At least one more US soldier has been killed in Iraq.
For what? The neo-con wet dream of a Three Stooges
Reich...There are 33 days to go until the Electoral
Uprising...Forget about asking your fellow citizens if
they are better off than four years ago? The answer,
of course, is NO. Forget about even asking your fellow
citizens if they are safer than they were four years
ago. Again, the answer, of course, is NO. Now you
should ask "Can you really afford four more years of
the Bush abomination? Can you really afford four more
years of the most illegitimate, corrupt and
incompetent regime in modern American history? Can
this Republic afford four more years of this failed
regime -- economically, environmentally,
strategically, militarily? Can the world afford four
more years of the Bush abomination?"
Here are six stories that should dominate the
airwaves and capture headlines above the fold, but
they won't. (You should not have to read about Halliburton and Cheney in Le Monde.) The Triad ( i.e. the Bush cabal itself,
its wholly-owned-subsidiary-formerly-known-as-the-Republican-Party
and their sponsors, in the US regimestream news
media)will make sure of that…Please read them and
share them with others. Please vote and encourage
others to vote. And, please, remember that the
USregimestream news media does not want to inform you
about this presidential campaign, it wants to
DISinform you…FRODO LIVES!
Matthew Mosk, Washington Post: On Tuesday, the
33-year-old New Jersey widow was stumping in swing
states with Democratic vice presidential candidate
John Edwards for the second day in a row. It's here
that Breitweiser's fresh face and emotional story are
becoming an integral part of an effort to convince
"security moms" that the Democratic ticket of Sen.
John F. Kerry (Mass.) and Edwards can make them safer
and that four more years with President Bush is
dangerous.
Wearing her husband's wedding band, the only evidence
of his life to be recovered at Ground Zero,
Breitweiser said she steeled herself to hit the
campaign trail this week with Edwards, a North
Carolina senator. She fought back a fear of flying
born out of the World Trade Center disaster and
overcame her jitters about public speaking to become a
blunt instrument of attack against a president she
once supported.
"I would love to have heard President Bush and the
Republicans in Congress say, 'Here's what we'll do
better.' But they didn't do that. They circled the
wagons, they stonewalled, they blocked, they
foot-dragged," she said in an interview aboard the
Edwards campaign plane...
Joining the partisan fray was not part of any original
plan by Breitweiser or others in the core group of
victims' relatives that became outspoken advocates for
action in Washington over the course of three years.
They saw value, in fact, in remaining politically
neutral, Breitweiser said.
But the political season has seen that goal trumped by
partisan passions among the families. At a Republican
National Convention awash in Sept. 11 imagery,
delegates heard from Tara Stockpile, widow of a New
York City firefighter; Debra Burlingame, sister of the
captain of the American Airlines plane that crashed
into the Pentagon; and Deena Burnett, the wife of a
passenger of the United Airlines flight that crashed
into a field in Pennsylvania. "We know that what those
passengers did prevented the airline from hitting the
intended target," Burnett said to thunderous applause.
Breitweiser said she hopes the partisan efforts do not
become an unsettling force within a victims' group
that has been fairly cohesive. But she said watching
the way Republicans handled the issue at their
convention convinced her that she should raise her
profile, no matter the consequence.
"I know in my heart that this is what needs to be
done," Breitweiser said, clenching her jaw. "I have a
5-year-old that lost her father and thinks a dad is an
image in a photo. She has no idea that a dad is
supposed to be real and hug you. I want to know that
she's going to be safer. That when she grows up, she's
not going to die because of payback for a bad foreign
policy."
Rob Zaleski, Capitol Times (Madison, WI): Sixteen
months have passed since Kirk Straseskie of Beaver
Dam, a 23-year-old U.S. Marine infantry sergeant,
became the first Wisconsin fatality in the Iraq war...
Since then, 20 other Wisconsin soldiers have died in
Iraq, the most recent being 21-year-old Marine Cpl.
Adrian Soltau of Milwaukee, who was killed in an
explosion Sept. 13. And while all those deaths were
duly noted in the media, one gets the sense that many
Americans have grown indifferent to what's happening
in that chaotic region. Either that, or they don't
want to face the unsettling possibility that, 30 years
after Vietnam, we're once again trapped in a no-win
situation.
John Straseskie, the father of Kirk Straseskie, senses
it, too.
"I don't think Bush has a clue what he's doing over
there," the 52-year-old retired Beaver Dam resident
said in a phone interview this week. And Straseskie
suspects things will just continue to deteriorate
because, he maintains, the president and his advisers
can't seem to comprehend one simple fact.
"Anytime you have guerrilla-type warfare going on, you
kill a lot of innocent people - and that just feeds
the guerillas," he says. "And there's gonna come a
time when we're running with our tails tucked between
our legs just to get out of there."He's angry,
Straseskie says, "because more and more innocent
soldiers are dying in a war that we had no business
starting in the first place." And he's disillusioned,
he says, because many Americans apparently agree with
Bush's contention that the war was worth fighting
because we captured Saddam Hussein - who, according to
the president, was a major terrorist threat...
