Guten Morgen Mr. Bush - 500 Beiträge pro Seite (Seite 45)

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In 1972, Mr. Ut photographed a girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, running naked down a road, seared by napalm, screaming in Vietnamese, "Too hot! Too hot!" Nick Ut (himself Vietnamese) took the picture and then helped save the girl`s life. Now living in Toronto and working as a peace activist, she was in Eddie`s studio that evening too.
Ich habe mich oft gefragt, was ist aus dem Mädchen geworden auf dem berühmten Vietnam Foto. Sie hat überlebt und hat auch einen Namen.


September 25, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
When the Shooting Stopped
By PETE HAMILL

The death last weekend of my friend the photographer Eddie Adams took me back to a visit to the Saigon bureau of The Associated Press before Christmas of 1965. I was arranging, in those years before personal computers, to use the bureau`s telegrapher to send back dispatches to my newspaper in New York. Eddie introduced himself and I asked him if he had any advice for me about covering the war.

"Yeah," he said. "Find some grizzled old noncom who was in Korea. Ask him to keep you alive."

Then he said: "Learn these two words: `Bao chi.` That`s Vietnamese for `press.` If you walk into some guy with a gun, put your hands in the air, and shout, `Bao chi, bao chi!` " He laughed. "Maybe he won`t shoot you."

At the time, Eddie Adams was a lean, stringy guy dressed in some patchwork of Army and civilian clothes, with pockets for film and lenses, and I didn`t see much of him in Saigon. Most of the time, he was off at the war, covering the "bang-bang," in places where I was not present. So were the other photographers of what became the Vietnam generation. All saw terrible things. More than 130 of them, of all nations, including North Vietnam, were killed. Many were wounded. A few became psychic casualties of war, learning the hard way that some wounds could not be healed by sex, drugs and rock `n` roll.

Eddie Adams, like all the others in that time and place, hoped in his work to capture that single image that told an immediate truth, while expressing a larger truth, one that said, "This is war" and, beyond that, "This is Vietnam."

"You shoot," Eddie told me once, "and you hope it`s bigger than what`s in the frame."

The photographers of our new wars in Iraq and Afghanistan surely have the same ambitions. They were partly educated, after all, by the example of the Vietnam generation, and have the immense new technical aid of digital photography. Their work has often been extraordinary, standing with the best of what came out of Vietnam. But the unsettling truth is that, so far, the defining photographic images of Iraq were taken by amateurs in the prison at Abu Ghraib.

Eddie Adams was not an amateur. He made one of those defining photographs of Vietnam in 1968, for which he won a 1969 Pulitzer Prize. It showed the South Vietnamese police commander, Brig. Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, shooting a Vietcong prisoner in the head on the second day of the Tet offensive. The photograph made front pages all over the world, but you could never find a print of it on the walls of Eddie`s various studios.

One evening in his studio, Eddie introduced me to Nick Ut, who made another defining photograph of Vietnam (a third was the photograph of the dead at My Lai made by Ronald L. Haeberle in 1968). In 1972, Mr. Ut photographed a girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, running naked down a road, seared by napalm, screaming in Vietnamese, "Too hot! Too hot!" Nick Ut (himself Vietnamese) took the picture and then helped save the girl`s life. Now living in Toronto and working as a peace activist, she was in Eddie`s studio that evening too. "I still can`t look at Nick`s picture, or at her," Eddie said, "without the tears coming up."

There is no simple way to explain why such defining images have eluded today`s professional war photographers. One explanation is simple: sheer luck. You must be there at the moment. If you`re around the corner or stalled in traffic, or stopped by soldiers, the moment vanishes forever.

A more important reason might be the ferocious nature of Iraq itself - a ferocity that, I think, has something to do with the war`s religious context. Visions of God were not a factor in Vietnam. Marx and Lenin, maybe. Nationalism, of course. But not God. Eddie Adams and all the others lived each day with the possibility of sudden death. Some were captured, held as prisoners, and later released. But they did not fear being kidnapped, held hostage, and then beheaded as "infidels." In the savage urban warfare of Iraq, the desire to stay alive creates understandable restraint. You cannot shout the Iraqi equivalent of "Bao chi!" at the insurgents and hope for the best. Some of them believe they are fighting in a holy contest between Islam and Christianity.

There are also several other factors: censorship and self-censorship. After Vietnam, the press in general, and photographers in particular, were never as free again to cover American wars. A rigid system of image control was imposed in Grenada, Panama and the Persian Gulf war. Though the Pentagon`s experiment with embedding loosened some of those controls, there were still limits. No soldiers bleeding in the sand, please. No body bags. No coffins.

The Pentagon image-mongers had learned from Vietnam that all great war photography is essentially antiwar photography. Too often their goals are assisted by squeamish editors, with generally honorable intentions, far from the killing fields.

Long ago, a tough old editor explained to me why he had chosen not to run a photograph of a 10-year-old girl who had been murdered and thrown off a rooftop. "How would you feel if it was your daughter?" he asked. As an editor, I`ve turned down similar glimpses of urban horror, not because the readers could not take them, but because there should be some privacy to death, particularly when it is charged with horror.

Those self-imposed limits also apply to war, which is never pretty. There is no news media conspiracy to conceal the truth of war. But the results are obvious: some of the best - and most appalling - Iraq photographs have probably never been seen by the public. As the war recedes ever farther from the front pages, the chances of important pictures emerging grow bleaker by the day.

Eddie Adams loved soldiers (he had been a combat photographer with the Marines in Korea) and hated the abstract rhetoric of war. "It`s not about numbers, or glory," he told me once. "It`s about young guys dying." He saw too many die, but in his New York life, he never seemed to be a haunted man. After the war, he turned his lenses on statesmen, politicians, an occasional movie star, often in the safety of his studio. Still, Vietnam never went completely away. When I ran into him in the street, he always smiled and so did I. He would say, "What a glorious day, man." But sometimes, he`d put up his hands in greeting and whisper, "Bao chi." And laugh, and perhaps hear the distant rumble of artillery.

Pete Hamill is the author of the forthcoming "Downtown: My Manhattan.``

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Informed Comment
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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

Saturday, September 25, 2004

US Assault on Ramadi
Rockets in Baghdad Kill 4
Sadrists, AMS threaten Fresh Uprisings

President George W. Bush cited a poll done in June and July to argue that Iraqis are more optimistic about their future than Americans are about theirs. First of all, even if this were true, it is not good news for Bush.

Second of all, that poll was done before the US assault on Najaf, and the significant deterioration of the security situation in August and September. Many Iraqis had at that time been willing to give Allawi a chance, hoping security would improve. I am sure those numbers would be much lower now.

Moreover, the same poll found that more than 80 percent of Iraqis want an Islamic Republic with Islamic canon law or shariah as the law of the land. So if they are optimistic, it is because they think they can achieve such a goal over US objections. Again, this is not actually good news for Bush.

Nancy Youssef of Knight Ridder has an exclusive from Baghdad reporting that US air strikes on Iraqi cities and other actions have killed twice as many Iraqis (many of them civilian bystanders) since early April as have the actions of the nationalist guerrillas.

Al-Zawra Newspaper gives a useful overview of the specific guerrilla groups fighting in Iraq.

Ramadi

AP reports that the US military launched a major assault on the city of Ramadi on Friday. Warplanes and helicopter gunships flew above as US ground forces engaged in battles near the government buildings. Al-Zaman says that the fighting began when US froces surrounded the city on all sides and called for civilian inhabitants to evacuate, and then went in. Some 7 Iraqis, probably civilian by-standers, were wounded and sought treatment at the hospital. Typically wounded guerrillas do not go to the hospitals for fear of capture.

Fallujah

US war planes bombed Fallujah`s industrial district on Friday, killing 8 and wounding 15.

Baghdad

Guerrillas trying to bombard a police recruitment station in Baghdad missed and hit Palestine Street, killing 4 persons and wounding 14.

A series of explosions could be heard in the capital Friday evening, probably at Haifa Street, which has become a stonghold of the militant Monotheism and Holy War organization that came to Iraq from Jordan.

Late Thursday, the Italian Embassy took mortar fire.

At a demonstration outside Abu Ghuraib Shaikh Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi of the Association of Muslim Scholars called on National Guardsmen to rebel against the government of Iyad Allawi. AMS has affiliations to some 8000 Sunni mosques in Iraq and has emerged as the most popular Sunni Arab leadership. ArabNews writes that Kubaisi said,


` "It is strange to hear someone announce that Iraq cannot achieve democracy without the Americans," referring to Allawi "who has abandoned Islamic, regional and patriotic principles, forgets that America is the one that slaughtered its native Americans and killed millions of Red Indians. He forgets that America is the first to have made mass graves by bombing Hiroshima." . . . "We live in strange times. As practically everyone is condemning America and its conquering of Iraq, we see a small bit of scum fighting the current, calling America a liberator and friend," referring to Allawis speech praising the US invasion. . . .

"Let it be clear for everyone that the traitors ... cannot give orders. To die for the country, to be a martyr is not death. Death is for those who betray their religion, soil, honour and country." . . .

"Today Iraq is facing the biggest conspiracy, a conspiracy to eliminate its most faithful people, all the faithful whether Muslim or Christian, Arab or Kurd or Turkmen ... That is why the Americans have formed the Iraqi national guard and police". Kubaisi described the nascent Iraqi security forces as "just a cover in order to sabotage Iraq ... Because of this I call for the leaders of the national guard and police not to obey their orders which are meant to make them the first spear, the first arrow as the criminal of the century Bush says." Kubaisi concluded calling on the Iraqis to unite in a peaceful resistance against the fear and terror inflicted upon them by the US-invader and to be confident of victory. `




On Thursday night, guerrillas had fired mortar shells at a Shiite mosque in the Abu Dishar quarter of southern Baghdad, putting a sizeable hole in its dome and damaging the courtyard.


Kufa

A leader of the Sadr movement threatened a new uprising on Friday.

In Kufa, Shaikh Hashim Abu Raghif-- an aide to Muqtada al-Sadr -- denounced recent moves by US Marines and Iraqi police in Najaf to raid Sadrist offices and arrest the movement`s leaders. It was widely felt among Shiites in Iraq, even among those who dislike the Sadrists, and the raids and arrests contavened the terms of a peace agreement brokered by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. He was among those who complained about the recent raids.

Shaikh Abu Raghif said at the Sadr mosque in Kufa before hundreds of worshipers, "This aggression is a serious precedent in the new Iraq and for the state which has thrown itself in the arms of the occupation.” He maintained that the US and the caretaker Iraqi government "are trying to finish off this movement.” He added, “The pressures on us are great after the signing of the agreement,” Regheef said. “We will be back if the leader orders us to ... We will rise up when we’re ordered to.”

More hostages were taken on Friday in what has become an all too familiar tactic on the part of the guerrillas.

posted by Juan @ [url9/25/2004 06:00:46 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2004_09_01_juancole_archive.html#109609136238572762[/url]

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Ein Link von der der Cole Home Page.

An Inventory of Iraqi Resistance Groups
"Who Kills Hostages in Iraq?"

By Samir Haddad and Mazin Ghazi
Al Zawra (Baghdad)
September 19, 2004

(FBIS Translated Text)

US soldiers guard the wreckage of a military armored vehicle destroyed by the Iraqi resistance. In Iraq, the issues are even more confused now than they were before. This happened after an armed group abducted two French journalists, and threatened to kill them if France did not rescind the law banning religious symbols at schools, including the veil, and another group abducted two Italian women in Baghdad. The issues became even more confused when a third group killed 12 Nepalese workers, claiming that they were serving the US forces.

It is our duty now to clarify the picture with regard to who targets civilians and foreigners, who abducts hostages indiscriminately, and who makes the US occupation and its soldiers his main preoccupation.

After the fall of Baghdad into the hands of the Anglo-American occupation on 9 April 2003, as a natural reaction, several sectors of Iraqi society confronted the occupation. Resistance cells were formed, the majority of which were of Islamic Sunni and pan-Arab tendencies. These cells started in the shape of scattered groups, without a unifying bond to bind them together.

These groups and small cells started to grow gradually, until they matured to some extent and acquired a clear personality that had its own political and military weight. Then they stated to pursue combining themselves into larger groups.

The majority of these groups do not know their leadership, the sources of their financing, or who provides them with weapons. However, the huge amounts of weapons, which the Saddam Husayn regime left behind, are undoubtedly one of the main sources for arming these groups. These weapons include mortars, RPGs, hand grenades, Kalashnikovs, and light weapons.

Their intellectual tendencies are usually described as a mixture of Islamic and pan-Arab ideas that agree on the need to put an end to the US presence in Iraq.

These groups have common denominators, the most important of which perhaps are focusing on killing US soldiers, rejecting the abductions and the killing of hostages, rejecting the attacks on Iraqi policemen, and respecting the beliefs of other religions. There is no compulsion to convert to Islam, this stems from their Islamic creed, their reading of the jurisprudence texts and historical events, and their respect for the directives and appeals of the Islamic organizations and religious dignitaries.

These groups believe the Iraqis are divided into two categories. One category -- the majority - is against the occupation, and the other -- the minority -- is on the side of the occupation. The resistance considers those who reject the occupation, whatever their description might be, to be on its side. The resistance considers those who are on the side of the occupation to be as spies and traitors who do not deserve to remain on Iraqi territory, and hence they should be liquidated.

As for their view of the political parties, it depends on the stance of these parties toward the occupation. If these parties are dealing with the United States on the basis that it is an occupation force that should be evicted and that Iraq should be liberated from any military occupation or constrictions, and if these parties choose to deal with the United States and to engage in political action within this context, then these parties are free to continue with their efforts. Moreover, in general, these groups do not target the political powers that deal, but do not cooperate with the United States within the political framework established by the occupation.

The following is a review of the resistance groups and the armed groups in Iraq:

First, the main Sunni resistance groups that primarily target the US occupation:

1. The Iraqi National Islamic Resistance, "The 1920 Revolution Brigades:"

-- It emerged for the first time on 16 July 2003. Its declared aim is to liberate Iraqi territory from foreign military and political occupation and to establish a liberated and independent Iraqi state on Islamic bases. It launches armed attacks against the US forces. The attacks primarily are concentrated in the area west of Baghdad, in the regions of Abu-Ghurayb, Khan Dari, and Al-Fallujah. It has other activities in the governorates of Ninwi, Diyali, and Al-Anbar. The group usually takes into consideration the opinions of a number of Sunni authorities in Iraq.

-- The group`s statements, in which it claims responsibility for its operations against the US occupation, are usually distributed at the gates of the mosques after the Friday prayers.

-- A recent statement issued by the group on 19 August 2004 explained that the group, during the period between 27 July and 7 August 2004, carried out an average of 10 operations every day, which resulted in the deaths of dozens of US soldiers and the destruction of dozens of US armored vehicles.

-- The most prominent operations of the group during that period were the shooting down of a helicopter in the Abu-Ghurayb region by the Al-Zubayr Bin-al-Awwam Brigade on 1 August 2004, and the shooting down of a Chinook helicopter in the Al-Nu`aymiyah region, near Al-Fallujah, by the Martyr Nur-al-Din Brigade on 9 August 2004.

2. The National Front for the Liberation of Iraq:

-- The front includes 10 resistance groups. It was formed days after the occupation of Iraq in April 2003. It consists of nationalists and Islamists. Its activities are concentrated in Arbil and Karkuk in northern Iraq; in Al-Fallujah, Samarra, and Tikrit in central Iraq, and in Basra and Babil Governorates in the south, in addition to Diyali Governorate in the east.

-- Generally speaking, its activities are considered smaller than those of the 1920 Revolution Brigades.

3. The Iraqi Resistance Islamic Front, `JAMI`:

The front is the newest Sunni resistance group to fight the US occupation. It includes a number of small resistance factions that formed a coalition. Its political and jihad program stems from a jurisprudence viewpoint that allows it to fight the occupiers. Its activities against the occupation forces are concentrated in the two governorates of Ninwi and Diyali. It announced its existence for the first time on 30 May 2004.

In its statements, JAMI warns against the Jewish conspiracies in Iraq.

According to statements issued by the front, JAMI`s military wing, the Salah-al-Din and Sayf-Allah al-Maslul Brigades, has carried out dozens of operations against the US occupation forces. The most prominent of these operations were in Ninwi Governorate. These operations included the shelling of the occupation command headquarters and the semi-daily shelling of the Mosul airport. Further more, JAMI targets the members of US intelligence and kills them in the Al-Faysaliyah area in Mosul and also in the governorate of Diyali, where the front`s Al-Rantisi Brigade sniped a US soldier and used mortars to shell Al-Faris Airport.

4. Other Small Factions:

There are other factions that claim responsibility for some limited military operations against the US forces. However, some of these factions have joined larger brigades that are more active and more experienced in fighting. These factions include:

Hamzah Faction: A Sunni group that appeared for the first time on 10 October 2003 in Al-Fallujah and called for the release of a local shaykh known as Shaykh Jamal Nidal, who was arrested by the US forces. There is no other information available about this group.

Iraqi Liberation Army: The first appearance of this group was on 15 July 2003. It warned the foreign countries against sending troops to Iraq and pledged to attack those troops if they were sent.

Awakening and Holy War: A group of Arab Sunni mujahidin. It is active in Al-Fallujah. It filmed an operation on videotape and sent the tape to Iranian television on 7 July 2003. On the tape, the group said that Saddam and the United States were two sides of the same coin. The group said that it carried out operations against the US occupation in Al-Fallujah and other cities.

The White Banners: A group of local Arab Sunni mujahidin that is active in the Sunni triangle and probably in other areas. Originally, they were opposed to Saddam Husayn, and in alliance with the Muslim Youths and Muhammad`s Army. The group criticized the bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad. So far, there is no information about their operations.

Al-Haqq Army: There is not much information about this group, apart from that it consists of Arab Sunni Muslims, it has some nationalistic tendencies, and it is not loyal to Saddam.

5. Ba`thist Factions:

These factions are loyal to the Ba`th Party and the previous regime of Saddam Husayn. They do not constitute a proportion of the actual resistance in Iraq. Their activities are more or less restricted to financing of resistance operations. The factions that still exist secretly in the Iraqi arena include:

Al-Awdah (The Return): This faction is concentrated in northern Iraq -- Samarra, Tikrit, Al-Dur, and Mosul. It consists of members of the former intelligence apparatus.

Saddam`s Fedayeen: The faction was formed by the Saddam regime before the US invasion. Now, it is rumored that many of its members have abandoned their loyalty to Saddam and have joined Islamic and national groups on the side of the 11 September Revolutionary Group and the Serpent`s Head Movement.

Second, Shiite resistance against the occupation:

Al-Sadr group: The Al-Mahdi Army is considered the only militia experiment to emerge after the occupation. In July 2003, Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr announced the formation of the Al-Mahdi Army, but not as a force directed against the occupation. Within a short period, Al-Sadr gathered between 10,000 and 15,000 well-trained youths, the majority of whom were from the poor of the Al-Sadr City, Al-Shu`lah, and the southern cities.

Recent events -- starting with the closure of Al-Sadr`s Al-Hawzah newspaper in March 2004; the arrest of Al-Sadr assistant Mustafa al-Ya`qubi against a background of suspicions about his involvement in the killing of Imam Abd-al-Majid al-Khu`i, and crowned with the writ to arrest Muqtada al-Sadr in April on charges of assassinating Al-Khu`i inside the Al-Haydari mosque in Al-Najaf on 10 April 2003 -- placed the Al-Mahdi Army in confrontation with the occupation forces in Baghdad and the southern governorates.

The greatest confrontation between this militia and the occupation forces erupted in Al-Najaf in August 2004. The confrontation continued for nearly three weeks, and it ended with the signing of a cease-fire agreement between the two sides. The observers believe that these confrontations bestowed upon the Al-Sadr tendency the mark of an armed resistance to the occupation.

Imam Ali Bin-Abi-Talib Jihadi Brigades: This Shiite group appeared for the first time on 12 October 2003. It vowed to kill the soldiers of any country sending its troops to support the coalition forces, and threatened to transfer the battleground to the territories of such countries if they were to send troops. The group also threatened to assassinate all the members of the Interim Governing Council and any Iraqi cooperating with the coalition forces. The group also announced that Al-Najaf and Karbala were the battlegrounds in which it would target the US forces.

Third: Factions that adopt abductions and killing:

In addition to the groups resisting occupation, other armed groups have emerged and resorted to operations of abducting and killing foreigners as a method, in their opinion, that would terrorize the enemy and as a political pressure card to achieve their specific demands. This was what happened when Philippine President Gloria Macapagol-Arroyo decided to withdraw the Philippine forces acting under US command in Iraq after the abduction of her compatriot Angelo del Cruz on 7 July 2004 and his release at a later time.

The most prominent of these groups are:

Assadullah Brigades: The brigades said in a statement, number 50, "The mujahid is entitled to capture any infidel that enters Iraq, whether he works for a construction company or in any other job, because he could be warrior, and the mujahid has the right to kill him or take him as a prisoner."

The activities of this group are concentrated in Baghdad and its suburbs. The group detained the third most senior diplomat at the Egyptian Embassy to Iraq, Muhammad Mamduh Hilmi Qutb, in July 2004 in response to statements by Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif, who announced that Egypt was prepared to offer its security expertise to the interim Iraqi Government. The diplomat was released after nearly a week.

Islamic Retaliation Movement: One of the movements that adopt the course of abductions. It abducted the US Marine of Lebanese origin, Wasif Ali Hassun, on 19 July 2004, and then released him.

Islamic Anger Brigades: The group that abducted 15 Lebanese in June 2004 and then released them, with the exception of Husayn Ulayyan, an employee of a communications company, whom it killed.

Khalid-Bin-al-Walid Brigades and Iraq`s Martyrs Brigades: They are believed to be the ones who abducted Italian journalist Enzo Bladoni in August 2004 and killed him.

The Black Banners Group: A battalion of the Secret Islamic Army. The group abducted three Indians, two Kenyans, and an Egyptian working for a Kuwaiti company operating in Iraq. The aim was to compel the company to stop its activities in Iraq. The hostages were later released.

The Abu-Mus`ab al-Zarqawi Group.

The Al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad Group.

The Islamic Army in Iraq: A secret organization that adopts the ideology of Al-Qa`ida. The organization abducted Iranian Consul Feredion Jahani and the two French journalists, Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot.

Ansar al-Sunnah Movement: The movement abducted 12 Nepalese on 23 August 2004 and killed them.

The last four groups are clearly intellectually close to the beliefs and thinking of Al-Qa`ida Organization and its leader, Usama Bin Ladin.

The first case of slaughter was that of US national Nicholas Berg in May 2004, and the Abu-Mus`ab al-Zarqawi group claimed responsibility for it.

After that, the Al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad Group killed South Korean Kim Il, who was working for a Korean company providing the US Army with military installations.

Following that, the operations of abducting hostages cascaded in Iraq. Some of the hostages were slaughtered, and others were released. And the phenomenon came to the surface.

The total number of hostages killed so far is: two Italians, two US nationals, two Pakistanis, one Egyptian, one Turk, one Lebanese, one Bulgarian, one South Korean, and 12 Nepalese.

(Description of Source: Baghdad Al-Zawra in Arabic--Weekly published by the Iraqi Journalists Association)

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The Independent
The worse the situation in Iraq, the bigger the lies that Tony Blair tells us
Iraq, remember, was going to be the role model. It would be the catalyst, ’crucible’ even, of the new Middle East
Saturday, 25th September 2004, by Robert Fisk


E are now in the greatest crisis since the last greatest crisis. That’s how we run the Iraq war - or the Second Iraq War as Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara would now have us believe. Hostages are paraded in orange tracksuits to remind us of Guantanamo Bay. Kidnappers demand the release of women held prisoner by the Americans. Abu Ghraib is what they are talking about. Abu Ghraib? Anyone remember Abu Ghraib? Remember those dirty little snapshots? But don’t worry. This wasn’t the America George Bush recognised, and besides we’re punishing the bad apples, aren’t we? Women? Why, there are only a couple of dames left - and they are "Dr Germ" and "Dr Anthrax".

But Arabs do not forget so easily. It was a Lebanese woman, Samia Melki, who first understood the true semantics of those Abu Ghraib photographs for the Arab world. The naked Iraqi, his body smeared with excrement, back to the camera, arms stretched out before the butch and blond American with a stick, possessed, she wrote in Counterpunch, "all the drama and contrasting colours of a Caravaggio painting".

The best of Baroque art invites the viewer to be part of the artwork. "Forced to walk in a straight line with his legs crossed, his torso slightly twisted and arms spread out for balance, the Iraqi prisoner’s toned body, accentuated by the excrement and the bad lighting, stretches out in crucifix form. Exuding a dignity long denied, the Arab is suffering for the world’s sins."

And that, I fear, is the least of the suffering that has gone on at Abu Ghraib. For what happened to all those videos which members of Congress were allowed to watch in secret and which we - the public - were not permitted to see? Why have we suddenly forgotten about Abu Ghraib? Seymour Hersh, the journalist who broke the Abu Ghraib story - and one of the only journalists in America who is doing his job - has spoken publicly about what else happened in that terrible jail.

I’m indebted to a reader for the following extract from a recent Hersh lecture: "Some of the worst things that happened that you don’t know about. OK? Videos. There are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib... The women were passing messages out saying please come and kill me because of what’s happened. And basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children, in cases that have been recorded, the boys were sodomised, with the cameras rolling, and the worst above all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking..."

Already, however, we have forgotten this. Just as we must no longer talk about weapons of mass destruction. For as the details slowly emerge of the desperate efforts of Bush and Blair to find these non-existent nasties, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. US mobile site survey teams managed, at one point, to smash into a former Iraqi secret police headquarters in Baghdad, only to find a padlocked inner door. Here, they believed, they would find the horrors that Bush and Blair were praying for. And what did they find behind the second door? A vast emporium of brand new vacuum cleaners. At Baath party headquarters, another team - led by a Major Kenneth Deal - believed they had discovered secret documents which would reveal Saddam’s weapons’ programme. The papers turned out to be an Arabic translation of A J P Taylor’s The Struggle for Mastery in Europe. Perhaps Bush and Blair should read it.

So as we continue to stagger down the crumbling stairway of our own ghastly making, we must listen to bigger and bigger whoppers. Iyad Allawi, the puppet prime minister - still deferentially called "interim prime minister" by many of my reporter chums - insists that elections will be held in January even though he has less control of the Iraqi capital (let alone the rest of the country) than the mayor of Baghdad. The ex-CIA agent, who obediently refused to free the two women prisoners the moment Washington gave him instructions not to do so, dutifully trots over to London and on to Washington to shore up more of the Blair-Bush lies.

Second Iraq War indeed. How much more of this tomfoolery are we, the public, expected to stomach? We are fighting in "the crucible of global terrorism", according to Lord Blair of Kut. What are we to make of this nonsense? Of course, he didn’t tell us we were going to have a Second Iraq War when he helped to start the First Iraq War, did he? And he didn’t tell the Iraqis that, did he? No, we had come to "liberate" them. So let’s just remember the crisis before the crisis before the crisis. Let’s go back to last November when our Prime Minister was addressing the Lord Mayor’s banquet. The Iraq war, he informed us then - and presumably he was still referring to the First Iraq War - was "the battle of seminal importance for the early 21st century".

Well, he can say that again. But just listen to what else Lord Blair of Kut informed us about the war. "It will define relations between the Muslim world and the West. It will influence profoundly the development of Arab states and the Middle East. It will have far-reaching implications for the future of American and Western diplomacy."

And he can say that again, can’t he? For it is difficult to think of anything more profoundly dangerous for us, for the West, for the Middle East, for Christians and Muslims since the Second World War - the real second war, that is - than Blair’s war in Iraq. And Iraq, remember, was going to be the model for the whole Middle East. Every Arab state would want to be like Iraq. Iraq would be the catalyst - perhaps even the "crucible" - of the new Middle East. Spare me the hollow laughter.

I have been struck these past few weeks how very many of the letters I’ve received from readers come from men and women who fought in the Second World War, who argue ferociously that Blair and Bush should never be allowed to compare this quagmire with the real struggle against evil which they waged more than half a century ago.

"I, now 90, remember the men maimed in body and mind who haunted the lanes in rural Wales where I grew up in the years after 1918," Robert Parry wrote to me. "For this reason, Owen’s ’Dulce et decorum est’ remains for me the ultimate expression of the reality of death in war, made now more horrific by American ’targeted’ bombing and the suicide bombers. We need a new Wilfred Owen to open our eyes and consciences, but until one appears this great poem must be given space to speak again." It would be difficult to find a more eloquent rejoinder to the infantile nonsense now being peddled by our Prime Minister.

Not for many years has there been such a gap - in America as well as Britain - between the people and the government they elected. Blair’s most recent remarks are speeches made - to quote that Owen poem - "to children ardent for some desperate glory". Ken Bigley’s blindfolded face is our latest greatest crisis. But let’s not forget what went before.


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But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush`s business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election. Von einem Schadenersatzprozeß gegen die Bush-Familie habe ich noch nichts gehört. Aber wenn wirklich von Holocaust Überlebenden gegen die Bush-Familie geklagt hat, wird es auch Thema der Zeitungen werden.
Hier auf jeden Fall die Beweise aus dem Guardian zu den Verwicklungen von Prescott Bush mit den Rüstungsgeschäften Hitlers.


How Bush`s grandfather helped Hitler`s rise to power

Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today`s president
Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington
Saturday September 25, 2004

The Guardian
George Bush`s grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings, which continued until his company`s assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.

The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator`s action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

The debate over Prescott Bush`s behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis` plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler`s rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.

Remarkably, little of Bush`s dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush`s business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election.

While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen`s US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.

Tantalising

Bush was also on the board of at least one of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world.

Thyssen owned the largest steel and coal company in Germany and grew rich from Hitler`s efforts to re-arm between the two world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssen`s international corporate web, UBC, worked exclusively for, and was owned by, a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands. More tantalising are Bush`s links to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC, although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssen`s American assets were seized in 1942.

Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush`s involvement. All three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system and a helpful and dedicated staff at both the Library of Congress in Washington and the National Archives at the University of Maryland.

The first set of files, the Harriman papers in the Library of Congress, show that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen.

The second set of papers, which are in the National Archives, are contained in vesting order number 248 which records the seizure of the company assets. What these files show is that on October 20 1942 the alien property custodian seized the assets of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a director. Having gone through the books of the bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates, the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. By November, the Silesian-American Company, another of Prescott Bush`s ventures, had also been seized.

The third set of documents, also at the National Archives, are contained in the files on IG Farben, who was prosecuted for war crimes.

A report issued by the Office of Alien Property Custodian in 1942 stated of the companies that "since 1939, these (steel and mining) properties have been in possession of and have been operated by the German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country`s war effort".

Prescott Bush, a 6ft 4in charmer with a rich singing voice, was the founder of the Bush political dynasty and was once considered a potential presidential candidate himself. Like his son, George, and grandson, George W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and influential Skull and Bones student society. He was an artillery captain in the first world war and married Dorothy Walker, the daughter of George Herbert Walker, in 1921.

In 1924, his father-in-law, a well-known St Louis investment banker, helped set him up in business in New York with Averill Harriman, the wealthy son of railroad magnate E H Harriman in New York, who had gone into banking.

One of the first jobs Walker gave Bush was to manage UBC. Bush was a founding member of the bank and the incorporation documents, which list him as one of seven directors, show he owned one share in UBC worth $125.

The bank was set up by Harriman and Bush`s father-in-law to provide a US bank for the Thyssens, Germany`s most powerful industrial family.

August Thyssen, the founder of the dynasty had been a major contributor to Germany`s first world war effort and in the 1920s, he and his sons Fritz and Heinrich established a network of overseas banks and companies so their assets and money could be whisked offshore if threatened again.

By the time Fritz Thyssen inherited the business empire in 1926, Germany`s economic recovery was faltering. After hearing Adolf Hitler speak, Thyssen became mesmerised by the young firebrand. He joined the Nazi party in December 1931 and admits backing Hitler in his autobiography, I Paid Hitler, when the National Socialists were still a radical fringe party. He stepped in several times to bail out the struggling party: in 1928 Thyssen had bought the Barlow Palace on Briennerstrasse, in Munich, which Hitler converted into the Brown House, the headquarters of the Nazi party. The money came from another Thyssen overseas institution, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvarrt in Rotterdam.

By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the world`s largest private investment bank, and UBC had bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler`s build-up to war.

Between 1931 and 1933 UBC bought more than $8m worth of gold, of which $3m was shipped abroad. According to documents seen by the Guardian, after UBC was set up it transferred $2m to BBH accounts and between 1924 and 1940 the assets of UBC hovered around $3m, dropping to $1m only on a few occasions.

In 1941, Thyssen fled Germany after falling out with Hitler but he was captured in France and detained for the remainder of the war.

There was nothing illegal in doing business with the Thyssens throughout the 1930s and many of America`s best-known business names invested heavily in the German economic recovery. However, everything changed after Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Even then it could be argued that BBH was within its rights continuing business relations with the Thyssens until the end of 1941 as the US was still technically neutral until the attack on Pearl Harbor. The trouble started on July 30 1942 when the New York Herald-Tribune ran an article entitled "Hitler`s Angel Has $3m in US Bank". UBC`s huge gold purchases had raised suspicions that the bank was in fact a "secret nest egg" hidden in New York for Thyssen and other Nazi bigwigs. The Alien Property Commission (APC) launched an investigation.

There is no dispute over the fact that the US government seized a string of assets controlled by BBH - including UBC and SAC - in the autumn of 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy act. What is in dispute is if Harriman, Walker and Bush did more than own these companies on paper.

Erwin May, a treasury attache and officer for the department of investigation in the APC, was assigned to look into UBC`s business. The first fact to emerge was that Roland Harriman, Prescott Bush and the other directors didn`t actually own their shares in UBC but merely held them on behalf of Bank voor Handel. Strangely, no one seemed to know who owned the Rotterdam-based bank, including UBC`s president.

May wrote in his report of August 16 1941: "Union Banking Corporation, incorporated August 4 1924, is wholly owned by the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. My investigation has produced no evidence as to the ownership of the Dutch bank. Mr Cornelis [sic] Lievense, president of UBC, claims no knowledge as to the ownership of the Bank voor Handel but believes it possible that Baron Heinrich Thyssen, brother of Fritz Thyssen, may own a substantial interest."

May cleared the bank of holding a golden nest egg for the Nazi leaders but went on to describe a network of companies spreading out from UBC across Europe, America and Canada, and how money from voor Handel travelled to these companies through UBC.

By September May had traced the origins of the non-American board members and found that Dutchman HJ Kouwenhoven - who met with Harriman in 1924 to set up UBC - had several other jobs: in addition to being the managing director of voor Handel he was also the director of the August Thyssen bank in Berlin and a director of Fritz Thyssen`s Union Steel Works, the holding company that controlled Thyssen`s steel and coal mine empire in Germany.

Within a few weeks, Homer Jones, the chief of the APC investigation and research division sent a memo to the executive committee of APC recommending the US government vest UBC and its assets. Jones named the directors of the bank in the memo, including Prescott Bush`s name, and wrote: "Said stock is held by the above named individuals, however, solely as nominees for the Bank voor Handel, Rotterdam, Holland, which is owned by one or more of the Thyssen family, nationals of Germany and Hungary. The 4,000 shares hereinbefore set out are therefore beneficially owned and help for the interests of enemy nationals, and are vestible by the APC," according to the memo from the National Archives seen by the Guardian.

Red-handed

Jones recommended that the assets be liquidated for the benefit of the government, but instead UBC was maintained intact and eventually returned to the American shareholders after the war. Some claim that Bush sold his share in UBC after the war for $1.5m - a huge amount of money at the time - but there is no documentary evidence to support this claim. No further action was ever taken nor was the investigation continued, despite the fact UBC was caught red-handed operating a American shell company for the Thyssen family eight months after America had entered the war and that this was the bank that had partly financed Hitler`s rise to power.

The most tantalising part of the story remains shrouded in mystery: the connection, if any, between Prescott Bush, Thyssen, Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC) and Auschwitz.

Thyssen`s partner in United Steel Works, which had coal mines and steel plants across the region, was Friedrich Flick, another steel magnate who also owned part of IG Farben, the powerful German chemical company.

Flick`s plants in Poland made heavy use of slave labour from the concentration camps in Poland. According to a New York Times article published in March 18 1934 Flick owned two-thirds of CSSC while "American interests" held the rest.

The US National Archive documents show that BBH`s involvement with CSSC was more than simply holding the shares in the mid-1930s. Bush`s friend and fellow "bonesman" Knight Woolley, another partner at BBH, wrote to Averill Harriman in January 1933 warning of problems with CSSC after the Poles started their drive to nationalise the plant. "The Consolidated Silesian Steel Company situation has become increasingly complicated, and I have accordingly brought in Sullivan and Cromwell, in order to be sure that our interests are protected," wrote Knight. "After studying the situation Foster Dulles is insisting that their man in Berlin get into the picture and obtain the information which the directors here should have. You will recall that Foster is a director and he is particularly anxious to be certain that there is no liability attaching to the American directors."

But the ownership of the CSSC between 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland and 1942 when the US government vested UBC and SAC is not clear.

"SAC held coal mines and definitely owned CSSC between 1934 and 1935, but when SAC was vested there was no trace of CSSC. All concrete evidence of its ownership disappears after 1935 and there are only a few traces in 1938 and 1939," says Eva Schweitzer, the journalist and author whose book, America and the Holocaust, is published next month.

Silesia was quickly made part of the German Reich after the invasion, but while Polish factories were seized by the Nazis, those belonging to the still neutral Americans (and some other nationals) were treated more carefully as Hitler was still hoping to persuade the US to at least sit out the war as a neutral country. Schweitzer says American interests were dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The Nazis bought some out, but not others.

The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war.

Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held liable under the principle of "state sovereignty".

Jan Lissmann, one of the lawyers for the survivors, said: "President Bush withdrew President Bill Clinton`s signature from the treaty [that founded the court] not only to protect Americans, but also to protect himself and his family."

Lissmann argues that genocide-related cases are covered by international law, which does hold governments accountable for their actions. He claims the ruling was invalid as no hearing took place.

In their claims, Mr Goldstein and Mr Gingold, honorary chairman of the League of Anti-fascists, suggest the Americans were aware of what was happening at Auschwitz and should have bombed the camp.

The lawyers also filed a motion in The Hague asking for an opinion on whether state sovereignty is a valid reason for refusing to hear their case. A ruling is expected within a month.

The petition to The Hague states: "From April 1944 on, the American Air Force could have destroyed the camp with air raids, as well as the railway bridges and railway lines from Hungary to Auschwitz. The murder of about 400,000 Hungarian Holocaust victims could have been prevented."

The case is built around a January 22 1944 executive order signed by President Franklin Roosevelt calling on the government to take all measures to rescue the European Jews. The lawyers claim the order was ignored because of pressure brought by a group of big American companies, including BBH, where Prescott Bush was a director.

Lissmann said: "If we have a positive ruling from the court it will cause [president] Bush huge problems and make him personally liable to pay compensation."

The US government and the Bush family deny all the claims against them.

In addition to Eva Schweitzer`s book, two other books are about to be published that raise the subject of Prescott Bush`s business history. The author of the second book, to be published next year, John Loftus, is a former US attorney who prosecuted Nazi war criminals in the 70s. Now living in St Petersburg, Florida and earning his living as a security commentator for Fox News and ABC radio, Loftus is working on a novel which uses some of the material he has uncovered on Bush. Loftus stressed that what Prescott Bush was involved in was just what many other American and British businessmen were doing at the time.

"You can`t blame Bush for what his grandfather did any more than you can blame Jack Kennedy for what his father did - bought Nazi stocks - but what is important is the cover-up, how it could have gone on so successfully for half a century, and does that have implications for us today?" he said.

"This was the mechanism by which Hitler was funded to come to power, this was the mechanism by which the Third Reich`s defence industry was re-armed, this was the mechanism by which Nazi profits were repatriated back to the American owners, this was the mechanism by which investigations into the financial laundering of the Third Reich were blunted," said Loftus, who is vice-chairman of the Holocaust Museum in St Petersburg.

"The Union Banking Corporation was a holding company for the Nazis, for Fritz Thyssen," said Loftus. "At various times, the Bush family has tried to spin it, saying they were owned by a Dutch bank and it wasn`t until the Nazis took over Holland that they realised that now the Nazis controlled the apparent company and that is why the Bush supporters claim when the war was over they got their money back. Both the American treasury investigations and the intelligence investigations in Europe completely bely that, it`s absolute horseshit. They always knew who the ultimate beneficiaries were."

"There is no one left alive who could be prosecuted but they did get away with it," said Loftus. "As a former federal prosecutor, I would make a case for Prescott Bush, his father-in-law (George Walker) and Averill Harriman [to be prosecuted] for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. They remained on the boards of these companies knowing that they were of financial benefit to the nation of Germany."

Loftus said Prescott Bush must have been aware of what was happening in Germany at the time. "My take on him was that he was a not terribly successful in-law who did what Herbert Walker told him to. Walker and Harriman were the two evil geniuses, they didn`t care about the Nazis any more than they cared about their investments with the Bolsheviks."

What is also at issue is how much money Bush made from his involvement. His supporters suggest that he had one token share. Loftus disputes this, citing sources in "the banking and intelligence communities" and suggesting that the Bush family, through George Herbert Walker and Prescott, got $1.5m out of the involvement. There is, however, no paper trail to this sum.

The third person going into print on the subject is John Buchanan, 54, a Miami-based magazine journalist who started examining the files while working on a screenplay. Last year, Buchanan published his findings in the venerable but small-circulation New Hampshire Gazette under the headline "Documents in National Archives Prove George Bush`s Grandfather Traded With the Nazis - Even After Pearl Harbor". He expands on this in his book to be published next month - Fixing America: Breaking the Stranglehold of Corporate Rule, Big Media and the Religious Right.

In the article, Buchanan, who has worked mainly in the trade and music press with a spell as a muckraking reporter in Miami, claimed that "the essential facts have appeared on the internet and in relatively obscure books but were dismissed by the media and Bush family as undocumented diatribes".

Buchanan suffers from hypermania, a form of manic depression, and when he found himself rebuffed in his initial efforts to interest the media, he responded with a series of threats against the journalists and media outlets that had spurned him. The threats, contained in e-mails, suggested that he would expose the journalists as "traitors to the truth".

Unsurprisingly, he soon had difficulty getting his calls returned. Most seriously, he faced aggravated stalking charges in Miami, in connection with a man with whom he had fallen out over the best way to publicise his findings. The charges were dropped last month.

Biography

Buchanan said he regretted his behaviour had damaged his credibility but his main aim was to secure publicity for the story. Both Loftus and Schweitzer say Buchanan has come up with previously undisclosed documentation.

The Bush family have largely responded with no comment to any reference to Prescott Bush. Brown Brothers Harriman also declined to comment.

The Bush family recently approved a flattering biography of Prescott Bush entitled Duty, Honour, Country by Mickey Herskowitz. The publishers, Rutledge Hill Press, promised the book would "deal honestly with Prescott Bush`s alleged business relationships with Nazi industrialists and other accusations".

In fact, the allegations are dealt with in less than two pages. The book refers to the Herald-Tribune story by saying that "a person of less established ethics would have panicked ... Bush and his partners at Brown Brothers Harriman informed the government regulators that the account, opened in the late 1930s, was `an unpaid courtesy for a client` ... Prescott Bush acted quickly and openly on behalf of the firm, served well by a reputation that had never been compromised. He made available all records and all documents. Viewed six decades later in the era of serial corporate scandals and shattered careers, he received what can be viewed as the ultimate clean bill."

The Prescott Bush story has been condemned by both conservatives and some liberals as having nothing to do with the current president. It has also been suggested that Prescott Bush had little to do with Averill Harriman and that the two men opposed each other politically.

However, documents from the Harriman papers include a flattering wartime profile of Harriman in the New York Journal American and next to it in the files is a letter to the financial editor of that paper from Prescott Bush congratulating the paper for running the profile. He added that Harriman`s "performance and his whole attitude has been a source of inspiration and pride to his partners and his friends".

The Anti-Defamation League in the US is supportive of Prescott Bush and the Bush family. In a statement last year they said that "rumours about the alleged Nazi `ties` of the late Prescott Bush ... have circulated widely through the internet in recent years. These charges are untenable and politically motivated ... Prescott Bush was neither a Nazi nor a Nazi sympathiser."

However, one of the country`s oldest Jewish publications, the Jewish Advocate, has aired the controversy in detail.

More than 60 years after Prescott Bush came briefly under scrutiny at the time of a faraway war, his grandson is facing a different kind of scrutiny but one underpinned by the same perception that, for some people, war can be a profitable business.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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Posted on Sat, Sep. 25, 2004


Iraqi civilian casualties mounting

By NANCY A. YOUSSEF
Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis - most of them civilians - as attacks by insurgents, according to statistics compiled by the Iraqi Health Ministry and obtained exclusively by Knight Ridder.

According to the ministry, the interim Iraqi government recorded 3,487 Iraqi deaths in 15 of the country`s 18 provinces from April 5 - when the ministry began compiling the data - until Sept. 19. Of those, 328 were women and children. Another 13,720 Iraqis were injured, the ministry said.

While most of the dead are believed to be civilians, the data include an unknown number of police and Iraqi national guardsmen. Many Iraqi deaths, especially of insurgents, are never reported, so the actual number of Iraqis killed in fighting could be significantly higher.
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During the same period, 432 American soldiers were killed.

Iraqi officials said the statistics proved that U.S. airstrikes intended for insurgents also were killing large numbers of innocent civilians. Some say these casualties are undermining popular acceptance of the American-backed interim government.

That suggests that more aggressive U.S. military operations, which the Bush administration has said are being planned to clear the way for nationwide elections scheduled for January, could backfire and strengthen the insurgency.

American military officials said "damage will happen" in their effort to wrest control of some areas from insurgents. They blamed the insurgents for embedding themselves in communities, saying that`s endangering innocent people.

Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, an American military spokesman, said the insurgents were living in residential areas, sometimes in homes filled with munitions.

"As long as they continue to do that, they are putting the residents at risk," Boylan said. "We will go after them."

Boylan said the military conducted intelligence to determine whether a home housed insurgents before striking it. While damage would happen, the airstrikes were "extremely precise," he said. And he said that any attacks by the multinational forces were "in coordination with the interim government."

The Health Ministry statistics indicate that more children have been killed around Ramadi and Fallujah than in Baghdad, though those cities together have only one-fifth of the Iraqi capital`s population.

According to the statistics, 59 children were killed in Anbar province - a hotbed of the Sunni Muslim insurgency that includes the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah - compared with 56 children in Baghdad. The ministry defines children as anyone younger than 12.

"When there are military clashes, we see innocent people die," said Dr. Walid Hamed, a member of the operations section of the Health Ministry, which compiles the statistics.
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Juan Cole, a history professor at University of Michigan who specializes in Shiite Islam, said the widespread casualties meant that coalition forces already had lost the political campaign: "I think they lost the hearts and minds a long time ago."

"And they are trying to keep U.S. military casualties to a minimum in the run-up to the U.S. elections" by using airstrikes instead of ground forces, he said.

American military officials say they`re targeting only terrorists and are aggressively working to spare innocent people nearby.

Nearly a third of the Iraqi dead - 1,122 - were killed in August, according to the statistics. May was the second deadliest month, with 749 Iraqis killed, and 319 were killed in June, the least violent month. Most of those killed lived in Baghdad; the ministry found that 1,068 had died in the capital.

Many Iraqis said they thought the numbers showed that the multinational forces disregarded their lives.

"The Americans do not care about the Iraqis. They don`t care if they get killed, because they don`t care about the citizens," said Abu Mohammed, 50, who was a major general in Saddam Hussein`s army in Baghdad. "The Americans keep criticizing Saddam for the mass graves. How many graves are the Americans making in Iraq?"

At his fruit stand in southern Baghdad, Raid Ibraham, 24, theorized: "The Americans keep attacking the cities not to keep the security situation stable, but so they can stay in Iraq and control the oil."

Others blame the multinational forces for allowing security to disintegrate, inviting terrorists from everywhere and threatening the lives of everyday Iraqis.

"Anyone who hates America has come here to fight: Saddam`s supporters, people who don`t have jobs, other Arab fighters. All these people are on our streets," said Hamed, the ministry official. "But everyone is afraid of the Americans, not the fighters. And they should be."

Iraqi officials said about two-thirds of the Iraqi deaths were caused by multinational forces and police; the remaining third died from insurgent attacks. The ministry began separating attacks by multinational and police forces and insurgents June 10.

From that date until Sept. 10, 1,295 Iraqis were killed in clashes with multinational forces and police versus 516 killed in terrorist operations, the ministry said. The ministry defined terrorist operations as explosive devices in residential areas, car bombs or assassinations.

The ministry said it didn`t have any statistics for the three provinces in the north: Arbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah, ethnic Kurdish areas that generally have been more peaceful than the rest of the country.

The Health Ministry is the only organization that attempts to track deaths through government agencies. The U.S. military said it kept estimates, but it refused to release them. Ahmed al Rawi, the communications director of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Baghdad, said the organization didn`t have the staffing to compile such information.

The Health Ministry reports to interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, whom the United States appointed in June.

Iraqi health and hospital officials agreed that the statistics captured only part of the death toll.

To compile the data, the Health Ministry calls the directors general of the 15 provinces and asks how many deaths related to the war were reported at hospitals. The tracking of such information has become decentralized since the fall of Saddam Hussein`s regime because both hospitals and morgues issue death certificates now. And families often bury their dead without telling any government agencies or are treated at facilities that don`t report to the government.

The ministry is convinced that nearly all of those reported dead are civilians, not insurgents. Most often, a family member wouldn`t report it if his or her relative died fighting for rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr`s Mahdi Army militia or another insurgent force, and the relative would be buried immediately, said Dr. Shihab Ahmed Jassim, another member of the ministry`s operations section.

"People who participate in the conflict don`t come to the hospital. Their families are afraid they will be punished," said Dr. Yasin Mustaf, the assistant manager of al Kimdi Hospital near Baghdad`s poor Sadr City neighborhood. "Usually, the innocent people come to the hospital. That is what the numbers show."

The numbers also exclude those whose bodies were too mutilated to be recovered at car bombings or other attacks, the ministry said.

Ministry officials said they didn`t know how big the undercount was. "We have nothing to do with politics," Jassim said.

Other independent organizations have estimated that 7,000 to 12,000 Iraqis have been killed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations.

Iraqis are aware of the casualties that are due to U.S. forces, and nearly everyone has a story to tell.

At al Kimdi Hospital, Dr. Mumtaz Jaber, a vascular surgeon, said that three months ago, his 3-year-old nephew, his sister and his brother-in-law were driving in Baghdad at about 9 p.m. when they saw an American checkpoint. His nephew was killed.

"They didn`t stop fast enough. The Americans shot them immediately," Jaber said. "This is how so many die."

At the Baghdad morgue, Dr. Quasis Hassan Salem said he saw a family of eight brought in: three women, three men and two children. They were sleeping on their roof last month because it was hot inside. A military helicopter shot at them and killed them: "I don`t know why."

U.S. officials said any allegations that soldiers had recklessly killed Iraqi citizens were investigated at the Iraqi Assistance Center in downtown Baghdad.

"There is no way to refute" such stories, said Robert Callahan, a spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. "All you can do is tell them the truth and hope it eventually will get through."

(Knight Ridder special correspondent Omar Jassim contributed to this report.)




© 2004 KR Washington Bureau and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
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Wieso heißt die Überschrift über diesen `The Good Germans`? Sind die Bush-Republikaner die Germans?
Aus einem Antwortpostig zu diesem Artikel.
I think Moderate Republicans are in the same boat as European leaders, (or for that matter German Generals in 1944). In their hearts they may wish for a Kerry victory, but they understand that any kind of public move means harsh retribution if Bush manages to squeak this one out.

There is a saying that is hundreds, perhaps thousands of years old: "You only get one chance to slay the king".


The Good Germans

http://seetheforest.blogspot.com/2004_09_01_seetheforest_arc…

For months now Brad DeLong has been asking for the adult Republicans to stand up and be counted. Every once in a while little teasers make you think that it might actually happen. For example, just recently four Republican Senators stiffly criticized Bush`s Iraq policy. A Wall Street Journal columnist described the Bush Administration as "hapless and incompetent." And when you think about it, there really are no reasons why a conservative should vote for Bush: his fiscal policies are the worst ever, his handling of the Iraq War has been a disaster from the beginning -- and there`s a lot more.

Nonetheless, all the above are still supporting Bush. With the exception of Lincoln Chaffee, no important Republican has distanced himself from Bush, and not a single one supports Kerry. A number of conservatives and moderates from the military, the State Department, and the intelligence and security services are supporting Kerry or have repudiated Bush, but almost no politicians have, nor have any of the conservatives in the punditocracy.

This is appalling. Apparently the "grownup conservatives" and "moderate Republicans" value their party above their own integrity or the fate of the nation. They might criticize their miserable failure of a President, but they will not oppose him politically. Some even say that the Iraq War "should not be politicized", but that`s actually what elections are for: getting the bad leaders out of office. (And of course, the ones who are being "political" here are the Republicans who support Bush even though they understand how wretched his performance has been.)

Why is this happening? My guess is that it`s because of fear. Karl Rove is known to be ruthless in punishing anyone who steps out of line, and my guess is that Senator Jeffords has been given good reason to regret going independent. Any Republican who deserts Bush can kiss his career ambitions goodbye.

Rove and Bush have put together a political campaign which is directed entirely at the lowest common denominator. Almost none of the Republican talking points (which are almost entirely attacks on Kerry) can be taken seriously: flip-flop, raising taxes, not supporting the troops, fake Purple Heart, fake Silver Start, elitist windsurfer, ketchup, WMD, al-Qaeda in Iraq, democracy in Iraq, and so on. (And this is to say nothing of the extraordinary viciousness of some of the high-level attacks on the al-Qaeda-loving, Saddam-loving Democrats.)

But it`s quite possible that Bush will be able to win on these issues, without any help from the "Republican moderates and intelligent conservatives." In that case, Bush will owe them nothing, and they will be irrelevant forever. We will have a President who owes nothing to anyone who knows anything at all about the world -- and God help anyone who stands in his way.

A lot depends on which way the adult Republicans swing, but they`re even more gutless than Democrats. We shouldn`t hope for much.



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September 23, 2004
FRANK RICH
President Lindbergh in 2004

HILIP ROTH is one of America`s great novelists, but you don`t expect him to be barreling up the best-seller list with a book that hasn`t even been published yet. "Literary fiction," as it is now stigmatized in the cultural marketplace, no longer flies off the shelves unless struck by the TV lightning of Oprah or the "Today" show. And yet there was "The Plot Against America" in the top 25 at amazon.com this week, at one point the only serious contemporary American novel on the list, sandwiched between Clay Aiken`s memoir and "The South Beach Diet." It ascended without benefit of a single author`s interview on TV or anywhere else and with only the first few reviews, not all of them ecstatic.

Since the book isn`t officially published until Oct. 5, online shoppers are quite literally judging it by its cover image, a one-cent stamp of the 1930`s crisply postmarked with a swastika, and the bare bones of its story. The plot of "The Plot" belongs to a low-rent genre, "alternate history," in which novelists of Mr. Roth`s stature rarely dwell. It spins a what-if scenario in which the isolationist and anti-Semitic hero Charles Lindbergh runs for president as a Republican in 1940 and defeats F.D.R. "Keep America Out of the Jewish War" reads a button worn by Lindbergh partisans rallying at Madison Square Garden. And so he does: he signs nonaggression pacts with Germany and Japan that will keep America at peace while the rest of the world, six million European Jews included, burns.

Where "The Plot Against America" fits into the hierarchy of Mr. Roth`s canon, which I and so many others have followed for our entire reading lifetimes, may be beside the point over the short haul. Sometimes the public, acting on instinct, just picks up the scent of something it craves without regard for the aesthetic niceties. Whether it`s major or minor Roth, this novel is on a trajectory to match the much-different "Portnoy`s Complaint" in its anomalous permeation of the larger culture. That`s because "The Plot Against America," set from 1940-1942, is on its face linked to the wartime of 2001-2004. It`s going to be read by those who don`t otherwise read Roth novels, or novels at all, as well as by those who do. Not for nothing does it sit on a best-seller list dominated, low carbs notwithstanding, by a single subject, George W. Bush.

The book is riveting from the very first sentence: "Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear." That fear belongs to the Newark Jewish family to whom its history happens, among them its principal narrator, the 9-year-old "Philip Roth," his parents and an inevitable Aunt Evelyn, who is so besotted by celebrity and power that she happily kicks up her heels at a White House state dinner for the Nazi foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. But the fear you feel is not so much that the Roths and their neighbors are going to face mass murder at the hands of a fascist American government. Nor, conversely, do you believe they are going to be able to prevent the fate of the Jews of Europe. No one can rewrite that history, and we know from the start that Mr. Roth wouldn`t be so silly as to try. What grabs us instead is the sinking sense that the "perpetual fear" he describes is in some way a cousin to the fear we live with now. Surely "perpetual fear" defines our post-9/11 world - and the ruthless election-year politics of autumn 2004 - as succinctly as what Mr. Roth tagged "the ecstasy of sanctimony" defined the Monica summer of 1998, in which he set "The Human Stain."

In an essay in Sunday`s New York Times Book Review, Mr. Roth took a swipe at President Bush ("a man unfit to run a hardware store let alone a nation like this one") but not before saying that he conceived this book in December 2000, and that it would be "a mistake" to read it "as a roman à clef to the present moment in America." He`s right. It can`t be. Yet it`s precisely because "The Plot Against America" wasn`t written to make facile analogies between then and now that the light it casts on this present American moment seems so illuminating. Literature still can accomplish what nonfiction and ideologues can`t. By sweeping us into an alternative universe, it lets us see the world we actually inhabit from another perspective.

Though Mr. Roth`s premise opens the door to all kinds of apocalyptic scenarios, the Lindbergh presidency he refracts through the eyes of the young "Philip" and his Newark compatriots is not some B-movie horror tale with concentration camps springing up in Nebraska. He isn`t writing a roman à clef comparing anyone to Hitler, Lindbergh included, or saying that America is fertile ground for a Third Reich. That would be wasted breath anyway; Hitler, Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl have lately been invoked so much by the left and right, even in tacky campaign commercials, that they`re becoming as weightless as the Three Stooges. What Mr. Roth has drawn instead is far less horrific but all the scarier for being plausible rather than over the top. The book`s low, at times mock-journalistic tone is antithetical to the election year hysteria of Bush haters and Bush boosters alike. The fear it unfurls is a cool fear, not that of an incipient holocaust.

Thus Mr. Roth`s Lindbergh, a plain-spoken man of few words, never snarls, goosesteps or drapes himself in Nazi regalia. He is "normalcy raised to heroic proportions, a decent man with an honest face and an undistinguished voice who had resoundingly demonstrated to the entire planet the courage to take charge and the fortitude to shape history." He is for "entrepreneurial individualism" and against governmental tyranny. He is against the persecution of Jews. He reassures Americans that every decision he makes in the White House, including his willingness to blow off former allies opposed to his go-it-alone foreign policy, is "designed solely to increase their security and guarantee their well-being." And while there are a few pogroms along the way, their scattered fatalities and bottom-up provenance have more in common with the urban race riots of the late 1960`s than with the programmatic state genocide of a totalitarian regime.

This America is still a democracy. But it is one in which a president can use fear, extra-Constitutional government surveillance and stagecraft (Lindy is constantly barnstorming the country in his plane, "Mission Accomplished" style) to impose a dangerous idée fixe. Meanwhile, his surrogates, including the voluble vice president, Burton K. Wheeler, question the patriotism of anyone who doesn`t get with the program. That Mr. Roth can portray this America with a certain amount of wit and even vaudeville - the gossip columnist Walter Winchell ("America`s best known Jew after Albert Einstein") becomes Lindbergh`s most forceful nemesis - distinguishes this writer`s voice from so much of the hectoring in our culture now. When everyone else in the room is shouting, Mr. Roth`s piquant storytelling is what makes you want to listen and suspend disbelief.

Rather then erect a Dachau, the Lindbergh administration hatches a seemingly gentle plan to prod assimilation, not extermination. It`s innocuously called Just Folks - a name that is itself almost a joke and is as benign-sounding as, say, "faith-based initiative." It`s "a volunteer work program for city youth in the traditional ways of heartland life" and is administered by an Office of American Absorption fronted by an obliging and pompous rabbi of radio celebrity. The teenage Roth character who enlists in Just Folks is shipped off to a Kentucky tobacco farm, where his Christian host, like many of the non-Jews in "The Plot Against America," is nothing but lovely.

But what about those who choose not to participate in this program supposedly intended "to raze those barriers of ignorance that continue to separate Christian from Jew and Jew from Christian"? If you abstain, you are not Just Folks. You are not the Heartland. You are not, in the formulation of our current president, the "heart and soul" of your country. You are, perhaps, something less than an American.

Set against this backdrop is the real heart and soul of "The Plot Against America" - the Roth family and their Newark neighbors. Meet and judge them for yourself. But as this novel enters the culture, and some hell breaks loose in that way that Mr. Roth is a master of fomenting, it`s worth taking the temperature of the country into which it is being sent. As there`s no Nazi putsch in the book`s counter-history, there is none on the horizon in America now. In that sense, the swastika on the cover of "The Plot Against America" is a red herring. But there are other ways for things to go wrong in America - as they did in the 1930`s and as they did in the McCarthy and Vietnam eras apotheosized in other Roth novels.

In truth, we`ve only just begun to be tested. We are still in the very early stages of two wars whose ends are nowhere in sight. The war in Iraq has already been pinned on Jewish neoconservatives by Senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, a Kerry-supporting Democrat, as well as by right-wingers like the unrepentant Pat Buchanan, as if the non-Jewish president and vice president were not among its architects. The other war, which politicians of all stripes want to pretend is a war on a tactic (terrorism) and not about religion, is, as everyone else seems to know, being fought against a bastardized form of Islam. Not unlike Jews in the 1930`s, the innocent American practitioners of that creed are alien to many in the heartland of just folks.

But in victory there are no scapegoats, and the president tells us daily that "we`re making good progress.`` Freedom is on the march in Iraq, he says, and all the grave projections in our own intelligence reports are merely defeatist naysaying. Every presidential decision is made solely to increase our security. Our policy of pre-emptive war is F.D.R. incarnate, we`re told, the very antithesis of Lindbergh isolationism.

As long as there`s no explosive evidence to rain on that parade, Mr. Roth is entirely right to say that "The Plot Against America" cannot be squared with "the present moment in America." But what makes this book terrifying in its sly, even insidious way is that you can`t read it without imagining how the combustible elements of our own home front might ignite if the present moment does not hold.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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DER SPIEGEL 40/2004 - 27. September 2004
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,319904,00.html

Wahlkampf

Solo für Tante

George W. Bush mobilisiert die Familie - seine Tante Nancy schickt er nach Frankfurt.

Plötzlich grelles Licht, der Kameramann hat die Spotlampe angeknipst, die Frau in dem Sessel zuckt zusammen. "Oje, bitte, müssen Sie mir mit all diesen, diesen Dingern, diesen Lampen und Kameras denn so nah kommen?"

Die Frau blinzelt, ihre Stimme klingt zitterig und gereizt: "Muss das wirklich sein?"

Die Herren in den dunkelblauen Anzügen schauen verlegen. Suite 4406 liegt im obersten Stockwerk des Marriott-Hotelturms zu Frankfurt am Main, Executive Floor, Panoramablick über Frankfurt am Main, draußen rauscht der Regen.

Und das mit den Fernsehkameras, den Lampen und Medien - das muss wirklich sein. Weil Wahlkampf Krieg ist, wird einer von ihnen später sagen.

Die Frau in dem Sessel hat graue Locken und geschwollene Hände, gesprenkelt mit braunen Altersflecken. Die N-tv-Reporterin, die vor ihr hockt und mit dem Mikro fuchtelt, trägt ein kurzes T-Shirt und ein glitzerndes Bauchnabelpiercing. "Also, warum sind Sie hergekommen, Mrs. Bush?"

Die alte Dame in dem Sessel setzt sich gerade. Räuspert sich. "Ich bin hier, um den Amerikanern in Europa zu sagen, dass der derzeitige Präsident ein sehr guter Präsident ist. Jawohl. Und dass er ein prima Junge ist. Und dass ich das weiß, weil er schließlich mein Neffe ist und auch der Präsident ..." Der Anfang war gut einstudiert, am Ende hat sie sich ein bisschen verhaspelt.

Sie blickt starr an der Kamera vorbei.

Und wie oft haben Sie Kontakt?

"Ich rufe ihn ab und zu an, im Weißen Haus werde ich immer gleich durchgestellt, die Telefonistinnen kennen mich alle noch, das ist nett." Sie versucht zu lächeln.

Und was halten Sie von Michael Moore, der die Politik ihres Neffen so kritisiert?

Die Augen der alten Frau, eben noch aufgerissen, werden splitterschmal.

"Michael Moore? Ein Arsch."

Die Herren in den dunkelblauen Anzügen schauen aus dem Fenster, Wolken fliegen, Regen fällt. Man hat es eben nicht immer in der Hand.

Um 12.05 Uhr landete die Lufthansa-Maschine LH 4213 aus Paris auf dem Frankfurter Flughafen. Passagierin in der Business Class: Nancy Bush Ellis, 78 Jahre alt, geborene Bush, verwitwet, mager und zäh, die Inge Meysel des amerikanischen Wahlkampfs, wohnhaft in Boston, wo sie manchmal in die Oper geht. Schwester des 41. Präsidenten der USA und Tante des 43., der nicht nur ein prima Junge ist, sondern vor allem ein Politiker mit Mumm. Der Einzige, der in einer Welt der Feiglinge und Drückeberger den Terroris-ten Einhalt gebietet. "Es sind kranke, böse Typen."

Was wissen Sie über die Hintergründe des Terrorismus, Mrs. Bush?

"Nicht viel ..." Sie räuspert sich. "Eigentlich nichts."

Vor rund drei Wochen kam Diana Kerry, Schwester von John F. Sie stieg in München ab und warb für ihren Bruder und die Demokraten. Die Vereinigung der "Republicans Abroad Europe", der in Europa lebenden Anhänger der Republikaner, musste also handeln. Robert R. Pingeon, republikanischer Chairman aus Paris, 53 Jahre alt, Firmenberater, ein schmaler, kultivierter Herr, rief in der Wahlkampfzentrale an: "Schickt uns einen Bushi, irgendeinen!"

Die meisten Auslandsamerikaner leben in Kanada und Mexiko, jeweils etwa eine halbe Million. In Europa sind es schätzungsweise 2,7 Millionen Amerikaner, in Deutschland wohl 120 000, sagt Pingeon. Das macht etwa 80 000 Wähler, das macht 40 000 potenzielle Republikaner-Wähler, das macht Deutschland zum Swing-State. "Hier könnte es sich diesmal entscheiden", sagt Pingeon.

Die Bush-Zwillingstöchter Jenna und Barbara brauchte man für die Jungwähler daheim, schon um den Kerry-Töchtern Vanessa und Alex entgegenzutreten. Unabkömmlich war auch Jeb, der jüngere Bruder, der den Bundesstaat Florida halten soll; und Jebs Sohn George P., glutäugig, gut aussehend, der Ricky Martin der Bush-Dynastie, wurde nach Mexiko entsandt.

Für Europa, "old Europe", blieb da nur noch die Tante.

Und so sitzt sie hier, Nancy Bush Ellis, sie nestelt an einem bunten Tuch, das in ihrem Schoß liegt und erklärt die Weltformel der Bush-Familie in einem Satz. Es gibt Böse und Gute, kranke, böse Terroristen, die es wagten, Amerika anzugreifen - und es gibt ihren Neffen.

Abends zum Wahlkampf-Dinner sind weniger Gäste gekommen als geplant, nur 32 sitzen an den 4 runden Tischen. Nach der Vorspeise tritt Nancy Bush ans Rednerpult. Kann sein, dass viele ihren Neffen für dumm halten. Aber das sei er nicht, erstens war er in Yale, zweitens in Harvard, drittens sei er ein unverwüstlicher Optimist.

Der Applaus klingt höflich. Sie verabschiedet sich früh, Wahlkampf ist Krieg, und der geht morgen weiter.

RALF HOPPE

© DER SPIEGEL 40/2004

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DER SPIEGEL 40/2004 - 27. September 2004
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,319910,00.html

USA

"Dann gibt`s eine Tragödie"

Der New Yorker Komiker und Regisseur Woody Allen über Präsident Bush und den Wahlkampf in den Vereinigten Staaten

SPIEGEL: Mister Allen, sehen Sie Ihren Präsidenten George W. Bush als komische oder als tragische Figur?

Allen: Bush selbst ist ziemlich komisch. Wenn man ihn reden hört, muss man oft laut loslachen. Sollte er aber wiedergewählt werden, dann gibt`s eine Tragödie.

SPIEGEL: Ist das Leben der Amerikaner denn unter Bush so schrecklich geworden?

Allen: Präsident Bush liefert in seiner Person das perfekte Beispiel dafür, dass in einem Meer von Tragödie ab und zu plötzlich winzige Inseln von Komik auftauchen können, so dass wir uns mit Humor erfrischen. Das ist wie ein Glas kaltes Wasser trinken an einem glühend heißen Tag. Denn die Wirklichkeit, von der wir jeden Morgen in der Zeitung lesen, ist einfach schlecht und grausam. Da gibt`s keine Schokoladenseite. Leiden erlöst niemanden, nichts können wir daraus lernen.

SPIEGEL: Hat sich das Lebensgefühl in New York seit den Anschlägen auf die Twin Towers dermaßen verändert, dass Sie jetzt alles schwarz in schwarz sehen?

Allen: Nein. Außer einer gewissen Paranoia, welche die Gespräche auf Partys prägt, läuft das Leben wie vorher. Die Leute gehen ins Theater, zum Baseball, füllen die Restaurants. Die meisten der neuen harschen Sicherheitsmaßnahmen spielen im Alltag keine Rolle.

SPIEGEL: Warum haben Sie als Chronist von Manhattan den 11. September bisher nicht in Ihre Filme einbezogen?

Allen: Ich finde einfach politische Themen nicht profund genug, um mich damit als Künstler auseinander zu setzen. Die ganze Menschheitsgeschichte besteht doch aus Morden, nur die Kosmetik, die Dekoration ändert sich: 2001 brachten einige Fanatiker Amerikaner um, und jetzt bringen Amerikaner ein paar Iraker um. Und in meiner Kindheit ermordeten die Nazis Juden. Jetzt schlachten Juden und Palästinenser sich gegenseitig ab. Politik ist auf die Jahrtausende gesehen eine zu flüchtige Angelegenheit, zu unbedeutend, denn alles wiederholt sich. Aber als Bürger gehe ich natürlich wählen.

SPIEGEL: Fühlen Sie sich aufgerufen, im Präsidentschaftswahlkampf mitzumischen?

Allen: Ich habe in den vergangenen Jahren immer wieder Kampagnen für die unterschiedlichsten Kandidaten gemacht. Das würde ich gern auch für John Kerry tun.

SPIEGEL: Lassen sich die Wähler denn von prominenten Künstlern beeinflussen?

Allen: Wenn Showbusiness-Leute im amerikanischen Wahlkampf Stellung beziehen, scheint das nicht viel zu helfen. In Europa haben die Menschen wohl mehr Hochachtung vor den Künstlern. Wenn sich in den USA dagegen Autoren wie Norman Mailer oder Philip Roth äußern, nehmen nur die Leute das zur Kenntnis, die schon immer deren Ansichten teilten. Davon kommt keine einzige frische Stimme.

SPIEGEL: Auch Argumente - wie die Kriegslüge oder die Schulden aufhäufende Wirtschaftspolitik - zählen da nicht?

Allen: Wer für Bush ist, der will von guten Gründen gegen ihn nichts wissen. "Macht nichts, ich weiß schon", sagen seine Anhänger, "aber ich mag ihn halt." Dabei bleibt`s. Ich persönlich mag halt Kerry.

Wenn ich mich auf Wahlveranstaltungen einmische, heißt es: "Na ja, der Woody Allen ist eben ein typischer New Yorker Intellektueller." Über das verrückte Hollywood-Völkchen lachen die Wähler der Republikaner nur.

SPIEGEL: Halten Sie es also für wirkungslos, wenn jemand wie Michael Moore einen Dokumentarfilm mit starker politischer Botschaft dreht?

Allen: Moore hat mit "Fahrenheit 9/11" eine sehr erfolgreiche und gute Dokumentation abgeliefert. Aber das Problem war, dass nur die den Streifen liebten, die wie er empfinden. Ich zum Beispiel. Aber auch Moore gelang es nicht, die Gegenseite zu beeinflussen. Das hat man mit Hilfe von Meinungsumfragen ausgetestet. Hoffnungsloser Fall.

INTERVIEW: HELENE ZUBER

© DER SPIEGEL 40/2004

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"The CIA laid out several scenarios and said life could be lousy, life could be okay, life could be better, and they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like."
-- George W. Bush, on Iraq report

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September 26, 2004
What if America Just Pulled Out?
By ROGER COHEN

EVEN by its own disturbing standards, this was a hallucinatory week in Iraq. Beheadings, kidnappings, bombings, outbreaks of deadly disease and everyday mayhem were accompanied by interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi`s upbeat statement to Congress: "We are succeeding in Iraq."

Are we? The discordant images and messages captured a central difficulty of defining an Iraq policy. In the absence of any semblance of agreement on what the situation is, or even who is behind the insurgency, setting a course is problematic. But with more than 1,000 Americans already dead, and more dying each week, one question has begun to be posed with growing insistence: Should American forces leave?

There are several arguments for getting out, or at least setting a timetable for doing so. The status quo is unacceptable. History, from Algeria to Vietnam, suggests that no military solution to a spreading insurgency is possible. A major counteroffensive would almost certainly require a large addition to the 138,000 troops in Iraq, an unattractive prospect to politicians of any stripe.

A decision to withdraw would focus the minds of Iraqis, and perhaps their neighbors, on the need to grapple seriously with establishing security and an inclusive political system. It would also remove a chief target of the insurgents - American infidels in uniform - and so presumably undermine their cause.

"A withdrawal plan says to the Iraqis: you want this to be your country, you must make the deals to keep it together," said Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. "If we are there to fight, they won`t do this. So a timetable should be established."

But the counterarguments are also powerful. Withdrawal in the absence of stability would amount to a devastating admission of failure and a blow to America`s world leadership. The credibility of the United States, already compromised, would be devastated. More than 1,000 young lives would appear to have been blotted out for naught.

Iraq might descend into all-out civil war and split into three pieces, one Kurdish, one Shiite, one predominantly Sunni. Neighboring states, particularly Iran and Turkey, would be drawn in. A failed state - or the vestiges of one - would draw terrorists as surely as a honey-pot draws bees.

There is a troubling recent precedent for such a retreat. When the Soviet Union, confronted by an intractable insurgency, pulled out of Afghanistan, Kabul soon became terrorism central. The Taliban took control, offering sanctuary to Al Qaeda and terrorist training camps. The Soviet Union, sapped by its Afghan adventure, never fully recovered.

Is this the trauma the United States wants from its foray into Iraq?

"Iraq would be worse than post-Soviet Afghanistan," said Philip Gordon of the Brookings Institution. "Its oil and geostrategic importance ensures that. The Lebanese civil war dragged in Syria, and just as surely the civil war that would result from an American withdrawal would drag in Iran and Turkey. You`d see ethnic strife that would make Kosovo look like a picnic. It`s hard to fathom how bad it would be if we left."

Under President Bush, the prospect of such a pullout appears remote for now. He told Mr. Allawi this week that, "America will stand with you until freedom and justice have prevailed." The president has shown no sign, at least in this electoral season, of wavering from the we-will-stay-the-course message that has been constant since the invasion last year.

John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, has tried to stake out a distinct position, saying he would aim to bring American forces home within four years, beginning next year. But while lashing out at the administration for what he has portrayed as disastrous incompetence, he has been cautious on the question of withdrawal.

As Richard Holbrooke, a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Kerry, put it: "Troops are dying at an unacceptable rate, but to pull out now would be crazy and beyond dangerous. We have to work harder on a political power-sharing arrangement, because there is no military solution to this thing."

That proposition is not accepted by commanders in Iraq, who are focused on the rapid development of the Iraqi army. For now, the military is contemplating reinforcements not withdrawals. Gen. John P. Abizaid, the American commander in Iraq, told Congress last week that "we will need more troops than we currently have to secure the elections process in Iraq that will probably take place in the end of January."

He added that he hoped enough Iraqi or international forces could do the job, but "we can`t discount" the possibility that more United States soldiers would be required. A temporary increase of troops, perhaps by as much as 15,000, might be achieved through overlap during the planned rotation of forces in January.

Another factor is behind the idea of possible reinforcements: Areas of central Iraq, in the so-called Sunni Triangle, are no longer under government control. At some point, probably toward the end of the year, they will have to be retaken. This may not be doable with current troop levels.

But American commanders are hopeful that the nascent Iraqi army - 50,000 combat-ready troops today and 145,000 by January, according to Mr. Allawi -will help do the job and then patrol cities like Falluja that are now strongholds of the insurgency. The retaking of places like Falluja is viewed as urgent because they provide havens for the resistance to plan, plot and pounce.

"Either you leave or you control the country," said Javier Solana, the former NATO secretary general who is now the European Union`s foreign policy chief. In New York last week for the United Nations General Assembly, he met with several senior American officials. "You cannot be in a situation like this,`` he said in a brief interview.

Several factors complicate that situation for the stay-the-course school. Resentment of America is such that any Iraqis - and that includes Mr. Allawi - who ally themselves with the United States probably have dim long-term political prospects, to say nothing of the more basic difficulty of staying alive.

Relations between the insurgents and the rest of the Iraqi community often appear so seamless that it can be hard to know which side the police and soldiers being trained will end up fighting on.

An important potential source of reinforcement - Muslim troops from allied nations -remains elusive because of the American presence. Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, last week refused a request from Iraq`s interim administration to send troops.

"We cannot be seen as an extension of the present forces there," he said. In other words, an explosion of anger from anti-American Islamic radicals in Pakistan would result from any Iraqi deployment. Saudi Arabia has been evasive for similar reasons.

America`s Western allies are also divided. One foreign minister of a major European power suggested that the United States should reinvent its fight on terrorism through a three-pronged approach: set a timetable for Iraqi withdrawal while working to broaden Mr. Allawi`s coalition; inject new energy into the quest for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement; focus on coming up with a joint American-European plan to engage with Iran and so defuse its nuclear-weapons program.

"Iraq," the minister, who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of his country`s ties to the United States, said, "is the wrong battle and a losing one."

Insurgents in the predominantly Sunni cities of Falluja, Baquba and others know that this division exists, even if NATO is sending a small, noncombatant training mission to Iraq. The Western powers are weakened because they are less united than in many years. That gives the insurgency more leverage.

Are these difficulties insuperable? If so, should American forces pack their bags? No believer in the ultimate beneficence of American world leadership can easily accept that outcome. But one thing is certain: Independent Arab states like Iraq are largely a 20th-century creation, places with vivid memories of colonial rule and a visceral abhorrence of the presence of foreign troops.

"Independence and freedom from foreign forces is a major political value," said Abdel Monem Said, director of Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. "So the insurgency enjoys some support in the Arab world, because someone must resist, some manhood is needed."

Robert Cooper, a British diplomat and author, said: "If you don`t even know exactly who you are fighting, winning can be very tricky. So we have to go. But how to get out is the great question. Somebody should write a book about military withdrawals because they are so much more difficult than invasions."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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September 26, 2004
Why We Fear the Digital Ballot
By TOM ZELLER Jr.

WASHINGTON — It was a bit of gorilla theater.

At an event meant to highlight the dangers of electronic voting, a smattering of reporters and voting-rights advocates at the National Press Club last Wednesday watched a film of Baxter, a chimpanzee, poking the "Delete" and "Enter" keys on a computer keyboard. This was presented as evidence that even a chimp could tweak an election.

Breathless accounts of "secret back doors" and "hidden triggers" embedded in election-tabulating software were cited as indications that democracy was endangered. A man protesting computerized voting marked the 15th day of his hunger strike.

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Das ist nicht ein US-Wähler bei Abgabe seiner Stimme und auch nicht Bush himself, sondern eine Werbung für Electronic Voting :Even a chimp can tweak the ballot: Baxter, at a recent Washington event, promoting the paper ballot over electronic voting.
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In fact, while most experts appear to agree that electronic voting has real problems, few argue that they could completely undermine the November election, or that they are products of a dark conspiracy. "The people who designed these systems just weren`t thinking enough about security," said Aviel Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University and one of the first people to point out major flaws in electronic voting systems.

But the burlesque and passion on display last week may indicate a simpler truth: Voting has always required a leap of faith - one that, after the 2000 election debacle, and in a culture grown hip to the fallibility of technology, is proving harder to make.

For over a century, as election technology moved from the tactile (paper, ballot boxes) toward the invisible (the hidden workings of lever machines, optical scanners, touch screens), each upgrade was touted as a bulwark against manipulation or human error.

"A device for registering votes without possibility of fraud has been patented by Albert Snoeck, a Belgian inventor," The New York Times reported on Aug. 20, 1896. "It is called the Perfected Voting Machine."

While Mr. Snoeck`s particular innovation didn`t quite catch on, New York State did introduce mechanical lever machines at the end of the 19th century. By the 1930`s most major cities had followed suit, according to Stephen Ansolabehere, a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the Voting Technology Project, which studies election systems. One of the machine`s best security features: its size. "You couldn`t just walk away with it," Professor Ansolabehere said.

But rumors of tampering swirled around mechanical voting through much of the early- to mid-20th century, and by the 1960`s, mechanical devices were yielding to the magic of I.B.M.`s computerized systems.

"Could a skilled technician set a vote counting computer to switch a candidate tally ... ?" another New York Times article asked in 1969. "Recently, six local computer experts, after pitting a computer against a set of tests they devised, declared it was possible to rig the machines to cheat." I.B.M. countered that "a crooked technician couldn`t get close enough" to the computers "without attracting the attention of others."

Despite such debates, the culture quietly absorbed the new technology, as it did optical-scan voting in the late 1970`s, push-button electronic voting in the 1980`s and touch screens in the 1990`s. In the context of a culture flooded with compact discs, DVD`s, personal computers, the Internet and MP3`s, digitized voting made sense.

And after the election breakdown of 2000, the solution, to many, was plain: electronic voting machines. "In the immediate post-2000 era, enthusiasm for the machines was pretty high," said Doug Chapin, the director of Electionline.org, a nonprofit group monitoring election reform.

But the 2000 election also occurred just as the dot-com bubble was bursting, and as words like "hacker," "virus," "worm" and "pirate" were becoming commonplace. If everyone needed anti-virus protection, spam filters, 128-bit encryption and firewalls, even the most ardent technophiles had to wonder, could electronic voting machines be hacked? Infected? Hijacked?

Many voting-rights advocates are now demanding a return to paper ballots, as a means of restoring transparency to the voting process. Others insist that the major manufacturers of electronic voting systems, like Diebold and Sequoia and Election Systems and Software, release their source code to the world for inspection.

The fear that electronic voting represents a corporate conspiracy is probably overblown, experts say. Too many people would have to cooperate on too many levels - from the programming labs at each company to the warehouses where machines are stored to precinct floors on election night. "It would be a heist on the order of `Ocean`s Eleven,` " said Michael I. Shamos, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who spent 20 years testing the integrity of election systems. "It would make for a fascinating movie, but it`s not reality."

But that`s no longer likely to satisfy everyone. Even some middle-of-the-road voters, whether they submit punch cards or poke an electronic screen, will pause to wonder what`s going on under the hood of their voting system.

"Even in places that don`t have new technology, the voters are different now," Mr. Chapin of Electionline said. "They`ve been exposed to the process. They`re thinking about it more. Even in those places where the only upgraded moving part is the voter, there`s still change."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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For Markos Moulitsas, in white shirt and shown here with other bloggers during the Republican convention, success is becoming a problem. "Rather than enjoy it," he says, "sometimes I feel guilty about it."
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Ein Bericht über die journalistische Gegenkultur in den USA. Hier der erste Teil von einem langen Artikel.
Sonst in der NYTimes in der Rubrik Magazin zu finden oder unter diesem Link(14 Tage frei zugänglich):

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/26/magazine/26BLOGS.html

Fear and Laptops on the Campaign Trail
By MATTHEW KLAM

Published: September 26, 2004

Nine blocks north of Madison Square Garden, next door to the Emerging Artists Theater, where posters advertised ``The Gay Naked Play`` (``Now With More Nudity``), the bloggers were up and running. It was Republican National Convention week in New York City, and they had taken over a performance space called the Tank. A homeless guy sat at the entrance with a bag of cans at his feet, a crocheted cap on his head and his chin in his hand. To reach the Tank, you had to cross a crummy little courtyard with white plastic patio furniture and half a motorcycle strung with lights and strewn with flowers, beneath a plywood sign that said, ``Ronald Reagan Memorial Fountain.``

The Tank was just one small room, with theater lights on the ceiling and picture windows that looked out on the parking garage across 42nd Street. Free raw carrots and radishes sat in a cardboard box on a table by the door, alongside a pile of glazed doughnuts and all the coffee you could drink. The place was crowded. Everyone was sitting, staring at their laptops, at bridge tables or completely sacked out on couches. Markos Moulitsas, who runs the blog Daily Kos, at dailykos.com, was slouched in the corner of one squashed-down couch in shorts and a T-shirt, his computer on his lap, one of the keys snapped off his keyboard. He`s a small guy with short brown hair who could pass for 15. Duncan Black of the blog Eschaton, who goes by the name Atrios, sat at the other end of the couch, staring out the window. On the table set up behind them, Jerome Armstrong of MyDD worked sweatily. Jesse and Ezra, whose blog is called Pandagon, were lying with two cute women in tank tops -- Ezra`s girlfriend Kate and Zoe of Gadflyer -- on futon beds that had been placed on the tiny stage of the performance space. Their computers and wireless mice and some carrots and radishes and paper plates with Chinese dumplings were scattered between them. A month ago, at the Democratic convention, Zoe had accidentally spilled a big cup of 7-Up on Jesse`s computer, killing it. She and Jesse now looked as if they might be dating.

Moulitsas pulled a 149-word story off nytimes.com linking Robert Novak, the conservative columnist, to ``Unfit for Command,`` the book that attacked John Kerry`s service in Vietnam; the article revealed that Novak`s son is the marketing director for the book`s publisher, Regnery. Moulitsas copied and pasted the story, wrote ``Novak blows another one`` at the top and clicked Submit. A couple of seconds later, the item appeared on Daily Kos, and his hundreds of thousands of readers began to take note, many of them posting their own fevered thoughts in response. Moulitsas read some e-mail messages and surfed around, trying to think of the next rotten thing to say about the right. Beside him, around the same time, Atrios was assembling a few words about Ed Schrock, a conservative Republican congressman vocal in his disavowal of the rights of gays, who had now been accused of soliciting gay love. A Web site dedicated to exposing closeted antigay politicians had posted an audio clip of what they said was Schrock`s voice, and he had pulled out of the race. A pizza-stained paper plate sat between Moulitsas and Atrios. Together, they have more readers than The Philadelphia Inquirer.

A year ago, no one other than campaign staffs and chronic insomniacs read political blogs. In the late 90`s, about the only places online to write about politics were message boards like Salon`s Table Talk or Free Republic, a conservative chat room. Crude looking Web logs, or blogs, cropped up online, and Silicon Valley techies put them to use, discussing arcane software problems with colleagues, tossing in the occasional diaristic riff on the birth of a daughter or a trip to Maui. Then in 1999, Mickey Kaus, a veteran magazine journalist and author of a weighty book on welfare reform, began a political blog on Slate. On kausfiles, as he called it, he wrote differently. There were a thousand small ways his voice changed; in print, he had been a full-paragraph guy who carefully backed up his claims, but on his blog he evolved into an exasperated Larry David basket case of self-doubt and indignation, harassed by a fake ``editor`` of his own creation who broke in, midsentence, with parenthetical questions and accusations.
Weiter:

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September 26, 2004
Iraq`s Disappearing Election

Iraq`s interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, acknowledges that those elections he and President Bush have vowed would take place next January "may not be perfect.`` Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledges that they may not be held at all in 20 to 25 percent of Iraq because of continuing violence. Meanwhile, as The Times`s Dexter Filkins reports from Baghdad, Iraq`s most influential cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is increasingly concerned that even where voting does take place, the choices will be rigged in advance in ways that underrepresent the country`s Shiite majority and thwart democratic choice.

These are far from trivial issues, despite Mr. Rumsfeld`s curiously undemocratic remark that if some substantial portion of Iraqis cannot vote, "so be it." With the original rationales for the Iraq war now discredited and with a spreading insurgency killing scores of American soldiers and hundreds of Iraqi civilians every month, the prospect of holding democratically legitimate elections in January is about the only thing the Bush administration could hope for as a sign of eventual success.

Yet the six political parties that Washington has promoted all along are not making that any easier. These parties, which are rooted among the exiles who left Iraq during the Hussein era and lack broad popular support, are now discussing a plan to run as a single unified ticket rather than competing among themselves on the ballot. That could create essentially a one-party election unless Iraq`s fragmented independents manage to organize themselves into an effective new political force. Otherwise, Iraq`s first free election may look uncomfortably like the plebiscites choreographed to produce 98 percent majorities for Saddam Hussein.

Had the American occupation not worn out its welcome so fast and so thoroughly, there would be a good argument for delaying those elections until more representative and competitive political parties could organize themselves and conditions became more secure. But as things now stand, any postponement would probably make matters even worse. Washington and Mr. Allawi`s appointed government have fallen under a Catch-22: the only hope of quelling the insurgency depends on progress toward democratic government and the only hope of meaningful elections depends on greater progress in quelling the insurgency.

The best thing the administration can do now is to salvage as much legitimacy as possible for the elections. Ayatollah Sistani`s biggest concern is that a unified slate would effectively parcel out seats in the new assembly in backroom deals before any votes are cast, using a formula that he feels would give the Shiites fewer seats in the new assembly than they are entitled to based on their present share of the Iraqi population. That would be less likely to happen if the parties agreed to compete against each other at the polls, letting the voters themselves decide how many seats to give to each party.

Building legitimacy for the elections in the Sunni areas will be considerably harder. Some of these areas are not now under government control, and, even if they are by January, they may be in no condition for a free vote. Even the more peaceful Sunni regions do not feel adequately represented by any of the six main parties: two Kurdish, two Shiite and two nonsectarian. It is imperative that Baghdad, with help from the United Nations, use the next four months to try to bring new elements from these areas into the political arena.

If the elections cannot be held in much of the Sunni heartland and are boycotted elsewhere by Sunnis and Shiite followers of Ayatollah Sistani, the prospects for holding Iraq together, let alone creating enough stability to withdraw American troops anytime soon, would turn desperately bleak.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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September 26, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Saddam, the Bomb and Me
By MAHDI OBEIDI

While the final report from Charles A. Duelfer, the top American inspector of Iraq`s covert weapons programs, won`t be released for a few weeks, the portions that have already been made public touch on many of the experiences I had while working as the head of Saddam Hussein`s nuclear centrifuge program. Now that I am living in the United States, I hope to answer some of the most important questions that remain.

What was really going in Iraq before the American invasion last year? Iraq`s nuclear weapons program was on the threshold of success before the 1991 invasion of Kuwait - there is no doubt in my mind that we could have produced dozens of nuclear weapons within a few years - but was stopped in its tracks by United Nations weapons inspectors after the Persian Gulf war and was never restarted. During the 1990`s, the inspectors discovered all of the laboratories, machines and materials we had used in the nuclear program, and all were destroyed or otherwise incapacitated.

By 1998, when Saddam Hussein evicted the weapons inspectors from Iraq, all that was left was the dangerous knowledge of hundreds of scientists and the blueprints and prototype parts for the centrifuge, which I had buried under a tree in my garden.

In addition to the inspections, the sanctions that were put in place by the United Nations after the gulf war made reconstituting the program impossible. During the 1980`s, we had relied heavily on the international black market for equipment and technology; the sanctions closed that avenue.

Another factor in the mothballing of the program was that Saddam Hussein was profiting handsomely from the United Nations oil-for-food program, building palaces around the country with the money he skimmed. I think he didn`t want to risk losing this revenue stream by trying to restart a secret weapons program.

Over the course of the 1990`s, most of the scientists from the nuclear program switched to working on civilian projects or in conventional-weapons production, and the idea of building a nuclear bomb became a vague dream from another era.

So, how could the West have made such a mistaken assessment of the nuclear program before the invasion last year? Even to those of us who knew better, it`s fairly easy to see how observers got the wrong impression. First, there was Saddam Hussein`s history. He had demonstrated his desire for nuclear weapons since the late 1970`s, when Iraqi scientists began making progress on a nuclear reactor. He had used chemical weapons against his own people and against Iran during the 1980`s. After the 1991 war, he had tried to hide his programs in weapons of mass destruction for as long as possible (he even kept my identity secret from weapons inspectors until 1995). It would have been hard not to suspect him of trying to develop such weapons again.

The Western intelligence services and policy makers, however, overlooked some obvious clues. One was the defection and death of Saddam Hussein`s son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, who was in charge of the unconventional weapons programs in the 1980`s.

As my boss, Mr. Kamel was a brutal taskmaster who forced us to work under impossible deadlines and was the motivating force for our nuclear effort. The drive for nuclear weapons began in earnest when he rose to a position of power in 1987. He placed a detail of 20 fearsome security men on the premises of our centrifuge lab, and my staff and I worked wonders just to stay out of his dungeons. But after he defected to Jordan in 1995, and then returned months later only to be assassinated by his father-in-law`s henchmen, the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs lost their top promoter.

In addition, the West never understood the delusional nature of Saddam Hussein`s mind. By 2002, when the United States and Britain were threatening war, he had lost touch with the reality of his diminished military might. By that time I had been promoted to director of projects for the country`s entire military-industrial complex, and I witnessed firsthand the fantasy world in which he was living. He backed mythic but hopeless projects like one for a long-range missile that was completely unrealistic considering the constraints of international sanctions. The director of another struggling missile project, when called upon to give a progress report, recited a poem in the dictator`s honor instead. Not only did he not go to prison, Saddam Hussein applauded him.

By 2003, as the American invasion loomed, the tyrant was alternately working on his next trashy novel and giving lunatic orders like burning oil around Baghdad to "hide" the city from bombing attacks. Unbelievably, one of my final assignments was to prepare a 10-year plan for military-industrial works, even as tens of thousands of troops were gathering for invasion.

To the end, Saddam Hussein kept alive the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission, staffed by junior scientists involved in research completely unrelated to nuclear weapons, just so he could maintain the illusion in his mind that he had a nuclear program. Sort of like the emperor with no clothes, he fooled himself into believing he was armed and dangerous. But unlike that fairy-tale ruler, Saddam Hussein fooled the rest of the world as well.

Was Iraq a potential threat to the United States and the world? Threat is always a matter of perception, but our nuclear program could have been reinstituted at the snap of Saddam Hussein`s fingers. The sanctions and the lucrative oil-for-food program had served as powerful deterrents, but world events - like Iran`s current efforts to step up its nuclear ambitions - might well have changed the situation.

Iraqi scientists had the knowledge and the designs needed to jumpstart the program if necessary. And there is no question that we could have done so very quickly. In the late 1980`s, we put together the most efficient covert nuclear program the world has ever seen. In about three years, we gained the ability to enrich uranium and nearly become a nuclear threat; we built an effective centrifuge from scratch, even though we started with no knowledge of centrifuge technology. Had Saddam Hussein ordered it and the world looked the other way, we might have shaved months if not years off our previous efforts.

So what now? The dictator may be gone, but that doesn`t mean the nuclear problem is behind us. Even under the watchful eyes of Saddam Hussein`s security services, there were worries that our scientists might escape to other countries or sell their knowledge to the highest bidder. This expertise is even more valuable today, with nuclear technology ever more available on the black market and a proliferation of peaceful energy programs around the globe that use equipment easily converted to military use.

Hundreds of my former staff members and fellow scientists possess knowledge that could be useful to a rogue nation eager for a covert nuclear weapons program. The vast majority are technicians who, like the rest of us, care first about their families and their livelihoods. It is vital that the United States ensure they get good and constructive jobs in postwar Iraq. The most accomplished of my former colleagues could be brought, at least temporarily, to the West and placed at universities, research labs and private companies.

The United States invaded Iraq in part to end what it saw as a nuclear danger. It is now vital to reduce the chance of Iraq`s dangerous knowledge spilling outside of its borders. The nuclear dangers facing the world are growing, not decreasing. My hope is that the Iraqi example can help people understand how best to deal with this threat.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Mahdi Obeidi is the author of "The Bomb in My Garden: The Secrets of Saddam`s Nuclear Mastermind." Kurt Pitzer, who collaborated on the book, assisted with this article.

Über das Buch:
A news-breaking inside look at Saddam s nuclear program by the Iraqi scientist who ran it

No one knows more about Iraq s nuclear weapons program than Mahdi Obeidi, the man who headed its successful uranium enrichment effort. In the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War, Obeidi voluntarily turned himself into American intelligence. Among the revelations reported by CNN at the time: In the early 1990s, under orders to hide the core of the program from U.N. weapons inspectors, Obeidi had buried in his backyard the capacity to build uranium-enriching gas centrifuges.

Now, at last, Obeidi tells all, taking us inside Saddam s regime and revealing the truth about its quest for nuclear weapons. He explains how he traveled abroad incognito though the United States and Europe in the 1980s and gained covert assistance for the Iraqi nuclear effort from scientists and manufacturers. He tells how he was forced to orchestrate Saddam s cat-and-mouse game with U.N. weapons inspectors in the early 1990s. And he captures what life was like in Saddam s inner circle the intimidation, the paranoia, the impossible deadlines. Most significantly, Obeidi discloses that Iraq never reconstituted its nuclear weapons program after the first Gulf War; the critical elements including the centrifuge remained buried in his garden until he voluntarily turned them over to U.S. forces last year.

Written with the pace and drama of a spy thriller, this eye-opening book shows how easy it was for a rogue regime to acquire nuclear technology and helps answer still-lingering questions about Saddam`s weapons of mass destruction.

Mahdi Obeidi oversaw Iraq s top-secret centrifuge program and later became director-general of Iraq s Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization under Saddam Hussein. In late 2003, Obeidi was granted asylum by the U.S., where he now lives. Kurt Pitzer (New York, NY) met Obeidi in Baghdad and helped him turn his secrets over to the U.S. He has reported out of the Balkans, the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Iraq and written for the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and numerous magazines.

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September 26, 2004
GUEST COLUMNIST
Getting to Average
By HENRY LOUIS GATES JR.

When black policy types let themselves dream about racial uplift, they dream about getting to average. The fantasy isn`t that inequality vanishes; it`s that inequality in black America catches up with inequality in white America. And, for the moment, a fantasy is all it is. Since the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the black middle class has increased significantly, yet the percentage of black children living in poverty has hovered between 30 and 40 percent.

"Look at what we could achieve if we got to be average!" Franklin Raines, the C.E.O. of Fannie Mae, told me. "We don`t need to take everybody from the ghetto and make them Harvard graduates. We just need to get folks to average, and we`d all look around and say, `My God, what a fundamental change has happened in this country.` "

How big a change? He`s done the math. "If America had racial equality in education and jobs, African-Americans would have two million more high school degrees, two million more college degrees, nearly two million more professional and managerial jobs, and nearly $200 billion more income," he pointed out in a speech. "If America had racial equality in housing, three million more Americans would own their own homes. And if America had racial equality in wealth, African-Americans would have $760 billion more in equity value, $200 billion more in the stock market, $120 billion more in their retirement funds and $80 billion more in the bank." Total: Over $1 trillion.

Recently, I asked a few experts on poverty in black America about how we might get to average. I heard a lot of deep breaths. When they picture black America, they see Buffalo - a boarded-up central city and a few lakefront mansions. The glory days for the black working class were from 1940 to 1970, when manufacturing boomed and factory jobs were plentiful. But when the manufacturing sector became eclipsed by the service economy, black workers ended up - well, stuck in a demographic Buffalo.

My colleague William Julius Wilson, the sociologist, thinks better manpower policies would help. Once black workers moved to where the jobs were; they need to do it again. Instead of trying to turn ghettos into boomtowns, then, we ought to provide workers with relocation assistance, and create "transitional public sector jobs" for those who haven`t yet found a private-sector gig. Oh, and - since we`re dreaming - fixing the schools would be nice, including "school-to-work transition programs," to place high school grads in the job market.

Raines, as you might expect, considers homeownership to be crucial to wealth generation. "The average person develops more wealth in their home than they do in the stock market. Next to a job, it`s the most important thing in a family`s lives." Blacks, he notes, are considerably less likely to own their own homes than whites.

How to afford one, though? "The whole new service economy is fundamentally based on communications, the Internet, electronics," he told me. "That infrastructure is going to need people who can manage it, and those jobs are going to move from very high tech to being service jobs, just the way it happened at the telephone company. You used to have to be a scientist to operate a phone, and then it became a blue-collar job."

But maybe, as the economist Glenn Loury suggests, we need to aim lower. "There doesn`t seem to be an end in sight to the vast, disproportionate overrepresentation of African-Americans in prison or jails," he told me. "It`s our deepest problem." Job training for willing prisoners would be a good start.

Loury considers welfare reform a success: "We ask a lot more of mothers, and they have given us a lot more, and they and we are both better off for our having asked." When it comes to education, though, he advocates "equal expenditures per kid, no matter where they live." In fact, he`d spend more money on inferior school districts, at least over the short run, to bring them up to standard.

Would any of these initiatives really make much of a difference in an age of offshoring? As everyone I spoke to agreed, we`re unlikely to find out. There just isn`t the political will, in either party. The White House has relegated its costly experiments in social engineering to Iraq. And so the 60`s generation now seems to be presiding over the permanent entrenchment of a vast black underclass.

Has average really become too much to ask for?

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is a guest columnist through September. Thomas L. Friedman is on book leave.

E-mail: [e-mail]

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September 26, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Dance of the Marionettes
By MAUREEN DOWD

It`s heartwarming, really.

President Bush has his own Mini-Me now, someone to echo his every word and mimic his every action.

For so long, Mr. Bush has put up with caricatures of a wee W. sitting in the vice president`s lap, Charlie McCarthy style, as big Dick Cheney calls the shots. But now the president has his own puppet to play with.

All last week in New York and Washington, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi of Iraq parroted Mr. Bush`s absurd claims that the fighting in Iraq was an essential part of the U.S. battle against terrorists that started on 9/11, that the neocons` utopian dream of turning Iraq into a modern democracy was going swimmingly, and that the worse things got over there, the better they really were.

It`s the media`s fault, the two men warble in a duet so perfectly harmonized you wonder if Karen Hughes wrote Mr. Allawi`s speech, for not showing the millions of people in Iraq who are not being beheaded, kidnapped, suicide-bombed or caught in the cross-fire every day; and it`s John Kerry`s fault for abetting the Iraqi insurgents by expressing his doubts about our plan there, as he once did about Vietnam.

"These doubters risk underestimating our country and they risk fueling the hopes of the terrorists," Mr. Allawi told Congress in a rousing anti-Kerry stump speech for Bush/Cheney, a follow-up punch to Mr. Cheney`s claim that a vote for John Kerry is a vote for another terrorist attack on America.

First the Swift boat guys; now the swift dhow prime minister.

Just as Mr. Cheney, Rummy and the neocons turned W. into a host body for their old schemes to knock off Saddam, transform the military and set up a pre-emption doctrine to strike at allies and foes that threatened American hyperpower supremacy, so now W. has turned Mr. Allawi into a host body for the Panglossian palaver that he believes will get him re-elected. Every time the administration takes a step it says will reduce the violence, the violence increases.

Mr. Bush doesn`t seem to care that by using Mr. Allawi as a puppet in his campaign, he decreases the prime minister`s chances of debunking the belief in Iraq that he is a Bush puppet - which is the only way he can gain any credibility to stabilize his devastated country and be elected himself.

Actually, being the president`s marionette is a step up from Mr. Allawi`s old jobs as henchman for Saddam Hussein and stoolie for the C.I.A.

It`s hilarious that the Republicans have trotted out Mr. Allawi as an objective analyst of the state of conditions in Iraq when he`s the administration`s handpicked guy and has as much riding on putting the chaos in a sunny light as they do. Though Mr. Allawi presents himself as representing all Iraqis, his actions have been devised to put more of the country in the grip of this latest strongman - giving himself the power to declare martial law, bringing back the death penalty and kicking out Al Jazeera.

Bush officials, who proclaim themselves so altruistic about bringing liberty to Iraq, really see Iraq in a creepy narcissistic way: It`s all about Mr. Bush`s re-election.

As The Chicago Tribune reported, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage alleged that Iraqi insurgents have stepped up their bloody attacks because they want to "influence the election against President Bush."

At a recent G.O.P. fund-raiser, House Speaker Dennis Hastert claimed that terrorists would be happier with a Kerry presidency. "I don`t have data or intelligence to tell me one thing or another," he said, but "I would think they would be more apt to go" for "somebody who would file a lawsuit with the World Court or something rather than respond with troops."

Faced with their dystopia, the utopians are scaling back their grand visions for Iraq`s glorious future.

Rummy suggested last week that a fractional democracy might be good enough. "Let`s say you tried to have an election, and you could have it in three-quarters or four-fifths of the country, but some places you couldn`t because the violence was too great," he said at a hearing on Capitol Hill, adding: "Nothing`s perfect in life."

At a Pentagon briefing on Friday, Rummy also blew off Colin Powell`s so-called Pottery Barn rule that if we broke Iraq, we own it. "Any implication that that place has to be peaceful and perfect before we can reduce coalition and U.S. forces, I think, would obviously be unwise, because it`s never been peaceful and perfect," he said. "It`s a tough part of the world."

As he said after the early looting in Iraq: "Stuff happens."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Zarqawi schadet dem Anliegen der Moslems.
Nichts hat mehr den teilweise verständlichen Forderungen mancher Moslemgruppen geschadet, als diese Blutorgien von Zarqawi. Es sind über ihn zu viele Fragen offen, ob er es ist, dieser Analphabet und Straßenräuber, der hinter diesen Taten steht.
Es wird oft gefragt, welche Gruppe in Wirklichkeit hinter diesen Morden steckt.

Commentary
Zarqawi has method in his madness

Jason Burke
Sunday September 26, 2004

The Observer
In The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad`s novel of anarchists in London a century ago, a terrorist mastermind dreams of `a band of men, absolute in their resolve to discard all scruples, strong enough to give themselves frankly the name of destroyers, and free from ... pity for anything on earth`. He would no doubt have approved of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. For though the 37-year-old Jordanian-born militant`s actions may seem psychotic, there is method to his madness.

To understand that method, we need first to identify Zarqawi`s intended audience. Islamic militant terrorism is primarily propaganda and not usually tied to specific political objectives. Though frightening vital Western contractors out of Iraq and thus generating destabilising discontent by slowing reconstruction is useful, Zarqawi`s primary goal is to communicate. His videos are clever, professional and laden with meanings that many in the West will miss entirely.

This is not surprising, for Zarqawi, like other Islamic militants, is not talking to us. Ken Bigley, Tony Blair, the British public and the 155,000 apparently impotent foreign troops in Iraq are all unwitting actors in his carefully scripted drama. The audience is the world`s 1.3 billion Muslims.

Aware that hacking people`s heads off live on camera disgusts the vast majority of those he is addressing, Zarqawi first sets out to convince them that his actions are legitimate. So he picks one of the single most emotive issues in the Islamic world: the supposed imprisonment, and abuse, of Muslim women by non-Muslim men. Their release is not a demand, it is a justification.

The issue takes Zarqawi immediately into the realm of the myth. American jails don`t actually contain thousands of such prisoners, but after Abu Ghraib most in the Middle East think they do. The incarceration of women also taps the mother lode of resentment underlying the appeal of radical Islam: the profound sense of humiliation, disenfranchisement and emasculation felt by hundreds of millions of young Muslim men faced with the apparent military, political and, increasingly, cultural dominance of the West. This is increased by a collective memory of the past glories of Islamic civilisation.

Zarqawi, whose thuggish demeanour belies his talent for exploiting modern media, then starts to develop his themes. Again he appeals to the same basic belief: that the US is leading an aggressive attempt by the new `Crusaders` to subordinate the Islamic world. Images of violent conflict, particularly the effects of suicide bombings and videoed last testaments of `martyrs`, stress the power of faith, the crucial commodity possessed by the `mujahideen` and lacked by their enemy. Victims wear orange jump-suits, like prisoners at Guantanamo.

The climactic act - the execution - is a ritualised slaughter, reflecting myths about how the first warriors of Islam killed during `raids on the path of God` more than 1,000 years ago. Militants actually kill with guns and bombs, not long knives. Zarqawi is deliberately trying to shock his audience. Moderates may be stunned by the brutality, but those with any sympathy for the radical Islamic agenda might well be impressed by how far Zarqawi is prepared to go. He is the man to whom the donations and the recruits should flow. He is Conrad`s anarchist mastermind`s perfect `destroyer`. In fact, Zarqawi`s brutality is so extreme one senses a half-baked hope that it will somehow provoke massive change through its sheer outrageousness.

Yet there is another key audience. Though in very broad terms committed to a similar agenda, Islamic militants, like Conrad`s anarchists, are a quarrelsome bunch, riven by personal jealousies and ambition. A new generation of younger, less educated, less political operators now challenge senior leaders such as Osama bin Laden. Zarqawi, who grew up in a breezeblock house in a rough, poor city north of Jordan`s capital, became involved in Islamic militancy in Afghanistan in the late 90s, at about the time that 47-year-old bin Laden started his `al-Qaeda` project.

The younger man, far from being an `affiliate`, as the Americans say, has always resented the Saudi-born militant`s pre-eminence and his wealthy upbringing. The executions, perhaps even by Zarqawi`s own hand, are a strong challenge to a man who has, for 15 years, sent others out to fight and die and is confined to the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, far from the killing grounds of Falluja.

However, Zarqawi does not share bin Laden`s strategic intelligence. The Saudi`s aim was to radicalise and mobilise the masses of the Middle East and he has been careful not to alienate his core constituency by attacking only targets symbolic of the West`s might. But, judging by the reaction of much of the Islamic world to this year`s string of executions, Zarqawi has misjudged his audience. Only the most extreme seem to support his actions. Though numerous enough to do serious harm, they are vastly outnumbered by moderates. This offers hope of a sort.

· Jason Burke`s `Al-Qaeda: the true story of radical Islam` is published by Penguin
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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Letzte Kolumne siehe # 22007
Ihr Busch hat es nicht ganz an die Spitze der Sellerlisten gebracht, aber 4.und 5. Plätze waren drin.

The President calls her `the Cobra`

Maureen Dowd, acerbic columnist and author of Bushworld, prefers the word `sceptic`. Can this woman really hurt Bush?
Gaby Wood
Sunday September 26, 2004

The Observer
Maureen Dowd rushes into the lobby of the venerable New York Times building in Times Square. `I`m so sorry,` she mouths. `You`re allowed to say, "Maureen Dowd arrived half an hour late for our interview,"` she offers, `but only if you explain that it was because I got trapped by the Bushworld motorcade - and then Kerry`s!` Somewhat exceptionally, George Bush and John Kerry appeared at competing fundraisers that day in midtown Manhattan. Maureen Dowd, the New York Times`s star op-ed columnist, and the woman the President once referred to as `the Cobra`, has got caught in the crosstown crossfire.

Later that evening, at a cocktail party to celebrate Bushworld, the collection of Dowd`s columns, which has been near the top of the Times`s bestseller list since it was published a few weeks ago, someone reported that people had booed Bush on Sixth Avenue. `Really?` Dowd said excitedly, `that`s amazing.` Asked whether he would have done the same, one of her guests replied: `Oh no, I`m a traditionalist. He`s the President of the United States!`
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Dowd has built her reputation on debunking precisely that sort of reverence. Writing in a paper famous for its respectful voice, Dowd is something of a firebrand, though her touch is light. She seems to be always right without being self-righteous, she`s funny without being silly and has turned mischievous commentary into a lethal political weapon.

She won a Pulitzer for her columns about the Clinton impeachment, in which she tried, in her own description, `to change the tone - and I think I had an influence on our editorial pages in this - to be farcical. Like, this is absurd, that you would try to impeach a politician in Washington on the basis of sex`.

Dowd wrote an inspired column in which a man, assumed to be Clinton, obsesses about Monica`s thong, and turns out, in the last line, to be Ken Starr. `That`s my favourite column I`ve ever done,` she told me. `I just thought [Starr`s] whole report was like this ridiculous bodice-ripping, heavy-breathing sex novel.`

Now Dowd, whose combination of languid wit and va-va-voom hair must unsettle many, has so enraged the Bushes père et fils they have refused to renew her White House press pass. Bushworld is the product of Dowd`s singular position: she was the Times`s White House correspondent during Bush Senior`s presidency, and op-ed columnist for Bush Junior. She has watched what she portrays as a gripping Oedipal drama at close range.

`It`s funny,` she reflects, `because when I covered the father, I used to regret that I got to be a White House reporter then because he was a really nice guy and very gracious to me. I wanted someone dark and complicated - a Lyndon Johnson or a Richard Nixon. So then the son gets in and I think, oh no, it`s going to be this carbon copy, and why did I get stuck with this flighty, Waspy family for my whole White House tenure? And then, suddenly, it became this amazing cross between Monty Python and Shakespeare.`

Unlike other reporters, Dowd asked the Bushes questions about culture and sport, an approach that led them to fear they were being `put on the couch`. So we learn that W`s favourite film of recent times is Saving Private Ryan; that he likes John le Carré because he`s `mainly a history person`, revealing a novel grasp of the difference between fact and fiction; and that he refers to Vice-President Dick Cheney simply as `Vice`.

Bushworld is full of brilliant ventriloquism, like the letter from Dick Cheney to the Saudi ambassador that`s carefully censored in the manner of an FBI document. Dowd uses effortless irony in support of positive discrimination, suggests `Furious George`, as she calls Bush II, thinks social security is a dating service, and writes of the war in Iraq: `This administration is the opposite of the movie The Sixth Sense. They don`t see any dead people.`

What does Dowd see as the greatest threat - the `Freudian tango` between father and son or the calculating manoeuvres of W`s cohorts? `I thought about this for a long time. I thought, why would a Republican President who`s going to war against Saddam not call the only other Republican President who went to war against Saddam? Either to notify him or to ask his advice, especially if it`s his beloved father. And then you finally realise it`s simple: the answer is that he didn`t want to hear what his father had to say because what his father had to say was, do you have an exit strategy? And he didn`t.`

But `other people with decade-long subterranean agendas` are, Dowd believes, equally to blame. Dowd was prescient about Cheney. How did she know to look out for him from the start?

`What I did was trust my eye,` she explains. `Dick Cheney wasn`t a source of mine, so I came to it on paper, and saw his voting record and I was like, oh my gosh, this is, like, the Vice-Presidential choice! Even conservative Republicans spend a lot of time trying to figure out what happened to Cheney. He had a very, very conservative voting record when he was chosen, but it`s that voice that men seem to respond to like a dog whistle - it`s like the dean of a private boy`s school voice. And there were a lot of columns at the time by guys who said, oh, Cheney`s such a great guy. He is an amazing character - he`s very Shakespearean.`

At one point during what Bush Senior called his `love-hate relationship` with Maureen Dowd, the President`s campaign manager told her that they didn`t really see her as the White House reporter for the New York Times. `We just picture you someplace else,` he said. `The Chicago Tribune, maybe, or the New York Post. ` Dowd laughs: `I said, "You mean because I`m a woman, I`m ethnic, I`m working-class, you think I should be at a working-class paper?" And he goes, "Yeah, I guess that`s it."`

Maureen Dowd is an Irish-Catholic, the youngest of five children, who grew up in Washington DC (she is 52). Her father was a DC police inspector in charge of security at the Senate, and her three older brothers worked as Senate pages in their youth. Her first memory, she tells me, was of the Capitol building. She began her journalistic career as a copytaker at the Washington Star. She became a reporter there and, when it folded, she moved to Time magazine. In 1983, she joined the New York Times as a reporter and has been at the paper ever since.

Dowd believes she has been influenced by her father`s White House sensibilities. `He would judge politicians by whether they were phonies or not,` she explains. `Like sometimes politicians would ask him to take constituents to lunch, but then not give him the money to pay for it, and that would be a phony. It didn`t matter if it was a Democrat or a Republican. He loved the Kennedys - we grew up with a huge picture of JFK in his den. But Nixon was the nice guy at Capitol Hill. He was really nice to my dad and to my brothers, and Kennedy was sort of snooty. He wouldn`t talk to my brother when he delivered the mail. In fact, my brother said you were told not to address Kennedy or look at him. So I learned to judge more on what kind of person they are, rather than having one party and sticking to it.`

Her family now thinks `all the Bushes are swell`, as she put it in the book`s dedication to her mother. `None of my family has ever asked what I thought about politics in my whole life,` Dowd tells me. `And they have not acknowledged there`s a book. But they all came to the book party and were the first to come and the last to leave!`

Dowd has described herself as an `equal-opportunity sceptic`, and she is certainly as informedly sceptical about Hillary Clinton as she is about George Bush. But I wonder if this leaves her with few causes she feels she absolutely has to fight for.

`I don`t know,` Dowd muses. `I did some columns about when my niece gave my brother half of her liver and saved his life last year. I would love to do more stuff like that. And my mom says, "You should do some more nice columns." But I do tend to get caught up in thinking, well, these guys have a bunch of people on the taxpayer`s dime, who are putting stuff out there that is misleading. Like the Iraq war - we were misled into that war. So it`s a really good time for journalists to be sceptical. Journalists are an important part of checks and balances. If it`s negative,` she concludes, `well, so is making up stuff to go to war.`
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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Informed Comment
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

Sunday, September 26, 2004

5 US Troops, at least 9 Iraqis Dead
Violence up 36 Percent in Iraq

The incidents of violence on Friday and Saturday in Iraq that appeared in the newspapers were a very small proportion of the whole. The press did tell us that guerrillas killed 5 US troops in separate incidents on Friday and Saturday. The US continued to bomb Fallujah, killing 9 and wounding 16.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post has gotten hold of some daily violence reports on Iraq done for the US Agency for International Development by Kroll Security International. They demonstrate that my point on Friday about most of Iraq being dangerous was correct, but apparently I should have colored in more of the map red than I did. There are continuing acts of violence in Amarah and Samarra. Muthanna province should not have been white. Attacks are occurring everywhere but the three majority-Kurdish provinces in the far north, on a regular basis, some 70 a day nation-wide. These include car bombings, rocket propelled grenade attacks, machine gun attacks, etc. In June there had been 40 to 50 such attacks per day, so the situation is getting worse. He writes:
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` After his speech to a joint meeting of Congress on Thursday, Allawi described Baghdad as "very good and safe." In fact, during the period for which security reports were available, the number of attacks in the capital averaged 22 a day.

On Wednesday, there were 28 separate hostile incidents in Baghdad, including five rocket-propelled grenade attacks, six roadside bombings and a suicide bombing in which a car exploded at a National Guard recruiting station, killing at least 11 people and wounding more than 50. `



For the original of the poll results (from June and July, a long time ago) cited by President Bush recently see see the International Republican Reserch powerpoint slides.

Some of the results don`t favor Bush policies.

Crime, unemployment and infrastructure are the biggest concerns people have. (This is because they are the biggest problems people actually face daily).

70% want Islam and Shariah as the basis of the state, and 73% want to ensure the Islamic identity of the state. (I had misremembered this as 80% but anyway wasn`t far off).

On a different subject, a report on the treatment of the Turkmen minority in northern Iraq is in this report.



64% of the population think security is the number 1 issue. (As we have seen, it is getting worse.



Slide 23: 3/4s of Iraqis feel government is there to take care of people, and are basically socialists in outlook.


posted by Juan @ [url9/26/2004 06:03:33 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2004_09_01_juancole_archive.html#109618132430339013[/url]

Saturday, September 25, 2004

Two Faces of Bush

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This graphic is part of a new Democratic Party initiative to focus on the "two-facedness" of George W. Bush, which is apparently conceived broadly.

The thing the graphic most reminded me of was Bush`s angry performance at the Cabinet meeting that discussed Fallujah in early April of 2004, where Newsweek says he commanded, "Heads must roll!" His temper and recklessness in such key moments contrast vividly with the folksy image he projects on the campaign trail. Over 600 Iraqis died, many of them women and children, from aerial bombardments and tank assaults on residential areas that had not previously been directly involved in the insurgency.

posted by Juan @ 9/25/2004 03:52:43 PM

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Die Geschichte ist etwas untergegangen. Der selbsternannte US-Rambo in Afghanistan ist wie sein Vorbild ein Stück US-amerikanischer Großmannsucht.

Commentary:
The War on Terror makes the world safe for barbarism
By ROBERT KOEHLER
Guest Commentary
http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showa.html?article=44…

“I KNEW the American government wasn’t going to help me.”

This was the Ugly American on Steroids, lamenting at his trial that he’d been hung out to dry by his employers. Jack Idema, ex-Green Beret-turned-bounty-hunter, SUV cowboy, poster boy of mercenaries and self-described victim of “sick justice,” just got sentenced to 10 years in prison in Afghanistan. Poor guy. All he did was operate a private torture chamber.

When his house in Kabul was raided by Afghan police in July, they allegedly found eight locals being held prisoner — three of them, gasp, hanging upside down. All showed signs of being beaten. Some said they’d been burned with scalding water, deprived of food and sleep. Among the torture equipment found were chains, ropes and blood-stained fabric. The guy was a regular ambassador of goodwill.

For some reason, shadowy paramilitary combatants seldom come up when GOP fantasists extol their war on terror, but when you poke around in its rubble, these are the guys you find. If we’re bringing freedom to Central Asia and the Middle East, like the president says, it’s the sort of freedom only someone like Jack Idema and his team of bounty hunters could appreciate.

Yahoo, it’s the Wild East! Arm yourself to the teeth and the place is yours. They were after the big prize, the $25 million reward for the capture of Osama bin Laden, and had no need, so they figured, to worry about human-rights niceties in their quest for it. This is the sort of freedom we’re foisting on the rest of the world — freedom for gangsters and other no-government types who just want to be kings of some little corner of the planet. The war on terror is making the world safe for barbarism.

