Liberation News Service

LNS Countdown to Electoral Uprising -- 36 Days to Go -- D-Voter Reg. Up 250% in OH, Jimmy Carter on Fraudida II, SeeBS CEO reveals pro-Bush BIAS, Big Media Lie on JFK's Iraq stand, MM launches "Slacker Uprising" barnstorm

There are only 36 days to go until the national
referendum on the CHARACTER, CREDIBILITY and
COMPETENCE of the _resident, the VICE _resident AND
their full partners, the shameless pollsters, craven
propapunditgandists, complicit news room editors,
mercenary producers, besotted anchormen and corporate
overlords of the US regimestream news media...Yes,
it's the Media, Stupid...The corporatist media
monopolies who beat the drums of war during the ramp-up to the invasion of Iraq, instead of asking why, how and for what, are now working as hard as they can to skew public opinion toward their protectors in the
White House, by under-reporting dismal economic news and the daily death tolls of US soldiers in Iraq, while deliberately distorting the public statements and policy positions of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta)...Over one thousand US soldiers have died in a foolish, ill-planned and unnecessary war in Iraq, the Bush national insecurity team is GUILTY of pre-9/11
negligence and post-9/11 incompetence.
The US federal budget surplus has been squandered on
TWO foolish, ill-timed and unnecessary tax cuts skewed
toward the wealthiest few. The Bush doodoo economics
team, as LNS Foreign Correspondent Dunston Woods has
dubbed them, has plunged us into hundreds of billions
of dollars in federal deficit and a multi-trillion
dollar national debt.
With unprecedented ferocity and frequency, FOUR
hurricanes have devasted Fraudida. Scientists studying
Global Warming predicted such severe weather three
years ago. But we have lost four years we did not have
to lose in the struggle to come to grips with its
impact, because the _resident has denied its reality
as vehemently as he has denied the true costs of his
foolish military adventure and his obscene tax cuts...
Forget about asking your fellow citizens if they are
safer or better off than they were four years ago (of
course, the answer is no), instead, ask them can we
afford four more years --strategically, militarily,
economically, environmentally, constitutionally?
The US regimestream news media, at least until this
point, has, in large part, been a full partner along
with the Bush Cabal and its wholly-owned-subsidiary
formerluy-known-as-the-Republican-Party
in a Triad of shared special interest (e.g. oil,
weapons, media, pharmaceuticals, tobacco, etc.) Here
are five very important news items. They should
dominate the air waves and demand headlines above the
fold. But they won't. Please read them and share them
with others. Please vote and encourage others to vote.
Please remember that the US regimestream news media,
particularly the major network and cable news
organizations, does not want to inform you about this
presidential campaign, it wants to DISinform you. It's
the Media, Stupid...There is an Electoral Uprising
coming on November 2nd at the Ballot Box...FRODO
LIVES!

Ford Fessenden, New York Times: A sweeping voter
registration campaign in heavily Democratic areas has
added tens of thousands of new voters to the rolls in
the swing states of Ohio and Florida, a surge that has
far exceeded the efforts of Republicans in both
states, a review of registration data shows.
The analysis by The New York Times of
county-by-county data shows that in Democratic areas
of Ohio - primarily low-income and minority
neighborhoods - new registrations since January have
risen 250 percent over the same period in 2000. In
comparison, new registrations have increased just 25
percent in Republican areas. A similar pattern is
apparent in Florida: in the strongest Democratic
areas, the pace of new registration is 60 percent
higher than in 2000, while it has risen just 12
percent in the heaviest Republican areas.

Jimmy Carter, Washington Post: Four years ago, the top
election official, Florida Secretary of State
Katherine Harris, was also the co-chair of the
Bush-Cheney state campaign committee. The same strong
bias has become evident in her successor, Glenda Hood,
who was a highly partisan elector for George W. Bush
in 2000. Several thousand ballots of African Americans
were thrown out on technicalities in 2000, and a
fumbling attempt has been made recently to disqualify
22,000 African Americans (likely Democrats), but only
61 Hispanics (likely Republicans), as alleged felons.
The top election official has also played a leading
role in qualifying Ralph Nader as a candidate, knowing
that two-thirds of his votes in the previous election
came at the expense of Al Gore. She ordered Nader's
name be included on absentee ballots even before the
state Supreme Court ruled on the controversial issue.
Florida's governor, Jeb Bush, naturally a strong
supporter of his brother, has taken no steps to
correct these departures from principles of fair and
equal treatment or to prevent them in the future.
It is unconscionable to perpetuate fraudulent or
biased electoral practices in any nation. It is
especially objectionable among us Americans, who have
prided ourselves on setting a global example for pure
democracy. With reforms unlikely at this late stage of
the election, perhaps the only recourse will be to
focus maximum public scrutiny on the suspicious
process in Florida.

Asian Wall Street Journal: The chairman of the
entertainment giant Viacom [which owns CBS] said the
reason was simple: Republican values are what U.S.
companies need. Speaking to some of America's and
Asia's top executives gathered for Forbes magazine's
annual Global CEO Conference, Mr. Redstone declared:
"I look at the election from what's good for Viacom. I
vote for what's good for Viacom. I vote, today,
Viacom.
"I don't want to denigrate Kerry," he went on, "but
from a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican
administration is a better deal. Because the
Republican administration has stood for many things we
believe in, deregulation and so on. The Democrats are
not bad people. . . . But from a Viacom standpoint, we
believe the election of a Republican administration is
better for our company."

www.dailyhowler.com: Hopeless. Quintanilla plays the
actual tape of Kerry saying he would have “voted for
the authority.” But even as he plays the actual tape
of this statement, Quintanilla describes a different
statement. Viewers are told that Kerry “admitted” that
he’d “still support the war.”
Here are the two statements in question. And no—they
aren’t the same thing:
KERRY: I would have voted for the authority.
QUINTANILLA: Kerry said he would still support the
war.
No, those two statements aren’t equivalent—especially
since Kerry immediately listed major things he didn’t
support about the way the war was conducted.
Quintanilla looks great on camera. But in a nation of
300 million souls, how can it be that important
players at our greatest news orgs have such weak
logical skills? More specifically, how hard can it be
for TV scribes to repeat basic things that a candidate
says? In this case, it should have been easy to start
with what Kerry said—that he would have voted for the
authority—and go from there to an account of what he
seems to have meant by his statement. But no! Kerry
said “authority” three separate times. But Quintanilla
had a better word—war.
But then, your hapless press corps has offered this
paraphrase ever since Kerry’s August 9 statement. Yes,
we think Kerry’s statement was somewhat inept. But it
isn’t hard to repeat what he said. Why can’t the
gorgeous lads and ladies of your national press corps
just do it?
Lazy; inept; uninvolved, unaware—your press corps
dozes its way toward election. They draw nice
salaries; have nice summer homes; and very much like
to get out to the Hamptons. Do they care about matters
that transform your lives? When it comes to events
which transformed this election,
third-time’s-the-charm seems to be the great rule that
prevails at the slumbering Times. Are you really
surprised that you have to come here for the dope on
John O’Neill’s kooky book?

Michael Moore, www.michaelmoore.com: Tomorrow I begin
a little 20-state, 60-city tour to try and convince
the fed-up, the burned-out, and the Nader-impaired to
leave the house for just a half-hour on November 2nd
and mark an "X" in a box (or punch a chad or touch a
screen) so that America and the world can be saved...
So, having nothing better to do for the next month
(and eager to visit such swinging states as Iowa!
Ohio! Arkansas!), I have decided to go to every
battleground state in the country and do whatever it
takes to get out the vote. I will do your laundry, I
will clean your house, I will give you a year's supply
of beer nuts if you will commit to me to go to the
polls on Tuesday, November 2.
I'm calling it "The Slacker Uprising Tour", a
coast-to-coast effort to bring the non-voting majority
out of hibernation and kick some political butt. My
goal is to get as many of the 100 million non-voters
in America as I can to give voting a try -- just this
once. I want at least 56% of all eligible voters to
vote and thus set a modern-day turnout record...
I, the original slacker -- I, who have endured all
sorts of attacks for my slacker demeanor -- yes I am
coming to an arena or stadium just outside your dorm
room (or that little space off the furnace room where
your parents still let you stay, rent-free). Why
arenas and stadiums? Because there are so many of us
-- AND they serve beer and chips. From the Sun Dome to
the Key Arena, from the Patriot Center to the Del Mar
Race Track, I will be there and I will bring prizes
and presents and clean underwear for all in need.
Before I arrive, I have arranged for free screenings
of "Fahrenheit 9/11" in each city. When I get there I
will have with me dozens of voter registrars who will
register new (or recently transplanted) voters (please
check here for voter registration deadlines -- they
are fast approaching in most states in the next 10
days!). Absentee ballot applications will also be
available. And the good people of Move-On, ACT and
other groups will be present at each of my appearances
to sign up volunteers to get out the vote on election
day.

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!)

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/092704K.shtml

A Big Increase of New Voters in Swing States
By Ford Fessenden
The New York Times

Sunday 26 September 2004

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A sweeping voter registration
campaign in heavily Democratic areas has added tens of
thousands of new voters to the rolls in the swing
states of Ohio and Florida, a surge that has far
exceeded the efforts of Republicans in both states, a
review of registration data shows.

The analysis by The New York Times of
county-by-county data shows that in Democratic areas
of Ohio - primarily low-income and minority
neighborhoods - new registrations since January have
risen 250 percent over the same period in 2000. In
comparison, new registrations have increased just 25
percent in Republican areas. A similar pattern is
apparent in Florida: in the strongest Democratic
areas, the pace of new registration is 60 percent
higher than in 2000, while it has risen just 12
percent in the heaviest Republican areas.

While comparable data could not be obtained for
other swing states, similar registration drives have
been mounted in them as well, and party officials on
both sides say record numbers of new voters are being
registered nationwide. This largely hidden but deadly
earnest battle is widely believed by campaign
professionals and political scientists to be
potentially decisive in the presidential election.

"We know it's going on, and it's a very encouraging
sign," said Steve Elmendorf, deputy campaign manager
for Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential
nominee. The new voters, Mr. Elmendorf said, "could
very much be the difference."

A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee,
Christine Iverson, declined to comment on The Times's
findings and said she did not believe Republicans were
lagging in the registration battle. "We're very
confident that we have a ground game that's as good as
the Democrats', and better," she said.

The precise impact of the swell in registration is
difficult to predict, as there is no reliable gauge of
how many of these new voters will actually vote. Some
experts, though, say that the spike has not been
accurately captured by political polls and could
confound prognostications in closely contested states.

What is clear is that each side has deployed huge
numbers of workers and devoted millions of dollars to
the effort. Much of it is being directed by civil
rights and community groups, as well as soft-money
organizations allied with the Democrats. One such
Democratic umbrella group, America Votes, says its
constituents - labor unions, trial lawyers,
environmental groups, community organizations - will
spend $300 million on registration and turnout in
swing states, a sum that dwarfs the $150 million in
public financing the two candidates together will
receive for the entire fall campaign.

The registration drives are just the first step in a
campaign by each side to get more Americans to vote by
using personal contact. As registration winds down,
with early October cutoffs in many states, efforts
will shift to staying in touch through Election Day
with repeated phone calls and visits, and, on Nov. 2,
ferrying people to the polls.

In Ohio - no Republican presidential candidate has
ever been elected without carrying the state - the
campaign has been especially exhaustive. Canvassers
ride public transportation, visit coin laundries, and
trudge the sidewalks and parking lots at the job
centers, housing agencies and community colleges.

In Columbus, Akume Green has haunted the Franklin
County Courthouse for months, working the sidewalk
between the entrance and the nearby bus stop. Ms.
Green says she has signed up more than 700 voters
since March here and elsewhere in the city. But it is
getting harder to do so, she said. On a recent day,
the first 12 people she asked said they had already
registered.

"I get about 30 new voters or changes of address in
six hours," said Ms. Green, who was hired by Project
Vote, the nonpartisan arm of the Association of
Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn. "I
used to get 16 in 45 minutes, but now everyone's
registered."

Studies have shown that calling voters and showing
up at their houses before and on Election Day
substantially increases turnout - and is cheaper per
vote than buying a television advertisement.
Republicans used the strategy with great success in
the 2002 elections.

But Donald P. Green, a professor of political
science at Yale who has conducted many of those
studies, said there was no reliable way to tell how
many new voters would turn out at the polls,
especially those from lower-income areas.

"Do you get 30 percent, or do you get 70 percent?"
Professor Green said. "To the extent that these new
voters are on the radar screen of groups that have the
kind of resources these groups have at their disposal,
they might well turn out."

Steve Rosenthal, the chief executive of Americans
Coming Together, or ACT, a soft-money group that is
trying to register Democrats, said he believed they
would. "I think what's happening on the streets, below
the radar, is what's going to make the big difference
on Election Day," said Mr. Rosenthal, who said his
organization and the other groups would register two
and a half million new Democratic voters nationwide.

But Republican officials say they remain confident
that their voters will prove easier to get to the
polls. "It would scare me if we weren't doing our own
thing," said Joanne Davidson, the regional chairwoman
of the Bush campaign in four Midwestern states
including Ohio, of the wave of new Democrats. "We know
how to turn out voters."

Ms. Green is typical of the army of registrars who
have been working the streets here, some of them since
last September. Their persistence has produced
results. Franklin County had 650,000 registered voters
in the 2000 election. "Now we're over 800,000," said
Matt Damschroder, the director of the Board of
Elections. "If you look at the pure census numbers,
you'd think we are close to registering the entire
voting-age population."

Project Vote says it has registered 147,000 new
voters in Ohio. Americans Coming Together said that,
together with allied groups that are part of America
Votes, it had registered 300,000 new voters. America
Votes and ACT are openly Democratic, although they
cannot legally coordinate with the party or the Kerry
campaign.

Republican officials say they think the paid workers
who are registering low-income voters are sloppy, and
are skeptical of the number of voters they claim to
have registered, saying many are duplicates and
changes of address. Mr. Damschroder said he had to
throw out many of the cards he got because the voters
were already registered. "One woman had signed a card
three different times," with three different groups,
he said.

Prosecutors in Columbus have filed criminal charges
against an Acorn registrar, saying that he filed a
false registration form and forged a signature.
Officials for the group say they fired the worker and
instituted a quality checking system before the
prosecutors acted.

Nevertheless, an examination of county registration
records shows that the groups have added thousands of
new Democrats to the rolls and have far outnumbered
new registrations in Republican areas. In a
300-square-block area east of the courthouse in
downtown Columbus that voted nine to one against Mr.
Bush in 2000, for instance, 3,000 new voters have
registered this year. That is three times as many as
in each of the last two presidential election years.
The number of registered voters in the area is up 18
percent since January.

By comparison, in a prosperous area north of
downtown with a similar number of voters who are
overwhelmingly Republican, just 1,100 new voters have
been added this year, increasing registration rolls by
7 percent.

These numbers are similar across Ohio. The Times
examined registration from Jan. 1 to July 31 in a
sample of counties that included seven of the state's
nine largest, along with some smaller rural and
suburban counties. Voters do not give a party
affiliation when they register in Ohio, but The Times
looked at the voting history of ZIP codes to gauge the
political inclinations of the new voters.

In rock-ribbed Republican areas - 103 ZIP codes,
many of them rural and suburban areas, that voted by
two to one or better for George W. Bush in 2000 -
35,000 new voters have registered, a substantial
increase over the 28,000 that registered in those
areas in the first seven months of 2000. The Ohio
Republican party said it was pleased with the results.

"It's not easy work, but we go door to door in
strong Republican precincts, making sure everyone is
registered," said Chris McNulty, the state party
chairman.

But in heavily Democratic areas - 60 ZIP codes
mostly in the core of big cities like Cleveland,
Dayton, Columbus and Youngstown that voted two to one
or better against Mr. Bush - new registrations have
more than tripled over 2000, to 63,000 from 17,000.

In Florida, where The Times was able to analyze data
from 60 of the state's 67 counties, new registrations
this year also are running far ahead of the 2000 pace,
with Republican areas trailing Democratic ones. In the
150 ZIP codes that voted most heavily for Mr. Bush,
96,000 new voters have registered this year, up from
86,000 in 2000, an increase of about 12 percent.

But in the heaviest of Democratic areas, 110 ZIP
codes that gave two-thirds or more of their votes to
Al Gore, new registrations have increased to 125, 000
from 77,000, a jump of more than 60 percent.

In Duval County, where a confusing ballot design in
2000 helped disqualify thousands of ballots in black
precincts, new registrations by black voters are up
150 percent over the pace of 2000.

"We're using guerrilla tactics to get into the malls
and sign up voters before the security guards chase us
off," said Adam Broad, 40, an organizer in Duval
County with the Florida Consumer Action Network
Foundation, one of dozens of community groups
registering in Florida.

The groups are building nationwide databases of
voters and have committed millions of dollars for
continued contact with them before and on Election
Day.

"If every Democrat showed up at the polls, you'd
win, no question," said James Koehler, a precinct
organizer in Columbus working for MoveOn.org, another
soft-money group. Mr. Koehler said MoveOn hoped to
have a volunteer in every precinct to call neighbors
on Nov. 2.

But intensive voter contact and turnout are exactly
what the Republicans believe they do best. Their plan
calls for the same kind of sophisticated targeting,
and a last-minute push for turnout called a 72-hour
strategy, the plan Republicans used in 2002 to
overwhelm incumbent Democrats like former Senator Max
Cleland in Georgia.

Even before Election Day, the new voters may be
having an impact on the campaign, because they may not
be accurately reflected in the political polls.

"The people who are new voters are disengaged;
they're less likely to respond to a poll question,"
said Philip Klinkner, a government professor at
Hamilton College.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/092804W.shtml

Still Seeking a Fair Florida Vote
By Jimmy Carter
The Washington Post

Monday 27 September 2004

After the debacle in Florida four years ago, former
president Gerald Ford and I were asked to lead a
blue-ribbon commission to recommend changes in the
American electoral process. After months of concerted
effort by a dedicated and bipartisan group of experts,
we presented unanimous recommendations to the
president and Congress. The government responded with
the Help America Vote Act of October 2002.
Unfortunately, however, many of the act's key
provisions have not been implemented because of
inadequate funding or political disputes.

The disturbing fact is that a repetition of the
problems of 2000 now seems likely, even as many other
nations are conducting elections that are
internationally certified to be transparent, honest
and fair.

The Carter Center has monitored more than 50
elections, all of them held under contentious,
troubled or dangerous conditions. When I describe
these activities, either in the United States or in
foreign forums, the almost inevitable questions are:
"Why don't you observe the election in Florida?" and
"How do you explain the serious problems with
elections there?"

The answer to the first question is that we can
monitor only about five elections each year, and
meeting crucial needs in other nations is our top
priority. (Our most recent ones were in Venezuela and
Indonesia, and the next will be in Mozambique.) A
partial answer to the other question is that some
basic international requirements for a fair election
are missing in Florida.

The most significant of these requirements are:

A nonpartisan electoral commission or a trusted and
nonpartisan official who will be responsible for
organizing and conducting the electoral process
before, during and after the actual voting takes
place. Although rarely perfect in their objectivity,
such top administrators are at least subject to public
scrutiny and responsible for the integrity of their
decisions. Florida voting officials have proved to be
highly partisan, brazenly violating a basic need for
an unbiased and universally trusted authority to
manage all elements of the electoral process.

Uniformity in voting procedures, so that all citizens,
regardless of their social or financial status, have
equal assurance that their votes are cast in the same
way and will be tabulated with equal accuracy. Modern
technology is already in use that makes electronic
voting possible, with accurate and almost immediate
tabulation and with paper ballot printouts so all
voters can have confidence in the integrity of the
process. There is no reason these proven techniques,
used overseas and in some U.S. states, could not be
used in Florida.

It was obvious that in 2000 these basic standards
were not met in Florida, and there are disturbing
signs that once again, as we prepare for a
presidential election, some of the state's leading
officials hold strong political biases that prevent
necessary reforms.

Four years ago, the top election official, Florida
Secretary of State Katherine Harris, was also the
co-chair of the Bush-Cheney state campaign committee.
The same strong bias has become evident in her
successor, Glenda Hood, who was a highly partisan
elector for George W. Bush in 2000. Several thousand
ballots of African Americans were thrown out on
technicalities in 2000, and a fumbling attempt has
been made recently to disqualify 22,000 African
Americans (likely Democrats), but only 61 Hispanics
(likely Republicans), as alleged felons.

The top election official has also played a leading
role in qualifying Ralph Nader as a candidate, knowing
that two-thirds of his votes in the previous election
came at the expense of Al Gore. She ordered Nader's
name be included on absentee ballots even before the
state Supreme Court ruled on the controversial issue.

Florida's governor, Jeb Bush, naturally a strong
supporter of his brother, has taken no steps to
correct these departures from principles of fair and
equal treatment or to prevent them in the future.

It is unconscionable to perpetuate fraudulent or
biased electoral practices in any nation. It is
especially objectionable among us Americans, who have
prided ourselves on setting a global example for pure
democracy. With reforms unlikely at this late stage of
the election, perhaps the only recourse will be to
focus maximum public scrutiny on the suspicious
process in Florida.

-------

Former president Carter is chairman of the Carter
Center in Atlanta.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110005669

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

Guess Who's a GOP Booster?
The CEO of CBS's parent company endorses President
Bush.

Friday, September 24, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

From The Asian Wall Street Journal

With the scandal at CBS still festering, questions are
being raised about whether a felony was committed when
the network broadcast apparently forged memos in an
attempt to discredit George W. Bush. Yesterday, the
chairman of CBS's parent company chose Hong Kong as a
place to drop a little bomb. Sumner Redstone, who
calls himself a "liberal Democrat," said he's
supporting President Bush.

The chairman of the entertainment giant Viacom said
the reason was simple: Republican values are what U.S.
companies need. Speaking to some of America's and
Asia's top executives gathered for Forbes magazine's
annual Global CEO Conference, Mr. Redstone declared:
"I look at the election from what's good for Viacom. I
vote for what's good for Viacom. I vote, today,
Viacom.

"I don't want to denigrate Kerry," he went on, "but
from a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican
administration is a better deal. Because the
Republican administration has stood for many things we
believe in, deregulation and so on. The Democrats are
not bad people. . . . But from a Viacom standpoint, we
believe the election of a Republican administration is
better for our company."

Sharing the stage with Mr. Redstone was Steve Forbes,
CEO, president and editor in chief of Forbes and a
former Republican presidential aspirant, who quipped:
"Obviously you're a very enlightened CEO."

Mr. Redstone's unexpected declaration came at a time
when an unwelcome spotlight is directed at him and his
board because of the CBS airing of what everyone now
believes was a fake memo alleging that Mr. Bush
shirked his duties three decades ago in the Texas Air
National Guard. On Tuesday, Republican National
Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie alleged a leftist bias
at Viacom. While it was well known that Mary Mapes,
the producer who did most of the reporting on the
memos, is a liberal, and that anchorman Dan Rather,
has always been much tougher on Republicans, the
Viacom board had heretofore remained in the
background.
Mr. Gillespie said, "This demonstrates a serious lack
of judgment separate and apart from the lack of
judgment demonstrated in running a report based on
discredited documents. Did this producer's own
political viewpoint cloud her judgment? Is CBS News's
decision to neither suspend nor release the producer
in question a result of judgment clouded by Viacom and
CBS owner Sumner Redstone's role as a Kerry
fundraiser, or Viacom President Tom Freston's public
support of John Kerry for President?"

Mr. Redstone's office immediately went into overdrive,
denying on Wednesday that he's a raised funds for the
Democratic presidential nominee. Then came yesterday's
"I vote Republican" vow in Hong Kong.

It was all the more surprising because the Boston-born
Mr. Redstone was co-chairman of Edmund Muskie's
presidential campaign in 1972. He's also a close
friend of the other Massachusetts senator, Ted
Kennedy. Monday's New York Sun, quoting the Federal
Election Commission, said that since 1998 Mr. Redstone
had given $50,000 to the Democratic Party. He's also
donated the maximum $2,000 to the Kerry campaign,
after supporting Al Gore in 2000.

In his book, "A Passion to Win," Mr. Redstone wrote,
"From my early days I have considered myself a liberal
Democrat. . . . I had no respect for Nixon. . . . My
efforts on Senator Muskie's behalf apparently landed
me on Nixon's notorious 'enemies list.' I took that as
a badge of honor."
Of his 13-member board, two are former cabinet members
for Democratic presidents. It is this board that will
ponder what to do about the Rather-Mapes-CBS mess. The
bombshell from Hong Kong will not come as welcome news
to those responsible for "memogate."

http://www.dailyhowler.com

REPEAT AFTER KERRY: How weak are the press corps’
analytical skills? If Kerry loses, his August 9
statement about Iraq will likely be seen as a campaign
turning-point. That was the statement Kerry made at
the Grand Canyon, when he said that—well, let’s put
the Q-and-A on the record. On the September 12 Meet
the Press, Tim Russert finally provided the actual
text of the question Kerry was asked. (In real time,
the text of the question was missing in action. See
THE DAILY HOWLER, 8/12/04). We can now present the
full Q-and-A. This exchange has hurt Kerry badly:

QUESTION (8/9/04): The president last week challenged
you to answer yes or no to the question of whether if,
knowing what you know now, you would still have voted
to go to war? Are you going to take that challenge up?
KERRY: I’m ready for any challenge, and I'll answer it
directly. Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I
believe it is the right authority for a president to
have, but I would have used that authority, as I have
said throughout this campaign, effectively. I would
have done this very differently from the way President
Bush has. And my question to President Bush is, Why
did he rush to war without a plan to win the peace?
Why did he rush to war on faulty intelligence and not
do the hard work necessary to give America the truth?
Why did he mislead America about how he would go to
war? Why has he not brought other countries to the
table in order to support American troops in the way
that we deserve and relieve a pressure from the
American people?

To this day, that’s the fullest transcript of this
exchange available in the Nexis records. We don’t know
if Kerry’s response ended there. We don’t know what
the next question was.
But what did Kerry say that day? He said that, knowing
what he knows now, he “would have voted for the
authority”—for the authorization to go to war if
necessary. But he “would have done this very
differently from the way President Bush has,” he said.
Specifically, he implied that Bush “rushed to war
without a plan to win the peace” and failed to “bring
other countries to the table in order to support
American troops in the way that we deserve.”

We think that’s a slightly odd statement, although
Kerry has fleshed it out since then. He has said that
it was good for Bush to have “the authority” because
that gave him the clout to go to the UN and force Iraq
to allow inspections. Of course, if Kerry knew then
what he knows now, it’s unclear why those inspections
would have been necessary. If our country actually had
books about public logic, this Q-and-A would go in the
chapter that explains why pols shouldn’t answer
hypothetical questions.

But if Kerry’s answer was slightly odd, it shouldn’t
be hard to relate. It shouldn’t be hard to repeat what
Kerry said. But then, of course, we have to deal with
handsome members of the national press corps! NBC’s
Carl Quintanilla is quite telegenic. But he made a
hopeless (if typical) presentation last night about
this crucial statement by Kerry. On Hardball,
Quintanilla described relations between the two
hopefuls and the press:

QUINTANILLA (9/24/04): Candidates try to forge a bond
with their traveling press, but Kerry's been more
distant since his last press conference in August,
when he was challenged and admitted he'd still support
the war even knowing there were no weapons of mass
destruction.
KERRY (videotape from August 9): Yes, I would have
voted for the authority.
QUINTANILLA: The president has given fewer than half
the number of campaign trail Q and A’s as his father,
because reporters questions can be tough, even
hostile, and throw candidates off message.

Hopeless. Quintanilla plays the actual tape of Kerry
saying he would have “voted for the authority.” But
even as he plays the actual tape of this statement,
Quintanilla describes a different statement. Viewers
are told that Kerry “admitted” that he’d “still
support the war.”
Here are the two statements in question. And no—they
aren’t the same thing:

KERRY: I would have voted for the authority.
QUINTANILLA: Kerry said he would still support the
war.
No, those two statements aren’t equivalent—especially
since Kerry immediately listed major things he didn’t
support about the way the war was conducted.
Quintanilla looks great on camera. But in a nation of
300 million souls, how can it be that important
players at our greatest news orgs have such weak
logical skills? More specifically, how hard can it be
for TV scribes to repeat basic things that a candidate
says? In this case, it should have been easy to start
with what Kerry said—that he would have voted for the
authority—and go from there to an account of what he
seems to have meant by his statement. But no! Kerry
said “authority” three separate times. But Quintanilla
had a better word—war.

But then, your hapless press corps has offered this
paraphrase ever since Kerry’s August 9 statement. Yes,
we think Kerry’s statement was somewhat inept. But it
isn’t hard to repeat what he said. Why can’t the
gorgeous lads and ladies of your national press corps
just do it?

BUT WHO WILL CORRECT THE CORRECTIONS: In this
morning’s column, Nicholas Kristof corrects a
correction from last Wednesday’s column. It concerns a
matter we noted this week—the error he made in last
Saturday’s column about Kerry’s Bronze Star award:

KRISTOF (9/25/04): Aargh. My last column ended with a
jet-lagged correction that repeated the error it was
meant to fix. William Rood saw John Kerry's Silver
Star incident, not the Bronze Star episode. Mea culpa
squared.
So you can keep track of all the action, here is
Kristof’s original text, and his first failed attempt
at correction:

KRISTOF (9/18/04): Did Mr. Kerry deserve his Bronze
Star? Yes. The Swift Boat Veterans claim that he was
not facing enemy fire when he rescued a Green Beret,
Jim Rassmann, but that is contradicted by those who
were there, like William Rood and Mr. Rassmann (a
Republican). In fact, Mr. Rassmann recommended Mr.
Kerry for a Silver Star.
KRISTOF (9/22/04): In the spirit of taking a tough
look at one's own shortcomings: on Saturday, I
referred to William Rood as a witness for Mr. Kerry's
Silver Star incident. It was the Bronze Star episode
that he saw. Mea culpa.

Kristof’s original column was wrong about Rood, as was
his first attempt at correction. Third time apparently
being the charm, the Times gets this fact right today.

We say that “the Times” gets the fact right today
because we want to move beyond Kristof. Anyone can
compose a mistaken correction the way he did on
Wednesday. But might we note an obvious fact?
Presumably, someone other than Kristof himself reads
the text of his twice-weekly columns. With that in
mind, let’s note the terminal laziness the Times seems
to have brought to the crucial matters involved in
this piece.

Last Saturday, Kristof was writing, a month too late,
about matters that may have decided this election. And
since the Swift Boat Vets have actually challenged a
very small number of medal awards—only three events
are in real dispute—it was unimpressive when Kristof
bungled the facts about two of those incidents (link
below). But it wasn’t just Kristof who seemed to be
dozing when it came to these crucial matters.
Kristof’s editor also failed to notice that he had
this basic fact wrong about Rood. And that editor also
failed to notice the bungling of the gentleman’s first
correction.

As noted, Kristof’s problems went beyond Rood. As
we’ve noted, he bungled another aspect of the Bronze
Star matter and he bungled the first Purple Heart
event too (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 9/22/04). But we
think it’s instructive that neither he nor his editor
noticed the gentleman’s two-time bungling RE Rood. The
Swift Boat Veterans have transformed this race; the
charges they lodged have been deeply important. But
does your celebrity press corps really care? Even when
he was trying to challenge the Vets, Chris Matthews
was plainly unaware of the simplest facts, and no one
at the New York Times seems to give a big enough damn
to get clear on these simple facts either.

Lazy; inept; uninvolved, unaware—your press corps
dozes its way toward election. They draw nice
salaries; have nice summer homes; and very much like
to get out to the Hamptons. Do they care about matters
that transform your lives? When it comes to events
which transformed this election,
third-time’s-the-charm seems to be the great rule that
prevails at the slumbering Times. Are you really
surprised that you have to come here for the dope on
John O’Neill’s kooky book?

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?messageDate=2004-09-25

Saturday, September 25th, 2004
Michael Moore On Tour; Slackers of the World, Unite!

9/25/04

Dear Friends,

Tomorrow I begin a little 20-state, 60-city tour to
try and convince the fed-up, the burned-out, and the
Nader-impaired to leave the house for just a half-hour
on November 2nd and mark an "X" in a box (or punch a
chad or touch a screen) so that America and the world
can be saved. (I don't mean "saved" as in all workers
will henceforth control the means of production.
That's, um, going to take a few more years.)

What I'm asking is that our fellow Americans, as the
collective landlord of a public housing project at
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., take just a few minutes to
evict the tenant who is currently wrecking the place
(not to mention what he's doing to the rest of the
neighborhood). After all, isn't this one of the
coolest things about a democracy, getting to give some
payback to those in power? "YOU'RE FIRED!" Oooh, that
feels good -- especially if the recipient of the pink
slip is someone who wants to send your kid off to war.

So, having nothing better to do for the next month
(and eager to visit such swinging states as Iowa!
Ohio! Arkansas!), I have decided to go to every
battleground state in the country and do whatever it
takes to get out the vote. I will do your laundry, I
will clean your house, I will give you a year's supply
of beer nuts if you will commit to me to go to the
polls on Tuesday, November 2.

I'm calling it "The Slacker Uprising Tour", a
coast-to-coast effort to bring the non-voting majority
out of hibernation and kick some political butt. My
goal is to get as many of the 100 million non-voters
in America as I can to give voting a try -- just this
once. I want at least 56% of all eligible voters to
vote and thus set a modern-day turnout record.

I'm putting out the red alert call to slackers
everywhere to help me lead this revolt. I want
everyone in their teens and twenties who exist from
one packet of Ramen noodles to the next bag of
Tostitos to take your fully-justified cynicism and
toss it like a Molotov right into the middle of this
election. As "non-voters" you have been written off.
But if only a few thousand of you vote, it could make
all the difference. You literally hold all the power
in your hands. That's even cooler than holding a TV
remote.

I, the original slacker -- I, who have endured all
sorts of attacks for my slacker demeanor -- yes I am
coming to an arena or stadium just outside your dorm
room (or that little space off the furnace room where
your parents still let you stay, rent-free). Why
arenas and stadiums? Because there are so many of us
-- AND they serve beer and chips. From the Sun Dome to
the Key Arena, from the Patriot Center to the Del Mar
Race Track, I will be there and I will bring prizes
and presents and clean underwear for all in need.

Before I arrive, I have arranged for free screenings
of "Fahrenheit 9/11" in each city. When I get there I
will have with me dozens of voter registrars who will
register new (or recently transplanted) voters (please
check here for voter registration deadlines -- they
are fast approaching in most states in the next 10
days!). Absentee ballot applications will also be
available. And the good people of Move-On, ACT and
other groups will be present at each of my appearances
to sign up volunteers to get out the vote on election
day.

Details of where I will be appearing will be available
in your local media. Many venues, due to advance word
already out there, have "sold out" (at most stops,
students get in for free and community people pay a
nominal fee -- usually $5 -- to cover costs). Again,
check your local media to find out the times and dates
and how to get advance tickets.

A partial list of the cities I'm visiting includes:
Seattle, Big Rapids (MI), Mt. Pleasant (MI), Tucson,
Dearborn, Phoenix, East Lansing, Detroit, Ann Arbor,
Albuquerque, Toledo, Columbus (OH), Ames (IA),
Cleveland, Fairmont (WV), Pittsburgh, Philadelphia,
Bethlehem (PA), Fairfax (VA), Carlyle (PA), State
College (PA), Minneapolis, Gainesville, Nashville,
Miami, Memphis, Orlando, Salem (OR), Jacksonville,
Tampa, Kansas City, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Madison,
Green Bay, Las Vegas, Reno, Denver, and, of course,
Tallahassee, Florida. Others will be posted later.

While on the road, I will try to keep my blog
up-to-date and post some pictures we take in each
city. The three campuses on the tour which register
the most students to vote (or who have the most
non-voters committing to me to vote) will receive a
special scholarship from us at the end of the tour.

Thanks, in advance, to everyone out there who is
working hard during this election. I know it will make
a difference.

Let's leave no non-voter behind.

Yours,

Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com
www.michaelmoore.com/takeaction/vote/

P.S. Good news! This current weekend our distributor
has added an astounding 600+ new theaters to the list
of those still showing "Fahrenheit 9/11." This is
highly unusual for a film entering it's fourth month
of release, but the demand has been strong to bring it
back in many areas and our wonderful distributors have
responded. This is a perfect time to either see it
again on the big screen or take a friend who hasn't
seen it, as it won't be around in theaters for long.
The DVD and home video come out October 5!

LNS Countdown to Electoral Uprising -- 37 Days to Go -- Nixon EPA Chief Blast Bush, MM on Bush's Iraq Flip-Flops, SeeBS limps off into the weeds, E.L. Doctorow on Bush's Moral Bankruptcy

Five more US soldiers have died in Iraq. For what? The
neo-con wet dream of a Three Stooges Reich. There are
only 37 days to go until the national referendum on
the CREDIBILITY, COMPETENCE and CHARACTER of the
_resident and the VICE _resident.
Over one thousand US soldiers have died in a foolish,
ill-planned and unnecessary war in Iraq, the Bush
national insecurity team is GUILTY of pre-9/11
negligence and post-9/11 incompetence.
The US federal budget surplus has been squandered on
TWO foolish, ill-timed and unnecessary tax cuts skewed
toward the wealthiest few. The Bush doodoo economics
team, as LNS Foreign Correspondent Dunston Woods has
dubbed them, has plunged us into hundreds of billions
of dollars in federal deficit and a multi-trillion
dollar national debt.
With unprecedented ferocity and frequency, FOUR hurricanes have devasted Fraudida. Scientists studying Global Warming predicted such severe weather three years ago. But we have lost four years we did not have to lose in the struggle to come to grips with its impact, because the _resident has denied its reality as vehemently as he has denied the true costs of his foolish military adventure and his obscene tax cuts...
Forget about asking your fellow citizens if they are
safer or better off than they were four years ago (of
course, the answer is no), instead, ask them can we
afford four more years --strategically, militarily,
economically, environmentally, constitutionally?
The US regimestream news media, at least until this
point, has, in large part, been a full partner along
with the Bush Cabal and its wholly-owned-subsidiary
formerluy-known-as-the-Republican-Party
in a Triad of shared special interest (e.g. oil,
weapons, media, pharmaceuticals, tobacco, etc.) Here
are four very important news items. They should
dominate the air waves and demand headlines above the
fold. But they won't. Please read them and share them
with others. Please vote and encourage others to vote.
Please remember that the US regimestream news media,
particularly the major network and cable news
organizations, does not want to inform you about this
presidential campaign, it wants to DISinform you. It's
the Media, Stupid...

Bill Novak, Capitol Times: Russell Train is so
disappointed in President Bush's environmental record
that the staunch Republican, the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency's second leader 30 years ago, is
casting his vote in November for Democrat John Kerry.
Train, 84, EPA administrator under Presidents Nixon
and Ford from 1973 to 77, was in Madison Tuesday in
support of Environment2004, an organization trying to
end what it calls the anti-environmental agenda of the
Bush administration.
A Washington insider for more than half a century,
Train said the Bush administration's performance is a
radical rollback of environmental rules to benefit
special interests.

Michael Moore, www.michaelmoore.com: Dear Mr. Bush,
I am so confused. Where exactly do you stand on the
issue of Iraq? You, your Dad, Rummy, Condi, Colin, and
Wolfie -- you have all changed your minds so many
times, I am out of breath just trying to keep up with
you!
Which of these 10 positions that you, your family and
your cabinet have taken over the years represents your
CURRENT thinking...
I know you hate the words "flip" and "flop," so I
won't use them both on you. In fact, I'll use just
one: Flop. That is what you are. A huge, colossal
flop. The war is a flop, your advisors and the
"intelligence" they gave you is a flop, and now we are
all a flop to the rest of the world. Flop. Flop. Flop.
And you have the audacity to criticize John Kerry with
what you call the "many positions" he has taken on
Iraq. By my count, he has taken only one: He believed
you. That was his position. You told him and the rest
of congress that Saddam had WMDs. So he -- and the
vast majority of Americans, even those who didn't vote
for you -- believed you. You see, Americans, like John
Kerry, want to live in a country where they can
believe their president.
That was the one, single position John Kerry took. He
didn't support the war, he supported YOU. And YOU let
him and this great country down. And that is why tens
of millions can't wait to get to the polls on Election
Day -- to remove a major, catastrophic flop from our
dear, beloved White House -- to stop all the flipping
you and your men have done, flipping us and the rest
of the world off.
We can't take another minute of it.

Associated Press: CBS News has shelved a "60 Minutes"
report on the rationale for war in Iraq (news - web
sites) because it would be "inappropriate" to air it
so close to the presidential election, the network
said on Saturday.
The report on weapons of mass destruction was set to
air on Sept. 8 but was put off in favor of a story on
President Bush (news - web sites)'s National Guard
service. The Guard story was discredited because it
relied on documents impugning Bush's service that were
apparently fake.
CBS News spokeswoman Kelli Edwards would not elaborate
on why the timing of the Iraq report was considered
inappropriate.

E.L. Doctorow, East Hampton Star: The president we get
is the country we get. With each president the nation
is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our
malleable national soul. He proposes not only the laws
but the kinds of lawlessness that govern our lives and
invoke our responses. The people he appoints are cast
in his image. The trouble they get into and get us
into, is his characteristic trouble.
Finally, the media amplify his character into our
moral weather report. He becomes the face of our sky,
the conditions that prevail. How can we sustain
ourselves as the United States of America given the
stupid and ineffective warmaking, the constitutionally
insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of
this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of
such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.

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!)

http://www.madison.com/tct/news/images/index.php?ntid=10685&ntpid=1

EPA's chief under Nixon rips Bush on environment
Says he will vote for Kerry
By Bill Novak
September 23, 2004

Russell Train is so disappointed in President Bush's
environmental record that the staunch Republican, the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's second leader
30 years ago, is casting his vote in November for
Democrat John Kerry.

Train, 84, EPA administrator under Presidents Nixon
and Ford from 1973 to 77, was in Madison Tuesday in
support of Environment2004, an organization trying to
end what it calls the anti-environmental agenda of the
Bush administration.

A Washington insider for more than half a century,
Train said the Bush administration's performance is a
radical rollback of environmental rules to benefit
special interests.

The administration's reversal of a finding that
mercury is a hazardous pollutant is one of 400
rollbacks of environmental protections cited by
Enviroment2004, and Train said the reversal is the
reason he's switched parties this presidential
election.

"Almost anybody's policy would be better than George
Bush," Train said in an interview with The Capital
Times Wednesday. "Kerry's environmental record in
Congress is extremely good."

Ironically, Train was awarded the presidential Medal
of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in America,
from the first President George Bush in 1991.

A major issue for environmentalists in the 2004
presidential campaign is to get the candidates and the
public to think about the environment in a time when
other issues, such as Iraq, terrorism and the economy,
are on the front burners, relegating clean air and
water policies to the back pages.

"The environment ought to be front and center, but
neither candidate has raised this as an issue," Train
said. "The administration has gotten away with an
awful lot because public attention is somewhere else."

Train ran the EPA during the golden age of
environmental policy. Nixon signed the National
Environmental Policy Act in January of 1970, then
devoted a good third of his State of the Union address
two weeks later to the environment.

"He (Nixon) said the environmental cause is as
fundamental as life itself," Train said.

Nixon's sentiments have apparently fallen on deaf ears
in the current Republican administration.

"One thing that's troubled me about this
administration is with the process involving
appointments," he said. "The undersecretary for
forestry policy came from the lobbying group for the
timber industry - that's just unconscionable."

Also troubling Train is the administration's meddling
into the rules and regulations of the EPA, an
independent agency in the executive branch of the
federal government.

"This White House has never hesitated to inject itself
into the regulatory rule-making by the EPA," Train
said. "That is very improper. When I was EPA
administrator for four years, I can recall not one
example of the White House telling me how a rule
should be. It just didn't happen."

In visits to New Hampshire, Washington state,
Pittsburgh and Minnesota on behalf of Environment2004,
Train was dismayed by the lack of interest in the
environment today. Why isn't the public paying
attention anymore?

"In the '60s and '70s people really felt threatened
with the big oil spills and pollution," he siad.
"Those issues were pretty well taken care of, the air
is pretty good, the water is pretty good, so people
feel relaxed about the environment.

"Also, we have a new generation that hasn't grown up
with a sense of environmental threat, and third,
there's so damned much else on the agenda, Iraq,
terrorism, jobs, the public is beset with."

E-mail: bnovak@madison.com

Published: 10:56 AM 9/23/04

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?messageDate=2004-09-22

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004
Mr. Bush and His 10 Ever-Changing Different Positions
on Iraq: "A flip and a flop and now just a flop."

9/22/04

Dear Mr. Bush,

I am so confused. Where exactly do you stand on the
issue of Iraq? You, your Dad, Rummy, Condi, Colin, and
Wolfie -- you have all changed your minds so many
times, I am out of breath just trying to keep up with
you!

Which of these 10 positions that you, your family and
your cabinet have taken over the years represents your
CURRENT thinking:

1983-88: WE LOVE SADDAM. On December 19, 1983, Donald
Rumsfeld was sent by your dad and Mr. Reagan to go and
have a friendly meeting with Saddam Hussein, the
dictator of Iraq. Rummy looked so happy in the
picture. Just twelve days after this visit, Saddam
gassed thousands of Iranian troops. Your dad and Rummy
seemed pretty happy with the results because ‘The
Donald R.’ went back to have another chummy hang-out
with Saddam’s right-hand man, Tariq Aziz, just four
months later. All of this resulted in the U.S.
providing credits and loans to Iraq that enabled
Saddam to buy billions of dollars worth of weapons and
chemical agents. The Washington Post reported that
your dad and Reagan let it be known to their Arab
allies that the Reagan/Bush administration wanted Iraq
to win its war with Iran and anyone who helped Saddam
accomplish this was a friend of ours.

1990: WE HATE SADDAM. In 1990, when Saddam invaded
Kuwait, your dad and his defense secretary, Dick
Cheney, decided they didn't like Saddam anymore so
they attacked Iraq and returned Kuwait to its rightful
dictators.

1991: WE WANT SADDAM TO LIVE. After the war, your dad
and Cheney and Colin Powell told the Shiites to rise
up against Saddam and we would support them. So they
rose up. But then we changed our minds. When the
Shiites rose up against Saddam, the Bush inner circle
changed its mind and decided NOT to help the Shiites.
Thus, they were massacred by Saddam.

1998: WE WANT SADDAM TO DIE. In 1998, Rumsfeld,
Wolfowitz and others, as part of the Project for the
New American Century, wrote an open letter to
President Clinton insisting he invade and topple
Saddam Hussein.

2000: WE DON'T BELIEVE IN WAR AND NATION BUILDING.
Just three years later, during your debate with Al
Gore in the 2000 election, when asked by the moderator
Jim Lehrer where you stood when it came to using force
for regime change, you turned out to be a downright
pacifist:

“I--I would take the use of force very seriously. I
would be guarded in my approach. I don't think we can
be all things to all people in the world. I think
we've got to be very careful when we commit our
troops. The vice president [Al Gore] and I have a
disagreement about the use of troops. He believes in
nation building. I--I would be very careful about
using our troops as nation builders. I believe the
role of the military is to fight and win war and,
therefore, prevent war from happening in the first
place. And so I take my--I take my--my responsibility
seriously.” --October 3, 2000

2001 (early): WE DON'T BELIEVE SADDAM IS A THREAT.
When you took office in 2001, you sent your Secretary
of State, Colin Powell, and your National Security
Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, in front of the cameras to
assure the American people they need not worry about
Saddam Hussein. Here is what they said:

Powell: “We should constantly be reviewing our
policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to
make sure that they have directed that purpose. That
purpose is every bit as important now as it was 10
years ago when we began it. And frankly, they have
worked. He has not developed any significant
capability with respect to weapons of mass
destruction. He is unable to project conventional
power against his neighbors.” --February 24, 2001

Rice: “But in terms of Saddam Hussein being there,
let's remember that his country is divided, in effect.
He does not control the northern part of his country.
We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces
have not been rebuilt.” --July 29, 2001

2001 (late): WE BELIEVE SADDAM IS GOING TO KILL US!
Just a few months later, in the hours and days after
the 9/11 tragedy, you had no interest in going after
Osama bin Laden. You wanted only to bomb Iraq and kill
Saddam and you then told all of America we were under
imminent threat because weapons of mass destruction
were coming our way. You led the American people to
believe that Saddam had something to do with Osama and
9/11. Without the UN's sanction, you broke
international law and invaded Iraq.

2003: WE DON’T BELIEVE SADDAM IS GOING TO KILL US.
After no WMDs were found, you changed your mind about
why you said we needed to invade, coming up with a
brand new after-the-fact reason -- we started this war
so we could have regime change, liberate Iraq and give
the Iraqis democracy!

2003: “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!” Yes, everyone saw you
say it -- in costume, no less!

2004: OOPS. MISSION NOT ACCOMPLISHED! Now you call the
Iraq invasion a "catastrophic success." That's what
you called it this month. Over a thousand U.S.
soldiers have died, Iraq is in a state of total chaos
where no one is safe, and you have no clue how to get
us out of there.

Mr. Bush, please tell us -- when will you change your
mind again?

I know you hate the words "flip" and "flop," so I
won't use them both on you. In fact, I'll use just
one: Flop. That is what you are. A huge, colossal
flop. The war is a flop, your advisors and the
"intelligence" they gave you is a flop, and now we are
all a flop to the rest of the world. Flop. Flop. Flop.

And you have the audacity to criticize John Kerry with
what you call the "many positions" he has taken on
Iraq. By my count, he has taken only one: He believed
you. That was his position. You told him and the rest
of congress that Saddam had WMDs. So he -- and the
vast majority of Americans, even those who didn't vote
for you -- believed you. You see, Americans, like John
Kerry, want to live in a country where they can
believe their president.

That was the one, single position John Kerry took. He
didn't support the war, he supported YOU. And YOU let
him and this great country down. And that is why tens
of millions can't wait to get to the polls on Election
Day -- to remove a major, catastrophic flop from our
dear, beloved White House -- to stop all the flipping
you and your men have done, flipping us and the rest
of the world off.

We can't take another minute of it.

Yours,

Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CBS_BUSH?SITE=NYSTA&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

CBS Nixes '60 Minutes' Story on Iraq War

Sat Sep 25, 7:42 PM ET

NEW YORK - CBS News has shelved a "60 Minutes" report
on the rationale for war in Iraq (news - web sites)
because it would be "inappropriate" to air it so close
to the presidential election, the network said on
Saturday.
The report on weapons of mass destruction was set to
air on Sept. 8 but was put off in favor of a story on
President Bush (news - web sites)'s National Guard
service. The Guard story was discredited because it
relied on documents impugning Bush's service that were
apparently fake.
CBS News spokeswoman Kelli Edwards would not elaborate
on why the timing of the Iraq report was considered
inappropriate.
The report, with Ed Bradley as the correspondent, has
long been in the works. Originally scheduled for June,
it was first put off because of new developments,
Edwards said.
CBS said no other reports on the presidential election
have been affected.
The network last week appointed former U.S. Attorney
General Dick Thornburgh and retired Associated Press
chief executive Louis Boccardi to investigate what
went wrong with the National Guard report and
recommend changes.
The controversy has put CBS News officials squarely on
the fire line, particularly anchor Dan Rather, who
narrated the National Guard report.
Meanwhile, the network announced that Rather would
anchor the network's coverage of all three
presidential debates, starting Sept. 30.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GUESTWORDS: By E.L. Doctorow

The Unfeeling President
I fault this president for not knowing what death is.
He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who
wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-Day
in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives
of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He
knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war
not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the
cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.

But this president does not know what death is. He
hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the
press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass
destruction he can't seem to find, you see him at
rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to
the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and
waving, triumphal, a he-man.

He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should
mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech
written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak
of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate
sacrifice for their country.

But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he
dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the
depths of his being because he has no capacity for it.
He does not feel a personal responsibility for the
1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what
they could be.

