getting ready to move to New York.

That's right! I'm leaving the "Left Coast," as one of my New York contacts is wont to call it, to try my hand again in the Big Apple. And, what is more, to rejoin my sweetie. Long-distance relationships suck!

With luck, depending on the gig I pick up, I'll start posting more regularly on K9 once I settle in.

Lord knows, there's plenty to complain about! What with Dean trailing Bush by only 5 points in the latest Harris poll, the Republican party is running scared that the more than $112 million--raised for the primary alone, in which Bush runs unopposed--won't be enough to beat the Democrats. And we all know that a scared Karl Rove is a man who will stop at nothing.

The latest? They've targeted MoveOn.org regarding two ads entered in a recent contest (here, among other places) . Talk about a non-issue! The ads in question were submitted to an open forum, to be voted on by interested MoveOn members. And guess what: the weren't among the 15 final ads chosen.

Even had they been picked and actually aired on TV, they would have fallen under the category of free speech, still protected by the Constitution. Give the Bush camp another 4 years and that may no longer be true.

So stay tuned in '04 and keep on fighting!

"We got 'im...?"

According to foreign news sources, U.S. military and intelligence forces did not find and capture Saddam Hussein. Rather, U.S. soldiers followed directions given by Kurdish forces to locate and drag the drugged, befuddled Hussein from the hole in the ground where the Kurds had imprisoned him since one of his own tribesmen betrayed him out of revenge.

London: Ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was captured by Kurdish forces, then drugged and handed over to the American forces as a revenge against the rape of a tribal chief's daughter by the tyrant's psychopathic eldest son Uday, a media report said today.

The full story of the fallen dictator's capture last Saturday in a "spider hole" near his birthplace of Tikrit exposes the version peddled by Americans as incomplete.

According to the report in The Sunday Express, Saddam had already been handed over to Kurdish forces, who then brokered a deal with US commanders.

He was drugged and abandoned, ready for the American troops to recover him.

So, President Bush lied again when he said, "Yesterday, on December 13th, at 8:30 p.m. Iraqi time, Saddam Hussein was captured by US forces."

Worse, most major U.S. media outlets are complicit in his lie by failing to publish and broadcast the truth.

Real story here, here, and here.

Feel safer yet...?


Exactly how is this going to make us safer?

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 — Pentagon officials said today that Americans in some areas of the country could expect to see more warplanes in the skies during the holiday season now that a higher antiterrorism alert level is in effect.

"They may see additional air patrols over select cities and facilities, an increase in the air-defense posture here in Washington, D.C., and combat aircraft could be put on a higher alert at different air bases throughout the country," the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, said at a Pentagon briefing.

Yeah, right, al Qaeda's going to attack us with a squadron of fighter bombers.

Considering the safety record of the U.S. military, more warplanes in the skies above American cities probably increases the risk of casualties.

More here.

Blow 2 to tyranny...!

A divided federal appeals court in New York ruled yesterday that President Bush lacked the authority to detain indefinitely a United States citizen arrested on American soil on suspicion of terrorism simply by declaring him "an enemy combatant."

Within hours, a second federal appeals court, based in San Francisco, also in a divided ruling, declared that the administration's policy of imprisoning some 660 noncitizens captured in the Afghan war on a naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, without access to United States legal protections was unconstitutional as well as a violation of international law.

The twin blows to the underpinnings of the administration's elaborate legal strategy erected after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks make it all the more likely that the Supreme Court will have the final say on matters that the administration had argued did not belong in the courts in the first place.

Of course, before we start celebrating too heartily we should remember that the same Supreme Court that annointed Bush president has agreed to definitively decide the issue of the Guantánamo Bay detainees. Court watchers say the Supremes will likely add the question of Padillo's fate to their docket.

Complete story here.

Courts rule against Bush...!

NEW YORK - President Bush does not have power to detain American citizen Jose Padilla, the former gang member seized on U.S. soil, as an enemy combatant, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The decision, which ordered that Padilla be released from military custody within 30 days, could force the government to try the "dirty bomb" plot suspect in civilian courts. The White House said the government would seek a stay.

[...]

"As this court sits only a short distance from where the World Trade Center stood, we are as keenly aware as anyone of the threat al-Qaida poses to our country and of the responsibilities the president and law enforcement officials bear for protecting the nation," the court said.

"But presidential authority does not exist in a vacuum, and this case involves not whether those responsibilities should be aggressively pursued, but whether the president is obligated, in the circumstances presented here, to share them with Congress," it added.

I wish the court had ruled more strongly and extended its decision to other detainees, such as Esam Hamdi, a Louisiana native captured during the fighting in Afghanistan and also designated an "enemy combatant."

But it's a start.

Complete story here.

More Republican hypocrisy....

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- The 78-year-old daughter of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond and a black maid said Wednesday that now that she has come forward to disclose her heritage, she is finally at peace.

At a news conference in her native South Carolina, Essie Mae Washington-Williams said she did not come forward earlier because she didn't want to jeopardize Thurmond's political career and family. ``Throughout his life and mine we respected each other. ... I was sensitive about his well-being and his career.''

``I am not bitter. I am not angry. In fact, there is a great sense of peace that has come over me in the past year,'' she said. ``I feel as though a great weight has been lifted. I am Essie Mae Washington-Williams, and at last I feel completely free.''

I can understand Williams' desire to be free of bitterness and anger. After all, those emotions eat away at a person's integrity and happiness.