Asked what he'd ask Bush if he - not Jim Lehrer - were
moderating Thursday night's televised debate,
Straseskie says, "I'd ask him, 'Don't you think you're
rather vain and full of bluster when you say that -
with all the information we have now - we were
justified in going into Iraq? Without enough allied
support to even try to get the job done?' "
Raw Story, www.bluelemur.com: Seymour Hersh, the dean
of American investigative journalism, was in top form
Tuesday when he addressed a lunch gathering hosted by
the American Society of Magazine Editors. The prolific
New Yorker writer shared his gloomy views on the
current administration and the prospects for stability
in Iraq with a crowd that included Elle editor in
chief Roberta Myers, Playboy editor in chief Chris
Napolitano and Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker. “The
question I keep thinking about is how did eight or
nine neocons, utopians, take control of the
government?” Hersh said by way of warm-up. He
predicted that President Bush would be forced to
reinstate the draft in a hypothetical second term,
said the Pentagon had failed to account for billions
of dollars, and called the abuses at Camp X-Ray in
Guantanamo Bay “much worse than Abu Ghraib.”
Raw Story, www.bluelemur.com: Salon, the online
magazine, acquired an advance copy of the 60 Minutes
broadcast that was originally slated to be aired
during Dan Rather’s troubled broadcast about Bush’s
Guard fiasco. After CBS cancelled the show, which was
to air how forged documents (of all things) led the
U.S. into Iraq, Salon decided they had a
responsibility to report on it. Here are a few
excerpts from that report by Mary Jacoby, which can be
read (get a day-pass if you’re not subscribed) here.
The importance that CBS placed on the report was
evident by its unusual length: It was slated to run a
full half hour, double the usual 15 minutes of a
single segment. Although months of reporting went into
the production, CBS abruptly decided that it would be
“inappropriate to air the report so close to the
presidential election,” in the words of a statement
that network spokeswoman Kelli Edwards gave the New
York Times…
“Two years ago, Americans heard some frightening words
from President Bush and his closest advisers,” Bradley
said in his introduction of the now-shelved report.
“Saddam Hussein, they said, could soon have a nuclear
bomb. Of course, we now know that wasn’t true.” Not
only did Saddam not have a nuclear program, Bradley
said, but “he hadn’t for more than ten years. How
could the Bush administration be so wrong about
something so important?”
Eric Leser, Le Monde: The last two weeks, John Kerry has been launching
direct attacks against American Vice President Dick
Cheney and his ties to Halliburton, the world's second
largest oil services group. "While Halliburton
increases its over-billing and its waste thanks to the
no-bid contract it's gotten, Dick Cheney continues to
receive compensation from his former company," he
accused. "When I am president, I'll put a stop to such
practices."
In a television spot, the Democratic candidate
returns to the accusation: "Halliburton earned
billions with a discretionary contract in Iraq. What
did we get? A bill for 200 billion dollars." According
to his advisors, undecided voters are sensitive to
ethics questions about the ties between government and
big companies.
What has become the Halliburton "Affair" goes back
to November 2002. A group constituted within the
Pentagon to prepare Iraq's economic future in the
event of war asked the company to study a plan for
refurbishing the country's oil industry for which it
paid $1.9 million dollars. March 8, 2003, the American
land army chose Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), a
Halliburton subsidiary specialized in public works and
logistics, to repair Iraqi oil structures along the
lines defined by the mother company three months
earlier. The contract was assigned as the result of a
discretionary procedure without bids or competition.
A March 5, 2003 email from the regional director
of the Corps of Engineers, Stephen Browning, suggests
that assignment of the contract was "coordinated" with
Dick Cheney's office. This contract proved to be great
business. Its value went from 71.3 million dollars in
March to 2.5 billion dollars in December 2003. The
administration revealed its existence at the end of
March 2003 and described its purpose as extinguishing
oil well fires. Later, the administration acknowledged
that the contract had an altogether different scope
and committed to making it temporary. Two new
contracts were assigned, this time after a competitive
process, on January 16, 2004, one for 800 million
dollars to the California company Parsons and another
for 1.2 billion dollars to... Halliburton.
There is no formal proof that Dick Cheney played a
role in the contracts' assignment to Halliburton.
However, the administration and Dick Cheney's office
have contradicted one another several times about the
way Halliburton gained the contract. This company,
moreover, is the object of several legal proceedings.
They concern bribes paid in Nigeria, over-billing in
Iraq for everything from gasoline to canned soda for
the soldiers, and illegal sales to Iran when Dick
Cheney was CEO. In this last matter, a Houston, Texas
Grand Jury could proceed to indictments in the coming
months.
George Soros, www.georgesoros.com: Immediately after
9/11 there was a spontaneous outpouring of sympathy
for us worldwide. It has given way to an equally
widespread resentment. There are many more people
willing to risk their lives to kill Americans than
there were on September 11 and our security, far from
improving as President Bush claims, is deteriorating.
I am afraid that we have entered a vicious circle of
escalating violence where our fears and their rage
feed on each other. It is not a process that is likely
to end any time soon. If we re-elect President Bush we
are telling the world that we approve his policies -
and we shall be at war for a long time to come.