Still, the Jack Idema story is pretty shocking even in this context. How do you set up a private torture operation even in a place as shattered and chaotic as Afghanistan? Do you just rent a house and start kidnapping suspects on your own, the way sexual predators like Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy abducted victims? Or do you have help?

Idema says his team (which included right-hand man Brent Bennett, also the recipient of a 10-year prison sentence, and, bizarrely, Emmy-winning filmmaker Edward Caraballo, who wound up with eight years) was in Afghanistan legitimately, working for the U.S. intelligence community, the Department of Defense and the U.N.’s International Security Assistance Force.

No government agency will claim him, of course, and the swaggering, extravagant Idema — hero and cover model of Robin Moore’s 2003 best-seller “The Hunt for bin Laden” — is easy to write off as no more than a world-class liar, the self-styled hero of his own potboiler.

At his trial, the evidence he tried to introduce proving his ties to legitimate government agencies was iffy and dismissible: an e-mail from someone, videotapes of telephone conversations with persons unknown. Give us a break, Jack. This proves nothing, except possibly mental illness. It’s standard paranoiac fare. In a sane world, Idema is certifiably nuts. This is not, however, a sane world. The government he claims to have been working for — ours — just happens to be embroiled in a torture scandal of seismic proportions. Leaked memos indicate that torture was given the OK at the highest levels, and flagrant abuse or prisoners began not in Iraq, but at Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan.

Same deal: sexual humiliation, ghoulish threats, sleep deprivation, pain, inhuman discomfort, occasional murder. Idema, who insisted his prisoners were subjected to nothing more than “standard interrogation techniques,” fits neatly into this picture.

And then there are the uncomfortable facts: International peacekeeping forces accompanied Idema on three raids on Afghan houses in which he took his personal prisoners; and Idema, who dressed and acted like a member of U.S. Special Forces, once turned a prisoner over to American troops. The prisoner, ultimately released, was held in U.S. custody for two months. This swaggering soldier of fortune, this Ugly American, was well-connected. Maybe he never dealt, as he claimed, with underlings of Donald Rumsfeld and William Boykin, but he is part of the mercenary underground that does their dirty work. He’s our boy. If we’re proud of the war on terror, we have to be proud of Jack Idema and his private torture chamber.

Robert Koehler is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at [e-mail] or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com

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None Dare Call Them Neo-cons
by Ahmed Amr
(Saturday 25 September 2004)
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/10017/

Einige weiteren Artikel zu den Spionen im Pentagon. Frühere Artikel aus allen großen US-Zeitungen hier im Thread oder auch als Link über Juan Cole. Der 1.Link ist ein Zogby-Poll zu dem Thema: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3120.shtml http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=51948&d=25… http://english.daralhayat.com/opinion/OPED/09-2004/Article-2… Hier noch eine ganz alte Geschichte. Interessanter Bericht von der BBC über den Angriff auf die USS Liberty. Der Direkt-Link zur BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/dead_in_… Links zu den Filmen: BBC Four Investigative Report: Broadcast Saturday 17 May 2003 Dead in the Water Part I+II During the Six-Day War, Israel attacked and nearly sank the USS Liberty belonging to its closest ally, the USA. Thirty-four American servicemen were killed in the two-hour assault by Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5073.htm http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1/ussliberty1.… http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1/ussliberty2.…

"The catastrophic success of the neo-cons in escalating America’s unprofitable conflicts in the Middle East to a war of civilizations should create serious questions in serious minds about the national origin of their neo-conservative ideology."

Where have all the neo-cons gone? They’re not visible anymore. It appears they have successfully maneuvered to avoid further detection by launching a preemptive attack against those still tracking their distinctive footprints on America’s disastrous foreign policy. In a frontal assault on their detractors, they have now taken to smearing their adversaries as anti-Semites while regrouping as a new political force under a new banner. They now insist on being called ‘conservative ideologues’ and ‘Republican hawks’. None dare call them neo-cons.

To the casual observer, it might appear that the neo-cons have been chastened by recent encounters with the FBI, their abysmal failures in Iraq and their not so secret role in corrupting intelligence to market the war. Yet, every time someone writes their obituary, they show up at the funeral as pallbearers. The day after you bury their neo-con skeletons, they are resurrected as rosy cheeked ‘Republican ideologues’.

Of course, the most vulnerable among the neo-cons have gone into hibernation. Richard Perle is now embroiled in the Hollinger embezzlement scandal along with Conrad Black, the publisher of the Jerusalem Post. Perle apparently made off with a sizzling five million dollars – a pittance compared to the fortune siphoned off by Lord Black. At the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz is no longer making waves. These days, he rarely ventures out in public to threaten the Arabs, bully the Turks, warn the Russians or smear the French.

Douglas Feith is too busy warding off charges that he had a role in spying for Tel Aviv and in outing Valerie Plame. In his defense, Abe Foxman and the Jewish lobby have flexed their muscle to kill any further probing of AIPAC/neo-con/Israeli spy operations.

To those who still doubt the political supremacy of the fourth estate, the neo-con faithful at New York Times and The Washington Post have once again demonstrated that they can provide immunity even to those Likudniks implicated in acts of treason. So what have we here? Conservative Republican spies infiltrating the Pentagon and passing on state secrets to Israel. It sounds unlikely. So, who needs an investigation?

You would think that after the exposure of Judith Miller as an accomplice in propagating neo-con WMD fantasies, Sulzberger would behave himself and start reporting the biggest spy scandal since Jonathan Pollard. Contrast his indifference to the AIPAC/neo-con Pentagon spy cabal to the way The New York Times persecuted the innocent Wen Ho Lee who lost his job, was confined under threat of execution and denied bail. It seems that even when it comes to treason, ethnicity matters.

The neo-cons are strange even by the standards of the Israeli lobby. Their tiny cabal is more a cult than a political movement. Even their detractors admire their fanatical patriotism to their country – Israel. Ideologically, they align themselves with the Netenyahu wing of the Likud party. That might not mean a whole lot to most Americans. But it roughly translates into the modern day equivalent of the virulently racist segregationists that plagued the south just a generation ago.

Because of their primary allegiance to Israel, the neo-cons feel no remorse about the outcome in Iraq. For them, America’s quagmire and Iraq’s misery are a fabulous success story. They got most of what they wanted and their Likudnik brethren in Tel Aviv are ecstatic about the results. While many ordinary Americans are concerned about the increasing toll in blood and treasure – these Likudnik fanatics are celebrating. They have every reason to gloat, break out the champagne and hang up a ‘mission accomplished’ sign.

After 9/11, the Israel Firsters were alarmed by the emergence of an unprecedented international coalition that rallied around the United States. It gave them no comfort when Le Monde ran front-page headlines proclaiming that "We Are All Americans". Their fear was that their Likudnik agenda would be diluted by a comprehensive universal approach to dealing with the root causes of terrorism.

Sharon was quick to react to the emergence of this international alliance, which threatened to encroach on his expansionist fantasies. He warned that Israel would not cave in to international pressures to grant the Palestinian people their rights to an independent state. His neo-con moles in the Bush administration immediately rallied and dismantled the international coalition in favor of a more manageable `coalition of the willing` made up of Bush, Blair and Sharon.

By far, the biggest feather in the neo-con’s hat came from their incredible success in isolating the United States from her traditional European allies and the many other nations that rallied to America’s cause after the catastrophe of 9/11. As a result, American and British soldiers are now standing shoulder to shoulder in Iraq with a forty-man contingent from Tonga and a few dozen Mongolian warriors.

By focusing on Iraq, the neo-cons gave Sharon plenty of elbowroom to continue battering the Palestinians. The Israeli government took full advantage of the world`s distraction to confiscate more native land, routinely kill Palestinian civilians, assault foreign journalists, murder American and British peace activists, demolish thousands of homes and build a Palitentiary wall to segregate the Arab natives into open-air internment camps. All under the banner of bringing freedom and democracy to the `Greater Middle East`.

Getting the opportunity to stoke the flames of anti-Arab racism and anti-Islamic bigotry was also considered a distinct advantage by the neo-cons. It created a favorable global environment for the continued repression and humiliation of the Palestinian people.

These neo-con operatives had few problems with the increased prospect of anti-American terrorism. Part of their Likudnik marketing program was to smear the Palestinian resistance as nothing more than a branch of Al Qaeda. On another front, they worked to bring about the demise of the United Nations, which was dismissed as a `debating society`. For the neocons, this had the salutary effect of annulling UN resolutions calling for a Palestinian state and an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders.

The neo-cons even managed to squeeze in hundreds of millions of dollars of supplemental aid to Israel to compensate for Sharon`s `losses` from the Iraq war. If the neo-cons ever believed that Iraq had chemical weapons, they are now satisfied that Israel retains its Middle Eastern monopoly on WMDs – including an arsenal of hundreds of nuclear bombs.

Of course, Wolfowitz and his gang didn`t get all the items on their wish list. Almost immediately after the fall of Baghdad, they started agitating for an assault on Syria and Iran. That wasn`t going to happen – at least not immediately. Still, all in all, it is not a bad score card for the tiny Likudnik cabal that operates under the neo-con neon sign. In their estimate, when America loses a mile and Israel gains an inch, it makes for an excellent journey.

Even if the neo-cons were permanently exiled from the Pentagon and the State Department, they would forever boast of how so few of them did so much for the cause of Ariel Sharon, the patron saint of the Likudnik priesthood.

After the trauma of 9/11, many Americans instinctively understood that the terrorists did not attack us because of our lifestyle or who we are. They knew that the attacks had a lot to do with our foreign policy. But the neo-cons and their entrenched media allies managed to silence those who would engage in a rational discourse of what compelled nineteen crazed men with suicidal rage to kill so many innocent Americans.

The neo-cons had good reason to avoid a debate that might have resulted in exposing their role in formulating a ruinous foreign policy that only served the interest of giving their brethren in Tel Aviv more space to create a Greater Israel. In place of a realistic assessment of the political environment that causes the phenomenon of terrorism, the neo-cons and their mass media allies have sold America on the dangerous notion that the assailants were motivated by their culture and religion – not by their rage at our policies.

To date, no serious inquiry into the root cause of terrorism has taken place in the halls of power or the mass media. Just as the Likudniks in Israel managed to obscure the fact that a brutal military occupation is a manufacturing plant of Palestinian terror, their neo-con cousins have succeeded in divorcing anti-American terror from the foreign policy of the United States. Terrorism has been rendered into a bizarre philosophical outlook of a nihilistic religious cult that seeks nothing less than the elimination of freedom and liberty and the destruction of western democracy.

Any historian with half a brain knows that terrorism is nothing new. Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir were master terrorists before Bin Laden was born. Just ask the kin of the folks they blew up in the King David Hotel. Ariel Sharon was the commander of Unit 101 – tasked with leading terror squads in missions like Qibya, where his goons massacred a whole village in 1953.

The Sikhs, the IRA, the Basques, the Red Brigades, Tamil separatists, Liberian tribal factions, the Shining Path in Peru, The ANC and the Mau Mau have all resorted to terrorism. We have all been witnesses to narco-terrorism in Colombia and Mexico and state terrorism in Saddam’s Iraq and Israel. In military textbooks, terrorism and guerilla tactics are simply known as asymmetrical warfare. It is an instrument of battle employed by those with just and unjust causes in every corner of the planet.

My point is that a statistical analysis of the cultural, racial or theological causes of terrorism might yield some uncomfortable results. What if one were to compare the per-capita incidence of terrorism by Jews like Begin, Shamir and Sharon to that of Muslims like Bin Laden. If state terrorism was added to the statistical pool – which culture would appear to be more violent? If we were to take into account that Israelis have a nasty habit of electing war criminals to the highest office in the land – what if anything would that say about Jewish values? If we took a historical account of genocide against native people, Soviet gulags, Nazi concentration camps and plain old collateral damage and free fire zones – what could we conclude if anything about western culture. If we broadened our studies to the cruelties in Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Bosnia, Algeria, Ceylon, Chechnya, Colombia, Cambodia, the Congo, East Timor and Darfur – what cultural lessons could we draw?

The catastrophic success of the neo-cons in escalating America’s unprofitable conflicts in the Middle East to a war of civilizations should create serious questions in serious minds about the national origin of their neo-conservative ideology. Enough people have already noticed that their agenda is not an American agenda. So, it is natural that they have taken heed of the heat and retreated to other quarters to market their wares under new ‘conservative Republican’ labels. And if Kerry wins, they will certainly posture as ‘Democratic hawks’ – returning to their land of birth as ‘Scoop Jackson Democrats’.

Whatever label they choose for marketing their policies will not change their basic mission to promote Israeli interests. A neo-con is a neo-con is a neo-con. And a Likudnik is a Likudnik is a Likudnik. And they are all one and the same.

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America the Conservative
Europe is in the 21st century, but we remain locked in the 18th
By Edward L. Glaeser
Edward L.Glaeser is a professor of economics at Harvard University, director of the Rappaport Institute and Taubman Center for State and Local Government at the Kennedy School of Government, and autho

September 26, 2004

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Whether President Bush is reelected or Sen. John F. Kerry prevails, the United States will be the most conservative developed nation in the world. Its economy will remain the least regulated, its welfare state the smallest, its military the strongest and its citizens the most religious. According to data taken from the World Values Survey in the last decade, 60% of Americans believe that the poor are lazy (only 26% of Europeans share that view), and 30% believe that luck determines income (54% of Europeans say so). About 60% of Europeans say the poor are trapped, while only 29% of Americans believe they are. And roughly 30% of Europeans declare themselves to be left wing, but only 17% of Americans do.

Why is the U.S. such an exceptionally conservative nation?

It`s tempting to think that American conservatism is the natural result of exceptional economic mobility in the country, but the odds of leaving poverty in Europe are higher than those in the United States, in part because European social democrats enacted national education policies that do a better job of looking after the poor than local schools in the U.S. Instead, American conservatism stems from political stability and ethnic heterogeneity.

The Constitution was designed with checks to protect private property and to ensure that change happens slowly. The U.S. elects its representatives by majority vote, which leads politicians to cater to the voter in the middle, not the poorest. By contrast, proportional representation in many European countries gives greater voice to politicians who stand for minority groups like the poor. In most European countries, proportional representation is also strongly related to spending on social programs.

The sharp separation of powers in the U.S., as the Federalist Papers predicted, has reduced the extension of government. Battles between Congress and the presidency — such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt`s fights with the Senate in the late 1930s — have historically stymied the growth of the welfare state. The powerful, unelected Supreme Court has supported conservatism at many critical periods in our history. For example, in the late-19th century, it declared the income tax unconstitutional; in the 1930s, the court ruled that the New Deal was unlawful; and in 2000, it intervened to decide the presidential election. The nation`s federalist structure, furthermore, limits states` welfare spending because they fear the flight of capital and wealthy residents.

One doesn`t need to embrace Beardian conspiracy theories to believe that the Constitution was designed to limit the central government`s ability to extract resources from wealthy citizens. As a result, it has succeeded in checking the rise of an American socialist state while all the larger countries in continental Europe have socialism-friendly political institutions.

It wasn`t always so. At the start of the 20th century, the U.S. looked progressive compared with Europe`s empires. The big difference between the U.S. and Europe is that the U.S. kept its 18th century Constitution, while most European countries discarded theirs. In a wave of revolutions and quasi-revolutionary general strikes, European countries, one by one, replaced their older conservative constitutions with ones often designed by socialist or labor leaders.

Some small nations introduced proportional representation before World War I in response to uprisings that threatened their governments` stability, but the war was a watershed for great powers like Germany, Russia and Austro-Hungary. These nations` armies had traditionally checked militant labor unrest, just as in the United States, but during World War I, mass mobilizations and steady demoralization broke the armies` will to fire on rioters. As the armies` policing power vanished, empires were upended by left-wing revolutions. The new constitutions of these countries were written by socialist leaders like Friedrich Ebert, who were determined to craft institutions, like proportional representation, that would entrench socialist power. France had a constitution drafted by a socialist-heavy group, but this had to wait until after its defeat in World War II.

By contrast, the U.S. has not lost a war on its home soil and thus has never faced the internal disruptions caused by such a collapse. The U.S. military and private armies, like Pinkerton`s, have always been able to subdue agitators, such as the Homestead, Pa., strikers who faced off against Andrew Carnegie in 1892 and the jobless World War I veterans who marched to Washington in 1932 to ask for their bonus, and were dispersed — with swords drawn — by Army troops.

The nation`s racial heterogeneity also partly explains its conservatism. U.S. heterogeneity sharply contrasts with the much greater homogeneity in Canada, Britain and continental Europe. People are much less likely to support income redistribution to people who are members of different racial or ethnic groups. Ethnic divisions make it easier for the enemies of welfare to vilify the poor, by making them seem like parasites who could be rich but prefer to live on the public dollar. The pro-redistribution populists were defeated in the South in the 1890s by politicians who stressed that populism would help blacks (which was true) and that blacks were dangerous criminals (which was not.) The enemies of Lyndon B. Johnson`s Great Society also employed racial messages that conveyed the idea that welfare recipients were dangerous outsiders who should not be helped. The sharp racial division that runs through American society makes it possible to castigate poor people in a way that would be impossible in a homogeneous nation like Sweden, where the poor look the same as everyone else.

Across countries, ethnic heterogeneity strongly predicts a smaller welfare state. The U.S. states with larger populations of blacks have historically been less generous to the poor (even controlling for state per capita income). Work by Erzo Luttmer, professor at Harvard`s Kennedy School of Government, shows that people who live around poor people of their own races say they want the government to spend more on welfare. But people who live around poor people of another race say they want the government to spend less on welfare. Sympathy for the poor appears to be muted when the poor are seen as outsiders.

Increased immigration to Europe is making those societies more heterogeneous, and we have already seen opponents of social welfare, such as Jean-Marie Le Pen in France, Joerg Haider in Austria and Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands, use inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric to discredit generous welfare payments. We may like to believe that human beings are colorblind, but the reality is that American diversity has always made redistribution less popular here than in more ethnically and racially homogeneous places.





Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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POLITICS
My Congressman Stands for Money, Not for Me
And, what`s even worse, there`s no way I can get rid of him
By Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Johnson is a retired professor of international relations at UC San Diego and the author of, among other books, "The Sorrows of Empire" and "Blowback."

September 26, 2004

It is news to no one who pays the slightest attention to American politics that Congress is no longer responsive to the people. Incumbency is so well institutionalized that elections generally don`t mean much. Take the case of guns: House Majority Leader Tom DeLay approves of the private ownership of assault weapons and machine guns, despite complaints from police across the country that they`re outgunned by criminals, despite the 65% of the public that wants them banned, despite pleas from the relatives of murdered Americans. On this issue, the National Rifle Assn. seems to own the Congress.

A similar situation exists with regard to munitions makers. In one district after another, the weapons industry has bought the incumbent, and would-be challengers are unable to overcome the advantage of incumbency. On really big projects like the B2 Stealth bomber, contracts for different parts of the airplane are placed in as many congressional districts as possible. This is done to spread the pork (in the form of jobs) around. But it also ensures that a wide swath of congressional representatives have a disincentive to ever ask whether we really need another weapon of massive destruction. It`s part of the reason we have defense budgets of $425 billion per year (plus that extra $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan, $20 billion for nuclear weapons and $200 billion more for veterans and the wounded), leading to the highest governmental deficits in postwar history. It seems likely that only bankruptcy will stop the American imperial juggernaut.

California`s 50th Congressional District in northern San Diego County where I live is a good example of exactly how this plays out at the local level. The constituents of the 50th have been misrepresented in Washington for the last 14 years by a wholly paid-for tool of the military-industrial complex, the Republican incumbent, Randy "Duke" Cunningham. The heavily populated 50th District has changed in recent years from the wealthy Republican stronghold it once was to a much more politically diverse mix, and that should spell trouble for Cunningham, whose record on such things as abortion, school vouchers and the environment are increasingly out of step with a wide swath of his constituents.

This year, Cunningham is opposed by Francine Busby, a well-qualified Democrat whose views are probably much closer to a majority of voters in the 50th. But a look at the candidates` fundraising and expenditures demonstrates why Busby faces an uphill fight. Incumbents have an advantage that`s almost impossible to overcome, as races throughout the nation will demonstrate this fall. The Cunningham-Busby race illustrates why.

Let`s start with money. As of June 30, campaign records show, Cunningham had raised $608,977, or nearly 10 times the amount Busby had raised. About 46% of Cunningham`s money comes from political action committees, or PACs, compared with 2% of Busby`s. Nearly a third of Cunningham`s money comes from out of state, compared with only 3% of Busby`s.

What kind of people like to give to an incumbent like Cunningham? Based on Federal Election Commission data released in August, his top contributors by industry/occupation are defense electronics ($66,550), defense aerospace ($39,000), lobbyists ($32,500), miscellaneous defense ($29,200), air transport ($26,500), health professionals ($24,700) and real estate ($23,001). Cunningham`s No. 1 financial backer is the Titan Corp. of San Diego, which gave him $15,000. It has recently been in the news because an Arabic translator it supplied under a contract with the U.S. Army has been implicated in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq.

Now it may be that these donors contribute to Cunningham instead of Busby just because they like the guy. But Titan`s $657-million Pentagon contract had to be approved by the House Appropriations Committee`s national defense subcommittee, on which Cunningham sits. Lockheed Martin, the world`s largest weapons manufacturer, also gave Cunningham a whopping $15,000. They too can`t help but be interested in those purse strings he holds. The list of Cunningham`s top contributors reads like a Who`s Who among the nation`s war suppliers: Raytheon (which makes the Tomahawk cruise missile), Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and on and on.

To judge by Cunningham`s voting record, their money was well spent. Not only has he been a strong supporter of the war in Iraq — which directly benefits many of his contributors — he also has embraced the causes of the neconservative strategists in Washington who favor a more aggressive foreign policy that would probably, down the road, benefit the defense contractors even more.

In some sense, Cunningham comes by his support for the military honestly. He cites as his most important lifetime achievement his 20 years as a naval aviator, during which time he flew combat missions in Vietnam. During the war, he shot down five communist jets (three of them in one day) and was himself brought down by a surface-to-air missile. On May 10, 1972, he was rescued from the South China Sea by a helicopter.

But Cunningham has exploited this record into what one commentator calls "hero inflation" and Shakespeare`s Henry V called "remembering with advantages." He now claims to have been a military hero deserving of the Medal of Honor (which he didn`t get), even though he acknowledges that his dog-fighting had little effect on the course of the war. Cunningham has created a company called Top Gun Enterprises that sells lithographs of himself in his pilot`s outfit and a book he has written about his Navy exploits. His company`s website claims that the 1986 film "Top Gun," starring Tom Cruise, depicted many of Cunningham`s "real-life experiences."

All of this wouldn`t mean much in terms of his ability to represent his district, but Cunningham is now using his war record as a cudgel with which to hammer John F. Kerry, who is supported by many residents of the politically divided 50th District. On April 22, for example, Cunningham said in the House of Representatives: "Mr. Speaker, I was shot down over North Vietnam…. I can remember the anger and the disparaging remarks that John Kerry made about our service. I remember the rage in all of us from his slander…. Even today, John Kerry votes against defense, the military, veterans and intelligence bills that would enforce the safe return of our men and women. We do not need someone that would vote like a Jane Fonda as commander in chief."

On social issues too Cunningham is far out of step with many of his constituents. In 1998, after Cunningham had been operated on for prostate cancer, he described the procedure as "just not natural, unless maybe you`re Barney Frank." Frank, a fellow House member and a Massachusetts Democrat who is openly gay, replied that Cunningham "seems to be more obsessed with homosexuality than most homosexuals."

In the end, though, Cunningham`s failure to represent his district is unlikely to cost him is job. Why? Because if he needs to, he can outspend Busby 8 to 1. And in elections today, money talks.



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Setdem es diese großen Unterschiede bei den Ergebnissen der Umfragen gab, kommen die Befragungen immer mehr in Verruf. Diesmal das Wall Street Journal.

Public-Opinion Polls
Diverge Because They
Are Still Partly an Art
September 24, 2004; Page B1

It is enough to bring tears to the eyes of researchers who labor mightily to put public-opinion polling on a scientific footing: Last week, the Gallup Organization had President Bush up by 13 percentage points, while the Pew Research Center had him and Sen. John Kerry dead even.

Time, then, to check in with the scientists who probe the arcana of random-digit dialing and demographic weighting, yet who wrestle with the fact that their work is as much art as science.

"There is no god-given right way to do a survey," says sociologist Stanley Presser of the University of Maryland, College Park. "Lots of decisions, made at every step, can influence the results."

First, let`s puncture the myth that the growing number of people who tell the poll taker to buzz off results in polls missing a certain kind of voter. (Curmudgeons for Kerry, perhaps?) Recent studies show no difference between cooperators and noncooperators, says sociologist Robert Groves of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In large part, that`s because people refuse to cooperate for what he calls "shallow reasons" -- their favorite show is on, the kid is screaming -- that have nothing to do with political leanings.

People not reached at all are more problematic. Phone polls are conducted with random-digit dialing, which theoretically gives every phone the same statistical chance of being rung. But cellphone numbers are not included. As a result, an estimated 3% of mostly under-30 U.S. households have no chance of being polled.

An undercount of young voters is easy to spot and easy to fix, recent fulminating by political pundits notwithstanding. Poll takers always adjust raw results so their sample matches the demographic profile of eligible voters, says Nancy Belden, a partner in the survey firm Belden, Russonello & Stewart, Washington, D.C., and the president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, or AAPOR. If the sample has only half the percentage of young people that the voting-age population does, for example, you count each of their responses double. Poll takers do the same for sex, education and income.

But adjusting for age may not capture the cell-only crowd. "My sense is that those with only cellphones are different from those in the same age group with land lines," says Cliff Zukin, professor of public policy at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. "They`re "probably more mobile, more urban." A straightforward age adjustment may not capture this, but no one is sure what else to do.

Do you perform a similar adjustment for party affiliation? As my colleague John Harwood reported on Monday, the Gallup poll showing the Bush surge reflected a sample consisting of seven percentage points more Republicans than Democrats.

Gallup does not adjust for party self-identification, and neither do many other major polls. Zogby International, however, treats party affiliation, as given by voters in exit polls in 2000 and other recent elections, much like age or sex, increasing the weight of whichever party is undersampled.

But every scientist I asked has grave qualms about that. Party affiliation can change in four years, or even overnight, as Prof. Zukin found in a 2003 study: When people lean toward, say, a Republican, they then tell poll takers they are Republican. If more self-identified Republicans make the cut of "likely voters," then that reflects that more of the former are likely to vote.

Adjusting the results to make party representation "even" will then make the poll less accurate.

Which brings us to the challenge of determining who`s a likely voter. Gallup uses seven questions, says Senior Gallup Poll Editor David Moore: How much thought have you given to the upcoming election for president? Do you know where people in your neighborhood go to vote? Have you ever voted in your election district? Do you vote always, nearly always, part of the time, or seldom? Do you plan to vote in November? In the 2000 election, did you vote for Bush or Gore, or not at all? On a numerical scale, how likely are you to vote?

Respondents can score up to seven. But the determination of who`s a likely voter isn`t based on raw score. Instead, Gallup notes the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in 2000, roughly 55%, and takes the top 55% of scores. The responses of the bottom 45% don`t count.

"When you see big changes week to week [in the horse-race polls] it`s not necessarily that views of the candidates are changing," says Prof. Presser. What is changing, he and everyone else I spoke to suspects, is who makes the "likely" cutoff. "Someone who got all steamed up by the convention and said they were going to vote for Bush could easily have moved into the `likely voter` group," says Prof. Presser, displacing someone leaning toward Kerry.

How? By getting more points for Gallup`s questions on how much thought they`ve given to the race and how likely they are to vote.

You`d think that poll takers could validate their model of who`s a likely voter by, basically, calling people back on Nov. 3 and asking, did you vote? "No one to my knowledge has ever done a validation study of a poll seven weeks out, and never a presidential poll," says Prof. Presser.

As I said, art as much as science.

Copyright © 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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unday Herald - 26 September 2004
Reagan junior warns Bush: ‘stop hijacking my father’s reputation’
In an exclusive interview, the son of the Gipper brands the current Republican leader an opportunist and a cheat … but fears Kerry has shot himself in the foot
By Jenifer Johnston

He’s a hypocrite. He “plays farm” on his ranch. He cheated to get to the White House. He lied about Iraq, and used national grief from September 11 to his own advantage.

Those are the kind of criticisms the left has levelled at President Bush for months, but just 37 days before the election, those accusations are coming from Ron Reagan – the son of one of America’s most revered Republican presidents.

In an exclusive interview, Reagan has spoken frankly to the Sunday Herald about his anger and deep resentment of the Bush administration for “hijacking” his father’s legacy through the campaign.

Ronald Reagan, who was president between 1981 and 1989, died, aged 93, in June after a 10-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease. George W Bush’s father, George, served as Reagan’s vice-president.

The present Bush team have recruited several of Reagan’s presidential aides and speechwriters to the 2004 campaign. But Ron Reagan accused Bush of trying to re-invent himself in the mould of his father, who was near-idolised in the US as an immensely strong president in the face of the cold-war threat.

Reagan said: “This administration will use whatever they can – they will try to hijack that legacy, they will pretend that Mr Bush is the reincarnation of my father. I don’t feel terribly happy about that; I certainly don’t remember Bush being at any Thanksgiving dinners.

“ I don’t know Mr Bush well, but from what I can gather, he’s nothing like my father as a man.”

Ironically, Reagan says he sometimes finds Bush “amusing, when you see pictures of him on his ranch with his little chainsaw as if he actually does any work there”.

Reagan, a broadcaster and writer, told the Sunday Herald that he is determined to speak out about the tactics of the Bush administration in this election campaign – especially when viewed against the struggle of the 2000 result.

He said: “The reality of this administration is so ugly that most Americans, even those who are more or less opposed to the administration, really don’t want to come to grips with that.

“This is an administration that has cheated to get into the White House. It’s not something Americans ever want to think about their government. My sense of these people is that they don’t have any respect for the public at large. They have a revolutionary mindset. I think they feel that anything they can do to prevail – lie, cheat, whatever – is justified by their revolutionary aims.”

Although confirming he has no ambition to stand for political office himself, Reagan admitted that his address to the Democratic convention in July raised eyebrows, not least with his family.

“I wouldn’t want to be a politician, because politicians are constrained in what they can say. My mother probably gets a little nervous if I’m too rough on George Bush – I mean, she has to speak to these people every once in a while. But she knows I have to speak my conscience.”

His conscience drives Reagan to campaign on a single, personal issue – stem cell research.

The Bush administration is firmly against it, so stem cell research receives just $25 million in federal funding and has evolved into a political hot potato . Reagan’s convention speech received a standing ovation, in tune with public opinion that shows three quarters of Americans favour more stem cell research. But Republicans and the Christian right (a considerable voting force in the US) continue to brand it immoral and equate it with abortion .

“This is an issue that has become extremely divisive in American society,” he said. “They always say a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged – well, I wonder how they would feel if a child or a loved one developed diabetes or Parkinson’s, and then see where they lie on the debate. Most people have no difficulty in choosing between a petri dish and a human being.”

Even the first lady Laura Bush has been tasked with opposing it – despite her own father dying, like Reagan Sr, after a lengthy struggle with Alzheimer’s . She stated last month: “To hear people say that a cure for Alzheimer’s is at our fingertips is just not right.”

Reagan has a sharp reply to her assertion. “If Laura Bush went back and did her homework, she would see that nobody thinks there is a cure around the corner for Alzheimer’s.

“Diabetes, Parkinson’s and spinal injuries will come first in the search for therapies. It was thought that stem cell research would help Alzheimer’s, but it’s clear other things will come first. Mrs Bush was either uninformed or disingenuous in her comments, but perhaps, with federal funding, we could address the issue properly.”

In the run-up to polling day on November 2, Reagan will be keeping an eye on the three key television debates pitting Kerry against Bush in front of the nation for the first time.

Reagan is quietly hopeful of a Kerry comeback , but is realistic about the impact the media has on the campaign. “Kerry has made a slight comeback in the polls, but it doesn’t really matter how many people watch the debates. When Gore and Bush debated four years ago, Gore did a better job, but the press focused on his mannerisms and his make-up and ignored Bush’s lies. The American media is not healthy.

“I do think Kerry has an uphill battle on his hands, and it’s of his own making. He made a huge mistake in saying: ‘If we knew what we know now, we would not have gone to war.’ He should have come out forcefully and said he made a mistake about the war in the first instance.”

The war in Iraq, and the Bush administration’s attitude after September 11, are viewed by Reagan as “terrible”.

“September 11 was a huge opportunity for the Bush administration. When you read accounts of insiders who were close to the top of the administration on September 11, it’s shocking. Within hours of this terrible atrocity they were looking for opportunities to take advantage of it. They turned it into a situation where they could attack Saddam, who had nothing to do with September 11. This wasn’t a wake-up call for them.”

In a recent book called Five Minutes With The President, for which Reagan wrote the foreword, he called on Bush to look into his heart and ask what kind of Christian he really is. He told the Sunday Herald that he would like to hammer home to Bush the consequences of his actions.

“I would ask him whether he felt that the innocent Iraqis and Afghans who died under our bombs were going to heaven as he imagines it. I think the answer to that would be very telling about Mr Bush’s character and his outlook on the world.”

Reagan lives with a constant legacy of his father – in name, but also in his strong sense of right and wrong . The world-wide grief and mourning for his father is something he found “gratifying ”.

Despite being at opposite ends of the political spectrum, does he think his father would have been proud of him?

“I hope my father would be proud. All I’m trying to do is lend my name and voice to what I see as an unaligned good cause. I hope that he would be supportive of that. I have no reason to believe that he wouldn’t be.”


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Profile: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - a man notorious for his alleged ruthlessness - is suspected of direct involvement in the kidnap and beheading of several foreigners in Iraq - even of wielding the knife himself.

Washington has also accused the 37-year-old Jordanian radical of masterminding a string of spectacular suicide bombings in Iraq, and of being linked to al-Qaeda.

After viewing a video of the beheading of American engineer Eugene Armstrong, taken hostage in Baghdad in September 2004 along with a fellow American and a Briton, the CIA believes with a "high degree of confidence" that it was Zarqawi who read out a statement and then carried out the murder.

The video followed a pattern which has become grimly familiar since American contractor Nick Berg was shown being killed in May 2004.

A group of militants clad in black stand in front of the banner of Zarqawi`s group, Tawhid and Jihad, with their victim kneeling before them.

After reading a statement, a militant leans over the bound and blindfolded prisoner and cuts off his head with a knife.
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Those killed in this fashion include another American, a South Korean and a Bulgarian. A Turkish hostage was shot three times in the head.

Bin Laden rival?

Zarqawi`s network is considered the main source of kidnappings, bomb attacks and assassination attempts in Iraq.

Although he is thought to have links with al-Qaeda, experts regard his group as autonomous - perhaps even a rival to Osama Bin Laden`s organisation.

The US has put a $25m bounty on his head - the same sum they are offering for Bin Laden himself.

The reward was increased after American authorities intercepted a letter which, they claimed, confirmed he was working with al-Qaeda to drive the US out of Iraq.

In the run-up to the Iraq war in February 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations Zarqawi was an associate of Osama Bin Laden who had sought refuge in Iraq.

Intelligence reports indicated he was in Baghdad and - according to Mr Powell - this was a sure sign that Saddam Hussein was courting al-Qaeda, which, in turn, justified an attack on Iraq.

But some analysts contested the claim, pointing to Zarqawi`s historical rivalry with Bin Laden.

Both men rose to prominence as "Afghan Arabs" - leading foreign fighters in the "jihad" against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

It was a far cry from Zarqawi`s youth as a petty criminal in Jordan, remembered by those who knew him as a simple, quick-tempered, and barely literate gangster.

But after the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan, Zarqawi went back to Jordan with a radical Islamist agenda.

Sentenced to death

He spent seven years in prison there, accused of conspiring to overthrow the monarchy and establish an Islamic caliphate.

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there is $25m bounty on his head
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Not long after his release, he fled the country.

Jordan tried him in absentia and sentenced him to death for allegedly plotting attacks on American and Israeli tourists.

Western intelligence indicated Zarqawi had sought refuge in Europe.

German security forces later uncovered a militant cell which claimed Zarqawi was its leader.

The cell-members also told their German interrogators their group was "especially for Jordanians who did not want to join al-Qaeda".

According to the German intelligence report, this "conflicts with... information" from America.

Kurdish connection

The next stop on his itinerary was his old stamping ground - Afghanistan.

He is believed to have set up a training camp in the western city of Herat, near the border with Iran.

Students at his camp supposedly became experts in the manufacture and use of poison gases.

It is during this period that Zarqawi is thought to have renewed his acquaintance with al-Qaeda.

He is believed to have fled to Iraq in 2001 after losing a leg in a US missile strike on his Afghan base.

US officials argue that it was at al-Qaeda`s behest that he moved to Iraq and established links with Ansar al-Islam - a group of Kurdish Islamists from the north of the country.

He is thought to have remained with them for a while - feeling at home in mountainous northern Iraq.

When US aid official Laurence Foley was gunned down in Amman in October 2002, the Jordanian authorities claimed he had masterminded and financed the attack.

If the intelligence agencies are to be believed, it was just the beginning of a busy year for Zarqawi.

Sectarian strategy

In 2003, he was named as the brains behind a series of lethal bombings - from Casablanca in Morocco to Istanbul in Turkey.

Later Spanish officials were reported to be looking into allegations that he may have been behind the Madrid bombings on 11 March 2004, which killed 191 people.

It is in Iraq, though, that he appears to be most active.

The assassination of the Shia cleric, Ayatollah al-Hakim, at a shrine in the town of Najaf, was one of the bloodiest attacks in Iraq last year - over 50 Shia worshippers died.

US authorities pinned the blame on Zarqawi.

The intercepted "Zarqawi" letter released by the Americans in February 2004 seems to support their claim.

In it, the author appeared to share his plans for igniting sectarian conflict in Iraq as a means of undermining the US presence there. And he claims to have already undertaken 25 successful attacks against the enemy.

Within days of the letter`s release, bomb attacks on recruiting centres for the Iraqi security forces had killed nearly 100 people.

Attacks have continued across Iraq almost daily in recent months. Whether or not Zarqawi is behind them all, he is seen by the US as the biggest obstacle to their hopes of progress in Iraq - their most dangerous enemy in the country.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/3483089.st…

Published: 2004/09/22 11:55:32 GMT

© BBC MMIV

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Notes: Iyad Allawi always reminded me of somebody then I saw this article, Ministers were told premier was seen as stooge on Buzzflash, and Bingo! This Allawi character is a dead ringer for Curly Howard of the Three Stooges! Then, I found this image of the Stooges selling snake oil, which fit`s the Bush administration to a tee. I also have to give credit to Kerry for saying that Bush is living in a `Fantasy World of Spin`.
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Der Artikel soll für Zweifel über die Rolle von Zarqawi sorgen. Der Wahrheitsgehalt diese Artikels ist genausowenig erwiesen, wie das was von Spiegel und Co und der US-Propagandamaschine behauptet wird.
Es ist wichtig in dem Falle Zarqawi weiter gegenüber allen Erklärungen äußerst mißtrauisch zu sein und zu bleiben.

Zarqawi Superstar, der Phantom-Köpfer von Bagdad
Manche Ungereimtheit und noch mehr Fragen

http://www.uni-kassel.de/fb10/frieden/themen/Terrorismus/Wel…

Normalerweise beteiligen wir uns nicht an Spekulationen und Verschwörungstheorien - von welcher Seite sie auch in die Welt gesetzt werden. Um den Irakkrieg aus völkerrechtlichen und politischen und humanitären Gründen abzulehnen, hätte es nicht der schlimmen Bilder und Befunde über die Folteruntaten in den Besatzungsgefängnissen bedurft. Auf der anderen Seite bedarf es auch keiner Videoaufnahmen von geköpften Gefangenen, um die Grausamkeit und Inhumanität mancher selbst ernannter "Widerstandskämpfer" zur Kenntnis zu nehmen. Der folgende Beitrag, den uns der Autor zur Verfügung gestellt hat, zielt auf einen anderen Sachverhalt: Indem er auf Widersprüchlichkeiten in den Vorgängen um die Köpfung des US-Amerikaners Nicholas Berg hinweist, beleuchtet er die politische Legende, die um den Tötungsakt gestrickt wurde. Es geht offenbar um den angeblichen Top-Terroristen Zarqawi, der - in Ermangelung der Ergreifung des Urvaters aller Topterroristen, Ossama bin Laden - an dessen Stelle getreten ist.


Von Knut Mellenthin

Der derzeit weltweit führende Top-Terrorist, auf dessen Kopf die US-Regierung eine Belohnung von 10 Millionen Dollar ausgesetzt hat, schlachtete eigenhändig. Woher wissen wir das so genau, obwohl er sein Gesicht maskiert hatte und seine Stimme nicht wirklich zu identifizieren war, weil sie gar nicht mit Sicherheit bekannt ist? Weil das Video, das am 11. Mai auf einer islamistischen Website auftauchte und anscheinend die Ermordung des einen Monat zuvor spurlos verschwundenen Amerikaners Nicholas ("Nick") Berg zeigte, den über jeden Zweifel erhabenen Titel trug: "Sheik Abu Musab al-Zarqawi slaughters an American infidel with his own hands."

Zwei Tage später teilte laut New York Times ein CIA-Beamter mit, der maskierte Mann, der im Video dem 26-jährigen Amerikaner mit einem großen Schlachtermesser den Hals durchschneidet, sei "mit hoher "Wahrscheinlichkeit" wirklich Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - "a militant linked to Al-Qaeda who American officials also say has behind some of the deadliest bombing attacks in Iraq" - wie die Zeitung hinzufügte. Auch die auf dem Video zu hörende arabische Stimme sei "sehr vermutlich" die Zarqawis. Das hätte "eine technische Analyse des Videos" ergeben.(NYT, 13. Mai)

Gab es für diese der New York Times anonym erstattete inoffizielle Auskunft eigentlich jemals eine offizielle Bestätigung? Wohl nicht. Die CIA ist nämlich regelmäßig sehr vorsichtig mit solchen Aussagen, beispielsweise zu Tonbändern, auf denen angeblich Bin Laden zu vernehmen ist. Wer einmal naiv geglaubt hatte, für die heutige Technik sei eine Stimme "so eindeutig zu identifizieren wie ein Fingerabdruck", sieht sich enttäuscht auf Wahrscheinlichkeiten und Annahmen verwiesen.

Im Fall Zarqawis ist eine Identifizierung zusätzlich dadurch erschwert - oder, um es genau zu sagen: völlig unmöglich- dass es nur ganz wenige Tonaufnahmen - höchstens ein halbes Dutzend - gibt, auf denen er angeblich zu hören sein soll. Bei allen bestehen Zweifeln, und selbst wenn sich nachweisen ließe, dass es sich immer um dieselbe Stimme handelt, wäre keineswegs sicher, ob es sich wirklich um die des angeblichen Top-Terroristen Zarqawi handelt, der eigentlich Ahmad Fadil al-Khalayleh heißt und 1966 im jordanischen Zarqa geboren wurde, nach dem er seinen nom de guerre gewählt hat. Es existiert ein mehrere Jahre altes Polizeifoto, das Zarqawi zeigen soll, aber kein Video, in dem er beim Sprechen sein Gesicht zeigt.

Spielverderber und Schlaumeier, die es natürlich immer gibt, behaupteten denn auch sofort, der maskierte Halsabschneider auf dem Video sei nie und nimmer Zarqawi:

"Some recent news media reports have suggested that the Arabic-language accent heard on the tape was not consistent with the part of Jordan where Mr. Zarqawi originated. A C.I.A. official would not say exactly how the agency had made its assessment, but indicated that the voice pattern and regional accent heard on the tape had both contributed to the assessment of a `high probability` that it was Mr. Zarqawi speaking." (NYT, 14. Mai)

Al-Jazeera hatte schon am 13. Mai auf seiner Website von Zweifeln berichtet: Viele, die sich das Video angesehen hätten, seien der Meinung, der Akzent des maskierten Mannes sei weder irakisch noch jordanisch. Einige seien der Meinung, die Stimme könne die eines Ägypters oder sogar eines Iraners sein.

Außerdem, so al-Jazeera, sei Zarqawi nach Aussagen zweier islamistischer Gruppen schon im März ums Leben gekommen. In Falludscha kursiere seit Tagen eine achtseitige Flugschrift, dass Zarqawi während eines amerikanischen Bombenangriffs im nordirakischen Sulaimaniya-Gebirge getötet worden sei. Aber das kann selbstverständlich ein Trick sein - auch wenn in diesem Fall rätselhaft wäre, wer dahinter steckt und welchen Zweck er damit verfolgt. Anzunehmen, dass Zarqawi selbst auf diese Weise seine Spur zu verwischen versucht, ergibt absolut keinen Sinn, wenn man unterstellt, dass er sich gleich darauf wieder auf einem Video präsentiert hat. Und eine amerikanische Desinformation wird es wohl auch nicht sein, denn dort hütet man sich, wie im Fall des wahrscheinlich schon im Dezember 2001 in Afghanistan ums Leben gekommenen Bin Laden, das Huhn, das im propagandistischen Sinn goldene Eier legt, offiziell zu schlachten.

Noch etwas fiel an dem Video auf: Alle amerikanischen Stellen gaben sich bis vor kurzem absolut sicher, dass Zarqawi eine Prothese trägt, seit ihm nach einer in Afghanistan erlittenen Verletzung ein Bein amputiert werden musste. Man behauptete sogar, ganz genau zu wissen, wann und wo die Operation vorgenommen wurde: im Mai 2002 in Bagdad. Das galt bisher als einer der Hauptbeweise für die angebliche enge Zusammenarbeit zwischen Saddam Hussein und al-Kaida, die einer der vorgeschobenen Kriegsgründe war.

Der maskierte Köpfer des Videos hingegen zeigt kein Anzeichen einer Gehbehinderung. Aber auch das lässt sich mit etwas Phantasie erklären: "An American counterterrorism official said Thursday that while intelligence analysts still believed that Mr. Zarqawi had injured his leg and was treated in Iraq, they no longer thought that he had lost a limb." (New York Times, 14. Mai)

Nein, GANZ neu ist diese Erkenntnis der amerikanischen Terrorismus-Bekämpfer nicht. Aber doch FAST neu. Genau am 6. April, dem Tag der Freilassung Bergs nach 13 Tagen Haft in einem amerikanischen Militärgefängnis in Mossul, vier Tage vor seinem spurlosen Verschwinden, gab ein anonymer US-Beamter bekannt, dass Zarqawi zwar im Mai 2002 zur Behandlung einer Beinverletzung in Bagdad gewesen sei, aber das Bein entgegen früheren Berichten nicht amputiert worden sei. "The official would not discuss the reason for the change in assessment." (CNN, 7. Mai)

Das Video von der Ermordung Nick Bergs erinnert stark an ein anderes, das am Tag seines Verschwindens, am 10. April, vom Sender al-Arabiya ausgestrahlt wurde. Zu sehen waren acht maskierte Männer - auf dem Berg-Video sind es fünf. Ein Sprecher erklärte: "Wir sind die Brigaden des Helden und Märtyrers Scheich Ahmed Jassin". Die nach dem von Israel am 22. März ermordeten Hamas-Führer benannte Gruppe, die weder vor noch nach diesem Video in Erscheinung trat, habe - so der Sprecher - 30 ausländische Geiseln in ihrer Gewalt: Japaner, Bulgaren, Israelis, Amerikaner, Spanier und Koreaner. Man werde die Geiseln enthaupten, sofern die US-Streitkräfte die Belagerung von Falludscha nicht einstellten.

Tatsächlich wurde aber außer Nick Berg kein weiterer Entführter auf diese Weise getötet. Vor ihm wurden lediglich zwei andere Geiseln ermordet: Der Italiener Fabrizio Quattrocchi, dessen Tötung durch einen Kopfschuss am 14. April in einem Video dokumentiert wurde, und der am 11. April entführte Däne Henrik Frandsen, dessen Leiche schon am nächsten Tag gefunden wurde. Die meisten der zeitweise über 50 entführten Ausländer kamen durch Vermittlung integrer irakischer Politiker und Geistlicher frei, ohne dass es eine erkennbare Gegenleistung gab. Dazu trug offenbar entscheidend bei, dass alle Sektoren der irakischen Opposition und des bewaffneten Widerstands die Geiselnahmen öffentlich kritisierten.

Nimmt man hinzu, dass zweifellos niemals 30 Ausländer in den Händen einer einzigen Gruppe waren, dass der Name "Brigaden des Helden und Märtyrers Scheich Ahmed Jassin" außer diesem Video nicht verwendet wurde, und dass die angebliche Entführergruppe sich auch unter anderem Namen nicht wieder öffentlich zu Wort meldete, so ist davon auszugehen, dass das Video ein vollständiger Fake war. Von wem es produziert wurde und zu welchem Zweck, ist eine offene Frage.

Zurück zum maskierten Halsabschneider des Berg-Videos. Es gibt keine Gründe, den Amerikanern zu glauben, dass sich unter der Maske der plötzlich wieder zweibeinig gewordene Zarqawi verbarg. Es gibt aber zwei Präzedenzfälle für die Annahme, dass der mit 10 Millionen Dollar dotierte Top-Terrorist Zarqawi erste Wahl ist, wenn die US-Regierung für eine Propagandashow die Hauptrolle des Schurken zu besetzen hat.

Erstes Beispiel: Die Multimedia-Show von Außenminister Colin Powell vorm UNO-Sicherheitsrat am 5. Februar 2003, mit der die US-Regierung pro forma ihre Gründe für den ohnehin schon seit Monaten beschlossenen und vorbereiteten, unmittelbar bevorstehenden Überfall auf den Irak ablieferte. Neben den Massenvernichtungswaffen, von denen nach der Besetzung Iraks nicht eine einzige und nicht einmal ein kleines Restchen gefunden wurde, behandelte ein langer Abschnitt in Powells Vortrag die angebliche Zusammenarbeit Saddam Husseins mit Bin Ladens al-Kaida. Genauer gesagt: mit Zarqawi, der angeblich das zentrale Bindeglied zwischen al-Kaida und Bagdad darstellte.

Mindestens 21 mal fiel der Name Zarqawi in Powells Ansprache an den Sicherheitsrat. Alle wesentlichen Behauptungen waren falsch. So etwa, dass Zarqawi mit Duldung und Unterstützung Saddam Husseins in Bagdad die Zentrale eines internationalen Netzwerks eingerichtet habe und von dort aus terroristische Aktivitäten in Frankreich, Großbritannien, Italien, Deutschland, Russland und Nordafrika steuere.

Besonders intensiv malte Powell aus, dass Zarqawi ein Spezialist für hochtödliche Gifte sei und seine Anhänger vor allem in dieser Technik ausgebildet habe. Für den Propagandazweck ausgezeichnet gewählt, da Gift die Phantasie der Menschen in besonderer Weise beflügelt und sich außerdem mit der Vorstellung von extremer Heimtücke verbindet. Nur: Es gab und gibt keine einzige islamistischen Terroristen zugeschriebene Tat, bei der Gift verwendet wurde.

Zweites Beispiel für den Einsatz von Zarqawis Namen für eine Propagandashow der US-Regierung: Am 9. Februar dieses Jahres veröffentlichte die New York Times Auszüge aus einem auf CD gespeicherten 17-seitigen Brief, dessen Kurier angeblich im Januar von amerikanischen Besatzungsstreitkräften in Bagdad oder von kurdischen Kollaborateuren im Nordirak festgenommen worden war. (Wie immer bei dieser Art lausiger Shows gibt es mehrere Legenden.) Der Kurier habe, so hieß es, gestanden, dass der Autor des Briefes Zarqawi sei und dass der Empfänger die geheime al-Kaida-Zentrale irgendwo im afghanisch-pakistanischen Grenzgebiet sein sollte.

Ein toller Fund! Der New York Times "exklusiv" auf dem Silbertablett serviert von Regierungs- und/oder Geheimdienststellen, die damit klare politische Absichten verfolgten. William Safire, der schamloseste und bissigste Kriegshetzer im durchaus differenzierten Spektrum der Times-Kolumnisten, feierte drei Tage später in einem Kommentar das seltsame Geschenk gebührend ab: Der abgefangene Brief sei der definitive Beweis, dass die kriegsbegründenden Behauptungen über eine ganz enge Zusammenarbeit zwischen Saddam Hussein und al-Kaida allesamt und von Anfang an richtig gewesen seien. Und der Brief zeige darüber hinaus, dass die Amerikaner dabei seien, den Krieg zu gewinnen und dass die Stimmung ihrer Gegner von Niedergeschlagenheit und Ausweglosigkeit gekennzeichnet sei.

Alles absolut zutreffend. In dem Brief stand tatsächlich genau das, was andere Autoren aus der Ecke der verrücktesten und skrupellosesten Kriegstreiber zuvor hineingeschrieben hatten. Die Wirklichkeit im Irak spiegelte sich in diesem Text überhaupt nicht, dafür aber das Wunschdenken und die Propagandathesen der US-Regierung.

In dem 17-seitigen Text bestätigt der angebliche Zarqawi, dass er höchstpersönlich für mindestens 25 der wichtigsten Anschläge im Irak verantwortlich gewesen sei und dass er seine Rolle künftig noch weiter ausbauen wolle. Er bestätigte ferner, dass die Terroristen überwiegend aus dem Ausland eingereiste internationale Mudschaheddin seien. Mit den Irakern selbst sei nämlich wenig anzufangen.

Mit Schmunzeln wird Präsident Bush auch folgende Situationsbeschreibung aus dem Fake-Brief gelesen haben: "America has no intention of leaving, no matter how many wounded nor how bloody it becomes. It is looking to a near future, when it will remain safe in its bases, while handing over control of Iraq to a bastard government with an army and police force that will bring back the time of Husayn and his cohorts. There is no doubt that our field of movement is shrinking and the grip around the throat of the Mujahidin has begun to tighten. With the spread of the army and police, our future is becoming frightening."

Der 30. Juni, an dem die US-Regierung in einer großen Propagandashow eine "souveräne irakische Regierung" ohne wirkliche Macht inthronisieren will, sei - so die Autoren des angeblichen Zarqawi-Briefes - für die Terroristen ein äußerst fatales Datum: "The Americans will continue to control from their bases, but the sons of this land will be the authority. This is the democracy, we will have no pretext." "Our enemy is growing stronger day after day, and its intelligence information increases." Die Zeit laufe den Terroristen davon, und ohne einen Durchbruch vor dem 30. Juni werde ihnen nichts anderes übrig bleiben, als ihre Sachen zu packen und das Land zu verlassen.

Es gebe nur eine Alternative, heißt es in dem Text: Mit massiven Terroranschlägen gegen die Schiiten müsse man diese zur bewaffneten Konfrontation mit der sunnitischen Minderheit provozieren, um ein Erwachen der Sunniten aus ihrer Lethargie herbei zu führen.

Der größte Schwachkopf unter den islamistischen Terroristen kann sich so etwas nicht einfallen lassen. Man hat so etwas, abgesehen von dem "Zarqawi-Brief", noch nie irgendwo gehört oder gelesen. Um auf so etwas zu kommen, bedarf es der perversen Phantasie von Kriegsstrategen, die sich angesichts wachsender Schwierigkeiten ihrer Besatzungspolitik nichts besseres vorstellen können als die Gruppen des Irak in einen hasserfüllten Krieg aller gegen alle zu hetzen. Die wirkliche Entwicklung scheint aber, Inschallah, in die entgegengesetzte Richtung zu gehen.

Den Brief hat Zarqawi nicht geschrieben. Den Amerikaner hat er wahrscheinlich auch nicht geköpft. Aber wer dann? Und für welche Propagandashow wird Zarqawis Name als nächstes eingesetzt werden?

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Trotz allen technischem Fortschritt, zurück in die Gedankenwelt der Steinzeit.

SPIEGEL ONLINE - 27. September 2004, 9:44
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,320090,00.html

Kerry und Bush knallhart

US-Wählerinnen wollen echte Kerle

Amerikanische Meinungsforscher haben herausgefunden: Maskuline Männer haben die besseren Chancen aufs Präsidentenamt. Vor allem Frauen seien von taffen Typen mit Macho-Allüren angetan, hieß es. Die Kandidaten Bush und Kerry haben die Botschaft längst verstanden.


George W. Bush, 58, republikanischer US-Präsident, und John Kerry, 60, demokratischer Präsidentschaftskandidat, bieten der Welt einen Wettbewerb der harten Kerle. Der Präsident aus Texas und sein Konkurrent aus Massachusetts zeigen sich als Angler, Jäger, Mountainbiker, Kite-Surfer, Holzfäller, Harley- und Pick-up-Fahrer. Der männlichste der Männer, so die Botschaft, ist der beste Mann fürs Präsidentenamt. Und damit liegen sie, so hat die demokratische Meinungsforscherin Celinda Lake in der Tageszeitung "USA Today" festgestellt, auf überraschende Weise voll im Trend. Denn nicht nur männliche Wähler fühlten sich von den taffen Typen in Jeans und Baumwollhemd angesprochen, gerade bei den Frauen seien in dieser Wahlperiode die Vorbehalte gegen hemdsärmelige Raubeine geschwunden:

"Was in der Vergangenheit als präpotent und als machohaft galt, hat jetzt bei den Frauen Konjunktur." Die Frauen wollen einen Beschützer, sie "wollen einen, der das tut, was Amerika zu seinem Schutz braucht". Und der Politikwissenschaftler David Paletz von der Duke-University haut in dieselbe Kerbe. Beide Amtsbewerber versuchten Ronald Reagan und Arnold Schwarzenegger nachzuahmen. Es gebe "in diesem Land einen sehr eng gefassten Begriff von Stärke", so Paletz: "Töte Tiere, hacke Holz mit einem Beil."

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2004

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Tankers near Nasiriya, Iraq, wait to load their fuel before making deliveries to American military bases.
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September 27, 2004
SUPPLIES
Truckers of Iraq`s Pony Express Are Risking It All for a Paycheck
By JAMES GLANZ

SAFWAN, Iraq - They go by names like Mac Daddy, Milkman and Tango One. When a snaking convoy of 18-wheelers is moving smoothly, they are cadillackin`. And when word crackles on the radio that the lead truck has passed from another impossibly rutted, kidney-bruising dirt road onto a stretch of asphalt, they are about to hit the hardball.

A few months ago, many of the truckers were driving for companies like Chick-fil-A and Office Depot. Now, lured by paychecks that are double or triple what they earned in the United States, these civilians are risking their lives - and occasionally losing them - to deliver things as mundane as detergent, spare parts, Froot Loops and fuel across hundreds of miles of hostile desert to the American troops in Iraq.

The scale of the operation is astonishing, with about 700 trucks on Iraqi roads on a typical day. The trucks deliver 40 million gallons of fuel a month, for example, and keep shelves stocked for half a million meals daily at more than 60 military bases across the country. And the fare at those bases is splendid, ranging from Omaha-cut steaks to deep-dish pizza to a respectable chicken Kiev. Whatever judgment history renders on this war, it will always be remembered as well victualed.

Many of the same convoys are heavily populated with Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Egyptians, Somalis and other drivers who receive their orders through translators in dusty staging areas but who take the same risks as the Americans. Few, if any, of the trucks are driven by Iraqis.

The motivations of the American drivers, who cruise the roads of Iraq and Kuwait listening to country music, Top 40 and the chatter on their radios, are not subtle.

"It`s all about money," said Ben Gay, a 42-year-old trucker from Tacoma, Wash., who is trying to pay off some credit-card debt. "The main reason I`m over here is just to better my family and myself.``

In addition to a substantial increase in pay - one driver said he made $30,000 a year in the United States and more than $80,000 in Iraq - those who remain in the country for more than 330 days a year earn a sizable tax break as well.

Like many of the drivers here, Mr. Gay served in the military, an experience he and others say often helps them cope with being shot at, shelled and bombed on a regular basis. The job also tends to bring with it a sense they are still serving their country. But who sticks it out and who decides to "demobe" - slang for demobilize or, more simply, go home - is unpredictable, the drivers say.
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A Pakistani driver sits on top of his oil tanker keeping an eye on the amount of fuel in his tank
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"You would think the macho, tough-guy, biker types would be the best," said Beryl Hudson, a trucker from Rathdrum, Idaho, who has been driving for nearly 30 years. "But some of them just buckle."

From Kuwait to Baghdad

On a grueling, two-day trip across 425 miles of those roadways, a New York Times reporter rode in two of the convoys - one delivering fuel and the other general supplies - as they made their way north from a main supply point in Kuwait to a depot outside Baghdad. As a condition for making the journey, the reporter agreed not to disclose either the precise route and location of staging areas or the exact number of vehicles in the convoy.

The trip revealed an operation of enormous scope and sophistication, but also one that is wide open to attack by insurgents at virtually every point along the way.

Drivers are forced to grapple with frequent breakdowns caused by extreme heat, blowing sand that fouls engine parts and the incessant beating from bad roads. Moving both in daylight and under cover of darkness, the convoys are tracked by satellite on huge electronic maps in Iraq and Kuwait, and the convoy commanders stay in touch with dispatchers using a sophisticated text messaging network, as if they were all members of an Internet chat group.

The trip took place a few days after the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It was a particularly violent stretch of days, when Iraq was convulsed with attacks of every description. But while the number of convoys was reduced on at least one of those days, they never stopped completely. "It`s like, the Pony Express still has to get through," said Ray Alderson, director of logistics for what is called the theater transportation mission at Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that has the main supply contract for the military.

Because the military could not function without those supplies, Mr. Alderson said, "you can`t say, `End this forever.` "

Kellogg Brown & Root`s contract with the Army, which has ballooned in wartime to a budget of nearly $7.8 billion, has been dogged by controversy. After accusations of overcharging and inefficiency by the company, the military is considering shifting away some of its work, and Halliburton has said it is weighing whether to sell its subsidiary.

With more immediate concerns on their minds, though, the drivers themselves seem to give little thought to the wider political calculus as they sit nervously in their trucks before a run.

"I just hope that the good Lord watches over us tonight," said Charles McDaniel, a civilian convoy commander from Forsyth, Ga., who uses the handle Mac Daddy, before leading a convoy of fuel tankers on a late-night run into Baghdad from the south over an especially dangerous stretch of road.

"Everybody from here on up will be on the edge," he said, "because you never know when it will happen."

Soon afterward, Mr. McDaniel, who like all the civilian drivers interviewed for this article works for Kellogg Brown & Root on a one-year contract that may be renewed at the company`s option, was on the radio soothing and exhorting his team as the convoy began to move through the darkness.

"Easy riders," Mac Daddy said, "these vehicles rolling."

A Multinational Crew

Preparations for the convoy trip began early one morning at a dust-blown staging area near Kuwait City called the theater distribution center, where a long line of heavily laden flatbed trucks sat idling.

Richard Daviss, a foreman at the distribution center, was standing next to a truck in the midst of a crowd of mostly Pakistani and Bangladeshi drivers, with several American drivers scattered around the edges. A spokeswoman for Kellogg Brown & Root said that although the "third country nationals" outnumbered American drivers in southern Iraq, Americans make up a majority of the foreign work force in the country as a whole.
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A KBR driver spoke with an American soldier during a convoy stop as it made its way through central Iraq.
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An American would be riding in the lead vehicle as commander and driving the last one as "bobtail" - a truck without a load that acts as a sort of sheepdog, rushing to help with any problems and making sure no one has drifted out of formation.

As someone translated into Urdu, Mr. Daviss introduced the commander, Joe Holyfield, who was wearing an oily, wide-brimmed Tilley hat under a hardhat and an orange reflecting vest with the words "Got Milk" written all over it in Magic Marker. His handle is Milkman.

There would be no easy way to communicate with the non-American drivers during the drive, so while the interpreter was still available, Mr. Holyfield gave them some instructions for dealing with breakdowns in insurgent territory.

"If you get a flat, please do not sit there in your seat and wait for him to fix it," Mr. Holyfield said, chomping on a cigar and pointing to the bobtail as the Urdu translation continued. "Don`t tell this man it`s his job; it`s not," Mr. Holyfield said, before conceding, "He`ll help you."

Mr. Gay, who would be driving the third vehicle in the convoy - a nicely appointed Volvo bearing a Kuwaiti license plate- said the danger and the language barrier sometimes created a volatile mix.

"They`re just as scared as we are," he said. "We have to give them the same ultimatum that we`re given, which is, `You got to get up north or you go home.` ``

Well-Founded Fears

No direct access to the foreign drivers was granted during the trip. But their fears were understandable: of roughly 30 convoys a day on the road in Iraq, an average of 10 are attacked, said Keith Richard, the regional project manager for Kellogg Brown & Root. Some 46 Kellogg Brown & Root employees have died in Iraq, including 16 while on convoys.

Nearly every driver has a story of coming under attack. Mike Smith, a 22-year veteran of the Army Rangers from Hattiesburg, Miss., who is the flatbed supervisor, sat hunched over during an ambush in April when a bullet blasted a hole through the cab six inches behind his head.

Now he walked down the line of flatbeds and checked the loads that the drivers would be risking their lives for: Humvee tires, tank treads, car jacks, huge containers of bleach and laundry detergent. "Somebody`s got to clean clothes," Mr. Smith said.

At 9:05 a.m. the convoy pulled out. "We rolling," Milkman said on the radio.

In Mr. Gay`s truck, Stevie Wonder was on the stereo. A pack of Marlboros sat on the dash next to his flak helmet, which along with his body armor he would not have to put on until they crossed into Iraq. As the Kuwaiti desert flowed past the windows, men with nicknames like Speed, Sandman, Primetime and Alabama bantered with the convoy commander.

The sense of disconnectedness with the surroundings grew when a truck immediately broke down, the convoy pulled over and Mike Salazar, a trucker from Houston, strode through the sand on the side of the road chatting with anybody who spoke English. Mr. Salazar - a.k.a. Speed - explained that he had come here to pay off a mortgage, but he grew animated only when he started to talk about a ranch for miniature horses that he and his wife own as a hobby.

"Once you seen them one time," Mr. Salazar said of the tiny horses, "you`ll fall in love with them."

The convoy pulled out again. By 11:05 the drivers had arrived at another base, still in Kuwait, where they picked up a military escort of several Humvees with weaponry, received an intelligence briefing and put on their body armor. The danger of attack on the road was expected to begin in the south and gradually increase as convoys approached Baghdad.

Two hours later, after a series of military checkpoints, the only indication that the convoy had passed into Iraq was a crowd of skinny children on the side of the road waving boxes of cigarettes for sale and making guzzling motions with their hands, suggesting that alcohol was available, too.

And after the sparkling prosperity of Kuwait, the houses suddenly become low cinderblock hovels in bleak country. For long stretches, children stood by the side of the road, spaced roughly 25 yards apart, apparently waiting for anything to fall off the trucks, even in open desert with nothing but sand dunes visible for miles.

But the road, a six-lane superhighway with little traffic, was good.

"We cadillackin`, baby," Milkman said. "Cadillackin`."

Poverty and Prayers

As truckers do, Mr. Gay talked about himself. He said he had heard about the job through friends and applied online. On Dec. 8, 2003, he flew to Kellogg Brown & Root`s headquarters in Houston for his first face-to-face interview; by Dec. 23, he was in Kuwait. Several truckers said that the speedy timetable was routine.

But then there were his new surroundings to deal with.

"My first trip across almost yanked my heart out," Mr. Gay said, referring to the begging children. "It was cold outside, it was raining, and they were out there doing this and it hurt. And the next time, it didn`t hurt quite as bad.

"And the more I went - I grew numb to it."

Around 4 p.m. the convoy came into another base, called Camp Cedar, near Nasiriya, and went through another elaborate queuing exercise in a gigantic lot before the drivers ate and bedded down for the night.

At the camp, Fletcher L. Smith Jr., a senior logistics coordinator, said it was useless to compare the operation to anything very familiar. "I don`t mean to make this sound trite," Mr. Smith said, "but it is what it is."

The next morning, Mr. McDaniel, Mac Daddy, was ready to lead a convoy of fuel tankers north to a camp called Scania, where they would wait and make a night run into Baghdad. With each mile they drove north, the risk of attack would grow, he told his group, which this time consisted mostly of Arabic speakers.

"Anything can happen once we roll out of the gate," Mr. McDaniel said, adding that he was naturally hoping that there would be no problems.

"Mafi mushkil, mafi mushkil," said the Arabic interpreter. "No problems, no problems."

Except for some horribly bumpy, unpaved roads on the way to Scania, all went well. Then came the long wait for the nighttime departure. Mr. McDaniel sat in the coffee tent and sketched out the family pressures that many of the drivers were under.

"My wife, she doesn`t like it," he said. "My mother, she doesn`t like it. My kids don`t like it."

But he said that the money and the camaraderie were so good that he would not leave anytime soon.

Among Mac Daddy`s drivers was Jeff Riggs, a trucker from Idaho who had been forced to abandon a rig in June after it had been disabled by gunfire. He had heard the dread words "Driver down!" on his radio, but had angrily replied that he was fine. Mac Daddy had been there that day, too.

As the convoy pulled away from Scania under a brilliantly starlit sky at 10:43 p.m., Mr. Riggs said softly, "Now you say your prayers and hope he`s listening."

They drove north, toward where the Big Dipper, looking enormous, was just beginning to sink below the horizon. Somewhere short of it was Baghdad.

The convoy arrived safely.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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September 27, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Look for Substance, Not Sizzle
By ADAM CLYMER

With President Bush and John Kerry set to debate on Thursday, American political journalism is proclaiming that the occasion is a crucial "test" for Mr. Kerry, and perhaps for Mr. Bush.

Indeed. But it`s also a test for journalists. Phony documents and dishonest advertising have captured more attention than the facts of the candidates` competing claims about health care, or whether either has a plan - a plausible plan - for Iraq. And neither candidate`s acceptance speech got widespread scrutiny.

But the debates provide critical moments when the public pays attention, when voters can measure one candidate against the other. And the press will, as it has for years, do a creditable job of summarizing what is said, broadcasting the encounters live and even printing transcripts.

That will not be enough. For just as the 2000 National Annenberg Election Survey showed that voters learned what candidates stood for by watching debates, other research has shown that the public`s views are influenced by what the news media emphasize.

The immediate judgments of television watchers can be changed by analysts citing a moment as a blunder or an overall presentation as strong or weak, commanding or uninformed, human or condescending. Often that impression has not even been conveyed by a seriously developed journalistic case, but by the trivia of television sound bites or reports in newspapers, like Al Gore`s sighs or his flawed recollection of just who accompanied him on a trip to a disaster in Texas. Or when George H. W. Bush glanced at his watch, a movement interpreted to prove that he was uncomfortable debating Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.

The test for journalists is whether they can appreciate the importance of the event and help voters make sense of what is said, checking the accuracy of claims about the past and the present and the plausibility of what is claimed for the future. It won`t do to say, "We covered that in August."

So if Mr. Kerry says he will solve the situation in Iraq by getting other countries to send more troops, the press needs to examine whether this could happen if he should win. And if Mr. Bush says he is going to solve the health insurance crisis with more community health care centers and fewer lawsuits, then journalists have to help voters determine whether Mr. Bush is offering cures or Band-aids.

The press in recent years has spilled a lot more important ink over debate style than substance, with dutiful fact-checking relegated to inside pages, and descriptions of candidates` manners and costumes - and above all, strategy accompanying the front-page accounts of what was actually said. It was not always that way. The accounts of the Kennedy-Nixon debates relied on accounts of what was said. So did the reporting of the 1976 debates. In that year and in 1980, articles pointing out major inaccuracies (like Gerald Ford`s assertion that Eastern Europe was not under Soviet domination or Ronald Reagan`s denial that he had ever said nuclear proliferation was not the United States`s business) made the front pages.

Sometime in the 1980`s political coverage began to confuse itself with drama criticism. The word "performance" started showing up frequently in debate analyses, and reporters started citing Samuel Beckett in their front-page articles.

By 2000, front-page articles were saying the language that mattered was "body language," and that the candidates offered "the distilled ether of two very different personalities," while reporters` efforts to correct the debaters` claims on tax plans and patients` rights were buried inside the newspaper. And even those fact-checking efforts were constrained by an effort to balance one candidate`s big mistakes against the other`s minor errors. Strategy and color do belong in the report, but only after telling how Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry propose to govern, and how much of what they say makes sense.

This is ultimately a challenge for newspapers because television isn`t interested, not even the cable networks with their longer political broadcasts. Indeed after watching the coverage of the Swift Boat story, it is easy to imagine an evenhanded cable exchange revolving around a political ad saying one candidate thought the earth was round. Its sponsor would be challenged on cable by someone who said the earth was flat. In an effort to seem fair to both sides, journalists can forget to be fair to the public.

Adam Clymer, the former Washington correspondent for The Times, is the political director of the National Annenberg Election Survey.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Powell says rebellion in Iraq intensifying
By Edward Alden and Thomas Catan in Washington and Mark Huband in London

Financial Times

Published: September 27 2004

Colin Powell, US secretary of state, said on Sunday that the revolt in Iraq was intensifying, in a departure from the Bush administration`s recent assessments of security in the country.

"We are fighting an intense insurgency," Mr Powell said on ABC television`s This Week programme. "Yes, it`s getting worse and the reason it`s getting worse is that they are determined to disrupt the election."

But Mr Powell joined top US military officials in insisting it would not undermine the planned elections, telling Fox News Sunday that it was "premature to judge that we cannot have full, free elections throughout the country".

President George W. Bush, who is campaigning for re-election, has insisted that "freedom is winning" in Iraq and at the weekend pointed to "steady progress" in rebuilding the country.

Last week Iyad Allawi, Iraq`s interim prime minister, on a visit to the US, insisted that the security situation in Iraq was not as bad as it was being portrayed by the media.

But Mr Powell`s comments echo those of the head of the private company co-ordinating security for contractors in Iraq, who said on Sunday that insurgents in the country will try to make it ungovernable in the run up to elections scheduled for January.

"There are spikes and troughs [in the violence], and we think there will be a `lost` period between now and January," warned Tim Spicer, chairman of Aegis Defence Services. "There`s a very serious insurgency problem going on. In the period running up to both the US and Iraqi elections, the enemy will try to make the place as dangerous and as ungovernable as possible."

Washington has in the past linked the growing violence in Iraq to its timetable for handing over power in Iraq. US officials said earlier this year that the growing violence was aimed at preventing the transfer of sovereignty, which occurred at the end of June. But instead of falling in the wake of the handover, attacks by insurgents have escalate d.

Mr Powell also confirmed on Sunday that he planned a conference for next month or early November on the future of Iraq, and that countries such as Syria, Iran and the Group of Eight industrial countries would be invited.

Mr Spicer was speaking in his first interview since the UK-based company won a $293m contract to co-ordinate the private security companies protecting civilian contractors involved in reconstruction projects. Aegis runs Iraq`s National Civil Military Operations Centre, in conjunction with coalition forces.

The insecurity facing the companies rebuilding Iraq has been highlighted by the kidnapping and slaughter of two Americans in the past 10 days. The fate of Kenneth Bigley, a British hostage held by a militant group led by Abu Musub al-Zarqawi, remains precarious.

Concerns about the ability of a relatively small company such as Aegis to provide security services throughout Iraq led to a dispute with Dyncorp, a rival security company, over the US defence departme nt decision`s to award it the contract.

DynCorp`s complaint to the US government`s general accountability office focused on Aegis`s relative inexperience and Mr Spicer`s personal involvement i n controversial military activities. The US government rejected DynCorp`s complaint last September.

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Key Bush assertions about Iraq in dispute
Reuters

27 September, 2004

By Adam Entous

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - Many of President George W. Bush`s assertions about progress in Iraq -- from police training and reconstruction to preparations for January elections -- are in dispute, according to internal Pentagon documents, lawmakers and key congressional aides on Sunday.

Bush used the visit last week by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to make the case that "steady progress" is being made in Iraq to counter warnings by his Democratic presidential rival, Senator John Kerry, that the situation in reality is deteriorating.

Bush touted preparations for national elections in January, saying Iraq`s electoral commission is up and running and told Americans on Saturday that "United Nations electoral advisers are on the ground in Iraq."

He said nearly 100,000 "fully trained and equipped" Iraqi soldiers, police officers and other security personnel are already at work, and that would rise to 125,000 by the end of this year.

And he promised more than $9 billion (five bill ion pounds) will be spent on reconstruction contracts in Iraq over the next several months.

But many of these assertions have met with scepticism from key lawmakers, congressional aides and experts, and Pentagon documents, given to lawmakers and obtained by Reuters, paint a more complicated picture.

TROOP, POLICE TRAINING

The documents show that of the nearly 90,000 currently in the police force, only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training. Another 46,176 are listed as "untrained," and it will be July 2006 before the administration reaches its new goal of a 135,000-strong, fully trained police force.

Six Army battalions have had "initial training," while 57 National Guard battalions, 896 soldiers in each, are still being recruited or "awaiting equipment." Just eight Guard battalions have reached "initial (operating) capability," and the Pentagon acknowledged the Guard`s performance has been "uneven."

Training has yet to begin for the 4,800-man civil intervention force, which will help c ounter a deadly insurgency. And none of the 18,000 border enforcement guards have received any centralised training to date, despite earlier claims they had, according to Democrats on the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee.

They estimated that 22,700 Iraqi personnel have received enough basic training to make them "minimally effective at their tasks," in contrast to the 100,000 figure cited by Bush.

"Let me tell you exactly what the story is. They`re saying they`re trying to train them, yet they have not trained," Senator Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on CNN.

The White House defended its figures, and a senior administration official defined "fully trained" as having gone through "initial basic operations training." Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command that covers Iraq, told NBC`s "Meet the Press" that the number of trained Iraqi forces "will continue to grow."

On CBS "Face the Nation," Republican Senator Lindsey G raham of South Carolina said Bush needed to deploy more troops to secure areas of Iraq before the elections.

"We are making progress, but we need to adjust," Graham said.

ELECTIONS, RECONSTRUCTION DISPUTED

The status of election planning in Iraq is also in question. Of the $232 million in Iraqi funds set aside for the Iraqi electoral commission, it has received a mere $7 million, according to House Appropriations Committee staff.

While Bush said the commission has already hired personnel and begun setting election procedures, congressional aides said preparations in other areas were behind schedule.

According to a one-page election planning "time line," registration materials are supposed to be distributed in early October and initial voter lists to go out by the end of October, which is during the holy month of Ramadan.

So far, the United Nations has been reluctant to send staff back into the battle zone. It only has 30 to 35 people now in Baghdad, no more than eight working on the elections.

" The framework for it (free and fair elections) hasn`t even been set up. The voter registration lists aren`t set. There have to be hundreds of polling places, hundreds of trained monitors and poll watchers. None of that has happened," Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State for President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, told ABC`s "This Week."

With the violence expected to intensify in the run-up to the elections, congressional experts were also sceptical $9 billion could be spent on reconstruction projects within several months, as Bush asserted.

A top Republican aide briefed by the administration said, "at best," the $9 billion would be disbursed by late 2005 or early 2006. A top Democratic aide called Bush`s projections "laughable."

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27.09.04: Martin Rowson on Tony Blair and Iraq

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Wenn nicht alle wählen dürfen, was ist daran auszusetzen, in den USA ist es doch auch nicht anders.

Democracy cannot be good in parts

The idea that some Iraqis should not be allowed to vote is a travesty
Peter Preston
Monday September 27, 2004

The Guardian
Sometimes there`s a tricky, twisty moment when a party goes on too long. You`re tired, you`re aching, you really have to go. So you edge to the door and look vaguely round for mine host. Sorry, it`s been wonderful, but it`s a way long home and my mother isn`t on top form and I promised ... mumble, mumble. But thank you very, very much for a lovely time.

And you scurry for the stairs as the words ring hollow on your lips. And you sound like Donald Rumsfeld.

Hey Donald! We thought you were in Iraq for as long as it took to see perfect democracy reign, until Baghdad was a Swiss-style model of purity for the Middle East? But now you cough and look around and head for the fire exit.

Well, what is perfection? "We had something like 200 or 300 or 400 people killed in the major cities of America last year and is that perfectly peaceful? No. What`s the difference? We just didn`t see every homicide in every major city in the United States on television every night."

Thank you and good night. The secretary of defence is talking about the moment when Iraq seems calm enough to quit. He is also talking about what kind of an election next January lets the Pentagon leave the party early.

For there`s a new tale in town, one eddying back and forth across a chorus of lips. Perhaps it began in Baghdad itself a couple of weeks ago when ministers started to say openly that not everywhere in Iraq needed to vote to make January a legitimate election. After all, in the US or the UK, 50% turn-out - or even 40%, come to that - was deemed viable enough to build an administration on. Why set the Baghdad bar higher?

Or perhaps the script was basically written further away, in a back office of Washington DC: for it was also a variation on the theme that George Bush and Iraq`s caretaker prime minister, Ayad Allawi, chanted on the White House lawn last week. Was there trouble in Iraq? Not on any national scale, they crooned. Maybe in no more than two or three provinces out of 18. Which turned out, on examination, to be the same number of provinces too prospectively unruly to vote next January if bloody push comes to violent shove.

Up to a point, that slipped by when they first sang their verses: inevitable but small omissions from the electoral rollcall, minor glitches to be remedied later. But look now, coldly at what`s involved. Welcome to the Sunni triangle, continuing heartland of resistance, rebellion and terrorism.

It stretches, you`ll remember, from Baghdad in the east to Ramadi in the west, and pokes north to Tikrit, Saddam`s home town; and never, of course, forget Falluja, boiling away in the middle. These aren`t small, insignificant spots. Falluja has upwards of a quarter of a million population, Ramadi is touching 400,000 - and the Sunni areas of Baghdad run into millions.

Now, how would Blair fare if he announced that the Hampstead triangle - from the Heath to Luton to Oxford and back - was too wild to vote next May, but that Islington, Chelmsford and Abingdon could go ahead as per normal? How would Bush deal with the loss of his Stetson square, otherwise Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin?

Yet that, in broadly proportionate terms and with all due seriousness, is what`s being suggested for Iraq. Any election, apparently, is better than none. A PR voting system based on nationwide party lists apparently makes it easier to leave Falluja or Ramadi out. Fifteen semi-peaceful provinces, at least, can do their own thing and confer a certain legitimacy on the rulers they choose. Apparently.

Mr Rumsfeld says that three-quarters of an election is better than none. But, of course, it`s rubbish - and rubbish made worse by that national voting system. How many millions of Sunnis would be denied their chance at the polls and thus their full, legitimate stake in the regime that follows Allawi? What use is a block vote if the blocks are knocked away? Where, when that happens, lies any hope of democratic acceptance and reconciliation?

There is no legitimate government waiting down that road. There is only a greater Shia Muslim hegemony founded on an exclusion that makes the 60% Shia majority more powerful yet. After our own dear rotten boroughs comes the rotten triangle. Why on earth suppose otherwise?

Because the bind is tighter and more desperate than ever. Because Mr Allawi, hanging on and bolstering his White House leader, needs something he can call a mandate. Because the Shias are (rightly) restive. Because western public opinion (full of voters itself) has been told to hail Iraqi democracy in a torrent of jargon about crucibles and epicentres.

The real debate, as usual, seems to sit between between the Pentagon and state department. Richard Armitage, Colin Powell`s outspoken point man, tells a congressional committee that "we`re going to have those elections in all parts of the country" and "open to all citizens". Donald Rumsfeld, meanwhile, observes that big American cities had hundreds of murders a year, so many that TV didn`t always get round to reporting them. But does that mean America can`t vote on November 2? No way, says Don. Turn out and beat the assault weapon ban.

And there, in the distance, you can hear the theme swell. George W talking down 9/11. After all, 47 out 50 states were totally unaffected. George W hailing the defeat of terrorism - at least in America, if not Indonesia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Madrid and points east. Here`s the solution we`ve been hungering for through the years, the ultimate miracle of half-full not half-empty. Call it the 50% solution, turned sunny side up. Lovely party. So sorry to go...

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This is really disgusting.
We put those men in harm`s way, then Bush and Rove sit behind guarded walls and decide
which way to best spin the war to get ther never-elected Governor another term in office.

"Attack" screams the White House.
"Stop the attack" they scream three days later.

Remember when Reagan`s White House overruled the Marine Commanders in Beirut?

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This was spun as, "...but Reagan knows what he`s doing."

Remember when Reagan`s White House told NASA, "The President wants Challenger up t-o-d-a-y,"
so Reagan could tell America about his great vision of the future was while the orbiter flew over their head?
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This was spun as, "...we never pressured NASA, not even a little bit,"
and the Democrats said, "Your word is good enough for us, Mr. President!"

Remember when Poppy Bush worried about his legacy of hate and greed and sent
our marines into Somalia without the armor they`d need to fight the local gangsters?
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They talk about this today like Clinton sent them there.


Now, in late 2004, Rove and his Monkey play "Risk" on the big stage

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and we`re stuck in an endless loop of "We`re winning for sure!"

Meanwhile, Clinton had a girlfriend so he`s the "scandal president."
http://www.bartcop.com/

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A European superstate is inevitable

Bush`s America does not have a divine right to global supremacy
Roy Hattersley
Monday September 27, 2004

The Guardian
The Lost Boys of the Tory party are planning another excursion into Never Never Land. John Redwood, the Eurosceptic who never grew up, has once more raised the prospect of renegotiating Britain`s membership of the European Union. His stated objective is a relationship which is "more closely modelled to what we originally joined".

Forget the weird syntax. Just estimate the possibility of France and Germany, not to mention the other member nations, agreeing to turn back the clock by 30 years or accepting that Britain alone can pick and choose among the aspects of the union from which it benefits and the obligations which it prefers to avoid.

The one thing to be said in Redwood`s favour is that he remains true to the greatest of all Conservative traditions - swimming against the tide of history. Over the next 20 years (about the time it will take for the Tories to become realistic contenders again) Europe will become more integrated not less. All the pressures, internal and external, make that inevitable. If you doubt it, read Stephen Haseler`s latest book. It sets out a series of self-evident truths that other Europhiles have been afraid to express. Its title is Super-State and superstate is what, sooner or later, Europe will become.

Haseler tells part of the story. The world`s largest economy with a stable common currency and a successful single market is, he rightly argues, bound to pursue policies that conflict with the interests of the US.

That makes the two "superpowers" competitors but not enemies. It also means that "core Europe" - the Franco-German alliance which Britain should join and make into a troika - is certain to lead the way towards distinctive defence and foreign policies. Only people who share the Bush belief that America has a divine right to global supremacy can complain about that.

The war in Iraq, supported in Europe only by America`s client nations, is the most dramatic example of the way in which transatlantic interests diverge. Haseler points to a more fundamental cause of the widening gap.

"Nato - the embodiment and instrument of American power in Europe - was a huge success." The fall of the Berlin wall and the dissolution of the Warsaw pact "changed everything". Europe no longer needs America and, on the basis of Henry Kissinger`s view that US troops were in Berlin to defend Baltimore, America no longer needs Europe. President Bush has not been slow to disengage. Neither he, nor his successors, could complain if Europe chooses to establish its own identity.

When Haseler discussed his ideas with a variety of Euro-experts and enthusiasts, they all examined his proposition in remarkably romantic terms. Europe would be built - or demolished - according to the way in which men and women reacted to great events. The liberal theory of history has rarely had a finer flowering. The inexorable pressures of economics were hardly mentioned. Even though they are the forces which have already made Europe a pseudo-superstate.

Thirty years ago, we joined a common market that was little more than a free trade area. Foolishly, Ted Heath promised no reduction in national sovereignty - instead of emphasising the strength that comes when sovereignty is pooled. But we all knew that the Zollverein was only the beginning. The free trade area begat a community and the community begat a union. At each step along the way, political and economic integration went hand in hand. It would not have been possible to run the single market, which Margaret Thatcher`s government supported with such enthusiasm, without a political and legal framework to enforce its acceptance and application.

The social chapter of the Maastricht treaty deserved support on its own merits. But half of Europe wants it applied to the whole union to make sure that Gradgrind welfare policies do not allow skinflint companies to undercut competitors in more progressive nations. Economic and political union cannot be separated. The free movement of capital and labour have to be politically defined and legally regulated. That is a necessity, not a matter of choice. An army and a unified foreign policy may be optional extras. A common competition policy - by definition a political proposition - goes, automatically, with a common external tariff.

The superstate - which does not require Brussels to dictate the shape of bananas in British shops - is historically inevitable. That is the only Europe on offer.

Is it possible that John Redwood, sometime fellow of All Souls, does not recognise that obvious fact? Or is he posturing to protect the Tories against the United Kingdom Independence party? The third, and most plausible possibility, is that he knows how Europe will develop and believes, but dare not say, that Britain should withdraw completely.

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irgendwo in Texas....

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Eine Rechnung mit vielen Unbekannten.
Der letzte Absatz des Artikels stellt auch den Vergleich zwischen Palestina und Irak in Frage und vergleicht den Überfall auf den Irak durch die USA eher mit dem Einmarsch Israels in den Libanon.

washingtonpost.com
From Jenin To Fallujah?

By Jackson Diehl

Monday, September 27, 2004; Page A19

Two and a half years ago this week, the Israeli army launched an offensive against the Palestinian towns of Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah and Bethlehem -- which, it said, had become havens for extremist groups and suicide bombers who made daily life in Israel unbearable. Images of flattened houses and civilian casualties soon filled the world`s television screens: Palestinian spokesmen claimed, falsely, that thousands were being massacred. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan declared himself "appalled." President Bush publicly called on Israel to withdraw "without delay." Some editorial writers -- such as this one -- argued that the offensive would do more harm than good.

As Americans and Iraqis now debate what to do about insurgent-held Iraqi towns, it`s worth revisiting that Israeli campaign -- because what followed offers a counter to some of the conventional wisdom. Yes, there are innumerable differences between the West Bank and Iraq. And yet the salient point is that through the robust use of military force, Israel has succeeded in reducing the level of violence it faces by more than 70 percent.

Despite occasional feints at diplomacy, the strategy pursued by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been unadulterated. Israeli forces have invaded and swept Palestinian towns and refugee camps repeatedly. They have carried out hundreds of "targeted killings" of suspected militants, often through air strikes. They have assassinated the Islamic clerics and political leaders who inspired the bombers. Not only has this relentless warfare not been leavened with reconstruction projects or a nation-building program, but Sharon has done his best to destroy existing Palestinian political and governmental institutions.

Yet it`s now undeniable that the "military solution" that so many believed could not work has brought Israelis an interlude of relative peace. In 2002, 228 Israelis died in 42 suicide bombings; in March 2002, as Sharon launched his offensive, 85 died in nine attacks. This year there have been 10 suicide bombings and 53 Israeli deaths; last week`s bombing in Jerusalem was only the second such bombing in more than six months. While the prospects for an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement remain dismal, and no one expects the violence to end, life in Israel has returned to something approaching normal.

The cost in lives has been lower than commonly believed. For example, in the invasion of Jenin`s refugee camp, Israel wiped out the leadership and infrastructure of terrorist organizations responsible for more than two dozen suicide bombings. But human rights groups later documented only 52 Palestinian deaths, of which 22 were civilians. Twenty-three Israeli soldiers died. Since 2002, Palestinian deaths have declined along with those of Israelis. The uproar over the offensive, and what has followed it, has seriously eroded Israel`s standing in Europe and elsewhere. But the consequences of that loss are mostly intangible.

So should the U.S. Army stop worrying about the collateral damage of an invasion of Fallujah? Of course not: The United States, after all, is still primarily focused on political goals in Iraq and not merely an end to car bombings. Yet the Israeli experience does suggest that it`s wrong to insist, as many in Washington do, that a military campaign against the terrorists` bases could not substantially improve security conditions for both Americans and Iraqis. The visuals would be awful and the outcry loud, on al-Jazeera and maybe at the United Nations. But if the reality were modest civilian casualties and heavy enemy losses, the result might be an opportunity to pursue the nation-building that now is stymied.

This raises another question: Could U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies duplicate the Israeli army`s success? Here the outlook is debatable. Israeli officials I`ve spoken to are themselves doubtful. One major reason for their military success, they say, has been superior intelligence: Thanks to decades of investment in human sources as well as high technology, Israeli forces know who their enemies are and are very good at finding them. Moreover, by 2002 there was a strong political consensus in Israel that there was no choice but to take the offensive against the terrorists and bear the inevitable costs. As the U.S. presidential campaign is demonstrating, Americans are deeply divided over whether the war in Iraq is worth fighting.

One thoughtful Israeli I spoke to said that as he watches the U.S. mission he thinks not of Jenin but of Lebanon. There, Israel`s 1982 invasion and subsequent attempt to fashion a new political order deeply divided its society and led to a losing situation from which retreat was all but impossible. It was 18 years before Israel finally exited from Lebanon and stopped the slow but excruciating accretion of its casualties. That history is not nearly as encouraging as the more recent tactical victory over terrorism -- but it`s another possible forecast of the American future in Iraq.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Bananenrepublik USA!

washingtonpost.com
Still Seeking a Fair Florida Vote

By Jimmy Carter

Monday, September 27, 2004; Page A19

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.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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WASHINGTON OUTLOOK
Bush Benefiting From Divided Nation`s Unity on Security
Ronald Brownstein

September 27, 2004

Has Sept. 11 tipped the 50-50 nation toward the GOP?

Less cryptically, is a political environment centered on national security issues allowing the Republican Party to break the partisan deadlock that has characterized U.S. politics for the last decade?

That`s the ominous question facing Democrats as Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and President Bush prepare for a debate on foreign policy Thursday night that could represent Kerry`s best opportunity to regain the initiative in a presidential race defined primarily by war and terrorism.

For the last decade, the parties have been as evenly balanced as at any time since the late 19th century. In 2000, Bush won the second-narrowest electoral college victory ever. Voters in 2000 returned a Senate divided exactly in half. Probably not since 1880 had a national election, measured from all angles, finished so close to a tie.

Our recent partisan standoff was built on a political landscape shaped almost entirely by economic and cultural concerns. National security was probably less relevant to the elections of the 1990s than any since the 1930s.

In an environment where cultural and economic views drove most decisions, neither party had a clear or lasting advantage. The unusual Republican gains in the 2002 congressional elections, and Bush`s lead now, raise the possibility that when security looms largest, the balance may tilt slightly toward the GOP. Or at least it does if Democrats can`t convince voters they will do as good a job safeguarding the country.

Security was the Democrats` downfall in 2002, when Bush became only the second president since the Civil War to see his party win both House and Senate seats in the first midterm election of his White House tenure. (Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1934, was the other.) Republicans pilloried Democrats for resisting the creation of a Department of Homeland Security without greater protections for union workers.

The argument was more than a little hypocritical, because Bush initially resisted the idea of a new department when Congress, led by Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, proposed it. But it worked largely because it reinforced the electorate`s preexisting assumptions about the parties.

Since the Vietnam War era, the default position for most voters has been to view the Republicans as tougher than Democrats on national security. That means in any partisan argument over how to keep the country safe, most voters are probably more inclined to trust Republicans until given a good reason not to.

It`s similar to the advantage that Democrats enjoy on healthcare and Social Security: No matter how much Republicans protest, most voters still believe Democrats are more committed to those priorities.

The problem for Democrats is that in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, security has eclipsed these domestic concerns. In the post-Sept. 11 world, strength trumps empathy.

A telling question in recent polls has asked voters whether it is more important that the next president be a strong leader or someone who cares about people like them. Voters, by a solid majority, have preferred a strong leader.

Bush is banking on it. He is running for reelection after a first term virtually certain to leave him as the only president since Herbert Hoover to suffer a net loss of jobs during his term. And since he took office, the federal deficit has hit record heights, the median family income has fallen, poverty is up and the number of Americans without health insurance has jumped by nearly 5.2 million.

In most times, a president running on that record probably wouldn`t be favored, and all of those issues could still hurt Bush. But he has regained the lead in this year`s race because he has reestablished crushing advantages over Kerry on questions relating to security.

Democrats, with considerable justification, complain that Republicans such as Vice President Dick Cheney and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) are fanning unreasonable fears by arguing that terrorists would be more likely to strike again if Kerry won, or would even prefer his victory.

But those charges aren`t at the center of Kerry`s difficulties: His real problem is that Bush has convinced most voters he has a stronger backbone and a clearer vision of how to protect America.

To his credit, Kerry has worked hard at establishing credibility as commander in chief, devoting virtually his entire convention to that goal. But he has been torn between a desire to project strength (which encourages him to minimize differences with Bush on questions such as maintaining the U.S. troop commitment in Iraq) and the imperative of providing voters a clear contrast with the president.

Last week, he may have finally squared that circle when he argued that the war in Iraq had weakened U.S. security by diverting attention from Al Qaeda, alienating allies and deepening anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world. To stay safe, Kerry argued, America needs both strength and judgment.

That case puts Kerry in a stronger position at Thursday`s debate to exploit lingering public unease about Bush`s decision to invade Iraq without appearing too dovish. But it also raises the stakes for Democrats in the election.

After some hesitation, Kerry is now making what most party experts consider the best argument against Bush on the campaign`s central issue. And Kerry is pressing that case as violence in Iraq daily dramatizes the war`s costs.

If Bush wins another term, many Democrats will likely point to Kerry`s flaws as a candidate. But a Bush victory would force Democrats to consider the possibility that in a country split evenly on other issues, security has become a thumb on the scales for the GOP.

If Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, can`t neutralize the Republican advantage on defense, what are the odds that, say, Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York could do so in 2008?

Ronald Brownstein`s column appears every Monday. See current and past columns on The Times` website at http://www.latimes.com/brownstein .





Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/192327_williams26.html

Bush`s dismal policy failures in tax cuts and Iraq are being sold as achievements

Sunday, September 26, 2004

By WALTER WILLIAMS
GUEST COLUMNIST

During his first term, George W. Bush has inflicted more damage on the nation`s people than any other president in the post-World War II era. Not only has the Bush administration failed, it has been far and away the most dangerous presidency in this period.

No other administration has seen itself above the law or so disregarded the Constitution by attacking the venerable institutions created to uphold democracy. In addition, the Bush presidency pushed through its policies by employing a calculated lawlessness that featured both deception and secrecy. A couple of examples help illustrate the administration`s use of subterfuge.

The wanton level of deception became clear early on when the first tax cut was sold with the claim that those with the lowest earnings did better than the highest-income families. As data and analysis became available, however, it was clear that claim depended on statistical trickery. The biggest beneficiaries were the top 1 percent of the population, who received more than twice as much from the total amount of tax reductions as the bottom 60 percent.

Another example involves the Medicare bill. To pass the legislation, the administration promised reluctant conservatives that the legislation would cost less than $400 billion over 10 years. After enactment, the administration admitted that Medicare would cost $530 billion.

It also came out that the Medicare actuary, a career civil servant, had earlier projected the cost at around $550 billion. After Congress requested the actuary`s numbers, the administration threatened to fire him if he turned over his projection. He did not.

Later the administration`s threats that blocked the actuary were adjudged illegal. Yet the lawless behavior won the day, with the legislation acclaimed as a great triumph for the president. Deception became the administration`s primary weapon.

The Bush administration`s two most important policy thrusts -- the three tax cuts and the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq -- were sold with similar tactics, including the withholding of critical information needed by Congress and the public to make informed judgments.

The nation thereby was duped into buying two flawed policies that quickly resulted in devastating failures.

Tax cuts disproportionately benefited the rich, turned a budget surplus into the largest deficits in history, produced weak economic and job growth, and brought the worse income disparities since the `20s.

Invading Iraq was a questionable call from the beginning because that country had become a mere shell after the Gulf War. In contrast, North Korea and Iran, the other two members of the president`s "axis of evil," posed much greater nuclear threats. Even more incomprehensibly, the administration turned its attention away from Afghanistan before capturing Osama bin Laden, the architect of 9/11.

The shift in policy generated a frightening rise in Muslim hatred of the United States, caused incalculable harm to America`s reputation as the world`s moral leader and increased the threat of world terrorism.

Why did these disastrous policies come on George W. Bush`s watch?

The answer is the administration`s gross mismanagement stemming from ideologically driven incompetence and lawlessness. The lawlessness of this administration far exceeds that of any postwar presidency, including that of Richard Nixon.

Two dogmas drove the Bush administration. The first involved the return to Ronald Reagan`s embrace of anti-governmental market fundamentalism. The second was the unshakeable neoconservative belief that Iraq was the epicenter of worldwide terrorism.

Not even Reagan was as ideological as Bush has been in his holding so unswervingly to the two dogmas in the face of strong contradictory evidence. In a direct comparison, no Reagan policy had a higher place on his agenda than deep reductions in the top tax brackets. He threw all his political power into pushing through by far the largest tax cut in history at that time, with the biggest gains going to the wealthiest citizens.

But the consequent reality of surging budget deficits then persuaded the administration to raise taxes three times, albeit, not enough to stop the flow of red ink.

Bush, like Reagan, forced through a huge first-year tax cut mainly benefiting those with high incomes. It too exploded into massive budget deficits. But unlike the Reagan administration, the response of Bush and his close advisers has been to cling to their ideological beliefs.

They have ignored the overwhelming evidence that the first tax cut had been too deep and repeated the error with more tax cuts the next two years. Bush`s tax policy turned a budget surplus in 2000 of $236 billion, or 2.4 percent of GDP, into a Congressional Budget Office-projected deficit of $477 billion, or 4.2 percent of GDP in 2004.

In their April 2004 report "Tax Returns," Isaac Shapiro and Joel Friedman, senior fellows at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, wrote: "The swing of 6.6 percentage points of GDP is the sharpest deterioration in the nation`s fiscal balance since World War II."

Together with an almost total lack of spending restraints, the tax cuts have created a gaping imbalance between federal revenues and expenditures, and thus massive budget deficits.

Even so, Bush chose not to follow his three predecessors -- Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton -- in increasing income taxes, or the latter two in working with Congress to develop and maintain strong expenditure controls.

Turning to Iraq, two costly errors exemplify and summarize myriad other mistakes. First, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld decided to field a relatively small invading force in order to demonstrate the superiority of the more mobile army he saw as the wave of the future.

This decision ignored strong warnings from experts, such as the former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, that far more troops would be needed in the occupation stage. Even when the problem of insufficient troops became clear, Rumsfeld refused to abandon his concept.

Second, Rumsfeld invaded Iraq without a strategy for stabilizing that nation, dismissing completely a well-thought-through State Department plan developed in the Future of Iraq project. The State Department effort spelled out many of the difficulties that would arise and that likely could have been avoided or mitigated had the administration followed it.

Rumsfeld`s unwillingness to change direction proved to be particularly costly. The occupation continues to be plagued by a lack of troops and planning.

One deep institutional result of the stubbornness of Rumsfeld and the president is highlighted by Stanley Kutler`s review of the Stephan Halper and Jonathan Clarke book, "America Alone":

"Halper and Clarke denounce the Bush administration for effectively co-opting `important allies and entire government agencies in a pattern of deceit.` The administration, they believe, created `a synthetic neurosis,` which it buttressed by exploiting the Sept. 11 attack. The price was enormous, they say, with `substantial damage` to both core American political institutions and to `American legitimacy.` "

Among the nation`s postwar foreign policies, Iraq is likely to rank with Lyndon Johnson`s tragic course in Vietnam as the two efforts causing the most long-term damage to the United States` national security, internal political cohesiveness and international standing.

In both the tax-cut and Iraq cases, whatever the reasons -- stubbornness, arrogance or ideological rigidity -- the decisions reflected a common administration response in the face of sound contradictory evidence.

One aspect of administration policy has worked, however.

Amazingly and unfortunately, the dismal policy failures in pursuing the tax cuts and the invasion and occupation of Iraq are being sold as achievements during the presidential campaign and apparently being bought by large numbers of the public.

The Bush administration`s strong suit has been its political propaganda machine. From the first tax cut introduced at the outset of the presidency, the administration has exploited every trick in the books to win the public to its side.This makes it imperative that the electorate has hard evidence readily available showing the dimensions of the failed presidency. What`s needed is to provide a solid base for refuting the administration`s deceptive presidential campaign, which has used alchemy to change the hard reality of its disastrous policy performance into untruths that proclaim a successful four years.

If not, the most polarizing and likely the most important election in the 60 years since World War II ended will be decided on misinformation and a distorted imagery that covers over a failed presidency.

The reasons to vote against Bush in the upcoming election go beyond partisanship. The nation has become an entrenched plutocracy ruled by immensely wealthy individuals and the leaders of corporate America. It closely resembles the Gilded Age of a hundred years earlier with its concentrated wealth and robber barons. I truly fear for my country -- not because of the threat of terrorist attacks but because the nation`s constitutional framework is being destroyed.

I do not believe the destruction is purposeful on Bush`s part. Nonetheless, that he sees himself as a patriot defending the nation does not refute the hard evidence that his misguided policies, based on now-disproved theories, are in fact destroying the American republic created by the Founders.
THIS WEEK ON THE P-I EDITORIAL PAGE

Monday: Under George W. Bush, the United States has become a government of the corporation, by the corporation and for the corporation, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln`s Gettysburg Address.

Tuesday: The decision-making process in Bush`s first term has been driven by ideologically driven incompetence.

Wednesday: Today there exists more imbalance in the three-branch federal system of government than at any time in the post-World War II era .

Thursday: Two main factors distinguish the performances of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush: the skill of their top policy advisers and the differences in the political environments in which they operated.

Friday: Bush`s first term should rate near the bottom among all the presidents since 1789.

Walter Williams is a professor emeritus at the University of Washington`s Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs and is the author of "Reaganism and the Death of Representative Democracy."

© 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Nach Aussage von Mussolini sollte der Faschismus besser Corporatismus heißen.

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/192341_williams27.html

Uncle Sam is hard at work for U.S. corporations

Monday, September 27, 2004

WALTER WILLIAMS
GUEST COLUMNIST

In assessing President Bush`s four-year economic performance, the standard measures show overwhelmingly that his record puts him at the bottom among the post-World War II presidents.

Also, the average family has lost ground during Bush`s presidency. Since 2000, median family income (adjusted for inflation) has dropped by $1,535, or 3.4 percent, to $43,318.

When the eight previous postwar recoveries are measured two years out from their low points, the average annual real growth rate is 5.7 percent. Bush`s economic growth rate is one-third lower at 3.6 percent, the lowest annual growth rate except for his father, George H.W. Bush.

George W. Bush has the worst performance on job creation of the postwar presidents with roughly a million net jobs lost since his inauguration. He will join Herbert Hoover as the only presidents to experience such a net decline of jobs.

In 2003, the number of people in poverty and those with no health insurance rose for the third straight year. Since 2000, the ranks of the poor had increased by 4.3 million persons. The number of individuals who were uninsured reached a record high of 45 million. Bush`s 2003 budget deficit of $445 billion is the highest in history.

In the face of such results, Bush has sought to put the blame on extraordinary difficulties, such as the recession and the terrorist attacks, and claim that he has turned the economy around. His administration has ballyhooed 12 straight months of job gains that yielded 1.7 million new jobs -- an average of 140,000 new jobs a month -- as a signal achievement.

These gains, however, fall almost 40 percent below the average increase of 230,000 jobs a month at comparable points after the last two recessions in the early `80s and early `90s.

Thus, the Bush administration`s one-year shortfall is over a million new jobs (12 months times 90,000 fewer jobs) less than the average performance by Presidents George H.W. Bush and Clinton.

The assertion that his performance has suffered because of more difficult problems is questionable. What Bush confronted, even the attacks, were not necessarily tougher economic challenges than those faced by past presidents. Rather Bush`s dismal performance on almost every economic measure comes from his inefficient tax cuts totaling $1.7 trillion.

Such tax reductions stimulated economic activity but were far too costly and became the main cause of the massive deficits. In their April 2004 report , "Tax Returns," Isaac Shapiro and Joel Friedman, senior fellows at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities wrote that "the tax cuts are responsible for more than half of 2004 deficit."

Efficient stimuli would have been concentrated on putting funds in the hands of those who would spend it rapidly. Shapiro and Friedman have noted that Bush spurned the most efficient means, such as extending unemployment insurance benefits that generate 73 cents per dollar of lost revenue. Instead, he unwisely opted for a dividend tax reductions that only generated 9 cents, and hence far greater budget deficits.

The most dangerous results from Bush`s economic policies are those that have provided corporate America and the wealthy a disproportionately high share of the benefits and greater power at the expense of ordinary citizens.

Columbia University historian Alan Brinkley has written: "Since 1932, we have not had a president who has been more closely allied with business and more sympathetic to large and powerful corporations."

During the past three years, Bush`s tax cuts have provided as much of his total reduction in income taxes to the top 1 percent of the population, whose average yearly earnings are $1.2 million, as to the bottom 80 percent. The middle class now has a larger share of the tax burden and faces a materially heightened threat to its long-term economic security.

The worsening income disparities between the rich and ordinary citizens -- the greatest since the 1920s -- have been a major factor pushing the nation into plutocratic governance. The tax reductions for the wealthy and major business firms provided money that helped fuel the campaigns of Washington politicians.

Under George W. Bush, the United States has become a government of the corporation, by the corporation and for the corporation, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln`s Gettysburg Address. Such an entrenched plutocracy is totally incompatible with the form of governance created by the Constitution to support representative democracy.

This dimension of Bush`s failed fiscal policies carries his performance into a different, frightening realm from his postwar predecessors. My overall assessment is that Bush`s four-year economic record is not only the worst in the postwar era but also by far the most dangerous for America`s future economic and political health.

Walter Williams is a professor emeritus at the University of Washington`s Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs and is the author of "Reaganism and the Death of Representative Democracy."

© 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Europe to Bush: Go away
Even British prefer Kerry for president
- Vivienne Walt, Chronicle Foreign Service
Monday, September 27, 2004

Paris -- "Why Bush must be beaten," screamed the headline of Le Nouvel Observateur, a left-leaning French newsweekly. Smaller type above the U.S. president`s half profile provided the answer: "His re-election will be a catastrophe for the world and for America."

That sentiment may have been expressed more bluntly than the opinions of many Europeans, yet it captured the passions on this continent over who will occupy the White House come January.

Poised halfway between the political wrangling in Washington over the war in Iraq and the suicide bombs and kidnappings in Baghdad, Europeans have rarely felt so involved in a U.S. presidential race.

Many Europeans, analysts and regular citizens alike, argue that their own security is increasingly at risk, while violence spirals in Iraq and anti- Western hostility hardens in Europe`s backyard -- the Arab world.

Some on the continent have suggested, only half-jokingly, that with one superpower remaining in a globalized world, Europeans ought to have a say in who should be America`s next president.

"Americans will choose their president, and the rest of the world will have to live with that decision," said Bernhard May, a senior analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. "All we can do is talk to people."

Perhaps mirroring sentiments on the other side the Atlantic, Europeans who dislike Bush are not necessarily strong supporters of John Kerry.

"Europe is get-rid-of-Bush country, which is not quite the same as Kerry country," said Guillaume Parmentier, head of the Center on the United States at the French Institute for International Relations in Paris.

He said the continent`s hostility toward Bush began long before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, dating back to Bush`s decision in 2001 to reverse President Bill Clinton`s support for the Kyoto Protocol on global warming -- a cherished cause for many European politicians. "Iraq just made it worse," Parmentier added.

Yet European`s good-guy, bad-guy approach to the presidential race is simplistic, say some analysts. "In substance, there is no such black-and-white picture," said May, a specialist on German-American relations.

May points out that Kerry has already made clear his belief that Europe should participate more in Iraq`s reconstruction. The Democratic candidate has called for sending European troops to help with January`s elections in Iraq. The county`s first democratic elections will probably require thousands of peacekeeping troops to secure election monitors and polling sites amid escalating violence.

Europeans might find it hard to provide such help, because tens of thousands of their soldiers are already deployed in Afghanistan and the Balkans. Yet it would be harder for the continent`s leaders to refuse the man they greatly prefer for president over Bush, says May.

"If Kerry is elected, he`ll present us with this challenge perhaps in his very first week in office," May said. "Bush won`t put the same kind of pressures on Europeans to help out. He`s been rebuffed before."

A survey published this month by the Program on International Policy Attitudes in Washington, which conducts polls on global issues, found that Europeans overwhelmingly opposed Bush`s re-election. Kerry was the favored candidate even in Britain, the Bush administration`s closest ally. There, 47 percent of those interviewed said they would choose Kerry, compared with 16 percent for Bush.

Not surprisingly, anti-Bush feelings were strongest in countries whose governments have based their foreign policies on refusing to join the U.S.- dominated coalition in Iraq. In Germany, 74 percent said they would back Kerry, compared with 10 percent for Bush, while in France only 5 percent said they would vote for Bush, and 63 percent said they supported Kerry.

Both French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder rejected Bush`s requests to support military action in Iraq last year and have staked their leadership in Europe on that stance.

In Spain, Kerry`s lead over Bush was only slightly narrower: 47 to 7 percent. Spain`s Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, won election last March almost entirely on the promise to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq. Zapatero`s predecessor, Jose Maria Aznar, was a frequent White House visitor and had a growing personal relationship with Bush at the time he was ousted.

Europe`s complex feelings about U.S. politics are hardly new. The two continents have for centuries looked to each other for cultural inspiration as near-mirrors of each other through the years. But this year`s campaign has brought a new tension over Americans` political choices.

"There`s this usual tradition of a love-hate relationship," said Jean- Gabriel Fredet, one of two journalists who wrote the mid-September Nouvel Observateur cover story pleading for Bush`s defeat. "But now there`s a growing anxiety about the world`s sole superpower," he said in an interview. "Excuse the cliche, but it`s true."

Fredet`s article listed numerous reasons why Bush should go: "unprecedented" American isolationism since 2000; "unequaled arrogance" in Bush`s leadership style; intolerant religious fervor; and the growing millions of Americans without proper health insurance. On a continent with largely free health services, many Europeans cite that last reason as their major dislike for the U.S. system and are often dumbfounded about why Americans do not push politicians for universal health care.

Despite the overwhelming support among Europeans, Fredet says that few people expect dramatic changes if Kerry defeats Bush.

"Of course we believe Kerry will change things only in a slight way," he said. "But at least he will do it in a more polite way."

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/09/27/M…
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

Monday, September 27, 2004

Violence Kills 23
US Soldiers Wounded at Karama

Al-Arabiyah is reporting that guerrillas detonated a car bomb near a national guard facility in Mosul, killing or wounding several persons on Monday morning. Also, US war planes attacked Sadr City on Monday, killing 5 and wounding 48. Al-Arabiyah showed wounded children in the hospital. A rocket slammed into Karrada in Baghdad, killing one person and wounding several others.

On Sunday, wire Services report that guerrillas detonated two car bombs at Karama, east of Fallujah, outside an Iraqi national guard base. The bombs wounded "several" US and Iraqi soldiers.

In the Tamim district of Ramadi, fighting between US Marines and Sunni Arab nationalists left 4 Iraqis dead and 10 wounded.

In Baghdad, a rocket landed in a busy shopping street in the city centre, killing one person and wounding several others.

US military forces engaged guerrillas near Baquba in the east, and in the course of the fighting a farmer was killed in the crossfire.

US warplanes bombed Fallujah again on Sunday, more than once, attempting to strike at a meeting of Monotheism and Holy War downtown. The US struck three times in 24 hours. Hospital officials said they received 8 dead and 22 wounded, including women and children. Residents asserted that many victims remained buried under the rubble.

Guerrillas at Latifiyah just south of Baghdad launched an attack on a group of gasoline tankers, in which they killed 10 persons and wounded 26 on Saturday. They sprayed machine gun fire at the tanker trucks, setting all five ablaze, after which they engaged in a running gun battle with members of the National Guard who were accompanying the convoy.

In Baqubah, the US military arrested a high officer in the Iraqi National Guard whom they suspect was actually working for the Sunni Arab nationalist forces. Talib al-Lahibi was a former officer in the Baath army. Most close observers believe that the Iraqi national guards, police and bureaucracy are riddled with double agents working for the cause of expelling the US rather than for the caretaker goverment.

posted by Juan @ 9/27/2004 06:30:59 AM

Bush Falsehoods about Iraq

Adam Entous of Reuters (siehe #22040)is too polite to put it this way, but the conclusion is easily extracted from his article that Bush played fast and loose with the facts on Iraq last week.

Bush said that the UN electoral advisers are on the ground. In fact, there are only a handful there because it is so dangerous. Voter registration hasn`t been conducted. Almost no preparations have been made, and the poor security situation may prevent them from being accomplished.

Bush spoke of 100,000 "fully trained and equipped" Iraqi soldiers & police.

In fact, only 22,700 Iraqi troops and police have received even minimal training, and only a few thousand are fully trained. The article is worth reading in full, and by the time you get to the end it is clear that Bush was either lying or ignorant, neither of these being a good posture for a president.

posted by Juan @ [url9/27/2004 06:01:44 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2004_09_01_juancole_archive.html#109626424490832569[/url]

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Bush stands by aircraft carrier speech
Defends declaring major conflict over in words to troops

By Patrick Healy, Globe Staff | September 27, 2004

MADISON, Wis. -- President Bush said in a television interview airing tonight that he does not regret flying to an aircraft carrier in May 2003 and announcing an end of major combat in Iraq -- under the banner "Mission Accomplished" -- despite the subsequent deaths of some 900 US military personnel from ongoing turmoil in that country.

According to excerpts of the interview with Fox News`s "The O`Reilly Factor," Bush said twice that he would "absolutely" still don a Navy flight suit and make the declaration if he had to do it over again -- a comment that Democratic rival John F. Kerry attacked yesterday in hopes of tripping up Bush with his own words by depicting him as a leader who refuses to admit, or learn from, his mistakes.

"I`m saying to the troops, on this carrier and elsewhere, thanks for serving America," Bush told Fox News. "And by the way, those sailors and airmen loved seeing the commander in chief. . . . These kids had been on a very long cruise. They`d been on a cruise to both, in two theaters of war now, Afghanistan and Iraq. I flew out there and said thanks. Thanks on behalf of a grateful nation. You bet I`d do it again."

Bush also stood by the decision earlier this year to withdraw US forces from Fallujah, a focal point of the anti-American insurgency in Iraq, because he believed the fighting there could have jeopardized the transfer of sovereignty to Iraqi officials in June. Fallujah has since become a haven for terrorist activity as well, US military commanders say, and is believed to be a base of operations for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian considered to be the mastermind behind a series of kidnappings and beheadings in Iraq this year.

"A lot of people on the ground there thought that if we`d have gone into Fallujah at the time, the interim government would not have been established," Bush said.

The Kerry campaign inserted a new attack over these statements into a speech by the Massachusetts senator upon his arrival yesterday afternoon in the battleground state of Wisconsin, where he and a dozen senior advisers have gathered for four days of practice and coaching for this Thursday`s first presidential debate in Miami, which will focus on foreign policy.

"When the president landed on that aircraft carrier, 150 of our young sons and daughters had given their lives [in Iraq]. Since then, tragically, since he said `mission accomplished,` tragically, over 900 [more] have now died," Kerry told about 250 supporters at this capital city`s airport. "But the president continues to live in a fantasy land of spin. George Bush owes the American people the truth, and he owes the troops the truth.

"I will never be a president who just says `mission accomplished.` I will get the mission accomplished -- that`s the difference," Kerry said.

Advisers to Kerry said they believed the president had made a serious tactical error by standing by the 2003 event on the USS Abraham Lincoln, given the bloodshed since then. Some advisers compared the potential damage for Bush to the drubbing that Kerry took when he told reporters at the Grand Canyon in August that he did not regret his 2002 Senate vote authorizing war against Iraq even though no major weapons or other links to Al Qaeda were found there; some Democrats were mystified by the remark, while the Bush camp used it to assail Kerry`s views about Iraq as fuzzy and inconsistent.

"I don`t think the president realized how much trouble this comment is going to get him in," said one senior Kerry adviser, who insisted on anonymity to discuss political strategy.

Stephanie Cutter, the Democrats` communications director, said that attacking Bush as a stubborn leader who has misled Americans about Iraq is one of the campaign`s chief themes heading into Thursday`s debate. Cutter said that Kerry and others learned from the debates between Bush and Al Gore in 2000 that it was critical not only to perform well at the face-off, but also to win the "spin war" afterward by creating a negative image for Bush and reinforcing it relentlessly to voters. In 2000, Cutter said, the Bush camp influenced many voters to feel that Gore was an "exaggerator" who promoted his role in issues and events, such as Gore`s statement at one debate that he was traveling with the Federal Emergency Management Agency head, James Lee Witt, to view fires in Texas, when, in fact, he was not.

"I think what everybody learned from 2000 is that the Bush people went in with a theory of that debate, and no matter what happened, they stuck with that theory. They won the spin war," Cutter told reporters on Kerry`s campaign plane yesterday.

Among the Kerry aides traveling to a resort about 50 miles outside Madison for the debate practice are campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill, strategist Robert Shrum, advisers Joe Lockhart and Jonathan Winer, foreign policy adviser Susan Rice, former Clinton White House lawyer Gregory Craig, and former Gore adviser Ron Klain. Craig is playing the role of Bush in mock debate sessions with Kerry, the first of which was held recently at the senator`s Beacon Hill townhouse. Kerry`s wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, planned to arrive in Wisconsin last night.

Kerry has previously watched videotape recordings of some of Bush`s past debates, such as against incumbent governor Ann Richards of Texas, who he unseated, and recently read an article in the Atlantic Monthly about Bush`s debating style, Cutter said.

Meanwhile, former Massachusetts governor William F. Weld appeared on "Fox News Sunday" to talk about what he learned about Kerry`s debating skills during their contest in 1996, when Weld unsuccessfully challenged Kerry for his Senate seat.

"I think his strength is that he knows the issues absolutely cold, particularly the domestic issues," Weld said. "And he`s one of the most articulate people in public life, if not the most. . . . In debate, I think a particular strength of his is the ability to pivot and change the question to the topic that he really would prefer to discuss."

Asked whether Kerry had any debating weaknesses, Weld said: "He may be a little bit academic on the issues, because he`s so interested in the minutiae of public policies that it might be possible to draw him to meander a little bit. Some of the answers could perhaps be shorter."

Patrick Healy can be reached at [e-mail].
© Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Crockett & Lawrence: `Gallup polls: Conditioning the public for vote rigging?`
Date: Monday, September 27 @ 10:21:39 EDT
Topic: Election 2004

By Stephen Crockett and Al Lawrence

The recent polls showing a large Bush lead seem to be designed to either discourage Democratic voters and/or condition the American public for a Bush victory based on vote rigging. The methodology that seems to be in use by Gallup and most other polling firms connected to large corporations are greatly over weighted to give Republicans excessive representation and do not give sufficient weight to Democratic voters based on historical voting trend. Polls by independent polling organizations that are using properly weighted samples (like Zogby, Pew Research, Harris and others) are not showing a significant Bush lead and some have Kerry ahead!