What I don't understand is why she and her family concealed the late senator's incredible hypocrisy out of sensitivity for "his well-being and his career." Thurmond's actions in the Senate advanced one of the most racist, homophobic and misogynist agendas in modern times. If ever a man deserved to be exposed for the sort of slimy hypocrite who believed it was ok to take sexual advantage of a 16-year-old family servant, but not eat with, attend school with, sit side-by-side on a city bus with or marry, it was Strom Thurmond.

Complete story here.

So, Hussein is in custody...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 14 - Saddam Hussein, the deposed Iraqi leader, was captured in a raid on a farm near Tikrit on Saturday night, American military officials confirmed today.

Personally, I don't expect the Iraqi resistance to weaken. But I could be wrong.

Complete story here.

Bush's "war on terrorism" fails again...

The Bush administration’s obsessive secrecy and adamant opposition to public trials for suspected terrorists not only violates the Constitution, thus moving our country closer to totalitarianism, but makes it impossible to fairly try those accused of collaborating to plan 9/11.

One such suspect was freed in Germany today and the outcome of his trial thrown into doubt.

BERLIN, Dec. 11 — The United States' refusal to allow testimony from a jailed Qaeda figure prompted a Hamburg judge on Thursday to order the release of a Moroccan accused of aiding the Sept. 11 hijackers.

The judge acted after reviewing new evidence that Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a member of the Hamburg Qaeda cell that planned and executed the World Trade Center attacks, told American interrogators that only he and the three suicide pilots from the Hamburg cell knew about the attacks before they happened. The judge said that while he had strong doubts about the reliability of the evidence, he could not properly evaluate it without testimony from Mr. bin al-Shibh.

Complete story here.

The problem with Democrats....

As much as I abhor radical Republicans and the stands they take—war in Iraq, tax-cuts and tax-shelters for the wealthy, dismantling of Medicare and Social Security, de-funding of public education, exploitation of the environment, opposition to gay marriage, against a woman's right to choose, and so on and so on--I detest spineless Democrats even more. At least the Republicans stand on their convictions, selfish, twisted and corrupt as those convictions may be. While Democrats seem to have no principles, much less the guts to take a stand, even against Republicans.

In a letter to the editors of the Rapid City Journal, Senator Tom Daschle's campaign manager defended his boss' legislative record by emphasizing how often the minority leader sided with the opposition.

I'm very disappointed in Denise Ross' Nov. 25 column allowing Republican Sen. George Allen of Virginia to do a 1,100-word hatchet job on Tom Daschle without any opportunity to refute the false charges.

For instance, Allen claims that Daschle opposes the president at every turn, but in fact a Congressional Quarterly study has Sen. Daschle voting with President Bush 75 percent of the time. [Emphasis mine.]

Jeeze, with enemies like this, Republicans need no friends.

Complete story here.

More broken promises...

SACRAMENTO — Retreating from two central campaign promises that helped make him governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday dropped his personal "guarantee" that cities and counties would be compensated for billions in lost car-tax revenue and reversed his pledge to safeguard spending for public schools.

In a wide-ranging interview with CNN, Schwarzenegger offered no commitment that his administration would restore to local governments the money they lost when he repealed a vehicle registration fee increase on his first day in office. Rather, he said that mayors and county supervisors who are worried that some $4 billion in lost revenue won't be replaced should look to the Legislature, which is considering a bill to make that happen.

And he suggested that if local government coffers are not replenished, it is not his fault.

"They [local officials] should put pressure on their state legislators because they've spent their money," Schwarzenegger said on the network's "Inside Politics" show. "It's not me taking anything away from them, it's they've spent their money."

Schwarzenegger also broached the prospect of suspending an education spending formula mandated by the state Constitution. During the campaign he had said that schools would be cut "over my dead body."[Emphasis mine.]

Ahh, you can see Schwarzenegger's learning from the best. Promise voters anything, then once in office plunder public coffers with one hand and point the finger of blame at Democrats with the other.

How California voters could be so delusional as to expect otherwise from Schwarzenegger is beyond me.

I'll soon be leaving the state to return to NYC (and my sweetie!). Perhaps regarding the debacle from afar will be less painful than up close.

Complete story here.

I was rooting for the green...

SAN FRANCISCO — Gavin Newsom, a 36-year-old millionaire entrepreneur and protege of outgoing mayor Willie Brown, edged out a surprisingly strong Green Party opponent Tuesday night to become the youngest San Francisco mayor in a century.

[...]

The contest between Green Party member and Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez and fellow Supervisor Newsom had become a referendum on politics as usual.

Newsom — a charismatic Democratic Party favorite — campaigned for more than a year as Brown's chosen successor. With all the precincts counted, Newsom won by 52.6% to Gonzalez's 47.4%.

Gonzalez led a vigorous Green Party bid for mayor that drew national attention and had Democratic Party heavyweights scrambling to protect their longtime stronghold. The Democratic strategy worked even though young liberals, disenchanted with Newsom's establishment credentials, flocked to Gonzalez, a candidate who cast himself as a political outsider.

[...]

If Gonzalez had pulled off an upset, he would have become the most prominent elected Green Party official in the United States — claiming a city that has been a Democratic Party stronghold for decades. Democratic Party leaders had responded accordingly. Former President Bill Clinton flew in on a Newsom backer's private plane Monday to address supporters. Former Vice President Al Gore visited last week. And Democratic officials including U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, among others, have campaigned aggressively for Newsom.

I can only hope that Democratic pols--across the nation--realize that Gonzalez's strong showing is a sign they better respond to concerns of the party's progressive wing.

Complete story here.

CA's gropping governor breaks promise...

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is dropping a plan to hire a private investigator to examine allegations that he groped at least 16 women over the last three decades, a spokesman said Monday.
The governor is busy with the state's budget crisis and doubts that such an inquiry would appease critics, said Rob Stutzman, communications director for Schwarzenegger. Because of that, he has decided not to look into the charges himself — as he promised to do in the final days of the recall campaign — Stutzman said.