I realize that what I am saying is bound to be
unpopular. We are in the grip of a collective
misconception induced by the trauma of 9/11, and
fostered by the Bush administration. No politician
could say it and hope to get elected. That is why I
feel obliged to speak out. There is a widespread
belief that President Bush is making us safe. The
opposite is true. President Bush failed to finish off
bin Laden when he was cornered in Afghanistan because
he was gearing up to attack Iraq. And the invasion of
Iraq bred more people willing to risk their lives
against Americans than we are able to kill -
generating the vicious circle I am talking about.
President Bush likes to insist that the terrorists
hate us for what we are - a freedom loving people -
not what we do. Well, he is wrong on that. He also
claims that the torture scenes at Abu Graib prison
were the work of a few bad apples. He is wrong on that
too. They were part of a system of dealing with
detainees put in place by Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld and our troops in Iraq are paying the price.
Support Our Troops, Save the US Constitution,
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Restore Fiscal Responsibility in the White House,
Thwart the Theft of a Second Presidential Election,
Save the Environment, Break the Corporatist
Stranglehold on the US Mainstream News Media, Rescue
the US Supreme Court from Right-Wing Radicals, Cleanse
the White House of the Chicken Hawk Coup and Its
War-Profiteering Cronies, Show Up for Democracy in
2004: Defeat the Triad, Defeat Bush (again!)
Sept. 11 Widow Joins Campaign
Families of Victims Bring Their Passion and Grief to
Partisan Fray
By Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 29, 2004; Page A20
PITTSBURGH, Sept. 28 -- Before Sept. 11, 2001, all
Kristen Breitweiser wanted in the way of worldly
responsibility was to tend to her garden and care for
her infant daughter, Caroline.
"After watching my husband get murdered on live
worldwide television," she said, everything changed.
Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards
listens to Kristen Breitweiser, 33, of Middletown,
N.J., whose husband died in the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks on the World Trade Center, at a stop in
Manchester, N.H. She was helping Democrats in swing
states. (Jim Cole -- AP)
On Tuesday, the 33-year-old New Jersey widow was
stumping in swing states with Democratic vice
presidential candidate John Edwards for the second day
in a row. It's here that Breitweiser's fresh face and
emotional story are becoming an integral part of an
effort to convince "security moms" that the Democratic
ticket of Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and Edwards can
make them safer and that four more years with
President Bush is dangerous.
Wearing her husband's wedding band, the only evidence
of his life to be recovered at Ground Zero,
Breitweiser said she steeled herself to hit the
campaign trail this week with Edwards, a North
Carolina senator. She fought back a fear of flying
born out of the World Trade Center disaster and
overcame her jitters about public speaking to become a
blunt instrument of attack against a president she
once supported.
"I would love to have heard President Bush and the
Republicans in Congress say, 'Here's what we'll do
better.' But they didn't do that. They circled the
wagons, they stonewalled, they blocked, they
foot-dragged," she said in an interview aboard the
Edwards campaign plane.
Before large, sympathetic crowds here, as well as in
Iowa and New Hampshire, she offered a blistering
account of the obstacles she says she faced during a
three-year battle to start the nation toward a new
intelligence system. Her presentation is raw with
anger and grief, and it registered strongly with the
Democratic loyalists. At a town hall meeting, under a
hot midday sun in downtown Manchester's Victory Park,
she moved museum volunteer Fran Gordon, 84, to tell
Edwards: "You should put her on a TV commercial.
People need to hear her."
On the rope line later, as Edwards shook hands,
Breitweiser was swamped. Jane Ryan, 54, of Hollis,
Maine, begged her to stick with the campaign. "They
need you," Ryan said. "You are so powerful."
Joining the partisan fray was not part of any original
plan by Breitweiser or others in the core group of
victims' relatives that became outspoken advocates for
action in Washington over the course of three years.
They saw value, in fact, in remaining politically
neutral, Breitweiser said.
But the political season has seen that goal trumped by
partisan passions among the families. At a Republican
National Convention awash in Sept. 11 imagery,
delegates heard from Tara Stockpile, widow of a New
York City firefighter; Debra Burlingame, sister of the
captain of the American Airlines plane that crashed
into the Pentagon; and Deena Burnett, the wife of a
passenger of the United Airlines flight that crashed
into a field in Pennsylvania. "We know that what those
passengers did prevented the airline from hitting the
intended target," Burnett said to thunderous applause.
Breitweiser said she hopes the partisan efforts do not
become an unsettling force within a victims' group
that has been fairly cohesive. But she said watching
the way Republicans handled the issue at their
convention convinced her that she should raise her
profile, no matter the consequence.
"I know in my heart that this is what needs to be
done," Breitweiser said, clenching her jaw. "I have a
5-year-old that lost her father and thinks a dad is an
image in a photo. She has no idea that a dad is
supposed to be real and hug you. I want to know that
she's going to be safer. That when she grows up, she's
not going to die because of payback for a bad foreign
policy."
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/zaleski/index.php?ntid=11274
Rob Zaleski: Soldier's dad: Bush blunder cost son his
life
By Rob Zaleski
September 29, 2004
About Rob
Rob Zaleski is a 32-year veteran of the news business.
His columns appear every Monday and Wednesday in the
Communities section.