They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers
and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to
the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of
familial relationships and the inconsolable
remembrance of aborted life . . . they come to his
desk as a political liability, which is why the press
is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their
coffins from Iraq.

How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret
and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his
reason for going to war was, as he knew,
unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that
his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of
his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not
regret that, rather than controlling terrorism, his
war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for
the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this
war of his choice.

He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind
to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those
who knew those costs. He did not understand that you
do not go to war when it is one of the options but
when it is the only option; you go not because you
want to but because you have to.

Yet this president knew it would be difficult for
Americans not to cheer the overthrow of a foreign
dictator. He knew that much. This president and his
supporters would seem to have a mind for only one
thing -- to take power, to remain in power, and to use
that power for the sake of themselves and their
friends.

A war will do that as well as anything. You become a
wartime leader. The country gets behind you. Dissent
becomes inappropriate. And so he does not drop to his
knees, he is not contrite, he does not sit in the
church with the grieving parents and wives and
children. He is the president who does not feel. He
does not feel for the families of the dead, he does
not feel for the 35 million of us who live in poverty,
he does not feel for the 40 percent who cannot afford
health insurance, he does not feel for the miners
whose lungs are turning black or for the working
people he has deprived of the chance to work overtime
at time-and-a-half to pay their bills - it is amazing
for how many people in this country this president
does not feel.

But he will dissemble feeling. He will say in all
sincerity he is relieving the wealthiest 1 percent of
the population of their tax burden for the sake of the
rest of us, and that he is polluting the air we
breathe for the sake of our economy, and that he is
decreasing the quality of air in coal mines to save
the coal miners' jobs, and that he is depriving
workers of their time-and-a-half benefits for overtime
because this is actually a way to honor them by
raising them into the professional class.

And this litany of lies he will versify with
reverences for God and the flag and democracy, when
just what he and his party are doing to our democracy
is choking the life out of it.

But there is one more terribly sad thing about all of
this. I remember the millions of people here and
around the world who marched against the war. It was
extraordinary, that spontaneous aroused oversoul of
alarm and protest that transcended national borders.
Why did it happen? After all, this was not the only
war anyone had ever seen coming. There are little wars
all over he world most of the time.

But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding
of millions of people that America was ceding its role
as the last best hope of mankind. It was their
perception that the classic archetype of democracy was
morphing into a rogue nation. The greatest democratic
republic in history was turning its back on the
future, using its extraordinary power and standing not
to advance the ideal of a concordance of civilizations
but to endorse the kind of tribal combat that
originated with the Neanderthals, a people, now
extinct, who could imagine ensuring their survival by
no other means than pre-emptive war.

The president we get is the country we get. With each
president the nation is conformed spiritually. He is
the artificer of our malleable national soul. He
proposes not only the laws but the kinds of
lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our
responses. The people he appoints are cast in his
image. The trouble they get into and get us into, is
his characteristic trouble.

Finally, the media amplify his character into our
moral weather report. He becomes the face of our sky,
the conditions that prevail. How can we sustain
ourselves as the United States of America given the
stupid and ineffective warmaking, the constitutionally
insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of
this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of
such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.

The novelist E.L. Doctorow has a house in Sag Harbor.

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LNS Countdown to Electoral Uprising -- 38 Days to Go -- JFK rips Bush again, SeeBS and Niger Green Cake, US Military Families fight Bush, 9/11 and the Media, Global Warming

There are only 38 days to go until the national
referendum on the CHARACTER, COMPETENCE and
CREDIBILITY of the _resident and the VICE _resident.
Over one thousand US soldiers have died in a foolish,
ill-planned and unnecessary war in Iraq, the Bush
national insecurity team is GUILTY of pre-9/11
negligence and post-9/11 incompetence, the US federal
budget surplus has been squandered on TWO foolish,
ill-timed and unnecessary tax cuts skewed toward the
wealthiest few, the Bush vodoo economics team has
plunged us into hundreds of billions of dollars in
federal deficit and a multi-trillion dollar nationa
debt, forget about asking your fellow citizens if they
are safer or better off than they were four years ago
(of course, the answer is no), instead, ask them can
we afford four more years --strategically militarily
economically environmentally constitutionally?
The US regimestream news media, at least until this
point, has, in large part, been a full partner along
with the Bush Cabal and its wholly-owned-subsidiary
formerluy-known-as-the-Republican-Party
in a Triad of shared special interest (e.g. oil,
weapons, media, pharmaceuticals, tobacco, etc.) Here
are five very important news items. They should
dominate the air waves and demand headlines above the
fold. But they won't. Please read them and share them
with others. Please vote and encourage others to vote.
Please remember that the US regimestream news media,
particularly the major network and cable news
organizations, does not want to inform you about this
presidential campaign, it wants to DISinform you...

Lois Romano, Washington Post: "The invasion of Iraq
was a profound diversion from the battle against our
greatest enemy -- al Qaeda," Kerry said. "The
president's misjudgment, miscalculation and
mismanagement . . . all make the war on terror harder
to win. George Bush made Saddam Hussein the priority.
I would have made Osama bin Laden the priority."
Kerry's comments at Temple, reinforced later at a
rally of 20,000 at the University of Pennsylvania,
included a six-point plan that campaign officials said
is designed to contrast his proposals with those of
the president's and to demonstrate that foreign policy
is a strength of Kerry's.
The Democratic nominee promised to destroy terrorist
networks by going after their arms and financing; to
revamp and enhance the intelligence apparatus to
ferret them out; to build up an overstretched military
by 40,000 troops; to support Middle Eastern
democracies; and to increase funding for homeland
security and for more intense cargo inspections at
ports and other points of entry.
"The Bush administration is spending more in Iraq in
four days than they've spent protecting our ports for
all of the last three years," Kerry charged.
Kerry assailed Bush for alienating longtime U.S.
allies, pledging as he has before to rebuild global
relationships. "I have news for President Bush: Just
because you can't do something doesn't mean it can't
be done," Kerry said. "It can be. My friends, it's not
George Bush's style that keeps our allies from
helping. It's his judgment."

Michael Ishikoff, Mark Hosenball, Newsweek: In its
rush to air its now discredited story about President
George W. Bush's National Guard service, CBS bumped
another sensitive piece slated for the same "60
Minutes" broadcast: a half-hour segment about how the
U.S. government was snookered by forged documents
purporting to show Iraqi efforts to purchase uranium
from Niger...
A team of "60 Minutes" correspondents and consulting
reporters spent more than six months investigating the
Niger uranium documents fraud, CBS sources tell
Newsweek. The group landed the first ever on-camera
interview with Elisabetta Burba, the Italian
journalist who first obtained the phony documents, as
well as her elusive source, Rocco Martino, a
mysterious Roman businessman with longstanding ties to
European intelligence agencies.
Although the edited piece never ended up identifying
Martino by name, the story, narrated by "60 Minutes"
correspondent Ed Bradley, asked tough questions about
how the White House came to embrace the fraudulent
documents and why administration officials chose to
include a 16-word reference to the questionable
uranium purchase in President Bush's 2003 State of the
Union speech.
But just hours before the piece was set to air on the
evening of Sept. 8, the reporters and producers on the
CBS team were stunned to learn the story was being
scrapped to make room for a seemingly sensational
story about new documents showing that Bush ignored a
direct order to take a flight physical while serving
in the National Guard more than 30 years ago...
"This is like living in a Kafka novel," said Joshua
Micah Marshall, a Washington Monthly contributing
writer and a Web blogger who had been collaborating
with "60 Minutes" producers on the uranium story.
"Here we had a very important, well-reported story
about forged documents that helped lead the country to
war. And then it gets bumped by another story that
relied on forged documents."

Hank Kalet, Dispatches, South Brunswick Post: She
never expected to be speaking at Rutgers and elsewhere
about her views, never expected to find herself being
forcibly removed from a Republican Party political
rally in Hamilton after shouting a question at first
lady Laura Bush.
And she certainly never expected the kind of
insensitive treatment she received from the crowd.
But, then again, she never expected her son to die
in a dubious foreign war.
Yes. I said dubious. The war in Iraq was a war of
choice, not a war of necessity, a war sold to the
American public with a mixture of bad intelligence and
bad faith. And 1,000 Americans and tens of thousands
of Iraqis have paid the ultimate price.
Ms. Niederer's 24-year-old son Army 1st Lt. Seth
Dvorin, a graduate of South Brunswick High School, was
among those killed. Lt. Dvorin was serving in Iraq
with the 10th Mountain Division, Battery B, 3rd
Battalion, 62nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment when a
makeshift bomb exploded as he was conducting a
counter-explosive mission, Army officials said after
his death in February.
Ms. Niederer, who now lives in Hopewell, believes
her son did not have to die, that he and the
1,030-plus American soldiers who have died in Iraq
since the war began a year and a half ago were victims
of bad faith on the part of the Bush administration.
She has become active in the anti-war group Military
Families Speak Out and has made numerous speeches
around the area — including at Rutgers, her son's alma
mater — criticizing President George W. Bush and the
war in Iraq.

www.mediamatters.org: While the media has focused in
recent months on issues such as whether Senator John
Kerry took fire while saving the life of a fellow
swift boat crew member more than 30 years ago and
whether President George W. Bush's commanding officer
wrote memos bearing his name, an issue of at least
equal importance -- whether the Bush administration
lied to the 9-11 Commission and to the American people
about the events of September 11 -- has been almost
completely ignored. *
In fact, were reporters to devote anything approaching
the time and energy consumed by the disputed CBS memos
to the 9-11 Commission's conclusions, they would find
strong evidence that the administration has misled the
country regarding one of the most catastrophic days in
our country's history. In a review of the 9-11
Commission report in The New York Review of Books,
regular contributor Elizabeth Drew noted several
examples of Bush administration distortions and
apparent lies, of which the report provides strong
evidence. Following are two of the most flagrant.
Bush administration officials said no one could
predict terrorists would use airplanes as missiles
As Slate.com has reported, several prominent Bush
administration officials have asserted that there was
no way the government could have known that terrorists
would attempt to hijack airplanes and crash them into
buildings, as they did at the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. In May 2002,
national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said: "I
don't think anyone could have predicted that these
people would take an airplane and slam it into the
World Trade Center"; then-White House Press Secretary
Ari Fleischer echoed Rice's remarks: "Never did we
imagine what would take place on September 11 where
people use those airplanes as missiles and weapons."
In her testimony before the 9-11 Commission, though,
Rice retreated from her remarks, stating, "I probably
should have said, 'I could not have imagined'" such an
occurrence, but she only conceded that she couldn't
promise that there "might not have been a report here
or a report there that reached somebody in our midst."
USA Today reported a similar remark by President Bush
on April 18: "Nobody in our government, at least, and
I don't think the prior government, could envision
flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive
scale." CNN noted on March 24 that Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld told the Commission: "I knew
of no intelligence during the six-plus months leading
up to September 11 to indicate terrorists would hijack
commercial airlines, use them as missiles to fly into
the Pentagon or the World Trade Center towers."
However, as the 9-11 Commission report documented,
such a "possibility was imaginable, and imagined,"
citing an August 1999 Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) Civil Aviation Security intelligence office
report that warned on the potential of a "suicide
hijacking operation," and that the North American
Aerospace Defense Command had "developed exercises to
counter such a threat." The commission reported that
an August 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing
entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,"
which was received by Bush, stated that although the
FBI had "not been able to corroborate" a 1998 report
that Osama bin Laden was seeking to "hijack a US
aircraft," "FBI information since that time
indicate[d] patterns of suspicious activity in this
country consistent with preparations for hijackings or
other types of attacks, including recent surveillance
of federal buildings in New York."
Just weeks before 9-11, the Commission report also
noted, the Central Intelligence Agency warned British
and French officials of "'subjects involved in
suspicious 747 flight training' that described [Al
Qaeda operative Zacarias] Moussaoui as a possible
'suicide hijacker.'" And the week before the terrorist
attacks, a Minneapolis FBI agent told the FAA that
Moussaoui was "an Islamic extremist preparing for some
future act in furtherance of radical fundamentalist
goals" related to flight training he had received. The
commission also documented that on August 23, 2001,
then-Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet
"was briefed about the Moussaoui case in a briefing
titled 'Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly.'"

Reuters: Some of Antarctica's glaciers are melting
faster than snow can replace them, enough to raise sea
levels measurably, scientists reported on Friday.
Measurements of glaciers flowing into the Amundsen
Sea, on the Pacific Ocean side of Antarctica, show
they are melting much faster than in recent years and
could break up.
And they contain more ice than was previously
estimated, meaning they could raise sea level by more
than predicted, the international team of researchers
writes in the journal Science.
"The ... Amundsen Sea glaciers contain enough ice to
raise sea level by 1.3 meters (4 feet)," the
researchers wrote in their report.

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!)

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/092504I.shtml

The Story that Didn't Run
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek

Wednesday 22 September 2004

Here's the piece that '60 Minutes' killed for its
report on the Bush Guard documents.
In its rush to air its now discredited story about
President George W. Bush's National Guard service, CBS
bumped another sensitive piece slated for the same "60
Minutes" broadcast: a half-hour segment about how the
U.S. government was snookered by forged documents
purporting to show Iraqi efforts to purchase uranium
from Niger.

The journalistic juggling at CBS provides an
ironic counterpoint to the furor over apparently bogus
documents involving Bush's National Guard service. One
unexpected consequence of the network's decision was
to wipe out a chance-at least for the moment-for
greater public scrutiny of a more consequential
forgery that played a role in building the Bush
administration's case to invade Iraq.

A team of "60 Minutes" correspondents and
consulting reporters spent more than six months
investigating the Niger uranium documents fraud, CBS
sources tell Newsweek. The group landed the first ever
on-camera interview with Elisabetta Burba, the Italian
journalist who first obtained the phony documents, as
well as her elusive source, Rocco Martino, a
mysterious Roman businessman with longstanding ties to
European intelligence agencies.

Although the edited piece never ended up
identifying Martino by name, the story, narrated by
"60 Minutes" correspondent Ed Bradley, asked tough
questions about how the White House came to embrace
the fraudulent documents and why administration
officials chose to include a 16-word reference to the
questionable uranium purchase in President Bush's 2003
State of the Union speech.

But just hours before the piece was set to air on
the evening of Sept. 8, the reporters and producers on
the CBS team were stunned to learn the story was being
scrapped to make room for a seemingly sensational
story about new documents showing that Bush ignored a
direct order to take a flight physical while serving
in the National Guard more than 30 years ago.

The story has since created a journalistic and
political firestorm, resulting in a colossal
embarrassment for CBS. This week, the network
concluded that its principle source for the documents,
a disgruntled former Guard official and Democratic
partisan named Bill Burkett, had lied about where he
got the material. CBS anchor Dan Rather publicly
apologized for broadcasting the faulty report. Today,
CBS named a two-person team comprised of former U.S.
Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and former Associated
Press chief Louis Boccardi to investigate the
network's handling of the story. .

"This is like living in a Kafka novel," said
Joshua Micah Marshall, a Washington Monthly
contributing writer and a Web blogger who had been
collaborating with "60 Minutes" producers on the
uranium story. "Here we had a very important,
well-reported story about forged documents that helped
lead the country to war. And then it gets bumped by
another story that relied on forged documents."

Some CBS reporters, as well as one of the
network's key sources, fear that the Niger uranium
story may never run, at least not any time soon, on
the grounds that the network can now not credibly air
a report questioning how the Bush administration could
have gotten taken in by phony documents. The network
would "be a laughingstock," said one source intimately
familiar with the story.

Although acknowledging that it was "frustrating"
to have his story bounced, David Gelber, the lead CBS
producer on the Niger piece, said he has been told the
segment will still air some time soon, perhaps as
early as next week. "Obviously, everybody at CBS is
holding their breath these days. I'm assuming the
story is going to run until I'm told differently."

The delay of the CBS report comes at a time when
there have been significant new developments in the
case-although virtually none of them have been
reported in the United States. According to Italian
and British press reports, Martino-the Rome middleman
at the center of the case-was questioned last week by
an Italian investigating magistrate for two hours
about the circumstances surrounding his acquisition of
the documents. Martino could not be reached for
comment, but his lawyer is reportedly planning a press
conference in the next few days.

Burba, the Italian journalist, confirmed to
Newsweek this week that Martino is the previously
mysterious "Mr. X" who contacted her with the
potentially explosive documents in early October
2002-just as Congress was debating whether to
authorize President Bush to wage war against Iraq. The
documents, consisting of telexes, letters and
contracts, purported to show that Iraq had negotiated
an agreement to purchase 500 tons of "yellowcake
uranium from Niger, material that could be used to
make a nuclear bomb. (A U.S. intelligence official
told Newsweek that Martino is in fact believed to have
been the distributor of the documents.)

Burba-under instructions from her editor at
Panarama, a newsmagazine owned by Italian Prime
Minister Silvio Berlusconi-then provided the documents
to the U.S. Embassy in Rome in an effort to
authenticate them. The embassy soon passed the
material on to Washington where some Bush
administration officials viewed it as hard evidence to
support its case that Saddam Hussein's regime was
actively engaged in a program to assemble nuclear
weapons.

But the Niger component of the White House case
for war quickly imploded. Asked for evidence to
support President Bush's contention in his State of
the Union speech that Iraq was seeking uranium from
Africa, the administration turned over the Niger
documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Within two hours, using the Google search engine, IAEA
officials in Vienna determined the documents to be a
crude forgery. At the urging of Sen. Jay Rockefeller,
vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee,
the FBI launched an investigation into the Niger
documents in an effort to determine if the United
States government had been duped by a deliberate
"disinformation" campaign organized by a foreign
intelligence agency or others with a political agenda
relating to Iraq.

So far, the bureau appears to have made little
progress in unraveling the case. "The senator is
frustrated by the slow pace of the investigation,"
said Wendy Morigi, the press secretary for Senator
Rockefeller, who was recently briefed on the status of
the FBI probe.

One striking aspect of the FBI's investigation is
that, at least as of this week, Martino has told
associates he has never even been interviewed by the
bureau-despite the fact that he was publicly
identified by the Financial Times of London as the
source of the documents more than six weeks ago and
was subsequently flown to New York City by CBS to be
interviewed for the "60 Minutes" report.

A U.S. law-enforcement official said the FBI is
seeking to interview Martino, but has not yet received
permission to do so from the Italian government. The
official declined to comment on other aspects of the
investigation.

The case has taken on additional intrigue because
of mounting indications that Martino has longstanding
relationships with European intelligence agencies.
Martino recently told the Sunday Times of London that
he had previously worked for SISMI, the Italian
military-intelligence agency, a potentially noteworthy
part of his resume given that the conservative Italian
government of Berlasconi was a strong supporter of the
Bush administration's invasion of Iraq. A French
government official told Newsweek that Martino also
had a relationship with French intelligence agencies.
But the French official rejected suggestions from U.S.
and British officials that French intelligence may
have played a role in creating the documents in order
to embarrass Bush and British Prime Minister Tony
Blair. The French never disseminated the documents
because they could not establish their authenticity,
the French official said.

Martino has told Burba and others that he obtained
the phony documents from an Italian woman who worked
in the Niger Embassy in Rome. He was in turn put in
touch with the woman by yet another middleman who,
according to Burba's account, had directed Martino to
provide the documents to "the Egyptians." Some press
reports have suggested the still unidentified
middleman who put Martino in touch with his Niger
Embassy source was in fact a SISMI officer himself.

Burba, who has twice been interviewed by the FBI
but never gave up Martino's name, said she had been
cooperating with the CBS team on the story in hopes of
getting to the bottom of the matter. But now, with the
"60 Minutes" broadcast postponed, she is no longer
confident that can ever happen. Meanwhile, she said
she is fed up with Martino who has "lied" to her and
provided contradictory accounts to other journalists.

"I'm disappointed," she told Newsweek. "In this
story, you don't know who's lying and who's telling
the truth. The sources have been both discredited and
discredited themselves."

-------
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48716-2004Sep24.html?referrer=email


washingtonpost.com
Kerry Blasts Iraq 'Diversion'
Challenger Says War Has Hurt the Fight Against Al
Qaeda
By Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 25, 2004; Page A01

PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 24 -- John F. Kerry detailed his
plan for combating terrorism Friday and insisted that
the nation is no safer after the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks because President Bush took his "eye off the
ball."

In a harsh assessment of his rival's policies, Kerry
told an audience at Temple University that Iraq has
become a haven for terrorists, and he drew a sharp
distinction between the war on terrorism and the war
in Iraq to differentiate his policies from those of
the president.

"The invasion of Iraq was a profound diversion from
the battle against our greatest enemy -- al Qaeda,"
Kerry said. "The president's misjudgment,
miscalculation and mismanagement . . . all make the
war on terror harder to win. George Bush made Saddam
Hussein the priority. I would have made Osama bin
Laden the priority."

Kerry's comments at Temple, reinforced later at a
rally of 20,000 at the University of Pennsylvania,
included a six-point plan that campaign officials said
is designed to contrast his proposals with those of
the president's and to demonstrate that foreign policy
is a strength of Kerry's.

The Democratic nominee promised to destroy terrorist
networks by going after their arms and financing; to
revamp and enhance the intelligence apparatus to
ferret them out; to build up an overstretched military
by 40,000 troops; to support Middle Eastern
democracies; and to increase funding for homeland
security and for more intense cargo inspections at
ports and other points of entry.

"The Bush administration is spending more in Iraq in
four days than they've spent protecting our ports for
all of the last three years," Kerry charged.

Kerry assailed Bush for alienating longtime U.S.
allies, pledging as he has before to rebuild global
relationships. "I have news for President Bush: Just
because you can't do something doesn't mean it can't
be done," Kerry said. "It can be. My friends, it's not
George Bush's style that keeps our allies from
helping. It's his judgment."

Before Kerry even finished his speech Friday morning,
the Bush-Cheney campaign sent out e-mails accusing him
of both copying Bush's policies and of distorting his
record.

"John Kerry's repackaged proposals embrace initiatives
that the President is already implementing, even as he
cynically attacks the President," campaign spokesman
Steve Schmidt said in a statement. "John Kerry called
Saddam Hussein a 'terrorist' before, but now he is
taking the opposite position and claiming that the
removal of Saddam Hussein has left the world 'less
secure.' "

Vice President Cheney weighed in from Lafayette, La.,
telling supporters: "John Kerry is trying to tear down
and trash all the good that has been accomplished."

Kerry's comments came at the end of a week when his
campaign switched its strategy of focusing heavily on
domestic issues and aggressively attacked Bush's Iraq
policies, portraying them as arrogant, misplaced and
extremist.

"Drawing these sharp contrasts with Bush on Iraq is
very important, because this is a fundamentally
important issue," senior adviser Mike McCurry said.
"It is the heart of the question about George Bush: Is
he capable of seeing mistakes and fixing them so we
can get them right?" Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.
(D-Del.), who accompanied Kerry on Friday, told
reporters that Kerry felt "liberated" to make the case
against Bush on foreign policy.

Kerry's campaign Friday unveiled a second ad on Iraq
in two days, this one turning Bush's words on him. The
30-second spot, to air during Sunday talk shows, shows
Bush during a Rose Garden news conference saying, "I
saw a poll that said the 'right-track, wrong-track' in
Iraq was better than here in America."

"The right track?" the narrator asks. "Americans are
being kidnapped, held hostage, even beheaded. Over a
thousand American soldiers have died. And George Bush
has no plan to get us out of Iraq."

Although Kerry had previously made many of the points
in Friday's speech, it was the first time he presented
an anti-terrorism plan in such a comprehensive way.

Anthony H. Cordesman, a senior national security
analyst at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, who said he is not endorsing either
candidate's approach, said Kerry's speech amounted to
"a wish list of any measure that anybody has proposed
without seeing whether they are cost-effective."

He gave Kerry credit for addressing the growing Muslim
resentment of the United States and the need for debt
relief in Middle East countries. But he said the Bush
administration has already been undertaking many of
Kerry's proposals, such as expanding the CIA's
clandestine service and the military's Special Forces
units.

"I have the impression," Cordesman said, "that
somebody assembled all the possibilities that would
have a rhetoric impact and crammed them into a
speech."

One area in which Kerry worked to set himself apart
from Bush was on Saudi Arabia, saying the
administration has not held it accountable for
financing al Qaeda terrorism.

"As president, I will do what President Bush has not:
I will hold the Saudis accountable. Since 9/11, there
have been no public prosecutions in Saudi Arabia, and
few elsewhere, of terrorist financiers," Kerry said.

Bush and others in the administration say that they
have put significant pressure on the Saudis, and that
the Saudis have become more aggressive in arresting al
Qaeda members living in the country and in closing
down religious-based contributions to the organization
and its affiliates.

Kerry also said that at U.S. ports, he would increase
the budgets for "the most promising cargo inspection
programs" by 600 percent. A spokesman said Kerry was
referring to two widely applauded programs run by the
Department of Homeland Security to increase
surveillance of incoming containers in foreign ports
such as Hong Kong, and to work with U.S. importers to
tighten their security. Both programs have been
severely understaffed, experts said.

Stephen E. Flynn, a retired Coast Guard official and
author of a homeland security book called "America the
Vulnerable," said Kerry's proposal makes sense because
it would result in tighter security without delaying
the flow of goods: "I applaud any effort to bolster
the resources going to these two important programs."

Staff writers Dana Priest and John Mintz in Washington
contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=12988666&BRD=1091&PAG=461&dept_id=

DISPATCHES: Unlikely activist takes on war in Iraq




By: Hank Kalet , Managing Editor 09/23/2004




DISPATCHES By Hank Kalet: Mother of soldier killed in
Iraq speaks out against President Bush and dubious
war.

Sue Niederer never expected to find herself on the
nightly news.
She never expected to be speaking at Rutgers and
elsewhere about her views, never expected to find
herself being forcibly removed from a Republican Party
political rally in Hamilton after shouting a question
at first lady Laura Bush.
And she certainly never expected the kind of
insensitive treatment she received from the crowd.
But, then again, she never expected her son to die
in a dubious foreign war.
Yes. I said dubious. The war in Iraq was a war of
choice, not a war of necessity, a war sold to the
American public with a mixture of bad intelligence and
bad faith. And 1,000 Americans and tens of thousands
of Iraqis have paid the ultimate price.
Ms. Niederer's 24-year-old son Army 1st Lt. Seth
Dvorin, a graduate of South Brunswick High School, was
among those killed. Lt. Dvorin was serving in Iraq
with the 10th Mountain Division, Battery B, 3rd
Battalion, 62nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment when a
makeshift bomb exploded as he was conducting a
counter-explosive mission, Army officials said after
his death in February.
Ms. Niederer, who now lives in Hopewell, believes
her son did not have to die, that he and the
1,030-plus American soldiers who have died in Iraq
since the war began a year and a half ago were victims
of bad faith on the part of the Bush administration.
She has become active in the anti-war group Military
Families Speak Out and has made numerous speeches
around the area — including at Rutgers, her son's alma
mater — criticizing President George W. Bush and the
war in Iraq.
Reading the letters on the Military Families Speak
Out Web site (www.mfso.org) is a painful experience.
They tell of dislocation and alienation, of extreme
worry verging on terror, of not being able to watch
the news or read the newspaper because each time they
hear of an American casualty they fear it will be a
son, a daughter, a cousin, a husband, wife, brother or
sister. The letters are bitter and angry and demand
the president be brought to account.
Ms. Niederer joined Military Families Speak Out as
a way of connecting with others who are feeling the
same things she has been feeling, and to speak out
against the war.
"I don't have any vendetta," she said by phone on
Tuesday night. "I just want these kids back."
Ms. Niederer sees her activism as a mission, as a
way of carrying out her son's commitment to the men
with whom he served.
"It was my son's last words before he went back to
Iraq," she said. "I asked him if he wanted to go back
to Iraq and he said he didn't. He said he thought it
was useless. We weren't going to win a war on
terrorism or war on religion. It was just a guerilla
war."
So she asked him why he felt he had to go.
"He said he had 18 men under him and he must bring
them home safely," she said.
Of those original 18 soldiers, three have died and
two were badly wounded.
"I'm just carrying out his wishes and his memory by
trying to bring the men home safely and alive," she
said. "It was his wish."
That sense of mission brought her to Hamilton on
Sept. 16, where Mrs. Bush was speaking at a rally and
fund-raiser on behalf of the president's re-election
campaign.
According to reports from several news
organizations, Ms. Niederer sat silently at the speech
until Mrs. Bush began talking of the troops abroad.
That's when she stood up and confronted the first
lady. She was wearing a T-shirt with her son's photo
and the words "President Bush, you killed my son"
across the front.
She came with a simple question: "When are yours
going to serve?" referring to the Bush twins. She got
no answer.
That should not be surprising, since the American
public has yet to get a straight answer from the
president or his minions as to why we are fighting and
why our young men are dying half way around the globe.
Each rationale has melted under real scrutiny, only to
be replaced with another. The elusive weapons of mass
destruction gave way to fictional links to al-Qaida,
which in turn gave way to the noble-sounding goal of
liberating the Iraqis from Saddam Hussein. Now the
Iraqis are fighting to liberate themselves from us and
our soldiers are dying with increasing frequency.
According to CNN.com, 58 Americans have died so far
this month and 181 have died since Iraqis were handed
back autonomy.
"It has ... become increasingly clear that
America's military presence continues to serve as a
catalyst and rallying cry for a growing number of
disaffected Iraqi citizens," The Nation wrote in a
recent editorial.
And yet the president continues to view this crisis
with rose-colored glasses, extolling a growing
democracy that just does not seem to exist, continues
to blame outside influences for what nearly every
observer inside Iraq agrees is a homegrown resistance.
It is time that someone in authority admitted that
this war has been a terrible, deadly mistake and made
real plans to bring our troops home so other mothers
do not have to feel the pain that Sue Niederer has
felt.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick
Post and The Cranbury Press. E-mail him by clicking
here.

©PACKETONLINE News Classifieds Entertainment Business
- Princeton and Central New Jersey 2004

http://mediamatters.org/items/200409240007

Media looked past 9-11 Commission documentation of
Bush administration fabrications

While the media has focused in recent months on issues
such as whether Senator John Kerry took fire while
saving the life of a fellow swift boat crew member
more than 30 years ago and whether President George W.
Bush's commanding officer wrote memos bearing his
name, an issue of at least equal importance -- whether
the Bush administration lied to the 9-11 Commission
and to the American people about the events of
September 11 -- has been almost completely ignored. *

In fact, were reporters to devote anything approaching
the time and energy consumed by the disputed CBS memos
to the 9-11 Commission's conclusions, they would find
strong evidence that the administration has misled the
country regarding one of the most catastrophic days in
our country's history. In a review of the 9-11
Commission report in The New York Review of Books,
regular contributor Elizabeth Drew noted several
examples of Bush administration distortions and
apparent lies, of which the report provides strong
evidence. Following are two of the most flagrant.

Bush administration officials said no one could
predict terrorists would use airplanes as missiles

As Slate.com has reported, several prominent Bush
administration officials have asserted that there was
no way the government could have known that terrorists
would attempt to hijack airplanes and crash them into
buildings, as they did at the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. In May 2002,
national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said: "I
don't think anyone could have predicted that these
people would take an airplane and slam it into the
World Trade Center"; then-White House Press Secretary
Ari Fleischer echoed Rice's remarks: "Never did we
imagine what would take place on September 11 where
people use those airplanes as missiles and weapons."

In her testimony before the 9-11 Commission, though,
Rice retreated from her remarks, stating, "I probably
should have said, 'I could not have imagined'" such an
occurrence, but she only conceded that she couldn't
promise that there "might not have been a report here
or a report there that reached somebody in our midst."
USA Today reported a similar remark by President Bush
on April 18: "Nobody in our government, at least, and
I don't think the prior government, could envision
flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive
scale." CNN noted on March 24 that Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld told the Commission: "I knew
of no intelligence during the six-plus months leading
up to September 11 to indicate terrorists would hijack
commercial airlines, use them as missiles to fly into
the Pentagon or the World Trade Center towers."

However, as the 9-11 Commission report documented,
such a "possibility was imaginable, and imagined,"
citing an August 1999 Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) Civil Aviation Security intelligence office
report that warned on the potential of a "suicide
hijacking operation," and that the North American
Aerospace Defense Command had "developed exercises to
counter such a threat." The commission reported that
an August 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing
entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,"
which was received by Bush, stated that although the
FBI had "not been able to corroborate" a 1998 report
that Osama bin Laden was seeking to "hijack a US
aircraft," "FBI information since that time
indicate[d] patterns of suspicious activity in this
country consistent with preparations for hijackings or
other types of attacks, including recent surveillance
of federal buildings in New York."

Just weeks before 9-11, the Commission report also
noted, the Central Intelligence Agency warned British
and French officials of "'subjects involved in
suspicious 747 flight training' that described [Al
Qaeda operative Zacarias] Moussaoui as a possible
'suicide hijacker.'" And the week before the terrorist
attacks, a Minneapolis FBI agent told the FAA that
Moussaoui was "an Islamic extremist preparing for some
future act in furtherance of radical fundamentalist
goals" related to flight training he had received. The
commission also documented that on August 23, 2001,
then-Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet
"was briefed about the Moussaoui case in a briefing
titled 'Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly.'"

The Bush administration's claims of ignorance are cast
into even greater doubt by a report that a
hypothetical event resembling the actual events of
September 11 was the subject of a military training
exercise less than a year before 9-11. As United Press
International documented, on October 24, 2000, the
Pentagon ran a "mass casualty exercise, which
simulated crisis response in a scenario where a
hijacked aircraft crashed into the Pentagon."

Cheney and Bush claimed Cheney received Bush's
approval to shoot down hijacked planes on 9-11

Both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney
have maintained, and testified to the 9-11 Commission,
that the order to shoot down airplanes hijacked by Al
Qaeda on the morning of September 11 was authorized by
the president himself. But the commission's report
indicated that the commission found no evidence to
support such a claim based on the review of an array
of documentary sources from that day.

The report noted Bush and Cheney's account of the
events in question: Cheney "stated that he called the
President to discuss the rules of engagement" for
shooting down the hijacked airplanes if they would not
divert their path on the morning of September 11,
Cheney "said the President signed off on that
concept," and "[t]he President said he remembered such
a conversation."

But the commission found "no documentary evidence for
this call." The report includes a caveat that "the
relevant sources are incomplete," but does not say
specifically what information the commission lacked.
The commission cited the following sources in reaching
its conclusion that there was no evidence for Bush and
Cheney's claim: "(1) phone logs of the White House
switchboard; (2) notes of Lewis Libby [Cheney's chief
of staff], Mrs. [Lynne] Cheney, and Ari Fleischer; (3)
the tape (and then transcript) of the air threat
conference call; and (4) Secret Service and White
House Situation Room logs, as well as four separate
White House Military Office logs (the PEOC Watch Log,
the PEOC Shelter Log, the Communications Log, and the
9-11 Log)."

The report then noted that after Cheney twice ordered
the "authorization to engage," he called President
Bush to obtain authorization at the behest of White
House deputy chief of staff Joshua Bolten. According
to the report, Bolten wanted Cheney to "confirm the
engage order" and "make sure the President was told"
Cheney had executed it, and Bolten "said he had not
heard any prior discussion on the subject with the
President." The hijacked planes crashed before the
authorization order was put into effect.

Drew, in her New York Review of Books review, noted
that in response to the commission's suggestion that
Cheney made the order without Bush's authorization,
"the White House reacted in a lengthy letter to the
commission ... propos[ing] substitute language that
portrayed the President's performance that morning in
a more positive light." And, she wrote that Cheney
"made a vehement phone call to the chairman, Thomas
Kean, and vice-chairman, Lee Hamilton, protesting the
staff report's implication that he had taken charge
and ordered the planes shot down." Despite the
protests by the White House, Drew noted, the
commission's report maintained an account of the
events that suggests Cheney, not Bush, made the order.

* An MMFA LexisNexis database search on September 24
of the "All News" directory for media coverage --
after the 9-11 Commission report's July 22 release --
of Bush administration assertions that were
contradicted by the evidence amassed in the report
produced minimal results. Relevant results were
defined as articles that note the inconsistencies
between the Bush administration accounts and the 9-11
Commission report findings:

A search for "rice and predict! and airplane and slam
and world trade center and date is after July 20,
2004" produced six relevant results.

A search for "Fleischer and imagine and airplanes as
missiles and date is after July 20, 2004" produced
zero relevant results.

A search for "rice and I could not have imagined and
date is after July 20, 2004" produced zero relevant
results.

A search for "Bush and envision flying airplanes into
buildings and date is after July 20, 2004" produced
zero relevant results.

A search for "9/11 Commission and imaginable and
imagined and date is after July 20, 2004" produced
zero relevant results.

A search for "cheney and (shoot /20 plane or airplane)
or (rules of engagement) or (9/11 commission and
documentary evidence and call) and date is after july
20, 2004" produced two relevant results.

— A.S. & M.K.

Posted to the web on Friday September 24, 2004 at 3:09
PM EST

Copyright © 2004 Media Matters for America. All rights
reserved.
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http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/09/24/environment.glaciers.reut/index.html

Report: Antarctica glaciers are thinning

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Some of Antarctica's glaciers
are melting faster than snow can replace them, enough
to raise sea levels measurably, scientists reported on
Friday.

Measurements of glaciers flowing into the Amundsen
Sea, on the Pacific Ocean side of Antarctica, show
they are melting much faster than in recent years and
could break up.

And they contain more ice than was previously
estimated, meaning they could raise sea level by more
than predicted, the international team of researchers
writes in the journal Science.

"The ... Amundsen Sea glaciers contain enough ice to
raise sea level by 1.3 meters (4 feet)," the
researchers wrote in their report.

"Our measurements show them collectively to be 60
percent out of balance, sufficient to raise sea level
by 0.24 mm (nearly 0.01 inch) per year," they added.

And as the surrounding ice shelves melt -- which they
are doing -- this process will speed up, the
researchers said.

"The ice shelves act like a cork and slow down the
flow of the glacier," said Bob Thomas of the NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight Facility
in Virginia.

Theirs is the second report this week to warn of
rapidly melting glaciers in Antarctica.

On Tuesday a team at NASA and the University of
Colorado reported that the 2002 breakup of the Larsen
B ice shelf on the other side of the continent had
accelerated the breakup of glaciers into the Weddell
Sea.

Many teams of researchers are keeping a close eye on
parts of Antarctica that are steadily melting.

Large ice shelves in the Antarctic Peninsula
disintegrated in 1995 and 2002 as a result of climate
warming. But these floating ice shelves did not affect
sea level as they melted.

Glaciers, however, are another story. They rest on
land and when they slide off into the water they
instantly affect sea level.

"The rates of glacier change remain relatively small
at present," said Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who worked on
Friday's study.

"But the potential exists for these glaciers to
increase global sea level by more than one meter (3
feet). The time scale over which this will take place
depends on how much faster the glaciers can flow,
which we do not know at present."

The measurements also show the glaciers are thicker
than once believed. This means more melting and more
rapid melting, Thomas said.

"Our measurements show an increase in glacier thinning
rates that affects not only the mouth of the glacier,
but also 60 miles (100 km) to 190 miles (300 km)
inland," Thomas said in a statement.

The researchers from NASA, the Centro de Estudios
Cientificos in Chile, the University of Kansas and
Ohio State University wrote their estimates based on
satellite data and measurements from a Chilean P-3
aircraft equipped with NASA sensors.

Experts say that overall sea levels around the world
are going up by about 1.8 mm or 0.07 inch a year.
About half of this comes from melting ice in glaciers.

The melting into the Amundsen sea is now more than the
previous amount from all of Antarctica and more than
the estimated contribution from Greenland, the
researchers said.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 2004 Reuters. All rights reserved.This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten,
or redistributed.

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Countdown to Electoral Uprising -- 39 Days to Go -- JFK hits hard on Bush terrror blunders, DeLay scandal HIDDEN by Corporatist Media, Theresa expect Osama's "capture, " Klinghoffer's murder, Pentagon vote supression foiled

There are only 39 days to go until the national
referendum on the COMPETENCE, CHARACTER and
CREDIBILITY of the _resident and the VICE
_resident...The botched, bungled, mis-named "war on
terrorism" is not the strength of the Bush
abomination, it is the SHAME of the Bush
abomination...There is an Electoral Uprising
coming...Do not be disceived, discouraged or confused
by the US regimestream news media, with its cooked
polls and craven propapunditgandists...There is an
Electoral Uprising coming in November 2004. It will
include many life-long Reublicans from US military
families in Red States, it will include many patrios
of diverse political view points...The US regimestream
news media, at least until this point, has, in large
part, been a full partner along with the Bush Cabal
and its wholly-owned-subsidiary
formerluy-known-as-the-Republican-Party
in a Triad of shared special interest (e.g. oil,
weapons, media, pharmaceuticals, tobacco, etc.) Here
are five very important news items. They should
dominate the air waves and demand headlines above the
fold. But they won't. Please read them and share them
with others. Please vote and encourage others to vote.
Please remember that the US regimestream news media
does not want to inform you about this presidential
campaign, it wants to DISinform you...

Mary Dalrymple, Associated Press: "The invasion of
Iraq was a profound diversion from the battle against
our greatest enemy, al-Qaida," Kerry said in a speech
at Temple University. "There's just no question about
it. The president's misjudgment, miscalculation and
mismanagement of the war in Iraq all make the war on
terror harder to win."
Kerry said Iraq has become a haven for terrorists
since the war, and he offered a detailed strategy to
contain terrorism while drawing a sharp distinction
between his and the president's views on national
security.
"George Bush made Saddam Hussein the priority. I
would have made Osama bin Laden the priority," Kerry
said. "I will finish the job in Iraq and I will
refocus our energies on the real war on terror."

www.democrats.com: SPEAK UP AMERICA! Networks Black
Out Story of Tom Delay Group Fraud Case
The networks spend DAYS giving big chunks of news time
to unsubstantiated, often "anonymous" slams against
Kerry or to dubious documents that could hurt Bush.
But they did not give ONE SINGLE MINUTE to a fraud
case involving one of the most powerful men in
Washington, Tom Delay. As Media Matters reports: "On
September 21, three top aides to U.S. House Majority
Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) were indicted on charges of
illegally raising political funds from corporations in
2002. Major newspapers carried the story, some of them
on the front page....Yet ABC World News Tonight, CBS
Evening News, and NBC Nightly News failed to report
the indictments on September 21 and on September 22."
Once again, the Networks are deceiving the public,
hiding info about the Republican Party, while
systematically seeking to undermine the Democrats.
This amounts to attempted subversion of the American
political process. Contact these corporations and
DEMAND JUSTICE

Mike Sunnucks, Business Journal of Phoenix: In regard
to the hunt for terror leader Osama Bin Laden, Heinz
Kerry said she could see the al-Qaida chief being
caught before the November election.
"I wouldn't be surprised if he appeared in the next
month," said Heinz Kerry, alluding to a possible
capture by United States and allied forces before
election day.
The spouse of Democratic presidential candidate John
Kerry also hit President Bush on Iraq, saying it
should not be equated with anti-terrorism efforts and
that the current administration chose to create a
"hotbed for terrorism" in Iraq when dictator Saddam
Hussein did not pose an immediate threat. Heinz Kerry
also said she agrees with her husband that a military
draft may be reinstated under Bush.
She said she was embarrassed to receive tax cuts
advocated by Bush and supports her husband's efforts
to roll them back for higher incomes and use those
funds for education, health care and deficit
reduction.

Sidney Blumenthal, Salon: In his stump speech,
repeated word for word across the country, Bush says
that he invaded Iraq because of "the lesson of
September the 11th." WMD go unmentioned; now the only
reason Bush offers is Saddam Hussein as an agent of
terrorism. "He was a sworn enemy of the United States
of America; he had ties to terrorist networks. Do you
remember Abu Nidal? He's the guy that killed Leon
Klinghoffer. Leon Klinghoffer was murdered because of
his religion. Abu Nidal was in Baghdad, as was his
organization."
The period of Klinghoffer's murder in 1985 on the
Achille Lauro by Abu Abbas, in fact, coincided with
the period of U.S. courtship of Saddam, marked by the
celebrated visits of Donald Rumsfeld, then Middle East
envoy. The United States actively collaborated with
Iraq in intelligence exchanges and materially
supported Saddam in his decade-long war with Iran
(which ended in 1988), including authorizing the sale
of biological agents for Saddam's laboratories, a
diversification of his WMD capability.

Jennifer Joan Lee, International Herald Tribune: The
U.S. Defense Department changed its explanation
Wednesday for problems faced by certain overseas
Americans attempting to access the government Web site
for voters abroad, saying that an Internet security
block imposed several years ago had been left in place
inadvertently.
The block, which had prevented some U.S. citizens
abroad from accessing www.fvap.gov, the site of the
Federal Voting Assistance Program, as the Nov. 2
election nears, has now been lifted, a Pentagon
spokesman said.
Tim Madden, spokesman for the Defense Department task
force that oversees the Pentagon's computer networks,
declined to specify the reason for the block.

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!)

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=3&u=/ap/20040924/ap_on_el_pr/kerry

Kerry Faults Bush for Pursuing Saddam

2 hours, 50 minutes ago

By MARY DALRYMPLE, Associated Press Writer

PHILADELPHIA - Democratic presidential candidate John
Kerry (news - web sites) faulted President Bush (news
- web sites) on Friday for pursuing Saddam Hussein
(news - web sites) instead of Sept. 11 mastermind
Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), a choice Kerry
contended had made defeating terrorism more difficult.

"The invasion of Iraq (news - web sites) was a
profound diversion from the battle against our
greatest enemy, al-Qaida," Kerry said in a speech at
Temple University. "There's just no question about it.
The president's misjudgment, miscalculation and
mismanagement of the war in Iraq all make the war on
terror harder to win."

Kerry said Iraq has become a haven for terrorists
since the war, and he offered a detailed strategy to
contain terrorism while drawing a sharp distinction
between his and the president's views on national
security.

"George Bush (news - web sites) made Saddam Hussein
the priority. I would have made Osama bin Laden the
priority," Kerry said. "I will finish the job in Iraq
and I will refocus our energies on the real war on
terror."

The Democrat's campaign also rolled out a new ad in
which it uses Bush's words to criticize the incumbent.
The spot shows Bush during a Rose Garden news
conference saying, "I saw a poll that said the 'right
track-wrong track' in Iraq was better than here in
America."

The ad continues: "The right track? Americans are
being kidnapped, held hostage, even beheaded. Over a
thousand American soldiers have died. And George Bush
has no plan to get us out of Iraq."

While campaigning Friday in Lafayette, La., Vice
President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) countered the
Democratic criticism, telling supporters, "John Kerry
is trying to tear down and trash all the good that has
been accomplished."

A day earlier, Kerry told The Columbus Dispatch that
the president's actions in Iraq and elsewhere show
Bush masquerading as a mainstream conservative while
pursuing extremist policies.

"I don't view these people as conservatives," Kerry
said. "I actually view them as extreme, and I think
their policies have been extreme, and that extends all
the way to Iraq, where this president, in my judgment,
diverted the real war on terror — which was Osama bin
Laden and al-Qaida — and almost obsessively moved to
deal with Iraq in a way that weakened our nation,
overextended our armed forces, cost us $200 billion
and created a breach in our oldest alliances."

Kerry also mentioned a blurring line between the
separation of church and state and the growth of
federal budget deficits.

To douse the spread of terrorism, Kerry proposed
policies aimed at denying individuals and groups the
ability to organize and attack. Kerry said he would
build a better military and intelligence apparatus to
go after enemies, deny terrorists weapons and
financing, move against worldwide terrorist havens and
recruitment centers, and promote freedom and democracy
in Muslim nations.

The Bush-Cheney campaign said the president is already
following that course. "He is copying the president's
plan at the same time he is attacking the president,"
said spokesman Steve Schmidt.

Kerry has repeatedly argued that the war in Iraq has
distracted attention and resources from the pursuit of
terrorists, including bin Laden.

The Bush-Cheney campaign said Kerry has held
conflicting positions on that point. They point to
instances where Kerry said the former Iraqi leader
acted like a terrorist and said that the war on
terrorism should be seen as an operation bigger than
the conflict in Afghanistan (news - web sites).

Kerry visited the Pennsylvania battleground before a
quick trip home to Boston and then several days spent
preparing for the presidential debates. Kerry told the
Dispatch that he has to present himself "clearly,
forcefully to the American people with a clear set of
priorities."

"I think a lot of people will tune in," he said.
"There are undecideds. A lot of folks will try to
measure our character and our vision, so I think it's
an important moment."

___

SPEAK UP AMERICA! Networks Black Out Story of Tom
Delay Group Fraud Case
The networks spend DAYS giving big chunks of news time
to unsubstantiated, often "anonymous" slams against
Kerry or to dubious documents that could hurt Bush.
But they did not give ONE SINGLE MINUTE to a fraud
case involving one of the most powerful men in
Washington, Tom Delay. As Media Matters reports: "On
September 21, three top aides to U.S. House Majority
Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) were indicted on charges of
illegally raising political funds from corporations in
2002. Major newspapers carried the story, some of them
on the front page....Yet ABC World News Tonight, CBS
Evening News, and NBC Nightly News failed to report
the indictments on September 21 and on September 22."
Once again, the Networks are deceiving the public,
hiding info about the Republican Party, while
systematically seeking to undermine the Democrats.
This amounts to attempted subversion of the American
political process. Contact these corporations and
DEMAND JUSTICE

http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=36732

Ethics Coalition: Texas Indictments Make DeLay Ethics
Investigation More Urgent

9/22/2004 3:47:00 PM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To: National Desk

Contact: Mark Glaze, 202-271-0982, Melanie Sloan,
202-588-5565, both of the Congressional Ethics
Coalition

WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The
Congressional Ethics Coalition, an ideologically
diverse coalition of eight leading government reform
organizations, released the following statement
regarding the indictment of several top aides to House
Majority Leader Tom DeLay. The Coalition is working
for meaningful reform of congressional ethics
oversight rules.

The coalition members are the Campaign Legal Center,
the Center for Responsive Politics, Citizens for
Responsibility and Ethics in Government, Common Cause,
Democracy 21, Judicial Watch, Public Campaign and
Public Citizen.

---

"The indictment of three top aides to House Majority
Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) makes it even more urgent
for the House Ethics Committee to investigate whether
Mr. DeLay played a role in allegedly illegal
fundraising by committees he directly controlled.

"The Ethics Committee has a clear responsibility to
investigate whether Mr. DeLay violated ethics rules in
the course of his leadership of TRMPAC and ARMPAC,
both of which are the subject of the criminal
indictments announced yesterday in Texas.

"The aides charged included the director of Texans for
a Republican Majority and two key fundraisers for the
committee, which Mr. DeLay helped create and on whose
advisory board he served. The executive director of
Mr. DeLays own PAC, Americans for a Republican
Majority, was also charged.

"If these charges do not persuade the Ethics Committee
that there is sufficient evidence to at least open an
investigation into the pending DeLay matter, it is
almost impossible to imagine what would.

"If the Ethics Committee chooses to ignore the
indictment of three individuals serving at the
pleasure of Mr. DeLay and directly reporting to him,
then it is clear that the Committee has abdicated its
constitutional responsibility to enforce ethical
standards in the House.

"Earlier this week, Ethics Committee Chairman Joel
Hefley (R- Colo.) and ranking member Rep. Alan
Mollohan (D-W.V.) -- apparently unable to agree on how
to address allegations of improper fundraising by Mr.
DeLay -- said that they would ask the full committee
to decide whether to open an investigation. Pushing
that decision off to the 10-member committee sets up
the likelihood the members will deadlock on a 5-to-5
vote, which would result in the matter being dropped
entirely.