While most political analysts predict the largest Democratic voter turn-out in history, Gallup is predicting in their methodology that Republicans will be 7-8% more of the total electorate than Democrats actually voting on election day. Based on the most recent elections, Democrats have usually been 7-8% more of the total electorate when the actual votes were counted. The swing in numbers using Gallup`s distorted methodology would tend to give Bush a "fake" lead in the neighborhood of 15%.



As voters, we need to ask ourselves "why Gallup would use a methodology that would almost definitely mean that their election predictions would be wrong?" These writers are somewhat baffled in answering that question. Why would Gallup want to give the false impression of a Bush lead?

It is interesting to note that James Clifton, who bought the Gallup organization, is a big Republican donor. He gave thousands to Right Wing Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herman Cain. (See http://www.opensecrets.org) Cain ran as a huge backer of cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans. This is essentially the same tax position supported with vigor by the Bush-Cheney ticket.

The Bush Administration has been re-writing the tax codes, labor regulations and business laws to give more wealth and power to large corporations along with wealthy and powerful individuals since their first days in office. Polling outfits, media companies and their owners have benefited as never before in history. Many of these entities and individuals are doing everything in their power to keep the Bush Republicans in power.

The massive increase in electronic voting machines will make it nearly impossible to detect vote fraud by computer hacking or hidden computer code. Many states are using machines that do not provide a paper receipt to voters. A top executive of one voting machine company at a Republican rally in Ohio promised to do everything in his power to put Ohio in the Bush column in November. He should have been removed as an executive by the company but was not. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has very close ties to another large voting machine company. He is a former top executive of that firm.

These concerns would not be as serious if the computer codes used by voting machine makers were standard, open source codes like in New Zealand and Sweden. In the United States, the vote counting computer codes are company property not available to the average voter. Voters should be worried and watchful but not discouraged! The public will not tolerate massive vote fraud in America regardless of any attempts at conditioning the public by the Corporate Media!

Stephen Crockett and Al Lawrence are the hosts of Democratic Talk Radio

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Published on Monday, September 27, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
Bush, Iraq, and Demonstration Elections
by Rahul Mahajan


Last October, when Vladimir Putin engineered the election of his hand-picked subordinate Ahmad Kadyrov as president of Chechnya through tactics such as pressuring candidates to withdraw, forcing the leading candidate, Malik Saidullayev, out with a court injunction, and appointing another candidate to his staff to remove him from the election, Western punditry was not slow to condemn the election as a farce and a sham. It did so again when he interfered as blatantly in the recent August elections in Chechnya.

Ever since 9/11, however, the Bush administration has been treating us to a series of equally farcical "elections" with minimal or no comment from the same sources. The matter has now come to what should be a crisis point over plans to engineer the upcoming U.N. Security Council-mandated elections in Iraq.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani was once again in the news regarding his concerns that the main U.S.-affiliated political parties (the ones that formed the Governing Council and that now dominate the transitional assembly) are negotiating on a "consensus slate" of candidates for the elections. While his main reported concern is that the Shi`a majority of Iraq will be underrepresented, based on an estimate from the early 90`s that 55% of the Iraqi population is Shi`a Arab compared to his estimate of 65% today, there is a much more serious question at stake - the legitimacy of the elections.

In some countries, with a well-established parliamentary system and a history of active political parties and an inclusive public discourse, slates like this are not necessarily a problem. In systems like India`s, with numerous parties and a first-past-the-post voting system (no matter how many candidates there are, the candidate with the most votes wins, with no runoffs), such electoral alliances may be necessary to get smaller parties some degree of parliamentary representation.

In Iraq, however, the situation is different. According to a recent New York Times editorial (9/26/04), such a slate could create "essentially a one-party election unless Iraq`s fragmented independents manage to organize themselves into an effective new political force." And, said the Times, in an uncharacteristically direct criticism, "Otherwise, Iraq`s first free election may look uncomfortably like the plebiscites choreographed to produce 98 percent majorities for Saddam Hussein."

What the Times neglected to mention is the Bush administration`s well-documented history of "managed" elections set up directly under its auspices in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In the June 2002 Afghan loya jirga, roughly 1500 delegates assembled to pick the interim president of the country. Although all delegates were under a great degree of pressure by U.S.-backed warlords (who did everything from killing delegates before the assembly to controlling the floor at the assembly), over 800 signed a statement in support of Zahir Shah, the exiled monarch. According to Omar Zakhilwal and Adeena Niazi, delegates to the loya jirga, the United States then stepped in and "the entire loya jirga was postponed for almost two days while the former king was strong-armed into renouncing any meaningful role in the government." (NYT, 6/21/02) When the assembly resumed, delegates were given a choice between Hamid Karzai and two unknown candidates running for symbolic value (one of them was a woman) - essentially, as in the Chechnya elections, they were presented with a fait accompli.

More recently, the Bush administration pushed to have Afghan elections before the U.S. elections, then switched around and pressured the Afghan Electoral Commission to delay the parliamentary elections until next April (CSM, 7/13/04) while going ahead with presidential elections in October. The notion was pretty clear that there would be no time for anyone to emerge as a national-level alternative to Karzai, thus making the presidential elections effectively one-candidate. There are 18 candidates, one of whom, Yunus Qanooni, is known to many - although no one considers him a rival to Karzai, who should have no trouble prevailing against such a divided field. Even so, U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad (closely linked with neoconservatives like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz) has been pressuring candidates from Qanooni all the way to Mohammed Mohaqiq, who represents the minority Hazaras, to resign with some combination of coercion and bribery. In fact, Qanooni and 13 other candidates actually met to discuss how to deal with Khalilzad`s election tampering (LAT, 9/23/04)

In Iraq, the U.S. record is similar. Much propaganda has been made of the local "elections" instituted by U.S. forces, but to believe it calls for a willing disjunction from reality. In some places, the "election" was an appointment of mayor and/or city council members by the local U.S. commander, sometimes disastrously, as when U.S. forces appointed a Sunni from Baghdad to be mayor of the mostly Shi`a Najaf, cancelled an election he would surely have lost, and later had to remove him anyway because of charges of corruption and Ba`athist links (WP, 6/28/03, and others). In Basra, British and U.S. forces appointed local officials and then removed them and decided explicitly that Iraqis would only serve in a technocratic capacity, not a political one (WP, 5/29/03). In other places, like Kirkuk, the "election" was one conducted by 300 delegates all hand-picked and vetted by U.S. forces, not by the people of Kirkuk.

In late June, U.S. commanders had ordered a halt to all local elections, because they had determined that in many places people and groups they didn`t like were too popular and might win (WP, 6/28/03). That is unfortunately one of the problems with democracy. A few days later, Paul Bremer approved resumption of elections (WP, 7/1/03), but allowed local commanders to choose between appointment, election by specially vetted caucuses, and actual elections; unstated was the conclusion that U.S. commanders should choose the form of "election" based on the likelihood of getting the result they wanted.

All of these experiments in "democracy" were, of course, in a context where U.S. commanders could countermand any city council decision and dissolve any council as they so chose.

At the national level, things have been similarly manipulated. Of course, elections have been postponed repeatedly, even though the difficulties that exist in Afghanistan did not exist in Iraq (for example, the ubiquitous ration cards could have been used as a basis for voter identification and registration); even the January elections are mandated only because other countries on the Security Council insisted on the setting of a date as a condition for approving Resolution 1546, on the so-called "transfer of sovereignty."

Furthermore, numerous other ostensibly national political processes have been cancelled or manipulated as well. An assembly planned for June 2003, that would have involved mostly the U.S.-designated exile-dominated "Iraqi opposition" was cancelled by Paul Bremer. He said it was because the "opposition" was not representative of the country; then, a month later he chose, entirely on his own authority, 25 people, 16 of them exiles, to form the Governing Council.

In August, as the center of Najaf was ceaselessly bombarded, a national conference of roughly 1300 delegates met to select the interim national assembly, a body of 100 people whose formation was mandated by the "transfer of sovereignty" process (actually, 81 delegates were to be selected, the other 19 coming from the old Governing Council). Ostensibly picked by democratic processes in their locality, the delegates certainly did represent a wide variety of parties and views, although major groups opposed to the occupation were under-represented (Moqtada al-Sadr, whose organization was under military assault at the time, boycotted the conference).

However, the delegates at the conference learned that there would be no nomination of candidates, campaigning, or elections but instead, a pre-selected slate of 81 candidates, picked by back-room negotiations between the major U.S.-affiliated parties. Attempts by small parties to form an alternative slate fell through; at the end, the U.S.-backed slate was not even presented to the delegates for formal approval.

This last was a sham that would likely embarrass even Vladimir Putin. Apparently, the Bush administration is happy with elections in places it controls, like Afghanistan or Iraq, as long as there are no choices (when there are, as in Florida, strange things can happen). There is not a shred of a reason to doubt that this is precisely what is planned for the January elections in Iraq - collusion by the U.S.-backed political parties to pick Iraqi figures who will continue to collaborate with the occupation and to shut out all other Iraqi voices. Now that the New York Times has weighed in on this particular election engineering scheme, it may well be traded in for another, but the recent history of U.S. foreign policy suggests that, no matter what, a free election will not be allowed.

There is a deplorable tendency in this country to use words like "freedom" and "democracy" in a purely talismanic manner, without attaching any actual meaning to them - only thus could the coups in Guatemala in 1954 or in Haiti in 2004 be hailed as advances for democracy. But the current administration takes this to heretofore undreamed of extremes, as could be seen clearly at the Republican National Convention this year. For Bush, apparently, democracy means any kind of election at all - a definition that would make dictators from Ngo Dinh Diem to Saddam Hussein, all of whom engineered electoral "victories," perfectly happy.

In fact, to Bush, democracy and freedom mean simply "anything the United States does" or, indeed, "anything I do." The implications for the United States and its internal affairs ought to be as clear as the implications for Iraq. Mobilize to ensure that the elections in Iraq in January are real elections; the freedom you save may be your own.

Rahul Mahajan is publisher of the blog Empire Notes and teaches at New York University. He has been to Iraq twice and reported from Fallujah during the siege in April. His latest book is "Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond."

He can be reached at [e-mail]

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Published on Monday, September 27, 2004 by the International Herald Tribune
The End of the Unipolar Myth
by Gautam Adhikari


With American casualties in Iraq passing 1,000, and regions of the country descending into more destructive violence, the limits of U.S. military power are on display. The Bush administration`s scramble to strike repeated compromises in Iraq, and its failure to achieve stability there, raise fundamental questions about the limits of American power.

Since the end of the cold war, the image of the United States as imperial hyperpower in a unipolar world has enjoyed wide currency. In fact, it`s a myth that needs re-examination if we want to build a more realistic understanding of world power in a globalized era.

There never was a unipolar world. The "unipolar moment" that commentators saw when the cold war ended was pretty much that - a hallucinatory moment in history. And describing the United States as the world`s first "hyperpower" was little more than French hyperbole. These terms should be retired. Other possible descriptions such as "indispensable power" or "leader of the democratic world" might instead be re-examined to serve as credible definitions of America`s status in the world today.

There is a huge gap between America`s military capacity and its actual ability to bend events according to its wish. America`s installed capacity as the sole superpower at the end of the cold war was, and remains, beyond dispute. A $11 trillion economy that facilitates enormous technological prowess and a defense budget that exceeds the combined total of the next 25 powers should leave no doubt about the potential of the United States.

As Zbigniew Brzezinski put it recently, "Preponderance should not be confused with omnipotence." It has been obvious since the later stages of the Vietnam War that overwhelming firepower is not enough for victory. Though the American death toll was significantly lower than the Vietnamese (58,000 versus 3 million), the superpower was unable to avoid defeat; media coverage of the devastating happenings eventually undermined credibility both at home and abroad.

The war in Iraq and its chaotic aftermath, however, highlight the basic unipolarist misconception that sophisticated military and economic power are sufficient to subdue any adversary.

The United States possesses by far the largest pile of sophisticated weaponry on earth, yet its conventional military power is severely stretched in fighting one and a quarter wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Further, its nuclear edge is tempered by the other nations - including China, India and Russia, which have large, conventional forces and demographic depth - that have the means to respond with substantial nuclear retaliation. Even tiny North Korea, with maybe a half-dozen bombs, has become hard to tackle.

The "war on terrorism," for its part, is far more complex than a massive deployment of men and munitions against a clearly perceived enemy-state or coalition of states. In this war, terrorism is not the enemy; it is a battle tactic used by an elusive, globally dispersed, well-funded enemy. Building a worldwide coalition of allies to fight such an enemy is not a policy choice. It is the only option in a war without conventional battlefields.

The formidable superiority of U.S. economic power is also under threat. The rapidly ballooning expense of the Iraq war is increasing budget deficits that were already huge. This is also intensifying a gathering U.S. fiscal crisis of growing debt, now financed by foreign capital. Thanks to persistently large current account deficits, the United States last year borrowed from abroad at an unprecedented rate of $4 billion a day.

Asian, European and Middle Eastern lenders are buying what they see as dollar assets. But if the dollar`s value keeps declining, as it has by 30 percent over 2002 and 2003, foreign investors will need higher returns by way of interest rate increases. Or, if push comes to shove in U.S. economic prospects, they might move to another currency; the euro, for instance, holds the potential eventually to replace the dollar as the world`s reserve currency. This is to say nothing of the influence that large creditor nations might have over U.S. foreign and trade policymaking.

At the end of the cold war, the world indeed seemed unipolar. At the time, it was assumed that the United States could act without significant cooperation or approval from other states to tackle international problems or resolve crises. In this world, no state or combination of states would be able to stop it from doing so.

Today, we are by no means in a multipolar world, one in which a coalition of major powers, acting consensually, would be invariably necessary to resolve international crises. But it is clearly not a world in which America can act unilaterally to resolve crises or wage simultaneous wars - including pre-emptive ones - without being constrained by limited resources and reach.

In that fictional world, the sole superpower might be tempted to act as if others didn`t matter, while regional powers would strive toward multipolarity. But the world can be stable only to the extent that these conflicting tendencies can be balanced.

The United States today, even with its travails in Iraq, remains much more than the world`s dominant power. As former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once asserted, America is still the world`s "indispensable power." It can create avoidable crises by plunging into poorly planned wars of choice, as in Iraq; or it can intervene as a coalition head to create relatively benign outcomes, as in the first Gulf war. But it would be hard to resolve a major world crisis without the active help of the United States.

In other words, America continues to occupy the world`s leadership position. But it`s a board chairman`s job, requiring persuasion, the creation of consensus and discreet flexing of power, as well as popular acceptance. Its tasks cannot be performed by a lone maverick. If the United States wants to reassert itself as a widely accepted, and respected, leader of the democratic world, it will have to carry the world with it. Its efforts will fail if it continues to believe it can wield unilateral power indefinitely in a unipolar world.

Gautam Adhikari is a former executive editor of The Times of India.

Copyright © 2004 the International Herald Tribune

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"But we also know you can`t let terrorists change who you are. If you do, they win."


EUROPE`S TERROR FIGHT QUIET, UNRELENTING

Author(s): Charles M. Sennott, Globe Staff Date: September 26, 2004
MADRID A city-bound train rumbled along with purpose on the same commuter line where bombs inflicted brutal carnage more than six months ago, killing 191 people and wounding hundreds in the worst terrorist attack in Europe in decades.

Passengers read their newspapers, snoozed, and chatted, as, on a day this month, a digital clock clicked to 7:38 a.m., the moment on March 11 when members of a Moroccan terrorist cell inspired by Al Qaeda set off the first of 10 bombs stuffed inside backpacks along the train line. There was no visible increase in security on this suburban Madrid train, and there is no sense of panic among commuters. The mood suggests that Spaniards, hardened by decades of struggle against terrorism, have moved on from the attack and that the Europeans have responded in vastly different ways than the Americans to the threat of global terrorism.

For the United States, the response to Sept. 11 was to launch a "war on terrorism," one cast in terms of good and evil and marked with somber ceremonies, fought more with armies than with indictments. But for Spain as well as for France, Germany, and Britain, all countries that have suffered a history of terrorist violence, the focus is a "struggle" against a criminal element.

These European countries have expressed a more quiet but collective resolve to work within an international consensus to fight terrorism. In the eyes of many European counterterrorism specialists and officials, the Bush administration`s reliance on conventional military means can serve to provoke more terrorism.

The contrasting strategic visions translate into diverging tactics on the ground. The US confrontation with terrorism turns now on a long-term commitment of troops in Iraq. Spain`s newly elected prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, fulfilled a campaign promise to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq, but also increased Madrid`s commitment to peacekeeping in Afghanistan. And at home, Spanish authorities have staged a series of raids against Islamic extremist cells, making numerous arrests.

"When Spain pulled out its troops, it was completely wrong to say the Spanish people had gone soft on terrorism," said Gijs de Vries, the European Union`s first counterterrorism chief, a post created in response to the Madrid bombing to help European countries coordinate efforts against terrorism. "They were instead exerting their belief that the war in Iraq was not connected to the war on terrorism, and that in fact it undercut the war on terrorism."

De Vries, of the Netherlands, said confronting terrorism needs to combine conventional military force, police investigations, and a political dimension that is "more than just hearts and minds, but truly analyzing the context and the conditions that create terrorism." He said the United States and Europe had cooperated very effectively in many ways, especially in criminal investigations, but that the United States had unnecessarily alienated many of its allies by relying too heavily on a military response and consistently undervalued the political dimension.

Zapatero has politically reunited his country with France and Germany, which have led Europe`s opposition to the war in Iraq. Spain`s former conservative prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, had aligned himself with President Bush and had supported the war in Iraq.

On the week that Spain marked the six-month anniversary of the bombings, Zapatero welcomed President Jacques Chirac of France and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany to Madrid. Zapatero and his Socialist Party were swept into power just three days after the bombings.

Zapatero derided the now-infamous comment by the US secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, disparaging "old Europe," which had opposed the Iraq war. "You have before you three fervent pro-Europeans," Zapatero said. "This is not just any meeting . . . and I am glad to say that old Europe is as good as new."

The three leaders agreed to share police databases and vowed closer cooperation in the continent`s fight against terrorism. They also agreed to pursue a united approach to address the anger and despair among Muslims in the Middle East and those who come as immigrants to Europe, and who sometimes become recruits for terrorist groups.

Across Europe, terrorism has claimed 5,000 lives in the past three decades, in attacks from such groups as the Irish Republican Army, the Basque separatist group ETA, anarchists, Italy`s Red Brigades, Arab nationalists, and Islamic militants.

This month, the European Union released a report it had commissioned to reassess Europe`s ability to confront terrorism. The study was compiled by an independent group of counterterrorism and military specialists. It showed that Europe must increase its capacity to intervene in regional conflicts worldwide, and to help root out security risks at the source.

To do this, the report said, leaders must stress the importance of reexamining outdated notions of protecting states in favor of an approach that protects people and that offers a wider and more interlocking concept of security. "In an era of interdependence, Europeans can no longer feel secure when the rest of the world is insecure," said the report, which was published Wednesday.

The report also emphasized a need to complement conventional military means with improved civilian elements, such as police and their trainers who can provide assistance in peacekeeping missions and in the promotion of democracy and the rule of law.

The report also illustrated the differing approaches of the United States and Europe.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush and his administration responded with a swift invasion of Afghanistan to crush the Taliban government that provided logistical support for Al Qaeda. Then, the administration pushed toward the buildup for the war in Iraq, ignoring widespread opposition among longtime allies.

After the attacks in Madrid, Spaniards reacted with a demonstration of collective resolve that brought 10 million people to the streets to protest the terrorists, as well as Spain`s involvement in Iraq. The new government deployed investigators to follow up leads and penetrate Moroccan cells with purported links to Al Qaeda, which turned out to be behind the attacks.

Antiterrorism police have arrested 68 people in connection with the train bombings, including 20 believed to have been directly involved. The suspects are alleged to form a web that ranges from Moroccan cell-phone store owners who perhaps unwittingly helped the terrorists obtain and program phones used to trigger bombs, to Spanish nationals who helped secure some of the explosives, to a core of 20 militants who more actively took part in planning and coordinating the bombings.

The core cell has been dismantled, according to Spanish law enforcement officials. A suspected mastermind of the operation, Rabei Osman Ahmed, is awaiting extradition from Italy under a new EU extradition agreement. A second purported coordinator is in custody in Spain and a third was killed when he exploded a bomb as police tried to capture him, authorities said.

German and French counter-terrorism officials have also made significant gains in disrupting Islamic militant cells through sweeps and key arrests. However, these countries have also suffered setbacks in obtaining convictions. In some cases this is because the FBI and CIA are reluctant to share intelligence on Al Qaeda; in others it is because the kind of information obtained by the United States is deemed inadmissible in European courts.

The Zapatero government has worked to build bridges with the immigrant Muslim community, , and the new foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, has gone on a diplomatic offensive to improve ties with its neighbor, Morocco, and other Muslim countries, relations that were frayed by Aznar`s support for the war.

Many European analysts say they believe the Bush administration has manipulated the emotions of Americans by playing up the fear of terrorism with its system of alerts and its rhetoric. European observers wonder why the American public has not reacted against this, and, based on the findings of a recent trans-Atlantic opinion poll conducted for the German Marshall Fund , a large majority of Europeans hope American voters will react by choosing John F. Kerry over Bush in November.

European terrorism specialists, government officials, and counterterrorism investigators from different political leanings say that understanding the difference between the US and Europe`s approaches to terror begins with language.

"The semantics are very important," said Gustavo de Aristegui, a leader of the right-of-center Popular Party and a terrorism specialist. He is Basque and is shadowed by a bodyguard because of a perceived ETA threat.

"For America to keep using the phrase `war on terror` reflects a deep misunderstanding of the threat we face," said Aristegui, who has held postings in the Middle East and whose father, also a diplomat, was killed in Lebanon by Syrian shelling during the civil war.

"Calling what we face a `war on terror,` " he added, "is a semantic trap that legitimizes a criminal element as a group worthy of being called an enemy in a conventional sense, and worthy of being a force with which we can engage in war. We need to have language that reflects the reality, and the reality is we need to close the faucet of good guys going into the pool of bad guys."

The Bush administration has expressed disdain and distrust of any approach to the fight against terrorism that sees it as anything short of a war, and has questioned Kerry`s ability to confront the threat.

In Iowa on Sept. 7, Vice President Dick Cheney said: "If we make the wrong choice [then the danger is that we`ll get hit again, that we`ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we`ll fall back into the pre-9/11 mindset, if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts and that we are not really at war."

Trinidad Jimenez, the spokesman on foreign affairs for the Spanish Socialist Party, said: "We know terrorism, but we are not afraid of it. . . . We know it needs to be confronted, but we have come to understand that it must be confronted intelligently, effectively, and within the framework of international and national law.

"Words in this debate matter. The world was fed fear to sell the war in Iraq, and the conservatives here tried to manipulate words to stay in power," said Jiminez, referring to the previous government`s initial assessment that Basque separatists carried out the Madrid bombings. "We will not be intimidated by Washington trying to say we were weak on terror. In fact, we find it offensive."

The differences between the United States and Europe were evident in the aftermath of the two attacks: While Americans rallied around the flag, Spaniards chose a less political symbol a white hand.

At public vigils, millions of Spaniards held up hands painted white, a symbol that for a decade has been used to protest Basque terrorism making the point that those with clean hands outnumber and will defeat those whose hands are stained with blood.

On the commuter train recently, Maribelle Marcos said friends from her working-class suburb had been killed in the bombings.

"We will never forget what happened, and the mourning isn`t over, especially not for the families," she said as the train pulled into the capital`s Atocha Station, ground zero for the attacks. "But we also know you can`t let terrorists change who you are. If you do, they win."

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Das letzte aus der Gerüchteküche, Bush hatte Flugangst.

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September 28, 2004
F.B.I. Said to Lag on Translations of Terror Tapes
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 - Three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, more than 120,000 hours of potentially valuable terrorism-related recordings have not yet been translated by linguists at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and computer problems may have led the bureau to systematically erase some Qaeda recordings, according to a declassified summary of a Justice Department investigation that was released on Monday.

The report, released in edited form by Glenn A. Fine, the department`s inspector general, found that the F.B.I. still lacked the capacity to translate all the terrorism-related material from wiretaps and other intelligence sources and that the influx of new material has outpaced the bureau`s resources.

Overhauling the government`s translation capabilities has been a top priority for the Bush administration in its campaign against terrorism. Qaeda messages, saying "Tomorrow is zero hour" and "The match is about to begin," were intercepted by the National Security Agency on Sept. 10, 2001, but not translated until days later, underscoring the urgency of the problem.

The inspector general`s report on the F.B.I., the lead agency for combating domestic terrorism, said the bureau faced "significant management challenges" in providing quick and accurate translations.

The report offered the most comprehensive assessment to date of the F.B.I.`s problems in deciphering hundreds of thousands of intercepted phone calls, conversations, e-mail messages, documents and other material that could include information about terrorist plots and foreign intelligence matters. It revealed problems not only in translating material quickly, but also in ranking the work and in ensuring that hundreds of newly hired linguists were providing accurate translations. While linguists are supposed to undergo periodic proficiency exams under F.B.I. policy, that requirement was often ignored last year, the inspector general found in the publicly released summary of its investigation. Most of the report remains classified.

Congressional officials who have been briefed recently by the F.B.I. on the translation issue said the report offered a much bleaker assessment than the bureau has acknowledged, and leading senators from both parties denounced what they described as foot-dragging in fixing the problem.

"What good is taping thousands of hours of conversations of intelligence targets in foreign languages if we cannot translate promptly, securely, accurately and efficiently?" asked Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. "The Justice Department`s translation mess has become a chronic problem that has obvious implications for our national security."

In its response to the report, the F.B.I. said it had taken "substantial steps to strengthen our language capabilities," but it acknowledged that a shortage of qualified linguists and problems in the bureau`s computer systems had led to a backlog in translating terrorism material. Robert S. Mueller III, director of the F.B.I., said he agreed "that more remains to be done in our language services program, and we are giving this effort the highest priority."

With $48 million in additional financing since the Sept. 11 attacks, the number of linguists at the F.B.I. rose to 1,214 as of April 2004 from 883 in 2001, with sharp increases in the number of translators of Arabic, Farsi and other languages considered critical to counterterrorism investigations. But Mr. Fine`s report made clear that the expansion had not eliminated the management and efficiency problems that dogged the bureau even before Sept. 11.

The investigation blamed in part the F.B.I.`s computer systems, long derided by Congressional critics as antiquated and unwieldy. The investigation found that limited storage capacities in the system meant that older audio recordings had sometimes been deleted automatically to make room for newer material, even if the recordings had not yet been translated.

In field tests conducted by the inspector general at eight F.B.I. offices, three offices had "Qaeda sessions that potentially were deleted by the system before linguists had reviewed them," the report said.

An F.B.I. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that officials have had to go back to original Qaeda recordings on some occasions to restore them after realizing that the copies had been inadvertently deleted because of capacity problems.

But the inspector general`s report said that linguists might not have realized that material was deleted unless a case officer happened to notice it missing from the final translations. Moreover, the report found that the F.B.I. had failed to institute necessary controls "to prevent critical audio material from being automatically deleted."

Audio recordings that relate to Qaeda investigations are supposed to be reviewed within 12 hours of interception under F.B.I. policy. But the report found that deadline was missed in 36 percent of nearly 900 cases that the inspector general reviewed. In 50 Qaeda cases, it took at least a month for the F.B.I. to translate material.

The F.B.I. "has not prioritized its workload nationwide to ensure a zero backlog in the F.B.I.`s highest priority cases - counterterrorism cases and, in particular, Al Qaeda cases," the report found.

Computer problems and the shortage of qualified linguists have worsened the backlog in translating material, the report found.

In counterterrorism cases, more than 123,000 hours of audio recordings in languages commonly associated with terrorism have not been translated since the Sept. 11 attacks, amounting to 20 percent of the total material, the report found. For all languages, nearly half a million hours of audio tapes, or 30 percent of the material collected, was not reviewed, it said. The data reflected material gathered under foreign intelligence surveillance warrants in operations within the United States.

Several lawmakers who have pressed for improvements in the F.B.I.`s translation abilities said the report reinforced their concerns that the bureau was headed in the wrong direction.

"Since terrorists attacked the United States on 9/11, the F.B.I. has been trying to assure the Congress and the public that its translation program is on the right track," said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. "Unfortunately, this report shows that the F.B.I. is still drowning in information about terrorism activities with hundreds of thousands of hours of audio yet to be translated."

Mr. Grassley also urged the inspector general to release a public version of an internal report about the case of a former F.B.I. linguist, Sibel Edmonds, who complained of ineptitude and possible espionage in the translation program. A still-classified version of the report found that Ms. Edmonds`s complaints played a part in the F.B.I.`s decision to dismiss her in 2002, officials said.

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September 28, 2004
Prewar Assessment on Iraq Saw Chance of Strong Divisions
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 - The same intelligence unit that produced a gloomy report in July about the prospect of growing instability in Iraq warned the Bush administration about the potential costly consequences of an American-led invasion two months before the war began, government officials said Monday.

The estimate came in two classified reports prepared for President Bush in January 2003 by the National Intelligence Council, an independent group that advises the director of central intelligence. The assessments predicted that an American-led invasion of Iraq would increase support for political Islam and would result in a deeply divided Iraqi society prone to violent internal conflict.

One of the reports also warned of a possible insurgency against the new Iraqi government or American-led forces, saying that rogue elements from Saddam Hussein`s government could work with existing terrorist groups or act independently to wage guerrilla warfare, the officials said. The assessments also said a war would increase sympathy across the Islamic world for some terrorist objectives, at least in the short run, the officials said.

The contents of the two assessments had not been previously disclosed. They were described by the officials after two weeks in which the White House had tried to minimize the council`s latest report, which was prepared this summer and read by senior officials early this month.

Last week, Mr. Bush dismissed the latest intelligence reports, saying its authors were "just guessing`` about the future, though he corrected himself later, calling it an "estimate.``

The assessments, meant to address the regional implications and internal challenges that Iraq would face after Mr. Hussein`s ouster, said it was unlikely that Iraq would split apart after an American invasion, the officials said. But they said there was a significant chance that domestic groups would engage in violent internal conflict with one another unless an occupying force prevented them from doing so.

Senior White House officials, including Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, have contended that some of the early predictions provided to the White House by outside experts of what could go wrong in Iraq, including secular strife, have not come to pass. But President Bush has acknowledged a "miscalculation`` about the virulency of the insurgency that would rise against the American occupation, though he insisted that it was simply an outgrowth of the speed of the initial military victory in 2003.

The officials outlined the reports after the columnist Robert Novak, in a column published Monday in The Washington Post, wrote that a senior intelligence official had said at a West Coast gathering last week that the White House had disregarded warnings from intelligence agencies that a war in Iraq would intensify anti-American hostility in the Muslim world. Mr. Novak identified the official as Paul R. Pillar, the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, and criticized him for making remarks that Mr. Novak said were critical of the administration.

The National Intelligence Council is an independent group, made up of outside academics and long-time intelligence professionals. The C.I.A. describes it as the intelligence community`s "center for midterm and long-term strategic thinking.`` Its main task is to produce National Intelligence Estimates, the most formal reports outlining the consensus of intelligence agencies. But it also produces less formal assessments, like the ones about Iraq it presented in January 2003.

One of the intelligence documents described the building of democracy in Iraq as a long, difficult and potentially turbulent process with potential for backsliding into authoritarianism, Iraq`s traditional political model, the officials said.

The assessments were described by three government officials who have seen or been briefed on the documents. The officials spoke on condition that neither they nor their agencies be identified. None of the officials are affiliated in any way with the campaigns of Mr. Bush or Senator John Kerry. The officials, who were interviewed separately, declined to quote directly from the documents, but said they were speaking out to present an accurate picture of the prewar warnings.

The officials` descriptions portray assessments that are gloomier than the predictions by some administration officials, most notably those of Vice President Dick Cheney. But in general, the warnings about anti-American sentiment and instability appear to have been upheld by events, and their disclosure could prove politically damaging to the White House, which has already had to contend with the disclosure that the National Intelligence Estimate prepared by the council in July presented a far darker prognosis for Iraq through the end of 2005 than Mr. Bush has done in his statements.

The reports issued by the intelligence council are of two basic types: those that try to assess intelligence data, like the October 2002 document that assessed the state of Iraq`s unconventional weapons programs, and broader predictions about foreign political developments.

The group`s National Intelligence Estimate about Iraqi weapons has now been widely discredited for wildly overestimating the country`s capabilities. Members of the intelligence council have complained that they were pressured to write the document too quickly and that important qualifiers were buried.

The group`s recent National Intelligence Estimate, prepared in July this year, with its gloomy picture of Iraq`s future, was described by White House officials in the past two weeks as an academic document that contained little evidence and little that was new.

"It was finished in July, and not circulated by the intelligence community until the end of August,`` said one senior administration official. "That`s not exactly what you do with an urgent document.``

Mr. Pillar, who has held his post since October 2000, is highly regarded within the C.I.A. But he has been a polarizing figure within the administration, particularly within the Defense Department, where senior civilians who were among the most vigorous champions of a war in Iraq derided him as being too dismissive of the threat posed by Mr. Hussein.

A C.I.A. spokesman said Monday that Mr. Pillar was not available for comment and that his comments at the West Coast session had been made on the condition that he not be identified. An intelligence official said Mr. Pillar had supervised the drafting of the document, but the official emphasized that it reflected the views of 15 intelligence agencies, including the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the State Department`s bureau of Intelligence and Research.

A spokesman for the National Security Council, Sean McCormack, said Monday that "we don`t comment on intelligence and classified reports," and he would not say whether Mr. Bush had read the January 2003 reports. But he said "the president was fully aware of all the challenges prior to making the decision to go to war, and we addressed these challenges in our policies."

"And we also addressed these challenges in public," he added.

A senior administration official likened Mr. Bush`s decision to a patient`s decision to have risky surgery, even if doctors warn that there could be serious side effects. "We couldn`t live with the status quo," the official said, "because as a result of the status quo in the Middle East, we were dying, and we saw the evidence of that on Sept. 11."

Officials who have read the July 2004 National Intelligence Estimate have said that even as a best-case situation, it predicted a period of tenuous stability for Iraq between now and the end of 2005. The worst of three cases cited in the document was that developments could lead to civil war, the officials have said. Some Democratic senators have asked that the document be declassified, but administration officials have called that prospect unlikely.

The White House has also sought to minimize the significance of the estimate, with Mr. Bush saying that intelligence agencies had laid out "several scenarios that said, life could be lousy, life could be O.K. or life could be better, and they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like.`` Mr. Bush later corrected himself, saying that he should have used the word estimate.

Democrats have contrasted the dark tone of the intelligence report with the more upbeat descriptions of Iraq`s prospects offered by the administration. The White House has defended its approach, saying that it is the job of intelligence analysts to identify challenges, and the job of policy makers to overcome them. But administration officials have also emphasized that the White House was not given a copy of the document until Aug. 31, only about two weeks before it was made public by The New York Times.

In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell acknowledged that "we have seen an increase in anti-Americanism in the Muslim world`` since the war began. Mr. Powell also said the insurgency in Iraq was "getting worse`` as forces opposed to the United States and the new Iraqi leadership remained "determined to disrupt the election`` set for January.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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IRAQ
Election Plan
Einige Links:
http://www.cfr.org/background/background_iraq_electionplan.p…

Updated: September 27, 2004

Will Iraq’s January elections occur on schedule?
President George W. Bush and Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi insist they will. The Iraqi government has an independent electoral commission, the foundations of an election law, and the framework of a system to register some 12 million voters for the January 2005 election. But there is extensive work yet to be done, and the planning is taking place against the backdrop of a violent insurgency that many observers say could delay the election or compromise its results. “You cannot have credible elections if the security conditions continue as they are now,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the BBC September 16.

Could the most unsettled areas of Iraq be excluded from the election?
Yes, U.S. officials and Allawi say. “Let’s say you tried to have an election, and you could have it in three-quarters or four-fifths of the country, but some places you couldn’t because the violence was too great. Well, so be it. Nothing’s perfect in life,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld told a congressional committee September 23. Members of the independent Iraqi electoral commission, however, have objected to this possibility, arguing that denying the vote to the most restive parts of Iraq—places like Falluja, Ramadi, and other insurgent-held sections of the so-called Sunni triangle—would severely weaken the legitimacy of Iraq’s first elected legislature, which is charged with writing the country’s new constitution. “If there is no election in some cities, there will be no election at all,” said Farid Ayar, the spokesman for Iraq’s electoral commission. “Our goal is to make the Iraqi people understand freedom.”

What positions are up for grabs?
In the January election, voters are to choose candidates for three types of assemblies:

* All Iraqis will cast votes for the 275-member transitional National Assembly, which will serve as the legislature until elections for a permanent body are held.
* Iraqis who live in the semi-autonomous northern region will also cast votes for the 105-member Iraqi Kurdistan National Assembly, the regional lawmaking body.
* Voters will also elect governorate councils in each of Iraq’s 18 provinces, which will provide the framework for elected local government. The electoral commission has not yet decided on the make-up or size of these councils, experts say.

Are election plans on track?
Technical preparations, such as setting up the electoral commission, devising voter-registration procedures, and hiring election officials, are on schedule, according to the United Nations Electoral Assistance Division. However, experts say the schedule is vulnerable to disruption, especially if insurgent attacks persist. One critical variable: public confidence in the electoral commission, says Makram Ouaiss, senior program officer at the Washington-based National Democratic Institute, which is training political parties in Iraq. If enough Iraqis want the elections to proceed, they will go to the polls despite the insurgency, he says.

Which agency is organizing the election?
The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, which was created by an order of former Coalition Provisional Authority administrator L. Paul Bremer III on May 31, 2004, about one month before the end of the occupation. Of the panel’s nine commissioners, seven are voting members—all of them Iraqis—who set election procedures. There is also a U.N. representative, Carlos Valenzuela, who offers guidance and other assistance, and an Iraqi chief operating officer, who will direct the elections bureaucracy that is being built from scratch. Security concerns are affecting the commission’s work, experts say; the commissioners rarely venture out of the Green Zone, the heavily protected area in the center of Baghdad.

What are the commission’s tasks?
Designing a system to register voters, establishing polling places and other infrastructure, and hiring and training election workers. It will also finalize political party rules and educate Iraqis about voting procedures. Running the elections is a massive job: U.N. experts have estimated that 30,000 polling stations staffed by 120,000 to 130,000 workers will be needed to help with the voting, counting, and tallying. The United Nations, the United States, other nations, and a number of nongovernmental organizations are helping the Iraqis. But the ultimate responsibility for the elections lies with the commission.

Who are the Iraqi commissioners?
The six men and two women include lawyers, academics, and a diplomat, and represent Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. They were selected—based on personal character and professional experience—by U.N. officials from a pool of 1,800 applicants, said Carina Perelli, the director of the U.N. Electoral Assistance Division, in a June press conference. They are: Ibrahim Ali Ali, Mohammed Allami, Abdul Hussein al-Hindawi, Hamdi Abbas al-Husseini, Mohammed al-Jabouri, Fareed Michael, Mustafa Safwat Rashid, and Izzadine Mohammed Shafiq.

What is the United Nations’ role?
U.N. Security Council Resolution 1546, passed June 8, assigned the United Nations a “leading role” in assisting with the elections. U.N. officials are working with Iraqis to create an electoral administration, educate voters, and decide on election rules. But the United Nations is limited by the hazardous security conditions, said U.N. Special Representative for Iraq Ashraf Jehangir Qazi in a September 14 address to the Security Council. At the moment, the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq is limited to 35 people, far below the number required to be fully operational. More than 50 additional U.N. staffers are operating from Amman, Jordan; others wait in Kuwait for the security situation to improve. The current staff “is operating at the outer limit of acceptable and prudent risk,” Qazi said.

Is the United Nations supposed to have a special force to protect it?
Yes. Resolution 1546 authorized the creation of a force to protect U.N. personnel in Iraq. On September 27, Fiji became the first nation to step forward with troops, announcing that it would contribute 155 soldiers and 24 bodyguards for U.N. officials beginning in October. Security for U.N. personnel in Iraq is a highly sensitive issue: the U.N. mission in Baghdad was bombed by insurgents in the summer of 2003, killing the then-special representative in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and 22 others.

What rules govern the election process?
The election’s legal framework consists of two sets of documents:

* Orders signed by Bremer during the occupation of Iraq, generally with the advice of the now-defunct Iraqi Governing Council (IGC). There are three orders that specifically deal with the election: Order 92, which established the independent electoral commission, Order 96, the electoral law, and Order 97, the political parties law. Some international law experts question the legal standing of orders passed under the occupation. But the electoral commission has so far been willing to accept these rules as a basis on which it can build, experts say.
* The Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), also referred to as Iraq’s interim constitution. Signed by both Bremer and the IGC, this law defines the responsibilities of the National Assembly and establishes the timetable for Iraq’s transition to a permanent government. Electoral commission members say they are committed to following this document as closely as possible.

How will voting procedures work?
According to Order 96, instead of choosing a certain number of legislators to represent each province—a geographically based system similar to that used in the United States—all voters will elect the entire legislature. Each voter will choose a political party, and each political party will be awarded seats in the National Assembly according roughly to the percentage of the national vote it wins. Political parties will submit lists of candidates and legislators will be drawn from the top of the list. In election-speak, this is called a closed list, single district, proportional-representation system.

Why are the Iraqis voting this way?
U.N. electoral assistance director Perelli suggested the system because it may give an advantage to smaller parties, and thus may be more inclusive than other forms of voting. Another key consideration was the candidates’ security. “I’m very much aware that one of the problems this election might have is intimidation of candidates,” Perelli said June 4. “It is for this reason that choosing proportional representation at a national level—removing the politics from just the local level where people can be easily identified and taken down—is an extra layer of security for the candidates.” If some dangerous areas are left out of the voting—as Rumsfeld says they might—Iraqi officials won’t have to appoint parliamentarians to represent Falluja and other restive cities, because there will be no solely regional representatives.

What are the arguments against proportional representation?
In this kind of system, successful candidates don’t owe their election to a specific district and so might have little incentive to respond to local voters’ concerns. Some towns or regions could be denied a voice in the National Assembly, and—considering Iraq’s volatile mix of ethnic and religious groups—that could breed violence, critics say. In addition, some reports indicate that the major Iraqi political parties may form a large coalition and run with a single, unified list, thus limiting voter choice and, in all likelihood, smothering smaller political parties. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s most powerful Shiite cleric, is reportedly concerned that such a coalition will dilute the power of Shiites, who form a majority in the country. Sistani has consistently spoken in favor of elections, and his influence pushed the U.S. occupation authority to move up the original schedule for elections by a year. But his aides say that if he deems the voting procedures to be unfair to Shiites, he may withdraw his support for the January vote.

What rules govern political parties?
Order 97 sets a low bar for political parties: they need just 500 signatures to register. There has been an explosion of political activity in Iraq since March 2003: some 380 political parties have been identified by the National Democratic Institute, Ouaiss says. Among them are the larger, more organized parties, such as the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq—a Shiite-based party—and Allawi’s party, the Iraqi National Accord. There are also many small parties just learning how to organize. Parties with ties to militia groups are banned from participating in the elections, according to Bremer’s order. But this law may not be strictly enforced; many of the major parties have militias associated with them, experts say.

What system will the commission use to register voters?
U.N. officials say that the voter rolls will be based on U.N. Oil for Food lists created in the 1990s to distribute food to needy Iraqis. These so-called “public distribution” lists are imperfect; they list households, rather than individuals, and do not include all families. U.N. officials say they expect the Iraqi electoral commission to open up the list for revision for approximately one month to allow Iraqis to make corrections and additions. There is not enough time before January to conduct a proper census, experts say.

What will the Iraqi Transitional National Assembly do?
Once elected, it will choose a president and two deputy presidents from among its own members. This so-called presidency council will appoint a prime minister and other government ministers. The National Assembly will be able to pass laws; it will also be responsible for drafting a constitution by August 15, 2005. According to the tight timetable laid out in the TAL, Iraqis will vote in a referendum on the constitution by October 15, 2005. If they approve the document, elections for a permanent government will be held in December 2005. If the constitution is rejected, the National Assembly will be dissolved and a new transitional assembly will be elected in December 2005 to take another stab at constitution-writing. It is unclear what will happen if, after another year, still no decision is reached.

-- by Sharon Otterman, staff writer, cfr.org

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September 28, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Truths Worth Telling
By DANIEL ELLSBERG

Kensington, Calif. — On a tape recording made in the Oval Office on June 14, 1971, H. R. Haldeman, Richard Nixon`s chief of staff, can be heard citing Donald Rumsfeld, then a White House aide, on the effect of the Pentagon Papers, news of which had been published on the front page of that morning`s newspaper:

"Rumsfeld was making this point this morning,`` Haldeman says. "To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing: you can`t trust the government; you can`t believe what they say, and you can`t rely on their judgment. And the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the president wants to do even though it`s wrong, and the president can be wrong."

He got it exactly right. But it`s a lesson that each generation of voters and each new set of leaders have to learn for themselves. Perhaps Mr. Rumsfeld - now secretary of defense, of course - has reflected on this truth recently as he has contemplated the deteriorating conditions in Iraq. According to the government`s own reporting, the situation there is far bleaker than Mr. Rumsfeld has recognized or President Bush has acknowledged on the campaign trail.

Understandably, the American people are reluctant to believe that their president has made errors of judgment that have cost American lives. To convince them otherwise, there is no substitute for hard evidence: documents, photographs, transcripts. Often the only way for the public to get such evidence is if a dedicated public servant decides to release it without permission.

Such a leak occurred recently with the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which was prepared in July. Reports of the estimate`s existence and overall pessimism - but not its actual conclusions - have prompted a long-overdue debate on the realities and prospects of the war. But its judgments of the relative likelihood and the strength of evidence pointing to the worst possibilities remain undisclosed. Since the White House has refused to release the full report, someone else should do so.

Leakers are often accused of being partisan, and undoubtedly many of them are. But the measure of their patriotism should be the accuracy and the importance of the information they reveal. It would be a great public service to reveal a true picture of the administration`s plans for Iraq - especially before this week`s debate on foreign policy between Mr. Bush and Senator John Kerry.

The military`s real estimates of the projected costs - in manpower, money and casualties - of various long-term plans for Iraq should be made public, in addition to the more immediate costs in American and Iraqi lives of the planned offensive against resistant cities in Iraq that appears scheduled for November. If military or intelligence experts within the government predict disastrous political consequences in Iraq from such urban attacks, these judgments should not remain secret.

Leaks on the timing of this offensive - and on possible call-up of reserves just after the election - take me back to Election Day 1964, which I spent in an interagency working group in the State Department. The purpose of our meeting was to examine plans to expand the war - precisely the policy that voters soundly rejected at the polls that day.

We couldn`t wait until the next day to hold our meeting because the plan for the bombing of North Vietnam had to be ready as soon as possible. But we couldn`t have held our meeting the day before because news of it might have been leaked - not by me, I`m sorry to say. And President Lyndon Johnson might not have won in a landslide had voters known he was lying when he said that his administration sought "no wider war."

Seven years and almost 50,000 American deaths later, after I had leaked the Pentagon Papers, I had a conversation with Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, one of the two senators who had voted against the Tonkin Gulf resolution in August 1964. If I had leaked the documents then, he said, the resolution never would have passed.

That was hard to hear. But in 1964 it hadn`t occurred to me to break my vow of secrecy. Though I knew that the war was a mistake, my loyalties then were to the secretary of defense and the president. It took five years of war before I recognized the higher loyalty all officials owe to the Constitution, the rule of law, the soldiers in harm`s way or their fellow citizens.

Like Robert McNamara, under whom I served, Mr. Rumsfeld appears to inspire great loyalty among his aides. As the scandal at Abu Ghraib shows, however, there are more important principles. Mr. Rumsfeld might not have seen the damning photographs and the report of Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba as soon as he did - just as he would never have seen the Pentagon Papers 33 years ago - if some anonymous people in his own department had not bypassed the chain of command and disclosed them, without authorization, to the news media. And without public awareness of the scandal, reforms would be less likely.

A federal judge has ordered the administration to issue a list of all documents relating to the scandal by Oct. 15. Will Mr. Rumsfeld release the remaining photos, which depict treatment that he has described as even worse? It`s highly unlikely, especially before Nov. 2. Meanwhile, the full Taguba report remains classified, and the findings of several other inquiries into military interrogation and detention practices have yet to be released.

All administrations classify far more information than is justifiable in a democracy - and the Bush administration has been especially secretive. Information should never be classified as secret merely because it is embarrassing or incriminating. But in practice, in this as in any administration, no information is guarded more closely.

Surely there are officials in the present administration who recognize that the United States has been misled into a war in Iraq, but who have so far kept their silence - as I long did about the war in Vietnam. To them I have a personal message: don`t repeat my mistakes. Don`t wait until more troops are sent, and thousands more have died, before telling truths that could end a war and save lives. Do what I wish I had done in 1964: go to the press, to Congress, and document your claims.

Technology may make it easier to tell your story, but the decision to do so will be no less difficult. The personal risks of making disclosures embarrassing to your superiors are real. If you are identified as the source, your career will be over; friendships will be lost; you may even be prosecuted. But some 140,000 Americans are risking their lives every day in Iraq. Our nation is in urgent need of comparable moral courage from its public officials.

Daniel Ellsberg is the author of "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers."

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September 28, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Swagger vs. Substance
By PAUL KRUGMAN

et`s face it: whatever happens in Thursday`s debate, cable news will proclaim President Bush the winner. This will reflect the political bias so evident during the party conventions. It will also reflect the undoubted fact that Mr. Bush does a pretty good Clint Eastwood imitation.

But what will the print media do? Let`s hope they don`t do what they did four years ago.

Interviews with focus groups just after the first 2000 debate showed Al Gore with a slight edge. Post-debate analysis should have widened that edge. After all, during the debate, Mr. Bush told one whopper after another - about his budget plans, about his prescription drug proposal and more. The fact-checking in the next day`s papers should have been devastating.

But as Adam Clymer pointed out yesterday on the Op-Ed page of The Times, front-page coverage of the 2000 debates emphasized not what the candidates said but their "body language." After the debate, the lead stories said a lot about Mr. Gore`s sighs, but nothing about Mr. Bush`s lies. And even the fact-checking pieces "buried inside the newspaper" were, as Mr. Clymer delicately puts it, "constrained by an effort to balance one candidate`s big mistakes" - that is, Mr. Bush`s lies - "against the other`s minor errors."

The result of this emphasis on the candidates` acting skills rather than their substance was that after a few days, Mr. Bush`s defeat in the debate had been spun into a victory.

This time, the first debate will be about foreign policy, an area where Mr. Bush ought to be extremely vulnerable. After all, his grandiose promises to rid the world of evildoers have all come to naught.

Exhibit A is, of course, Osama bin Laden, whom Mr. Bush promised to get "dead or alive," then dropped from his speeches after a botched operation at Tora Bora let him get away. And it`s not just bin Laden: most analysts believe that Al Qaeda, which might have been crushed if Mr. Bush hadn`t diverted resources and attention to the war in Iraq, is as dangerous as ever.

There`s also North Korea, which Mr. Bush declared part of the "axis of evil," then ignored when its regime started building nuclear weapons. Recently, when a reporter asked Mr. Bush about reports that North Korea has half a dozen bombs, he simply shrugged.

Most important, of course, is Iraq, an unnecessary war, which - after initial boasts of victory - has turned into an even worse disaster than the war`s opponents expected.

The Kerry campaign is making hay over Mr. Bush`s famous flight-suit stunt, but for me, Mr. Bush`s worst moment came two months later, when he declared: "There are some who feel like the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring `em on." When they really did come on, he blinked: U.S. forces - obviously under instructions to hold down casualties at least until November - have ceded much of Iraq to the insurgents.

During the debate, Mr. Bush will try to cover for this dismal record with swagger, and with attacks on his opponent. Will the press play Karl Rove`s game by, as Mr. Clymer puts it, confusing political coverage with drama criticism, or will it do its job and check the candidates` facts?

There have been some encouraging signs lately. There was a disturbing interlude in which many news organizations seemed to accept false claims that Iraq had calmed down after the transfer of sovereignty. But now, as the violence escalates, they seem willing to ask hard questions about Mr. Bush`s fantasy version of the situation in Iraq. For example, a recent Reuters analysis pointed out that independent sources contradict his assertions about everything "from police training and reconstruction to preparations for January elections."

Mr. Bush is also getting less of a free ride than he used to when he smears his opponent. Last week, after Mr. Bush declared that Mr. Kerry "would prefer the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein to the situation in Iraq today," The Associated Press pointed out that this "twisted his rival`s words" - and then quoted what John Kerry actually said.

Nonetheless, on Thursday night there will be a temptation to revert to drama criticism - to emphasize how the candidates looked and acted, and push analysis of what they said, and whether it was true, to the inside pages. With so much at stake, the public deserves better.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |

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"The fourth hurricane this year is hitting Florida. Jeb Bush said if the state were any more devastated, his brother would declare it a complete success"
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"Donald Rumsfeld said they are going to have elections even if only three quarters of the country votes. He said life isn`t perfect. He said sometimes when you have elections, you have to exclude parts of the country. You know, like we did with the blacks in Florida."
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"President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi were here this week to say things are going very well in Iraq indeed. Although Allawi did admit there are pockets of terrorists. Most of whom are in one area, called Iraq."
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"Bush bragged that more Iraqis say their country is on the right track than American say our country is on the right track. Boy, there’s a campaign slogan for you. `America: More F***ed Up Than Fallujah!`"
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"John Kerry said that you can`t have fair and free elections in a place where there`s no rule of law. President Bush said, `Oh yeah? What if your brother`s governor of that state?`"
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"HBO has a big special this weekend: Cat Stevens Live At Guantanamo Bay."
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Election or eviction? Kerry and Bush vie for the ultimate reality TV prize
By David Usborne in New York

28 September 2004

Reality television just gets better. On Thursday, viewers in America will be invited to watch a live special, called Presidential Debate, that promises to be so compelling that every network will broadcast it simultaneously. It will star two middle-aged men competing for one prize: the White House.

Best of all, it is the viewers who will ultimately decide which of the two contestants, George Bush or John Kerry, is the winner. Between Thursday and November, there will be two more episodes as well as a bonus feature when their running mates will get to play their own version.

As always in reality TV, it will not just be the contestants` words that will matter. Almost as important will be their demeanour. Who will the viewers most easily connect with? Will Mr Kerry impress or send us running to the fridge for beer? If Mr Bush stumbles on his syntax, will we wince or barely care? The ties they choose, the frequency of their smiles, how they use their hands - all could be deciding factors.

From now until Thursday, the normal campaigning rhythms will come almost to a standstill, as both candidates disappear into semi-purdah to get ready for the 90-minute ordeal. Senator Kerry, the Democrat, is at a resort town in Wisconsin, huddled with aides and image consultants, while President Bush began his preparations at the weekend at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Rarely has a series of presidential debates generated such an intense level of anticipation. Pitted against one another will be two men with much in common, including well-heeled backgrounds and experiences as students of a former Yale University oratory professor who coached them both on debating.

Yet they are men with starkly differing political personas. The President is good at folksy while Mr Kerry suffers from seeming too clever. And if Mr Kerry is clever, then Mr Bush can, on occasion, run the risk of turning his affection for making things simple and straightforward into seeming intellectually simplistic. Of the myriad pieces of advice that both men will be hearing is this: don`t be afraid. For Mr Bush it could mean appearing flustered - and mangling his words. For Mr Kerry, nerves usually lead him to chop his hands through the air in a way that is distractingly out of synch with the words coming out of his mouth.

The stakes may be highest for Mr Kerry. Thursday`s debate and the two others to follow - one in Missouri and one in Arizona - could be Mr Kerry`s last chance to up-end the race before it is too late. Voters know him least well. If he outscores the President - on substance and on likeability - he might just vault over him in the polls and capture a lead that he could consolidate in the final weeks until polling day.

As requested by the Bush camp, the topics for debate at their first face-off will be foreign relations, terrorism and Iraq. That was meant to be the President`s strongest turf, but recently Mr Kerry has signalled that he considers it ripe for exploitation. For 10 days now, he has been fiercely attacking the President`s "stubborn incompetence" on Iraq and accusing him of failing to come clean on the mess there.

Iraq will leave little scope for levity, even as historians admonish that wit and humour can be a debater`s best weapons. That is tricky for Mr Kerry who has been told to smile more and look less grave - even though he cannot help his heavy eyelids and almost basset-hound facial droop. But there may be a trap here for Mr Bush, whose appeal is his chummy conviviality. His smile could become a smirk.

"If I were prepping Bush," said Paul Begala, a former Clinton aide and Kerry advisor, "I would warn him about crossing the line from self-confident to cocky. People like his self-confidence but there are moments, particularly when he`s jacked up on adrenaline, when he crosses that line."

The Republican spin on Iraq is that Mr Kerry would be a hesitant leader, too weak to win the war or deter terrorists. Mr Bush, by contrast, is portrayed as resolute and unerring. Indeed last night, he was due to say on Fox News that he has no regrets about declaring "Mission Accomplished" on an aircraft carrier last May, even though the months that followed showed the conflict in Iraq had actually barely begun.

But if Mr Kerry hits his mark, Mr Bush`s more-resolute-than-thou script may fray. "His strongest quality is also a kind of weakness to be exploited, so you don`t know how this is going to play out," said Wayne Fields of Washington University in St Louis. "If, all of a sudden, the situation looks more complicated, and Kerry is able to show he can take things on and master them, then this could turn against Bush."

Neither side, meanwhile, is under-estimating the opposition. It is a quirk of history that both men have drawn, over the years, on the teaching of their shared Yale oratory professor, Rollin Osterweis. Both men were at Yale two years apart from one another, and both took classes on oratory and debating skills with the professor.

It was Mr Kerry who became one of the star pupils. Most famously, in 1966, Mr Kerry took on a travelling British team to debate the relevance of the UN. Mr Kerry championed the world body and defeated the visitors.

The Bush camp is playing the game of lowering expectations. "Senator Kerry has been preparing his whole life for this moment," commented Dan Bartlett, the White House spokesman. "He was an all-star debater in prep school and an all-star debater in Ivy League. Will President Bush step on his own line and maybe not pronounce a word right? I bet he will. But, I think after the 90 minutes, there won`t be any ambiguity on his positions."

PRESIDENTIAL HEAD-TO-HEADS

John F. Kennedy vs Richard Nixon (1960)

Nixon wore "Lazy Shave" to mask his five o`clock shadow but no other make-up and viewers were turned off by his pale and visibly sweating features.

Gerald Ford vs Jimmy Carter (1976)

Ford makes famous gaffe: "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration."

Ronald Reagan vs Walter Mondale (1984)

Reagan used humour to avoid fears he was too old. "I will not make age an issue. I am not going to exploit my opponent`s youth and inexperience."

Vice president Dan Quayle vs Lloyd Bentsen (1988)

Quayle asserts that he is just as experienced as JFK was when he ran for President. Bentsen fires back: "I knew Jack Kennedy. He was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy."

George Bush Sr vs Bill Clinton and also Ross Perot (1992)

Bush damaged when he is caught looking at his watch in the second debate, suggesting boredom.

George Bush vs Al Gore (2000)

Bush pokes fun at Gore for exaggerating and for once suggesting that he invented the internet.

David Usborne


28 September 2004 11:36


©2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd. All rights reserved

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LATEST: Two British soldiers killed in an ambush near Basra, southern Iraq. More details soon ...

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Beware the tools of tyranny

Human rights must not be abandoned in the `war on terror`
Jeffrey Jowell
Tuesday September 28, 2004

The Guardian
We should take seriously the growing number of reports that anti-terrorist measures fall disproportionately on members of our Muslim community. It is easy to understand how, in the wake of the Bigley affair, the Russian school massacre, and even the invasion of our own House of Commons, the niceties of liberal procedures are seen as obstacles to the "war" on terror.

It is, sadly, true that nowadays no society - democratic or repressive - is immune from increasingly inventive forms of deadly assault. But it is not true that liberal societies are helpless in the face of terrorist attacks. Our Human Rights Act permits the limitation of a number of its designated liberties when national security demands it. However, the difference between us and authoritarian countries is that our anti-terrorist measures must be proportionate to the danger posed and should not undermine the essence of democratic practice.

The precise extent of any limitation on our procedural safeguards is always difficult to establish. But democracies should not allow potentially innocent people to be held for long periods without a trial, or to be humiliated or damaged by torture. Once a democratic country closes down free expression, or begins to discriminate against certain minorities, the bright distinction between its values and those of authoritarian regimes will soon dim. As a US supreme court justice, John Paul Stevens, said in a recent case about conditions at Guantánamo Bay: "We must not wield the tools of tyranny even to resist the forces of tyranny."

The feature that distinguishes Britain and other democracies most clearly from tyrannical states is the independence of the judiciary, which should not lightly be challenged. David Blunkett has frequently berated judges who have held against his department. And he recently threatened to exclude any judicial review in asylum cases. Similarly, when Michael Howard was home secretary, he challenged the judiciary and is now leading the Conservatives in an attack upon an alleged surfeit of claims under the Human Rights Act and what he calls the "compensation culture". More subtly, both sides of the political spectrum are seeking to downplay rights in favour of so-called public duties.

Both Blunkett and Howard are wrong. For a start, human rights litigation is not multiplying exponentially. Do not believe the anecdote about the burglar who successfully sued the owner of a home he ransacked after falling through a defective skylight. It is true that, prior to the introduction of the Human Rights Act, the committee set up to anticipate its impact on court business believed it was likely to stimulate a "flood" of new cases. But nothing of that scale has taken place. Nor has the dire prediction that the act would serve as a "villain`s charter" remotely been fulfilled.

It is certainly the case that judges have, over the years, limited the unfettered rights of ministers. Until recently, when parliament conferred discretion upon a minister in broad terms (to act "in the public interest" or "as he sees fit"), his actions were virtually immune from judicial challenge. Nowadays, our courts require public officials to have greater respect for the people they serve - for example, by providing a fair hearing before limiting rights or interests. Even so, the judges have been remarkably restrained about interfering with the substance of discretionary decisions by ministers. So we should welcome the judicial development of principles of good public administration and accountability.

The argument for duties rather than rights is another red herring. Of course we should encourage a notion of civic duty in a general sense. But civic virtues cannot easily be legislated. The old Soviet constitutions used to impose a catalogue of vague obligations upon citizens (such as the duty to go to the aid of anyone in distress). Because they were not enforceable, they diminished respect for the constitutions. In any event, our most important duties are to respect the rights of others.

Instead of belittling rights and judges, Blunkett and Howard could take a leaf out of Nelson Mandela`s book. Shortly after he became president, one of his decisions was struck down by South Africa`s new constitutional court. He immediately welcomed the judgment, saying it established from the outset that in the new South Africa no one was above the law, and that the judges were the final arbiters of the constitution.

In the heat of the vital battle against new and fearsome forms of attack, it is tempting to tolerate an erosion of equality and liberty. However, these principles are hard-won cornerstones of our democracy, which must also be heavily defended against the terrorist threat.

· Jeffrey Jowell QC is professor of public law at University College London, and a vice-president of the Council of Europe`s Commission for Democracy Through Law

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washingtonpost.com
Imperfect Elections



Tuesday, September 28, 2004; Page A26

OPPONENTS OF continued U.S engagement in Iraq frequently describe what they say is the misguided illusion that "Jeffersonian democracy" can be established in that country. The pitch sounds hard-nosed and pragmatic -- but Thomas Jefferson, we suspect, would not appreciate being used as a straw man. There`s no question that the Iraqi elections planned for January, and any government that follows from them, will fall well short of democratic ideals. Yet it`s anything but realistic to portray democracy as a system that only works when it is pure. Not only was Jefferson`s democracy not entirely democratic (just ask African Americans and women), but the modern world is replete with examples of partially democratic countries -- and in most cases, their governments are better and their people freer than in the nondemocratic world.

Iraq may not become a "showcase" of democracy anytime soon. But even flawed elections stand a chance of producing a government with more legitimacy and public support than most others in the Arab Middle East. If successful, they are also a likelier route to stability in Iraq, and an eventual U.S. withdrawal, than the alternatives -- partition, civil war or continued U.S. sponsorship of a non-elected regime. It follows that the Bush administration is right to press forward with plans for elections even under the present difficult conditions. Almost any election would produce a more credible government than the current, U.N.-appointed administration -- and delay, especially if prolonged, would be a victory for Iraq`s extremists and an invitation to chaos.

Yet it is also possible to imagine elections so flawed that they would not have the hoped-for effect of sapping legitimacy from an insurgency that appears to be gaining ground. In that sense, there are at least three reasons for worry about the current preparations for a January vote. One is the inability, so far, of the United Nations to deploy the hundreds of organizers needed to stage the balloting, and the related failure of the Bush administration to raise or deploy the protection force approved months ago by the U.N. Security Council.

A second concern is the ambiguous statements of Bush administration and Iraqi officials about whether they are committed to holding elections in Sunni areas of Iraq -- and to taking the military measures necessary to make voting possible. While elections held outside those areas could still allow participation by 80 percent or more of Iraqis, they would yield a government that excluded the very population from which most of the insurgency is now drawn. That would only encourage further resistance, whereas balloting in such towns as Fallujah and Ramadi, even if only partial, would deliver a major blow to the insurgents.

Third, the possible exclusion of Sunni voters has encouraged another questionable idea: the formation of a unified national election slate. This would ensure Sunni representation in the new National Assembly, but it might also turn the election into a one-sided affair in which assembly seats were apportioned among half a dozen competing parties by backroom deals rather than voters` choices -- and cause Shiite leaders who have supported the political process so far to turn against it. Although it can`t necessarily control such political horse-trading, the Bush administration shouldn`t encourage it. Instead, it should aim to create the broadest possible choice for the largest number of Iraqi voters in January. Even if the result is a less-friendly government, U.S. prospects in Iraq will improve in proportion to the degree of participation and fairness the elections achieve.

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How to Win the Heartland

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, September 28, 2004; Page A27

DENVER -- One of the central claims of democracy is that wisdom percolates up from the heartland. As he prepares for Thursday`s debate with President Bush, John Kerry might ponder the thoughts of Ken Salazar, Colorado`s attorney general and one of the Democrats` best hopes for picking up a U.S. Senate seat this year.

Salazar, a moderate Democrat who faces beer magnate Pete Coors, has won twice statewide by picking up a lot of Republican votes. He unequivocally endorses Kerry but does not always appear when his party`s nominee visits this state, which Democrats devoutly hope to turn into a battleground.

The remarkable thing is that the middle-of-the-road Salazar, being unencumbered by Washington`s conventional wisdom, is willing to ask uncomfortable but entirely reasonable questions about whether the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, could have been prevented.

Salazar wears black jeans and cowboy boots (but, being indoors, not his trademark cowboy hat) as he chats in a cluttered backroom of his campaign headquarters. He recalls that a commission chaired by his state`s former Democratic senator, Gary Hart, and New Hampshire`s former Republican senator Warren Rudman issued an eerily prescient report in early 2001 pointing to the likelihood of a catastrophic terrorist attack on our country.

Salazar is still curious as to why the Bush administration didn`t take the Hart-Rudman report more seriously. He`s also curious about what Bush did regarding that famous Aug. 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing that contained warnings of a terrorist attack.

Without making wild charges -- he`s not that kind of guy -- Salazar suggests that Americans should want to know more about "two huge intelligence failures." He`s referring to our government`s failure to anticipate the attacks of Sept. 11 and "the intelligence failure that created the premise for the war in Iraq."

"Nobody," he says, "is being held accountable for these intelligence failures." Isn`t this a matter that our president should be asked about in Thursday`s debate -- especially what actions he took concerning that Aug. 6 memo? Or would such a question be just too terribly impolite? The reluctance to explore what Bush knew before Sept. 11 and what he did about it stands as one of the great mysteries of American journalism.

Ask Salazar how he would have voted on the 2002 Iraq war resolution and he is unequivocal: He would have voted for it on the basis of the case President Bush made. But ask him how he`d vote in light of what we have learned since and his answer is one that Kerry might have considered. "It`s not a fair question," Salazar replies, "because the matter would not have even been raised to the Congress if the facts had been known."

In any event, he says, "we`re there now. We really need to look at how we move forward."

One of eight children -- all of whom became first-generation college graduates -- Salazar grew up on a farm in the San Luis Valley that didn`t have a telephone or a television. (They had "a little radio," but the battery on which it operated often went out.) This ignites a passion for rural communities that are being left behind.

"I`ve always thought that somebody has to speak up for these rural communities," he says, referring to 45 counties in Colorado "that have been in economic decline over these last 30 years."

"They are the rural, agriculture-dependent counties that struggle," he says, "and many of them wither on the vine even when the rest of the country is doing very well."

Democrats were clobbered in rural America in the 2000 election. "Look at all the red in the interior," Salazar says, referring to the electoral maps pointing to Bush`s countryside strongholds.

Salazar, who spent two years in a Franciscan seminary, understands the power of cultural issues that "create wedge divisions" and move rural voters toward Republicans. But he thinks Democrats need to challenge policies that send federal subsidies to "corporate landowners" and offer little relief to rural "main street businesses" or small farmers. Rural America, he says, is "the forgotten America." Democrats cannot hope to become the majority party without reducing Republican advantages in areas that are not doing well under Republican policies.

If Salazar wins, it will be because he cuts the usual Republican majorities in Colorado`s ranching and farming counties. That would send a useful message to Republicans who take the rural vote for granted and to Democrats inclined to give up on the countryside. And Salazar`s straight talk on the war against terrorism just might give John Kerry some useful cues.

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Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 207 Bush 317
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Es ist kein gutes Zeichen für die politische Kultur eines Landes, wenn die Pollster ihre Ergebnisse an den Wünschen des Auftraggebers ausrichten.
Es ist schon bezeichnend wenn ein Institut wie Gallup, nachdem es erwischt wurde, seine Berechnungsdaten ändern.
Am Ende des Posting ein Link zu den Bevölkerungsstatistiken nach der 2000 Wahl.

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News from the Votemaster

Some bad news for the polling business. Strategic Vision (R) has a new poll in Ohio showing Bush ahead 52% to 43% there. However, there is also a Lake Snell Perry (D) poll showing the race there to be an exact tie, with both candidates at 46%. It is becoming increasingly clear that the pollsters are producing the results that the people paying the bills want to hear. Even pollsters who were once thought to be above suspicion are now suspicious. Gallup, for example, is now normalizing its samples to include 40% Republicans, even though the 2000 exit polls showed the partisan distribution to be 39% Democratic, 35% Republican. There is scant evidence that the underlying partisan distribution has changed much since then. Other pollsters also normalize their data, but most don`t say how. Normalizing the sample to ensure the proper number of women, elderly voters, etc. is legitimate provided that the pollster publicly states what has been done.

Despite a smattering a polls today, none of these mean much on the eve of the first debate. For many people, the debates will determine their votes.

Former President Jimmy Carter, who has monitored elections in dozens of countries around the world, has stated that the election arrangements in Florida do not meet basic international requirements for a fair and honest election. Add four hurricanes to the controversy raging about purging from the rolls people with the same name as a convicted felon and other irregularities and you get a big problem.

Senate News: A new poll in Colorado puts Peter Coors ahead of Ken Salazar by 51% to 46%. On the other hand, another poll in Louisiana puts the three Democratic candidates at 47% vs. the one Republican candidate with 44%. If no one gets 50% on Nov. 2, there will be a runoff in Dec. Brad Carson has opened a 5% lead against Tom Coburn in Oklahome. Tom Daschle also has a 5% lead against John Thune in South Dakota. All in all, the current projection for the Senate is 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats (counting Sen. Jeffords as a Democrat). If Ken Salazar wins against Pete Coors, a likely event given all polls except today`s, the Democrats will take back the Senate 51 to 49.

Since I am answering many fewer mails these days (400 came in yesterday) I thought I would answer some of the common questions on the website. but PLEASE !!! read the welcome page and the FAQ. Most questions are answered there already.

I am not including Nader in FL much because Rasmussen has a poll of Florida every day and he doesn`t include Nader. If newer poll is available that does include Nader, I will use that.
Projected Senate: 49 Democrats, 50 Republicans, 1 independent To bookmark this page, type CTRL-D (Apple-D on Macintoshes). If you are visiting for the first time, welcome. This site has far more about the election than just the map. See the Welcome page for more details.

-- The votemaster

Exit Poll Results - Election 2000
(Source: Voter News Service via CNN.com)

Among the most interesting results of the election are the exit poll data, which reveal much about the electorate, especially in a year when the nation was clearly so divided about the presidential candidates. These data are obtained by the Voter News Service from voters immediately after they cast their ballots on election day. The data are compiled and transmitted by VNS, which is funded by a consortium of news organizations.

http://www.udel.edu/poscir/road/course/exitpollsindex.html

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Gallup, for example, is now normalizing its samples to include 40% Republicans, even though the 2000 exit polls showed the partisan distribution to be 39% Democratic, 35% Republican.
Da habe ich mich wohl in der Eile vertan. Gallup hat nicht seine falschen Zahlen berichtigt, sondern die falschen Zahlen erst zur Grundlage seiner Erhebungen gemacht.

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Iraqi City on Edge of Chaos
U.S. troops have tried to win over residents in Ramadi, but a surge in abductions and killings is threatening to create another Fallouja.
By Alissa J. Rubin
Times Staff Writer

September 28, 2004

RAMADI, Iraq — Insurgents are killing and kidnapping government officials, police and Iraqi national guard members in an apparent campaign to destabilize this city, the capital of Sunni Muslim-dominated Al Anbar province west of Baghdad.

The rash of attacks threatens to eliminate the interim Iraqi government`s control over Ramadi, notwithstanding the presence just outside the city of thousands of U.S. Marines and Army soldiers who back the government`s authority.

The provincial governor`s three sons were kidnapped, and released only after he resigned. More recently, the deputy governor was kidnapped and killed, his body found this month. The president of the regional university and the provincial directors of the national sewage and communications ministries have also been kidnapped, and 10 contractors working for the United States have been assassinated.

Then there are the ominous posters that appeared on the walls of mosques a couple of weeks ago. Directed at Iraqi police and national guardsmen, they read, "Quit or we`ll kill you."

The apparent aim is to make Ramadi into an ungovernable area like neighboring Fallouja, where insurgents have free rein. Ramadi and Fallouja represent 70% of Al Anbar`s population, according to U.S. estimates.

The erosion of order in Ramadi illustrates the success of the insurgents` methods and the serious problems facing the interim government and its U.S. backers in maintaining stability in Iraq. It also threatens to thwart plans for a national election in January, at least in Al Anbar`s main cities. An election that omits key population centers in the so-called Sunni Triangle region would have greatly diminished credibility.

"We do not know who the attackers are or who is backing them," said Ramadi`s acting governor, Mohammed Abid Awad. "Are they backed from outside? Nobody knows."

Some victims have disappeared without a word; others have been assassinated, their bodies left on the roads. Still others have fled their jobs, afraid of suffering a fate similar to that of their co-workers.

"There`s been a lot of kidnappings, a lot of assassinations, just in the last couple of weeks," said Col. Jerry L. Durrant of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, who oversees the coordination of the U.S. military with Iraqi security forces. "The government in Baghdad is not recognized by anyone in Al Anbar."

Durrant said leaders of the Iraqi national guard do not want to meet him in public or travel in military vehicles. Many no longer wear their uniforms for fear of being identified with the interim government`s security forces.

Ramadi is not yet lost, but it is teetering. The Marines, aware of what is at stake, are trying to back up the local government. But they are hamstrung, because taking too visible a role could endanger the lives of Iraqi officials. Working with the Army, Marines are also trying to undertake small reconstruction projects they can complete quickly — an approach they hope will make a difference in neighborhoods still open to the American presence.

Unlike in Fallouja, where U.S. troops within a hundred yards of the city draw fire, there are areas of Ramadi where Marines and soldiers dismount from their vehicles, talk to residents and respond to their concerns.

"Ramadi is a much more benign environment," said Lt. Col. Mike Cabrey, who runs an Army artillery unit stationed in Ramadi. "I`d like to say it`s the civil affairs work we`ve done that`s made a difference."

Between $8 million and $10 million has been spent in the greater Ramadi area, he said.

It may also be the hard work of Cabrey and fellow soldiers in a few discrete neighborhoods. Although he is an artillery expert by assignment and training, Cabrey has taken it upon himself to become deeply involved with projects that provide a combination of money and personal outreach. He visits the ongoing work efforts three times a week, so he maintains a relationship with the people his unit is trying to help.

Regardless, the U.S. military`s grip seems tenuous, the insurgency is persistent, and it appears that the troops face an uphill battle to maintain the bonds they have forged with the community.

As a provincial capital with a university, Ramadi has developed an insurgency of a much different character than that of Fallouja, where there appear to be many more Islamic extremists, including Wahhabis and Salafists. But Ramadi is strongly influenced by the tribes, who seem to think they have little to gain by working with the Marines.

"A lot of these guys have read history," said Durrant, recounting a recent meeting with Ramadi tribal sheiks, educators and businessmen. "They said to me the government in Baghdad is like the Vichy government in France during World War II, and I got called a Nazi several times."

The Vichy government was set up by the German Nazi occupation forces and ran a large area of France.

The attacks have discouraged law enforcement efforts by the Iraqi police and national guard, Marine intelligence officers say.

"In many cases, intimidation and pressure prompts a bias toward non-action. Maybe you`re just not there when you hear something might happen in a place," said Lt. Col. George Bristol, a senior intelligence officer for the 1st Marine Division.

Ramadi police deny there are problems. "Things are going well in the province," said deputy police commander Brig. Jassim Mohammed Baddaa.

Rank-and-file officers, who were trimming the dried bushes outside the police headquarters one day recently, said they were intimidated regularly but were not allowed to talk to the media.

Not that the entire city is without hope.

In the small neighborhood known as Tamim, or Five Kilo, on Ramadi`s western edge, residents seem pleased by U.S. efforts to refurbish schools, build a soccer field and two clinics, expand the police station and restore a badly damaged mosque.

On a recent day, seven U.S. armored Humvees drove into the neighborhood. There was no small-arms fire, no roadside bomb explosions, and when the troops dismounted, people looked up briefly and continued whatever they were doing.

Cabrey had brought with him a military policy trainer to meet the commander of the local precinct, and he was carrying sacks of medicine for one of the clinics.

At the police station, which the U.S. military supplied with 15 vehicles, the commander, who identified himself only as Chief Saleh, asked Cabrey to pose for a picture cutting the ribbon on the refurbished station so that the building`s use would be official.

He then complained that U.S. troops had detained some of his men when they were assigned outside the Tamim neighborhood and had taken their weapons. "If you hurt a man`s dignity, that`s very sensitive," Saleh said.

Cabrey nodded and before leaving made sure the police trainer had linked up with the deputy police commander to get details on the incident. "We`ll try to get them back for you," he said.

Saleh acknowledged that there had been kidnappings of police in his precinct in the last year, but said it had been "over tribal matters." He also said he had met with community leaders and imams and explained to them why he was accepting goods from the Americans. Cabrey nodded and added, "Col. Saleh went and worked directly with the community; I don`t know if these other people who are getting attacked have made the same effort."

When the soldiers and Marines reached a mosque, also being rebuilt with a grant from Cabrey`s team, there was no one there. Cabrey, however, recognized a child running across the street. "That`s the imam`s daughter — ask her where her father is," he said.

A few minutes later the imam emerged from his house, greeted Cabrey in the middle of the street where all the neighbors could see, and the pair walked to the mosque. They agreed Cabrey would leave the medicines there for the clinic doctors to pick up the next day.

The imam showed Cabrey the minaret, tall and elegant with white and turquoise tiles and almost complete. The imam had wanted the mosque and minaret rebuilt so they would be the first sight travelers saw as they entered Ramadi from the west.

For the moment, Cabrey`s efforts appear to have paid off. But with an estimated 6,500 people in the Tamim neighborhood — in a city of about 400,000 — it is also a measure of how much effort may be needed in every hamlet, every quarter of the Sunni Triangle if the U.S. is to maintain trust and blunt the insurgency.

Special correspondent Raheem Salman of The Times` Baghdad Bureau contributed to this report.



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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U.S. Bombs Insurgent Targets in Baghdad; Civilian Toll Reported
By Edmund Sanders
Times Staff Writer

September 28, 2004

BAGHDAD — U.S. warplanes bombed suspected insurgent positions in a restive slum of the Iraqi capital Monday, and hospital officials said 10 people, including civilians, were killed.

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The airstrikes in Baghdad`s Sadr City neighborhood underscored how U.S. forces are stepping up firepower in their battle against insurgents. Such aerial attacks have become increasingly common in Sadr City, Fallouja and other places where anti-American militants still exert significant control.

The strikes also raise questions about whether a fragile peace agreement with militiamen loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr will hold. Tensions have risen in recent days between his followers and U.S. forces in Sadr City and in the holy city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, where the two sides ended a bloody standoff in August.

Insurgents on Monday continued their attacks against U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces. Seven Iraqi national guard members were killed in two car bombings: four in Mosul and three at a checkpoint near Fallouja, police officials told Associated Press.

Thirty-four car bombs have been detonated in September in Iraq, the highest monthly tally since the war began in March 2003, U.S. military officials said.

Two U.S. soldiers died Monday. In Balad, north of Baghdad, a 1st Infantry Division soldier was killed when insurgents opened fire on his patrol, which was responding to a traffic accident that had killed another American soldier.

The two deaths brought the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq this month to 77, according to a compilation of Pentagon news releases by Globalsecurity.org, making September the fourth-deadliest month for American forces since the start of the war. At least 1,049 U.S. military personnel have died, according to a Pentagon tally Monday.

With Iraqi parliamentary elections set for January, U.S. military officials are planning to accelerate efforts to crack down on insurgents and restore peace.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Sunday that a "major thrust" of U.S. efforts in Iraq in the near future would be to reclaim from insurgents areas considered "no-go" for U.S. and Iraqi government forces and aid agencies. The air attack in Sadr City early Monday was part of that effort.

U.S. officials said they had killed four insurgents and destroyed several enemy positions in Sadr City with a "precision strike" on "positively identified targets." Witnesses said the attacks began about 1 a.m. and lasted several hours.

"We were terrified because the strikes were random," said Majeed Minshed, 23, a Sadr City resident. "By the time it was over, we did not believe we were still alive."

Sabah Abaas, an emergency room medical assistant at Jawader Hospital, reported 10 people killed and 71 injured, including women and children.

U.S. officials called reports of civilian casualties "suspect" but said they would investigate. They suggested civilians might have been killed by insurgents who responded to the U.S. attack by firing four mortar rounds at an American base shortly after the airstrikes began. Three of the mortar rounds missed and landed outside the base. A civilian vehicle was destroyed, military officials said.

"The enemy shows no concern for the Iraqi people," Army spokesman Lt. Col. Jim Hutton said.

Rising civilian deaths have put U.S. officials on the defensive. According to the Iraqi Health Ministry, nearly 3,200 Iraqi civilians have died since April in terrorist attacks and clashes between U.S. forces and insurgents.

American officials say the civilian toll has been exaggerated. A senior military official called reports of civilian deaths in Fallouja "propaganda" and suggested that local hospitals had been infiltrated by insurgent forces.

"We have seen pictures [of injured people] but we can`t authenticate that the individuals in the hospital are in the hospital because of [a U.S.] attack that day," the official said.

In other developments Monday, kidnapped Iranian diplomat Faridoun Jihani was freed, Iranian Embassy officials said in a statement. Jihani, who was the Iranian consul in the city of Karbala, south of Baghdad, was abducted from his vehicle Aug. 4 by a group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq.

And Jordan`s King Abdullah II said two female Italian aid workers who had been abducted and reported killed were alive. Negotiations for their release were continuing, he said.

An estimated 140 foreigners have been abducted in Iraq, including British businessman Kenneth Bigley, whose fate remains unclear. His family continued to plead for his release Monday, distributing leaflets and making radio appeals in Iraq.

Two of Bigley`s American co-workers, Eugene "Jack" Armstrong and Jack Hensley, were beheaded. The men were believed to have been abducted by the terrorist group Jamaat al Tawhid wal Jihad, led by Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi.

A Times special correspondent in Sadr City contributed to this report.




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In a TV interview Sunday, Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command, estimated that the number of foreign fighters in Iraq was below 1,000.
Davon hat allein Zarqawi fast 2000.

Insurgents Are Mostly Iraqis, U.S. Military Says
Bush, Kerry and Allawi have cited foreign fighters as a major security problem.
By Mark Mazzetti
Times Staff Writer

September 28, 2004

WASHINGTON — The insistence by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and many U.S. officials that foreign fighters are streaming into Iraq to battle American troops runs counter to the U.S. military`s own assessment that the Iraqi insurgency remains primarily a home-grown problem.

In a U.S. visit last week, Allawi spoke of foreign insurgents "flooding" his country, and both President Bush and his Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, have cited these fighters as a major security problem.

But according to top U.S. military officers in Iraq, the threat posed by foreign fighters is far less significant than American and Iraqi politicians portray. Instead, commanders said, loyalists of Saddam Hussein`s regime — who have swelled their ranks in recent months as ordinary Iraqis bristle at the U.S. military presence in Iraq — represent the far greater threat to the country`s fragile 3-month-old government.

Foreign militants such as Jordanian-born Abu Musab Zarqawi are believed responsible for carrying out videotaped beheadings, suicide car bombings and other high-profile attacks. But U.S. military officials said Iraqi officials tended to exaggerate the number of foreign fighters in Iraq to obscure the fact that large numbers of their countrymen have taken up arms against U.S. troops and the American-backed interim Iraqi government.

"They say these guys are flowing across [the border] and fomenting all this violence. We don`t think so," said a senior military official in Baghdad. "What`s the main threat? It`s internal."

In interviews during his U.S. visit last week, Allawi spoke ominously of foreign jihadists "coming in the hundreds to Iraq." In one interview, he estimated that foreign fighters constituted 30% of insurgent forces.

Allawi`s comments echoed a theme in Bush`s recent campaign speeches: that foreign fighters streaming into the country are proof that the war in Iraq is inextricably linked to the global war on terrorism.

Kerry has made a similar case, with a different emphasis. In remarks on the stump last week, he said that the "terrorists pouring across the border" were proof that the Bush administration had turned Iraq into a magnet for foreign fighters hoping to kill Americans.

Yet top military officers challenge all these statements. In a TV interview Sunday, Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command, estimated that the number of foreign fighters in Iraq was below 1,000.

"While the foreign fighters in Iraq are definitely a problem that have to be dealt with, I still think that the primary problem that we`re dealing with is former regime elements of the ex-Baath Party that are fighting against the government and trying to do anything possible to upend the election process," he said. Iraqi elections are scheduled for January.

U.S. officials acknowledge that Iraq`s porous border — especially its boundary with Syria — allows arms and money to be smuggled in with relative ease. But they say the traffic from Syria is largely Iraqi Baathists who escaped after the U.S.-led invasion and couriers bringing in money from former members of Hussein`s government.

At the behest of the interim government, U.S. forces last month cracked down on traffic along the 375-mile Syrian border. During Operation Phantom Linebacker, U.S. troops picked up small numbers of foreign fighters attempting to cross into Iraq, officials say.

Yet the bulk of the traffic they detected was the kind that has existed for hundreds of years: smugglers and Syrian tribesmen with close ties to sheiks on Iraq`s side of the border.

Top military officers said there was little evidence that the dynamics in Iraq were similar to those in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when thousands of Arabs waged war alongside Afghans to drive out the Soviet Union.

Instead, U.S. military officials said the core of the insurgency in Iraq was — and always had been — Hussein`s fiercest loyalists, who melted into Iraq`s urban landscape when the war began in March 2003. During the succeeding months, they say, the insurgents` ranks have been bolstered by Iraqis who grew disillusioned with the U.S. failure to deliver basic services, jobs and reconstruction projects.

It is this expanding group, they say, that has given the insurgency its deadly power and which represents the biggest challenge to an Iraqi government trying to establish legitimacy countrywide.

"People try to turn this into the mujahedin, jihad war. It`s not that," said one U.S. intelligence official. "How many foreign fighters have been captured and processed? Very few."



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COMMENTARY
Something Bad Has Begun
The former Cat Stevens says he hasn`t changed but the U.S. has.
By Yusuf Islam
Yusuf Islam, the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens, was deported to Britain last week after being refused entry into the United States.

September 28, 2004

Iwas flying to Nashville last week with my 21-year-old daughter to explore some new musical ideas with a record label there. Ironically, I was trying to remain low-profile because of the speculation that it might have raised in the music world about a return of "the Cat." Media attention was the last thing I wanted. But it seems God wanted otherwise.

Toward the end of our journey from London to Washington, the plane was diverted. The captain announced something about "heavy traffic." After landing in Bangor, Maine, six tall, blue-uniformed officers boarded and surrounded me and my daughter.

"Is your name Yusuf Islam?" they asked.

"Yes," I confirmed.

"Do you mind coming with us and answering a few questions?"

At that point my heart stopped, and my daughter`s face turned aspirin-white. This was the start of the nightmare.

Three FBI agents escorted me away from my daughter and asked me questions. At first, it sounded like they might have me mixed up with somebody else, as they repeated the spelling of my name.

"No. Y-u-s-u-f," I carefully spelled out. The agents looked a bit puzzled.

As they continued asking questions, some of their queries were obviously not related to me, so I thought this must be a matter of simple mistaken identity. Whether it was a mix-up or not remained unclear because they weren`t under any obligation to give me a reason; the green visa waiver form I had so neatly filled in earlier had effectively denied me any right to appeal or answers. It was only when an immigration official read out to me a legal reference number that he mentioned some implication with "terrorism" — no further details necessary.

The most upsetting thing was being separated from my daughter for 33 hours — not knowing how she was or when and where we might be united. Because my phone was confiscated, I couldn`t contact my family.

God almighty! Is this the same planet I`d taken off from? I was devastated. The unbelievable thing is that only two months earlier, I had been having meetings in Washington with top officials from the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to talk about my charity work. Even further back, one month after the attack on the World Trade Center, I was in New York meeting Peter Gabriel and Hillary Rodham Clinton at the World Economic Forum!

Had I changed that much? No. Actually, it`s the indiscriminate procedure of profiling that`s changed. I am a victim of an unjust and arbitrary system, hastily imposed, that serves only to belittle America`s image as a defender of the civil liberties that so many dearly struggled and died for over the centuries.

Need I say that any form of terrorism or violence is the antithesis of everything I love and stand for? Anyone who knows me will attest to this. I have spent my life in the search for peace and understanding, and that was mirrored clearly in my music. Since becoming a Muslim, I have devoted my life to education, charity and helping children around the world.

Consistently I have condemned the attacks of 9/11, stating that the slaughter of innocents, the taking of hostages and coldblooded killing of women and children have nothing do with the teachings of Islam. I`ve openly and publicly repudiated the actions of groups that resort to such acts of inhumanity — whatever their names. Any allegations to the contrary are fabricated. The Koran equates the murder of one innocent person with the murder of all of humanity.

Ever since I embraced Islam in 1977, people have regularly tried to link me with things I have nothing to do with. Take the Salman Rushdie case as an example, or the regurgitating of the accusation that I support groups like Hamas.

I am a man of peace, and I denounce all forms of terrorism and injustice; it is simply outrageous for anyone to suggest otherwise. The fact that I have sympathy for ordinary people in the world who are suffering from occupation, tyranny, poverty or war is human and has nothing to do with politics or terrorism.

Thank God my daughter and I were relieved of our ordeal and delivered home safely. I also thank all those who prayed for me and supported me through this dark episode; I have never harbored any ill will toward people of God`s great Earth anywhere — and wish the reverse was also true.





Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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ROBERT SCHEER
The Dangers of a `What the Heck` Vote
Robert Scheer

September 28, 2004

Don`t say you weren`t warned. Yes, you, that otherwise reasonable centrist voter who might be tempted to cast a "what the heck" vote for George W. Bush. Don`t kid yourself that the Cheneys, Ashcrofts and Rumsfelds who mold Bush`s thoughts will suddenly moderate their radical vision for remaking the world or dampen their attacks on our treasury and civil liberties. It won`t happen: Reward their rampage of the last four years with a new mandate to rule and they will only be emboldened.

Four more years of the Bush administration threaten two essential ingredients of our system of government: checks and balances on the president`s exercise of power by Congress and the judiciary; and an informed citizenry alert to the attempts by a president to play fast and loose with the people`s future.

On the latter point, it is dangerous to reward rather than punish a president who exploited the tragedy of 9/11 to justify a costly war in Iraq. A vote for Bush is a vote for the neoconservative doctrine of preemptive war based on distorted evidence and the rule of fear. If the GOP wins in November, why shouldn`t a victorious Bush administration feel empowered in its second term to invade another country on the basis of flimsy ties to Al Qaeda?

What is to stop the administration from expanding attacks on our civil liberties or reinstituting a military draft in order to wage an ill-defined war on terror? Nothing, because Bush`s reelection would erase the doubts raised by his first dubious victory and validate his post 9/11 strategy of stoking our fears while robbing us of the information and logic needed to make rational policy choices.

A Bush victory would mean the dominance of that unholy alliance of the so-called Christian right and the adventurist neoconservatives over all three branches of government. Moderate Republicans in Congress are an endangered species no longer willing to challenge even the more extreme elements of their party. And with the Democrats frozen into a minority party posture, Americans can forget about any check on the hubris of the Bush administration.

All this would be glaringly obvious in the domestic as well as the foreign policy area and nowhere more alarming than in the ideological shaping of the federal judiciary for generations to come. The odds are overwhelming that the modicum of restraint now exercised by the U.S. Supreme Court would be swept aside by the inevitable Bush appointments in a second term. A high court held in check by the swing vote of Sandra Day O`Connor, who has talked of retiring, would give way to the ideological far-right judges that Bush has been pushing onto the courts.

The high court would become the Antonin Scalia court, faithfully served by the rigid obedience of newly minted clones of Clarence Thomas. Scalia is the justice who refused to recuse himself from a case involving Vice President Dick Cheney, his duck-hunting buddy. This would be the most politically activist court of modern time because its prevailing philosophy would be to green-light the actions of this wildly activist president.

We have been warned about the dangerous excesses of the Bush White House by veterans of other GOP administrations, beginning with John Dean, who was President Nixon`s White House counsel and who has condemned the unprecedented misuse of secrecy and national security as "worse than Watergate." The warnings from former key players in the current administration, such as Treasury Secretary Paul O`Neill and counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, document a dangerous pattern of deceit and manipulation.

This is the time to decide whether this country and, by logical extension, the fate of the world should be in the hands of a leader whose essential mode of governance mocks the ideals of a free society.

This is too dangerous a time for voters to be blinded by the extra bucks in those tax breaks that are bankrupting our future economy or to indulge in some comic book fantasy about zapping the bad guys in those foreign countries. It is a time to think hard about the unbridled power of a second Bush term and whether you want Bush, Cheney & Co. to decide, on a political whim, to send your kid, or the one next door, to war.



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/192647_thomas28.html

Saying U.N. backed war doesn`t make it so

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON -- President Bush may try to fool the American people with his repeated claim that he invaded Iraq to pursue a "war on terrorism" but he should not try that spin on the world leaders at the United Nations. They know better.

Americans do, too. We don`t have such short memories that we`ve forgotten how the Bush administration previously declared that Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction required an invasion.

Bush, who has run out of excuses for the war, now wants everyone to believe that the United Nations gave him the go-ahead to invade Iraq when the world body passed a resolution warning there would be "serious consequences" if Saddam Hussein did not disarm and give weapons inspectors free rein in Iraq.

"The commitments we make must have meaning," he told the U.N. General Assembly last week. "When we say serious consequences for the sake of peace, there must be serious consequences."

But the U.N. resolution gave him no mandate for war.

No matter how many times Bush claims he had U.N. backing to attack the oil-rich nation, it doesn`t make it so.

In his new policy of unilateralism -- reminiscent of 19th century imperialism -- Bush has said repeatedly that we don`t need permission from the United Nations. When he embarked on his tragic venture, the president cited Iraq`s deadly arsenals and ties to al-Qaida. Both of those premises have proven non-existent and the president is casting about for a new rationale for an invasion that has provoked world outrage and an escalation of terrorism.

Isn`t it time for Bush to level with the nation and tell us the real reason he invaded Iraq?

Since Bush last year declared "mission accomplished" in Iraq, violence has escalated in Iraq. Attacks against American troops are almost a daily occurrence. But we have not heard an apology from the president for the thousands of American and Iraqi war casualties, including uncounted numbers of Iraqi civilians.

He touts Iraq and Afghanistan as models for the Middle East. Have you heard of any other nation begging to be invaded by the United States lately?

The CIA is pessimistically forecasting more difficulty and more instability and extremism in Iraq. But the president speaks of "progress" despite the growing violence and fanaticism. Meanwhile, the opposition controls some key cities and has targeted foreigners, mostly Americans, who are now more vulnerable than ever.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has said the war violated international law because it was not U.N.-sanctioned. He upset the White House by telling the BBC that the war was "illegal." Annan pitched his speech to the U.N. General Assembly with an appeal to the "rule of law," which Americans also cherish as the foundation of our democracy.

"Those who seek to bestow legitimacy must themselves embody it, and those who invoke international law must themselves submit to it," he said.

Annan also referred to Iraq, saying: "We see civilians massacred in cold blood while relief workers, journalists and other non-combatants are taken hostage and put to death in the most barbarous fashion." He denounced the horrific beheadings by Iraqi insurgents.

At the same time, Annan said, "We have seen Iraqi prisoners disgracefully abused."

Bush has shown little respect for the world organization, even though his father, former President George H.W. Bush, once served as the U.S. representative to the United Nations. Apparently none of its aura rubbed off on his son.

Looking for more justification for his colossal folly, the president is now basically saying "So what if there were no weapons and no terrorist links? Saddam Hussein is gone; the Iraqis are better off and we are safer."

Just before Bush spoke to the General Assembly, Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva warned the meeting that "mankind is losing the fight for peace."

"The necessary fight against terrorism cannot be conceived strictly in military terms," he added.

Amen.

Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: [e-mail]. Copyright 2004 Hearst Newspapers.

© 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Jeden Tag eine Kolumne. Gestern habe ich 2 eingestellt.

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/192648_williams28.html

Bush`s decisions defined by ideology

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

WALTER WILLIAMS
GUEST COLUMNIST

Sound presidential decision-making structures do not guarantee a successful policy. But the worse the decision process, the greater the danger that the policy devised will fail and wreak havoc on the nation when it is a major initiative.

President Bush`s decision to launch a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq is as good an example as I`ve seen of a severely flawed decision-making process producing an ill-thought-through decision that quickly became a nightmare as that misbegotten policy was put in place.

Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies called the National Security Council where the decision was made "the weakest and most ineffective National Security Council in post-war American history."

Ideologically driven incompetence as usual dominated. Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other top Defense Department officials -- all civilians, not the generals and admirals they commanded -- pressed the neoconservative conviction that Iraq had become the center of worldwide terrorism.

David Kay, Bush`s former weapons inspector in Iraq, told Congress in mid-August 2004 that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice had ill-served the president in terms of developing good intelligence on Iraq`s weapons program. As Kay put it, Rice was "the dog that did not bark."

The problem, however, started with Bush`s striking incompetence in directing his own policy-making structure. He did not understand how a well-functioning decision process worked or the importance of getting the facts. He knew little about Iraq and its complex history, seldom read any policy papers and had little curiosity.

Historically, the strongest institutional decision-making processes have had presidents with extensive policy knowledge who exerted intelligent guidance. Successful presidents demanded that their systems have the technical capacity to develop hard policy information and analyses to support reality testing.

Each president took the time to master policy papers and interacted with their top advisers as full participants in considering policy alternatives based on sound data and analyses.

Decision-making on Iraq featured two diametrically opposite mind-sets concerning the efficacy of valid numbers and informed analyses in the presidential decision process. The critical policy choice involved a lone truth teller against the neoconservative true believers.

How the two views played out in the decision-making process is shown best by two members of the National Security Council -- Cheney and Treasury Secretary Paul O`Neill --who not only had similar characteristics but were best of friends.

Both were highly intelligent and deeply committed to the Republican cause. Each had experience with sound decision-making systems and had gained a reputation for being a prudent policy adviser.

By the start of the Bush administration, however, Cheney had morphed into a political ideologue rather than a policy analyst.

O`Neill had spent all his career in government at the Office of Management and Budget as the brightest career staff member of his time and then as a political appointee. He had inculcated the creed of information excellence and telling truth to power.

In 1988, O`Neill admonished young OMB staff members that their "guiding light of motivation" should be "the objective of living up to a standard which says in every decision the president has to make, he has from you the best and clearest exposition of the facts and arguments on every side of the issue that it is possible for a human mind to muster."

O`Neill kept telling the other decision makers they had no good evidence to justify a preemptive strike. This deep commitment to honest numbers made O`Neill the odd man out on the president`s war council.

O`Neill, based on his direct participation in the process and his distinguished record as a public servant, is a most credible witness.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind drew on him heavily in his book "The Price of Loyalty," which discussed the decision-making on Iraq in depth.

Suskind wrote that in Bush`s decision-making process, "hard-eyed analysis would be painted as disloyalty." Instead, Cheney, the dominant behind-the-scenes manipulator, drove the decision-making process toward a choice consonant with the neoconservative dogma.

To do so, Cheney led what O`Neill labeled "a praetorian guard" that encircled Bush. Suskind underscored the fatal flaw in the Bush administration war council:

"The president was caught in an echo chamber of his own making, cut off from everyone other than (a small circle of advisers that) keeps him away from the one thing he needs most: honest, disinterested perspectives about what`s real and what the hell he might do about it."

It was a horrendous decision that defied everything we know about good policy-making. Yet, the president and his top advisers brought the same mind-set to the implementation and management of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

They combined unswerving conviction and striking ignorance as ideologically driven incompetence was again the order of the day. My next column tells that tragic tale.

Walter Williams is a professor emeritus at the University of Washington`s Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs and is the author of "Reaganism and the Death of Representative Democracy."

© 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Das sind nicht alle Polls, die jeden Tag herauskommen.
http://www.pollingreport.com/
Eine andere Poll-Sammelseite
http://realclearpolitics.com/bush_vs_kerry_hth.html
Ein täglicher Poll mit 1000 LV
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Presidential_Tracking_Poll.h…

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 28. September 2004, 6:18
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,319533,00.html

Interview mit OSZE-Beobachterin der US-Wahl

"Wir konzentrieren uns auf die Problemstaaten"

Erstmals wird die US-Präsidentschaftswahl von der OSZE überwacht. Die Schweizer Nationalrätin Barbara Haering wird das Duell zwischen George W. Bush und John Kerry als Leiterin der Wahlbeobachtungsmission kontrollieren. SPIEGEL ONLINE sprach mit ihr über die Aufgaben vor Ort und Auszählungspannen vor vier Jahren.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Frau Haering, zuletzt hat die OSZE die Wahlen in Georgien und Kasachstan beobachtet, nun werden die Vereinigten Staaten kontrolliert. Steht die US-Demokratie auf einer Stufe mit Ländern des ehemaligen Ostblocks?

Barbara Haering: Die Wahlbeobachtung in den USA findet auf ausdrücklichen Wunsch der Vereinigten Staaten statt. Die OSZE wird nur aktiv, wenn sie von einem Land eingeladen wird. Es ist der OSZE sehr wichtig, dass eine Wahl in allen Ländern nach den gleichen Maßstäben abläuft. Deshalb hat sie die Einladung der Vereinigten Staaten sehr gerne angenommen. Die OSZE legt das Schwergewicht ihrer Aktivitäten auf Transitionsländer, also den Ländern des ehemaligen Ostblocks, die sich auf dem Weg zu Demokratie und sozialer Marktwirtschaft befinden. Diese reklamieren jedoch, dass die OSZE ihre Aufmerksamkeit einseitig auf sie richte.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Warum haben die Vereinigten Staaten die OSZE eingeladen?

Haering: Ich denke, dass dies eine Folge der Unstimmigkeiten bei der Wahl vor vier Jahren und der damit verbundenen internationalen Reaktion gewesen ist. Die USA haben ein Interesse an einer Wahlbeobachtung im eigenen Land, unter anderem auch im Hinblick auf ihre Politik innerhalb der OSZE.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Möchten die USA auch Vorbild für andere Länder sein, in dem sie Wahlbeobachter einladen?

Haering: Durchaus. Sie können nämlich nicht verlangen, dass in Russland, in der Ukraine oder in Georgien Maßstäbe angesetzt werden, die sie nicht auch an sich selbst anlegen.

Barbara Haering wurde 1953 in Montreal (Kanada) geboren. Sie studierte Naturwissenschaften und Raumplanung in Zürich (Schweiz). Seit 1990 ist die Sozialdemokratin Mitglied des Schweizer Nationalrats. Von 2001 bis 2003 war sie Präsidentin der Schweizer Delegation bei der Parlamentarischen Versammlung der OSZE. Mittlerweile ist sie deren Vize-Präsidentin.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Ursprünglich sollte die Uno die Wahl am 2. November beobachten. Jetzt übernimmt die OSZE diese Aufgabe.

Haering: Dem amerikanischen Kongress lag ein Antrag der Demokraten vor, die Uno als Wahlbeobachter anzufragen. Dieser wurde von den Republikanern im Parlament abgelehnt. Daraufhin hat das Außenministerium bei der OSZE angefragt.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Beobachtet die OSZE anders als die Uno?

Haering: In der Abwicklung macht die OSZE nichts anderes als die Uno. Wir stehen auch im Kontakt bezüglich der Weiterentwicklung von Wahlbeobachtungen. Ich denke, es ging dabei mehr um den völkerrechtlichen Status der Uno und ihre hoheitlichen Befugnisse, die nicht angerufen werden sollen. Die Wahlbeobachtung durch die OSZE ist ein Dienst, den sich die Länder gegenseitig auf Anfrage erweisen - und keine hoheitliche Funktion.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Was unterscheidet die Wahl in den USA von einer Abstimmung in einem Land wie Georgien oder der Ukraine?

Haering: Viele Transitionsländer stehen am Wahltag vor der Premiere einer demokratischen Volkswahl. In diesen Ländern ist die Wahlbeobachtung oft auch mit einer Unterstützung bei der Vorbereitung der Wahl verknüpft. In Georgien mussten erst Wählerregister erstellt werden. Die Probleme in solchen Ländern sind sehr viel grundsätzlicherer Art. In den USA sind demokratische Wahlen schon lange in Gesetzen verankert, Wählerregister sind bereits vorhanden. Das ergibt eine ganz andere Ausgangssituation.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Wie sieht die Wahlbeobachtung der OSZE genau aus?

Haering: Wir werden mehrere Schwerpunkte setzen. Einmal bei der Wahlkampagne: Haben die Kandidaten den gleichen Zugang zur Medienöffentlichkeit, finden Wahlversammlung frei, fair und ohne Einschüchterungen statt, welche Bedeutung hat Geld im Wahlkampf?

Weiterer Schwerpunkt wird die Registrierung der Wähler sein. Das stellt in jedem Land ganz unterschiedliche Probleme dar. Dann wird der Wahltag beobachtet. Dabei werden wir uns auf Staaten konzentrieren, in denen bei früheren Wahlen Probleme aufgetreten sind. Schließlich wird die Wahlauszählung ein wichtiger Faktor sein: die Maschinen, die Hard- und Software. Es wird überprüft, ob die Auszählungen verlässliche Ergebnisse ergeben. Alles selbstverständlich immer stichprobenartig.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Welche werden das sein?

Haering: Sicher Florida, aber auch Ohio und andere südliche Staaten.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Die Auszählungspannen bei der US-Wahl im Jahr 2000 sind noch nicht vergessen. War damals ein zu kompliziertes System schuld oder haben die Verantwortlichen Fehler gemacht?

Haering: Ich denke, es war eine Kombination aus verschiedenen Faktoren: kompliziert, missverständlich und irreführend.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Ist in diesem Jahr mit ähnlichen Komplikationen zu rechnen?

Haering: Dazu möchte ich jetzt noch keine Aussage machen. Ich gehe neutral an die Aufgabe heran.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Kann die OSZE helfen, eine ähnliche Panne zu verhindern?

Haering: Nein, die OSZE kann nur einen Bericht mit Blick auf folgende Wahlen erstellen. Die OSZE hat keine Machtbefugnisse - sie kann nur Empfehlungen abgeben. In Ländern, in denen sie finanziell Wahlsystem und Vorbereitungen unterstützt, hat sie allerdings bessere Möglichkeiten zur Einflussnahme bei der Umsetzung der Verbesserungsvorschläge.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Welchen Nutzen hat eine Wahlbeobachtung ohne Einfluss?

Haering: Bereits die Tatsache, dass eine Beobachtung stattfindet, kann eine präventive Wirkung haben. Ein von Parlamentariern veröffentlichter Bericht erhält eine Resonanz in der internationalen Öffentlichkeit und kann damit als Argumentationsmacht einen Einfluss auf nächste Wahlen haben.

OSZE und ODHIR Die Organisation für Sicherheit und Zusammenarbeit in Europa, kurz OSZE, entstand 1995 aus der Konferenz über Sicherheit und Zusammenarbeit in Europa (KSZE). Ihr gehören 55 Mitgliedsstaaten an: alle Staaten Europas, die Nachfolgestaaten der Sowjetunion, sowie die USA und Kanada. Oberstes Ziel ist die Sicherung des Friedens und der Wiederaufbau nach Konflikten. Zu den Aufgaben der OSZE zählen die Gewährleistung von Menschenrechten, die Hilfe beim Aufbau demokratischer Strukturen, die Förderung des Dialoges zwischen ethnischen Gruppen, die Unterstützung bei der Vereinbarung von Autonomieregelungen sowie die Hilfestellung bei der Durchführung von Wahlen. Die OSZE unterhält gegenwärtig 17 Missionen, unter anderem in Albanien, Armenien, Aserbaidschan, Georgien, Kasachstan, Kirgistan, Kosovo, Tadschikistan, Turkmenistan sowie Usbekistan. ODHIR ist das Büro für Demokratische Institutionen und Menschenrechte. Es ist eine Institution der OSZE, die vor allem Wahlbeobachtungsmissionen organisiert.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Wie viele Beobachter werden in den USA sein?

Haering: Das kann ich noch nicht mit Bestimmtheit sagen, da die Anfragen an die Parlamente der 55 OSZE-Länder erst vergangene Woche herausgegangen sind. Ich gehe davon aus, dass sich eine ganze Reihe von Parlamentariern melden wird. Es könnten rund hundert sein. Dieses Team wird noch durch Mitarbeiter des ODIHR unterstützt.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Wie lange dauert die OSZE-Mission?

Haering: Die Beobachtung der Wahlkampagne findet schon jetzt statt. Nicht vor Ort, aber über die Medien. Wir werden voraussichtlich ab dem 27. Oktober in den USA sein. Am 3. November wird es eine Besprechung aller Parlamentarier in Washington geben, und am Tag darauf soll der vorläufige Bericht veröffentlicht werden.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Wie ist der Wahlkampf bisher verlaufen?

Haering: Er war durch seinen frühen Beginn gekennzeichnet. Sehr früh waren beide Kandidaten-Teams bekannt. Das hat dazu geführt, dass diesmal die Aufmerksamkeit der Wähler schon sehr viel höher ist als bei vergangenen Wahlen zum gleichen Zeitpunkt.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Verläuft er denn aus OSZE-Sicht fair?

Haering: Dazu kann ich im Vorfeld leider keine Stellungnahme abgeben.

Das Interview führte Oliver Bilger

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Für alle , die Bush immer schon eins auswischen wollten.
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Spank Bush
[url]http://www.spankbush.com/
Choose your favorite
weapon![/url]
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John Nichols: `Debate Halliburton`
Date: Tuesday, September 28 @ 09:07:27 EDT
Topic: Election 2004

By John Nichols, The Nation

George W. Bush is ready to debate John Kerry.

The chronically underestimated president, who invariably prevails in face-to- face showdowns with his general election opponents, has been cramming for weeks. According to Bush aides, the president listens to tapes of Kerry`s past debate performances and speeches while he is traveling and during his daily workouts. He has imported a lanky, boring New Englander, New Hampshire U.S. Sen. Judd Gregg, to play the role of Kerry during practice debates at the ranch in Crawford, Texas. And he is now memorizing poll-tested one liners crafted to devastate the Democratic challenger and capture the headlines on the day after Thursday`s debate in Coral Gables, Florida.

For his part, Kerry is prepping at a resort in Wisconsin. After two weeks of honing an increasingly aggressive message regarding the crisis in Iraq and the mismanaged war on terrorism, he will go into the first of three critical debates feeling confident. But if all Kerry does is wrestle Bush for the tough-on-terror mantle, that confidence will prove misplaced.



In a foreign policy debate that plays out within the lines defined by White House political czar Karl Rove, the best Kerry can hope for is a draw. Predictable punches will not upset Bush`s delivery of the simple basic themes -- "battling against evil," "taking the fight to the terrorists," "safer now than on Sept. 11" -- that have allowed him to maintain relatively broad support in the face of increasingly awful news from around the world.

To knock Bush off message, Kerry will need to come into the debates with a message for which Bush is unprepared. And Kerry will have to hammer away on that message until it supplants Bush`s mantras in the mind of the voting public.

So what should Kerry talk about? One word: Halliburton.

Kerry should make the crony capitalism that has allowed Vice President Dick Cheney`s corporation to become the dominant player in the management of the botched occupation and reconstruction of Iraq a part of every answer to every question. The Democrat should explain to Americans, again and again and again, that one of the primary explanations for the fact that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has turned out badly is the determination of this administration to assure that Halliburton be the primary profiteer in the region.

No corporation has gained more from the invasion of Iraq than Halliburton. Since the war began, it has moved from No.19 on the U.S. Army`s list of top contractors to No. 1. Last year, the company pocketed $4.2 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars. And that`s merely the take so far; the company`s Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) subsidiary has collected what the Washington Post describes as "one of the contracting plums of the war: a classified no-bid deal worth up to $7 billion to do the restoration work."

Yet, by any measure, Halliburton and KBR have done a horrible job of managing the occupation and the reconstruction. The company has been investigated and fined for wrongdoing, and few days go by without new evidence surfacing to suggest that Halliburton either is massively corrupt or massively inept--or, and this is the most likely explanation, a messy combination of the two. Things are so bad that Halliburton officials are now talking about spinning off KBR in order to try to salvage what is left of the parent corporation`s reputation.

Kerry has promised that, "As president, I will stop companies like Halliburton from profiting at the expense of our troops and taxpayers." Referencing that fact that Cheney continues to receive money from Halliburton--$178,437 in 2003 alone--Kerry adds, "I will stop companies from receiving no-bid contracts from the government when the president or vice president is still receiving compensation from that company."

That`s a message Kerry should take into the debates. Bush wants to talk about "fighting against evil." Kerry should oblige him by forcing the president to address the evil of war profiteering -- and the crime of handing no-bid contracts to a company that is funneling money into the vice president`s bank account.

Copyright © 2004 The Nation

Reprinted from The Nation:
http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/
index.mhtml?bid=1&pid=1855

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The Independent Institute
Commentary
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1368
Ein Gerücht, das nicht verstummen will. Russland schickt Truppen in den Irak und kauft sich damit die Zustimmung der USA für seine Pläne.

The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!—To Iraq?
September 25, 2004
William Marina

Both the U.S. and Russian empires face a similar problem—how to put down raging insurgencies which do not hesitate to kill civilians in attacks that rival those launched by the imperial forces themselves.

In the case of the Russians, President Vladimir Putin has used the horrendous attack on a school in Beslan by Chechen rebels to introduce anti-democratic, centralizing changes that will make Russia more authoritarian. So much for the budding democracy there!

In the face of international criticism, Putin is seeking support for his actions. Apparently in the face of attacks by Senator John Kerry, President George W. Bush did criticize Putin, but The Financial Times (September 16) cited Professor Peter Reddaway of George Washington University that “U.S. domestic politics were playing a big part in Mr. Bush’s remarks” and “it remained to be seen whether the U.S. would translate rhetoric into tougher action.” The New York Times also called attention to Mr. Bush’s rather “guarded critique” of Putin’s actions.

In The Weekly Standard (September 8), neoconservative William Kristol had already urged that “We must make common cause” with the Russians, while Martin Wolf replied (Financial Times, September 21) that “We embrace Putin at our peril.”

As reported in The Observer (September 19), the British announced an October cut of one third of their 5,000 troops in Iraq. Heralded as the second largest contingent in the “Coalition of the Willing” after the U.S. military, this has long been untrue. American private mercenaries, now at about 30,000, with more being trained each day by Halliburton, constitute the second largest Coalition force in Iraq.

All of this occurs as the U.S. military admits that numerous towns are under the control of the insurgents, but vows to retake these before the “democratic” elections scheduled for January. Given the growing manpower shortages of the U.S.’s regular forces, how will this be accomplished?

Just as during most of 2002 the Bush Administration quietly planned for war, while claiming to pursue international diplomacy to solve its problems with Saddam Hussein, the same kind of secret planning may be underway with the aim of securing Russian help in Iraq.

Back on July 16, the American intelligence web site Stratfor.com broke the news of a long-rumored negotiation for the Russians to deploy 40,000 troops in Iraq before the end of this year, in time for the January elections. This was denied by the Russian Foreign Ministry on July 20, as noted in The Asian Times (July 27), but that same day, Izvestia, the pro-government Russian newspaper, approved the idea of “Russian peacekeepers in the Sunni belt in Iraq,” concluding that, given the Russians good relations there, “the Russian leadership should consider this option quite carefully.”

The escalating crisis in Chechnya, and the deteriorating situation in Iraq, suggest that both the U.S. and the Russians are still considering such an agreement. For Bush, the advantage of Russian help is obvious. Even though the polls seem to show increasing support for the President, these do not translate into stability in Iraq before the elections here or there.

As U.S. tactics of violence against civilians in Iraq increase, egged on by the U.S.’s Israeli advisors (Associated Press, December 13, 2003) to use helicopters and bulldozers in sustained attacks on urban neighborhoods, the Russians have long demonstrated few qualms at killing civilians on a large scale.

What’s in this for the Russians beyond justifying their actions in Chechnya?

As noted by the commentator “Spengler” in The Asian Times (August 3) the U.S. strategy in Central Asia has proven to be “dead wrong.” Policy makers such as Paul Wolfowitz imagined that replacing one secular regime in Iraq with a new one would protect Israel and bring stability to the region. Instead, these actions have aided Islamic fundamentalism as well as Al Qaeda, and have destabilized the whole region from Egypt to Pakistan.

Ironically, Turkey, the one once-solid secular regime in the area, has once again become the “sick man”, as fundamentalist forces increase there. Given Russia’s oil fields in the Black Sea and the oil throughout Central Asia, cooperation with the U.S. over pipelines offers a way for the two empires, Russia and the U.S., to counter the rise of Islamic fundamentalism there.

As empires evolve they tend to adopt similar tactics for survival. The Harvard advocate for empire, Samuel P. Huntington, was wrong in the 1960s when he argued that while U.S. forces had trouble with rural guerrillas in Vietnam, they could easily handle an urban insurgency—Iraq has exposed that nonsense! He was also fundamentally wrong in the 1990s with the notion of “a clash of civilizations” which as Arnold Toynbee argued in the 1940s, instead borrow enormously from each other, just as Huntington is wrong more recently about Hispanic-Americans.

Whether or not the Russians “come” to our aid in Iraq this year, and there is a good chance they will, it is perhaps more accurate to say that the U.S. is “coming” to resemble Russia as our institutions have evolved from those of a free republic to those of the sprawling statism of empire. This has been occurring for over a century now, and is not likely to be halted abruptly, certainly not by the actions of either Bush or Kerry. The U.S. consequently seems all too willing to build alliances with other empires, and to adopt culturally more and more, the horrendous aspects of imperial rule.
William Marina is Research Fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif., and Professor Emeritus in History at Florida Atlantic University.

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Sep 29, 2004

America`s new strategy in Iraq
By Michael Schwartz

Who won in Najaf?

The short answer is Ali al-Sistani, who re-established himself as the preeminent Iraqi leader by resolving the crisis without the destruction of the Imam Ali Shrine or the slaughter of the Mehdi soldiers occupying it. But al-Sistani is having trouble consolidating this preeminence, because the United States has not delivered the reconstruction aid it guaranteed; and Sistani cannot restore an orderly existence without such outside help. Moreover, since al-Sistani`s strategy rests upon asking the Shi`ite to forgo immediate demands in the expectation of achieving political domination in the January election, the sustained violence elsewhere is a threat to the elections, and therefore to his credibility.

Did Muqtada al-Sadr win or lose in Najaf? Before Sistani intervened, the Sadrists were faced with a tough choice. They could have fought to the death: this would have been a great political victory that would rally support inside and outside the country and make the Sadrists the primary force within the Iraqi resistance, even while it would mean sacrificing the lives of their most dedicated and experienced activists. Or they could have withdrawn from the shrine: this would have shattered their credibility as revolutionaries, and left them disarmed and discredited.

It looked as though they were going to be martyrs, but Sistani snatched away their victory while saving their lives. This preserved - and perhaps even strengthened - their organization; but their political primacy was preempted by Sistani.

Did the United States win or lose in Najaf? The US lost in two ways. It further alienated the Iraqis, so that neither the US nor its client administration has any credibility on the street. It also lost the opportunity for a smashing military victory that might have won the November US election for President George W Bush and intimidated Shi`ite militants enough to keep them quiet while the US developed and implemented a new program for the Shi`ite areas of the country.

But the US also won two things from Sistani`s intervention. First, it was relieved of a terrible choice: either withdraw without dislodging Muqtada al-Sadr, which would have been a monumental victory for Muqtada and would have led to liberated areas throughout the south of Iraq; or smash the shrine and create Islamic-wide outrage that could have led to an immediate insurrection throughout the country. So the Americans lived to try another strategy, which they would not have had the chance to do if al-Sistani had not intervened.

Second, Sistani`s preemption provided a template for the new strategy that the US adopted soon afterward. His truce-making provided an orderly process by which the Iraqi police (trained and controlled by the US) took official control of old Najaf. Their authority is guaranteed by the legitimacy of al-Sistani, and therefore they have not had to face a challenge by militant Sadrists or other insurgents - though the police themselves may not remain loyal to the US, a process we have seen elsewhere already. For the United States, this created the vision of parallel developments in other cities: an alliance with "moderates" that legitimated the Iraqi police while effectively removing the militants from the public life of the city.