Barbara and John Straseskie of Beaver Dam listen as a
joint resolution is read in the state Assembly last
year honoring their son, Marine Sgt. Kirk Straseskie,
who died in Iraq while trying to save friends from
drowning. (File photo)
Sixteen months have passed since Kirk Straseskie of
Beaver Dam, a 23-year-old U.S. Marine infantry
sergeant, became the first Wisconsin fatality in the
Iraq war.
That story, you may recall, received widespread play -
partly because it brought the war into Wisconsin
living rooms, and partly because of the heroic nature
of his death. A former star athlete at Beaver Dam High
School, Straseskie drowned after jumping into a canal
while attempting to rescue a downed helicopter crew.
Since then, 20 other Wisconsin soldiers have died in
Iraq, the most recent being 21-year-old Marine Cpl.
Adrian Soltau of Milwaukee, who was killed in an
explosion Sept. 13. And while all those deaths were
duly noted in the media, one gets the sense that many
Americans have grown indifferent to what's happening
in that chaotic region. Either that, or they don't
want to face the unsettling possibility that, 30 years
after Vietnam, we're once again trapped in a no-win
situation.
John Straseskie, the father of Kirk Straseskie, senses
it, too.
"I don't think Bush has a clue what he's doing over
there," the 52-year-old retired Beaver Dam resident
said in a phone interview this week.And Straseskie
suspects things will just continue to deteriorate
because, he maintains, the president and his advisers
can't seem to comprehend one simple fact.
"Anytime you have guerrilla-type warfare going on, you
kill a lot of innocent people - and that just feeds
the guerillas," he says. "And there's gonna come a
time when we're running with our tails tucked between
our legs just to get out of there."
It should be noted that this isn't the first time
Straseskie has voiced his opposition to the war.
Though he originally supported the idea - like the
vast majority of Americans, he says, "I believed this
stuff about weapons of mass destruction and all the
other horse bleep" - Straseskie publicly criticized
Bush shortly after learning of his son's death in May
2003. (Another of his sons, Ryan, also was deployed in
the Persian Gulf with the Wisconsin National Guard,
but returned home early this summer.)
"He put our troops over there to finish what his dad
didn't do," Straseskie said at the time.
Sixteen months later, those feelings appear to have
intensified.
He's angry, Straseskie says, "because more and more
innocent soldiers are dying in a war that we had no
business starting in the first place." And he's
disillusioned, he says, because many Americans
apparently agree with Bush's contention that the war
was worth fighting because we captured Saddam Hussein
- who, according to the president, was a major
terrorist threat.
"But how many Iraqis were involved in Sept. 11? None
that I'm aware of," Straseskie counters. And yet, he
says, "people still buy this stuff."
Having said all that, Straseskie acknowledges there's
still a chance the United States "could turn this
around" and says people shouldn't be surprised if the
draft is revived and the war is expanded early next
year - particularly if Bush is re-elected.
But in his own view, there's only one sensible option
at this point.
"I think we should get out and let the Iraqis fight
their own battles," he says.
Besides, "I think if you look at the region as a
whole, they don't want democracy over there. Not their
current leaders anyway. Because if they get democracy,
they'll lose their power."
Asked what he'd ask Bush if he - not Jim Lehrer - were
moderating Thursday night's televised debate,
Straseskie says, "I'd ask him, 'Don't you think you're
rather vain and full of bluster when you say that -
with all the information we have now - we were
justified in going into Iraq? Without enough allied
support to even try to get the job done?' "
But Straseskie says he knows Bush wouldn't answer
truthfully - one, because he's not about to admit he
made such a catastrophic blunder; and two, because to
admit as much could very well cost him the election.
And, frankly, that's been the toughest thing to accept
over the last 16 months, Straseskie says. The
likelihood that his son - and 1,052 other Americans -
gave his life in a war that in the long run "probably
isn't going to solve a thing."
Yes, the initial shock of Kirk's death has worn off,
Straseskie says.
"But you never really get over it. Especially at
holidays and birthdays. You look around and realize
your son's not there.
"It's like an open sore."
E-mail: rzaleski@madison.com
Published: 10:38 AM 9/29/04
http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=310
9/29/2004
Hersh predicts return of military draft
Filed under: General— site admin @ 10:37 am Email This
Raw Story latest: Buchanan endorses Kerry on Iraq;
ABC, NBC, CBS ban F9/11 ads; Qaeda-linked group
endorses Bush re-election
By Raw Story
Seymour Hersh, the non plus ultra of investigative
journalism (most recently responsible for bringing the
Abu Ghraib scandal to light) presaged that the U.S.
military draft would return at the American Society of
Magazine Editors Tuesday. This blurb was printed (in
all places) on the Women’s Wear Daily website.