"Once again, we strongly urge the House Ethics
Committee to open an inquiry into the allegations in
the complaint brought by Rep. Chris Bell (D-Texas)
against Mr. DeLay. Anything else would be
irresponsible conduct by the Committee and would
require the full House to take action to override the
Committee."

http://www.usnewswire.com/

-0-

/© 2004 U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/

http://phoenix.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2004/09/20/daily58.html?page=2

The Business Journal of Phoenix - September 23, 2004
http://phoenix.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2004/09/20/daily58.html

LATEST NEWS
1:48 PM MST Thursday
Heinz Kerry helps Democrats raise $1M at Phoenix event
Mike Sunnucks
The Business Journal
Arizona Democrats raked in more than $1 million
Wednesday night at a fund-raiser headlined by Teresa
Heinz Kerry.

Heinz Kerry criticized the Bush administration on tax
cuts, Iraq and the war on terrorism at the event,
which was held at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa.

In regard to the hunt for terror leader Osama Bin
Laden, Heinz Kerry said she could see the al-Qaida
chief being caught before the November election.

"I wouldn't be surprised if he appeared in the next
month," said Heinz Kerry, alluding to a possible
capture by United States and allied forces before
election day.

The spouse of Democratic presidential candidate John
Kerry also hit President Bush on Iraq, saying it
should not be equated with anti-terrorism efforts and
that the current administration chose to create a
"hotbed for terrorism" in Iraq when dictator Saddam
Hussein did not pose an immediate threat. Heinz Kerry
also said she agrees with her husband that a military
draft may be reinstated under Bush.

She said she was embarrassed to receive tax cuts
advocated by Bush and supports her husband's efforts
to roll them back for higher incomes and use those
funds for education, health care and deficit
reduction.

Bush Southwestern campaign spokesman Danny Diaz hit
the Kerry campaign on both the Iraq and draft issues.
Diaz said the Kerry camp is "irresponsible" for
bringing up the draft issue and contends the Democrat
is doing it for political gain.

Diaz also criticized Kerry for shifting positions on
Iraq on the campaign trail after voting to authorize
military action in 2002.

"Arizonans need a president they can count on, a
leader who knows what he believes, and after reading
the morning's paper, doesn't shift his stance to
accommodate the opposition," Diaz said.

The Biltmore event was the largest single fund-raising
event by state Democrats, displaying the prowess on
that front by state party chairman Jim Pederson and
Gov. Janet Napolitano.

Several of the main sponsors of the fund-raiser
included groups that often clash with business
interests.

That list includes the Arizona Trial Lawyers
Association, Arizona AFL-CIO, United Food and
Commercial Workers Union and the American Federation
of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Business interests view litigation reforms to reduce
class action and frivolous lawsuits as a top issue in
Bush's favor.

Groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and
National Federation of Independent Business are not
pleased with Kerry's pick of North Carolina Sen. John
Edwards, a former trial lawyer and opponent of
business-backed tort reform, as his running mate.

Kerry also has not backed business efforts on
litigation reforms. Bush supports tort reforms.

Pederson, a Valley shopping center developer, has made
fund-raising a top priority as Democratic state
chairman. That includes making significant
contributions himself and reaching out with Napolitano
to moderate business executives.

Democratic spokeswoman Sarah Rosen said none of the
money for the $1 million Wednesday event came from
Pederson.

Pederson is expected to challenge GOP U.S. Sen. Jon
Kyl in 2006.

There were some business lobbyists at the Heinz Kerry
event, including officials and lobbyists from Pinnacle
West Capital Corp., Wells Fargo Bank and the Home
Builders Association of Arizona.

The event was held the same day it was announced the
Kerry campaign was nixing plans to run homestretch ads
in Arizona. Kerry's team had planned to begin running
ads again on local stations in Phoenix and Tucson but
has opted not to, bolstering GOP confidence.

Recent Arizona polls show Bush leading Kerry in the
state by 6 to 11 percentage points.

Kerry Arizona campaign spokeswoman Sue Walitsky said
Arizona voters still will see national cable ads, and
the state still is a priority in terms of grassroots
efforts.

"There is no surrender here," Walitsky said.

Arizona Republican Party Chairman Bob Fannin said the
Biltmore fund-raiser will end up going to other
battleground states and not Arizona.

"The Arizona Democratic Party has become little more
than an ATM for the national Democrats," said Fannin.
"Democrats have realized that Napolitano's election
and Jim Pederson's soft money are not enough to save
the Kerry campaign in Arizona."

© 2004 American City Business Journals Inc.

Web reprint information

All contents of this site © American City Business
Journals Inc. All rights reserved.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/092404J.shtml

The Bubble Boy
By Sidney Blumenthal
Salon.com

Thursday 23 September 2004

Bush lives in a world immune from the realities of
Iraq.
The news is grim, but the president is
"optimistic." The intelligence is sobering, but he
tosses aside "pessimistic predictions." His opponent
says he has "no credibility," but the president
replies that it is his rival who is "twisting in the
wind." The secretary general of the United Nations
speaks of the "rule of law," but Bush talks before a
mute General Assembly of "a new definition of
security." Between the rhetoric and the reality lies
the campaign.

A reliable source who has just returned after
assessing the facts on the ground for U.S.
intelligence services told me that in Iraq, U.S.
commanders have plans for this week and the next, but
that there is "no overarching strategy." The New York
Times reports an offensive is in the works to capture
the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah - after the
election. In the meantime, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and
other al-Qaida-linked terrorists operate from there at
will, as they have for more than a year. The president
speaks of new Iraqi security forces, but not even half
of the U.S. personnel have been assigned to the
headquarters of the Multinational Security Transition
Command.

Bush's vision of the liberation of Iraq as the
restaging of the liberation of France - justified by
his unearthing of Saddam Hussein's fearful weapons of
mass destruction; paid for by the flow of cheap oil;
and leading to the establishment of democracy, regime
change in Iran and Syria, and the quiescence of
stunned Palestinians - has melted before harsh facts.
But reality cannot be permitted to obscure the image.
The liberation is "succeeding," he insists, and only
pessimists cannot see it.

In July, the CIA delivered to the president a new
National Intelligence Estimate that details three
gloomy scenarios of the future of Iraq ranging up to
civil war. Perhaps it was his reading of the NIE that
prompted Bush to remark in August that the war on
terrorism could not be won, a judgment he swiftly
reversed. But at the United Nations, Bush held a press
conference at which he rebuffed the latest
intelligence: "The CIA laid out a - several scenarios
that said life could be lousy, life could be OK, life
could be better. And they were just guessing as to
what the conditions might be like."

With that, Bush explained that for him
intelligence is not to be used to inform decision
making but to be accepted or rejected to advance an
ideological and political agenda. His dismissal is an
affirmation of the politicization and corruption of
intelligence that rationalized the war.

In his stump speech, repeated word for word across
the country, Bush says that he invaded Iraq because of
"the lesson of September the 11th." WMD go
unmentioned; now the only reason Bush offers is Saddam
Hussein as an agent of terrorism. "He was a sworn
enemy of the United States of America; he had ties to
terrorist networks. Do you remember Abu Nidal? He's
the guy that killed Leon Klinghoffer. Leon Klinghoffer
was murdered because of his religion. Abu Nidal was in
Baghdad, as was his organization."

The period of Klinghoffer's murder in 1985 on the
Achille Lauro by Abu Abbas, in fact, coincided with
the period of U.S. courtship of Saddam, marked by the
celebrated visits of Donald Rumsfeld, then Middle East
envoy. The United States actively collaborated with
Iraq in intelligence exchanges and materially
supported Saddam in his decade-long war with Iran
(which ended in 1988), including authorizing the sale
of biological agents for Saddam's laboratories, a
diversification of his WMD capability.

The reason was not out of idealism but necessity:
the threat of an expansive, Iranian-controlled Shiite
fundamentalism to the entire Gulf.

The policy of courting Saddam continued until his
invasion of Kuwait. But the policy of realpolitik
prevailed when U.S. forces held back from capturing
Baghdad for larger geostrategic reasons. The first
Bush administration grasped that in potential future
wars after the Cold War, the United States required ad
hoc coalitions to share the military burden and
financial cost. Going to Baghdad would have violated
the U.N.-sanctioning resolution that gave legitimacy
to the first Gulf War as well as created a nightmare
of "Lebanonization," as then-Secretary of State James
Baker called it.

Realism prevailed; Saddam's power was subdued and
drastically reduced. It was the greatest
accomplishment of the first President Bush. When he
honored the U.N. resolution, the credibility of the
United States in the region was enormously enhanced,
enabling serious movement on the languishing Middle
East peace process. Now the second President Bush has
undone the foundation of his father's work, which was
built upon by President Clinton.

The success of Bush's campaign depends on the
containment of any contrary perception of reality. He
must evade, deny and suppress it. His true opponent is
not his Democratic foe - called unpatriotic and the
candidate of al-Qaida by the vice president - but
events. Bush's latest vision is his shield against
them. He invokes the power of positive thinking, as
taught by Emile Coue, guru of cheerful auto-suggestion
in the giddy 1920s, before the crash, who urged mental
improvement through the constant repetition of "Every
day in every way I am getting better and better."

It was during this era of illusion that T.S. Eliot
wrote "The Hollow Men": Between the idea / And the
reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the
Shadow."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior
advisor to President Clinton and the author of "The
Clinton Wars," is writing a column for Salon and the
Guardian of London.


http://www.iht.com/articles/540149.html

Pentagon lifts block on voter site
Jennifer Joan Lee/IHT IHT
Thursday, September 23, 2004

PARIS The U.S. Defense Department changed its
explanation Wednesday for problems faced by certain
overseas Americans attempting to access the government
Web site for voters abroad, saying that an Internet
security block imposed several years ago had been left
in place inadvertently.

The block, which had prevented some U.S. citizens
abroad from accessing www.fvap.gov, the site of the
Federal Voting Assistance Program, as the Nov. 2
election nears, has now been lifted, a Pentagon
spokesman said.

Tim Madden, spokesman for the Defense Department task
force that oversees the Pentagon's computer networks,
declined to specify the reason for the block.

Earlier, a Pentagon official indicated that the block
had been imposed to thwart hackers, but Madden would
not comment on this.

He insisted, however, that the Pentagon had not been
not blocking the Federal Voting Assistance Program's
site.

Earlier Wednesday, three members of Congress wrote to
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warning that the
block could result in "the potential
disenfranchisement of millions of overseas Americans"
and urging him to restore access to the site.

News that access to the voting assistance site was
restricted, first reported in the International Herald
Tribune on Monday, infuriated both Democrats and
Republicans.

Both parties want to see a maximum number of voters
abroad register in time to vote in November.

"We've sent a man to the moon, so we should also be
able to safeguard our voter assistance Web sites
without disenfranchising patriotic, tax-paying,
law-abiding Americans," said Representative Carolyn
Maloney, Democrat of New York, one of the three who
wrote to Rumsfeld.

The chairman of Republicans Abroad Europe, Robert
Pingeon, said he did not believe the block had been
politically motivated.

"But I certainly think they could have done a better
job explaining the situation," he said. "The blocks
may have a legitimate reason, but they also complicate
the lives of people trying to register to vote."

According to overseas voter advocates, the block
prevented users of major Internet service providers in
many countries, including Australia, Britain Canada,
China, Czech Republic, France India and Japan, from
accessing www.fvap.gov.

Some users of Wanadoo.fr, a French provider that had
been blocked, said Wednesday that they were now able
to access the site.

Madden, the spokesman for the Pentagon's Joint Task
Force-Global Network Operations, said that the block
had been left in place "inadvertently."

"That block should not have continued past a certain
date," he said. "For technical reasons, that block was
not lifted when it was directed to be lifted." He
declined to elaborate.

The Federal Voting Assistance Program, which was set
up to help American servicemen and civilians overseas
take part in elections, is under the aegis of the
Defense Department.

Madden said the Pentagon computer task force employed
a strategy known as "defense in depth" - "layering
network defenses so that they complement, support and
validate each other.

Blocks, firewalls and antivirus software are only some
of those measures."

He said that "one device within the Department of
Defense" had maintained the block that prevented
certain Internet service providers from accessing the
voting assistance site.

The department's Global Information Grid involves
13,000 different networks and 3.5 million individual
computers, he said.

Madden declined to say when the block was originally
imposed. But Maloney, the Democratic congresswoman,
indicated that it may have been in place when the last
presidential election took place, in 2000.

"It's my understanding that this was a problem four
years ago, they knew it was a problem, and they still
haven't managed to fix it so that Americans overseas
can access the Web site," she said, before the
Pentagon indicated that the block had been lifted.

International Herald Tribune

Copyright © 2004 The International Herald Tribune |
www.iht.com

LNS Countdown to Electoral Uprising -- 40 Days to Go -- Vote Fraud in Ohio, Draft, US military families against Bush, Contra drug figure smears JFK, 9/11

At least three more US soldiers died in Iraq today.
For what? The neo-con wet dream of a Three Stooges
Reich...There are only 40 days to go until the
national referendum on the CHARACTER, COMPETENCE and
CREDIBILITY of the _resident and the VICE
_resident...Do not be deceived by the US regimestream
news media's cooked polls and craven
propapunditgandists. There is an Electoral Uprising
coming in November 2004. The US regimestream news
media, at least until this point, has, in large part,
been a full partner along with the Bush Cabal and its
wholly-owned-subsidiary-formerluy-known-as-the-Republican-Party
in a Triad of shared special interest (e.g. oil,
weapons, media, pharmaceuticals, tobacco, etc.) Here
are five very important news items from Ohio, West
Virginia and Fraudida. They should dominate the air
waves and demand headlines above the fold. But they
won't. Please read them and share them with others.
Please vote and encourage others to vote. Please
remember that the US regimestream news media does not
want to inform you about this presidential campaign,
it wants to DISinform you...

Bob Fitrakis, Free Press: Whether Kerry or Bush wins
in Ohio may well depend on how many voters are
disenfranchised in the state’s three largest counties:
Cuyahoga, Franklin and Hamilton. Respectively these
three counties contain the Democratically rich big
three-C cities Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. The
voter rolls are under unprecedented scrutiny and
irregularities abound.
In Hamilton County, home of the Republican Taft family
dynasty, the Board of Elections moved some 105,000
voters from active to inactive status within the last
four years. By contrast, Franklin County has not moved
any voters to inactive status, and doesn’t intend to
until 2006 because a computer transfer glitch wiped
out federal election voting histories. Matthew
Damschroder, Director of the Franklin County Board of
Elections, told the Free Press that under law a county
“may” cancel a person’s voter registration if that
person hasn’t voted in the last two federal elections.
But, the counties are not required to do so.

Charleston Gazette Editorial: Alarm is spreading that
President Bush may seek a military draft, or mobilize
more of the National Guard and Army Reserve, to obtain
enough combat troops to wage his bogged-down Iraq war.

Two bills pending in Congress would launch a new
draft for all young Americans ages 18 to 26, both male
and female, with no college exemption. Also, a new
border agreement with Canada is designed to prevent
young Americans from fleeing northward to elude the
draft.
When Democratic vice presidential nominee John
Edwards spoke in Parkersburg last week, he vowed:
“There will be no draft when John Kerry is president.”
His declaration drew a standing ovation from the
crowd...
Amid all this wrangling, it’s overwhelmingly clear
that Bush’s war is draining America of thousands of
young people and billions of dollars — and the nation
is forced to meet both needs.
Tragically, the war is a waste. There never was a
necessity for it. Bush’s far-right political clique
planned to attack Iraq, even before he attained the
White House. The 9/11 terrorist strike provided a
“cover” — a surge of patriotism that Bush manipulated
into justification for war against Iraq. All his
pretexts for the invasion turned out to be false.

Agence France Press: Democratic challenger John Kerry
(news - web sites) has gained new foot soldiers in his
battle to unseat Republican President George W. Bush
(news - web sites): eight mothers and wives of US
soldiers who will campaign for Kerry in seven
battleground states.
The women, whose husbands or sons have been deployed
in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web
sites), will march across 5,600 kilometers (3,480
miles) in less than 10 days, starting off in Wisconsin
and West Virginia on Tuesday, six weeks before the
November 2 election.

Bob Norman, Miami New Times: It's a familiar -- and
absolutely untenable -- refrain from the Reagan and
Bush administrations that continues to this day: The
narcotics ties to the contra operation were a
politically motivated myth. Vice President Dick
Cheney, who was then a congressman, played a key role
in the disinformation campaign. He led the effort to
squelch various Iran-contra investigations, especially
when it came to drug allegations. And George W. Bush?
Well, he seems to have no qualms about Iran-contra,
since he has hired several of the scandal's central
figures -- including Elliott Abrams, Otto Reich, and
John Negroponte -- to serve under him.
Though it has been largely ignored, this historic
battle between Kerry and the Bush family not only
provides a revelatory subtext to this election but
also indicates how much the two men running for
president dislike each other.
History clearly favors Kerry's side -- and he may even
have been right about that $10 million in cartel
money. Rodriguez, at the time, was the government's
key man in El Salvador, where he was conducting
counterinsurgency missions against leftist rebels. But
his main job was the contra operation. He claims to
this day that he wasn't paid for his efforts, a
contention about as shaky as H.W.'s famous excuse that
he was "out of the loop" on the contra affair.
Rodriguez also worked in Honduras, where the contras
trained in the mountains, and at another shipping
point in Costa Rica (which has been repeatedly tied to
the drug trade).

Chris Gardner, University of South Florida Oracle: Former CIA agent Ray McGovern went over what he considers the failures of the intelligence community and current administration over the past few years. He
has 27 years of experience as a CIA analyst to draw
upon and has dealt with every administration from
Kennedy to Bush Sr...
He also criticized the 9/11 Commission's final report,
saying the committee was comprised of political
extremists who couldn't reach a consensus.
"It wasn't a bipartisan commission; it was more like a
bipolar commission," McGovern said. "To say that no
one could prevent 9/11 was a bold-faced lie. It
basically let the president and everyone responsible
off the hook."
He went on to talk about the faulty intelligence
attorney general John Ashcroft used when he announced
that terrorist attacks may occur before or around
election time, saying that elections might have to be
postponed if the United States is attacked.
"There might be a real or staged terrorist attack in
order to postpone the elections," McGovern said. "This
might seem outlandish; I hope it is."
He mentioned how the Bush administration wanted to
involve the country with the war in Iraq for certain
reasons other than fear of weapons of mass
destruction, which was just a more media-friendly
explanation for the war.
"I have initials for why I think we went to war in
Iraq," McGovern said. "O.I.L. O-I-L, O is for oil, I
is for Israel and L is for logistics, as in when we
have Iraq we have a foothold and a number of bases
strategically placed in the Middle East so we can be
in control over there and also to protect Israel."
Next he brought up civil liberties in the United
States and how they have declined in the past few
years.
"I used to say when I was a kid growing up when
someone told me not to do something, 'It's a free
country,'" McGovern said. "I ask you to think about it
now."

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!)

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/953

Bob Fitrakis

Presidential Election at Risk: Ohio's electoral system
riddled with flaws
September 20, 2004

Whether Kerry or Bush wins in Ohio may well depend on
how many voters are disenfranchised in the state’s
three largest counties: Cuyahoga, Franklin and
Hamilton. Respectively these three counties contain
the Democratically rich big three-C cities Cleveland,
Columbus and Cincinnati. The voter rolls are under
unprecedented scrutiny and irregularities abound.

In Hamilton County, home of the Republican Taft family
dynasty, the Board of Elections moved some 105,000
voters from active to inactive status within the last
four years. By contrast, Franklin County has not moved
any voters to inactive status, and doesn’t intend to
until 2006 because a computer transfer glitch wiped
out federal election voting histories. Matthew
Damschroder, Director of the Franklin County Board of
Elections, told the Free Press that under law a county
“may” cancel a person’s voter registration if that
person hasn’t voted in the last two federal elections.
But, the counties are not required to do so.

“It’s a ‘may’ not a ‘shall.’ It’s up to the discretion
of the county Board of Elections. We have chosen not
to participate in widespread cancellations during this
presidential election,” Damschroder said. He concedes
that many Cincinnati voters may be unaware that their
voting status had been canceled, a surprising
admission from a conservative Republican. Unless these
Hamilton County voters re-register by October 4, many
in Cincinnati’s urban center, they will show up at the
polls and be barred from voting.

The Prison Reform Advocacy Center in Cincinnati issued
an August report entitled, “The Disenfranchisement of
the Re-Enfranchised” documenting in detail widespread
confusion over the voting rights of former felons.
Hamilton County again stands out as the key county for
eliminating eligible voters. The study found that the
Hamilton County Board of Elections erroneously
“requires felons who attempt to register by mail to
attach ‘documentation restoring voting rights.’”
Hamilton County practices are at odds with Ohio law,
which allows felons to vote as long they are not
incarcerated or in prison, even if they are on parole
or in a halfway house. There are more than 34,000
ex-offenders in Ohio who are currently under some form
of corrections supervision who are eligible to vote,
and many don’t know it. Political science studies
indicate that the vast majority of former felons tend
to vote Democratic.

Hamilton was one of twenty counties where Board of
Elections officials incorrectly stated the law in the
survey. The Prison Reform Advocacy Center report found
that only 44% of formerly incarcerated individuals in
the Cincinnati Adult Parole Authority Office knew they
had the right to vote. In Cleveland the rate was 77%
and in Columbus 71% knew they could register to vote.

Following the survey, Damschroder sent out 3500
letters to former felons in the Franklin County
stating, “The purpose of this letter is to notify you
that your voter registration status has been canceled
due to your conviction and incarceration, …” He
included people charged with felonies dating back to
the year 1998. Damschroder told the Free Press that he
normally only sends out between 2-300 such letters a
year, but he was following directives from Ohio’s
Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell.
Why Blackwell would issue such directives remains a
mystery.

Damschroder admitted that there were some problems
with the wording of the letter, and he never intended
to cancel re-registered or confused former felons. He
claims the letter was merely to advise the felons that
the voter registration deadline is October 4, 2004.

One registered voter who received Damschroder’s letter
was Mark A. Woodford, who has never been convicted of
a felony. Woodford was convicted of a misdemeanor in
1998. He voted Republican that November. In 2003,
while living in the conservative haven of Westerville,
Ohio, home of former Republican Congressman John
Kasich, Woodford cast his ballot for Republican
candidates. This year for the first time, Woodford
voted in the Democratic primary. He told the Free
Press, “I thought at the time, I wonder if they’ll
cancel my registration because I’m a Democrat now.”

Damschroder offers another explanation: “Back in the
late nineties when Virginia Barney was Clerk of the
Common Pleas Court, she forwarded felony arrest
records instead of just the convictions. So if
somebody plead to a misdemeanor often they were
incorrectly entered as a felon.”

Damschroder told the Free Press that Woodford, now
legally registered at a new Columbus address and no
longer residing at his parent’s address where he was
canceled, was “incorrectly sent a letter because
computers at the Board of Elections didn’t merge two
files.”

In Ohio’s dead even presidential election, something
as small as computer glitches at the major
metropolitan area’s Board of Elections could easily
swing the vote. To solve bureaucratic error and
computer mistakes, Ohio uses the provisional ballot.
Provisional ballots allow voters who are improperly
barred from voting due to a registration error, to
cast their ballot on Election Day while the Board of
Elections straightens out the problem.

On September 14, Project Vote announced that 150,555
new low-income and minority voters were registered in
Ohio. Many of these likely Democratic voters are in
the Cleveland area and an ongoing battle has developed
between Democratic Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones
and the politically ambitious Blackwell, both African
American. The same week Ohio newspapers headlined the
fact that the Ohio economy was the worst in the
nation, having lost nearly 12,000 jobs in August
alone.

Following Project Vote’s announcement, Blackwell
issued statewide directives severely restricting the
use of provisional ballots and instructing precinct
voting judges to give state or federal provisional
ballots only to persons who appear to have a voting
residence in that particular precinct. This narrow use
of the provisional ballot with over 150,000 new
minority and low-income voters, may well swing Ohio’s
election results for Bush.

Rep. Tubbs Jones immediately attacked Blackwell’s
orders as an attempt “to seek to disenfranchise the
people of the state of Ohio.”

The Congresswoman points out that with the re-drawing
of the Congressional districts following the 2000
census and the Republican Party’s elimination over the
past few years of many inner city precincts, many
voters will be showing up at the wrong precinct.

She said that “provisional ballot is a mechanism that
was put in place to take individual discretion out of
the voting process. Poll workers should not be put in
the position to determine who votes and who does not
vote.” Rep. Tubbs Jones argues that Blackwell’s
directives are contrary to the spirit in which the
Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was enacted and contrary
to the position that he previously took in the Ohio
primary.

In the 2000 Florida election, investigative reporter
Gregory Palast reported that an estimated 600,000
voters who registered by the deadline were not
properly processed. An additional 58,000 non-felons
were barred from voting incorrectly because they had a
same or similar name as a felon or the same date of
birth as a felon. Gore supporters point out that these
registration errors disproportionately occur in
heavily Democratic urban areas.

The nonpartisan Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections
(CASE) posted a letter to its website addressed to
Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell noting “with
great concern” Blackwell’s recent actions “regarding
the interpretation of provisional ballots.” The CASE
letter cites a recent Cleveland study indicating “that
up to 35,000 Ohio voters could be turned away from the
polls on November 2 because of registration errors.”
That same study found “that more than 1 in 20
registrations and changes of address were compromised
because of either clerical or voter errors.” This 5%
error factor could be lowered to less than 1% with
proper training of election officials.

CASE is demanding that the Secretary of State send out
new directives telling all newly registered voters and
re-registers that: “If you recently registered, filed
a name change or a change of address and you have NOT
yet received a confirmation notice in the mail, you
must act immediately. Call your County Board of
Elections to check that you are registered. If not,
you must re-register by October 4 at your local
library or Board of Elections office.”

The CASE letter calls any attempt to disenfranchise
Ohio voters “at the last minute … unethical and
cruel.”

With numerous voter registration organizations
canvassing Ohio and growing concern of voting
irregularities, various plans for poll watching are
emerging.

But Damschroder points out that Ohio’s law on poll
watching is “archaic,” with all challenges over voter
eligibility being decided on the spot at the local
voting precinct by election officials hired for
Election Day only. The only people allowed to
challenge under Ohio law are those certified eleven
days in advance by political parties or a slate of
five candidates. The certified challengers must
produce an ID and swear an oath, according to
Damschroder. Add to this the fact that the HAVA bill
allows for challenges to first-time voters to produce
state photo IDs.

The Free Press has learned that Franklin County
election officials are considering a wide contingent
of actions including arrests if the certified election
challengers attempt to challenge all new voters and
hold up the voting process. The election may rest on
how many Democratic election challengers show up to
advocate for urban center new voters versus how many
Republican election challengers show up to question
new voters.

The former state President of League of Women’s Voters
Sue Shidaker wrote the Secretary of State’s office
concerned that many newly registered voters in
Cuyahoga County have not as yet received their voter
registration cards. “…They are re-registering and
trying numerous phone calls to get help – taped
messages and no live help in many instances. …They’re
just beginning to learn how to be responsible, voting
citizens and need our help, not our hindrance,”
Shidaker said.

With Bush and Kerry in a virtual dead heat in Ohio,
and no Republican candidate having won the presidency
without winning Ohio’s electoral votes, the
disenfranchisement of more than 177,500 new voters,
ex-felons, canceled inactive voters and other victims
of bureaucratic bungling and election irregularities
may well decide who governs our nation, and the fate
of the Earth.

--
Bob Fitrakis is the Editor of the Free Press
(freepress.org), a political science professor, an
attorney, and co-author with Harvey Wasserman of
George W. Bush vs. the Superpower of Peace. He served
as an international observer for the national
elections in El Salvador.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/092304Y.shtml

Draft?
The Charleston Gazette

Wednesday 22 September 2004

Bush’s war needs troops.
Alarm is spreading that President Bush may seek a
military draft, or mobilize more of the National Guard
and Army Reserve, to obtain enough combat troops to
wage his bogged-down Iraq war.

Two bills pending in Congress would launch a new
draft for all young Americans ages 18 to 26, both male
and female, with no college exemption. Also, a new
border agreement with Canada is designed to prevent
young Americans from fleeing northward to elude the
draft.

When Democratic vice presidential nominee John
Edwards spoke in Parkersburg last week, he vowed:
“There will be no draft when John Kerry is president.”
His declaration drew a standing ovation from the
crowd.

Meanwhile, President Bush, campaigning in
Missouri, promised that there will be no draft. He
said improving military pay, housing and medical care
will attract enough recruits to supply the needed
fighting forces.

However, Bush plans a sneaky “backdoor draft,”
Democrats Kerry and Edwards allege. Speaking Friday in
Albuquerque, Kerry said Bush secretly intends a major
Guard and Reserve mobilization just after the Nov. 2
election. Kerry charged:

“He won’t tell us what congressional leaders are
now saying: that this administration is planning yet
another substantial call-up of reservists and Guard
units immediately after the election. Hide it from the
people, then make the move.”

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a Marine veteran of
Vietnam, said Pentagon insiders told him of the
mobilization plan. A White House spokesman ridiculed
the allegation.

Amid all this wrangling, it’s overwhelmingly clear
that Bush’s war is draining America of thousands of
young people and billions of dollars — and the nation
is forced to meet both needs.

Tragically, the war is a waste. There never was a
necessity for it. Bush’s far-right political clique
planned to attack Iraq, even before he attained the
White House. The 9/11 terrorist strike provided a
“cover” — a surge of patriotism that Bush manipulated
into justification for war against Iraq. All his
pretexts for the invasion turned out to be false.

Although he declared “Mission Accomplished” last
year, the fighting grows constantly uglier and more
expensive. More than 1,000 young Americans have been
killed. Bush needs more and more replacements.

Before the Nov. 2 election, he should tell the
American people candidly how many more young soldiers
he plans to order into combat — and how he will obtain
them.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040920/ts_alt_afp/us_vote_iraq_military&cid=1506&ncid=1473

Group of US soldiers' wives to campaign for Kerry

Mon Sep 20, 4:52 PM ET Add U.S. National - AFP to My
Yahoo!

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Democratic challenger John Kerry
(news - web sites) has gained new foot soldiers in his
battle to unseat Republican President George W. Bush
(news - web sites): eight mothers and wives of US
soldiers who will campaign for Kerry in seven
battleground states.

The women, whose husbands or sons have been deployed
in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web
sites), will march across 5,600 kilometers (3,480
miles) in less than 10 days, starting off in Wisconsin
and West Virginia on Tuesday, six weeks before the
November 2 election.

Laura Bertsch's husband just returned from Iraq, but
the 27-year-old recent university graduate will go on
her own mission before joining her husband in Ohio.

"He deserves the best leader," Bertsch told a news
conference in Washington.

Pat Heineman's 20-year-old son, her only child, had to
interrupt his university studies to spend one year in
Afghanistan.

"He joined the reserves to pay for college but also to
serve his country," the 49-year-old graphic designer
from Virginia said. "I trust John Kerry to take care
of our troops, I trust his judgment and his
integrity."

Nita Martin, a registered Republican from the
voter-rich state of Pennsylvania, will cross party
lines and vote for Kerry in November. Her two sons
were deployed to Iraq.

"My fear is there is no plan to complete the mission"
in Iraq, Martin said. "He got us in a quagmire."

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/2004-09-23/metro.html

Contra Campaign
John Kerry once took a shot at Miami's Felix Rodriguez
for his part in the Iran-contra scandal. Now the Bush
family friend is shooting back.
BY BOB NORMAN
bob.norman@newtimesbpb.com

The life of Felix I. Rodriguez provides a tour through
the dark heart of America. From the Bay of Pigs fiasco
to Vietnam to the El Salvador death squads to the
Iran-contra scandal, the Cuban exile and
self-described "CIA hero" was there. His most famous
assassination mission came in 1967, when he led the
Bolivian army group that captured and summarily
executed leftist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara.
He's worked closely with right-wing terrorists, and
some of his associates were involved in the Watergate
break-in. Given his background, it's not surprising
his name has surfaced in numerous JFK conspiracy
theories as well.
Now retired in North Miami-Dade near Barry University,
Rodriguez, who says his CIA career was always fueled
by a hope to unseat Fidel Castro, also has special
relationships with both of this year's presidential
candidates. George W. Bush sends him a White House
Christmas card each year. The president's father
counts Rodriguez as an old friend; Bush Sr. worked
with him during the mid-Eighties, when Rodriguez ran
the operation to arm the Nicaraguan contras for the
Reagan administration.

Democratic nominee John Kerry, though, isn't so cozy
with Rodriguez. In 1986 the then-rookie senator formed
a committee to investigate Iran-contra. The so-called
Kerry Committee alleged that Rodriguez had helped
steer $10 million from the notorious Medellín cocaine
cartel to the contras. The committee concluded that
trafficking was rampant in the rebels' effort.

Rodriguez ,who now leads Brigade 2506, the Bayh of
Pigs veterans' group squared off with Kerry during a
closed congressional hearing. He told the
Massachusetts senator point-blank that the allegation
was a damned lie and, for good measure, added that he
had no respect for him.

That was some seventeen years ago, but Rodriguez's
hatred for Kerry -- and his closeness to the Bush
family -- has driven Rodriguez from the CIA shadows
onto the open political stage. He's railed against
Kerry on Cuban radio and in the October edition of
Soldier of Fortune magazine. He also jumped at the
chance to join the Vietnam Veterans for Truth, an
anti-Kerry group that invited Rodriguez to speak at a
nationally televised September 12 rally at the
Capitol.

At the sparsely attended event, the storied spook
began with some words on Vietnam, where he flew
assassination and assault missions (and flights with
CIA-backed Air America, which has been tied to the
heroin trade). He portrayed his time there as if he
were dropping food and medicine from his combat
helicopter. "I never saw any atrocities that Senator
Kerry claims we did in Vietnam," Rodriguez told the
gathering in his thick accent. "We helped the
Vietnamese people."

Then he turned his attention to Central America,
referring to Kerry's accusation and noting that his
nemesis ultimately backed off the allegation against
him. "That was one more lie from Senator Kerry," he
triumphantly said.

But who, really, is lying? Rodriguez maintains he saw
no hint of drug trafficking while he was helping to
run the contra operation in El Salvador and Honduras.
"I never saw any indication of that at all -- it was
all a great fabrication," he said during a telephone
interview last week. "That all came from Senator
Kerry's committee. It came from those people that
didn't want to help the Nicaraguan resistance, people
like Kerry, who wanted to hurt Vice President Bush,
who was going to win the presidency."

It's a familiar -- and absolutely untenable -- refrain
from the Reagan and Bush administrations that
continues to this day: The narcotics ties to the
contra operation were a politically motivated myth.
Vice President Dick Cheney, who was then a
congressman, played a key role in the disinformation
campaign. He led the effort to squelch various
Iran-contra investigations, especially when it came to
drug allegations. And George W. Bush? Well, he seems
to have no qualms about Iran-contra, since he has
hired several of the scandal's central figures --
including Elliott Abrams, Otto Reich, and John
Negroponte -- to serve under him.

Though it has been largely ignored, this historic
battle between Kerry and the Bush family not only
provides a revelatory subtext to this election but
also indicates how much the two men running for
president dislike each other.

History clearly favors Kerry's side -- and he may even
have been right about that $10 million in cartel
money. Rodriguez, at the time, was the government's
key man in El Salvador, where he was conducting
counterinsurgency missions against leftist rebels. But
his main job was the contra operation. He claims to
this day that he wasn't paid for his efforts, a
contention about as shaky as H.W.'s famous excuse that
he was "out of the loop" on the contra affair.
Rodriguez also worked in Honduras, where the contras
trained in the mountains, and at another shipping
point in Costa Rica (which has been repeatedly tied to
the drug trade).

The allegation against Rodriguez came from Medellín
cartel accountant and convicted money launderer Ramon
Milian-Rodriguez, who met with Felix Rodriguez in 1985
while he was out on bail on federal drug charges in
Miami. Milian told the Kerry Committee that Rodriguez
solicited the cash from the cartel and that it was
later channeled to the contras. The cartel, he said,
hoped the contribution would bring it "good will" from
U.S. authorities. At the same time he was implicating
the CIA operative, Milian was adamant that Felix
Rodriguez had the American government's interest at
heart and never kept a dime of the proceeds.

Rodriguez admits the meeting took place but insists it
concerned only an offer from the money launderer to
help set up the Nicaraguan government in a cocaine
sting. In 1988 Milian failed a lie detector test on
the subject, and Kerry retracted the allegation.

Rodriguez then had every right to gloat, but in 1991
the accusation resurfaced. Medellín cartel cofounder
Carlos Lehder, while testifying for the U.S.
government against deposed Panamanian President Manuel
Noriega, admitted that his organization had indeed
given $10 million to the contras. Lehder, then a
federal witness working with U.S. prosecutors, had no
known motive to lie.

In light of that information, I asked Rodriguez if he
was absolutely sure the contra operation didn't
receive the drug money. "I don't think it did," he
said, losing his resolute tone. "They always say the
same shit. Where did the money go to if they did?
Every single penny that went into the contras was
accounted for."

While it's open to debate just how meticulously the
contras kept their ledgers, there have been other
indications that Rodriguez's operation may have been
involved in drug smuggling. In 1984 Rodriguez's
business partner, international arms dealer Gerald
Latchinian, was arrested in a conspiracy to smuggle
$10 million in cocaine to finance a plot to
assassinate Honduran President Roberto Suazo Cordova.
(He was later convicted.) While Rodriguez was never
tied to the crime, Latchinian argued that it was
connected to the CIA.

Rodriguez's agency-trained compatriot, fellow Cuban
exile Frank Castro, was deeply involved in both drug
smuggling and the contra effort, according to the CIA.
And in 1989 a drug pilot named Mike Tolliver alleged
on a CBS news show that he ran guns to Honduras for
the contras and that, while there, his plane was
loaded with marijuana for a return flight to Homestead
Air Force Base. He identified Rodriguez as his boss.

Perhaps the most damning allegation against Rodriguez
comes from former Drug Enforcement Administration
agent Celerino Castillo, a decorated Vietnam vet who
was stationed in Central America during Iran-contra.
While working for the DEA, Castillo says he became
aware of drug trafficking at San Salvador's Ilopango
air base, where Rodriguez was organizing the contra
supply effort. The DEA agent has testified in Congress
and recounted in his well-documented book,
Powderburns, how the airport hangars controlled by
Rodriguez and other government operatives were used by
drug traffickers. "The only reason Felix wasn't
arrested is because he knew where all the bodies were
buried in the Iran-contra operation," says Castillo,
who is now a substitute high school teacher living in
Texas.

Castillo recounts that in 1986 he met then-Vice
President Bush at an ambassador's party in Guatemala.
"I told him there was something funny going on at
Ilopango," he says. "And he just smiled and walked
away."

While Bush Sr. avoided the truth about Iran-contra,
Castillo has worked for years to expose it and, in so
doing, has researched Rodriguez's life -- from Cuba to
Vietnam to El Salvador. He's come to the conclusion
that the Cuban exile is no hero. "He's always been a
terrorist, just like Osama bin Laden and all the
terrorists we've made in the past," he says.

Unflinching words, but Rodriguez has indeed been tied
to known terrorists, most notably Luis Posada
Carriles, a CIA-trained operative who worked closely
with Rodriguez after his 1985 escape from a Venezuelan
jail, where he served nine years for his role in the
downing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 civilians.
Rodriguez admits he worked with Carriles on the contra
effort but says his friend wasn't convicted of
anything. He proffers that Fidel Castro may have blown
up the jetliner to "get rid of" Cuban military
officials on board who were plotting against the
dictator.

But that far-fetched theory doesn't explain the Havana
hotel bombings that Carriles has acknowledged
committing, or his recent incarceration in Panama for
planning to blow up Castro at a political conference
(his recent pardon made international news).

"I don't endorse or support bombings," Rodriguez says.
"I believe it kills innocent people, and that is not
the way to do it. That will backfire."

Rodriguez says he doesn't know why Castillo has made
the allegations against him. He insists he watched
every contra supply plane land, refuel, and take off
from Ilopango and that there were never any drugs
onboard. "What I understand from the guys I asked at
DEA was that they fired [Castillo] for making all
kinds of allegations about Ilopango," he says. "He was
fired for incompetence. If any of his allegations had
a grain of truth, the Iran-contra committee would have
brought it up. They looked at everything with a
toothbrush."

(Castillo actually retired from the DEA -- under
pressure from higher-ups regarding his whistleblowing
-- in 1992. He collects a pension from the agency.)

The Iran-contra Committee, which carried more weight
than Kerry's subcommittee, was, in reality, famously
unconcerned with the narcotics allegations.
Independent counsel Lawrence Walsh, who conducted the
criminal investigation, never even interviewed
Castillo. Later, after reporter Gary Webb's
well-researched 1996 "Dark Alliance" series in the San
Jose Mercury News showed clear ties between the
contras and the Los Angeles crack trade, a Justice
Department investigation indeed found the "seed of
truth" in Castillo's allegations but didn't bother to
make a real case.

As for the media, they can only look back at the time
with shame. The press -- led by the New York Times,
Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times -- tried to
discredit Webb. Though the papers dutifully reported
many of the salient facts, they never conveyed the big
picture and, in the end, let the perpetrators of one
of the greatest scandals in American history go
largely unpunished.

Other than Soldier of Fortune, only the conservative
Website NewsMax.comhas brought up Iran-contra in the
context of the presidential election. In a July
article, the Website portrayed Rodriguez as a "wholly
innocent freedom loving patriot" who was blindsided by
the unscrupulous, CIA-hating senator.

It may be just the beginning. Rodriguez says he'll
vigorously oppose Kerry until election day, continuing
his work with the anti-Kerry veterans' group, which is
ideologically aligned with the similarly named Swift
Boat Veterans for Truth, and exposing the terrible
injustice done to him by the Democratic nominee. "He
will tell you one thing, then he will tell you another
thing," Rodriguez says of Kerry. "He is a complete
liar."

We all know that Rodriguez can fight with the best of
them, but what about Kerry? His Florida campaign
communications director, Matt Miller, didn't respond
to the question. Former DEA man Castillo, who counts
his vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980 as one of the worst
mistakes of his life, isn't sure. And he believes Bush
II -- who has already led the country into a
nightmarish war using false pretenses -- will cook
scandals to make Iran-contra pale in comparison if
elected to a second term.

"They say Kerry is a liar, that he lied about Felix
Rodriguez, who is a hero and patriot," Castillo says.
"Bush and Cheney know how to fight. Cheney says, öGo
fuck yourself.' I am so upset because Kerry won't take
the gloves off. It's like he's idling. If he doesn't
fight now, will he ever fight for us?"

miaminewtimes.com | originally published: September
23, 2004

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0922-01.htm

Published on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 by the
University of South Florida Oracle
Former CIA Agent Says Bush to Blame for 9/11
by Chris Gardner

Former CIA agent Ray McGovern went over what he
considers the failures of the intelligence community
and current administration over the past few years. He
has 27 years of experience as a CIA analyst to draw
upon and has dealt with every administration from
Kennedy to Bush Sr.

"It's difficult for people to learn the truth about
things like Iraq," said McGovern, a member of the
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS),
which is comprised of more than 40 former employees of
agencies such as the CIA, the Defense Intelligence
Agency, Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence
and Research, Army Intelligence, the FBI and the
National Security Agency.

Ray McGovern, who spent 27 years as a CIA analyst,
tells an audience of about 50 at the USF Library on
Tuesday that preventable intelligence failures and
questionable priorities led to the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks. (Oracle Photo/Victor Griley)

"We have hundreds of years worth of experience in
government service and intelligence to draw on so we
feel a civic responsibility to do our best to spread
as much truth as we can this fall," McGovern said.

He began his lecture by describing the CIA. He
explained that the agency is supposed to be the one
place in government with no political agenda, and
could be very disastrous if it obtains one.

McGovern told a story about CIA officials who gave
false information about enemy troop numbers in Vietnam
to President Johnson. The lie led to a surprise of
U.S. forces by the Tet Offensive in 1968. In this war
of attrition, the agency wanted to make it look like
the United States was doing better than it really was,
McGovern said.

"Picture the Vietnam Memorial in Washington; it's a
big 'V' shape. Now picture it with just one side of
the 'V'. It might have been that way if some people
had told the truth," McGovern said.

He also criticized the 9/11 Commission's final report,
saying the committee was comprised of political
extremists who couldn't reach a consensus.

"It wasn't a bipartisan commission; it was more like a
bipolar commission," McGovern said. "To say that no
one could prevent 9/11 was a bold-faced lie. It
basically let the president and everyone responsible
off the hook."

He went on to talk about the faulty intelligence
attorney general John Ashcroft used when he announced
that terrorist attacks may occur before or around
election time, saying that elections might have to be
postponed if the United States is attacked.

"There might be a real or staged terrorist attack in
order to postpone the elections," McGovern said. "This
might seem outlandish; I hope it is."

He mentioned how the Bush administration wanted to
involve the country with the war in Iraq for certain
reasons other than fear of weapons of mass
destruction, which was just a more media-friendly
explanation for the war.

"I have initials for why I think we went to war in
Iraq," McGovern said. "O.I.L. O-I-L, O is for oil, I
is for Israel and L is for logistics, as in when we
have Iraq we have a foothold and a number of bases
strategically placed in the Middle East so we can be
in control over there and also to protect Israel."

Next he brought up civil liberties in the United
States and how they have declined in the past few
years.

"I used to say when I was a kid growing up when
someone told me not to do something, 'It's a free
country,'" McGovern said. "I ask you to think about it
now."

In the audience was Nahla al-Arian, wife of imprisoned
former professor Sami al-Arian. She explained to
McGovern how she and her husband came to America to be
free and described their current situation. Then she
asked him why the government would target Palestinian
activists.

His initial response was just, "I'm sorry," then he
paused to collect his thoughts and said that things
like that come all the way from the top down.

McGovern had a speaking engagement at the University
of Florida later in the afternoon, and will also be
lecturing at UCF soon on his and the VIPS's quest to
spread the truth.

"No one has a corner on the truth. We don't have a
corner on the truth, but it is certain that Fox News
does not," McGovern said. "That most people get their
'news' from Fox News is extremely troubling."

Copyright © 2004 University of South Florida

###

LNS Countdown to Electoral Uprising -- 41 Days to Go -- Bush bounce evaporates, US military on Fahrenheit 911, Homeland Insecurity, CBS Hit was Dirty Tricks Op, Is McCain setting Bush up?

There are 41 days to go until the national referendum
on the CHARACTER, CREDIBILITY and COMPETENCE of the
_resident and the VICE _resident. They are presiding
over the final days of a failed regime. The Bush
abomination's economic policy has squandered an
unprecendented surplus and supplanted it with an
unprecedented budget deficit. The current issue of
National Geographic is devoted to the very REAL and
DEVASTATING impact of Global Warming. We have lost
four years we could not afford to lose in coming to
grips with this and other burning national security
issues (e.g., nuclear proliferation and AIDS in
Africa) because of the Bush abomination's radical flat
earth ideology. The Bush abomination's foreign policy
has divided our friends, and united our enemies. The
odds on either the _resident or the
shell-of-a-man-formerly-known-as-Tony-Blair winning
the Nobel Peace Prize are LITERALLY 10,000 to 1, the
same odds given for Milosevic, who is in jail at the
Hague and on trial for war crimes. Yesterday's the
_resident delivered his fourth and hopefully final
address to the UN General Assembly. It was a
chillingly quiet chamber. The *only* applause was for
the end of the speech. The _resident's address was
preceded by another diplomatic (i.e. veiled) but
principled and unmistakable denunciation of the Bush
abomination's illegal war in Iraq. Yesterday, in
Miami, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta) thundered,
"The President really has no credibility at this
point." Yes. The Three Stooges Reich, which allowed
Osama bin Laden to escape in Tora Bora, has tried,
convicted and sentenced Martha Stewart to prison, and
diverted a plane, detained and denied entry to Cat
Steven...What would America look like after four more
years of the Bush abomination? What would the world
look like? Do not be deceived by the US regimestream
news media's cooked polls and craven
propapunditgandists. There is an Electoral Uprising
coming in November 2004. The US regimestream news
media, at least until this point, has, in large part,
been a full partner along with the Bush Cabal and its
wholly-owned-subsidiary-formerluy-known-as-the-Republican-Party
in a Triad of shared special interest (e.g. oil,
weapons, media, pharmaceuticals, tobacco, etc.) Here
are four very important news items. They should
dominate the air waves and demand headlines above the
fold. But they won't. Please read them and share them
with others. Please vote and encourage others to vote.
Please remember that the US regimestream news media
does not want to inform you about this presidential
campaign, it wants to DISinform you...

www.harrisinteractive.com: President Bush’s ratings
have slipped to 45 percent positive and 54 percent
negative, the lowest ratings of his presidency,
according to a new Harris Poll. These numbers compare
to 50 percent positive, 49 percent negative in June
and 48 percent positive, 51 percent negative in
August. This downward trend no doubt helps to explain
why the lead which the president enjoyed over Senator
Kerry immediately after the Republican convention in
New York – the so-called “convention bounce” – has now
disappeared.

Ann Scott Tyson, Christian Science Monitor: Washington
- Inside dusty, barricaded camps around Iraq, groups
of American troops in between missions are gathering
around screens to view an unlikely choice from the US
box office: "Fahrenheit 9-11," Michael Moore's
controversial documentary attacking the
commander-in-chief.
"Everyone's watching it," says a Marine corporal
at an outpost in Ramadi that is mortared by insurgents
daily. "It's shaping a lot of people's image of Bush."
The film's prevalence is one sign of a discernible
countercurrent among US troops in Iraq - those who
blame President Bush for entangling them in what they
see as a misguided war. Conventional wisdom holds that
the troops are staunchly pro-Bush, and many are. But
bitterness over long, dangerous deployments is
producing, at a minimum, pockets of support for
Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry, in part because
he's seen as likely to withdraw American forces from
Iraq more quickly.

Rick Hind and David Halperin, New York Times: While
President Bush continues to make terrorism and
domestic security the centerpiece of his campaign, he
has made little mention of one of the most urgent
threats to our safety: the risk that terrorists could
cause thousands, even millions, of deaths by
sabotaging one of the 15,000 industrial chemical
plants across the United States...
As The Wall Street Journal disclosed last month,
Homeland Security tried to reduce the threat of
catastrophic attack with the stroke of a pen. The
department announced that the number of plants that
threatened more than 1,000 people was actually only
4,391, and the number that endangered more than a
million people was not 123 but two.
Mr. Ridge has set in motion plans to install security
cameras at chemical plants in seven states - but not
in some high-threat states like Florida, Ohio and
Minnesota. Although the department visits plants and
offers advice, unlike the E.P.A., it doesn't have the
power to enforce security measures and relies instead
on voluntary efforts by the industry. Without
enforceable requirements, chemical firms will remain
reluctant to put sufficient safeguards in place, for
fear that their competitors will scrimp on security
and thus be able to undercut them on price.
Industry groups have lobbied intensely against the
Corzine legislation. While reluctant to invest in
plant safety, some of these companies and their
executives have found the resources to help pay for
the Republican campaign.
For the Bush administration, it seems, homeland
security is critical except when it conflicts with the
wishes of supporters who own chemical plants.

Terry McAuliffe, Democratic National Committee: “In
today’s New York Post, Roger Stone, who became
associated with political ‘dirty tricks’ while working
for Nixon, refused to deny that he was the source the
CBS documents.
“Will Ed Gillespie or the White House admit today what
they know about Mr. Stone’s relationship with these
forged documents? Will they unequivocally rule out Mr.
Stone’s involvement? Or for that matter, others with a
known history of dirty tricks, such as Karl Rove or
Ralph Reed?”

David Corn, The Nation: The McCain-Bush face-off has
been one of the most-watched soap operas in
Washington. Now it appears that when McCain hit the
campaign trail for Bush this summer, the conflict was
not ultimately resolved. A few more twists and turns
could come, and in this relationship, McCain at the
moment has more power. (Remember McCain's home state
of Arizona could end up being a key state on November
2.) With his recent comments, McCain has essentially
called out the administration and undermined Bush's
spin. If McCain continues to talk so candidly, he will
be serving as a wingman for Kerry. Is this calculation
or coincidence? Revenge being served out of a
deep-freezer? McCain likes to promote his reputation
as a straight-talker, but next time I see him in a
green room, I'm not going to bother asking him to
answer the question. Let him do what he's gotta
do--especially if it's personal. Anyway, who would
want to know the end of this melodrama before the
final page?