How considerate, to save his critics the trouble of deciding whether or not they will be appeased.
Complete story here.

Chechnya brings the war to Moscow...

Another horrible suicide bombing.

MOSCOW, Dec. 9 - A suicide bomber blew herself up outside a historic hotel in the center of Moscow today, officials said, killing at least 5 other people and seriously wounding 13 only steps away from the Kremlin, Red Square and the Parliament.

The bomb exploded just before 11 o'clock on a cold, snowy morning, leaving a scene of chaos and carnage. Russia has suffered a wave of suicide attacks this year that has killed more than 200 people, but the explosion today brought terrorism's grisly results to the historic and political heart of the country.

The Russian military has wrecked havoc in Chechnya, in one of the most brutal occupations in modern history. I am sickened and repelled, but not surprised, that Chechnyans are strapping on explosives and striking back on Russian soil.

It frightens me, too. Unless we change our foreign policy, withdraw our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, I fear it is simply a matter of time until such retaliatory attacks become common in the U.S.

Complete story here.

Petty, vindictive, greedy little men...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 — The Pentagon has barred French, German and Russian companies from competing for $18.6 billion in contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, saying the step "is necessary for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States."

The directive, which was issued by the deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, represents perhaps the most substantive retaliation to date by the Bush administration against American allies who opposed its decision to go to war in Iraq.

I guess Haliburton and Bechtel don't already have a big enough share of the Iraqi plunder.

Complete story here.

Hiatus....

Sorry about the unannounced hiatus.

I was in France, celebrating the holidays with my daughter. I thought I might want to post now and then--hence, my failure to announce my planned absence--but ended up enjoying the time away from the (bad) news.

And there is/was so much. Children murdered by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, practicing a favorite Israeli maneuver to take out suspected terrorists from the air. Bush's bill to annihilate Medicare and divide the booty among private drug companies, signed into law. Passage in the House of the president's $820 billion spending bill with no extension of benefits to unemployment workers--Merry Xmas! The AWOL "commander-in-chief's" slink into and out of Baghdad on Thanksgiving for a staged photo-op, complete with the prop-turkey. Rush Limbaugh’s toxic return to the airways. The unending, terrible, and pointless death toll among U.S. forces, allies and civilians in Iraq.

While a part of me would still like to hide away from the news, Bush and his murdering junta must be ousted from office in ’04! Keeping this blog is part of my small contribution to achieving that end.

American death toll in Iraq....

According to Harper's Magazine, more U.S. soldiers have died so far in Iraq than in the first three years of the Vietnam War.

Here. (Scroll down.)

Mogadishu revisited....

Responsibility for these ghoulish, tragic deaths should be laid squarely at the feet of President Bush.

MOSUL, Iraq - Gunmen killed two American soldiers driving through this northern Iraqi city Sunday, and then a crowd swarmed the scene, looting the soldiers' vehicle and pummeling their bodies, witnesses said. Another soldier was killed in a roadside bombing north of Baghdad.

[…]

The 101st Airborne Division said its soldiers in Mosul were shot while driving between U.S. garrisons. Several witnesses also said the soldiers were shot during the attack in the Ras al-Jadda district, though earlier reports by witnesses said assailants slit the soldiers' throats.

Bahaa Jassim, a teenager, said the soldiers' vehicle crashed into a wall after the shooting. Several dozen passers-by then descended on the wreckage, looting the car of weapons and the soldiers' backpacks.

After the soldiers' bodies fell into the street, the crowd pummeled them with concrete blocks, Jassim said.

Publicly, the U.S. government is insisting that the rising death toll in Iraq will not lessen its resolve to remain in occupation of the country. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military deputy director for operations, said the coalition was "not worried in the least" by the continuing attacks on its forces. "We have nothing at this point that causes us to be concerned," he said. "This is an enemy that cannot defeat us militarily."

Uh...wasn't that true in Vietnam, too?

Complete story here.

And this is only the beginning....

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Explosions shook Iraq's oil ministry this morning, witnesses said, and thick black smoke poured from the heavily guarded compound.

Fire trucks moved about the ministry and U.S. soldiers kept journalists away.

Imad Ahmed, a retired civil servant who lives near the ministry, said he heard five explosions at about 7:30 a.m. There were no reports of casualties in that attack.

The attack occurred minutes after at least three rockets were fired into the Palestine and Sheraton hotels in Baghdad. First indications were that there were no casualties among the large number of Americans and other Westerners who live in the Palestine Hotel, but a CNN report said at least two wounded people had been carried from the Sheraton after the attack.

The hotel attack was potentially the most serious strike on a major target involving foreigners in Baghdad since the Oct. 26 suicide bombing of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

On Thursday, a bomber in Kirkuk blew up a pickup packed with explosives alongside the office of a U.S.-allied political party, killing himself and five other people in the latest extension of resistance attacks into northern and southern Iraq.

The blast culminated a bloody 24-hour spate of bombings, assassinations and shootings across Iraq. Assailants blew up a sport-utility vehicle outside the home of a tribal leader in Ramadi, wounding him and killing at least two other people. In Karbala, three schoolboys were killed in a bomb blast. In Basra, a pro-American political leader was abducted and assassinated, his party said in a statement.[emphasis mine]

And let's not forget the 27 people killed yesterday (including the British consul general) and 450 wounded in Istanbul.

And the twin bombings last Saturday at the Istanbul synagogues that killed at least 20 and wounded 300.

How do President Bush and Prime Minister Blair respond?