The new US strategy
The new US strategy, then, is targeted at the cities where the guerrillas and their clerical leadership dominate, notably Fallujah, Samarra, Tal Afar and Sadr City, though there are several others that have not been in the news lately. The US method is to negotiate with the clerics, offering extensive reconstruction aid in exchange for calling off the insurgency and perhaps delivering the guerrilla fighters over to the United States. They call this negotiating with the moderates to split with the militants.

If they can get an agreement, then the US marches into town and arrests at least some of the guerrillas, using informants to determine whom to target. If the guerrillas resist arrest, the US annihilates them and the areas in which they take refuge. If they melt into the population, then the Iraqi police and National Guard take up stations within the city to enforce the rule of a re-established local government. US troops outside the city maintain the capacity to intervene against any effort to challenge the police or National Guard.

To force an agreement, the US threatens both economic and military attacks on the city as a whole. Part of the plan is to use brutal air power that can annihilate buildings or whole city blocks in an effort to convince residents and leaders that the cost of resistance is simply too high. The underlying assumption is that the "moderates" will eventually choose to negotiate rather than see their city destroyed. As one marine officer in Fallujah told Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chadrasekaran, the goal is "to split the city, to get the good people of the city on one side and the terrorists on the other".

The new plan is designed to achieve two goals. First, the US hopes to reduce drastically the number of attacks on US convoys and bases outside the cities. These attacks are planned within the cities, the weapons used are stockpiled there, and the guerrillas are protected from detection by their civilian identities as members of local communities. By demobilizing, arresting or killing the guerillas, the new plan holds the potential to reduce direct attacks on US forces drastically.

Second, by replacing guerrillas with police as the source of law and order in the city, the US hopes to obtain control over local public life, including establishing pro-American political leadership, instead of the current clerical leadership hostile to the US presence. This will permit US control of the electoral process in January and guarantee a legislature compliant with US policy.

There is considerable urgency in this venture because the current US strategy in Iraq centers around the elections that are scheduled for January. Sistani has made clear that he will not wait beyond January for elections - he has already agreed to wait six months beyond his own original deadline, and any further delay might provoke him into much more forceful protest than he has embraced so far. But elections that exclude the areas currently under insurgent control will produce yet another government with no legitimacy, including a possible boycott by Sistani himself. Nor can the United States let these cities be part of the election without reconquering them, since they would then send revolutionary representatives to demand that the legislature call for US withdrawal, a demand that would be supported by upwards of 90% of the population. Recent polls conducted by the occupation report less than 10% support for a continuing US presence.

Thus the US must quickly (within four months) re-establish its control of these liberated areas, and this control must be peaceful enough to allow for the semblance of fair elections. This is why the moderates are central to the new US strategy. Occupation by American troops is counterproductive - it generates stronger and more determined resistance among the population. Permanently pacifying even a single city against this sort of resistance requires tens of thousands of US troops patrolling all the neighborhoods - far beyond the numerical capability of US forces. The Iraqi police and National Guard are notorious for surrendering or defecting to guerrillas, but the US hopes they will be able to maintain order if respected local leadership silences the guerrillas and validates their presence, as Sistani has done in Najaf.

Is the new US plan working?
There has been enough coverage of four cities to get a sense of what is happening and what the prognosis might be for the new US strategy.

# Fallujah. The US met with the clerical leadership in Fallujah (the first official acceptance of their civic leadership), offering many millions of dollars in reconstruction money to repair the infrastructure that had been virtually demolished in the April attacks - on the condition that (1) the guerrillas were disowned and disarmed, (2) the US was allowed to mount patrols within the city, and (3) the clerics pledged loyalty to the central government. There were no negotiations to speak of, because the clerics rejected all three conditions.

Immediately after the collapse of the non-negotiations, the US initiated almost daily bombing of various neighborhoods in Fallujah. The cover story has been that they are bombing "safe houses" used by terrorists associated with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and that no other people are present during the attacks. But hospitals report daily that the vast majority of the casualties are civilians. It is clear to everyone but the US public that the attacks are designed to persuade the people of Fallujah to abandon their support of the rebellion. To add a further element of threat to the equation, the US has repeatedly announced that it would soon reinvade the city, and during the second week of September even announced on loudspeakers that the residents of certain areas should evacuate because of a pending attack. This was a bluff. US military officials admitted to American reporters that they are waiting until after the November elections in the United States.

We can expect that the bombing will continue until November, followed by a full-scale assault on the city, one that might be far more brutal than the previous attacks on Fallujah and Najaf - unless, of course, the strategy changes again. In the meantime, there are ongoing overtures for new negotiations, but without either side changing its position.
# Sadr City. The administration of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and clerics from Sadr City, all of whom were aligned with Muqtada al-Sadr, negotiated a tentative agreement that would have banned US troops from mounting patrols inside the huge Shi`ite slum in the northeast corner of Baghdad, while the Sadrists would not mount attacks on US bases or convoys outside Sadr City. This was a considerable concession by the Sadrists, since their strategy for expelling the Americans from Iraq depends on mounting constant attacks on US bases and convoys to strain US resources. In addition, the Allawi administration promised to begin a variety of reconstruction projects inside Sadr City, marking the first time that any serious effort would be made to repair the damage of 18 months of war.

The US command vetoed the agreement. While it would have achieved one of the Americans` goals - reducing guerrilla attacks on US bases and convoys - the command correctly saw that it would frustrate its second goal, because it would leave unhindered the political control of Sadr City by the Mehdi Army and its clerical allies. The US military explained the rejection by saying the deal would allow the Mehdi militia to reconstitute itself after its "devastating defeat" in Najaf, but all the evidence indicates that the Najaf battle did not weaken the Sadrists in Baghdad at all.

The day after this rejection, the US renewed patrols and battles inside Sadr City, attempting to create enough havoc and destruction to drive the moderates back to the bargaining table. They soon discovered, however, that these patrols were taking heavy casualties without driving a wedge between the clerical leadership and the guerrillas.

In Najaf, the long siege generated real anger at the Sadrists, who were not residents of the city; many residents saw them as interlopers who brought the US onslaught upon them. In Sadr City, the guerrillas are family members and respected neighbors who had been keeping crime down and the Americans out for months. Hence US attacks tended to consolidate support for the Mehdi, who were seen as preventing the Americans from taking control and generally oppressing the community by forcibly entering houses, terrorizing residents and indiscriminately detaining men, women and even children.

After two weeks of battles and bombings, the US temporarily withdrew to its bases, leaving control of Sadr City to the guerrillas and their clerical leadership. Currently, it appears that they have opted for a bombing campaign like the one in Fallujah, though so far the bombings have been occasional rather than consistent. The fact that American reporters can access Sadr City and report the carnage might be one deterrent.
# Samarra. Soon after the end of the battle of Najaf, US troops closed a key bridge into Samarra, thereby instituting an economic blockade that in effect cut off all normal commerce. This led to instant hardship around the city and had the hoped-for impact: a group of clerics negotiated a deal in which the bridge was reopened in exchange for a guarantee that US troops could enter the city without being attacked. This was the first success of the new strategy, and a US patrol entered the town unmolested on September 2. At City Hall they stopped to announce and introduce a new US-sponsored city government.

The next day, the guerrillas denounced the agreement, and a section of the local clerical leadership allied with the guerrillas announced the formation of a new insurgent government modeled after, and formally allied with, the Fallujah government. This is a new threat to the US, because coordination across liberated areas has been absent and would be a huge tool against the occupation.

With two competing governments, the situation is unsettled. US troops have been guarding City Hall (apparently they do not trust Iraqi police to perform this work with guerrillas still active), and they have been fired upon at least once. So far, however, there have been no reports of a major battle initiated by either side. The resolution of this standoff could well determine tactics that both sides use in other cities.

# Tal Afar. The US chose this city as a location for confronting the guerrillas, despite its atypicality. Its residents are largely Turkmen and mostly Shi`ite, and it lies on the border with Syria, which makes it a hub for trade and for smuggling goods and insurgents. Before the US attack in early September, it been a "no go" location for American troops for only about a month, and so the nature and support of the insurgency is hard to discern. Most significant, while it is clear that many Shi`ite Turkmen support the guerrillas, the US Army insists, and some independent observers agree, that many if not all the insurgents are Sunni Arabs. If this is true, it would constitute an unprecedented alliance between ethnicities within Iraq, one that presages a more resourceful and unified insurgency in the coming months.

There were some brief negotiations with the Turkmen leadership in the city, but no formal deals were offered. The US then initiated a massive bombing campaign much more ferocious than in any other locality - except perhaps Najaf at the height of the siege. Though even public-health and hospital officials denounced the bombing and reported hundreds of civilian casualties, the US military claimed that all dead and wounded were insurgents, including a large number of women and children. One reporter quoted an informant telling American soldiers that everyone in a particular community was an insurgent, so this could be the technical cover for their absurd claims. The blanket bombing, combined with a US warning to evacuate, led to upwards of 50,000 mainly Turkmen refugees fleeing the city of 350,000 (some unconfirmed accounts reported 250,000 refugees).

After the bombing, the US sent as many as 2,000 troops into the city, encountered strong resistance and fought a battle for five days before the guerrillas melted away. The US troops and their Iraqi allies moved unhindered around the city for several days, while outside protests against the invasion mounted.

The key protest emanated from the Turkish government, which denounced the US, saying that virtually all the casualties were innocent Turkmen civilians, and that no attacks on US troops had ever been mounted by the Turkmens, who were the targets of most of the violence. President Ahmet Necdet Sezar of Turkey threatened to withdraw from the "coalition of the willing" if the invading force did not leave Tal Afar and restore the refugees to their homes.

Perhaps this protest had some effect, because the US troops did withdraw, and announcements were made inviting the refugees to return. But this could also represent a planned strategy, since the newly pacified city was placed under the control of the Iraqi police and National Guard.

There have been credible reports that this campaign represents a new form of ethnic cleansing, in which US troops evacuated Tal Afar to facilitate the resettlement and domination of the city by the Kurds. These reports claim that the police the US left in charge are pesh merga, Kurdish militiamen committed to Kurdish domination of the northwestern area of the country. Tal Afar, as a border town sitting on major commercial routes, would be a major asset if it became a part of the Kurdish autonomous region within the country or an independent Kurdish republic.

It is premature to conclude that the Tal Afar campaign represents the most successful application of the new US strategy, without waiting for the ultimate reaction of the Turkmen minority in the city. Certainly their experience with the attack dissipated whatever sympathy they might have had for the Americans, and it thus laid the foundation for an even more determined rebellion as soon as they regain their equilibrium; but they might also have been beaten into submission, a result that appears to be the main US goal.

What is the prognosis?
The campaign in Tal Afar would appear to be the poster child for the new strategy, but Tal Afar is atypical in Iraq, and even if the Turkmens acquiesce to the new regime, their capitulation would not signal that a similar result could be expected in other localities.

More promising for the US strategy is Samarra, a typical Sunni city with a strong insurgency. The initial willingness of some clerics to negotiate when pressured by economic sanctions suggests that the US could possibly identify and work with a compliant local leadership in other cities controlled by insurgents. The outcome is, of course, undetermined, and if the resistance succeeds in isolating or eliminating the newly appointed leadership and/or making a continued US presence untenable, then this US strategy will fall into the long list of failed efforts to pacify the resistance. At present, however, this represents the best prospect for the occupation to reassert its authority somewhere.

Fallujah and Sadr City are both more typical than Samarra and less promising for the Americans. The initial effort to identify and work with some local leaders has failed, leading the Americans to terror tactics against the local population. These have not worked in the past in either location, and there is no sign of this latest iteration working. It seems apparent that the Americans will wait until after the US elections to activate a more aggressive and more destructive second phase, aimed at terrorizing the population into submission.

Perhaps the greatest success of the new strategy thus far is a negative one. The havoc and destruction wreaked by the terror bombing and invasion of Tal Afar generated a strong reaction from Turkey, a ripple of outrage in Iraq and the Middle East, and no protest at all in Europe or the United States. The less severe, but still brutal, attacks in Sadr City and Fallujah have generated almost no complaints or declarations of solidarity. This is a stark contrast to the April battle in Fallujah, which generated worldwide denunciations, and the siege of Najaf, which threatened to mobilize the international Shi`ite community.

What the US may have gained, therefore, is the apathy of the world to escalating violence against Iraqi civilians. This, more than the success or failure of these individual campaigns, may lay a foundation for the massive offensives that the US military appears to be preparing for in the period just after the US elections in November. The world is fully aware of the ability of the US Air Force to level even a very large city, using 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bombs delivered in great numbers by carrier-based aircraft. The calibrated increases in the destructiveness of US air attacks over the past few months appears to have numbed local and international outrage, a condition that allows for further escalation and many more casualties.

The actions of the Iraqi people - both insurgents and civilians - may constrain this strategy before it reaches the point of blanket bombing and wholesale destruction. But even the most ferocious Iraqi resistance may not be sufficient to deter the coming November offensive. The Iraqis need and deserve the support of the international community; the best (and least destructive) deterrent against this impending onslaught would be the threat of uncontrollable worldwide protest should the US attempt to level either Fallujah or Sadr City.

Michael Schwartz, professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and on US business and government dynamics. His work on Iraq has appeared on ZNet and TomDispatch, and in Z Magazine. His books include Radical Politics and Social Structure, The Power Structure of American Business (with Beth Mintz), and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo). He can be reached at [e-mail].

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POLITICS-U.S.:
Poll Finds A Nation Chastened by War

Jim Lobe


WASHINGTON, Sep 28 (IPS) - Three years of the Bush administration`s ``war on terrorism`` appears to have reduced the appetite of the U.S. public and its leaders for unilateral military engagements, according to a major survey released Tuesday by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (CCFR).

Indeed, the survey, the latest in a quadrennial series going back to 1974, found that key national-security principles enunciated by President George W Bush since the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon are opposed by strong majorities of both the public and the elite.

While supporting the idea that Washington should take an active role in world affairs, more than three of every four members of the public reject the notion that the United States ``has the responsibility to play the role of world policeman`` and four of every five say Washington is currently playing that role ``more than it should be``.

In addition, overwhelming majorities of both the public and the elite said that the most important lesson of 9/11 is that the nation needs to ``work more closely with other countries to fight terrorism`` as opposed to ``act more on its own``.

Similar majorities of both the public and leaders rejected Bush`s notion of pre-emptive war. Only 17 percent of the public and 10 percent of leaders said that war was justifiable if the ``other country is acquiring weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that could be used against them at some point in the future``.

Fifty-three percent of the public and 61 percent of leaders said that war would be justified only if there is ``strong evidence`` the country is in ``imminent danger`` of attack. For about 25 percent of both the public and the leaders, war would be justified only if the other country attacks first.

The CCFR survey, which because of its rich detail and consistency over the past 30 years is generally taken more seriously than others that are conducted more sporadically, queried nearly 1,200 randomly selected members of the public during the second week of July.

A second survey of 450 ``leaders with foreign policy power, specialisation, and expertise`` -- including U.S. lawmakers or their senior staff, university faculty, journalists, senior administration officials, religious leaders, business and labour executives, and heads of major foreign policy organisations or interest groups -- posed the same questions to determine where there may be gaps between the views of the elite and the public at large.

The last CCFR survey was taken in 2002, and normally the next one would not be held until 2006. But the council decided to commission one for 2004, in part due to ``the significant role foreign policy issues are playing in American political life and the 2004 presidential election``, according to Marshall Bouton, CCFR`s president.

The council also collaborated with similar efforts by partner organisations in Mexico and South Korea, the conclusions of which will be released in the coming days.

While terrorism and other security threats still loom large in the public`s mind, according to this year`s survey, ``there is a lowered sense of threat overall compared to 2002``, when foreign policy concerns, particularly terrorism, topped the list of foreign-policy issues that most concerned the public.

``Protecting American jobs`` was the most frequently cited goal of foreign policy in the 2004 poll (78 percent called it a ``very important`` goal), followed by preventing the spread of nuclear weapons (73 percent), and combating international terrorism (71 percent).

For the elite respondents, on the other hand, nuclear non-proliferation and terrorism topped the list, while protecting U.S. jobs ranked eighth out of 14 options.

As for ``critical threats``, three out of four public respondents chose international terrorism, but that was down 10 points from two years ago. Two of three chose WMD, but that was also down by about 17 points from 2002, and virtually all other threats cited in the survey declined substantially.

Thus, ``Islamic fundamentalism``, which was considered a ``critical threat`` by 61 percent of the public in 2002, was cited by only 38 percent this year, while the ``development of China as a world power``, cited by 51 percent in 2002, claimed only 33 percent in 2004.

While, for the public, foreign policy issues virtually across the board were seen as less important than in 2002, that was not true for the foreign-policy elite, which rated ``combating world hunger``, securing energy supplies, improving the global environment, and, most striking, improving the standard of living of less developed nations, significantly higher than two years ago.

In addition, 40 percent of the elite now consider ``strengthening the United Nations`` as a ``very important goal`` of U.S. foreign policy, up 12 percent from 2002. Conversely, the percentage of leaders who cited ``maintaining superior power worldwide`` as a very important goal, fell from 52 percent in 2002 to only 37 percent in 2004, the first time it has received less than majority support since the question was first asked in 1994.

A more chastened approach to foreign policy also showed up in declining support on the part of both the public and the elite for maintaining military bases abroad, particularly in hot spots like the Middle East and states linked to terrorist activities.

More than two-thirds of both the public and the leaders agreed the United States should withdraw from Iraq if a clear majority of Iraqi people want it to do so. As to whether Washington should remove its military presence from the Middle East if a majority of people there desire it, 59 percent of the public said yes, but only 35 percent of the elite agreed.

A majority of the public said Washington should not press Arab states to become more democratic; two-thirds said they opposed a Marshall-type Plan of economic aid and development for the region.

Large majorities of the public and the elite favour retaining traditional constraints on the use of force by individual states, including the United States, and oppose new ideas for making them looser, as often proposed by the Bush administration. At the same time, they favour giving wide-ranging powers to states acting collectively through the United Nations.

Thus, majorities of both the public and leaders oppose states taking unilateral action to prevent other states from acquiring WMD, but support such action if the UN Security Council approves. In the specific case of North Korea, for example, two-thirds of respondents said it should be necessary for Washington to get the council`s approval before taking military action.

A majority of the public opposes the United States or any other nation having veto power on the Security Council.

The survey also found strong support for U.S. participation in a wide range of international treaties and agreements, some of which have been rejected or renounced by the Bush administration.

Thus 87 percent of the public and 85 percent of the elite said they would favour the terms of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; 80 percent of both groups said they favoured the landmine ban; 76 percent of the public and 70 percent of the elite said they support U.S. participation in the International Criminal Court; and 71 percent of both groups said they back U.S. participation in the Kyoto Protocol to reduce global warming.

Two-thirds of the public and three-quarters of the elite agreed that, in dealing with international problems, Washington should be more willing to make decisions within the UN, even if this means that its views will not prevail.

Asked what specific steps should be taken for strengthening the world body, three-quarters of the public and two-thirds of leaders said the UN should have a standing peacekeeping force.

A majority of 57 percent of the public and a plurality of 48 percent of the elite said the United States should make a general commitment to abide by World Court decisions rather than decide on a case-by-case basis. (END/2004)

The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations

The Global U.S. Position der volle Report:
http://www.ccfr.org/globalviews2004/sub/pdf/Global_Views_200…

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Published on Tuesday, September 28, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush
by George Soros
Prepared text of speech delivered September 28, 2004
National Press Club
Washington, DC,


This is the most important election of my lifetime. I have never been heavily involved in partisan politics but these are not normal times. President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests and undermining American values. That is why I am sending you this message. I have been demonized by the Bush campaign but I hope you will give me a hearing.

President Bush ran on the platform of a "humble" foreign policy in 2000. If we re-elect him now, we endorse the Bush doctrine of preemptive action and the invasion of Iraq, and we will have to live with the consequences. As I shall try to show, we are facing a vicious circle of escalating violence with no end in sight. But if we repudiate the Bush policies at the polls, we shall have a better chance to regain the respect and support of the world and to break the vicious circle.

I grew up in Hungary, lived through fascism and the Holocaust, and then had a foretaste of communism. I learned at an early age how important it is what kind of government prevails. I chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society.

When I had made more money than I needed for myself and my family, I set up a foundation to promote the values and principles of a free and open society. I started in South Africa in 1979 and established a foundation in my native country, Hungary, in 1984 when it was still under communist rule. China, Poland and the Soviet Union followed in 1987. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, I established foundations in practically all the countries of the former Soviet empire and later in other parts of the world and in the United States. These foundations today spend about 450 million dollars a year to promote democracy and open society around the world.

When George W. Bush was elected president, and particularly after September 11, I saw that the values and principles of open society needed to be defended at home. September 11 led to a suspension of the critical process so essential to a democracy - a full and fair discussion of the issues. President Bush silenced all criticism by calling it unpatriotic. When he said that "either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists," I heard alarm bells ringing. I am afraid that he is leading us in a very dangerous direction. We are losing the values that have made America great.

The destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center was such a horrendous event that it required a strong response. But the President committed a fundamental error in thinking: the fact that the terrorists are manifestly evil does not make whatever counter-actions we take automatically good. What we do to combat terrorism may also be wrong. Recognizing that we may be wrong is the foundation of an open society. President Bush admits no doubt and does not base his decisions on a careful weighing of reality. For 18 months after 9/11 he managed to suppress all dissent. That is how he could lead the nation so far in the wrong direction.

President Bush inadvertently played right into the hands of bin Laden. The invasion of Afghanistan was justified: that was where bin Laden lived and al Qaeda had its training camps. The invasion of Iraq was not similarly justified. It was President Bush`s unintended gift to bin Laden.

War and occupation create innocent victims. We count the body bags of American soldiers; there have been more than 1000 in Iraq. The rest of the world also looks at the Iraqis who get killed daily. There have been 20 times more. Some were trying to kill our soldiers; far too many were totally innocent, including many women and children. Every innocent death helps the terrorists` cause by stirring anger against America and bringing them potential recruits.

Immediately after 9/11 there was a spontaneous outpouring of sympathy for us worldwide. It has given way to an equally widespread resentment. There are many more people willing to risk their lives to kill Americans than there were on September 11 and our security, far from improving as President Bush claims, is deteriorating. I am afraid that we have entered a vicious circle of escalating violence where our fears and their rage feed on each other. It is not a process that is likely to end any time soon. If we re-elect President Bush we are telling the world that we approve his policies - and we shall be at war for a long time to come.

I realize that what I am saying is bound to be unpopular. We are in the grip of a collective misconception induced by the trauma of 9/11, and fostered by the Bush administration. No politician could say it and hope to get elected. That is why I feel obliged to speak out. There is a widespread belief that President Bush is making us safe. The opposite is true. President Bush failed to finish off bin Laden when he was cornered in Afghanistan because he was gearing up to attack Iraq. And the invasion of Iraq bred more people willing to risk their lives against Americans than we are able to kill - generating the vicious circle I am talking about.

President Bush likes to insist that the terrorists hate us for what we are - a freedom loving people - not what we do. Well, he is wrong on that. He also claims that the torture scenes at Abu Graib prison were the work of a few bad apples. He is wrong on that too. They were part of a system of dealing with detainees put in place by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and our troops in Iraq are paying the price.

How could President Bush convince people that he is good for our security, better than John Kerry? By building on the fears generated by the collapse of the twin towers and fostering a sense of danger. At a time of peril, people rally around the flag and President Bush has exploited this. His campaign is based on the assumption that people do not really care about the truth and they will believe practically anything if it is repeated often enough, particularly by a President at a time of war. There must be something wrong with us if we fall for it. For instance, some 40% of the people still believe that Saddam Hussein was connected with 9/11 - although it is now definitely established by the 9/11 Commission, set up by the President and chaired by a Republican, that there was no connection. I want to shout from the roof tops: "Wake up America. Don`t you realize that we are being misled?"

President Bush has used 9/11 to further his own agenda which has very little to do with fighting terrorism. There was an influential group within the Bush administration led by Vice President Dick Cheney that was itching to invade Iraq long before 9/11. The terrorist attack gave them their chance. If you need a tangible proof why President Bush does not deserve to be re-elected, consider Iraq.

The war in Iraq was misconceived from start to finish -- if it has a finish. It is a war of choice, not necessity, in spite of what President Bush says. The arms inspections and sanctions were working. In response to American pressure, the United Nations had finally agreed on a strong stand. As long as the inspectors were on the ground, Saddam Hussein could not possibly pose a threat to our security. We could have declared victory but President Bush insisted on going to war.

We went to war on false pretences. The real reasons for going into Iraq have not been revealed to this day. The weapons of mass destruction could not be found, and the connection with al Qaeda could not be established. President Bush then claimed that we went to war to liberate the people of Iraq. All my experience in fostering democracy and open society has taught me that democracy cannot be imposed by military means. And, Iraq would be the last place I would chose for an experiment in introducing democracy - as the current chaos demonstrates.

Of course, Saddam was a tyrant, and of course Iraqis - and the rest of the world - can rejoice to be rid of him. But Iraqis now hate the American occupation. We stood idly by while Baghdad was ransacked. As the occupying power, we had an obligation to maintain law and order, but we failed to live up to it. If we had cared about the people of Iraq we should have had more troops available for the occupation than we needed for the invasion. We should have provided protection not only for the oil ministry but also the other ministries, museums and hospitals. Baghdad and the country`s other cities were destroyed after we occupied them. When we encountered resistance, we employed methods that alienated and humiliated the population. The way we invaded homes, and the way we treated prisoners generated resentment and rage. Public opinion condemns us worldwide.

The number of flipflops and missteps committed by the Bush administration in Iraq far exceeds anything John Kerry can be accused of. First we dissolved the Iraqi army, then we tried to reconstitute it. First we tried to eliminate the Baathists, then we turned to them for help. First we installed General Jay Garner to run the country, then we gave it to Paul Bremer and when the insurgency became intractable, we installed an Iraqi government. The man we chose was a protégé of the CIA with the reputation of a strong man - a far cry from democracy. First we attacked Falluja over the objections of the Marine commander on the ground, then pulled them out when the assault was half-way through, again over his objections. "Once you commit, you got to stay committed," he said publicly. More recently, we started bombing Falluja again.

The Bush campaign is trying to put a favorable spin on it, but the situation in Iraq is dire. Much of the Western part of the country has been ceded to the insurgents. Even the so-called Green Zone (a small enclave in the center of Baghdad where Americans live and work) is subject to mortar attacks. The prospects of holding free and fair elections in January are fast receding and civil war looms. President Bush received a somber intelligence evaluation in July but he has kept it under wraps and failed to level with the electorate.

Bush`s war in Iraq has done untold damage to the United States. It has impaired our military power and undermined the morale of our armed forces. Before the invasion of Iraq, we could project overwhelming power in any part of the world. We cannot do so any more because we are bogged down in Iraq. Afghanistan is slipping from our control. North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and other countries are pursuing nuclear programs with renewed vigor and many other problems remain unattended.

By invading Iraq without a second UN resolution, we violated international law. By mistreating and even torturing prisoners, we violated the Geneva conventions. President Bush has boasted that we do not need a permission slip from the international community, but our actions have endangered our security - particularly the security of our troops.

Our troops were trained to project overwhelming power. They were not trained for occupation duties. Having to fight an insurgency saps their morale. Many of our troops return from Iraq with severe trauma and other psychological disorders. Sadly, many are also physically injured. After Iraq, it will be difficult to recruit people for the armed forces and we may have to resort to conscription.

There are many other policies for which the Bush administration can be criticized but none are as important as Iraq. Iraq has cost us nearly 200 billion dollars -- an enormous sum. It could have been used much better elsewhere. The costs are going to mount because it was much easier to get into Iraq than it will be to get out of there. President Bush has been taunting John Kerry to explain how he would do things differently in Iraq. John Kerry has responded that he would have done everything differently and he would be in a better position to extricate us than the man who got us in there. But it won`t be easy for him either, because we are caught in a quagmire.

It is a quagmire that many predicted. I predicted it in my book, The Bubble of American Supremacy. I was not alone: top military and diplomatic experts desperately warned the President not to invade Iraq. But he ignored their experienced advice. He suppressed the critical process. The discussion about Iraq remains stilted even during this presidential campaign because of the notion that any criticism of our Commander-in-Chief puts our troops at risk. But this is Bush`s war, and he ought to be held responsible for it. It`s the wrong war, fought the wrong way. Step back for a moment from the cacophony of the election campaign and reflect: who got us into this mess? In spite of his Texas swagger, George W. Bush does not qualify to serve as our Commander-in-Chief.

There is a lot more to be said on the subject and I have said it in my book, The Bubble of American Supremacy, now available in paperback. I hope you will read it. You can download the chapter on the Iraqi quagmire free from www.georgesoros.com

If you find my arguments worth considering, please share this message with your friends.

I would welcome your comments at georgesoros.com . I am eager to engage in a critical discussion because the stakes are so high.

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Published on Tuesday, September 28, 2004 by the Free Press (Columbus, Ohio)
Bush is History`s Top Terrorist
by Harvey Wasserman


As the fourth global-warmed hurricane in two months rips through Florida, we are reminded that George W. Bush is history`s top terrorist.

We know, of course, that Bush has slaughtered thousands of Iraqis, imprisoned hundreds without trial or charges, and presided over the torture and sexual abuse of many of them. He is the world`s leading recruiter for hate-America terrorists the world over.

Bush`s preemptive militarism has paved the way for countless crusades for oil and fundamentalism in the decades to come. He overthrew the elected government of Haiti, resulting in hundreds of deaths. He tried to do the same in Venezuela. Other target nations are sure to follow.

Bush is also determined to turn AIDS into a profit center for the drug companies that help fund him. His attacks on sex education, birth control and reproductive choice will kill girls and women for the decades to come, especially if he re-criminalizes abortion in a second term.

As Texas`s Governor Bush executed a record 150-plus people. He publically mocked at least one, Karla Faye Tucker, who had asked him to spare her. His escalated war on drugs has helped stuff 2.2 million Americans into the largest gulag in world history. Many suffer regular physical and sexual abuse. Many are also conveniently deprived of their right to vote.

Bush`s catastrophic "No Child Left Behind" program is decimating America`s once-proud educational system, vastly escalating illiteracy and ignorance. He is barring thousands of students who have traditionally come here from overseas. Their disappearance will further cripple American education, as well as America`s historic role in spreading democratic values to young people around the world.

Bush has also decimated the Bill of Rights and basic freedoms embodied in the US Constitution, paving the way for a potential dictatorship should he get a second term.

In short, he has done to America things no foreign terrorist could ever imagine.

But it all pales before Bush`s all-out attack on the natural environment, which will ultimately kill hundreds of millions of people.

Bush`s eco-terror crusade has two primary roots: corporate greed and fundamental religious extremism.

On the corporate side, Bush`s entire environmental policy can be summarized in a simple sentence: Any polluter favored by the Bush regime can pillage and destroy any sector of the American ecology, regardless of the consequences, with full official sanction, including huge taxpayer handouts.

Bush`s signature flip flop has been on global warming. The scientific and insurance community is now virtually unanimous that rising carbon dioxide levels are wrecking utter havoc with global weather patterns, including this latest parade of Caribbean hurricanes. The only dissenters are oil company flacks, flat earth think tanks and fundamentalist fanatics.

Bush promised in 2000 that if elected he would endorse the Kyoto Accords to cut CO2 emissions. But then he joined Joseph Stalin in demanding that science fit his bizarre ideology. At the behest of his petro-backers, including Dick Cheney`s Halliburton, Bush has scorned a global consensus that includes his primary ally in Iraq, British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Two of the world`s biggest insurance companies, Swiss Re: and Munich Re:, have issued strong warnings about the skyrocketing costs of climate catastrophes. Even British Petroleum has voiced concern, at the same time making massive investments in solar power.

Bush`s fossil-nuke energy plan gives huge tax credits for gas guzzling HumVees, but has cynically stalemated long-standing green energy tax easements, crippling the once-booming US wind power industry.

Three years after Bush allowed 9/11, America`s 103 atomic power reactors remain vulnerable to attacks from the air. The first plane that flew into the World Trade Center could instead have turned the Indian Point reactors north of New York City into radioactive infernos. Such an apocalyptic attack could still happen, killing millions and costing trillions, dwarfing Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. By doing nothing significant to make US reactors safer, Bush has painted them with a big terror bullseye.

Bush is also reviving nuke weapons production and testing, escalating the likelihood of nuclear war and production disasters.

After 9/11, Bush lied to the people of New York about the toxic fallout from the WTC collapses. His cover-up caused countless avoidable deaths. His assaults on the air, water, food and other regulatory responsibilities daily poison millions worldwide. They feed the on-going plague of cancers, lung and heart disease, childhood afflictions and too much more to catalog here.

Acid rain and ozone destruction add to the horrors of global warming, as do Bush`s attacks on America`s national parks and public lands.

As history`s most environmentally destructive human, Bush`s hate-nature crusade has been blessed by fanatic fundamentalists who believe destruction of the planet will hasten the Messiah. James Watt, Ronald Reagan`s Interior Secretary, scorned attempts to preserve the Earth by announcing that Jesus was coming soon anyway.

Bush spinmeister Karl Rove bans such blunt talk. But his all-out attacks on environmental protection, fuel efficiency, renewable energy and much more have already guaranteed an avoidable death toll unparalleled in human history. The evil winds of climate chaos now blasting through the Caribbean may soon seem like mild breezes compared to the ultimate eco-curse of George W. Bush.

Attila the Hun. Genghis Khan. The Kaiser. Hitler. Stalin. Saddam. Bin Laden. None have killed more than those dying and destined to die at Bush`s anti-green hands. His terror attacks have driven Mother Earth to the very brink.

Four more years and he just might finish her off---and all of us with her.

HARVEY WASSERMAN`S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES is available at (http://www.harveywasserman.com) . He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service.

© 1970-2004 The Columbus Free Press

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Sep. 26, 2004. 10:00 AM
SANDRO CONTENTA/TORONTO STAR

U.S. casualties grim cost of Iraq war
Human tragedies take toll on medics

SANDRO CONTENTA
EUROPEAN BUREAU

LANDSTUHL, Germany—At the U.S. military hospital on a wooded hilltop here, the cost of the Iraq war is measured in amputated limbs, burst eyeballs, shrapnel-torn bodies and shattered lives.

They`re the seriously wounded U.S. soldiers who arrive daily at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a growing human toll that belies American election talk of improving times in Iraq.

They`re the maimed and the scarred that hospital staff believe are largely invisible to an American public ignorant of their suffering.

"They have no idea what`s going on here, none whatsoever," says Col. Earl Hecker, a critical care doctor who trained at Toronto`s Mount Sinai Hospital.

The broken bodies move some of the hospital`s military staff to question a war producing the most American casualties since Vietnam.

And they reduce the chief surgeon to tears.

"It breaks your heart," says Lt.-Col. Ronald Place.

"There`s nothing more rewarding than to take care of these guys. Not money, not anything," he adds, crying.

From their hospital beds, solidarity with the men and women in the platoons they`ve left behind has wounded soldiers expressing an amazing desire to return to Iraq.

But few feel they need to hurry. They`re convinced U.S. soldiers will be fighting, dying and getting maimed in Iraq for many years to come.

Says Col. Rhonda Cornum, the hospital`s commander: "Peace doesn`t seem to be breaking out any time soon."

The 50-year-old medical centre is where the U.S. military`s sick and seriously wounded from Iraq are treated after being patched up on the battlefield.

Prior to the Iraq war, the hospital received no more than 10 injured U.S. soldiers a year from conflicts. Now, it usually handles between 30 and 55 a day from Iraq and Afghanistan alone.

Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began in March, 2003, almost 16,000 wounded, injured or sick soldiers from the conflict have been evacuated to Landstuhl.

As of Friday, 1,042 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq — more than 900 of them since May 1, 2003, when U.S. President George W. Bush declared major combat over — and 7,400 were wounded in combat, according to the Pentagon. About 3,400 of the wounded returned to duty after 72 hours. Almost all the rest came to Landstuhl, in southwestern Germany, for treatment.

On Thursday, a medical flight from Iraq brought 27 injured soldiers, two of them fighting for their lives.

"He might not make it," says a member of the medical team as a 27-year-old soldier is lowered from an ambulance and rushed to the intensive care unit.

Plugged to a respirator, the soldier lies naked on a bed, his pelvic area covered by a towel.

A roadside bomb 12 hours earlier left deep burns on 20 per cent of his body, a punctured lung and a broken leg. His chances of survival, a doctor says, are roughly 50-50.

His seared hands are sliced opened to prevent the need for amputation due to swelling. His dead skin is scraped off, a gel is spread thick to prevent infections, and his arms are wrapped in thick, white bandages.

"He`s very unstable," says Hecker, 70.

Hecker retired from the military years ago but recently left his lucrative private practice in Detroit to save lives at Landstuhl.

"I`m here for him — nobody else," he says, pointing to the soldier. "I didn`t come here for my government."

He pauses, then blurts out: "Bush is an idiot."

Immediately, he regrets having said that about the U.S. president, and makes clear he`s been under enormous stress.

He describes taking a bullet out of the neck of an 18-year-old soldier six days ago, a wound that left the young man a quadriplegic.

"It`s terrible, terrible, terrible," Hecker says. "When we talked to him, he just cried."

"If it was me, I`d tell them to take me off the machine," he says. He then considers his job and adds, "I`ll never be the same mentally."

What the hospital`s chief psychologist calls "compassion fatigue" is a widespread syndrome among the medical staff.

"There`s a great deal of hurt going on in the hospital," says Maj. Stephen Franco.

But Maj. Cathy Martin, the nurse in charge of the intensive care unit, prefers to deal with her stress by calling on Americans to consider the plight of the war wounded when making a choice in the Nov. 2 presidential election.

"People need to vote for the right people to be in office and they need to be empowered to influence change," she says.

Most combat wounds treated at the hospital are caused by rocket-propelled grenades or shrapnel from bombs, Place says.

About 160 U.S. soldiers from Iraq have had limbs amputated, and 200 have lost all or part of their sight from bomb blasts. Body armour has saved lives, but Place believes wounds that significantly disfigure are a greater advantage to insurgents than the rising body count.

"From a psychological warfare aspect, to maim many is better than to kill a few," he says.

Wounds that can`t be seen are also taking their toll. About 1,400 U.S. soldiers have been treated exclusively for mental health problems caused by the trauma of war.

Hospital officials keep access to the wounded strictly limited. But they allow three soldiers to be interviewed, all in the hospital`s orthopaedic wing, where two nurses steady a soldier learning to use a walker and dragging a lifeless right leg.

In one room is Marine Lance Cpl. Corey Dailey from San Diego. Dailey says he enlisted shortly after the war started because, "I`m 18-years-old, I wanted to go and get some."

"Combat is the ultimate adrenalin rush. It`s scary as hell but when your adrenalin gets pumping, it`s really awesome," he says.

Last Wednesday, a month after he got to Iraq, Dailey was at an observation post in Ramadi, part of the so-called Sunni triangle of insurgency, when a sniper`s bullet shattered a bone in his right arm.

Now, Dailey doesn`t think much of Iraq.

"The whole place sucks," he says. "The heat — that sucks, and the streets smell like crap."

Still, he`s itching to go back.

"We can`t win this fight without the Iraqis. They need to help us. They need to stand up" to the insurgents, he says.

In another room, 23-year-old Mark Romero from the army`s Third Brigade is also nursing a broken arm. A mechanic who served 11 months in Iraq, he snapped a bone trying to stop a 230 kilogram metal door from falling on a fellow soldier.

Lodged in his back is a piece of shrapnel from mortars that rained through the roof of the gym at the U.S. base in Mosul, northern Iraq, while Romero was working out.

He says the question constantly asked by soldiers is: "What are we doing there?"

"Realistically, I think it`s going to turn into Korea where we have troops that will always be stationed there," he says of the U.S. military presence in Iraq.

Sitting stiff with pain on his bed is Romero`s roommate, Sgt. 1st Class Larry Daniels — "Big Daddy Daniels" to his men in Iraq. His arms are bandaged from just below the shoulders to the tip of his fingers and rods stick out of them like scaffolding. Shrapnel wounds cover the back of his body, from behind his right ear to his ankles.

"They got most of it out," he says about the shrapnel.

Doctors estimate it will take two years for Daniels to recover.

On Sept. 18 at 3:30 p.m., Daniels and his men were protecting Iraqi contractors repairing a chain-link fence on a bridge near the Baghdad airport.

"The traffic was going around us and this guy came out of nowhere," Daniels says, describing a car in the distinctive orange and white colours of local taxis.

"I took a step and I heard a pop, and in my head I thought I stepped on a land mine. At the same time my body went up in the air and I was upside down looking at the cars and the spot where I`d been. And then I hit the ground," he says.

Two of his soldiers in their early 20s lay dead. Daniels, 37, was patched up in a military hospital in Baghdad and arrived at Landstuhl last Monday.

A member of the 1st Cavalry, Bravo 4-5 ADA Company, Daniels traces his family`s long military roots to a colonel in the American Civil War.

"I wish I was there instead of here," he says about Iraq. "That`s where I`m suppose to be. That`s what I was trained to do. I wasn`t trained to get hurt."

Suddenly being away from the 23 men in his platoon, Daniels says, "feels like a part of me is gone." He says the soldiers in his platoon never balked at the daily patrols, often working shifts from 6 p.m. to 9 a.m.

"Every day that we did something, we were one day closer to going home," he says. "The more missions we did, the sooner we got out of there."

But no one in his platoon thinks U.S. soldiers will be pulling out of Iraq anytime soon.

"They say our kids might end up here," says Daniels, an Arkansas native.

"It`s going to be a long one, because the enemy don`t wear a uniform so you can`t identify them. If you don`t have a specific person to look for, you just have to wait for them to shoot at you."

If Americans understood what was really going on in Iraq, they`d pressure Bush to be clearer about "why we`re really fighting," he says.

"The war on terror wasn`t in Iraq till we went there," he says. "We initially went there to topple Saddam (Hussein) and then all these damn terrorists came in."

As a soldier, he describes himself as "almost a political prisoner" in the sense that he can`t express himself on whether he believes U.S. soldiers should stay in Iraq.

But his 33-year-old wife, Cheryl, has no qualms about speaking her mind.

"The army is not going to like what I have to say, but I think we have no business being there," she says about Iraq.

She too comes from a family with a long military tradition and works as a civilian at her husband`s military base in Texas. She voted for Bush in 2000, but now says Democratic challenger John Kerry will get her support.

"I will definitely vote for Kerry, not because I prefer Kerry over Bush but because I don`t want Bush back in office. I`m hoping that if Kerry takes office, we`ll be pulling out" of Iraq, she says.

Cheryl believes Bush misled the country to war, arguing he diverted resources from far greater threats to U.S. interests, including the hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and North Korea`s nuclear weapons program.

Asked why Bush launched the war, she says: "I think he wanted to fill his dad`s shoes. I think he felt he had something to prove."

If the point of the war was to remove Saddam from power, then Bush`s father, former president George Bush, should have done so in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, in which Daniels also fought.

Increasing Cheryl`s anger is the fact the army did little to help her contact her wounded husband.

She paid for her flight to Germany, and is staying at the Fisher House, a privately funded agency that offers virtually free accommodation in Landstuhl to the families of injured soldiers.

Infuriated by what she sees as a misleading president, an unnecessary war and a heartless military, Cheryl vows to break the Daniels` family tradition of serving their country. Her 12-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter are already talking of enlisting one day, but Cheryl won`t hear of it.

"We`ve paid our dues," she says.

Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited.

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Bush klatschen, für alle eine Möglichkeit ihren Frust loszuwerden. Eine Animation von meiner US-Lieblingseissorte `Ben & Jerry`
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Spank Bush
[url]http://www.spankbush.com/
Choose your favorite
weapon![/url]
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Throw The Independent Newspaper (UI)
Pretty clever promotion. Da gibt es echt was zu gewinnen.
Trips nach Paris, Rom und Barcelona.
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[url]http://www.indycompact.co.uk/[/url]
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Tuesday , September 28, 2004
LOWERING EXPECTATIONS FOR DEBATE, WHITE HOUSE SAYS BUSH HAS I.Q. OF 67
Spokesman Shows Footage of President Tumbling from Bike

In what some political insiders were calling an attempt to lower expectations in the days leading up to the first presidential debate, the White House today announced that President Bush has an I.Q. of 67.

"The president is far, far less intelligent than is commonly thought," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters. "Even the simplest tasks remain well beyond his reach."

Reinforcing the impression that the president will be overmatched in Thursday’s debate with Sen. John Kerry, Mr. McClellan showed reporters never-before-seen footage of Mr. Bush oafishly tumbling from his mountain bike.

"What a moron," Mr. McClellan said.

The White House spokesman said that Mr. Bush cannot possibly be expected to do well in a debate with Sen. Kerry, who Mr. McClellan said "has an I.Q. of 193" and "is widely considered the best debater on the planet."

But within minutes of the White House press conference, Kerry spokesman Joe Lockhart fired back, telling reporters, "John Kerry is much stupider than he looks."

As evidence of Mr. Kerry’s idiocy, Mr. Lockhart referred to the floral-patterned windsurfing pants the senator wears while enjoying his favorite water sport.

"His ass looks enormous in those pants," Mr. Lockhart said. "What kind of a moron would leave the house with his ass looking like that?"

Elsewhere, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said today that it was unfair to compare the upcoming Iraqi elections to those held in America, "except for Florida."

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 28. September 2004, 17:21
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,320183,00.html

TV-Duell von Bush und Kerry

Trainieren für den großen Augenblick

Von Lisa Erdmann

Es geht um viel für die Kandidaten: Wenn am Donnerstagabend George W. Bush und John F. Kerry im ersten TV-Duell dieses Wahlkampfes aufeinandertreffen, dann steht nicht weniger als Sieg oder Niederlage auf dem Spiel. Deshalb bereiten sich die Kontrahenten akribisch auf ihren Auftritt vor, nichts wird dem Zufall überlassen.


Nichts mehr zu sehen von den beiden. George W. Bush und John F. Kerry haben in diesen Tagen Wichtigeres zu tun, als Hände schüttelnd durch Schul-Aulen, Altersheime und Militärakademien zu ziehen. Seit Freitag vergangener Woche bereiten sich die beiden Kontrahenten intensiv auf die anstehenden Fernseh-Debatten vor. Denn wie die Vergangenheit in den USA zeigt: Ein Fehler im TV-Duell kann den Abstieg eines Präsidentschaftskandidaten zum Verlierer besiegeln. Manchmal kostet schon ein abgekämpftes, angestrengtes Gesicht die entscheidenden Prozente.

Bush hat sich seit vergangenem Freitag auf seine Ranch in Texas zurückgezogen. Um möglichst praxisnah üben zu können, hat er einen Kerry-Darsteller zu sich bestellt. Die Rolle des demokratischen Herausforderers übernimmt laut der "Neuen Züricher Zeitung" Senator Judd Gregg aus New Hampshire. Er kennt das Spiel bereits: Vor vier Jahren mimte er den damaligen Herausforderer Al Gore.

Kerry probt seit Sonntag an einem abgeschiedenen Ort in Wisconsin. Auch er hat den Informationen zufolge einen Trainingspartner: Gregory Craig, Anwalt aus Washington und Mitglied der Clinton-Regierung.

Eine verhängnisvolle Geste

Vor einem halben Jahr haben Teams der beiden Wahlkämpfer damit begonnen, die Bedingungen für die Fernseh-Shows auszuarbeiten. Ein Paragrafen-Werk von 32 Seiten kam am Ende dabei heraus. Jedes Detail ist geregelt. Absolut nichts bleibt während der drei Duelle dem Zufall überlassen.

Zwar dürfen beide einen eigenen Visagisten mitbringen; damit ist die gestalterische Freiheit aber auch schon am Ende.

Keiner der beiden darf sich während der Sendung von einem Berater Informationen zuflüstern lassen. Es dürfen keine Grafiken oder Notizen mitgenommen werden - lediglich leeres Papier und ein eigener Stift. Selbst die dunkelbraune Farbe der Stehpulte ist festgelegt.

Keiner von beiden darf auf einem Podest stehen - was vor allem für Bush misslich ist, der mit seinen 1,79 Meter elf Zentimeter kleiner ist als Kerry.

Zu jedem Themenkomplex gibt der Moderator eine Antwortzeit vor, die beide Politiker einhalten müssen. Die Kamera darf immer nur denjenigen im Bild zeigen, der gerade antwortet - was Bush schon im Gouverneurswahlkampf 1998 schamlos ausgenutzt hat: Damals schnitt er seinem Konkurrenten alberne Grimassen, sobald er selbst nicht mehr im Bild war. Das brachte den demokratischen Herausforderer damals völlig aus dem Konzept.

Doch so viel auch vorab geregelt und geklärt werden kann: Die Unwägbarkeiten eines solchen TV-Duells bleiben gigantisch. Denn bei den vorangegangen Debatten der Kontrahenten im Fernsehen war es jedes Mal nur ein Detail, das bei den Zuschauern hängen blieb und den Untergang des späteren Verlierers einläutete.

Gewinner im Radio, Verlierer im TV

Besonders bezeichnend war das beim allerersten TV-Duell zweier Bewerber um das US-Präsidentenamt: 1960 zwischen Richard Nixon und John F. Kennedy. Befragungen unter Radiohörern hatten damals eine leichte Präferenz für Nixon ergeben, weil seine Antworten eloquenter wirkten.

Ganz anders im Fernsehen. Gegen den braun gebrannten, jugendlich wirkenden und gut aussehenden Kennedy hatte der blasse, schwitzende und offensichtlich übernächtigte Nixon keine Chance. Überliefert ist ein erschreckter Ausruf des damaligen Chicagoer Bürgermeisters Richard Daley bei Nixons Anblick: "Mein Gott, sie haben ihn einbalsamiert, bevor er gestorben ist!"

Auch die übrigen Zuschauer waren von Nixons schlechtem Aussehen beeinflusst. Am Wahltag gaben 50 Prozent der Wähler an, dass die TV-Duelle eine Entscheidung bei ihrer Stimmabgabe gespielt hätten.

Erst 16 Jahre später kam es zum zweiten Showdown zwischen zwei amerikanischen Präsidentschaftskandidaten: dem Republikaner Gerald Ford und dem Demokraten Jimmy Carter. Ford katapultierte sich ins Aus, als er den erstaunten Moderatoren und Zuschauern mitteilte, dass die Sowjetunion keinen Einfluss auf Osteuropa hätte.

George Bush Senior wurde im Duell mit Bill Clinton eine Geste zum Verhängnis: Er schaute mitten in der Fernsehsendung auf die Uhr. Für viele Analysten damals ein Symbol dafür, dass er seine Zeit als Präsident als abgelaufen ansah.

Die beiden aktuellen Kandidaten Bush und Kerry wollen nun die Fernsehauftritte vor allem dazu nutzen, ihr jeweiliges Profil für die Wähler zu schärfen. Bush hat sich damit durchgesetzt, im ersten und wichtigsten gemeinsamen Auftritt das Thema Außenpolitik zu besprechen. Hier will er Kerry und dessen monatelangen Schlingerkurs in Sachen Irak vorführen.

Kerrys Augenblick soll der obligatorische Handshake sein. Seine Berater haben ihm geraten, vor den Kameras Bushs Hand möglichst lange zu schütteln, damit alle Fotografen auf den Auslöser drücken können für das eine Bild: der große Herausforderer neben dem kleineren Präsidenten.

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2004

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September 29, 2004
INSURGENCY
Iraq Study Sees Rebels` Attacks as Widespread
By JAMES GLANZ and THOM SHANKER

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 28 - Over the past 30 days, more than 2,300 attacks by insurgents have been directed against civilians and military targets in Iraq, in a pattern that sprawls over nearly every major population center outside the Kurdish north, according to comprehensive data compiled by a private security company with access to military intelligence reports and its own network of Iraqi informants.

The sweeping geographical reach of the attacks, from Nineveh and Salahuddin Provinces in the northwest to Babylon and Diyala in the center and Basra in the south, suggests a more widespread resistance than the isolated pockets described by Iraqi government officials.

The type of attacks ran the gamut: car bombs, time bombs, rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades, small-arms fire, mortar attacks and land mines.

"If you look at incident data and you put incident data on the map, it`s not a few provinces, " said Adam Collins, a security expert and the chief intelligence official in Iraq for Special Operations Consulting-Security Management Group Inc., a private security company based in Las Vegas that compiles and analyzes the data as a regular part of its operations in Iraq.

The number of attacks has risen and fallen over the months. Mr. Collins said the highest numbers were in April, when there was major fighting in Falluja, with attacks averaging 120 a day. The average is now about 80 a day, he said.

But it is a measure of both the fog of war and the fact that different analysts can look at the same numbers and come to opposite conclusions, that others see a nation in which most people are perfectly safe and elections can be held with clear legitimacy.

"I have every reason to believe that the Iraqi people are going to be able to hold elections," said Lt. Col. William Nichols of the Air Force, a spokesman for the American-led coalition forces here.

Indeed, no raw compilation of statistics on numbers of attacks can measure what is perhaps the most important political equation facing Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and the American military: how much of Iraq is under the firm control of the interim government. That will determine the likelihood - and quality - of elections in January.

For example, the number of attacks is not an accurate measure of control in Falluja; attacks have recently dropped there, but the town is controlled by insurgents and is a "no go" zone for the American military and Iraqi security forces. It is a place where elections could not be held without dramatic political or military intervention.

The statistics show that there have been just under 1,000 attacks in Baghdad during the past month; in fact, an American military spokesman said this week that since April, insurgents have fired nearly 3,000 mortar rounds in Baghdad alone. But those figures do not necessarily preclude having elections in the Iraqi capital.

Pentagon officials and military officers like to point to a separate list of statistics to counter the tally of attacks, including the number of schools and clinics opened. They cite statistics indicating that a growing number of Iraqi security forces are trained and fully equipped, and they note that applicants continue to line up at recruiting stations despite bombings of them.

But most of all, military officers argue that despite the rise in bloody attacks during the past 30 days, the insurgents have yet to win a single battle.

"We have had zero tactical losses; we have lost no battles," said one senior American military officer. "The insurgency has had zero tactical victories. But that is not what this is about.

"We are at a very critical time," the officer added. "The only way we can lose this battle is if the American people decide we don`t want to fight anymore."

American government officials explain that optimistic assessments about Iraq from President Bush and Prime Minister Allawi can be interpreted as a declaration of a strategic goal: that, despite the attacks, elections will be held. The comments are meant as a balance to the insurgents` strategy of roadside bombings and mortar attacks and gruesome beheadings, all meant to declare to Iraq and the world that the country is in chaos, and that mayhem will prevent the country from ever reaching democratic elections.

In a joint appearance last week in the White House Rose Garden, Mr. Bush and Dr. Allawi painted an optimistic portrait of the security situation in Iraq.

Dr. Allawi said that of Iraq`s 18 provinces, "14 to 15 are completely safe." He added that the other provinces suffer "pockets of terrorists" who inflict damage in them and plot attacks carried out elsewhere in the country. In other appearances, Dr. Allawi asserted that elections could be held in 15 of the 18 provinces.

Both Mr. Bush and Dr. Allawi insisted that Iraq would hold free elections as scheduled in January.

"The question is not whether there are attacks," said one Pentagon official. "Of course there are. But what are the proper measurements for progress?"

Statistics collected by private security firms, which include attacks on Iraqi civilians and private security contractors, tend to be more comprehensive than those collected by the military, which focuses on attacks against foreign troops. The period covered by Special Operations Consulting`s data represents a typical month, with its average of 79 attacks a day falling between the valleys during quiet periods and the peaks during the outbreak of insurgency in April or the battle with Moktada al-Sadr`s militia in August for control of Najaf.

During the past 30 days those attacks totaled 283 in Nineveh, 325 in Salahuddin in the northwest and 332 in the desert badlands of Anbar Province in the west. In the center of Iraq, attacks numbered 123 in Diyala Province, 76 in Babylon and 13 in Wasit. There was not a single province without an attack in the 30-day period.

Still, some Iraqis share their prime minister`s optimism when it comes to the likelihood that elections, and a closely related census, can be carried out successfully amid so much violence. "We are ready to start," said Hamid Abd Muhsen, an Iraqi education official who is supervising parts of the census in Baghad. "I swear to God."

James Glanz reported from Baghdad for this article and Thom Shanker from Washington.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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September 29, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
How to Debate George Bush
By AL GORE

This year, as usual, the dominance of attack advertisements on television has made it hard to get a clear picture of where the candidates stand. But the same media revolution that brought us the 30-second commercial also brought us televised presidential debates - and ever since the first of them 44 years ago, they have played a crucial role in shaping voters` opinions of the candidates.

America has long been devoted to the clash between opposing advocates as the best way to evaluate information. In this era of media clutter, it is all the more important for voters to have this moment of simple clarity when the candidates appear before them stripped of advisers, sound bites and media spin.

My advice to John Kerry is simple: be prepared for the toughest debates of your career. While George Bush`s campaign has made "lowering expectations" into a high art form, the record is clear - he`s a skilled debater who uses the format to his advantage. There is no reason to expect any less this time around. And if anyone truly has "low expectations" for an incumbent president, that in itself is an issue.

But more important than his record as a debater is Mr. Bush`s record as a president. And therein lies the true opportunity for John Kerry - because notwithstanding the president`s political skills, his performance in office amounts to a catastrophic failure. And the debates represent a time to hold him to account. For the voters, these debates represent an opportunity to explore four relevant questions: Is America on the right course today, or are we off track? If we are headed in the wrong direction, what happened and who is responsible? How do we get back on the right path to a safer, more secure, more prosperous America? And, finally, who is best able to lead us to that path?

A clear majority of Americans believe that we are heading in the wrong direction. The reasons are obvious. The situation in Iraq is getting worse. Osama bin Laden is alive and plotting against us. About 2.7 million manufacturing jobs have been lost. Forty-five million Americans are living without health insurance. Medicare premiums are the highest they`ve ever been. Environmental protections have been eviscerated.

In the coming debates, Senator Kerry has an opportunity to show voters that today American troops and American taxpayers are shouldering a huge burden with no end in sight because Mr. Bush took us to war on false premises and with no plan to win the peace. Mr. Kerry has an opportunity to demonstrate the connection between job losses and Mr. Bush`s colossal tax break for the wealthy. And he can remind voters that Mr. Bush has broken his pledge to expand access to health care.

Senator Kerry can also use these debates to speak directly to voters and lay out a hopeful vision for our future. If voters walk away from the debates with a better understanding of where our country is, how we got here and where each candidate will lead us if elected, then America will be the better for it. The debate tomorrow should not seek to discover which candidate would be more fun to have a beer with. As Jon Stewart of the "The Daily Show`` nicely put in 2000, "I want my president to be the designated driver.``

The debates aren`t a time for rhetorical tricks. It`s a time for an honest contest of ideas. Mr. Bush`s unwillingness to admit any mistakes may score him style points. But it makes hiring him for four more years too dangerous a risk. Stubbornness is not strength; and Mr. Kerry must show voters that there is a distinction between the two.

If Mr. Bush is not willing to concede that things are going from bad to worse in Iraq, can he be trusted to make the decisions necessary to change the situation? If he insists on continuing to pretend it is "mission accomplished," can he accomplish the mission? And if the Bush administration has been so thoroughly wrong on absolutely everything it predicted about Iraq, with the horrible consequences that have followed, should it be trusted with another four years?

The biggest single difference between the debates this year and four years ago is that President Bush cannot simply make promises. He has a record. And I hope that voters will recall the last time Mr. Bush stood on stage for a presidential debate. If elected, he said, he would support allowing Americans to buy prescription drugs from Canada. He promised that his tax cuts would create millions of new jobs. He vowed to end partisan bickering in Washington. Above all, he pledged that if he put American troops into combat: "The force must be strong enough so that the mission can be accomplished. And the exit strategy needs to be well defined."

Comparing these grandiose promises to his failed record, it`s enough to make anyone want to, well, sigh.

Al Gore, vice president from 1993 to 2001, was the Democratic presidential nominee in 2000.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Something rotten in the state of Florida
Pregnant chads, vanishing voters... the election fiasco of 2000 made the Sunshine State a laughing stock. More importantly, it put George Bush in the White House. You`d think they`d want to get it right this time. But no, as Andrew Gumbel discovers, the democratic process is more flawed than ever

29 September 2004

Of the many weird and unsettling developments in Florida since the presidential election meltdown four years ago, none is so startling as the fact that Theresa LePore, the calamitously incompetent elections supervisor of Palm Beach County, still has her job. It was LePore who chose the notorious "butterfly ballot" - a format so confusing that it led thousands of Democrats, many of them elderly, retired Jewish people, to punch the wrong hole, giving their vote not to Al Gore, as they had intended, but to the right-wing, explicitly anti-Jewish fringe candidate Pat Buchanan.

It was LePore, too, who caused huge problems for the fraught re-count process, first by insisting on the strictest standards for determining voter intent and then, with the final deadline 72 hours away, ordering her staff to take the day off for Thanksgiving. As a result, Palm Beach County fell short of completing its manual re-count on time, and the whole process - which even under LePore`s strictures had turned up an extra 180 votes for Gore - was rendered void.

Arguably, no one person did more to foul up the maddeningly close election in Florida in 2000, and no individual bears more responsibility for the fact that George Bush ended up President instead of Gore. (Without the butterfly ballot, Gore would have taken as many as 7,000 more votes and cruised past Bush`s official 537-vote margin of victory.) Yet Theresa LePore will still be in charge for this November`s presidential election - and things have got considerably worse in the interim.

Palm Beach isn`t the only place in Florida where crazy things have happened. Officials up and down the state have behaved like drunks caught out on one bender too many. They have talked the talk of reform quite convincingly, and even lavished considerable expense on covering up their past lapses. But the bottom line is that the voting machines still don`t work, political corruption and underhand campaign tactics remain rampant, and too many black and lower-income voters face daunting, often insurmountable obstacles in exercising their voting rights.

In a state that promises to be every bit as pivotal as it was last time, this is deeply worrying. And Palm Beach County shows why. After the 2000 débâcle, an unrepentant Theresa LePore was told by the state of Florida that she and her fellow election supervisors would have to replace the punchcard machines that had exposed the state to such ridicule. She flew to California, where she was quickly seduced by an electronic touchscreen voting system used in Riverside County, just east of Los Angeles.

She was told that Riverside`s system had performed flawlessly in November 2000, even as she and her canvassing board had been hung up for weeks examining punchcards for dimpled, hanging or pregnant chads. But Riverside`s tabulation system had in fact suffered meltdown on election night, creating the first of many controversies about the reliability and accuracy of its Sequoia Pacific machines.

Blissfully unaware of this, LePore spent $14.4m (£8m) on her own Sequoia system and unveiled it for local elections in March 2002. It seems to have fallen at the first hurdle. A former mayor of Boca Raton, Emil Danciu, was flabbergasted to finish third in a race for a seat on Boca Raton city council. A poll shortly before the election had put him 17 points ahead of his nearest rival.

Supporters told his campaign office that when they tried to touch the screen to light up his name, the machine registered the name of an opponent. Danciu also found that 15 cartridges containing the vote totals from machines in his home precinct had disappeared on election night, delaying the result. It transpired that an election worker had taken them home, in violation of the most basicprocedures. Danciu`s lawyer, his daughter Charlotte, said some cartridges were then found to be empty, for reasons that have never been adequately explained.

Danciu sued for access to the Sequoia source code to see if it was flawed. He was told that the source code was considered a trade secret under Florida law, and that even LePore and her staff were not authorised to examine it, on pain of criminal prosecution. His suit was thrown out.

Two weeks later, something even stranger happened. In the town of Wellington, a run-off election for mayor was decided by just four votes - but 78 votes did not register on the machines at all. This meant - assuming for a moment that the machines were not lying - that 78 people had driven to the polls, not voted, and gone home again.

The scenario beggared belief, but it was touted, with a straight face, by LePore. Then and since, she has refused to acknowledge even the slightest flaw in the voting machines, and has resisted with all her might a growing clamour for a voter-verifiable paper trail as a back-up. "She`s defended the system almost to the point where it`s been ridiculous," Charlotte Danciu said. "She treated us as though we were sore losers, andas though we were imbeciles. The tenor of what she told us was that if people were too dumb to vote on electronic machines, they shouldn`t be voting."

More phantom non-voters showed up in an election in Palm Beach County in January. Again, those supposedly present but not voting (137 people) greatly exceeded the margin of victory (12 votes). That persuaded a local Democrat Congressman, Robert Wexler, to sue LePore and the state of Florida to force them to adopt a paper trail. The case is pending.

Wexler went further, sponsoring a professor, Arthur Anderson, to challenge LePore for her job, putting up $90,000 of his own campaign money. The election got very strange, not least because it took on heavily partisan overtones. LePore, a registered Independent, was championed by the Republican Party as a much-maligned asset to Floridian democracy (a coded way of thanking her for her role in sending George Bush to the White House). Anderson had prominent Democrats stumping for him.

Any pretence of objective fairness was lost as each side accused the other of promoting a candidate intent on putting party before the electoral process. It was certainly odd that LePore was organising an election in which she was a prominent candidate. It was odder still when, on the August polling day, sheriff`s deputies arrived at the supervisor`s office and surrounded the building with squad cars and "do not cross" barriers. Such police presence at election sites is technically illegal.

The sheriff`s department cited a possible terrorist threat and, according to a TV station, drew a parallel with the Madrid train bombings. The source of this threat was never identified, and the cordoning off of the supervisor`s office - which was doubling as a polling station and collection point for hand-delivered absentee ballots - looked even more suspicious because a contentious sheriff`s race was also conducted that day.

Sarah "Echo" Steiner, a member of the Palm Beach Coalition for Election Reform, said the place looked "like a crime scene" when she dropped off her absentee ballot. It took her a while to find the lone unmarked entrance at the back where the public could still go in, and she was worried that the police presence was a ploy to try to suppress Anderson`s absentee vote count (which, given his supporters` mistrust of the electronic machines, was expected to be high).

LePore`s handling of the absentee ballots was controversial from start to finish. Her design for the ballot required voters to fill in a broken arrow linking the name of the office to the candidate - a system widely expected to cause mayhem, which it duly did. She also took the unusual step of having the voter`s party affiliation printed on the return envelope, opening the door for mischief by a corrupt poll-worker or mail-carrier. No other county does this.

Anderson won the election, but only just - by 51 per cent to 49. Election reformers were relieved, but suspicious. "We`re talking about one of the most hated politicians in the country, and she almost wins?" said an incredulous Susan Van Houten, who chairs the voting reform coalition. "Those numbers: I just don`t trust them any more."

But Palm Beach County will have to trust Theresa LePore in the presidential election, as she does not leave office until January. She believes she has been victimised and refuses to acknowledge any serious wrongdoing, much less apologise. "It`s just amazing that you can do everything right for 30-plus years, and you have one, albeit not small, incident [the 2000 butterfly ballot], and you`re crucified for it for ever," she said.

Arthur Anderson, who has yet to hear from LePore despite sending her flowers after the election, said: "She is just not recognising the level of mistrust among the voters. Much of it was entirely avoidable."

The 2000 election in Florida represented a huge conflict of interest, as the state Governor, Jeb Bush, was the brother of the Republican presidential nominee, and the person in charge of conducting the election, the Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, was doubling as George Bush`s campaign co-chair. The conflict has persisted, in one form or another, over the past four years. The Republican Party finds itself in an unusual position in Florida: although voter registration slightly favours the Democrats, the Republicans have managed to engineer the demographics - through the gerrymandering of electoral districts - so that they have a lock on both houses of the state legislature and the Governor`s office. They control almost all the machinery of government, including, in large part, the management of elections.

While they may have paid lip service to electoral reform after the 2000 fiasco, clearly their party interest lay in continuing to suppress Democratic votes while maximising the access of their own supporters. The Republicans did all they could to avoid manual re-counts in 2000 because they assumed that the more votes were re-counted in south Florida, the more they would favour Al Gore.

The same principle applies now. The Republicans can only be thrilled that those southern counties have opted for electronic voting machines, without an independent paper trail, because they make meaningful re-counts essentially impossible. There have even been efforts - by the Florida legislature, and by the new Secretary of State, Glenda Hood - to make re-counts on electronic machines illegal. Only the intervention of the courts, relying on a Florida statute calling for the possibility of manual re-counts, has forestalled them - so far.

The Republican lock on power helps to explain why Florida ignored the key recommendations of a task force on electoral reform set up by Governor Bush after the 2000 election. The group urged the Secretary of State`s office to certify a uniform voting system for all 67 counties. It also concluded that optically scanned paper ballots were the most secure, accurate system available: electronic voting was promising, but was not yet ready for prime time.

That was when a living, breathing conflict of interest came along in the shape of Sandra Mortham, a Republican former Secretary of State now working as a lobbyist for Election Systems & Software, makers of the notorious chad-producing Votomatic punchcard machines. ES&S was developing an electronic touchscreen machine called the iVotronic, and was very keen to sell it while memories of the 2000 election were fresh. Mortham had all the right contacts, not only because of her previous job but because she was also a lobbyist for the Florida Association of Counties.

The upshot? The iVotronic was sold to 12 of the state`s largest counties, including Miami-Dade and its immediate northern neighbour Broward. ES&S paid a percentage of its profits to the FAC, as well as a commission fee to Mortham. (Most of Florida`s mainly Republican rural counties went with a much cheaper optical scan system, as the task force recommended.)

The county elections supervisors who went for the iVotronic - many of them Democrats - fell in love with the idea of dispensing with paper ballots and leaving all the work of vote-counting to a computer. The lack of a paper trail struck many of them as a blessing, not a setback, as they regarded re-counts as an irksome addition to their workload and a slight to their professionalism.

Unfortunately, the officials never asked the hard questions about the systems they were buying, with calamitous results. ES&S had promised Miami-Dade it could add a third language, Creole, to its touchscreen software (built for English and Spanish), but omitted to mention that the trilingual package would be loaded via a dedicated flashcard, and would drastically slow down each machine. When the iVotronics debuted in September 2002, they took so long to boot up that the entire Miami-Dade electoral machinery ground to a halt.

To make matters worse, freak storms knocked out power to certain polling stations for so long that the battery back-ups on many iVotronics ran out. The tabulation machines then went bananas. One Miami precinct reported a 900 per cent turnout; another showed just one ballot cast out of 1,637 registered voters. "It turned out that the county had purchased a prototype," said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, who heads the Miami-Dade Electoral Reform Coalition. "This was an invention that had never been tested. We were the guinea pigs."

For the next election, that November, officials decided to turn on the machines the night before. Because of the obvious security risks, the city had police patrols roaming the streets and guarding precincts all night, at huge cost. There wasn`t much choice: as the Center for Democracy, a non-partisan group monitoring the election, discovered, it took as long as 70 minutes to fire up each machine, and the system was set up so that they had to be turned on one after the other, in sequence. Most polling stations took up to five hours to get ready.

And that is how Miami-Dade will operate in November. ES&S updated its software, but failed to reduce the boot-up time by much. "The emergency procedure has become the norm," Rodriguez-Taseff said. Apart from the security risk of leaving the machines on all night, it turns out that a software quirk makes it impossible to detect whether they have been tampered with.

That`s not all: when the head of the county technology department tested the internal audit trail in the computers (the mechanism that electronic voting advocates say provides sufficient back-up for a re-count), he found key data scrambled, creating discrepancies in the secondary vote totals. "I believe there is a serious `bug` in the programs that generate these reports, making the reports unusable," the technician, Orlando Suarez, wrote to the county elections supervisor in June 2003.

Several state officials, who have continued to trumpet the virtues of the ES&S machines, denied knowledge of Suarez`s letter until this summer, at which point one of them, the head of the state division of elections, abruptly resigned. Members of the Miami-Dade coalition believe that one reason Glenda Hood wants to outlaw manual re-counts on electronic voting machines is because she knows they are impossible to do on the ES&S machines, but would rather not say so up front.

Glenda Hood has become a particular object of attack in the campaign to hold Florida accountable for its voting practices. Unlike her predecessor, Katherine Harris, who was at least nominally independent because she was elected to the post of Secretary of State, Hood is a direct gubernatorial appointment. In the words of Congressman Wexler, a particularly ardent critic: "She is the political mouthpiece of Jeb Bush, a true partisan using her office to the best possible advantage of the Republican Party. She is the mechanism Jeb and George Bush have employed to do everything in their power to make Florida a Bush state."

When a Florida court ruled that Ralph Nader - seen as a possible spoiler for John Kerry`s chances in the Sunshine State - was not entitled to a place on the ballot, Hood wrote to the 67 elections supervisors and instructed them to include him anyway. (She was subsequently vindicated by the Florida Supreme Court.)

More egregiously - certainly in terms of protecting voting rights - Hood tried earlier in the year to revive a statewide purge list of suspected felons and ex-felons, ostensibly to clean up outdated voter rolls. The list, first dreamt up by Sandra Mortham when she was Secretary of State, disproportionately affects black voters, who vote Democrat by a nine-to-one margin. The list was discredited after 2000 because it was found to be riddled with errors, leading to unknown thousands of cases of wrongful disenfranchisement, many of which have not been corrected.

The state fought to keep this year`s list secret, only to have it forced into the open by court order. Sure enough, the list - prepared by the consultancy firm Accenture, which has contributed $25,000 to Republican candidates in Florida - turned out to be top-heavy with black voters (including about 2,000 people who had had their voting rights restored), and it included several people who could demonstrate that they had no criminal record at all. Most startlingly, the list of 48,000 included only 61 Hispanic names - way out of line with the strength of both the general Hispanic population and the prison population of Hispanic people. It`s probably no coincidence that Hispanics in Florida - especially Cuban exiles - tend to vote Republican.

Hood was sufficiently embarrassed to drop the list, but the furore focused attention on another glaring injustice in Florida politics: the fact that prisoners have no automatic restoration of voting rights once they have served their time. Florida is one of just seven states that disenfranchise ex-felons in this way, and it is by far the largest. The American Civil Liberties Union estimates that about 600,000 people in Florida are denied their voting rights because of their criminal history, including one in three black men.

Former felons can apply for restoration of their voting rights by executive clemency, but the process is tortuously long, requires them to waive the privacy of their medical and financial histories, and has no guaranteed outcome. Governor Bush himself hears a few dozen cases in hearings held four times a year. Given the political benefit of keeping most of these ex-felons off the rolls, it`s no surprise that he takes his sweet time. The backlog of applicants is tens of thousands.

Florida has had felon disenfranchisement laws on its books since 1868, when slavery had just been abolished and the white elite, humiliated by the Civil War, was looking for other means to deny blacks their rights. It is hard, even now, not to see a deliber-ately discriminatory pattern in the law. As Courtenay Strickland of the ACLU Voting Rights Project put it: "Florida is creating degrees of citizenship. When you start doing that, you`re creating something that begins to look not quite like a democracy."

That sentiment resonates in Miami`s Little Haiti, home to roughly half the one million Haitians in the United States. Pro-John Kerry voting-rights groups have been working the area in force ahead of the 4 October registration deadline, but they have found a population almost completely disillusioned with the electoral process. "They have got it in their minds that Bush will steal the election again," said Rosa Assinthe, a Haitian-American who has been on a registration drive for the Service Employees International Union since April.

Organisers are finding that at least 20 per cent of people who register to vote through their local Department of Motor Vehicles (the agency that issues driving licences) are not receiving voter cards in the mail. People can still vote without a voter card, but only at the correct polling station. The only sure way of finding out which station to go to - and they change from election to election, as do the addresses of lower-income voters and recent immigrants - is to telephone the county elections department. That line is often busy.

Other bureaucratic games appear to be going on. Edeline Clermont, a member of the Haitian American Grassroots Coalition, said she knew of several cases where voters - herself included - received new voter cards in the mail without prompting, only to discover that the party registration had been surreptitiously changed from Democrat to either Republican or Independent. When Clermont went to vote in the August primaries, she was turned away at first because, she was told, she was not listed as a Democrat. "I told them, you`ll have to call the police and arrest me, because I`m not leaving this place until I`ve voted," she said. The polling station officials relented and let her vote by provisional ballot.

Miami`s Haitians are particularly suspicious about the way their voting rights are regarded compared with those of the Cuban Republicans living in Little Havana. They are convinced that the Cubans are furiously registering non-citizens and filling in absentee ballots for dead people, and are being allowed to get away with it. The fear among the Haitians, meanwhile, is that if they break the rules in similar ways, they will be caught and punished.

Some of their suspicions are no doubt well grounded. There is a long history of voter fraud in Miami, especially among the Cubans. A Cuban exile columnist reported recently that absentee ballots were being sold on Calle Ocho in Miami for $25 a pop.

The fact is, though, that disreputable elements are almost certainly signing up non-citizens on both sides, and there`s every chance that a large number will have their votes recorded. (The zeal with which ex-felons are tracked does not extend to non-citizens.) More underhand tactics are in operation: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People learnt that a large number of voter registration forms collected from black citizens had been dumped in a garbage can - apparently the work of a pro-Republican operative who wanted to con them into thinking that they had completed their paperwork.

Absentee ballots, meanwhile, are in a class of their own, especially as the Florida legislature - with bipartisan support - recently abolished the last meaningful impediment to absentee fraud by eliminating the requirement for a witness signature on applications. It used to be that witness signatures could be tracked to spot "brokers" - middlemen who signed up dozens or even hundreds of absentee voters. The signatures could be checked by handwriting experts. No longer. "The floodgates are open for absentee-ballot abuse to an unprecedented degree," predicted Kendall Coffey, a Democratic Party lawyer who once won a case overturning an election in Miami thanks to broker signature-tracking.

In Little Haiti, vote organiser Carline Paul explained how the system might work now. "There is a bar code on the absentee ballot that can be checked against the registration application. So they can make sure a voter is registered. But they can`t check whether he or she is dead. All the Cubans need to do is to sign up everyone over 70, whether they are in a nursing home or in the next world, and they can steal this election."

Every elections supervisor in Florida has been praying for months that the November election won`t be close. But what if it is? The only certainty, as Congressman Wexler said, is that "both Bush and Kerry lawyers will be in several courts on election night". Thousands of attorneys are at the ready and - unlike last time - they have their strategies and case books ready to go.

But what will they argue about? If electronic voting machines are the issue, they will be hard put to request re-counts, as re-counts will be meaningless. They will have 72 hours from the close of polling - before absentee, provisional and overseas votes have been fully counted - to mount formal challenges, and that means sorting through an anticipated avalanche of testimonials and allegations to map a coherent legal strategy.

It could be that there will be nothing to argue about, as the physical evidence of vote-tampering (paper ballots and fraudulent signatures) have become so much rarer. Or it could be that the election is taken out of the hands of the people altogether - on the grounds that the results are unreliable - and decided, once again, in the Supreme Court. The problem, Lida Rodriguez-Taseff said, is this: "We have thrown millions of dollars at correcting the outward signs of problems, without correcting the problems themselves."

Some people believe the best strategy is to keep fighting. There are high hopes of introducing a voter-verified paper trail before the 2008 presidential election, and there are signs that a grassroots movement to restore ex-felons` voting rights is finding support beyond Florida`s boundaries.

"We`re trying not to get bogged down in negatives," said Monica Russo, a state co-ordinator for the service workers` union. "If you do that, everyone will slit their wrists. We`re union workers - we`re used to having the deck stacked against us. It`s about helping people to get through the process."

The mess that is Florida nevertheless came as a profound shock to a group of international election monitors who toured the state last week. Dr Brigalia Bam, who chairs South Africa`s Independent Electoral Commission, was stunned by the patchwork of jurisdictions, rules and anomalies. "Absolutely everything is a violation," she said. "All these different systems in different counties with no accountability... It`s like the poorest village in Africa." November could be another agonisingly long month in American politics.


29 September 2004 11:57


©2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd. All rights reserved

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My son died for a lie

Gordon wanted to be a soldier to defend his country
Rose Gentle
Wednesday September 29, 2004

The Guardian
Tony Blair says we are now fighting a "new war" in Iraq. That may suit him, to distract people from questions about the "old war" there. The one which killed my son Gordon at the age of 19. Sent to Iraq with just six months training at Catterick, with inadequate protection, he was killed by a bomb in Basra in June.

Gordon wanted to be a soldier to defend his country. Not to die in a war of aggression. My family is one of nearly 70 grieving for a lost son because of this war. Two more families joined the list yesterday. Many more of our soldiers are suffering from serious injuries.

Some people say that soldiers have to expect to die or be injured when they sign up for the armed services. Maybe so. But they also have the right to expect that they will only be sent to fight for a proper cause, by a government which tells the truth.

These poor boys are being sent to Iraq to die for this government`s lies. Where are the chemical and nuclear weapons they were supposed to be looking for? And if the war was about upholding the UN, why has the UN secretary general now said it is unlawful? Blair hasn`t answered that either.

He said our troops would be welcomed by the Iraqis. Instead, it is all endless bloodshed and chaos there. Yet he hasn`t apologised. If my children had the same regard for honesty as the prime minister, I would be ashamed.

It seems to me that Blair cares more about George Bush than about British soldiers. He made secret promises to the president behind our backs, without a thought for people like Gordon, or like my daughter Maxine, deprived of her brother.

If he cares, why doesn`t he bring our troops back home before more are killed? After all, power is supposed to have been handed over to the Iraqi government. There are no more weapons of mass destruction to look for. The Iraqis should be allowed to sort out their own problems now.

Instead, I heard Geoff Hoon talking about sending more of our lads and lasses over to Iraq. That will mean more dead, more injured, to stop the government facing up to what it has done. I am working with other service families to ensure that our voice can be heard too. Many have already got in touch.

I grieve also for all the Iraqis who have died in this war. It all seems to have been completely unnecessary.

Blair may be let off the hook by Lord this and Justice that in their inquiries. The establishment will stick together. But I do not believe the ordinary people will forgive him so easily.

I want the government to be held to account. The prime minister says he wants a democracy for Iraq. If we had a proper democracy here, we would never have got into this war. And Gordon would be with us at Christmas.

· Rose Gentle is the mother of Gordon Gentle, a British soldier killed in Iraq this year

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Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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Ein Bericht über `starwars` und dessen `Erfolge`

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The first anti-missile interceptor is
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System of Defense
• Interactive Graphic: Details on the new system; a timeline tracks missile technology development.
Frage an den Leser, kann man diese Grafiken speichern und kopieren? Für Hilfe wäre ich dankbar. Es sind Macromedia Flashs.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/graphics/missile…

Interceptor System Set, But Doubts Remain
Network Hasn`t Undergone Realistic Testing

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 29, 2004; Page A01

At a newly constructed launch site on a tree-shorn plain in central Alaska, a large crane crawls from silo to silo, gently lowering missiles into their holes. The sleek white rockets, each about five stories tall, are designed to soar into space and intercept warheads headed toward the United States.

With five installed so far and one more due by mid-October, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is preparing to activate the site sometime this autumn. President Bush already has begun to claim fulfillment of a 2000 presidential campaign pledge -- and longtime Republican Party goal -- to build a nationwide missile defense.

But what the administration had hoped would be a triumphant achievement is clouded by doubts, even within the Pentagon, about whether a system that is on its way to costing more than $100 billion will work. Several key components have fallen years behind schedule and will not be available until later. Flight tests, plagued by delays, have yet to advance beyond elementary, highly scripted events.

The paucity of realistic test data has caused the Pentagon`s chief weapons evaluator to conclude that he cannot offer a confident judgment about the system`s viability. He estimated its likely effectiveness to be as low as 20 percent.

"A system is being deployed that doesn`t have any credible capability," said retired Gen. Eugene Habiger, who headed the U.S. Strategic Command in the mid-1990s. "I cannot recall any military system being deployed in such a manner."

Senior officials at the Pentagon and the White House insist the system will provide protection, although they use terms such as "rudimentary" and "limited" to describe its initial capabilities. Some missile defense, they say, is better than none, and what is deployed this year will be improved over time.

"Did we have perfection with our first airplane, our first rifle, our first ship?" Rumsfeld said in an interview last month. "I mean, they`d still be testing at Kitty Hawk, for God`s sake, if you wanted perfection."

Weiter:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58080-2004Sep…

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Growing Pessimism on Iraq
Doubts Increase Within U.S. Security Agencies

By Dana Priest and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 29, 2004; Page A01

A growing number of career professionals within national security agencies believe that the situation in Iraq is much worse, and the path to success much more tenuous, than is being expressed in public by top Bush administration officials, according to former and current government officials and assessments over the past year by intelligence officials at the CIA and the departments of State and Defense.

While President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others have delivered optimistic public appraisals, officials who fight the Iraqi insurgency and study it at the CIA and the State Department and within the Army officer corps believe the rebellion is deeper and more widespread than is being publicly acknowledged, officials say.

People at the CIA "are mad at the policy in Iraq because it`s a disaster, and they`re digging the hole deeper and deeper and deeper," said one former intelligence officer who maintains contact with CIA officials. "There`s no obvious way to fix it. The best we can hope for is a semi-failed state hobbling along with terrorists and a succession of weak governments."
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"Things are definitely not improving," said one U.S. government official who reads the intelligence analyses on Iraq.

"It is getting worse," agreed an Army staff officer who served in Iraq and stays in touch with comrades in Baghdad through e-mail. "It just seems there is a lot of pessimism flowing out of theater now. There are things going on that are unbelievable to me. They have infiltrators conducting attacks in the Green Zone. That was not the case a year ago."

This weekend, in a rare departure from the positive talking points used by administration spokesmen, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell acknowledged that the insurgency is strengthening and that anti-Americanism in the Middle East is increasing. "Yes, it`s getting worse," he said of the insurgency on ABC`s "This Week." At the same time, the U.S. commander for the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, told NBC`s "Meet the Press" that "we will fight our way through the elections." Abizaid said he believes Iraq is still winnable once a new political order and the Iraqi security force is in place.

Powell`s admission and Abizaid`s sobering warning came days after the public disclosure of a National Intelligence Council (NIC) assessment, completed in July, that gave a dramatically different outlook than the administration`s and represented a consensus at the CIA and the State and Defense departments.

In the best-case scenario, the NIC said, Iraq could be expected to achieve a "tenuous stability" over the next 18 months. In the worst case, it could dissolve into civil war.

The July assessment was similar to one produced before the war and another in late 2003 that also were more pessimistic in tone than the administration`s portrayal of the resistance to the U.S. occupation, according to senior administration officials. "All say they expect things to get worse," one former official said.

One official involved in evaluating the July document said the NIC, which advises the director of central intelligence, decided not to include a more rosy scenario "because it looked so unreal."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, and other White House spokesmen, called the intelligence assessment the work of "pessimists and naysayers" after its outlines were disclosed by the New York Times.

President Bush called the assessment a guess, which drew the consternation of many intelligence officials. "The CIA laid out several scenarios," Bush said on Sept. 21. "It said that life could by lousy. Life could be okay. Life could be better. And they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like."

Two days later, Bush reworded his response. "I used an unfortunate word, `guess.` I should have used `estimate.` "

"And the CIA came and said, `This is a possibility, this is a possibility, and this is a possibility,` " Bush continued. "But what`s important for the American people to hear is reality. And the reality`s right here in the form of the prime minister. And he is explaining what is happening on the ground. That`s the best report."

Rumsfeld, who once dismissed the insurgents as "dead-enders," still offers a positive portrayal of prospects and progress in Iraq but has begun to temper his optimism in public. "The path towards liberty is not smooth there; it never has been," he said before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. "And my personal view is that a fair assessment requires some patience and some perspective."

This week, conservative columnist Robert D. Novak criticized the CIA and Paul Pillar, a national intelligence officer on the NIC who supervised the preparation of the assessment. Novak said comments Pillar made about Iraq during a private dinner in California showed that he and others at the CIA are at war with the president. Recent and current intelligence officials interviewed over the last two days dispute that view.

"Pillar is the ultimate professional," said Daniel Byman, an intelligence expert and Georgetown University professor who has worked with Pillar. "If anything, he`s too soft-spoken."

"I`m not surprised if people in the administration were put on the defensive," said one CIA official, who like many others interviewed would speak only anonymously, either because they don`t have official authorization to speak or because they worry about ramifications of criticizing top administration officials. "We weren`t trying to make them look bad, we`re just trying to give them information. Of course, we`re telling them something they don`t want to hear."

As for a war between the CIA and White House, said one intelligence expert with contacts at the CIA, the State Department and the Pentagon, "There`s a real war going on here that`s not just" the CIA against the administration on Iraq "but the State Department and the military" as well.

National security officials acknowledge that the upcoming presidential election also seems to have distorted the public debate on Iraq.

"Everyone says Iraq certainly has turned out to be more intense than expected, especially the intensity of nationalism on the part of the Iraqi people," said Steven Metz, chairman of the regional strategy and planning department at the U.S. Army War College. But, he added, "I don`t think the political discourse that we`re in the middle of accurately reflects anything. There`s a supercharged debate on both sides, a movement to out-state each side."

Reports from Iraq have made one Army staff officer question whether adequate progress is being made there.

"They keep telling us that Iraqi security forces are the exit strategy, but what I hear from the ground is that they aren`t working," he said. "There`s a feeling that Iraqi security forces are in cahoots with the insurgents and the general public to get the occupiers out."

He added: "I hope I`m wrong."

Staff writers Walter Pincus and Robin Wright contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Bill Deore hat Premiere

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Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 241 Bush 273
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# North Carolina: Bush 50, Kerry 44 (Research 2000)
# Ohio: Kerry 46, Bush 46 (Lake Snell Perry - D)
# New Hampshire: Kerry 47, Bush 47 (Lake Snell Perry - D)
# Oklahoma: Bush 57, Kerry 31 (Wilson Research)
# Pennsylvania: Kerry 46, Bush 42 (Quinnipiac)
# Michigan: Kerry 45, Bush 42 (Inside Michigan Politics)
# Delaware: Kerry 45, Bush 37 (West Chester University)

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http://www.electoral-vote.com/#news

News from the Votemaster

New polls put Kerry ahead in Oregon by 6%, by 49% to 43%, and in Florida by 1%. The latter means nothing, of course. With all the hurricanes in Florida, the outcome is more in doubt than ever. Will it effect the election? Maybe turnout will be depressed. Maybe people will be angry at the government for not providing more aid. Who knows.

Tony Blair has admitted that Saddam did not have WMD. In a speech to his Labor party he said: "The evidence about Saddam having actual biological and chemical weapons as opposed to the capability to develop them has turned out to be wrong." I wonder if the moderator of tomorrow`s debate will ask President Bush if he still maintains that Saddam had WMD. Could be interesting.

The New York Times has an article today about how many of the swing states have been late in mailing absentee ballots to overseas voters, a group many experts see as the key to this election. As a consequence, many ballots are expected to arrive late, which will probably result in legal wrangling about whether ballots arriving Nov. 3 should be counted. In the Florida 2000 election, some late ballots were counted and others were not, leading to suspicions that election officials were counting those ballots (e.g., military ones) that they thought would be in their favor and ignoring those (e.g., civilian ones) that they thought would go against them. If you are an overseas voter who hasn`t registered yet, go to overseasvote2004.com and register right now, then follow the instructions on the Americans abroad page, but do it right now.

Family values, Part I: Former governor Tony Knowles (D) has increased his lead over Lisa Murkowski (R) in the race for the Alaska Senate seat. Knowles is now ahead by 6%. Ms. Murkowski, as you may recall, was appointed to the Senate by her dad, the governor.

Family values, Part II: Marylander Alan Keyes, who is running for senator of Illinois, has based his entire Senate campaign on the theme that homosexuals are sinful, selfish people. He even condemned Cheney`s lesbian daughter, Mary. Guess what? Keyes own 19-year-old daughter, Maya, is also a lesbian and has been outed. The story is all over the blogosphere. One good place to look is www.politics1.com, one of my favorite political blogs. Another favorite of mine is www.politicalwire.com.
Projected Senate: 49 Democrats, 50 Republicans, 1 independent To bookmark this page, type CTRL-D (Apple-D on Macintoshes). If you are visiting for the first time, welcome. This site has far more about the election than just the map. See the Welcome page for more details.

-- The votemaster

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`The american Taliban` John Walker Lindh wurde zu Zeiten der größten Terrorhysterie zu 20 Jahren in Victorville verurteilt.
Es wäre an der Zeit dieses Urteil in einer ruhigeren Zeit zu überprüfen.

Prisoner`s Release Spurs Lindh to Ask for Clemency
By Richard A. Serrano and Lee Romney
Times Staff Writers

September 29, 2004

SAN FRANCISCO — Buoyed by the impending release of accused "enemy combatant" Yaser Esam Hamdi, attorneys for John Walker Lindh filed a request for clemency with the Bush administration Tuesday, asking that his 20-year sentence, the second-longest in the war on terrorism, be commuted.

Lindh, a 23-year-old from Marin County who gained worldwide notoriety as the "American Taliban," has been in U.S. custody since late 2001, when he surrendered while fighting in Afghanistan. Captured alongside him was Hamdi, another young American whose experience shouldering a rifle for the Taliban closely mirrored Lindh`s military journey through Central Asia.

"They were found in the same place and surrendered together, and they never, ever fought against Americans," Lindh`s lead attorney, James J. Brosnahan, said at a news conference.

With Hamdi scheduled this week to be deported to Saudi Arabia, where he also is a citizen, Brosnahan said Lindh "should be able to look and see that he too has a future."

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The United States decided to release Hamdi, 24, after the Supreme Court ruled this summer that the government could no longer hold him without charges or access to lawyers.

The attempt by Lindh`s lawyers to compare their client to Hamdi was met unenthusiastically in Washington.

White House officials said they would wait for the Justice Department to make a recommendation. They noted that in nearly four years in office, President Bush had granted only two commutations — and those were for minor offenses.

Chief spokesman for the Justice Department Mark Corallo said there were deep differences between Lindh and Hamdi.

"John Walker Lindh pleaded guilty in a court of law, with his lawyers standing beside him, to supporting the Taliban," Corallo said. "The Taliban was a brutal regime which harbored and assisted Al Qaeda. We are currently conducting a global war on terrorism against Al Qaeda and remnants of the Taliban."

In contrast, he said, "Mr. Hamdi never appeared in a court of law. He was held as an enemy combatant, and it was determined that he was no longer a significant threat to the United States. So, like other [onetime enemy combatants], he could be transferred back to his home country."

Margaret Love, who as the U.S. pardon attorney from 1990 to 1997 made clemency recommendations to two presidents, said Tuesday that although disparity in the treatment of two defendants often is grounds for clemency, she believed that the Lindh request was coming too soon.

"John Walker Lindh was a poster boy for everything after 9/11," she said. "Sometimes that`s just the way things are. But eventually … maybe once Lindh has done eight or 10 years, a future president will say enough is enough."

Lindh is being held at the federal prison in Victorville. Since arriving there, his family and attorneys said, he has spent his time reading, studying the Koran and — as stipulated in his plea agreement — attempting to help authorities in their fight against terrorism.

He is not allowed to communicate with the media, a restriction his lawyers cited in declining to release a copy of the commutation petition or the narrative Lindh was invited to give explaining why he should be freed.

But at the news conference, his lawyers asserted a number of similarities between his case and Hamdi`s.

Both men were born in the United States — Lindh in Washington, D.C., and Hamdi in Louisiana. Hamdi`s Saudi Arabian parents were in this country on a temporary work visa.

Lindh entered Afghanistan in early June 2001, a month before Hamdi went to that country; both received training with the Taliban army before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Each man, Lindh`s lawyers said, "deployed with his Taliban unit in northeastern Afghanistan, where Taliban forces were engaged in battle with the Northern Alliance," an Afghan opposition force.

"No U.S. ground troops were ever engaged in battle with the Taliban in this region," they said.

And, the lawyers said, there was no evidence that either man fought against the U.S. troops who swept through Afghanistan to oust the Taliban government and hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

The lawyers said details of the men`s surrenders were also similar. Their Taliban units had turned themselves in to Northern Alliance forces in late 2001 near Kunduz, the attorneys said. After surrendering, Lindh and Hamdi were sent to a fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif and, after a prisoner uprising there, they were taken to a prison at Sheberghan.

That is where their paths diverged, the lawyers said.

At Sheberghan, the U.S. military took custody of Hamdi and transferred him to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It was not until after authorities discovered that he had dual U.S.-Saudi citizenship that Hamdi was moved to a military brig in the United States.

He was designated an enemy combatant and received no legal representation until last June, when the Supreme Court said he had a right to a lawyer and the right to defend himself in a U.S. court because of his American citizenship.

Shortly after that ruling, Hamdi was given a federal public defender. Negotiations with the government resulted in a court filing permitting Hamdi to be sent to Saudi Arabia in exchange for renouncing his American citizenship and agreeing to travel restrictions.

Lindh`s experience was markedly different. His picture was beamed around the world, especially after a video surfaced showing CIA agent Johnny "Mike" Spann attempting to interrogate him. Spann was later killed in the prison uprising.

Lindh was brought to the United States and charged in a 10-count indictment with conspiring to kill Americans, including Spann, and aiding the Al Qaeda terrorist network.

In July 2002, he pleaded guilty to serving as a soldier for the Taliban and to carrying a rifle and hand grenades while doing so.

In return, the other charges were dropped.

Had he gone to trial on all the charges, Lindh could have faced life in prison.

"That summer of 2002, this country was in a high state of fear, anger and mourning," Brosnahan said Tuesday. "There was no practical alternative at that time to talking to the government when they raised the matter of a plea with us."

Paul J. McNulty, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said of the Lindh case at the time: "This is a tough sentence. This is an appropriate sentence."

Except for the life sentence given to "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, who also pleaded guilty, no one else arrested in the anti-terrorism fight has received as harsh a punishment as Lindh. Almost all have pleaded guilty, often for sentences of eight to 10 years, but others for as short as a single year in prison.

It is this disparity that the Lindh family and his lawyers hope will convince Bush.

Said his mother, Marilyn Walker: "I hope America can find it in her heart to forgive John."

*

Serrano reported from Washington and Romney from San Francisco. Times staff writer Megan K. Stack in Saudi Arabia contributed to this report.




Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Siehe #22125 Soros Redevor dem National Press Club.

THE RACE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE
Financing His Own Anti-Bush Campaign
Billionaire George Soros plans a speaking tour in five battleground states to get `my message out.`
By Richard Rainey
Times Staff Writer

September 29, 2004

WASHINGTON — Calling it "the most important election of my lifetime," billionaire George Soros, a Democratic philanthropist and financial supporter of Sen. John F. Kerry, announced Tuesday that he would spend as much as $3 million on a monthlong, multi-state speaking tour criticizing President Bush and his conduct in the Iraq war.

"President Bush is undermining the civilized discourse that is the foundation of our democracy," Soros said in a speech at the National Press Club. "He is leading us in a very dangerous direction."

The 74-year-old Soros said the theme of the tour would be that Bush had generated hatred of the U.S. throughout the world and made the country more vulnerable to attack.

Republican critics said Soros` newest political move was motivated by self-interest.

"He has invested a lot in this campaign and in John Kerry, and 35 days before the election he`s obviously concerned about his investment," said Yier Shi, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.

Soros plans to focus his efforts and money on states where the two presidential candidates are closest in the polls, visiting about a dozen key cities in five states.

Steve Smith, a spokesman for Soros, said the bulk of the money would go to newspaper ads and a drive aimed at distributing about 2 million pamphlets to American households.

"I would like to … reach the business community, particularly the Republicans and traditional conservatives, people who are quite distressed by the policies of this administration," Soros said.

Soros` trip marks a tactical shift for the Democratic activist, who is putting himself in front of audiences rather than just donating from behind the scenes. He is the second-largest individual donor in this year`s presidential election, giving $12.6 million to various political advocacy groups.

In addition, Soros has pledged to give $5 million to MoveOn.org and $10 million to America Coming Together, political organizations running ads and conducting voter drives in an effort to defeat Bush.

Most of Soros` donations have been given through the 527 tax loophole, so named because of the tax code that regulates independent political action groups. The organizations that received the money have been criticized as backdoors for political donors to circumvent a 2002 reform law aimed at instituting spending caps.

"I didn`t invent them," Soros said of the 527 groups, "I merely contributed to them."

Responding to GOP criticism of him, Soros said there was "no way to avoid the smear campaign. It`s in full swing and I expect it to continue. And all I can do is try to get my message out and hope that people will actually consider my argument."



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Das Geheimnis seines Erfolges?

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/192812_bushorator29.ht…

Don`t underestimate Bush`s oratorical skill of persuasion

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

MICHAEL SHADOW
GUEST COLUMNIST

George W. Bush is a skilled communicator, perhaps as effective as Shakespeare`s Marc Antony.

While devotees of Shakespeare or those loathsome of Bush (and his familiar malapropisms) might resent the comparison, the similarity is strong.

First and foremost, Marc Antony and George W. Bush understand that words do more than inform. They inspire, motivate and reinforce shared values.

George Lakoff, author of "Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know that Liberals Don`t," writes: "It is very important that the facts be understood in some moral framework. The conservatives have understood that, and they frame everything they have in a moral framework."

The proper word choice can reinforce values and emotions that resonate with people`s everyday lives and they can position facts to articulate good or evil, love or hate.

Antony understood this when he repeatedly referred to Brutus as an "honourable man" at Caesar`s funeral -- an indirect attack on his opponent. But an attack framed within values that allowed the audience to arrive at the opposite conclusion.

Bush showed the same rhetorical savvy against Texas Gov. Ann Richards in their 1994 gubernatorial debate. Richards, a talented orator, asked Texans to pray for hurricane victims in Houston during one of her answers. Bush knew Richards had just embraced part of the audiences` moral framework and so he embraced both her and the audience in three short words: "Well spoken, Governor."

Writer James Fallows pointed out that this comment was both "gracious and disposing of the hurricane-compassion issue in three words."

Bush then went on to set the terms of the debate by saying: "I think the biggest thing Texas must do is to end the post-Vietnam War syndrome, which blames others for society`s ills. All policy in Texas must say to each and every individual, `You are accountable for your behavior.` "

By framing the debate on individual responsibility, he connected with his audience on a significant emotional and moral level. This new moral framework helped to define Richards as a governor who fostered victimhood. For a state whose motto warns, "Don`t Mess with Texas," nothing could be worse.

Like Antony, Bush didn`t attack his opponent directly. Rather, his words created a framework and his audience comes to the conclusion he wanted.

Most pundits, and probably Richards herself, assumed she would skewer Bush in the debate. Instead, she lost the debate and the race.

Richards fell victim to the most deadly of the Shakespearean flaws -- hubris.

In Julius Caesar, Brutus` critical errors were assuming that his nobility was enough to win over the masses and not realizing the true skill of his opponent.

Richards, like Shakespeare`s Brutus before her and Gore after her, did not recognize her opponent`s talents.

Richards and Gore thought they could easily out-talk and out-smart Bush. Both lost to a talented and unconventional orator.

For Gore, his most tragic mistake was to assume that the smartest guy always wins the debate.

Facts don`t tell a story; they tell statistics.

As a result, in the 2000 debates, Bush won by relying on his words to tell a story and to frame the debate.

Even Bush`s use of TV`s "King of the Hill" English instead of the Queen`s English strengthens his message and continues to frame the debate.

While his word choice may not always fit at MENSA, it does fit in at NASCAR; the audience always understands the words and the framework he uses.

Ann Richards and Al Gore did not realize Bush`s skills and both were beaten.

George Bush has never lost a political debate and it would be a critical mistake to once again underestimate him.

Michael Shadow is a Seattle-based speech coach. He is a lecturer in the UW`s Evans School of Public Affairs and an adjunct professor in Seattle University`s Institute of Public Service.

© 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Achtung ein guter Flash:
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Jeden Tag diese Woche einen Artikel bei PI von dem Autor.

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/192818_williams29.html

No balance in branches of government

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

WALTER WILLIAMS
GUEST COLUMNIST

The Founders of the American Republic in 1789 established three branches of government -- Congress, the presidency and the judiciary -- to uphold representative democracy in the new nation. After over more than 200 years, these great institutions of governance, housed in their magnificent buildings, bespeak permanence.

But deep within, these seemingly indestructible pillars of the Constitution are threatened by structural flaws. Nowhere is the threat greater than in the case of the system of checks and balances that are the key means the branches use to maintain institutional power.

Each branch must be able to check the others, including blocking them from usurping its own core functions.

Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian Garry Wills has indicated that the branches "have to fight off encroachment" so the executive can be stopped from legislating and Congress from seeking to execute.

These checks and balances that are at the heart of a viable American system of government must have a continuing balance of power among the branches in order to work. If not, a weaker branch will be unable to fight off encroachment.

Today, however, there exists more imbalance than at any time in the post-World War II era. Greater power in the institutional relationship between Congress and the president has accrued to the Bush administration. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W. Va., observed in the book, "Losing America," published this year: "The Bush team never tires in its drive to usurp congressional control of funding. (While Congress is) unwilling to assert its power, cowed, timid and deferential toward the Bush administration, a virtual paralytic."

A secretive, authoritarian White House runs the executive agencies with an iron hand, keeping them from communicating with Congress as much as possible.

In a particularly egregious case, political appointee Thomas Scully, then the head of the Medicare and Medicaid agency, threatened to fire Medicare`s chief actuary, careerist Richard Foster, if he met Congress` request to provide his projected costs for Bush`s proposed drug coverage legislation.

Such information was critical for sensible decision-making in that Foster`s projections much exceeded the costs the administration set out in the proposed Medicare legislation. Lawmakers in both parties indicated they would not have voted for the bill if the higher cost projection had been known.

Robert Pear reported in the Sept. 8 New York Times that a legal ruling found that "Scully`s threats to the actuary were `a prime example of what Congress was attempting to prohibit` when it outlawed `gag rules.` "

Keeping federal employees from communicating information requested by Congress that it must have to exercise informed policy choices undermines the checks and balances that are central to the constitutional process.

Congress is in intensive care, hurt by a power-hungry president, but suffering more from self-inflicted wounds. Its dysfunctional polarization has led members to focus on their own re-election and on being in the majority party. They flee the hard work of maintaining the institution`s prestige and power.

Polarization has also to abandon any notions of bipartisanship or serious debate seeking compromise. In passing legislation including the Medicare bill, Republicans barred Democrats from the conference committees or let in a few who favored the legislation.

In conference committee sessions where usually only differences in bills are considered, Republicans have added new provisions that only their leadership has seen.

The most intense polarization between the political parties in the postwar years has played into President Bush`s hands as the Republican congressional leadership has put winning above concern for the institution itself or the quality of the legislation.

Washington Post reporter Robert Kaiser wrote in a March 2004 article: "In fundamental ways that have gone largely unrecognized, Congress has become less vigilant, less proud and protective of its own prerogatives and less important to the conduct of the American government than at any time in decades."

Congress has been so battered from without and within that it has become a moribund institution. The last claim does not deny the obvious in that party leaders still exercise power over members, or that the latter still raise ridiculous sums of campaign funds and run for president.

Yet, they now go about their business in a burnt-out structure in institutional, not architectural terms. Byrd, who has served in Congress since 1952 and the Senate since 1958, wrote: "The Constitution`s careful separation of powers has been breached, and its checks and balances circumvented."

Despite these system-threatening changes, the public has hardly noticed the deterioration and misshaping of the institutions of governance over the past quarter-century. Most people focus exclusively on the politicians and their policies, not their institutions.

This inattention has kept most Americans from recognizing the profound changes that have intensified under George W. Bush to a point where the checks and balances now work so poorly that democracy and liberty are threatened by the most undemocratic presidency since 1789.

Walter Williams is a professor emeritus at the University of Washington`s Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs and is the author of "Reaganism and the Death of Representative Democracy."

© 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Bush`s American soldier body count in Iraq: 1052

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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

On the Virtues of Changing the Mind

It is depressing for me to see George W. Bush on the stump doing a stand-up comedy routine about John Kerry, parroting the predictable line that Kerry has had more than one opinion about Iraq. Serious news reporters who have gone back over the record find that Bush`s charge is without merit, and that Kerry has been consistent on his Iraq position.

The thing that most worries me is not when a politician`s thinking evolves on a subject and he changes his mind. It is when a politician refuses even to consider changing his mind. Such inflexibility is almost always a sign of rigidity, which can be catastrophic in the most powerful man in the world.

So Bush vowed not to retreat in Iraq.

Bush has been refusing to retreat, or even to reconsider, for a long time now. At a news conference in the spring, Bush was asked if he had made any errors, and he replied that he could not think of any. Yesterday he said he did not regret his "mission accomplished" speech aboard an aircraft carrier on May 1, 2003, in which he declared the Iraq war over. Bush keeps saying that there are 100,000 fully trained Iraqi security personnel, and seems to think that there are hundreds of UN election workers on the ground in Iraq.

This kind of single-mindedness and refusal to even think about altering course reminds me of Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam War.

It is indisputable that the Iraq situation is Fouled Up Beyond Repair, or FUBAR. The number of daily attacks has gone above 80. The Green Zone where the government offices are is taking mortar fire. Little of the country is actually under control, and it goes further out of control at the drop of a hat. Amarah was in full rebellion against the British in late August, forcing them to fire 100,000 rounds of ammunition in a major battle of which most Americans remain completely unaware. The country is witnessing a guerrilla war that is vast in geographical reach, such that the guerrillas struck British troops and National Guardsmen in the far southern city of Basra on Tuesday. Americans have little appreciation of geography, and still less of foreign geography, but let`s put it this way. The guerrillas were battling in Fallujah and Basra on the same day. They are over 300 miles apart. This is like being able to strike in both Youngstown, Ohio and Baltimore, Md. on the same day. The guerrilla resistance is not small, or localized, or confined to only 3 provinces.

Many in the CIA have concluded that "There`s no obvious way to fix it. The best we can hope for is a semi-failed state hobbling along with terrorists and a succession of weak governments."

When you are deep in a hole, the first rule is to stop digging. Whatever Bush has been doing in Iraq for the past 18 months demonstrably has not worked. He desperately needs a change of mind on these policies. He needs to try something else.

The image of him giggling about Kerry changing his mind on Iraq takes on a chilling aspect when you think of him as Captain Joseph Hazelwood of the Exxon Valdez. Hazelwood told the helsman to steer right and then went to bed. The helsman didn`t steer far enough right, and plowed into the Bligh Reef and disaster. Part of the reason was that corporate cost cutting had left the ship without radar. If you think about it, in fact, a wrecked oil tanker is a good image of Bush administration Iraq policy.

Bush should stop slapping his thigh and guffawing about that flipflopper Kerry and being to think seriously about changing his mind on some key policies himself. Otherwise, an Iraq as failed state could pose a supreme danger to the United States, the kind of danger that the Bligh Reef posed to the Exxon Valdez.


posted by Juan @ 9/29/2004 01:15:17 AM
Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Demolition of Old City in Najaf?

I got two interesting messages about Najaf today. The first was from Dr. Kamil Mahdi, who has lectured in economics at Exeter University in the UK and is an Iraqi expatriate and former political exile:


From: Kamil Mahdi

Did you realise they are demolishing the old city of Najaf, just like that?! This is an act of unbelievable vandalism and ignorance, and it is in the style of Saddam.

We all know the arguments about increasing visitor numbers etc, but this is not the time nor the way. There has been no investigation of alternatives nor are there any mechanisms for consultation of the population at large, let alone any structures of democratic decision-making. There appears to be money from Kuwait for an extensive development, and one can legitimately ask why the Kuwaitis are being so generous with this project at this very time, when they continue to demand a pound of Iraqi flesh in UN compensation and in Saddam`s debts.

The destruction of Najaf which is now under way is drastic and irreversible. Read the statement by Hussain Al-Shami, the Shi`i waqf [Pious Endowments] head. Clearly, the whole thing was a mere idea two weeks ago, and already demolition has begun.

People should at least discuss the rights and wrongs of such decisions. There is no such discussion. Is this the so-called democracy all these people have died and are dying for? If this is carried out without an open and meaningful public consultation that takes place in a rational atmosphere and in total transparency, it will be nothing short of a criminal assault on Iraq`s heritage and on its history. All over the civilised world, historic cities are protected, preserved and developed in ways that retain the character and identity of the city and the integrity of its physical and social fabric.

We should ask the ministers of this Interim Government, many of whom have travelled or lived outside Iraq for decades. Have they not seen how the rest of the world tries to protect its heritage, and succeeds? Have they not seen services provided in old cities and extended to old houses, and have they not seen historic cities regenerated with modern amenities? Other countries cherish their historic cities for their great cultural roles and also for the high economic value of their tourism. Such cities are a repository of the nation`s memory and are symbols of the shared experiences of the people of the land. Even after wars, people try to rebuild them with painstaking attention to historic detail. With all the manifestations of civil conflict we witness in Iraq today, we Iraqis should be the first to realise the importance of national symbols that bring us together. The old city of Najaf is not the cause of the conflict that took place there. On the contrary, destroying it will encourage more extemism among the young who will lose cultural reference points.

Major "redevelopment" must not be allowed to go ahead Saddam-style. The action appears to be motivated by security concerns and by highly questionable financial considerations. Economically, it is not in the interest of the people of Najaf to destroy the old city. All of the old city can be attractive to visitors, not just the holy shrine, and there is plenty of space for commercial and industrial development elsewhere in Najaf. Rushed "development" of the kind being undertaken is frequently accompanied by greed and financial corruption. It will benefit big contractors and absentee landowners, and the losers are usually the people who live in the city and those who value it, that is all of us Iraqis.

Where are those ministers who have allegedly been selected for their professionalism? It is not acceptable to allow this to go ahead under the pretext that there is a need to expand the shrine. The timing suggests that this is a dishonest pretext. In any case, most visitors will want to be close to the tomb itself, so the crowd will always be at the centre. Expanding the outer perimeter would not necessarily solve any problem. Besides, the expansion means that the space will only be used in a few major religious occasions each year, instead of being used all the year round if the old city is developed. What is needed are measures that might include regualtion of visits, and that are based upon careful study, long-term planning and gradual implementation. There has to be a clear rationale for any action, and development must be to the highest professional standards with plans that must be publicised beforehand and that must be open to the scrutiny of other professionals, with the involvement of UNESCO, ISESCO, ALESCO and all those who are concerned with world heritage and with Islamic culture.

We Iraqis are engaged in a terrible internecine conflict. Outsiders have divided us and are increasingly waging their campaigns through Iraqis. In these circumstances, we can at least unite to defend our heritage? We cannot pretend that the destruction of Najaf is being done by the local Najaf administration alone, without outside interference.

Sayyid Sistani and the other ulema must speak up against this vandalism. We all condemned Saddam for destroying the centre of Karbala. How can we keep quite about the same being one to Najaf? The people who are destroying the old city of Najaf are destroying the livelihoods of thousands of families in the area, and future generations will never forgive this barbarism.

. . . there is no time to lose. It is the responsibility of those of us outside Iraq to expose what is happening and to demand an immediate halt to the demolition. What is needed is help to the people of Najaf who have suffered so much, not wholesale destruction.

Dr Kamil Mahdi
Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies
University of Exeter
Exeter EX4 4ND
Fax: [phone]

Secretary of IAIS tel.: -44-(0)1392-264036
Visit the IAIS website at
http://www.ex.ac.uk/iais



Then a European correspondent who is in contact with Najafis sent me the following:


H. called from Najaf today.

Europeans don´t get the al Arabiya info on whats going on. There´s not much of a thorough description of the overall destruction, the kharaba [destruction] loss, the job loss, the water situation and the US "social welfare benevolence" system in Iraq delivering bread, flour, oil, kerosene.... whatever.

Al Arabiya have problems themselves describing the mess. They´re not allowed into
the Najaf city core, the mosque area.

There are three shields. Three thousand Hawza [Seminary] guards serve and attend to downtown, the City of Nejef. The Hawza guys are local people respected and fairly cooperative to anyone.

But Al Arabiya crew (nor any crew) are allowed to pass the middle shield of Iraqi National Guardsmen, who are not locals, maybe Kurds, maybe Baghdadis. Whatever, they don´t respect locals, being rude and violent.

As outer shield the Americans, controlling their middle men. There won´t be
much of info ecology around that place, would there?

Once the Sadrists left, the Americans tried to enter the city. Just as had happened roughly a year ago, during the invasion, they got driven out by civilian crowds, stoning them, hurling whatever they could find onto the "infidels". They quickly left the city to the Hawza boys

Did you ever imagine . . . the big entrance door to the mosque is blocked. Bricks are laid covering all of it. The Ali mosque has been looted. Valuable
gems, golden things disappeared.

After the sadrists left, some weeks after, I don´t know, robbers broke inside and ripped the place. Hawza had the door all bricked over. People are devastated by the
heresy - the theft.

The Najaf mosqe quarter is like a big cross with the mosque in the centre. The 4 beams in this cross form a covered bazaars system. Two parallell beams are totally destroyed by American air pounding, possibly blowing up Sadrist munition caches too, making things worse.

Bulldozers work their way through the antique bricks, the black ash layers, mud and dirt, having months and months ahead of work just for disposal. How long then the rebuilding?

Finally, I would like to underline, there is not a shred . . . to confirm this info.
Just H´s words to his exiled Najafi friend for now living in my house.


posted by Juan [url9/28/2004 07:12:32 PM]http://www.juancole.com/2004_09_01_juancole_archive.html#109643214294249701[/url]

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NEWS ANALYSIS
Record shows Bush shifting on Iraq war
President`s rationale for the invasion continues to evolve
- Marc Sandalow, Washington Bureau Chief
Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Washington -- President Bush portrays his position on Iraq as steady and unwavering as he represents Sen. John Kerry`s stance as ambiguous and vacillating.

"Mixed signals are the wrong signals,`` Bush said last week during a campaign stop in Bangor, Maine. "I will continue to lead with clarity, and when I say something, I`ll mean what I say.``

Yet, heading into the first presidential debate Thursday, which will focus on foreign affairs, there is much in the public record to suggest that Bush`s words on Iraq have evolved -- or, in the parlance his campaign often uses to describe Kerry, flip-flopped.

An examination of more than 150 of Bush`s speeches, radio addresses and responses to reporters` questions reveal a steady progression of language, mostly to reflect changing circumstances such as the failure to discover weapons of mass destruction, the lack of ties between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network and the growing violence of Iraqi insurgents.

Sept. 12, 2002 Speech before the U.N. General Assembly "Saddam Hussein`s regime is a grave and gathering danger. To suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence. To assume this regime`s good faith is to bet the lives of millions and the peace of the world in a reckless gamble. And this is a risk we must not take.`` Sept. 19, 2002 Response to a reporter`s question "If you want to keep the peace, you`ve got to have the authorization to use force. ... This is a chance for Congress to indicate support. It`s a chance for Congress to say, we support the administration`s ability to keep the peace. That`s what this is all about.`` Oct. 7, 2002 Speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Cincinnati "Saddam Hussein is harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror, the instruments of mass death and destruction. ... Knowing these realities, American must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.`` March 6, 2003 News conference "Should we have to go in, our mission is very clear: disarmament. And in order to disarm, it would mean regime change.`` March 17, 2003 Address to nation (two days before invasion) "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. The danger is clear: Using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country or any other.`` May 1, 2003 Aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. ... The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 -- and still goes on." Nov. 11, 2003 Veterans Day address "Our mission in Iraq and Afghanistan is clear to our service members -- and clear to our enemies. Our men and women are fighting to secure the freedom of more than 50 million people who recently lived under two of the cruelest dictatorships on earth. Our men and women are fighting to help democracy and peace and justice rise in a troubled and violent region. Our men and women are fighting terrorist enemies thousands of miles away in the heart and center of their power, so that we do not face those enemies in the heart of America.`` Aug. 16, 2004 Speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Cincinnati "Even though we did not find the stockpiles that we thought we would find, Saddam Hussein had the capability to make weapons of mass destruction, and he could have passed that capability on to our enemy, to the terrorists. It is not a risk after September the 11th that we could afford to take. Knowing what I know today, I would have taken the same action."

A war that was waged principally to overthrow a dictator who possessed "some of the most lethal weapons ever devised`` has evolved into a mission to rid Iraq of its "weapons-making capabilities`` and to offer democracy and freedom to its 25 million residents.

The president no longer expounds upon deposed Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein`s connections with al Qaeda, rarely mentions the rape and torture rooms or the illicit weapons factories that he once warned posed a direct threat to the United States.

In the fall of 2002, as Bush sought congressional support for the use of force, he described the vote as a sign of solidarity that would strengthen his ability to keep the peace. Today, his aides describe it unambiguously as a vote to go to war.

Whether such shifts constitute a reasonable evolution of language to reflect the progression of war, or an about-face to justify unmet expectations, is a subjective judgment tinged by partisan prejudice.

Yet a close look at the record makes it difficult to support Bush campaign chairman Ken Mehlman`s description of the upcoming debate as a "square-off between resolve and optimism versus vacillation and defeatism.``

A careful reading of Bush`s statements on Iraq reveals many instances of consistency, just as The Chronicle`s examination of Kerry`s words found consistency in the Democratic challenger`s statements. Over and over, Bush stated that the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, changed the way Americans -- including the commander in chief -- viewed the threat of terrorism and lowered the threshold of risk Americans were willing to accept.

"Saddam Hussein`s regime is a grave and gathering danger. To suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence. To assume this regime`s good faith is to bet the lives of millions and the peace of the world in a reckless gamble. And this is a risk we must not take,`` Bush said in a well-received speech before the U.N. General Assembly on Sept 12, 2002.

Bush echoed those words earlier this month as he accepted his party`s nomination for president a few miles away, at Madison Square Garden in New York:

"Do I forget the lessons of September the 11th and take the word of a madman, or do I take action to defend our country? Faced with that choice, I will defend America every time.``

Yet the more specific explanation of a mission that has cost more than 1, 000 American lives, thousands of Iraqi lives and well over $100 billion has undergone a transformation.

Prior to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, Bush focused on weapons of mass destruction and stated the U.S. goal in straightforward terms.

"Should we have to go in, our mission is very clear: disarmament. And in order to disarm, it would mean regime change,`` Bush said at a news conference two weeks before he took the nation to war.

"And our mission won`t change,`` Bush continued. "Our mission is precisely what I just stated.``

Six weeks later, speaking to workers at an Army tank plant in Ohio, the goal seemed to expand.

"Our mission -- besides removing the regime that threatened us, besides ending a place where the terrorists could find a friend, besides getting rid of weapons of mass destruction -- our mission has been to bring humanitarian aid and restore basic services and put this country, Iraq, on the road to self- government.``

Last month, speaking to supporters at a campaign event in Wisconsin, Bush put it more plainly: "The goal in Iraq and Afghanistan is for there to be democratic and free countries who are allies in the war on terror. That`s the goal.``

In the course of the campaign, such shifts have been characterized by Bush`s opponents as lies.