DARK PROPHET: Seymour Hersh, the dean of American
investigative journalism, was in top form Tuesday when
he addressed a lunch gathering hosted by the American
Society of Magazine Editors. The prolific New Yorker
writer shared his gloomy views on the current
administration and the prospects for stability in Iraq
with a crowd that included Elle editor in chief
Roberta Myers, Playboy editor in chief Chris
Napolitano and Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker. “The
question I keep thinking about is how did eight or
nine neocons, utopians, take control of the
government?” Hersh said by way of warm-up. He
predicted that President Bush would be forced to
reinstate the draft in a hypothetical second term,
said the Pentagon had failed to account for billions
of dollars, and called the abuses at Camp X-Ray in
Guantanamo Bay “much worse than Abu Ghraib.” He also
had choice words for Henry Kissinger (“At least you
knew there was some rationality somewhere. There isn’t
with these guys.”) And as for Bill Clinton (“I admire
Clinton — he was the first president since World War
II to bomb white people.”) By the time Hersh declared,
“The insurgency is us, baby,” most listeners were all
but ready to take the advice he claimed to give anyone
who asks: “Sell short and buy some property in Tuscany
http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=311
9/29/2004
Salon acquires the 60 Minutes that never was
Filed under: General— site admin @ 11:49 am Email This
Raw Story latest: Buchanan endorses Kerry on Iraq;
ABC, NBC, CBS ban F9/11 ads; Qaeda-linked group
endorses Bush re-election
By Raw Story
Salon, the online magazine, acquired an advance copy
of the 60 Minutes broadcast that was originally slated
to be aired during Dan Rather’s troubled broadcast
about Bush’s Guard fiasco. After CBS cancelled the
show, which was to air how forged documents (of all
things) led the U.S. into Iraq, Salon decided they had
a responsibility to report on it. Here are a few
excerpts from that report by Mary Jacoby, which can be
read (get a day-pass if you’re not subscribed) here.
The importance that CBS placed on the report was
evident by its unusual length: It was slated to run a
full half hour, double the usual 15 minutes of a
single segment. Although months of reporting went into
the production, CBS abruptly decided that it would be
“inappropriate to air the report so close to the
presidential election,” in the words of a statement
that network spokeswoman Kelli Edwards gave the New
York Times…
The report contains little new information, but it is
powerfully, coherently and credibly reported. It
features the first on-camera interview with Elisabetta
Burba, the Italian journalist who received the fake
Niger documents in 2002 and passed them on to the U.S.
embassy in Rome. Burba tells how she traveled to Niger
and concluded that Iraq could not have purchased
uranium from the tightly controlled French-run mines
in Niger and that therefore the documents must have
been faked…
That broadcast raises the question of whether the
right-wing government of Italian Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi had helped manufacture evidence that his
ally, Bush, could use to persuade Americans to support
an invasion. Burba passed on the documents to the U.S.
embassy in Rome at the instruction of her editor at
Panorama, a news magazine owned by Berlusconi. An
alternative theory, floated in corners of the
conspiracy-minded European press, is that Martino was
working for the antiwar French, who hoped to discredit
the Bush administration by getting American officials
to swallow obviously forged documents.
Whatever the case, the CBS producers apparently
decided to concentrate on what could be nailed down:
the Bush administration had, either intentionally or
with breathtaking credulity, relied on patently false
intelligence to make the case for invading Iraq.
“Two years ago, Americans heard some frightening words
from President Bush and his closest advisers,” Bradley
said in his introduction of the now-shelved report.
“Saddam Hussein, they said, could soon have a nuclear
bomb. Of course, we now know that wasn’t true.” Not
only did Saddam not have a nuclear program, Bradley
said, but “he hadn’t for more than ten years. How
could the Bush administration be so wrong about
something so important?”
The answer, Bradley was to have told viewers, “has a
lot to do with a single piece of evidence: A set of
documents that appear to prove Saddam was secretly
buying uranium ore.” The mysterious surfacing of the
forged Niger documents, Bradley said, helped “explain
why President Bush and his cabinet delivered the
frightening message we all heard in the early autumn
two years ago.” The broadcast then cut to video clips
of Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Advisor
Condoleezza Rice making public statements with eerily
similar wording:
“We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to
acquire nuclear weapons,” Cheney said in an address to
the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Cut to Rumsfeld: “We do
now know that Saddam Hussein has been actively and
persistently” pursuing nukes.” Then, Rice on a
television talk show, insisted: “We do know that he is
actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.”
…Cut to Bush: “We cannot wait for the final proof, the
smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom
cloud.” The expression on Bush’s face as he speaks
portentously was a look of concern. Yet, had the
segment aired, the viewer would have understood that
the president was not telling the truth.
By showing the video clips in rapid succession, the
television piece conveyed, in a manner beyond the
printed word, how deliberate and practiced was the
administration’s sense of urgency…
Bradley then interviews an expert from the U.N.
International Atomic Energy Agency, who tells him
laughingly that it took only about two hours of Google
searches for his staff to figure out the documents
were fraudulent.
Then-CIA director George Tenet warns the White House
not to let Bush use the discredited Niger information
in his speeches. “That might have been the end of it,
but it wasn’t,” Bradley says. Cut to Bush delivering
the fateful 16 words in the 2003 State of the Union
address: “The British government has learned that
Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities
of uranium from Africa
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/093004H.shtml
The Democratic Candidate Wants to Turn the
"Halliburton Affair" into a Dick Cheney Scandal
By Eric Leser
Le Monde
Tuesday 28 September 2004
The last two weeks, John Kerry has been launching
direct attacks against American Vice President Dick
Cheney and his ties to Halliburton, the world's second
largest oil services group. "While Halliburton
increases its over-billing and its waste thanks to the
no-bid contract it's gotten, Dick Cheney continues to
receive compensation from his former company," he
accused. "When I am president, I'll put a stop to such
practices."