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!)

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=496

President Bush’s Ratings Slip to Lowest Level of His
Presidency, According to Latest Harris Poll
ROCHESTER, N.Y. – September 17, 2004 – President
Bush’s ratings have slipped to 45 percent positive and
54 percent negative, the lowest ratings of his
presidency, according to a new Harris Poll. These
numbers compare to 50 percent positive, 49 percent
negative in June and 48 percent positive, 51 percent
negative in August. This downward trend no doubt helps
to explain why the lead which the president enjoyed
over Senator Kerry immediately after the Republican
convention in New York – the so-called “convention
bounce” – has now disappeared.

This is one of the results of a Harris Poll of 1,018
U.S. adults surveyed by telephone by Harris
Interactive® between September 9 and 13, 2004.

This survey also tracked the ratings of other
government leaders and of both parties in Congress.
Some of the other findings are:

Vice President Dick Cheney’s ratings – 40 percent
positive, 54 percent negative – have not changed since
August.
Secretary of State Colin Powell’s ratings are down to
63 percent positive, 32 percent negative from 69
percent to 27 percent in August, but he is still by
far the most popular member of the administration.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s ratings are
down very slightly to 43 percent positive, 50 percent
negative. This is the first time his negative ratings
have touched 50 percent.
Attorney General John Ashcroft’s ratings – at 40
percent positive, 49 percent negative – are also down
slightly since August, and his negative ratings have
never been this high before.
The best news for Republicans in this poll is probably
the fact that Republicans in Congress continue to
receive somewhat better (or, more accurately, “less
bad”) ratings, 38 percent positive and 56 percent
negative, than the Democrats in Congress, 34 percent
positive, 60 percent negative.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/092204C.shtml

Strident Minority: Anti-Bush U.S. Troops in Iraq
By Ann Scott Tyson
The Christian Science Monitor

Tuesday 21 September 2004

Though military personnel lean conservative, some
vocally support Kerry - or at least a strategy for
swift withdrawal.
Washington - Inside dusty, barricaded camps around
Iraq, groups of American troops in between missions
are gathering around screens to view an unlikely
choice from the US box office: "Fahrenheit 9-11,"
Michael Moore's controversial documentary attacking
the commander-in-chief.

"Everyone's watching it," says a Marine corporal
at an outpost in Ramadi that is mortared by insurgents
daily. "It's shaping a lot of people's image of Bush."

The film's prevalence is one sign of a discernible
countercurrent among US troops in Iraq - those who
blame President Bush for entangling them in what they
see as a misguided war. Conventional wisdom holds that
the troops are staunchly pro-Bush, and many are. But
bitterness over long, dangerous deployments is
producing, at a minimum, pockets of support for
Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry, in part because
he's seen as likely to withdraw American forces from
Iraq more quickly.

"[For] 9 out of 10 of the people I talk to, it
wouldn't matter who ran against Bush - they'd vote for
them," said a US soldier in the southern city of
Najaf, seeking out a reporter to make his views known.
"People are so fed up with Iraq, and fed up with
Bush."

With only three weeks until an Oct. 11 deadline
set for hundreds of thousands of US troops abroad to
mail in absentee ballots, this segment of the military
vote is important - symbolically, as a reflection on
Bush as a wartime commander, and politically, as
absentee ballots could end up tipping the balance in
closely contested states.

It is difficult to gauge the extent of
disaffection with Bush, which emerged in interviews in
June and July with ground forces in central, northern,
and southern Iraq. No scientific polls exist on the
political leanings of currently deployed troops,
military experts and officials say.

To be sure, broader surveys of US military
personnel and their spouses in recent years indicate
they are more likely to be conservative and Republican
than the US civilian population - but not
overwhelmingly so.

A Military Times survey last December of 933
subscribers, about 30 percent of whom had deployed for
the Iraq war, found that 56 percent considered
themselves Republican - about the same percentage who
approved of Bush's handling of Iraq. Half of those
responding were officers, who as a group tend to be
more conservative than their enlisted counterparts.

Among officers, who represent roughly 15 percent
of today's 1.4 million active duty military personnel,
there are about eight Republicans for every Democrat,
according to a 1999 survey by Duke University
political scientist Peter Feaver. Enlisted personnel,
however - a disproportionate number of whom are
minorities, a population that tends to lean Democratic
- are more evenly split. Professor Feaver estimates
that about one third of enlisted troops are
Republicans, one third Democrats, and the rest
independents, with the latter group growing.

Pockets of Ambivalence

"The military continues to be a Bush stronghold,
but it's not a stranglehold," Feaver says. Three
factors make the military vote more in play for
Democrats this year than in 2000, he says: the Iraq
war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's tense
relationship with the Army, and Bush's limited ability
as an incumbent to make sweeping promises akin to
Senator Kerry's pledge to add 40,000 new troops and
relieve an overstretched force.

"The military as a whole supports the Iraq war,"
Mr. Feaver says, noting a historical tendency of
troops to back the commander in chief in wartime. "But
you can go across the military and find pockets where
they are more ambivalent," he says, especially among
the National Guard and Reserve. "The war has not gone
as swimmingly as they thought, and that has caused
disaffection.

Whether representing pockets of opposition to Bush
or something bigger, soldiers and marines on Iraq's
front lines can be impassioned in their criticism. One
Marine officer in Ramadi who had lost several men said
he was thinking about throwing his medals over the
White House wall.

"Nobody I know wants Bush," says an enlisted
soldier in Najaf, adding, "This whole war was based on
lies." Like several others interviewed, his animosity
centered on a belief that the war lacked a clear
purpose even as it took a tremendous toll on US
troops, many of whom are in Iraq involuntarily under
"stop loss" orders that keep them in the service for
months beyond their scheduled exit in order to keep
units together during deployments.

"There's no clear definition of why we came here,"
says Army Spc. Nathan Swink, of Quincy, Ill. "First
they said they have WMD and nuclear weapons, then it
was to get Saddam Hussein out of office, and then to
rebuild Iraq. I want to fight for my nation and for my
family, to protect the United States against enemies
foreign and domestic, not to protect Iraqi civilians
or deal with Sadr's militia," he said.

Specialist Swink, who comes from a family of both
Democrats and Republicans, plans to vote for Kerry.
"Kerry protested the war in Vietnam. He is the one to
end this stuff, to lead to our exit of Iraq," he said.

'We Shouldn't be Here'

Other US troops expressed feelings of guilt over
killing Iraqis in a war they believe is unjust.

"We shouldn't be here," said one Marine
infantryman bluntly. "There was no reason for invading
this country in the first place. We just came here and
[angered people] and killed a lot of innocent people,"
said the marine, who has seen regular combat in
Ramadi. "I don't enjoy killing women and children,
it's not my thing."

As with his comrades, the marine accepted some of
the most controversial claims of "Fahrenheit 9/11,"
which critics have called biased. "Bush didn't want to
attack [Osama] Bin Laden because he was doing business
with Bin Laden's family," he said.

Another marine, Sgt. Christopher Wallace of
Pataskala, Ohio, agreed that the film was making an
impression on troops. "Marines nowadays want to know
stuff. They want to be informed, because we'll be
voting out here soon," he said. " 'Fahrenheit 9/11'
opened our eyes to things we hadn't seen before." But,
he added after a pause, "We still have full faith and
confidence in our commander-in-chief. And if John
Kerry is elected, he will be our commander in chief."

Getting Out the Military Vote

No matter whom they choose for president, US
troops in even the most remote bases in Iraq,
Afghanistan, and elsewhere overseas are more likely
than in 2000 to have an opportunity to vote - and have
their votes counted - thanks to a major push by the
Pentagon to speed and postmark their ballots. The
Pentagon is now expediting ballots for all 1.4 million
active-duty military personnel and their 1.3 million
voting-age dependents, as well as 3.7 million US
civilians living abroad.

"We wrote out a plan of attack on how we are going
to address these issues this election year," says Maj.
Lonnie Hammack, the lead postal officer for US Central
Command, an area covering the Middle East, Central
Asia, and North Africa, where more than 225,000 troops
and Defense Department personnel serve.

The military has added manpower, flights, and
postmark-validating equipment, and given priority to
moving ballots - by Humvee or helicopter if necessary
- even to far-flung outposts such as those on the
Syrian and Pakistani border and Djibouti.

Meanwhile, voting-assistance officers in every
military unit are reminding troops to vote, as are
posters, e-mails, and newspaper and television
announcements. Voting booths are also set up at
deployment centers in the United States.

"We've had almost 100 percent contact," says Col.
Darrell Jones, director of manpower and personnel for
Central Command, and 200,000 federal postcard ballot
applications have been shipped.

"We encourage our people to vote, not for a
certain candidate, but to exercise that right," he
said, noting that was especially important as the US
military is "out there promoting fledgling democracy
in these regions." Many of the younger troops may be
voting for the first time, he added.

-------

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/22/opinion/22halperin.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

September 22, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Lots of Chemicals, Little Reaction
By RICK HIND and DAVID HALPERIN

Washington — While President Bush continues to make
terrorism and domestic security the centerpiece of his
campaign, he has made little mention of one of the
most urgent threats to our safety: the risk that
terrorists could cause thousands, even millions, of
deaths by sabotaging one of the 15,000 industrial
chemical plants across the United States.

The dangers from chemical plant mishaps are clear.
According to data compiled by Greenpeace
International, the 1984 accident at an Union Carbide
insecticide plant in Bhopal, India, has caused 20,000
deaths and injuries to 200,000 people. A terrorist
group could cause even greater harm by entering a
plant in the United States and setting off an
explosion that produces a deadly gas cloud.

The administration knows the dangers. Soon after the
9/11 attacks, Senator Jon Corzine, Democrat of New
Jersey, highlighted the issue with legislation
requiring chemical plants to enhance security and use
safer chemicals and technologies when feasible. (Such
safer substitutes are widely available.)

A study by the Army surgeon general, conducted soon
after 9/11, found that up to 2.4 million people could
be killed or wounded by a terrorist attack on a single
chemical plant. In February 2003, the government's
National Infrastructure Protection Center warned that
chemical plants in the United States could be Qaeda
targets. Investigations by The Pittsburgh
Tribune-Review and the CBS program "60 Minutes" have
highlighted lax or nonexistent security at chemical
plants, with gates unlocked or wide open and chemical
tanks unguarded.

The Environmental Protection Agency under Christie
Whitman did its part to evaluate the threat,
identifying 123 chemical facilities where an accident
or attack could threaten more than a million people,
and 7,605 plants that threatened more than 1,000
people. The agency determined that it could use the
Clean Air Act to compel chemical plants to increase
security.

Following the Corzine approach, the agency also
planned to promote the use of less hazardous
chemicals. But the Bush administration overruled the
initiative, and in December the president announced
that chemical security was now the province of the new
Department of Homeland Security, under Secretary Tom
Ridge.

As The Wall Street Journal disclosed last month,
Homeland Security tried to reduce the threat of
catastrophic attack with the stroke of a pen. The
department announced that the number of plants that
threatened more than 1,000 people was actually only
4,391, and the number that endangered more than a
million people was not 123 but two.

Mr. Ridge has set in motion plans to install security
cameras at chemical plants in seven states - but not
in some high-threat states like Florida, Ohio and
Minnesota. Although the department visits plants and
offers advice, unlike the E.P.A., it doesn't have the
power to enforce security measures and relies instead
on voluntary efforts by the industry. Without
enforceable requirements, chemical firms will remain
reluctant to put sufficient safeguards in place, for
fear that their competitors will scrimp on security
and thus be able to undercut them on price.

Industry groups have lobbied intensely against the
Corzine legislation. While reluctant to invest in
plant safety, some of these companies and their
executives have found the resources to help pay for
the Republican campaign.

For the Bush administration, it seems, homeland
security is critical except when it conflicts with the
wishes of supporters who own chemical plants.

Rick Hind is legislative director of Greenpeace's
toxics campaign. David Halperin, a lawyer, has served
on the staffs of the National Security Council and the
Senate Intelligence Committee.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home |
Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | RSS | Help |
Back to Top

http://www.democrats.org/news/200409210001.html

Sep 21, 2004

McAuliffe: Will GOP Answer If They Know Whether Stone,
Others Had Involvement With CBS Documents?
Washington, D.C. - In response to false Republican
accusations regarding the CBS documents, Democratic
National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe issued
this statement:

“In today’s New York Post, Roger Stone, who became
associated with political ‘dirty tricks’ while working
for Nixon, refused to deny that he was the source the
CBS documents.

“Will Ed Gillespie or the White House admit today what
they know about Mr. Stone’s relationship with these
forged documents? Will they unequivocally rule out Mr.
Stone’s involvement? Or for that matter, others with a
known history of dirty tricks, such as Karl Rove or
Ralph Reed?”

http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=1833

McCain: The October Surprise?
09/20/2004 @ 1:05pm
E-mail this Post
Will John McCain be the October Surprise?

Months ago, when the Republican senator who is often
dubbed a maverick finally started campaigning with
George W. Bush--after news reports noted that John
Kerry had delicately discussed with McCain the idea of
McCain becoming Kerry's running mate--the question
asked by political commentators (and cable talk show
consumers) was, what does McCain want? Did he want to
make peace with the GOP establishment so he could run
for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008
(when he would be 72 years old)? Was he looking to be
secretary of defense? Was he hoping that Bush would
bounce Dick Cheney and put McCain on the ticket?

The obvious answer was that McCain was just yielding
to the overwhelming Ds-and-Rs dynamic of Washington's
binary culture. In his case, the issue was whether
McCain was a Republican or not. And if he did want to
continue being a GOPer in good standing, then he had
to do right by the Family. (Think The Sopranos.) That
meant putting aside the resentment and anger he must
have felt toward the Bush clan, which--take your
pick--ran or countenanced an ugly and vicious campaign
against McCain in the South Carolina primary in 2000
that included questioning McCain's commitment to
veterans and spreading rumors that McCain had been
brainwashed in a Vietnamese prison camp, that his
adopted daughter was a love-child he had had with a
prostitute, and that his wife was a junkie. So this
year McCain sucked it up and hit the trail for Bush,
even as the Bush brigade was mounting the same sort of
trash-and-slash attack against McCain's colleague,
John Kerry. At least, McCain could point to the war in
Iraq as a point of agreement with Bush. Though McCain,
according to a McCain adviser, has not accepted the
neoconservatives' argument (adopted by Bush) that the
Iraq war is necessary as an initial step in remaking
the region, he believed that because Saddam Hussein
posed a possible threat and was such a tyrant he
needed "to be taken out."

But maybe there was another reason beyond loyalty to
the party and to the commander-in-chief why McCain
saddled up with Bush. Perhaps he wanted to get near
enough to knife Bush--metaphorically speaking, of
course. As in, keep your friends close and your
enemies closer. (Think The Godfather.)

Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, McCain whacked Bush on
Iraq. He accused Bush of making "serious mistakes
after the initial successes by not having enough
troops there on the ground, by allowing the looting,
by not securing the borders. There was a number of
things that we did. Most of it can be traced back to
not having sufficient numbers of troops there." When
he said "we," McCain actually meant Bush, Dick Cheney,
Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Condoleezza Rice.
He noted that the Bush administration has allowed
insurgents to establish sanctuaries--such as in
Falluja--where anti-American rebels or terrorists can
be trained and harbored. McCain, saying he still
supports the US mission in Iraq, was making a serious
charge: that Bush and his gang have screwed things up
tremendously.

Anchor Chris Wallace then asked what seemed to be a
Bush-friendly question: "Some have suggested that what
we're seeing, to use a Vietnam analogy, is kind of a
rolling Tet offensive to try to break the will of the
American and Iraqi people and to play a role in
defeating President Bush. Do you think that's what's
going on?"

While other GOPers have tried to make such a point to
shore up support for Bush among potential voters,
McCain would not. "I don't think they're interested so
much," he replied, "in defeating President Bush."

*********

When you're done reading this article,visit David
Corn's WEBLOG at www.davidcorn.com. Read recent
entries on a top military commander claiming Iraq is
lost, the Kerry campaign's lag on analogies, Bush's
most recent campaign-trail fibs, and the never-ending
flap over Bush's Air National Guard service and those
CBS memos.

********

McCain challenged Bush's assertion that progress is
under way in Iraq, noting "the situation has obviously
been somewhat deteriorating, to say the least." Bush,
he remarked, "is not being "as straight as maybe we'd
like to see." McCain called for the declassification
of the recent National Intelligence Estimate that
raised the possibility of civil war in Iraq. "The
key," said McCain, who urged more extensive US
military action in Iraq, is to "recognize those
mistakes, correct those mistakes, and prevail." He
added, "I'd like to see more of an overall plan
articulated by the president."

McCain's remarks were not what a consultant would call
politically useful to the fellow whom McCain is
supposedly trying to help get reelected. These
comments came the day before John Kerry was to give a
major speech blistering Bush for mistakes and
miscalculations in Iraq. McCain--as well as Republican
Senators Chuck Hagel and Richard Lugar, who on other
talk shows each said the administration's handling of
postwar Iraq has been incompetent--softened up Bush
for Kerry's blows. But McCain's words, given his
standing in the media, hit the hardest.

Earlier this month, an editor at The Nation, dreaming
of magic-bullet scenarios, asked me whether Secretary
of State Colin Powell might break with Bush in October
and swing the election to Kerry. Not a chance I said,
read this. Powell is completely in the tank for the
Bush crew, enabling the neocons. But McCain--now he
might cause further difficult for his "good friend" in
the White House in the final weeks of the election.

The Bush campaign eagerly embraced McCain early in the
summer when Bush was slipping in the polls due to the
mess in Iraq. So when McCain (rather than Kerry) says
Bush hasn't articulated a plan for Iraq, can the White
House dismiss this serious statement? It sure cannot
be pooh-poohed by Bush's mouthpieces as partisan
rhetoric. Might such a remark cause Bushies to wonder
whether McCain infiltrated the Bush campaign in order
to better zing the man whose lieutenants once bitterly
and scurrilously attacked McCain's family and
questioned McCain's loyalty to veterans?

The McCain-Bush face-off has been one of the
most-watched soap operas in Washington. Now it appears
that when McCain hit the campaign trail for Bush this
summer, the conflict was not ultimately resolved. A
few more twists and turns could come, and in this
relationship, McCain at the moment has more power.
(Remember McCain's home state of Arizona could end up
being a key state on November 2.) With his recent
comments, McCain has essentially called out the
administration and undermined Bush's spin. If McCain
continues to talk so candidly, he will be serving as a
wingman for Kerry. Is this calculation or coincidence?
Revenge being served out of a deep-freezer? McCain
likes to promote his reputation as a straight-talker,
but next time I see him in a green room, I'm not going
to bother asking him to answer the question. Let him
do what he's gotta do--especially if it's personal.
Anyway, who would want to know the end of this
melodrama before the final page?

********

DON'T FORGET ABOUT DAVID CORN'S BOOK, The Lies of
George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception
(Crown Publishers). A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! An
UPDATED and EXPANDED EDITION is NOW AVAILABLE in
PAPERBACK. The Washington Post says, "This is a fierce
polemic, but it is based on an immense amount of
research....[I]t does present a serious case for the
president's partisans to answer....Readers can hardly
avoid drawing...troubling conclusions from Corn's
painstaking indictment." The Los Angeles Times says,
"David Corn's The Lies of George W. Bush is as
hard-hitting an attack as has been leveled against the
current president. He compares what Bush said with the
known facts of a given situation and ends up making a
persuasive case." The Library Journal says, "Corn
chronicles to devastating effect the lies, falsehoods,
and misrepresentations....Corn has painstakingly
unearthed a bill of particulars against the president
that is as damaging as it is thorough." And GEORGE W.
BUSH SAYS, "I'd like to tell you I've read [ The Lies
of George W. Bush], but that'd be a lie."

For more information and a sample, go to
www.davidcorn.com. And see his WEBLOG there.

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LNS Countdown to Electoral Uprising -- 42 Days to Go -- 9/11, Media, Kitty Kelly, Theft of the Election, Michael Moore

There are 42 days to go until the national referendum on the CREDIBILITY, COMPETENCE and CHARACTER of the _resident and the VICE _resident...Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta) appeared on David Letterman's show last night, and hung out for through two commercial breaks...It was a poignant act of resistance by Letterman and SeeBS. JFK and Letterman talked at length, and in a serious way, about the war in Iraq and the failed administration in the White House...,JFK taunted and baited the _resident...Associated Press: Besides reading his "Top 10" list, Kerry also poked fun at the tedious debate negotiations between the rival campaigns that ended in agreement Monday. Kerry said he wanted running mate John Edwards to stand in the vice presidential debate, but Cheney wanted to sit. "We compromised and now George Bush is going to sit on Dick Cheney's lap," he said...Kerry's "Top 10 Bush Tax Proposals" are:
10. No estate tax for families with at least two U.S. presidents.
9. W-2 Form is now Dubya-2 Form.
8. Under the simplified tax code, your refund check goes directly to Halliburton.
7. The reduced earned income tax credit is so unfair, it just makes me want to tear out my lustrous, finely groomed hair.
6. Attorney General (John) Ashcroft gets to write off the entire U.S. Constitution.
5. Texas Rangers can take a business loss for trading Sammy Sosa.
4. Eliminate all income taxes; just ask Teresa (Heinz Kerry) to cover the whole damn thing.
3. Cheney can claim Bush as a dependent.
2. Hundred-dollar penalty if you pronounce it "nuclear" instead of "nucular."
1. George W. Bush gets a deduction for mortgaging our entire future.
Here are five very important LNS selections. Please read them and share them with others. Please vote and encourage others to vote. Please remember that the US regimestream news media does not want to inform you about this presidential campaign, it wants to DISinform you...There is an Electoral Uprising coming at the Ballot Box in November...

Jennifer Barrett Ozols, Newsweek: Kristen Breitweiser supported George W. Bush in 2000. This year, she’s endorsing his opponent. She is certainly not the only woman in America to change her mind about whom she plans to vote for this election, but Breitweiser is no ordinary voter. The New Jersey lawyer-turned-stay-at-home-mom has taken on an increasingly prominent role since September 11. After her husband, Ron, a vice president at Fiduciary Trust, was killed in the World Trade Center, she joined three other widows from her state as activists demanding a full investigation into the 2001 attacks. The group, who call themselves "The Jersey Girls,” have since testified before Congress, met with administration officials, and lobbied successfully for the creation of the 9/11 Commission to look into intelligence failures leading up to the 2001 attacks.
Now Breitweiser has volunteered to join John Kerry’s campaign, speaking out in support of the Democratic challenger across the nation—even agreeing, for the first time since 9/11, to fly on an airplane to get the word out. This Tuesday, she and four other 9/11 widows, along with a survivor of the Pentagon attacks, held a press conference to endorse Kerry. As they described it, their reasons for speaking out are twofold: anger at the war on Iraq and a growing frustration with an administration they accuse of obstructing the investigation into intelligence failures. NEWSWEEK’s Jennifer Barrett Ozols spoke with Breitweiser about her decision and her new role in the White House race. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: You supported Bush in 2000. Why are you changing your vote this year?
Kristen Breitweiser: The predominant reason is because I don’t feel President Bush has done everything he could do to make us safer in the three years since 9/11. I’ve personally spent the last three years fighting to try to fix the problems that plague our intelligence apparatus, so we would not be so vulnerable to Al Qaeda the next time around. And during the three years, our largest adversary was the administration. Because of that, I can’t in good conscience vote for President Bush.
The second largest reason is the war in Iraq. We have lost more than a thousand soldiers in Iraq, thousands have been wounded—Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The net result is that we are more vulnerable to terrorism because Al Qaeda has increased [its] recruitment there, the hatred and animosity toward Americans has increased, worldwide support for Americans has decreased … If President Bush is in office for another four years, I shudder to think of how many other wars unrelated to terrorism he’ll take us into.
Was there a particular moment that triggered your decision to speak out in favor of Kerry?
For me, it was the [Republican National Convention] … At the convention, 9/11 was spoken about constantly and I thought, where was this interest, this passion, this fervor for the last three years when we [9/11 widows] were begging and pleading and screaming to get 9/11 issues addressed by this administration? They wanted nothing to do with it, and then there’s a convention where that’s all they’re talking about: 9/11. I can [also] give you a laundry list of other things that could have been done by this administration in the past three years that were not done. That’s upsetting to me.

William Rivers Pitt., www.truthout.org: The American mainstream television news media, in whole and in part, has catastrophically failed the American people and is singularly responsible for the untimely deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people...
The decision by the mainstream television news media to get into bed with the very entities they are supposed to stand watchdog against has been a mortal one. Once it becomes acceptable to get your reporting from Defense Department and military spin-doctors, without doing any work on your own, the game is over. What started with the Gulf War as a new 'reporting' technique has become an institutionalized process of standing as mouthpiece for those who deserve the strongest scrutiny.
The White House and Defense Department boys know this, and exploited it ruthlessly in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration sought to capitalize on the tragedy by using it as an excuse to invade Iraq, something the power-pitchers in the administration had wanted for more than a decade. A shadowy and little-known media consulting company called The Rendon Group got a $100,000-a-month contract from the Pentagon right after the attacks. The Rendon Group was getting paid to offer media strategy advice. Or, in other words, propaganda.
The Rendon Group has been around a long time, and stands at the center of the media's failure to report accurately on the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The Rendon Group has received close to $200 million from the Pentagon and CIA over the last several years to spread anti-Hussein propaganda far and wide. One of the first steps they took was to create in 1992, out of absolute thin air, the Iraqi National Congress. The Iraqi National Congress, and its most famous spokesperson Ahmad Chalabi, are entirely the creation of a media strategy company doing the bidding of the United States government.

www.mediamatters.org: The Republican National Committee (RNC)'s public relations firm, Shirley & Banister Public Affairs, sent a memo to conservative media outlets instructing them not to give airtime to Kitty Kelley, author of The Family: The Real Story Of the Bush Dynasty (Doubleday, September 14). And according to The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, White House communications director Dan Bartlett also discouraged news outlets from covering the book. Media Matters for America tracked mentions of Kelley and her book, as well as her personal appearances, during the week of the book's release (September 13-17) on the four major cable news networks: CNBC, CNN, FOX News Channel, and MSNBC. The only network on which Kelley did not appear in person is FOX News Channel.

Anne-Marie Cusac, The Progressive: What if Republican shenanigans tip the election? Many members of the media are looking at the dangers voting machines may pose to the integrity of the national election. Others are wondering whether voters may be disenfranchised by use of faulty felon lists, as happened in Florida in 2000. But there is another danger: Republicans may use a variety of tactics to suppress the vote of racial minorities in swing states. These tactics could determine control of the White House or the Senate.
In August, the Zogby International poll raised the number of battleground states from sixteen to twenty. In those states, notes John Zogby, "the pounding has been relentless."
Zogby was referring to negative ads, but the sanctity of the vote is also taking a pounding. In some states, Republicans are threatening to conduct widespread vote challenges in heavily minority areas. In others, recent events suggest that poll workers may wrongly turn away voters. In still others, new laws passed or enforced by Republicans have erected hurdles to trip up the minority vote. And on Election Day itself, say advocates, Republicans may direct numerous tricks at Democratic districts in an effort to confuse or frighten voters.
Here's a rundown of what's happening in several swing states...

[The LNS disagrees with M.M.'s assessment of JFK but M.M. is entitled to his opinion uncensured. He is one of the heroes of the Republic...]

Michael Moore, www.michaelmoore.com: My friends, it is time for a reality check.
1. The polls are wrong. They are all over the map like diarrhea. On Friday, one poll had Bush 13 points ahead -- and another poll had them both tied. There are three reasons why the polls are b.s.: One, they are polling "likely voters." "Likely" means those who have consistently voted in the past few elections. So that cuts out young people who are voting for the first time and a ton of non-voters who are definitely going to vote in THIS election. Second, they are not polling people who use their cell phone as their primary phone. Again, that means they are not talking to young people. Finally, most of the polls are weighted with too many Republicans, as pollster John Zogby revealed last week. You are being snookered if you believe any of these polls.
2. Kerry has brought in the Clinton A-team. Instead of shunning Clinton (as Gore did), Kerry has decided to not make that mistake.
3. Traveling around the country, as I've been doing, I gotta tell ya, there is a hell of a lot of unrest out there. Much of it is not being captured by the mainstream press. But it is simmering and it is real. Do not let those well-produced Bush rallies of angry white people scare you. Turn off the TV! (Except Jon Stewart and Bill Moyers -- everything else is just a sugar-coated lie).
4. Conventional wisdom says if the election is decided on "9/11" (the fear of terrorism), Bush wins. But if it is decided on the job we are doing in Iraq, then Bush loses. And folks, that "job," you might have noticed, has descended into the third level of a hell we used to call Vietnam. There is no way out. It is a full-blown mess of a quagmire and the body bags will sadly only mount higher. Regardless of what Kerry meant by his original war vote, he ain't the one who sent those kids to their deaths -- and Mr. and Mrs. Middle America knows it. Had Bush bothered to show up when he was in the "service" he might have somewhat of a clue as to how to recognize an immoral war that cannot be "won." All he has delivered to Iraq was that plasticized turkey last Thanksgiving. It is this failure of monumental proportions that is going to cook his goose come this November.

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!)

MSNBC.com
‘He Can Make Us Safe’
A prominent 9/11 widow—and former Republican—explains why she now wants Kerry to win the White House race

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Jennifer Barrett Ozols
Newsweek
Updated: 4:21 p.m. ET Sept. 17, 2004

Sept. 17 - Kristen Breitweiser supported George W. Bush in 2000. This year, she’s endorsing his opponent. She is certainly not the only woman in America to change her mind about whom she plans to vote for this election, but Breitweiser is no ordinary voter. The New Jersey lawyer-turned-stay-at-home-mom has taken on an increasingly prominent role since September 11. After her husband, Ron, a vice president at Fiduciary Trust, was killed in the World Trade Center, she joined three other widows from her state as activists demanding a full investigation into the 2001 attacks. The group, who call themselves "The Jersey Girls,” have since testified before Congress, met with administration officials, and lobbied successfully for the creation of the 9/11 Commission to look into intelligence failures leading up to the 2001 attacks.

Now Breitweiser has volunteered to join John Kerry’s campaign, speaking out in support of the Democratic challenger across the nation—even agreeing, for the first time since 9/11, to fly on an airplane to get the word out. This Tuesday, she and four other 9/11 widows, along with a survivor of the Pentagon attacks, held a press conference to endorse Kerry. As they described it, their reasons for speaking out are twofold: anger at the war on Iraq and a growing frustration with an administration they accuse of obstructing the investigation into intelligence failures. NEWSWEEK’s Jennifer Barrett Ozols spoke with Breitweiser about her decision and her new role in the White House race. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: You supported Bush in 2000. Why are you changing your vote this year?
Kristen Breitweiser: The predominant reason is because I don’t feel President Bush has done everything he could do to make us safer in the three years since 9/11. I’ve personally spent the last three years fighting to try to fix the problems that plague our intelligence apparatus, so we would not be so vulnerable to Al Qaeda the next time around. And during the three years, our largest adversary was the administration. Because of that, I can’t in good conscience vote for President Bush.

The second largest reason is the war in Iraq. We have lost more than a thousand soldiers in Iraq, thousands have been wounded—Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The net result is that we are more vulnerable to terrorism because Al Qaeda has increased [its] recruitment there, the hatred and animosity toward Americans has increased, worldwide support for Americans has decreased … If President Bush is in office for another four years, I shudder to think of how many other wars unrelated to terrorism he’ll take us into.

Was there a particular moment that triggered your decision to speak out in favor of Kerry?
For me, it was the [Republican National Convention] … At the convention, 9/11 was spoken about constantly and I thought, where was this interest, this passion, this fervor for the last three years when we [9/11 widows] were begging and pleading and screaming to get 9/11 issues addressed by this administration? They wanted nothing to do with it, and then there’s a convention where that’s all they’re talking about: 9/11. I can [also] give you a laundry list of other things that could have been done by this administration in the past three years that were not done. That’s upsetting to me.

Can you give some examples?
Border security. The 9/11 Commission found that border security is in very bad shape. We’re less secure with regard to border safety than we were. That would take a simple reallocation of funds and for whatever reason it hasn’t been done. There are harder things to do, too, like the reorganization of the intelligence community. I understand that’s a concept that has been out there for 15 years and couldn’t get accomplished. But my God, if 9/11—the largest intelligence failure in U.S. history—was not enough to awaken President Bush to the need to reorganize the intelligence community, I don’t know what is.

What role will you have in the Kerry campaign?
I want to be able to talk to people across the country and make them understand that homeland security must be a priority and explain to them why, in the last four years, homeland security was not a priority. Bush is constantly saying national security is a priority, but where is the proof?

Did the Kerry campaign approach you?
No, I called the Kerry campaign and said we [the group of 9/11 widows] want to support John Kerry and do what we need to do to get the word out. Because we feel like he can make us safe.

You say you encountered initial resistance from the administration regarding the creation of a 9/11 commission. Why was that?
Well, the first argument was that we were a nation at war and we couldn’t spare the vital resources. But if we had established a commission sooner to investigate, as we did with Pearl Harbor, we might not have gone to Iraq because we might have learned that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

In your opinion, what needs to be done now to improve our national security?
Obviously, I’d like to see the 9/11 Commission recommendations thoughtfully put into legislation, which would entail a reorganization of our intelligence committee to better fight terrorism and groups like Al Qaeda specifically. And I would like to know that our transportation system—whether it be subways, buses or planes—are a serious part of our homeland security plan. Borders, nuclear plants, water plants are all vulnerable. Also, I’m a lawyer, and I know that our judicial system needs to be set up so we can successfully prosecute the terrorists. It’s not now. We need to make sure detainees’ rights aren’t being violated, [that] prisoners aren’t being abused. We need to dry up those money lines [to terrorist groups]. We have not made the efforts there.

How hopeful are you that all the 9/11 Commission recommendations will be implemented?
I truly feel the only way the 9/11 Commission recommendations will be implemented with the spirit and intent of what the commission wanted is if Kerry is elected.

Did you ever imagine you would be campaigning for Kerry or playing such a public role?
No, I am a very private person; I am a mom. Now I am a single mom. But what is so motivating for me is the amount of people who have contacted me to say thank you or to say, I feel the same way, I am scared. They ask me, why aren’t we fixing border security and looking into alternative energy sources to oil? That is what keeps you going … We have spent three years being very engaged in this because we feel we have to be. I would love nothing better then to have spent the last three years instead knowing we are safe. I think it’s sad that homeland security is even an issue in this election. I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now if we had addressed this earlier.

© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6030699/site/newsweek/

Your Media is Killing You
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Tuesday 21 September 2004

The American mainstream television news media, in whole and in part, has catastrophically failed the American people and is singularly responsible for the untimely deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people.

The trajectory of this plunge is easy to chart. The 1980s saw unprecedented deregulation of the rules pertaining to the ownership of media outlets. Thus began the combination and consolidation of dozens of differing viewpoints under the iron control of a few massive corporations. The many voices became one voice, and a dullard's voice at that.

The opening year of the 1990s saw the push towards our first war in Iraq. Rather than hold to basic standards set by Edward R. Murrow and the other giants of journalism - see it for yourself, do the legwork, because the American people deserve to know what is happening - the mainstream television news media decided their best course was to allow themselves to be hand-fed by the Pentagon. No footage, no reports, no news whatsoever would be released to the public without first passing through Defense Department screeners. The American people learned from this that war looks like a video game, that death is remote, that victory is a simple matter of pushing a button.

After surrendering their integrity to governmental and military entities which lie as a matter of course, the mainstream television news media learned with the trial of O.J. Simpson the simple truth espoused by H.L. Mencken: "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." Day after day, for sixteen months, every television was filled around the clock with soap-opera entertainment passing itself off as news. The American people, deprived of substantive information about the world around them, learned that real news is only about celebrities.

Then came the greatest entertainment-as-news extravaganza of all time: The Monica Lewinski scandal and the impeachment of a President who lied about sex. As an athlete will lose muscle tone if he stays away from the gym or the playing field, so did the intellectual muscles of the media atrophy after years of avoiding the basic efforts required in their field. Why run a scoop down about the war if I can just publish this Pentagon-prepared battle assessment? Why investigate Whitewater and the death of Vince Foster when I can just regurgitate this fax I just got from the Republican National Committee's media headquarters? If I can just get in front of the camera with a salacious bit of gossip, I can become an anchor. For many 'journalists,' the inflated nonsense of the impeachment was their "White Bronco."

Meanwhile, during the period beginning with the O.J. trial and concluding with the impeachment extravaganza, the Taliban was taking control of Afghanistan in the wake left by the completion of our anti-Soviet policies in that nation. A man named Osama bin Laden was preparing to attack anything and everything American he could get close to. UNSCOM weapons inspectors under Scott Ritter were taking Iraq's chemical and biological warfare capabilities apart literally brick by brick, and the sanctions against that nation, which were killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, were also reducing Saddam Hussein's conventional arsenal to a large collection of formidable paperweights.

One threat was on the rise, another was on the wane, but this is boring stuff compared to ill-fitting leather gloves and a stained blue dress. The American people were never provided the full scope of the security issues facing their country, because the television news media they relied upon didn't want to put in the work. Often, when then-President Clinton acted to address these security issues, he was accused of "wagging the dog," i.e. manufacturing unimportant threats to obscure the really important stuff, like whether or not he purchased gifts for Lewinski at the Big Dog store on Nantucket.

Think of these points - media laziness, media complicity with the powers-that-be, media obsession with fantastically unimportant gossip and tabloidism - and then remember those tall buildings in New York collapsing to the ground. Perhaps the 'journalists' involved could have been focusing on other things before that dark day?

Sunday night's episode of the CBS News program '60 Minutes' had a long, detailed and graphic expose on the fighting that recently took place in Najaf and Fallujah. All of the commercials for the program, however, focused on the '60 Minutes' interview with New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick. It was a clever bit of sleight-of-hand; by now, Americans have been well-trained to spurn whatever tiny molecules of substantive news that might somehow blunder across their screens, because the truly important stuff has more to do with who is sleeping with J-Lo and how Ben feels about it.

Sports is, of course, the champion distraction. Listen to any sports talk radio show; if the American people could rattle off housing or budget statistics, if they could quote from memory the casualty statistics from Operation Iraqi Freedom, the way they can tell you in half a second how many doubles Manny Ramirez hit in his rookie season, half-bright loafers like George W. Bush would never have a prayer in American politics. Perhaps CBS knew this. Millions of viewers made time to watch Belichick, and were treated to a bloody and terrifying and accurate view of the Iraq occupation that has been thoroughly, completely and utterly absent.

For more than two years now, this column space has been dedicated to describing, with all truth and verified data in hand, the mess an invasion of Iraq would create. This column was among the first to declare that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that any alleged connection between Osama bin Laden and the government of Iraq was laughable on its face, that democracy was a pipe dream in Iraq, that we would not be greeted as liberators, and that any military action in Iraq based upon these unfounded claims would result in a destabilized Middle East, a world filled with furious former allies, and an ocean of blood spilled by American soldiers and Iraqi civilians.

All of this has come to pass.

How is it that little truthout.org, with its limited resources and small staff, got it right time and again while ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN and Fox - with their massive financial resources and their huge pool of reporters - got it so totally and continuously wrong? The answer comes in two parts.

The first part is the degree to which these nationally broadcast news stations have become compromised by the corporations that own them. The ownership of the media is key to understanding the process. Take the example of General Electric, owners of NBC, MSNBC and CNBC. This company is one of the largest defense contractors in America; they get paid every time we go to war, and yet we somehow believe they will tell us the truth of war, even though it affects their profit margin. Such thinking is folly.

Take the example of AOL/TimeWarner, owner of CNN. This company lives and dies by the 'outsourcing' of American technological jobs overseas, where labor is cheaper. Do you think they will tell a straight story about the economy with so much on the line? Such thinking is folly, and never mind the fact that AOL/TimeWarner's largest investor is a Saudi. So much for the truth about who really supports Osama bin Laden and international terrorism. So much for the truth about what really happened on September 11, and why.

The decision by the mainstream television news media to get into bed with the very entities they are supposed to stand watchdog against has been a mortal one. Once it becomes acceptable to get your reporting from Defense Department and military spin-doctors, without doing any work on your own, the game is over. What started with the Gulf War as a new 'reporting' technique has become an institutionalized process of standing as mouthpiece for those who deserve the strongest scrutiny.

The White House and Defense Department boys know this, and exploited it ruthlessly in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration sought to capitalize on the tragedy by using it as an excuse to invade Iraq, something the power-pitchers in the administration had wanted for more than a decade. A shadowy and little-known media consulting company called The Rendon Group got a $100,000-a-month contract from the Pentagon right after the attacks. The Rendon Group was getting paid to offer media strategy advice. Or, in other words, propaganda.

The Rendon Group has been around a long time, and stands at the center of the media's failure to report accurately on the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The Rendon Group has received close to $200 million from the Pentagon and CIA over the last several years to spread anti-Hussein propaganda far and wide. One of the first steps they took was to create in 1992, out of absolute thin air, the Iraqi National Congress. The Iraqi National Congress, and its most famous spokesperson Ahmad Chalabi, are entirely the creation of a media strategy company doing the bidding of the United States government.

Since 1992, the Iraqi National Congress has become accepted completely by the mainstream news media as a legitimate group. They were embraced by the American Congress under Newt Gingrich and given hundreds of millions of dollars. They were, with the help of the aforementioned Congress, the driving force behind the passage of the Iraqi Liberation Act in 1998, an Act which made the removal of Saddam Hussein a matter of American law. All this for a group made out of nothing by what amounts to a media consulting company.

The post-9/11 money paid to the Rendon Group returned handsome dividends for the investment. Rendon creation Ahmad Chalabi, who has since been accused of giving vital national security secrets to Iran, arranged an interview between Judith Millerof the New York Times and an Iraqi defector named Adnan Ishan Saeed al-Haidieri. al-Haidieri claimed to have personal knowledge of the vast and growing stockpiles of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Miller, thinking Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress were worthy sources, believed al-Haidieri and printed an exclusive report on the threat posed by Iraq in the Times.

Time and a little legwork has since exposed al-Haidieri as a total fraud, but Rendon's propaganda got out there; as the New York Times goes, so goes the rest of the mainstream media. Miller's report, released in 2001, created a landslide push towards war, and allowed George W. Bush to sell the American people a frightening and utterly inaccurate portrait of why war was necessary, and necessary now.

Companies like The Rendon Group are a bellweather for exactly how depraved our journalistic institutions have become. Millions of dollars in government contracts are there for the taking by anyone who wants to scam the media with bogus stories. The media is more than happy to oblige, because it relieves them of having to put the necessary work in. Meanwhile, stories that might negatively affect the parent companies go by the boards, and everyone is happy.

Well, almost everyone is happy. The families of 1,033 American soldiers who have died in Iraq aren't happy. The families of the 17,000 or so American soldiers who have been 'medically evacuated' from Iraq for things like missing legs and faces aren't happy. The families of the 20,000 or so civilians killed in the invasion of Iraq aren't happy, and a lot of them are taking their unhappiness to the streets with grenades and rifles so they can make more American families unhappy by killing American soldiers.

Don't look to the mainstream television news media for an apology or a reversal of course anytime soon. They can't report the truth now. To do so would expose them as the incompetent lapdogs they have become, and as anyone who has ever screwed up at work knows, the hardest person to face after a grievous error is the person you find in the mirror.

The second part of the answer to that question - How is it that little truthout.org got it right time and again while the entire mainstream television news media got it wrong? - is simplicity itself.

We put in the work. We did the research in triplicate. We talked to the people who knew the score. We took the time. We cared. We understood that September 11 did not require us to click our heels and say "Yes sir!" to whatever balderdash Mr. Bush and his crew spouted. Quite completely the opposite is true. We understood that September 11 made it more important than ever for us to be very, very good at what we do.

The American mainstream television news media, in whole and in part, has catastrophically failed the American people and is singularly responsible for the untimely deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people. It is not too late for them to reverse course, to take again the simple rules and requirements espoused by Murrow and Mencken and place them at the forefront of their institutional mission. Nothing less than the basic stability of our republic is at stake.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and international bestseller of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence.'

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RNC's p.r. firm urged conservative media to ignore Kelley's Bush book; FOX the only cable network not to host author

The Republican National Committee (RNC)'s public relations firm, Shirley & Banister Public Affairs, sent a memo to conservative media outlets instructing them not to give airtime to Kitty Kelley, author of The Family: The Real Story Of the Bush Dynasty (Doubleday, September 14). And according to The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, White House communications director Dan Bartlett also discouraged news outlets from covering the book. Media Matters for America tracked mentions of Kelley and her book, as well as her personal appearances, during the week of the book's release (September 13-17) on the four major cable news networks: CNBC, CNN, FOX News Channel, and MSNBC. The only network on which Kelley did not appear in person is FOX News Channel.

As of September 17, Kelley had personally appeared for three interviews on CNN (NewsNight with Aaron Brown, American Morning, and Lou Dobbs Tonight), one interview on MSNBC (Hardball with Chris Matthews), and one interview on CNBC (Capital Report). In addition, several news programs on CNBC, CNN, and MSNBC aired clips of Kelley's interviews on NewsNight and on NBC's Today show. FOX News Channel, meanwhile, did not air or schedule a single interview with Kelley.

While Kelley has not appeared on the network, FOX News Channel hosts have made negative references to her on their programs. Brit Hume labeled Kelley a "gossip" [Special Report with Brit Hume, September 9]; Sean Hannity claimed Kelley was "discredited" and expressed outrage that the Today show would devote three days to her [Hannity & Colmes, September 15]; and Bill O'Reilly disparaged The New York Times for publishing a review of "the Kelley dirt" and the media in general for "giving huge exposure to Kitty Kelley's hatchet job on the Bush family" [The O'Reilly Factor, September 15]. O'Reilly solicited input from viewers and listeners on whether or not he should interview Kelley on his show. On September 14, O'Reilly reported that "50,000 Factor viewers and listeners voted down Ms. Kelley in a billoreilly.com poll. So we canceled her appearance here." O'Reilly said: "I just didn't want to get down there in the muck."

U.S. News & World Report's September 14 "U.S. News Bulletin" reported that Shirley & Banister Public Affairs sent a memorandum to conservative media outlets discouraging them from giving Kelley airtime:

"New Media" Urged To Ignore Kitty Kelley And Her Book.

Conservative talk radio, TV and print outlets are being urged to ignore Kelley, author of The Family: The Real Story Of the Bush Dynasty. "Don't give Kitty Kelley air time," says a memo from the conservative and influential PR firm Shirley & Banister Public Affairs. The memo was sent as NBC's Today Show was set to interview Kelley over three days.

Shirley & Banister Public Affairs is a public relations and government affairs firm founded by Craig Shirley, a longtime Republican activist. Shirley & Banister's client list is a virtual Who's Who of Republican and conservative organizations, including the RNC, the Cato Institute, Citizens United, The Club for Growth, The Federalist Society, The Gingrich Group, The Heritage Foundation, and the National Rifle Association. Shirley's clients have also included discredited right-wing authors Gary Aldrich and Ann Coulter.

— A.F. & M.J.

Posted to the web on Monday September 20, 2004 at 12:34 PM EST

Counted Out

By Anne-Marie Cusac, The Progressive. Posted September 20, 2004.

What if Republican shenanigans tip the election? Many members of the media are looking at the dangers voting machines may pose to the integrity of the national election. Others are wondering whether voters may be disenfranchised by use of faulty felon lists, as happened in Florida in 2000. But there is another danger: Republicans may use a variety of tactics to suppress the vote of racial minorities in swing states. These tactics could determine control of the White House or the Senate.

In August, the Zogby International poll raised the number of battleground states from sixteen to twenty. In those states, notes John Zogby, "the pounding has been relentless."

Zogby was referring to negative ads, but the sanctity of the vote is also taking a pounding. In some states, Republicans are threatening to conduct widespread vote challenges in heavily minority areas. In others, recent events suggest that poll workers may wrongly turn away voters. In still others, new laws passed or enforced by Republicans have erected hurdles to trip up the minority vote. And on Election Day itself, say advocates, Republicans may direct numerous tricks at Democratic districts in an effort to confuse or frighten voters.

Here's a rundown of what's happening in several swing states.

Arizona

On the ballot in Arizona this November is a Republican-authored referendum called Protect Arizona Now or Proposition 200, which would do several things, including requiring proof of citizenship for anyone registering to vote. Steve Gallardo, a Democratic state legislator from Arizona, worries about what some supporters of that initiative might do. "There's a lot of rumors... that they want to stand out in front of polling places and report voters-anyone they feel is here illegally and is voting in our elections," he says. "Our fear is they're going to intimidate Arizona citizens, U.S. citizens who are brown-skinned. Imagine going up to the poll and seeing a man standing there with a gun and asking if you're a citizen. Are you not going to turn away?"

The Arizona attorney general's office acknowledges that it has heard similar rumors.

Does Protect Arizona Now plan to make an appearance at the polls? "I really don't know what we're going to do," says Kathy McKee, the founder of Protect Arizona Now. She says she's worried about fraud.

"In our state, a person can register to vote from a computer in their home, mail in their registration, and they have not shown their face in public, much less their identity," says McKee. Lots of people, she says, are "coming across our borders illegally and getting jobs, which is a felony. Why would they hesitate to vote?" McKee and other Protect Arizona Now members say that voter fraud is already high in the state and is bound to rise in the close election. The voter registration drives targeting the state have piqued their anger. "There are several groups from around the country that have just besieged Arizona," says McKee. "Project Vote Smart, which really disappointed me. The infamous Southwest Voter Registration Project, Moving America Forward, New American Freedom Summer, the Urban Institute. They have been in this state only targeting Hispanic voters. That's the most racist thing I've ever heard."

On September 7, primary day, two gentlemen came to Tucson Precinct 30, says a poll worker there named Ross (who does not want his last name mentioned). "They were both very intimidating and forceful looking," he says. "They said they were checking polls to see if illegal aliens were voting. They said their organization's name was Truth in Action." The men, says Ross, told him they believed that "Mexicans are coming to vote because it's really easy."

"They were making the runs on all kinds of polls," says Aurora Duron, AFL-CIO Tucson coordinator of the My Vote-My Right Campaign.

Russ Dove is editor of tianews.com, the website of Truth in Action, which supports Protect Arizona Now. He says he visited five polls on September 7. As a door-to-door campaigner for Proposition 200, Dove says he heard "verbal evidence from individuals on the street who said, 'Yes, illegal immigrants are voting.' " Dove says he is "bent on discovering" how many are doing so.

On the day I contact Dove, he is a little out of sorts. The AFL-CIO, he says, has accused him of intimidating voters. "Why would someone who supports the Constitution and wants to exercise his rights as a citizen intimidate U.S. citizens?" he asks. "What they're saying is that they know there are illegals voting."

On primary day, Dove says he sported "a black T-shirt with 'U.S. Constitutional Enforcement' on the back" and the image of a badge on the front. "I wear a tool belt," he says. On primary day, that belt carried tools, a camera, and a video recorder. Dove says he used the camera to take "some photographs of the polling places." He used the video recorder to film "all the conversations I had." Dove says that more people want to monitor polls in November. "After the AFL-CIO threw their fit," he says, people started wanting to get involved. "They said, 'Let's get the T-shirts printed up and let's go," he says.

"The only people we will bother are people who are in violation of the law," says Dove. For instance, if he sees "a busload of Hispanic individuals who didn't speak English and who voted," he plans to follow that bus to make sure they aren't voting more than once.