"He failed to tell the truth about the rationale for going to war,`` Kerry said during a speech at New York University last week in which he said Bush has offered 23 different rationales for going to war. "If his purpose was to confuse and mislead the American people, he succeeded.``

The count comes from a study conducted by an honors thesis written by a University of Illinois student, which actually attributed 19 rationales -- none mutually exclusive -- to Bush and four others to members of his administration.

Most of the rationales were on the table from the beginning. What changed was the emphasis.

Bush voiced no doubt from the beginning that Hussein possessed chemical, biological and potentially nuclear weapons.

"Year after year, Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks, to build and keep weapons of mass destruction,`` Bush said in his State of the Union address in January 2003.

By the following year, after no such weapons had been discovered and evidence suggested that much of the intelligence was wrong, Bush had toned down such talk and begun to speak of the "threat`` of Hussein developing such weapons.

In his State of the Union address last January, Bush spoke of Hussein`s "mass destruction-related program activities."

"Look, there is no doubt that Saddam Husein was a dangerous person,`` the president told ABC`s Diane Sawyer in an interview several weeks before that speech. "And there`s no doubt we had a body of evidence providing that. And there is no doubt that the president must act, after 9/11, to make America a more secure country.``

Sawyer asked the president about the distinction between the "hard fact that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons.``

"So what`s the difference?`` Bush responded. "The possibility that he could acquire weapons, if he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger.``

"What would it take to convince you he didn`t have weapons of mass destruction,`` Sawyer persisted.

"Saddam Hussein was a threat,`` Bush responded. "And the fact that he is gone means America is a safer country.``

In the months since, Bush has changed his standard speech to reflect that failure to discover the weapons.

"Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, we were right to go into Iraq,`` Bush said in July in Tennessee. "We removed a declared enemy of America who had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them. In the world after September the 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take.``

There are a few instances where the president`s words contradict developments or his previous statements.

On March 6, 2003, for example, Bush insisted during a prime-time news conference that he would offer a resolution before the United Nations calling for the use of force against Iraq even if other nations threatened to veto it.

"No matter what the whip count is, we`re calling for the vote,`` Bush said.

A few days later, after it became apparent that the measure would not only be vetoed but might fail to win a majority of the Security Council, the Bush administration dropped its demand for a vote.

The president also said last month on NBC`s "Today Show`` that "I don`t think you can win`` the war on terrorism, explaining instead that the nation could greatly minimize the likelihood of terrorist attacks. The comment came after months of asserting the United States was winning, and would ultimately triumph, in its war on terror. The statement appeared to be little more than an inelegant way of adding nuance to his explanation, and the president quickly retreated from the words the following day.

Some statements now look off-base after developments in Iraq, such as Bush`s response in the first days of the war after learning that Iraqis may have captured some Americans.

"I do know that we expect them to be treated humanely, just like we`ll treat any prisoners of theirs that we capture humanely,`` Bush said, many months before American soldiers committed the atrocities at the Abu Ghraib prison.
President Bush on Iraq


Editor`s note

An examination of Sen. John Kerry`s record on Iraq appeared in The Chronicle last Thursday. To read the story, go to sfgate.com/politics/.

E-mail Marc Sandalow at [e-mail].


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/09/29/M…
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

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Dan Rather Takes A Bullet
While the Right was demonizing the crusty ol` newsman, BushCo got away with murder, again
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, September 29, 2004

Oh, come on.

I mean, really now. Like anyone worth their even remotely sober intellect didn`t have, during that entire, cute little "Memogate" scandal, in their mind`s eye a slightly oozing picture of BushCo`s master puppeteer and most favoritist overfed pit bull Karl Rove, sitting there all puffed up and wheezing and hunched over his grease-stained nail-studded Compaq Presario after yet another three-Martini, four-baby-seal-kabob lunch, hammering out those forged memos about Bush`s military ineptitude on his swiped copy of MS Word.

Can`t you just see it? Hear the heavy breathing? Smell the gin? Could this picture be very far from the truth? Because, verily, if it ain`t the truth, it`s hovering over it like a giant elephant-shaped radiation cloud.

And who can`t clearly see Rove, the ruthless conspirator and "co-president," grinning like a troll on ether, orchestrating the whole memo maneuver and hiring some GOP flunkies to feed the docs to overly gullible CBS News with the full intent of later discrediting them and screaming abut the bogus "liberal media" and hanging sad wonky ol` Dan Rather out to dry and making a big fat nonsensical media field day of it?

Voilá, the net effect: a total and shockingly efficient deflection of all public attention away from the obvious fact that George W. Bush is, and was, and forever will be an incompetent AWOL serviceman whose meager and embarrassing record pales in comparison to Kerry`s outstanding heroism, and adding yet another notch to the Repubs belt of truly outstanding, world-class deceptions.

Conjecture? Mere wishful liberal thinking? Hardly. With Rove, it`s never a difficult leap from the seemingly impossible and utterly ruthless to the absolutely soulless and eminently doable.

Look. From doctoring the Florida voter rolls to rigging the Supreme Court to manufacturing the Swift Boat Veterans for Utter B.S. to creating an entirely discredited "flip flop" claim against Kerry to forcing the Democratic presidential candidate to actually defend his stunning Vietnam heroism when not a single member of Bush`s team of sneering flying monkeys could be bothered to serve in the military, ever, the proof is frightening and obvious: Rove`s GOP spin machine, it is brutal and toxic and alarming.

And this machine, it is beyond more than capable of orchestrating just such a tiny, vicious feat as this pointless "Memogate" nonscandal, given how Karl Rove is the demon god at calculation and redirection and removing all accountability from his candidate and making it appear as though some big media conspiracy is treating Dubya unfairly, even as Rove manipulates that very same media to smear the living hell out of bona fide war heroes, all while shrugging off more than 1,000 dead U.S. soldiers and ignoring the brutal fact that his boy Bush has almost singlehandedly made America the most disrespected and openly loathed major power on the planet.

Do we really not see? Is much of the nation really this gullible and lost and easily misled? Do you already know the answer?

Let`s be clear: CBS embarrassed itself silly by claiming those documents are legit. To be sure, their fact-checking abilities are rather appalling and clumsy and not even as good as those of an average major daily American newspaper. And, absolutely, Dan Rather`s personality and history of news reportage are, uh, unconventional and more than a little weird, and Rather himself may even be, as Slate suggests, "totally bonkers."

And, furthermore, it may very well be true, as screeching media pundits so desperately want you to believe, that "Memogate" will be some sort of tipping point for major TV-news media, the final straw that broke their aching back of strained credibility, thus creating a huge hole for eager-beaver bloggers and false pundits and wanna-be authorities to rush in and make up the news for themselves without much thought to integrity whatsoever. What fun that will be.

But aren`t you noticing something? Something missing? Something huge and obvious and slimy and elephant size and yet somehow utterly ignored during the entire Dan Rather fiasco? Of course you don`t -- after all, you`re not supposed to. This was the whole point.

It`s this: Paperwork or no paperwork, the allegations against Dubya are entirely true. It is common knowledge. Dubya was a family embarrassment. A none-too-bright problem child. A mediocre student and AWOL National Guardsman whose whereabouts can`t be accounted for during large chunks of his "service," unless you happened to look in the bars down in Tijuana.

He skipped out on Vietnam due to Daddy`s connections and was spoon-fed and coddled, and he binge drank his way through most of his adult life, and no matter how much the GOP fluffs up his threadbare "record," even they can`t deny that Bush looks like a spoiled little Texas brat who could no more wear a military uniform with dignity and pride than a drag queen can wear a khaki pantsuit from the Gap.

Funny how that little point got lost. Because, oh right, that crusty and peculiar 73-year-old CBS newscaster, he`s the real devil here. And forget Bush`s stunning record of flip-flops and lies. It`s Kerry who can`t make up his mind. And forget all those dead U.S. soldiers who`ve lost their lives for no justifiable reason whatsoever -- it`s, uh, Cat Stevens who`s the real threat. Nice.

Clearly, Rove has sold his soul to the devil. After all, his results are brilliant and troubling. You know your cold-blooded re-election campaign is a crushing success when American support for BushCo`s handling of this hideous war is actually on the rise, while simultaneously every report, and every military general and think tank and former ally, claims the situation in Iraq is more brutal and desperate and irreconcilable than ever, and that Bush has botched nearly every single piece of war policy imaginable. This is how you know.

And do you hear that? That cackling, hissing laughter? It`s coming from the brilliantly orchestrated Repubs, all giddy like greased pigs at how they can so effortlessly switch the attack to some cranky CBS newscaster and let some small-minded neoconservative millionaire attack-dog bloggers get his screeching 15 minutes of fame, as meanwhile, once again, Bush gets off scot-free, the entire point lost, his absolutely miserable weak little character and embarrassing military career instantly forgotten, again. Applause, Karl. You`ve done it again.

But let us not give up quite so easily. Let us not discount the massive wave of unprecedented unrest in this nation, a dissonant and mutinous anger not seen since Vietnam, emerging like a flame from the sense that we are being -- and have been -- regularly, massively duped, and lied to, and misled, and brutalized, and this shall not stand.

After all, the way to defeat any screaming demon of Rove is simply to stop. Stop running and stop thinking he has all the angles, and turn and face the snarling pasty-faced demon, and rally your legion of thinking voters and scream your truth and hold your ground, and then watch the big monster phantasm of God and war and blood dissolve into a sticky miasma of screeching reeking gases and bloody hunks of polemical mud, signifying nothing. Are you ready?
# Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.
# Mark`s column archives are here

Mark Morford`s Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does. Subscribe to this column at sfgate.com/newsletters.


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/200…

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Wenn die USA die Soldaten dafür hätte.

Oktober-Überraschung Iran
von Mike Whitney
ZNet 17.09.2004
„Wir weisen alle Anschuldigungen ueber irgendwelche Nukleartests in Parchin entschiedenst zurueck.“
Hossein Mousavian, Vertreter des Irans bei der IAEA

„Ein bekannter internationaler Experte sagte am Mitwoch, neue Satellitenbilder zeigten, dass der Militaerkomplex Parchin im Suedosten von Teheran ein Ort der Erforschung, Testung und Produktion von Kernwaffen sein koennte.“ (Reuters)

Obwohl eine gestern veroeffentlichte Einschaetzung der nationalen Geheimdienste die vielen Katastrophenszenarien fuer den gewaltgeplagten Irak verdeutlichte, ist die Bush-Regierung weiterhin fleissig dabei, die Vorarbeit fuer Amerikas naechsten Kreuzzug im Nahen Osten zu leisten. Die Unterstellungen einer iranischen „Atombomben“-Produktionsstaette kommen einer Kriegshandlung gleich; oder so wird zumindest unter Bush-Anhaengern spekuliert.

Bis jetzt gibt es keine Beweise, die stuetzen wuerden, dass die Fotos zeigen, was ihnen zu zeigen „unterstellt“ wird, doch Irans leitender Vertreter bei der Internationalen Atomenergiebehoerde IAEA Hossein Mousavian aeusserte gegenueber Reuters, dass „dies eine Luege ist ... doch wir sind bereit, mit der IAEA zusammenzuarbeiten, wenn sie gehen wollen [um den Ort zu inspizieren]“. Diese bekannte Taktik war von Colin Powell im Vorfeld des Irakkrieges angewandt worden, als er der UN unzaehlige unklare Fotografien von Chemiewaffen vorlegte, die sich allesamt als falsch herausstellten.

Es erinnert uns auch an Rumsfelds Aeusserung vor der Invasion, dass „wir wissen, wo sie [die Massenvernichtungswaffen] sind. Sie sind dort in der Umgebung von Tikrit.“ Erneut stellten sich die Behauptungen als unfundiert heaus, doch waren sie Instrumente, um Unterstuetzung des Krieges durch die Oeffentlichkeit zu organisieren. Rumsfeld weiss, dass die jetzigen Anschuldigungen keine Unterstuetzung fuer die Invasion hervorrufen werden, und das ist auch gar nicht beabsichtigt. Das Verteidigungsministerium versucht einfach, einen „finalen Vorstoss“ („end sweep“) an IAEA, UN-Sihcerheitsrat und US-Geheimdiensten vorbei durchzufuehren, welche versuchen, die Kriegsvorbereitungen zu verzoegern. (Das FBI hat schon nachgewiesen, dass fuehrende Persoenlichkeiten des Verteidigungsministeriums „als geheim klassifizierte Informationen“ an Israel weitergeben mit dem eindeutigen Ziel, Feindseligkeiten gegen den Iran einzuleiten.)

Satellitentechnologie faellt komplett in den Verantwortungsbereich des Verteidigungsministeriums (nicht des CIA).

Was legt das nahe?

Waehrend der letzten anderthalb Jahre war die IAEA nicht in der Lage nachzuweisen, dass sich der Iran nicht in Uebereinstimmung mit dem Atomwaffensperrvertrag befindet, obwohl sie „Reaktionsfolgeelemente“ von angereichertem Uran an aus Pakistan erworbenen Zentrifugen fand. Gerade diese Woche aeusserte der Leiter der Atomwaffenaufsichtsbehoerde El Baradei, dass es „keine funiderten Beweise gibt, die die US-Annahemn bewiesen, nach denen Teheran sein Atomprogramm als Arbeitsfront zur Produktion von Waffen benutze“ Dies bedeutet, dass es keinen zu rechtfertigenden Grund gibt, um die Angelegenheit fuer „Strafaktionen“ vor den Sicherheitsrat zu bringen.

Die Herangehensweise der Bush-Regierung an den Iran ist komplex. Einerseits vollzieht sie die vorhersehbaren Schritte, um einen Kriegsgrund zu schaffen und diesen vor den Sicherheitsrat zu bringen. Diese Heangehensweise beruht auf der unwahrscheinlichen Aussicht, dass die UN einen „Ausloesemechanismus“ unterstuetzen werden, der den USA gestattete, den Iran anzugreifen, wenn er sich nicht in Uebereinstimmung mit seinen vertraglichen Verplichtungen befindet.

Andererseits nimmt das Verteidigungsministerum den „direkten Weg“ zum Krieg. Es hat die Fotografien als Beweis fuer ein Fehlverhalten vorgelegt (und ebenfalls iranische Beteiligung am irakischen Widerstand nahegelegt), und es ist voellig moeglich, dass sie dies als Rechtfertigung fuer einen „Preemptiv“-Schlag nutzen werden.

Beide Wege fuehren unausweichlich zum Krieg; der eine demonstriert lediglich ein bescheidenes Mass an Respektierung internationaler Organisationen.

Rumsfelds Satellitenfotografien stellen eine ernsthafte Eskalation im Marsch auf den Krieg hin dar. Wie unzuverlaessig die Fotos auch sein moegen, ihr Zweck liegt in der Rechtfertigung von Aggressionen gegen den Iran. Die Buh-regierung wird keine Zeit mit dem Versuch verschwenden, die Unterstuetzung des amerikanischen Volkes, des Kongresses oder der Welt zu gewinnen. Sie wird einfach einen „plausiblen“ Fall der Bedrohung der „nationalen Sicherheit“ schaffen und dann voranschreiten.

Das eitle Geschwaetz ueber eine „Oktoberueberraschung“ scheint Wirklichkeit zu werden.

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John Eisenhower: `Why I will vote for John Kerry for President`
Date: Wednesday, September 29 @ 10:01:45 EDT
Topic: Election 2004

By John Eisenhower, Union Leader

THE Presidential election to be held this coming Nov. 2 will be one of extraordinary importance to the future of our nation. The outcome will determine whether this country will continue on the same path it has followed for the last 3®� years or whether it will return to a set of core domestic and foreign policy values that have been at the heart of what has made this country great.

Now more than ever, we voters will have to make cool judgments, unencumbered by habits of the past. Experts tell us that we tend to vote as our parents did or as we "always have." We remained loyal to party labels. We cannot afford that luxury in the election of 2004. There are times when we must break with the past, and I believe this is one of them.

As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration`s decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry.



The fact is that today`s "Republican" Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar. To me, the word "Republican" has always been synonymous with the word "responsibility," which has meant limiting our governmental obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms. Today`s whopping budget deficit of some $440 billion does not meet that criterion.

Responsibility used to be observed in foreign affairs. That has meant respect for others. America, though recognized as the leader of the community of nations, has always acted as a part of it, not as a maverick separate from that community and at times insulting towards it. Leadership involves setting a direction and building consensus, not viewing other countries as practically devoid of significance. Recent developments indicate that the current Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris and arrogance.

In the Middle East crisis of 1991, President George H.W. Bush marshaled world opinion through the United Nations before employing military force to free Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. Through negotiation he arranged for the action to be financed by all the industrialized nations, not just the United States. When Kuwait had been freed, President George H. W. Bush stayed within the United Nations mandate, aware of the dangers of occupying an entire nation.

Today many people are rightly concerned about our precious individual freedoms, our privacy, the basis of our democracy. Of course we must fight terrorism, but have we irresponsibly gone overboard in doing so? I wonder. In 1960, President Eisenhower told the Republican convention, "If ever we put any other value above (our) liberty, and above principle, we shall lose both." I would appreciate hearing such warnings from the Republican Party of today.

The Republican Party I used to know placed heavy emphasis on fiscal responsibility, which included balancing the budget whenever the state of the economy allowed it to do so. The Eisenhower administration accomplished that difficult task three times during its eight years in office. It did not attain that remarkable achievement by cutting taxes for the rich. Republicans disliked taxes, of course, but the party accepted them as a necessary means of keep the nation`s financial structure sound.

The Republicans used to be deeply concerned for the middle class and small business. Today`s Republican leadership, while not solely accountable for the loss of American jobs, encourages it with its tax code and heads us in the direction of a society of very rich and very poor.

Sen. Kerry, in whom I am willing to place my trust, has demonstrated that he is courageous, sober, competent, and concerned with fighting the dangers associated with the widening socio-economic gap in this country. I will vote for him enthusiastically.

I celebrate, along with other Americans, the diversity of opinion in this country. But let it be based on careful thought. I urge everyone, Republicans and Democrats alike, to avoid voting for a ticket merely because it carries the label of the party of one`s parents or of our own ingrained habits.

John Eisenhower, son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, served on the White House staff between October 1958 and the end of the Eisenhower administration. From 1961 to 1964 he assisted his father in writing "The White House Years," his Presidential memoirs. He served as American ambassador to Belgium between 1969 and 1971. He is the author of nine books, largely on military subjects.

Copyright c 2004

Reprinted from The New Hampshire Union Leader:
http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_
showa.html?article=44657

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POLITICS:
U.S.-Backed Warlords Big Threat to Afghan Elections

Jim Lobe


WASHINGTON, Sep 29 (IPS) - Insufficient security forces and a lack of election observers, combined with regional warlords backed by the United States, continue to threaten the upcoming presidential election in Afghanistan, says a new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Local citizens feel the warlords pose a greater threat to their safety than forces of the former ruling Taliban, which was ousted by U.S. soldiers after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, adds the report by the U.S.-based group.

Remnants of the Taliban, which harboured the al-Qaeda terrorists who committed the U.S. attacks, have remained in hiding in Afghanistan`s remote mountainous regions and recently carried out a number of deadly attacks.

The 52-page HRW report, `The Rule of the Gun: Human Rights Abuses and Political Repression in the Run-Up to Afghanistan`s Presidential Election,` says the international community, and countries of NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) in particular, should vastly increase the number of troops in Afghanistan to ensure security for the elections.

It also complains that there are far too few international observers to monitor polls and give confidence to voters that their ballots will be secret than are needed.

"Amazingly, because of the inadequate forces, current security plans for the presidential election include the use of deputised warlords of factional forces to guard polling stations -- the very people Afghans say they`re most afraid of," the report noted, adding that U.S. officials closely involved with election preparations "appear to be complacent," believing "democracy is now on the horizon."

It adds that continuing human rights abuses are fuelling a pervasive atmosphere of repression and fear in many parts of the country, and that voters in many regions do not appear to understand the ballot or have faith in its secrecy, particularly in the face of pressure from militia factions.

"The warlords are still calling the shots," said Brad Adams, HRW`s Asia director. "Many voters in rural areas say the militias have already told them how to vote, and that they`re afraid of disobeying them. Activists and political organisers who oppose the warlords fear for their lives," he added in the report.

The document, which was released just nine days before the election, echoes many of the same complaints and concerns voiced by a number of other human rights, development and women`s groups in recent weeks.

The main contenders in the election feature the favourite of the administration of U.S. President George W Bush, interim Afghan President Hamid Karzai, his former education and information minister, Yonus Qanooni and a dozen less competitive figures. Among them are at least three warlords, such as General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who kicked off his campaign with a giant rally in his hometown Shibarghan, in the northern, predominantly Uzbek, part of the country.

U.S. officials have reportedly tried to persuade Qanooni, an ethnic Tajik from the Panjshir Valley, the stronghold of the Northern Alliance that led the drive to oust the Taliban, to withdraw and join a new unity government under Karzai, a member of Afghanistan`s largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns, who also constitute the ethnic base of the Taliban.

In addition to these efforts, Washington, which has more than 10,000 U.S. troops in the country, is also trying to prevent Taliban forces and its allies from disrupting the election, especially in the Pashtun regions of the south and southeast, where they have carried out deadly attacks aimed at election workers and officials.

While the HRW report agrees the Taliban pose a threat of further violence in the days leading to the election, voters and political organisers interviewed by the group across Afghanistan said armed local factions, many of them supported by Washington and condoned by the Karzai government, pose the most significant threat to a democratic process.

"The reality is that most Afghans involved in politics on the ground are primarily afraid of warlords and their factions, much more than they`re afraid of the Taliban," said Adams, who, like other rights activists, has been particularly frustrated by the failure of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which is led and manned primarily by soldiers of the European and North American nations of NATO, to extend its presence beyond Kabul into the countryside and other important towns and cities.

"For a long time there has been widespread agreement that elections cannot be successful unless additional international security forces are deployed and warlord militias are disarmed. If Afghanistan is a priority of the international community, where are the troops?" asked Adams.

Intimidation and control by warlords and the Taliban are not the only threats to the election`s legitimacy, according to HRW.

Its staff has confirmed several flaws in the voter-registration process, including multiple registrations. Afghan and UN officials have claimed that some 10.5 million people have registered, including more than four million women, but HRW, echoing a recent report by the International Crisis Group (ICG), has concluded the total is significantly less if the multiple registrations are subtracted.

Factions have used force, intimidation and deception to collect thousands of voting cards from civilians, according to the report, which concluded that tens of thousands of women were induced to register more than once after being told the cards entitled them to certain benefits, such as food rations.

Warlords have also used intimidation and harassment against Afghan journalists and potential candidates for next year`s parliamentary and local elections.

The report applauded Karzai`s recent sidelining of some warlords, most significantly, Ismail Khan, the governor of the western city of Herat. But it called for the president and his government to intensify such efforts and refrain from any deal making that could further entrench warlord rule.

Washington and NATO should increase cooperation with ISAF and expand troops levels to ensure security throughout the country, according to the report, which said the United States in particular should clarify its strategy in Afghanistan to make the protection of human rights its primary goal.

"The current strategy of supporting both the central government and regional and local warlords who resist accountability to Kabul undermines the creation of democratic institutions and the rule of law," according to the report, which added that Washington must stop supporting abusive faction leaders. (END/2004)

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From AxisofLogic.com

Critical Analysis
Of Disconnect and Fantasyland
By Manuel Valenzuela
Sep 26, 2004, 10:21

Imagine my surprise, having returned from a research and exploratory sojourn through the mesmerizing beauty of the lands, coasts and peoples of Mexico where the spirit re-energized, mind meditated and appreciation for humanity returned, all of which enabled me to escape, at least for a small respite, from the madness of a troubled world, to see that Iraq had almost overnight been transformed into a nation on the verge of a Renaissance, becoming a new beacon of democracy and security, morphing into an unyielding success, an illuminated positive road devoid of reality. A heap of garbage had suddenly become a Kandinsky, a masterpiece in waiting whose canvas Bush had transformed into a work of art with each new brushstroke of his formula for nation building and democracy creating.



As if dark skies pregnant with ominous chaos and certain defeat had suddenly parted and dissipated from the lands of Eden, giving rise to splendorous warmth and radiant success, Iraq was, in the eyes of the Bush administration, their sock puppet Ayad Allawi and almost half the American population, a nation no longer in the grip of utter decay or certain devastation. As if on cue, the plague introduced by Bush into Iraq disappeared in a blink of an eye, no doubt an act of divine intervention brought on by Bush�s Almighty Father. Iraq, it seemed, was once more on the right track, even as carnage hovered above and devastation prospered below.



Simply because Bush wished it so, Iraq became, in the minds of 40 percent of American citizens, an endeavor worth staying the course over, a noble undertaking worth thousands of American casualties, tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, and over 200 billion dollars of America�s treasure. Chaos suddenly became success, a quagmire was now the road to democracy, a debacle morphed into progress and turbulent sandstorms of bullets and the riled hornet�s nest in Iraq were made tranquil through the power of positive spin and delusional manipulation.



Because Bush and his malevolent brain Karl Rove wished it, 40 percent of Americans were ready, willing and able to re-appoint Bush back into office, accepting as true his make-believe fantasy over Iraq and the delusion that he has made Americans safer while winning the fictional �war on terror�. It is these 40 percent of Americans that believe any and all trash emanating from the mouths of the Bush administration, the Republican Party and the minions in the corporate media. It is this forty percent that cannot see reality for what it is, cannot comprehend the danger Bush has placed them in and cannot understand what four more years of Bush means for America, and the world. It is this forty percent whose disconnect may help seal the future course of humankind, and why millions more break out in cold sweats at the prospect at having the disconnected decide their futures.



Almost miraculously, the nation all people with half a brain in their craniums knew to be on the verge of implosion had been resurrected, becoming a great victory for the Bush administration, a true Lazarus rising from the dead. The ruins of war no longer existed, the putrid smells of quagmire no longer lingered, nor did the growing swells of freedom fighters reclaiming their lands from the terrorist occupiers that had in two wars and a decade of economic genocide destroyed their society and lay waste to their country.



Rubble had been made to disappear, rotting corpses vanished, open sewers spawning disease were a figment of our imagination and the Iraqi animosity towards the US military had never existed. New schools and hospitals were prevalent, even with disease and injuries from American �collateral damage� growing; electricity and water were now commonplace, in fact better than pre-war levels; reconstruction was moving forward and a new dawn of prosperity was fast approaching. The new Iraq, the one envisioned by the neocons and Bush was finally upon us, even if less than one billion dollars out of a total of 18 billion has actually been spent on reconstruction and even when new reports have found that American forces have killed more innocent Iraqis than the insurgency has. It is now going so well in Iraq, in fact, that the Pentagon�s emergency funds of 25 billion dollars has been tapped and top military officials in Iraq have asked for more troops. Democracy, they tell us, is now in motion, even though nothing has been done to assure its implementation and even when Bush knows January elections will be near impossible to undertake given the chaos and insecurity now ravaging the nation. But oh yes, freedom is on the march, and so America must stay the course.



Most surprisingly, suddenly Iraq was truly sovereign, a free state capable of its own decision making powers and free of the corrosive grip of the occupiers that linger in every ministry, every neighborhood, street and throughout the giant bubble called the Green Zone. It seems the largest American embassy in the world, the biggest CIA station on the globe, 140,000 troops and the fourteen new bases built in Iraq are nothing more than pillars of support to the new, unelected and interim government, most of whom are considered American puppets and expatriate stooges by the Iraqi people. Every decision and speech by Prime Minister Allawi, we are made to believe, are now independent, with no American control, full of truth and righteousness and free of the stooge label printed on his thick skull.



The puppet�s strings have finally been cut off as the �courageous� Prime Minister, who foreign reports claim had in cold blood murdered six Iraqi prisoners just before taking office and once worked for Saddam Hussein himself, stood steadfast and stalwart in the face of tremendous obstacles, ready to instill human rights and immovable pillars of freedom and democracy on his people. How soon it is forgotten that he once, and may still, work for the CIA and MI5. Through American governmental and corporate propaganda, Iraq�s Thomas Jefferson has been born, combining the attributes of Washington and Lincoln, positive and upbeat, angered that the �truth� of the wonders taking place in the country he had not visited in over two decades is not being told the American people.



Finally, Bush�s hand had been taken out of Allawi�s rear end, as he was now able to speak his own mind. To Washington he headed, wowing the morons, scum and traveling salesmen who comprise Congress. These prostitutes and gluttonous vermin could only stand and applaud the man comfortably arranged at the end of Bush�s now brown stained hand, even when they all knew the debacle taking place, the death and destruction their ignorance and incompetence had helped unleash, and the obviously less secure country and world their spineless failure to act had birthed. The American stooge performed rather well, manifesting an echo where no hallways or canyons existed, reading from the same script of lies and delusion as his masters in the White House. Never mind that Allawi�s opinions and so-called �truths� continue to mirror Bush�s, using the same language and talking points, the same rhetoric and delusional bovine fecal matter. In the end, forty percent of the American people would not be able to tell the difference. Their attention span is that of a gnat, their IQ that of their shoe size.



The Iraqi people, I soon found out, were now grateful to America, and thus to George W. Bush, for being �liberated� and �saved� from the claws of Saddam, that evildoer extraordinaire, the most dangerous of �terrorists�, the man who, if he even came close to wet dreaming about WMDs needed to be decapitated and his people condemned. The man who replaced Osama as enemy number one was now in prison, making the world entire safer, making Americans more secure. Iraqis were now glad to replace a boxed-in, contained and impotent charade of a dictator who provided security, jobs, food, water, electricity, social services and stability with an occupation in quagmire, a society near debacle and a nation on the verge of chaos and anarchy. Thank you George W. Bush! Iraqis, we now hear, are so grateful for the utter death now common in their cities, the carnage prevalent in their streets and the anarchy imported thanks to American stupidity. In some strange and twisted way, and in the Bush logic of positive spin, Iraqis who did not welcome American troops with open arms, flowers and candy during the invasion now welcome the strangulating occupation that has only delivered misery and endless suffering with smiles, positiveness and thanks. Yes, Iraq is a great success, and forty percent of Americans desperately cling to this ludicrous fallacy.



I soon found that Iraq only had one troubled spot left: the pesky town of Fallujah, which itself only had a few pockets of thugs, dead-enders and foreign fighters. Fallujah, we must remember, is the headquarters of the new evildoer extraordinaire, Osama and Saddam�s replacement as �thee anointed to haunt the American mind�, al-Zarqawi, the man that is as elusive as a ghost and as hard to catch as the delusions espoused by Allawi and Bush. This man has been made out to be a metaphysical freak of nature, everywhere and nowhere at the same time, a villain of reputable superpowers, a Napoleon-like commander directing the entire Iraq resistance from a city that is surrounded by American forces. He has become, quite simply, a poster child created in order to brainwash the American populace into further supporting the debacle in Iraq as being part of the larger war on terror. He has become the perfect enemy, geniusly marketed by the propagandists in government as the axis connecting Iraq with al-Qaeda, thereby validating American war crimes, occupation and collateral damage.



This al-Zarqawi, very conveniently to the Bush administration, enables the American mind to associate Iraq with al-Qaeda, something the corporate media gleefully endeavors to accomplish. Through him, suddenly al-Qaeda is at the center of the Iraq insurgency, once more terrorizing the world. Every kidnapping, bombing, beheading and American death is therefore blamed on al-Zarqawi, and by implication al-Qaeda, the bogeyman group whose terror-filled activities have been implanted into the non-thinking American mind in order to instill fear and acquiescence. The national resistance, comprised of many groups and insurgencies, and following the steps in guerilla warfare, thus becomes al-Qaeda in the American mind, forgotten as a valid insurgency to purge the invaders from Iraq. A war for independence thus morphs into a war against terrorism, and the US military is granted the moral high ground in a canyon of war crimes and crimes against humanity. This gives Bush the ability to connect in the American mind the al-Qaeda/Iraq connection with the wider war on terror, in essence enabling fear in the American populace to dictate the furthering debacle in Mesopotamia without the citizenry seeking accountability or questioning authority.



In Fantasyland, I learned, the rest of Iraq beyond Fallujah was as placid as Disneyland, the happiest place on Earth. The world was rejoicing; the nations� of freedom and democracy had prevailed. America was fighting �terrorists� in Iraq so that we didn�t have to fight them in Kansas or Oklahoma or Georgia. Never mind that a resistance usually fights in their occupied lands, trying only to expel the occupiers. George Washington and his patriot army waged guerilla and traditional war in the US, not in Britain, after all, never to fire a single bullet in London. George W. Bush is right in one respect, however: freedom is winning in Iraq. The resistance is slowly but surely suffocating the invaders and occupiers who have raped Iraq of its freedom, society and lands. Freedom will eventually prevail, as it almost always does when an occupier is subjected to the independence movement of the native resistance. History, for those willing to listen, echoes this same sentiment over and over again. Those living in occupied lands have many advantages, and, as we can see in Iraq, time and the occupier�s ignorance are on the side of the Iraqis. It is only a matter of time, and of how many more American deaths and maimings the occupier and its population can withstand. Yet with each act of American barbarity, death of innocents, rape of lands and resources, and daily humiliation directed at Iraqis the resistance will grow until the boiling waters of anger spill over, burning the entire surface of American occupation.



No doubt thanks to the political season, Iraq has, thanks to George Bush, suddenly become part of the fiction called the war on terror, even if it had no WMD, no ties to al-Qaeda, no connection to 9/11 and no terrorist atrocities before the invasion. Bush now makes the direct connection that Iraq is a central front on the war on terror, thus connecting it with the greater brand name of the war on terror, most probably because the war there is going terribly wrong yet the American people approve of and have been conditioned to accept the �war on terror� label. The hope is that once Iraq is considered the central front on the war on terror the debacle taking place will be forgiven and whitewashed.



The quagmire is so pervasive, the stench so putrid, that this clever marketing mechanism is being used to squash in the American mind any chance to deviate from the government�s propaganda. This will no doubt work successfully to once more manipulate the non-thinking, I-believe-everything-my- government-tells-me American mind. It is pure politics, as usual to manipulate the American people to accept and sacrifice the mistakes and lies of the Bush administration and to once more become compliant worker bees aimlessly surviving from day to night. Ignoring and forgetting, moving on to the next TV show, celebrity gossip or sporting event, the American mind will once more suffer the amnesia it is world renowned for, turning the channel yet again in search of further decay and ignorance in the endless cycle of short attention spans and conditioned minds that once more return us to the dumbing down of the collective brain and the further enslavement of the American mind.



I returned home to Fantasyland to find that America had entered the rabbit hole into Wonderland, taking the hand of Peter Pan into the realm of Never, Never Land. Instantly fiction had replaced reality, compulsive lies now represented holier than thou truths and the last four years had been but a terrible nightmare that we had now awoken from. George W. Bush and his administration, I found out, were incapable of lies, delusions and manipulations, after all, and so what they say must be truth and reality. Thanks to Bush and the American public that continues to live in Fantasyland, the world is a safer place and America has been made stronger, a land once more safe from the bogeymen trying to destroy us because of our endangered freedoms and ever-disappearing rights that they so abhorrently hate. Our Protector in Chief has given us comfort and security, and certainly four more years of his leadership are thus warranted. Only he, after all, can defeat the Arab bogeymen. He is the new superhero, sent to protect security moms and NASCAR dads. He has been anointed by the Almighty to read �My Pet Goat� to our children while the nation burns. Only he can protect us from evil and terror, helping to make us safe once again. He is, after all, the savior, the second coming. He converses with the Almighty. He genuinely cares about the middle class, even as he eviscerates our way of life, guts social programs such as healthcare and education and only serves to further enrich the elite few. But, deep in his heart, he cares about you and me. And, lest we forget, he has the same mental capacity as forty percent of our population. He truly represents America, for he is us and we are he. If presidents are indeed microcosms of the nation, then the United States is in grave danger. If our people are as dumb as George W. Bush, I fear the end is near.



In this new Fantasyland, those of us who have reported and written about the prevalent chaos and inevitable defeat that is only a matter of time from coming into fruition are nothing but defeatists and traitors, men and women giving comfort and aid to the enemy. This cluster of unpatriotic heathens are labeled �Islamists� and �terrorists�, �unpatriotic� and �anti-American�, nothing more than the evolving name-calling of the times since the label �communist� is so yesterday, made extinct by the passage of time. We manifest lies from our mouths and keyboards. Our fictions do not exist; our warnings should be ignored and silenced. We are alarmists and dead-enders, writing in our pajamas from our homes, knowing nothing about the �reality� in Iraq. Our truths are called disruptive to the fictional war on terror. We are once again unpatriotic and anti-American, providing solace and confidence to the terrorist evildoers. How dare we question the feces that is Iraq? How dare we question the lies and delusions that emanate from the mouths of Cheney and Bush? How dare we question the motives, the deceptions, the fictions of the war on terror? How dare we try to awaken the sheep that roam the land of the free and the home of the brave? How dare we think for ourselves in a land where free-thinking minds are now the exception rather than the rule?



Yes, this new foray into Wonderland is typical George W. Bush, the Bubble President, a man whose lies are so incessant he can no longer tell the difference between the fictions he blurts out and the delusions he believes. The very sad reality is that 40 percent of Americans also believe the delusions and fantasy espoused by the Bush administration. Millions of Americans take the words of the compulsive liars in office as unchallenged truths, even in the face of such obvious distortions and manipulations, even when the lies no longer make sense and the laundry list of distortions begin to contradict each other. Millions still believe the false connections, blatantly made by the administration, of a Saddam, 9/11 connection, a Saddam/al-Qaeda relationship and the lie that Iraq was a haven for terrorists.



Millions of Americans choose not to see the debacle in Iraq for what it was, and is: a war for corporate profit and crony capitalism, not for freedom and liberty; a war for geostrategic empire building, not democracy; and a war for Israeli security, not American, using our soldiers� blood for the proxy war of another nation. Iraq�s invasion and subsequent occupation has nothing to do with protecting our vaunted freedoms and rights, which, by the way, are being threatened daily by the savior called Bush. The inept mismanagement of Iraq by Bush now threatens the entire security of the globe, giving birth to a Bush-created and abused fear that now envelopes Americans everywhere. Millions think themselves safer under Bush and his war for profit, not realizing the tremendous karma, blowback and hunger for hatred and revenge the war and occupation have engendered. Yet forty percent of Americans fail to see beyond the fog of war or the haze of propaganda, and will do all in their capacity to elect the worst President in history back for four more years.



Millions of Americans are keeping alive the evil that is George W. Bush, in the process scaring billions of world citizens that the worst American President in history will be left to his own devices for four more years. The world�s destiny depends on the average American citizen, which is why so many people around the globe tremble in fear at the thought of what might be decided in less than 40 days. Forty percent of 290 million people may well seal the fates of 6.2 billion people. I now see how 1920�s and 30�s Germans were capable of electing a vile monster into power. I now understand how so many people allowed horrific crimes to be committed in their name. I now comprehend how a nation can become so blind to the fate their actions have placed the world entire in. I now see what is happening in present day America, and it scares the living daylights out of me. The ignorant, the dumb, the easily manipulated worker bees and soldier ants are the same, whether in 1930�s Germany or 21st century America. Blind to the truth, consumed by fear, brainwashed by ideology, manipulated by propaganda and hypnotized by deadly patriotism, unknowing what they do and dumbed down by the system they live in and support, it is in these millions that our future depends.



Why is it that so many Americans do not see what they are helping to keep in power? Why do they not see that in their support for corruption, wickedness, death and destruction they are helping to seal their own fates, helping to prolong world conflict and American fear and insecurity? Why can�t they see the fate that their support for malfeasance is bringing to fruition and the decimation of the way of life they cherish their blind belief in ineptitude is unleashing? What is it in these 40 percent of Americans that sheep they become even as packs of wolves condemn them to the slaughter? How, in such obvious exercises in lies and distortions, and such blatant ineptitude and mismanagement, can 40 percent of Americans still try to maintain the status quo by keeping in office the most damaging administration in history? In the answers to these vexing questions the salvation of the nation lies.

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Published on Wednesday, September 29, 2004 by the New York Daily News
The War`s Littlest Victim
He was Exposed to Depleted Uranium.His Daughter may be Paying the Price.
by Juan Gonzalez


In early September 2003, Army National Guard Spec. Gerard Darren Matthew was sent home from Iraq, stricken by a sudden illness.

One side of Matthew`s face would swell up each morning. He had constant migraine headaches, blurred vision, blackouts and a burning sensation whenever he urinated.

The Army transferred him to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington for further tests, but doctors there could not explain what was wrong.

Shortly after his return, his wife, Janice, became pregnant. On June 29, she gave birth to a baby girl, Victoria Claudette.

The baby was missing three fingers and most of her right hand.

Matthew and his wife believe Victoria`s shocking deformity has something to do with her father`s illness and the war - especially since there is no history of birth defects in either of their families.

They have seen photos of Iraqi babies born with deformities that are eerily similar.

In June, Matthew contacted the Daily News and asked us to arrange independent laboratory screening for his urine. This was after The News had reported that four of seven soldiers from another National Guard unit, the 442nd Military Police, had tested positive for depleted uranium (DU).

The independent test of Matthew`s urine found him positive for DU - low-level radioactive waste produced in nuclear plants during the enrichment of natural uranium.

Because it is twice as heavy as lead, DU has been used by the Pentagon since the Persian Gulf War in certain types of "tank-buster" shells, as well as for armor-plating in Abrams tanks.

Exposure to radioactivity has been associated in some studies with birth defects in the children of exposed parents.

"My husband went to Iraq to fight for his country," Janice Matthew said. "I feel the Army should take responsibility for what`s happened."

The couple first learned of the baby`s missing fingers during a routine sonogram of the fetus last April at Lenox Hill Hospital.

Matthew was a truck driver in Iraq with the 719th transport unit from Harlem. His unit moved supplies from Army bases in Kuwait to the front lines and as far as Baghdad. On several occasions, he says, he carried shot-up tanks and destroyed vehicle parts on his flat-bed back to Kuwait.

After he learned of his unborn child`s deformity, Matthew immediately asked the Army to test his urine for DU. In April, he provided a 24-hour urine sample to doctors at Fort Dix, N.J., where he was waiting to be deactivated.

In May, the Army granted him a 40% disability pension for his migraine headaches and for a condition called idiopathic angioedema - unexplained chronic swelling.

But Matthew never got the results of his Army test for DU. When he called Fort Dix last week, five months after he was tested, he was told there was no record of any urine specimen from him.

Thankfully, Matthew did not rely solely on the Army bureaucracy - he went to The News.

Earlier this year, The News submitted urine samples from Guardsmen of the 442nd to former Army doctor Asaf Durakovic and Axel Gerdes, a geologist at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. The German lab specializes in testing for minute quantities of uranium, a complicated procedure that costs up to $1,000 per test.

The lab is one of approximately 50 in the world that can detect quantities as tiny as fentograms - one part per quadrillionth.

A few months ago, The News submitted a 24-hour urine sample from Matthew to Gerdes. As a control, we also gave the lab 24-hour urine samples from two Daily News reporters.

The three specimens were marked only with the letters A, B and C, so the lab could not know which sample belonged to the soldier.

After analyzing all three, Gerdes reported that only sample A - Matthew`s urine - showed clear signs of DU. It contained a total uranium concentration that was "4 to 8 times higher" than specimens B and C, Gerdes reported.

"Those levels indicate pretty definitively that he`s been exposed to the DU," said Leonard Dietz, a retired scientist who invented one of the instruments for measuring uranium isotopes.

According to Army guidelines, the total uranium concentration Gerdes found in Matthew is within acceptable standards for most Americans.

But Gerdes questioned the Army`s standards, noting that even minute levels of DU are cause for concern.

"While the levels of DU in Matthew`s urine are low," Gerdes said, "the DU we see in his urine could be 1,000 times higher in concentration in the lungs."

DU is not like natural uranium, which occurs in the environment. Natural uranium can be ingested in food and drink but gets expelled from the body within 24 hours.

DU-contaminated dust, however, is typically breathed into the lungs and can remain there for years, emitting constant low-level radiation.

"I`m upset and confused," Matthew said. "I just want answers. Are they [the Army] going to take care of my baby?"

We track soldiers` sickness

For the last five months, Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez has chronicled the plight of soldiers who have returned from Iraq with mysterious illnesses.

His exclusive groundbreaking investigation began with a [urlfront-page story on April 4]http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0403-05.htm that suggested depleted uranium contamination was far more widespread than the Pentagon would admit.

At the request of The News, nine soldiers from a New York Army National Guard company serving in Iraq were tested for radiation from depleted uranium shells - and four of the ailing G.I.s tested positive.

The day after Gonzalez`s story appeared, Army officials rushed to test all returning members of the company, the 442nd Military Police, based in Rockland County.

By week`s end, the scandal had reverberated all the way to Albany, as Gov. Pataki joined the list of politicians calling for the Pentagon to do a better job of testing and treating sick soldiers returning from the war.

Gonzalez`s exposé sparked a huge demand for testing. By mid-April, 800 G.I.s had given the Army urine samples, and hundreds more were waiting for appointments.

Two weeks later, the Pentagon claimed that none of the soldiers from the 442nd had tested positive for depleted uranium. But The News` experts found significant problems with the testing methods.[/url]

© 2004 Daily News, L.P.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/politics/administration…
washingtonpost.com
Who`s the Biggest Flip-Flopper?

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, September 29, 2004; 11:24 AM

It`s looking increasingly like one of the key questions at tomorrow night`s presidential debate will be: Who`s the biggest flip-flopper?

President Bush has arguably succeeded in making resoluteness in the face of terror the defining issue of the campaign.

But Bush is vulnerable on the issue.

Marc Sandalow writes in a San Francisco Chronicle news analysis about how Bush`s position on Iraq is not as steady and unwavering as he represents.

Sandalow writes that "there is much in the public record to suggest that Bush`s words on Iraq have evolved -- or, in the parlance his campaign often uses to describe Kerry, flip-flopped.

"An examination of more than 150 of Bush`s speeches, radio addresses and responses to reporters` questions reveal a steady progression of language, mostly to reflect changing circumstances such as the failure to discover weapons of mass destruction, the lack of ties between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network and the growing violence of Iraqi insurgents."

And Sandalow notes one presidential reversal that is, ironically, central to the charge that Kerry is a flip-flopper.

"In the fall of 2002, as Bush sought congressional support for the use of force, he described the vote as a sign of solidarity that would strengthen his ability to keep the peace. Today, his aides describe it unambiguously as a vote to go to war."

David Paul Kuhn highlights "Bush`s Top Ten Flip-Flops" on CBSNews.com.

So how does Bush come off as resolute? Maybe it`s the bluster.

William Saletan writes in Slate that Bush makes his arguments unfalsifiable.

"In 1999, George W. Bush said we needed to cut taxes because the economy was doing so well that the U.S. Treasury was taking in too much money, and we could afford to give some back to the people who earned it. In 2001, Bush said we needed the same tax cuts because the economy was doing poorly, and we had to return the money so that people would spend and invest it. . . .

"Now Bush is playing the same game in postwar Iraq. When violence there was subsiding, he said it proved he was on the right track. Now violence is increasing, and Bush says this, too, proves he`s on the right track."
The Wrong Track

Dana Priest and Thomas E. Ricks write in The Washington Post: "A growing number of career professionals within national security agencies believe that the situation in Iraq is much worse, and the path to success much more tenuous, than is being expressed in public by top Bush administration officials, according to former and current government officials and assessments over the past year by intelligence officials at the CIA and the departments of State and Defense. . . .

"People at the CIA `are mad at the policy in Iraq because it`s a disaster, and they`re digging the hole deeper and deeper and deeper,` said one former intelligence officer who maintains contact with CIA officials. `There`s no obvious way to fix it. The best we can hope for is a semi-failed state hobbling along with terrorists and a succession of weak governments.` "
A Shared Challenge: Finding a Way Out

Robin Wright writes in The Washington Post: "Iraq, the issue most likely to ignite fire in tomorrow`s debate, has become the chief symbol of differences between presidential candidates George W. Bush and John F. Kerry.

"Bush cites Kerry`s positions on Iraq to portray him as an indecisive flip-flopper on strategic issues. Kerry says Iraq demonstrates Bush`s arrogant misuse of U.S. power. . . .

"Yet, for all their squabbling on the campaign stump, both presidential candidates actually share a common commitment to Iraq -- and have many of the same long-term goals."

Bryan Bender and Thanassis Cambanis write in the Boston Globe: "Iraq has become the key issue in the presidential race and is sure to be at the center of tomorrow night`s presidential debate in Coral Gables, Fla. But officials steeped in the day-to-day handling of the postwar situation say that when it comes to the nuts and bolts of Iraq policy, many of the candidates` positions seem both similar and unrealistic."

Ronald Brownstein writes in the Los Angeles Times: "President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry both face intensifying challenges to their credibility on Iraq as they approach Thursday`s potentially pivotal debate on foreign policy."
Debate Expectations Watch

Mark Knoller of CBS Radio reports: "While top aides low-ball expectations for the President`s performance in Thursday`s debate, not so the First Lady.

" `Well, of course, I think he`s going to do very well,` she said yesterday in a radio interview with CBS News.

"While senior aides would only say they expect Mr. Bush to `hold his own,` Mrs. Bush trumpets her husband`s debating skills.

" `He has great characteristics. He says what he thinks. He`s very straightforward. He means what he says. I think people will see that again in this debate,` she said. . . .

"She said her husband isn`t nervous about the debates, but she is."

And Terry Moran on ABC`s Good Morning America reports: "On the surface, the president`s team is sober and serious about the debate and the race right now. They say they respect -- even fear -- Senator Kerry`s debating skills. But behind the scenes, all of the body language and even some of the private remarks tell a different story: This campaign, Robin, is cocky."
The Importance of the Debates

Steven Thomma and Frank Davies write for Knight Ridder Newspapers: "George W. Bush probably won the presidency in his debates against Al Gore. He could win it again -- or lose it -- in a rapid-fire series of three 90-minute debates with John Kerry starting Thursday night in Miami. . . .

"On substantive issues of foreign policy and national security, the most critical questions facing each man are: What would you do to keep the country safe from terrorists, how would you secure Iraq, and why should voters trust you to achieve these goals? . . .

"Yet style will count as much as substance, and it could both reinforce each man`s arguments and answer lingering questions about their characters and personalities."

Ken Herman writes for Cox News Service: "Tomorrow night, for 90 prime-time minutes, preaching to the choir will take a back seat to targeting the undecideds. . . .

"To date, President Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry have spent much of their time and energy talking to the enthusiastic supporters who show up to scream support at rallies."
The Debate Rules

Mike Allen writes in The Washington Post that "officials from the Commission on Presidential Debates continued to chafe at demands from the Bush-Cheney campaign for rigorous enforcement of unprecedented debate restrictions designed to limit chances for the candidates to interact directly. One debate official said jokingly that the Bush campaign was so insistent about keeping the candidates in their designated spaces that organizers were `thinking of using flares or building a campfire` to satisfy the GOP handlers. Instead, the organizers will settle for strips of tape that are likely to be visible to television viewers, officials said."

Joe Strup writes in Editor & Publisher: "The restrictive guidelines for the upcoming presidential debates -- which include limits on follow-up questions, audience participation, and even camera shots -- have drawn heavy criticism from some of the country`s leading veteran journalists, who claim the rules will diminish what voters can gain from the events."

David Folkenflik writes in the Baltimore Sun about the role of the moderator. Tomorrow night, it`s PBS`s Jim Lehrer.

"Lehrer poses direct questions and asks worthwhile follow-up questions. He hates flashy journalists who use the setting to gain notice for themselves, and this commends him to the candidates. Because of his genial style, however, Lehrer can be much more easily deflected than the insistent Ted Koppel of Nightline or Tim Russert of Meet the Press."
Debate Spin Watch

Howard Kurtz writes in The Washington Post: "Tens of millions of Americans will watch the first of three Bush-Kerry debates and draw their own tentative conclusions as to who got the best of it. But perceptions can shift as commentators, analysts and spinners chew things over and selected sound bites are endlessly replayed on television, creating `moments` that may not have seemed particularly dramatic at the time."

Taliban Gone?

Remember Gerald Ford`s 1976 comment "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe?"

The Kerry campaign is calling attention to Bush`s statement Monday that the Taliban no longer exists, and saying that it exhibits a similar cluelessness.

Here`s what Bush said, in a talk in Springfield, Ohio: "I said to the Taliban in Afghanistan: Get rid of al Qaeda; see, you`re harboring al Qaeda. Remember this is a place where they trained -- al Qaeda trained thousands of people in Afghanistan. And the Taliban, I guess, just didn`t believe me. And as a result of the United States military, Taliban no longer is in existence. And the people of Afghanistan are now free."

Indeed, the Taliban no longer governs Afghanistan, but as the Kerry press release points out, pro-Taliban militias and Taliban-affiliated factions are in fact active in many parts of the country.
Missile Defense

Bradley Graham in The Washington Post looks at Bush`s record in missile defense, and reports that "what the administration had hoped would be a triumphant achievement is clouded by doubts, even within the Pentagon, about whether a system that is on its way to costing more than $100 billion will work."
Intel Watch

Carl Hulse writes in the New York Times: "The White House on Tuesday endorsed the intelligence reorganization measure under consideration in the Senate, warning lawmakers that it would oppose efforts to dilute powers that the bill seeks for a proposed national intelligence director."
Today`s Calendar

Deb Riechmann writes for the Associated Press that Bush is surveying hurricane damage today in Lake Wales, Fla., a fast-growing swing area in the center of the states, on his way to Miami.

"The hurricanes have all but halted campaigning in Florida, where the close 2000 election was decided in Bush`s favor by 537 votes. But Bush, with the power of incumbency at his disposal, has visited after every storm and has helped distribute ice and water, and patted the backs of residents whose homes and possession have been damaged."
Who Wrote Allawi`s Speech?

Not the White House, insists press secretary Scott McClellan.

Here`s an excerpt from McClellan`s gaggle yesterday:

"Q Speaking of the paper, The Washington Post does a line-by-line juxtaposition of the President`s comments on Iraq and Prime Minister Allawi`s comments on Iraq . Can you tell us, today, whether any U.S. officials had a hand in crafting either the --

"MR. McCLELLAN: None that I know of.

"Q None that you know of?

"MR. McCLELLAN: Yes. No one -- no one at the White House. . . .

"Q The embassy in Baghdad, was the speech run through the embassy in Baghdad?

"MR. McCLELLAN: I don`t know. You can direct those questions to them. I mean, those were, obviously, Prime Minister Allawi`s words when he was talking about -- and he talked about the progress that is being made, but he also talked about the ongoing security challenges."

Home Town Paper

Peter Wallsten writes in the Los Angeles Times: "President Bush may be leading in the national polls, but Tuesday he awoke at his ranch in conservative central Texas to some surprising news: The hometown newspaper had endorsed his Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry."


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http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/default.htm

Kerry Will Restore
American Dignity
2004 Iconoclast Presidential Endorsement

Few Americans would have voted for George W. Bush four years ago if he had promised that, as President, he would:
• Empty the Social Security trust fund by $507 billion to help offset fiscal irresponsibility and at the same time slash Social Security benefits.
• Cut Medicare by 17 percent and reduce veterans’ benefits and military pay.
• Eliminate overtime pay for millions of Americans and raise oil prices by 50 percent.
• Give tax cuts to businesses that sent American jobs overseas, and, in fact, by policy encourage their departure.
• Give away billions of tax dollars in government contracts without competitive bids.
• Involve this country in a deadly and highly questionable war, and
• Take a budget surplus and turn it into the worst deficit in the history of the United States, creating a debt in just four years that will take generations to repay.
These were elements of a hidden agenda that surfaced only after he took office.
The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda.
Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry, based not only on the things that Bush has delivered, but also on the vision of a return to normality that Kerry says our country needs.
Four items trouble us the most about the Bush administration: his initiatives to disable the Social Security system, the deteriorating state of the American economy, a dangerous shift away from the basic freedoms established by our founding fathers, and his continuous mistakes regarding terrorism and Iraq.
President Bush has announced plans to change the Social Security system as we know it by privatizing it, which when considering all the tangents related to such a change, would put the entire economy in a dramatic tailspin.
The Social Security Trust Fund actually lends money to the rest of the government in exchange for government bonds, which is how the system must work by law, but how do you later repay Social Security while you are running a huge deficit? It’s impossible, without raising taxes sometime in the future or becoming fiscally responsible now. Social Security money is being used to escalate our deficit and, at the same time, mask a much larger government deficit, instead of paying down the national debt, which would be a proper use, to guarantee a future gain.
Privatization is problematic in that it would subject Social Security to the ups, downs, and outright crashes of the Stock Market. It would take millions in brokerage fees and commissions out of the system, and, unless we have assurance that the Ivan Boeskys and Ken Lays of the world will be caught and punished as a deterrent, subject both the Market and the Social Security Fund to fraud and market manipulation, not to mention devastate and ruin multitudes of American families that would find their lives lost to starvation, shame, and isolation.
Kerry wants to keep Social Security, which each of us already owns. He says that the program is manageable, since it is projected to be solvent through 2042, with use of its trust funds. This would give ample time to strengthen the economy, reduce the budget deficit the Bush administration has created, and, therefore, bolster the program as needed to fit ever-changing demographics.
Our senior citizens depend upon Social Security. Bush’s answer is radical and uncalled for, and would result in chaos as Americans have never experienced. Do we really want to risk the future of Social Security on Bush by spinning the wheel of uncertainty?
In those dark hours after the World Trade Center attacks, Americans rallied together with a new sense of patriotism. We were ready to follow Bush’s lead through any travail.
He let us down.
When he finally emerged from his hide-outs on remote military bases well after the first crucial hours following the attack, he gave sound-bytes instead of solutions.
He did not trust us to be ready to sacrifice, build up our public and private security infrastructure, or cut down on our energy use to put economic pressure on the enemy in all the nations where he hides. He merely told us to shop, spend, and pretend nothing was wrong.
Rather than using the billions of dollars expended on the invasion of Iraq to shore up our boundaries and go after Osama bin Laden and the Saudi Arabian terrorists, the funds were used to initiate a war with what Bush called a more immediate menace, Saddam Hussein, in oil-rich Iraq. After all, Bush said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction trained on America. We believed him, just as we believed it when he reported that Iraq was the heart of terrorism. We trusted him.
The Iconoclast, the President’s hometown newspaper, took Bush on his word and editorialized in favor of the invasion. The newspaper’s publisher promoted Bush and the invasion of Iraq to Londoners in a BBC interview during the time that the administration was wooing the support of Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Again, he let us down.
We presumed the President had solid proof of the existence of these weapons, what and where they were, even as the search continued. Otherwise, our troops would be in much greater danger and the premise for a hurried-up invasion would be moot, allowing more time to solicit assistance from our allies.
Instead we were duped into following yet another privileged agenda.
Now he argues unconvincingly that Iraq was providing safe harbor to terrorists, his new key justification for the invasion. It is like arguing that America provided safe harbor to terrorists leading to 9/11.
Once and for all, George Bush was President of the United States on that day. No one else. He had been President nine months, he had been officially warned of just such an attack a full month before it happened. As President, ultimately he and only he was responsible for our failure to avert those attacks.
We should expect that a sitting President would vacation less, if at all, and instead tend to the business of running the country, especially if he is, as he likes to boast, a “wartime president.” America is in service 365 days a year. We don’t need a part-time President who does not show up for duty as Commander-In-Chief until he is forced to, and who is in a constant state of blameless denial when things don’t get done.
What has evolved from the virtual go-it-alone conquest of Iraq is more gruesome than a stain on a White House intern’s dress. America’s reputation and influence in the world has diminished, leaving us with brute force as our most persuasive voice.
Iraq is now a quagmire: no WMDs, no substantive link between Saddam and Osama, and no workable plan for the withdrawal of our troops. We are asked to go along on faith. But remember, blind patriotism can be a dangerous thing and “spin” will not bring back to life a dead soldier; certainly not a thousand of them.
Kerry has remained true to his vote granting the President the authority to use the threat of war to intimidate Saddam Hussein into allowing weapons inspections. He believes President Bush rushed into war before the inspectors finished their jobs.
Kerry also voted against President Bush’s $87 billion for troop funding because the bill promoted poor policy in Iraq, privileged Halliburton and other corporate friends of the Bush administration to profiteer from the war, and forced debt upon future generations of Americans.
Kerry’s four-point plan for Iraq is realistic, wise, strong, and correct. With the help from our European and Middle Eastern allies, his plan is to train Iraqi security forces, involve Iraqis in their rebuilding and constitution-writing processes, forgive Iraq’s multi-billion dollar debts, and convene a regional conference with Iraq’s neighbors in order to secure a pledge of respect for Iraq’s borders and non-interference in Iraq’s internal affairs.
The publishers of the Iconoclast differ with Bush on other issues, including the denial of stem cell research, shortchanging veterans’ entitlements, cutting school programs and grants, dictating what our children learn through a thought-controlling “test” from Washington rather than allowing local school boards and parents to decide how young people should be taught, ignoring the environment, and creating extraneous language in the Patriot Act that removes some of the very freedoms that our founding fathers and generations of soldiers fought so hard to preserve.
We are concerned about the vast exportation of jobs to other countries, due in large part to policies carried out by Bush appointees. Funds previously geared at retention of small companies are being given to larger concerns, such as Halliburton — companies with strong ties to oil and gas. Job training has been cut every year that Bush has resided at the White House.
Then there is his resolve to inadequately finance Homeland Security and to cut the Community Oriented Policing Program (COPS) by 94 percent, to reduce money for rural development, to slash appropriations for the Small Business Administration, and to under-fund veterans’ programs.
Likewise troubling is that President Bush fought against the creation of the 9/11 Commission and is yet to embrace its recommendations.
Vice President Cheney’s Halliburton has been awarded multi-billion-dollar contracts without undergoing any meaningful bid process — an enormous conflict of interest — plus the company has been significantly raiding the funds of Export-Import Bank of America, reducing investment that could have gone toward small business trade.
When examined based on all the facts, Kerry’s voting record is enviable and echoes that of many Bush allies who are aghast at how the Bush administration has destroyed the American economy. Compared to Bush on economic issues, Kerry would be an arch-conservative, providing for Americans first. He has what it takes to right our wronged economy.
The re-election of George W. Bush would be a mandate to continue on our present course of chaos. We cannot afford to double the debt that we already have. We need to be moving in the opposite direction.
John Kerry has 30 years of experience looking out for the American people and can navigate our country back to prosperity and re-instill in America the dignity she so craves and deserves. He has served us well as a highly decorated Vietnam veteran and has had a successful career as a district attorney, lieutenant governor, and senator.
Kerry has a positive vision for America, plus the proven intelligence, good sense, and guts to make it happen.
That’s why The Iconoclast urges Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country.
The Iconoclast wholeheartedly endorses John Kerry.

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 30. September 2004, 09:28
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,320759,00.html

Irak

Ölreiche Südprovinzen beraten Abspaltung

Der Irak steht vor einer neuen Zerreißprobe: Drei ölreiche Provinzen im Süden des Landes erwägen, sich zu einer autonomen Region abspalten. Weil die überwiegend dort lebenden Schiiten von der Zentralregierung in Bagdad enttäuscht sind, wollen sie laut einem Zeitungsbericht dem Vorbild der Kurden im Norden folgen.

Hamburg - Der Plan zur Abspaltung gehe von Mitgliedern des Stadtrates von Basra aus, berichtet die "Financial Times". Die Kommunalpolitiker der zweitgrößten Stadt des Irak haben demnach bereits Gespräche mit Politikern aus den benachbarten Provinzen Missan und Dhikar aufgenommen. Wie die "FT" unter Berufung auf Regierungsmitglieder weiter berichtet, soll hinter diesen Bestrebungen der radikale Schiitenführer Mutaka al-Sadr stehen.

Diese Pläne "könnten den Staat schwächen und eventuell zu einer Zersplitterung des Landes führen", warnte der Irak-Experte Walid Khadduri in der heutigen internationalen Ausgabe der "Financial Times".

Die Zentralregierung von Ministerpräsident Ijad Alawi sieht damit einer weiteren Bedrohung entgegen. Neben den Kämpfen in sunnitischen Regionen und den fortgesetzten Unruhen mit Schiiten in anderen Teilen des Landes muss Bagdad nun auch noch gegen die separatistischen Ansprüche aus dem Süden des Landes kämpfen. Diese drei Provinzen sind für den Staat äußerst wichtig: In Basra, Missan und Dhikar werden 80 Prozent des irakischen Öls gefördert.

Überwiegend leben im Süden des Irak Schiiten, die sich laut ihren geistigen und politischen Führern von dem neuen Staat als Bürger zweiter Klasse behandelt fühlen. So kritisieren die Separatisten, dass nicht genug Vertreter der drei Provinzen in der Verwaltung der neuen Regierung vertreten sind - nur ein Politiker aus der Region sitze in Alawis Kabinett. Sie bemängeln zudem, nicht fair an den Erlösen des in ihrer Regionen geförderten Öls beteiligt zu werden.

Die Kurden dienen den Unterstützern einer südlichen Autonomiezone als Vorlbild. In dem nördlichen Gebieten leben sie de facto bereits seit Jahren in einem autonomen Staat. Auch nach den für Januar geplanten Wahlen wollen die engen Verbündeten der USA und Kämpfer gegen die Gewaltherrschaft von Saddam Hussein ihre Autonomie weitgehend bewahren.

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2004

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M.E. ist es nicht wichtig, was bei der Debatte stattfindet. Es ist wichtig, was danach von den Medien darüber berichtet wird. Und da hat Kerry besonders bei Rundfunk und Fernsehen schlechte Karten, weil ein Großteil dieser Medien offen oder versteckt Bush unterstützt. Bis heute haben es die großen Medienkonzerne noch nicht geschafft den US-Amerikanern ein realistische Bild über die Zusammenhänge in Bezug auf 9/11, den Irakkrieg und den jetzigen Zustand im Irak zu vermitteln. Ein Großteil der US-Bürger glaubt immer noch, dass Saddam für die Anschläge am 9/11 verantwortlich ist, dass WMD im Irak gefunden wurden und dass die Welt eine Scheibe ist. So hat Bush gestern unwidersprochen erzählen können, dass es die Taliban nicht mehr gibt, und Cheney reist durch die USA mit der Behauptung es gibt eine Verbindung von Al Kaida zu Saddam. Daher sehe ich die Diskussion über Fakten als unwichtig an, weil die gesamte Diskussion nur Leute sehen, die sowieso politisch informiert sind. Der unwissende Teil, sofern er zur Wahl geht und dadurch mitentscheidet, lässt sich von den `News` von Fox, CNN u.a. oder den reaktionären Radioschows berieseln. Da wird dann eine Sprechart festgelegt und dies setzt sich dann bei den Hörern fest. Und das ist nicht von den tatsächlichen Vorgängen abhängig. Das ist genauso wie bei der Geschichte mit dem Flip-Flop-Kerry. Nach Untersuchungen der von Kerry und Bush gemachten Aussagen ergibt ein Vergleich, dass Bush seine Meinung in den letzten Jahre viel öfter gewechselt hat als Kerry. Wenn Bush bei der Diskussion keinen dicken Bolzen macht, wird Kerry von den Mainstream-Medien zum Verlierer erklärt werden, der Grund wird morgen ausgegeben werden und dann auch von den meisten US-Amerikanern geglaubt werden. Da werden keine noch so klugen Kommentare in einem Teil der Tageszeitungen helfen. Diese Informationspolitik ergibt sich automatisch aus der Interessenlage der hinter den Medien stehenden Konzerne wie GE, die natürlich im Zweifelsfall immer die Person unterstützt von der sie sich den größten Gewinn versprechen. Beide Kandidaten werden auch in Zukunft vorrangig die Industrie unterstützen, aber vermutlich wird Kerry doch eine größere Verantwortung für die Gesamtgesellschaft übernehmem, wogegen Bush ohne Rücksicht auf Verluste die Großindustrie unterstützen wird.

September 30, 2004
POLITICAL MEMO
In Debate on Foreign Policy, Wide Gulf or Splitting Hairs?
By JAMES BENNET

WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 - It is an axiom of the two presidential campaigns that their candidates offer a stark choice about America`s role in the world.

On Thursday night, voters will have their best chance yet to judge that choice when President Bush and Senator John Kerry meet in their first debate, on foreign policy.
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"I don`t think we`ve had as clear-cut a difference between two presidential candidates on international issues since 1980," said Richard C. Holbrooke, a former United Nations ambassador and now a top adviser to Mr. Kerry.

There are "clear differences on the biggest priorities facing the American people, first and foremost on the war on terrorism," Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said on Wednesday.

Yet, in the view of some politicians and policy analysts, this race has done little so far to clarify the major issues of foreign policy. "I was a little more hopeful this year that we`d get a robust debate on these issues," said Lee H. Hamilton, the former Democratic representative from Indiana who served as the vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission. "It`s just appalling, if you look at what is not being addressed. You confront not just terrorism in the world, but you confront turmoil, chaos."

One reason the candidates have not discussed a wide range of issues is that - for all the talk about stark differences - on many foreign policy subjects, from relations with China to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, the two differ only slightly, if at all.

Even on Iraq, the candidates` sharpest stated differences are retrospective, rather than prospective. Mr. Bush defends the war as central to the struggle against terrorism; Mr. Kerry criticizes it as a diversion. As they look ahead, though, neither man is calling for the immediate departure of American troops; both advocate accelerating the training of Iraqi forces.

Both want to create similar conditions for an American withdrawal; Mr. Kerry argues he will find a way to do that more quickly.

Concerning China, both candidates speak of building a cooperative relationship while promoting internal reform. Susan Rice, another Kerry national security adviser, argued that the candidates had "fundamental differences" on foreign policy, but said that on the specific question of China, "the differences are more of nuance than fundamentals."

On Israel and the Palestinians, both candidates support Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, in building a barrier against West Bank Palestinians and planning to evacuate settlers from the Gaza Strip without a peace agreement.

Sam Nunn, the former Democratic senator from Georgia who is co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which focuses on threats from unconventional weapons, noted that both candidates had called controlling such weapons the No. 1 foreign policy challenge. "But I don`t think there`s enough discussion," he said.

For example, Mr. Nunn asked, could the United States simultaneously build a strong relationship with Russia to control such weapons and press the Russians to move ahead with internal democratic reform? "If there`s a conflict between those two goals," he asked, "which is more important, and how do you deal with it?"

Both men have proposed plans to restrict more countries from producing potential fuel for nuclear weapons. Mr. Kerry has said he would sharply step up a program, which he argues Mr. Bush has underfinanced, to secure nuclear stockpiles in Russia.

Senator Chuck Hagel, the Nebraska Republican, said, "I think both these campaigns have let down this country." He said that the most important issue to address was how "to put back together America`s standing in the world."

In modern presidential campaigns, candidates tend to pick foreign policy issues at least as much for what those issues say about them as for what they might have to say about the issues. They marshal policy differences as symbols, as markers of values, judgment or style.

When they debate Iraq, the candidates are clashing over matters of real moment - over whether, for example, the insurgency is growing stronger - but also trying to cement specific images. Call it character versus competence: Mr. Bush wants to present himself as a leader with the courage to go it alone, facing a rival who wavers; Mr. Kerry wants to present himself as wise and prudent, better able to judge threats and enlist allies against them.

In discussing what he described as major differences between the two candidates, Mr. Holbrooke argued that "the core issue is that John Kerry is a real internationalist." He added that from Mr. Bush`s speeches, "you could put him right up there with Woodrow Wilson," but that there is no "connection between his speeches and his performance."

White House officials continued to cast the foreign policy debate primarily as a way for Mr. Bush to make his case that Mr. Kerry is not a suitable commander in chief.

"We are a nation that is still at war, and it`s important that the president speak with clarity and show resolve,`` Mr. McClellan said. "And that`s what this president has done.

"He will talk about his optimistic vision and his resolve and his clear strategy for success. And that stands in stark contrast to Senator Kerry, who has offered pessimism and uncertainty and defeatism during a time of war."

There are substantive reasons for the candidates to emphasize their styles in foreign policy, for it is no easy matter to anticipate what crises will astonish the next administration. Four years ago, during the three debates between Vice President Al Gore and Governor Bush, "terrorism" was mentioned only once - by Mr. Gore.

And even when it comes to approaches, presidents have often found themselves prompted by circumstances to modify or reverse a stance they promoted as candidates. "I don`t think our troops ought to be used for what`s called nation-building," Mr. Bush declared in 2000.

James B. Steinberg, the director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, argued that the questions of character and policy were entwined this year to a degree they had not been since 1972, during the Vietnam War. "There is a big character issue being debated here," he said. "But people are also really lining up around two very different world views, and two very different responses to 9/11."

Those two worldviews are easily caricatured, with Mr. Bush mocked by Democrats as a trigger-happy loner and Mr. Kerry lampooned by Republicans as wanting permission from the United Nations to protect the United States. Yet behind the cartoons are unmistakable philosophical differences, with application across the range of foreign policy. Mr. Bush has a record of breaking with allies to act in what he perceives as vital American interest; Mr. Kerry is more comfortable operating with consensus.

The debate on Thursday is likely to focus on Iraq. Mr. Bush`s advisers have identified what they think is a major vulnerability in Mr. Kerry`s arguments: The Democrat, they say, is far more interested in talking about plans to withdraw American troops than in describing how he would stabilize Iraq and bring democracy to the region. They have hinted that Mr. Bush will make that a key point. One senior Bush official called Mr. Kerry`s arguments "a slow version of cut and run."

Mr. Kerry has seized on Mr. Bush`s admission of a single "miscalculation`` in the post-invasion phase in Iraq, and regularly ticks off other miscalculations that he argues have cost lives and money. His advisers have discussed how long a list Mr. Kerry should present in the debate.

Iraq is also likely to serve as a gateway to other issues. Already Mr. Kerry`s claim that Iraq is a diversion has led him to accuse Mr. Bush of neglecting other matters. Speaking at Temple University on Friday, he cited independence from Middle East oil and relations with the Muslim world among those areas of neglect, and he called for debt reduction to support social progress in "the most vulnerable nations."

Mr. Kerry also argued that the Bush administration had failed to address "the nuclear danger" posed by the advancing nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea.

Some foreign policy analysts argue that Iran has been an accidental beneficiary of the two American-led wars of the last four years, which removed hostile governments in neighboring Afghanistan and Iraq. The 160,000 American troops in those two nations are preoccupied, at least for the moment. Oil prices are at record levels, a boon to Iran, and Iran`s fundamentalist religious leaders have tightened their hold on power.

"I don`t care who wins the election - Bush or Kerry - Iran will come right to the top of the agenda, right under Iraq," said Geoffrey Kemp, director of regional strategic programs at the Nixon Center.

Both Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry call Iran`s nuclear program unacceptable, and both speak of pursuing diplomacy to choke it off. Mr. Kerry says he would also pursue sanctions, though there is little sign that European nations would join that course.

North Korea`s nuclear program is more advanced than Iran`s; the C.I.A. has warned that North Korea may conduct its first nuclear test before the election. Again, both candidates call for diplomacy. But while Mr. Bush wants to continue the "six nation" talks toward North Korea`s disarmament, Mr. Kerry says he would also pursue direct talks with Pyongyang.

Neither man has said what he would do if diplomacy failed.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Es laufen wieder alle möglichen Versuche Wähler von den Wahlen auszuschließen. Getroffen werden meistens Minderheiten, die in Mehrzahl demokratisch wählen.
Der Hauptaugenmerk ist natürlich Florida, dort wird wieder von offizieller Seite versucht die Wahl zu manipulieren. Es sind wieder Listen erstellt worden, auf denen ohne Begründung Leute zusammengstellt werden, die nicht wählen dürfen. Die Liste umfasst meist Schwarze, Hispanics, (Ausnahme Excubaner), die überwiegend demokratisch wählen.
Es ist zwar gerichtlich angeordnet worden, diese Liste zu bereinigen, aber Jeb Bush denkt nicht daran.
Auf diesem Weg wurden bei der Wahl 2000 ~30000 Menschen an der Wahl gehindert. Dazu kamem damals die anderen Schweinereien.
Bananenrepublik USA!

September 30, 2004
MAKING VOTES COUNT
Playing With the Election Rules

ne of the lessons of the election mess in Florida in 2000 was that a secretary of state can deprive a large number of people of the right to vote by small manipulations of the rules. This year in Ohio and Colorado, two key battlegrounds, the secretaries of state have been interpreting the rules in ways that could prevent thousands of eligible Americans from voting. In both states, the courts should step in.

Just weeks before the deadline to register, Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio`s secretary of state, instructed the state`s county boards of election to reject registrations on paper of less than 80-pound stock - the sort used for paperback-book covers and postcards, compared with the 20-to-24-pound stock in everyday use. He said he was concerned about forms` being mailed without envelopes and mangled by postal equipment. But the directive applied to all registration forms, even those sent in an envelope or delivered by hand. Mr. Blackwell, a Republican, acted in the midst of an unprecedented state voter registration drive, which is signing up far more Democrats than Republicans.

Under intense criticism, Mr. Blackwell has backed off. Earlier this week, his office said it would not be the "paper police," but said it was not withdrawing the directive. Yesterday, it said he had advised county boards to accept registrations on any paper. But the advisory is worded so inartfully that it could create confusion. And it is unclear how many registrations may have already been rejected. The burden is now on Mr. Blackwell to ensure that counties have not rejected valid registrations.

Mr. Blackwell`s second directive tells local elections officials to follow a bad policy Ohio adopted on provisional ballots. This is the first presidential election in which every voter whose eligibility is in doubt has the right to cast a ballot and to have the vote`s validity verified later. But Ohio and some other states have tried to gut this guarantee by not counting provisional ballots cast in the wrong polling places. There is no reason to do that.

This rule could void many votes. There will be a flood of first-time voters this year, who may not know where to vote. And some polling places have been changed by redistricting. Mr. Blackwell says poll workers should help voters call an elections hot line to find out where to go. But these hot lines are often busy on Election Day. Poor people and members of minorities, who move more often than most voters, are likely to be most affected. Ohio Democrats, who expect to do well among these groups, are fighting the rule in court.

In Colorado, Secretary of State Donetta Davidson, also a Republican, has issued a bizarre ruling of her own on this issue. She will allow provisional ballots cast at the wrong polling places to count for only the presidential race. The Senate race in Colorado, among the closest in the nation, could determine control of the Senate, and there is no reason all valid provisional ballots should not count in this race or for statewide ballot propositions. Colorado Common Cause is challenging Ms. Davidson`s rule, but she should not need a court to tell her to count the votes.

Democrats say these rulings are all attempts to disqualify thousands of Democratic votes. Whatever the motivation, they threaten to disenfranchise voters. They have no place in our democracy.

Making Votes Count: Editorials in this series remain online at nytimes.com/makingvotescount.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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The best strategy now is to withdraw our troops
Of course there`s a problem of disengaging, but there`s a bigger problem in just going on
Adrian Hamilton

The Independent

30 September 2004

Someday we may have a serious debate about Iraq and its future. But not if the British Government has anything to do with it. Tony Blair`s distinction on Tuesday between those who saw terrorism in terms of a global battle against Muslim extremism and those who simply saw it as acts of isolated individuals whom we should "try not to provoke and hope in time will wither" was simply specious, not even worth a classroom discussion. His alternative vision, which would rope in every atrocity in a grand conspiracy by Muslim extremists, was pure Donald Rumsfeld, the old Cold War relived, only this time with Islamists rather then reds under the beds.

Unfortunately, it will be no better today when the Labour conference debates a motion on withdrawal from Iraq. Withdrawal? All too easily ministers will paint a picture of opponents of present policy wanting to cut and run, to leave the Iraqis to chaos and disaster. Whatever the differences over the reasons for going to war, to oppose policy now would be betrayal, goes the Blair argument. We are where we are. Your only option is to support us.

It`s a false choice, as well Blair knows. With violence in Iraq spreading, with half the Sunni areas outside government control and with the death toll of the US and British forces remorselessly rising, you can`t pretend that all is going well in Iraq.

Government spokesmen would have us believe that this violence is limited in extent and largely fuelled by outside forces, the tactics of a few nihilistic extremists who want to disrupt the path to democratic elections next January and must be prevented from doing so. That is not the picture being painted by the reporters on the ground, or, according to reports, the latest intelligence estimates by the CIA, the state department or the army officer corps in Washington. According to the well-sourced leaks, the National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July put as its best-case scenario a "tenuous stability" over the next 18 months and, in the worst case, total civil war.

Leave aside the question of whether we were right or wrong to invade in the first place, it is perfectly fair now to ask what the Government believes our troops are achieving there and when does it see them returning home.

This is not a matter of cutting and running, betraying the Iraqis or any other of the cheap phrases used by ministers to characterise the legitimate questions of those concerned by this war. The brutal problem is that, on all the evidence of reporters and opinion polls, the British, with the US troops, are regarded as an occupying force, which the Iraqis themselves feel have failed in their task of providing security and whom they want to leave.

Easy enough to cry: how can we do that when the security situation is so bad? More honest to ask: if we are now part of the problem, wouldn`t our going help to solve it?

Of course there is a problem of how you manage disengagement, but there is a bigger problem of just going on as we are, plodding on in a war of attrition, making new enemies as the US tries to bomb the terrorists out of existence. Announcing an exit strategy doesn`t involve a sudden retreat in the manner of Vietnam, although if we delay it too long it might. It means making a clear and definite statement that we will leave the country as soon as elections are held and a new government is in place.

In the meantime, we will hand over to the UN as the primary agency for organising those elections and ensuring their security. It is too late now to believe that the presence of Muslim forces, the troops of neighbouring countries or anyone else will be, of themselves, acceptable to the Iraqis. But it is not too late to gather an international force that is clearly there to help elections and to pave the way for US and British withdrawal. All it is waiting for is the open admission of the UK and the US that we have had our day and are making way for others.

At the same time, the UN could also call a conference of Iraq`s neighbours in the region, not to sort out their domestic problems but to commit the region to the support of the election results and to guarantee the boundaries as they exist, stopping any spill-over of tension into the Kurdish or Shia regions of the adjoining countries.

It won`t be perfect; it won`t necessarily prevent a long and appalling struggle for power within Iraq. And it requires the two things that Tony Blair is most unwilling to do: to admit we`re part of the problem rather than the solution and to adopt a position independent of the US.

But what is the alternative? It is to pretend that things in Iraq are far rosier than they are and to sign up to a Blair/Bush vision of global war between the West and "Muslim extremism" which will lead us to pre-emptive actions and confrontations we know not where.

Government ministers will try today, as they always try, to oil their way over the Iraqi debates with false appeals to loyalty and subtle arguments about there being "no alternative". But there is an alternative and if Labour Party members could but have the courage to demand it then, who knows, they might even encourage their parliamentary colleagues to do the same.

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Kidnap-for-cash is the one growth industry in Iraq`s no-go areas
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad

30 September 2004

Iraq is becoming the kidnap capital of the world, though this gets international attention only when foreigners are taken hostage.

It is the one growth industry in the country. Nobody is safe. "We had one case recently where the kidnappers seized a three-year-old," said Sabah Kadhim, a senior official at the interior ministry in Baghdad.

Most kidnap victims are Iraqis and the motive is always money. Many well-off Iraqis have fled to Jordan or Syria. "I just don`t make enough money in Iraq to take the risk of being taken hostage," a businessman who had moved to Amman said. Doctors are a frequent target and many of the best-qualified have gone abroad.

Mr Khadim says he is convinced the motive for kidnapping the two Italian women, Simona Pari and Simona Torreta, now freed, was always money.

"The kidnappers are not stupid," he says. "They could see Italy was part of the coalition but the war was very unpopular there. They knew that if they kidnapped women this would generate publicity, and this means more money in ransom."

Only a few kidnappings are political, probably including that of Kenneth Bigley, the British engineer, held by the Tawhid and Jihad group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The Jordanian-born militant has discovered that as a way to attract the world`s attention, horrific videos of captives being beheaded or pleading for their life are difficult to beat. Unlike commercial kidnappers, few of Zarqawi`s victims are known to have survived.

The wave of kidnappings started soon after the fall of Baghdad last year. Criminals, many released by Saddam Hussein just before the invasion, found it was an easy way to make money with almost no fear of punishment. Some gangs have their own dungeons so they can handle several victims at once.

The police admit they do not know how many people are being kidnapped because relatives or friends of victims think it is dangerous to tell them. People also think the police are paid by kidnap gangs.

One man, who turned down an offer of police assistance in getting back his business partner, had a phone call from the kidnappers 30 minutes later complimenting him on his discretion.

The hostage-takers are often cruel. One 22-year-old student called Ali was left in a room by himself for three days without food or water. Later, he met two other victims, both young men, held by the same gang. One day, a man came in and shot one victim in the head. Negotiations with his family had failed.

Months ago, the kidnappers realised they could make even more money seizing foreigners. Word spread that a Kuwaiti company had paid $100,000 each for the return of several employees. Before, the kidnappers had thought taking foreigners could cause them trouble, but as the strength of the US occupation ebbed over the past six months, expatriates became fair game.

It is impossible to draw a line between commercial and political kidnappings. This is because kidnappers whose only aim is to make money often pretend to be fighting the occupation. Iraqi security men, who have not had much success against kidnappers, tracked one gang which had seized a Lebanese man. In their hideout the police found banners with religious and political slogans.

The head of the gang said they were to be used as a backdrop if they made a video of their victim, in the hope that it would be shown on television. "If you can get a kidnap on television, you can make more money," the gang leader said.

Kidnapping foreigners also became easier after the Sunni Muslim uprising in April. Fallujah and most of Anbar province in western Iraq, stayed in rebel hands. Insurgents also control towns south of Baghdad, including Latafiyah, Mahmouiyah and Iskandariyah, a large no-go area for Iraqi government forces where hostages can be concealed.

This was where the two French journalists, Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot, were kidnapped on 20 August.

Commercial and political kidnappings are likely to continue because they are successful. But the pool of available kidnap victims is now small. This puts foreigners in greater danger.


30 September 2004 11:37

©2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd. All rights reserved

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The true face of Iraqi resistance

We will all pay the price if Labour today backs continued occupation
Sami Ramadani
Thursday September 30, 2004

The Guardian
Rarely have delegates to a party conference had such potential to influence the course of history as they do today. In Labour`s debate on the occupation of Iraq, the party will confront the biggest question facing the country: will Britain continue to follow the lead of President Bush, or will it change course and help to give the Iraqi people the chance to determine their own future? Ominously for the prospects of Labour and the government - as well as for the future of Iraq - it looks likely that delegates will vote to back the continued bloody occupation of the land of my birth to save the prime minister`s political skin.

There are now two Iraq wars: the first is being fought with helicopter gunships and cluster bombs along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates; the second is being fought here in Britain and in the pre-election US. This is a propaganda war in which the hundreds of Iraqis killed every week by US bombardment fail to make the headlines, while the horrifying images provided by a Jordanian kidnapper and killer of British and US contractors is portrayed as the true face of Iraqi resistance. Thus the real human suffering, and the reality of the widespread resistance to occupation, is hidden from view, while bombing what US generals call Abu Musab al-Zarqawi`s "supporters` hideouts" is portrayed as a necessity. And so Falluja, a besieged city of 300,000 people, is under daily aerial attack, and parts of Sadr City, the poorest neighbourhood of Baghdad, are being reduced to rubble. Many towns and villages across Iraq are encircled, and thousands of people arrested to crush popular resistance to occupation.

The vast majority of Iraqis reject Zarqawi and his ilk - as do the resistance and its supporters in Falluja, Sadr City and across Iraq. Many even suspect that the occupation forces are somehow encouraging the likes of Zarqawi, or at least failing to prevent their crimes, as a way of obscuring the fact that most Iraqis now actively support a patriotic and widespread resistance movement.

The occupation forces have admitted that the attacks on them by the resistance rose last month to 2,700. And how many of these 2,700 attacks a month were claimed by Zarqawi? Six. Six headline-grabbing, TV-dominating, stomach-churning moments.

Just as Iraq`s 25 million people were reduced, in the public`s mind, to the threat from weapons of mass destruction, ready to be unleashed within 45 minutes, the resistance is now being reduced to a single hoodlum.

Meanwhile, in the name of building democracy, the Iraqi people`s democratic rights have been crushed. Instead of an elected constitutional assembly we have a CIA-appointed puppet government. Trade union leaders have been detained by the occupation forces and their offices destroyed. The US proconsul Paul Bremer, and later the US-appointed Ayad Allawi regime, have reintroduced a 1987 law of Saddam`s banning strikes in the state sector.

Iraqi workers are nevertheless fighting back. Last month the Southern Oil Company Union staged a successful strike to halt oil exports and help force the US to lift its bombardment of Najaf. But Labour`s conference will hear little or nothing of this, whether from Tony Blair and his ministers or from pro-occupation Iraqis masquerading as supporters of free trade unionism and self-determination in Iraq.

Such insidious misrepresentation of reality helps keep people of conscience in Britain and the US from having sleepless nights about the children daily killed in their name or the trade unionists hounded by Saddamist torturers enlisted by the occupation.

One might regret this "collateral damage", the government argues, but it is all in a good cause: fighting not against the Iraqi people, but to save them from Zarqawi.

Britain is morally and politically responsible for the current US bombardment of Iraqi cities. Indeed, Britain`s role in the war is now politically decisive. The announcement of a phased British withdrawal, to be completed by the end of the year, would be the desperately needed move to force President Bush to change direction.

The impact of such a decision on the US public would be huge. Blair, speaking on behalf of the British people, played a key role in helping Bush dupe America about WMD. Were that support withdrawn, Bush would either have to change direction or risk losing the election. The impact on Democrat candidate Kerry`s campaign would surely be no less dramatic, forcing him to accept that the Iraqi people`s struggle for freedom is unstoppable. Once free, the Iraqi people would certainly sweep away Zarqawi`s tiny gang, who appear to have little trouble slipping in and out of Iraq under the occupation regime.

Labour delegates have it in their gift today to hold their leaders to account and uphold the cause of peace and self-determination. If they fail to seize that chance, we are all likely to pay the price.

· Sami Ramadani was a political refugee from Saddam Hussein`s regime and is a senior lecturer at London Metropolitan University

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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/192999_williams30.html

Advisers shape Bush presidency

Thursday, September 30, 2004

By WALTER WILLIAMS
GUEST COLUMNIST

George W. Bush is unquestionably Ronald Reagan`s political offspring with striking personal and ideological similarities; yet, the latter had a much more successful presidency than his heir.

Two factors stand out in distinguishing their performances: the skill of their top policy advisers and the differences in the political environments in which they operated. But first the almost eerie likeness needs setting out.

# Similarities: Both combined confidence, optimism and unshakable beliefs as history`s two most ideological presidents. Although intelligent, the two had less curiosity than any other postwar president.

The two ignored or derided hard numbers or solid commentary that conflicted with their ideology.

Similar combinations of assets and liabilities meant both presidents became dependent on the organizational and policy skills, motives and judgment of advisers. Neither had sufficient understanding of the critical issues to differentiate good from bad advice.

# Advisers: Reagan had two highly skilled pragmatists in his inner circle. James Baker, the president`s chief of staff, in his first term worked tirelessly to keep the often too trusting president from supporting dangerous policies, such as those concocted by CIA Director William Casey.

Once Baker traded jobs with Treasury Secretary Donald Regan, the latter let the administration slide into the arms-for-hostages deal and the ensuing Iran-Contra scandal that blighted Reagan`s second term.

One of the ablest Cabinet members of the postwar era, Secretary of State George Shultz, used his sound foreign policy knowledge and exceptional institutional skills to guide the president away from the bad ideas of other foreign policy advisers, craft a sturdy institutional framework and help Reagan work out viable international strategy.

Bush`s top foreign policy advisers were even more ideological than Bush and able to shape his policies -- particularly the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq -- in part by keeping the badly uninformed president from information that might challenge his beliefs.

# Different environments: If an awakening modern-day Rip Van Winkle had snoozed for 20 years between the Reagan and Bush inaugurations, he would be aghast at the changes brought by Reaganism.

Party polarization attained a level far beyond anything seen in the postwar era. Bipartisan compromise lay in intensive care. Representative democracy was on the endangered list as an early stage of plutocratic governance took hold.

Reagan`s sunny style had dulled the harshness of his political philosophy. However, "Mean Reaganism" became the operating version of the doctrine in the Clinton administration as the 1994 midterm election brought 73 new Republicans to the U.S. House.

This core group -- dominated by angry true believers in Reaganism -- turned the House into a cauldron of vicious behavior, epitomized by the attempted impeachment of Bill Clinton.

By the end of Clinton`s presidency, a polarized, rudderless Congress ceased to act as a deliberating body seeking compromises and often could barely function.

# A perplexing question: Where does this leave us? I strongly suspect the polarized 2001 environment and Bush`s strong ideology made it highly unlikely that a competent pragmatist would be among the new president`s most trusted policy advisers.

James Baker was picked as chief of staff over Edwin Meese even though he had supported Bush`s father against Reagan and Meese had been Reagan`s chief of staff in California.

Baker was believed to be better equipped to do that job. It was that simple. When Bush chose his inner circle, loyalty to Bush dominated the selections.

The point needs underscoring that the inner circle of trusted advisers a president chooses can make or break his presidency. The choices become even more central when the president is woefully lacking in knowledge and analytic skills, as were Reagan and Bush.

That Reagan listened to Shultz, and Bush depended on Cheney and Rumsfeld, is critical for understanding the relative adroitness of Reagan`s foreign policy compared with the string of disastrous choices by Bush.

I doubt a competent, pragmatic president using a sound decision-making process would have made ideologically driven mistakes that have afflicted the Bush administration.

It is also the case that such traits do not guarantee successful policies. Still, qualities such as organizational and policy knowledge and competence can be critically important.

The Bush administration has made painfully clear the danger of an anti-analytic, intellectually lazy president being advised by true believers who shun sound information and reasoned deliberations that could test their unshakable principles.

It is a formula for pushing an activist president into reckless decisions. When that president and his top advisers do not admit mistakes or accept hard facts, the subsequent misbegotten choices can produce a policy disaster of the order of Iraq.

Walter Williams is a professor emeritus at the University of Washington`s Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs and is the author of "Reaganism and the Death of Representative Democracy."

© 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 254 Bush 280
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http://www.electoral-vote.com/sep/sep30.html

News from the Votemaster

Today is D-day. The first debate is tonight and may determine the result of the election. It will take a number of days to get any polling data though. Kind of makes today`s polls irrelevant.

Pollster Scott Rasmussen recently addressed the issue of registered voters vs. likely voters. He said that one of the questions his firm asks is "Please rate your interest in the campaign from 1 to 10." Republicans always score higher on this question. Some firms use this question (often along with a few others such as "Did you vote in 2000?" as a screen to remove unlikely voters from the sample. He also said that in his experience, this screen does not work well until the final weekend of the campaign. For this reason, Rasmussen polls are of all registered voters. If you look on the pollsters page you can see the most recent result per pollster.

The importance of the difference between RVs and LVs can be seen in a Gallup poll of Ohio conducted Sept. 25-28. Among all registered voters, Kerry is ahead 49% to 46%. Among those voters Gallup thinks are likely to vote, Bush is ahead 49% to 47%. In other words, Gallup thinks Bush will carry Ohio because large numbers of Democrats won`t bother to vote. Needless to say, both sides will strive mightily to get out the vote on election day. As an aside, this poll is the first one I have seen in many weeks showing Kerry ahead in crucial Ohio.

Gallup took a poll on whether people think CBS made an honest mistake about the memo relating to George Bush`s service/nonservice in the Alabama National Guard. By a large margin (56% to 38%) the public thinks it was an honest mistake. Only 26% think CBS should fire Dan Rather. Perhaps not surprisingly, by a 2 to 1 margin (63% to 36%), Republicans think CBS broadcast the story to make Bush look bad. By a 6 to 1 margin (82% to 13%) Democrats think it was just an honest mistake. What strikes me as the worst part of this whole story is that everyone has forgotten the real story. It is not about whether one memo was a forgery or not. It is about whether George Bush got favorable treatment (as the former Lt. Governor of Texas, Ben Barnes, has said) and whether he fulfilled his obligations to the Guard. In a court case, if one piece of evidence is invalidated, it is discarded and the judge and jury look at the rest of the evidence.

A reader pointed out to me a possible systematic bias in the Florida polls related to the travel patterns of migratory birds. Snowbirds. A lot of New Yorkers have condos in Florida and spend summers in New York and winters in Florida. Some of them are registered to vote in Florida and do not yet show up in the Florida polls. But a large majority will vote Democratic. It might be an overlooked factor. On the other hand, the effect of the hurricanes may be even larger.

I am in the process of installing new software that will provide maps with averages of the past three polls as well as the "traditional" most recent poll wins. There were some bugs in the software and several errors crept in. As one example, the question of whether "D.C. comes before "Delaware" alphabetically depends on (1) whether the former should be sorted on "D.C." or on "District" and (2) if it counts as "D.C." whether "D." comes before or after "De" in the collating sequence. Librarians usually ignore nonalphabetic characters (periods, apostrophes, etc.) but computers don`t work that way. As a consequence of a bug related to this sorting, the D.C. and Delaware polls were interchanged for a while. Anyway, testing is continuing and hopefully the new software will be ready by the end of the weekend. Sorry for the confusion caused by the bugs.
Projected Senate: 49 Democrats, 50 Republicans, 1 independent To bookmark this page, type CTRL-D (Apple-D on Macintoshes). If you are visiting for the first time, welcome. This site has far more about the election than just the map. See the Welcome page for more details.

-- The votemaster

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Multiple bombings kill at least 37 in capital, deadly explosions elsehwere
- ALEXANDRA ZAVIS, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, September 30, 2004

(09-30) 04:24 PDT BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) --

At least three bombs exploded near a U.S. convoy in western Baghdad on Thursday, killing 37 people and wounding more than 50, officials said. Hours earlier, a suicide car bombing killed a U.S. soldier and two Iraqis on the capital`s outskirts.

It was unclear if the bombs targeted only the convoy or a ceremony marking the opening of a new sewage system in the neighborhood that was taking place at the same time. Also unknown was the nationality of the casualties or whether there were U.S. soldiers among the dead.

A U.S. helicopter evacuated some of the wounded while other aircraft circled overhead, an Associated Press photographer reported from the scene. U.S. forces sealed off the area.

In the northern city of Talafar, meanwhile, a car bomb targeting the police chief killed at least four people and wounded 16, Iraqi and U.S. officials said. A police officer speaking on condition of anyonmity said the police chief, whose name was only given as Col. Ismail, escaped from the assassination attempt.

There were conflicting accounts of what caused the blast. Military spokeswoman Capt. Angela Bowman said it was a car bomb, but police in nearby Mosul said it was a device planted in the road.

Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman said two car bombs and a roadside bomb exploded in swift succession as the convoy was passing. The attack happened around 1 p.m. in the al-Amel neighborhood, said Lt. Col. Jim Hutton, spokesman for the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division.

Yarmouk Hospital received 37 bodies and more than 50 wounded in the attack, said Dr. Nibras Hamdan.

Resident Samir Abul-Karim said the attack happened during a ceremony marking the opening of a new sewage system in the neighborhood.

The attack occurred hours after a suicide car bomber struck in the Abu Ghraib area outside of Baghdad. At least two Iraqis were killed and 60 wounded, said Dr. Abbas al-Timimi of Abu Ghraib hospital. Along with the killed soldier, three American military were wounded and were evacuated, said Maj. Philip Smith, spokesman for the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division.

That bomb targeted a compound that houses the mayor`s office, a police station and other buildings, police 1st Lt. Ahmed Jawad said. A U.S. Bradley fighting vehicle parked in front of the compound was hit, he said.

Smoke and fire could be seen rising from the scene as U.S. forces sealed off the area. The wounded Americans were evacuated, said Maj. Philip Smith, spokesman for the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division.

Elsewhere on the outskirts of Baghdad, insurgents fired a rocket Thursday at a logistical support area for coalition forces, killing one soldier and wounding seven, the military said in a statement. No further information was disclosed -- including whether it was a U.S. soldier or not.

Meanwhile Thursday, the United States targeted a suspected terrorist safehouse in Fallujah, killing at least four Iraqis. The military said in a statement that intelligence reports indicated the house was being used by followers of Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to plan attacks against U.S.-led forces and Iraqi citizens.

"Significant secondary explosions were observed during the impact indicating a large cache of illegal ordinance was stored in the safe house," the statement said. Explosions continued in the northeastern side of the city for hours.

At least four Iraqis were killed -- including two women and one child -- and eight wounded, said Dr. Ahmed Khalil of the Fallujah General Hospital. Witnesses said two houses were flattened and four others damaged in the strike.

American jets, tanks and artillery units have repeatedly targeted al-Zarqawi`s network in Fallujah in recent weeks as U.S.-led forces seek to assert control over insurgent enclaves ahead of elections slated for January. The military says the attacks have inflicted significant damage on the network, which has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings, kidnappings and other attacks.

Doctors say scores of civilians have been killed and wounded in the strikes.

Zarqawi`s group, Tawhid and Jihad, has claimed responsibility for several beheadings and kidnappings. On Wednesday, video surfaced of British hostage Kenneth Bigley, believed held by Zarqawi`s group, pleading for help between the bars of a makeshift cage.

The new footage, first broadcast on the Arab news network Al-Jazeera and then posted on the Internet, showed Bigley begging British Prime Minister Tony Blair to meet his captors` demands.

"Tony Blair, I am begging you for my life," the 62-year-old Bigley said between sobs. "Have some compassion. Only you can help me now."

He accused Blair of lying about efforts to secure his release, saying no negotiations were taking place.

"My life is cheap. He doesn`t care about me. I am just one person," the civil engineer said. "I want to go home. Please, Mr. Blair, don`t leave me here."

Britain`s foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said Thursday that Britain won`t pay a ransom or meet any political demands to secure Bigley`s release. His captors have demanded all female prisoners in Iraq be freed, but the United States says only two are in custody and there are no plans to free them.

"Of course it`s very difficult for the Bigley family," Straw told British Broadcasting Corp. TV, speaking of the government`s refusal to negotiate with the hostage-takers.

But he added: "If we did not have this position there would be many, many more people who would be kidnapped, and the world would be less safe."

The tape was the second in a week to surface showing Bigley appealing for help. Tawhid and Jihad beheaded two American hostages seized with Bigley and warned he will be the next to die unless its demands are met.

Gruesome videotapes of the killings were posted on the Internet, and the men`s decapitated bodies were found in Baghdad -- not far from the upscale neighborhood where they were seized from their house Sept. 16.

More than 140 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq and at least 26 have been killed. Some, like Bigley, were seized by insurgents as leverage in their campaign against the United States and its allies. But others were taken by criminals seeking ransom.

Earlier Thursday, the Arab news network Al-Jazeera showed footage of 10 new hostages seized in Iraq by militants. Al-Jazeera said the 10 -- six Iraqis, two Lebanese and two Indonesian women -- were taken by The Islamic Army in Iraq. The group has claimed responsibility for seizing two French journalists last month.

The footage showed three of the hostages, who were not identified, and two masked gunmen pointing weapons at them. There was no mention of demands by the militant or when or where the hostages were captured.

The network said the 10 were employees of an electricity company.

A Lebanese Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, later said that two Lebanese citizens have been kidnapped in Iraq. It was not immediately possible to confirm if the two Lebanese mentioned by the official were the same as those shown by Al-Jazeera.

The Frenchmen, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, disappeared Aug. 20 during a trip to the southern Iraqi city of Najaf. The Islamic Army in Iraq demanded that France revoke a new law banning Islamic head scarves from state schools.


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/200…
©2004 Associated Press

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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/

Thursday, September 30, 2004

President al-Yawir Decries "Collective Punishment"

13 Killed in Continued Battles

Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawir strongly protested US air strikes against Iraqi cities, comparing them to Israeli tactics in Gaza and branding them a form of "collective punishment." Collective punishment was a Nazi tactic during World War II, and was forbidden as a tool to occupying powers in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. Al-Yawir`s condemnation of the US use of the tactic is the strongest to date from a high-level Iraqi politician. The comments seem likely to create a diplomatic crisis, and bode ill for Bush administration plans to pursue a scorched earth campaign against Fallujah and other cities in al-Anbar province in November. Al-Yawir is from a Sunni tribal background.

Wire services report that


` Thirteen people have been killed since Tuesday night in drive-by shootings, ambushes and grenade attacks south of the capital and elsewhere. `



In one incident, guerrillas attempted but failed to assassinate a local leader of the Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

The US used a howitzer to kill three guerrillas who had been firing mortars in Baghdad.

posted by Juan @ 9/30/2004 06:38:51 AM

Is Justice Being Delayed by Bush Administration Politics?

Several high-profile FBI investigations, in which substantial progress have been made, may well have been put on hold by the Bush administration for political reasons. That is, it has been alleged to me that the White House may have leaned on the FBI-- not to drop the investigations but to postpone some key arrests until after the November elections.

The first such case is the investigation into the leaking of Valerie Plame`s identity as a covert CIA agent to the press as way to undermine the credibility of her husband, Joe Wilson, who had gone public about his warnings to the administration that the story about the Iraqi purchase of uranium from Niger was bogus.

Warning: The text below will use the word "Neoconservative." In my lexicon, a Neoconservative is a person from a social group that typically voted Democrat before 1968 but now votes Republican. Neoconservatives include all the white southern Christian denominations, such as the Southern Baptists, that emigrated from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party as a result of the Nixon strategy, as well as the Reagan Democrats (largely working-class Catholics) and Jewish Americans who trod the same path. Neoconservatives tend to be far-right Zionists in the Jabotinsky tradition, whether they are Jews or Christian Zionists, and they are associated with a desire to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from the West Bank or at least to so circumscribe their existence there as to render them nonentities. The latest Neoconservative to enlist in the cause is Zell Miller, and he typifies the anger, recklessness and disregard for open, democratic values that characterize the movement.

Neoconservatives have gained allies for themselves from some rightwing Realists, such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, to the extent that it may well be that the latter two have been converted to the Neoconservative ideology, which is distinctive because of its historical origins on the right of the old Democratic Party and in some cases in the far left (Christopher Hitchens is another example). Some have attempted to argue that the very term "Neoconservative" is a code word for derogatory attitudes toward Jews. This argument is mere special pleading and a playing of the race cared, however, insofar as only a tiny percentage of American Jews are Neoconservatives, and only a tiny percentage of Neoconservatives are Jews. The Neoconservative movement is an example of what social scientists call cross-cutting cleavages, which are multiple loyalties and identities typical of complex urban political societies.

We now know that the Niger story involved the forgery of documents by a man with ties to Italian military intelligence, and that moreover Italian military intelligence has ties to Michael Ledeen, Harold Rhode and Lawrence Franklin, pro-Likud Neoconservatives, two of whom had high-level positions in the Pentagon and all three of whom were tightly networked with the American Enterprise Institute. Franklin (a Neoconservative Catholic) is being investigated for spying on the US for Israel. The nexus of Italian military intelligence, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and the Neoconservatives in the Pentagon suggests a network of conspiracy aimed at dragging the US into wars against Iraq and Iran. The Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq after the war was in some significant part staffed by young people who had initially applied to work at the American Enterprise Institute as interns.

Joe Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA in response to a request by Dick Cheney that they investigate the story of the Iraq uranium purchases, and he came to the (correct) conclusion that the whole idea was implausible given the structure of the industry in Niger, which was heavily under the control of European companies. The Neoconservatives around Dick Cheney, including Scooter Libby and John Hannah, were highly commited to the Niger uranium story as a casus belli against Iraq, and were furious when Wilson revealed that he had shown it false in spring of 2002. They were convinced that the CIA was behind this strike at their credibility, and that Valerie Plame had been the one who managed to get Wilson sent. That is, in their paranoid world, Wilson`s honest reportage of the facts was a CIA plot against the Iraq War and perhaps against the Neoconservatives around Cheney and in the Pentagon.

It has been being leaked for many months now that the FBI believes the leak came from persons in Cheney`s circle, possibly John Hannah and/or Scooter Libby. The FBI could well be ready to move in the case. But I have been told that it has orders from the White House to back off until later this fall.

There has likewise been no arrest of Franklin, though one was expected by now. This is not, as the Neoconservatives and their supporters in the press are beginning to allege, because the case against Franklin is week. Rumors are flying in Washington that the FBI found a whole cache of classified documents in his house. If this is true, it was illegal for him to keep them there. We know that the evidence against Franklin was so air tight that Franklin was turned by the FBI, and was attempting to gather incriminating evidence against other Neoconservatives on their behalf. At some point the FBI as a courtesy let Franklin`s boss, Douglas Feith, know of their investigation, and apparently soon after the story was leaked to the press.

Is it possible that Franklin hasn`t been charged yet not because the case is weak, but because the White House does not want to anger the powerful AIPAC lobbying organization just before an election, and does not want to risk alienating Neoconservative voters in swing states like Florida? Indeed, isn`t it likely that the Franklin investigation was leaked to the press by persons in the Pentagon who feared they were under investigation, and who knew very well that such a story leaked in late August before the election would get the investigation squelched or much delayed?

posted by Juan @9/30/2004 06:18:24 AM

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Der wichtigste Terrorismus ist “Unserer”
von John Pilger
New Statesman / ZNet 16.09.2004
Die Welt teilt sich in zwei feindlich Lager: Islam und „wir“. Das ist die unfehlbare Botschaft von westlichen Regierungen, Presse, Radio und Fernsehen. Für Islam, lies Terroristen. Es erinnert an den kalten Krieg, als die Welt zwischen „Roten“ und uns geteilt war und sogar eine Strategie der Vernichtung zu unserer Verteidigung zulässig war. Jetzt wissen wir, oder wir sollten wissen, dass soviel davon eine Farce war; der Öffentlichkeit zugänglich gemachte amtliche Dokumente machen deutlich, dass die sowjetische Bedrohung nur für den öffentlichen Konsum war.

Jeden Tag, wie während des kalten Krieges, wird uns ein moralischer Ein-Weg-Spiegel wie eine wahre Spiegelung der Ereignisse vorgehalten. Der neuen Bedrohung wird mit jedem Terroranschlag Antrieb verliehen, sei es in Beslan oder Jakarta. Durch unseren Ein-Weg-Spiegel gesehen machen unsere Führer bedauernswerte Fehler, aber ihre guten Absichten werden nicht in Frage gestellt. Tony Blairs „Idealismus“ und „Anständigkeit“ werden durch seine zugelassenen Mainstream-Kritiker dargestellt, wenn sich die zurechtgebastelte griechische Tragödie seines politischen Niedergangs auf der Bühne der Medien öffnet. Obwohl Blair Anteil an dem Töten von mehr als 37.000 irakischen Zivilisten hatte, sind Blairs Ablenkungen (und nicht seine Opfer) Neuigkeiten: von seiner geheimnisumwobenen Rivalität mit dem Finanzminister Gordon Brown, seiner zweiten Hälfte, bis zu seiner damaszenen Wendung zu den Gefahren der Erderwärmung. Im Bezug auf die Greueltat von Beslan kann Blair ohne Ironie oder Widerspruch sagen, dass „dieser internationale Terrorismus sich nicht durchsetzen wird“. Dieses sind die gleichen Worte, die Mussolini sprach, kurz nachdem er Zivilisten in Abyssinia bombardiert hatte.

Es gibt wenige Ketzer, die hinter den Ein-Weg-Spiegel blicken und die völlige Unehrlichkeit von all diesem sehen und die Blair und seine Kollaborateure mit Kriegsverbrechern im wörtlichen wie im legalen Sinne identifizieren und Beweise seines Zynismus und seiner Unmoral präsentieren; aber sie haben große Unterstützung in der Öffentlichkeit, deren Bewusstsein nach meiner Erfahrung nie größer war. Es ist die leidenschaftliche Gleichgültigkeit der britischen Öffentlichkeit, wenn nicht Verachtung für die politischen Spiele von Blair und Brown und ihrer Gerichte und ihr steigendes Interesse dafür, wie die Welt wirklich ist, was die Mächtigen nervös macht. Lasst uns einige Beispiele ansehen, wie die Welt präsentiert wird und wie sie wirklich ist. Die Besetzung des Iraks wird als Durcheinander präsentiert: ungeschicktes, inkompetentes amerikanisches Militär gegen islamische Fanatiker. In Wirklichkeit ist die Besetzung ein systematischer, blutrünstiger Angriff auf die Zivilbevölkerung durch eine korrupte amerikanische Offiziersklasse, genehmigt durch ihre Vorgesetzten in Washington. Letzen Mai benutzten die US-Marinesoldaten Kampfpanzer und Kampfhubschrauber, um die Slums von Fallujah anzugreifen. Sie gaben das Töten von 600 Leuten zu, was eine weit höhere Ziffer ist als die gesamte Anzahl von Zivilisten, die durch die „Aufrührer“ während des letzten Jahres getötet wurden. Die Generäle waren ehrlich; dieses sinnlose Gemetzel war Rache für das Töten von drei amerikanischen Söldnern. 60 Jahre zuvor tötete die SS-Division des dritten Reiches 600 französische Zivilisten in Oradour-sur-Glane als Rache für die Entführung eines deutschen Offiziers durch den Widerstand. Gibt es da einen Unterschied?

In diesen Tagen schiessen die Amerikaner routinemäßig Raketen auf Fallujah und andere dicht besiedelte städtische Gebiete ab; sie ermorden ganze Familien. Wenn das Wort Terrorismus irgendeine modere Anwendung hat, dann ist es dieser Terrorismus der Industriestaaten. Die Briten haben einen anderen Stil. Es gibt mehr als 40 bekannte Fälle von Irakern, die durch britische Soldaten getoetet worden sind. Nur ein Soldat wurde angeklagt. In der jetzigen Ausgabe des Magazins „The Journalist“ schrieb Lee Gordon, ein freiberuflicher Reporter: „Als Brite im Irak zu arbeiten ist gefährlich, besonders im Süden, wo unsere Truppen einen Ruf für Brutalität haben (was nicht zu Hause berichtet wird).“ Noch wird zu Hause von der wachsenden Unzufriedenheit unter britischen Soldaten berichtet. Das beunruhigt das Verteidigungsministerium dermaßen, dass es sich angeschickt hat, die Familie des 17-jährigen Soldaten David McBride zu beruhigen, indem es ihn von der AWL-Liste genommen hat, nachdem er sich geweigert hatte, im Irak zu kämpfen. Fast alle Familien von im Irak getöteten Soldaten haben die Besetzung und Blair angeprangert, was bisher einmalig ist.

Nur durch Anerkennen des Terrorismus von Staaten ist es möglich, Akte des Terrorismus von Gruppen und Individuen zu verstehen und damit umzugehen, die, wie entsetzlich auch immer, im Vergleich doch winzig sind. Ferner ist ihre Quelle unentrinnbar der öffentliche Terrorismus, für den es keine Mediensprache gibt. Auf diese Weise war der Staat Israel fähig, viele Außenstehende zu überzeugen, dass er nur ein Opfer des Terrorismus ist, wobei im Grunde genommen sein eigener unerbittlich geplanter Terrorismus die Ursache für die berüchtigte Vergeltung durch palästinensische Selbstmordattentäter ist. Bei allem abwegigen Zorn Israels gegen die BBC - eine erfolgreiche Form von Einschüchterung - berichteten BBC-Reporter niemals von Israelis als Terroristen: dieser Ausdruck gehört ausschließlich zu Palästinensern, die in ihrem eigenen Land inhaftiert sind. Es ist nicht überraschend, wie die kürzliche Untersuchung der Glasgow Universität folgerte, dass viele Fernsehzuschauer in Britannien glauben, dass die Palästinenser die Angreifer und Besetzer sind.

Am 7. September tötete ein palästinensischer Selbstmordattentäter 16 Israelis in der Stadt Beersheba. Jeder Fernsehbericht erlaubte dem Sprecher der israelischen Regierung diese Tragödie zu nutzen, um eine Rassentrennungsmauer zu bauen - wobei die Mauer zu den bedeutendsten Ursachen palästinensischer Gewalt zaehlt. Fast jeder Nachrichtenbericht kennzeichnete das Ende einer fuenfmonatigen Periode von „vergleichbarer Ruhe und Frieden“ und „einer Pause in der Gewalt“. Während dieser fuenf Monate von vergleichbarer Ruhe und Frieden wurden 400 Palästinenser getötet, 71 von ihnen durch Ermordung. Während der Pause von Gewalt wurden mehr als 73 palästinensischer Kinder getötet. Ein Dreizehnjähriger wurde mit einer Kugel durchs Herz getötet, eine Fünfjährige wurde ins Gesicht geschossen, als sie Arm in Arm mit ihrer zweijährigen Schwester ging. Der Körper des vierzehnjährigen Mazen Majid wurde von 18 israelischen Kugeln durchlöchert, als er und seine Familie aus ihrem niedergerissenen Haus flohen.

Nichts davon wurde in Britannien als Terrorismus berichtet. Das meiste davon wurde gar nicht berichtet. Schliesslich war das eine Periode von Frieden und Ruhe, eine Pause der Gewalt. Am 19. Mai feuerten israelische Panzer und Helikopter auf friedliche Demonstranten, wobei sie acht von ihnen töteten. Die Greueltat hatte eine bestimmte Bedeutung; die Demonstration war Teil einer wachsenden gewaltlosen palästinensischen Bewegung, die friedlichen, oft von Gebeten begleitete Protestversammlungen entlang der Rassentrennungsmauer abgehalten hat. Der Aufstieg dieser Bewegung im Stile Ghandis wird kaum von dem Rest der Welt zur Kenntnis genommen. Die Wahrheit über Tschetschenien wird ähnlich unterdrückt. Am 4. Februar 2000 attackierten russische Flugzeuge das tschetschenische Dorf Katyr Yurt. Sie benutzten „Vacuum-Bomben“, die Benzingas freigeben und menschliche Lungen aussaugen, und durch die Genfer Konvention verboten sind. Die Russen bombardierten einen Konvoi von Überlebenden unter einer weißen Flagge. Sie töteten 363 Männer, Frauen und Kinder. Es war einer von zahllosen, relativ unbekannten Akten von Terrorismus in Tschetschenien, begangen durch den russischen Staat, dessen Führer Vladimir Putin die „voellige Solidarität“ Blairs hat.

“Wenige von uns”, schrieb der Dramatiker Arthur Müller, “können einfach unseren Glauben aufgeben, dass die Gesellschaft irgendwie Sinn machen muss. Der Gedanke, dass der Staat seinen Verstand verloren hat und so viele unschuldige Menschen bestraft, ist nicht zu tolerieren. Und so muss der Beweis innerlich abgestritten werden.“ Es ist Zeit, dass wir damit aufhören es abzustreiten.

John Pilgers neues Buch „Tell Me No Lies: investigative journalism and its triumphs” (Erzähl mir keine Lügen: investigativer Journalismus und seine Erfolge) wird nächsten Monat im Jonathan Cape-Verlag veröffentlicht.

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WASHINGTON (IWR News Parody) - A CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released Wednesday showed that a clear majority of 75% of registered voters believed George W. Bush was a hamster, 15% thought the President was a member of the weasel family and remaining respondents believed he was some sort of Texas tree frog.

The same poll also found that the overwhelming majority of likely voters thought Vice President Dick Cheney was a Ferengi.
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joerver,

# 198: ein erstklassiger artikel -der mann hat mumm u. sachverstand!

cu
rightnow

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LOSING OUR HEADS
Iraqi Insurgents are Butchers, Yet Not as Bad as Us

WASHINGTON--"INHUMAN," screamed the cover of the New York Post in reaction to the latest beheading video to come out of Iraq. "BUTCHERS," added the late edition. But that`s too easy. The men who slit American engineer Jack Hensley`s throat are human beings. So let`s consider them, as fellow humans with strategy in mind, and look at how the current rash of teledecapitations began.

Muslim extremists have been sending us a message for more than a decade. That message can be summarized as "leave us alone." Quit funding a right-wing Israeli government that drops American-made bombs on our Palestinian brothers. Stop arming corrupt, despised autocracies across the Muslim world--in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, to name a few--so that we can overthrow them. Let us liberate ourselves. We`ll decide whether we prefer secular, modern societies like Turkey, medieval fundamentalists like the Taliban, or something in between. It`s our choice, not America`s.

Leaders of Al Qaeda and likeminded groups know that a polite letter to the editor, a boycott of American goods, or even a high-concept ad campaign wouldn`t convince the United States to pull out of the Middle East or Central Asia. Too much oil is at stake. And no other country or group of countries is powerful enough to make us do so. Terrorism, the time-honored tool of the disenfranchised and powerless, seems the only potential equalizer to those who seek to take us on.

From the standpoint of the jihadis, the retail approach--blowing up as many people as possible--has been a failure. Headlines were impressive but the big bombings` practical effect on policy has been nil. Americans barely noticed when Osama & Co. blasted our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Two hundred twenty-four people died and over 5,000 were wounded, but just twelve were American. And East Africa is far, far away. President Bill Clinton fired off cruise missiles at Sudan and Afghanistan, and the editorial pages of American newspapers remained devoid of calls for reconsidering our involvement in the Arab world. September 11 did spark such a discussion, but it was immediately overwhelmed by a wave of righteous indignation that the Bushies channeled into wars against Afghanistan, Iraq and the American Constitution. The big question--should we be over there at all?--was not seriously asked or considered.

Pakistani militants stumbled upon a quintessential truth of marketing with the 2002 killing of kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl: personal tragedy plays to a bigger audience and moves them more deeply than mass murder. For the vast majority of Americans who neither live in New York nor lost a friend or relative, the horrors of September 11 were all the more abstract for their incomprehensible scale. Four hundred people died last year from secondhand smoke, but that`s just a statistic. You know Laci Peterson; you`ve seen and heard her laugh. Three thousand dead, the commercial center of the nation`s largest city vaporized--it`s too big, like some terrible disease or flood in China that kills vast numbers. But Pearl was real, individual, knowable--one guy, murdered, videotaped right to his grisly end. Four months after 9/11 and three after the invasion of Afghanistan, his gruesome murder finally forced the American public to pay attention to extremists` message. "Maybe we shouldn`t be over there," people started wondering.

Iraqi resistance groups took note. "What they do is behead Americans so they can get on the TV screens," Bush says. He`s absolutely right. Cutting off the heads of a wide range of the "average folks" of the war situation--truck drivers, journalists, people who might be working to feed their families or might be war profiteers--gets past network censors the way images of dead Iraqi civilians can`t, and penetrates all the way to the horrified minds of viewers.

It`s impossible to imagine what people beheaded by the Iraqi insurgents went through during their final days. It`s painful to even try. "You are living with your executioner, who`s having pictures taken both before, during and after the beheading. That increases the horror," says Daniel Gerould, author of "Guillotine: Its Legend and Lore." Yet, as undeniably disgusting as these killings are, the Iraqis are conveying their message to us far more economically than we`re conveying our message to them.