In a television spot, the Democratic candidate
returns to the accusation: "Halliburton earned
billions with a discretionary contract in Iraq. What
did we get? A bill for 200 billion dollars." According
to his advisors, undecided voters are sensitive to
ethics questions about the ties between government and
big companies.
Dick Cheney was Halliburton's CEO from October
1995 to August 2000. He continues to receive
compensation from the company to the tune of $147,579
dollars in 2001, $162, 392 in 2002 and $178,437 in
2003. These sums are deferred salary payments
according to a contract signed in 1998, two years
before Mr. Cheney became a Vice Presidential
candidate. Such practices are common among American
business leaders. They allow them to receive salary
after retirement and so to pay fewer taxes. At the
same time, Mr. Cheney also took out an insurance
policy that guaranteed his receipt of compensation
even if Halliburton went bankrupt or did poorly.
Moreover, he placed the purchase options for the
433,000 shares of Halliburton he had into a charitable
trust.
What has become the Halliburton "Affair" goes back
to November 2002. A group constituted within the
Pentagon to prepare Iraq's economic future in the
event of war asked the company to study a plan for
refurbishing the country's oil industry for which it
paid $1.9 million dollars. March 8, 2003, the American
land army chose Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), a
Halliburton subsidiary specialized in public works and
logistics, to repair Iraqi oil structures along the
lines defined by the mother company three months
earlier. The contract was assigned as the result of a
discretionary procedure without bids or competition.
A March 5, 2003 email from the regional director
of the Corps of Engineers, Stephen Browning, suggests
that assignment of the contract was "coordinated" with
Dick Cheney's office. This contract proved to be great
business. Its value went from 71.3 million dollars in
March to 2.5 billion dollars in December 2003. The
administration revealed its existence at the end of
March 2003 and described its purpose as extinguishing
oil well fires. Later, the administration acknowledged
that the contract had an altogether different scope
and committed to making it temporary. Two new
contracts were assigned, this time after a competitive
process, on January 16, 2004, one for 800 million
dollars to the California company Parsons and another
for 1.2 billion dollars to... Halliburton.
Legal Proceedings
There is no formal proof that Dick Cheney played a
role in the contracts' assignment to Halliburton.
However, the administration and Dick Cheney's office
have contradicted one another several times about the
way Halliburton gained the contract. This company,
moreover, is the object of several legal proceedings.
They concern bribes paid in Nigeria, over-billing in
Iraq for everything from gasoline to canned soda for
the soldiers, and illegal sales to Iran when Dick
Cheney was CEO. In this last matter, a Houston, Texas
Grand Jury could proceed to indictments in the coming
months.
An incontestable fact, Halliburton has gone from
the rank of 19th supplier to the American army in 2002
to first in 2003, with a turnover of 4.2 billion
dollars, most of which comes from a contract KBR
walked away with to general indifference in December
2001. That contract is for supplying the army with
food and the maintenance of American troops abroad -
consequently today for the 150,000 soldiers in the
Gulf and 20,000 in Afghanistan. By May, it would have
brought in 5.6 billion dollars.
"Vicious Campaign"
Paradoxically, in spite of these contracts,
Halliburton and its KBR subsidiary even more so, are
not doing well. Last week, during a meeting with
investors in New York, David Lesar, Halliburton's
Chairman of the Board, grieved to see his company the
target of a "vicious campaign." He reminded everyone
that 45 of the group's employees have been killed in
Iraq.
Halliburton itself is not doing well. The company
reported a loss of 762 million dollars on construction
of an oil platform off the coast of Brazil. Now
Halliburton today is thinking about separation from
its KBR subsidiary, hoping that would allow it to get
rid of all its problems and concentrate on oil
services, its main calling.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
KBR in Bankruptcy Court
At the heart of Halliburton, it's KBR that
obtained Iraqi contracts, that is being prosecuted for
its activities in Nigeria and in Iran, and which finds
itself under the protection of the bankruptcy law
since the beginning of the year following hundreds of
suits from former employee asbestos victims. To put an
end to the suits, Halliburton agreed in December 2003
to a legal settlement by which it pays 4.2 billion
dollars to its subsidiaries DII Industries and KBR's
former employees who had been exposed to asbestos dust
during the seventies.
The transaction forced KBR to file for bankruptcy.
When the company, which counts 83,000 employees in 43
countries, gets out of bankruptcy court protection, it
will be to be sold.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/093004D.shtml
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Translation: t r u t h o u t French language
correspondent Leslie Thatcher.
Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush
By George Soros
George Soros.com
Tuesday 28 September 2004
Prepared text of speech delivered September 28, 2004,
National Press Club, Washington, DC.
This is the most important election of my
lifetime. I have never been heavily involved in
partisan politics but these are not normal times.
President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our
vital interests and undermining American values. That
is why I am sending you this message. I have been
demonized by the Bush campaign but I hope you will
give me a hearing.