Florida

The state that started it all in 2000 is no stranger to controversy this election. In July, The Miami Herald revealed that the state issued faulty felon purge lists containing the names of 48,000 people it said were ineligible to vote. Among these were 2,100 who actually were eligible voters. Many of these people were African American Democrats. The list of 48,000 also contained only sixty-one Hispanic names. (Because of Florida's large Cuban population, the Hispanic vote in Florida is predominantly Republican. The Florida African American vote, on the other hand, tends to be heavily Democratic.)

In mid-August, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert revealed that the state was investigating get-out-the-vote drives among blacks in Orlando by sending armed police officers into the homes of citizens who had filed absentee ballots. Most of these citizens were African American, and many were elderly.

And in Florida's late August primary, representatives from People for the American Way saw poll workers turn back registered voters who neglected to bring their IDs. "Under Florida law," noted The New York Times, "registered voters can vote without showing identification."

But there's a lot more going on in the state, according to Alma Gonzalez, spokeswoman for the Voter Protection Coalition in Florida and special counsel to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. "We keep hoping that they've learned from 2000," but early indications are that they haven't, she says. "When some of our members have gone to early voting or to register to vote, they're being asked if they're citizens of the United States." Gonzalez says she has heard from "about half a dozen people, all of them in South Florida," who approached the polls as part of the early election only to be asked their citizenship. And it's not poll watchers who are asking, says Gonzalez. It's "the poll workers, the duly deputized election officials."

Registered voters, Gonzalez points out, have already attested to their citizenship in their registration forms. "They cannot ask you your citizenship at the polling place. It's unlawful," says Gonzalez. "When that question is asked of you" based on your skin color or the fact that you have an accent, "it is not intended to ensure that you're complying with the law. It's intended to suppress voters." And, even though public attention to the faulty felon voter purge lists led the Florida government to say belatedly that it would not use them this time, the word has traveled slowly. "We are still getting reports from people when they go to vote in different parts of the state," says Gonzalez. "Apparently, there are still inaccuracies."

Then there's the provisional ballot crisis. In Florida in 2000, many people who attempted to vote found that they were not on the rolls, even though they had registered. This is the reasoning behind the provisional ballot requirement in the federal Help America Vote Act. If a voter is wrongly removed from the rolls in the future, he or she should be able to file a provisional ballot. Most states interpret this part of the act as allowing provisional ballots as long as the voter files them in the correct county. Florida is a little different. Rather than the correct county, voters must submit their provisional ballots to the correct precinct. "This will disenfranchise thousands and thousands of voters," says Gonzalez.

So the AFL-CIO is suing Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood, along with two election supervisors from areas of Florida that have seen some of the largest population increases, and some of the most marked changes in precinct lines. The precinct requirements "impermissibly abridge the right to vote," the AFL says.

How intentional is all this on the part of Florida officials? "They're all intentional," Gonzalez says. "People didn't do these things in their sleep." Then she qualifies the point, saying the real question is, are they intentionally trying to suppress voter turnout? "I'm not going to make that allegation," she says. "I know what the result is." And, she points out, under the Voting Rights Act, the issue is not whether you intended to disenfranchise people, but what is the result. "These election schemes and the conduct of these officials are undermining" the rights of people to vote.

Michigan

Michigan is the state that Jon Greenbaum, director of the Voting Rights Project for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, mentions as a potential trouble spot. On July 16, the Detroit Free Press quoted John Pappageorge, a Republican state representative from Troy, Michigan, who said, "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election cycle." Detroit is 83 percent African American.

Pappageorge later told the Associated Press that he was not advocating suppression of the black vote but that "you get it [the Detroit vote] down with a good message."

Cecelie Counts, AFL-CIO director of civil, human, and women's rights, says she thinks Pappageorge was acknowledging the truth the first time around. "That is the political reality in most of these swing states," she says. Democrats "can't win Ohio or Michigan or Pennsylvania without the African American vote, without a tremendous African American vote." And, she says, by using census numbers, Republican strategists "can pinpoint places" where minority voters are likely to influence an election. "They know it's Detroit. They know it's Kansas City and St. Louis. They know it's Las Vegas."

In late April, the Republican Party of Michigan announced that it hoped to recruit 1,000 poll watchers to monitor elections. The party told the Detroit Free Press that it planned to assign 300 of those to Oakland County, home of Pontiac, which is heavily minority. Why? The Republicans claimed that they had evidence that some people there had voted up to four times under different names. But even Republican Oakland County Clerk G. William Caddell doubted the allegation. "Last night was the first I'd heard of any problems," Caddell told the paper. "I want to be a good party person, but I haven't heard about this, and none of my local clerks have reported problems."

"We know there is going to be an aggressive effort to have poll watchers" across the country, including in Pontiac, says Greenbaum. "A poll watcher can be very intimidating." He says poll workers can confront voters with questions like, "What's your name?" or "What are you doing here?" or imply that the voters shouldn't be voting.

At issue is whether the poll watchers "are making accusations" that are based on real reasons or whether they're trying to slow down the lines "and impede voters, so less polling gets done," says Greenbaum.

Michigan is no stranger to aggressive poll watchers. In the 1999 election, a group calling itself Citizens for a Better Hamtramck went to the polling centers in Hamtramck, Michigan, and approached people who appeared to be Arab. "As people were standing outside waiting to vote, this group took it upon itself to ask people to prove they were citizens," says Laila Al-Qatami, communications director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. "They were asking voters to step aside and say an oath of citizenship, even if they were capable of producing a U.S. passport." The group, says Al-Qatami, humiliated people, prohibited people from entering and voting and broke the law. The U.S. government filed a lawsuit that claimed violations of the Voting Rights Act. As part of an agreement resolving the suit, the U.S. Justice Department sent election monitors to Hamtramck between 2000 and 2003.

Missouri

The secretary of state of Missouri, Matt Blunt, is running for governor on the Republican Party ticket. "This gentleman has a vested interest in suppressing the black voter turnout in this state," says John Hickey, executive director of the Missouri Progressive Vote Coalition.

"That is a ridiculous statement," says Spence Jackson, spokesperson for Blunt. "It is directly because of Matt Blunt's leadership that we have provisional balloting in our state." Because of Blunt, says Jackson, "thousands of voters have been given the opportunity to vote when they otherwise would not have had it." Provisional ballots allow voters who lack IDs, or whose names don't appear on the rolls, to cast votes. But the version Blunt introduced, concedes Jackson, requires that voters file any provisional ballots in the correct precinct-a demand that prompted a lawsuit from the Democratic Party and some citizens of Kansas City.

The suit claims that the new federal Help America Vote Act supersedes the older state law. It also alleges that toll-free help lines were so jammed during the August primary that many voters were unable to find out their correct polling site.

Other ominous problems cropped up that day. "In Democratic districts, which also happened to be predominantly African American, there were polls that opened late, like 10 a.m. instead of 7 a.m., which is a real problem for working people," says Counts of the AFL-CIO. "The hours weren't extended during the evening." Counts also says that "people who showed up without ID were turned away from the polls and not given /provisional ballots," even though that's what the law required.

The ID requirement, says Hickey, is a new law aimed at the black vote. It requires voters "to present the picture ID, unless the election official recognizes you." Where are they going to recognize you? asks Hickey. In small towns and rural areas, which, he points out, are majority white. In urban areas, says Hickey, it's more likely that poll workers won't recognize you, especially in areas that are poor and where people move frequently. "That means you need a picture ID in the city and not the country. The city's black. The country's white."

The new law amounts to "a sophisticated effort to suppress the vote," says Hickey. And he says the Republicans have given thought to this strategy. "OK, if we can shave off 1,000 black votes here and 500 black votes there, that's how" we're going to win. "It is disproportionately excluding poor and minority voters, and that is exactly why the Republicans passed that law after they took over the legislature."

Nevada

In late August, Gary Peck, executive director of the ACLU of Nevada, met with the registrars from the Reno and Las Vegas areas. Peck says the registrar of Washoe County, which includes Reno, "noted that he had received calls" from people identifying themselves as members of the Republican Party. These Republicans, according to Peck, said "they intended to be out at polling places to challenge voters."

The registrar of Washoe County is Daniel Burk. "An official of the Republican Party" came to his office one day with a small group, he says. The official asked how to launch a "full-scale program for challenging voters who come to the polls." Burk says he informed the Republicans that vote challenges should be used narrowly, when one voter with personal knowledge of another calls attention to a problem.

"One said, 'Well, we were thinking of a wider scale use of it. We were thinking of challenging lots of voters,' " says Burk. It was the way they looked at each other, he says. "I began to wonder, what are they up to? I just told them I wouldn't tolerate it. The process isn't designed for one party challenging another."

Burk worked as a registrar in Oregon for eighteen years before he came to his position in Nevada seven years ago. "I have never in all those twenty-five years had a person challenge another person," he says.

The revelations, says Peck, are "consistent with reports people are getting all around the country. Republicans have a national strategy of going out and challenging voters" come November 2. "Our concerns are utterly nonpartisan," says Peck. "It's the integrity and fairness of the election." Although Nevada law does allow for voter challenges when a challenger has personal information about a voter's citizenship or place of residence, "it becomes problematic when people are using this strategically, in a partisan way." For instance, he says, "it would certainly be improper if they picked out the names of Latinos."

Juventino Camarena, a field representative for the Painters Union, is registering voters and keeping an eye out on voter protection issues as part of the My Vote-My Right campaign of the AFL-CIO. He is worried. "The people have been thinking what happened in Florida couldn't happen in Nevada," Camarena says. "Now, we're seeing little tactics here and little tactics there. There are all kinds of ways to confuse a person so bad that he takes it to his heart that it's so difficult, and I'm doing it for what? I've seen it in Mexico since I was a little kid. That's why I took it to heart to stop it. They're suppressing the right of the voter."

New Mexico

In August, a group comprised mostly of Republicans filed a suit claiming that people who were registering for the first time through a third party voter registration group, such as ACORN, should have to show IDs when they voted. The group said it was worried about voter fraud. Democrats said the Republicans were trying to disenfranchise voters.

"The plaintiffs are not able to demonstrate any fraud whatsoever," Luis Stelzner, an attorney, said while arguing against the ID requirement, according to the Associated Press. "The only thing we've heard from them is a vague fear of fraud." (Two plaintiffs in the suit who said that they were concerned about voter registration fraud admitted that they knew of no instances of the crime.) On September 7, Robert Thompson, a state district judge, refused to issue an injunction to force people to show IDs at the polls. "The eleventh-hour request by the plaintiffs creates a risk of substantially disrupting the public voting process, which far outweighs any potential harm to the plaintiffs," wrote Thompson in his decision.

The fraud allegations may be the least of the problems. Reyna Juarez, the administrative director of Revisioning New Mexico, a social justice organization connected to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, says that in 2000 her organization received reports that the immigration patrol showed up near some New Mexican polling sites. "Down south, they have the migra trucks that sit outside and scare people away," she says. "Not necessarily right outside the polls but in the neighborhood of the polls, so you see these enormous lime-green trucks."

South Dakota

South Dakota is hardly a swing state in the common sense, since George W. Bush is set to win here by a landslide. But the state is seeing a rough Senatorial race. The Republicans have targeted Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle for removal. And one tool is a new law that requires all voters to show ID at the polls and get all absentee ballots notarized.

During the 2002 election, Democratic Senator Tim Johnson won his seat by only 524 votes. He had strong Native American support. Republicans weren't happy about that. "In South Dakota, the common tactic is to allege voter fraud," particularly when the Democrats win, says Bryan Sells, staff attorney with the ACLU Voting Rights Project. "Usually it's called 'Indian voter fraud.' In fact, I can't recall a case of someone alleging 'non-Indian voter fraud.' The idea is, whether true or not, you create the sense" that Native American voters are not to be trusted.

After investigating fifty charges of fraud following that 2002 election, State Attorney General Mark Barnett, a Republican, said, "There was no widespread fraud and the election results are valid. No one stole the election."

Nonetheless, Republicans introduced legislation that Sells characterizes as "voter suppression." The legislation requires South Dakotans to show a picture ID in order to vote or else write up an affidavit. And, if they vote by absentee ballot, they need to get it notarized. The legislation, he says, will make it "harder to vote at the polls, harder to register, and harder to vote by absentee ballot," especially for people on reservations. "I don't know if you've ever been to a reservation, but there aren't a lot of notaries around."

Among Native Americans in South Dakota, there is a widespread belief that the legislation is aimed at them. "They decided, we got to do something to slow down the Indian vote," says Alfred Bone Shirt, a plaintiff in one of the five recent voting rights lawsuits the ACLU has filed in the state. "The bottom line of it all is racism." Jesse Clausen, who has been active in many voter registration drives, puts it another way. "In the summer of 2003, the South Dakota State Senate passed new laws to keep Native American people from voting," Clausen says. "Indian people living in poverty might have higher priority on other things than spending $8 to get their driver's license." Clausen points out that many people on the reservations don't have cars.

During a special election held on June 1, the effect of the new law on the Native American vote started to show. "People would go in and say, 'Well, I don't have an ID,' and [poll workers] would let it be known that if they didn't have an ID, they should turn around and leave," says Clausen.

Poll workers weren't supposed to do that. According to the law, they were supposed to give voters who lacked IDs an affidavit. Once signed, the affidavit would allow people to vote. Jason Schulte, executive director of the Democratic Party of South Dakota, says that, "mostly on or near reservations," people who forgot to bring their IDs "were not told about the affidavit scenario." Daschle himself says he "heard from countless voters who experienced difficulty when attempting to vote."

"Indians were disproportionately affected by the ID requirement," says Sells, adding that there were just more hurdles for Native Americans to leap.

Is this intentional on the part of the Republicans? Sells doesn't hesitate. "Yeah," he says. "In South Dakota, anyway. I don't for a minute suggest that Republicans have the suppression market cornered, but that's how it operates in South Dakota."

Additional efforts to suppress the vote are bound to happen in the last week of the campaign and on Election Day itself. Then, it will be almost impossible to remedy the situation.

Jim Gardner, communications director for the Missouri Democratic Party, describes some of the tactics that he says have happened in his state during past elections: "Videotaping people as they're coming into the polling place. Parking near a polling place in a Crown Victoria with a couple of guys in dark suits.... A whisper campaign that everyone trying to vote who has outstanding traffic tickets will be arrested." Gardner, who says the party had reports of such occurrences in 2000, says the Missouri Democrats have also heard stories in past elections of people handing out flyers in Democratic precincts that say, "Don't forget to vote on Wednesday, November 4," when the election is Tuesday, November 3.

If groups start trying to suppress the vote a month out from the election, says Greenbaum of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, "it gives people like us plenty of opportunity to react." Whereas, if voter suppression happens just before or the day of the election, "it's actually more likely to be effective." Greenbaum's organization faxed me a series of signs that have appeared in Democratic precincts on or near election day. One sign, which appeared in Baltimore in 2002, is entirely in capital letters. "URGENT NOTICE," it reads. "COME OUT TO VOTE ON NOVEMBER 6th. BEFORE YOU COME TO VOTE MAKE SURE YOU PAY YOUR

- PARKING TICKETS

- MOTOR VEHICLE TICKETS

- OVERDUE RENT

AND MOST IMPORTANT

ANY WARRANTS"

A second sign, this one from 1996, uses a tiny font to inform prospective voters that they may get into trouble when they walk into the booth. "Thanks to advances in computer technology Voting Machines can now be equipped with computers inside. The computers can be connected to a phone line to Federal State, and Local government agencies to instantly check if a voter is:

A NON-CITIZEN

Wanted on Criminal or Traffic Warrants or Parole or Probation violations
Is behind on child support payments
Is cheating on Welfare, Food Stamps, AFDC, Section 8 or Medicaid by earning money 'off the books'
Has defaulted on government-backed student loans
Has failed to file income taxes for two or more years."

In late August, People for the American Way and the NAACP released a report entitled, "The Long Shadow of Jim Crow: Voter Intimidation and Suppression in America Today." "In every national American election since Reconstruction, every election since the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965, voters-particularly African American voters and other minorities-have faced calculated and determined efforts at intimidation and suppression," says the report. However, it describes recent voter suppression tactics as "more subtle, cynical, and creative" than "the poll taxes, literacy tests, and physical violence of the Jim Crow era."

Jim Crow is still casting a very long shadow.

Anne-Marie Cusac is an investigative reporter at The Progressive.

Mike's Words : Mike's Message
Monday, September 20th, 2004
Put Away Your Hankies...a message from Michael Moore

9/20/04

Dear Friends,

Enough of the handwringing! Enough of the doomsaying! Do I have to come there and personally calm you down? Stop with all the defeatism, OK? Bush IS a goner -- IF we all just quit our whining and bellyaching and stop shaking like a bunch of nervous ninnies. Geez, this is embarrassing! The Republicans are laughing at us. Do you ever see them cry, "Oh, it's all over! We are finished! Bush can't win! Waaaaaa!"

Hell no. It's never over for them until the last ballot is shredded. They are never finished -- they just keeping moving forward like sharks that never sleep, always pushing, pulling, kicking, blocking, lying.

They are relentless and that is why we secretly admire them -- they just simply never, ever give up. Only 30% of the country calls itself "Republican," yet the Republicans own it all -- the White House, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court and the majority of the governorships. How do you think they've been able to pull that off considering they are a minority? It's because they eat you and me and every other liberal for breakfast and then spend the rest of the day wreaking havoc on the planet.

Look at us -- what a bunch of crybabies. Bush gets a bounce after his convention and you would have thought the Germans had run through Poland again. The Bushies are coming, the Bushies are coming! Yes, they caught Kerry asleep on the Swift Boat thing. Yes, they found the frequency in Dan Rather and ran with it. Suddenly it's like, "THE END IS NEAR! THE SKY IS FALLING!"

No, it is not. If I hear one more person tell me how lousy a candidate Kerry is and how he can't win... Dammit, of COURSE he's a lousy candidate -- he's a Democrat, for heavens sake! That party is so pathetic, they even lose the elections they win! What were you expecting, Bruce Springsteen heading up the ticket? Bruce would make a helluva president, but guys like him don't run -- and neither do you or I. People like Kerry run.

Yes, OF COURSE any of us would have run a better, smarter, kick-ass campaign. Of course we would have smacked each and every one of those phony swifty boaty bastards down. But WE are not running for president -- Kerry is. So quit complaining and work with what we have. Oprah just gave 300 women a... Pontiac! Did you see any of them frowning and moaning and screaming, "Oh God, NOT a friggin' Pontiac!" Of course not, they were happy. The Pontiacs all had four wheels, an engine and a gas pedal. You want more than that, well, I can't help you. I had a Pontiac once and it lasted a good year. And it was a VERY good year.

My friends, it is time for a reality check.

1. The polls are wrong. They are all over the map like diarrhea. On Friday, one poll had Bush 13 points ahead -- and another poll had them both tied. There are three reasons why the polls are b.s.: One, they are polling "likely voters." "Likely" means those who have consistently voted in the past few elections. So that cuts out young people who are voting for the first time and a ton of non-voters who are definitely going to vote in THIS election. Second, they are not polling people who use their cell phone as their primary phone. Again, that means they are not talking to young people. Finally, most of the polls are weighted with too many Republicans, as pollster John Zogby revealed last week. You are being snookered if you believe any of these polls.

2. Kerry has brought in the Clinton A-team. Instead of shunning Clinton (as Gore did), Kerry has decided to not make that mistake.

3. Traveling around the country, as I've been doing, I gotta tell ya, there is a hell of a lot of unrest out there. Much of it is not being captured by the mainstream press. But it is simmering and it is real. Do not let those well-produced Bush rallies of angry white people scare you. Turn off the TV! (Except Jon Stewart and Bill Moyers -- everything else is just a sugar-coated lie).

4. Conventional wisdom says if the election is decided on "9/11" (the fear of terrorism), Bush wins. But if it is decided on the job we are doing in Iraq, then Bush loses. And folks, that "job," you might have noticed, has descended into the third level of a hell we used to call Vietnam. There is no way out. It is a full-blown mess of a quagmire and the body bags will sadly only mount higher. Regardless of what Kerry meant by his original war vote, he ain't the one who sent those kids to their deaths -- and Mr. and Mrs. Middle America knows it. Had Bush bothered to show up when he was in the "service" he might have somewhat of a clue as to how to recognize an immoral war that cannot be "won." All he has delivered to Iraq was that plasticized turkey last Thanksgiving. It is this failure of monumental proportions that is going to cook his goose come this November.

So, do not despair. All is not over. Far from it. The Bush people need you to believe that it is over. They need you to slump back into your easy chair and feel that sick pain in your gut as you contemplate another four years of George W. Bush. They need you to wish we had a candidate who didn't windsurf and who was just as smart as we were when WE knew Bush was lying about WMD and Saddam planning 9/11. It's like Karl Rove is hypnotizing you -- "Kerry voted for the war...Kerry voted for the war...Kerrrrrryyy vooootted fooooor theeee warrrrrrrrrr..."

Yes...Yes...Yesssss....He did! HE DID! No sense in fighting now...what I need is sleep...sleeep...sleeeeeeppppp...

WAKE UP! The majority are with us! More than half of all Americans are pro-choice, want stronger environmental laws, are appalled that assault weapons are back on the street -- and 54% now believe the war is wrong. YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO CONVINCE THEM OF ANY OF THIS -- YOU JUST HAVE TO GIVE THEM A RAY OF HOPE AND A RIDE TO THE POLLS. CAN YOU DO THAT? WILL YOU DO THAT?

Just for me, please? Buck up. The country is almost back in our hands. Not another negative word until Nov. 3rd! Then you can bitch all you want about how you wish Kerry was still that long-haired kid who once had the courage to stand up for something. Personally, I think that kid is still inside him. Instead of the wailing and gnashing of your teeth, why not hold out a hand to him and help the inner soldier/protester come out and defeat the forces of evil we now so desperately face. Do we have any other choice?

Yours,

Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
mmflint@aol.com

Countdown to Electoral Uprising -- 43 Days to Go -- Youth vote, Al Qaeda's endorsement, aWOL, Iraq, Global Warming

There are 43 days to go until the national referendum on the CREDIBILITY, COMPETENCE and CHARACTER of the _resident and the VICE _resident. Sadly, the US regimestream news media, in particular, the major network and cable news organizations, as well as the WASHPS and the NYTwits, are not just failing to provide you with substantive coverage and insightful commentary, they are COMPLICIT, they are full partners in a Triad of shared special interest (oil, weapons, media, pharmaceuticals, tobacco, etc.) along with the Bush Cabal and its wholly-owned-subsidiary-formerly-known-as-tahe-Republican-Party, they are carrying Rove's filthy water...Here are five very important LNS selections. Please read them, and share them with others. There is an Electoral Uprising coming in November. Please vote and encourage others to vote. There are two kinds of polls, the cooked ones they broadcast to cultivate despair, disbelief and disinformation among us, and the real ones they study in their war room. The real ones are making them very nervous. Please remember that the US regimstream news media does not want to inform you about this election or the choice it offers you, it wants to DISinform you...There is an Electoral Uprising coming at the Ballot Box in 43 days..."Fear no darkness."

Martha Irvine, Associated Press: Officials in several other battleground states — New Mexico, Ohio and Florida among them — see clear signs that more young people are interested in this election. And some election experts believe that polls of "likely voters" often miss young people because the population is so mobile...
In Wisconsin, the New Voters Project claims to have registered more than 109,000 young people — numbers election officials say they have "no reason to doubt."
Officials at Rock the Vote — a nationwide campaign aimed at young people — say they expect registration numbers to surge as deadlines in many states approach. In the first two weeks of September alone, more than 163,000 people filled out and downloaded registration forms from Rock the Vote's Web site. Hans Riemer, the organization's Washington, D.C., director, says that in the past week as many as 20,000 people a day used the site to register.

Reuters: Britain’s ambassador to Italy described President Bush as “the best recruiting sergeant” for al-Qaida, Italian media reported on Monday.
The comment, made at a closed-door conference at the weekend, was denounced by one leading Italian newspaper editor, who issued an open letter snubbing the veteran ambassador, Sir Ivor Roberts.
Roberts was quoted as telling an annual Anglo-Italian gathering in Tuscany, “If anyone is ready to celebrate the eventual re-election of Bush, it’s al-Qaida.”
Corriere della Sera newspaper said Roberts also told the meeting of British and Italian policy-makers, “Bush is al-Qaida’s best recruiting sergeant.”

Sen. John Edwards (D-NC), www.johnkerry.com: “One clear sign of weakness and failed leadership is when a politician stoops to the politics of fear. In the last twenty-four hours Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House, has joined the fear mongering choir. Last night, he said something to the effect that Al Qaeda wants John Kerry to be President of the United States. Let me say this in the simplest possible terms: when John Kerry is President of the United States, we will find Al Qaeda where they are and crush them before they can do damage to the American people.
“Over and over, this president and his cronies have taken one of our nation’s greatest tragedies and used it as part of a cheap political ploy. With their words, they seek to divide us and they dishonor the fallen. They want to scare the American people but they will pay a price in November.
“None of us should be surprised by this, because just two or three weeks ago we heard what Dick Cheney said about this. He said that if you don't vote for him and George Bush come November and there is another terrorist attack, then it's your fault.
“The truth is that this statement by Dick Cheney was not an accident. It was calculated and it was calculated to divide us on one of the most critical issues to our country, keeping the American people safe and secure. It was un-American. The President of the United States should say it was un-American.”

James Moore, www.buzzflash.com: The available evidence is still pointing in the direction of deceit and the smoke machine fueled by the CBS memos cannot hide that fact. The president continues to refuse to allow uncontrolled access to his microfilmed documents at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis or the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver and the hard copy file is incomplete. People who know the truth about the president’s time in the Texas Air National Guard are angry that the cover up of his failings has been so effective. And now there are suspicions that the individuals who have long sought after the truth may have succumbed to the power of fighting a well-told lie with another; not so well-told. If this has happened, much more than just CBS’ future is at risk.
Reports that one of the controversial documents was faxed from a Kinko’s in Abilene are interpreted as evidence of the involvement of Lt. Col. (Ret.) Bill Burkett. Burkett, who has never concealed his anger at Mr. Bush, lives less than a half hour from the Kinko’s location. After appearing with me for an interview on Real Time with Bill Maher, Burkett, his wife, and a colleague of mine discussed politics over dinner. I had been talking to Burkett for over a year, gathering information and trying to corroborate a story he had told me and one other reporter about a purging of George W. Bush’s hard copy file at the Texas National Guard headquarters on Camp Mabry in Austin. Neither then, nor now, did Burkett attempt to hide his disdain for President Bush.
“I don’t know how he’s doing this,” Burkett said. “He says whatever he wants. It has nothing to do with the truth. And people are letting him get away with it. He’s just lying. Over and over again. About his past. About Iraq. You name it."
CBS and Rather may have to admit mistakes. And then make corrections. Why don’t we demand the same thing of our president? Maybe there are no big lies and small lies. There are just lies. And they all must be atoned for. We know the ones that belong to George W. Bush. And if we don’t hold him accountable, eventually, we the people will end up paying for his debts and his sins.

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta): With us today is a remarkable group of women who lost loved ones on September 11th … and whose support I am honored to have. Not only did they suffer an unbearable loss – they helped us learn the lessons of that terrible time by insisting on the creation of the 9/11 Commission. I ask them to stand. And I thank them on behalf of our country -- and I pledge to them and to you that I will implement the 9-11 recommendations...
In June, the President declared, “The Iraqi people have their country back.” Just last week, he told us: “This country is headed toward democracy… Freedom is on the march.”
But the administration’s own official intelligence estimate, given to the President last July, tells a very different story.
According to press reports, the intelligence estimate totally contradicts what the President is saying to the American people.
So do the facts on the ground...
The first and most fundamental mistake was the President’s failure to tell the truth to the American people.
He failed to tell the truth about the rationale for going to war. And he failed to tell the truth about the burden this war would impose on our soldiers and our citizens.
By one count, the President offered 23 different rationales for this war. If his purpose was to confuse and mislead the American people, he succeeded.
His two main rationales – weapons of mass destruction and the Al Qaeda/September 11 connection – have been proved false… by the President’s own weapons inspectors… and by the 9/11 Commission. Just last week, Secretary of State Powell acknowledged the facts. Only Vice President Cheney still insists that the earth is flat.
The President also failed to level with the American people about what it would take to prevail in Iraq.
He didn’t tell us that well over 100,000 troops would be needed, for years, not months. He didn’t tell us that he wouldn’t take the time to assemble a broad and strong coalition of allies. He didn’t tell us that the cost would exceed $200 billion. He didn’t tell us that even after paying such a heavy price, success was far from assured...
This President’s failure to tell the truth to us before the war has been exceeded by fundamental errors of judgment during and after the war.
The President now admits to “miscalculations” in Iraq.
That is one of the greatest understatements in recent American history. His were not the equivalent of accounting errors. They were colossal failures of judgment – and judgment is what we look for in a president.
This is all the more stunning because we’re not talking about 20/20 hindsight. Before the war, before he chose to go to war, bi-partisan Congressional hearings… major outside studies… and even some in the administration itself… predicted virtually every problem we now face in Iraq.
This President was in denial. He hitched his wagon to the ideologues who surround him, filtering out those who disagreed, including leaders of his own party and the uniformed military. The result is a long litany of misjudgments with terrible consequences.
The administration told us we’d be greeted as liberators. They were wrong.
They told us not to worry about looting or the sorry state of Iraq’s infrastructure. They were wrong.
They told us we had enough troops to provide security and stability, defeat the insurgents, guard the borders and secure the arms depots. They were wrong.
They told us we could rely on exiles like Ahmed Chalabi to build political legitimacy. They were wrong.
They told us we would quickly restore an Iraqi civil service to run the country and a police force and army to secure it. They were wrong.
In Iraq, this administration has consistently over-promised and under-performed. This policy has been plagued by a lack of planning, an absence of candor, arrogance and outright incompetence. And the President has held no one accountable, including himself.
In fact, the only officials who lost their jobs over Iraq were the ones who told the truth.
On May 1 of last year, President Bush stood in front of a now infamous banner that read “Mission Accomplished.” He declared to the American people: “In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” In fact, the worst part of the war was just beginning, with the greatest number of American casualties still to come. The president misled, miscalculated, and mismanaged every aspect of this undertaking and he has made the achievement of our objective – a stable Iraq, secure within its borders, with a representative government, harder to achieve.
In Iraq, this administration’s record is filled with bad predictions, inaccurate cost estimates, deceptive statements and errors of judgment of historic proportions.
At every critical juncture in Iraq, and in the war on terrorism, the President has made the wrong choice. I have a plan to make America stronger.
The President often says that in a post 9-11 world, we can’t hesitate to act. I agree. But we should not act just for the sake of acting. I believe we have to act wisely and responsibly.
George Bush has no strategy for Iraq. I do.

Baltimore Sun: An International group of scientists studying global warming predicted in 2001 a sharp increase in melting of glaciers and polar ice, heat waves and related deaths, severe storms and flooding, and drought and wildfires, as well as substantially altered patterns of species migration.
Three years later, it can be reported all of that and more has happened - with stunning and record speed. The latest fearful evidence storming in from the Gulf of Mexico goes by the name of Ivan, the fourth major hurricane of a season that usually doesn't produce so many and still has 21Ú2 months to go.
Japan has been hit this year by seven typhoons, the most since record-keeping began in 1951, and the worst floods in decades have killed more than 400 people in China. In Europe, 19,000 people succumbed last year to a heat wave that was one of the deadliest of the decade.
This is only the beginning, experts agree. Even those who contend climate change is a natural cyclical phenomenon expect the cycle to last decades or more.

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!)

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040920/ap_on_el_pr/young_voters_battleground_2

More Young People Registering to Vote

Mon Sep 20, 7:49 AM ET

By MARTHA IRVINE, AP National Writer

Voter registration drives aimed at young people are turning 18- to 24-year-olds into an important variable in the presidential election, especially in decisive battleground states such as Michigan — where nearly 100,000 young people have registered in recent months — and Wisconsin, where the numbers are even higher.

They are the nation's newest swing voters, with polls showing their support for the major candidates has vacillated in recent months. A Harvard University poll found that, in a five-month period, 19 percent of young potential voters changed their minds about whom they'd support.

"It's a big population of fluid voters, and they're largely unknown," says Ivan Frishberg, outreach and communications coordinator for the nonprofit New Voters Project, which has registered tens of thousands of young people across the country.

Take Kristin Wilson, a 23-year-old in Perrysburg, Ohio, and her 18-year-old sister, Kellyn, a freshman at Ohio State University. Both have registered to vote, but neither identifies as Republican or Democrat and both are taking their time deciding who to vote for.

"I think people underestimate people our age," Kellyn says. "And they shouldn't."

The candidates have made some attempts to reach out to college students and other young people. The Bush campaign has a Web log that includes "Barbara and Jenna's journal," detailing the president's daughters' campaign exploits. Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites), who made a campus tour last spring, recently appeared on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show."

And the political parties are using volunteers and paid canvassers to register young voters and get them to the polls. But the attempts can sometimes fall flat.

"Some of it feels very awkward to young people — like the candidates are trying too hard," says Jane Eisner, author of the new book "Taking Back the Vote: Getting American Youth Involved in Our Democracy."

Other times, young people feel ignored, says Stephen Lucas, a high school junior in Leechburg, Pa.

"I haven't heard any serious talk about college tuition, or even people our age mentioned," says Lucas, who works with a group called Freedom's Answer to get upperclassmen interested in voting.

It's still anybody's guess how many young people have registered in his state, another thought to be a toss-up. Michigan is one of the few that has compiled registration numbers by age.

Officials in several other battleground states — New Mexico, Ohio and Florida among them — see clear signs that more young people are interested in this election. And some election experts believe that polls of "likely voters" often miss young people because the population is so mobile.

In Wisconsin, the New Voters Project claims to have registered more than 109,000 young people — numbers election officials say they have "no reason to doubt."

"It's been an incredible undertaking," says Kevin Kennedy, executive director of the State Board of Elections in Wisconsin, a state Al Gore (news - web sites) won by less than 6,000 votes in 2000.

Officials at Rock the Vote — a nationwide campaign aimed at young people — say they expect registration numbers to surge as deadlines in many states approach. In the first two weeks of September alone, more than 163,000 people filled out and downloaded registration forms from Rock the Vote's Web site. Hans Riemer, the organization's Washington, D.C., director, says that in the past week as many as 20,000 people a day used the site to register.

At that rate, he says Rock the Vote's registration numbers may surpass those from 1992 — a year when young voter turnout topped 50 percent for the first and only time since 1972.

One political scientist says he's particularly interested to see what happens this time in Minnesota, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, where voters can register on Election Day. Data has shown that young people are particularly likely to take advantage of same-day registration.

"It leaves the door open for a surprising outcome," says Donald Green, a political scientist at Yale University and co-author of "Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout."

Stephanie Camargo, a recent graduate of the University of Florida who opted not to vote in 2000, says she'll be one of those young people who gets to the polls Nov. 2. She has many motivators — from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the war in Iraq (news - web sites) (where she has a cousin fighting), to peers who are still looking for jobs.

"Before I thought of politics as a game," says Camargo, 22, who's registered in Broward County, Fla. "Now I realize you have to play the game if you want to make a difference."

___

On the Net:

http://www.rockthevote.org

http://www.freedomsanswer.org

___

Martha Irvine is a national writer specializing in coverage of people in their 20s and younger. She can be reached at mirvine(at)ap.org

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6052073/

MSNBC.com
U.K. envoy: Bush the best recruiter for al-Qaida
Italian media report ambassador's remarks at private conference

Reuters
Updated: 7:22 a.m. ET Sept. 20, 2004

ROME - Britain’s ambassador to Italy described President Bush as “the best recruiting sergeant” for al-Qaida, Italian media reported on Monday.

The comment, made at a closed-door conference at the weekend, was denounced by one leading Italian newspaper editor, who issued an open letter snubbing the veteran ambassador, Sir Ivor Roberts.

Roberts was quoted as telling an annual Anglo-Italian gathering in Tuscany, “If anyone is ready to celebrate the eventual re-election of Bush, it’s al-Qaida.”

Corriere della Sera newspaper said Roberts also told the meeting of British and Italian policy-makers, “Bush is al-Qaida’s best recruiting sergeant.”

The British embassy in Rome declined to comment about the remarks, saying the Tuscan conference had been covered by the so-called Chatham House Rules, which means that anything said by delegates should remain off the record.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair along with Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi have been Bush’s strongest allies in Europe.

Conservative furor
Giuliano Ferrara, outspoken editor of the conservative Il Foglio broadsheet, wrote an open letter saying he would boycott a previously scheduled dinner with the ambassador on Monday.

“The dinner unfortunately would be a complete waste of time and a grotesque hypocrisy,” he said.

Ferrara added that he would prefer to have supper with the French ambassador to Italy “who loyally represents in Rome Mr. Jacques Chirac.”

Ferrara is a fervent supporter of the U.S.-led war on Iraq.

Roberts was British ambassador to Yugoslavia in the mid-1990s, helping negotiations between the international community and Yugoslav authorities. He then served as British ambassador to Ireland before his Italian posting.

Copyright 2004 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6052073/

Statement by John Edwards on Republican Fear Mongering
Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards today made the following statement in response to Dennis Hastert’s comments last night that Al Qaeda wants John Kerry to be elected:

“One clear sign of weakness and failed leadership is when a politician stoops to the politics of fear. In the last twenty-four hours Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House, has joined the fear mongering choir. Last night, he said something to the effect that Al Qaeda wants John Kerry to be President of the United States. Let me say this in the simplest possible terms: when John Kerry is President of the United States, we will find Al Qaeda where they are and crush them before they can do damage to the American people.

“Over and over, this president and his cronies have taken one of our nation’s greatest tragedies and used it as part of a cheap political ploy. With their words, they seek to divide us and they dishonor the fallen. They want to scare the American people but they will pay a price in November.

“None of us should be surprised by this, because just two or three weeks ago we heard what Dick Cheney said about this. He said that if you don't vote for him and George Bush come November and there is another terrorist attack, then it's your fault.

“The truth is that this statement by Dick Cheney was not an accident. It was calculated and it was calculated to divide us on one of the most critical issues to our country, keeping the American people safe and secure. It was un-American. The President of the United States should say it was un-American.”

http://blog.johnkerry.com/rapidresponse/

Posted on September 19, 2004 at 03:49 PM
Election 2004 | Entry link | Comments (0)

Statement from John Edwards on Despicable Republican Tactics
Senator John Edwards issued the following statement today based on reports that the Republican National Committee sent campaign mail into West Virginia claiming that the Bible will be banned if Democrats are elected in November:

“Republicans always say they want to have a values debate but lying and spreading hate were not the values I learned growing up in a small town in North Carolina where the Bible was the most important book my home. George Bush and Dick Cheney should be appalled by these despicable mailings. They should condemn this practice immediately and tell everyone associated with their campaign to never use tactics like this again. The American people deserve better.”

Posted on September 18, 2004 at 03:58 PM

http://www.buzzflash.com/buzzscripts/buzz.dll/sub2

BUZZFLASH REPORT Monday September 20, 2004 at 9:27:14 AM

James C. Moore, Co-Author of "Bush's Brain" and an Expert on Karl Rove and Bush's National Guard Lies, Speculates on the CBS Memos. Are They True Fabrications?
A BuzzFlash Exclusive.
A BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY

September 20, 2004

Men of Destiny

“It is one thing to show a man that
he is in error, and another to put
him in possession of the truth.”
John Locke

By James C. Moore, Co-Author of "Bush's Brain" and Author of "Bush's War for Reelection"

Liars are not supposed to last. Eventually, their fabrications can be expected to collapse and all of the sickness they have spread is cured by truth and righteousness. Most of the time that’s what happens. But there is a new perception in the American political process and it is a threat to candidates and our democracy. Lying has become an acceptable tactic. And the immorality of lying is no longer a reason to dismiss it as an effective tool. When voters are not paying attention, lying works. But it still creates casualties and they are beginning to accumulate in the controversy surrounding CBS and the George W. Bush National Guard memos.

In the cascade of events that has led CBS News into trouble, the first lie actually belongs to the President of the United States. No one any longer has doubt that there are records missing from the president’s Military Personnel Records Jacket. Huge gaps of service time are simply unaccounted for. Also, there is no commander’s report or counseling statement, which is required by guard regulations, to explain the grounding of Lt. Bush. Oddly, not one journalist has ever asked the president why he did not show up for his flight physical. His spokesman, Dan Bartlett, has been able to explain away the controversy by saying the physical was “a formality because he was no longer flying.” That’s not true, of course, because pilots are not allowed to decide on their own they no longer want to fly. Instead of addressing that matter, though, the White House consistently claims, “The president got an honorable discharge and is proud of his service in the National Guard.”

The available evidence is still pointing in the direction of deceit and the smoke machine fueled by the CBS memos cannot hide that fact. The president continues to refuse to allow uncontrolled access to his microfilmed documents at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis or the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver and the hard copy file is incomplete. People who know the truth about the president’s time in the Texas Air National Guard are angry that the cover up of his failings has been so effective. And now there are suspicions that the individuals who have long sought after the truth may have succumbed to the power of fighting a well-told lie with another; not so well-told. If this has happened, much more than just CBS’ future is at risk.

Reports that one of the controversial documents was faxed from a Kinko’s in Abilene are interpreted as evidence of the involvement of Lt. Col. (Ret.) Bill Burkett. Burkett, who has never concealed his anger at Mr. Bush, lives less than a half hour from the Kinko’s location. After appearing with me for an interview on Real Time with Bill Maher, Burkett, his wife, and a colleague of mine discussed politics over dinner. I had been talking to Burkett for over a year, gathering information and trying to corroborate a story he had told me and one other reporter about a purging of George W. Bush’s hard copy file at the Texas National Guard headquarters on Camp Mabry in Austin. Neither then, nor now, did Burkett attempt to hide his disdain for President Bush.

“I don’t know how he’s doing this,” Burkett said. “He says whatever he wants. It has nothing to do with the truth. And people are letting him get away with it. He’s just lying. Over and over again. About his past. About Iraq. You name it.”

I had included Burkett’s story in my new book, which was just being released at the time of our interview with Maher. What he had detailed, with unfailing repetition, was consistent with what I knew to be the facts based upon the released Bush file and dozens of other interviews I had conducted over the years. Burkett’s reputation was also considered impeccable by a number of people I had interviewed both on and off the record. Even the Chief Warrant Officer, George Conn, who later discounted Burkett’s version of events, described him as an honorable man who never opened his mouth without speaking the truth. Besides, Burkett was in the midst of a retirement on the edge of the Chihuahua Desert, enjoying time with his wife and their grandchildren. But his health was failing. He suffered neural and muscular problems as a result of a virus he said he had contracted on a military mission in Panama. Bill Burkett did not seem a likely candidate to make up stories and take on the White House.

Burkett told me that he had witnessed hard copy documents being dumped out of Bush’s file and into a wastebasket. According to his memory, there were “retirement points” and pay sheets in the trash and he had a moment to “lightly rummage” through them as two other officers stepped away to talk. The officer Burkett claimed was doing the cleansing of the Bush file, Gen. John Scribner, has denied the story as has Conn, who had asked Burkett to go for a walk that evening and took him on a circuitous route to the building where Scribner was allegedly going through the file. In 1997, when this was supposed to have occurred, Bush was preparing to run for re-election as governor and was prepping a presidential campaign. Cleaning up a hard copy file and then controlling access to the microfilmed record was a simple method for hiding the facts. Bill Burkett either had a fanciful imagination or his unfettered access to senior officers in the Texas Guard had serendipitously put him a few right places at all the wrong times.

Burkett, who is subject to seizures as a result of his virus and has begun to need a cane to walk, is not the only officer within the Texas Guard who is angered at President Bush. At least a dozen commanders, some of them still within the guard, are mad over the lack of adequate funding and essential training. They blame former Texas Governor Bush and his successor, Rick Perry. Burkett had been hired to fix those failings. But he never got the chance. He was brought into the Texas Guard by recommendations from former Republican Governor Bill Clements and Jim Francis, one of the president’s closest friends and most prolific fund-raisers. Burkett’s job was to develop a plan to make the guard’s training and equipment more relevant to modern missions against enemies like terrorists. His years of work and recommendations, however, were never implemented and the governor is said to have turned down millions of dollars in federal money to pay for improvements when it was offered by the Clinton administration.

No one understood the decision to not upgrade the guard until Bush ran for president. In his first policy speech, given at the Citadel, candidate Bush told the assembled cadets, “If the commander-in-chief were today call upon all of our armed forces to defend America, at least one full division would be unable to answer that call.” The only “full division” that was incapacitated at the time of that speech was the Texas National Guard. The governor of Texas is the only governor in the country who has command of a full division. It struck Texas Guard commanders then, even some who supported Bush, that they had been used as a political ploy and their lousy training and equipment was part of a plan. Burkett’s complaints, and those of others, had already resulted in a Texas legislative investigation. Nothing changed, though, and a few years later stories of “ghost soldiers,” men kept on rosters after they had quit in order maintain federal funding, began to leak into the media. Burkett also related the purging incident to USA Today but the paper’s editors failed to publish it until my book was released in early 2004.

The disgust over all of this may have reached its flashpoint this summer when the Texas 56th Brigade Combat Team was called to active duty and sent to Iraq. The grumblings were the same. Not enough armored equipment. Outdated weaponry. No tactical training relevant to the conflict. An insufficient amount of body armor. One former officer threatened to hold a news conference and confront Mr. Bush and the governor of Texas. A president, who had avoided combat in Vietnam by getting into the guard and then had walked away four years into a six year hitch, was sending them into a deadly war without training or appropriate weaponry. Their anger was understandable.

The emotion was further exacerbated by political context. The same president that had avoided combat was allowing his re-election campaign to attack a candidate who had volunteered to go to the war, a man who had shed blood and had been awarded medals. Even Texas Guard soldiers that follow orders, regardless of the politics of their commanders, had now reached the end of their tolerance. And at least one of these individuals was probably angry enough to manufacture documents. The men accusing Kerry were using lies to destroy his military reputation and ruin his candidacy so why not use lies to fight back? It was faulty and dangerous rationale, if it were deployed. And it has frightening implications for American democracy.

Burkett gets named as the primary suspect because of his profile. When his friend George Conn failed to confirm the file purging story for the Boston Globe, a number of journalists tended to discredit everything Burkett said. Conn, who works as a civilian employee of the U.S. Army in Germany, has college age children and a wife who reportedly works for a large Republican law firm in Dallas, could have reasonably been expected to choose his family over Burkett. Burkett told me he understood Conn’s actions and probably would have done the same thing. The White House, meanwhile, is working very diligently on connecting the CBS Killian memos, if they are fabrications, to Burkett. Strategically, the political intent is transparent: he’s discredited so if the memos are his they are also discredited. Burkett’s personal medical files were leaked to reporters and it is now public knowledge that he had a nervous breakdown while fighting the virus he contracted in Panama. One skeptic has suggested that the use of the term “billet” in one of the documents is telling because it is an Army and not an Air Force term and Burkett’s background is not Air National Guard. And, of course, there is the Kinko’s fax.

If Burkett is suspect, though, so is Karl Rove. Admittedly, this is a five-cushion bank shot if it does involve Rove. But such things are no longer considered impossible when looking at his political machinations. Every campaign he runs seems to have well-timed distractions. In 2000, just before his inarticulate client was to debate Al Gore, a tape of Mr. Bush’s training ended up in the Gore campaign’s mailbox. Reporters wrote about this discovery and overwhelmed issues and debate coverage with the unraveling mystery. An employee of Mark McKinnon, Bush’s media expert, was later implicated in the scandal but nobody ever proved Rove wasn’t pulling strings. Of course, it was strictly coincidental when Rove’s office was found bugged in 1986, the day of a critical debate between another one of his inarticulate candidates and an incumbent governor. That mystery overwhelmed debate coverage and implicated the democratic opponent. I remember standing with other reporters outside of Rove’s building after his news conference to announce the revelation he was bugged. We all laughed about how amateurish it all appeared. And then we realized he had us because we had to report it straight; not the way we perceived the facts. When the FBI file was finally made public, it showed the bug on Rove’s wall had a battery with a life span of only six hours and just 15 minutes of it had been expended. Rove did it. But there are probably too many people who would have had to have been in on the fraud for him to make phony documents surface in CBS’s hands.

So, Rove, it turns out, might just be both lucky and good. His deceptive behavior through the years, involving everything from Swift Boat veterans to faux environmental groups made up of Bush donors, is not a sufficient rationale for others to enter lying into the political process. Nothing is. But that appears to be what has resulted from the persistent string of lies about the president’s time in the National Guard, should the CBS memos be proven false. Some of the good guys may not be the good guys any more. They may have become like their enemies. And in the process, they gave Rove what he needs to win. There is truth, however, in the fake memos. Witnesses, including commander Killian’s secretary, have said Lt. Bush defied an order to take his flight physical. The White House has not refuted what is in the memos. It has only attacked the legitimacy of the documents themselves. Republican congressional leaders, who asked no questions about faulty intelligence leading to the war with Iraq, are suddenly demanding investigations and hearings on the failings of CBS. Burkett told the Washington Post to not be so confident the Killian memos were forgeries. What does he know that he isn’t saying? Yet. Is it possible they are flawed transcriptions of real memos and the originals are being protected? And how would he know? Or does he know?

This has all worked very well for the Bush campaign. Reporters worried about the veracity of the Killian memos have not yet asked the president if he failed to obey a direct order to take his physical. And that’s a fair question, regardless of who wrote the Killian documents. Lt. Bush missed a physical and there has never been an explanation beyond Dan Bartlett’s lame argument of “formality.” This most glaring lie in the president’s resume, his time in the Texas Air National Guard, avoids intelligent scrutiny because memos raising the issue appear dubious.

The bonus for Rove is that Dan Rather is enduring greater evaluation than the President of the United States. The CBS anchor, who rode to the top of his profession on the crest of great national events like Hurricane Carla, the Kennedy assassination, the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, and Watergate, has long been vilified by the right. If Rather and his talented producer Mary Mapes did not bring proper skepticism to their analysis of the documents, they will likely pay a dear professional price. And John Kerry, who ran a positive convention and ignored the Swift Boat attacks while the GOP spat vitriol, can also be expected to pay a price for bad advice and a lack of political diligence. No toll, however, has ever been exacted on the life and political career of George W. Bush. The magnitude of his lies and mistakes far outweighs any possible transgression by CBS or those who might have fabricated the Killian memos. If they get caught, they suffer. Mr. Bush has been proved both wrong and deceptive and has danced into a lead in the polls through our collective American delusion. We punish the anchorman and praise the president.

CBS and Rather may have to admit mistakes. And then make corrections. Why don’t we demand the same thing of our president? Maybe there are no big lies and small lies. There are just lies. And they all must be atoned for. We know the ones that belong to George W. Bush. And if we don’t hold him accountable, eventually, we the people will end up paying for his debts and his sins.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/spc_2004_0920.html

Speech at New York University
Remarks of John Kerry
For Immediate Release

Bush's Catastrophic Failures in Iraq
Congressional Republicans Admit What Bush Hides
Kerry Leads, Bush Follows on Iraq Policy
Winning The Peace In Iraq


New York, NY - I am honored to be here at New York University -- one of the great urban universities, not just in New York, but in the world. You have set a high standard for global dialogue and I hope to live up to that tradition today.

This election is about choices. The most important choices a President makes are about protecting America… at home and around the world. A president’s first obligation is to make America safer, stronger and truer to our ideals.

Only a few blocks from here, three years ago, the events of September 11 reminded every American of that obligation. That day brought to our shores the defining struggle of our times: the struggle between freedom and radical fundamentalism. And it made clear that our most important task is to fight… and to win… the war on terrorism.

With us today is a remarkable group of women who lost loved ones on September 11th … and whose support I am honored to have. Not only did they suffer an unbearable loss – they helped us learn the lessons of that terrible time by insisting on the creation of the 9/11 Commission. I ask them to stand. And I thank them on behalf of our country -- and I pledge to them and to you that I will implement the 9-11 recommendations.