Our response to their "leave us alone," of course, is "no." Beginning with the slaughter of the free-fire "Highway of Death" at the end of the Gulf War, continuing throughout the `90s with routine bombings of civilians and sanctions that blocked medicine that could have saved thousands and culminating with a 2003 invasion with a death toll well into the tens of thousands, the United States has been far more extravagant with expending Iraqi lives then Iraq`s beheaders have been with their targeting of individual Westerners.

Just this week, Knight Ridder newspapers reported, the Iraqi Health Ministry--part of the Allawi puppet regime--announced that 3,487 Iraqis have been killed and 13,720 injured by American forces since April 5. "While most of the dead are believed to be civilians," wrote Nancy Youssef, "the data include an unknown number of police and Iraqi national guardsmen. Many Iraqi deaths, especially of insurgents, are never reported, so the actual number of Iraqis killed in fighting could be significantly higher...Iraqi officials said the statistics proved that U.S. airstrikes intended for insurgents also were killing large numbers of innocent civilians."

Whatever our intentions, and in part thanks to our tactics, Iraqis are increasingly hostile to the U.S. "I think [we] lost the hearts and minds [of Iraqis] a long time ago," says University of Michigan Shiite Islam specialist Juan Cole. Since July, meanwhile, cutting the heads off of about 20 foreigners has given the Iraqi resistance the results it wants: fewer Americans support the war or believe it`s worth the cost. Twenty versus three thousand--it`s rough calculus but easy arithmetic.

COPYRIGHT 2004 TED RALL

RALL 9/28/04

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"My mom and I are going to watch the debates together. She plans to do a vodka shot every time Bush says `flip-flop."`
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"The first presidential debate is Thursday in Florida. I think it`s Bush`s way of saying thank-you for that last crooked election."
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"Before the debate, Bush is concerned about the lectern, he`s worried about the room temperature and the lighting. Kerry is making the mistake of worrying about the issues."
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"Everyone is talking about the ground rules. Kerry wants his podium to be tall enough so he can rest his hands. And President Bush wants it to be wide enough to hide Dick Cheney."
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"During a speech this week, John Kerry said if President Bush is re-elected he might bring back a military draft. When asked, Bush said, `Trust me, even if I bring back the draft there are plenty of ways to get around it.`"
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"Of course you know, President Bush has been taking a couple days off this week to prepare for the debates. In fact, he`s having a having a microchip implanted in his ear. This will allow Dick Cheney to speak to him directly. `It`s pronounced `Falloujah` `Abu Ghraib."`
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G. W. Bush and John Kerry somehow ended up at the same barbershop.

As they sat there, each being worked on by a different barber, not a word was spoken. The barbers were even afraid to start a conversation, for fear it would turn to politics.

As the barbers finished their shaves, the one who had Bush in his chair reached for the aftershave.

Bush was quick to stop him saying, "No thanks. My wife, Laura, will smell that and think I`ve been in a Texas whorehouse."

The second barber turned to Kerry and said, "How about you?"
Kerry replied, "Go ahead. My wife, Teresa, doesn`t know what the inside of a Texas whorehouse smells like."
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Dafür braucht man keine Umfrage um festzustellen, dass Bus-Anhänger von den tatsächlichen politischen zusammenhängen wenig Ahnung haben. Um Bushanhänger zu sein, ist Intelligenz eher ein Nachteil.
Dafür um das nachzuweisen, ist diese Umfrage nun wieder von Vorteil.

No clue: Poll finds that Bush supporters misread his foreign policy positions
Date: Thursday, September 30 @ 10:20:22 EDT
Topic: Election 2004

Kerry Supporters Largely Accurate — Swing Voters Also Misread Bush, But Not Kerry

From Program On International Policy Attitudes

As the nation prepares to watch the presidential candidates debate foreign policy issues, a new PIPA-Knowledge Networks poll finds that Americans who plan to vote for President Bush have many incorrect assumptions about his foreign policy positions. Kerry supporters, on the other hand, are largely accurate in their assessments. The uncommitted also tend to misperceive Bush’s positions, though to a smaller extent than Bush supporters, and to perceive Kerry’s positions correctly. Steven Kull, director of PIPA, comments: “What is striking is that even after nearly four years President Bush’s foreign policy positions are so widely misread, while Senator Kerry, who is relatively new to the public and reputed to be unclear about his positions, is read correctly.”

Majorities of Bush supporters incorrectly assumed that Bush favors including labor and environmental standards in trade agreements (84%), and the US being part of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (69%), the International Criminal Court (66%), the treaty banning land mines (72%), and the Kyoto Treaty on global warming (51%). They were divided between those who knew that Bush favors building a new missile defense system now (44%) and those who incorrectly believe he wishes to do more research until its capabilities are proven (41%). However, majorities were correct that Bush favors increased defense spending (57%) and wants the US, not the UN, to take the stronger role in developing Iraq’s new government (70%).



Kerry supporters were much more accurate in assessing their candidate’s positions on all these issues. Majorities knew that Kerry favors including labor and environmental standards in trade agreements (90%); the US being part of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (77%); the International Criminal Court (59%); the land mines treaty (79%); and the Kyoto Treaty on climate change (74%). They also knew that he favors continuing research on missile defense without deploying a system now (68%), and wants the UN, not the US, to take the stronger role in developing Iraq’s new government (80%). A plurality of 43% was correct that Kerry favors keeping defense spending the same, with 35% assuming he wants to cut it and 18% to expand it.

Many of the uncommitted (those who say they are not very sure which candidate they will vote for) also misread Bush’s position on most issues, though in most cases this was a plurality, not a majority. The uncommitted incorrectly believed that Bush favors including labor and environmental standards in trade agreements (69%), the US being part of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (51%), the International Criminal Court (47% to 31%), the land mines treaty (50%), and the Kyoto treaty on global warming (45% to 37%). Only 35% knew that Bush favors building a new missile defense system now, while 36% incorrectly believed he wishes to do more research until its capabilities are proven, and 22% did not give an answer. Only 41% knew that Bush favors increased defense spending, while 49% incorrectly assumed he wants to keep it the same (29%) or cut it (20%). A plurality of 46% was correct that Bush wants the US, rather than the UN, to take the stronger role in developing Iraq’s new government (37% assumed the UN).

The uncommitted were much more accurate in assessing Kerry’s positions. Majorities knew that Kerry favors including labor and environmental standards in trade agreements (75%), and the US being part of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (60%), the land mines treaty (57%), and the Kyoto Treaty on global warming (54%), and wants the US, not the UN, to take the lead in developing Iraq’s new government (71%). Pluralities correctly assumed that Kerry favors US participation in the International Criminal Court (49 to 30%) and that he favors doing more research until its effectiveness is proven (46%), with 26% assuming he does not want to build a system at all). Thirty-nine percent correctly assumed that he wants to keep defense spending the same, but 36% assumed that he wants to cut it.

PIPA selected these questions from those asked in polls by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations which dealt with issues on which the presidential candidates have taken clear and documented positions.

Two other issues, on which neither candidate’s position can be definitively established, were also explored. One was in regard to how the US should deal with the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Bush supporters were divided about whether Bush favored taking Israel’s side (43%) or taking neither side (45%), while the uncommitted leaned toward the view that Bush favored taking neither side (47%) more than taking Israel’s side (30%). Kerry voters mostly assumed that Kerry favored taking neither side (68%), as did swing voters (58%).

On the question of whether, as a general rule, the US should contribute troops to UN peacekeeping operations, Bush supporters assumed that Bush would favor doing so (78%) as did Kerry supporters (58%) and a majority of the uncommitted (60%). Kerry supporters (73%) also assume that he would favor contributing to peacekeeping as do a bare majority of the uncommitted (51%). However, a plurality of Bush supporters (48%) assumes that Kerry would prefer to leave the job to other countries.

The poll was conducted with a nationwide sample of 959 respondents over September 8-12. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.2-4.0%, depending on whether the question was administered to two-thirds or the entire sample. A report and the questionnaire can be found at www.pipa.org.

The poll was fielded by Knowledge Networks using its nationwide panel, which is randomly selected from the entire adult population and subsequently provided internet access. For more information about this methodology, go to www.knowledgenetworks.com/ganp.

Funding for this research was provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. For more information on the PIPA/GlobeScan poll see:
Report of Findings
Questionnaire
Press Release

Reprinted from Program on International Policy Attitudes:
http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/
Pres_Election_04/html/new_9_29_04.html

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Vielleicht ist diese Umfrage zuverlässlicher als Gallup.

Kerry beats Bush in US marine latrines
By Ned Parker in Al-asad airbase (Iraq)
Thursday, 30 September , 2004, 10:27
The US military, which traditionally avoids meddling in politics, is expressing its views about the US presidential race in the one place where a soldier can speak his mind freely: the latrines.

Here, in graffiti, young soldiers wax philosophical -- albeit crudely and with a fondness for four-letter words -- about God, death, PresidentGeorge W. Bush and his democratic rival John Kerry.

And, if one straw poll is to be believed on this gigantic air base in the western Iraqi desert, Kerry is due to rout Bush in the November 2 elections, after the Massachusetts senator picked up 73 votes to 58 on the bathroom wall. Discuss: These Marines are expressing a popular opinion, Kerry will surely topple Bush

However, the vote has come in for criticism amid suspicions Kerry supporters voted more than once due to the identical hashmarks on his side of the column inside the foul, humid brown and green plastic stalls, known as "Port-a-Johns".

While independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader received nary a mention, some marines nominated pornography kingpins Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt onto the latrine wall ballots.

Heavy Metal gods Slayer and Rob Zombie received 11th-hour nominations from men in uniform to run for the White House. The bathroom wall vents a surprising amount of anger over Bush, considered by many rank-and-file a great wartime president, and heaps a mountain of cynicism on the US presence in Iraq.

Much of the bile is dedicated to denigrating Bush`s homestate of Texas, the land of cowboys and toughness that has come to define his wartime presidency. "Here I sit cheeks a-flexin`. Bout to make another Texan," one rhyme reads, repeated in multiple stalls.

"F*** Texas" reads another slogan, prompting threats of death from a defender of the Lonestar state. Another slogan reads: "Texas = steers and queers," in a crude verbal assault on Texans` code of manhood.

One diatribe says: "The only thing Bush cares about is a good fight to make a name for himself. If you think he really cares about us you`re out of your f***ing mind. If you really believe 9/11 is related to Iraq then you`re just as delusional as the hippie that thinks there will ever be world peace. You`re not fighting for America. You`re fighting for f***ed-up politics. End of story Cinderella."

Another pundit opines: "If you are a retard, vote Bush. He is too!" Bush supporters fire back with accusations that Kerry will sink the military.

They belittle his military service in Vietnam and write: "A traitor ever since Vietnam, when he lied about his actions," in reference to charges brought against Kerry by a dubious group of military veterans in August.

"If you want a huge pay cut, vote Kerry," writes one bathroom scribe, voicing the grunt soldier`s belief that the Democrats will gut the armed forces. "If you want a p**** in office vote Kerry."

But Kerry gets off scot-free compared to Bush, who is called `a scumbag, alcoholic, draft-dodging millionaire daddy`s boy,` in reference to Bush`s wild youth and lingering questions about his national guard service during Vietnam.

Commenting on the marines` bathroom debating society, Lieutenant Josh Walton suggested the stalls had a loosening effect on the soldiers, especially the service`s smaller number of Kerry supporters.

"You can put out what you want. It`s pretty anonymous," Walton said. "If you want to be a jokester, express what you feel, you can put it up there."

Amid the scrawled expletives -- interspersed with rants against female marines and paeans to the virtues of other soldiers` wives, sisters and mothers -- some men offered sober and cynical reflections on the American mission in Iraq.

In black magic marker, a soldier scrawled a maxim from Plato that rings true whoever wins the November election: "Only the dead have seen the end of war."


"© 2004 sify.com India Limited. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed."

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Was ich heute morgen schrieb, wenn es drauf ankommt sind die US-Medien für Bush.



OCTOBER 1 - 7, 2004

Deadline Hollywood


When Might Turns Right
Golly GE, why Big Media is pro-Bush
by Nikki Finke

ON ANY GIVEN DAY, the major TV networks rarely demonstrate good judgment, much less morality, when it comes to accepting a litany of nauseating advertisements. Hemorrhoid creams. Vaginal ointments. Erectile dysfunction. Army recruiting ads that portray war as a gee-whiz video game. KFC’s claim that fried chicken is the new health food. And, lest we forget, Bud Light’s farting horse during the Super Bowl.

But ads for the October 5 release of the new Fahrenheit 9/11 DVD?

Now that makes Big Media gag.

L.A. Weekly has learned that CBS, NBC and ABC all refused Fahrenheit 9/11 DVD advertising during any of the networks’ news programming. Executives at Sony Pictures, the distributor of the movie for the home-entertainment market, were stunned. And even more shocked when the three networks explained why.

“They said explicitly they were reluctant because of the closeness of the release to the election. All three networks said no,” one Sony insider explains. “It was certainly a judgment that Sony disagrees with and is in the process of protesting.”

And protest Sony did. (Michael Lynton, the onetime Pearson publishing executive who is now chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, has privately told people he hasn’t seen anything like this since his Penguin Group published Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses.) What especially galled the Sony suits was this: The networks had no problem having the DVD ads appear on their entertainment shows so long as the guidelines for R-rated content like Fahrenheit 9/11 were followed. However, Sony executives told L.A. Weekly they wanted only to market the movie’s DVD on CBS’s, NBC’s and ABC’s news shows. “But all three networks said no to straight news,” one Sony exec explained. “Then, suddenly, the networks were extending the definition of news programming to include the news magazines and the morning news shows and restricting access to those as well. That becomes very problematic to any advertiser trying to reach an adult audience.”

Finally, this week, Sony’s protests started having an effect. “We’re now getting movement,” a Sony suit told L.A. Weekly Monday night. Sony corporate senior vice president Susan Tick claimed Tuesday that the initial ban on the morning news shows was lifted, and time on an NBC Dateline had been made available. But she also confirmed that the early-evening news shows are still verboten, and ABC still remains adamant that the DVD can’t be advertised on its PrimeTime Live. Meanwhile, the DVD ads’ status on the other network news shows is murky at best. (Sony execs emphasize that Fox was not part of this cabal — apparently because no Fahrenheit 9/11 DVD ads were planned there.)

Just when we think Big Media’s handling of this election can’t get any worse, something like this comes along and we realize the situation is totally whack.

For all the hundreds of thousands of words broadcast and written about so-called Rathergate, the news of Sonygate hasn’t received any attention at all. Yet here is more bile rising in our throats as Big Media does yet another favor for Dubya. At the very least the networks managed to delay Fahrenheit 9/11’s DVD ads for several weeks by claiming they had to consult their attorneys to make sure the ads didn’t fall under the Federal Election Commission rules governing electioneering communications — a bunch of laughable hooey, especially considering the armadas of attorneys already on network payrolls keeping the Election Commission at bay. And speaking of lawyers, how interesting that Big Media spent so much time spanking — or, worse, ignoring — Kitty Kelley’s newly released The Family that dares to criticize the Bushies. When, by contrast, the networks fell all over themselves basically promoting the bejesus out of that swift-boat book of half-truths and full lies, Unfit for Command. As if, in some parallel universe, the lawyers for Kelley’s publisher, Doubleday/Random House, are inferior to those of the Swifties’ Regnery Publishing.



WHERE IS THE LEVEL playing field? Gone, thanks to the shenanigans of Big Media. Nor is it an exaggeration to state that the networks increasingly look like they’re doing everything possible to help George W. win re-election. At least that wily old codger Sumner Redstone had the balls to come out this weekend and say what everyone already knows is true: “There has been comment upon my contribution to Democrats like Senator Kerry. Senator Kerry is a good man. I’ve known him for many years. But it happens that I vote for Viacom. Viacom is my life, and I do believe that a Republican administration is better for media companies than a Democratic one.”

Like, duh! Who else but Dubya and his FCC frown posse, led by Michael Powell, is never going to meet one media merger after another they didn’t like? And in return for all that conglomeration and consolidation, all Big Broadcasters have to do is fork over minor fines whenever they deflower the virgin ears and eyes of the public.

And with more money to spend on political ads this election year (hell, every election year), the Republicans are helping Big Media climb out of their recession-caused red ink. As Broadcasting & Cable reported this month, ad spending in markets across the country is “flat to down” this year. But thanks to all those GOP attack ads against Kerry and his own spots to defend against them, ad spending, especially in the battleground states, is “through the roof,” up 14 percent to 15 percent.

Once upon a time, large corporations and their executives typically avoided any public discussion of their politics because partisan positions alienated customers and employees. But all of that changed after GE bought NBC in 1986. The NBC peacock was literally flipped from left to right. As the story goes, this was done so the bird was looking forward, not back. Yeah, right. Maybe we should applaud Viacom’s Redstone for being aboveboard about his loyalties. So is News Corp.’s Murdoch. (Forget the little fact that Murdoch’s No. 2, Peter Chernin, has endorsed Kerry, or that Redstone’s co-president, Les Moonves, is an avowed Democrat. It’s meaningless because Murdoch and Redstone are media owners, not renters.)

And Time Warner’s chairman and CEO, Dick Parsons, doesn’t need to articulate his politics since he’s a Republican insider from way back. After Parsons nailed the top score on the New York state bar exam, he caught the eye of the late Nelson A. Rockefeller and even lived in Rockefeller’s compound for a time, eventually becoming a trustee of the former vice president’s estate after Rockefeller’s death in 1979. Parsons also is a former law partner of Rudy Giuliani and even managed Giuliani’s transition into the NYC Mayor’s Office. Who better to have at Time Warner’s helm than a GOP insider when the SEC is investigating your company?

Officially, GE (NBC’s parent company) chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt has yet to publicly declare himself politically. But anyone who spends time with him knows which way he blows. “He’s as right-wing as they come,” an insider tells L.A. Weekly. “Just as bad as Bob Wright.”

Wright, now GE’s vice chairman but also NBC’s long-term boss, never tried to hide his Republican partisanship because he never had to. For seemingly eons, his mentor and Immelt’s predecessor, Jack Welch, was a rabid right-winger. Welch used to boast openly about helping turn former liberals Chris Matthews and Tim Russert into neocons. And Los Angeles Representative Henry Waxman is still waiting for GE to turn over those in-house tapes that would prove once and for all whether Welch in 2000 ordered his network and cable stations to reverse course and call the election for Bush instead of Gore that election night.

As for Immelt, he uses all the Republican buzzwords with obvious ease. Complain about GE’s job outsourcing and he labels it “class warfare.” And he declared to Fox News’ business anchor, Neil Cavuto, that he wished his own network’s MSNBC talk TV could be “as interesting and edgy as you guys are. I think the standard right now is Fox.” MSNBC and increasingly CNBC as well are Fox News clones.

In return, Immelt is beginning to bag Republican perks, like appointment to President Bush’s Commission on Social Security. Besides all those lucrative U.S. defense contracts, his GE has snagged $450 million of orders in Iraq alone in 2003, and an apparent $3 billion more over the next few years. Plus, more than half of Iraq’s power grid is GE technology. Even before the fighting there started, Immelt told CNBC it was a GE business opportunity. “We built about a billion-dollar security business that’s going to be growing by 20 percent a year, so we’ve been able to play into that.”

Nor does it hurt that GE recently installed Anna Perez, a former Bush adviser to W and Condi who also served as press secretary to former first lady Barbara Bush, as NBC Universal’s executive vice president of communications.

Then there’s Disney’s Michael Eisner. As the longtime chairman and CEO, Eisner was never in the league of MCA/Universal’s Lew Wasserman, inarguably the most active Democratic activist of the media-mogul crowd. In contrast to Wasserman’s huge effort to get Hollywood-wide support for Jimmy Carter back in 1976, Eisner, while a Democrat, made just a small personal effort on behalf of the primary campaigns for his buddies Bob Kerry and Bill Bradley.



But that was then and this is now. Disney has turned most of ABC’s extensive radio network and owned-and-operated stations into a 24/7 orgy of right-wing talk. Disney’s chief lobbyist, Preston Padden, is not only one of Washington, D.C.’s most infamous Republican lobbyists, but he used to work for Rupert Murdoch. And Padden was set to use all of his considerable influence in Congress and the White House on Disney’s behalf if that big bad Goliath, Comcast, really tried to gobble up the Mouse House. As a result, no one thought it just coincidental when W pleaded just days after 9/11 for Americans “to return to the kind of lives we were leading before [that], especially air travel. Get on board. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America’s great destination spots. Go down to Disney World in Florida; take your families and enjoy life the way we want it to be enjoyed.” It was as close to a White House commercial for Disney as any corporation could dare hope.

Then Bush followed that up weeks later with a PR visit to Orlando, Florida, where the Magic Kingdom had suffered a 25 percent drop in ticket sales, where a national photo showed the theme park’s deserted entrance. And since then, in addition to the usual tax breaks from W’s brother, Jeb, Disney World has benefited from special security measures, including extra protection and a federally declared “no flyover zone.”

Given all of the above, when Eisner was replaced as chairman by former Democratic Senator George Mitchell, nobody seemed perturbed, not even when Mitchell sounded off in Kerry’s corner during the Boston convention this summer. And why should they since Mitchell is at best a short-timer? And let’s not forget that Eisner had already given the Bushies the biggest gift of all: pulling the distribution plug on Fahrenheit 9/11 even though stockholders were starving for movie-division profits after everything else on Disney’s slate in the first half of 2004 fell flat.

Apparently, Eisner didn’t care that this beleaguered company would miss out on one of the most lucrative films all year. But it certainly made Disney watchers sick to their stomachs. Perhaps Big Media’s advertisers have a cream or ointment or pill to cure that. Not to worry: We hear Moore’s next movie is Sicko, about the health-care industry.

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Pulling Back the Curtain: What a Top Reporter in Baghdad Really Thinks About the War
Wall Street Journal correspondent Farnaz Fassihi confirms that she penned a scathing letter that calls the war in Iraq an outright "disaster." She also reveals that reporters in Baghdad are working under "virtual house arrest."
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissu…
By Greg Mitchell

(September 29, 2004) -- Readers of any nailbiting story from Iraq in a major mainstream newspaper must often wonder what the dispassionate reporter really thinks about the chaotic situation there, and what he or she might be saying in private letters or in conversations with friends back home.

Now, at least in the case of Wall Street Journal correspondent Farnaz Fassihi, we know.

A lengthy letter from Baghdad she recently sent to friends "has rapidly become a global chain mail," Fassihi told Jim Romenesko on Wednesday after it was finally posted at the Poynter Institute`s Web site. She confirmed writing the letter.

"Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for insecurity," Fassihi wrote (among much else) in the letter. "Guess what? They say they`d take security over freedom any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler." And: "Despite President Bush`s rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a `potential` threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to `imminent and active threat,` a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come."

After she confirmed writing the letter on Wednesday, Paul Steiger, editor of the Wall Street Journal, stood up for her, telling the New York Post that her "private opinions have in no way distorted her coverage, which has been a model of intelligent and courageous reporting, and scrupulous accuracy and fairness."

Fassihi, 32, covered the 9/11 terror attacks in New York for the The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. and has also worked for the Providence Journal.

The reporter`s letter opens with this revelation: "Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference. Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons.

"I am house bound.... There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second."

Fassihi observed that the insurgency had spread "from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq." The Iraqi government, he wrote, "doesn`t control most Iraqi cities.... The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war. In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health--which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers--has now stopped disclosing them. Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.

"A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He said young men were openly placing improvised explosive devices into the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over it to signal to the locals this is booby-trapped. He said on the main roads of Sadr City, there were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car snaked and swirled to avoid driving over them. Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to detonate them as soon as an American convoy gets near. This is in Shiite land, the population that was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq."

For journalists, Fassihi wrote, "the significant turning point came with the wave of abduction and kidnappings. Only two weeks ago we felt safe around Baghdad because foreigners were being abducted on the roads and highways between towns. Then came a frantic phone call from a journalist female friend at 11 p.m. telling me two Italian women had been abducted from their homes in broad daylight. Then the two Americans, who got beheaded this week and the Brit, were abducted from their homes in a residential neighborhood....

"The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of calming down. If any thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more sophisticated every day.

"I went to an emergency meeting for foreign correspondents with the military and embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We were somberly told our fate would largely depend on where we were in the kidnapping chain once it was determined we were missing. Here is how it goes: criminal gangs grab you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who will in turn sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the other way from Al Qaeda to the Baathists to the criminals. My friend Georges, the French journalist snatched on the road to Najaf, has been missing for a month with no word on release or whether he is still alive."

And what of America`s "hope for a quick exit"? Fassihi noted that "cops are being murdered by the dozens every day, over 700 to date, and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just trained to get rid of them quietly....

"Who did this war exactly benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and Al Qaeda is running around in Iraq?

"I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote. This is truly sad...."

Making clear what can only, at best, appear between lines in her published dispatches, Fassihi concluded, "One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it`s hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral. The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can`t be put back into a bottle."
Greg Mitchell ([e-mail]) is the editor of E&P and the author of seven books on politics and history.

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IRAQ:
IMF Delivers Loan, Queried About Oversight

Emad Mekay


WASHINGTON, Sep 30 (IPS) - The International Monetary Fund (IMF), one of the most powerful architects of the world economy and controlled by the planet`s wealthiest nations, marked its return to U.S.-occupied Iraq with a new loan worth 436 million dollars.

The IMF Executive Board approved the loan late Wednesday as Emergency Post-Conflict Assistance (EPCA), to the loud praise of the United States, the main power broker in the Arab country.

”This action by the IMF Executive Board is an important milestone in the international community`s support for Iraq,” said secretary of the U.S. Treasury, John Snow, in a statement Thursday.

The White House has worked hard to generate good news from Iraq --where more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers fight to quell a deadly, growing insurgency -- prior to the Nov. 2 presidential election.

Washington, which invaded Iraq in March 2003 and says it handed over ”sovereignty” to an interim government Jun. 28, is a major influence behind Iraq`s 2004-2005 economic and monetary programme, on which the IMF based its new loan.

Snow said granting the loan is an essential step on the way to resolving the Iraqi debt, a long-time U.S. demand, by the end of 2004, as agreed by the Group of Eight (G8) most industrialised nations.

Washington wants creditors to forgive at least 90 percent of Iraq`s enormous 120-billion-dollars debt. But Russia and France, the country`s main creditors, have said they are only prepared to write-off up to 50 percent of the debt, on the grounds that Iraq is an oil-rich nation.

Watchdog groups and activists say the new IMF loan simply shifts Iraq`s debt from a few countries to the multilateral institutions where Washington exerts enormous influence.

”I think that it`s very much the case that America wants Iraq to remain indebted because debt is a way of exerting control. I think that`s part of the reason America is happy for Iraq to receive new loans and is not insisting that all financing to Iraq is in the form of grants,” said Justin Alexander of Jubilee Iraq, a group lobbying for arbitration on Iraq`s huge ”odious” debt.

The United States is the biggest shareholder in both the Washington-based IMF and its sister institution the World Bank, which hold their annual meetings here this weekend. Debt forgiveness for the world`s poorest nations is expected to top the agenda.

According to the budget office of the U.S. Congress, the country`s share in the World Bank -- which lent 18.5 billion dollars to spur development worldwide in 2003 -- is roughly 14-22 percent, while its share in the IMF lies between 17 and 22 percent. The IMF lent 40 billion dollars in 2003.

The IMF loan to Iraq is also a green light for commercial lenders to start doing business with the country.

The announcement will ”serve to catalyse much needed financial and technical assistance from the international community, and will facilitate the process of reducing Iraq`s external debt to a sustainable level,” according to IMF Deputy Managing Director Takatoshi Kato.

He complimented what he called Iraq`s ”progress” toward a market-oriented economy.

Washington wants to make Iraq a model for the neo-liberal economy in the Middle East, an area the United States, under the right-wing administration of Republican President George W Bush, has increasingly viewed with what some observers say are near colonial ambitions.

The IMF has already been providing extensive technical assistance and training to U.S.-appointed Iraqi officials in a number of areas, including tax policy, budget preparation and execution, central banking and the creation of a treasury bill market.

The interim Iraqi government of Iyad Allawi has said it will seek international loans and focus on implementing key structural changes, including tax and financial sector reform, restructuring and privatising state-owned enterprises, and enhancing the oil sector, all of which serve the IMF`s goal of promoting the local and international private sector in the country.

The loan comes as the Open Society Institute`s Iraq Revenue Watch project released a report saying that recent audits expose serious failures in U.S. oversight of Iraq`s revenues and spending of U.S. reconstruction funds. It also raises questions about the new government`s ability to deal with additional funds, like the IMF loan, transparently.

The OSI is financed by George Soros, the billionaire who has pledged to spend more than 18 million dollars to try to defeat U.S. President George W Bush in November`s presidential election.

The Iraq Revenue Watch report says that U.S. and U.K. companies received 85 percent of the value of all reconstruction contracts for Iraq. Local firms, by contrast, received just two percent of the value of contracts, which were paid for with Iraqi funds, it adds.

”Government favourites such as Kellogg, Brown and Root benefited at the expense of Iraqi companies, whose workers badly need jobs,” said Svetlana Tsalik, director of the Revenue Watch project.

The report also criticised the interim government for following the model of its U.S. predecessor by providing scant information about how it is managing Iraq`s revenues.

”The new government is basically behaving the same way the CPA (the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority) did: not accountable, not transparent and not keeping good records,” said the OSI`s Sarah Miller-Davenport.

But the IMF pledged to track the funds as it does with other borrowing countries. ”Of course we will monitor it, like we do with all members,” said IMF Managing Director Rodrigo de Rato, who met with Allawi and other Iraqi officials over the past week.

”But I think that from our discussions yesterday with the responsible economic team, they have a very clear strategy for that,” he added. (END/2004)

Copyright © 2004 IPS-Inter Press Service.

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Für alle, die keinen Fernseher zur Verfügung haben, ab 2,45 ARD. Hier Direktlink.
THURS., 9PM ET, C-SPAN3
http://www.c-span.org/watch/cspan3_rm.asp?Cat=TV&Code=CS3

RealPlayer, Stand-Alone Player

Oder hier auf der Seite von C-Span, dort C-SPAN3
http://www.c-span.org/watch/index.asp?Cat=TV&Code=CS&ShowVid…

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October 1, 2004
NEWS ANALYSIS
Standing Firm for 90 Minutes
By TODD S. PURDUM

In the end, it was a real debate: sharp, scrappy and defining, just what the nation seemed to be yearning for during a wartime election campaign. Again and again, President Bush defended his conduct of the war in Iraq, insisting, "there must be certainty from the U.S. president." Over and over, Senator John Kerry asserted that Mr. Bush had led the country into a debacle in Iraq and it was time for a "fresh start, new credibility" in foreign affairs.

From the very first question last night, Mr. Kerry was determined to show, as he put it, that "I can make America safer than President Bush has made us." He was cool, respectful, rational in offering a detailed brief that Mr. Bush had embarked on a diversion from the war on Al Qaeda and global terror by invading Iraq, and his answers never exceeded the time limits.

By the time the debate ended, Mr. Kerry appeared to have accomplished his primary goal for the evening: establishing himself as a plausible commander in chief.

Mr. Bush, who seemed defensive and less sure of himself at the outset, quickly gained his footing, counterpunching effectively by repeatedly charging that Mr. Kerry was inconsistent and lacked the resolve to defend the nation against terrorism.

He was just as relentless as Mr. Kerry, and perhaps more emotional, never ceding ground in his insistence that he had used every available means to defend the nation after Sept. 11. At times, he seemed to lean into the camera, pursing his lips, at some pains to disguise his apparent exasperation at Mr. Kerry`s attacks, insisting, as he did at the outset, "People know where I stand."

At one point, Mr. Bush burst out a spontaneous answer to a question that Mr. Kerry had posed only rhetorically, declaring before the moderator, Jim Lehrer, had recognized him, "Of course we`re doing everything we can to protect America." At another point, after Mr. Bush justified his use of pre-emptive military action by saying "the enemy attacked us,`` Mr. Kerry pointed out that that enemy had not been Saddam Hussein, leading Mr. Bush to jump in to say, "Of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us."

The two agreed that the threat of unconventional weapons in the hands of rogue actors would be the biggest challenge facing either of them as president, and that Mr. Hussein had seemed to pose such a threat. They agreed that the United States could not pull out of Iraq precipitately. But they disagreed on virtually all else, from how to handle what both called genocide in Sudan to nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran.

Perhaps their sharpest disagreement on future actions came over North Korea, with Mr. Kerry favoring direct talks with Pyongyang intended to halt its development of nuclear weapons and Mr. Bush contending that two-party talks would be unwise and wreck the regional six-party talks in which the United States is counting on China`s leverage to pressure the north.

Facing by far the largest national audience of the campaign to date, with polls suggesting that something between one-fifth and one-third of voters might be influenced by last night`s encounter, Mr. Kerry was at pains to rebut the Bush campaign`s portrayal of him as a fickle flip-flopper who has repeatedly changed his position on the war in Iraq and would cede too much control of the nation`s defenses to foreign allies.

When Mr. Bush noted that Mr. Kerry had voted against an $87 billion appropriation for military and reconstruction operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, then said he had initially voted for another version, Mr. Kerry`s rebuttal could hardly have been crisper.

"Well, you know, when I talked about the $87 billion, I made a mistake in how I talk about the war," Mr. Kerry said. "But the president made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse? I believe that when you know something`s going wrong, you make it right. That`s what I learned in Vietnam. When I came back from that war, I saw that it was wrong. Some people don`t like the fact that I stood up to say so. But I did. And that`s what I did with that vote. And I`m going to lead those troops to victory."

Mr. Bush was just as blunt in his insistence that Mr. Kerry`s criticism of the conduct of the war had demoralized the troops and the interim Iraqi leaders struggling to impose some stability on that country.

"What kind of message does it say to our troops in harm`s way `wrong war, wrong place, wrong time,` `` Mr. Bush said, echoing Mr. Kerry`s recent formulation. "That`s not what a commander in chief says when you`re trying to lead troops."

After the debate, each man`s backers claimed victory, with Mr. Kerry`s adviser Tad Devine declaring that viewers "saw somebody who could be president, and who could step into that role," and Ken Mehlman, Mr. Bush`s campaign manager, declaring, "George Bush spoke plainly," and insisting that Mr. Kerry`s "credibility gap became a chasm."

Indeed, each man was true to type, and gave his committed supporters comforting lines of argument to cling to, with Mr. Bush using tested lines from his stump speeches to argue that his course was simple and direct and Mr. Kerry doing the same to argue that only a greater awareness of complexities and more support from allies could keep the nation safe.

As the challenger, Mr. Kerry had the greater burden, and his performance was more disciplined and controlled than usual. He may well have struck undecided voters as not much like the Republicans` worst caricatures. He spoke plainly, politely, but did not shrink from direct and pointed criticism of Mr. Bush`s policies.

"You know, the president`s father did not go into Iraq, into Baghdad, beyond Basra, and the reason he didn`t is he said - he wrote in his book - because there was no viable exit strategy," Mr. Kerry said. "And he said our troops would be occupiers in a bitterly hostile land. That`s exactly where we find ourselves today." He added: "Almost every step of the way, our troops have been left on these extraordinarily difficult missions. I know what it`s like to go out on one of those missions where you don`t know what`s around the corner, and I believe our troops need other allies helping."

Mr. Kerry did not explain how he would secure international help, beyond calling an international conference, and by not being Mr. Bush. Mr. Bush`s response was skeptical.

"What`s the message going to be?" he asked. "Please join us in Iraq for a grand diversion? Join us for a war that is the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time? I know how these people think. I deal with them all the time. I sit down with world leaders frequently, and talk to them on the phone frequently. They`re not going to follow somebody who says this is the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time."

The more immediate question is whether voters will continue to follow a president who insists the war was right, in the face of polls suggesting widespread doubt about whether it was worth the cost. Mr. Bush is banking almost everything on his belief that they will, as long as they believe he is clear and resolute.

It is too soon to know whether Mr. Kerry, trailing in pre-debate polls, accomplished what Mr. Bush did four years ago when he came out of his first debate against Al Gore stronger than when he went in (or what Ronald Reagan did when he leapfrogged ahead of Jimmy Carter). But he is hoping that voters will agree with his own succinct assessment of Mr. Bush last night: "It`s one thing to be certain, but you can be certain and be wrong."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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October 1, 2004
The First Debate

If Americans who tuned into last night`s presidential debate were waiting for one of the candidates to catch the other in a fatal error, or leave him stammering, the event was obviously a draw. But if the question was whether Senator John Kerry would appear presidential, whether he could present his positions clearly and succinctly and keep President Bush on the defensive when it came to the critical issue of Iraq, Mr. Kerry delivered the goods.

George W. Bush is famous for fierce discipline when it comes to sticking to a carefully honed, simple message. Last night he reiterated this campaign message once again - that "the world is safer without Saddam Hussein" and that things are, on the whole, going well in Iraq. The confidence with which Mr. Bush has kept hammering home those points has clearly had an effect in the polls, encouraging wavering voters to believe that the president is the one who can best lead the country out of the morass he created.

But last night Mr. Bush sounded less convincing when he had to make his case in the face of Mr. Kerry`s withering criticism, particularly his repeated insistence that the invasion had diverted attention from the true center of the war on terror in Afghanistan.

Mr. Kerry found the most effective line of argument when he told the audience that "Iraq was not even close to the center of the war on terror" and that the president had "rushed the war in Iraq without a plan to win the peace." It is the strongest and most sensible critique of the administration`s actions. Of course, it left Mr. Kerry open to rejoinders by Mr. Bush that Mr. Kerry had sounded far more warlike about Iraq in his pre-campaign persona. That`s a fair comment, and one the senator simply has to live with in this campaign. "As the politics changed, his position changed," Mr. Bush said.

But when Mr. Bush jabbed at the senator with a reminder about his infamous comment on voting for a war appropriation before he voted against it, Mr. Kerry had finally found an effective answer. While saying he had made a mistake in the way he had expressed himself, the senator added: "But the president made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse?"

Both men made errors that appeared to be mainly a matter of misspeaking under the pressure of the moment. But Mr. Kerry scored an important point when the president made a more significant slip and talked about the need to go to war because "the enemy attacked us." The person who sent planes smashing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Mr. Kerry reminded the audience, was Osama bin Laden, who was operating from Afghanistan, not Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bush, whose body and facial language sometimes seemed downright petulant, insisted, again and again, that by criticizing the way the war is being run, Mr. Kerry was sending "mixed signals" that threatened the success of the effort.

Before last night`s debate, we worried that the long list of rules insisted on by both camps would create a stilted exchange of packaged sound bites. But this campaign was starved for real discussion and substance. Even a format controlled by handlers and spin doctors seemed like a breath of fresh air.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
Battle Lines on Foreign Policy Clearly Drawn

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 1, 2004; Page A09

CORAL GABLES, Fla., Sept. 30 -- It was no surprise that Iraq dominated the first debate between President Bush and Democratic challenger John F. Kerry on Thursday night, but rarely have the differences between the two men -- and the choices for the country -- been stated so clearly and with such passion.

Bush and Kerry differed on almost every aspect of the war in Iraq and on other major foreign policy issues such as North Korea and Iran. They disagreed over whether former president Saddam Hussein posed a serious threat to the United States at the time Bush took the country to war there. They disagreed on whether it was right to go to war as Bush did. They differed on whether the president has a plan to secure the peace. And they parted company on whether the certitude Bush has displayed as president has advanced U.S. security or weakened it.

If Republicans had hoped Bush could put Kerry away with a strong performance on terrain that has been his strongest suit, they are likely to be disappointed, as the Democrat constantly challenged the president to answer for his policies. Both men accomplished many of the goals their advisers had set out in the days before the debate and probably reinforced the strong backing each already has among his most committed supporters. But for those voters who remain undecided, Bush and Kerry may have only whetted appetites for their two remaining debates.

This was a debate shorn of gimmicks, gaffes, canned one-liners, gotcha moments or even many light-hearted asides. It was as serious as the times in which this campaign is being waged. Bush and Kerry gave as good as they got and laid out for the country a choice between Bush`s determination to stay on the course he has been following in Iraq or what Kerry said would be a genuine change in the direction of policy there.

Bush appeared defensive at the start of the 90-minute debate, and at times the camera caught him scowling or frowning as Kerry relentlessly attacked his record on Iraq. But as the debate continued, he made a passionate defense of the values that are at the foundation of his foreign policy: taking the fight to terrorists and spreading freedom across the planet.

Kerry, who was under great pressure to perform well, repeatedly presented his case that the president has led the country astray and that only a change in leadership can alter the equation in Iraq and attract the support of other countries in sharing more of the burden. He also sought to answer doubts about himself by trying to show that he would be resolute in fighting terrorists, albeit in a different way.

Instant polls judged Kerry the clear winner, but Kerry came into the debate knowing he had to begin to undo the damage the Bush campaign has inflicted on him and reverse public perceptions that Bush is better equipped to deal with Iraq and to fight terrorists -- and that the president is far more likable personally.

Whether he began to reverse those perceptions will not be clear immediately. His demeanor may have helped to counter the image Bush`s ads have tried to create, but he spent little time explaining apparent contradictions in his positions on Iraq and may have more work to do on that front in the next two debates.

For 90 minutes, Bush and Kerry stood opposite each other on the campus of the University of Miami and described strikingly different approaches to the world and sharply contrasting portraits of each other`s character. For the two men, foreign policy was defined almost exclusively through the prism of Iraq, with no discussion of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, Middle East oil, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. Bush repeatedly tried to undermine Kerry as someone who has shifted with the political winds on Iraq. Kerry challenged Bush`s record in Iraq as indefensible.

Kerry faced the more daunting challenge going into Thursday`s debate, given the state of the presidential race that has shown Bush in the lead, and his advisers were looking for the kind of performance that would begin to change the dynamic of the campaign heading into the next debate, on Oct. 8. But Bush also came to the debate with obstacles, principally the mounting bloodshed in Iraq and the strength of the insurgency there, and he needed to keep Kerry on the defensive as much as possible.

Bush portrayed Kerry as a politician without core convictions who has repeatedly changed his mind and said that by describing Iraq as "the wrong war" had called into question his ability to lead U.S. troops or rally the world. Kerry described Bush as unwilling to acknowledge the realities of an Iraq that experienced another bloody day Thursday and who has made a series of wrong decisions, from rushing to war to failing to develop a plan for peace to shattering relations with U.S. allies.

When PBS`s Jim Lehrer, the moderator, asked Bush toward the end of the debate whether there were any character flaws in Kerry that would disqualify the challenger from serving as commander in chief, Bush said: "He changes positions on something as fundamental as what you believe in your core, in your heart of hearts, is right in Iraq. You cannot lead if you send mixed messages. Mixed messages send the wrong signals to our troops. Mixed messages send the wrong signals to our allies. Mixed messages send the wrong signals to the Iraqi citizens."

When he got his turn to respond, Kerry said, "I`m not going to talk about a difference of character. I don`t think that`s my job or my business. But let me talk about something that the president just sort of finished up with. Maybe someone would call it a character trait, maybe somebody wouldn`t. But this issue of certainty. It`s one thing to be certain, but you can be certain and be wrong."

"I have a difference with this president," he said. "I believe when we`re strongest when we reach out and lead the world and build strong alliances. I have a plan for Iraq. I believe we can be successful. I`m not talking about leaving. I`m talking about winning. And we need a fresh start, a new credibility, a president who can bring allies to our side."

But when Kerry said he doubts that Bush really sees the deterioration in Iraq, the president challenged Kerry`s ability to find a strategy that would work, given his stances on the war.

"I don`t see how you can lead this country to succeed in Iraq if you say wrong war, wrong time, wrong place," he said. "What message does that send our troops? What message does that send to our allies? What message does that send the Iraqis? No, the way to win this is to be steadfast and resolved and to follow through on the plan that I`ve just outlined."

Bush has maintained a small but steady lead over Kerry in the national polls since the Republican National Convention in New York. In addition, Kerry`s campaign has gradually withdrawn from a number of states they had targeted as potential pickups, narrowing his electoral options as the campaign heads toward its final month.

Kerry partisans said immediately after the debate that they were pleased with his performance, while Bush backers said they were confident that as long as the campaign remains focused on foreign policy, the debate will benefit the president.

Few strategists believed that this first of three presidential debates will, by itself, fundamentally change the shape of the campaign, but for voters wondering whether the choice is as stark as the two sides had been portraying it, the session provided a resounding answer. It sets the stage for what promises to be a ferocious campaign over the next 4 1/2 weeks.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Full Presidential Debate Video
Thursday, Sep. 30, 2004

Candidates met Thursday night at University of Miami at Coral Gables, Fla., for the first presidential debate before the 2004 election.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/mmedia/politics/093004-…
Key Debate Exchanges
Thursday, Sep. 30, 2004

This video contains key exchanges from the first presidential debate between President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/mmedia/politics/093004-…

Auszüge frei zugänglich:
http://multimedia.realcities.com:8080/ramgen/miami/news/umde…

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October 1, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
America`s Lost Respect
By PAUL KRUGMAN

As a result of the American military," President Bush declared last week, "the Taliban is no longer in existence."

It`s unclear whether Mr. Bush misspoke, or whether he really is that clueless. But his claim was in keeping with his re-election strategy, demonstrated once again in last night`s debate: a president who has done immense damage to America`s position in the world hopes to brazen it out by claiming that failure is success.

Three years ago, the United States was both feared and respected: feared because of its military supremacy, respected because of its traditional commitment to democracy and the rule of law.

Since then, Iraq has demonstrated the limits of American military power, and has tied up much of that power in a grinding guerrilla war. This has emboldened regimes that pose a real threat. Three years ago, would North Korea have felt so free to trumpet its conversion of fuel rods into bombs?

But even more important is the loss of respect. After the official rationales for the Iraq war proved false, and after America failed to make good on its promise to foster democracy in either Afghanistan or Iraq - and, not least, after Abu Ghraib - the world no longer believes that we are the good guys.

Let`s talk for a minute about Afghanistan, which administration officials tout as a success story. They rely on the public`s ignorance: voters, they believe, don`t know that even though the United States promised to provide Afghanistan with both security and aid during its transition to democracy, it broke those promises. It has allowed the country to slide back into warlordism - and allowed the Taliban to make a comeback.

These days, Mr. Bush and other administration officials often talk about the 10.5 million Afghans who have registered to vote in this month`s election, citing the figure as proof that democracy is making strides after all. They count on the public not to know, and on reporters not to mention, that the number of people registered considerably exceeds all estimates of the eligible population. What they call evidence of democracy on the march is actually evidence of large-scale electoral fraud.

It`s the same story in Iraq: the January election has become the rationale for everything we`re doing, yet it`s hard to find anyone not beholden to the administration who believes that the election, if it happens at all, will be anything more than a sham.

Yet Mr. Bush and his Congressional allies seem to have learned nothing from their failures. If Mr. Bush is returned to office, there`s every reason to think that they will continue along the same disastrous path.

We can already see one example of this when we look at the question of torture. Abu Ghraib has largely vanished from U.S. political discussion, largely because the administration and its Congressional allies have been so effective at covering up high-level involvement. But both the revelations and the cover-up did terrible damage to America`s moral authority. To much of the world, America looks like a place where top officials condone and possibly order the torture of innocent people, and suffer no consequences.

What we need is an effort to regain our good name. What we`re getting instead is a provision, inserted by Congressional Republicans in the intelligence reform bill, to legalize "extraordinary rendition" - a euphemism for sending terrorism suspects to countries that use torture for interrogation. This would institutionalize a Kafkaesque system under which suspects can be sent, at the government`s whim, to Egypt or Syria or Jordan - and to fight such a move, it`s up to the suspect to prove that he`ll be tortured on arrival. Just what we need to convince other countries of our commitment to the rule of law.

Most Americans aren`t aware of all this. The sheer scale of Mr. Bush`s foreign policy failures insulates him from its political consequences: voters aren`t ready to believe how badly the war in Iraq is going, let alone how badly America`s moral position in the world has deteriorated.

But the rest of the world has already lost faith in us. In fact, let me make a prediction: if Mr. Bush gets a second term, we will soon have no democracies left among our allies - no, not even Tony Blair`s Britain. Mr. Bush will be left with the support of regimes that don`t worry about the legalities - regimes like Vladimir Putin`s Russia.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Informal Poll
Who do you think won the first Bush-Kerry debate?


9.2%
Bush
(1122 responses)

87.2%
Kerry
(10628 responses)

3.6%
It was a draw
(434 responses)

12184 total responses


Bush, Kerry Trade Barbs on Iraq War
In their first debate, the president calls the invasion crucial to protecting America; the senator criticizes it as an error in judgment.
By Mark Z. Barabak and Michael Finnegan
Times Staff Writers

October 1, 2004

CORAL GABLES, Fla. — In a debate barbed from the outset, President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry clashed sharply Thursday night over the war in Iraq, with Bush declaring the U.S. invasion a vital step in the fight against terrorists and Kerry depicting the conflict as a costly diversion from more serious threats.

Bush repeatedly used Kerry`s words and actions against him. He portrayed his Democratic rival as too weak and vacillating to run the country at a time when the prospect of a terrorist attack had become a color-coded part of everyday living.

"The only thing consistent about my opponent`s position is that he`s been inconsistent," Bush said of Kerry`s stance on Iraq. "He changes positions. And you cannot change positions in this war on terror if you expect to win. And I expect to win. It`s necessary we win."

Kerry, standing across from the president on a theater stage at the University of Miami, said his position on the war had been unwavering: He viewed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as a threat and favored disarming his regime, but not the way Bush approached the task. He also accused the president of making "a colossal error of judgment" by focusing on Iraq at the expense of fighting Al Qaeda terrorists.

"Saddam Hussein didn`t attack us," Kerry said in reference to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes. "Osama bin Laden attacked us. Al Qaeda attacked us."

Later in the debate, Bush responded somewhat testily, "Of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us. I know that."

Kerry dismissed Bush`s assertion that Iraq was at the center of the worldwide fight against terrorism. "Iraq was not even close to the center of the war on terror before the president invaded it," Kerry said.

He vowed to hasten the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and speed its reconstruction by drawing the nation`s estranged allies together at an international summit he would convene as president. "We can do better," Kerry promised over and over throughout the 90-minute session.

Bush accused Kerry of disparaging the contributions of allies such as Great Britain and Poland, and said that minimizing their role in the war effort was not the way to rally further international support.

Citing Kerry`s recent depiction of the invasion of Iraq as "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," Bush said such comments not only demoralized U.S. troops but gave other countries reason to question Kerry`s conviction. "You can`t expect to build an alliance when you denigrate the contributions of those who are serving side-by-side with American troops in Iraq," Bush said.

To drive home his point, he used the words "mixed message" or "mixed signals" half a dozen times to characterize Kerry`s position on Iraq.

Seeking to counter that assertion, Kerry said, "I have no intention of wilting. I`ve never wilted in my life, and I`ve never wavered in my life."

The two men entered the evening determined to cast their differences on the debate`s chosen topic — foreign policy and national defense — in the starkest, most dramatic way possible.

Bush sought to overcome voters` doubts about the war in Iraq and his hard-nosed approach to foreign policy by framing the November vote as a referendum on leadership. "I wake up every day thinking about how best to protect America. That`s my job," Bush said.

"You`d better have a president who chases these terrorists down and brings them to justice before they hurt us again," he added, peering sternly into the TV camera and pounding his hand on the lectern for emphasis.

He also said, "The best way to protect our homeland is to stay on the offensive."

Kerry sought to turn Bush`s decisiveness against him by portraying the president as bullheaded and reckless in refusing to adjust his course, even when events change. "It`s one thing to be certain," Kerry said. "But you can be certain and wrong."

The debate occurred on a day wracked by violence in the Middle East. A series of car bombs in Iraq killed dozens of people, 35 of them children. Two U.S. soldiers were also killed in separate incidents. Meantime, Israeli troops struck inside the largest Palestinian refugee camp Thursday.

But none of these incidents was broached directly, nor were several other issues — such as relations with Cuba or Haiti — that would seem pertinent to this tropical city. Instead, the session was devoted largely to the war in Iraq, which has defined this campaign more than any other issue.

Turning to another part of the world, Kerry charged that Bush`s diplomatic missteps had allowed North Korea to produce nuclear weapons, making the world more dangerous.

"We had inspectors and television cameras in the nuclear reactor in North Korea," Kerry said. "Colin Powell, our secretary of state, announced one day that we were going to continue the dialogue and work with the North Koreans."

But, Kerry went on, Bush reversed that policy, "and for two years this administration didn`t talk at all to North Korea.... And today there are four to seven nuclear weapons in the hands of North Korea. That happened on this president`s watch."

Bush maintained that he pulled out of the earlier talks because they were not working. Instead, he said, the U.S. returned to the bargaining table with Japan, South Korea, Russia and China after a pause, "so now there are five voices ... not just one" seeking to rein in North Korea.

Bush, who has enjoyed small leads in recent nationwide polls, entered with an interest in maintaining the campaign`s status quo. It was Kerry, who polls have found remains ill-defined to many voters, who needed to shake up the race and get voters to view him as a better leader for the Oval Office and cast out the incumbent.

With the first question from PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer, the debate`s moderator and sole questioner, Kerry maintained he could do a better job of preventing a repeat of Sept. 11. He said he would start by reaching out to the Muslim world and building diplomatic alliances to isolate radicals plotting against the U.S.

"I know I can do a better job in Iraq," he said.

He spoke of broad plans to speed up the training of Iraqi security forces, better prepare for elections and recruit allies to share the burden of rebuilding the country. The president, by contrast, has "a four-word plan," Kerry jibed: "More of the same."

At one point, he suggested Bush was divorced from reality. "I don`t know if he sees what`s really happening out there, but it`s getting worse by the day," Kerry said, describing a mounting U.S. death toll.

Bush said Iraq was on the mend, and reeled off upbeat statistics to make the case. He said 11 times that it was "hard work" to bring peace to Iraq and build a democracy there, but said there was no alternative.

"A free Iraq will be an ally in the war on terror, and that`s essential," Bush said. "A free Iraq will set a powerful example in the part of the world that is desperate for freedom. A free Iraq will help secure Israel.... A free Iraq is essential for the security of this country."

One of the sharpest exchanges focused on Kerry`s vote to give Bush authorization to go to war in October 2000, and his subsequent criticism of the results. Kerry accused Bush of misleading the country by cutting short diplomatic efforts to prevent war and overstating the threat that Hussein presented.

Bush replied, "I think what is misleading is to say you can lead and succeed in Iraq if you keep changing your positions on this war. And he has. As the politics change, his positions change. And that`s not how a commander in chief acts."

Throughout the night, Bush played back Kerry`s various statements on Iraq. The senator responded in one instance by using the words of Bush`s father, President George H.W. Bush. He noted the elder Bush wrote in his memoirs that he did not occupy Iraq during the Persian Gulf War because "there was no viable exit strategy. That`s exactly where we find ourselves today."

Bush did not respond directly, but mentioned Kerry`s vote against an $87-billion appropriation to fund reconstruction and military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. "That`s not what commanders in chief do when you`re trying to lead troops," Bush said.

"I made a mistake in how I talk about the war," Kerry replied, referring to his statement earlier this year that he had voted for a Democratic version of the appropriations bill before he voted against the GOP alternative. "But the president made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse?"

Kerry occasionally veered off the debate`s topic, working in several references to domestic issues.

He accused Bush of delivering unneeded tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans rather than investing in domestic security. Twice he chided Bush for using Afghan warlords in the hunt for Bin Laden. "He outsourced that job too," Kerry said, referring to the export of U.S. manufacturing jobs.

At another point, when asked about Bush`s character, he accused the president of ignoring "the truth of the science of stem cell research" by limiting federal research dollars.

Bush brushed off the attack on his tax cuts by suggesting Kerry had failed to account for the spending he had promised. "Anyway, that`s for another debate," Bush said.

The character question from Lehrer produced the most civil exchange of the evening. Asked if there were any underlying flaws that would prevent Kerry from serving as commander in chief, Bush smiled and said, "Hoo, that`s a loaded question!"

He praised Kerry for his "service to our country" said he admired "the fact that he is a great dad." He also said he appreciated the fact Kerry`s two daughters had reached out to his twin daughters and "been so kind ... in ... what has been a pretty hard experience."

Kerry, thanked Bush for his comments and praised his wife, Laura, as "a terrific person and a great first lady."

The debate was the first of three scheduled between Bush and Kerry, with the next a week from today in St. Louis. Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, will debate next Tuesday night in Cleveland.

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Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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CRITIC`S NOTEBOOK
In a Rigid Setting, Two Projections of the Father Image
By Paul Brownfield
Times Staff Writer

October 1, 2004

Who`s your daddy?

This seemed to be the question before America`s TV viewers, an hour into the first presidential debate Thursday night, when the intensely visceral and fear-producing issues of Iraq and Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein seemed to leave a choice between two father figures.

Who`s the daddy, at a time when the electorate is having nightmares about unseen, vaguely understood enemies? Is it President Bush, with his look-straight-into-the-camera, folksy masculinity, the daddy who pats you on the head, gives you a slogan that isn`t terribly helpful and keeps saying, though you`re not sure why, that life is "hard work"?

"I just know how this world works!" Bush said at one point, like a TV dad cutting off discussion at a dinner table.

Or is it the patrician-looking Kerry, who during this campaign has suffered from an innate reserve and the withering spin of the Bush people that he`s a waffler? Standing next to, or at least 10 feet from, Bush, he actually came across on TV as with-it, engaged and informed — a father who might actually know best.

"I don`t know if he sees what`s really happening there," Kerry said of Bush`s take on Iraq, on a night when anyone watching the evening news had seen tough footage of wounded and dead Iraqi children, victims of yet another car bombing in Baghdad.

Pundits had said all along that the debate could be a context in which Kerry would enjoy an advantage, though not a turn-the-campaign-around edge. When moderator Jim Lehrer announced the candidates, Bush came striding out first, easily beating Kerry to center stage.

On the "CBS Evening News," anchor Dan Rather referred to the debate as a "televised happening." He was referring to the imposed rigidities (no direct questions from the candidates, no pie charts, no sighing or hint of a human emotion) that threatened to turn the debate into two respective stump speeches delivered 10 feet apart.

But there were fireworks almost immediately, because the war in Iraq is an emotional, in-the-moment issue on which Kerry and Bush differ deeply. If it was shocking to see their differences on display so starkly, this has much to do with the shoddy way TV news has been covering the campaign, funneling every day into a headache-producing prism of 10-second sound bites, illuminated by nothing deeper than spin.

Bush came across as suddenly less qualified to be Daddy than he has been.

Bush did look into the camera as much as he did at moderator Jim Lehrer, which reinforced his personableness in contrast to Kerry`s more studied manner.

But words continually fail Bush. Mostly because he doesn`t try very many. With the TV cameras trained on the stripped-down debate stage, his bare-bones communication style sometimes played as monotonous rather than resolute. He repeatedly said the situation in Iraq was "hard work." He said it 10 times, until it no longer seemed like anything so much as a network time-killer. He said this: "I wake up every day thinking about how best to protect us. There`s a lot of people working hard."

Meanwhile, the candidates had signed an agreement requesting that TV cameras not show one while the other was speaking.

But the networks immediately violated this, posing the two in split screen. When Kerry spoke, Bush appeared tight-mouthed and frustrated that he was being contradicted. Kerry looked in control, taking notes, nodding and listening.

The two campaigns have crystallized their rhetoric about character: Inconsistency versus rigidity.

But on TV, rigidity made for a more revealing visual.

For 90 minutes, at least, it seemed Kerry had found a small-screen context in which he can get the better of Bush.

Even on the subject of actual fatherhood.

When Kerry said he had chuckled at some of the Bush daughters` "comments," Bush replied, "I`m trying to put a leash on them." Kerry winked and said, "Well, I don`t know. I`ve learned not to do that, Mr. President."




Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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NEWS ANALYSIS
Finally Face to Face, Candidates Deepen Their Division on Iraq
Kerry accuses Bush of a ‘a colossal error’ that spared Bin Laden
By Ronald Brownstein , Times Staff Writer

October 1, 2004

CORAL GABLES, Fla. — President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry increased the odds that the voters` verdict on the war in Iraq will decide the November election, as they deepened their disagreement over the conflict during a sharp but civil debate Thursday night.

Overall, the two men raised few new arguments. But they offered starkly different visions of how America should pursue its goals in the world, how a president should lead and, most emphatically, whether the ongoing war in Iraq had enhanced or diminished American security.

Continuing the tougher tone that he had unveiled in recent weeks, Kerry described the war as a "colossal error of judgment" that had weakened American security by diverting attention and resources from the pursuit of the Al Qaeda terrorist network.

"Saddam Hussein didn`t attack us," Kerry declared in one of his most forceful moments. "Osama bin Laden attacked us."

Bush insistently declared that the war would reduce the long-term threat of terrorism by encouraging the spread of democracy in the Middle East and allowing the United States to take the offensive against terrorists.

But the president sometimes seemed exasperated and even angry as Kerry pressed his case against him; at one point, Bush even apparently sighed in frustration, a distant echo of the behavior that hurt Vice President Al Gore in his first debate against Bush in 2000.

The debate came with Bush holding a lead in recent national surveys, but also facing resurfacing doubts about the war amid rising violence in Iraq. Several initial surveys Thursday found that most voters thought Kerry won the encounter. But the debate`s full political effect probably won`t be apparent for several days as the arguments between the contenders reverberate through their campaign appearances.

"I think Kerry got in the game," said Norman Ornstein, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. "You could imagine him as president ... if you decide that the other guy doesn`t deserve four more years."Debates have had a mixed effect on presidential races. In 1960, 1980 and 2000, they proved a turning point. In each of those contests, the candidate trailing in the last Gallup Poll before the first debate —John F. Kennedy in 1960, Ronald Reagan in 1980 and Bush in 2000 — pulled ahead after the debate and won in November. But in 1984, 1988, 1992 and 1996, debates didn`t change the race`s trajectory.

Small rhetorical gestures offered large clues to the campaigns` contrasting strategies. Bush, who depends heavily on the votes of the most religiously observant Americans, several times referred to prayer. Kerry, returning to the emphasis of his convention in July, repeatedly referred to his experience in combat and touted his support from generals and other retired military officers.

Bush was often at his best in the encounter when he was most visionary. Many of his most effective moments came when he echoed his argument from his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention last month and portrayed the war in Iraq as a crucial first step in a generation-long effort to reduce the threat of terrorism by encouraging the spread of democracy in the Middle East.

"We have a duty to defeat this enemy," Bush said. "The best way to defeat them is to never waver, to be strong, to use every asset at our disposal, to constantly stay on the offensive and, at the same time, spread liberty."

But Bush may have been weakest in offering specifics on how he would improve the situation in Iraq in the near-term. On that question, he offered mostly resolve.

Kerry presented an inverse picture: He was stronger on the details than the big picture. He said little about his long-term vision of how to reduce the threat of terrorism, other than to broadly pledge to work more closely with allies and to try to build closer ties with moderate Muslims around the world.

But he showed his prosecutor`s experience by relentlessly driving his case that Bush had bungled the management of the war by failing to provide enough time for diplomacy before invading, failing to provide troops with all the equipment they needed, and failing to plan adequately for the aftermath. "He rushed the war in Iraq without a plan to win the peace," Kerry said. "Now that is not the judgment that a president of the United States ought to make."

Apart from a moment when the two praised each other`s family, the 90 minutes offered a parade of differences large and small.

Kerry insisted that the best way for America to pursue its aims and enhance its security was to build strong alliances. "I believe America is safest and strongest when we are leading the world and we are leading strong alliances," he declared in his first answer.

Bush also pledged to work with other nations, but he pointedly reaffirmed his reluctance to bend toward other nations when he believes he is acting in America`s interest. "Trying to be popular, kind of, in the global sense, if it`s not in our best interest, makes no sense," he said. "I`m interested in working with other nations and do a lot of it. But I`m not going to make decisions that I think are wrong for America."On North Korea, Bush defended his stance of engaging with the reclusive government only through multilateral talks, whereas Kerry insisted on bilateral negotiations.

The differences were just as stark on an issue that had rarely received as much attention in a debate: how a president leads. Bush was unwavering in his insistence that a president should be ... unwavering.

Repeatedly, Bush declared that Kerry had sent "mixed signals" by shifting his positions on Iraq. Over and again, Bush presented resolve and determination as the key to success against the long-term threat of terrorism.

"As the politics change, his positions change, and that`s not how a commander in chief acts," Bush said.

Kerry repeatedly argued that resolve was not enough. "I believe in being strong and resolute and determined," he said. "But we also have to be smart." Later he said it was critical that a president be able to learn and change from experience.

With those arguments, each man targeted a principal vulnerability of the other. In surveys, many voters have expressed concerns that Kerry lacks core convictions and changes positions too frequently; meanwhile, voters have been more likely to describe Bush as stubborn or reckless.

In an ABC News survey of 531 debate viewers Thursday night, 45% thought Kerry had won the encounter, 36% picked Bush, and 17% called it a tie. That verdict, however, did not change the immediate preferences in the race itself. Bush still held a 4-percentage point lead, just as he did in the previous ABC poll.

For those seeking to instantly assess the debate`s political effect, the first 2000 debate between Bush and Gore offers a cautionary example. Though many observers thought Gore won more of the exchanges in that debate, the Bush campaign clearly won the debate`s aftermath by accusing the vice president of misrepresenting the facts in several of his assertions.

That charge, combined with questions about whether Gore showed disrespect for Bush by sighing loudly during some of his answers, helped Bush regain the lead in the race by reopening doubts for many voters about Gore`s veracity and personality.

Mike McCurry, a senior advisor to Kerry, said the campaign expected Bush to repeat the effort this time by seizing on aspects of the debate to accuse the Democrat of flip-flopping. "We are conscious of that and we will have a 48-hour plan," he said.

Bush and his senior aides seemed especially exercised about two comments from Kerry. Bush reacted sharply when Kerry suggested that the war in Iraq had helped Osama bin Laden recruit terrorists.

"Osama bin Laden isn`t going to determine how we defend ourselves," Bush insisted.

After the debate, Karl Rove, Bush`s senior political advisor, said the president was likely to return to that point in the days ahead. "The idea that by attacking the terrorists we`re doing them a favor ... that`s a pre-9/11 mind-set of the worst sort," Rove said.

Bush also recoiled when Kerry declared that preemptive military action must pass "the global test" of acceptance around the world. That seemed likely to inspire another round of charges from the GOP that Kerry would mortgage American security to foreign nations.

On the other side, Kerry aides seemed most eager to pounce on something Bush didn`t say. "He didn`t offer any new plan for Iraq," said one top Kerry aide, predicting that that would become a major theme for the challenger in the days ahead.





Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Does God Hate Florida?
After four brutal hurricanes, why aren`t Bush evangelicals talking about the Almighty`s wrath?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, October 1, 2004

You know it`s true.

You know if, say, San Francisco had just been blasted by not two, not three, but fully four lethal trailer-park-eating earthquakes, why, the Right-wing Bible set would be yelping with barely disguised joy.

Of course they would. They`d be jumping up and down and saying I told you so and pointing to Volume 18 of "Left Behind" and claiming that this was, of course, God`s wrath upon the sinners and the gays and the heathens and sodomites and the tofu eaters and the Toyota Priuses and the yoga studios and the anal sex and the incense burners and the Zen meditation centers.

Ha ha snicker, they`d say. Serves you right, they`d sneer. Shoulda voted Republican, they`d add. And then they`d go make lime Jell-O and watch Raymond.

But of course, right now it`s about 68 crisp n` flawless pre-fall degrees here in God`s Fetish Dungeon, all gorgeous and progressive and non-ravaged, whereas along the Gulf Coast they just finished battening down the hatches and sandbagging the one millionth salmon-colored strip mall and anchoring Jeb Bush`s ego in a vat of swamp water and evacuating nearly one million stunned and exhausted citizens for the fourth time, as hurricane Jeanne hammered down and shredded the state. Ironic, if it weren`t so sad.

Which sort of makes you think, if I were a God-fearing right-wing BushCo fundamentalist and not, say, a neo-pagan Zen atheist Buddhist Taoist Zoroastrian Orgasmican who uses "Passion of the Christ" DVDs as Astroglide coasters, I might offer up the notion that maybe, just maybe Bush`s neoconservative God is more than a mite peeved with the Neon Stucco Retirement State. You think?

Maybe He`s more than a little perturbed at the current situation, and maybe I`d suggest that some sort of karmic retribution was at hand, some sort of divinely important message was trying to come through loud and clear, and the message was that we`d better not have a repeat of 2000`s bogus election, or else.

Is this possible? Shouldn`t the fundamentalist evangelicals be all over this angry God-spittin` storm thing like the FCC on Janet Jackson?

Because as God surely knows, BushCo`s swiping of the White House quickly led to an unprecedented and incredibly violent mauling of the planet, the rolling back of 30 years of environmental protections and the rejection of global warming as a major life-threatening issue, as the Almighty could only sit there, stunned and appalled as the rest of us, as BushCo turned America into this heartless warmongering wildly disrespected global thug who seems to care about as much for Mother Nature as Dick Cheney cares for butterfly sanctuaries.

Funny, then, how there`s been nary a peep about Florida`s storm-tossed woes from Bush`s born-again Bible set. Nary a mention of how these deadly, brutal storms might be some sort of sign, a cosmic signal that All is Not Well. All we get is poor, homoerotically desperate Jimmy Swaggart saying he`d kill any gay man who looked at him romantically. Which is just so cute, in a violently sickening sort of way. I mean, dream on, Jimmy.

Clearly, it would appear that you can only claim God`s wrath is at hand when the people being wrathed upon do not, naturally, vote Republican. After all, as any fundamentalist Republican will tell you, God only smites those places that really deserve it (sorry, Haiti), and of course in America to deserve it means you have to have lots of environmental activism and vegetarian restaurants and recycling programs and gay pride street fairs and you have to regularly do things with silicon sex toys that would make Lynne Cheney scream and cry and then shudder with secret delight.

(Ironically, to most of us, these are the very things that make S.F. blessed and divine and make us God`s favoritest vibrating bath toy in the first place. But that`s another column.)

So then, the vicious hurricanes can`t possibly be God`s wrath, because Florida is Jeb Bush Country and everyone knows all Bushes are blessed WASP Mafioso with first-class seats on the glory train to salvation, and therefore the storms can only be explained by that other barely tolerable thing the Bible set really hates trying to comprehend: science.

OK then. So, if I were a scientist, maybe I`d be pointing out how four horrific hurricanes in a row, when combined with the various environmental atrocities slapping the planet at an unprecedented rate along with the melting of the polar ice shelves, might just be some sort of prime indicator, some sort of potent and irrefutable sign that maybe, just maybe, global climate change should be a major concern of any government administration, and not, as BushCo views it, as an obnoxious afterthought to be ignored and openly blocked and concerned about only if it somehow threatens your Lockheed Martin profits.

But wait. That can`t be right. It can`t be science because the storms can`t be in any way related to climate change or global warming, because as Bush policy has shown, nature is a merely a huge, exploitable sandbox for the rich and global warming is a big fat liberal myth and the Kyoto Treaty is a pathetic joke despite all those reams of international, world-class scientific evidence to the contrary. So, you know, screw science.

So let`s see: Not God`s wrath. Not Mother Nature`s fury or scientific global-warming memento. Not karmic retribution. Not the planet recoiling in pain. So then, where does that leave us?

Maybe there is no real explanation. Maybe the storms, like quantum physics or Tom DeLay`s nasty hairpiece or Muenster cheese, they just are.

Or maybe they`re just a precursor, a warm-up, God practicing His scales and tuning His big viola for the upcoming Cataclysm Symphony Opus No. 1, coming all too soon to a tortured landscape near you. Could be, could be.

Or maybe it will only all make sense to the fundamentalist Right when California finally gets smacked by the long-predicted Big One, the major Earth-shattering west-coast quake that will swallow our big liberal state whole and prove the existence of an angry white NASCAR-loving God and set the wacky apocalypse in motion and Jimmy Swaggart will finally get laid and everyone will get a free Hummer just for playing.

Or maybe it`s none of those things. Maybe we just need to understand those horrific hurricanes for what they really are: an honest mistake. It`s simple, really: God must have the map upside down.

Silly, silly God.
# Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.
# Mark`s column archives are here

Mark Morford`s Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does. Subscribe to this column at sfgate.com/newsletters.


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/200…
©2004 SF Gate

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Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 221 Bush 276
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http://www.electoral-vote.com/

Rate the Debate - Who Won?
Panel 1 Panel 2 Visitors
Bush 41 % 42 % 37 %
Kerry 51 % 52 % 59 %
Neither 8 % 6 % 4 %
Members of Panel 1 were asked their presidential ballot preference prior to the debate and were asked their presidential ballot preference and to rate the debate immediately following the debate. Members of Panel 2 were asked their presidential ballot preference and to rate the debate immediately following the debate. They will be asked these same questions in 24 hours. A third panel (Panel 3) was asked their presidential ballot preference prior to the debate and will be asked their presidential ballot preference and to rate the debate in 24 hours. Visitors are visitors to this site.

http://www.americanresearchgroup.com/

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http://www.pollingreport.com/

News from the Votemaster

The first polls are already in on the debate. The American Research Group ran three quickie polls on the first debate and in all three sample groups, Kerry won, by margins of 10%, 10%. and 18%, respectively. But I wouldn`t take these instant impressions too seriously. Did you notice that BOTH candidates got the colors wrong though? Kerry had a red tie on and Bush had a blue tie on.

The AP accidentally released an article about the debate BEFORE the debate and written in the past tense, as though it had already occurred. After all, it saves time to report the news before it happens. The model here is the New York Post running a story on Kerry`s selection of Dick Gephardt as vice president before the actual announcement to scoop the competition.

In regular polling, we have contradictory polls in some states. Rasmussen has the candidates tied in Michigan, but the Detroit Free Press has Kerry still ahead. Similarly Rasmussen has Kerry ahead in Ohio while Strategic Vision (R) has Bush ahead. Again, we use the most recent poll on the map although software is being developed now to average the past three polls.

I got a report of push polling in Maryland ("Are you going to vote for John Kerry even though he will raise your taxes?"). I don`t know which firm it was though. I also heard that at a high school in New Mexico, about 1/3 of the students have been polled. They are having loads of fun concocting answers. Doesn`t give one much faith in the polls, unfortunately.

President Eisenhower`s son, John, a lifelong Republican, has switched his party registration to independent and is going to vote for John Kerry. This makes the second child of a Republican president who is jumping ship (Ron Reagan spoke at the DNC). Eisenhower does not feel he is leaving the party; he feels the party has abandoned the principles his father stood for, including balanced budgets at home and working with our allies abroad. To read his story, entitled "Why I will will Vote for John Kerry for President," click here. So far Chelsea Clinton, Amy Carter, and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg have not announced for Bush. But they still have a month if they want to.
Projected Senate: 48 Democrats, 51 Republicans, 1 independent To bookmark this page, type CTRL-D (Apple-D on Macintoshes). If you are visiting for the first time, welcome. This site has far more about the election than just the map. See the Welcome page for more details.

-- The votemaster

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Waiting to bomb Iran
Aluf Benn

Haaretz

Tishrei 16, 5765

While the debate in Israel was focused on the disengagement plan, an entirely different discussion was developing in the international media. They have become convinced in recent weeks that Israel is planning an aerial attack on Iran`s nuclear installations, should it conclude that Iran is proceeding apace toward the development of an atomic bomb, and the diplomatic effort to stop it has failed.

This discussion is not taking place on remote Internet sites, but in learned analyses by the most important newspapers in the world, which are describing the anticipated Israeli bombing as a political fact that is influencing decision makers in Washington and Europe. Everyone knows that Israel considers the Iranian bomb the most serious threat to its existence and its regional status.

The newspaper articles recall the destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reaction in 1981 as an example of what awaits the Iranians. They analyze the ability of the Israel Air Force to carry out such an operation, and warn that it will lead to terrible repercussions in the Middle East.

There is no question that the bombing of Iran will be much more complicated than the attack on the Iraqi reactor. The flight range is greater, the Iranian installations are scattered and protected, and Iran is capable of retaliating. But the interesting difference between Iraq and Iran is that at the time, the Iraqi operation was planned in secret and was carried out by surprise, and this time the ostensible preparations are being conducted almost in the open.

The belief that Israel`s patience is running out have increased since July, when the British Sunday Times reported - based on Israeli sources - on the advanced preparations for bombing the reactor in Bushehr. The article, which was widely quoted all over the world and aroused Iranian counter-threats, seems to be Israeli psychological warfare.

The British papers are a well-known target of such deliberate leaks, but no investigation was begun in Israel about presumed revelations of operational secrets, and at the time, Iran seemed to be evading diplomatic pressure. Afterward came the tests of the Israel Arrow missile and the Iranian Shihab, and more belligerent declarations from Teheran, and additional articles about the anticipated operation.

Judging by an analysis of the articles, Israel has decided to sharpen the sense of urgency in the international community, in order to increase diplomatic pressure on Teheran to cease its enrichment of uranium. This goal has been achieved, at least in the declarations being heard from the United States and Europe, and in the decisions of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

It is possible that factors in the West, doubtful about the success of the diplomatic effort, prefer to have Israel act in their place. There are signs of that: Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, who met with many of his colleagues at the UN General Assembly, heard a great deal of understanding from them about the Iranian danger, and serious doubts as to the chances of diplomacy. Nobody asked Israel to refrain from a belligerent act.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says that Israel is not planning a military operation in Iran, and speaks of developing improved means of defense and deterrence. But the foreign media were more interested in the threats against the Iranians by senior members of the Israel Defense Forces. "We will not rely only on others" (Chief of Staff Moshe Ya`alon), "We will rely on others until we have to rely on ourselves" (his deputy, Dan Halutz), "The operational capability of the air force has increased significantly since the bombing of the Iraqi reactor" (Commander of the Israel Air Force, Eliezer Shkedi).

Sharon is disturbed by the growing acceptance, particularly in Europe, of Iran`s impending membership in the nuclear club. Meanwhile he is carefully walking on the edge, and is exploiting his tough-guy image to arouse international attention. But nor should we forget that the present political-military leadership - Sharon, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, Ya`alon, Halutz - has few inhibitions about exercising military might. Operations that were once considered taboo, such as attacks on Damascus and assassinations of Hamas leaders, now seem self evident.

A possible attack on Iran will be much more complex and risky, and therefore we would do well not to ignore the threats, and to conduct a public debate on the question of whether this course of action is desirable for Israel.

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Der Optimismus der Ungewißheit
von Howard Zinn
ZNet Kommentar 30.09.2004
In dieser furchtbaren Welt, in welcher die Anstrengungen von Menschen oft geringfügig erscheinen, wenn man sieht, was von jenen welche Macht haben getan wird, wie kann ich weitermachen und glücklich wirken?

Ich bin mir nicht vollkommen sicher, daß die Welt besser werden wird, aber durchaus, daß wir nicht aufgeben sollten bevor alle Karten gespielt worden sind.

Die Metapher ist bewußt gewählt; das Leben ist ein Spiel. Nicht zu spielen hieße gleich auf jede Chance zu gewinnen zu verzichten. Zu spielen, zu handeln, schafft zumindest die Möglichkeit die Welt zu verändern.

Es gibt eine Tendenz zu denken, daß die Welt in jener Art wie wir sie im Augenblick sehen auch so bleiben wird. Wir vergessen wie oft wir durch das plötzliche Einstürzen von Institutionen überrascht worden sind, durch außergewähnliche Veränderungen in den Gedanken der Menschen, durch unerwartete Ausbrüche der Rebellion gegen Tyranneien, durch den raschen Zusammenbruch von Machtsystemen welche bis Tags zuvor unbesiegbar schienen.

Was von der Geschichte der letzten hundert Jahren hervorsticht ist ihre vollkommene Unvorhersehbarkeit. Eine Revolution zum Sturze des Zaren von Rußland, in diesem trägestem semi-feudalem Imperium, welche nicht nur die fortgeschrittensten imperialen Mächte geschreckt hat, sondern selbst Lenin überraschte und ihn in den nächsten Zug nach Petrograd springen ließ.

Wer hätte die bizarren Wendungen des Zweiten Weltkrieges vorhergesehen? - den Nazi-Sowjet Pakt (diese peinlichen Photos von Ribbentrop und Molotov beim Händeschütteln), und die deutsche Armee wie sie über Rußland rollt, anscheinend unbesiegbar, kolossale Opferzahlen hinter sich lassend, wie sie vor den Toren Leningrads und vor Moskau zurückgewiesen wird, und in den Straßen von Stalingrad geschlagen, gefolgt vom Sieg über die deutsche Armee, und Hitler, wie er sich in seinem Berliner Bunker versteckt und darauf wartet zu sterben.

Und dann in der Nachkriegswelt, welche eine Form annimmt, welche niemand hätte ahnen können: die kommunistische Revolution in China, die laute und gewaltvolle Kulturrevolution, und dann die nächste Wendung, wie das postmaoistische China seine kompromißlosesten Ideen und Institutionen begräbt, Annäherungsversuche an den Westen macht, es den kapitalistischen Unternehmungen recht machen will, und jeden sprachlos macht.

Niemand hat die Aufsplitterung der alten westlichen Imperien für so knapp nach dem Krieg vorhergesehen, oder die seltsame Vielzahl an Gesellschaften welche in den damit unabhängig werdenden Nationen entstanden, vom sanften Dorfsozialismus in Nyereres Tansania bis zum Wahnsinn in Idi Amins Uganda. Spanien wurde bestaunt. Ich erinnere mich noch, wie ein Veteran der Abraham Lincoln Brigade mir sagte, daß er sich nicht vorstellen könne, daß der Faschismus in Spanien ohne einen weiteren blutigen Krieg gestürzt werden könne.

Aber nachdem Franco verschwunden war entwickelte sich eine parlamentarische Demokratie, in welcher SozalistInnen, KommunistInnen, AnarchistInnen, und jeder, leben konnte.

Das Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges hinterließ zwei Supermächte mit ihren Einflußsphären und den von ihnen kontrollieren Gebieten, um militärische und politische Macht wetteiferend. Und doch konnten sie auch jene Gebiete der Erde welche als ihre Einflußsphären betrachtet worden sind nicht kontrollieren.

Das Versagen der Sowjetunion sich in Afghanistan durchzusetzen, und ihre Entscheidung sich nach fast einem Jahrzehnt ekelhafter Intervention zurückzuziehen, war der überzeugendste Beweis, daß selbst der Besitz von thermonuklearen Waffen nicht die Herrschaft über eine entschlossene Bevölkerung garantieren kann.

Die Vereinigten Staaten wurden von der selben Realität konfrontiert. Sie führten einen Krieg unter Einsatz fast aller Mittel in Indochina, bombardierten eine kleine Halbinsel brutaler als es die Weltgeschichte je gesehen hatte, und waren doch gezwungen sich zurückzuziehen. Die Schlagzeilen zeigen uns jeden Tag neue Fälle in welchen die scheinbar Mächtigen vor den scheinbar Machtlosen weichen müssen, wie in Brasilien, wo eine Graswurzelbewegung von ArbeiterInnen und Armen einen neuen Präsidenten gewählt hat welcher verspricht die zerstörerische Macht der Konzerne zu bekämpfen.

Wenn wir uns diesen Katalog von riesigen Überraschungen ansehen wird es klar, daß der Kampf für Gerechtigkeit niemals aufgegeben werden darf, und sicher nicht wegen der anscheinend überwältigenden Macht jener welche die Waffen und das Geld haben, und welche in ihrer Entschlossenheit jene zu behalten unbesiegbar scheinen.

Diese scheinbare Macht hat sich, immer und immer wieder, als verletzlich herausgestellt, verletzbar durch menschliche Qualitäten welche weniger meßbar sind als Bomben und Dollars: moralischer Wille, Entschlossenheit, Einigkeit, Organisierung, Opferbereitschaft, Humor, Einfallsreichtum, Courage, Gedult - ob von Schwarzen in Alabama und Südafrika, BäuerInnen in El Salvador, Nicaragua und Vietnam, oder ArbeiterInnen und Intellektuellen in Polen, Ungarn und der Sowjetunion selbst. Keine kalte Berechnung der Balance der Macht sollte Menschen abschrecken können welche überzeigt sind, daß sie für eine gerechte Sache einstehen.

Ich habe mich sehr bemüht den Pessimismus meiner Freunde über die Welt zu teilen (sind es nur meine Freunde?), aber ich treffe immer wieder auf Menschen welche mir Hoffnung geben, trotz all der Beweise was für schreckliche Dinge überall passieren. Besonders junge Menschen, von welchen die Zukunft abhängt.

Woauchimmer ich hingehe, finde ich solche Menschen. Und über die paar AktivistInnen hinaus, scheint es noch hunderte, tausende und mehr zu geben welche für unorthodoxe Ideen offen sind. Aber sie wissen oft nichts voneinander, und während sie standhaft bleiben, tun sie das mit der Gedult eines Sisyphus welcher für alle Zeiten den Stein auf den Berg hinaufrollt.

Ich versuche jeder Gruppe zu sagen, daß sie nicht alleine ist, und daß gerade jene Menschen welche unglücklich über das Fehlen einer nationalen Bewegung sind der Beweis für das Potential einer solchen Bewegung sind.

Revolutionäre Veränderung kommt nicht durch einen kataklysmischen Moment (man hüte sich vor solchen Momenten!), sondern durch eine endlose Folge von Überraschungen, einer zick-zack Bewegung zu einer besseren Gesellschaft hin. Wir müssen keine großartigen, heroischen Aktionen durchführen um am Prozeß der Veränderung teilzuhaben. Kleine Handlungen können die Welt verändern, wenn Millionen sie machen.

Selbst wenn wir nicht �gewinnen� ist es schön und erfüllend mit anderen guten Menschen dabei involviert gewesen zu sein, etwas richtiges zu machen. Wir brauchen Hoffnung.

Ein Optimist ist nicht notwendigerweise ein Mensch der in unseren dunklen Zeiten heiter pfeift. In schlechten Zeiten hoffnungsvoll zu sein ist nicht nur dumme Romantik. Es basiert auf der Tatsache, daß die Geschichte der Menschheit nicht nur eine Geschichte der Grausamkeit, sondern auch eine des Mitgefühls, der Opfer, der Corage und der Liebenswürdigkeit ist. Das wofür wir uns entscheiden, in dieser komplexen Geschichte hervorheben zu wollen, wird unsere Leben bestimmen. Wenn wir nur das schlimmste sehen, zerstört es unsere Fähigkeit etwas zu tun.

Wenn wir uns an die Zeiten und Orte erinnern - und es gibt so viele - wann und wo Menschen sich großartig verhalten haben, gibt uns das die Energie zu handeln und zumindest die Möglichkeit diesen wirbelnden Kreisel Welt in eine andere Richtung zu schicken. Und wenn wir handeln, egal auf welche kleine Weise, müssen wir nicht auf irgendeine großartige utopische Zukunft warten. Die Zukunft ist eine unendliche Folge von Augenblicken, und jetzt so zu leben wie wir glauben, daß menschliche Wesen leben sollten, trotz alldem was um uns herum so schlecht ist, ist schon für sich ein wunderbarer Sieg.

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8.15am
First blood to Kerry in TV debate

Julian Borger in Miami
Friday October 1, 2004

The Guardian
John Kerry regained the initiative in the US presidential race last night with a forceful performance in his first debate with George Bush, occasionally leaving the president scowling and at a loss for words.

Instant-response polls by three major television networks all showed that a large majority of their viewers thought the challenger had won the 90-minute verbal contest at the University of Miami - the first of three debates in the last month of the campaign.

Perhaps even more seriously for President Bush, the networks ignored broadcasting guidelines agreed beforehand and showed both candidates at the same time. On several occasions, Mr Bush could be seen sour-faced and nervous in reaction to some of Mr Kerry`s remarks. Similar "cut-away" shots of Al Gore in the first presidential debate four years ago sapped his campaign and helped put Mr Bush into office.

After last night`s debate, senior Democrats made it clear that they would make maximum use of the pictures of a disgruntled President Bush.

"What you saw was a president who was annoyed, angry and aloof. He clearly didn`t want to be there, and he was slouched over his podium," said Terry McCauliffe, the Democratic party chairman, in an interview in "spin alley", a university basketball court where partisans of each side strove frenetically to influence media coverage of the event.

Mr McCauliffe`s Republican counterpart, Ed Gillespie, laughed off the description, saying: "I don`t know what Terry thought he saw, but the president was obviously very engaged and very clear about his policies."

However, several conservative commentators awarded the encounter to Senator Kerry on points. Morton Kondracke, an outspoken hawk on Fox News, said he did not think the president "had dominated" and argued "Kerry looked like a commander-in-chief".

The Democratic challenger lived up to his reputation for hitting his best form in the closing stages of an election race, answering his critics by delivering a string of short, declarative statements, with relatively few of the verbal meanderings for which he has become famous on the campaign trail.

He rejected Mr Bush`s central claim that Iraq was a central front in the "global war on terror". "Iraq was not even close to the centre of the war on terror before the president invaded it," he said

As he has done in the past, the president took Mr Kerry to task for inconsistency in criticising the Iraq invasion. He pointed out that the senator had voted to approve the use of force in 2002, and had declared Saddam`s Iraq to be a "grave threat".

"It was a threat. That`s not the issue. The issue is what you do about it," Senator Kerry replied. "The president said he was going to build a true coalition, exhaust the remedies of the UN and go to war as a last resort. Those words really have to mean something. And, unfortunately, he didn`t go to war as a last resort."

Throughout the debate, Mr Kerry pounded the president for the US military`s failure to capture Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora in Afghanistan, and for diverting resources from the battle against al-Qaida to Iraq.

In return, Mr Bush hit back repeatedly with the argument that Mr Kerry`s wavering position on the Iraq war and his description of the invasion as a "diversion" sent "mixed messages" to US troops and allies.

That was also the main message driven home by Bush aides afterwards in "spin alley". Karl Rove, the president`s chief political adviser, pointed to what he said was a new contradiction in the Kerry position.

"He said the war was a mistake, but he also said he was not asking American soldiers to die for a mistake," Mr Rove said. "Here`s a guy who voted for the war and then says it`s the wrong war at the wrong time. How can you go to the allies and ask them to go in there, if you`re saying it`s the `wrong war`?"

Mr Bush did appear to score some points, hitting back at Senator Kerry for a longwinded explanation of his position on "pre-emptive strikes" in which the Democrat said he would only consider such an action if it passed a "global test" and gathered international support.

The president said he did not know what "a global test" was but added: "My attitude is you take pre-emptive action in order to protect the American people, that you act in order to make this country secure."

But at other moments in the contest, Mr Bush seemed to lose track of his point between sentences and seemed to struggle to fill his allotted time for each response. Challenged by Mr Kerry for awarding tax cuts to wealthy Americans while the money could have been used to improve America`s counter-terrorist defences, the president reply was vague and hesitant.

"Of course, we`re doing everything we can to protect America. I wake up every day thinking about how best to protect America. That`s my job," Mr Bush said. "I work with Director Mueller of the FBI; comes in my office when I`m in Washington every morning, talking about how best to protect us. There`s a lot of really good people working hard to do so. It`s hard work."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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CHUMP CHECK 2004

DISASTER FOR BUSH: America Clearly Sees At Last That The Emperor Is Naked

Rambling, Incoherent... and It Was Bush Wiping The Sweat Away (and Drinking Heavily)

by Betsy R. Vasquez
http://www.moderateindependent.com/v2i19chumpcheck.htm


OCTOBER 1, 2004 – How bad was it for Bush?

So bad that FOX News` website didn`t even run any poll. So bad that all Matt Drudge could try and boast about on his website was that some Democrat called it a draw. So bad that even Bush`s people could only try to say, Yeah, he lost, but so what.

Other media outlets have been telling you this election would be close and that the debates might be even as well.

We hate to say it (not that much) but we told them so.

Bush got shellacked so badly it was astounding. He was like a wounded animal desperate for a place to hide but not able to find one.

For the past week the right-wing had been joking about how Kerry was a sweater, would sweat during the debates. But it was Bush who the camera saw wiping sweat from his brow. And drinking heavily from his water glass repeatedly. And fumbling through his papers, desperate to find something else to say besides the one or two talking point phrases he could manage to remember.

There was no escaping or hiding the fact that Bush was not even remotely deserving of being on that stage. He was rambling, incoherent. His answers wandered not only off topic but out of comprehensibility. In short, all of the things the President`s handlers have been adeptly hiding from the public - that the emperor truly is butt naked - got stuck right out there in the bright light.

And now America knows.

Even the Gallup poll, which took its usual heavily Republican biased sample, said Kerry blew Bush away.

These were supposed to, according to the non-Moderate Independent media, be Bush`s strong points: foreign policy and style. He got clobbered on both.

He gave answers that were flat out dishonest, huge gaffes that will certainly be brought back to haunt him.

"The A.Q. Khan network has been brought to justice," said President Bush, bragging about his national security record. (see: Washington Post transcript)

Excuse me? How about reality: US Supports A Q Khan Pardon

As this story reports, "The United States has supported Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf`s decision to pardon scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who confessed to leaking nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea."

This man, who gave nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran, and North Korea, Bush let him get pardoned - and then stood before America last night and said he, "has been brought to justice."

Bush even said at one point, "I didn`t need anyone to tell me to go to the UN."

President Bush`s fantasy world has crumbled right before the American public. Last election he came across as one of the average people. This time he showed himself to be one of the "special" children who ride the little yellow bus.

And President Bush had a Freudian moment from hell, when he was trying to counter Kerry`s charge that Bush confused Saddam with Osama and incorrectly attacked Iraq for 9/11 instead of just going after Osama.

Bush replied, "Of course we`re after Saddam Hussein -- I mean bin Laden."

President Bush didn`t even come prepared with an zingers, the usual Republican-fed crack lines.

No, on this night it was Senator Kerry who was calm, forceful, relaxed, in complete control - and personable and funny.

Kerry brought down the house when he talked about Tora Bora, saying the President even "outsourced" the job of going after Bin Laden when we had him cornered..

"Just yesterday," said Kerry, "General Eisenhower`s son, General John Eisenhower, endorsed me; General Admiral William Crown; General Tony McBeak, who ran the Air Force war so effectively for his father -- all believe I would make a stronger commander in chief. And they believe it because they know I would not take my eye off of the goal: Osama bin Laden.

"Unfortunately, he escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora. We had him surrounded. But we didn`t use American forces, the best trained in the world, to go kill him. The president relied on Afghan warlords and he outsourced that job too. That`s wrong."

What happened last night was exactly what we said would happen way back in May in articles like these (see: Look, We Told You Months Ago Kerry Would Win By A Landslide and John Kerry, Leader Or Loser?) The Bush people had been making the horrible mistake of running against John Kerry as if he were Al Gore or Mike Dukakis, whiny sort of weak liberal types who let themselves be bullied. We warned that Kerry wasn`t one to let himself get bullied, and that he had strength, charisma, and charm that the press was underestimating. No, he was not the smooth-talking southern charmer like Bush or Clinton, but he was the quiet, cool Northeastern-type charmer.

Last night, the Bushies went up there seemingly without a plan except to have Bush repeatedly - and we mean repeatedly and repeatedly and repeatedly, until he began to sound like Rain Man - say that Kerry, "changes positions." "He sends mixed messages." "He changes positions." "Mixed messages." "He changes positions." (We are not exaggerating here - I am accurately reflecting the number of times Bush mumbled these phrases in incoherent desperation.) "Mixed messages." "Mixed messages." "Mixed signals." "Mixed signals." "Mixed messages." "Mixed messages." "Waver."

And he only stopped babbling that mantra when he was saying not one, not two, but seven times, that Kerry had called Iraq, "...the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place," and not seven, not eight, but eleven times that it is, "hard work," fighting terrorist (in addition to pointing out twice people were, "working hard," at it.

So people are sitting there, seeing Kerry give actual, coherent answers, and Bush is lost, sweating, pounding water likes it`s JD, fumbling through papers desperately, sneering and looking miserable and angry, like he wants to leave, and giving answers that are incoherent rambles laced with flat out lies or misstatements.

Over and over, "This is the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place." "Hard work" "This is the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place." "Hard work" "Hard work" "This is the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place." "Hard work" "This is the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place." "Hard work" "This is the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place." "This is the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place." "Hard work" "This is the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place." "Hard work" "Hard work" "Working hard." "Hard work" "Hard work" "Working hard." "Hard work"

Only interrupted by, "Changes positions." "He sends mixed messages." "He changes positions." "Mixed messages." "He changes positions." "Mixed messages." "Mixed messages." "Mixed signals." "Mixed signals." "Mixed messages." "Mixed messages." "Waver."

Folks, this was only a ninety minute debate - and Bush only got half of it.

The worst part was seeing the look of the Bush spinners` faces afterwards. They were, at first, trying desperately to try and pretend their guy won, but couldn`t muster it. Then they tried to call it a draw. No luck. So in the end they simply admitted the obvious, that their guy lost - which, coming from the Bushies, means he really got clobbered. And, desperately, they tried to sell the spin that Kerry won but it won`t affect the voters or polls.

Like we`ve said, this is not an election, it is a chump check. One candidate is not even considerable. And America saw that clearly last night.

And they saw that the other candidate, Kerry, is no Al Gore. They had been told he was not warm, aloof, unable to connect, a flip-flopaholic. As our John Ashton said, all Kerry had to do was pass the, "I`m not a pushover" test. And there is no question he did so with flying colors.

He nailed points, like about how Bush let Osama get away at Tora Bora, that the President had been given a free ride on until that point. And he made important, clear distinctions about Iraq policy. The press said it wasn`t clear what the difference was between Kerry`s and Bush`s positions on Iraq. Kerry made it clear again and again: It`s the how, stupid.

He said clearly and concisely, "I`ve had one position, one consistent position, that Saddam Hussein was a threat. There was a right way to disarm him and a wrong way. And the president chose the wrong way."

And he was very specific in pointing out what the wrong way meant, and what the right way would be: to win peace, the people over there must trust we are not there to occupy their country and take their oil.

"I think a critical component of success in Iraq is being able to convince the Iraqis and the Arab world that the United States doesn`t have long-term designs on it. As I understand it, we`re building some 14 military bases there now, and some people say they`ve got a rather permanent concept to them. When you guard the oil ministry, but you don`t guard the nuclear facilities, the message to a lot of people is maybe, "Wow, maybe they`re interested in our oil."

When, "The only building that was guarded when the troops went into Baghdad was the oil ministry," we created an insurgency, said Kerry. When Bush, "didn`t guard the nuclear facilities... didn`t guard the foreign office, where you might have found information about weapons of mass destruction... didn`t guard the borders," Bush created the mess that exists there now; he wouldn`t have made such a mess and will correct mistakes like these now.

And, again clearly pointing out how he would fix the situation in Iraq, correcting the mistakes Bush has made, he said, "I will make a flat statement: The United States of America has no long-term designs on staying in Iraq."

It would be nice to show some area or moment where Bush shined and Kerry could use some improvement, but there was none. Tonight was ugly, a complete disaster for the Bushies - and so far, unlike with Gore, the non-M/I media hasn`t even been able to cover for Bush on this one.

No, tonight America saw that the emperor clearly has no clothes, and they all realized, as they gazed upon him standing naked before them for ninety painful, tortured minutes, that the naked truth is, the emperor really doesn`t have much there.

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Friday, Oct. 01, 2004
Reality Check: George Bush
By TONY KARON

Mehr von Time-Magazin, das eher bushfreundlich einzustufen ist.
http://www.time.com/time/election2004/article/0,18471,703908…

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Who won the first presidential debate?

Total Votes Cast: 29292
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The Claim:
The difficulties facing the U.S. in Iraq are a product of foreign terrorists showing up to fight the America there.

Reality Check:
The U.S. military on the ground says that the overwhelming majority of the insurgents fighting the U.S. in Iraq are Iraqis, not foreigners.

The Claim:
Saddam Hussein "had no intention of disarming and was systematically deceiving inspectors."

Reality Check:
The fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, and the U.S. inspection team has concluded that no such stockpiles existed when the war began, suggests that Saddam Hussein had, in fact, disarmed.

The Claim:
"The A.Q. Khan network has been brought to justice." (Khan is the Pakistani nuclear scientist who shipped nuclear weapons technology to North Korea, Iran, Libya and possibly other states.)

Reality Check:
Observers generally concur that there`s no way Khan could have acted without the authorization and support of Pakistan`s military leadership, yet the U.S. accepted an outcome in which Khan received a slap on the wrist and wasn`t even made available for questioning by U.S. officials, nor was any obvious attempt made to hold his superiors accountable — perhaps because of Pakistan`s crucial role in hunting al-Qaeda.

The Claim:
President Bush says he tried diplomacy in Iraq, and went to war only when it failed.

Reality Check:
Numerous accounts from within the U.S. and allied governments suggest the Bush Administration had decided to invade Iraq even before it went to the UN in the fall of 2002, and had gone back to the international body only under pressure from moderates in its own ranks and from Britain`s Prime Minister Tony Blair. The termination of the UN inspection process had nothing to do with its progress; it was based primarily on the window of opportunity for an invasion presented by the seasonal calendar.

The Claim:
Saddam Hussein would have grown stronger had the invasion not occurred.

Reality Check:
The decrepit state of the Iraqi military, its negligible pursuit of prohibited weapons, and the widespread internal rot of the regime that emerged after it collapsed showed that, in fact, containment had succeeded in weakening Saddam Hussein — although an enormous cost to Iraq`s civilian population.

The Claim:
Bilateral talks with North Korea would be a fatal mistake that would precipitate the collapse of the six-party talks on Pyongyang`s nuclear program.

Reality Check:
Some of the key parties to those talks, including China, Russia and South Korea, are in favor of the U.S. talking directly to North Korea in order to provide Pyongyang with security guarantees that would improve the prospects for success in the six-party process.

The Claim:
Osama bin Laden is isolated, and 75 percent of his people have been brought to justice.

Reality Check:
Bin Laden may have physically sequestered himself, but he remains politically considerably more popular than President Bush in most of the Arab world. And despite considerable success by U.S. intelligence and allies in Europe, the Middle East and Pakistan in rounding up Qaeda operatives, allied intelligence services concur that al-Qaeda`s ranks have swelled a lot faster than they`ve been denuded, particularly since the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The Claim:
A free Iraq will help secure Israel.

Reality Check:
The bulk of Iraq`s Arab majority, both Sunni and Shiite, hold the same hostile view of Israel as their brethren throughout the Arab world. While elements of one particular faction of the formerly exiled opposition (Ahmed Chalabi`s Iraqi National Congress) have suggested that ties with Israel could be established, there`s no evidence to support the claim that an Iraqi government reflective of the popular will would be any warmer toward Israel than any of its neighbors.

The Claim:
We have 100,000 Iraqi troops trained now.

Reality Check:
There are around 100,000 people currently recruited to various Iraqi security forces, although the number who`ve been fully trained is closer to 20,000. And the number on whom U.S. commanders believe they can currently rely in frontline combat situations against the insurgencies is thought to currently number no more than 5,000.

The Claim:
We have 30 nations in our coalition; our coalition is strong.

Reality Check:
There isn`t a single Arab country in the coalition, in contrast to the wide Arab participation in the Gulf War. And the U.S. and Britain between them provided more than 90 percent of the troops. Moreover, eight of the countries that initially joined the U.S. have since pulled out their soldiers, and more are expected to follow. Efforts to persuade Muslim countries to send troops have foundered.

Friday, Oct. 01, 2004
Reality Check: John Kerry
By TONY KARON



The Claim:
I have a plan to call an international conference with all the allies to discuss Iraq; something this administration has not yet done.

Reality Check:
The administration has, in fact, organized just such a conference, in consultation with Iraqi and other Arab allies. It will be held in Cairo late in November, with the foreign ministers of the G8 countries (i.e. including antiwar countries such as France, Germany and Russia), China, the countries of the Arab League, Turkey and Iran invited to attend. If it goes ahead, it will mark the most significant attempt to forge a political consensus on Iraq since the war.

The Claim:
Kerry claimed he has the "credibility" to bring allies back to the table on Iraq.

Reality Check:
It wasn`t the President`s credibility that kept most of the international community out of Iraq; it was, and is, the policies pursued by the U.S. in Iraq. But Kerry is broadly committed to the same policies. And if, as he says, other countries will participate because they have a stake in the outcome, the presumably they would do so no matter who was President of the United States.

The Claim:
I have a four-point plan to win in Iraq; he doesn`t.

Reality Check:
Kerry`s plan — convening a regional summit to win greater outside support, speeding up the training of Iraqi forces, focusing reconstruction aid on high-impact projects that create jobs and taking steps to ensure that elections are held next year — is pretty much a checklist of recent initiatives adopted by the Bush Administration.

The Claim:
To win in Iraq, you can`t back off in Fallujah and other places. You have to show the terrorists we`re serious.

Reality Check:
The decision to back off in Fallujah and other places was taken only when those U.S. military operations had so alienated uncommitted Iraqis that continuing the assault threatened to fatally undermine America`s prospects for achieving its objectives in Iraq. It was the Iraqi leaders cooperating with the U.S. that actually urged it to curb its actions in Fallujah and Najaf.

The Claim:
I will never take my eyes off the goal in the war on terror, which is Osama bin Laden.

Reality Check:
Although he remains extremely important as a symbol, the evolution of al-Qaeda since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 has considerably diminished bin Laden`s centrality to the operations of the increasingly diffuse networks he has inspired. The nature of the movement he has spawned demands a generational commitment to Jihad, and assumes the inevitability of his "martyrdom." The war will continue long after bin Laden is dust.

The Claim:
I have a plan for reaching out to the Muslim world and isolating the fundamentalists rather than allowing them to isolate us.

Reality Check:
Kerry has spoken of investing hundreds of millions of dollars in an aggressive PR strategy to change the Arab world`s perception of the U.S. and of Israel. In reality, as the 9/11 commission concluded, the depth of U.S. support for Israel (on which there is no difference between Bush and Kerry) will be the prism through which much of the Muslim world perceives U.S. policy — at least as long as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to rage. Again, it`s not a question of PR or image, but of policy, and Kerry has thus far shown no inclination to change Washington`s course in relation to Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Claim:
North Korea has made nuclear weapons. I`ll change that.

Reality Check:
If, in fact, North Korea is to be taken at its word that it has created nuclear weapons, the Senator offered no strategy that would result in Pyongyang disarming. If it`s already a reality, it`s quite likely an intractable one for the foreseeable future. After all, North Korea will have observed India and Pakistan and learned that once countries have nuclear capability, the international community has little option but to deal with them as nuclear powers.

The Claim:
Before the Bush Administration came to power, North Korea`s nuclear program was under scrutiny and its fuel rods were permanently visible to TV monitors. The agreement broke down because the Bush Administration refused to continue the Clinton policy, and as a result North Korea has developed nuclear weapons.

Reality Check:
While the Yongbon facility was under scrutiny and the fuel rods were sealed, North Korea has since admitted to running a secret parallel uranium-enrichment program to create weapons-grade fissile material in the years following the agreement reached with the Clinton administration, in violation of that agreement. The Claim:
The U.S. is suffering 90 percent of the casualties in Iraq.

Reality Check:
The U.S. may be recording upward of 90 percent of coalition casualties, but the overwhelming majority of the people killed in Iraq over the past 18 months have been Iraqis.

The Claim:
"We`ve got weapons of mass destruction coming across the border every day [in Iraq] and blowing people up."

Reality Check:
Suicide bombers are not weapons of mass destruction.


Copyright © 2004 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

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An appeal for America to be American

By Joan Chittister, OSB

09/30/04 "National Catholic Reporter" -- I have discovered that there is a lot you never find out, even about your own country, unless you go somewhere else.

For instance, Aug. 31 during the Republican National Convention, 203 Asian scholars from 13 countries published a public declaration, endorsed by 42 Asian organizations, appealing to U.S. voters "not to vote for a president who will turn Asia and the global society into America`s enemy." The statement, they tell us, was released simultaneously in both New York and Japan, a nation that understands first-hand what war can do to a people for generations.

"Another America is possible," the declaration insists.

Maybe you heard about it but I didn`t. Instead, they handed the document to me in Tokyo, amazed that I knew nothing about it at all.

Which, it seems to me, too, is strange, given the fact that the declaration purports to be the work of groups such as the International Movement for a Just World, the Women`s International League of Peace and Freedom, the Friends Service Council, Sociologists Without Borders, the Center for Research on the Environment, the Japan Lawyers International Solidarity group and the Korean Professors Union.

It is embarrassing to have to explain how it is that a "free press" is simply free to disregard so important a story. After all, John Kerry had said early in the campaign that world leaders preferred his presidency to four more years of another Bush regime.

The Bush camp challenged Kerry to prove the assertion, of course. They had no reason to believe that other world leaders weren`t fully committed to the policies of George Bush, they insisted, and, in fact, knew that it was just the opposite. It took months before the press even attempted to test the truth of the statement but when they did, lo and behold, they finally announced that "30 out of 35 major countries were solidly pro-Kerry, and only Poland of all the countries of Europe, was pro-Bush."

This statement of Asian concerns they never published at all.

In the light of these recent findings of world-wide defection from present U.S. policies, I read it carefully. After all, even if the American response to such an appeal is "Who cares?" -- which in John Wayne`s America, it may well be -- someone ought to at least acknowledge the concerns.

Most surprising of all, perhaps, is the fact that it is neither rant nor screed. It simply appeals to Americans to preserve the moral leadership that Americans have been seen before now to exert. The declaration makes four major points:

1. With the war in Iraq, America`s leadership and its influence have crumbled worldwide. The Iraqi war, they say, is "immoral, unlawful and unjustifiable."

The real news about such a position as this is not that others are saying what the circumstances clearly demonstrate but that Americans, who claim to be the ultimate defenders of the rule of law, don`t seem to mind the fact that they are in violation of international law. Nor does it bother them that the war was launched on insufficient and old -- very, very old --data. Nor does this church-going nation seem to think that the moral dictums they teach their children -- as in "thou shalt not lie," for instance, -- has anything whatsoever to do with politics and the standards we set for our politicians even when thousands and thousands of innocent people die because of it.

2. The unilateralism and militarism of the United States in this mis-directed war has evoked "broad and seething rejections from all corners of the globe." It is, they argue, only the first attempt of this new kind of United States to achieve US domination of the world.

Most ironic of all, they maintain, is the fact that because of US militarism, the world is much less safe than it ever was before the US launched its new doctrine of preemption. There is "unprecedented political unrest to the Middle East," they argue. And, most ironic of all, this campaign to "make the world safe for democracy" is now being used as an excuse for whatever political goals other authoritarian governments may have-as in the amendment of the Peace Constitution and the military rearmament of Japan.

They maintain that in its anger over 9/11, the United States has simply unleashed another arms race all around a world that is now using the fear of "terrorism" to justify it.

3. In a globalized and interdependent world, they insist, they have a right to make this appeal because this election is no longer a local affair.

What we do politically, as they see it, effects their countries as much -- sometimes more -- than it effects us. If the United States maintains its present policies, they mourn, "peace and democracy in Asia will be only a dream long gone" as other governments use the same tactics to eliminate human rights and suppress their own peoples.

"By the rest of the world, your country is looked at as an Empire," the document goes on, "looming large over the globe with pre-emptive strike doctrines and blind anti-terrorism policies depending heavily on macho military measures and ignorance of human rights ..."

It is easy to see how this letter could have been written to Julius Caesar, or Nikita Kruschev. But to George Bush II? To us? Have we really fallen this low? "The United States of American is looked at," the document says, "as the most dangerous and destructive nation in the world by civilized global societies."

4. Another America is possible, they remind us. The one that struggled against Hitler and Stalin, against Nazism and Communism, for the rights of all people everywhere.

It is an appeal for America to be American.

From where I stand, this is one of the saddest letters I have ever read in my lifetime. What else besides arrogance or ignorance can possibly account for the fact that as a nation these things don`t seem to bother us at all? Most of all, how is that such positions never see the light of day in the very democratic country that stands to lose the most by being unaware of such anger, such pain, such global despair?

You may want to read these documents: [urlThe Declaration of Asian Intellectuals,]http://nationalcatholicreporter.org/fwis/asiadeclaration.pdf[/url] a [urlpress release]http://nationalcatholicreporter.org/fwis/asiapressrelease.pdf[/url] explaining the declaration and an [urlopen letter to Americans.]http://nationalcatholicreporter.org/fwis/asiaopenletter.pdf[/url]

A Benedictine Sister of Erie, Sister Joan is a best-selling author and well-known international lecturer. She is founder and executive director of Benetvision: A Resource and Research Center for Contemporary Spirituality, and past president of the Conference of American Benedictine Prioresses and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. Sister Joan has been recognized by universities and national organizations for her work for justice, peace and equality for women in the Church and society. She is an active member of the International Peace Council.

Copyright © 2004 The National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company

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Oct 2, 2004

THE ROVING EYE
That split screen
By Pepe Escobar

"I just know how this world works." - George W Bush

For all the talk of history being made in Florida (not again!), the first of three debates between US presidential contenders George W Bush and John Kerry may go down in history as "The Attack of the Split Screen".

Some people may be naive enough to believe that a 90-minute reality show, a rhetorical Gladiator meets Miss Universe (Don`t move! Don`t sweat! Don`t stray away from script!), live from Florida, with Fox News controlling the video cameras, is remotely similar to participatory democracy. But as the rules of the game go, this is what is actually deciding the destiny of US democracy - and US projection of power over the rest of the world.

The original script as designed by the narrow, ideological right-wing cult that is the Bush administration machine should have been a Hail Mary to Bush`s supposed abilities of commander-in-chief in times of war. Bush consigliere James Baker even bent Democratic operative Vernon Jordan into accepting a 32-page "memorandum of understanding" worthy of the Surrealist Manifesto: no controversy, no confrontation, no real debating, just manufacturing of consent (sample: "The candidates may not ask each other direct questions, but may ask rhetorical questions").

According to another rule, "There will be no TV cutaways to any candidate who is not responding to a question while another candidate is answering a question." In true Monty Python fashion ("Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"), nobody was expecting the split screen. But doing without it would have made very boring TV. So Fox News, generating the images and cutaway shots, perhaps inadvertently delivered to the world The Smirking Robot: the president of the United States lip-smacking, smirking, blinking, eye-rolling, performing anguished jazz solos of facial contortions, and looking genuinely angry. His voice was petulant. He barely remembered his own record. He said absolutely nothing new. And he could barely disguise his rage: How could anyone even dream of questioning and holding him to account for his foreign-policy choices - in the "war on terra" and in Iraq? After all, "I just know how this world works."

Spinning to death
Whatever the merits of the "debate", the perception of a winner is shaped by the larger-than-life spinning machine. And the ghosts in the corporate machine, many of them reluctantly, are almost unanimous: even with the absence of any knockout punches, Kerry won - in style and in substance. Most instant polls confirm it. Fox itself had to admit that Kerry looked like a commander-in-chief (one possible reason for why he never looked at the camera is because he was genuinely amused looking at the smirking president).

Bush told Americans what political adviser Karl Rove and his minions think Americans want to hear. So the usual catalogue of inaccuracies, blunders and endless repetition - recited by a real tough guy - was on show: "The Taliban are no longer in power"; "of course we`re after Saddam Hussein, I mean bin Laden"; "our coalition is strong"; "we`re making progress"; "it`s hard work"; "you cannot change positions in this war on terra"; "the enemy attacked us" (referring to Saddam Hussein); "trying to be popular in a global sense makes no sense". And of course the key mantra of the night: Kerry`s "missed mexages" (sic).

Kerry, for many looking surprisingly presidential, was cool, calm, collected and - even more surprising - concise. He was visibly thinking, not only criticizing Bush`s blunders but detailing how to be "smarter on how to wage the war on terror", telling the real story on North Korea and making the crucial flat statement, on the record, that really distinguishes his policy from the Bush neo-conservatives: "We have no long-term designs on Iraq."

The Iraqi resistance decided to commemorate the debate with some real-life input, making it one of the bloodiest and most horrific days since the invasion with the death of 35 children by a car bomb. Apart from non-stop "free Iraq" rambling, Bush simply had no ammunition to contradict reality. Even the Special Operations Consulting Security Management Group, a private firm, has compiled more than 2,300 attacks in Iraq for the past 30 days, stressing that most of the country is in chaos - contrary to the version spun by Bush and dancing-bear-prime minister-without-a-parliament Iyad Allawi. US Secretary of State Colin Powell was forced to admit that the insurgency is booming. Now even the Green Zone - the supposedly impregnable American Mesopotamian fortress - is attacked on a daily basis. Kerry quoted the National Intelligence Council (NIC), in mid-September, saying that the resistance could lead Iraq to a "civil war on the short term" and on the absolute best scenario the country could reach something of a "difficult stability" in 18 months.

Pollster James Zogby says Kerry "is a candidate who gets about 45-47% of the vote just by showing up". His performance in the first debate puts him back in the race with a vengeance. Kerry is always comfortable when he`s the underdog. But what happened in Florida lowers the expectations for Bush tremendously - and the smirking president is at his best when expectations are very low.

Little did Fox News, or the other networks that used it, know the split screen is the metaphor of this election. The Bush you see on-screen - the "likable" tough guy - is not the Bush you see off-screen - a very different figure - as much as the Bush "war on terra" has nothing to do with the tragic realities on the ground. But there`s the rub: do Americans prefer to deal with a man who "knows how the world works" because God told him so, or do they want a thinking man? Do they want to live in reality, or seek refuge in a reality show?

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [e-mail] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

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A Failed "Transition": The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War

By the Institute for Policy Studies and Foreign Policy In Focus


Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org


[url"Just the Numbers"]http://www.fpif.org/pdf/reports/IPStransition.pdf[/url] factsheet feel free to photocopy and share (.pdf document)

http://www.fpif.org/papers/0409iraqtrans.html

KEY FINDINGS

A Failed `Transition` is the most comprehensive accounting of the mounting costs of the Iraq war on the United States, Iraq, and the world. Among its major findings are stark figures about the escalation of costs in these most recent three months of "transition" to Iraqi rule, a period that the Bush administration claimed would be characterized by falling human and economic costs.

1. U.S. Military Casualties Have Been Highest During the "Transition": U.S. military casualties (wounded and killed) stand at a monthly average of 747 since the so-called "transition" to Iraqi rule on June 28, 2004. This contrasts with a monthly average of 482 U.S. military casualties during the invasion (March 20-May 1, 2003) and a monthly average of 415 during the occupation (May 2, 2003-June 28, 2004).

2. Non-Iraqi Contractor Deaths Have Also Been Highest During the "Transition": There has also been a huge increase in the average monthly deaths of U.S. and other non-Iraqi contractors since the "transition." On average, 17.5 contractors have died each month since the June 28 "transition," versus 7.6 contractor deaths per month during the previous 14 months of occupation.

3. Estimated Strength of Iraqi Resistance Skyrockets: Because the U.S. military occupation remains in place, the "transition" has failed to win Iraqi support or diminish Iraqi resistance to the occupation. According to Pentagon estimates, the number of Iraqi resistance fighters has quadrupled between November of 2003 and early September 2004, from 5,000 to 20,000. The Deputy Commander of Coalition forces in Iraq, British Major General Andrew Graham, indicated to Time magazine in early September that he thinks the 20,000 estimate is too low; he estimates Iraqi resistance strength at 40,000-50,000. This rise is even starker when juxtaposed to Brookings Institution estimates that an additional 24,000 Iraqi resistance fighters have been detained or killed between May 2003 and August 2004.

4. U.S.- led Coalition Shrinks Further After "Transition": The number of countries identified as members of the Coalition backing the U.S.-led war started with 30 on March 18, 2003, then grew in the early months of the war. Since then, eight countries have withdrawn their troops and Costa Rica has demanded to be taken off the coalition list. At the war`s start, coalition countries represented 19.1 percent of the world`s population; today, the remaining countries with foces in Iraq represent only 13.6 percent of the world`s population.


Highlights of "A Failed `Transition`"
I. Costs to the United States

A. HUMAN COSTS TO THE U.S. AND ALLIES

U.S. Military Deaths: Between the start of war on March 19, 2003 and September 22, 2004, 1,175 coalition forces were killed, including 1,040 U.S. military. Of the total, 925 were killed after President Bush declared the end of combat operations on May 1, 2003. Over 7,413 U.S. troops have been wounded since the war began, 6,953 (94 percent) since May 1, 2003.

Contractor Deaths: As of September 22, 2004, there has been an estimated 154 civilian contractors, missionaries, and civilian worker deaths since May 1, 2004. Of these, 52 have been identified as Americans.

Journalist Deaths: Forty-four international media workers have been killed in Iraq as of September 22, 2004, including 33 since President Bush declared the end of combat operations. Eight of the dead worked for U.S. companies.

B. SECURITY COSTS

Terrorist Recruitment and Action: According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, al Qaeda`s membership is now at 18,000, with 1,000 active in Iraq. The State Department`s 2003 "Patterns of Global Terrorism," documented 625 deaths and 3,646 injuries due to terrorist attacks in 2003. The report acknowledged that "significant incidents," increased from 60 percent of total attacks in 2002 to 84 percent in 2003.

Low U.S. Credibility: Polls reveal that the war has damaged the U.S. government`s standing and credibility in the world. Surveys in eight European and Arab countries demonstrated broad public agreement that the war has hurt, rather than helped, the war on terrorism. At home, 52 percent of Americans polled by the Annenberg Election Survey disapprove of Bush`s handling of Iraq.

Military Mistakes: A number of former military officials have criticized the war, including retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, who has charged that by manufacturing a false rationale for war, abandoning traditional allies, propping up and trusting Iraqi exiles, and failing to plan for post-war Iraq, the Bush Administration made the United States less secure.

Low Troop Morale and Lack of Equipment: A March 2004 army survey found 52 percent of soldiers reporting low morale, and three-fourths reporting they were poorly led by their officers. Lack of equipment has been an ongoing problem. The Army did not fully equip soldiers with bullet-proof vests until June 2004, forcing many families to purchase them out of their own pockets.

Loss of First Responders: National Guard troops make up almost one-third of the U.S. Army troops now in Iraq. Their deployment puts a particularly heavy burden on their home communities because many are "first responders," including police, firefighters, and emergency medical personnel. For example, 44 percent of the country`s police forces have lost officers to Iraq. In some states, the absence of so many Guard troops has raised concerns about the ability to handle natural disasters.

Use of Private Contractors: An estimated 20,000 private contractors are carrying out work in Iraq traditionally done by the military, despite the fact that they often lack sufficient training and are not accountable to the same guidelines and reviews as military personnel.