LONDON, Nov. 20 —A grim President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged defiantly Thursday to continue the fight to combat terror and stabilize Iraq, only hours after two coordinated truck-bomb attacks on British targets in Istanbul. (More here.)

I wish we could force the two of them to duke it out in the streets of Baghdad, mano-a-mano, with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

All four deserve to be imprisoned for the devastation they have wrought throughout the world.

In the predictable aftermath of this absurd "war on terror" in Afghanistan and Iraq, everyday citizens like you and me have absolutely no protection against deplorable acts of vengeance like the ones detailed above.

These bombings were utterly predictable outcomes of the U.S. and British actions. While the exact locations and timings remain unknown until it's too late, their inevitability is as predictable as flipping a switch and turning on a light. Maybe more so.

It's time for the U.S. to treat the peoples of the world--all of them--as fellow human beings. Afford them respect, human rights and share the wealth. If instead, we continue to bully those weaker and poorer than us, terrorism is the logical and predictable outcome.

Judging from the hubris of Bush and Blair's past actions and current response, better get used to it.

It makes me so mad.

Latest bombing story here.

Energy bill blocked....

For the time being.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 — Opponents of the energy bill succeeded today in blocking the measure in the Senate, leaving the future of the legislation uncertain.

Fifty-seven senators voted in favor of cutting off debate and moving to a yes-or-no vote on the measure itself. But under Senate rules, 60 votes are required to halt debate, so the bill's backers need to find three more votes to prevail. Forty senators voted to keep the debate going.

Call your senators to thank them if they voted to defeat the bill. (Go here for the vote tally.) Chew them out if they voted "yea."

And while you're at it, tell them to defeat the trojan-horse prescription drug bill. (For more, see Paul Krugman's editorial.

Full story here.

Royal egg on the face....

How many millions of dollars have they spent on security for President Bush's visit to London? Some $1 million?

And all somebody had to do was apply for a palace job under his own name using bogus references.

Not only that, according to Salon the reporter has pulled the same stunt before, getting a job as a security guard to tennis stars at Wimbledon.

A SHOCKING royal security scandal has been exposed by a Mirror reporter working secretly as a footman.

Ryan Parry infiltrated the heart of Buckingham Palace for two months as police and senior staff prepared for the state visit of George Bush.

Parry, who used bogus references to get the job, was still in the Palace lastnight as Mr Bush arrived. He watched unchallenged as the president and his wife Laura were met by the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh in the Palace garden at around 8pm.

He had a full view from a pitch by the state dining room through a net curtain. Had he been a terrorist hell bent on assassinating the royals or Mr Bush, nothing could have stopped him.

Mirror story here and Salon story here.

No surprise....

I'm seriously considering voting my conscience in the next presidential election. In other words, voting for Dennis Kucinich.

Like many of my radical friends, I'm fed up with settling for second-best in the name of the "lesser of two evils." The Democrat's wimpiness on issues like this one burns me up.

The major Democratic presidential candidates continued to back legal rights for gays but declined to go as far as the Massachusetts Supreme Court and endorse gay marriage.

Only underdog candidates Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton and Carol Moseley Braun support laws that would allow same-sex couples to wed.

The leading candidates for the nomination oppose gay marriage, but most say gay couples should get all the legal rights of married couples. It may seem like a dubious distinction, but it's the same position taken by the majority of Americans in public opinion polls.

"Dubious distinction?" Didn't the Supreme Court strike down that dubious "separate but equal" distinction in 1953 in Brown v. Board of Education?

Complete story here.

CNN poll....

On gay marriage. Vote here (scroll down).

Wedding bells are going to ring...!

The highest court in Massachusetts ruled today that gay and lesbian couples have the right to marry under the state constitution, emphatically stating that the Commonwealth had failed to identify any constitutional reasons why they could not wed.

The ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court stopped short of immediately allowing marriage licenses to be issued to the seven gay couples who sued the state Department of Public Health in 2001 after their requests for marriage licenses were denied.

But the court gave the Legislature six months to comply with its decision.

Naturally, the Religious Right is apoplectic over the decision, promising to pass a state (or federal) constitutional amendment to stop gays from getting marriage rights.

Yet according to the article, the earliest any such amendment could be voted on in Massachusetts would be November 2006. In the interim, gay couples could be granted marriage licenses.

Yay!

Complete story here.

Coward II....

Go here for a rundown on the extreme and expensive security measures to protect Bush while he's in London.

(Thanks to Buzzflash.)

Coward....

GEORGE Bush was last night branded chicken for scrapping his speech to Parliament because he feared being heckled by anti-war MPs.

The US president planned to give a joint address to the Commons and Lords during his state visit to Britain.

[...]

The decision to abandon the speech came as extraordinary security measures costing £19million placed London under a state of virtual siege ahead of Mr Bush's arrival tomorrow.

Roads in Whitehall were closed with concrete blockades. Overhead, a no-fly zone has been established with the RAF on standby to shoot down unidentified planes. All police leave is cancelled.

The only speech Mr Bush, who will stay with the Queen at Buckingham Palace, is now due to give will be to an "invited audience" at the Banqueting House in Whitehall.

Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn said: "This is yet another slight on this country by the president of the USA.

[...]

The row about the speech came after President Bush set up a showdown with demonstrators by refusing to be apologetic on the Gulf war.

In an interview with the BBC's Breakfast with Frost show, he said they would not "cut and run" from Iraq. He added: "We will not be defeated by the terrorists."

Mr Bush also refused to grant British pleas for mercy for the six Britons held in Guantanamo Bay.

He said: "They will go through a military tribunal at some point, a military tribunal in international accord, or in line with international accords."

Complete story here.

Bush in Britain....