In fighting the war on terrorism, my principles are straight forward. The terrorists are beyond reason. We must destroy them. As president, I will do whatever it takes, as long as it takes, to defeat our enemies. But billions of people around the world yearning for a better life are open to America’s ideals. We must reach them.

To win, America must be strong. And America must be smart. The greatest threat we face is the possibility Al Qaeda or other terrorists will get their hands on a nuclear weapon.

To prevent that from happening, we must call on the totality of America’s strength. Strong alliances, to help us stop the world’s most lethal weapons from falling into the most dangerous hands. A powerful military, transformed to meet the new threats of terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction. And all of America’s power – our diplomacy, our intelligence system, our economic power, the appeal of our values – each of which is critical to making America more secure and preventing a new generation of terrorists from emerging.

National security is a central issue in this campaign. We owe it to the American people to have a real debate about the choices President Bush has made… and the choices I would make… to fight and win the war on terror.

That means we must have a great honest national debate on Iraq. The President claims it is the centerpiece of his war on terror. In fact, Iraq was a profound diversion from that war and the battle against our greatest enemy, Osama bin Laden and the terrorists. Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions and, if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight.

This month, we passed a cruel milestone: more than 1,000 Americans lost in Iraq. Their sacrifice reminds us that Iraq remains, overwhelmingly, an American burden. Nearly 90 percent of the troops – and nearly 90 percent of the casualties – are American. Despite the President’s claims, this is not a grand coalition.

Our troops have served with extraordinary bravery, skill and resolve. Their service humbles all of us. When I speak to them… when I look into the eyes of their families, I know this: we owe them the truth about what we have asked them to do… and what is still to be done.

In June, the President declared, “The Iraqi people have their country back.” Just last week, he told us: “This country is headed toward democracy… Freedom is on the march.”

But the administration’s own official intelligence estimate, given to the President last July, tells a very different story.

According to press reports, the intelligence estimate totally contradicts what the President is saying to the American people.

So do the facts on the ground.

Security is deteriorating, for us and for the Iraqis.

42 Americans died in Iraq in June -- the month before the handover. But 54 died in July…66 in August… and already 54 halfway through September.

And more than 1,100 Americans were wounded in August – more than in any other month since the invasion.

We are fighting a growing insurgency in an ever widening war-zone. In March, insurgents attacked our forces 700 times. In August, they attacked 2,700 times – a 400% increase.

Falluja…Ramadi… Samarra … even parts of Baghdad – are now “no go zones”… breeding grounds for terrorists who are free to plot and launch attacks against our soldiers. The radical Shi’a cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, who’s accused of complicity in the murder of Americans, holds more sway in the suburbs of Baghdad.

Violence against Iraqis… from bombings to kidnappings to intimidation … is on the rise.

Basic living conditions are also deteriorating.

Residents of Baghdad are suffering electricity blackouts lasting up to 14 hours a day.

Raw sewage fills the streets, rising above the hubcaps of our Humvees. Children wade through garbage on their way to school.

Unemployment is over 50 percent. Insurgents are able to find plenty of people willing to take $150 for tossing grenades at passing U.S. convoys.

Yes, there has been some progress, thanks to the extraordinary efforts of our soldiers and civilians in Iraq. Schools, shops and hospitals have been opened. In parts of Iraq, normalcy actually prevails.

But most Iraqis have lost faith in our ability to deliver meaningful improvements to their lives. So they’re sitting on the fence… instead of siding with us against the insurgents.

That is the truth. The truth that the Commander in Chief owes to our troops and the American people.

It is never easy to discuss what has gone wrong while our troops are in constant danger. But it’s essential if we want to correct our course and do what’s right for our troops instead of repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

I know this dilemma first-hand. After serving in war, I returned home to offer my own personal voice of dissent. I did so because I believed strongly that we owed it those risking their lives to speak truth to power. We still do.

Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell. But that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war. The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: we have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.

The President has said that he “miscalculated” in Iraq and that it was a “catastrophic success.” In fact, the President has made a series of catastrophic decisions … from the beginning … in Iraq. At every fork in the road, he has taken the wrong turn and led us in the wrong direction.

The first and most fundamental mistake was the President’s failure to tell the truth to the American people.

He failed to tell the truth about the rationale for going to war. And he failed to tell the truth about the burden this war would impose on our soldiers and our citizens.

By one count, the President offered 23 different rationales for this war. If his purpose was to confuse and mislead the American people, he succeeded.

His two main rationales – weapons of mass destruction and the Al Qaeda/September 11 connection – have been proved false… by the President’s own weapons inspectors… and by the 9/11 Commission. Just last week, Secretary of State Powell acknowledged the facts. Only Vice President Cheney still insists that the earth is flat.

The President also failed to level with the American people about what it would take to prevail in Iraq.

He didn’t tell us that well over 100,000 troops would be needed, for years, not months. He didn’t tell us that he wouldn’t take the time to assemble a broad and strong coalition of allies. He didn’t tell us that the cost would exceed $200 billion. He didn’t tell us that even after paying such a heavy price, success was far from assured.

And America will pay an even heavier price for the President’s lack of candor.

At home, the American people are less likely to trust this administration if it needs to summon their support to meet real and pressing threats to our security.

Abroad, other countries will be reluctant to follow America when we seek to rally them against a common menace -- as they are today. Our credibility in the world has plummeted.

In the dark days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy sent former Secretary of State Dean Acheson to Europe to build support. Acheson explained the situation to French President de Gaulle. Then he offered to show him highly classified satellite photos, as proof. De Gaulle waved the photos away, saying: “The word of the President of the United States is good enough for me.”

How many world leaders have that same trust in America’s president, today?

This President’s failure to tell the truth to us before the war has been exceeded by fundamental errors of judgment during and after the war.

The President now admits to “miscalculations” in Iraq.

That is one of the greatest understatements in recent American history. His were not the equivalent of accounting errors. They were colossal failures of judgment – and judgment is what we look for in a president.

This is all the more stunning because we’re not talking about 20/20 hindsight. Before the war, before he chose to go to war, bi-partisan Congressional hearings… major outside studies… and even some in the administration itself… predicted virtually every problem we now face in Iraq.

This President was in denial. He hitched his wagon to the ideologues who surround him, filtering out those who disagreed, including leaders of his own party and the uniformed military. The result is a long litany of misjudgments with terrible consequences.

The administration told us we’d be greeted as liberators. They were wrong.

They told us not to worry about looting or the sorry state of Iraq’s infrastructure. They were wrong.

They told us we had enough troops to provide security and stability, defeat the insurgents, guard the borders and secure the arms depots. They were wrong.

They told us we could rely on exiles like Ahmed Chalabi to build political legitimacy. They were wrong.

They told us we would quickly restore an Iraqi civil service to run the country and a police force and army to secure it. They were wrong.

In Iraq, this administration has consistently over-promised and under-performed. This policy has been plagued by a lack of planning, an absence of candor, arrogance and outright incompetence. And the President has held no one accountable, including himself.

In fact, the only officials who lost their jobs over Iraq were the ones who told the truth.

General Shinseki said it would take several hundred thousand troops to secure Iraq. He was retired. Economic adviser Larry Lindsey said that Iraq would cost as much as $200 billion. He was fired. After the successful entry into Baghdad, George Bush was offered help from the UN -- and he rejected it. He even prohibited any nation from participating in reconstruction efforts that wasn’t part of the original coalition – pushing reluctant countries even farther away. As we continue to fight this war almost alone, it is hard to estimate how costly that arrogant decision was. Can anyone seriously say this President has handled Iraq in a way that makes us stronger in the war on terrorism?

By any measure, the answer is no. Nuclear dangers have mounted across the globe. The international terrorist club has expanded. Radicalism in the Middle East is on the rise. We have divided our friends and united our enemies. And our standing in the world is at an all time low.

Think about it for a minute. Consider where we were… and where we are. After the events of September 11, we had an opportunity to bring our country and the world together in the struggle against the terrorists. On September 12th, headlines in newspapers abroad declared “we are all Americans now.” But through his policy in Iraq, the President squandered that moment and rather than isolating the terrorists, left America isolated from the world.

We now know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and posed no imminent threat to our security. It had not, as the Vice President claimed, “reconstituted nuclear weapons.”

The President’s policy in Iraq took our attention and resources away from other, more serious threats to America.

Threats like North Korea, which actually has weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear arsenal, and is building more under this President’s watch…

… The emerging nuclear danger from Iran…

… The tons and kilotons of unsecured chemical and nuclear weapons in Russia…

… And the increasing instability in Afghanistan.

Today, warlords again control much of that country, the Taliban is regrouping, opium production is at an all time high and the Al Qaeda leadership still plots and plans, not only there but in 60 other nations. Instead of using U.S. forces, we relied on the warlords to capture Osama bin Laden when he was cornered in the mountains. He slipped away. We then diverted our focus and forces from the hunt for those responsible for September 11th in order invade Iraq.

We know Iraq played no part in September 11 and had no operational ties to Al Qaeda.

The President’s policy in Iraq precipitated the very problem he said he was trying to prevent. Secretary of State Powell admits that Iraq was not a magnet for international terrorists before the war. Now it is, and they are operating against our troops. Iraq is becoming a sanctuary for a new generation of terrorists who someday could hit the United States.

We know that while Iraq was a source of friction, it was not previously a source of serious disagreement with our allies in Europe and countries in the Muslim world.

The President’s policy in Iraq divided our oldest alliance and sent our standing in the Muslim world into free fall. Three years after 9/11, even in many moderate Muslim countries like Jordan, Morocco and Turkey, Osama bin Laden is more popular than the United States of America.

Let me put it plainly: The President’s policy in Iraq has not strengthened our national security. It has weakened it.

Two years ago, Congress was right to give the President the authority to use force to hold Saddam Hussein accountable. This President… any President… would have needed the threat of force to act effectively. This President misused that authority.

The power entrusted to the President gave him a strong hand to play in the international community. The idea was simple. We would get the weapons inspectors back in to verify whether or not Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. And we would convince the world to speak with one voice to Saddam: disarm or be disarmed.

A month before the war, President Bush told the nation: “If we have to act, we will take every precaution that is possible. We will plan carefully. We will act with the full power of the United States military. We will act with allies at our side and we will prevail.” He said that military action wasn’t “unavoidable.”

Instead, the President rushed to war without letting the weapons inspectors finish their work. He went without a broad and deep coalition of allies. He acted without making sure our troops had enough body armor. And he plunged ahead without understanding or preparing for the consequences of the post-war. None of which I would have done.

Yet today, President Bush tells us that he would do everything all over again, the same way. How can he possibly be serious? Is he really saying that if we knew there were no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to Al Qaeda, the United States should have invaded Iraq? My answer is no – because a Commander-in-Chief’s first responsibility is to make a wise and responsible decision to keep America safe.

Now the president, in looking for a new reason, tries to hang his hat on the “capability” to acquire weapons. But that was not the reason given to the nation; it was not the reason Congress voted on; it’s not a reason, it’s an excuse. Thirty-five to forty countries have greater capability to build a nuclear bomb than Iraq did in 2003. Is President Bush saying we should invade them?

I would have concentrated our power and resources on defeating global terrorism and capturing or killing Osama bin Laden. I would have tightened the noose and continued to pressure and isolate Saddam Hussein – who was weak and getting weaker -- so that he would pose no threat to the region or America.

The President’s insistence that he would do the same thing all over again in Iraq is a clear warning for the future. And it makes the choice in this election clear: more of the same with President Bush or a new direction that makes our troops and America safer. It is time, at long last, to ask the questions and insist on the answers from the Commander-in-Chief about his serious misjudgments and what they tell us about his administration and the President himself. If George W. Bush is re-elected, he will cling to the same failed policies in Iraq -- and he will repeat, somewhere else, the same reckless mistakes that have made America less secure than we can or should be.

In Iraq, we have a mess on our hands. But we cannot throw up our hands. We cannot afford to see Iraq become a permanent source of terror that will endanger America’s security for years to come.

All across this country people ask me what we should do now. Every step of the way, from the time I first spoke about this in the Senate, I have set out specific recommendations about how we should and should not proceed. But over and over, when this administration has been presented with a reasonable alternative, they have rejected it and gone their own way. This is stubborn incompetence.

Five months ago, in Fulton, Missouri, I said that the President was close to his last chance to get it right. Every day, this President makes it more difficult to deal with Iraq – harder than it was five months ago, harder than it was a year ago. It is time to recognize what is – and what is not – happening in Iraq today. And we must act with urgency.

Just this weekend, a leading Republican, Chuck Hagel, said we’re “in deep trouble in Iraq … it doesn’t add up … to a pretty picture [and] … we’re going to have to look at a recalibration of our policy.” Republican leaders like Dick Lugar and John McCain have offered similar assessments.

We need to turn the page and make a fresh start in Iraq.

First, the President has to get the promised international support so our men and women in uniform don’t have to go it alone. It is late; the President must respond by moving this week to gain and regain international support.

Last spring, after too many months of resistance and delay, the President finally went back to the U.N. which passed Resolution 1546. It was the right thing to do – but it was late.

That resolution calls on U.N. members to help in Iraq by providing troops… trainers for Iraq’s security forces… a special brigade to protect the U.N. mission… more financial assistance… and real debt relief.

Three months later, not a single country has answered that call. And the president acts as if it doesn’t matter.

And of the $13 billion previously pledged to Iraq by other countries, only $1.2 billion has been delivered.

The President should convene a summit meeting of the world’s major powers and Iraq’s neighbors, this week, in New York, where many leaders will attend the U.N. General Assembly. He should insist that they make good on that U.N. resolution. He should offer potential troop contributors specific, but critical roles, in training Iraqi security personnel and securing Iraq’s borders. He should give other countries a stake in Iraq’s future by encouraging them to help develop Iraq’s oil resources and by letting them bid on contracts instead of locking them out of the reconstruction process.

This will be difficult. I and others have repeatedly recommended this from the very beginning. Delay has made only made it harder. After insulting allies and shredding alliances, this President may not have the trust and confidence to bring others to our side in Iraq. But we cannot hope to succeed unless we rebuild and lead strong alliances so that other nations share the burden with us. That is the only way to succeed.

Second, the President must get serious about training Iraqi security forces.

Last February, Secretary Rumsfeld claimed that more than 210,000 Iraqis were in uniform. Two weeks ago, he admitted that claim was exaggerated by more than 50 percent. Iraq, he said, now has 95,000 trained security forces.

But guess what? Neither number bears any relationship to the truth. For example, just 5,000 Iraqi soldiers have been fully trained, by the administration’s own minimal standards. And of the 35,000 police now in uniform, not one has completed a 24-week field-training program. Is it any wonder that Iraqi security forces can’t stop the insurgency or provide basic law and order?

The President should urgently expand the security forces training program inside and outside Iraq. He should strengthen the vetting of recruits, double classroom training time, and require follow-on field training. He should recruit thousands of qualified trainers from our allies, especially those who have no troops in Iraq. He should press our NATO allies to open training centers in their countries. And he should stop misleading the American people with phony, inflated numbers.

Third, the President must carry out a reconstruction plan that finally brings tangible benefits to the Iraqi people.

Last week, the administration admitted that its plan was a failure when it asked Congress for permission to radically revise spending priorities in Iraq. It took 17 months for them to understand that security is a priority … 17 months to figure out that boosting oil production is critical … 17 months to conclude that an Iraqi with a job is less likely to shoot at our soldiers.

One year ago, the administration asked for and received $18 billion to help the Iraqis and relieve the conditions that contribute to the insurgency. Today, less than a $1 billion of those funds have actually been spent. I said at the time that we had to rethink our policies and set standards of accountability. Now we’re paying the price.

Now, the President should look at the whole reconstruction package…draw up a list of high visibility, quick impact projects… and cut through the red tape. He should use more Iraqi contractors and workers, instead of big corporations like Halliburton. He should stop paying companies under investigation for fraud or corruption. And he should fire the civilians in the Pentagon responsible for mismanaging the reconstruction effort.

Fourth, the President must take immediate, urgent, essential steps to guarantee the promised elections can be held next year.

Credible elections are key to producing an Iraqi government that enjoys the support of the Iraqi people and an assembly to write a Constitution that yields a viable power sharing arrangement.

Because Iraqis have no experience holding free and fair elections, the President agreed six months ago that the U.N. must play a central role. Yet today, just four months before Iraqis are supposed to go to the polls, the U.N. Secretary General and administration officials themselves say the elections are in grave doubt. Because the security situation is so bad… and because not a single country has offered troops to protect the U.N. elections mission… the U.N. has less than 25 percent of the staff it needs in Iraq to get the job done.

The President should recruit troops from our friends and allies for a U.N. protection force. This won’t be easy. But even countries that refused to put boots on the ground in Iraq should still help protect the U.N. We should also intensify the training of Iraqis to manage and guard the polling places that need to be opened. Otherwise, U.S forces would end up bearing those burdens alone.

If the President would move in this direction … if he would bring in more help from other countries to provide resources and forces … train the Iraqis to provide their own security …develop a reconstruction plan that brings real benefits to the Iraqi people … and take the steps necessary to hold credible elections next year … we could begin to withdraw U.S. forces starting next summer and realistically aim to bring all our troops home within the next four years.

This is what has to be done. This is what I would do as President today. But we cannot afford to wait until January. President Bush owes it to the American people to tell the truth and put Iraq on the right track. Even more, he owes it to our troops and their families, whose sacrifice is a testament to the best of America.

The principles that should guide American policy in Iraq now and in the future are clear: We must make Iraq the world’s responsibility, because the world has a stake in the outcome and others should share the burden. We must effectively train Iraqis, because they should be responsible for their own security. We must move forward with reconstruction, because that’s essential to stop the spread of terror. And we must help Iraqis achieve a viable government, because it’s up to them to run their own country. That’s the right way to get the job done and bring our troops home.

On May 1 of last year, President Bush stood in front of a now infamous banner that read “Mission Accomplished.” He declared to the American people: “In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” In fact, the worst part of the war was just beginning, with the greatest number of American casualties still to come. The president misled, miscalculated, and mismanaged every aspect of this undertaking and he has made the achievement of our objective – a stable Iraq, secure within its borders, with a representative government, harder to achieve.

In Iraq, this administration’s record is filled with bad predictions, inaccurate cost estimates, deceptive statements and errors of judgment of historic proportions.

At every critical juncture in Iraq, and in the war on terrorism, the President has made the wrong choice. I have a plan to make America stronger.

The President often says that in a post 9-11 world, we can’t hesitate to act. I agree. But we should not act just for the sake of acting. I believe we have to act wisely and responsibly.

George Bush has no strategy for Iraq. I do.

George Bush has not told the truth to the American people about why we went to war and how the war is going. I have and I will continue to do so.

I believe the invasion of Iraq has made us less secure and weaker in the war against terrorism. I have a plan to fight a smarter, more effective war on terror – and make us safer.

Today, because of George Bush’s policy in Iraq, the world is a more dangerous place for America and Americans.

If you share my conviction that we can not go on as we are …that we can make America stronger and safer than it is… then November 2 is your chance to speak... and to be heard. It is not a question of staying the course, but of changing the course.

I’m convinced that with the right leadership, we can create a fresh start and move more effectively to accomplish our goals. Our troops have served with extraordinary courage and commitment. For their sake, and America’s sake, we must get this right. We must do everything in our power to complete the mission and make America stronger at home and respected again in the world.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091904G.shtml

Global Warming Will Spawn More Ivans
The Baltimore Sun | Editorial

Thursday 16 September 2004

Climate change leading to hurricanes.
An International group of scientists studying global warming predicted in 2001 a sharp increase in melting of glaciers and polar ice, heat waves and related deaths, severe storms and flooding, and drought and wildfires, as well as substantially altered patterns of species migration.

Three years later, it can be reported all of that and more has happened - with stunning and record speed. The latest fearful evidence storming in from the Gulf of Mexico goes by the name of Ivan, the fourth major hurricane of a season that usually doesn't produce so many and still has 21Ú2 months to go.

Japan has been hit this year by seven typhoons, the most since record-keeping began in 1951, and the worst floods in decades have killed more than 400 people in China. In Europe, 19,000 people succumbed last year to a heat wave that was one of the deadliest of the decade.

This is only the beginning, experts agree. Even those who contend climate change is a natural cyclical phenomenon expect the cycle to last decades or more.

But conceding Mother Nature's contribution to these extreme weather events makes it all the more important for humans to take whatever steps they can to minimize the damage.

"It is a huge issue, and time is running out," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tuesday in trying to goad his Group of Eight peers, including President Bush, into getting serious about reducing emissions of greenhouse gases that appear to be accelerating global warming by trapping heat from the sun.

Blair has also set his sights on China and India, the two giant nations whose rapidly expanding economies could easily wreak havoc on the global environment over the next few decades.

But China and India can't be expected to impose the emission controls and other steps required to curb greenhouse gases unless the United States leads the way.

Sens. John McCain and Joseph Lieberman, leading champions of capping emissions on utilities and other industrial sources, are scheduled to resume their crusade today at a Senate hearing on the impact of climate change.

All those in Ivan's path will be able to answer the question firsthand - the lives lost, the houses flattened or flooded, the property destroyed, the families separated and routines disrupted. New Orleans, the below-sea-level delta queen that has been flirting with disaster for years, could finally be overwhelmed by it.

Would Ivan have happened without human influence on global warming? Perhaps. But with the climate already heating up, it's foolish to imagine that we shouldn't take what precautions we can.

If we have to learn to live with global warming, it's time to at least try to control the thermostat a bit.

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Jump to TO Features for Sunday September 19, 2004

LNS Countdown to Electoral Uprising -- 44 Days to Go -- REAL News on US Military Family Protests, Chalabi, SCOTUS, The Economy and Black Box Voting

There are 44 days to go until the national referendum on the CHARACTER, CREDIBILITY and COMPETENCE of the _resident and the VICE _resident. The central theme of this referendum is SECURITY: National Security, Economic Security, Environmental Security, etc. Are you and those who love safer today than you were four years ago? No. Well, here is some clarity for you. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta) says he will get the troops out of Iraq by the end of his first term, Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) says there will be no draft in the Kerry administration...The Bush abomination's economic policies have squandered an unprecedented surplus and replaced it with an unprecedented deficit...We have lost four years we did not have time to lose in the international struggle against the quickening REALITY of Global Warming, as well as Nuclear Proliferation, AIDS in Africa and other vital national security issuess...And if you need more incentive, whoever wins this election will probably appoint at least three US Supreme Court justices, including a Chief Justice...There is an Electoral Uprising coming against the Bush Cabal, its
wholly-owmed-subsidiary-formerly-known-as-the-Republican-Party AND their sponsors in the US regimestream news media. This unholy Triad of shared special interest (i.e. oil, weapons, media, pharmaceuticals, tobacoo, etc.)is going to be dealt a defeat on Nov. 2. There is an Electoral Uprising coming...Here are SEVEN very important stories that should dominate the air waves and command headlines above the fold, but they won't...Please read them and share them with others. Please vote and encourage others to vote. And, please, remember that the US regimestream news media does not want to inform you about this presidential campaign, it wants to DISinform you...

Diane Davis Santoriello, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Now my son is dead. How did he die? According to the Army, he was killed on Aug. 13 in western Iraq when an IED -- an "improvised explosive device" -- detonated near his vehicle. According to me, he was killed by the arrogance and ineptitude of George W. Bush aided by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld...
Did our men and women in harm's way have what they needed? No.
Did we have enough tanks on the ground? No.
Could we supply parts as they were needed? No.
This Bush team could be on a poster for the old axiom: People don't plan to fail -- they fail to plan.
Their actions tarnished the reputation and honor of the United States. We are supposed to be better than other countries because we believe in individual rights.
The Abu Ghraib scandal not only tarnished our reputation, but has put all of servicepeople in jeopardy for decades to come. If we could abuse prisoners, what country will honor the Geneva Conventions when it comes to U.S. troops? The January 2002 memo by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales about the treatment of prisoners scares me. He wrote that because "the war against terrorism is a new kind of war," it "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." In my mind, this memo is Bush's Watergate. I do not understand how people who claim they believe in the ideals of our Founding Fathers can ignore this.
My son voted for Bush. If he were alive, would he be voting for him again? I am not sure. His wife and I avoided political discussions with him before and during his deployment. He would have never talked badly about the president, because you do not criticize your commander in chief.
But I sensed frustration in his letters. When he came home, I would have talked to him about it. I can't ask him now. Now I speak for him.
John Kerry was not my first choice for president, but I believe he has demonstrated a willingness to be open-minded. He knows that changing your position is not a character flaw, but a character plus. I believe he is the only person capable of getting the rest of the world to help us clean up the mess created by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld...

Norman Solomon: The big media themes about the 2004 presidential campaign have reveled in vague rhetoric and flimsy controversies. But little attention has focused on a matter of profound importance: Whoever wins the race for the White House will be in a position to slant the direction of the U.S. Supreme Court for decades to come...
Vacancies are very likely during the next presidential term. Rehnquist, 79, is expected to step down. So is Sandra Day O'Connor, 74, a swing vote on abortion and other issues that divide the court in close votes. Also apt to retire soon is 84-year-old John Paul Stevens, who usually votes with the more liberal justices. "The names of possible Bush or Kerry appointees already are circulating in legal circles," the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported in August, "and there is virtually no overlap between the lists."
There should be no doubt about the kind of Supreme Court nominee that President Bush would want. "In general what he's going to look for is the most conservative Court of Appeals judge out there who is young," says David M. O'Brien, a professor of government who has written a book about the Supreme Court. "Those are the top two priorities."
Bush has made clear his intention to select replacements akin to hard-right Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Writing in the Washington Times on Sept. 14, conservative attorney Bruce Fein predicts that "the winner of the impending presidential sweepstakes will likely appoint from one to three new justices." He foresees that if Bush wins on Election Day and the seats held by O'Connor and Stevens become vacant, "constitutional decrees in pivotal areas concerning presidential war powers, church-state relations, freedom of speech, the death penalty, the powers of the police and prosecutors, racial, ethnic and gender discrimination and private property will display a markedly more conservative hue."
Some political agendas benefit from the claim that the Supreme Court's 1973 abortion-rights decision, Roe v. Wade, is not in jeopardy. But as Michael Dorf, a law professor at Columbia University, wrote this summer, "three justices -- Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas -- remain committed to overturning Roe. Meanwhile, two of the Court's three oldest members -- justices Stevens and O'Connor -- are part of the six-justice majority for recognizing a constitutional right to abortion. Should President Bush have the opportunity to name anti-Roe successors to these two justices -- or to any two or more of the six justices who oppose overturning Roe -- there is little reason to doubt that he would seize it. The result would be a Supreme Court majority for eliminating the constitutional right to abortion."

Arthur I. Blaustein, Los Angeles Times: Here's the Economic Sweepstakes Quiz. The rules are simple. Guess which president since World War II did best on these eight most generally accepted measures of good management of the nation's economy. You can choose among six Republicans — Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Bushes 41 and 43 — and five Democrats — Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Clinton. Which president produced:
1. The highest growth in the gross domestic product?
2. The highest growth in jobs?
3. The biggest increase in personal disposable income after taxes?
4. The highest growth in industrial production?
5. The highest growth in hourly wages?
6. The lowest misery index (inflation plus unemployment)?
7. The lowest inflation?
8. The largest reduction in the deficit?
The answers are:
1-Truman; 2-Clinton; 3-Johnson; 4-Kennedy; 5-Johnson; 6-Truman; 7-Truman; 8-Clinton.
In other words, Democratic presidents trounced Republicans eight out of eight.
If this isn't enough to destroy the perception that the economy has performed better under Republicans, then let's include stock market performance under Democrats. The Dow Jones Industrial Average during the 20th century rose an average of 7.3% a year under Republican presidents. Under Democrats, it jumped 10.3%, a whopping 41% gain for investors. During George W. Bush's first three years as president, the stock market declined 4%.
Moreover, since World War II, the national debt increased on average by 3.7% a year under Democratic administrations, compared with 9.1% when Republicans occupied the Oval Office. During the same period, Democratic presidents oversaw on average an unemployment rate of 4.8%. For Republicans, it was 6.3%.
That's the historical record. What about current policies?
The Clinton administration presided over the longest peacetime economic expansion in U.S. history. The national debt fell dramatically, the industrial sector boomed, wages grew and more Americans found jobs. In contrast, the Bush administration has presided over the weakest job-creation cycle since the Great Depression, record household debt, the highest-ever bankruptcy rate and a substantial increase of those who live in poverty.
Kerry maintains that government has the responsibility to keep the economy on the right track. Toward that end, he has pledged to reduce the national debt and budget deficit. He would help the middle class and working poor by maintaining current benefit levels and eligibility for the earned income tax credit. Kerry has also promised to restore tax progressivity and fairness by rolling back Bush's giveaways to taxpayers earning more than $200,000 annually. And the Massachusetts senator wants to make significant investments in healthcare, education, affordable housing and the environment.
The president, by contrast, has emerged as little more than a supply-sider in the mold of his father, George H.W. Bush, and his father's former boss, Reagan. The results demonstrate why supply-side policies are sometimes called "trickle-down" economics. Corporate profits have soared 57.5% during the Bush administration, while workers' wages and benefits have increased a minuscule 1.57%.

Mary Jacoby, Salon, interviews Seymour Hersh: I think these guys in their naiveté and single-mindedness have been so completely manipulated by - not the Israelis - but the Iranians. The Iranians always wanted us in. I think there's a lot of evidence that Iran had much to do with [Ahmed] Chalabi's disinformation [about nonexistent Iraqi WMD]. I think there were people in the CIA who suspected this all along, but of course they couldn't get their view in. I think the Senate Intelligence Committee's report's a joke, the idea this CIA was misleading the president. They get some analysts in and say, "Were you pressured?" And they all say, "No, excuse me?" Is that how you do an investigation? The truth of the matter is, there was tremendous pressure put on the analysts [to produce reports that bolstered the case for war]. It's not as if anybody issued a diktat. But everybody understood what to do.
Talk about the ...
Wait. You're missing something now. The Iranian stuff. I think Iran probably had more to do with Chalabi's information than people know.
We know that Chalabi had Iranian agents on his payroll.
Yeah, but, well, he admits to that. He had a villa in Tehran. But basically I think Iran was very interested in getting us involved. We get knocked down a peg; they become the big boys on the block.
Are you working on this now?
Yeah, I'm thinking about it. I'm reporting on it. But I'm not working on it. I'm just - it's too cosmic.
Was Chalabi the conduit?
I think Chalabi thought he could handle the Iranians. They were helping him all along with disinformation and documents he could give to the White House. Don't forget, once the neocons decided to go to Iraq in the face of all evidence, they were like a super-reverse suction machine, and anything in the world that furthered the argument that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction was hot. I call it stove-piping, because it's a technical work of art. But it was much more than that. It was anything - vavoom! - into the president's [office]. It was so amateurish, it was comical. How hard was it to get some crapola into the White House about WMD without the CIA looking at it?

New York Times Editorial: Many computer scientists insist that electronic voting machines will be trustworthy only when they produce paper receipts that can be audited. But supporters of electronic voting have long argued that doing so would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. Nevada proved the naysayers wrong this month, running the first statewide election in which electronic voting machines produced paper records of votes cast. Election officials across the country now have no excuse not to provide systems that voters can trust.
There is a growing body of evidence indicating that electronic voting machines are vulnerable to tampering and to software glitches that can skew the vote totals. The best safeguard is a voter-verifiable paper trail, receipts that are printed out during the voting process. Voters can view the receipts to check them against the choices they made on the computer screens. Each receipt remains under glass and, after the vote is cast, falls into a locked box. The receipts can be used in a recount or an audit to check the accuracy of the machine tallies.

Eric Alterman, The Nation: Four years ago, Ralph Nader justified his third-party campaign on the grounds that the two parties represented nothing more than "Tweedledum and Tweedledee." As Americans die by the thousand in Iraq, the budget deficit explodes thanks to a tax cut targeting the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, the Justice Department demands women's private medical records from abortion clinics, and polluters are given carte blanche to despoil the earth and poison our children, the devastating evidence of Nader's myopia is everywhere around us.
Recall also that four years ago, Nader professed to want to help build the Green Party into a genuinely progressive alternative to what he termed the corporate-dominated "duopoly." But Nader was no more truthful about his commitment to party-building than George W. Bush was when he decried "nation-building." Today, Nader's party allies consist mainly of the motley far-right collection of Republicans who fund his campaign and collect his signatures, and the remains of the nativist Reform Party, late of Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign.

Michael Daly, New York Daily News: As politicians make grand speeches supporting our troops, families of our wounded soldiers are being told they soon will no longer receive the modest government stipend that helps them leave job and home to stay at their loved one's hospital bedside.
The majority of the 3,974 seriously wounded soldiers are young, and few earn more than $1,600 a month, tops. Their families are often of limited means and have a hard enough time keeping up with their bills. Family members forfeit wages and risk losing their jobs altogether as they help their soldier recover.
"None of these kids left a Park Ave. townhouse to go fight," observed one Army combat officer.
With exactly that in mind, the stipend was established in April 2003, just as the war in Iraq commenced. It lapses Sept. 30.

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!)

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04262/381101.stm

First Person: For whom did my son die in Iraq?
Saturday, September 18, 2004

By Diane Davis Santoriello

For the last year and a half, the pain in my gut screamed at my head write about this war, speak out against the war! But my aching heart said, "You can't undermine your son's confidence in what he is doing." Memories of people scorning and smearing Vietnam vets ran rampant through my mind. You see, my son, 1st Lt. Neil Anthony Santoriello Jr., was living his dream. He had fulfilled his dream of becoming a military officer. I thought he was fulfilling his destiny of being a man of purpose, compassion and justice working to make the world a better place.

Diane Davis Santoriello lives in Penn Hills (dianesantoriello@hotmail.com).

Now my son is dead. How did he die? According to the Army, he was killed on Aug. 13 in western Iraq when an IED -- an "improvised explosive device" -- detonated near his vehicle. According to me, he was killed by the arrogance and ineptitude of George W. Bush aided by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

I hear people talk about how well-bred John Kerry and Bush were. What constitutes good breeding? What constitutes good character? My father taught me that when you make a mistake the first thing you do is own up to it and the second thing you do is fix it. Bush made mistakes. Did he own up to them right away? No, he waited until recently and admitted to miscalculations.

What Bush needed to do a year or more ago was to go to the United Nations with his hat in his hand and say, "We made a mistake. We thought we were doing the right thing, but now we have a mess that we can't handle. But now we are mired in a country that must be made stable; we don't have the right kind of troops on the ground to do the job right. You folks have the people and the Iraqi people will trust you. Will you help us fix this mistake?"

My son compulsively planned everything. For every Boy Scout outing, every ski trip, he was prepared for any eventuality.

This presidential administration ignored experts who told them that they could win the war, but winning the peace presented the challenge. Did they prepare for that? Of course not -- they were too arrogant to change their direction even as the insurgency increased.

Did our men and women in harm's way have what they needed? No.

Did we have enough tanks on the ground? No.

Could we supply parts as they were needed? No.

This Bush team could be on a poster for the old axiom: People don't plan to fail -- they fail to plan.

Their actions tarnished the reputation and honor of the United States. We are supposed to be better than other countries because we believe in individual rights.

The Abu Ghraib scandal not only tarnished our reputation, but has put all of servicepeople in jeopardy for decades to come. If we could abuse prisoners, what country will honor the Geneva Conventions when it comes to U.S. troops? The January 2002 memo by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales about the treatment of prisoners scares me. He wrote that because "the war against terrorism is a new kind of war," it "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." In my mind, this memo is Bush's Watergate. I do not understand how people who claim they believe in the ideals of our Founding Fathers can ignore this.

My son voted for Bush. If he were alive, would he be voting for him again? I am not sure. His wife and I avoided political discussions with him before and during his deployment. He would have never talked badly about the president, because you do not criticize your commander in chief.

But I sensed frustration in his letters. When he came home, I would have talked to him about it. I can't ask him now. Now I speak for him.

He worried about his men, his stateside friends set to deploy next month. I did not speak out against the war earlier and for this I am angry with myself. My son, a man of incredible honor, died from the actions of dishonorable men. I cannot bring him back. But I speak out now to protect the people still serving, to try to restore honor to our country.

John Kerry was not my first choice for president, but I believe he has demonstrated a willingness to be open-minded. He knows that changing your position is not a character flaw, but a character plus. I believe he is the only person capable of getting the rest of the world to help us clean up the mess created by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the administration's other Iraq

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/092004X.shtml

Missing: A Media Focus on the Supreme Court
By Norman Solomon
CommonDreams.org

Friday 17 September 2004

The big media themes about the 2004 presidential campaign have reveled in vague rhetoric and flimsy controversies. But little attention has focused on a matter of profound importance: Whoever wins the race for the White House will be in a position to slant the direction of the U.S. Supreme Court for decades to come.

Justices on the top court tend to stick around for a long time. Seven of the current nine were there a dozen years ago. William Rehnquist, who was elevated to chief justice by President Reagan, originally got to the Supreme Court when President Nixon appointed him a third of a century ago. The last four justices to retire had been on the high court for an average of 28 years.

Vacancies are very likely during the next presidential term. Rehnquist, 79, is expected to step down. So is Sandra Day O'Connor, 74, a swing vote on abortion and other issues that divide the court in close votes. Also apt to retire soon is 84-year-old John Paul Stevens, who usually votes with the more liberal justices. "The names of possible Bush or Kerry appointees already are circulating in legal circles," the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported in August, "and there is virtually no overlap between the lists."

There should be no doubt about the kind of Supreme Court nominee that President Bush would want. "In general what he's going to look for is the most conservative Court of Appeals judge out there who is young," says David M. O'Brien, a professor of government who has written a book about the Supreme Court. "Those are the top two priorities."

Bush has made clear his intention to select replacements akin to hard-right Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Writing in the Washington Times on Sept. 14, conservative attorney Bruce Fein predicts that "the winner of the impending presidential sweepstakes will likely appoint from one to three new justices." He foresees that if Bush wins on Election Day and the seats held by O'Connor and Stevens become vacant, "constitutional decrees in pivotal areas concerning presidential war powers, church-state relations, freedom of speech, the death penalty, the powers of the police and prosecutors, racial, ethnic and gender discrimination and private property will display a markedly more conservative hue."

Some political agendas benefit from the claim that the Supreme Court's 1973 abortion-rights decision, Roe v. Wade, is not in jeopardy. But as Michael Dorf, a law professor at Columbia University, wrote this summer, "three justices -- Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas -- remain committed to overturning Roe. Meanwhile, two of the Court's three oldest members -- justices Stevens and O'Connor -- are part of the six-justice majority for recognizing a constitutional right to abortion. Should President Bush have the opportunity to name anti-Roe successors to these two justices -- or to any two or more of the six justices who oppose overturning Roe -- there is little reason to doubt that he would seize it. The result would be a Supreme Court majority for eliminating the constitutional right to abortion."

Though Bush and Kerry are inclined to understate the importance of potential new Supreme Court picks as they try to attract swing voters, Professor Dorf is unequivocal: "A Bush victory will greatly increase the likelihood that Congress and the state legislatures will be able to ban most abortions at some point in the next four years. In contrast, a Kerry victory will almost surely preserve the status quo of legal abortion prior to the third trimester of pregnancy."

Already, Bush's impacts on the judiciary have been appreciable. Like the members of the Supreme Court, the federal judges on appeals and district court benches are appointed for life -- and in less than four years, Bush has chosen almost a quarter of all those judges nationwide.

Dahlia Lithwick, a legal analyst with Slate, notes that "Bush has already had a chance to massively reshape the lower federal bench. He's now filled 200 seats" -- with judges who'll have far-reaching effects. "He has certainly put a lot of people onto the federal bench who have sort of litmus tests on issues like abortion, on issues like civil rights. And I think we are going to see -- in the far future, but not today -- the fallout of a massive, massive influx of quite conservative jurists who've been put on the bench in the last four years."

As opponents of abortion rights, civil liberties, gay rights and other such causes work to gain a second term for George W. Bush, they try not to stir up a mass-media ruckus that might light a fire under progressives about the future of the Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary. Likewise, those on the left who don't want to back Kerry even in swing states are inclined to dodge, or fog over, what hangs in the balance. Kerry is hardly a champion of a progressive legal system, but the contrast between his centrist orientation and the right-wing extremism of the Bush-Cheney regime should be obvious. It's too easy to opt for imagined purity while others will predictably have to deal with very dire consequences.

"The popular constituency of the Bush people, a large part of it, is the extremist fundamentalist religious sector in the country, which is huge," Noam Chomsky said in a recent interview with David Barsamian. "There is nothing like it in any other industrial country. And they have to keep throwing them red meat to keep them in line. While they're shafting them in their economic and social policies, you've got to make them think you're doing something for them. And throwing red meat to that constituency is very dangerous for the world, because it means violence and aggression, but also for the country, because it means harming civil liberties in a serious way. The Kerry people don't have that constituency. They would like to have it, but they're never going to appeal to it much. They have to appeal somehow to working people, women, minorities, and others, and that makes a difference."

Chomsky added: "These may not look like huge differences, but they translate into quite big effects for the lives of people. Anyone who says 'I don't care if Bush gets elected' is basically telling poor and working people in the country, 'I don't care if your lives are destroyed. I don't care whether you are going to have a little money to help your disabled mother. I just don't care, because from my elevated point of view I don't see much difference between them.' That's a way of saying, 'Pay no attention to me, because I don't care about you.' Apart from its being wrong, it's a recipe for disaster if you're hoping to ever develop a popular movement and a political alternative."

Norman Solomon is co-author, with Reese Erlich, of "Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You." His columns and other writings can be found at normansolomon.com.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-blaustein19sep19,1,5188096.story
THE ECONOMY
Who's Better in the Driver's Seat?
Under Democratic presidents, the engine hums along
By Arthur I. Blaustein
Arthur Blaustein was chairman of the President's National Advisory Council on Economic Opportunity during the Carter administration. He is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where

September 19, 2004

BERKELEY — A businessman who voted for President Bush four years ago and Bill Clinton in 1996 told me that John F. Kerry's social-program goals "seem good, but I'm worried the Democrats can't manage the economy as well [as Republicans], and they'll get into my wallet." Many voters agree, according to pollsters. But are Republicans better economic managers than Democrats?

Since we entered an entirely new phase of presidential politics 25 years ago, this question has become harder to answer in a full and open manner. Today's campaign imperatives are who can raise the most money and package the most attractive media image, not who can best demonstrate competence and capacity to govern. But fortunately, we don't have to depend on campaign slogans or advertising bucks to frame the debate. We can look to the record.

Here's the Economic Sweepstakes Quiz. The rules are simple. Guess which president since World War II did best on these eight most generally accepted measures of good management of the nation's economy. You can choose among six Republicans — Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Bushes 41 and 43 — and five Democrats — Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Clinton. Which president produced:

1. The highest growth in the gross domestic product?

2. The highest growth in jobs?

3. The biggest increase in personal disposable income after taxes?

4. The highest growth in industrial production?

5. The highest growth in hourly wages?

6. The lowest misery index (inflation plus unemployment)?

7. The lowest inflation?

8. The largest reduction in the deficit?

The answers are:

1-Truman; 2-Clinton; 3-Johnson; 4-Kennedy; 5-Johnson; 6-Truman; 7-Truman; 8-Clinton.

In other words, Democratic presidents trounced Republicans eight out of eight.

If this isn't enough to destroy the perception that the economy has performed better under Republicans, then let's include stock market performance under Democrats. The Dow Jones Industrial Average during the 20th century rose an average of 7.3% a year under Republican presidents. Under Democrats, it jumped 10.3%, a whopping 41% gain for investors. During George W. Bush's first three years as president, the stock market declined 4%.

Moreover, since World War II, the national debt increased on average by 3.7% a year under Democratic administrations, compared with 9.1% when Republicans occupied the Oval Office. During the same period, Democratic presidents oversaw on average an unemployment rate of 4.8%. For Republicans, it was 6.3%.

That's the historical record. What about current policies?

The Clinton administration presided over the longest peacetime economic expansion in U.S. history. The national debt fell dramatically, the industrial sector boomed, wages grew and more Americans found jobs. In contrast, the Bush administration has presided over the weakest job-creation cycle since the Great Depression, record household debt, the highest-ever bankruptcy rate and a substantial increase of those who live in poverty.

Kerry maintains that government has the responsibility to keep the economy on the right track. Toward that end, he has pledged to reduce the national debt and budget deficit. He would help the middle class and working poor by maintaining current benefit levels and eligibility for the earned income tax credit. Kerry has also promised to restore tax progressivity and fairness by rolling back Bush's giveaways to taxpayers earning more than $200,000 annually. And the Massachusetts senator wants to make significant investments in healthcare, education, affordable housing and the environment.

The president, by contrast, has emerged as little more than a supply-sider in the mold of his father, George H.W. Bush, and his father's former boss, Reagan. The results demonstrate why supply-side policies are sometimes called "trickle-down" economics. Corporate profits have soared 57.5% during the Bush administration, while workers' wages and benefits have increased a minuscule 1.57%.

In less than a year and a half, the Bush administration's sweeping tax cuts, passed by Congress in 2001, wiped out the federal government's 10-year projected budget surplus of $1.6 trillion. In 2000, the budget surplus was $236 billion. Three years later, the surplus had turned into a deficit of $375 billion.

Because Bush believes the free market will solve America's economic problems, he wants to gradually privatize Social Security and Medicare. To finance current government spending — after having given the wealthiest 1% of Americans 43% of the tax cuts — Bush is borrowing more heavily from the Social Security trust fund than any previous president. At the same time, the Treasury owes billions to foreign investors who buy Treasury bonds, and thus subsidize the national debt, which has soared by 29%, to $7.3 trillion.

Bush's solution to the recovering economy's still-uneven job creation is more tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals and corporations. The cost of these tax breaks plus his proposed spending initiatives is estimated to be $3 trillion over a decade. In denying the tax cut's role in the nation's current budgetary problems — and placing the blame instead on Sept. 11 and corporate malfeasance — the administration is being dishonest with the public.

During the 2000 campaign, Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney, bragged about their MBA and CEO credentials, respectively. We've learned what that means: fudging, manipulating, wheedling government contracts and favors, and, in general, working the system for all it's worth. Bush and Cheney were schooled in a corporate culture that believes success involves exploiting the government, the economy and the environment.

They now practice that culture in the White House. To them, the national treasury seems little more than a personal piggy bank to reward their corporate friends and largest campaign contributors.

We don't need more quick-fix schemes or lopsided tax cuts. Four more years of Reaganomics II could land us on the economic endangered nations' list. Ballooning deficits and private debt could strangle the economy for the next generation, and all but the wealthiest would have a tough time making ends meet.

Kerry understands these realities and has demonstrated a willingness to confront them with candor, fairness and vision. We need an administration that understands and believes in coherent, comprehensive and equitable policies that promote sustainable economic growth — and, on that count, Democrats have the winning record.

If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.

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Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091904D.shtml

Seymour Hersh's Alternative History of Bush's War
By Mary Jacoby
Salon.com

Saturday 18 September 2004

The crack investigative reporter tells Salon about a disastrous battle the U.S. brass hushed up, the frightening True Believers in the White House, and how Iran, not Israel, may have manipulated us into war.


Seymour Hersh
(Photo: Michael Schmelling / AP Photo)

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Seymour Hersh has written more than two dozen stories for the New Yorker magazine on the secret machinations of the Bush administration in what the White House calls the "war on terrorism." His revelations, including an investigation of a group of neoconservatives at the Pentagon who set up their own special intelligence unit to press the case for invading Iraq, have consistently broken news.

Arguably his most important scoop came last spring, when the legendary investigative reporter received the now infamous photos of prisoner abuse by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, Iraq, as well as the explosive report on the abuse by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba. The story Hersh published in the New Yorker, followed by a report by CBS's "60 Minutes," created an international scandal for the Bush administration and led to congressional hearings.

In a new book, "Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib," Hersh expands upon his work in the New Yorker to contribute new insights and revelations. He discloses how a CIA analyst's report on abuses against captured Taliban prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, made its way to the White House in 2002, putting National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on notice two years before the Abu Ghraib scandal that human rights violations were taking place in U.S.-run prisons abroad.

In March 2002, Hersh writes, a military action against al-Qaida, known as Operation Anaconda, was botched in Afghanistan's mountainous border with Pakistan. Billed at the time as a success story by the Pentagon, it was in fact a debacle, plagued by squabbling between the services, bad military planning and avoidable deaths of American soldiers, as well as the escape of key al-Qaida leaders, likely including Osama bin Laden.

Hersh's story is well known. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1969 exposé of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, in which American soldiers killed more than 500 civilians. He is the author of eight books, including 1983's "The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House." And, since 1998, he's been a staff writer for the New Yorker

I visited with Hersh this week in his tiny, unadorned two-room office in downtown Washington, where he works amid a whirring fax machine, a constantly ringing phone and delivery men knocking on the door with packages. A map of the world, slightly off-kilter, is taped to the wall behind his desk, which is piled high with papers.

He speaks quickly, answering questions before the sentences can be completed, and hopscotches through conversational topics, as if everything's a race against time. "I have some Brazilians coming in. You know, just to talk about ... wait! Turn it off for a second," he says, gesturing at my recorder. He shares with me a lead he's working on. He flashes me a look at an intriguing document before stealing it away. "OK, let's talk about the book. I've gone over the top here. I'm not pimping anymore. I'm now a full-fledged whore, with red paint," he says, pretending to smear rouge on his cheeks. He loosens his tie. "Let's get on with it!"

What is new in the book, and what is based on your published work?

I'd say about 35 percent of the opening material on Abu Ghraib is new, maybe about 15,000 words, altogether about, I don't know what percentage. Maybe about a third, maybe a little less, is either new or revised or significantly changed. But the bulk of the book is the articles I did, put in a different form and combined in a different way by a very competent editor of mine. This book was edited by the New Yorker and fact-checked by the New Yorker. Everything that is new in the book was fact-checked by the New Yorker.

Who was the editor?

Her name is Amy Davidson. She's a senior editor, and she's great. A man named John Bennet, who is a wonderful editor, was my editor for the first couple of years, and then Amy came on because John's good that way. John is very avuncular, and he wants other people to start editing significant stuff, because among other things, he's always stuck with the big pieces. It was fact-checked by the same people, and the publisher paid for it. And Remnick, to his everlasting credit, David Remnick the editor, agreed that even though there's a very good story at the beginning - the whole Condi Rice meeting issue - he said publish it in your book and go make some money. It was sort of nice of them. It reflects well on the New Yorker. His point was, your being out there reflects well on the New Yorker. We all fight for making a living.

To talk about the new revelations ...

Let me tell you the one I like the most; aside from the obvious stuff about Abu Ghraib, there was a story I didn't write two years ago about Operation Anaconda. I didn't write it because, oh, a lot of complicated reasons. One, it was very hostile to our soldiers, and the military, and General [Tommy] Franks, and [Major Gen. Frank] Hagenbeck, a very nasty story. And then secondly, there was bad blood between the Marine Corps, and General Franks, and CentComm and the Air Force, and it just didn't, uh ... it's one of those stories. The real reason in a funny way is that even though my sources were angry in talking about it, it's one of the stories they really would have regretted, because you're talking about internecine warfare among the services. It's about boys ... anyway.

They would have regretted it?

They would have regretted talking to me about that. In there is an account of the Marines insisting that General Franks sign an MOU, a memorandum of understanding, of how the Marines would be used. We're talking about in combat, this kind of war going on between the services. And, you know, I probably guess it was the right decision, because I had to do obviously an alternate history of the war. And obviously there were certain people talking to me. People on the inside know what's going on. And so, I probably agree it was OK to do it. But I felt bad when I saw [former Gen. Wesley] Clark later. I had talked to Clark about the story at the time. Then two years later I ran into him when he was running for president, or right before, and he said, "Whatever happened to that story?" I said, "Well, I just decided not to write it." And he said, "Well, you should have. It's your job."