C. ECONOMIC COSTS

The Bill So Far: Congress has approved of $151.1 billion for Iraq. Congressional leaders anticipate an additional supplemental appropriation of $60 billion after the election.

Long-term Impact on U.S. Economy: Economist Doug Henwood has estimated that the war bill will add up to an average of at least $3,415 for every U.S. household. Another economist, James Galbraith of the University of Texas, predicts that while war spending may boost the economy initially, over the long term it is likely to bring a decade of economic troubles, including an expanded trade deficit and high inflation.

Oil Prices: U.S. crude oil prices spiked at $48 per barrel on August 19, 2004, the highest level since 1983, a development that most analysts attribute at least in part to the deteriorating situation in Iraq. According to a mid-May CBS survey, 85 percent of Americans said they had been affected measurably by higher gas prices. According to one estimate, if crude oil prices stay around $40 a barrel for a year, U.S. gross domestic product will decline by more than $50 billion.

Economic Impact on Military Families: Since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 364,000 reserve troops and National Guard soldiers have been called for military service, serving tours of duty that often last 20 months. Studies show that between 30 and 40 percent of reservists and National Guard members earn a lower salary when they leave civilian employment for military deployment. Army Emergency Relief has reported that requests from military families for food stamps and subsidized meals increased "several hundred percent" between 2002 and 2003.

D. SOCIAL COSTS

U.S. Budget and Social Programs: The Bush administration`s combination of massive spending on the war and tax cuts for the wealthy means less money for social spending. The $151.1 billion expenditure for the war through this year could have paid for: close to 23 million housing vouchers; health care for over 27 million uninsured Americans; salaries for nearly 3 million elementary school teachers; 678,200 new fire engines; over 20 million Head Start slots for children; or health care coverage for 82 million children. A leaked memo from the White House to domestic agencies outlines major cuts following the election, including funding for education, Head Start, home ownership, job training, medical research and homeland security.

Social Costs to the Military: In order to meet troop requirements in Iraq, the Army has extended the tours of duty for soldiers. These extensions have been particularly difficult for reservists, many of whom never expected to face such long separations from their jobs and families. According to military policy, reservists are not supposed to be on assignment for more than 12 months every 5-6 years. To date, the average tour of duty for all soldiers in Iraq has been 320 days. A recent Army survey revealed that more than half of soldiers said they would not re-enlist.

Costs to Veteran Health Care: About 64 percent of the more than 7,000 U.S. soldiers injured in Iraq received wounds that prevented them from returning to duty. One trend has been an increase in amputees, the result of improved body armor that protects vital organs but not extremities. As in previous wars, many soldiers are likely to have received ailments that will not be detected for years to come. The Veterans Administration healthcare system is not prepared for the swelling number of claims. In May, the House of Representatives approved funding for FY 2005 that is $2.6 billion less than needed, according to veterans` groups.

Mental Health Costs: The New England Journal of Medicine reported in July 2004 that 1 in 6 soldiers returning from war in Iraq showed signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression, or severe anxiety. Only 23 to 40 percent of respondents in the study who showed signs of a mental disorder had sought mental health care.


II. Costs to Iraq

A. HUMAN COSTS

Iraqi Deaths and Injuries: As of September 22, 2004, between 12,800 and 14,843 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the U.S. invasion and ensuing occupation, while an estimated 40,000 Iraqis have been injured. During "major combat" operations, between 4,895 and 6,370 Iraqi soldiers and insurgents were killed.

Effects of Depleted Uranium: The health impacts of the use of depleted uranium weaponry in Iraq are yet to be known. The Pentagon estimates that U.S. and British forces used 1,100 to 2,200 tons of weaponry made from the toxic and radioactive metal during the March 2003 bombing campaign. Many scientists blame the far smaller amount of DU weapons used in the Persian Gulf War for illnesses among U.S. soldiers, as well as a sevenfold increase in child birth defects in Basra in southern Iraq.

B. SECURITY COSTS

Rise in Crime: Murder, rape, and kidnapping have skyrocketed since March 2003, forcing Iraqi children to stay home from school and women to stay off the streets at night. Violent deaths rose from an average of 14 per month in 2002 to 357 per month in 2003.

Psychological Impact: Living under occupation without the most basic security has devastated the Iraqi population. A poll conducted by the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies in June 2004 found that 80 percent of Iraqis believe that coalition forces should leave either immediately or directly after the election.

C. ECONOMIC COSTS

Unemployment: Iraqi joblessness doubled from 30 percent before the war to 60 percent in the summer of 2003. While the Bush administration now claims that unemployment has dropped, the U.S. is only employing 120,000 Iraqis, of a workforce of 7 million, in reconstruction projects.

Corporate War Profiteering: Most of Iraq`s reconstruction has been contracted out to U.S. companies, rather than experienced Iraqi firms. Top contractor Halliburton is being investigated for charging $160 million for meals that were never served to troops and $61 million in cost overruns on fuel deliveries. Halliburton employees also took $6 million in kickbacks from subcontractors, while other employees have reported extensive waste, including the abandonment of $85,000 trucks because they had flat tires.

Iraq`s Oil Economy: Anti-occupation violence has prevented Iraq from capitalizing on its oil assets. There have been an estimated 118 attacks on Iraq`s oil infrastructure since June 2003. By September 2004, oil production still had not reached pre-war levels and major attacks caused oil exports to plummet to a ten-month low in August 2004.

D. SOCIAL COSTS

Health Infrastructure: After more than a decade of crippling sanctions, Iraq`s health facilities were further damaged during the war and post-invasion looting. Iraq`s hospitals continue to suffer from lack of supplies and an overwhelming number of patients.

Education: UNICEF estimates that more than 200 schools were destroyed in the conflict and thousands more were looted in the chaos following the fall of Saddam Hussein. The State Department reported on September 15th that "Significant obstacles remain in maintaining security for civilian/military reconstruction, logistical support and distribution for donations, equipment, textbooks and supplies."

Environment: The U.S-led attack damaged water and sewage systems and the country`s fragile desert ecosystem. It also resulted in oil well fires that spewed smoke across the country and left unexploded ordnance that continues to endanger the Iraqi people and environment. Mines and unexploded ordnance cause an estimated 20 casualties per month.

E. HUMAN RIGHTS COSTS

Even with Saddam Hussein overthrown, Iraqis continue to face human rights violations from occupying forces. In addition to the widely publicized humiliation and torture of prisoners, abuse has been widespread throughout the post-9-11 military operations, with over 300 allegations of abuse in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo. As of mid-August 2004, only 155 investigations into the existing 300 allegations had been completed.

F. SOVEREIGNTY COSTS

Despite the proclaimed "transfer of sovereignty" to Iraq, the country continues to be occupied by U.S. and coalition troops and has severely limited political and economic independence. The interim government does not have the authority to reverse the nearly 100 orders by former CPA head Paul Bremer that, among other things, allow for the privatization of Iraq`s state-owned enterprises and prohibit preferences for domestic firms in reconstruction.


III. Costs to the World

A. HUMAN COSTS

While Americans make up the vast majority of military and contractor personnel in Iraq, other U.S.-allied "coalition" troops have suffered 135 war casualties in Iraq. In addition, the focus on Iraq has diverted international resources and attention away from humanitarian crises such as in Sudan.

B. DISABLING INTERNATIONAL LAW

The unilateral U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq violated the United Nations Charter, setting a dangerous precedent for other countries to seize any opportunity to respond militarily to claimed threats, whether real or contrived, that must be "pre-empted." The U.S. military has also violated the Geneva Convention, making it more likely that in the future, other nations will ignore these protections in their treatment of civilian populations and detainees.

C. UNDERMINING THE UNITED NATIONS

At every turn, the Bush Administration has attacked the legitimacy and credibility of the UN, undermining the institution`s capacity to act in the future as the centerpiece of global disarmament and conflict resolution. The efforts of the Bush administration to gain UN acceptance of an Iraqi government that was not elected but rather installed by occupying forces undermines the entire notion of national sovereignty as the basis for the UN Charter. It was on this basis that Secretary General Annan referred specifically to the vantage point of the UN Charter in his September 2004 finding that the war was illegal.

D. ENFORCING COALITIONS

Faced with opposition in the UN Security Council, the U.S. government attempted to create the illusion of multilateral support for the war by pressuring other governments to join a so-called "Coalition of the Willing." This not only circumvented UN authority, but also undermined democracy in many coalition countries, where public opposition to the war was as high as 90 percent. As of the middle of September, only 29 members of the "Coalition of the Willing" had forces in Iraq, in addition to the United States. These countries, combined with United States, make up less than 14 percent of the world`s population.

E. COSTS TO THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

The $151.1 billion spent by the U.S. government on the war could have cut world hunger in half and covered HIV/AIDS medicine, childhood immunization and clean water and sanitation needs of the developing world for more than two years. As a factor in the oil price hike, the war has created concerns of a return to the "stagflation" of the 1970s. Already, the world`s major airlines are expecting an increase in costs of $1 billion or more per month.

F. UNDERMINING GLOBAL SECURITY AND DISARMAMENT

The U.S.-led war and occupation have galvanized international terrorist organizations, placing people not only in Iraq but around the world at greater risk of attack. The State Department`s annual report on international terrorism reported that in 2003 there was the highest level of terror-related incidents deemed "significant" than at any time since the U.S. began issuing these figures.

G. GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS

U.S.-fired depleted uranium weapons have contributed to pollution of Iraq`s land and water, with inevitable spillover effects in other countries. The heavily polluted Tigris River, for example, flows through Iraq, Iran and Kuwait.

H. HUMAN RIGHTS

The Justice Department memo assuring the White House that torture was legal stands in stark violation of the International Convention Against Torture (of which the United States is a signatory). This, combined with the widely publicized mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military and intelligence officials, gave new license for torture and mistreatment by governments around the world.


Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS, online at www.ips-dc.org). ©2004. All rights reserved.

Recommended Citation
IPS/FPIF, “A Failed "Transition": The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War,” Foreign Policy In Focus (Silver City, NM: Interhemispheric Resource Center, September 2004).

Web location:
http://www.fpif.org/papers/0409iraqtrans.html

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Ich habe mir eben Teile der Debatte angeschaut. Ich war bis jetzt noch nicht dazu gekommen. Das Bild oben hatte ich vorher schon gesehen, konnte es aber noch nicht einordnen. Nun weiß ich, weshalb das Bild da ist. Bush hat in seiner Nervosität sehr viel geblinkert und was mir sonst auch noch aufgefallen ist, er hat auch auch viele Verrenkungen mit dem Mund angestellt, besonders wenn er kurz dazwischengeschnitten wurde. Es erinnert mich an die Mundspiele von Nixon, glaube ich. Es sind einige alten Debattenausschnitte in den letzten Tagen gezeigt worden und die Gründe weshalb diese Debatten von Präsidenten oder Kandidaten verloren wurden. Da wurde auch Nixon und seine nervösen Gesichtzuckungen gezeigt. Nach allem, was ich vorher und nachher gelesen habe, war immer die Körpersprache der Kandidaten wichtiger als die Aussage. Wenn man die Körpersprache der beiden Kandidaten auf sich wirken lässt, meine ich, Kerry war souveräner. Ich habe auch schon Bush-Reden in voller Länge im US-Fernsehen verfolgt. Wenn Bush ein Manuskript hat, dann wirkte er fast hypnotisch und kann auch jemand, der ihn nicht mag, beeindrucken. Gestern war nichts von seinem `Zauber` vorhanden. Gestern war er das, was er auch in Wirklichkeit ist ein `lip-smacking, smirking, blinking, eye-rolling chimp`. Hier für alle, die es noch mal überprüfen wollen, ein Link zu einem Video von der ganzen Debatte. Es ist von der WaPost, wenn das nicht zugänglich ist, siehe # 22220

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/mmedia/politics/093004-…

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What you told us
October 1 2004: We asked Americans to tell us their experiences of the campaign so far. Here`s what they told us

Bob Bahnsen: Bush is one of us
Amanda Earls: I do not really care for Kerry
Jon Farnsworth: We need our renegade cowboy out of office
Amy J Hart: Bush has fallen short every step of the way
Patricia Kintz: The Bush administration is at best incompetent
Doug Overmyer: Everyone knows exactly where Bush stands

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/electoralcollege/0…

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Published on Friday, October 1, 2004 by the Boston Globe
A Misleading Focus on Iraq
by William Pfaff


PARIS - Karl Rove has taken charge of American foreign policy. The Bush administration`s Iraq policy swerved onto a new course at the end of last week, cutting the legs from under John Kerry. Only the French government, in its reaction to the Bush administration proposal for an international conference on Iraq, seemed to have Rove`s measure.

Certainly Kerry`s entourage seems lost. Kerry`s first comprehensive attack on Bush administration foreign policy criticized the president`s sunny optimism about Iraq.

Kerry promised an international conference to rally international support, new foreign troop commitments to Iraq, and 40,000 newly recruited US soldiers to fight the insurrection and stabilize the country.

He said his administration would plan to have American forces started home by next summer and said all US forces could expect to be out of Iraq by the end of his first term, four years from now.

Karl Rove then took charge. Colin Powell conceded on Sunday that "it`s getting worse" in Iraq. The overall US commander in Iraq said to expect much violence before January and flawed elections. Donald Rumsfeld said that elections might have to be held in only part of Iraq. He added that US troops don`t have to wait for a totally pacified Iraq before starting home.

President Bush then called for an international conference, probably next month -- just before the US vote. It would drum up support for the United States and check outside interference in Iraq. Iran, Syria, and Jordan would be invited, as well as Iraqi dissidents and the leading democratic governments.

Thus, on the eve of the first presidential debate, the candidates` real or implied proposals were:

By the president: support for an international conference including dissidents and European allies; some US troops soon on their way home; acknowledgement of difficulties but a promise that with "sovereignty" already handed over to an interim government and a new government to be elected in January, the Iraqis soon can look after themselves.

By Kerry: an international conference sometime next year; Europeans and others to take over from US troops (a fantasy, as nearly everyone recognizes); new efforts to internationalize the reconstruction effort and to train Iraqi security forces; US troops starting home next summer; and all troops possibly back by the end of Kerry`s first term, in 2009.

Even taking for granted that most of what both sides promise is phony, which promises would you vote for?

The answer to Rove came not from the Kerry campaign but the French Foreign Ministry. It said an international conference is a splendid idea. But the agenda should include the withdrawal of US and other troops. Iraqi opposition groups as well as dissidents should be invited, as well as other governments in the region.

The Kerry camp could not say the same thing because John Kerry is committed to fundamentally the same goal as George Bush, which is a permanent US strategic presence in Iraq.

Most of the Muslim world is ferociously opposed to this idea. The international community is generally skeptical of it. The American electorate senses that there has to be something better than stubborn persistence in a Bush administration war that is manifestly failing.

But since Kerry until now has had nothing really different to offer, his campaign has gone nowhere on the Iraq issue. He is a victim of the conventional wisdom and the conventional political cowardice. The American policy community -- the people in the policy institutes, think-tanks, and university institutions accustomed to man the US government in successive administrations, and most of the press as well -- share an identical vision of America`s role in the world.

They believe, in one or another form, in the notion that as America is the world`s most powerful nation, its duty (and privilege) is to order and police the world.

Kerry`s own electoral website declares that if elected he will "strengthen weak states and secure and rebuild failed states around the world." George Bush is already committed to democratic reconstruction of the whole "Greater Middle East."

That sort of unbridled ambition to solve the world`s problems and more is the conventional wisdom, and the conventional hypocrisy as well. You might think Bush or Kerry would be content if they could get out of Iraq without setting ablaze the rest of the Middle East.

The conventional cowardice is that neither will assume responsibility for resolving the most poisonous and dangerous conflict affecting the global situation of the United States, which still may be within American power to solve: the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Even to carry out the commitment already made by the US government to the so-called "road map," which requires antiterrorism actions by the Palestinian authorities and a nearly total Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territories, would mean a frontal clash with the Sharon government in Israel.

Neither candidate has the courage for that. Bush finds it easier to "modernize" Islamic civilization. Kerry will rescue the failed states. The war in Iraq will go on.

© 2004 The Boston Globe

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Published on Friday, October 1, 2004 by Reuters
September Among Deadliest Months for U.S. in Iraq
by Thomas Wagner


WASHINGTON - September was one of the deadliest months for U.S. troops in the 18-month-old war in Iraq, and the death toll for the first time has risen four straight months.

At least 76 U.S. troops were killed this month, reflecting a steady increase in American deaths since the United States transferred sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government headed by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi on June 28, officially ending the occupation, according to a count of U.S. fatalities announced by the Pentagon.
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U.S. soldiers tend to their injured colleagues after a bomb exploded in Baghdad, September 30, 2004. September was one of the deadliest months for U.S. troops in the 18-month-old war in Iraq, and the death toll for the first time has risen four straight months.
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Forty-two U.S. troops were killed in June, 54 in July and 66 in August.

Only three other months have produced a higher American death count than September since U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq in March 2003 to topple President Saddam Hussein.

The highest death count, with 135 U.S. military fatalities, came this past April, with the simultaneous flaring of the insurgency in the so-called Sunni Triangle and in the Shi`ite south. Eighty were killed in May as well.

In November 2003, 82 U.S. troops died during a spike in insurgent violence that coincided with the Islamic holy month Ramadan.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged the worsening violence by insurgents, and said it "will very likely increase" ahead of national elections scheduled for January.

"I think they`re getting worse because the people that oppose the Iraqi government and are determined to not have a democratic system there and want to reestablish the Baath Party and a terrorist state are determined to stop it," Rumsfeld told a radio interviewer this week.

"If they can disrupt things, they feel they`ve been successful. But they`re basically killing Iraqis. They`re killing a lot of Iraqis, innocent citizens. They`re also killing a lot of Iraqi security forces, six or seven hundred of them. And, indeed, they`re killing coalition members as well," Rumsfeld said.

The United States has about 138,000 troops in Iraq, with about another 22,000 British, Polish and other foreign troops there as well.

`LOSING SLOWLY BUT STEADILY`

Defense analysts said the Pentagon is struggling to forge a winning strategy against an insurgency that is intensifying and spreading.

"I personally think that the Bush administration is waiting to get through the (Nov. 2) American elections before it uses its military in a much more decisive fashion to suppress insurgent activity," said Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute think tank.

Ted Carpenter of the Cato Institute think tank noted the number of daily attacks launched by insurgents against U.S. and other foreign troops and Iraqi security forces are surging, indicating a further deteriorating security situation.

"I think we`re losing slowly but steadily," Carpenter said. "I think we`re sinking deeper into the quick sand."

The U.S. military death toll in Iraq passed the 1,000 milestone on Sept. 7, and it stood at 1,052 in the Pentagon`s latest figures released on Thursday.

There were eight days in September in which at least four U.S. troops were killed, including two days in which 10 or more died. On Sept. 6, 12 U.S. troops died, including seven Marines killed in a single car bombing near Falluja, one of several cities that have become virtual "no-go" zones for the U.S. military and havens for insurgents. On Sept. 13, 10 U.S. troops died, including six in Anbar Province.

© 2004 Reuters Ltd

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Rich ist jede Woche ein Vergnügen mit seinen politisch-kulturellen Streifzügen. Seine Kolumnen erscheinen auch in der IHT.

October 3, 2004
FRANK RICH
Now on DVD: The Passion of the Bush

You can run but you can`t hide: Oct. 5 will bring the perfect storm in this year`s culture wars. It`s on that strategically chosen date, four Tuesdays before the election, that the DVD of "Fahrenheit 9/11" will be released along with not one but two new Michael Moore books. It`s also the release date of the equally self-effacing Ann Coulter`s latest rant, of a new DVD documentary, "Horns and Halos," that revisits the Bush mystery year of 1972, and of an R.E.M. album, "Around the Sun," that gets in its own political licks at the state of the nation.

When Dick Cheney and John Edwards debate in Cleveland that night, Bruce Springsteen will be barnstorming in another swing state, as the Vote for Change tour hits St. Paul. All that`s needed to make the day complete is a smackdown between Kinky Friedman and Teresa Heinz Kerry on "Imus in the Morning."

Of the many cultural grenades being tossed that day, though, the one must-see is "George W. Bush: Faith in the White House," a DVD that is being specifically marketed in "head to head" partisan opposition to "Fahrenheit 9/11." This documentary first surfaced at the Republican convention in New York, where it was previewed in tandem with an invitation-only, no-press-allowed "Family, Faith and Freedom Rally," a Ralph Reed-Sam Brownback jamboree thrown by the Bush campaign for Christian conservatives. Though you can buy the DVD for $14.95, its makers told the right-wing news service WorldNetDaily.com that they plan to distribute 300,000 copies to America`s churches. And no wonder. This movie aspires to be "The Passion of the Bush," and it succeeds.

More than any other campaign artifact, it clarifies the hard-knuckles rationale of the president`s vote-for-me-or-face-Armageddon re-election message. It transforms the president that the Democrats deride as a "fortunate son" of privilege into a prodigal son with the "moral clarity of an old-fashioned biblical prophet." Its Bush is not merely a sincere man of faith but God`s essential and irreplaceable warrior on Earth. The stations of his cross are burnished into cinematic fable: the misspent youth, the hard drinking (a thirst that came from "a throat full of Texas dust"), the fateful 40th-birthday hangover in Colorado Springs, the walk on the beach with Billy Graham. A towheaded child actor bathed in the golden light of an off-camera halo re-enacts the young George comforting his mom after the death of his sister; it`s a parable anticipating the future president`s miraculous ability to comfort us all after 9/11. An older Bush impersonator is seen rebuffing a sexual come-on from a fellow Bush-Quayle campaign worker hovering by a Xerox machine in 1988; it`s an effort to imbue our born-again savior with retroactive chastity. As for the actual president, he is shown with a flag for a backdrop in a split-screen tableau with Jesus. The message isn`t subtle: they were separated at birth.

"Faith in the White House" purports to be the product of "independent research," uncoordinated with the Bush-Cheney campaign. But many of its talking heads are official or unofficial administration associates or sycophants. They include the evangelical leader and presidential confidant Ted Haggard (who is also one of Mel Gibson`s most fervent P.R. men) and Deal Hudson, an adviser to the Bush-Cheney campaign until August, when he resigned following The National Catholic Reporter`s investigation of accusations that he sexually harassed an 18-year-old Fordham student in the 1990`s. As for the documentary`s "research," a film positioning itself as a scrupulously factual "alternative" to "Fahrenheit 9/11" should not inflate Mr. Bush`s early business "success" with Arbusto Energy (an outright bust for most of its investors) or the number of children he`s had vaccinated in Iraq ("more than 22 million," the movie claims, in a country whose total population is 25 million).

"Will George W. Bush be allowed to finish the battle against the forces of evil that threaten our very existence?" Such is the portentous question posed at the film`s conclusion by its narrator, the religious broadcaster Janet Parshall, beloved by some for her ecumenical generosity in inviting Jews for Jesus onto her radio show during the High Holidays. Anyone who stands in the way of Mr. Bush completing his godly battle, of course, is a heretic. Facts on the ground in Iraq don`t matter. Rational arguments mustered in presidential debates don`t matter. Logic of any kind is a nonstarter. The president - who after 9/11 called the war on terrorism a "crusade," until protests forced the White House to backpedal - is divine. He may not hear "voices" instructing him on policy, testifies Stephen Mansfield, the author of one of the movie`s source texts, "The Faith of George W. Bush," but he does act on "promptings" from God. "I think we went into Iraq not so much because there were weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Mansfield has explained elsewhere, "but because Bush had concluded that Saddam Hussein was an evildoer" in the battle "between good and evil." So why didn`t we go into those other countries in the axis of evil, North Korea or Iran? Never mind. To ask such questions is to be against God and "with the terrorists."

The propagandists of "Faith in the White House" argue, as others have, that the president`s invocation of religion in the public sphere, from his citation of Jesus as his favorite "political philosopher" to his incessant invocation of the Almighty in talking about how everything is coming up roses in Iraq, is consistent with the civic spirituality practiced by his antecedents, from the founding fathers to Bill Clinton. It`s not. Past presidents have rarely, if ever, claimed such godlike infallibility. Mr. Bush never admits to making a mistake; even his premature "Mission Accomplished" victory lap wasn`t in error, as he recently told Bill O`Reilly. After all, if you believe "God wants me to be president" - a quote attributed to Mr. Bush by the Rev. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention - it`s a given that you are incapable of making mistakes. Those who say you have are by definition committing blasphemy. A God-appointed leader even has the power to rewrite His texts. Jim Wallis, the liberal evangelical author, has pointed out Mr. Bush`s habit of rejiggering specific scriptural citations so that, say, the light shining into the darkness is no longer God`s light but America`s and, by inference, the president`s own.

It`s not just Mr. Bush`s self-deification that separates him from the likes of Lincoln, however; it`s his chosen fashion of Christianity. The president didn`t revive the word "crusade" idly in the fall of 2001. His view of faith as a Manichaean scheme of blacks and whites to be acted out in a perpetual war against evil is synergistic with the violent poetics of the best-selling "Left Behind" novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins and Mel Gibson`s cinematic bloodfest. The majority of Christian Americans may not agree with this apocalyptic worldview, but there`s a big market for it. A Newsweek poll shows that 17 percent of Americans expect the world to end in their lifetime. To Karl Rove and company, that 17 percent is otherwise known as "the base."

The pandering to that base has become familiar in countless administration policies, starting with its antipathy to stem-cell research, abortion, condoms for H.I.V. prevention and gay civil rights. But ever since Mr. Bush`s genuflection to Bob Jones University threatened to shoo away moderates in 2000, the Rove ruse is to try to keep the most militant and sectarian tactics of the Bush religious program under the radar. (Mr. Rove even tried to deny that the wooden lectern at the Republican convention was a pulpit embedded with a cross, as if a nation of eyewitnesses could all be mistaken.) The re-election juggernaut has not only rounded up the membership rosters of churches en masse but quietly mounted official Web sites like kerrywrongforcatholics.com as well. (Evangelicals and Mormons have their own Web variants on this same theme, but not the Jews, who are apparently getting in Kerry just what they deserve.) Even the contraband C-word is being revived out of sight of most of the press: Marc Racicot, the Bush-Cheney campaign chairman, lobbed a direct-mail fund-raising letter in March describing Mr. Bush as "leading a global crusade against terrorism."

In this spring`s classic "South Park" parody, "The Passion of the Jew," in which Mr. Gibson`s movie tosses the community into a religious war, one of the kids concludes: "If you want to be Christian, that`s cool, but you should focus on what Jesus taught instead of how he got killed. Focusing on how he got killed is what people did in the Dark Ages, and it ends up with really bad results." He has a point. It`s far from clear that Mr. Bush`s eschatology and his religious vanity are leading to good results now. The all-seeing president who could pronounce Vladimir Putin saintly by looking into his "soul" is now refusing to acknowledge that the reverse may be true. The general in charge of tracking down Osama bin Laden, William G. Boykin, has earned cheers in some quarters for giving speeches at churches proclaiming that Mr. Bush is "in the White House because God put him there" to lead the "army of God" against "a guy named Satan." But all that preaching didn`t get his day job done; he hasn`t snared the guy named Osama he was supposed to bring back "dead or alive."

"George W. Bush: Faith in the White House" must be seen because it shows how someone like General Boykin can stay in his job even in failure and why Mr. Bush feels divinely entitled to keep his job even as we stand on the cusp of an abyss in Iraq. In this pious but not humble worldview, faith, or at least a certain brand of it, counts more than competence, and a biblical mission, or at least a simplistic, blunderbuss facsimile of one, counts more than the secular goal of waging an effective, focused battle against an enemy as elusive and cunning as terrorists. That no one in this documentary, including its hero, acknowledges any constitutional boundaries between church and state is hardly a surprise. To them, America is a "Christian nation," period, with no need even for the fig-leaf prefix of "Judeo-."

Far more startling is the inability of a president or his acolytes to acknowledge any boundary that might separate Mr. Bush`s flawed actions battling "against the forces of evil" from the righteous dictates of God. What that level of hubris might bring in a second term is left to the imagination, and "Faith in the White House" gives the imagination room to run riot about what a 21st-century crusade might look like in the flesh. A documentary conceived as a rebuke to "Fahrenheit 9/11" is nothing if not its unintentional and considerably more nightmarish sequel.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Iraqis Condemn Prime Minister After Falluja Raid
Sat Oct 2, 2004 04:57 AM ET

FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - After the latest U.S. air strike on Falluja, enraged residents clasped wounded children and challenged Iraq`s prime minister to visit the town to see how bombs were hitting civilians, not "terrorists."

"Is this a terrorist? Is this a terrorist? Iyad Allawi come and show us the terrorists," screamed a man as he fixed a bandage on the head of a small boy in his arms.

A U.S. warplane struck Falluja late Friday night, the latest in a weeks-long campaign of bombardments the U.S. military says are targeting hideouts used by followers of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most hunted man in Iraq.

Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, has been in rebel hands since U.S. forces withdrew following a failed offensive on the city in April.

Since the handover of power to an Iraqi government in June, U.S. forces are supposed to get a green light from the Iraqi government before conducting any air strikes. But many Iraqis believe Washington often acts of its own accord.

The U.S. military has repeatedly said that it conducts air strikes on Falluja only when it has specific intelligence and says that it only makes "precision strikes" on those targets.

After Friday`s attack, hospital officials said at least seven civilians were killed and 13 wounded. Reuters television pictures showed Iraqis digging through mounds of rubble and twisted metal hoping to find survivors.

At one point, a child no older than 10 was pulled alive from under a pile of bricks and dust.

U.S. military officials have suggested that insurgents have pressured doctors into exaggerating casualty tolls and have cast doubt on television footage, indicating that scenes after air strikes may have been staged.

Reuters television footage of the destruction after Friday night`s strike showed panicked men using their bare hands to dig out bodies. One man lay face down, covered by a heavy slab of cement over his waist and legs.

Such scenes are familiar to the people of Falluja, who say they have seen no evidence backing U.S. assertions that insurgents and foreign fighters were operating from houses that are flattened by U.S. warplanes.

Amid the screams and groans of children having their wounds stitched at a Falluja hospital Saturday, a young girl pulled dead from the rubble lay on thin mat on the floor.

Allawi`s U.S.-backed government is scrambling to regain control of several rebel-held cities before elections are due in January, and put an end to suicide bombings that have killed hundreds of Iraqi police and civilians.

As part of that campaign, U.S. and Iraqi forces launched an offensive against the rebel stronghold of Samarra early on Friday, killing more than 100 insurgents in fierce fighting.

The U.S. military has said the air raids on Falluja have killed scores of militants loyal to Zarqawi, who`s group Washington says is allied to Osama bin Laden. It recently said as many as 100 of Zarqawi`s followers had been killed in aerial bombardments and other strikes.
U.S.-Led Forces Tighten Grip on Iraq Rebel Town
Sat Oct 2, 2004 04:25 AM ET

By Sabah al-Bazee

SAMARRA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. and Iraqi forces tightened their grip on Samarra Saturday, pressing on with one of the largest offensives since the fall of Saddam Hussein to try to regain control of the rebel stronghold.

A doctor at a hospital in Samarra, about 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad on the banks of the Tigris, said five more bodies had been brought in overnight, and 20 people were treated for wounds. It was not clear if they were civilians or fighters. Dozens of bodies had been brought in Friday.

Residents said U.S. aircraft bombarded parts of the city, and tanks patrolled the streets 24 hours after the offensive was launched to retake the city. The town had been a virtual no-go zone for U.S. troops for months.

The U.S. military has pledged to wrest all rebel-held areas from insurgents before the end of the year so elections can be held in January. Iraq`s Defense minister said the offensive would begin in October and Samarra appears to be the first step.

As well as Samarra, a town of about 100,000, the cities of Falluja and Ramadi, west of Baghdad, will also have to be taken, as will several areas of Baghdad, including militant Sadr City.

Before the Samarra operation was launched, the biggest offensives U.S. forces had carried out were in Najaf in August and Falluja in April. In Najaf, a peace deal was struck with Shi`ite militants after weeks of fighting, but in Falluja, U.S. forces eventually withdrew after heavy Iraqi civilian losses.

The U.S. military said in a statement Saturday that Iraqi National Guards had "secured" Samarra`s hospital and a team of 70 Iraqi volunteers had arrived from Tikrit, 75 km (45 miles) to the north, to help deal with the scores of wounded.

In operations Friday, U.S.-led forces said they killed more than 100 guerrillas in air strikes and street-to-street combat, while around 35 insurgents were captured, 25 of them inside the Golden Mosque, a revered ancient Shi`ite shrine.

Iraqi forces stormed the mosque to offset any local anger at the presence of U.S. troops on holy ground. The seizure of the shrine was a tactical strike to try to prevent insurgents holing up there as they did in Najaf for weeks.

During Friday`s clashes, Samarra`s hospital said dozens of bodies were brought in, including at least 11 women, five children and seven old men. Staff could not cope with any more wounded and bodies lay in the streets. Thousands of people fled the town, while water and electricity supplies were cut off.

Falluja was also attacked by U.S. warplanes overnight, the latest in a weeks-long campaign of aerial bombardments targeting suspected hideouts used by followers of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Washington`s most-wanted man in Iraq.

Doctors said seven people were killed and 13 wounded in the strike, and residents angrily denounced the Americans saying the dead were civilians, not foreign fighters. The U.S. military says it makes only precision strikes on known militant hideouts.

KIDNAP CONUNDRUM

During Friday`s offensive in Samarra, a Turkish worker kidnapped by guerrillas was rescued, the U.S. military said.

Since April, more than 140 foreigners have been seized in Iraq and about 30 have been killed. At least three Westerners are still held, including French journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, kidnapped south of Baghdad in August.

A self-appointed mediator said the release of the two journalists fell through Friday when a group of Iraqis transporting them was bombarded by U.S. forces.

France`s Foreign Ministry had no comment on French mediator Didier Julia`s account of events, which could not be independently verified. The U.S. military in Baghdad said it knew nothing of such an incident.

Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said on Friday: "We have information which is not complete at this stage."

An aide to Julia said they were no longer in the hands of the Islamist militants who seized them on Aug. 20, but in the custody of members of what he called the "Iraqi resistance" who aimed to bring them to Syria. He gave no details.

"The Americans have multiplied the bombardment (of the area), placing two divisions to fire on all the `terrorists` who passed down the road. They have set up 20 roadblocks on the route," Julia said, explaining why they couldn`t get to Syria.

Also being held in Iraq is Briton Kenneth Bigley, a 62-year-old engineer seized more than two weeks ago from a house in Baghdad along with two American colleagues.

Zarqawi`s group beheaded the two Americans after U.S. and Iraqi authorities refused to give in to demands for all female prisoners to be freed from Iraqi jails. Bigley is also threatened with death, although no deadline has been set. (Additional reporting by Fadel al-Badrani in Falluja and Michael Georgy and Mariam Karouny in Baghdad)

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Kerry hatte von Anfang an eine durchgehende Meinung: On Oct. 9, 2002 he declared on the Senate floor: "I will support a multilateral effort to disarm him by force, if we ever exhaust those other options, as the president has promised, but I will not support a unilateral U.S. war against Iraq unless that threat is imminent and the multilateral effort has not proven possible under any circumstances."
Er hat im Laufe der Zeit immer wieder andere Punkte herausgehoben, aber dieses alles widerspricht sich nicht, ist aber manchmal sehr akademisch und überfordert einfache Geister wie Bush. Es wird auch oft ein einzelner Satz von interessierter Seite aus dem Zusammenhang gerissen, der im Kontext eine ganz andere Aussage ergibt.
Gegenüber den 3 Wort Sätzen von Bush erfordern die Aussagen Kerrys schon eine geistige Fähigkeit, und sie sind natürlich auch sehr anfällig für falsche Interpretationen.


October 2, 2004
FACT CHECK
A Closer Look at Statements From the Debate
By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 - More than a dozen times in their 90-minute debate on Thursday night, President Bush accused Senator John Kerry of continually shifting positions on Iraq.

"As the politics change, his positions change," Mr. Bush said at one point. "You cannot lead if you send mixed messages," he said at another.

This line of attack has become a central element of the Bush campaign, and Mr. Kerry was clearly prepared to answer it.

"I`ve had one position, one consistent position," Mr. Kerry said.

This is just one of several points on which the candidates disagreed during the debate. Other disputes involved nuclear proliferation and whether the Bush administration has spent enough for domestic security.

Concerning Iraq, a review of Mr. Kerry`s public statements found that his position had been quite consistent. But as the politics changed, Mr. Kerry repeatedly changed his emphasis. News accounts reflected what he was emphasizing at the time. And Mr. Kerry was often unclear in expressing his views.

Since well before the presidential campaign began, Mr. Kerry has maintained that Saddam Hussein was a menace and that removing him from power was a worthy goal. He has said that the president needed the authority to use troops in Iraq.

But Mr. Kerry has also said that Mr. Bush should not have gone to war without exhausting all diplomatic alternatives and without mobilizing international support. And he has insisted that the war`s cost should be covered as much as possible by repealing tax cuts for the wealthy enacted during the Bush presidency.

On Oct. 9, 2002, Mr. Kerry was planning to run for president, but had not yet announced his candidacy. Before he voted to give Mr. Bush the authority to use force in Iraq, he declared on the Senate floor: "I will support a multilateral effort to disarm him by force, if we ever exhaust those other options, as the president has promised, but I will not support a unilateral U.S. war against Iraq unless that threat is imminent and the multilateral effort has not proven possible under any circumstances."

That is essentially his position today. But look at what Mr. Kerry has said in the meantime:

In May 2003, two months after the United States invaded Iraq and routed Mr. Hussein`s army, Mr. Kerry was the presumed front-runner for the Democratic nomination. Former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont, from the antiwar wing of the party, was not yet regarded as a serious threat.

In a nine-candidate debate in Columbia, S.C., on May 3, Mr. Kerry declared: "I would have preferred if we had given diplomacy a greater opportunity, but I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein. And when the president made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him."

By October 2003, Dr. Dean had begun to emerge as a strong candidateand it had become clear that no unconventional weapons would be found in Iraq. On Oct. 12, Mr. Kerry asserted on the ABC News program "This Week": "The president and his advisers did not do almost anything correctly in the walk-up to the war. They rushed to war. They were intent on going to war. They did not give legitimacy to the inspections. We could have still been doing inspections even today."

Five days later, Mr. Kerry voted against a Republican bill to provide $87 billion more to support American troops and to pay reconstruction costs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Before that vote, he voted for a version of the measure Mr. Bush threatened to veto, a version that would have paid for the $87 billion by repealing tax cuts for Americans with annual incomes of more than $200,000.

By January 2004, the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary were at hand, Mr. Kerry`s campaign had yet to gel and Dr. Dean, having generated enormous enthusiasm from antiwar Democrats, seemed on the verge of winning those contests. On Jan. 6, Mr. Kerry, on the MSNBC program "Hardball," was asked by its host, Chris Matthews, "Are you one of the antiwar candidates?"

Mr. Kerry replied: "I am. Yes, in the sense that I don`t believe the president took us to war as he should have. Yes, absolutely. Do I think this president violated his promise to America? Yes, I do."

By March, Mr. Kerry had won the early contests, essentially clinching the nomination. On March 16, he explained his vote against the $87 billion for the troops by saying, in a comment Mr. Bush has repeatedly ridiculed, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

On Aug. 9, following the Democratic convention, Mr. Kerry told reporters during a trip to the Grand Canyon that he "would have voted for the authority" for Mr. Bush to use troops in Iraq even if he had known that unconventional weapons would not be found and that no close connection existed between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

This was the first time Mr. Kerry had expressed that view, and reports emphasized it. Many accounts, especially those on television, did not include his further explanation that "it`s the right authority for a president to have" and that, referring to subsequent events in Iraq, he "would have done this very differently from the way President Bush has."

Then last month on the radio program "Imus in the Morning," its host, Don Imus, asked Mr. Kerry, "Do you think there are any circumstances in which we should have gone to war in Iraq?"

Mr. Kerry replied: "Not under the current circumstances, no. There are none that I see. I voted based on weapons of mass destruction. The president distorted that, and I`ve said that."

That was another new point, and nearly all accounts emphasized it. Many did not include the rest of what Mr. Kerry said: "But I think it was the right vote based on what Saddam Hussein had done, and I think it was the right thing to do to hold him accountable. I`ve said 100 times, there was a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. The president chose the wrong way."

Nuclear Proliferation

Both candidates called nuclear proliferation the greatest threat to American security. But they differed on specifics and used facts loosely to defend their stances.

Mr. Kerry said, "Thirty-five to 40 countries in the world had a greater capability of making weapons at the moment the president invaded than Saddam Hussein."

A report this year by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace lists 36 countries that have, once had or are suspected of pursuing nuclear weapons programs, including Iraq, whose program it lists as "recently terminated." Some countries have not progressed any further than Iraq and could not yet produce weapons.

Mr. Kerry maintained that the Bush administration had been slow to secure nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, saying that 600 tons of material would take another 13 years to secure. A similar figure is cited by the Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington and the Project to Manage the Atom at Harvard.

Mr. Bush countered by saying, "Actually, we`ve increased funding for dealing with nuclear proliferation, about 35 percent since I`ve been president."

Victoria Sampson of the Center for Defense Information said Mr. Bush`s 35 percent figure was "not entirely accurate," since it included money for disposing of the United States` own unneeded nuclear materials.

Mr. Kerry may have exaggerated the attention he has given the issue of proliferation. He said, "I did a lot of work on this. I wrote a book about it several years ago."

The book, "The New War" (Simon & Schuster, 1997), discusses the issue in about 20 of its 210 pages; the book, which is subtitled "The Web of Crime That Threatens America`s Security," is about dangers posed by international criminal networks, mostly involving drugs and other concerns.

Al Qaeda

Mr. Bush`s statement that 75 percent of Osama Bin Laden`s "people have been brought to justice" is impossible to document. It appears to refer to terrorist leaders, a poorly defined category.

There is no reliable tally of how many Qaeda operatives ever existed, and the administration has not provided the number who have been captured or killed.

Until just before the Republican convention, Mr. Bush said in his stump speeches that two-thirds had been brought to justice, but then began using the larger figure. A C.I.A. spokesman told Reuters at the time that the 75 percent figure was "absolutely consistent with our view."

Domestic Security

Mr. Kerry complained that money spent on the war could be better used for police, firefighters and other security measures at home. He said the administration had put "not one nickel" into protection for vulnerable tunnels, bridges and subways.

That is an exaggeration. Even Democratic critics demanding more spending on rail and transit security and lobbyists for transit systems say the government has spent millions of dollars, while the systems have spent more than a billion dollars.

"That`s why they had to close down the subway in New York when the Republican convention was there," Mr. Kerry said of the lack of security upgrades. Several stations around Madison Square Garden were indeed closed, as were nearby streets, partly to deter protesters.

Mr. Bush`s statement that the administration had "tripled the amount of money we`re spending on homeland security to $30 billion a year" was an approximation and embroidered somewhat the rate of growth. It depends in part on what programs are counted, and from what date.

Programs inherited by the new Department of Homeland Security from other agencies have more than doubled since 2001, to about $24 billion in the fiscal year 2004, according to a report in April by the Congressional Budget Office. Related programs in other agencies have grown almost as fast, bringing total domestic security spending to about $41 billion, a doubling since 2001. Democrats have argued for even faster growth in spending on some of these programs.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Der Schreiber reist durch Afghanistan.

October 2, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Winning the Peace for Afghans
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

KABUL, Afghanistan — My quest to help President Bush find Osama bin Laden has taken me into Afghanistan, where I`ve offended the locals by scrutinizing every unusually tall woman in a burka. But so far, no sign of Osama.

What I do see, though, is an Afghanistan that shows real promise in the north - but is falling apart in the rural areas of the south. The result is more terrorism and narcotics, and more Americans coming home in body bags.

Right after the war, an American could travel virtually everywhere in Afghanistan. These days, much of the south is a killing ground.

Before Mr. Bush claims again that Afghanistan is a shining success, he should talk to Nyamatullah, a 33-year-old tribal leader from Zabul, one of the most dangerous provinces.

"At first, people were very hopeful, and they thought America would help us," said Mr. Nyamatullah, who initially was an enthusiastic supporter of the American invasion. "The [new Afghan] government promised us new schools, district offices, clinics, water pumps, but it has done nothing at all. People are so disappointed. ... At least the Taliban would grade roads, build madrassas, while this government has done nothing."

Mr. Nyamatullah still hates the Taliban, but he added, "If the situation continues and America does the same things, I definitely will pick up a gun and fight the Americans."

Our failure in the south is tragic because it is so unnecessary. Much of Afghanistan - the north, and even the cities in the south - is flourishing, demonstrating what would have been possible if we had only tried as hard to win the peace as we did to win the war.

One measure of the boom in Kabul is the way a street haircut has moved upmarket.

Three years ago, I had my hair cut on a Kabul sidewalk by a street barber who used rusty scissors and charged me the equivalent of 7 U.S. cents. This time, I wound through a Kabul traffic jam and found someone in the same group of street barbers to cut my hair again. But the barber, Muhammad Yasin, had clippers as well as scissors, and he even had a bowl of water to wet my hair before cutting it. And the price had soared to 38 cents.

The boom could have spread across Afghanistan and Central Asia, if only President Bush had provided Afghans with security and more reconstruction assistance. Instead, he was distracted by Iraq, and our attention-deficit-disorder foreign policy lurched on.

In a recent column, I compared President Bush to King Henry V, who was presented by Shakespeare as the great English warrior. King Henry was so determined to consolidate his military victories over France that he married a French princess; Mr. Bush didn`t need to go that far (although people here sure would have been impressed if he had taken an Afghan as a second wife), but some follow-up was essential.

"The powers that be have not made any significant progress at addressing the security problems that affect ordinary Afghans, and there is no coherent strategy for addressing the narcotics-related problems," said Paul Barker, the head of Care in Afghanistan. "While Afghanistan is in far better shape than Iraq, it is very far from a success story."

Haji Muhammad Ayoub, the deputy police chief in now-perilous Helmand Province, acknowledged that crime had gotten much worse across Afghanistan, and he blames corruption. He said that he had captured 120 robbers and murderers in the last two years, but that most of them had bought their freedom with bribes. In one case, he said, two murderers paid $8,000 to a prison official to be freed, then resumed their rampages.

A government official from Uruzgan put it bluntly: "The Taliban is much stronger than before. The American and Afghan governments were saying that things would get better, and they didn`t. So people turned to the Taliban."

I`m still optimistic about the north of Afghanistan, and I give Mr. Bush credit for liberating the Afghan people from the Taliban in 2001. But the image he presents of Afghanistan is unrecognizable on the ground, and his failure to win the peace has given Osama even more places to hide.

Readers have asked how to help Mukhtaran Bibi, the indomitable Pakistani rape victim I wrote about in my last column. For more information, go to Posting 614 at www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Es ist immer wieder überraschend mit welcher Klarheit Fisk die Fehler in der Argumentation herausstreicht.
Absolut lesens- oder hörenswert.

Friday, October 1st, 2004
Robert Fisk on the Presidential Debate, Iraq, Palestine and the International Criminal Court

Video DSL: (Fisk nach knapp 10 min.)
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2004/oct/video…
Sonst von der Seite direkt.
Link und Modem:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/01/1421206

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

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AMY GOODMAN: Here is some of last night`s discussion on Iraq.

JIM LEHRER: What criteria would you use to determine when to start bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq?

GEORGE W. BUSH: Let me first tell you that the best way for Iraq to be safe and secure is for Iraqi citizens to be trained to do the job. And that‘s what we‘re doing. We‘ve got 100,000 trained now, 125,000 by the end of this year, 200,000 by the end of next year. That is the best way. We‘ll never succeed in Iraq if the Iraqi citizens do not want to take matter into their own hands to protect themselves. I believe they want to. Prime Minister Allawi believes they want to. And so the best indication about when we can bring our troops home, which I really want to do, but I don‘t want to do so for the sake of bringing them home I want to do so because we‘ve achieved an objective—is to see the Iraqis perform, is to see the Iraqis step up and take responsibility. And so, the answer to your question is: When our general is on the ground and Ambassador Negroponte tells me that Iraq is ready to defend herself from these terrorists, that elections will have been held by then, that their stability and that they‘re on their way to, you know, a nation that‘s free; that‘s when. And I hope it‘s as soon as possible. But I know putting artificial deadlines won‘t work. My opponent at one time said, “Well, get me elected, I‘ll have them out of there in six months.” You can‘t do that and expect to win the war on terror. My message to our troops is, “Thank you for what you‘re doing. We‘re standing with you strong. We‘ll give you all the equipment you need. And we‘ll get you home as soon as the mission‘s done, because this is a vital mission.” A free Iraq will be an ally in the war on terror, and that‘s essential. A free Iraq will set a powerful example in the part of the world that is desperate for freedom. A free Iraq will help secure Israel. A free Iraq will enforce the hopes and aspirations of the reformers in places like Iran. A free Iraq is essential for the security of this country.

JIM LEHRER: 90 seconds, Senator Kerry.

JOHN KERRY: Thank you, Jim. My message to the troops is also: Thank you for what they‘re doing, but it‘s also help is on the way. I believe those troops deserve better than what they are getting today. You know, it‘s interesting. When I was in a rope line just the other day, coming out here from Wisconsin, a couple of young returnees were in the line, one active duty, one from the Guard. And they both looked at me and said: We need you. You‘ve got to help us over there. Now I believe there‘s a better way to do this. You know, the president‘s father did not go into Iraq, into Baghdad, beyond Basra. And the reason he didn‘t is, he said—he wrote in his book—because there was no viable exit strategy. And he said our troops would be occupiers in a bitterly hostile land. That‘s exactly where we find ourselves today. There‘s a sense of American occupation. The only building that was guarded when the troops went into Baghdad was the oil ministry. We didn‘t guard the nuclear facilities. We didn‘t guard the foreign office, where you might have found information about weapons of mass destruction. We didn‘t guard the borders. Almost every step of the way, our troops have been left on these extraordinarily difficult missions. I know what it‘s like to go out on one of those missions when you don‘t know what‘s around the corner. And I believe our troops need other allies helping. I‘m going to hold that summit. I will bring fresh credibility, a new start, and we will get the job done right.

JIM LEHRER: New question -- All right. Go ahead. Yes, sir.

GEORGE W. BUSH: I think it`s worthy of a follow-up. If you don`t mind.

JOHN KERRY: I`ll be happy to. Let’s change the rules. We can add a whole bunch --

JIM LEHRER: We can do 30 seconds each here, alright?

GEORGE W. BUSH: My opponent says help is on the way, but what kind of message does it say to our troops in harm‘s way, “wrong war, wrong place, wrong time?” That’s not a message a commander-in-chief gives, or this is a “great diversion.” As well, help is on the way, but it‘s certainly hard to tell it when he voted against the $87-billion supplemental to provide equipment for our troops, and then said he actually did vote for it before he voted against it. That’s not what commander-in-chiefs does when you‘re trying to lead troops.

JIM LEHRER: Senator Kerry, 30 seconds.

JOHN KERRY: Well, you know, when I talked about the $87 billion, I made a mistake in how I talk about the war. But the president made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse? I believe that when you know something‘s going wrong, you make it right. That‘s what I learned in Vietnam. When I came back from that war I saw that it was wrong. Some people don‘t like the fact that I stood up to say no, but I did. And that‘s what I did with that vote. And I‘m going to lead those troops to victory.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Senator Kerry and President Bush debating Iraq policy in the first presidential face-off last night. They met at the University of Miami in Coral Gables. A large majority of the session was devoted to Iraq, which has defined the presidential race more than any other issue. Let`s go back to the discussion.

JIM LEHRER: New question. Senator Kerry, two minutes. You just—you‘ve repeatedly accused President Bush—not here tonight, but elsewhere before—of not telling the truth about Iraq, essentially of lying to the American people about Iraq. Give us some examples of what you consider to be his not telling the truth.

JOHN KERRY: Well, I‘ve never, ever used the harshest word, as you did just then. And I try not to. I‘ve been—but I‘ll nevertheless tell you that I think he has not been candid with the American people. And I‘ll tell you exactly how. First of all, we all know that in his State of the Union message, he told Congress about nuclear materials that didn‘t exist. We know that he promised America that he was going to build this coalition. I just described the coalition. It is not the kind of coalition we were described when we were talking about voting for this. The president said he would exhaust the remedies of the United Nations and go through that full process. He didn‘t. He cut it off, sort of arbitrarily. And we know that there were further diplomatic efforts under way. They just decided the time for diplomacy is over and rushed to war without planning for what happens afterwards. Now, he misled the American people in his speech when he said we will plan carefully. They obviously didn‘t. He misled the American people when he said we‘d go to war as a last resort. We did not go as a last resort. And most Americans know the difference. Now, this has cost us deeply in the world. I believe that it is important to tell the truth to the American people. I‘ve worked with those leaders the president talks about, I‘ve worked with them for 20 years, for longer than this president. And I know what many of them say today, and I know how to bring them back to the table. And I believe that a fresh start, new credibility, a president who can understand what we have to do to reach out to the Muslim world to make it clear that this is not, you know—Osama bin Laden uses the invasion of Iraq in order to go out to people and say that America has declared war on Islam. We need to be smarter about how we wage a war on terror. We need to deny them the recruits. We need to deny them the safe havens. We need to rebuild our alliances. I believe that Ronald Reagan, John Kennedy, and others did that more effectively, and I‘m going to try to follow in their footsteps.

JIM LEHRER: Ninety seconds, Mr. President.

GEORGE W. BUSH: My opponent just said something amazing. He said Osama bin Laden uses the invasion of Iraq as an excuse to spread hatred for America. Osama bin Laden isn‘t going to determine how we defend ourselves. Osama bin Laden doesn‘t get to decide. The American people decide. I decided the right action was in Iraq. My opponent calls it a mistake. It wasn‘t a mistake.

AMY GOODMAN: George Bush, John Kerry facing off last night at the University of Miami, Coral Gables. We`re going to go on to other excerpts of this forum. We`ll be hearing what they have to say about the Sudan, what they didn`t say about Haiti, and we`ll also be hearing their discussion on North Korea. But we come back from our break, we`re going to start on Iraq, Israel, Palestine -- overall, the Middle East, with Robert Fisk. [break]

AMY GOODMAN: As we turn now to Robert Fisk. He is the long-time middle East correspondent for the London Independent. Today he joins us from his home in Ireland. He has spent much of the past year, though, in Iraq. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Robert Fisk.

ROBERT FISK: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: It`s great to have you with us. Well, you have been listening to the debate.

ROBERT FISK: Oh, I have, indeed, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: If you want to call it that, when it comes to the issue of Iraq. Why don`t you share some of your thoughts today.

ROBERT FISK: Well, I thought they were both – I have actually heard it before, and I have heard almost all of the so-called debate. I think it`s miserable stuff. Both Kerry and Bush have completely missed the point. I think if they`re not willfully doing so, they are certainly misleading American people, who listened to what they had to say. We need to go back and recall how this whole disaster happened. We are talking about a disaster in Iraq. We are talking about a country we claimed we were coming to liberate and now we`re occupying it. We`re re-besieging their cities. I mean, Samarra was supposed to have been liberated by us in 2003. Now we`re going to re-liberate it, and apparently Fallujah is next on the list. What on earth are we doing there? Remember this all started at a critical moment after September 11, 2001, after the international crimes against humanity in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. When Osama bin Laden was suddenly deleted off the screen, off the radar screen and Saddam Hussein was put up there. The Americans were bombarded with the idea, which many Americans, sadly, still believe, that Saddam Hussein had had something to do with September 11 when in fact the agenda for attacking Iraq was first thought up by the neoconservatives in Washington during the Clinton administration. We`re now apparently fighting for democracy in Iraq. Originally, we were going to liberate Iraq so they could have democracy. Most of Iraq is outside of the control of the United States forces or British forces and certainly not government forces. The Iraqi government itself now has less power than the mayor of Baghdad and doesn`t even control all of Baghdad. The situation – the disastrous situation in Iraq is now so grave that I don`t think it could ever be turned around, not while western troops are there. And yet, Kerry and Bush talk about it, as if it is a reversible situation or actually getting better. And again and again, the concentration on America`s soldiers. Well, fine, Americans should be interested in their soldiers and their welfare, but the principal victims in Iraq are not Americans, they’re Iraqis, and they`re dying at an ever greater number. When I go to the mortuaries and see shrieking people holding the corpses of children, old men as well as young men. Trying to stuff them into coffins. The stench is overpowering. That`s the reality on the ground in Iraq. What Kerry and Bush had to say last night bore no relation to the reality which I see inside Iraq.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Robert Fisk, it seemed almost as if the basic thrust of Kerry`s arguments was, I will present a smarter imperialism, a smarter defensive empire than the kind of defense that the President has so far been responsible for. For instance, he – as you mentioned, the thrust of the Bush administration, he kept calling it a colossal mistake, rather than dealing with even what some former people in government as Richard Clarke said in his book, the night of September 11, President Bush began to say, let`s find a connection to Saddam Hussein in the attacks. Rather than reiterate that enormous indictment of Richard Clarke against the President, he kept referring to it as a colossal mistake. And he also, as Amy mentioned before, didn`t deal with one of the driving forces of much of the Islamic terrorism around the world is the continuing situation of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Your thoughts about how that would be possible.

ROBERT FISK: You have to start off on the basis that nobody who wants to be the United States President is going to try and head into the Palestine-Israel conflict because it would be essential at some point to criticize the Israelis, and that`s not going to get you President of the United States of America. So, I`m not surprised that they ducked that one. That`s par for the course. Clinton did the same. George Bush Sr. This is not going to be a subject for debate.

AMY GOODMAN: But neither did the journalists dare to ask them about it, either.

ROBERT FISK: No, of course, not, because American journalism is, I think, I`m sorry to say, is becoming increasingly neutered. You only have to look the at cozy relationships now between journalists and power in Washington. The relationship is very evident. If you go to a press conference it`s, “Yes, John.” It’s “Mr. President, can I ask you…” It`s first name terms for the journalists and Mr. President. The journalists in many ways have become mouthpieces. I remember pointing out in lectures in the United States before the invasion of Iraq that “The New York Times,” every time it had a major story, the first paragraph always ended with the words, “according to American officials” or “American officials say” – often by Judith Miller at “The New York Times.” Over and over again, we have seen a failure of American journalism, who should – I mean the fourth estate should be out there for the people to ask the serious questions and challenge power. I go back to Amira Hass, the brilliant Israeli journalist, who once defined journalism to me as monitoring the centers of power. I think by and large, with the exception of a few newspapers and small television and radio programs, yours for example, by and large, major American news organizations are neutered. They have neutered themselves. They will not monitor the centers of power. They will not challenge authority, and that leads to a situation in which the major issues which should be discussed, and which American people are quite capable of discussing, and would like to discuss, do not get mentioned. You have got to go back and realize what lies behind the whole issue of Iraq for the two contenders last night. There is an equation which they wouldn`t mention and can’t mention, but it`s very clear. The Americans have got to leave Iraq. And they will leave Iraq, but they can’t leave Iraq. That is why we have this bloody mess at the moment. Everybody in America would like the American soldiers home. Everyone in America knows why the President cannot admit it was all folly. And why Kerry can’t admit it was all folly. So, we end up in essentially a false debate. The issue is that the Iraqi invasion is a disaster. We have got rid of dictatorship and replaced it with total anarchy. You know, I hate to once again go back to the poor Iraqi, but over and over again when I go to funerals in Iraq, of men who have been cruelly murdered, women, children, people say to me, look. I don`t care if you got rid of Saddam Hussein. No, we didn`t like him, but at least with Saddam Hussein, we had security. Our children went to school in the morning. Although we didn`t have free speech, we knew that if we obeyed the rules, we would be alive. Now, that is not praise of Saddam Hussein. He was a cruel dictator. We helped to prop him up. We started him off in the first place. But if the alternative is carnage on the scale we`re now seeing, what do you think that the Iraqis want? I mean, history shows that what Bush did, and what Kerry thinks he might be able to do, cannot work, especially in Iraq. I`m writing a new book about history and the folly of history and the inability to escape from it. I have gone back through the British and Iraqi records and what happened when the British occupied Iraq in 1917. Well, we set up an occupation authority. We appointed our own Iraqi rulers, like Mr. Allawi. Eventually we brought in a King. We found that the Iraqis started a major insurrection against us. One of our senior officers was killed near Fallujah. So we besieged Fallujah with artillery and killed many of the citizens living there. Then we besieged Najaf because we wanted the surrender of a Shia muslim cleric called Badr, not Muqtada al-Sadr, but the name is kind of similar. And then our intelligence operatives in Baghdad, this is British intelligence in 1920, told London they thought the terrorists were coming in from Syria. It’s an absolute fingerprint of what was to happen in 2003 and 2004. Anyone who goes back to the history of the British occupation, and believe me, we knew about empire and occupation, can see every step of the way the path to disaster. Everything we did there went wrong.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, we want it turn for a minute it another excerpt of the debate, this on Afghanistan.

GEORGE W. BUSH: We have a duty to defeat this enemy. We have a duty to protect our children and grandchildren. The best way to defeat them is never waver, to be strong, to use every asset at our disposal. It is to constantly stay on the offensive, and at the same time spread liberty. That`s what the people are seeing now is happening in Afghanistan. 10 million citizens have registered to vote. It`s a phenomenal statistic – that if given a chance to be free, they will show up the at polls. 41% of those 10 million are women. In Iraq, no doubt about it, it`s tough. It`s hard work. It`s incredibly hard. You know why? Because an enemy realizes the stakes. The enemy understands a free Iraq will be a major defeat in their ideology of hatred. That`s why they`re fighting so vociferously. They showed up in Afghanistan when they were there because they tried to beat us and they didn`t, and they`re showing up in Iraq for the same reason. They`re trying to defeat us, and if we lose our will, we lose, but if we remain strong and resolute, we will defeat this enemy.

JIM LEHRER: 90 second response, Senator Kerry?

JOHN KERRY: I believe in being strong and resolute, and determined. I will hunt down and kill the terrorists wherever they are. But we also have to be smart, Jim. And smart, means not diverting your attention from the real war on terror in Afghanistan against Osama bin laden, and taking it off to Iraq where the 9/11 Commission confirms there was no connection to 9/11 itself and Saddam Hussein, and where the reason for going to war was weapons of mass destruction, not the removal of Saddam Hussein. This President has made, I regret to say, a colossal error of judgment. Judgment is what we look for in the President of the United States of America. I`m proud that important military figures are supporting me in this race. Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, John Shalikashvili. Just yesterday, General Eisenhower`s son, General John Eisenhower endorsed me. General Admiral William Crowell, General Tony McPeak, who ran the Air Force war for his father, all believe I would make a stronger Commander In Chief. They believe it because they I would not take my eye off of the goal, Osama bin Laden. Unfortunately, he escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora. We had him surrounded, but we didn`t use American forces, the best trained in the world to kill him. The President relied on Afghan warlords and he outsourced that job, too. That`s wrong.

AMY GOODMAN: John Kerry, George Bush, and their first so-called debate last night. It took place in Coral Gables, Florida. Certainly, a swing state. On the line us with, Robert Fisk, long-time middle-East correspondent for The Independent newspaper of Britain. he speaks to us from his home in Ireland on Afghanistan. Robert Fisk, you were beaten badly when you were covering the conflict in Afghanistan, but your response to Kerry and Bush?

ROBERT FISK: Afghanistan is not a success. Human rights organizations are already pointing out that the polls are hopelessly flawed, that the candidates in some cases are working for the warlords. Not since before the Taliban, when the same warlords were back in power killing each other has there been such opium and drug production in Afghanistan. Most of the country is out of bounds to foreigners because the Taliban have re-established themselves, especially in the villages around Pastia coast, and the Pakistani border. In many cases, U.S. forces cannot move freely except in large numbers in parts of Afghanistan. There has been some reconstruction work. Some people have gone along to put their names down for a vote, but given the warlordism, the vote is likely to prove meaningless, if it does take place. I don`t think, by the way, that the elections are going to take place in January or any time soon afterwards in Iraq. Afghanistan is being left to sink again back into the same chaos and the same poverty that it was in before. Both in Afghanistan and in Iraq, we have profoundly failed because we have not done our work as we should have done internationally through the United Nations. And that, unfortunately, is why the bin Ladens of this world can continue to flourish and can continue to stage their war. I think there`s one other thing that you need to remember. It`s very easy to say, we`re at war. It`s very easy to go off and start a war. Okay, you can say that the war started on September 11, 2001, but you could also say that the war started in 1948 between the Palestinians and Israelis. The war started in Iraq when the British invaded in 1917 and again in 1941. But once you embark on a major military campaign it`s very difficult to switch it off. What we have got in Iraq now is not a war on terror. Most of the people – the vast majority of the men fighting the Americans are Iraqi, and they will go on fighting. You know one of the things that`s very interesting at moment. Again, we need to look at history. When Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980, we supported him with guns, chemicals for gas, with export credits from the United States. And we urged him on. We wanted the destruction of the Islamic Republic of Iran after Khomeini’s revolution. We backed Saddam. He sent a whole generation of Iraqis to learn to fight and die. Now, in that war, the Iraqis went through immense suffering. They fought most of them without any initiatives, because no one could take initiative, only Saddam was the man who was allowed to make decisions. They dug their tanks into the ground, stuck the gun barrels over the top and just fought on, like the battle of Asam against Iranians. But those young men, those men who were captains and lieutenants are now grown up with an enormous experience of fighting power. And they are no longer hobbled by dictatorship. They can take their own initiatives. That, I suspect, that, I suspect is why this insurgency is so successful.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, before we end, I wanted to go to the issue of the international criminal court. During the face-off last night, moderator, Jim Lehrer asked the two candidates starting with John Kerry his position on the whole concept of pre-emptive war. Kerry responded by saying, quote “The President always has the right and always has had the right for pre-emptive strike,” but it was Bush`s response to Kerry that was most compelling. This is what President Bush had to say.

GEORGE W. BUSH: My attitude is you take pre-emptive action in order to protect the American people. That you act in order to make this country secure. My opponent talks about me not signing certain treaties. Let me tell you one thing I didn`t sign and I think show as difference of our opinion, the difference of opinions. That is: I wouldn`t join the International Criminal Court. This is a body based in the Hague where unaccountable judges and prosecutors can pull our troops and diplomats up for trial. I wouldn`t join it. I understand that in certain capitals around the world it – that wasn`t a popular move. But it`s the right move. Not to join a foreign court that could – where our people could be prosecuted. My opponent is for joining the International Criminal Court. I just think that trying to be popular in the global sense, if it`s not in our best interests makes no sense. I`m interested with working with other nations and do a lot of it. But I`m not going to make decisions that I think are wrong for America.

AMY GOODMAN: President Bush on the International Criminal Court last night. Robert Fisk, your response?

ROBERT FISK: Well, Bush has spoken over and over again of the need for international law, then when the machinery for imposing that law exists, he doesn`t want any part of it. He repeatedly says, prosecutions of American soldiers, diplomats, what are the prosecutions that he`s worried about? What are these war crimes he appears to be worried about? Do they exist? Do they happen? Are they going to happen? Is it perhaps the case, and remember this started before Iraq, that United States forces are going to be used in such a way that there will be a clamor for prosecutions? I don`t know, but I`ll tell you one thing, I`m a Brit. And I believe that the world should have a court in which we can try the bin Ladens and the Mladics and Karadzics. There’s a couple of other people we could talk about because we didn’t find them either. I think these people should be put on trial before the world. That is one way of exhausting all the possibilities of justice. And then placing these people in a position where the world can see what they really represent. Bush doesn`t want to do that. That is the problem. Why doesn`t he? What lies behind this? What are these prosecutions he`s so frightened about? That does raise a question in my mind.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to go, Robert Fisk. I do have to ask – we have 15 seconds. If you look at the plans for the future that Kerry and Bush have presented, this is a debate between the two major parties, not the other candidates, Kerry admits perhaps the most often word used last night was the word “plan.” Do you think there`s a difference in their plan for Iraq or the middle East, for that matter, overall?

ROBERT FISK: Neither of them are facing up to the realities that the Palestinians are not going to have a state, and the Israelis have no intention of giving them a state. Not this present Sharon government. And that Iraq is a hell disaster. There`s no point of talking of plans now. The question is the whole way in which the United States treats the middle East, and Israel, has got to be openly debated, discussed and re-thought through. Plans for getting out of a mess are not good enough. It doesn`t go far enough and it won`t work.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, thank you for joining us, of The Independent newspaper in Britain, a long-time middle East correspondent for that paper, voted year after year the best foreign correspondent by British editors and reporters. This is Democracy Now!

To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for our new online ordering or call 1 [phone].

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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Saturday, October 02, 2004

Samarra Campaign

Sistani Aide Insists on Elections

Some 3000 US soldiers and 1000 Iraqi national guardsmen advanced into downtown Samarra on Friday, engaging in heavy fighting with the guerrilla resistance in that city. Thousands of residents fled north, and the city was shaken with constant explosions. Electricity and water were cut off. Although the US troops and their Iraqi allies took the city center and the major government offices, guerrillas appear to have continued to control some city quarters. The Iraqi spokesman, Qasim Da`ud, castigated the guerrillas as highway robbers and other undesirables, but they appear just to be angry young men from the city would reject the new American-dominated status quo.

Some 47 bodies were brought to the local morgue, and dozens were wounded. Some estimates put the number of dead at over 100.

Although Samarra is a largely Sunni city, it has a small Shiite population, who tend to live near the srine of the 11th Imam. One report said that US fire struck the shrine, sending black plumes of smoke from it, and doing some damage.

Fighting in Sadr City killed 9 Mahdi Army militiamen. (al-Hayat)

An aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Karbala said on Friday that elections must be held in January.

In al-Qurnah in the deep south, clashes broke out earlier this week between tribal factions. The Iraqipolice intervened, killing four and taking four casuatlties themselves. No announcement was made about what was really going on in al-Qurnah. (-Ash-Sharq al-Awsat).

posted by Juan @ 10/2/2004 06:34:12 AM
Friday, October 01, 2004

Debate and Chalabi

I wonder if more could not have been made about Bush`s constant zigzags on Iraq policy. First he was going to send Jay Garner. Then he suddenly switched off and sent Paul Bremer. First Bremer was going to be proconsul for years. Then he suddenly was going to hand off power to a new government elected through caucases in May 2004. Then Sistani asked for open and free elections, and they were postponed until January 2005 and power was handed to an appointed caretaker government.

Moreover, some of this zigzagging reflected very poorly on Bush`s judgment. I have it from insiders that in April, 2003, Jay Garner let it slip to some of his staff that his charge was to turn Iraq over to Ahmad Chalabi within six months. The staffers were shocked and some contacted the State Department to see if this was known there. It was not. So they blew the whistle on Bush with Colin Powell. I was told that Powell then made a coalition with Tony Blair and that the two of them went to Bush and got him to change his mind.

The plan to put Chalabi in charge of Iraq was frankly idiotic. Chalabi had no grass roots. He was the one who had the bright idea to throw thousands of ex-Baathists into unemployment (which encouraged them to join the guerrilla resistance). It later came out that some of the Neoconservatives in the Pentagon had let it slip to him that the US had broken the Iranian diplomatic codes. Chalabi is chummy with Tehran and let his friends among the Ayatollahs know this tidbit. As a result, the US can no longer closely track the Iranian nuclear program.

This is the man to whom Bush-- and I underline Bush-- was planning originally just to hand Iraq over. An Iranian asset. This was why, as Kerry noted on Thursday night, Bush had done no real planning for the period after the war. He thought he had everything sewn up because Chalabi would handle it.

You judge a president in part by the people he chooses for the tasks before him. Bush has consistently chosen very poorly. In the first campaign, he sometimes came close to admitting that he wasn`t knowledgeable or competent, but said he would surround himself by capable people.

The problem is that if you begin by not being knowledgeable, you surround yourself with people like Ahmad Chalabi.

posted by Juan @ 10/1/2004 09:36:35 AM

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News from the Votemaster

Survey USA has polled over 20,000 people in 14 states and 21 cities to ask who won the first debate. In 11 states and 15 cities Kerry was the clear winner. In 2 states and 6 cities, Bush was the clear winner. Colorado was a tossup. Ominously for Bush, the 2 states that said he won the debate are Texas and Oklahoma, which he has in the bag already, but the states that gave Kerry the win include Oregon (by 19%), Maine (by 18%), Pennsylvania (by 22%), Arkansas (by 12%), and most significantly Florida (by 24%).

American Research Group has now produced more details on its post-debate poll. Not surprisingly, practically all Democrats thought Kerry won and practically all Republicans thought Bush won. But among independents, Kerry won by 19%.

Gallup`s lead story today is entitled "Kerry Wins Debate." According to Gallup`s poll, 53% of the people interviewed felt Kerry won and 37% felt Bush won.

How important are the debates, anyway? Take a look at John Zogby`s view.

The LA Weekly has a nice article about polls and how to interpret them.

Polling junkies who are looking for data about the 2000 race might be interested in the Electoral 2000 website

A number of people verified the push polling story in Maryland. The push poll is being run by the Maryland Republican Party. Shame on them. For new readers not familiar with the practice of push polling, the basic idea is that the pollster asks mostly normal polling-type questions, and then slips in a question like "Are you going to vote for John Kerry even though he has said he will raise your taxes?" or "Are you going to vote for George Bush even though he is going to reinstitute the draft and send your son to Iraq?" Push polls are based on misleading statements or sometimes complete lies. The purpose is to skew the "poll" to make one candidate look much better than he really is. If you are push-polled, immediately ask the pollster who is paying for the poll and refuse to go further until you get an answer. In some states it is a crime for a pollster to refuse to answer that question when asked point blank.

A reader pointed out that George Bush`s home town newspaper, the Crawford Lone Star Iconoclast, has endorsed John Kerry for President. Maybe they know something about George Bush the rest of us don`t know. If the Boston Globe endorses Bush, I will certainly announce it here.

While we are on the subject of jumping ship, esterday I had an item on President Eisenhower`s son planning to vote for Kerry. In the interest of balance, today I have a link to a story saying former Democratic NYC mayor, Ed Koch is going to vote for Bush.

Senate news: A new poll in South Carolina shows Inez Tenenbaum leading Jim DeMint for the open Senate seat there being vacated by Fritz Hollings. The pundits originally gave her no chance at all, but she is doing remarkably well at the moment. We`ll see if it lasts, however.
Projected Senate: 49 Democrats, 50 Republicans, 1 independent To bookmark this page, type CTRL-D (Apple-D on Macintoshes). If you are visiting for the first time, welcome. This site has far more about the election than just the map. See the Welcome page for more details.

-- The votemaster

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Dieser Beitrag wurde vom System automatisch gesperrt. Bei Fragen wenden Sie sich bitte an [e-mail]

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Understanding the Bush doctrine

BY Noam Chomsky

10/02/04 "ICH" -- PERHAPS the most threatening document of our time is theU.S. National Security Strategy of September 2002. Its implementation in Iraq has already taken countless lives and shaken the international system to the core.

In the fallout from the war on terror is a revived Cold War, with more nuclear players than ever, across even more dry-tinder landscapes around the world.

As Colin Powell explained, the NSS declared that Washington has a "sovereign right to use force to defend ourselves" from nations that possess weapons of mass destruction and cooperate with terrorists, the official pretexts for invading Iraq.

The obvious reason for invading Iraq is still conspicuously evaded: establishing the first secure US military bases in a client state at the heart of the world’s major energy resources.

As old pretexts collapsed, President Bush and his colleagues adaptively revised the doctrine of the NSS to enable them to resort to force even if a country does not have WMD or programmes to develop them. The "intent and ability" to do so is sufficient.

Just about every country has the ability, and intent is in the eye of the beholder. The official doctrine, then, is that anyone is subject to attack.

In September 2003, Bush assured Americans that "the world is safer today because our coalition ended an Iraqi regime that cultivated ties to terror while it built weapons of mass destruction." The president’s handlers know that lies can become Truth, if repeated insistently enough.

The war in Iraq incited terror worldwide. In November 2003, Middle East expert Fawaz Gerges found it "simply unbelievable how the war has revived the appeal of a global jihadi Islam that was in real decline after 9-11." Iraq itself became a "terrorist haven" for the first time, and suffered its first suicide attacks since the 13th century CK assassins.

Recruitment for Al Qaeda networks has risen. "Every use of force is another small victory for bin Laden," who "is winning," writes British journalist Jason Burke in Al-Qaida, his 2003 study of this loose array of radical Islamists, now mostly independent.

For them, bin Laden is hardly more than a symbol. He may be even more dangerous after he is killed, becoming a martyr who will inspire others to join his cause. Burke sees the creation of "a whole new cadre of terrorists," enlisted in what they see as a "cosmic struggle between good and evil," a vision shared by bin Laden and Bush.

The proper reaction to terrorism is two-pronged: directed at the terrorists themselves, and at the reservoir of potential support. The terrorists see themselves as a vanguard, seeking to mobilise others. Police work, an appropriate response, has been successful worldwide. More important is the broad constituency that the terrorists seek to reach, including many who hate and fear them but nevertheless see them as fighting for a just cause.

We can help the terrorist vanguard mobilise this reservoir of support, by violence. Or we can address the "myriad grievances," many legitimate, that are "the root causes of modern Islamic militancy," Burke writes.

That basic effort can significantly reduce the threat of terror, and should be undertaken independently of this goal.

Violent actions provoke reactions that risk catastrophe. US analysts estimate that Russian military expenditures have tripled during the Bush-Putin years, in large measure a predicted response to Bush administration bellicosity. On both sides, nuclear warheads remain on hair-trigger alert. The Russian control systems, however, have deteriorated. The dangers ratchet up with the threat and use of force.

As anticipated, US military plans have provoked a Chinese reaction as well. China has announced plans to "transform its military into a technology-driven force capable of projecting power globally by 2010," Boston Globe correspondent Jehangir Pocha reported last month, "replacing its land-based nuclear arsenal of about 20 1970s-era intercontinental ballistic missiles with 60 new multiple-warhead missiles capable of reaching the United States."

China’s actions are likely to touch off a ripple effect through India, Pakistan and beyond. Nuclear developments in Iran and North Korea, also in part at least a response to US threats, are exceedingly ominous. The unthinkable becomes thinkable.

In 2003, at the UN General Assembly, the United States voted alone against implementation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and alone with its new ally India against steps toward the elimination of nuclear weapons.

The United States also voted alone against "observance of environmental norms" in disarmament and arms control agreements, and alone with Israel and Micronesia against steps to prevent nuclear proliferation in the Middle East -- the pretext for invading Iraq. Presidents commonly have "doctrines," but Bush II is the first to have "visions" as well, possibly because his handlers recall the criticism of his father as lacking "the vision thing."

The most exalted of these, conjured up after all pretexts for invasion of Iraq had to be abandoned, was the vision of bringing democracy to Iraq and the Middle East. By November 2003, this vision was taken to be the real motive for the war.

The evidence for faith in the vision consists of little more than declarations of virtuous intent. To take the declarations seriously, we would have to assume that our leaders are accomplished liars: While mobilising their countries for war, they were declaring that the reasons were entirely different. Mere sanity dictates scepticism about what they produce to replace pretexts that have collapsed.

Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author, most recently, of Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance.

© 2004 Noam Chomsky

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Ein sehr langer Artikel aus der heutigen Times. Bei Interesse der Link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/international/middleeast/0…

THE NUCLEAR CARD
Skewed Intelligence Data in March to War in Iraq
By DAVID BARSTOW, WILLIAM J. BROAD
and JEFF GERTH

Published: October 3, 2004

his article was reported by David Barstow, William J. Broad and Jeff Gerth, and was written by Mr. Barstow.

In 2002, at a crucial juncture on the path to war, senior members of the Bush administration gave a series of speeches and interviews in which they asserted that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program. In a speech to veterans that August, Vice President Dick Cheney said Mr. Hussein could have an atomic bomb "fairly soon." President Bush, addressing the United Nations the next month, said there was "little doubt" about Mr. Hussein`s appetite for nuclear arms.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/international/middleeast/0…

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October 3, 2004
Militant Cleric Discussing Plan for Iraq Politics
By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 2 - The Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has begun laying the groundwork to enter Iraq`s nascent democratic process, telling Iraqi leaders that he is planning to disband his militia and possibly field candidates for office.

After weeks of watching his militia wither before American military attacks, Mr. Sadr has sent emissaries to some of Iraq`s major political parties and religious groups to discuss the possibility of involving himself in the campaign for nationwide elections, according to a senior aide to Mr. Sadr and several Iraqi leaders who have met with him.

According to these Iraqis, Mr. Sadr says he intends to disband his militia, the Mahdi Army, and endorse the holding of elections. And while Mr. Sadr has made promises to end his armed resistance before, some Iraqi officials believe that he may be serious this time, especially given the toll of attacks on his forces.
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Iraqi boys were selling posters of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr before Friday Prayer in the neighborhood of Baghdad known as Sadr City.
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Mr. Sadr`s aides say his political intentions have been endorsed by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country`s most powerful Shiite religious leader. He has long tried to tame what he believes is Mr. Sadr`s destructive influence on the chances of Iraq`s Shiites to win a majority in the elections scheduled for January.

In recent weeks, Mr. Sadr`s chief aide, Ali Smesim, has met with some of the country`s most important political leaders, including members of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the powerful Sunni organization; leaders of the country`s Kurdish community; Christians and other Shiite leaders. Mr. Sadr appears to be particularly interested in cultivating disaffected political groups that did not cooperate with the American occupation and which are not now part of the interim Iraqi government. Those smaller parties, in turn, are keenly interested in tapping the vast support enjoyed by the 31-year-old cleric among Iraq`s poor.

"We are ready to enter the democratic process, under certain conditions," Mr. Smesim said in an interview. "We will have a program. And if Moktada comes in, he will be the biggest in Iraq."

Mr. Smesim said Mr. Sadr`s two major conditions were the involvement of the United Nations, which is already assisting in the elections here, and the absence of any interference from American and British military forces in the electoral process.

Mr. Sadr`s overtures toward the political mainstream, if they develop into a full-blown commitment, would represent a significant victory for the American-led enterprise here, just a few months before nationwide elections are to be held in January.

Mr. Sadr, who commands a vast following among Iraq`s poor, has long posed one of the most difficult threats to the efforts to implant a democracy here. Twice before, he has called for armed uprisings against the Americans that took weeks and hundreds of Iraqi and American lives to suppress. More than once, he has promised to disband his militia, only to keep fighting.

His steps, though clear, are still tentative, with no definitive public declaration from the man himself. With an Iraqi murder warrant still issued for his arrest, Mr. Sadr has not been seen in public in weeks. The informal talks to persuade Mr. Sadr`s militia, the Mahdi Army, to disband, have yielded little.

Nonetheless, Iraqi officials say they are encouraged by Mr. Sadr`s recent overtures, and some believe that this time Mr. Sadr might be serious. The reason, they say, is the political and military defeat that Mr. Sadr suffered in Najaf, where the Mahdi Army was badly mauled by American forces and where Mr. Sadr himself was ordered to capitulate by Ayatollah Sistani.

Mr. Smesim said Mr. Sadr was in the process of trying to form a political coalition, putting out feelers for Iraqis willing to join him. He has even floated a name for a new party - the Patriotic Alliance.

According to the same Iraqis, Mr. Sadr`s aides have begun to work closely with Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi exile who was once a favorite of the Bush administration but who has since fallen out of favor. In recent weeks, Mr. Chalabi has been advising Mr. Sadr`s aides in their search for allies, and he has encouraged members of the Shiite Council, a political alliance that he is a part of, to join with Mr. Sadr. Mr. Chalabi and his allies appear to be interested in tapping the vast support that Mr. Sadr enjoys among Iraqis poor and lower-class Shiites.

Since August, when Mr. Sadr met with Ayatollah Sistani in Najaf and pledged in a cease-fire to enter the democratic process, the pressure on Mr. Sadr has only intensified. With his forces routed from Najaf, the American military has been attacking almost daily in Sadr City, the sprawling Shiite district in northeastern Baghdad.

American and Iraqi officials have long said that Mr. Sadr could be given a place in the country`s budding democratic system as long as he renounces violence. But it is not clear just how far they are willing to let him go. There is still a great wariness about Mr. Sadr, whose fiery sermons often include promises to expel the Americans from the country. Officials also believe that he maintains close relations with the Iranian government, which is regarded as a destabilizing force here.

Among those most concerned about Mr. Sadr`s potential entry into democratic politics are the mainstream Shiite parties, like Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or Sciri. Both parties are well organized and well financed, yet each has suffered some loss of popularity for cooperating with the American occupation.

In the interview, Mr. Smesim accused the leaders of the two parties of pressing the Americans and the government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to exclude them from the political process at whatever cost, lest Mr. Sadr undercut the two big Shiite parties. Even so, Mr. Smesim recently met the leaders of both parties to tell them of Mr. Sadr`s plan.

For their part, the Shiite party leaders say they welcome Mr. Sadr`s entry into the political fray but say he overestimates his popularity.

"He has no support," said Adil Abdul Madhi, the finance minister and a Sciri leader. "You will see that when his hold is broken in these neighborhoods, he will have no support."

And then there is the problem of the Mahdi Army, the loosely organized guerrilla group that is thought to number in the thousands. In informal talks that have unfolded over the past several weeks, the Allawi government has insisted that any normalization of relations with Mr. Sadr must start with a surrender of the group`s mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. The group would still be allowed to keep most of its automatic weapons.

Until the group turns over its heavy weapons, Iraqi and American leaders say, they will keep up the military pressure.

"The government has made clear that it can accommodate all trends in Iraqi society," said Barham Salih, the deputy prime minister. "But we cannot accept the presence of any armed militias."

Mr. Sadr, who has broken several earlier promises to disarm, does not inspire much trust among the American military either.

"My daddy taught me, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me," a senior American military commander said. "I don`t trust him."

Indeed, there are some indications that Mr. Sadr intends to test the political waters before giving up his guns. Asked about the group`s heavy weapons, Mr. Smesim turned evasive, indicating that most of the weapons were the property of individual Iraqis within the Mahdi Army who were not likely to listen to Mr. Sadr`s orders to turn them over. "They are personal weapons, personal R.P.G.`s," he said.

Yet for all the reservations about Mr. Sadr, many of the Iraqi leaders who have met with his representatives say they are impressed with their seriousness.

Faoud Masoon, chairman of the National Assembly and a senior leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said he was not surprised by Mr. Sadr`s switch, given the decimation of his army. He met with Mr. Smesim two weeks ago.

"Every man is free to change his mind," Mr. Masoon said. "I think Moktada is being cautious, so he is sending his people out, testing the waters."

"We would welcome him into the democratic process," he said.

Mr. Sadr appears to be cultivating a number of groups, like his own, that are outside the political mainstream. One is the Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni Arab group that is opposed to the occupation and has decided, for now, to sit out the elections.

Abdul Salam al-Qubaisi, a senior member of the group, said talks with Mr. Smesim were planned for next week. Despite the groups` religious differences, Mr. Qubaisi said he saw a natural confluence of interests.

"We represent the Sunni resistance, and Sadr represents the Shiite resistance," Mr. Qubaisi said. "We think there can be a coordination of responses for the elections."

Of all those encouraging Mr. Sadr to jump into the political arena, one of the most surprising is Mr. Chalabi. A former exile with little popular support, Mr. Chalabi has recently tried to position himself as a populist Shiite leader much like Mr. Sadr is. In an interview, Mr. Chalabi acknowledged that he was trying to coax Mr. Sadr into the mainstream.

"Our real business is to persuade everybody that Sadr is better inside than outside," Mr. Chalabi said, "and to provide some measure of comfort to the middle class that he is not going to eat them up."

Mr. Smesim has recently met at least 10 times with members of the Shiite Council, an alliance of about 40 political parties that includes Mr. Chalabi`s Iraqi National Congress.

The big question surrounding Mr. Sadr and the Mahdi Army is how much authority he really has. Among many Iraqis, there is some worry that if Mr. Sadr jumps to the political mainstream, some of the hard-liners in his organization, like Abdul Hadi Daraji, would keep fighting.

"Most of them would give up if Moktada told them to,`` Mr. Masoon said. "A few of them would go with the terrorists."

John F. Burns contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Dieser Roman scheint das literarische Ereignis des Herbstes zu sein, weil er auch in die Zeit passt. Er stellt die Frage was passiert, wenn Amerika faschistisch wird.


October 3, 2004
`The Plot Against America`: What If It Happened Here?
By PAUL BERMAN


Philip Roth has written a terrific political novel, though in a style his readers might never have predicted — a fable of an alternative universe, in which America has gone fascist and ordinary life has been flattened under a steamroller of national politics and mass hatreds. Hitler`s allies rule the White House. Anti-Semitic mobs roam the streets. The lower-middle-class Jews of Weequahic, in Newark, N.J., cower in a second-floor apartment, trying to figure out how to use a gun to defend themselves. (``You pulla the trig,`` a kindly neighbor explains.) The novel is sinister, vivid, dreamlike, preposterous and, at the same time, creepily plausible.

Roth seems to be taunting, ``You think swastikas are only for other countries?`` And you turn the pages, astonished and frightened.

There is a solid tradition in American letters of novels like this, phantasmagoric pictures of a United States whose every promise has been turned upside down — jeremiads about America`s ability to transmute overnight into a fascist monstrosity. Jack London wrote the earliest example that anyone still reads today, I think — ``The Iron Heel,`` in 1908, from the period before the word ``fascism`` even existed (though fascism was plainly what London had in mind, in the form of a plutocratic-Republicantrade union dictatorship). Nearly 30 years later, Nathanael West produced a variation of his own called ``A Cool Million,`` which the Library of America resurrected not long ago — a freaky picture of an America taken over by murderous right-wing screwballs. But the classic of classics has always been Sinclair Lewis`s ``It Can`t Happen Here`` from 1935. The very title of Lewis`s novel entered long ago into the American language, a sardonic phrase, mocking the sweet naïfs who persist in believing that evil dwells anywhere but at home.

It is a bit odd to think of Philip Roth as a descendant of Sinclair Lewis, but when I reflect on some recent appreciative essays on Lewis by John Updike and Gore Vidal, it occurs to me that half the writers in America may be Lewis`s descendants. For what has Roth been doing during these past 45 years, except fulminating against the conformist oppressions and hypocrisies of bourgeois life, writing Lewis`s ``Babbitt`` in versions all his own — sexual, generational, comic, anti-McCarthyite, anti- P.C., antipuritanical, academic, East Coast, Middle Western and Jewish? One of Roth`s characters in ``The Human Stain,`` fuming over America`s prissiness and the impeachment of Bill Clinton, wonders how the stupid public could have learned so little about human nature over the years. For hasn`t anyone read ``Babbitt``? And so, having dwelled over ``Babbitt`` for long enough, Roth has evidently decided to dwell over ``It Can`t Happen Here,`` and has even found a clever way of setting his own tale of America-goes-fascist in the post-1935 era, exactly as Sinclair Lewis did — quite as if ``The Plot Against America`` and ``It Can`t Happen Here,`` not to mention ``A Cool Million,`` were, all of them, contemporaries: nervous novels from the Age of Roosevelt. And there is a reason for this.
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THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA
By Philip Roth.
391 pp. Houghton Mifflin Company. $26.
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Fascism took over most of continental Europe during those years, and this event was terrifying not just for the obvious reasons but also because every country in Europe seemed to have generated a fascist movement of its own, drawing on national idiosyncrasies and charming folk costumes — such that, after a while, the very existence of local traditions and funny hats came to seem positively sinister. In America, European-style fascist movements, the imitators of Hitler and Mussolini, were already marching around the streets. Roth describes the German-American Bund of Union, N.J., drinking from beer steins and enjoying the accordion music of ``a stout little man in short pants and high socks who wore a hat ornamented with a long feather.`` But the genuinely scary prospect in America was a fascism that might draw on something more than immigrant peculiarities — a fascism thriving on the ``patriot`` legacies of the American Revolution and the cornball kitsch of surly folk cultures from this or that region of the country. A fascism in red, white and blue. That was Lewis`s fear, and West`s. And it is Roth`s.

His novel worries over these possibilities in a tone that is marvelously ruminative and sorrowful — the tone of a saddened older man recalling his own childhood, and, then again, a scholar`s tone, as if, in his maturity, the narrator has become a dignified college professor, accustomed to nailing every factoid briskly into place. The narrator thinks back to a summer evening of 1940, when he is 7 years old. He and his brother Sandy have gone to sleep, while, in another room, his mom and dad and cousin Alvin listen to a radio broadcasting live reports from the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.
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The Republicans at the actual convention that year nominated a lawyer named Wendell Willkie to run against Franklin Roosevelt, which was pretty much a doomed thing to do. Roth`s narrator recalls a different outcome. The Republicans go 20 ballots and cannot settle on anybody at all. Instead, the name of Charles A. Lindbergh, the aviator, is entered into nomination. Lindbergh, in real life as in the novel, famously admired Hitler and even accepted a medal from Hitler`s government. He looked on the American Jews as a pretty suspicious group, all in all. Even so, millions of other Americans admired him. In the Republican Party, some politicians did think of running him for president. Roth has not invented this possibility out of thin air. And with the propeller of ``The Plot Against America`` already twirling, the novel taxis down the runway, and off we go.

Lindbergh makes a surprise appearance at the convention. It is 3:18 a.m. — such is the narrator`s attention to detail.

``The lean, tall, handsome hero, a lithe, athletic- looking man not yet 40 years old, arrived in his flying attire, having landed his own plane at the Philadelphia airport only minutes earlier, and at the sight of him, a surge of redemptive excitement brought the wilted conventioneers up onto their feet to cry `Lindy! Lindy! Lindy!` for 30 glorious minutes, and without interruption from the chair.``

At 4 a.m. the Republicans officially nominate their candidate. And the narrator abruptly reverts to his childhood memories — the recollections of the 7-year-old who, until that moment, had been fast asleep, together with his older brother:

`` `No!` was the word that awakened us, `No!` being shouted in a man`s loud voice from every house on the block. It can`t be. No. Not for president of the United States.

``Within seconds, my brother and I were once more at the radio with the rest of the family, and nobody bothered telling us to go back to bed.`` The neighbors pour into the street in their pajamas and nightdresses, crying in outrage and disbelief, ``Hitler in America!`` And Roth`s America is already headed toward the presidency of Charles Lindbergh, and Lindbergh`s alliance with the Axis powers, and something very close to war with Canada (``with Canada?`` the narrator says, incredulous) and the pogroms and other cataclysmic events that send ``The Plot Against America`` careering through the early 1940`s.

But I want to return to this matter of Roth`s tone. The dignity, the formality, sometimes even the hint of academic reserve in the narrator`s voice produce two vibrating timbres, and these dominate the novel — a timbre of explosive anger, and, when the clapper swings to the other side, a timbre of husky pathos. The anger is political, refreshing in its pealing clarity — an anger at fascism and at anti-Semitism. And then the anger gives way to the anxieties of a little boy, overwhelmed by childhood fears, trying to make sense of events with a knowledge of the world that comes from his stamp collection and from bedtime whisperings with his brother and cousin Alvin — a boy who cannot begin to understand why the name ``Lindbergh`` has begun to turn his household upside down.

Alvin joins the Canadian army to go fight Hitler, and comes home with his teeth rotting, missing a leg, embittered, furious, rocked by wild emotions — a superb character, richly imagined. The narrator as a boy can hardly cope with these calamities. ``I wanted to scream `No! Alvin can`t stay here — he has only one leg!` `` And the adult narrator exudes a pathos of his own, the tone of a man forever reeling, even in his older years, at the memory of that most amazing and alarming of childhood discoveries — the recognition that his own father, the all-powerful, is not so powerful, after all.
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Father and mother take their sons on a trip to Washington, to reassure the family that democracy survives and all is well. The trip is harrowing. The father adores Roosevelt, and puts in a word for his idol at every opportunity. His remarks arouse mutterings about ``loudmouth Jews`` from random strangers. A tourist guide explains in lush exactitude that recently the Washington Monument was thoroughly cleaned: `` `They used water mixed with sand and steel-bristled brushes. Took five months and cost a hundred thousand dollars.`

`` `Under F.D.R.?` my father asked.

`` `I believe so, yes.`

`` `And do people know?` my father asked.

`Do people care? No. They want an airmail pilot running the country instead. And that`s not the worst of it.` ``

The family climbs the steps to the Lincoln Memorial and gazes at the giant statue. ``Gravely my father said, `And they shot him, the dirty dogs.` ``

This is funny, in its way. But the puny dimensions of the father`s rhetoric are a little heartbreaking too. The truly thunderous phrases in ``The Plot Against America,`` at least in its earlier sections, belong instead to Lindbergh and his supporters. And the most powerful is this, the Republican campaign slogan of 1940: ``Vote for Lindbergh or vote for war.`` Lindbergh is, after all, the dove, and Roosevelt, the hawk, in the election that year — though Roth scrupulously clings to the 1940`s terminology of ``isolationist`` and ``internationalist.`` Even the Newark Jews, some of them, fall prey to the isolationist logic, not to mention Republican political pressure, after a while. A big-shot pro-Lindbergh rabbi acknowledges that, yes, the Jews of Europe are suffering grievously under Hitler. But won`t things get even worse if America enters the war? Won`t the Jews of America end up suffering as well, not to mention America as a whole? Aren`t the American Jews making themselves ridiculous in their panic over anti- Semitism, when Lindbergh is, at bottom, a decent man with honorable goals?

The father, arguing back, invokes the radio broadcasts of Walter Winchell, the gossip columnist — who, in real life, was a big enemy of the Nazis, and who, in the novel, leads the anti-Lindbergh movement, until he is foully assassinated by a suspected American Nazi in collaboration with the Ku Klux Klan. But the father is not a leader of men, and the martyred gossip columnist is merely a gossip columnist. And, in the end, the father goes on railing in his pipsqueak voice against the ``fascist bastards`` and the ``sons of bitches`` and the ``dirty dogs`` — a language that, in its tiny tones, seems brave and poignant in equal measure. And so the boy grows up, an inch at a time, and begins to see America collapsing around him in family fights, and the festering stump of his cousin`s leg, and the humiliations and violence that pour down upon the workaday Jews of Newark, N.J.

Not once in any of this does Roth glance at events of the present day, not even with a sly wink. Still, after you have had a chance to inhabit his landscape for a while and overhear the arguments about war and fascism and the Jews, ``The Plot Against America`` begins to rock almost violently in your lap — as if a second novel, something from our own time, had been locked inside and was banging furiously on the walls, trying to get out. Roth shows us President Lindbergh in his aviator`s gear, speaking in a plain style — and you would have to be pretty dimwitted not to recall our current president, striding around the carrier Abraham Lincoln in his own flying attire, delivering his ``Mission Accomplished`` speech.
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Roth shows us how swiftly the rights and democratic customs of American life are lost, under the authoritarian guidance of President Lindbergh and his cloyingly named ``Just Folks`` program, which sets out to break up Jewish families and neighborhoods by scattering Jewish children into the Christian heartland. The narrator`s brother spends a while in Kentucky through this program, and comes home with a twang and a sympathy for Lindbergh — a chilling development. And you find yourself reflecting on the equally cloying Patriot Act and the hardships of immigrants from Muslim countries in the last few years, not to mention the unfortunate fate of the Geneva Conventions of war, and sundry other worrisome aspects of our present predicament. But there is something else.

The anti-Semitism Roth describes in the 1940`s springs mostly from an antiwar resentment — from the belief that the Jews, and not the Nazis, bear responsibility for the war, and are trying to advance their own narrow interests at everyone else`s expense. And perhaps a bit of this has likewise turned up in our own time. During the last two or three years, large publics in Western Europe and even in the United States have taken up the view that, if extremist political movements have swept across large swaths of the Muslim world, and if Baathists and radical Islamists have slaughtered literally millions of people during these last years, and then have ended up at war with the United States, Israel and its crimes must ultimately be to blame. And if America has been drawn into war in Iraq, it is because President Bush`s second-level foreign policy advisers include a few Jews (though all of his toplevel advisers are Protestants), and these second- level figures have manipulated everyone else to the bidding of Ariel Sharon.

Quite a few protesters who subscribe to interpretations of this sort have found it natural during the last few years to march through the streets bearing placards denouncing Sharon, and sometimes comparing him to Hitler — quite as if Sharon were the embodiment of evil in the modern world. Some people have found it natural to go a bit farther, and have proclaimed an outright approval of suicide terrorism, as happened in Washington, where people marching in the street chanted, ``Martyrs, not murderers!``

It has become natural in these last years for political cartoonists in Europe to draw Sharon in the memorable style that Nazi cartoonists used to reserve for Jews; natural for a notorious and well-designed poster in San Francisco to suggest, in the spirit of medieval anti- Semitism, that Israelis murder Palestinian children in order to eat them; natural for Jewish students to feel intimidated at more than a few American college campuses; natural, in Paris, for a handful of militants to veer off from the biggest of the protest marches against the invasion of Iraq and rough up a few Jews — these many astonishing developments that depart pretty sharply from the protest atmosphere of the Vietnam era, yet do conjure a few scents and flavors of the 1930`s and 40`s.

Or is it ludicrous to suggest any such parallels? Maybe the mere act of noticing a few odors of a long-ago past insinuates a slander against the overwhelming mass of good-hearted antiwar protesters from our current era, who have never dabbled in scapegoat theories and cannot be held responsible for every zealot of the anti-Zionist cause or proponent of radical Islamism who chooses to carry a placard or to shout slogans. For that matter, is it fair to see any parallels at all between the heavy hand and cynical manipulations of the Bush administration, and the heavier hand and even more cynical manipulations of true-blue authoritarians from darker times and more sinister places, long ago? I have my opinions on these matters, and so does everyone else, and so does Philip Roth, I imagine.

But Roth has kept his opinions to himself. ``The Plot Against America`` is not an allegorical tract about the present age, with each scene or character corresponding to events of our own time. I think that in composing his novel, Roth has simply run his eye across the modern horizon, and gathered in the sights, and rearranged them in a 1940`s kaleidoscope. And, astonished by the shapes and colors, he has taken a deep breath and let himself feel what he really feels, and not what a levelheaded, judicious political analyst should try to feel.

All hell ultimately breaks loose in the Lindbergh administration. The evil vice president stages a sort of coup d`état to drive the country farther yet into Nazi-like policies. Mobs kill Jews. And thus the novel proceeds, through many a panicky newspaper headline and newsreel episode, until, at last, history resumes its proper course and the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor — all of which, in whole segments of ``The Plot Against America,`` pretty much drowns out the ordinary, intimate concerns of family life and the hardships of being a little kid. The conventional novel reader in me was sorry to see these political excitements get in the way, and doubly sorry because some of the news events, in their complexity, become a little hard to follow. Even so, the history reader in me was delighted. You could learn quite a bit about American history from Roth`s novel, if only any of this had happened. Here is a writer who knows his A.F.L. from his C.I.O. And the strictly political and historical events, in his imaginary version, begin to stir up some powerful emotions.

One of Roth`s talents is the ability to spin the decibel dial as he writes dialogue, such that, in ``The Plot Against America,`` his little boys emit thin little sounds (which are rendered still more plaintive by shifting into present tense), and the father in his humbleness emits a slightly louder tone, and cousin Alvin a shriekier one. In this fashion, the tones ascend in volume until, at last, Franklin Roosevelt addresses an anti-Lindbergh rally at Madison Square Garden. Roosevelt sonorously declaims, in syllables so majestic that only dashes will suffice, ``We — choose — freedom!`` And the patrician grandeur booms and trembles with such fervor and magnificence that as you read these lines, you want to leap to your feet and, like Churchill`s parrot, or what is said to be Churchill`s parrot, hurl curses at the Nazis.

Fiorello La Guardia, the mayor of New York, makes a couple of remarks of his own in a slightly quieter, scornful tone, and even manages to say, with a raised eyebrow, ``It can`t happen here?`` — just to allow Roth to nod respectfully to his literary master. And among these varied voices and shifting decibels, Roth presents, at long last, a newsreel summary of radio broadcasts from faraway Germany — the impersonal voice of the Nazis themselves across the ocean.

The German radio denounces a conspiracy by ``the warmonger Roosevelt — in collusion with his Jewish Treasury secretary, Morgenthau, his Jewish Supreme Court justice, Frankfurter, and the Jewish investment banker Baruch.`` This conspiracy, the German radio explains, ``is being financed by the international Jewish usurers Warburg and Rothschild and carried out under the command of Roosevelt`s mongrel henchman, the half-Jew gangster La Guardia, mayor of Jewish New York City, along with the powerful Jewish governor of New York State, the financier Lehman, in order to return Roosevelt to the White House and launch an all-out Jewish war against the non-Jewish world.`` And so on — Nazi blather about America, beamed across the airwaves. And the blather is, in its fashion, illuminating.

In the political culture of modern-age totalitarianism, there are soft doctrines for the fellow-traveling innocents around the world, and hard doctrines for the political insiders. Until this moment, we have mostly seen the soft doctrines, the ones that are Lindbergh`s. Now we see the real thing — the conspiracy theory about an all-out Jewish war against the entire world. This theory is mad, and yet, in a dozen subtle ways, this theory, in its madness, has been animating events, even among people who picture themselves as anything but Nazi sympathizers. And in these citations from the German radio, it is possible, one more time, to detect a few reverberations from our own age — a few echoes of modern-day Baathists and radical Islamists, who likewise speak about an all-out Jewish war for cosmic evil, sometimes with phrases and concepts that have been lifted directly from the European ultraright of the 1930`s and 40`s. But does Roth want us to notice these echoes? On this point, too, he offers not one word in guidance. He has staked his place in his alternative past, and he will not budge — and this rigid adherence of his to the world of long ago, instead of making ``The Plot Against America`` less interesting, makes the novel ever more strange and mysterious, as if, in constructing an imaginary fascist America under President Lindbergh, Roth has erected a giant and enigmatic symbol, whose meaning he will not define.

``The Plot Against America`` contains one more curious and provocative element. The father is named ``Herman Roth,`` and the sadvoiced scholarly narrator recounts the childhood memories of a boy called ``Phil Roth,`` and the entire novel appears to be the story of the real-life Philip Roth at a young age. The habit of presenting the author as a fictional character in his own books is an old trick of Roth`s, not to say a mania. Anyone reading ``The Plot Against America`` may wish to look on the novel as merely one more installment in a series of books about a personage named ``Philip Roth`` — an extension perhaps of ``Operation Shylock,`` in which a semifictional ``Philip Roth`` confronts a fully fictional ``Philip Roth,`` and father Herman plays a role, and many a clever and too-clever puzzle about alternative universes and multiple identities cries out for attention, postmodern style. But watch out. Something else is going on in ``The Plot Against America.`` And this something else wanders out of our postmodern era entirely, and — though I cannot tell if Roth is conscious of this or not — plunges into some of the most ancient and forgotten zones of the Jewish novel in America, at its most primitive.

The very earliest novel by a Jewish author to leave a mark on the wider literature of the United States was a lyrical album of New York street scenes called ``Jews Without Money,`` by Michael Gold, a bighearted and smallbrained ``proletarian`` writer from the Communist Party, in 1930. Gold, in this book, had already lit on the idea of writing about himself as a fictional little boy. The idea may have come to him from reading Isaac Babel or other writers, probably in Yiddish, who had been dabbling in autobiographical childhood fictions, back in the Old World. Gold`s inspiration was to chronicle the adventures of little ``Mikey Gold`` from ages 5 to 12, as viewed in sorrowful retrospect by his adult self. The plot, to the degree that ``Jews Without Money`` has a plot, shows little Mikey roaming around the Lower East Side, circa 1900, growing an inch at a time and slowly discovering that his beloved father, coincidentally named Herman, is merely a humble man of puny strength — a stout-hearted father overwhelmed by powerful anti-Semitic social forces, and berated by his superior, the Jewish doctor, for failing to bow before his Christian oppressors. And what was Michael Gold`s purpose in sending little Mikey around the Jewish streets to make this childhood discovery?

The purpose was to write more than a novel. Gold wanted to write a mythology of Jewish suffering, set for once in America — just as Babel had done in the Ukraine. Gold wanted to fashion a myth out of the Lower East Side and its immigrant sufferings — a myth about social conditions so brutal and degrading that, out of sheer misery, the tenements themselves groan with pain. And so Gold mythologized his own childhood, therefore his adulthood too. I know that to describe Philip Roth as an heir to Sinclair Lewis is already a stretch, and to see in Roth a further inheritance from a Lower East Side tub-thumper like Michael Gold touches on the absurd.

But what can I say? In his ``Plot Against America,`` Roth has mythologized his own childhood. He is little Philip, roaming the Jewish streets of Newark and discovering the humble status of his beloved father, Herman — an ordinary man overwhelmed by the tides of powerful social forces and anti-Semitism, berated by his superior, the pro-Lindbergh rabbi, for failing to bow his head. Roth, too, has written an American mythology of Jewish suffering. The overlap is hard to miss. ``Recently, groups of anti-Semitic demagogues have appeared in this country. They are like Hitler, telling the hungry American people that capitalism is Jewish, and that an attack on the Jews is the best way of restoring prosperity. What folly! . . . And there are signs that this oldest of swindles will grow in America.`` These sentences could loll about the Weequahic sidewalks of ``The Plot Against America`` with perfect ease, shaking their fists. But this is Gold, in his preface to a 1935 edition of ``Jews Without Money.``

Now, Roth has never been loath to take spectacular literary risks in the past; and here he goes again. Say what you will about Michael Gold, he really did grow up in an East Side tenement, and he wrote his novel in a mood of hard-boiled authenticity. But today is the age of soft-boiled fakery. Whole sectors of the population relieve their cultural anxieties by dressing up in the costumes of distant places and faraway social classes — disguising themselves as third world peasants, or hip-hop jailbirds or, in the case of the Jews, immigrant proletarians from the pages of Michael Gold, or even survivors of the camps, decked out in striped pajamas. Phony victimhood is the sentimentality of our time, and no one has dissected this unhappy phenomenon more relentlessly than Roth, in novel after novel.

But then, what are we to make of little Philip and the American landscape of Jewish oppression in ``The Plot Against America``? Isn`t there, in the end, a touch of sentimental fakery here — a suggestion that Roth, the scourge of everything false, has dressed himself up as someone else entirely, as the kind of Jewish writer of our time who, in childhood, really did survive the fascists and Nazis of Europe, and grew up to tell the tale, shivering in fear? Roth loves to make shocking and transgressive gestures — ``transgressive`` is his favorite word, together with ``poignant`` — and one of his favorite transgressions is to seize on other people`s real-life tragedies, Anne Frank`s or Leon Klinghoffer`s, for crafty literary purposes of his own. At least he laughs at himself, sometimes, for doing this sort of thing, and laughter lets him get away with it. Laughter is Roth`s way of putting a perspective on his own mischief — his reality principle.

The very title of ``The Plot Against America,`` with its air of popeyed tabloid melodrama, suggests that, in this novel, too, he may be laughing at his own imaginings — at his absurd and lachrymose memories of American fascism in the age of President Lindbergh. And yet, apart from the title, there is not much comedy or self-mockery here. In the final pages, he serves up a scholarly appendix containing a bibliography, historical chronology and minibiographies of real-life figures who appear in the book, which will prove handy to any reader who wishes to parse the real from the not-real. But the appendix, in its dense facticity, also allows Roth to hammer home his entirely earnest point — his argument that every terrible thing he has imagined could, in fact, have happened here, and some of it did. And as Roth bangs away on these matters, not just in the appendix but throughout the book, a few chips and dustclouds of Jewish sentimentality do seem to fly up from the page, as if knocked into the air by the author`s vehemence.

The narrator insists on describing the Jews of Newark as ordinary people whose Jewishness contains nothing special or even valuable — ``plain people who happened to be Jews.`` But those are empty words — the kind of phrase that Roth, in other circumstances, would take pleasure in complicating or undermining. He pictures in acute detail how the Jews of New Jersey respond to the fascist menace, and his political spectrum reaches all the way to the gangsters and thugs, quite as if, like Gold or Babel, he wanted to paint Jewish reality in even its ugliest colors. And yet, for all his political shrewdness, he manages to exclude the one political grouping that, under the conditions of a real-life fascism in the 1940`s, would probably have flourished — the one political faction in New Jersey, Jewish and otherwise, that maintained underground cells and enjoyed secret subsidies from the Soviet Union. The Communist Party, that is, Michael Gold`s organization, which is oddly missing here — the party that Roth painted with genuine precision in what seems to me the finest of his recent novels, ``I Married a Communist.``

He has stripped a few dark and complicating hues out of America herself, in ``The Plot Against America.`` In the past, Roth has never shown any reluctance to speak about Hiroshima and the atomic bomb — Hiroshima, which, he has written, was one of the cataclysms of his real-life childhood. Hiroshima weighed on his American conscience as recently as 2001, in ``The Dying Animal.`` But in the scholarly chronology at the end of ``The Plot Against America,`` when August 1945 arrives and Hiroshima ought to appear, it, too, is oddly missing. The history reader in me harbors a couple of reservations after all.

I suppose Roth wanted to preserve the black-and-white simplicity of his fable about fascism and democracy, and likewise the simplicity of his mythology of Jewish oppression, and figured it was better for artistic reasons to leave out the ambiguous shadows. Or maybe little Philip`s love for his father reigns emotionally over ``The Plot Against America,`` and the father`s level of intellectual sophistication provides a ceiling above which the novel cannot rise. Maybe Roth has finally taken to heart the censorious advice of his anxious Jewish elders — the people whom he resents so bitterly in ``The Ghost Writer`` and other novels. (In a passage of ``The Ghost Writer`` that nearly predicts ``The Plot Against America,`` his narrator points out that growing up Jewish in Newark in the 1940`s was not at all like growing up Jewish in fascist Europe — which invites the counterfactual question, but what if it had been?) Or maybe the contours of ``The Plot Against America`` have been shaped by still another impulse, which is neither fabulist nor mythological nor filial but dreamlike — quite as if little Philip, on the evening of the Republican convention, never did get awakened by the uproar over Lindbergh in the other room, and went on sleeping, dreaming every last astonishing event.

A dream does figure at the center of the novel, and on the book jacket, too, in a softtoned illustration by the artist Milton Glaser. In the dream, Philip`s stamp collection has been hideously disfigured. He owns a set of national parks stamps, depicting nature scenes. In the dream about these stamps, though, ``across the face of each, across the cliffs, the woods, the rivers, the peaks, the geyser, the gorges, the granite coastline, across the deep blue water and the high waterfalls, across everything in America that was the bluest and the greenest and the whitest and to be preserved forever in these pristine reservations, was printed a black swastika.`` This is vivid, unnerving, touching — and wonderfully traditional.

Michael Gold described a similar nightmare in ``Jews Without Money.`` ``In my bad dreams during the hot summer nights,`` Gold wrote, ``dark Christian ogres the size of tenements moved all around me. They sat on my chest, and clutched my throat with slimy remorseless fingers, shrieking, `Jew, Jew! Jew!` `` But this similarity is not because Philip Roth has borrowed anything from Michael Gold. I think that, instead, like Gold almost 75 years ago, Roth has found his way to an archetypal nightmare — the anxious, ancestral, midnight fear of the American Jews. This, finally, is the rumbling engine that keeps ``The Plot Against America`` securely aloft and chugging forward — the emotion that Roth has allowed himself to feel, luxuriously and at length.

The very first line of the novel says, ``Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear.`` Fear of what? you may ask. Of Nazis? They are gone. Of Lindbergh? He never got anywhere in politics. Fear of what, then? Nobody living in this era after 9/11 should have to ask that question. But then, perhaps even 9/11 cannot explain every last aspect of this dark fear, which is old, old, old.

Paul Berman is the author of ``Terror and Liberalism`` and the forthcoming ``Passion of Joschka Fischer.``
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Passion of Joschka Fischer
by Paul Berman
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Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Danke Groupier für den Hinweis. Hatte schon seit langem etwas in der Art über Hersh in Deutsch gesucht.

01.10.2004 16:11 Uhr

Seymour Hersh im Interview

"Das Rätsel bleibt, wie Verrückte die Regierung übernehmen konnten"
Der beste investigative Reporter der Welt über die Neokonservativen um US-Präsident Bush, die Folterer von Abu Graib und den neuen irakischen Staatschef.
Interview von Andrian Kreye
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Seymour Hersh hat sein Büro im dritten Stock eines unauffälligen Bürogebäudes aus den siebziger Jahren im Zentrum von Washington. Das fensterlose Vorzimmer ist bis auf eine Neonröhre und ein paar Regale voller Akten leer.

Hersh sitzt in einem zehn Quadratmeter großen Zimmer hinter einem überladenen Schreibtisch. Über dem altmodischen Computer hängt ein gerahmtes Foto von Henry Kissinger, dem einstigen Erzfeind. Den Telefonhörer unters Kinn geklemmt schreibt Hersh E-Mails.

Seit sein Buch "Die Befehlskette – vom 11. September bis Abu Ghraib" in neun Ländern fast gleichzeitig erschienen ist und in die Bestsellerliste der New York Times auf Platz fünf eingestiegen ist, kommt er kaum noch zur Ruhe. Dem 67-Jährigen ist der Wirbel um seine Person unangenehm.

"Meine 15 Minuten Ruhm", sagt er. Die dauern allerdings schon 35 Jahre. Seine Karriere begann er mit Berichten über das Vietnamkriegmassaker von My Lai. Es folgten Enthüllungen über die Rolle der CIA im Putsch von Chile, Kissingers Bombenkrieg gegen Kambodscha, die amerikanische Unterstützung von Atomprogrammen in Israel und Pakistan.

"Die Befehlskette" fasst jetzt seine Artikel im New Yorker über die Sicherheits- und Außenpolitik der USA nach dem 11. September zusammen, die in der Veröffentlichung der Fotos von Abu Ghraib gipfelte.
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SZ: War Abu Ghraib Extrem oder bewusste Politik?

Seymour Hersh: Was in Abu Ghraib passiert ist, war ein Endpunkt. Wir werden allerdings herausfinden, dass die Misshandlungen in Guantanamo Bay noch viel schlimmer waren. Alleine seit das Buch erschienen ist, habe ich da noch viel mehr erfahren. Und wir wissen auch noch nichts über das geheime Team, das Gefangene nach Ägypten, Thailand, Singapur und wer weiß wohin gebracht hat.

SZ: Wo liegen die Wurzeln dieser Politik?

Hersh: Nach den Anschlägen des 11. Septembers waren wir alle sehr wütend und hatten Angst, dass die Terroristen noch einmal zuschlagen würden. Da wurden eben Leute festgenommen und grün und blau geprügelt, um etwas herauszufinden. Dann kam Guantanamo. Und Condoleezza Rice hat da ihre ganz eigene Definition von Folter entwickelt.

SZ: Im offiziellen Sprachgebrauch heißt die ‚GTMO Verhörtechniken’ und wurde vom Verteidigungsminister persönlich abgesegnet.

Hersh: All diese Kategorien und Handbücher haben nichts damit zu tun, was wirklich passiert ist. Sie haben geglaubt, sie könnten tun und lassen, was sie wollen. Und zwar zum Großteil mit Leuten, die sie willkürlich irgendwo aufgegriffen haben. Nach offiziellen Angaben der CIA hatten 50 Prozent aller Gefangenen in Guantanamo nichts mit Terror zu tun.

Im Irak waren es 60 Prozent. Amnesty International spricht sogar von 90 Prozent. So wie dieser britische Gefangene. Dem wurde unterstellt, dass er auf irgendwelchen Gruppenbildern mit Osama bin Laden zu sehen ist. Als er sagte, zu dem Zeitpunkt sei er in England in einem Gefängnis gesessen, haben sie ihn drei Monate lang in Einzelhaft gesteckt.

Manchmal haben sie ihn tagelang in Eis gepackt. Nach drei Monaten war er dann soweit und hat zugegeben was sie wollten. Aber das wird nicht als Folter definiert.

SZ: Trotzdem bleibt das derzeit oft bemühte moralische Dilemma: Wenn man jemanden gefangen hält, der von einem geplanten Anschlag weiß, bei dem Hunderte oder Tausende sterben würden, ist es da nicht gerechtfertigt, ihn mit Folter zu einer Aussage zu bringen?

Hersh: Auf keinen Fall. Weil man mit Folter keine brauchbaren Informationen bekommt. Entweder falsche Geständnisse von Gefangenen, die sagen, was man will, um der Folter zu entkommen. Oder falsche Aussagen. Ich habe hier die Übersetzung eines al-Qaida-Handbuches von 1997, das Richtlinien für Verhöre gibt. Als erstes steht da: Brüder, sie werden euch nackt ausziehen. Sie werden Sachen in euch hineinstecken, euch krank machen, euch bloßstellen und erniedrigen. Die wussten von Anfang an, was ihnen da blüht.

SZ: Hieß es nicht, man habe in Guantanamo wichtige Informationen bekommen?

Hersh: Ein paar brauchbare Informationen haben sie bekommen. Da gab es einen geplanten Anschlag in Bahrain und auf irgendeine Botschaft. Dafür, dass sie so viele gefoltert haben, war das aber ziemlich dürftig.

SZ: Wissen denn die Geheimdienste das nicht alles?

Hersh: Sie meinen, ob Amerikaner aus Erfahrung klug werden? (lacht) Sie meinen, wir hätten Dien Bien Phu verstanden? Sie glauben, wir sind in Vietnam einmarschiert und haben gewusst, dass Vietnam und China befreundet sind?

SZ: Wenn die USA aber so wenig von diesen Ländern wissen, woher wissen sie dann, dass Sexualität in islamischen Ländern eines der besten Druckmittel ist?

Hersh: Da gibt es dieses Buch „The Arab Mind“ von Raphael Patai. Das ist für die Neokonservativen das Grundlagenwerk über die arabische Kultur. Darin findet sich übrigens auch ein Kapitel über die Sexualität als ultimativem Tabu der islamischen Kultur. Die Neokons wie Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle und Doug Feith sind ja sehr kluge, sehr politische Männer. Sie sind weder für Israel noch für Öl in den Krieg gezogen. Sie waren von einer utopischen Ideologie getrieben.

Wolfowitz glaubte wirklich, man könne mit 15000 Mann, ein paar Bombenangriffen und vielen Flaggen den Irak erobern, und die Demokratie würde dann wie Wasser aus einem Quell sprudeln und weiter nach Syrien und in den Iran fließen.

SZ: So einen Krieg können aber weder ein paar Berater und Minister im Alleingang beschließen, noch der Präsident.

Hersh: Das Rätsel ist, wie acht oder neun verrückte Neokonservative die Regierung übernehmen konnten. Sie haben den Präsidenten überzeugt. Sie haben den Kongress niedergerungen, das Militär kleingekriegt, das diesen Krieg hasst, und sie haben die Presse eingeschüchtert. Ich verstehe das alles nicht. Das ist ganz sicher noch ein eigenes Buch wert.