During his visit to the UK, Bush wants to offer his prayers and tell the bereaved families their loved ones did not die in vain.

But Reg Keys, who lost his 20-year-old son Tom in June 2002, said he holds Bush and Tony Blair responsible for his death.

"I don't know how the man (Bush) has the nerve to show his face in his country after costing the lives of 53 British servicemen," said Mr Keys, of Llanuwchllyn, near Bala.

[...]

Mr Keys said other nations had the "backbone" to stand up to waging war on Saddam Hussein.

Mr Keys said: "I haven't had an invitation for an interview with Mr Bush, if I did I would literally walk from Wales to London to meet the man, look him in the eye and tell what I think of him.

"They didn't die for a noble cause, they died for Bush's political reasons, they were just sacrificial lambs."

[...]

"As Tom used to say in his phone calls - 'Dad, you will never westernise this country, they will never be democratic, there are too many tribal factions in this country for it to be a democracy'."

"He felt they were getting nowhere, they would try to train Iraqi police, you couldn't trust them anyway, you could put them in charge of weapon searches and they would just let their friends drive through with weapons.

"He felt it was futile, they were trying to impose Western values on a country which would not be westernised."

Bush's official response to the prospect of meeting anti-war protestors in Britain has been along the lines of "they're lucky to live in a country where people are free to say anything." This echoes--almost verbatim--what he said about protestors in Australia.

As for Bush's own country, I've seen damn few articles in any mainstream media as heartbreakingly critical as this short BBC piece. What does that say about our freedom to "say anything" and have it be heard?

Moreover, good luck getting within a mile of President Bush with any sort of anti-administration protest sign.

Complete story here.

A mayoral race to follow....

San Francisco's race for mayor is too close to call, but Supervisor Matt Gonzalez has a small lead among those most likely to vote Dec. 9, according to a poll released Friday by CBS 5-TV.

The poll, taken earlier this week by SurveyUSA of New Jersey, gave Gonzalez a surprising 49 to 47 percent lead over Supervisor Gavin Newsom among those certain to vote in the runoff. Among probable voters, Newsom had a 46 percent to 43 percent advantage. Both results are within the poll's margin of error.

For those who don't know it, Gonzalez is a Green Party candidate, while Newsom is the designated Democratic heir to outgoing Mayor Willie Brown.

Brown has disappointed and alienated many of San Francisco's liberal voters with his pro-business stance.

On the other hand, while San Francisco has no viable Republican party to speak of, there remains a staunch corps of conservative voters who may push Newsom over the top.

Complete story here.

This stinks to high heaven and beyond....

It is an unusual charity brochure: a 13-page document, complete with pictures of fireworks and a golf course, that invites potential donors to give as much as $500,000 to spend time with Tom DeLay during the Republican convention in New York City next summer — and to have part of the money go to help abused and neglected children.

Representative DeLay, who has both done work for troubled children and drawn criticism for his aggressive political fund-raising in his career in Congress, said through his staff that the entire effort was fundamentally intended to help children. But aides to Mr. DeLay, the House majority leader from Texas, acknowledged that part of the money would go to pay for late-night convention parties, a luxury suite during President Bush's speech at Madison Square Garden and yacht cruises.

And so campaign finance watchdogs say Mr. DeLay's effort can be seen as, above all, a creative maneuver around the recently enacted law meant to limit the ability of federal officials to raise large donations known as soft money.

"They are using the idea of helping children as a blatant cover for financing activities in connection with a convention with huge unlimited, undisclosed, unregulated contributions," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a Washington group that helped push through the recent overhaul of the campaign finance laws.

Other Republicans are jumping on the bandwagon. Senator Bill Frist, R-TN and Senate majority leader, is planning a concert and reception in conjunction with the convention to supposedly benefit--get this--AIDS charities.

How's he going to square that with his homophobic consitutuents?

These guys truly have no shame.

Complete story here.

Yes...!

I wish these victories were more frequent.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 — After almost 40 hours of wearying, temper-fraying debate, Senate Democrats succeeded today in blocking three of President Bush's nominees to federal appeals courts, and they appeared to be in good position to block more nominations.

The Democrats stymied the nomination of Judge Priscilla Owen of the Texas Supreme Court for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which sits in New Orleans; Judge Carolyn Kuhl of California for the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, and Justice Janice Rogers Brown of the California Supreme Court for the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

[...]

The White House reacted with anger. "Once again, a partisan minority of senators has thwarted the will of the majority and stood in the way of voting on superb judicial nominees," President Bush said in a statement issued by his spokesman, Scott McClellan. "These obstructionist tactics are shameful, unfair and have become all too common."

What a baby.

The Senate has approved 168 of Bush's right-wing judicial nominations and blocked only six of the most extreme.

Six!

Hardly obstructionist. Unless you're a spoiled rich kid from Texas used to getting you way by any hook or by crook.

Full story here.

Following Bush's footsteps....

We have a president in the Whitehouse who spends more time on vacation and fundraising than he does on the job and now a governor in California who kicks off his inaugural term with a family vacation in Hawaii.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - For many days, aides have portrayed California Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger (news - web sites) as hard at work in meetings on his new administration which takes office on Monday.

It turns out that the actor and his wife Maria Shriver have been vacationing in Hawaii with their four children, a person close to the family told Reuters.

"They took the children off to Hawaii," he said on Wednesday, adding that the couple's kids missed some school as a result of the pre-inaugural travels.

Complete story here. (Thanks to Bob Harris over at This Modern World.)

What's the point...?

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 — The commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks said on Thursday that its deal with the White House for access to highly classified Oval Office intelligence reports would let the White House edit the documents before they were released to the commission's representatives.