President Bush ran on the platform of a "humble"
foreign policy in 2000. If we re-elect him now, we
endorse the Bush doctrine of preemptive action and the
invasion of Iraq, and we will have to live with the
consequences. As I shall try to show, we are facing a
vicious circle of escalating violence with no end in
sight. But if we repudiate the Bush policies at the
polls, we shall have a better chance to regain the
respect and support of the world and to break the
vicious circle.
I grew up in Hungary, lived through fascism and
the Holocaust, and then had a foretaste of communism.
I learned at an early age how important it is what
kind of government prevails. I chose America as my
home because I value freedom and democracy, civil
liberties and an open society.
When I had made more money than I needed for
myself and my family, I set up a foundation to promote
the values and principles of a free and open society.
I started in South Africa in 1979 and established a
foundation in my native country, Hungary, in 1984 when
it was still under communist rule. China, Poland and
the Soviet Union followed in 1987. After the Berlin
Wall fell in 1989, I established foundations in
practically all the countries of the former Soviet
empire and later in other parts of the world and in
the United States. These foundations today spend about
450 million dollars a year to promote democracy and
open society around the world.
When George W. Bush was elected president, and
particularly after September 11, I saw that the values
and principles of open society needed to be defended
at home. September 11 led to a suspension of the
critical process so essential to a democracy - a full
and fair discussion of the issues. President Bush
silenced all criticism by calling it unpatriotic. When
he said that "either you are with us, or you are with
the terrorists," I heard alarm bells ringing. I am
afraid that he is leading us in a very dangerous
direction. We are losing the values that have made
America great.
The destruction of the twin towers of the World
Trade Center was such a horrendous event that it
required a strong response. But the President
committed a fundamental error in thinking: the fact
that the terrorists are manifestly evil does not make
whatever counter-actions we take automatically good.
What we do to combat terrorism may also be wrong.
Recognizing that we may be wrong is the foundation of
an open society. President Bush admits no doubt and
does not base his decisions on a careful weighing of
reality. For 18 months after 9/11 he managed to
suppress all dissent. That is how he could lead the
nation so far in the wrong direction.
President Bush inadvertently played right into the
hands of bin Laden. The invasion of Afghanistan was
justified: that was where bin Laden lived and al Qaeda
had its training camps. The invasion of Iraq was not
similarly justified. It was President Bush's
unintended gift to bin Laden.
War and occupation create innocent victims. We
count the body bags of American soldiers; there have
been more than 1000 in Iraq. The rest of the world
also looks at the Iraqis who get killed daily. There
have been 20 times more. Some were trying to kill our
soldiers; far too many were totally innocent,
including many women and children. Every innocent
death helps the terrorists' cause by stirring anger
against America and bringing them potential recruits.
Immediately after 9/11 there was a spontaneous
outpouring of sympathy for us worldwide. It has given
way to an equally widespread resentment. There are
many more people willing to risk their lives to kill
Americans than there were on September 11 and our
security, far from improving as President Bush claims,
is deteriorating. I am afraid that we have entered a
vicious circle of escalating violence where our fears
and their rage feed on each other. It is not a process
that is likely to end any time soon. If we re-elect
President Bush we are telling the world that we
approve his policies - and we shall be at war for a
long time to come.
I realize that what I am saying is bound to be
unpopular. We are in the grip of a collective
misconception induced by the trauma of 9/11, and
fostered by the Bush administration. No politician
could say it and hope to get elected. That is why I
feel obliged to speak out. There is a widespread
belief that President Bush is making us safe. The
opposite is true. President Bush failed to finish off
bin Laden when he was cornered in Afghanistan because
he was gearing up to attack Iraq. And the invasion of
Iraq bred more people willing to risk their lives
against Americans than we are able to kill -
generating the vicious circle I am talking about.
President Bush likes to insist that the terrorists
hate us for what we are - a freedom loving people -
not what we do. Well, he is wrong on that. He also
claims that the torture scenes at Abu Graib prison
were the work of a few bad apples. He is wrong on that
too. They were part of a system of dealing with
detainees put in place by Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld and our troops in Iraq are paying the price.
How could President Bush convince people that he
is good for our security, better than John Kerry? By
building on the fears generated by the collapse of the
twin towers and fostering a sense of danger. At a time
of peril, people rally around the flag and President
Bush has exploited this. His campaign is based on the
assumption that people do not really care about the
truth and they will believe practically anything if it
is repeated often enough, particularly by a President
at a time of war. There must be something wrong with
us if we fall for it. For instance, some 40% of the
people still believe that Saddam Hussein was connected
with 9/11 - although it is now definitely established
by the 9/11 Commission, set up by the President and
chaired by a Republican, that there was no connection.
I want to shout from the roof tops: "Wake up America.
Don't you realize that we are being misled?"
President Bush has used 9/11 to further his own
agenda which has very little to do with fighting
terrorism. There was an influential group within the
Bush administration led by Vice President Dick Cheney
that was itching to invade Iraq long before 9/11. The
terrorist attack gave them their chance. If you need a
tangible proof why President Bush does not deserve to
be re-elected, consider Iraq.
The war in Iraq was misconceived from start to
finish - if it has a finish. It is a war of choice,
not necessity, in spite of what President Bush says.