He's an amazingly straight guy. A difficult guy. "You should have." He basically told me, "Punk kid. You didn't know what you were doing." I also respect him because ...

Let's talk about some of these revelations.

Oh, so that was the one I liked the most.

But why didn't you write it at the time? You thought it would be too hostile?

No! There was, you know, it was a tough story about troops running from the battlefield, you know; it was just a tough story. [Hersh is referring to the lost battle of Anaconda.] I was writing a lot of other tough stories, and, uh ... it just didn't work. Let's put it that way.

Isn't that what a lot of the mainstream press get accused of - certainly not you - but holding back important information out of sensitivity for the feelings of the nation?

Ain't none of us perfect. It just seemed at the time, some of the people who were talking to me at the time, it would cause a big stink, and some of the Marines who were talking to me would not talk anymore. I also know, in order to do the story right, I would have had to go find some of the guys who were in the mission ... There was a lot of reporting to do, and I don't know, I just didn't do it.

But now you've gone back and revisited it in the book?

Oh yeah. Give me the book. I'll show you right where it is. So I'm not backing off. It was a story that should have been written. Of course I should have written it.

Let's talk about this anecdote about Vice President Cheney saying there would be no resignations [over the Abu Ghraib scandal]. Your publisher emphasized this in the press release, and I wanted to know ...

Now, wait a minute. Are you asking about a press release? Excuse me. That's like asking me about a headline.

Just tell me why you feel it's important.

What? Tell me why I feel it's important that Cheney called up?

What does it reveal?

It's more complicated than you think. For one thing, it reveals that they're all as one. The notion that they're going to fire [Donald] Rumsfeld, as people actually entertained, is comical. After 9/11 he gets in this swaggering mode and says we're going to smoke those terrorists out of their snake holes. And then it's clear there's prisoner abuse and torture going on. But does Cheney call up and say, "Oh, my God! What's going on over there, Don? What kind of craziness are you doing to those prisoners? This is devastating to our campaign. What's going on?" I don't hear that. What I hear is, "Let's all pull together and get past it." Very interesting.

You're an expert on Henry Kissinger. Is there someone who ...

I'm an expert on the side of Henry Kissinger that lied like most people breathed.

Is there someone who is the Henry Kissinger in this administration?

Oh, believe me, I pray for one [clasps his hands and looks beseechingly upward]. Wouldn't it be great if the reality was that they were lying about WMD, and they really didn't believe that democracy would come when they invaded Iraq, and you could go to war with 5,000 troops, a few special forces, a few bombs and a lot of American flags, and Iraq would fold, Saddam would be driven out, a new Baath Party would emerge that's moderate? Democracy would flow like water out of a fountain. These guys believe it. They believe WMD. There's no fallback with these guys. These guys are utopians. They're like Trotskyites. They believe in permanent revolution. They really believe. They believe that they could go in with few forces. They believed that once they went in it would happen quick. Iran would get the message. What they call occupied Lebanon would get the lesson. Even the Saudis would change.

They thought it would happen quickly?

Very quickly. I don't have any empirical basis for it, but if I had to bet, the plan was to go right into Syria. That's why the fourth division was hanging for so long in the desert out there right on the border with Syria. In the early days of the war, before this government figured out how much trouble they were in - which took them a long time - they would drive practice runs, somebody told me. Again, I'm just saying what was told to me; this is not something I reported, but I was told pretty reliably, they were doing practice runs that amounted to the distance from the border to Damascus. It's my belief always - again this is not empirical, it's sort of my heuristic view - that the real reason [Paul] Wolfowitz and others were mad at [Gen. Eric] Shinseki when he testified before the war about [the need for] 200 or 300 troops - it wasn't about the numbers - was, "Didn't he get it? What had he been listening to in the tank? Didn't we explain to him in the tank what we told the chiefs? This is the way it's going to be. Didn't he understand what it's all about?" He didn't get it. He hadn't understood what they meant. This was all going to fall down. It was all going to be peaches and cream. And Shinseki just didn't get it! It wasn't about the numbers. He wasn't a member of the clan. He didn't join the utopia crowd.

You've answered one of my questions. Let's elaborate on it. Clearly there's very little that's, well, in touch with reality in these policies.

Ha, ha, ha. It's so easy for you to say that!

But it's not so clear actually. Many Americans ...

I think I used actually ... I'll get you this word [grabs book from my lap and begins flipping through it] ... there was a "fantastical" quality to the White House's deliberations. Fantastical. That was the phrase I used.

Yes, I read that. And that was my next question. With Kissinger, there were lies, and he knew exactly what he was doing ...

Yes, one of his aides was assigned - literally assigned on one of the secret flights they made to China - to keep track of the lies, who knew what. I think they used to describe it as keeping track of what statements were made, but essentially it was who was being told what, because so many different people were being told different things. But these guys, do you realize how much better off we would be if they really were cynical, and they really were lying about it, because, yes, behind the invasion would be something real, like support for Israel or oil. But it's not! It's not about oil. It's about utopia. I guess you could call it idealism. But it's idealism that's dead wrong. It's like one of the far-right Christian credos. It's a faith-based policy. Only it wasn't a religious faith. It was the faith that democracy would flourish.

So you don't think that this is some Machiavellian, cynical, manipulative ...

I used to pray it was! We'd be in better shape. Is there anything worse than idealism that doesn't conform to reality? You have an unrealistic policy.

It seems that they are very selective not only about what kind of information they present to the public but even in what they decide to believe in themselves.

I think these guys in their naiveté and single-mindedness have been so completely manipulated by - not the Israelis - but the Iranians. The Iranians always wanted us in. I think there's a lot of evidence that Iran had much to do with [Ahmed] Chalabi's disinformation [about nonexistent Iraqi WMD]. I think there were people in the CIA who suspected this all along, but of course they couldn't get their view in. I think the Senate Intelligence Committee's report's a joke, the idea this CIA was misleading the president. They get some analysts in and say, "Were you pressured?" And they all say, "No, excuse me?" Is that how you do an investigation? The truth of the matter is, there was tremendous pressure put on the analysts [to produce reports that bolstered the case for war]. It's not as if anybody issued a diktat. But everybody understood what to do.

Talk about the ...

Wait. You're missing something now. The Iranian stuff. I think Iran probably had more to do with Chalabi's information than people know.

We know that Chalabi had Iranian agents on his payroll.

Yeah, but, well, he admits to that. He had a villa in Tehran. But basically I think Iran was very interested in getting us involved. We get knocked down a peg; they become the big boys on the block.

Are you working on this now?

Yeah, I'm thinking about it. I'm reporting on it. But I'm not working on it. I'm just - it's too cosmic.

Was Chalabi the conduit?

I think Chalabi thought he could handle the Iranians. They were helping him all along with disinformation and documents he could give to the White House. Don't forget, once the neocons decided to go to Iraq in the face of all evidence, they were like a super-reverse suction machine, and anything in the world that furthered the argument that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction was hot. I call it stove-piping, because it's a technical work of art. But it was much more than that. It was anything - vavoom! - into the president's [office]. It was so amateurish, it was comical. How hard was it to get some crapola into the White House about WMD without the CIA looking at it?

Do you have any idea of the origin of the forged Niger documents that Bush cited in his January 2003 State of the Union address as proof that Iraq was seeking uranium to make nuclear weapons?

I don't really know. I know that they think it was an inside job. And my idea is that there were people in the government who knew that you could give these guys [the neoconservatives] anything, and within three days, if it said the right thing, there would be a principals meeting [of the senior foreign policy officials] at the White House on it. And one idea would be to get them in a position where they really walked on their dongs, in a way. Give them some bad stuff. They'd have a big meeting about it and [the neocons] would finally be exposed as ludicrous. Nobody anticipated that [the forged documents] would end up in the State of the Union address. I mean, it's beyond belief. I don't believe in these conspiracy theories, about [Michael] Ledeen [a neocon operative] and these things. He's too smart for that. Because it was designed to be caught.

Do you think the responsibility for Abu Ghraib goes directly up to Rumsfeld?

I think they [Rumsfeld and senior administration officials] had a chance in the fall of 2002 to set the limits, and they chose not to. I don't think the CIA analyst who did the report was very explicit in his written document about the abuses. That isn't the way to get ahead. But he certainly told his peers there was a real mess there, so they know it. All she [Rice] had to do was put the word out there. The chain of command is very responsive. If you put out the word that you're not going to tolerate this crap, it's not going to happen. But that's not the word they put out.

Nobody would have countenanced in his right mind Abu Ghraib. But then again, if you think a bunch of kids from West Virginia understood the way to the soul of an Arab man is to take off his clothes and photograph him ... they didn't know that. Somebody told it to them. And that's the thing about the military. In loco parentis. They have an obligation to take our children and protect them, not only from land mines but from doing stupid things that could land them in jail.

The book is filled with reporting that shows how newspapers either got it wrong, or simply accepted the official version of events. What do you think of the performance of the main newspapers people look to as sources of information?

Well, so here I am, I'm busy trying to peddle a book and you're asking me to commit self-immolation! (Laughs). Well, all I'll say is, it speaks for itself.

"Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib"
By Seymour M. Hersh
HarperCollins
416 pages
Nonfiction

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/18/opinion/18sat2.html?ex=1096511651&ei=1&en=9fea3eeb78a68461

They Said It Couldn't Be Done

Published: September 18, 2004

Many computer scientists insist that electronic voting machines will be trustworthy only when they produce paper receipts that can be audited. But supporters of electronic voting have long argued that doing so would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. Nevada proved the naysayers wrong this month, running the first statewide election in which electronic voting machines produced paper records of votes cast. Election officials across the country now have no excuse not to provide systems that voters can trust.

There is a growing body of evidence indicating that electronic voting machines are vulnerable to tampering and to software glitches that can skew the vote totals. The best safeguard is a voter-verifiable paper trail, receipts that are printed out during the voting process. Voters can view the receipts to check them against the choices they made on the computer screens. Each receipt remains under glass and, after the vote is cast, falls into a locked box. The receipts can be used in a recount or an audit to check the accuracy of the machine tallies.

The main argument against voter-verifiable paper trails is that they are impractical. At a May meeting of the federal Election Assistance Commission, and again at the National Association of State Election Directors' summer conference, local election officials denounced the campaign for voter-verifiable paper records. At both events, critics waved a receipt about three feet long, saying one that big would be needed for Los Angeles County's lengthy ballot.

But Nevada's secretary of state, Dean Heller, has always believed that paper records are practical, and this month he proved it. Primary voters across the state cast votes on machines that printed out paper records, and none of the nightmarish possibilities came to pass. The poll workers had no trouble with the technology. And election officials had spare machines and printers on hand in the few cases when printers jammed or had other mechanical problems.

Conditions in Nevada favored success. The turnout was light, and the ballot was short enough that the receipt was only about five inches long. But there is no reason to believe that paper trails could not work in any election. Alfred Charles, a vice president of Sequoia Voting Systems, which made the machines used in Nevada, says that if the receipts are done properly, listing only the candidates and referendum choices that the voter actually selects, length should not be a problem, and it is unlikely that even Los Angeles County would require anything like three-foot-long paper receipts.

Even if Nevada's approach - attaching printers to touch-screen machines - had failed, there would still be other ways to provide a paper record. Probably the best solution is the optical scan system used now in many jurisdictions, where voters mark paper ballots that are then read by computers. In optical scan systems, the paper ballots the voters fill out can be retained and used as a check against the machines' tallies.

Nevada has taken the lead on paper trails not only in its own elections, but also in Congress. Its senators - John Ensign, a Republican, and Harry Reid, a Democrat - have co-sponsored the bipartisan Voting Integrity and Verification Act, one of a number of pending bills that would require that all electronic voting machines produce voter-verifiable paper trails. Congress should pass such legislation right away so all Americans can have the same confidence in their elections as Nevadans now have.

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the liberal media by Eric Alterman

Bush's Useful Idiot
[from the October 4, 2004 issue]

Four years ago, Ralph Nader justified his third-party campaign on the grounds that the two parties represented nothing more than "Tweedledum and Tweedledee." As Americans die by the thousand in Iraq, the budget deficit explodes thanks to a tax cut targeting the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, the Justice Department demands women's private medical records from abortion clinics, and polluters are given carte blanche to despoil the earth and poison our children, the devastating evidence of Nader's myopia is everywhere around us.

Recall also that four years ago, Nader professed to want to help build the Green Party into a genuinely progressive alternative to what he termed the corporate-dominated "duopoly." But Nader was no more truthful about his commitment to party-building than George W. Bush was when he decried "nation-building." Today, Nader's party allies consist mainly of the motley far-right collection of Republicans who fund his campaign and collect his signatures, and the remains of the nativist Reform Party, late of Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign.

It's true that Nader once represented an important progressive voice in American politics; then again, so did Norman Podhoretz, David Horowitz and Christopher Hitchens. While Nader continues to employ the same rhetoric as before, this speaks merely to his personal self-delusion and shameless demagoguery. He also appears to be a rather brazen liar. "We have not been accepting signatures obtained through organized Republican Party efforts in the three or four states where we have learned of such activity," he insisted in a September Washington Post op-ed. In fact, as the Detroit Free Press reported a day earlier, 45,000 of the 50,500 petition signatures submitted on Nader's behalf in Michigan were indeed submitted by Republicans. (Meanwhile, in Florida, Nader's ballot access lawyer is one Kenneth Sukhia, who just happened to represent Bush in that state's 2000 recount.)

While Nader, with characteristic obliviousness, refuses to accept any responsibility for the horrors of the Bush Administration, Ronnie Dugger, who presented Nader four years ago at the Green Party convention, admits, "We, the Nader people, certainly put Bush close enough electorally for the Supreme Court to seize the presidency for him." Giving up on talking sense to Nader personally, many of his big-name 2000 supporters have joined together to oppose his current candidacy. Among the seventy-four members of the "113-person Nader 2000 Citizens Committee" who've signed a statement urging support for Kerry/Edwards in all swing states this year are: Phil Donahue, Jim Hightower, Susan Sarandon, Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Howard Zinn and Cornel West. Indeed, Nader is without a single high-profile supporter anywhere this time around. And he has added to his list of enemies what he terms the "liberal intelligentsia": those he defines as concerned with his issues but willing to accept "the least worst option."

Four years ago, writing in these pages about Nader's "nascent leftist movement," I pointed out that it enjoyed "virtually no support among African-Americans, Latinos or Asian-Americans. It has no support among organized feminist groups, organized gay rights groups or mainstream environmental groups. To top it all off, it has no support in the national union movement. So Nader and company are building a nonblack, non-Latino, non-Asian, nonfeminist, nonenvironmentalist, nongay, non-working people's left: Now that really would be quite an achievement." I could have added Jews, too.

Today Nader has managed to top even that accomplishment. This time he is actively hated by the leaders of the dispossessed to whom he professes his allegiance. On June 22, for instance, Nader met with members of the Congressional Black Caucus in a session that ended with shouting, cursing and several members walking out in a state of fury. When it was over, Texas Representative Sheila Jackson Lee told CNN, "This is the most historic election of our lifetime, and it is a life-or-death matter for the vulnerable people we represent. For that reason, we can't sacrifice their vulnerability for the efforts being made by Mr. Nader."

Pragmatic concerns carried no weight in what was essentially a Leninist campaign in 2000, based as it was on Nader's belief that things needed to get much worse before they could begin to get better. When Nader claimed a Bush victory would help energize groups like the Sierra Club, its leader, Carl Pope, loudly told him, No thanks. When I debated Cornel West and Frances Fox Piven before a large audience at NYU, our introductions were preceded by a plea from graduate student union organizers to support their efforts to elicit decent pay and conditions. I tried to point out that those students who supported both Nader and the union might wish to concern themselves with the makeup of the presidentially appointed National Labor Relations Board. Well, in July of this year, the graduate students who stuck with Nader got what they apparently wanted. The Bush-controlled NLRB voted to reverse an earlier decision and deny all American graduate students the right to bargain collectively.

Despite all of this, as I write, Nader is actually polling higher than the 2.74 percent of Americans who provided the votes for his 2000 kamikaze mission--high enough to tip key swing states toward the single worst President in American history. What in God's name will convince Nader's remaining supporters to abandon his lemminglike march? It's hard to imagine what kind of logic will resonate with people who define themselves as leftists and yet remain unmoved by the sight of George Bush and Dick Cheney lying us into war, John Ashcroft attempting to criminalize dissent and Donald Rumsfeld rationalizing rape and torture.

If anyone has any ideas, let's hear them, please, and fast. In the meantime, can the media please stop assuming that this Republican-funded, nativist-supported and Bush/Cheney-enabling campaign is somehow deserving of the label "liberal"? Are our problems not large enough that we must also be saddled with the sins of our enemies?

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/col/story/232224p-199435c.html

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Soldiers' kin pay a high price

Wednesday, September 15th, 2004

As politicians make grand speeches supporting our troops, families of our wounded soldiers are being told they soon will no longer receive the modest government stipend that helps them leave job and home to stay at their loved one's hospital bedside.
The majority of the 3,974 seriously wounded soldiers are young, and few earn more than $1,600 a month, tops. Their families are often of limited means and have a hard enough time keeping up with their bills. Family members forfeit wages and risk losing their jobs altogether as they help their soldier recover.

"None of these kids left a Park Ave. townhouse to go fight," observed one Army combat officer.

With exactly that in mind, the stipend was established in April 2003, just as the war in Iraq commenced. It lapses Sept. 30.

"I think nobody expected the war to last that long," an Army medical official said.

Surprise, surprise. A provision making the stipend permanent, Section 632 of HR4200, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005, is languishing in Congress as if it were not a crime to compound the anxieties of wounded heroes.

A House Armed Services Committee spokesman said HR4200 was "in conference" and suggested any current benefits to wounded soldiers would only "technically" expire and "go on as has been." Those who disagree include the Department of Defense, which allowed, "it appears there will be a gap in payment of per diem."

Meanwhile, a nation in a multibillion-dollar war will be saving the $51 a day plus lodging expenses now accorded the mother of 23-year-old Spec. Ken Comstock of the 2nd Battalion, 108th Light Infantry, New York Army National Guard. He is at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, recovering from a head wound he suffered in Iraq. His most recent surgery involved an ear-to-ear incision and shifting tissue to stop drainage from his skull.

"He's now in a seven- to 10-day waiting period to make sure nothing else is leaking," said his mother, Bonnie Comstock of upstate New York.

The mother has been able to remain at his side thanks to a patient employer and the stipend. She has observed his reaction whenever she prepares to leave the room.

"He gives this bewildered look: 'What? Where are you going?'" the mother said.

Her son would then point to the wall clock above the sink on the other side of the room. She would have no trouble understanding the message.

"When are you coming back? How long are you going to be?"

He would hold up one finger then another.

"One hour? Two Hours?"

She would step out only long enough to get something to eat or send an E-mail. Each time she returned, she would see anew what her presence means to him.

"He's my firstborn," she said yesterday. "It's that bond."

She was notified Aug. 23 that her son had been wounded. She flew to the hospital in Germany where he was first treated and accompanied him on the flight to Andrews Air Force base on Labor Day weekend. She has now been away from her job as a restaurant manager for three weeks.

"I don't want to lose my job, and I don't want to leave my son here alone," Comstock said.

She certainly could not afford to commute, and she had used the single trip the Army provides each parent of a wounded soldier.

"They said, 'One trip. That's it,'" the mother said.

And as if all that were not enough, the hospital's family assistance office informed her she would soon be losing her stipend.

"I'm like, 'What do you mean?'" Comstock recalled.

The family assistance people, who seem as kind as anybody, suggested she call her congressman.

"I said, 'My son was seriously wounded in Iraq and now you're telling me I have to call somebody to ask for food and lodging?'" she recalled.

While the mother spent another day with her wounded firstborn, a columnist called the office of Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the House Armed Services Committee's ranking minority member. A spokeswoman was unable to predict when the bill reinstating the stipend would become law.

"They've just started," she said. "Hopefully, before they adjourn in October, but your guess is as good as mine."

LNS Countdown to Electoral Uprising -- 45 Days to Go -- Seven Stories from the REAL Headlines

There are 45 days to go until the national referendum on the CHARACTER, CREDIBILITY and COMPETENCE of the _resident and the VICE _resident...Here's what a real headline, heralding a real story written by real journalists, in a real big city newspaper looks like: "US Death Toll in Iraq at least 52 This Month." Here's what a real lead to a real story by real journalists looks like: "Iraqi insurgents pressed their assault on U.S. and allied forces Thursday as two Americans and a Briton were kidnapped from their Baghdad house and three Marines were killed, bringing the number of U.S. military deaths in the country this month to at least 52. The brazen abduction of the employees of a Middle East-based construction firm continued a violent week that has left more than 200 Iraqis dead, and it followed a similar kidnapping of two Italian women from their office 10 days ago." Kudos to Los Angeles Times, and to Ashraf Khalil and Patrick J. McDonnell. MEANWHILE...We are two weeks out from Labor Day, and the quick fix to the Deep Fix is unraveling...The _resident didn't get a bounce from the brown shirt convention in NYC -- indeed, he was losing ground because of the purple heart band-aids and Zell Miller (D-Phillip Morris) -- so the US regimestream news media delivered a fabricated bounce cooked up by its shameless pollsters (Gallup, in particular)and spun by its craven propapunditgansists...But, as we said, the quick fix to the Deep Fix is unraveling. Yes, it is unraveling under the withering attacks of Kerry-Edwards and the irreversible momentum of events in Iraq, the Economy, etc. Something is SINKING IN for the US electorate, something about the _resident's foolish military adventure and the Mega-Mogadishu it has created for our military, yes, something is SINKING IN...And despite the despicable spinning of NotBeSeen's Tom Brokaw, who said that the Iraqi insurgents are trying to influence the US presidential campaign (remember to look up his salary in the LNS searchable database), the US electorate is turning against the Bush Cabal, its wholly-owmed-subsidiary-formerly-known-as-the-Republican-Party AND their sponsors in the US regimestream news media. This unholy Triad of shared special interest (i.e. oil, weapons, media, pharmaceuticals, tobacoo, etc.) is going to be dealt a defeat on Nov. 2. There is an Electoral Uprising coming...Here are SEVEN very important stories that should dominate the air waves and command headlines above the fold, but they won't...Please read them and share them with others. Please vote and encourage others to vote. And, please, remember that the US regimestream news media does not want to inform you about this presidential campaign, it wants to DISinform you...

Columbia Journalism Review Campaign Desk: There's a history here; the same wild variance in September polls took place during the 2000 presidential campaign. In that year, Gallup showed Al Gore leading by 10 percentage points on September 20, yet losing by 13 percentage points on October 26 -- a stunning 23-point shift in 36 days. (Meanwhile, polls commissioned by Fox and by Reuters/MSNBC on those same days showed statistical ties -- which, of course, pretty well mirrored what happened on election day.)
There were a few outlets that showed a willingness to recognize that competing and wildly divergent poll results had been released on the same day, like the Associated Press and CNN, which ran a story headlined "Latest Presidential Polls Vary Widely."
So whom do you believe today -- Pew, which portrays a dead heat, or Gallup, which shows Bush pulling away smartly? Our suggestion is to treat the polls as what they are -- snapshots, not predictions, and snapshots taken by different cameras with different focus, shutter speeds, refraction and lens angles.
That's the story that you don't read or hear from the news organizations that commission the polls in question -- and at this point, they all ought to be in question. It's much simpler for newspapers to offer up raw numbers rather than to explain the intricacies of any given poll or trying to explain why one poll differs so wildly from another. Horse race numbers create easily digestible storylines, after all, and storylines, it is thought, keep people interested and sell papers.
Besides, relying on a poll to, in effect, do your reporting for you, instead of relying on said poll to put your reporting in perspective, is the easy way out. The new Gallup poll, with its disputed methodology, should not rate a banner headline in one of the nation's most widely read newspapers; readers in search of an accurate take on the state of the race deserve better.

www.mediamatters.org: According to analysis released September 14 by Media Tenor International (an independent and nonpartisan research organization), ABC, CBS, FOX News Channel, and NBC evening news reports on Senator John Kerry's military service far outnumbered reports on other topics relating to President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry. The analysis surveyed the period of August 1 through August 29; the "other topics" included campaigning and campaign strategy; foreign and domestic policy; personality; and terrorism.

www.fair.org: In the past week, a handful of stories have cast doubt on whether George W. Bush fulfilled his National Guard obligations 30 years ago. Reports by the Associated Press (9/7/04), Boston Globe (9/8/04) and U.S. News & World Report (9/20/04) have all raised new questions about Bush's military service. Though each of these stories has been accompanied by significant official documentation, developments in the investigations by AP, U.S. News and the Boston Globe have been largely sidetracked by the fixation on questions about the authenticity of documents aired on CBS on September 8...Instead of asking the White House tough questions about the well-documented information contained in these reports, media have focused almost exclusively on the claims and counter-claims made about the Killian memos-- as if the discrepancies over Bush's service record stand or fall based on this one set of disputed documents. It's the equivalent of covering the sideshow and ignoring the center ring.

Associated Press: A woman wearing a T-shirt with the words "President Bush (news - web sites) You Killed My Son" and a picture of a soldier killed in Iraq (news - web sites) was detained Thursday after she interrupted a campaign speech by first lady Laura Bush.
Police escorted Sue Niederer, of Hopewell, N.J., from a rally at a firehouse after she demanded to know why her son, Army 1st Lt. Seth Dvorin, 24, was killed in Iraq. Dvorin died in February while trying to disarm a bomb.
As shouts of "Four More Years" subsided, Niederer, standing in the middle of a crowd of some 700, continued to shout about the killing of her son. Local police escorted her from the event, handcuffed her and put her in the back of a police van.

Democratic National Committee: In response to news reports of a New Jersey woman, whose son was killed while serving in Iraq and who after attempting to ask First Lady Laura Bush a question at a campaign event was arrested, put in a police wagon, and taken to jail, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe issued this statement:
"George W. Bush has cultivated a culture in which a grieving mother in New Jersey gets arrested for asking a question at a Bush campaign event. It’s the same culture that allows an Alabama woman to be fired for expressing her beliefs with a John Kerry bumper sticker on her car. You ask a question they don’t want to answer and they arrest you. You express a belief that they disagree with and you get fired.

David J. Sirota and Jonathan Baskin, American Progress: As Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush, Cheney helped lead a multinational coalition against Iraq and was one of the architects of a post-war economic embargo designed to choke off funds to the country. He insisted the world should “maintain sanctions, at least of some kind,” so Saddam Hussein could not “rebuild the military force he’s used against his neighbors.”
But less than six years later, as a private businessman, Cheney apparently had more important interests than preventing Hussein from rebuilding his army. While he claimed during the 2000 campaign that, as CEO of Halliburton, he had “imposed a ‘firm policy’ against trading with Iraq,” confidential UN records show that, from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that sold more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was in charge. Halliburton acquired its interest in both firms while Cheney was at the helm, and continued doing business through them until just months before Cheney was named George W. Bush’s running mate.
Perhaps even more troubling, at the same time Cheney was doing business with Iraq, he launched a public broadside against sanctions laws designed to cut off funds to regimes like Iran, which the State Department listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. In 1998, Cheney traveled to Kuala Lumpur to attack his own country's terrorism policies for being too strict. Under the headline, “Former US Defence Secretary Says Iran-Libya Sanctions Act ‘Wrong,’” the Malaysian News Agency reported that Cheney “hit out at his government" and said sanctions on terrorist countries were "ineffective, did not provide the desired results and [were] a bad policy.”
Two years later, Cheney traveled to another country to demand America weaken restrictions on doing business with Iran’s petroleum industry, despite Clinton administration warnings that Iranian oil revenues could be used to fund terrorism. “We're kept out of [Iran] primarily by our own government, which has made a decision that U.S. firms should not be allowed to invest significantly in Iran,” he told an oil conference in Canada. “I think that's a mistake.”
Now new reports suggest Cheney’s desire to do business with Iran may have amounted to more than words. Details of Halliburton’s activities in Iran have been investigated by the Treasury Department and were recently forwarded to the U.S. attorney in Houston. Such an action is taken only after Treasury finds evidence of ‘serious and willful violations’ of sanctions laws. Halliburton already admits one of its subsidiaries “performs between $30 [million] and $40 million annually in oilfield service work in Iran.”

Ray McGovern, www.truthout.org: "Have they all drunk the Kool-Aid?" asked a former CIA colleague, referring to the stampede to appoint a new director and radically restructure the intelligence community. The Kool-Aid allusion was to the "group-think" that led disciples of self-anointed "messiah" Jim Jones to mass suicide via poisoned Kool-Aid in 1978...
Goss co-authored an opinion piece in The Tampa Tribune on March 8, claiming that in the 1990s Sen. John Kerry "was leading efforts in Congress to dismantle the nation's intelligence capabilities." And in June, Goss interrupted debate on the House floor by displaying a sign with a 1977 quote from Kerry that called for cuts in the intelligence budget. These antics raise legitimate concerns with respect to Goss's ability to be nonpartisan.
Even more troubling to veteran intelligence analysts is the way Goss' prepared statement parroted the president's rhetoric to the effect that terrorists "are committed to the destruction of our economy and our way of life" - boilerplate that merits as much credence as the now thoroughly discredited pre-war claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

James Wolcott, www.jameswolcott.com: So far I have watched four cable news interviews with Kitty Kelley, author of The Evil Clampetts. And here is what I have learned about her book.
Not much.
The interviewers are all working off of the same talking points, the tone and thrust of their questioning so similar it's as if they all received the same fax from the Republican National Committee...
The worst interviews were on CNN. Aaron Brown fretted over the methodology and wondered why Kelley focused on the Bushes, since so many privileged families such as the Kennedys and the Rockefellers get away with all sorts of behavior without having to pay the price most people do--why pick on them?
Kelley smartly retorted that the Bushes have paid less price than most (what she didn't say, and could have, was two assassinations of Kennedy brothers was worse than anything the Bushes have had to endure)... Brown at least wasn't a snitty little twit, like the CNN interviewer this morning whose name, I believe, is Heidi Hairdo. From the outset her tone was brisk, assistant district-attorneyish, and yet schoolgirlishly naive, as when she couldn't understand why anyone would be "afraid" of the Bushes and Kelley laughed in snorting disbelief, as if she had to explain the facts of life to Miss Snippy.
Heidi Hairdo, like some of the other interviewers, seem to keep up an invisible cordon sanitarire, a starchy, disdainful discomfort at having to share the set with an author so disreputable and, oh dear, tacky. This from people who fawn over every narcissistic piece of Hollywood horseflesh making the rounds to promote their latest lousy movie.
What's clear is that the news media are uncomfortable with someone investigating the arrogant and disturbing patterns of behavior in the Bush dynasty. They can't ignore Kitty Kelley, but they want to keep her in her litter box. But she's a tiny tigress, and will not be contained.

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!)

http://www.campaigndesk.org/

September 17, 2004
Hidden Angle
Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

On the way to work this morning, we picked up one of New York's free papers, Metro, and discovered the headline, "Poll Says Bush, Kerry Tied." Once at the office, we clicked over to USA Today, only to see the cover story, headlined "Bush Clear Leader in Poll." Readers of both publications could be forgiven for being confused. And their confusion would only continue if they read on: "The boost Bush received from the Republican convention has increased rather than dissipated," USA Today exclaimed. No, declared the AP story in Metro, in reality Bush's post-convention bounce had all but evaporated between September 8 and September 14.

The poll referenced by Metro, which showed a statistical tie, came from the Pew Research Center, which just three days earlier had released a different poll showing Bush with a 15-point lead among likely voters. (Meantime, a Harris poll taken in between the two Pew efforts showed a slim Kerry lead, and argued the "'convention bounce' has now disappeared.") The poll featured in USA Today showing a huge Bush lead comes from Gallup.

There's a history here; the same wild variance in September polls took place during the 2000 presidential campaign. In that year, Gallup showed Al Gore leading by 10 percentage points on September 20, yet losing by 13 percentage points on October 26 -- a stunning 23-point shift in 36 days. (Meanwhile, polls commissioned by Fox and by Reuters/MSNBC on those same days showed statistical ties -- which, of course, pretty well mirrored what happened on election day.)

USA Today regularly commissions polls from Gallup, though they didn't commission this most recent one, erroneous media reports notwithstanding. The paper still gave the poll prominent play, however; according to Susan Page, who wrote the story, "we felt very comfortable comparing it to previous polls because it used the same methodology" as other polls that the paper had commissioned this year. Though the story does mention the contrasting Pew poll in the seventh paragraph, the lede, like the headline, presents the Gallup poll results as largely beyond question, asserting that the poll heralds "the first statistically significant edge either candidate has held this year."

There were a few outlets that showed a willingness to recognize that competing and wildly divergent poll results had been released on the same day, like the Associated Press and CNN, which ran a story headlined "Latest Presidential Polls Vary Widely."

So whom do you believe today -- Pew, which portrays a dead heat, or Gallup, which shows Bush pulling away smartly? Our suggestion is to treat the polls as what they are -- snapshots, not predictions, and snapshots taken by different cameras with different focus, shutter speeds, refraction and lens angles.

That's the story that you don't read or hear from the news organizations that commission the polls in question -- and at this point, they all ought to be in question. It's much simpler for newspapers to offer up raw numbers rather than to explain the intricacies of any given poll or trying to explain why one poll differs so wildly from another. Horse race numbers create easily digestible storylines, after all, and storylines, it is thought, keep people interested and sell papers.

Besides, relying on a poll to, in effect, do your reporting for you, instead of relying on said poll to put your reporting in perspective, is the easy way out. The new Gallup poll, with its disputed methodology, should not rate a banner headline in one of the nation's most widely read newspapers; readers in search of an accurate take on the state of the race deserve better.

--Brian Montopoli

Posted 09/17/04 at 04:33 PM
Go to comments

http://mediamatters.org/items/200409170002

Media Tenor report: Negative reports on Kerry's military service dominated TV news in weeks between Dem, GOP conventions

According to analysis released September 14 by Media Tenor International (an independent and nonpartisan research organization), ABC, CBS, FOX News Channel, and NBC evening news reports on Senator John Kerry's military service far outnumbered reports on other topics relating to President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry. The analysis surveyed the period of August 1 through August 29; the "other topics" included campaigning and campaign strategy; foreign and domestic policy; personality; and terrorism.

Media Tenor also found that, while negative statements about Kerry's military service significantly outnumbered positive statements on both the network evening news programs and on FOX News Channel's Special Report with Brit Hume -- by a margin of more than two to one -- FOX News Channel's negative statements outnumbered those of the networks by 462 to 252.

In addition, Media Tenor tracked the number of anonymous sources cited in statements about Kerry's military service; the report revealed that Hume cited anonymous sources in twelve negative statements, compared with a total of four anonymously sourced negative statements on the three networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC).

— N.C.

Posted to the web on Friday September 17, 2004 at 10:43 AM EST

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http://www.fair.org/press-releases/cbs-bush-documents.html

FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting 112 W. 27th Street New York, NY 10001
MEDIA ADVISORY:
Media Should Probe Bigger Questions About Bush's Record

September 14, 2004

In the past week, a handful of stories have cast doubt on whether George W. Bush fulfilled his National Guard obligations 30 years ago. Reports by the Associated Press (9/7/04), Boston Globe (9/8/04) and U.S. News & World Report (9/20/04) have all raised new questions about Bush's military service. Though each of these stories has been accompanied by significant official documentation, developments in the investigations by AP, U.S. News and the Boston Globe have been largely sidetracked by the fixation on questions about the authenticity of documents aired on CBS on September 8.

Weighing the credibility of evidence is an essential function of journalism. Experts have weighed in on both sides on the authenticity of CBS's so-called Killian memos (New York Times, 9/14/04; Washington Post, 9/14/04); efforts to establish the origin of those documents should continue. However, news outlets that focus on this tangent of the National Guard story to the exclusion of the unchallenged new evidence that has recently emerged are neglecting another essential journalistic task: holding powerful people and politicians accountable.

In the wake of the stories scrutinizing Bush's stateside service during the Vietnam era, it's hard to imagine a better situation for the White House than to have the press corps ignore a range of evidence raising questions about Bush's fulfillment of his obligations while obsessing singularly on one set of documents from one story.

A review of some of the information uncovered in recent news reports:

The September 7 Associated Press story, based on new records the White House had long maintained didn't exist, debunked a Bush assertion that he'd skipped his flight physical because the jet he was trained on was becoming obsolete. According to AP, Bush's unit continued to fly the same jets for two years after the missed physical.

The September 8 Boston Globe expose concluded that Bush failed in his military obligations by missing months of duty in Alabama and in Boston. As the Globe revealed, Bush had signed contracts on two separate occasions swearing to meet minimum Guard requirements on penalty of being called up to active duty. According to the military experts consulted by the Globe, Bush's Guard attendance was so bad "his superiors could have disciplined him or ordered him to active duty in 1972, 1973 or 1974."

U.S News & World Report (9/20/04) reviewed National Guard regulations and reported that the White House has been using "an inappropriate-- and less stringent-- Air Force standard in determining that he had fulfilled his duty." The magazine noted that Bush committed to attend at least "44 inactive-duty training drills each fiscal year" when he signed up for the Guard, but that Bush's own records "show that he fell short of that requirement, attending only 36 drills in the 1972-73 period, and only 12 in the 1973-74 period." The magazine explains that even by using the White House's preferred methodology for measuring Bush's service, he still fell short of those minimum requirements.

An NBC Nightly News segment (9/9/04) played a clip of Bush being interviewed in 1988, acknowledging that favoritism sometimes played a part in getting into the National Guard. While he had said that he didn't think that happened in his case, he did voice his approval of the practice: "If you want to go in the National Guard, I guess sometimes people made calls. I don't see anything wrong with it." (He continued with a remark that could be taken as an insult to the men and women who did face combat during the war: ''They probably should have called the National Guard up in those days. Maybe we'd have done better in Vietnam.")
Even CBS's September 8 broadcasts, the subject of so much scrutiny, included important information beyond what is contained in the disputed memos. On the CBS Evening News and 60 Minutes II that night, CBS featured Ben Barnes, the former speaker of the Texas legislature, describing how he used his political influence to help a young George W. Bush bypass a waiting list and secure a coveted position in the Guard. In addition, the CBS stories also featured an interview with Robert Strong, a former colleague of Bush's commander, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, the purported author of the disputed documents. Strong described the pressure Bush's commander was working under: "He was trying to deal with a volatile political situation, dealing with the son of an ambassador and a former congressman.... And I just saw him in an impossible situation. I felt very, very sorry because he was between a rock and a hard place."

Instead of asking the White House tough questions about the well-documented information contained in these reports, media have focused almost exclusively on the claims and counter-claims made about the Killian memos-- as if the discrepancies over Bush's service record stand or fall based on this one set of disputed documents. It's the equivalent of covering the sideshow and ignoring the center ring.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you'd like to encourage the media to follow up on these stories, you can find contact information on FAIR's website:
http://www.fair.org/media-contact-list.html

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040917/ap_on_el_pr/laura_bush_protester_5

Woman Disrupts Laura Bush Speech in N.J.

Thu Sep 16, 8:10 PM ET

By JOHN P. McALPIN, Associated Press Writer

HAMILTON, N.J. - A woman wearing a T-shirt with the words "President Bush (news - web sites) You Killed My Son" and a picture of a soldier killed in Iraq (news - web sites) was detained Thursday after she interrupted a campaign speech by first lady Laura Bush.
Police escorted Sue Niederer, of Hopewell, N.J., from a rally at a firehouse after she demanded to know why her son, Army 1st Lt. Seth Dvorin, 24, was killed in Iraq. Dvorin died in February while trying to disarm a bomb.

As shouts of "Four More Years" subsided, Niederer, standing in the middle of a crowd of some 700, continued to shout about the killing of her son. Local police escorted her from the event, handcuffed her and put her in the back of a police van.

Niederer was later charged with defiant trespass and released.

The first lady continued speaking, touting her husband's record on the economy, health care and the war on terror to those attending the rally in this suburban community of 90,000 people near Trenton.

She made several references to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and said that many in New Jersey, including some in neighborhoods near the firehouse, lost family members that day.

"Too many people here had a loved one that went to work in New York that day," Bush said. "It's for our country, it's for our children, our grandchildren that we do the hard work of confronting terror."
Sep 17, 2004

http://www.democrats.org/news/200409170002.html

McAuliffe: Gold Star Mother's Arrest Emblematic of Bush's Disrespect of the Military
Washington, D.C. – In response to news reports of a New Jersey woman, whose son was killed while serving in Iraq and who after attempting to ask First Lady Laura Bush a question at a campaign event was arrested, put in a police wagon, and taken to jail, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe issued this statement:

"George W. Bush has cultivated a culture in which a grieving mother in New Jersey gets arrested for asking a question at a Bush campaign event. It’s the same culture that allows an Alabama woman to be fired for expressing her beliefs with a John Kerry bumper sticker on her car. You ask a question they don’t want to answer and they arrest you. You express a belief that they disagree with and you get fired.

"This is not the way we treat anyone, and especially not the families of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice -– families who deserve our respect, our thanks, and our empathy. Unfortunately, this incident is emblematic of the way the President disrespects our military, our veterans, and their families. America can do better, and with John Kerry we will."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040918/ap_on_el_pr/kerry_navy_awards_6

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=8498

The Greed Factor
Sanctions against rogue regimes would have been abandoned if Dick Cheney had had his way.
By David J. Sirota and Jonathan Baskin
Web Exclusive: 09.15.04

Print Friendly | Email Article

In 1992, the Republican Party launched a vicious assault against Bill Clinton for traveling overseas and speaking out against his country’s foreign policy during the Vietnam War. It was the beginning of a strategy to demean the national-security credentials of the Democratic Party. Now, twelve years later, Vice President Dick Cheney has updated the tactic, hammering those who question George W. Bush’s prosecution of the war on terror and impugning John Kerry’s commitment to national security. His rhetoric has been so vitriolic, he actually suggested last week that a Kerry presidency would mean "we will get hit again" by terrorists.

Beyond blatantly mischaracterizing Democrats’ positions on defense, these shameless attacks serve to distract from the vice president’s own proclivity for undermining American foreign policy. The record shows that over the last decade, Cheney was willing first to do business with countries on the U.S. government’s terror list, then to travel abroad and condemn U.S. counter-terrorism policy when it got in his way. In the process, Cheney proved repeatedly he could be trusted to put Halliburton’s bottom line ahead of his country’s national security.

As Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush, Cheney helped lead a multinational coalition against Iraq and was one of the architects of a post-war economic embargo designed to choke off funds to the country. He insisted the world should “maintain sanctions, at least of some kind,” so Saddam Hussein could not “rebuild the military force he’s used against his neighbors.”

But less than six years later, as a private businessman, Cheney apparently had more important interests than preventing Hussein from rebuilding his army. While he claimed during the 2000 campaign that, as CEO of Halliburton, he had “imposed a ‘firm policy’ against trading with Iraq,” confidential UN records show that, from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that sold more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was in charge. Halliburton acquired its interest in both firms while Cheney was at the helm, and continued doing business through them until just months before Cheney was named George W. Bush’s running mate.

Perhaps even more troubling, at the same time Cheney was doing business with Iraq, he launched a public broadside against sanctions laws designed to cut off funds to regimes like Iran, which the State Department listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. In 1998, Cheney traveled to Kuala Lumpur to attack his own country's terrorism policies for being too strict. Under the headline, “Former US Defence Secretary Says Iran-Libya Sanctions Act ‘Wrong,’” the Malaysian News Agency reported that Cheney “hit out at his government" and said sanctions on terrorist countries were "ineffective, did not provide the desired results and [were] a bad policy.”

Two years later, Cheney traveled to another country to demand America weaken restrictions on doing business with Iran’s petroleum industry, despite Clinton administration warnings that Iranian oil revenues could be used to fund terrorism. “We're kept out of [Iran] primarily by our own government, which has made a decision that U.S. firms should not be allowed to invest significantly in Iran,” he told an oil conference in Canada. “I think that's a mistake.”

Now new reports suggest Cheney’s desire to do business with Iran may have amounted to more than words. Details of Halliburton’s activities in Iran have been investigated by the Treasury Department and were recently forwarded to the U.S. attorney in Houston. Such an action is taken only after Treasury finds evidence of ‘serious and willful violations’ of sanctions laws. Halliburton already admits one of its subsidiaries “performs between $30 [million] and $40 million annually in oilfield service work in Iran.”

Why is this record important in the current presidential debate? Because as Cheney barnstorms around the country touting the Bush administration’s record, his years at Halliburton indicate he is willing to put other priorities before America’s national security. Even as Iran built ties to terrorists and worked to develop a nuclear weapon, Cheney insisted corporations must do “business in countries that may have policies that the U.S. does not like.” His reasoning? “The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratic regimes friendly to the United States.”

Such comments contrast sharply with the Republicans’ message at their national convention. Far from embodying lofty ideals of “freedom” and “democracy,” Cheney’s record depicts a man governed by greed. As the election nears, that poses an important question to all Americans: Are we really comfortable with this person -- and this ideology -- shaping U.S. policy in an age of global terror?

David Sirota is the Director of Strategic Communications at the American Progress Action Fund. Jonathan Baskin is the Fund’s research assistant.

Copyright © 2004 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: David J. Sirota, "The Greed Factor", The American Prospect Online, Sep 15, 2004. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091804D.shtml

Gossing over the Record
By Ray McGovern
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Friday 17 September 2004

"Have they all drunk the Kool-Aid?" asked a former CIA colleague, referring to the stampede to appoint a new director and radically restructure the intelligence community. The Kool-Aid allusion was to the "group-think" that led disciples of self-anointed "messiah" Jim Jones to mass suicide via poisoned Kool-Aid in 1978.

Attorney General John Ashcroft warned on May 26 that the government has "credible intelligence from multiple sources that Al Qaeda plans an attack on the United States" before the November election. Yet the president and Congress have picked this very time - as our intelligence and security forces are ordered to battle stations - to create mammoth distraction and uncertainty among those on whom we rely for our safety.

As my colleague put it: "It just doesn't parse. Besides, if nominee Porter Goss, R-Fla., becomes CIA director and the president does not win re-election, Goss has but six weeks before becoming a lame duck. And then still further disruption and uncertainty would be in store for an intelligence community that yearns in vain for stability."

I reminded my friend that this is not about stability, efficiency or preparedness. The current hyperactivity is driven by politics, and experience has shown that politics and intelligence reform are a noxious mix.

In the light of 9/11 and the debacle in Iraq, no politician wishes to risk being seen as putting the brakes on intelligence reform.
In this highly charged atmosphere the Republican-led Senate would confirm Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau, were the president to nominate him.
As one wag put it referring to Goss, a bird in the hand is worth it for Bush. Even if the president is reelected, he cannot be sure he will have so docile a Senate next year.
Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., recently commented: "Porter is a team player...and will probably defer to what the president wants." Which, of course, is a very large part of the problem - as so dramatically illustrated by the sycophancy of former CIA Director George Tenet.
"The Record is the Record"
With those words, Mr. Goss tried to deflect questioning at his nomination hearing on Sept. 14. Okay, we'll bite. Let's look at that record.

On June 19, 1997, The Washington Post reported:

"The House Intelligence Committee criticized U.S. intelligence agencies for having 'limited analytical capabilities...an uncertain commitment and capability to collect human intelligence...a lack of analytic depth and expertise...and a lack of foreign language skills and limited in-country familiarity.' The panel's sharply written report on the fiscal 1998 intelligence authorization bill carried more weight than usual because for the first time it was chaired by a former C.I.A. operations officer, Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.)."

Goss chaired that committee for more than seven years, overseeing (overlooking?) a steady decline in all of those areas. The fact that during that period he did not use the committee's power of the purse and its watchdog prerogative to ensure that those deficiencies were corrected gives a hollow ring to his current assertion, "I can make that happen." Instead of doing so as head of the intelligence committee, Goss spent seven years cheering for the CIA - which he still affectionately calls his "alma mater" - until last June when the signals from the White House changed and he stunned everyone by abruptly becoming its harshest critic.

To their credit, Sens. Levin, Durbin and DeWine asked tough questions of Goss during Monday's hearing and found him entirely unresponsive.

Politics and Reform Don't Mix
Mr. Goss also lacks what is demonstrably a sine qua non qualification for a Director of Central Intelligence - experience managing a large, highly complex organization.

Moreover, the job for which he has been nominated requires the kind of nonpartisan approach that is alien to anyone who has functioned for very long in the highly politicized ether of the U.S. Congress - again, as the tenure of George Tenet, who made his mark serving Senators, so amply demonstrated.

Goss co-authored an opinion piece in The Tampa Tribune on March 8, claiming that in the 1990s Sen. John Kerry "was leading efforts in Congress to dismantle the nation's intelligence capabilities." And in June, Goss interrupted debate on the House floor by displaying a sign with a 1977 quote from Kerry that called for cuts in the intelligence budget. These antics raise legitimate concerns with respect to Goss's ability to be nonpartisan.

Even more troubling to veteran intelligence analysts is the way Goss' prepared statement parroted the president's rhetoric to the effect that terrorists "are committed to the destruction of our economy and our way of life" - boilerplate that merits as much credence as the now thoroughly discredited pre-war claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The situation is much more complex than that. If Mr. Goss believes what he said, he has not read the definitive work on "why they hate us," CIA analyst Michael Scheuer's recent book Imperial Hubris . And if he doesn't grasp this complexity, how can he convey it to the leaders relying on his counsel?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ray McGovern - a CIA analyst for 27 years from the administrations of John F. Kennedy to George H. W. Bush - has written "A Compromised C.I.A.: What Can Be Done?", a chapter in "Patriotism, Democracy and Common Sense", published this month by the Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation. The chapter includes a detailed discussion of the qualities needed in a CIA director. McGovern is a member of the steering group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and a member of the Truth-Telling Coalition.

This article first appeared at TomPaine.com

http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2004/09/kitkat_club.php

James Wolcott is a VANITY FAIR contributing editor
« Fall Migration | JamesWolcott.com | Wedding Belle »
Kit-Kat Club
Posted by James Wolcott
So far I have watched four cable news interviews with Kitty Kelley, author of The Evil Clampetts. And here is what I have learned about her book.

Not much.

The interviewers are all working off of the same talking points, the tone and thrust of their questioning so similar it's as if they all received the same fax from the Republican National Committee.

Normally when an author comes on to talk about a book as big and ambitious, the questioning is general before it moves to the specific. Normally, the average harried host would ask, "What made you decide to write about the Bushes? Who is the most interesting of the Bush family? Who is the most dangerous? What is the biggest public misconception about them?"

Etc.

But with Kelley, the questioning is super-specific, skeptical, and suspicious from the outset, keys in on the same hotspots from interview to interview (coke at Camp David, his refusal to take a flight physical, Laura's reputed past as a distribution point on campus for wacky weed), and cuts her answers short whenever she begins to dilate on the Bush modus operandi.

They grill her on sources, their authenticity, whether she spoke to that person directly or relied on hearsay. And in the interviews I've seen, Kelley has been cucumber-cool and composed, going up to the brink of the available evidence and no further, refusing to back down from her claims of Dubya's drug use, and more than holding her own.

The hypocrisy of the cable newsers reeks to low hell.

For years they've been hyping and peddling every variety of fishy speculation and brazen assertion about the Clintons, Vince Foster, Monica, Gary Condit-Chandra Levy, Laci Peterson, this rape case, that abduction case; they've rolled out the ratty carpet for every Swift Boat slob; and now, now, they decide to get loftily anal.

The worst interviews were on CNN. Aaron Brown fretted over the methodology and wondered why Kelley focused on the Bushes, since so many privileged families such as the Kennedys and the Rockefellers get away with all sorts of behavior without having to pay the price most people do--why pick on them?