The agreement, announced on Wednesday, has led to the first public split on the commission. Two Democrats on the 10-member panel say that the commission should have demanded full access to the intelligence summaries, known as the President's Daily Brief, and that the White House should not be allowed to determine what is relevant to the investigation.

An umbrella group of victims' families joined the criticism, saying the terms of the accord should be public.

While spokesmen for panel refused again to provide the terms, citing the sensitivity of the talks with the White House, its executive director acknowledged that the White House would be able to remove information from the reports unrelated to Al Qaeda and to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

[...]

Administration officials have acknowledged that they are concerned that intelligence reports received by Mr. Bush in the weeks before 9/11 might be construed to suggest that the White House failed to respond to evidence suggesting that Al Qaeda was planning a catastrophic attack. The White House acknowledged last year in response to news reports that a copy of the Daily Brief in August 2001 noted that Al Qaeda might use hijacked planes in an attack.

Why not end the charade and disband the commission right now?
Complete story here.

More bad news from Iraq....


You know things are bad when USA Today is more truthful than the Pentagon and the Whitehouse.

U.S. forces are losing the intelligence battle in Iraq to an increasingly organized guerrilla force that uses stealth, spies and surprise to inflict punishing casualties.

U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement officials say that after six months of intensifying guerrilla warfare, Iraqi insurgents know more about the U.S. and allied forces -- their style of operations, convoy routes and vulnerable targets -- than the coalition forces know about them. Indeed, U.S. intelligence has had trouble simply identifying the enemy and figuring out how many are Iraqis and how many are foreign fighters.

With local knowledge and the element of surprise on their side, the guerrillas are exploiting their intelligence edge to overcome the coalition's overwhelming military superiority. Insurgents routinely use inexpensive explosives to destroy multimillion-dollar assets, including tanks and helicopters. Using surveillance and inside information, the guerrillas have assassinated many Iraqis helping the coalition, gunned down a member of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council, killed the top United Nations official in Iraq and blasted the heavily guarded hotel in Baghdad where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying.

Sophisticated U.S. intelligence tools such as spy satellites and electronic eavesdropping intercepts have been of little practical use, according to intelligence officials in Washington and military officers in Iraq. And despite an intense search and exhaustive intelligence efforts, deposed leader Saddam Hussein remains at large.

Complete story here.

More on digital voting....

This column by the NYT's David Pogue concisely lays out the case against touch-screen voting.

...Wrong Thing 4: Diebold points out that the software is inspected and tested by election officials before it's certified. There's only one problem: Diebold engineers can slip in and make changes to the software even AFTER it's been certified.

Worse, they do exactly that. A Wired article quoted a Diebold engineer as saying that his team made no fewer than three rounds of software changes to the machines in Georgia's 2002 election for governor--after the machines had been certified but before the election began. (That election "ended in a major upset that defied all polls and put a Republican in the governor's seat for the first time in more than 130 years.")

Read it here.

Hearts and minds....

This, sadly, speaks for itself.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - If Washington doubts there is Iraqi public support for guerrillas killing its troops, it should consider the teenagers who happily watched American blood spill on Wednesday.
 
After a roadside bomb ripped through a military vehicle and wounded two soldiers, Iraqi boys rushed out of their homes to survey the damage.

"This is good. If they ask me, I will join the resistance. The Americans have to die," said Ali Qais, 15. "They are just here to steal our oil."

The U.S. administration has long dismissed the guerrillas as isolated "terrorists" who are Saddam Hussein loyalists or foreign Islamic militants.

But the scene in the Sarafiya district of Baghdad suggests they are winning the sympathy of Iraqis, whose joy at Saddam's fall has been overshadowed by anti-American rage.

Teenage boys were irritated to hear that two American soldiers were just wounded, not killed.

"I saw them pushing their hands onto one of the Americans' chest. They must have died. One soldier's friend was crying," said Abdullah Oman, 18.

His fury has been fueled by what he says is an American desire to humiliate all Iraqis.

He even believes that U.S. troops plant the bombs themselves, risking American lives to terrify and kill Iraqis.

"They are watching us die and laughing. They humiliate us. They handcuffed me and arrested me in front of my parents late one night because I stood on my house porch after curfew," he said.

How can the rank-and-file Right, enamored of books and movies starring outnumbered and outgunned Americans making heroic stands against evil invaders (be they of Satan or, formerly, the Soviet Union) be so blind when it comes to this war? Iraqis are defending their homes. Their way of life. Like the American heroes of those favored fables, they will fight to the last man.

America lost this war before it began. All that remains is to determine how long we will continue the slaughter before we concede that.

Complete story here.

So how are we safer from terrorism...?

...Before the war, President Bush contended that Al Qaeda was active in Iraq. But it was not until several months after the U.S.-led occupation began that Islamic extremists apparently took advantage of the postwar chaos and started launching terrorist attacks.

U.S. officials acknowledge that they are hobbled in their efforts to stem the apparent surge in Islamic extremism because they have little information about the attackers or their activities.

Authorities believe that some of the fighters are Al Qaeda operatives and others are members of extremist groups affiliated with the network. Officials suspect that the groups operate as independent cells but are cooperating to some degree with one another and with Hussein loyalists seeking to regain power.

In September, Bremer told reporters in Washington that 248 foreign fighters had been arrested in Iraq, including 19 suspected Al Qaeda members. It is unclear when the arrests took place.

Bin Laden, who was critical of Hussein while he was in power, has repeatedly called on Muslims to go to Iraq and avenge the U.S. invasion.