The arms inspections and sanctions were working. In
response to American pressure, the United Nations had
finally agreed on a strong stand. As long as the
inspectors were on the ground, Saddam Hussein could
not possibly pose a threat to our security. We could
have declared victory but President Bush insisted on
going to war.
We went to war on false pretences. The real
reasons for going into Iraq have not been revealed to
this day. The weapons of mass destruction could not be
found, and the connection with al Qaeda could not be
established. President Bush then claimed that we went
to war to liberate the people of Iraq. All my
experience in fostering democracy and open society has
taught me that democracy cannot be imposed by military
means. And, Iraq would be the last place I would chose
for an experiment in introducing democracy - as the
current chaos demonstrates.
Of course, Saddam was a tyrant, and of course
Iraqis - and the rest of the world - can rejoice to be
rid of him. But Iraqis now hate the American
occupation. We stood idly by while Baghdad was
ransacked. As the occupying power, we had an
obligation to maintain law and order, but we failed to
live up to it. If we had cared about the people of
Iraq we should have had more troops available for the
occupation than we needed for the invasion. We should
have provided protection not only for the oil ministry
but also the other ministries, museums and hospitals.
Baghdad and the country's other cities were destroyed
after we occupied them. When we encountered
resistance, we employed methods that alienated and
humiliated the population. The way we invaded homes,
and the way we treated prisoners generated resentment
and rage. Public opinion condemns us worldwide.
The number of flipflops and missteps committed by
the Bush administration in Iraq far exceeds anything
John Kerry can be accused of. First we dissolved the
Iraqi army, then we tried to reconstitute it. First we
tried to eliminate the Baathists, then we turned to
them for help. First we installed General Jay Garner
to run the country, then we gave it to Paul Bremer and
when the insurgency became intractable, we installed
an Iraqi government. The man we chose was a protégé of
the CIA with the reputation of a strong man - a far
cry from democracy. First we attacked Falluja over the
objections of the Marine commander on the ground, then
pulled them out when the assault was half-way through,
again over his objections. "Once you commit, you got
to stay committed," he said publicly. More recently,
we started bombing Falluja again.
The Bush campaign is trying to put a favorable
spin on it, but the situation in Iraq is dire. Much of
the Western part of the country has been ceded to the
insurgents. Even the so-called Green Zone (a small
enclave in the center of Baghdad where Americans live
and work) is subject to mortar attacks. The prospects
of holding free and fair elections in January are fast
receding and civil war looms. President Bush received
a somber intelligence evaluation in July but he has
kept it under wraps and failed to level with the
electorate.
Bush's war in Iraq has done untold damage to the
United States. It has impaired our military power and
undermined the morale of our armed forces. Before the
invasion of Iraq, we could project overwhelming power
in any part of the world. We cannot do so any more
because we are bogged down in Iraq. Afghanistan is
slipping from our control. North Korea, Iran, Pakistan
and other countries are pursuing nuclear programs with
renewed vigor and many other problems remain
unattended.
By invading Iraq without a second UN resolution,
we violated international law. By mistreating and even
torturing prisoners, we violated the Geneva
conventions. President Bush has boasted that we do not
need a permission slip from the international
community, but our actions have endangered our
security - particularly the security of our troops.
Our troops were trained to project overwhelming
power. They were not trained for occupation duties.
Having to fight an insurgency saps their morale. Many
of our troops return from Iraq with severe trauma and
other psychological disorders. Sadly, many are also
physically injured. After Iraq, it will be difficult
to recruit people for the armed forces and we may have
to resort to conscription.
There are many other policies for which the Bush
administration can be criticized but none are as
important as Iraq. Iraq has cost us nearly 200 billion
dollars - an enormous sum. It could have been used
much better elsewhere. The costs are going to mount
because it was much easier to get into Iraq than it
will be to get out of there. President Bush has been
taunting John Kerry to explain how he would do things
differently in Iraq. John Kerry has responded that he
would have done everything differently and he would be
in a better position to extricate us than the man who
got us in there. But it won't be easy for him either,
because we are caught in a quagmire.
It is a quagmire that many predicted. I predicted
it in my book, The Bubble of American Supremacy. I was
not alone: top military and diplomatic experts
desperately warned the President not to invade Iraq.
But he ignored their experienced advice. He suppressed
the critical process. The discussion about Iraq
remains stilted even during this presidential campaign
because of the notion that any criticism of our
Commander-in-Chief puts our troops at risk. But this
is Bush's war, and he ought to be held responsible for
it. It's the wrong war, fought the wrong way. Step
back for a moment from the cacophony of the election
campaign and reflect: who got us into this mess? In
spite of his Texas swagger, George W. Bush does not
qualify to serve as our Commander-in-Chief.
There is a lot more to be said on the subject and
I have said it in my book, The Bubble of American
Supremacy, now available in paperback. I hope you will
read it. You can download the chapter on the Iraqi
quagmire free from George Soros.com.
If you find my arguments worth considering, please
share this message with your friends.
I would welcome your comments at George Soros.com.
I am eager to engage in a critical discussion because
the stakes are so high.
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Posted by richard at September 30, 2004 03:47 PM