Kelley smartly retorted that the Bushes have paid less price than most (what she didn't say, and could have, was two assassinations of Kennedy brothers was worse than anything the Bushes have had to endure). He was also troubled that she was implying Bush skipped his flight physical because of drug use, to which she said it was a logical inference and all Bush had to do was release the appropriate records.

Brown at least wasn't a snitty little twit, like the CNN interviewer this morning whose name, I believe, is Heidi Hairdo. From the outset her tone was brisk, assistant district-attorneyish, and yet schoolgirlishly naive, as when she couldn't understand why anyone would be "afraid" of the Bushes and Kelley laughed in snorting disbelief, as if she had to explain the facts of life to Miss Snippy.

Heidi Hairdo, like some of the other interviewers, seem to keep up an invisible cordon sanitarire, a starchy, disdainful discomfort at having to share the set with an author so disreputable and, oh dear, tacky. This from people who fawn over every narcissistic piece of Hollywood horseflesh making the rounds to promote their latest lousy movie.

What's clear is that the news media are uncomfortable with someone investigating the arrogant and disturbing patterns of behavior in the Bush dynasty. They can't ignore Kitty Kelley, but they want to keep her in her litter box. But she's a tiny tigress, and will not be contained.

09.15.04 12:30PM

LNS Countdown to Electoral Uprising -- 46 Days to Go -- Nine EXPLOSIVE News Stories

Three more US Marines died in Iraq today. For what?
The neo-con wet dream of a Three Stooges Reich. There
are 46 days to go until the national referendum on the
CHARACTER, COMPETENCY and CREDIBILITY of the _resident
and the VICE _resident...Truth is a river. It flows
forward. It does not turn back on itself. And as
Heraclitus said, "you cannot step into the same river
twice." The deep fix is unraveling in the onrushing of
this river...The truth of this presidential campaign
is flowing toward an Electoral Uprising at the Ballot
Box...Here are NINE important news stories that should
dominate the air waves and headlines above the fold,
but won't, because the US regimestream news media is a
full partner in a Triad of shared special interest
(oil, weapons, media, pharmaceuticals, tobacco,
etc.)with the Bush Cabal and
its-wholly-owned-subsidiary-formerly-known-as-the-Republican-Party...
Please read them and share them with others. Please vote and
encourage others to vote. And, please, remember that
the US regimestream news media, with its shameless
pollsters and craven propapunditgandists, does not
want to inform you about this campaign, it wants to
DISinform you about it...

Mary Dalrymple, Associated Press: Democratic Sen. John
Kerry on Friday accused the Bush administration of
hiding a plan to mobilize more National Guard and
Reserve troops after the election while glossing over
a worsening conflict in Iraq.
"He won't tell us what congressional leaders are now
saying, that this administration is planning yet
another substantial call-up of reservists and Guard
units immediately after the election," Kerry said.
"Hide it from people through the election, then make
the move."
While Bush has been campaigning as the best candidate
to deter terrorists and protect the nation, his
presidential rival portrayed him as out of touch with
a serious and dangerous situation in Iraq.
"With all due respect to the president, has he turned
on the evening news lately? Does he read the
newspapers?" Kerry said. "Does he really know what's
happening? Is he talking about the same war that the
rest of us are talking about?"

Daily Kos: It is pathetic and unacceptable for a
"non-partisan" polling firm to be produce the outlying
poll in favor of Bush in fourteen of its last sixteen
polls. The odds of this happening at random are around
one in 14,000. Considering those odds, the far more
likely explanation for all these outliers is that
Gallup's polling methodology is inherently structured
in favor of Bush. Whether or not it is intentional, I
do not know. However, I do know that Gallup's polls
are connected to the largest news outlets in America
of any poll, both in terms of print (USA Today is the
largest circulation newspaper in the country) and
cable news (CNN has more viewers than Fox, they just
watch for shorter periods of time). I also know that
sensational headlines sell. I further know that
Gallup's chairman is a Republican donor.

Democratic National Committee: Democratic National
Committee (DNC) Chairman Terry McAuliffe formally
launched Operation Fortunate Son today unveiling a new
DNC video which will be on the DNC website and will be
shown in battleground states. McAuliffe also announced
that veterans would be taking part in more than 30
Operation Fortunate Son events in 21 states this week
calling on George W. Bush to answer specific questions
about his National Guard service.
As George W. Bush continues to rely heavily on the men
and women serving in the Armed Forces today, thanks to
his failed foreign policies, he has no business lying
to them about fulfilling his own duty," said
McAuliffe. "It is time for this 'fortunate son' to
come clean with the American people."
The Operation Fortunate Son video traces Bush’s lies
about his service during Vietnam and focuses on the
importance of Bush, as President, telling the truth to
the American people now.

USA Today: A federal judge has ordered the Pentagon to
find and make public by next week any unreleased files
about President Bush's Vietnam-era Air National Guard
service to resolve a Freedom of Information Act
lawsuit filed by The Associated Press.
U.S. District Judge Harold Baer Jr. handed down the
order late Wednesday in New York. The AP lawsuit
already has led to the disclosure of previously
unreleased flight logs from Bush's days piloting
F-102A fighters and other jets.

Associated Press/CNN: A business school professor who
taught George W. Bush at Harvard University in the
early 1970s says the future president told him that
family friends had pulled strings to get him into the
Texas Air National Guard.
Yoshi Tsurumi, in his first on-camera interview on the
subject, told CNN that Bush confided in him during an
after-class hallway conversation during the 1973-74
school year.
"He admitted to me that to avoid the Vietnam draft, he
had his dad -- he said 'Dad's friends' -- skip him
through the long waiting list to get him into the
Texas National Guard," Tsurumi said. "He thought that
was a smart thing to do."
"What I couldn't stand -- and I told him -- he was all
for the U.S. to continue with the Vietnam War. That
means he was all for other people, Americans, to keep
on fighting and dying."

Russ Baker, The Nation: Growing evidence suggests that
George W. Bush abruptly left his Texas Air National
Guard unit in 1972 for substantive reasons pertaining
to his inability to continue piloting a fighter jet.
A months-long investigation, which includes
examination of hundreds of government-released
documents, interviews with former Guard members and
officials, military experts and Bush associates,
points toward the conclusion that Bush's personal
behavior was causing alarm among his superior officers
and would ultimately lead to his fleeing the state to
avoid a physical exam he might have had difficulty
passing. His failure to complete a physical exam
became the official reason for his subsequent
suspension from flying status.

David Brock, Media Matters: The media's fixation on
the controversy over the authenticity of memos exposed
by CBS's 60 Minutes has enabled conservative members
of the media to discount the serious questions
regarding President George W. Bush's National Guard
service. The media's focus on the memos has enabled
conservatives to dodge questions raised by the strong
evidence indicating that strings were pulled on Bush's
behalf in the National Guard; that he did not meet his
service obligations; and, most importantly, that he
has repeatedly lied about his service. As recently as
February 8, Bush told NBC Meet the Press host Tim
Russert: "I did my duty."

JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press: Billionaire
philanthropist George Soros has asked the House ethics
committee to investigate House Speaker Dennis Hastert
over comments suggesting that Soros could be receiving
money from illegal drug groups.
"This kind of insinuation — that a private United
States citizen was in league with drug cartels and may
be receiving funds derived from criminal activity —
has no place in public discourse," Soros wrote Tuesday
to the chair and top Democrat on the panel, Reps. Joel
Hefley, R-Col., and Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va.

Agence France Press: Writer Kitty Kelley has accused
the White House of putting pressure on her and the US
media over the new biography on the family of
President George W. Bush.
"The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty",
which alleges that Bush took cocaine at Camp David
when his father was president, became an instant
best-seller after its publication this week. But it
has been strongly condemned by the presidency.
Kelley said she interviewed 988 people for the book.
"If it's in the book, it's corroborated," she said.
"There is a lot I left out the book."
Kelley said Sharon Bush's publicist has "corroborated
everything".
"But I am not really surprised that she is backing off
because this is a very powerful family. Sharon said
over that lunch that she was afraid of the Bushes."
Kelley went on: "I really do think they are the most
powerful in America, the most powerful family in the
world."
She denied she had a political agenda explaining that
the book was started in 2000. "I personally come from
a large Republican family. My father voted for both
Bushes."

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, 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!)

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=3&u=/ap/20040917/ap_on_el_pr/kerry

Kerry Accuses Bush of Hiding Troops Plan

1 hour, 49 minutes ago

By MARY DALRYMPLE, Associated Press Writer

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Democratic Sen. John Kerry (news -
web sites) on Friday accused the Bush administration
of hiding a plan to mobilize more National Guard and
Reserve troops after the election while glossing over
a worsening conflict in Iraq (news - web sites).

"He won't tell us what congressional leaders are now
saying, that this administration is planning yet
another substantial call-up of reservists and Guard
units immediately after the election," Kerry said.
"Hide it from people through the election, then make
the move."

The Bush campaign called the allegation of a secret
plan "completely irresponsible ... false and
ridiculous." The Pentagon (news - web sites) said
troop replacements would include some from National
Guard and Reserve units and those expected to be sent
to Iraq had been notified.

While Bush has been campaigning as the best candidate
to deter terrorists and protect the nation, his
presidential rival portrayed him as out of touch with
a serious and dangerous situation in Iraq.

"With all due respect to the president, has he turned
on the evening news lately? Does he read the
newspapers?" Kerry said. "Does he really know what's
happening? Is he talking about the same war that the
rest of us are talking about?"

Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record) of
Pennsylvania, top Democrat on the House Appropriations
Defense Subcommittee and a former Marine who served in
Vietnam, said he had learned through conversations
with Pentagon officials that beginning in November,
"the Bush administration plans to call up large
numbers of the military Guard and Reserves, to include
plans that they previously had put off to call up the
Individual Ready Reserve."

Other Democrats joined Kerry in a chorus trying to
drown out Bush's message on Iraq.

"It's clear that this administration didn't know what
it was getting into, or else they grossly
misrepresented the facts to the American people," said
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California. "In
either case, staying the course is not an option."

Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) of
Massachusetts, campaigning for Kerry in Pennsylvania,
said that in spite of bleak national intelligence
estimates on Iraq, Bush still "goes out
misrepresenting and distorting the progress that's
being made over there."

Kerry said the president was avoiding hard truths
about casualties, new insurgencies and troop
shortages. "He won't tell us that, day by day, we're
running out of soldiers and that we're now resorted to
a backdoor draft of our reservists and our National
Guard."

The Bush campaign denied the assertion about secret
plans.

"John Kerry's conspiracy theory of a secret troop
deployment is completely irresponsible," said
spokesman Steve Schmidt. "John Kerry didn't launch
this attack when he spoke to the National Guard
because he knows they know it is false and
ridiculous."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said of Kerry:
"He's struggling to explain his incoherent positions
on Iraq. He's engaging in baseless attacks."

At the Pentagon, Lt. Col. Chris Rodney said, "There is
no force increase that is expected."

The Army is on target to rotate into Iraq the same
number of soldiers who will be leaving over the next
six months, and all National Guard and Reserve units
that are expected to be mobilized for the next
rotation have been notified, the spokesman said.

Kerry's campaign also intensified its criticism of
Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) and
defense contractor Halliburton, the company Cheney
used to lead, as an aspect of the administration's
management of the war.

"Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, has profited
from the mess in Iraq at the expense of American
troops and taxpayers," Kerry said.

In a new television ad, which went on the air Friday
in Oregon and other battleground states, the Democrat
suggests that Cheney has conflicts of interest
stemming from money he received from Halliburton under
a deferred compensation agreement.

The ad also contends that Halliburton wasted taxpayer
money, in contracts awarded without competitive
bidding, that could have been better used at home.
Several investigations have found evidence of
overcharging or raised questions about the company's
performance.

The Bush-Cheney campaign denied any conflicts of
interest existed for Cheney, saying that deferred
compensation agreements aren't uncommon and that the
vice president has no influence on contracts awarded
to his former employer.

A new radio ad running in New Hampshire and Florida
says "the Saudi royal family appreciates the support"
when Americans fill up their tanks at gas stations.
"Who does the royal family support? George W. Bush and
Dick Cheney."
Copyright © 2004 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved. The information contained in the AP News
report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed without the prior written authority of
The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2004 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/17/04339/5885

DailyKos: The level of Gallup's polling corruption
over the past three months is staggering and needs to
be exposed.

Gallup, even without their new poll, is without
question the top outlying polling organization in this
election. Since they began doing state polls on the
2004 campaign, one twelve occasions Gallup has had a
poll in the field for at least one day when at least
one other non-partisan polling firm has had a poll in
the field. On eleven of those twelve occasions,
Gallup's results where the most pro-Bush of the other
non-partisan operations. On the other occasion, Gallup
was actually the pro-Kerry outlier: (source)
(* = three way trial heat):

Diaries :: Chris Bowers's diary ::

Florida, 7/19-7/22
Bush Kerry Date
Gallup 50 46 7/22
M-D* 48 46 7/21
Zogby* 48.5 48.4 7/23
IA 46 46 7/20
LAT 45 45 7/21
R2000 44 49 7/19

Florida, 8/20-8/22
Bush Kerry Date
Gallup* 48 46 8/22
Zogby* 49.0 49.6 8/21

Minnesota, 9/11-9/14
Bush Kerry Date
Gallup 48 46 9/14
M-D 46 45 9/14
Star 41 50 9/13

Missouri, 9/3-9/6
Bush Kerry Date
Gallup 55 41 9/6
Rasm 48 42 9/3
Zogby* 48.5 48.9 9/3

North Carolina, 7/9-7/11
Bush Kerry Date
Gallup 54 39 7/11
R2000 49 44 7/10-4

Ohio, 9/4-7
Bush Kerry Date
Gallup 52 43 9/7
SUSA 50 47 9/8

Ohio, 8/13-9/15
Bush Kerry Date
Gallup 45 47 8/15
Cincy 46 48 8/11-7

Ohio, 7/19-7/22
Bush Kerry Date
CD 47 44 7/23
Zogby 48.1 46.8 7/23
ARG 45 47 7/22
Gallup 45 51 7/22

Pennsylvania, 9/4-9/7
Bush Kerry Date
Gallup 48 47 9/7
Rasm 46 48 9/6-8
SUSA 47 49 9/7-9

Pennsylvania, 8/23-8/26
Bush Kerry Date
Gallup 48 47 8/26
Rasm 45 49 8/26

Washington, 9/3-9/6
Bush Kerry Date
Gallup* 44 52 9/6
Zogby* 44.2 52.7 9/3

Wisconsin, 9/9-9/12
Bush Kerry Date
Gallup 52 44 9/12
Rasm 49 47 9/12No other polling outfit, not even
Zogby or Strategic Vision, is even close to being in
favor of one candidate in state polls as frequently as
Gallup has favored Bush during this election. Even the
one time Gallup favored Kerry, it was still an
outlier.
Looking at national polls, one finds almost exactly
the same story. Since late July, Gallup has, save
once, been the outlying poll. Here's how the last four
Gallup national polls stack up against other
non-partisan polls taken during the same time period
(source):

National, 7/30-8/1
Bush Kerry Date
Gallup 51 47 8/1
ARG 46 49 8/1
Rasm 45 48 8/2
CBS 43 49 8/1
News 44 52 7/30

National, 8/23-9/25
Bush Kerry Date
Gallup 50 47 8/25
LAT 49 46 8/24
Rasm 46 46 8/24-6
Time 46 46 8/24-6
Fox 44 45 8/25

National, 9/3-9/5
Bush Kerry Date
News 54 43 9/3
Gallup 52 45 9/5
Rasm 47.6 46.5 9/5

National, 9/13-9/15
Bush Kerry Date
Gallup 54 40 9/15
Rasm 49.3 44.7 9/15
Econ 47 46 9/15
Pew 46 46 9/14
Harris 47 48 9/13

This last one is the most profound outlier of any
national poll this year, leaving Newsweek and Time in
the dust (maybe that is what they were trying to
accomplish). Then again, maybe they aren't leaving
Time in the dust, since CNN and Time are affiliated
news organizations and frequently do joint polls.
It is pathetic and unacceptable for a "non-partisan"
polling firm to be produce the outlying poll in favor
of Bush in fourteen of its last sixteen polls. The
odds of this happening at random are around one in
14,000. Considering those odds, the far more likely
explanation for all these outliers is that Gallup's
polling methodology is inherently structured in favor
of Bush. Whether or not it is intentional, I do not
know. However, I do know that Gallup's polls are
connected to the largest news outlets in America of
any poll, both in terms of print (USA Today is the
largest circulation newspaper in the country) and
cable news (CNN has more viewers than Fox, they just
watch for shorter periods of time). I also know that
sensational headlines sell. I further know that
Gallup's chairman is a Republican donor.

This is a shameful state for the oldest and most
respected polling organiztion in the country. Shame on
you Gallup. Let USA Today know that Gallup always
favors Bush by large margins, and that we have the
numbrs to prove it.

http://www.democrats.org/news/200409140004.html

Sep 14, 2004

DNC Unveils New Video at Launch of Operation:
Fortunate Son
OFS Includes More Than 30 Events in 21 States

Washington, DC - Democratic National Committee (DNC)
Chairman Terry McAuliffe formally launched Operation
Fortunate Son today unveiling a new DNC video which
will be on the DNC website and will be shown in
battleground states. McAuliffe also announced that
veterans would be taking part in more than 30
Operation Fortunate Son events in 21 states this week
calling on George W. Bush to answer specific questions
about his National Guard service.

As George W. Bush continues to rely heavily on the men
and women serving in the Armed Forces today, thanks to
his failed foreign policies, he has no business lying
to them about fulfilling his own duty," said
McAuliffe. "It is time for this 'fortunate son' to
come clean with the American people."

The Operation Fortunate Son video traces Bush’s lies
about his service during Vietnam and focuses on the
importance of Bush, as President, telling the truth to
the American people now.

Video Script:

Vietnam.

A generation forced to make difficult choices.

Some chose war. Others chose different paths.

It's hard, thirty years later, to pass judgment on
those choices.

But we do expect our leaders to be honest with us
about them.

George W. Bush: "I George Walker Bush do solemnly
swear."

Has George Bush?

The President said he never used any influence to get
into the National Guard.

Debate Moderator: "You are confident that no influence
was exercised on your behalf."

George W. Bush: "I am, yeah."

But former Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes gave sworn
testimony that he pulled strings at the behest of a
Bush family friend.

Ben Barnes: "I recommended a lot of people for the
National Guard during the Vietnam era, as Speaker of
the House and as Lt. Governor."

Dan Rather: "And you recommended George W. Bush."

Ben Barnes: "Yes I did."

Dan Rather: "And you said you did this for others.
What would be called preferential treatment for
President Bush. Would you describe it as that?"

Ben Barnes: "I would describe it as preferential
treatment."

Just before losing his student deferment, George Bush
was accepted in the National Guard.

George Bush leapfrogged a long waiting list.

This son of privilege. This fortunate son.

More than 150 young men were waiting to get in the
Guard when George Bush was inducted. Their families
didn't have any special influence.

Just months ago, George Bush sat in the Oval Office
and said he fulfilled his duty in the Guard.

Tim Russert: "You would allow pay stubs, tax records,
anything that shows that you were serving during that
time?"

George W. Bush: "I'm just telling you, I did my duty."

But Guard records show he didn't take required
physical.

He was grounded.

And for 6-months in 1972 he failed to perform any
Guard service, as required. His supervisor wrote that
Bush "had not been observed at this unit."

Where was he? And why did he miss his physical?

This son of privilege. This fortunate son.

Today tens of thousands of brave Guardsmen and women
from across America serve with distinction in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

They don't miss physicals. They didn't pull strings.
They are living up to their commitment.

It's time for George Bush to come clean and answer the
questions about his service.

Because it may be hard to sit in judgment on choices
made at a confusing time. But there's nothing
confusing about telling the truth.

OFS Events

At Operation Fortunate Son events veterans will call
on President Bush to answer five specific questions
about his military service:

Q: Why did George Bush say "I did my duty" when he
missed months of duty in 1972, 73 and 74?

Q: How did George Bush avoid getting called into
active service for missing months of duty in 1972, 73,
74?

Q: Why did George Bush say he received "no special
treatment" when Ben Barnes says he pulled strings to
secure a Guard slot for him?

Q: Who asked Bush family friend Sidney Adger to get
Bush a slot in the Guard immediately after Bush
graduated and at the height of the Vietnam War?

Q: When will George Bush produce any credible witness
who can attest to his service in the Alabama Air
National Guard?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-16-bush-memos_x.htm?POE=NEWISVA

Judge orders government to find, release all Bush
military records
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has ordered the
Pentagon to find and make public by next week any
unreleased files about President Bush's Vietnam-era
Air National Guard service to resolve a Freedom of
Information Act lawsuit filed by The Associated Press.

U.S. District Judge Harold Baer Jr. handed down the
order late Wednesday in New York. The AP lawsuit
already has led to the disclosure of previously
unreleased flight logs from Bush's days piloting
F-102A fighters and other jets.

Pentagon officials told Baer they plan to have their
search complete by Monday. Baer ordered the Pentagon
to hand over the records to the AP by Sept. 24 and
provide a written statement by Sept. 29 detailing the
search for more records.

"We're hopeful the Department of Defense will provide
a full accounting of the steps it has taken, as the
judge ordered, so the public can have some assurance
that there are no documents being withheld," said AP
lawyer David Schulz.

White House officials have said Bush ordered the
Pentagon earlier this year to conduct a thorough
search for the president's records, and officials
allowed reporters to review everything that was
gathered back in February.

Through a series of requests under the federal open
records law and a subsequent suit, the AP uncovered
the flight logs, which were not part of the records
the White House released earlier this year.

Both Bush's and John Kerry's service records in
Vietnam have become a major issue in the presidential
race. New records that have surfaced in recent weeks
have raised more questions. (Related story:
Authenticity of Bush records criticized)

Bush's critics say Bush got preferential treatment as
the son of a congressman and U.N. ambassador. Critics
also question why Bush skipped a required medical
examination in 1972 and failed to show up for drills
during a six-month period that year.

Bush has repeatedly said he fulfilled all of his Air
National Guard obligations.

The future president joined the Texas Air National
Guard in 1968, when he graduated from Yale. He spent
more than a year on active duty learning how to fly
and then mostly flew in the one-seat F-102A fighters
until April 1972.

The pilot logs show a shift to flights in two-seat
trainer jets in March 1972, shortly before Bush quit
flying. Former Air National Guard officials say that
could have been because F-102A jets were not available
for Bush to fly or because of other reasons, such as
concerns about Bush's flight performance.

Bush skipped his required yearly medical exam in 1972
in the months after he stopped flying in April. Bush
has said he moved to Alabama to work on the
unsuccessful Senate campaign of a family friend.

Bush never showed up for Guard service between late
April and mid-October 1972. He won approval to train
with an Alabama Air National Guard unit during
September, October and November 1972, but more than a
dozen members of the unit at that time say they never
saw him there.

The only direct record of Bush appearing at the
Alabama unit's base is a January 1973 dental exam
performed at that base. Bush's Texas commanders wrote
in May 1973 they never saw him between May 1972 and
April 1973, a time when his pay records show he
trained on 14 days.

Although military regulations allowed commanders to
order two years of active duty for guardsmen who
missed more than three straight months of drills, that
never happened to Bush. Commanders had leeway at the
time to allow guardsmen to make up for missed drills.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/13/bush.professor/

Professor says Bush revealed National Guard favoritism
>From Phil Hirschkorn
CNN
Monday, September 13, 2004 Posted: 6:53 PM EDT (2253
GMT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A business school professor who
taught George W. Bush at Harvard University in the
early 1970s says the future president told him that
family friends had pulled strings to get him into the
Texas Air National Guard.

Yoshi Tsurumi, in his first on-camera interview on the
subject, told CNN that Bush confided in him during an
after-class hallway conversation during the 1973-74
school year.

"He admitted to me that to avoid the Vietnam draft, he
had his dad -- he said 'Dad's friends' -- skip him
through the long waiting list to get him into the
Texas National Guard," Tsurumi said. "He thought that
was a smart thing to do."

While the campaign has not responded directly to
Tsurumi's allegations, White House Communications
Director Dan Bartlett said last week, "Every time
President Bush gets near another election, all the
innuendo and rumors about President Bush's service in
the National Guard come to the forefront."

Bush has said in the past that neither he nor his
father sought special treatment for him. "Any
allegation that my dad asked for special favors is
simply not true," he said in 1999.

Tsurumi said Vietnam was a top topic among the 85
students in his class, when he was a visiting
associate professor at Harvard from 1972 to 1976. He
now teaches at Baruch College in New York.

"What I couldn't stand -- and I told him -- he was all
for the U.S. to continue with the Vietnam War. That
means he was all for other people, Americans, to keep
on fighting and dying."

Tsurumi got to know Bush when the future president
took his "Economics EAM" (Environmental Analysis for
Management), a required two-semester class from the
fall of 1973 to the spring of 1974, Bush's first year
at Harvard's business school.

Bush had transferred to Air National Guard reserve
status before he enrolled in the MBA program. He had
enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard in May 1968
and trained to fly fighter jets until he was suspended
from flying status in August 1972 for failing to
submit to an annual physical, according to Bush's
military records released earlier this year.

Tsurumi said he remembers Bush because every teacher
remembers their best and worst students, and Bush was
in the latter group.

"Lazy. He didn't come to my class prepared," Tsurumi
said. "He did very badly."

Tsurumi concedes that he disapproves of Bush's
politics. He wrote a letter to the editor of his
hometown newspaper, the Scarsdale Inquirer, that
derided the president's claims to "compassionate
conservatism."

"Somehow I found him totally devoid of compassion,
social responsibility, and good study discipline,"
Tsurumi said. "What I remember most about him was all
the kind of flippant statements that he made inside of
classroom as well as outside."

Tsurumi says he is not working for any Democratic
group for the Kerry campaign. "The only activity I do
is to vote for him," Tsurumi said.

But Tsurumi has been speaking out against Bush by
giving newspaper and radio interviews.

The professor's comments come as a former Texas
politician, former state House Speaker and Lieutenant
Governor Ben Barnes, has said it was he got Bush into
the Guard.

Barnes, a Democrat supporting John Kerry, says he
called the head of the Texas unit in 1968, at the
request of a Bush family friend. Bush's father was
then a U.S congressman.

CNN's Jonathan Wald and Jennifer Icklan contributed to
this story.

This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040927&s=baker

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why Bush Left Texas
by RUSS BAKER

[posted online on September 14, 2004]

Growing evidence suggests that George W. Bush abruptly
left his Texas Air National Guard unit in 1972 for
substantive reasons pertaining to his inability to
continue piloting a fighter jet.

A months-long investigation, which includes
examination of hundreds of government-released
documents, interviews with former Guard members and
officials, military experts and Bush associates,
points toward the conclusion that Bush's personal
behavior was causing alarm among his superior officers
and would ultimately lead to his fleeing the state to
avoid a physical exam he might have had difficulty
passing. His failure to complete a physical exam
became the official reason for his subsequent
suspension from flying status.

This central issue, whether Bush did or did not
complete his duty--and if not, why--has in recent days
been obscured by a raging sideshow: a debate over the
accuracy of documents aired on CBS's 60 Minutes. Last
week CBS News reported on newly unearthed memos
purportedly prepared by Bush's now-deceased commanding
officer. In those documents, the officer, Lieut. Col.
Jerry Killian, appeared to be establishing for the
record events occurring at the time Bush abruptly left
his Texas Air National Guard unit in May 1972. Among
these: that Bush had failed to meet unspecified Guard
standards and refused a direct order to take a
physical exam, and that pressure was being applied on
Killian and his superiors to whitewash whatever
troubling circumstances Bush was in.

Questions have been raised about the authenticity of
those memos, but the criticism of them appears at this
time speculative and inconclusive, while their
substance is consistent with a growing body of
documentation and analysis.

If it is demonstrated that profound behavioral
problems marred Bush's wartime performance and even
cut short his service, it could seriously challenge
Bush's essential appeal as a military steward and
guardian of societal values. It could also explain the
incomplete, contradictory and shifting explanations
provided by the Bush camp for the President's striking
invisibility from the military during the final two
years of his six-year military obligation. And it
would explain the savagery and rapidity of the attack
on the CBS documents.

In 1972 Bush's unit activities underwent a change that
could point to a degradation of his ability to fly a
fighter jet. Last week, in response to a lawsuit, the
White House released to the Associated Press Bush's
flight logs, which show that he abruptly shifted his
emphasis in February and March 1972 from his assigned
F-102A fighter jet to a two-seat T-33 training jet,
from which he had graduated several years earlier, and
was put back onto a flight simulator. The logs also
show that on two occasions he required multiple
attempts to land a one-seat fighter and a fighter
simulator. This after Bush had already logged more
than 200 hours in the one-seat F-102A.

Military experts say that his new, apparently
downgraded and accompanied training mode, which
included Bush's sometimes moving into the co-pilot's
seat, can, in theory, be explained a variety of ways.
He could, for example, have been training for a new
position that might involve carrying student pilots.
But the reality is that Bush himself has never
mentioned this chapter in his life, nor has he
provided a credible explanation. In addition, Bush's
highly detailed Officer Effectiveness Reports make no
mention of this rather dramatic change.

A White House spokesman explained to AP that the heavy
training in this more elementary capacity came at a
time when Bush was trying to generate more hours in
anticipation of a six-month leave to work on a
political campaign. But, in fact, this scenario is
implausible. For one thing, Guard regulations did not
permit him to log additional hours in that manner as a
substitute for missing six months of duty later on. As
significantly, there is no sign that Bush even
considered going to work on that campaign until
shortly before he departed--nor that campaign
officials had any inkling at all that Bush might join
them in several months' time.

Bush told his commanding officers that he was going to
Alabama for an opportunity with a political campaign.
(His Texas Air National Guard supervisors--presumably
relying on what Bush told them--would write in a
report the following year, "A civilian occupation made
it necessary for him to move to Montgomery, Alabama.")
But the timing of Bush's decision to leave and his
departure--about the same time that he failed to take
a mandatory annual physical exam--indicate that the
two may have been related.

Campaign staff members say they knew nothing of Bush's
interest in participating until days before he arrived
in Montgomery. Indeed, not one of numerous Bush
friends from those days even recalls Bush talking
about going to Alabama at any point before he took
off.

Bush's behavior in Alabama suggests that he viewed
Alabama not as an important career opportunity but as
a kind of necessary evil.

Although his role in the campaign has been represented
as substantial (in some newspaper accounts, he has
been described as the assistant campaign manager),
numerous campaign staffers say Bush's role was
negligible, low level and that he routinely arrived at
the campaign offices in the afternoon hours, bragging
of drinking feats from the night before.

According to friends of his, he kept his Houston
apartment during this period and, based on their
recollections, may have been coming back into town
repeatedly during the time he was supposedly working
full-time on the Alabama campaign. Absences from the
campaign have been explained as due to his
responsibilities to travel to the further reaches of
Alabama, but several staffers told me that organizing
those counties was not Bush's de facto responsibility.

Even more significantly, in a July interview, Linda
Allison, the widow of Jimmy Allison, the Alabama
campaign manager and a close friend of Bush's father,
revealed to me for the first time that Bush had come
to Alabama not because the job had appeal or because
his presence was required but because he needed to get
out of Texas. "Well, you have to know Georgie,"
Allison said. "He really was a totally irresponsible
person. Big George [George H.W. Bush] called Jimmy,
and said, he's killing us in Houston, take him down
there and let him work on that campaign.... The tenor
of that was, Georgie is in and out of trouble seven
days a week down here, and would you take him up there
with you."

Allison said that the younger Bush's drinking problem
was apparent. She also said that her husband, a
circumspect man who did not gossip and held his cards
closely, indicated to her that some use of drugs was
involved. "I had the impression that he knew that
Georgie was using pot, certainly, and perhaps
cocaine," she said.

Now-prominent, established Texas figures in the
military, arts, business and political worlds, some of
them Republicans and Bush supporters, talk about
Bush's alleged use of marijuana and cocaine based on
what they say they have heard from trusted friends.
One middle-aged woman whose general veracity could be
confirmed told me that she met Bush in 1968 at
Hemisfair 68, a fair in San Antonio, at which he tried
to pick her up and offered her a white powder he was
inhaling. She was then a teenager; Bush would have
just graduated from Yale and have been starting the
National Guard then. "He was getting really aggressive
with me," she said. "I told him I'd call a policeman,
and he laughed, and asked who would believe me."
(Although cocaine was not a widespread phenomenon
until the 1970s, US authorities were struggling more
than a decade earlier to stanch the flow from Latin
America; in 1967 border seizures amounted to
twenty-six pounds.)

Bush himself has publicly admitted to being somewhat
wild in his younger years, without offering any
details. He has not explicitly denied charges of drug
use; generally he has hedged. He has said that he
could have passed the same security screening his
father underwent upon his inauguration in 1989, which
certifies no illegal drug use during the fifteen
preceding years. In other words, George W. Bush seemed
to be saying that if he had used drugs, that was
before 1974 or during the period in which he left his
Guard unit.

The family that rented Bush a house in Montgomery,
Alabama, during that period told me that Bush did
extensive, inexplicable damage to their property,
including smashing a chandelier, and that they
unsuccessfully billed him twice for the damage--which
amounted to approximately $900, a considerable sum in
1972. Two unconnected close friends and acquaintances
of a well-known Montgomery socialite, now deceased,
told me that the socialite in question told them that
he and Bush had been partying that evening at the
Montgomery Country Club, combining drinking with use
of illicit drugs, and that Bush, complaining about the
brightness, had climbed on a table and smashed the
chandelier when the duo stopped at his home briefly so
Bush could change clothes before they headed out
again.

It is notable that in 1972, the military was in the
process of introducing widespread drug testing as part
of the annual physical exams that pilots would
undergo.

For years, military buffs and retired officers have
speculated about the real reasons that Bush left his
unit two years before his flying obligation was up.
Bush and his staff have muddied the issue by not
providing a clear, comprehensive and consistent
explanation of his departure from the unit. And,
peculiarly, the President has not made himself
available to describe in detail what did take place at
that time. Instead, the White House has adopted a
policy of offering obscure explanations by officials
who clearly do not know the specifics of what went on,
and the periodic release of large numbers of confusing
or inconclusive documents--particularly at the start
of weekends and holiday periods, when attention is
elsewhere.

In addition, the Bush camp has offered over the past
few years a shifting panoply of explanations that
subsequently failed to pass muster. One was that Bush
had stopped flying his F-102A jet because it was being
phased out (the plane continued to be used for at
least another year). Another explanation was that he
failed to take his physical exam in 1972 because his
family doctor was unavailable. (Guard regulations
require that physicals be conducted by doctors on the
base, and would have been easily arranged either on a
base in Texas or, after he left the state, in
Alabama.)

One of the difficulties in getting to the truth about
what really took place during this period is the
frequently expressed fear of retribution from the Bush
organization. Many sources refuse to speak on the
record, or even to have their knowledge communicated
publicly in any way. One source who did publicly
evince doubts about Bush's activities in 1972 was Dean
Roome, who flew formations often with Bush and was his
roommate for a time. "You wonder if you know who
George Bush is," Roome told USA Today in a
little-appreciated interview back in 2002. "I think he
digressed after awhile," he said. "In the first half,
he was gung-ho. Where George failed was to fulfill his
obligation as a pilot. It was an irrational time in
his life." Yet in subsequent years, Roome has revised
his comments to a firm insistence that nothing out of
the ordinary took place at that time, and after one
interview he e-mailed me material raising questions
about John Kerry's military career. Roome, who
operates a curio shop in a Texas hamlet, told me that
Bush aides, including communications adviser Karen
Hughes, and even the President himself stay in touch
with him.

Several Bush associates from that period say that the
Bush camp has argued strenuously about the importance
of sources backing the President up on his military
service, citing patriotism, personal loyalty and even
the claim that he lacks friends in Washington and must
count on those from early in his life.

In 1971 Bush took his annual physical exam in May.
It's reasonable to conclude that he would also take
his 1972 physical in the same month. Yet according to
official Guard documents, Bush "cleared the base" on
May 15 without doing so. Fellow Guard members
uniformly agree that Bush should and could have easily
taken the exam with unit doctors at Ellington Air
Force Base before leaving town. (It is interesting to
note that if the Killian memos released by CBS do hold
up, one of them, dated May 4, 1972, orders Bush to
report for his physical by May 14--one day before he
took off.)

Bush has indicated that he departed from Ellington Air
Force Base and his Guard unit because he had been
offered an important employment opportunity with a
political campaign in Alabama. The overwhelming
evidence suggests, however, that the Alabama campaign
was a convenient excuse for Bush to rapidly exit stage
left from a Guard unit that found him and his behavior
a growing problem. If that's not the case, now would
be an excellent time for a President famed for his
superlative memory to sit down and explain what really
happened in that period.

http://mediamatters.org/items/printable/200409170001

Back to this story | Home
Media's memo obsession has enabled conservatives to
distract from Bush's lies about service

The media's fixation on the controversy over the
authenticity of memos exposed by CBS's 60 Minutes has
enabled conservative members of the media to discount
the serious questions regarding President George W.
Bush's National Guard service. The media's focus on
the memos has enabled conservatives to dodge questions
raised by the strong evidence indicating that strings
were pulled on Bush's behalf in the National Guard;
that he did not meet his service obligations; and,
most importantly, that he has repeatedly lied about
his service. As recently as February 8, Bush told NBC
Meet the Press host Tim Russert: "I did my duty."

CLAIM: Service questions are meaningless if the
documents are forged

On the September 15 edition of FOX News Channel's
Special Report with Brit Hume, FOX News Channel
contributor and Roll Call executive editor Morton M.
Kondracke claimed that the "net effect" of the memo
controversy is that "the draft story" (allegations
that Bush avoided the draft by getting into the
National Guard with the help of family connections) is
"falling apart":

KONDRACKE: I mean, look, the net effect of this [memo
controversy] is that attempts to use this to hammer
George [W.] Bush, the draft story, are falling apart.
You know? It's still faithful, loyal Democrats, you
know, will believe this to the last ditch. But you
know, this assertion, at least, is falling apart.

On the September 14 edition of FOX News Channel's
Hannity & Colmes, co-host Alan Colmes attempted to ask
L. Brent Bozell III, president of the conservative
Media Research Center, substantive questions regarding
whether Bush "got special consideration" to "get in"
to the Guard. Bozell used the memo controversy to
dismiss those questions:

COLMES: Whether he [Bush] was there -- let me just ask
the question. Whether he [Bush] was there or not,
whether he got special consideration to get in. Rather
than dealing with those questions we're dealing with
whether these memos are real and what the typeset is.

BOZELL: And what I'm saying, Alan, is that it's the --
it's the height of journalistic irresponsibility to
bring up those issues when they're based on fraudulent
documents.

But as Media Matters for America has noted, former
Texas Speaker of the House Ben Barnes swore under oath
that he helped Bush get into the Guard, and Bush's
Harvard Business School professor Yoshi Tsurumi said
Bush "admitted to me that to avoid the Vietnam draft,
he had his dad -- he said 'dad's friends' -- skip him
through the long waiting list to get into the Texas
National Guard." Neither statement has anything to do
with the CBS documents.

On the September 15 edition of FOX News Channel's The
O'Reilly Factor, guest Tony Snow (a conservative radio
host) falsely claimed that the disputed memos are the
only evidence proving Bush skipped a physical in July
1972 and thereby violated Guard regulations:

SNOW: And now, it [CBS News] also has the fuller
problem of if the documents are forgeries, how do you
make the claim that the story itself was true? After
all, the story itself hinges upon what? Somebody
finding out whether the president showed up for a
physical.

In other words, you have to prove that he wasn't
there. Well, that's almost impossible to do. The
doctor is not around. So there's CBS left grasping at
straws.

In fact, a separate, unchallenged document states
clearly that Bush was suspended from flying because he
missed his physical.

On the September 14 edition of his radio show, FOX
News Channel host Bill O'Reilly agreed with co-host
E.D. Hill that if CBS admits the disputed memos are
forged, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Web
page highlighting Bush's false statements about his
Guard service will be discredited. But only one small
section of the page, which is based primarily on CBS's
original story, relies on the disputed memos.

>From the September 14 edition of The Radio Factor with
Bill O'Reilly:

HILL: But if they say that [the documents are fake],
and the DNC's website is basing their entire "Bush
lied" page [a September 9 "Headlines" page bore this
headline] --

O'REILLY: On fabricated documents --

HILL: On the CBS report --

O'REILLY: Right. There you go. See, it's all over.
They lost. "They" being the DNC or whoever tried to
push this phony stuff on CBS. They lost. Bush wins
again. He wins.

[...]

HILL: Yeah, the DNC makes it -- hurts itself --

O'REILLY: Right. Right.

HILL: -- by repeating that stuff.

On the September 15 edition of Hannity & Colmes,
co-host Sean Hannity repeatedly interrupted guest Carl
Bernstein, the former Washington Post investigative
journalist who first broke the Watergate story, in an
attempt to stop him from addressing the substantive
questions relating to Bush's Guard service record:

BERNSTEIN: [W]e're looking -- I think we're looking at
a side show here. I don't think this [whether or not
the documents are forged] is the real issue. It's --
the real issue is the war record of these two
candidates.

HANNITY: I don't want to talk about that.

[crosstalk]

HANNITY: We're going to get into that.

BERNSTEIN: This is about journalism. Let me finish.

HANNITY: But wait a minute. Wait, wait.

BERNSTEIN: I would like to finish.

HANNITY: Hang on a second. I'm not having you here to
talk politics.

CLAIM: Bush's honorable discharge means something

FOX News Channel hosts E.D. Hill, Brian Kilmeade, and
Sean Hannity, NPR national political correspondent and
FOX News contributor Mara Liasson, and WABC radio host
and Landmark Legal Foundation president Mark Levin
joined others in the media (as MMFA has documented
here, here and here) both in repeating the irrelevant
Bush-Cheney '04 talking point that Bush's honorable
discharge means he fulfilled his obligation to the
Guard and in dismissing serious questions about his
service.

>From the September 15 edition of FOX News Channel's
FOX & Friends, during a discussion of the $50,000
reward being offered by anti-Bush group Texans for
Truth for original information proving whether Bush
performed his duties in the Air National Guard between
May 1972 and May 1973 in Alabama:

HILL: Wouldn't you just have to show his [Bush's]
honorable discharge papers [to affirm Bush's service]?

KILMEADE: You would think so.

>From the September 14 edition of FOX News Channel's
Special Report with Brit Hume:

LIASSON: [I]f the Bush campaign says the bottom line
is he was honorably discharged, the official record
[of his honorable discharge] should be the final
statement on this.

>From the September 13 edition of Hannity & Colmes:

HANNITY: We know he [Bush] served honorably. He served
all these hours that he had put in the aircraft
itself. We know that. It's documented. He has his
honorable discharge. You see these attacks against the
president. You see that they've gone to this Colonel
Killian [alleged author of the CBS documents]. Now, we
had Colonel Killian's son on the program Friday night,
and he dismisses this as absolutely outrageous and
wrong and inaccurate, and it was not his father. His
father thought highly of him. What do you think is
going on here?

>From the September 13 Mark Levin Show:

LEVIN: The bottom line is George [W.] Bush served all
the hours he was required to serve in order to receive
his honorable discharge -- all of them. CBS lied. Dan
Rather lied. They lied today. They were too anxious to
assassinate Bush's reputation. They were deceived by
pro-[Senator John] Kerry people and others. And
they've destroyed whatever reputation that they have
left.

Evidence that Bush lied is being ignored

Meanwhile, evidence indicating that Bush has
misrepresented his record in the Guard has largely
been ignored:

BUSH CLAIM: "I did my duty" in the National Guard.

During an interview with host Tim Russert on the
February 8 edition of Meet the Press, Bush stated, "I
served in the National Guard. I flew F-102 aircraft. I
got an honorable discharge. ... I -- I put in my time,
proudly so." Later in the interview, Bush reiterated
the claim: "I'm just telling you, I did my duty.

EVIDENCE: Media reports found Bush didn't fulfill
obligation to the Guard.

As Media Matters for America has documented, according
to a September 20 U.S. News & World Report article,
Bush didn't fulfill the "military service obligation"
that he signed. Even using White House methodology, he
still didn't attend enough drills to meet
requirements. Bush also failed to comply with time
limits on making up missed drills. The U.S. News
article reported: "[D]uring the final two years of his
obligation, Bush did not comply with Air Force
regulations that impose a time limit on making up
missed drills." In addition, Bush never made up five
months of missed drills. According to the U.S. News
article, Bush "apparently never made up five months of
drills he missed in 1972, contrary to assertions by
the administration." According to a September 8
article in The Boston Globe, Bush twice signed
documents pledging to meet requirements and twice
violated that oath. Finally, on September 16,
Salon.com's Eric Boehlert reported that a "newly
surfaced document (pdf) from President Bush's military
file" from 1968 shows that Bush agreed to serve for
five years as a pilot after he completed his Guard
pilot training. But since Bush stopped flying at least
two and a half years before this five-year commitment
would have ended, as Boehlert noted, the document
"offers more proof that Bush failed to fulfill his
military obligations."

BUSH CLAIM: I flew planes in the Guard for "several
years."

On page 34 of his 1999 campaign autobiography, A
Charge to Keep (penned by Karen Hughes), Bush claimed
that, after learning to fly the F-102 fighter jet, "I
continued flying with my unit for the next several
years," as Joe Conason noted in a February 2 New York
Observer column.

EVIDENCE: Bush flew planes for 22 months.

As Conason pointed out, "[I]n May 1972, only 22 months
after he completed pilot training, he [Bush] stopped
flying," according to the facts established by Boston
Globe reporter Walter Robinson in May 2000. Twenty-two
months, not even two years, hardly constitutes the
"several years" that Bush claimed.

BUSH CLAIM: The Guard "just had an opening for a pilot
and I was there at the right time"

On September 15, journalist and blogger Joshua Micah
Marshall noted that Bush was asked by James Moore
during a 1994 Texas gubernatorial campaign debate
against Ann Richards, "How did you get into the Guard
so easily? One hundred thousand guys our age were on
the waiting list, and you say you walked in and signed
up to become a pilot. Did your congressman father
exercise any influence on your behalf?" Bush
responded, "Not that I know of, Jim. I certainly
didn't ask for any. And I'm sure my father didn't
either. They just had an opening for a pilot and I was
there at the right time."

EVIDENCE: Others say Bush got preferential treatment.

As MMFA previously documented, former Texas Speaker of
the House Ben Barnes swore under oath that he helped
Bush get into the Air National Guard. According to The
Boston Globe: "Ben Barnes, who was speaker of the
Texas House of Representatives in 1968, said in a
deposition in 2000 that he placed a call to get young
Bush a coveted slot in the Guard at the request of a
Bush family friend."

In addition, as MMFA also noted, Bush's Harvard
Business School professor Yoshi Tsurumi said Bush
admitted his father's friends got him into the Guard.
A September 13 CNN.com article reported that Tsurumi
said that Bush told him that family friends had pulled
strings to get him into the Texas Air National Guard:
"He [Bush] admitted to me that to avoid the Vietnam
draft, he had his dad -- he said 'Dad's friends' --
skip him through the long waiting list to get him into
the Texas National Guard." The videotaped interview
has been largely absent from CNN's cable broadcasts,
as Media Matters for America has also noted.

— N.C.

Posted to the web on Thursday September 16, 2004 at
8:09 PM EST

Copyright © 2004 Media Matters for America. All rights
reserved.
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=ap/soros_hastert

Soros Asks House to Probe Hastert Remarks

Wed Sep 15, 7:28 PM ET Add Politics - U. S. Congress
to My Yahoo!

By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Billionaire philanthropist George Soros
has asked the House ethics committee to investigate
House Speaker Dennis Hastert over comments suggesting
that Soros could be receiving money from illegal drug
groups.

Reuters Photo

"This kind of insinuation — that a private United
States citizen was in league with drug cartels and may
be receiving funds derived from criminal activity —
has no place in public discourse," Soros wrote Tuesday
to the chair and top Democrat on the panel, Reps. Joel
Hefley, R-Col., and Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va.

During an Aug. 29 interview on "Fox News Sunday,"
Hastert, R-Ill., questioned the source of the
73-year-old financier's wealth: "I don't know where
George Soros gets his money. I don't know where — if
it comes from overseas or from drug groups or where it
comes from." He made similar comments in an Aug. 23
radio interview.

Soros said Hastert has since said he was
misunderstood, that he was talking about groups to
which Soros — a supporter of legalizing marijuana —
gives money.

But "the indisputable fact is that he alleged that I
might be receiving 'drug money' from 'drug groups,'"
Soros said.

Hastert's office had no immediate comment on the
ethics complaint. The Committee on Standards of
Official Conduct, under its rules, normally accepts
complaints only from House members or from outsiders
when members certify that the complaints merit review.

Soros has earned the enmity of Republicans because of
his generous contributions to liberal activist groups
campaigning to defeat President Bush (news - web
sites).

After Hastert made his comments, 11 House Democrats
led by Rep. Barney Frank (news, bio, voting record) of
Massachusetts, wrote Soros inviting him to speak on
Capitol Hill.

"We have been particularly troubled by the McCarthyite
attacks that have been made on you by some American
politicians, including colleagues of ours, who have
gone far beyond the reasonable bounds of civil
discourse in their efforts to discredit you," they
wrote.

Soros, a native of communist Hungary, arrived in the
United States in 1956 and made his fortune through the
Soros Fund Management, a private, international
investment firm. He has given away billions to various
causes, including groups promoting democracy in
Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=3&u=/ap/20040916/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iraq

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1542&e=8&u=/afp/20040917/en_afp/us_vote_bush_book_kelley_040917194015

Bush author says White House applying pressure over
book

Fri Sep 17, 3:40 PM ET Add Entertainment - AFP to My
Yahoo!

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Writer Kitty Kelley has accused the
White House of putting pressure on her and the US
media over the new biography on the family of
President George W. Bush (news - web sites)

"The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty",
which alleges that Bush took cocaine at Camp David
when his father was president, became an instant
best-seller after its publication this week. But it
has been strongly condemned by the presidency.

"I have had the pressure of the White House," Kelley,
a veteran of biographical polemics, told a conference
in Washington late Thursday linked to the release of
her book.

"It was published on Tuesday, it was under embargo
until that time, so there were no copies available.
Days before publication, the White House issued a
formal statement saying that the book was garbage and
nobody should read it," Kelley declared.

Kelley also said the White House had called the
president of NBC News to urge the network not to
invite her to talk about the new book.

"Larry King did not extend an invitation. I have done
his show for every book that I have ever written," she
said of the star CNN talk show host.

The 733-page tome is heavy with Kelley's trademark mix
of scandal and sexual innuendo, and paints a deeply
unflattering portrait of the Bush dynasty that has
been condemned by the White House as a politically
motivated smear job ahead of the November 2
presidential election.

Kelley said she interviewed 988 people for the book.

"If it's in the book, it's corroborated," she said.
"There is a lot I left out the book."

Among those quoted are Sharon Bush -- an ex-wife of
one of the president's brothers, Neil Bush -- who was
said to have confirmed the cocaine incident. Sharon
Bush has since denied this however.

"I met Sharon Bush at a little restaurant. It was a
four-hour lunch and Sharon Bush talked about
everything," Kelley said.

"She talked about her father-in-law's infidelity, she
talked about the mistresses of George H. W. Bush, she
talked about her tormented relationship with the Bush
family.

"I said: 'Sharon, have you ever heard about George W.
doing drugs at Camp David when his father was
president? And she said: 'Yes, many times'.

Kelley said Sharon Bush's publicist has "corroborated
everything".

"But I am not really surprised that she is backing off
because this is a very powerful family. Sharon said
over that lunch that she was afraid of the Bushes."

Kelley went on: "I really do think they are the most
powerful in America, the most powerful family in the
world."

She denied she had a political agenda explaining that
the book was started in 2000. "I personally come from
a large Republican family. My father voted for both
Bushes."