"God knows if I could find a way to your field, I wouldn't stall," a voice identified as Bin Laden's said in an audiotape released in mid-October. "You my brother fighters in Iraq ... I tell you: You are God's soldiers and the arrows of Islam, and the first line of defense for this [Muslim] nation today."

[...]

Some officials fear that a growing Islamist movement in Iraq could give a boost to the extremist cause and train a new core of Muslim fighters, just as the war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union did in the 1980s.

A senior U.S. intelligence official in Washington said Iraq has emerged as the focal point for Islamic jihad, becoming the most active front in the movement and the top priority for Muslim fighters who want to confront the United States.

The assessment, shared by analysts at the CIA and other agencies, underscores how in a matter of months Iraq has supplanted Afghanistan, Chechnya and other international trouble spots as the focus of the jihad cause.

Complete story here.

More on Iraqi peace overtures....

...MICHAEL ISIKOFF [of Newsweek]: You know, there are a lot of games being played on this story and that's why it has to be murky at this point. It is hard to know. You have various agendas. Mr. Perle and his allies inside the pentagon have been at war with the C.I.A. for some time about this.- You have congressional investigators that are raising questions about the role of Mr. MALUF, who was a member of the secret pentagon intelligence team that was reviewing intelligence and back channel diplomacy that was not going through proper channels, not being reported to Secretary of State Powell and the diplomats who were responsible for this. So, it is -- It is very hard to know what to make of this at this point with a lot of--perhaps a lot of different agendas being pushed on this one.-

Complete interview here.

Verifiable voting....

The effort to standardize touch-screen voting with no paper trail must be stopped.

Go here to find out more and join the campaign.

More on Iraqi peace overtures….

Josh Marshal at Talking Points Memo is suspicious of the timing and veracity of the Iraqi peace story.

The main players--Hage and Maloof--appear to have ulterior motives for getting their version of the tale out there at this time. And neither man appears to be of sterling character.

No surprises there! Hage is an arms dealer and Maloof a protégé of Richard Perle. As for ulterior motives, doesn't every source in journalistic history have them?

While Marshall’s doubts do make me more cautious about the story, they don’t disprove it.

I hope journalists and Democrats with spine (an oxymoron) will pursue the matter.

Iraqi-gate...

The story of the Bush administration's arrogant dismissal of Iraq's last-ditch, desperate efforts to avoid war is being picked up by news outlets.

More than any allegation made to date, this one has the potential to bring Bush down. Call your elected representatives and urge them to investigate the matter.

Bush may never be tried for war crimes, but he should at the very least be impeached.

AP story here.

War-crimes...

With time running out, Saddam Hussein's government tried desperately to avert war by negotiating through back channels with Bush administration officials.

They were summarily rebuffed.

Or, as Richard Perle—hawk, neoconservative, resident fellow at the rightwing American Enterprise Institute and former chairman and current member of the Defense Policy Board—told the NY Times, "The message was, `Tell them that we will see them in Baghdad.' "

How do you like that, “we?” This whole Iraqi tragedy wouldn’t have happened if sorry-assed old rich men, like Perle, Bush, Cheney and Wolfowitz had to patrol the streets of Baghdad with M16s.

But I digress.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 — As American soldiers massed on the Iraqi border in March and diplomats argued about war, an influential adviser to the Pentagon received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman: Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal.

Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct an independent search. The businessman said in an interview that the Iraqis also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 who was being held in Baghdad. At one point, he said, the Iraqis pledged to hold elections.

[…]

…Mr. Obeidi [chief of foreign operations of the Iraqi Intelligence Service] explained that the Iraqis wanted to cooperate with the Americans and could not understand why the Americans were focused on Iraq rather than on countries, like Iran, that have long supported terrorists, Mr. Hage [the Lebanese-American businessman] said. The Iraqi seemed desperate, Mr. Hage said, "like someone who feared for his own safety, although he tried to hide it."

Mr. Obeidi told Mr. Hage that Iraq would make deals to avoid war, including helping in the Mideast peace process. "He said, if this is about oil, we will talk about U.S. oil concessions," Mr. Hage recalled. "If it is about the peace process, then we can talk. If this is about weapons of mass destruction, let the Americans send over their people. There are no weapons of mass destruction."

Why have Iraqis so seriously underestimated the American capacity for treachery? In 1990, Saddam Hussein believed U.S. ambassador to Iraq, April Gillespie, when she announced that America had no interest in “territorial disputes between Iraq and its Arab neighbors.” Four months later, he invaded Kuwait.

Thirteen years later, his flunkies trusted Richard Perle, leading proponent of the invasion of Iraq, to plead their case against war to the Bush administration.

Did they not know who they were talking to? Might as well ask Satan to relay your repentance to God.

Perle is now downplaying the importance of his contact with Mr. Hage, claiming disbelief that the overture was authentic. No matter. Principled men grasp at any straw to avoid the sort of bloodshed that occurred in Iraq.

The men in the Bush White House are anything but principled.

Justice demands that those responsible for the lies and manipulation that led to the slaughter in Iraq be tried for war-crimes.

Complete story here.

Bush's magic marker strikes again....

This is all over the net, but in case you haven't seen it, half of the 186 pages of a recently released Justice Department report on diversity among its attorneys was blacked out.

...The blacked-out pages betray a Justice Department that does not want America to know what happens after people are hired. The full report is available on a Web site called the Memory Hole, which electronically lifted the blacked-out sections. Among the conclusions of the full report were:

"When controlling for component, grade, and salary, we found that the average minority is currently residing approximately one-third step lower than the average white and the average woman is currently residing approximately one-half step lower than the average man. These effects are statistically significant."

"Race and gender combine for a particularly strong negative effect of identity for minority women."

"Section chiefs are an extremely critical element of the department's diversity climate. They have significant authority in recruitment, hiring, promotion, performance appraisal, case assignment, and career development. The section chief work force is not diverse, and turnover is low. This pattern, combined with the generally low attention that these managers pay to staff career development, leads minorities to perceive a lack of advancement opportunities."

Complete op-ed here.

Touch-screen vote manipulation.…

Long article on the dangers of converting to touch-screen voting. A must-read if you care about democracy in America.

…Roxanne Jekot, who has put much of her professional and personal life on hold to work on the issue full time, puts it even more strongly. "Corporate America is very close to running this country. The only thing that is stopping them from taking total control are the pesky voters. That's why there's such a drive to control the vote. What we're seeing is the corporatisation of the last shred of democracy.

"I feel that unless we stop it here and stop it now," she says, "my kids won't grow up to have a right to vote at all."

Complete story here.

Thanks to This Modern World for the link.

Such hatred....

The consecration of a gay man as an Anglican bishop in New Hampshire has evoked fury from members of a religion allegedly based on love of one's fellow human beings.

The rage seems particularly extreme in Africa where any support has been greeted with fanatical condemnation.

...But such remarks drew condemnation from conservative church leaders, who said there was no room for compromise on an issue like homosexuality. A leader of the African Christian Democratic Party in South Africa, Louis Green, said Mr. Ndungane and others who support the gay bishop are in need of "spiritual guidance and biblical insight."

"Although God loves everyone, he does not condone sinful behavior," Mr. Green told the South African Press Association. "The Bible equates homosexuality with perversity and as Christians we cannot interpret God's word to suit modern lifestyles."

On the wider question of whether gays ought to be allowed to marry or enter the priesthood, Nigeria's Anglicans have been unequivocal in their opposition.

"We totally reject and renounce this obnoxious attitude and behavior," the church said in a statement issued last month.

"It is devilish and satanic. It comes directly from the pit of hell. It is an idea sponsored by Satan himself and being executed by his followers and adherents who have infiltrated the church."

You've got to wonder when people feel so vehmently about an issue that, presumably, doesn't personally affect them.

Or does it?

Complete story here.

Picking your pocket with a smile…

Excellent column by David Pogue in today’s NYT on the trend of large companies toward passive-aggressive customer-service.

Pogue presents an interesting theory to explain the phenomena.

…I called Verizon. “Don’t worry,” the lady told me. “You signed up for the 700-minute plan with a 100-minute-a-month bonus. When you get your bill, you’ll see 800 minutes of airtime free.”

As you can probably guess, I did not, in fact, get those extra 100 minutes. For two straight months, I had to call Verizon and ask them to fix it. Each time, they apologized and gave me the 100-minute credit. But each time, I lost 25 minutes of my life.

Yes, it’s possible that I just had the good luck to call three incompetent customer-service reps in a row.

But there’s another possibility: Verizon knows that a certain percentage of customers will never notice that they’re being overbilled, or will trust that the problem has been corrected after the first complaint.

I’d chalk this up as an isolated oddity—but the thing is, this was the third or fourth time it’s come up this year.

For example, only a month earlier, the same story had played out with our MCI home long-distance service: our plan was supposed to include unlimited, free long-distance calls on the main line. Yet month after month, we were billed for long-distance calls. Month after month, we’d call customer service. “Oh, I’m so sorry; we’ll credit that to your next bill”—and no credit ever appeared. (We finally dumped MCI.)

Oh, that we could dump all the companies that are jumping on this bandwagon!

Pogue leaves out my own pet peeves. They include impenetrable voicemail systems; being placed on-hold for 20 minutes or longer; the requirement that you punch in your contact information, only to have to repeat it to the person who finally answers; the insistence that one department cannot communicate directly with another, thereby restarting the whole process; and, when all else fails, undisguised rudeness on the part of managers.

AT&T Wireless excels in these techniques. That's why I bought out of my contract early and will never sign with them again.

Read Pogue's column here.

Spinmeisters....

Remember when U.S. forces were puzzled by the failure of Saddam Hussein's "elite Republican Guard" to make a stand to defend Baghdad? Remember when it seemed that Saddam's forces just melted away, and no one knew where they went or what happened to their weapons and organization?

Now the White House/U.S. Media spin is that "foreign terrorists" are responsible for the recent string of deadly attacks in Iraq that has left U.S. soldiers and foreign aid workers--Red Cross, U.N., Doctors Without Borders, etc.--scurrying for cover.

Wouldn't it make more sense that the recent attacks are the work of some of those unaccounted for Republican guard units? Say, under the command of Saddam Hussein?

Remember him?

But that would contradict President Bush's posturing that we "won" handily in Iraq and that the war is over. It would defy the notion that all Iraqis despise Hussein. And it would undermine a key foundation upon which Bush sold his war, namely, that Iraq is a warren of al-Qaida and other foreign terrorists.

No matter how you spin it, the U.S. is bogging down deeper and deeper in Iraq.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq was hit by a string of explosions Thursday that set a freight train on fire, killed a U.S. soldier in a military convoy and ripped through Baghdad's Old Quarter. Another blast injured two U.S. soldiers on a military police patrol.

The attacks came as international organizations continued their exodus from Iraq and the U.N. secretary-general warned of ``a new phase'' in postwar violence.

[…]

U.S. forces are suffering an average of 33 attacks a day -- up from about 12 daily attacks in July. A total of 117 American soldiers have been killed in combat since May 1 -- when Bush declared an end to major fighting -- or slightly more than the 114 soldiers who died in invasion that began March 20.

The escalating violence has unnerved many of Baghdad's 5 million people...

Complete story here.