SZ: Würde sich etwas ändern, wenn Kerry die Wahlen im November gewinnt?

Hersh: Nicht viel. Manchmal bin ich so zynisch, mir zu sagen, dass es sogar besser wäre, wenn wir noch einmal vier Jahre Bush an der Macht hätten und er alles bis zum Äußersten triebe.

SZ: In Ihren Artikeln für den New Yorker haben Sie die die Befehlskette bis ins Pentagon verfolgt. Versucht man eigentlich, Ihnen Schwierigkeiten zu machen?

Hersh: Das Weiße Haus greift mich immer sehr scharf an. Rumsfeld und Cheney wollten schon einmal das FBI auf mich ansetzen. Das war 1975, als Rumsfeld Stabschef von Präsident Ford war, Cheney sein Stellvertreter.

Damals deckte ich auf, dass amerikanische U-Boote Spionagefahrten innerhalb der russischen Dreimeilenzone unternahmen. Jetzt haben sie behauptet, ich würde nur anonyme Quellen verwenden. Das Weiße Haus und das Pentagon stützen sich seit 50 Jahren auf anonyme Quellen, seltsamerweise muss ich mich aber ständig dafür rechtfertigen.

SZ: Der New Yorker ist für sein penibles fact-checking bekannt. Müssen Sie dort Ihre Quellen offen legen?

Hersh: Jede einzelne. Da wird auch jede Einzelheit nochmal überprüft und jede der Quellen noch einmal angerufen.

SZ: Versuchen die Leute an der Macht nicht, Ihre Quellen aufzuspüren und zum Schweigen zu bringen?

Hersh: Glauben Sie mir, einige meiner Quellen sind die Leute an der Macht. Prinzipiell ist unsere Regierung ja sehr in Ordnung. Vor allem das Militär.

SZ: Trotzdem ist das Schweigen der Regierung doch sehr erstaunlich.

Hersh: Die scheren sich um nichts. Ein paar wichtige Dinge sind daraufhin aber trotzdem passiert. Zum Beispiel haben Leute, die für Rice arbeiten über das besagte Treffen von 2002 geredet, bei dem sie zum ersten Mal von den Misshandlungen erfahren hat, was jetzt im ersten Kapitel des Buches beschrieben wird.

SZ: Der Umstand, dass Rice und Rumsfeld schon 2002 von Misshandlungen wussten und nichts taten, wäre doch eigentlich eine Sensation. Die amerikanischen Medien haben sich da aber bedeckt gehalten.

Hersh: Ich weiß. Aber da gibt es all diese Geschichten, die liegen ganz offen herum. Manchmal bin ich den anderen fast dankbar, dass sie mir alles überlassen. Nehmen Sie den irakischen Regierungschef Ijad Allawi.

An den hat sich noch niemand herangetraut. Er war eine der Schlüsselfiguren, als Saddam die Baathpartei übernommen hat. Dabei sind viele Leute umgebracht worden. Danach gehörte Allawi zu den Loyalisten und irgendwann ging er ins Ausland, um Neurologie zu studierten. Aber er brauchte zehn Jahre dafür, war irgendwie auch in die Mukhabarat verwickelt, kümmerte sich um irgendwelche Leute. Ich kann nicht behaupten, dass er den Abzug gezogen hat. Aber Allawis Hände sind voll Blut.

SZ: Es gab Berichte, dass er in den neunziger Jahren als Agent der CIA im Irak für Anschläge auf einen Schulbus und ein Kino verantwortlich war.

Hersh: Der hat Geld von allen möglichen ausländischen Geheimdiensten genommen. Der Punkt ist : Wer ist denn dieser Allawi? Das ist ein nichtreligiöser Schiit, ein Strohmann, der im Ausland gelebt hat, während die Schiiten im Irak gekämpft haben und umgebracht wurden. Und dann kommt er einfach zurück und übernimmt die Macht. Jetzt hat er sich auch noch in Washington feiern lassen. Der gesamte Kongress hat ihm applaudiert. Ich sage Ihnen, es gibt noch so einige andere Geschichten, die ich in Vorbereitung habe.

(SZ vom 2. Oktober 2004)

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Der Chimp hat nach der gestrigen Debatte wieder Renaisance!

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"May I please have my banana now?"
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"Eich bin ein Monkey!"
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"I am a Monkey!"
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"That`s OK, I need the money"
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"You can embolden an enemy by sending
a mixed message.
You can dispirit the Iraqi people
by sending mixed messages.
You can send the wrong message to
our troops by sending mixed messages."
--Dubya, explaining the differences
between Rummy`s madness and the Powell Doctrine
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"Terrorists are pouring into Iraq
to try to undermine Iraq and God forbid,
if Iraq is broken or the will of Iraq
is broken, then London will be a target,
Washington will be a target."
--Iraq`s Prime Minister Allawi,
calling Bush a liar
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"We know that dictators are quick to
choose aggression, while free nations
strive to resolve differences in peace."
President Monkey Bush.
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"Al Qaeda would prefer "somebody who
would file a lawsuit with the World
Court or something, rather than respond
with troops."
--Dennis Hastert,(R-Sweaty Wrestler)
on why Osama wants Kerry in the
White House, Haster is lying.
The truth is, al Qaeda would prefer
an idiot who attacks Muslim countries
for no reason instead of the country
where al Qaeda is currently hiding out
...and that`s President Monkey Bush.
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Ich möchte auf die etwas seltsamen Ergebnisse von Newsweek hinweisen. Veränderungen von +8 auf -11 dann wieder auf +3 für Kerry halte ich bei allem, was man über den gemeinen US-Bürger so alles erzählt für eher unwahrscheinlich. Also die Frage bleibt, wie zuverläßlich sind die Polls.


*****************Bush/Cheney**Kerry/Edwards**Other**(vol.)/Undecided
++++++++++++++++++++%++++++++++ %++++++ %
++++++++9/30-10/2/04++++46++++++49++++++5
++++++++9/9-10/04+++++++50++++++45++++++5
++++++++9/2-3/04++++++++54++++++43++++++3
++++++++7/29-30/04++++++44++++++52++++++4
++++++++7/8-9/04++++++++45++++++51++++++4




The Race is On
With voters widely viewing Kerry as the debate’s winner, Bush’s lead in the NEWSWEEK poll has evaporated
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Brian Braiker
Newsweek
Updated: 6:04 p.m. ET Oct. 2, 2004

Oct. 2 - With a solid majority of voters concluding that John Kerry outperformed George W. Bush in the first presidential debate on Thursday, the president’s lead in the race for the White House has vanished, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll. In the first national telephone poll using a fresh sample, NEWSWEEK found the race now statistically tied among all registered voters, 47 percent of whom say they would vote for Kerry and 45 percent for George W. Bush in a three-way race.

Removing Independent candidate Ralph Nader, who draws 2 percent of the vote, widens the Kerry-Edwards lead to three points with 49 percent of the vote versus the incumbent’s 46 percent. Four weeks ago the Republican ticket, coming out of a successful convention in New York, enjoyed an 11-point lead over Kerry-Edwards with Bush pulling 52 percent of the vote and the challenger just 41 percent.

Among the three-quarters (74 percent) of registered voters who say they watched at least some of Thursday’s debate, 61 percent see Kerry as the clear winner, 19 percent pick Bush as the victor and 16 percent call it a draw. After weeks of being portrayed as a verbose “flip-flopper” by Republicans, Kerry did better than a majority (56 percent) had expected. Only about 11 percent would say the same for the president’s performance while more than one-third (38 percent) said the incumbent actually did worse that they had expected. Thirty-nine percent of Republicans felt their man out-debated the challenger but a full third (33 percent) say they felt Kerry won.

Kerry’s perceived victory may be attributed to the fact that, by a wide margin (62 percent to 26 percent), debate watchers felt the senator came across as more confident than the president. More than half (56 percent) also see Kerry has having a better command of the facts than Bush (37 percent). As a result, the challenger’s favorability ratings (52 percent, versus 40 percent unfavorable) are better than Bush’s, who at 49 percent (and 46 percent unfavorable), has dipped below the halfway mark for the first time since July. Kerry, typically characterized as aloof and out of touch by his opponents, came across as more personally likeable than Bush (47 percent to the president’s 41 percent).

In fact, Kerry’s numbers have improved across the board, while Bush’s vulnerabilities have become more pronounced. The senator is seen as more intelligent and well-informed (80 percent, up six points over last month, compared to Bush’s steady 59 percent); as having strong leadership skills (56 percent, also up 6 points, but still less than Bush’s 62 percent) and as someone who can be trusted to make the right calls in an international crisis (51 percent, up five points and tied with Bush).

Meanwhile, Bush’s approval ratings have dropped to below the halfway mark (46 percent) for the first time since the GOP convention in late August. Nearly half of all voters (48 percent) say they do not want to see Bush re-elected, while 46 percent say they do. Still, a majority of voters (55 percent versus 29 percent) believe the president will be re-hired on Nov. 2.

Neither man was seen as a particularly stronger leader (44 percent Bush, 47 percent Kerry), more negative (37 percent Bush, 36 percent Kerry) or more honest (43 percent Bush, 45 percent Kerry).

Perhaps because the debate topic focused on foreign policy—and largely was dominated by the war in Iraq—that issue rates higher as a voter concern than it did a month ago. Twenty percent of all voters say Iraq is the issue that will most determine their vote, up from 15 percent. Tied with Iraq is the economy (21 percent), and still leading the list is terrorism and homeland security (26 percent). And key for the president is the fact that he is the preferred man on the issues more important to voters. On homeland security, Bush is preferred 52 percent to Kerry’s 40 percent (a significant spread, but a narrowing one: Last month the spread, in the president’s favor, was 58 percent to 34 percent). On Iraq Bush is preferred 49 percent to 44 percent (compared to 54 percent versus 39 percent a month ago). Kerry is even with the president on the question of which man is better suited to guide foreign policy in general (48 percent Bush to the challenger’s 46 percent) and clamping down on the proliferation of nuclear materiel (47 percent Bush, 43 percent Kerry).

Where Kerry clearly leads is on domestic issues, which will be the focus of the third debate on Oct. 13, in Tempe, Ariz. The Democrat is preferred to Bush by double-digit spreads on who would be better at handling the economy (52 percent to 39 percent), foreign competition (54 percent to 36 percent) and health care (56 percent to 34 percent).

Although the subject of the draft was only briefly addressed during the debate, four in ten voters (38 percent) believe that because of the war in Iraq—which 50 percent of all voters now view as unnecessary—a second Bush administration would reinstate the draft. Just 18 percent feel the same would happen if Kerry were elected. Nearly two thirds (62 percent) feel a draft should not be considered at this time and 28 percent said a draft should at least be considered. But only 46 percent feel going to war was the right decision in the first place with just as many (45 percent) under the impression that the administration deliberately misled the nation into war with falsified evidence of weapons of mass destruction.

Finally, echoing a recurring refrain of Kerry’s, more than half of all voters (51 percent) think the Bush administration has not done enough to engage other nations (43 percent feel they have done enough or even gone too far in that direction as it is).

For the NEWSWEEK poll, Princeton Survey Research Associates interviewed 1,013 registered voters aged 18 and older between Sept. 30 and Oct. 2 by telephone. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6159637/site/newsweek/

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October 3, 2004
Iraq`s New Police: Scared, but at Least Employed
By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The olive-green Peugeot sedan sat beneath the noon sun in a dirt lot by the police station. Small and mottled with rust, it looked as threatening as a rotten avocado. But it had been resting unattended for five hours, which was about four hours too long for police officers worried about car bombs.

Capt. Fouad Hadi barked orders. Several officers pushed the car across the lot. "It`s all up to our God," the captain said, a walkie-talkie crackling in one hand. "Our spirits are still high. The attacks on us give us more motivation to fight the thugs and outlaws."
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Iraqi policemen go on patrol with assault rifles and, in some cases, good body armor. The insurgents have rocket-propelled grenades.
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In the end, it proved to be just a parked jalopy, and the police went on to worrying about what form the next real threat might take - like the 35 or so suicide car bombs that exploded in September, many aimed at the nascent Iraqi security forces and would-be recruits lined up outside police stations and national guard centers.

Senior American commanders here all say the outcome of this increasingly grim war - and the ability of Americans to leave eventually - depends on standing up Iraqi security forces that can take over many of the policing duties now handled with questionable effectiveness by the 140,000 American soldiers here. The police force will be the largest component.

But these days, the Iraqi police spend as much time protecting themselves as guarding the public. The police are key targets in the insurgents` campaign to cripple the interim Iraqi government, and hospital wards are filling with dazed men lying in blood-drenched blue uniforms.

To listen to Iraq`s new police officers is to hear the voices of under-equipped and under-trained men, often unnerved by the danger but determined to work. They hope that if they can feed their families and calm their country, their lives may get better. They say they are committed to building a new Iraq, but many are skeptical about the Americans who insist they were sent here to do the same thing. Some even say they are willing to turn their guns on the soldiers.

At least 750 police officers were killed between the fall of Baghdad in April 2003 and June this year, according to Interior Ministry statistics, and scores more have been slain since then. In addition, hundreds of potential recruits were killed in bombings.

In the southern city of Basra, some policemen have begun wearing black ski masks to hide their identities, giving them more than a passing resemblance to the shadowy jihadists they are supposed to be fighting.

But like Captain Hadi, many police officers and potential recruits say the violence does not shake their resolve to serve. For sure, it does not shake their need to bring home a paycheck. Iraq`s unemployment rate is 50 percent, and police officers earn a relatively high average salary, equivalent to $228 a month. So the number of people applying for jobs has not dropped, Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said.

Ayad Hussein, 24, a recruit recovering in Karama Hospital from shrapnel wounds suffered in a car bombing, said he was not deterred. "There are no other jobs, no opportunities offered," he said.

If a police officer is killed on duty, the family gets a payment equivalent to $690 and continues getting the officer`s salary indefinitely, Colonel Abdul-Rahman said.

But some officers complain that they have yet to see promised raises.

"They said there would be a bonus last month for fighting the Mahdi Army," said Sgt. Rafid Rashid, 34, referring to the Shiite militia that rose in rebellion in August. "But we got nothing."

Many officers also express frustration that they are issued assault rifles and pistols, while insurgents often have rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. Many also complain of a shortage of good body armor.

The elaborate defenses surrounding stationhouses are testaments to the hazards. At the headquarters of the Organized Crime Unit in western Baghdad, where Captain Hadi`s men were spooked by the parked car, a labyrinth of sand-filled barriers and metal-spiked speed bumps lies between the parking lot and the front door. Insurgents have attacked the building using mortars and cars packed with explosives. Black funeral banners proclaiming the martyrdom of comrades drape some barriers.

"We always keep in mind the worst thing that can happen," Gen. Abdul Razzaq al-Samarrai, chief of police in Baghdad, said at a recent news conference. "Right now, we think these attacks will continue until January." That is when elections are scheduled.

The force has 39,000 trained officers now, and the American military hopes to have more than 60,000 on hand for the elections, Capt. Steven Alvarez, a United States military spokesman, said. The ultimate goal is 140,000. But Reuters recently cited Pentagon documents saying that only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training.

Even if one takes the military`s numbers at face value, there is no way to measure the loyalty and morale of the officers.

Sergeant Rashid said he had to use his own money to fill the gas tank of his squad car and to buy decent blue shirts for his uniform. "Even very ordinary tasks are dangerous these days," he said. "We`re afraid, but we do our job. It`s kind of a national motivation. Who will protect our country if I quit and others quit?"

Many policemen said the occupation forces had botched Iraq`s security, and it was now up to Iraqis to fix it. At the site of a roadside bomb explosion in Baghdad that killed three Iraqi security guards, the police arrived an hour before American soldiers showed up, and struggled to keep a growing crowd away from the bloody wreck.

"All of our families, they don`t like this job, they want us to quit," said Sgt. Ahmed Abdul Ilaa, 25. "But if I did that and the next person did that, what will become of our country?" Next to him stood Sgt. Husham Abdul Zahara . "If we depend on the Americans,`` he said, "we`ll never have security or stability."

Earlier that morning, at dawn, a half-dozen policemen were sitting around at a cafe in the same neighborhood eating eggs and bread. They smoked and drank tea and read in a newspaper of how three policemen had been killed by a suicide car bomb in the capital the previous day. A 32-year-old chief sergeant who declined to give his name made a distinction between killing policemen and killing Americans.

"The mujahedeen," he said, referring to Iraqi Islamist fighters, "are my brothers, but when policemen are killed, it is not the mujahedeen; those people are Wahhabis and terrorists like Zarqawi and Osama." Now he was referring to the branch of fundamentalist Islam associated with Saudi Arabia and followed by Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian.

"I like the mujahedeen," he said, "because they fight the Americans."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Post-Conflict Expert Says Priority Should Be Given to Making Baghdad Safe

http://www.cfr.org/pub7414/bernard_gwertzman_frederick_barto…

Frederick D. Barton, the co-director of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, says "there is way too much chaos" in Iraq for this stage of the reconstruction. He faults the Bush administration for not adequately preparing for the public-safety vacuum that followed the fall of Baghdad and says the reconstruction mission has been severely hindered as a result.

Barton, who previously served as deputy U.N. high commissioner for refugees in Geneva and was in charge of post-conflict development programs in the Clinton administration, says there will be a very strong political push by any elected Iraqi government to ask the United States to pull out. He says the White House should not even consider withdrawing, however, until Baghdad and the key Shiite cities of Najaf and Karbala are stabilized.

Barton served on a now inactive advisory committee for Senator John F. Kerry`s (D-Mass.) presidential campaign. He was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on September 29, 2004.
Other Interviews

What is the situation in Iraq now? We get so many conflicting views because of the politics in the United States and the uncertainties in Iraq. Your group has examined the data available--how would you sum it up?

There is way too much chaos for this stage of the reconstruction. We missed the opportunity to establish a new order in Iraq and as a result, things have really gotten out of control in too many places. That insecurity and lack of public safety is having a huge influence on the ability to make progress and, most importantly, on the ability of Iraqis to take charge of their lives, which they are desperate to do.

Your group`s report of a few weeks ago looked for signs of progress in five areas of Iraqi life and ended up giving the reconstruction no passing grades. Could you elaborate?

What we tried to do essentially was to create five simple but important statements that an average Iraqi would make about his or her life in today`s Iraqi society. As it turned out, one of the statements was about security, one was about governance, one was about education and health, one was about basic services, and one was about income. And the statements would be as simple as "I have a job and can support my family." That would be the "income" statement.

From that, we took all the data we could find and tried to determine how Iraqis felt about how their country was doing and where the country stood, because we felt we needed to get them into a viable zone where they could take charge of things themselves. In none of these five areas did the data suggest we had crossed the tipping point into the viable zone. In fact, as we broke the data out into five separate periods over the past year, there was a negative trend line in four of the five areas. There had been an initial improvement in the early days of the occupation, but now things were trending increasingly into the danger zone, with the exception of the governance trend.

We stopped collecting data just before the handover of sovereignty at the end of June. There was an increase in Iraqi optimism at that point on that issue.

Your project has been studying the issue of Iraqi security since before the war started. What do you think is the root cause of what is now loosely called "the insurgency"?

I think at the heart of it are two factors. One is that we did not establish a new authority [in Iraq immediately after the invasion]. We did not make it clear that there was a "straight-shooting sheriff" in town and that he was reliable and doing the job. So we missed that opportunity. We said in our January 2003 report that in almost every post-conflict case, such as the Panama invasion in 1989, there is inevitably a public-safety vacuum which must be filled. We tried to be very precise. We felt that 15,000 specially trained non-combat U.S. forces who had received six weeks of special training should be ready to be inserted into the major cities the day after the combat ended. We also priced it out. We said it would cost about $220,000 per soldier. They might be needed for 18 to 24 months, so we priced it at around $5 to $6 billion. And just to show it was very doable, we did this working with our military fellows, who felt that this number [of soldiers] could be drawn upon from the existing services.

[The United States] missed that opportunity. That`s the first big mistake. The second one was that we didn`t have a reference point with the Iraqis for what happened at the end of war. This was a war which ended without us capturing anybody and nobody surrendering. They all just went away. We were very, very slow in reacting to this. In fact, when our group was in Iraq on a visit in July 2003, the U.S. military was still not accepting that the "disappearance" might have been part of an organized strategy.

Before the war, we heard there were 20,000 crack Republican Guards. None of those people fought or were captured or were seen. You had to imagine one of the scenarios was that this was their strategy. It wasn`t until later that the U.S. military began to concede that there was some organization behind the continuing attacks. But earlier, in July 2003, for instance, the official line was that these attacks were not coordinated.

The problem was that you had some pretty skilled people who had been used to working together and we had left armories and arms stockpiles pretty much uncollected. And so there was a capable force out there with a lot of tools to play with and that complicated the situation.

Let`s go to the present. There is supposed to be an Iraqi election at the end of next January. Do you believe that whatever party emerges victorious may place a high priority on getting the United States out of Iraq?

Yes. I think that is a political imperative which, until now, the United States has been in denial about. Although, in a way, it might be the most graceful exit that we can find, because the single strongest argument in Iraqi politics right now is to invite the foreigners to leave. If there is a national campaign, that argument is going to work and every party is going to have some variation on that theme.

The United States, of course, is planning to stay in Iraq for at least a couple of more years. And not even Senator Kerry is calling for any immediate withdrawal. In fact, he has called for more troops from other countries to help out. Is there any scenario in which the United States could leave soon without total chaos breaking out?

I think the vacuum is still too large, and our more detailed study shows that the insecurity has grown greater. I think we have to focus on making more of Iraq safer. My feeling is that until Baghdad, Najaf, and Karbala are safe you should not even have a discussion about leaving. Right now, the attacks in Baghdad are way up. You have one-third of the country`s population there. Somehow the international community has made Kabul [the capital of Afghanistan] more or less safe; Baghdad is not even close.

That has to happen while we are containing [the insurgency in] Falluja. There is too much attention on Falluja. You could knock out Falluja. But we have seen that the Iraqi politicians with whom we are dealing now may be tough guys, but they are not willing to flatten a city to win a battle. That is too much like something Saddam Hussein might have done.

I think this concept of operations needs to be reviewed because you are coming up against new circumstances. I don`t know how you could claim that Iraq is safe if Baghdad is not safe.

How do you make Baghdad safe?

You are going to have to get a critical mass of soldiers there. You are going to have to get a reassuring presence on the ground. I would guess that if you issued a challenge to the generals: "I want Baghdad to be safe. Come back to me with a plan," I think what they would say is that the only way to do it is if we get many, many more street patrols. This is not about armored vehicles. This is about having people on virtually every block. You are going to have to engage every one of these local governing councils that we have all over the city. Get them cell phones. Get them early warning systems. Put every capable Iraqi you can find there so that you are not surprised by roadside bombs.

Somebody has to place a roadside bomb. We are only picking up the pieces afterwards. Put that as the challenge. Say, "Look, I want to see a sequence where in the next three months we are going to see Baghdad safe, and the Shiite holy cities are going to be safe. And I don`t want to have the feeling that there is non-stop trafficking of new people into Falluja. I want to shut that town down."

You know, in the history of warfare, everyone knows how to surround a city. It is not a sophisticated concept. But you need people to do it. So if we don`t have enough people there, then we are going to have to shift them around and move them faster or get more people there. Maybe the only way to solve this dilemma is to bite off a piece of time until you start a winning streak. And right now, we don`t have a winning streak.

Overall, this is a very depressing scenario. Do you find that officers at the Pentagon share your pessimism?

I really can`t comment because I haven`t had enough exchange with them. I think the military is looking for ideas. They have tried different things. The worry for me, not just on the military side, but on the assistance side, and on the diplomatic side, is that we are doing the familiar and the bureaucratic, but that this is a situation that needs the entrepreneurial and the innovative.

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Friedman ist und war kein NeoCon, aber er hat den Irak-Krieg und die Bush-Politik über die Jahre mit allen Mitteln verteidigt.

October 3, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Iraq: Politics or Policy?
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Sorry, I`ve been away writing a book. I`m back, so let`s get right down to business: We`re in trouble in Iraq.

I don`t know what is salvageable there anymore. I hope it is something decent and I am certain we have to try our best to bring about elections and rebuild the Iraqi Army to give every chance for decency to emerge there. But here is the cold, hard truth: This war has been hugely mismanaged by this administration, in the face of clear advice to the contrary at every stage, and as a result the range of decent outcomes in Iraq has been narrowed and the tools we have to bring even those about are more limited than ever.

What happened? The Bush team got its doctrines mixed up: it applied the Powell Doctrine to the campaign against John Kerry - "overwhelming force" without mercy, based on a strategy of shock and awe at the Republican convention, followed by a propaganda blitz that got its message across in every possible way, including through distortion. If only the Bush team had gone after the remnants of Saddam`s army in the Sunni Triangle with the brutal efficiency it has gone after Senator Kerry in the Iowa-Ohio-Michigan triangle. If only the Bush team had spoken to Iraqis and Arabs with as clear a message as it did to the Republican base. No, alas, while the Bush people applied the Powell Doctrine in the Midwest, they applied the Rumsfeld Doctrine in the Middle East. And the Rumsfeld Doctrine is: "Just enough troops to lose." Donald Rumsfeld tried to prove that a small, mobile army was all that was needed to topple Saddam, without realizing that such a limited force could never stabilize Iraq. He never thought it would have to. He thought his Iraqi pals would do it. He was wrong.

For all of President Bush`s vaunted talk about being consistent and resolute, the fact is he never established U.S. authority in Iraq. Never. This has been the source of all our troubles. We have never controlled all the borders, we have never even consistently controlled the road from Baghdad airport into town, because we never had enough troops to do it.

Being away has not changed my belief one iota in the importance of producing a decent outcome in Iraq, to help move the Arab-Muslim world off its steady slide toward increased authoritarianism, unemployment, overpopulation, suicidal terrorism and religious obscurantism. But my time off has clarified for me, even more, that this Bush team can`t get us there, and may have so messed things up that no one can. Why? Because each time the Bush team had to choose between doing the right thing in the war on terrorism or siding with its political base and ideology, it chose its base and ideology. More troops or radically lower taxes? Lower taxes. Fire an evangelical Christian U.S. general who smears Islam in a speech while wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army or not fire him so as not to anger the Christian right? Don`t fire him. Apologize to the U.N. for not finding the W.M.D., and then make the case for why our allies should still join us in Iraq to establish a decent government there? Don`t apologize - for anything - because Karl Rove says the "base" won`t like it. Impose a "Patriot Tax" of 50 cents a gallon on gasoline to help pay for the war, shrink the deficit and reduce the amount of oil we consume so we send less money to Saudi Arabia? Never. Just tell Americans to go on guzzling. Fire the secretary of defense for the abuses at Abu Ghraib, to show the world how seriously we take this outrage - or do nothing? Do nothing. Firing Mr. Rumsfeld might upset conservatives. Listen to the C.I.A.? Only when it can confirm your ideology. When it disagrees - impugn it or ignore it.

What I resent so much is that some of us actually put our personal politics aside in thinking about this war and about why it is so important to produce a different Iraq. This administration never did. Mr. Kerry`s own views on Iraq have been intensely political and for a long time not well thought through. But Mr. Kerry is a politician running for office. Mr. Bush is president, charged with protecting the national interest, and yet from the beginning he has run Iraq policy as an extension of his political campaign.

Friends, I return to where I started: We`re in trouble in Iraq. We have to immediately get the Democratic and Republican politics out of this policy and start honestly reassessing what is the maximum we can still achieve there and what every American is going to have to do to make it happen. If we do not, we`ll end up not only with a fractured Iraq, but with a fractured America, at war with itself and isolated from the world.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Wie man mit dem ollen Shakespeare einen aktuellen Kommentar schreiben kann. Dafür einen Anfangsschmuckbuchstaben.

October 3, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Friends, Americans, Countrymen...
By STEPHEN GREENBLATT

wo bitter rivals stand up to address an immense, anonymous crowd. The rules have been set in advance: they will speak from the same platform; they will not address each other directly; they will limit their discourse to certain set topics. The stakes are immensely high: no less than the fate of the nation and of the whole world.

Sound familiar? The scene is from Shakespeare`s "Julius Caesar," written and first performed more than 400 years ago as the opening play in the newly built Globe Theater. Brutus and Antony stand over the corpse of the assassinated Caesar. Nothing will bring Caesar back. The question is the future course of the damaged republic.

It is worth noting that Shakespeare lived in a monarchy, not a republic. Elizabethan society had little or nothing comparable to what observers of modern democratic societies call the public sphere - the shared space where competing views on politics, economics, foreign policy and moral values are aired. (Parliamentary debates were closed to the public, and transcripts were strictly prohibited.)

This makes it all the more striking that Shakespeare depicts the world`s destiny as determined by the rhetorical performances of two men standing up at a pulpit and speaking out to an agitated populace that demands a public reckoning: "We will be satisfied! Let us be satisfied!``

The crowd wants to know why Caesar has been murdered. The honorable, principled Brutus addresses himself to the wisdom of his listeners. Assuming that his audience is capable of assessing and rationally judging his actions, he lays out a complex and seemingly contradictory argument: "As Caesar loved me, I weep for him. As he was fortunate, I rejoice at it. As he was valiant, I honour him. But as he was ambitious, I slew him. There is tears for his love, joy for his fortune, honour for his valour, and death for his ambition."

In the heat of the moment this is a lot for anyone to process: how could Brutus have shifted from friend to foe? Are his deeds the mark of inconsistency or thoughtfulness? How could he be for and against the same man? How is it possible to keep in focus the noble principle for which he says he has acted?

Antony takes a different tack. He addresses not the listeners` heads but their gut feelings. And, weeping ostentatiously, he puts his own feelings on display: "Bear with me. My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar." Never mind that anyone looking closely and coolly should be able to see through the pretense. The wily politician Antony manages to convince the crowd of his absolute sincerity: "I am no orator as Brutus is - But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man."

His cunning speech appeals at once to his listeners` fears, aroused by the ghastly spectacle of violence, and to their greed. To every Roman citizen he gives 75 drachmas. The handout, absurd at such a moment of public crisis, is magically effective. The mob erupts and, as Antony had calculated, Rome is plunged into a cycle of violence that he can exploit for his own political ends.

Did it have to end like this? What if Brutus had honed his message more successfully? And what if the crowd had glimpsed something in Antony`s face when he did not know he was being observed that gave away his cynical scheme? The course of history - the collapse of order, years of bloodshed, wasted lives and treasure, the loss of liberty - would have been startlingly different.

Have we learned something about listening to political oratory that Shakespeare`s "friends, Romans, countrymen" did not know? Thursday night`s debate seemed to me surprisingly revealing. I expected boilerplate, and of course was not totally disappointed in that, but there was something more. To my surprise, substantive differences between President Bush and Senator John Kerry emerged.

One man, the incumbent, insisted again and again on the need at all costs to avoid mixed messages. Everything for him was reduced to an apparently simple war-making strategy and a single enemy. The other man, the challenger, had a more complex account of the task. He expressed commitment to winning the war, but doubted its wisdom; he honored the sacrifice of our troops, but lamented our relative isolation from the rest of the world.

And then something entirely unexpected happened: the lengthy rulebook had called for the television cameras to focus exclusively on whichever man was speaking, but the networks flouted the ban and allowed the audience to see how each candidate responded to his rival`s words. The effect was startling.

Senator Kerry principally addressed his remarks to the moderator, Jim Lehrer, and when President Bush was speaking he watched attentively and jotted occasional notes. The president, for the most part, seemed more effective at facing the camera directly when he spoke; he understood that the task was not to persuade Mr. Lehrer to vote for him but to persuade the crowd. However, as many have noted, when he evidently thought he was unobserved he disclosed an astonishing range of emotions: confusion, annoyance and something like rage.

It was a revealing and unnerving sight, something like seeing into Antony`s head when he addresses the Roman crowd. Will it make a difference to have seen what we have seen? I believe it will.

Stephen Greenblatt, a professor of humanities at Harvard, is the author of "Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Wegen diese Themas hatte Kerry einen Vorsprung bei jungen Wählern.

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October 3, 2004
THE DRAFT CARD
The Option Nobody`s Pushing. Yet.
By JAMES DAO

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — In the worried steel town of Weirton, W.Va., last week, the first question from the crowd that came out to hear Senator John Edwards was not about the economy, tariffs or health care. It was about the draft: Is a new one coming?

The Democratic candidate for vice president was unequivocal. Not in a Kerry-Edwards administration, he replied. But Erika Lontz, a 19-year-old college sophomore, was not reassured. "Students worry about it a lot," she said later. "With the way the war is going, how could you not?"

Though President Bush and Senator John Kerry talk about it in only the most glancing ways - the president pledged to defeat terrorism with "an all-volunteer army" during Thursday`s presidential debate - many people across the country are wondering just who will fight the nation`s wars.

There is good reason to ask. By most accounts, the military, particularly the Army, has been spread thin by America`s global commitments, and signs of strain are mounting.
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More than one-third of nearly 3,900 former soldiers mobilized under a special wartime program have resisted their call-ups. The Army National Guard fell nearly 10 percent short of its 2004 recruiting goal of 56,000 enlistees. The Army, concerned about recruiting, has eased some standards. And there have been bipartisan calls in Congress to expand the Army by more than 20,000 soldiers.

Just months ago, Pentagon officials suggested that a new draft could be avoided if recruitment and retention numbers stayed high. But as fighting in Iraq escalates, signs are growing that those numbers may not be adequate in the coming years. Thus, the new talk about a draft.

Of course, enacting a draft has historically been a matter of political will, democratic ideals and high passion, as much as military need. Some have long argued that citizenship is enhanced by having all young people serve; others contend that forced conscription violates democratic ideals. At various times, the draft has been sought either as a way to prepare for going to war, or to inhibit the temptation to do so. These days, public polls indicate that most people do not favor the idea.

And so, not surprisingly, both the president and Senator Kerry have outlined plans to relieve the military strain - without resorting to a draft.

The Bush administration has called for pulling troops out of Europe and South Korea, expanding the number of combat brigades to shorten rotations and increasing the size of the Army temporarily by about 30,000 soldiers, in many cases by delaying their departure from the armed forces.

Mr. Kerry has countered with proposals to expand the Army permanently by 40,000 soldiers, speed up training of Iraqi forces, double the number of Army special-forces troops and increase international forces in Iraq. Doing so will allow a swifter drawing down of America`s 135,000 troops in Iraq, he contends.

The mathematics behind these suggestions can be sobering. In the combined American armed forces there are 1.4 million active-duty troops, with another 865,000 National Guard members and reservists. That may sound like a big pool to draw from, but consider: Total active Army and Marine personnel are about 655,000, and that includes support units, training units, headquarters personnel and others who do not go to the front. During a prolonged war like that in Iraq, units sent to the front have to be rotated out and replaced with an equal number while they rest and retrain.

So maintaining a level of 135,000 ground troops in Iraq, another 20,000 in Afghanistan and a smaller force in the Balkans, while a garrison of 36,000 (soon to be reduced) guards the Korean armistice line and other troops maintain bases in Europe, creates a major strain. The current system is already drawing on Guard and reserve units to fill the gap. What is more, some military officers and political figures have long questioned whether 135,000 troops is a large enough force to prevail in Iraq.

What if another big deployment is needed? Estimates vary widely on how many additional troops might be required, but some analysts say the current overall force could easily fall short by more than 70,000 ground troops. In the 1991 gulf war, when Saddam Hussein was at the height of his power, the United States sent 500,000 troops to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

So while military analysts have welcomed the presidential candidates` proposals as important first steps to address personnel needs, they have raised serious concerns about both. Even conservatives have questioned whether Mr. Bush would expand the Army enough to pacify Iraq.

"You might be able to squeeze more people out of pockets of the military, but the truth is, there is a limit to what you can do there," said Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for the New American Century, a conservative group that favors permanent expansion of the Army.

Mr. Schmitt and other analysts also say Mr. Kerry`s proposal to internationalize the forces in Iraq is unrealistic. France and Germany, the countries with the best militaries not already in Iraq, oppose sending forces there and either face legal restrictions on deploying troops overseas or are overextended themselves.

"A French admiral once told me: `Your generals` problem is our generals` problem: we are stretched too thin,` said Andrew Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a military policy organization.

But the most striking shortcoming in both plans, experts say, is their lack of allowance for another major conflict - if war erupts on the Korean Peninsula, or tensions with Iran boil over, or the United States suffers a major terrorist attack.

A Pentagon-appointed panel recently concluded that the military would lack the forces to handle its current combat and stabilization operations if new crises emerged. The report, which has not been made public, apparently did not address the issue of a draft. But some policy makers have said it points to the potential need for one.

"We have put ourselves in a position where we don`t have the capability to handle another major contingency,`` said Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat and a West Point graduate.

Experts say that getting Congress to approve a draft would probably be more difficult than implementing one. Draft boards exist, and 18-year-olds must register. All that would be required would be to determine who is eligible.

But there is little political appetite in Washington for a new draft. "The one sure way to lose public support for the war in Iraq is to say we will institute a draft," Mr. Krepinevich said.

History seems to bear him out. The United States has instituted the draft three times - during the Civil War and the two world wars. During the Civil War, when draftees could buy their way out of service, gangs in New York rioted and attacked blacks when the police tried to enforce conscription. Anti-draft protesters went to jail during World War I.

In the draft that was virtually continuous from 1940 to 1973, there were few protests during World War II and only muted complaints during the Korean War, but Vietnam was another matter. President Richard Nixon pushed to end the draft in the early 1970`s in the hopes of defusing the unruly antiwar protests that had begun when his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, was president.

Yet at other times, politicians have also been willing to use the draft to appease another potent constituency, the families of National Guard and reserve troops, said George Q. Flynn, a retired history professor and the author of three books on the draft. President Johnson, he said, chose to expand the draft rather than use guard and reserve troops for combat in Vietnam, he said.

Mr. Flynn said a similar dynamic may be taking form today, as guard and reserve troops express growing anger about repeated long rotations in Iraq. "One reason you hear talk of a draft today is that there may be a big political price to pay for using these reservists and National Guard," he said.

Professor Flynn is among those who believe a draft would be a good thing. He contends it engenders powerful feelings of citizenship, while spreading military service across a broader cross section of society. Some Democrats, led by Representative Charles Rangel of New York, who has sponsored legislation to require military or other national service from all young adults, also say a draft would prevent a rush into war.

But critics of the draft, including senior advisors to both President Bush and Senator Kerry, say conscription would reduce morale, cost too much and create short-term soldiers with inadequate training.

There is another solution to the overstretched military, some people argue: reducing America`s commitments overseas. Charles Pena, director of defense policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said America should withdraw troops from Iraq, Europe and Korea. But he acknowledges that his is a minority position.

For that reason, people like Sharon Underwood, here in Charleston, expect Army recruiters to keep calling their sons.

Ms. Underwood said the calls come almost weekly. She has persuaded her two sons, ages 18 and 19, not to enlist. But she is convinced a draft is on the way. "I`m just terrified about it," she said. "They just seem to need new troops so desperately."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Je schlimmer die Situation im Irak, desto dreister belügt uns Tony Blair
von Robert Fisk
Independent / ZNet 28.09.2004
Wir befinden uns in der ‘größten Krise’ - das heißt, seit der letzten größten Krise. Auf diese Art führen wir den Irakkrieg - beziehungsweise den Zweiten Irakkrieg, wie uns Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara weismachen will. Man führt uns Geiseln in orangefarbenen Leuchtoveralls vor - wir sollen uns an Guantanamo erinnern. Die Entführer fordern die Freilassung mehrerer Frauen, die von den Amerikanern gefangenhalten werden. Von Abu Ghraib ist die Rede. Abu Ghraib? Erinnert sich noch jemand an den Namen? An schmutzige kleine Schnappschuß-Fotos? Keine Sorge, das war nicht das Amerika George W. Bushs, und wir haben die ‘faulen Äpfel’ doch auch bestraft, oder? Und überhaupt, welche Frauen? Sind doch nur noch zwei Damen übrig - Frau Dr. Keim und Frau Dr. Anthrax. Aber so leicht vergessen die Araber nicht. Die Libanesin Samia Melki war die Erste, die die eigentliche Bedeutung der Abu-Ghraib-Fotos für die arabische Welt erfaßte. In ‘Counterpunch’ schreibt sie in Zusammenhang mit jenem nackten Iraker mit exkrementverschmiertem Körper und ausgebreiteten Armen, der mit dem Rücken zur Kamera steht - vor einer Amerikanerin mit blondem Bürstenschnitt und einem Knüppel in der Hand - das Ganze erinnere sie an “die Dramatik und die Farbkontraste eines Caravaggio-Gemäldes”.* Gute barocke Kunst zeichnet sich dadurch aus, daß sie den Betrachter einlädt, Teil des Kunstwerks zu werden: “Man zwingt den irakischen Gefangenen mit gekreuzten Beinen geradeaus zu gehen, der Körper ist leicht gekrümmt, die Arme ausgebreitet, damit er das Gleichgewicht halten kann. Der Körper (des irakischen Gefangenen), akzentuiert durch die Exkremente und die schlechte Beleuchtung, hat die Form eines Gekreuzigten. ... Der Araber strahlt (?) eine Würde aus, die ihm seit langem verwehrt wird, er leidet für die Sünden der Welt”*.

Hinsichtlich des Leids in Abu Ghraib, fürchte ich, war dies aber nur die Spitze des Eisbergs. Was ist beispielsweise aus jenen Videos geworden, die sich Kongreßmitglieder im geheimen ansahen? Uns - der Öffentlichkeit - hat man sie vorenthalten. Warum erinnern wir uns plötzlich nicht mehr an Abu Ghraib? Seymour Hersh, der Journalist, der die Story ans Licht brachte - einer der wenigen amerikanischen Journalisten, die ihren Job tun -, spricht in aller Öffentlichkeit von weiteren Geschehnissen in dem Schreckensgefängnis. Im Folgenden ein Auszug aus einem kürzlichen Hersh-Vortrag, den mir ein Leser dankenswerterweise überließ: “Über einige der schlimmsten Dinge, die sich dort ereigneten, wissen Sie nichts. Okay? Videos. Es gab dort Frauen. Einige von Ihnen haben sicher gelesen, daß diese Briefe herausschmuggelten, sie kommunizierten mit ihren Männern. Wir reden hier von Abu Ghraib... Die Frauen schmuggelten Botschaften heraus, sie sagten (zu ihrem Mann), bitte komm’ und bring’ mich um, weil das passiert ist. Passiert war im Grunde Folgendes. In einigen der dokumentierten Fälle waren die Frauen zusammen mit kleinen Jungs, also Kindern, festgenommen worden. Mit den Jungen wurde Sodomie getrieben, vor laufender Kamera, das Allerschlimmste waren die Schreie der Jungen...”

Wir haben das alles schon wieder vergessen. Auch von den Massenvernichtungswaffen sollen wir nicht mehr reden. Ich weiß nicht, ob ich lachen oder weinen soll, wenn jetzt so langsam en détail an die Öffentlichkeit sickert, wie verzweifelt Bush und Blair nach diesen ekelhaften Waffen suchten, die gar nicht existierten. Einmal drangen die US-Überwachungsteams für mobile Anlagen ins ehemalige Hauptquartier der irakischen Geheimpolizei in Bagdad ein. Drinnen stießen sie auf eine mit einem Vorhängeschloß gesicherte Tür. Sie waren sich sicher, hier auf jenen Horror zu stoßen, für den Bush und Blair so inbrünstig beteten. Was fanden sie hinter der zweiten Tür? Ein Großlager voller nagelneuer Staubsauger. Ein anderes Team - unter Leitung von Major Kenneth Deal - kümmerte sich um das Hauptquartier der Baath-Partei. Schon glaubte man, wichtige Geheimdokumente über Saddams Waffenprogramme gefunden zu haben. In Wirklichkeit handelte es sich bei den Papieren um die arabische Übersetzung von A J P Taylors ‘The Struggle for Mastery in Europe’. Vielleicht gar keine schlechte Lektüre für Bush und Blair.

So stolpern wir weiter Stufe um Stufe eine bröselnde Treppe hinunter - die häßliche Treppe, die wir uns selbst gebaut haben -, und bekommen immer größere Lügen zu hören. Iyad Allawi, der Marionetten-Premierminister - von vielen meiner Journalistenkollegen immer noch respektvoll “Interimspremier” genannt -, besteht nach wie vor auf Wahlen im Januar, dabei hat er weniger Kontrolle über die irakische Hauptstadt Bagdad als deren Bürgermeister (ganz zu schweigen vom Rest des Landes). Gehorsamt verweigerte Ex-CIA-Agent Allawi die Freilassung der beiden weiblichen Gefangenen - just in dem Moment, als Washington entsprechende Anweisungen gab. Anschließend trottete er pflichtschuldigst nach London und nach Washington, um die neuen Bush-Blair-Lügen zu untermauern.

‘Zweiter Irakkrieg’. Wieviel Schwachsinn dieser Art müssen wir, das heißt, die Öffentlichkeit, noch schlucken? Glaubt man Lord Blair of Kut, kämpfen wir uns gerade durch die “Feuerprobe des globalen Terrorismus”. Was soll der Unsinn? Hat er uns, bevor er mithalf, den Ersten Irakkrieg zu starten, etwa gesagt, es wird noch einen Zweiten geben? Natürlich nicht. Nein, wir kamen ja, sie zu “befreien”. Erinnern wir uns an die Vor-Vor-Krise. Es war im letzten November, als unser Premier auf dem Lord-Mayor- Bankett sprach. ‘Irak’, so sagte er, sei “eine Schlacht von grundlegender Bedeutung für das frühe 21. Jahrhundert”. Damit war wahrscheinlich noch der Erste Krieg gemeint. Die gleichen Worte könnte er heute wiederholen. Aber hören wir weiter, was uns Lord Blair of Kut damals über den (Ersten) Krieg zu sagen hatte: “Er wird die Beziehungen zwischen der muslimischen Welt und dem Westen definieren. Er wird tiefgreifenden Einfluß haben auf die Entwicklung der arabischen Staaten des Mittleren Ostens. Er hat weitreichende Konsequenzen für die künftige amerikanische und westliche Diplomatie”. Auch das könnte er wiederholen, oder? Denn, seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, dem echten Zweiten Krieg, läßt sich wohl kaum etwas derart tiefgreifend Gefährliches vorstellen wie Blairs Irakkrieg - gefährlich für uns, den Westen, den Mittleren Osten, für Muslime wie Christen. Dabei sollte der Irak, wir erinnern uns, eigentlich zum Modell für den gesamten Mittleren Osten werden. Jeder arabische Staat würde ein zweiter Irak sein wollen. Der Irak als Katalysator - vielleicht sogar als Feuerprobe - für den Nahen/Mittleren Osten. Sparen Sie sich bitte Ihr Lachen. Die letzten Wochen waren überwältigend. Ich erhielt soviele Briefe von Männern und Frauen, die im Zweiten Weltkrieg gekämpft hatten und es sich vehement verbeten, daß Blair und Bush den jetzigen Sumpf mit jenem wahren Kampf gegen das Böse vergleichen, den diese Menschen vor über 50 Jahren führten.

“Ich bin 90. Ich kann mich noch gut an die körperlichen und seelischen Wracks erinnern, die das ländliche Wales durchstreiften. Das war in den Jahren nach 1918, als ich groß wurde”, schreibt mir Robert Parry. “Am besten seinen Ausdruck findet für mich der Tod im Krieg immer noch in Owens ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’**. (Dieses Sterben) ist heutzutage, durch amerikanische “Zielbomben” und Selbstmordbomber, noch furchtbarer. Was wir bräuchten, ist ein neuer Wilfred Owen, der uns Augen und Gewissen öffnet. Aber solange es den nicht gibt, gilt es, diesem großartigen Gedicht erneut Gehör zu verschaffen”. Ich jedenfalls kann mir keine bessere Antwort auf den infantilen Schwachsinn, den Tony Blair derzeit verbreitet, vorstellen. Es ist lange her, seit - in Amerika und Großbritannien - eine derartige Kluft bestand zwischen der Bevölkerung und der von ihr gewählten Regierung. Blairs jüngste Reden richten sich tatsächlich an “Kinder, heiß auf irgendwelchen Ruhm der Verzweiflung” - um es mit Owens Worten auszudrücken. Das Gesicht Ken Bigleys mit der Augenbinde symbolisiert unsere jüngste ultimative Krise. Aber vergessen wir nicht, was ihr vorausging.

Anmerkung d. Übersetzerin

*’Caravaggio in Iraq’ von Samia Melki, nachzulesen unter: www.counterpunch.org/melki06032004.html

** Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), britischer Soldat im Ersten Weltkrieg (er fiel in den letzten Kriegstagen), der eines der berühmtesten Kriegsgedichte schrieb:

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! --An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.-- Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight He plunges at me, gluttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin, If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs Bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.”

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Ein Gedicht sollte auch als Gedicht geschrieben werden s.#22297.

Wilfred Owen Dulce Et Decorum Est Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!-An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound`ring like a man in fire or lime... Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil`s sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

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Das wäre doch ein Satz, der überzeugt:
I think America can do better!

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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

Sunday, October 03, 2004

Of Fallujah and Kirkuk

The US forces declared they had taken Samarra back away from the guerrilla resitance, though they admitted there there were still "pockets" of guerrillas. Although the US forces should be able to defeat the guerrillas in Samarra fairly handily, it is not clear that they can learn the language of diplomacy in time for that to make a difference in the political battle. In a guerrilla war, the real struggle is over popular support, a struggle that the Bush administration is badly losing in general. Whether it can achieve a genuine victory in Samarra, such that the guerrillas don`t come back in two weeks, remains to be seen.

Dexter Filkin of the New York Times reports that Muqtada al-Sadr appears to be weighing a run for parliament. It seems to me more likely that some of his aides will run for parliamentary seats, but that he will stay behind the scenes.

The Kurds mounted big demonstrations Saturday, demanding much more provincial automony. They want a popular referendum, and they want the oil-rich city of Kirkuk to be turned over to their "Kurdistan" province. Most Iraq Arabs resist these moves. Although the US has been concentrating on security challenges in places like Fallujah and Najaf, it seems to me that the Muslim clergy in Pakistan are increasingly desperate, for economic and other reasons.

posted by Juan @ [url10/3/2004 06:22:51 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2004_10_01_juancole_archive.html#109678240158368793[/url]

Of Fallujah and Kirkuk

The US forces declared they had taken Samarra back away from the guerrilla resitance, though they admitted there there were still "pockets" of guerrillas. Although the US forces should be able to defeat the guerrillas in Samarra fairly handily, it is not clear that they can learn the language of diplomacy in time for that to make a difference in the political battle. In a guerrilla war, the real struggle is over popular support, a struggle that the Bush administration is badly losing in general. Whether it can achieve a genuine victory in Samarra, such that the guerrillas don`t come back in two weeks, remains to be seen.

Dexter Filkin of the New York Times reports that Muqtada al-Sadr appears to be weighing a run for parliament. It seems to me more likely that some of his aides will run for parliamentary seats, but that he will stay behind the scenes.

The Kurds mounted big demonstrations Saturday, demanding much more provincial automony. They want a popular referendum, and they want the oil-rich city of Kirkuk to be turned over to their "Kurdistan" province. Most Iraq Arabs resist these moves. Although the US has been concentrating on security challenges in places like Fallujah and Najaf, it seems to me that the Muslim clergy in Pakistan are increasingly desperate, for economic and other reasons.

posted by Juan @ 10/3/2004 06:22:41 AM

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Rule of violence

David Rose
Sunday October 3, 2004

The Observer
Inside Camp Delta, the British former Guantánamo prisoner Shafiq Rasul told me: `There`s only one rule that matters. You have to obey whatever US government personnel tell you to do.` The cost of disobedience was high: possibly a visit from the camp`s `Extreme Reaction Force (ERF)`, a squad of guards in riot gear, which is said by several detainees to have carried out brutal assaults.

When these allegations first surfaced, American spokesmen denied them. A leaked internal Guantánamo document, published here for the first time and headed `Detainee Standards of Conduct`, suggests Rasul and the others were telling the truth.

`The following is a set of standards detainees WILL follow at ALL times,` it begins. `Failure to follow the following standards will result in strict punishment by US security forces.`

The first two rules allow 30 minutes for detainees to eat their meals, and just five minutes for showers, although here `amputees are authorised 10-15 minutes for showers`. Then they become more menacing:

3. Detainees WILL NOT be disrespectful to any US security forces personnel or other detainees.

4. Detainees will follow the orders of US security forces at ALL times.

5. Detainee units can and WILL be searched at any time.

6. Detainees WILL NOT harass, annoy, harm or otherwise interfere with the safety or operation of the detention facility.

7. Detainees WILL NOT touch, spit, or throw any object at US security forces personnel or other detainees. If any non-issued objects are found in or around unit area, detainees WILL inform US security forces, with no disciplinary action taken.

8 Detainees WILL keep noise down to a low conversational level. At no time will a detainee be allowed to yell or become unruly. At no time will detainees communicate across block areas.

It is perhaps the last rule which is the most sinister:

13. US Security Forces RESERVE THE RIGHT to alter or temporarily cease the above standards if necessary.

Gitmo`s public affairs spokesman will not disclose the details of the `strict punishment` threatened in the document`s preamble. However, it has now emerged that ERF deployments have all been videotaped, and in July the Pentagon told the Associated Press that `only 32 hours` of these tapes revealed `excessive force`.

Although they maintain that the `unlawful combatants` at Guantánamo do not deserve the protection of the Geneva Conventions, President Bush and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have repeatedly claimed that the regime at Camp Delta is nevertheless `consistent with Geneva`s principles`.

In these secret rules, as in much else, Guantánamo is, in fact, in flagrant breach of this fundamental piece of international law. If one sought to construct and manage a prison camp with Geneva as a blueprint, it would be not resemble Camp Delta in any significant way. Detainees would, for example, be able to move freely within a secure perimeter and, instead of being locked in tiny cells for 24 hours a day, would largely organise their own lives.

According to the conventions` article 21: `The detaining Power may subject prisoners of war to internment. It may impose on them the obligation of not leaving ... the camp where they are interned, or if the said camp is fenced in, of not going outside its perimeter.`

Under Article 96, `Before any disciplinary award is pronounced, the accused shall be given precise information regarding the offences of which he is accused, and given an opportunity of explaining his conduct and of defending himself. He shall be permitted ... to call witnesses and to have recourse, if necessary, to the services of a qualified interpreter.` Needless to say, at Guantánamo, there have been no such hearings.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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Retreat into a substitute reality

By touching on Bush`s ambivalent relations with his father, Kerry exposed his delusions about Iraq
Sidney Blumenthal
Saturday October 2, 2004

The Guardian
After months of flawless execution in a well-orchestrated campaign, President Bush had to stand alone in an unpredictable debate. He had travelled the country, appearing before adoring pre-selected crowds, delivered a carefully crafted acceptance speech before his convention, and approved tens of millions of dollars in TV commercials to belittle his opponent. In the lead, Bush believed he had only to assert his superiority to end the contest once and for all.

But onstage the president ran out of talking points. Unable to explain the logic for his policies, or think on his feet, he was thrown back on the raw elements of his personality and leadership style.

Every time he was confronted with ambivalence, his impulse was to sweep it aside. He claimed he must be followed because he is the leader. Fate, in the form of September 11, had placed authority in his hands as a man of destiny. Scepticism, pragmatism and empiricism are enemies. Absolute faith prevails over open-ended reason, subjectivity over fact. Belief in belief is the ultimate sacrament of his political legitimacy.

In the split TV screen, how Bush felt was written all over his face. His grimaces exposed his irritation and anger at being challenged. Lacking intellectual stamina and repeating points as though on a feedback loop, he tried to close argument by assertion. With no one interrupting him, he protested, "Let me finish" - a phrase he occasionally deploys to great effect before the cowed White House press corps.

John Kerry was set up beforehand as Bush`s foil: long-winded, dour, dull. But the Kerry who showed up was crisp, nimble and formidable. His thrusts brought out Bush`s rigidity and stubbornness. The more Bush pleaded his own decisiveness, the more he appeared reactive.

Time and again, as he tried to halt Kerry, he accused him of "mixed signals" and "inconsistency." For Bush, certainty equals strength. Kerry responded with a devastating deconstruction of Bush`s epistemology. Nothing like this critique of pure reason has ever been heard in a presidential debate. "It`s one thing to be certain, but you can be certain and be wrong," said Kerry.

Kerry`s analysis of Bush`s "colossal error of judgment" in Iraq was systematic, factual and historical. The coup de grace was the citation of the president`s father`s actions in the Gulf war. "You know," said Kerry, "the president`s father did not go into Iraq, into Baghdad, beyond Basra. And the reason he didn`t is, he said - he wrote in his book - because there was no viable exit strategy. And he said our troops would be occupiers in a bitterly hostile land. That`s exactly where we find ourselves today." With that, Kerry touched on Bush`s most ambivalent relationship, the father he recently called "the wrong father," compared to the "Higher Father".

In flustered response, Bush simply insisted on his authority. "I just know how this world works ... there must be certainty from the US president." He reverted to his claim that September 11 justified the invasion of Iraq because "the enemy" - Saddam Hussein - "attacked us." A stunned but swift-footed Kerry observed: "The president just said something extraordinarily revealing and frankly very important ... he just said, `The enemy attacked us`. Saddam Hussein didn`t attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us." In his effort to banish all doubt, Bush had retreated into a substitute reality, a delusional version of Iraq, ultimately faith-based.

Bush`s attack lines on Kerry did not describe the surprising man standing opposite him. They had been effective last week, but were suddenly shopworn. But Bush couldn`t adjust. The greater his frustration in the debate, the more frequently he spoke of his difficulties in coping with "my job." Ten times he spoke of his "hard work": listening to intelligence briefings, talking to allies, having to comfort a bereaved mother whose son was killed in Iraq.

Near the end, Kerry praised Bush for his public service, and his wife, and his daughters. "I`m trying to put a leash on them," Bush said. That was hard work, too. "Well, I don`t know," replied Kerry, who also has daughters. "I`ve learned not to do that, Mr President." Even in the banter, Kerry gained the upper-hand.

But Bush lost more than control in the first debate. He has lost the plot.

· Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is Washington bureau chief of www.salon.com

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The real truth about Camp Delta

America`s prison camp at Guantánamo Bay holds detainees in extreme conditions. But David Rose, in this extract from his remarkable new book, says the intelligence gathered has failed to stop any terror attacks.
David Rose
Sunday October 3, 2004

The Observer
Opposite Camp Delta`s main gate is a little wooden pergola, an observation point where journalists are allowed to take photographs and watch who comes and goes.

Spotting the interrogators isn`t difficult. Instead of battle-dress and sweaty black boots, they wear polo shirts, lightweight shoes, khakis or even shorts, and most of them look surprisingly young - well under 30. Most are accompanied by older men, many of them swarthy - their interpreters or, as intelligence men call them, `terps`. Interrogations take place day and night, in rows of `booths` - bare, air-conditioned rooms inside converted trailers behind the cell blocks.

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Guantánamo Bay`s advocates say their success rate is astounding. Harvesting intelligence through interrogations has become the principal raison d`être of `Gitmo`, as Guantánamo is popularly known. If the political rhetoric of the camp`s early weeks planted the idea of a direct link between the detainees and 9/11, interrogations and their vaunted worth have maintained it and thus enabled Gitmo`s lonely guards to cling to a sense of purpose.

In the words of US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld: `Detaining enemy combatants... provides us with intelligence that can help us prevent future acts of terrorism. It can save lives and, indeed, I am convinced it can speed victory.`

Captain Gregg Langevin, 32, a reservist whose civilian job is as a McDonald`s rep in Massachusetts, told me he missed his family and was ready to resign from the reserves at the cost of his military pension rather than risk being mobilised for another tour of duty abroad. But he kept himself going day to day by convincing himself of the worth of his mission: `Above all else, I know that good intelligence is being gathered.`

He and his fellow soldiers have been fed a lie. During my own trip to Gitmo in October 2003, there was no more enthusiastic exponent of this mission than the Joint Task Force commandant, Major-General Geoffrey Miller. Though short in stature, his favourite words were `enormous` and `enormously`.

`We are developing information of enormous value to the nation, enormously valuable intelligence,` he said with passion. `We have an enormously thorough process that has very high resolution and clarity... I think of Guantánamo as the interrogation battle lab in the war against terror.`

Until Miller, now running Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where he exported his methods in the summer of 2003, went to Gitmo, he had never filled an intelligence post in his life. His predecessor, Brigadier-General Rick Baccus, was accused on his departure by Pentagon officials of `coddling` detainees; under his command the intelligence from Guantánamo was no more than a trickle.

There were two possible reasons for this: either the prisoners knew very little about terrorism and al-Qaeda, or they were not being questioned with sufficient skill. Miller decided it had to be the latter. In public, he told reporters, the sixfold increase in `high-value` intelligence he achieved in 2003 was solely due to the judicious use of carrots: offering rewards, in the shape of better privileges and conditions. In private, there was also a menacing stick.

Rumsfeld approved a range of measures for use against reluctant prisoners, including solitary confinement - which could be administered in repeated, back-to-back doses of 30 days - chaining people for hours in chilled or heated interrogation rooms, and what he euphemistically called `sleep adjustment` - in other words, deprivation.

I have obtained the minutes of a meeting between Miller and a delegation from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on 9 October, 2003, when this system was at its peak, which suggest he deliberately misled them as to what was going on.

Vincent Cassard, head of the Red Cross inspection team, said the relentless interrogations were having serious consequences for the detainees` mental health.

`The ICRC feels that interrogators have too much control over the basic needs of detainees, that the interrogators attempt to control the detainees through use of isolation... The interrogators have total control of the level of isolation in which the detainees were kept; the level of comfort items detainees can receive; also the access for basic needs.`

Miller did not like to be lectured in this way, declaring he `had issues` with the fact that Cassard had raised the interrogation process at all. When the Red Cross man said he was concerned to see that only those who co-operated with interrogators received greater privileges - a clear breach of the Geneva Conventions - Miller simply denied that this was so. Privileges were not removed for non-co-operation but `for disciplinary reasons. If a detainee loses a privilege, it is as a result of his actions.`

Cassard gave the example of interrogators` deciding that unco-operative detainees would not be allowed books. Again, Miller`s reply was less than the truth: `Restrictions can only occur as a result of detainee disciplinary infractions.`

Cassard told him that the Red Cross team had heard so many prisoners say that books and other `comfort items` were confiscated for refusing to talk that they believed this must be true. Miller replied that `he would listen to the allegations, but he had given the ICRC the accurate facts`.

My own Guantánamo interview with Miller took place just eight days after he spoke to the Red Cross. With me, he made no secret of his belief that subjecting the unco-operative to harsher conditions had boosted the yield of intelligence.

Shafiq Rasul, one of the Tipton Three from Staffordshire, who was freed in March, described to me the effect of Miller`s system, which after three months` in solitary led him to make a false confession of attending a 9/11 planning meeting with Osama bin Laden and the fanatical Mohamed Atta in Afghanistan in January 2000. He was told the meeting had been videotaped.

`The walls [of the interrogation room] were rusty, and they seemed to be soundproofed. There was no ventilation; it was roasting in there. One interrogator told me that anyone who was in Afghanistan was guilty of the murders of 9/11 - even the women and children killed by the American bombing.

`But they said my position was much worse, because the meeting in this video was to plan 9/11, and loads of people had told them that this guy in a beard standing behind bin Laden was me. I told them that in 2000 I didn`t leave the country, that I was working at the Wednesbury branch of Currys, who would have my employment records. They told me I could have falsified those records - that I could have had someone working with me at Currys who could have altered the data the company held, and travelled on a false passport.`

Finally, as his isolation continued and the interrogators deployed their full range of techniques, Rasul said, he cracked. In a final session, a senior official had come down from Washington: `My heart is beating, beating, I`m saying it`s not me, it`s not me, but I`m thinking: "I`m going to be screwed, I`m on an island in the middle of nowhere, there`s nothing I can do."

`This woman had come down and she plays me the video. I say: "Are you blind? That doesn`t look anything like me." But it makes no difference. I`d got to the point where I just couldn`t take any more. "Do what you have to do," I told them. I`d been sitting there for three months in isolation, so I say, "Yes, it`s me. Go ahead and put me on trial."`

Intelligence officials fear there may be many more examples - while the case against Britons still held at Guantánamo, such as Moazzem Begg, a Birmingham father-of-four, also rests on their confessions.

For much of 2003 Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony Christino, a military intelligence officer of 20 years` experience, worked at the heart of the intelligence war against terror inside the Pentagon. Interrogators, he said, were woefully inexperienced and underprepared, while in most cases they had to rely on interpreters of very poor quality, such as those provided by the Titan Corporation of San Diego.

`It takes far more than locating heritage speakers of Arabic in the United States who can obtain an interim security clearance. Unfortunately, that is essentially what the US army contracted Titan to do,` he said.

In early 2003, he revealed, a group of Pentagon intelligence staff became so concerned about the Gitmo interpreters that they submitted a memorandum to their civilian bosses, recommending that interrogations should be taped and spot-checked as a means of verifying their work. Vehemently opposed by Miller, it was rejected.

Christino said he did not believe that Guantánamo, despite its vaunted claims, had helped to prevent a single terrorist attack. `Most of the information derived from interrogations at Guantánamo appears to be very general in nature; so general that it is not very useful,` he said.

`How much help is it to know that during a class on improvised explosives at a camp in Afghanistan someone discussed bombing apartment complexes or shopping malls in the US?

`Chechen terrorists have been bombing apartment complexes in Russia for years, and anyone even vaguely familiar with American consumer culture knows that shopping malls would be a good target. Is it "enormously valuable intelligence"? No; it does not identify cities where sympathisers are resident or an execution timeframe, so it is not very useful.

`I doubt that anyone detained at Guantánamo ever had access to that type of information; if some claim that they did, they probably did so to either earn the incentives or avoid the maltreatment that General Miller instituted.`

Christino`s conclusions were backed by three other intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. One, an FBI man for 30 years, works on tracking terrorist finance - a field in which Rumsfeld has claimed Gitmo has been especially productive. `I`m unaware of any important information in my field that`s come from Gitmo,` he said. `It`s clearly not a significant source.`

· Guantánamo Bay: America`s War on Human Rights by David Rose is published by Faber on 7 October. To order a copy for £7.99, with free UK p&p, call the Observer Book Service on 0870 836 0885, or go to observer.co.uk/bookshop.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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Ich hatte gestern schon auf den Artikel hingewiesen, den ich aber wegen der Länge nicht ganz eingestellt habe.
Heute ist er in Kopie auf anderen Seiten zu finden und dort frei zugänglich. Hier nochmal der Link:
http://www.christusrex.org/www1/news/nyt-10-3-04a.html

Ich möchte auf die Startseite dieses Links hinweisen. Dort werden jeden Tag europäische und US-Presseartikel zu dem Thema Krieg und Kriegsverbrechen auch von Zeitungen, die sonst nicht zugänglich sind, eingestellt.

http://www.christusrex.org/www1/news/war-crimes-index.html

Skewed Intelligence Data in March to War in Iraq
By DAVID BARSTOW, WILLIAM J. BROAD and JEFF GERTH

New York Times

October 3, 2004

This article was reported by David Barstow, William J. Broad and Jeff Gerth, and was written by Mr. Barstow.

In 2002, at a crucial juncture on the path to war, senior members of the Bush administration gave a series of speeches and interviews in which they asserted that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program. In a speech to veterans that August, Vice President Dick Cheney said Mr. Hussein could have an atomic bomb "fairly soon." President Bush, addressing the United Nations the next month, said there was "little doubt" about Mr. Hussein`s appetite for nuclear arms.

The United States intelligence community had not yet concluded that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program. But as the vice president told a group of Wyoming Republicans that September, the United States had "irrefutable evidence" - thousands of tubes made of high-strength aluminum, tubes that the Bush administration said were destined for clandestine Iraqi uranium centrifuges, before some were seized at the behest of the United States.

The tubes quickly became a critical exhibit in the administration`s brief against Iraq. As the only physical evidence the United States of Mr. Hussein`s revived nuclear ambitions, they gave credibility to the apocalyptic imagery invoked by President Bush and his advisers. The tubes were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs," Condoleezza Rice, the president`s national security adviser, asserted on CNN on Sept. 8, 2002. "We don`t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

But before Ms. Rice made those remarks, she was aware that the government`s foremost nuclear experts had concluded that the tubes were most likely not for nuclear weapons at all, an examination by The New York Times has found. As early as 2001, her staff had been told that these experts, at the Energy Department, believed the tubes were probably intended for small artillery rockets, according to four officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and a senior administration official, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information.

"She was aware of the differences of opinion," the senior administration official said in an interview authorized by the White House. "She was also aware that at the highest level of the intelligence community, there was great confidence that these tubes were for centrifuges."

Ms. Rice`s alarming description on CNN was in keeping with the Bush administration`s overall treatment of the tubes. Senior administration officials repeatedly failed to fully disclose the contrary views of America`s leading nuclear scientists, The Times found. They sometimes overstated even the most dire intelligence assessments of the tubes, yet minimized or rejected the strong doubts of their own experts. They worried privately that the nuclear case was weak, but expressed sober certitude in public.

The result was a largely one-sided presentation to the public that did not convey the depth of evidence and argument against the administration`s most tangible proof of a revived nuclear weapons program in Iraq.

In response to questions last week about the tubes, administration officials emphasized two points: First, they said they relied on the repeated assurances of George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, that the tubes were in fact for centrifuges. Second, they noted that the intelligence community, including the Energy Department, largely agreed that Saddam Hussein had revived his nuclear program.

"We understood from intelligence briefings that the aluminum tubes were a part of the case" for nuclear reconstitution, Kevin Kellems, director of communications for Mr. Cheney, said in a written statement. But "there were a number of other important pieces of evidence." Furthermore, he said, the concerns about Mr. Hussein`s nuclear capabilities "followed the tenor of the intelligence we had been hearing for some time."

It is not known when the president learned of the doubts that had been raised about the tubes. Sean McCormack, a spokesman for Mr. Bush, said yesterday that the president relied on the intelligence community to assess the tubes` significance. "These judgments sometimes require members of the intelligence community to make tough assessments about competing interpretations of facts," Mr. McCormak said.

Mr. Tenet declined to be interviewed. But in a statement, he said he "made it clear" to the White House "that the case for a possible nuclear program in Iraq was weaker than that for chemical and biological weapons." Regarding the tubes, Mr. Tenet said "alternative views were shared" with the administration after the intelligence community drafted a new National Intelligence Estimate in late September 2002. But the estimate as a whole, particularly its sections on the tubes and Iraq`s nuclear programs, has been largely discredited by the Senate Intelligence Committee. After a yearlong investigation, the committee unanimously concluded this summer that most of the estimate`s findings about the tubes were either unsupported, overstated or incorrect. The panel devoted more than 50 pages to the tubes after learning that they were the C.I.A.`s "principal" reason for concluding that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.
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http://www.christusrex.org/www1/news/nyt-10-3-04a.html

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October 2, 2004
INTELLIGENCE
C.I.A.-White House Tensions Are Being Made Public to Rare Degree
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 - James L. Pavitt spent 31 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, the last five as head of the clandestine service, before retiring in August. But never, Mr. Pavitt said Friday, does he recall anything like "the viciousness and vindictiveness" now playing out in a battle between the White House and the C.I.A.

The tensions have simmered for years, mostly over intelligence about Iraq, including whether Iraq posed a threat. But in the last few weeks, they have surged into the open in a remarkable way, in a struggle in which both sides believe they have much at stake.

Already, the contents of classified intelligence estimates about Iraq have been leaked by people sympathetic to the C.I.A., to the considerable embarrassment of the White House. In response, the White House associated the documents` authors with "pessimists and naysayers," and President Bush initially dismissed one particularly damaging forecast as nothing more than a guess. And in newspaper columns in recent days, Republican partisans have variously described what is now afoot as part of an insurgency or vendetta being waged by the C.I.A. against the White House.

"Wars bring things out in people that sometimes other disputes don`t," said R. James Woolsey, a former director of central intelligence. "But even with the passions of war, I think you ought to keep it within channels." A third former intelligence official was more critical of the C.I.A. "The agency`s role is to tell the administration what it thinks, not to criticize its policies," the official said.

Of course, the most urgent threat to the agency lies in the effort now under way in Congress to restructure American intelligence agencies under the command of a new national intelligence director. Those efforts were recommended by the Sept. 11 commission, but the agency`s now infamous prewar misjudgments on Iraq and its illicit weapons were an important factor in prompting the calls for change.

In defense, the agency`s allies have clearly been trying, as they see it, to set the record straight, by calling attention to what they regard as the more prescient judgments by the C.I.A. that the Bush administration dismissed. In an election year that is very much about the war in Iraq, the overlapping streams of self-preservation and politics have elevated the intelligence agencies to unusual prominence.

"My opponent looked at the same intelligence I looked at," President Bush said several times in his debate with Senator John Kerry on Thursday night, alluding to the C.I.A.`s prewar blunder in asserting that Iraq possessed illicit weapons. But Mr. Kerry replied that it was the White House, not the C.I.A., that sent the country to war in Iraq.

In a telephone conversation on Friday, Mr. Pavitt made an argument that echoed that others have sounded in recent weeks. "There was nothing in the intelligence that was a casus belli," Mr. Pavitt said. The C.I.A. may have been wrong about Iraq and its weapons, he acknowledged, but it was on the mark in issuing prewar warnings about the obstacles that an American occupying force would face in postwar Iraq.

Mr. Pavitt`s career whose spanned the Church Committee revelations, in the mid-1970s, of C.I.A. improprieties, the sharp downsizing of the C.I.A. under President Jimmy Carter, the Iran-Contra scandal, and the repeated intelligence failures of recent years, including those related to the Sept. 11 attacks.

As deputy director of operations, Mr. Pavitt headed human spying operations, and was the day-to-day tactical commander of the clandestine war on terrorism. He worked closely with the White House, and said he has no sympathy with those in the government who may have leaked the contents of classified documents to make a political point. "The agency is not out to undermine this president," Mr. Pavitt said.

At the C.I.A. and the White House, officials dismissed the idea that the institutions were at odds. An intelligence official said the notion of an institutional battle between the White House and the C.I.A. was "simply not the case."

Sean McCormack, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said that the White House believed "that the men and women of our intelligence community and the C.I.A. are doing a terrific job in helping to defend the country, and are working tirelessly day and night."

But Mr. Pavitt was not alone among former intelligence officials in describing what is now unfolding as extraordinary. In interviews, several other former high-ranking officials, including those from the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies, said that while C.I.A. and White House were continuing to work closely and professionally together, they had rarely seen tensions so high among their allies and other partisans on both sides.

As for what may lie ahead, the shape and fate of any intelligence overhaul still remains far from certain. The terms of possible legislation are still being debated by the House and Senate, and it is unclear whether new legislation will be passed before Election Day. But all of the changes under consideration threaten to strip the C.I.A. from the position of preeminence among American intelligence agencies that it has enjoyed for more than 50 years.

"I think this has much more to do with intelligence reform than with Iraq," said the former senior C.I.A. official. "People are just very angry and worried and on the defensive about what they think might happen to the agency." (Like most others interviewed for this story, the former official would not allow his name to be used, saying that to do so would jeopardize his professional and business relationships.)

Whatever the motivation, the steps taken by people sympathetic to the C.I.A. allies to call attention to intelligence successes on Iraq have been notable. They included the disclosure in mid-September by government officials to The New York Times of details of a classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in July 2004 and distributed in late August. Its gloomy assessment of the challenges facing Iraq said that an environment of tenuous stability was the best-case outcome the country could expect through the end of 2005.

Other disclosures by government officials early this week have included specific new details contained in two other classified documents, prewar assessments on Iraq that were issued by the National Intelligence Council in January 2003. As described by the government officials, the postwar challenges identified in the documents included a surge in anti-Americanism in the Muslim world and the possibility of an anti-American insurgency in Iraq. The intelligence warnings appeared to have been much sharper than was acknowledged in the more upbeat forecasts provided before the war by Mr. Bush and top deputies including Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary.

From some conservative voices, including the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, the response has been furious. An editorial published by the Journal on Wednesday under the heading of "The C.I.A.`s Insurgency" said that Mr. Bush "now has two insurgencies to defeat: the one that the C.I.A. is struggling to help put down in Iraq, and the other inside Langley against the Bush administration."

"Rather than keep this dispute in-house," it said, "the dissenters have taken their objections to the public, albeit usually through calculated and anonymous leaks that are always spun to make the agency look good and the Bush administration look bad."

An op-ed article published on Friday in the Washington Times by John B. Roberts II, a conservative commentator on national security affairs, reiterated that message. "When the president cannot trust his own C.IA.," it warned, "the nation faces dire consequences."

Mr. Pavitt, the recently retired C.I.A. official, said such a suggestion was offensive. "This President has been served extremely well by intelligence," he said.

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Alle Zahlen. PDF-Datei.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/2004/la-100304poll_exce…


THE TIMES POLL
Viewers Give Round 1 to Kerry
Most who watched Thursday`s debate say it added to the Democratic candidate`s luster, but not at the expense of Bush`s standing.
By Ronald Brownstein and Kathleen Hennessey
Times Staff Writers

October 3, 2004

WASHINGTON — Sen. John F. Kerry improved his image with voters who watched his debate with President Bush last week, but didn`t significantly shift their choice in the presidential race, a Times poll of debate viewers has found.

Although the debate did not diminish impressions of Bush on most questions, it did restore some of the luster Kerry had lost amid relentless Republican pounding since his party`s convention in July, the poll found.

The key question will be whether those gains will help Kerry peel away voters from Bush in the days ahead.

Of those who watched Thursday`s debate, more than three times as many called Kerry the winner as picked Bush, the poll found. The Democratic nominee also made modest gains with viewers on questions relating to national security and leadership. And the portion of debate viewers with favorable perceptions of Kerry increased from 52% before to 57% after.

Kerry`s most dramatic advance in the survey came in convincing more voters that he had a thorough agenda for the next four years. Asked which candidate had the more detailed plan for the policies he would pursue if elected, viewers gave Bush a 9-percentage-point edge before the encounter; afterward, they preferred Kerry by 4 points.

"I thought [Kerry] did remarkably well within that format," said Joanne Sullivan, a registered Republican from Bremen, Maine. "He was very specific and went from Point A to Point B so much better than the platitudes that emerged from George Bush`s side."

These survey results reflect attitudes only among registered voters who watched the debate. Their views are more apt to change than the views among voters overall, many of whom did not watch the debate.

The poll, conducted Thursday night and Friday, surveyed 1,368 registered voters who participated in a Times survey last week and agreed to be contacted after the Sept. 30 debate. Among the group, 725 voters said they had watched the debate; it is their responses the poll reports. The poll, supervised by polling director Susan Pinkus, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The voters who watched the debate were slightly more favorable to Kerry than the overall electorate even before the encounter began, the poll showed.

For instance, in last week`s Times poll, Kerry trailed Bush among all registered voters by 49% to 45%. But the voters who watched the matchup preferred Kerry by 48% to 47% for Bush before the debate. After the debate, viewers divided nearly the same way, with 49% favoring Kerry, 47% Bush.

That tracks with other post-debate polls showing improvements in Kerry`s image but generally little immediate change in the race. The exception is a Newsweek poll conducted Thursday night through Saturday that showed Kerry leading Bush 49% to 46% in a two-way race among registered voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Lorri Guy, a secretary from Memphis, Tenn., who watched the debate, may exemplify the extent, and limits, of Kerry`s gains in the Times poll.

After the debate, she`s still undecided. She voted for Bush in 2000 and continues to admire what she sees as his tenacity and firm response to terrorism. "He says what he`s going to do and stands behind it," she said.

But now Guy is more open to the Massachusetts senator.

"I`m not quite sure yet where Kerry`s going, but I got a better impression of him than I had," she said. "He seemed a little more precise; he seemed like he had more of a plan."

Guy is waiting to hear more from the candidates on the economy before deciding.

As for the candidates` performances, viewers gave Kerry the edge on almost all questions. Before the debate, more of those who watched said they expected Bush to win than Kerry. But by 54% to 15%, viewers said they believed Kerry did a better job; independents who watched the debate preferred Kerry to Bush by more than 5 to 1.

Before the debate, those who ended up watching it were divided evenly on whether they expected Bush or Kerry to appear more knowledgeable. But, by 42% to 29%, viewers said they believed Kerry had seemed more knowledgeable.

By just over 2 to 1, viewers said Kerry was more effective at delivering his message. By more than 3 to 1, viewers said Kerry was more effective at responding under pressure. Viewers split on whether Kerry or Bush had seemed "most presidential," with Kerry leading by a statistically insignificant 40% to 38%.

Among the striking findings was the verdict on which candidate had displayed the strongest personality and character. Before the debate, by more than 2 to 1, the viewers had expected Bush to make the best impression. Afterward, they favored Kerry over Bush by 40% to 33% on that question.

Overall, Kerry`s performance had many Democrats breathing sighs of relief, and even some Bush supporters tipping their hats.

John Harvey, a union carpenter from Douglasville, Ga., was worried that "Kerry wouldn`t know what he was talking about" on the war and foreign policy.

But after watching, he said, "I think Kerry just got his point over better. When they were showing the split screen, every time Kerry said anything critical … Bush`s lip would quiver like a little kid."

Added Ivan Searcy, a self-employed Democrat from Redondo Beach: "I had become somewhat disappointed in [Kerry] as a candidate. Now I feel happier with his position after the debate. He was really able to stand right there with Bush."

Small-business owner Jan Kendall is a Bush supporter from Slidell, La. The debate didn`t cause her to question her commitment to the president. But she thought Bush "looked tired and haggard," while Kerry "did a good job in terms of being a little more likable."

Viewers were more likely to say Kerry attacked his opponent than Bush did Kerry — though half felt that neither attacked more than the other. Likewise, although more voters said the president had made a mistake during the debate than said Kerry did, about half thought that neither had erred.

These reviews generated a consistent pattern on broader questions about the two men. Attitudes toward Bush generally didn`t deteriorate. But assessments of Kerry did improve.

Among those who watched, Bush`s approval rating after the debate was unchanged from before, with 49% approving and 50% disapproving. Bush`s favorability rating among debate viewers improved slightly (though within the survey`s margin of error). Before the debate, 51% of the watchers viewed Bush favorably and 49% viewed him unfavorably; afterward, the numbers were 52% and 47%.

Kerry made bigger gains among viewers. On the most basic measure, the share of viewers with a favorable impression of him rose from 52% before the debate to 57% after; the share with an unfavorable impression dropped from 46% to 41%.

Kerry gained ground on every issue and personal characteristic that the survey measured.

Before the debate, viewers gave Bush a 7-percentage-point advantage when asked which man would provide strong leadership; after the debate Bush`s advantage was 2 points.

Viewers gave Bush a 4-percentage-point advantage before the debate when asked which man had the honesty and integrity to serve as president; afterward, viewers gave Kerry a 1-percentage-point edge.

Likewise, before the debate, viewers gave Bush a 2-percentage-point advantage when asked who would be a stronger commander in chief; afterward they split evenly.

Attitudes on Iraq showed the same modest movement in Kerry`s favor. Before the debate, viewers preferred Bush over Kerry by 1 percentage point when asked which man was more likely to develop a plan for success in Iraq; afterward, they preferred Kerry by 3 points.

Bush retained a big lead among debate watchers on handling terrorism, but his advantage there was trimmed from 14 to 10 percentage points. Kerry`s edge on handling the economy widened from 6 percentage points beforehand to 13 after.

Among those who watched, Bush`s position eroded on another key question. Before the debate, 43% of viewers agreed that "the country is better off" because of his policies, whereas 53% said the nation needed to "move in a new direction."

After the debate, the percentage of viewers who wanted to continue in Bush`s direction dropped to 39%, and the share preferring a new direction increased to 57%. Yet about an eighth of the debate watchers who wanted a new direction said they were voting for Bush nonetheless — a finding that underscored the doubts Kerry must still overcome.

*

Times Poll data management supervisor Claudia Vaughn contributed to this report.





Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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BUSH VERSUS KERRY
L`Etat, C`est George W.

October 3, 2004

George W. Bush has campaigned on a foreign policy that is, for the most part, appropriate and wise. He has said that this country and its leaders should show "the modesty of true strength [and] the humility of real greatness." We take issue with his criticism of what he has called "nation-building" because we believe that American might can and should be used sometimes to promote democratic values in other countries. But his is a vision of America`s role in the world that would make us happy and proud.

If only we could have it. For that was Bush`s vision in 2000. He has governed very differently. Yes, the events of Sept. 11 changed much, if not everything. But that doesn`t justify Bush`s dramatic flip-flop (to use his favorite criticism of his opponent, John F. Kerry). Elected leaders should be penalized for saying one thing and doing another, even if the result isn`t disastrous. Bush`s foreign policy has been disastrous.

When Bush and Kerry debated Thursday, they focused so narrowly on Iraq that they didn`t really answer this fundamental question: Is the U.S. safer than it was four years ago? Even allowing that our country was less safe four years ago than we realized at the time, the answer is no.

When Bush entered office in January 2001, the United States was not just a dominant power in the world, it was an unrivaled one. Europe cheered as U.S.-led airstrikes toppled Slobodan Milosevic`s tyranny in the Balkans. China backed down from threatening Taiwan when President Clinton sent warships into the region. Around the world, the American model was seen as the only path to prosperity and freedom.

Now all that is gone. The military is stretched to the breaking point, with more than 100,000 troops tied down in Iraq and more than $90 billion having been spent on behalf of a war that was based on a massive intelligence failure. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has been willfully abandoned by the Bush administration. North Korea and Iran are constructing nuclear weapons with impunity. Russia is reaching back to its czarist past as Vladimir V. Putin tightens his grip on power, while Bush utters feeble pieties about how he will continue to push for democracy and human rights. Meanwhile, admiration for the U.S. has been replaced by loathing; even in moderate Turkey, 59% of the population, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll, believes that suicide bombings are legitimate in Iraq.

The mischief began even before 9/11. From the start, Bush`s credo was unilateralism. Even as German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was on his way to visit the White House, Bush gratuitously humiliated him by announcing that he would not sign the Kyoto treaty limiting greenhouse gases. He made it clear from the start that he would repudiate the antiballistic missile treaty with Russia, which he did, in order to pursue the chimera of strategic defense. The taxpayers will spend more than $10 billion next year on this highly doubtful missile shield.

That same unilateralism has suffused the approach to the war on terrorism, leaving the U.S. to bear the brunt of the war in Iraq and earning it the odium of the outside world. By simultaneously overextending the military and running up huge deficits, Bush may have created the kind of overstretch that has destroyed empires.

But would Kerry offer a more realistic foreign policy? The former Navy man regained his sea legs, so to speak, during the debate by proposing, however vaguely, that the U.S. should begin to think about an exit strategy from Iraq. His other foreign policy stands are not remarkably different from Bush`s.

Kerry`s biggest virtue is what he is not. In contrast to Bush, who seems to be living in a fantasy land about Iraq, he realizes that the U.S. has to patch up its relations with Europe, fight nuclear proliferation and make choices about where it can and cannot exercise power. Sadly, there is also some comfort in the thought that, like Bush four years ago, Kerry can change his mind. Bush is committed. There is value in non-incumbency.

There is value in incumbency too. Bush is now claiming the virtue of experience and knowledge of global leaders (he reeled them off in Thursday`s debate). His experience might count for more if it hadn`t been our experience as well.

One aspect of Bush`s incumbency deserves special comment. In the debate and elsewhere, he has repeated a Kerry line about Iraq being the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, and has declared that this and similar criticisms of his policy disqualify Kerry as president because they send a bad message to, variously, U.S. troops, citizens or allies.

The message Kerry`s criticisms send is that, even in wartime, the United States is a democracy. The message Bush sends is that he need not defend his stewardship because criticism is invalid, whatever its merits. L`etat, c`est moi, as one of those French fellas put it. So much for the modesty of true strength and the humility of real greatness.





Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey: `Bush`s Legacy: Walking firmly towards Armageddon`
Date: Sunday, October 03 @ 10:08:01 EDT
Topic: War & Terrorism

By Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey, Pravda

From Pakistan to Iraq to the Lebanon, fundamentalist violence erupts at a rate hitherto unseen with a venom never before felt, with a new deep-rooted seething hatred. The legacy of George Bush, whose incompetence and ignorance leaves a swathe of unrest in the most delicate area of the planet.

Thursday. Baghdad, which George Bush`s "military troops", as he says, invaded over a year ago. Three huge explosions, this time not caused by his cluster bombs but by the international terrorists who flocked to post-Saddam Iraq (he was the one keeping them out). 42 dead, including 35 children. 141 injured.

The children had been attracted to the scene by US soldiers handing out sweets. However noble this gesture is, what are US troops doing interfering inside Iraq? How many more deaths are they to be responsible for and why did they go there in the first place?

Where are the Weapons of Mass Destruction that Bush talked about? Where are the weapons systems being driven around the desert, that Powell talked about and where are the caches of arms north, south, east and west of Baghdad and Tikrit that Rumsfeld talked about?



Where then is the apology from the arrogant, conceited and self-convinced incompetent Bush, admitting to his mistakes like a man?

The same day, bombs exploded from the Lebanon to Talafar, in northern Iraq, to Pakistan. The whole area is in flames, flames lit, fuelled and fanned by George Bush and his foreign policy which has united the world in a unanimous call for the American people to vote against this odious regime even if this means installing a buffer presidency for four years while the Republican Party does a much-needed purge of its ranks, having been taken by a clique of super-rich elitist corporate bosses, who confuse their own goals with Washington`s, making a mockery out of democracy and clowns out of their people, while divorcing their country from the international community which they insulted so deeply.

But this is not the end of it. Destabilizing Iraq was a monumental error, which is painfully obvious with every day that passes. How Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld can look at themselves in the mirror each morning defies logic.

However, there is far, far more. The prison of Abu Ghraib jolts the memory of all those who have been victims of, or who have visited, Dachau or Belsen or Auschwitz. The humiliation, the sexual depravity, the torture, the sheer cruelty, were all there,

Now we have proof that torture and murder have taken place elsewhere at the hands of US soldiers. A British detainee at Guantanamo, the US concentration camp in Cuba, has claimed that he was tortured.

Mohammed Begg has stated that he saw two other detainees being murdered in a letter released this week, the first communication to come out of this horrendous concentration camp.

Begg, who claims he is an innocent British citizen, has been held there for over two years without charge. He claims he was the victim of threats of torture, death threats and other coercive interrogation methods and that any documents that he might have signed admitting to his guilt were obtained as a result of torture.

He speaks of horrendous screams from men being butchered by US interrogators.

The stories just go on and on and on and on. Surely, the people of the United States of America have collective values better than this? How can they allow their good name to be usurped by this clique of elitists who have already squandered two hundred thousand million dollars of their workers` money and who are reportedly planning to launch similar invasions in Iran and possibly Syria?

Is this the better world the people of the USA want? A vote for Bush is a vote for Armageddon.


The URL for this story is:
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=18095

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Ich habe schon immer Zweifel an der Rolle von Zarqawi gehabt. Ich bin der Meinung da ist ein Popanz aufgebaut worden.

Doubt over Zarqawi`s role as ringleader
By Adrian Blomfield
Fallujah
October 2, 2004
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/10/01/1096527932416.h…

American intelligence obtained through bribery may have seriously overstated the insurgency role of the most wanted fugitive in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

US agents in Baghdad and Fallujah have revealed a series of botched and often tawdry dealings with unreliable sources who, in the words of one, "told us what we wanted to hear".

"We were basically paying up to $US10,000 ($A13,700) a time to opportunists, criminals and chancers who passed off fiction and supposition about Zarqawi as cast-iron fact, making him out as the linchpin of just about every attack in Iraq," one agent said.

"Back home this stuff was gratefully received and formed the basis of policy decisions. We needed a villain, someone identifiable for the public to latch on to, and we got one."

Officials in Washington have linked Zarqawi to Osama bin Laden`s al-Qaeda, casting the Jordanian extremist as leader of the insurgency, mastermind of suicide bombings and the man behind the abduction of foreign hostages.
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But some critics of the war say the Bush Administration has deliberately skewed the level of Zarqawi`s involvement in an attempt to portray the insurgency as a war waged by foreign Islamic terrorists.

That view could be bolstered by intelligence emerging from around Fallujah since the end of June, when the practice of paying for information was abandoned.

It suggests that the insurgency is led not by foreign-born Arabs but by members of Iraq`s Sunni minority.

"The overwhelming sense from the information we are now getting is that the number of foreign fighters does not exceed several hundred and is perhaps as low as 200," one agent said.

"From the information we have gathered, we have to conclude Zarqawi is more myth than man. At some stage, and perhaps even now, he was almost certainly behind some of the kidnappings. But if there is a main leader of the insurgency, he would be an Iraqi. But the insurgency is not nearly so centralised to talk of a structured leadership."

Military intelligence officials complain that their reports to Washington are largely being ignored and accuse the Pentagon of over-reliance on electronic surveillance and aerial and satellite reconnaissance by the CIA.

In recent weeks America has claimed a series of precision air strikes on targets in Fallujah identified by the CIA as housing known Zarqawi associates.

It has denied that there were any civilian casualties, despite television pictures showing dead and wounded women and children being pulled from the rubble of flattened homes.

That is evidence, the military`s spies say, of America`s continued dependency on technology over old-fashioned human intelligence - an often voiced criticism since the early 1990s when Bill Clinton cut the number of field agents.

Both US President George Bush and English Prime Minister Tony Blair have, to varying degrees, conceded that intelligence on Saddam Hussein`s weapons of mass destruction programs - the basis on which the decision to go to war was taken - was misleading.

But both continue to maintain that the continued violence since Saddam was ousted is because the front line in the war on terrorism has formed in Iraq, a claim the Prime Minister was at pains to stress at this week`s Labour Party Conference.

Yet it now seems that the intelligence on which such claims are based is as haphazard, scanty and contradictory as ever it was.

- Telegraph

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Der dazu gehörende Artikel steht auf #22308. Dieser Artikel scheint für einigen Wirbel zu sorgen, denn er war ein Hauptthema in den sonntäglichen Shows im US-Fernsehen.
Dazu eine Zusammenfassung von Reuters:

With Month to Go, Kerry on Offense Against Bush
Sun Oct 3, 2004 05:02 PM ET

By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With one month to go in a tightening White House race, an invigorated Democratic Sen. John Kerry stepped up his attacks on President Bush`s economic record on Sunday and raised new questions about whether the White House misled the country into war in Iraq.

Bush administration officials defended the Iraq invasion and disputed a New York Times report claiming they ignored doubts about whether high-strength aluminum tubes seized in 2001 were destined to be used for a revived Iraqi nuclear program.

At a campaign stop in Ohio, Kerry said the Times report "raises serious questions about whether or not the administration was open and honest in making the case for the war in Iraq" and said Bush similarly avoided the truth on key economic issues.

"This is a time where I think all too often the administration also chooses to avoid the facts and the truth," he said. "Not just in the issues about how we went to war -- the intelligence, what intelligence we had or didn`t have -- but just look around you in the economy of our country."

The exchanges came at the start of a week featuring two debates where Kerry and running mate John Edwards will try to build on their momentum from Thursday`s first face-to-face encounter with Bush, which polls showed was a clear win for Kerry.

A Newsweek poll showed Kerry climbed to a two-point lead in the White House race after his performance in the debate. A Los Angeles Times poll on Sunday showed Kerry improved his image among voters but did not dramatically shift the horse race with Bush.

Kerry has turned to domestic issues after the debate, arguing in economically battered Ohio that Bush had burdened U.S. taxpayers with policies that helped companies ship jobs and tax revenues offshore.

"This administration, every time it`s had an opportunity to make a choice for you, whether it`s health care, or prescription drugs or schools ... they`ve made a choice that helps the powerful, the people who are most helped already," the Massachusetts senator said in Austintown, Ohio.

Kerry also took a swipe at Bush over the New York Times report that administration officials did not disclose the contrary views of America`s leading nuclear scientists and sometimes overstated intelligence assessments about whether Iraq was acquiring the aluminum tubes to develop nuclear weapons.

"These are questions the president must face, these are the questions that a president has to answer fully to the American people and to the troops," Kerry said.

`TENET`S FAULT`

Condoleezza Rice, Bush`s national security adviser, defended her claim in 2002 about former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein`s nuclear capabilities and laid the blame for faulty intelligence on departed CIA Director George Tenet.

"The director of central intelligence believed that the centrifuge part for these tubes ... were a part of a procurement effort for a reconstituted nuclear weapons program," Rice said on ABC`s "This Week."

She said she was aware there was a debate about some of the pre-war evidence against Saddam, but she said intelligence officials deemed the overall threat to be credible.

"I stand by to this day the correctness of the decision to take seriously an intelligence assessment that Saddam Hussein would likely have a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade if you didn`t do something," she said.

Dan Bartlett, White House director of communications, said on CBS`s "Face the Nation" that "despite the fact that some had different opinions about the technical use of these, it was the director of the central intelligence and others who said we believe this to be the case."

Iraq is certain to be a key topic at Tuesday`s debate between Vice President Dick Cheney and Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards in Cleveland, Ohio.

Cheney, a key architect of the administration`s Iraqi policy and a prime defender of the war, gets a second chance to state the administration`s case on Iraq after Bush`s performance, which polls showed had not impressed voters.

On Friday, Bush and Kerry meet for their second debate in St. Louis, Missouri, in a town hall format where undecided voters compose the questions and the topics are unlimited, allowing a discussion on domestic issues.

The third and final presidential debate, on Oct. 13, in Tempe, Arizona, will focus strictly on domestic policy, which Democrats once hoped to make the focus of the campaign before violence in Iraq overshadowed everything.

Bush took a day off the campaign trail on Sunday, attending church and going on a bicycle ride.

Democrats were heartened by Kerry`s debate performance and hoped it would ease lingering doubts about his abilities. But Republicans said the polls still showed Bush leading on key issues.

"President Bush still has a lead in the big issues on terrorism, on Iraq, leadership, and these are the issues which the president is going to get re-elected on," Bartlett said on "Fox News Sunday." (Additional reporting by Greg Frost in Ohio)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top U.S. officials were aware some pre-war evidence cited to make the case against Iraq`s Saddam Hussein was questionable but U.S. intelligence officials nonetheless deemed the threat of his developing nuclear weapons credible, top White House aides said on Sunday.

President Bush`s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, one top aide who cited the claims about aluminum tubes seized in Jordan in June 2001 in urging that Saddam was attempting to revive a nuclear program, was responding to a report in The New York Times that Bush officials ignored doubts about the potential other uses of thousands of the high-strength tubes to press the case for war.

Rice claimed in September 2002 that the tubes were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs."

On ABC`s "This Week," Rice said she was aware of debate over the tubes but that they were part of a larger body of evidence pointing to a nuclear threat.

"What you had was a debate in the intelligence community," Rice said.

"The tubes were alongside a lot of other evidence about experts being kept together, about balancing equipment being brought in, about how these procurement efforts were being funded," she said.

Rice added on CNN`s "Late Edition" that objections regarding the purpose of the tubes were raised by the Energy and State Departments more than a year before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

"But I did know at the time that the -- the DCI and the intelligence community had said, the intelligence community as a whole believed that these were for centrifuge parts" involved in nuclear weapon production.

On CBS "Face the Nation," White House communications director Dan Bartlett added, "Despite the fact that some had different opinions about the technical use of these, it was the director of the central intelligence and others who said we believe this to be the case."

Former CIA Director George Tenet, dogged by controversies over a string of U.S. intelligence setbacks, resigned in July.

Joe Lockhart, an adviser to Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry, told the CBS program: "I think the president needs to come forward, tell us what he knew."

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BETHESDA, MD (IWR News Parody) - President Bush on Saturday morning had what the White House billed as "elective outpatient" brain surgery to remove the frontal lobe from his brain.

The surgery was ordered by Bush`s chief political strategist Karl Rove after [urlBush`s humiliating defeat]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6159637/site/newsweek by John Kerry in the last debate.

"Dubya has been twitching, [urlmaking weird faces]http://mfile.akamai.com/8082/wmv/democratic1.download.akamai.com/8082/video/faces/faces.asx andfluttering his eyes so much lately, it`s like having a conversation with [urlBarney Fife!]http://www.mayberry.com/interactive/bio_barney.htm

Too make things worse, the President has also been pretty much an obnoxious little bastard all year long," said Rove to reporters.

The surgeon in charge, Dr. Scholl, said the whole procedure only took 30 minutes and that most of the time was spent drilling through the patient`s thick skull.

"He had the thickest skull that we have ever operated on in the entire history of Bethesda Naval Hospital.

Fortunately, we had an extra set of drill bits so we were able to get the job done on schedule.

Once we finally reached the frontal lobe, we were able to suck it right out with a [urlRoto-Rooter.]http://www.rotorooter.com/ After that, We filled up the empty cavity with some [urlBondo,]http://www.bondo-online.com/catalog_item.asp?itemNbr=241" said Dr. Scholl.

The president, who was only given a local anesthetic, was able to go home and watch cartoons on TV right after the surgery.[/url][/url][/url][/url][/url]
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October 4, 2004
INSURGENTS
After 3-Day Fight, U.S. and Iraqi Forces Retake Samarra
By RICK LYMAN and DEXTER FILKINS

SAMARRA, Iraq, Oct. 3 - American and Iraqi forces in Samarra finished retaking the last insurgent-controlled neighborhood early Sunday, completing a relentless three-day push through this ancient city in a first step toward wresting control of important central Iraqi areas held by Sunni guerrillas.

With the city in hand, American commanders said they were beginning the second phase of the operation, turning over the city to the Iraqi police and military forces the same way they took it - one neighborhood at a time.

American and Iraqi officials said the most difficult challenge was ahead, in re-establishing governmental authority and holding off what is certain to be a new round of attacks from guerrillas who melted away before the surging armies.

The Americans said they had killed at least 125 insurgents, but if the past is any guide, more are likely to be lying in wait. American commanders have long said that they could retake the cities of the so-called Sunni Triangle with ease but that the difficulty lies in transferring the cities to Iraqi security forces that have less training. Until the Samarra attack, Iraqi troops had not done well in combat against insurgents.
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American soldiers conducted searches on Sunday in Samarra, where allied forces drove out insurgents who had occupied the city.
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For that reason, more than 2,000 of the soldiers in the 5,000-member force that attacked Samarra are Iraqi, and many of them will be staying on after the Americans leave. The local government will come in behind them.

But on Sunday, with the city mostly quiet, the American and Iraqi forces celebrated an early success.

"I guess it`s about over," said Lt. Col. David Hubner, commander of one of the four American battalions that joined two Iraqi battalions in the battle. Colonel Hubner was resting in the cool afternoon gloom of the living room of a house that he had commandeered for his headquarters in southern Samarra.

As though a bell had been rung, people began to emerge from their homes on Sunday, gathering in small numbers on some market streets and waving warily at passing convoys of armored vehicles. Here and there, people passed along the hot, dusty streets with white flags waving over their heads.

The quick retaking of Samarra, which had fallen under the control of fundamentalists and other antigovernment insurgents, was welcome news to Iraq`s provisional government. With national elections promised by the end of January, concerns had been growing over what to do with cities that had fallen out of government control.

Now, bolstered by their victory in Samarra, Iraqi officials are predicting that the other major cities under insurgent control, like Falluja, will also soon be retaken.

American strategists said they had studied earlier battles with insurgents in Falluja, where troops have never been able to establish much of a foothold, and Najaf, which was taken from Shiite militiamen only after a grinding and costly struggle, and decided on an aggressive and relentless strategy that proved successful in Samarra.
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Sgt. Bill Willett of the Army on Sunday sorted items belonging to a former Baath Party figure in Samarra, including a portrait of Saddam Hussein.
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The battle began just before midnight on Thursday with a bombardment of the neighborhoods on Samarra`s edge. It was immediately followed by the entrance of the main force of American and Iraqi troops, repelling attacks by insurgents firing rocket-propelled grenades and answering their mortar fire with more mortar fire.

"That`s when the tide really turned, when we started firing mortars back at them," said Lt. Shawn Tabankin, who led one of the platoons moving into the city. "They were already surprised, but when we started throwing indirect fire at them, they just disappeared."

In past fights in Iraqi cities, insurgents have had time to regroup after the first assault, often buying time by initiating negotiations. But in Samarra, the guerrillas appeared to be thrown off balance by the continuing attack. Some insurgents fled and others tried, unsuccessfully, to counterattack.

The idea, Colonel Hubner said, was to panic the insurgents at the opening of the battle in an effort to scatter them. "We studied what had happened in Najaf and elsewhere very carefully, and we learned some important lessons," he said.

But if the Americans were pleased with their success, not all Iraqis were. In Baghdad, the Association of Muslim Scholars, which represents more than 3,000 Sunni mosques around the country, denounced the military operation and accused American and Iraqi troops of widespread atrocities in Samarra. The clerics, who spoke at a news conference in Baghdad, said the military action would undermine any support in the area for the elections.

"The hospital is full of bodies, children are buried in the gardens, and there are bodies filling the streets," said Muhammad Bashar al-Faidhi, one of the members of the group in Baghdad who said he was basing his accusations on witness accounts. It was impossible to independently verify his claims.

"These policies will increase the anger of the Iraqi people," he said, "and if the government insists on resolving the crisis in this horrible American way, then we expect that the Iraqi people will not cooperate in any forthcoming election or any other political program."

Also on Sunday, the American military said it had carried out an early morning airstrike in Falluja. The military said the attack, which hit a home where people had been seen moving weapons, was followed by 45 minutes of secondary explosions, confirming the presence of weapons there.

The military said it presumed that a large number of enemy fighters had been killed in the attack. But in Falluja, hospital officials said five civilians had been killed.

Iraqi officials said Sunday that they had found the bodies of a man and a woman, both believed to be Westerners, in a troubled area south of Baghdad.

The man had been decapitated, and the woman had been shot through the head and stabbed in the neck, a hospital official in the town of Mahmudiya said. The official said the bodies had been found in the nearby town of Yusefiya. Officials said no identification had been made.

At least three Westerners are believed to be hostages in Iraq - two French journalists and a British engineer, all men. A number of other foreigners, including Indonesians and Lebanese, are also being held.

Rick Lyman reported from Samarra for this article, and Dexter Filkins from Baghdad.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Da Gallup ein Handycap von 3-4% für Kerry eingebaut hat, kann man von einer Führung von Kerry ausgehen.

October 04, 2004
Kerry Pulls Even With Bush at 49%-49%
Bush retains strength on several key dimensions
Der ganze Text:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/content/?ci=13240

by Frank Newport

GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- The presidential election is roughly back where it was in August, with John Kerry and George W. Bush tied among likely voters, and with President Bush`s job approval squarely at the midpoint of 50%. This marks a significant change from September, when three separate CNN/USA Today/Gallup polls showed Bush ahead of Kerry.

Impact of First Debate

There is little question that Thursday night`s presidential debate has made a significant difference in the presidential race.

Gallup`s poll of debate watchers on Thursday night showed that Kerry was perceived as doing a better job than Bush by a 53% to 37% margin. In the latest poll, conducted Oct. 1-3, this perception of Kerry`s stronger debate performance has expanded, no doubt fueled by post-debate media discussion and spin. Fifty-seven percent of the broad sample of all Americans now say Kerry did the better job in the debate, compared to only 25% who say Bush did the better job.

Additionally, 71% of Americans say they watched or listened to the debate, while another 13% say they saw news coverage of the confrontation at the University of Miami.

The Horse Race

Prior to the debate, Bush was ahead of Kerry among likely voters by an eight-point margin of 52% to 44%. Bush also had job approval ratings in the three September polls in the 52%-54% range.

Now, in the new poll, Bush`s post-Republican convention bounce has dissipated. The race is literally tied among likely voters, at 49% to 49%, and statistically tied among registered voters, with a slight 49%- 47% margin in Bush`s favor. (Ralph Nader receives only 1% of the vote among both groups.)

Now, suppose that the presidential election were being held today, and it included John Kerry and John Edwards as the Democratic candidates, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney as the Republican candidates, and Ralph Nader and Peter Camejo as independent candidates. Would you vote for -- [ROTATED: Kerry and Edwards, the Democrats, Bush and Cheney, the Republicans, (or) Nader and Camejo, the independent candidates]?

As of today, do you lean more toward -- [ROTATED: Kerry and Edwards, the Democrats, Bush and Cheney, the Republicans (or) Nader and Camejo, the independents]?

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Beginning with Oct. 1-3, 2004 poll, Nader/Camejo support is based only on residents from states where Nader was on the presidential ballot at the time the poll was released. In states where Nader was not on the ballot at the time of release, Nader voters` choice for president if Nader is not on the ballot (Q.3/3A) was substituted for their Nader vote.

Job Approval Rating

For an incumbent, job approval rating is almost as important an indicator of probable election success as the trial heat ballot. Bush is now back squarely at a 50% job approval rating, directly on the line that symbolically divides a successful from an unsuccessful bid for the presidency.

Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?

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Terrorismus ist eine Frage des Standpunktes.

October 4, 2004
THE BATTLEGROUND
On Baghdad Streets, Loyalty to Rebel Cleric Is Still Fierce
By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 3 - On the groom`s last night as a single man, a bachelor party on his front lawn kicked off with song and dance.

"We love you to death, Moktada," a pair of singers crooned in praise of Moktada al-Sadr, the fiery anti-American cleric who, though absent, overshadowed the groom. "We love you as much as there are leaves on a tree."

Out came one of the groom`s best friends, waving his arms like a carnival barker. "Those who follow the Americans are dogs," he yelled. "We swear by Moktada that we won`t let our machine guns stop!"

Loyalty to the Shiite cleric burns fierce here in northeastern Baghdad, and especially in Sadr City, a vast slum of 2.2 million people, despite frequent American raids and almost nightly airstrikes. The American military has stepped up its campaign to rout the Mahdi Army, Mr. Sadr`s militia, on its home turf here, to drive him to the bargaining table. But it is often impossible to distinguish between civilians and fighters.
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A bloody handprint marked a house in Sadr City, a Baghdad slum, where neighbors said a family of five had been killed in an airstrike.
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A reporter, photographer and interpreter with The New York Times recently spent nearly 24 hours being guided through the battleground streets - and even to a guerrilla bachelor party - by one of Mr. Sadr`s midlevel aides. It became apparent that the Mahdi Army here is less a discrete military organization than a populist movement that includes everyone from doctors to policemen to tribal sheiks, and whose ranks swell with impoverished men willing to die.

The day began with a drive to the home of the Sadr aide, a slim, balding 35-year-old man who gave his name simply as Muhammad. Donkey carts plied the dusty streets, mounds of trash lined wide avenues and posters of chubby, black-turbaned Mr. Sadr were plastered across every block. Graffiti in English decorated some walls: "Vietnam Street - We`ll make your graves in this place."

Muhammad`s home was tucked into a narrow alley in the Chewadar neighborhood. A reeking channel of open sewage ran along the street. A boy dashed around with a toy rifle propped on his shoulder like a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Nearby, other children played soccer in dirt lots, and women in black robes peeked out from their doorways.

The home was typical of many in Sadr City: a two-story ocher building, with an extended family of 35 squeezed into 1,500 square feet. Muhammad`s family moved here in 1962 from Amara, a southern city, before his birth. He is the second-oldest of six brothers, many of whom are members of the Mahdi Army.

"If the Americans didn`t try entering Sadr City with their tanks, I can guarantee you not a single bullet would be fired," Muhammad said over a lunch of lamb kebab, a framed portrait of Mr. Sadr on the wall behind him. "Everyone here is part of the resistance."

Muhammad and several of his brothers ate lunch sitting on rugs in the bare concrete living room. Later, one of the brothers, Kassim, a Mahdi commander, picked up an AK-47 and disassembled and assembled it in a couple of minutes. "Mahdi Army basics," he said.

"I fought against the Americans twice in Najaf," he said proudly. "The battle in August was very bloody. There were two armies - one had much better technology, and there was no comparison. But we managed to stay for 26 days."

"We`re willing to fight, and we won`t let the Americans enter this city," he said, staring down the barrel of his rifle. That sentiment is widespread in Sadr City, where American patrols routinely encounter ambushes and roadside bombs.

In the afternoon, Muhammad drove his black sedan to a street that he said had been the target of an American airstrike three days earlier. Dozens of men from the neighborhood walked to one house and pointed out small indentations in flagstones in the outer courtyard. They said the craters had been made by shrapnel.

Looking in the house, Muhammad pointed to a pool of blood in a corner of the living room and to a family portrait on the wall. The parents and their three children were killed in the strike, he said.

"Everybody was asleep after midnight," a neighbor, Ahmed Faisal, 32, said. "The electricity went off, then the plane came after 1 a.m. It was very noisy."

Mr. Faisal emulated the sound of the plane firing, a jackhammer noise made by the cannons of an AC-130 gunship, which the Americans often deploy over Sadr City.

A senior military official said the strikes were not aimed at civilians, but there was no guarantee that civilian casualties could be avoided.

A half-dozen young men along the alley showed off gauze bandages over wounds on their arms and torsos that they said had resulted from the strike. They insisted they were not Mahdi Army fighters. But when asked whether they hoped Mr. Sadr would drive out the Americans, they said in unison, "God willing!"

Mr. Faisal said: "They`re attacking people; they`re capturing people. I won`t stand idle."

Muhammad drove next to Imam Ali Hospital and visited several people whom he and the doctors said had been wounded in the airstrikes, including three women. The policemen here kissed Muhammad on the cheeks, though few other policemen were to be seen in the center of Sadr City. Posters of Mr. Sadr adorned the walls, including one of him with Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of Hezbollah.

At another hospital, a construction worker screaming on a gurney in the emergency room said he had been wounded in an American attack. Blood streaked his face and clothes.

Muhammad drove to the site of the attack, on a wide street near an American base. A crowd had gathered several hundred feet from an incinerated pickup truck and a blockade of Humvees. When the Iraqis moved closer, American soldiers fired warning shots into the air.

A bystander named Hussein said a team of Mahdi fighters had lobbed mortars at the base, prompting the Americans to fire missiles back. Officials with the First Cavalry Division later said soldiers had fired a howitzer after dozens of mortar rounds had landed in the base.

Muhammad made a call on his cellphone as he drove away. "Three of the men have just been martyred," he said, his voice quavering. "I tried to evacuate them, but I couldn`t."

After nightfall, Muhammad and his brothers loaded AK-47`s and pistols into two cars and drove to the bachelor party, where they clapped to music and congratulated the groom. They returned home to one of the frequent three-hour blackouts. Neighbors, one of whom was a police captain, dropped in for tea.

"I supported the invasion at first, to get rid of Saddam, but when they put their flag up over the city of Basra, I knew it would turn into an occupation," the captain said, a Glock pistol tucked into his waistband.

At 1 a.m., Kassim, the militia commander, said he was going out to check on the sentries in the neighborhood. Two of the younger brothers escorted the foreign guests to the roof to sleep on thin mattresses. A full moon had risen, and sheep, satellite dishes and sleeping neighbors were visible on other roofs that spread out in every direction.

The sound of propellers from an unseen AC-130 gunship drifted from the sky above, and two fighter jets swooped through the air. Starting at 4:30 a.m., some people in the streets squeezed off rounds from their AK-47`s. Those shots were met by a burst from the AC-130, after which the streets fell silent.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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October 4, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Bush and Reality
By BOB HERBERT

For 90 minutes, at least, democracy seemed to be working. The two men in dark suits took their places at the lecterns. The analysts, the handlers, the spinmeisters and the hangers-on had been cleared out of the way. With no commercial interruptions, more than 60 million Americans got a rare, unedited, close-up look at the candidates in one of the most important presidential elections in the nation`s history.

John Kerry got the better of President Bush in last Thursday`s debate in Coral Gables, Fla. The president seemed listless, defensive and not particularly well prepared. His facial expressions and body language at times were odd. Some of his strongest supporters were dismayed by his performance, and polls are showing they had reason to be concerned.

There undoubtedly were many reasons for Mr. Bush`s lackluster effort. But I think there was one factor, above all, that undermined the president in last week`s debate, and will continue to plague him throughout the campaign. And that was his problematic relationship with reality.

Mr. Bush is a man who will frequently tell you - and may even believe - that up is down, or square is round, when logic and all the available evidence say otherwise. During the debate, this was most clearly displayed when, in response to a question about the war in Iraq, Mr. Bush told the moderator, Jim Lehrer, "The enemy attacked us, Jim, and I have a solemn duty to protect the American people, to do everything I can to protect us."

Moments later Senator Kerry clarified, for the audience and the president, just who had attacked the United States. "Saddam Hussein didn`t attack us," said Mr. Kerry. "Osama bin Laden attacked us. Al Qaeda attacked us."

Given a chance to respond, Mr. Bush flashed an unappreciative look at Senator Kerry and said, "Of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us - I know that."

With no weapons of mass destruction to exhibit, and no link between Saddam and Al Qaeda, Mr. Bush has nevertheless tried to portray the war in Iraq as not only the right thing to do but as largely successful. The increasing violence and chaos suggest otherwise. Even as the presidential debate was being conducted, details were coming in about car bombings earlier in the day in Baghdad that killed dozens of Iraqis, including at least 34 children.

The children were not in school because the turmoil had prevented the opening of schools.

The political problem for Mr. Bush is that while he is offering a rosy picture of events in Iraq - perhaps because he believes it, or because he wants to bolster American morale - voters are increasingly seeing the bitter, tragic reality of those events. A president can stay out of step with reality only so long. Eventually there`s a political price to pay. Lyndon Johnson`s deceit with regard to Vietnam, for example, has never been forgiven.

The president likes to tell us that "freedom is winning" in Iraq, that democracy is on the march. But Americans are coming to realize that Iraq is, in fact, a country in agony, beset by bombings, firefights, kidnappings, beheadings and myriad other forms of mayhem. The president may think that freedom is winning, but television viewers in the U.S. could see images over the weekend of distraught Iraqis pulling the bodies of small children from smoking rubble - a tragic but perfect metaphor for a policy in ruins.

Mr. Bush got his big bounce in the public opinion polls from the Swift boat nonsense and the mocking, nonstop criticism of Senator Kerry at the Republican National Convention. Those were distractions from the real world. But reality cannot be kept at bay indefinitely. Readers of The Washington Post got a disturbing dose of it yesterday from a front-page article about the strain being put on the overloaded systems of veterans` disability benefits and health care by the thousands of American troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with physical injuries and mental health problems.

The article noted that "President Bush`s budget for 2005 calls for cutting the Department of Veterans Affairs staff that handles benefits claims."

A staff sergeant who was paralyzed in a mortar attack near Baghdad was quoted as saying: "I love the military; that was my life. But I don`t believe they`re taking care of me now."

The real world is President Bush`s Achilles` heel. He can`t keep his distance from it forever.

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Das sind die Christen, die hinter Bush stehen.

Evangelist Pat Robertson leads pilgrims to Israel
By The Associated Press

Haaretz

Tishrei 18, 5765

Led by American evangelist Pat Robertson, thousands of Christian pilgrims gathered in the Holy Land on Sunday to express support for Israel.

In two Jerusalem appearances, Robertson praised Israel as part of God`s plan and criticized Arab countries and some Muslims, saying their hopes to include Israeli-controlled land in a Palestinian state are part of "Satan`s plan."

Robertson did offer a hint of rebuke for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. Only God could decide on transfers of biblical land, Robertson said.

Robertson`s views coincided with those of many of Sharon`s own constituency, who oppose his plan to evacuate all 21 Jewish settlements from Gaza next year. Sharon has pledged to push ahead.

The tourists, many from the United States, said they were not frightened by recent violence but only hoped to boost Israeli morale during their visit.

In a gathering of more than 4,000 pilgrims at a Jerusalem convention center Sunday, Robertson warned that some Muslims were trying to foil "God`s plan" to let Israel hold on to its lands.

"I see the rise of Islam to destroy Israel and take the land from the Jews and give East Jerusalem to [Palestinian Authority Chairman] Yasser Arafat. I see that as Satan`s plan to prevent the return of Jesus Christ the Lord," said Robertson, a Christian broadcaster.

Robertson, who has made critical statements of Islam in the past, called Israel`s Arab neighbors "a sea of dictatorial regimes."

He said he "sends notice" to Osama bin Laden, Arafat and Palestinian militant groups that "you will not frustrate God`s plan" to have Jews rule the Holy Land until the Second Coming of Jesus.

Only God should decide if Israel should relinquish control of the lands it captured in the 1967 war, including the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem, Robertson said, in a reference to Sharon`s plan to pull out of Gaza next year.

"God says, `I`m going to judge those who carve up the West Bank and Gaza Strip,`" Robertson said. "`It`s my land and keep your hands off it.`"

More than 4,000 people joined this year`s annual pilgrimage, about 25 percent higher than the past three years, according to organizers with the International Christian Embassy.

The support was welcomed by Israeli officials, including lawmakers and government representatives who attended the gatherings. The visit comes during Sukkot, or the Feast of the Tabernacles, a seven-day Jewish harvest festival the commemorates the 40 years biblical Israelites wandered in the desert after the exodus from Egypt. The holiday is celebrated by some Christians who want to connect with their religion`s Jewish roots.

Blowing rams` horns and exclaiming "Hallelujah," hundreds of pilgrims - including visitors from Norway, England and Germany - gathered in downtown Jerusalem to pray for peace and celebrate Israel`s unification of the city with the capture of East Jerusalem in 1967.

Israel considers the entire city its "eternal capital," despite Palestinian claims to make east Jerusalem the capital of a future state.

Evangelical Christians are strong supporters of Israel, believing that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land is foretold in the Scriptures and heralds the return of the messiah.

While the pilgrims are welcomed in Israel, the belief of some in a final, apocalyptic battle between good and evil - in which Jesus returns and Jews either accept him or perish - causes discomfort among Jews.

The Israeli government has forged a close alliance with conservative American Christians in recent years. Evangelical groups have contributed millions of dollars to Israel and lobbied in Washington in support of the Israeli
government.

Most of the pilgrims were spending at least 10 days in the country, visiting biblical sites in northern Israel`s Galilee, Jerusalem`s Old City and the Jordan River.

Some also toured Jewish settlements in the West Bank to express solidarity with settlers, who have frequently been targeted by Palestinian militants.

Marilyn Henretty, 66, an Anglican from Annandale, Virginia, blew a long ram`s horn throughout the prayer session. She said she was not afraid to be in Israel despite the fighting.

"God said my feet must be in Jerusalem at this feast," said Henretty, a retired public affairs worker at the U.S. Commerce Department.

Outside, Avi Bardugo, a 33-year-old Israeli ice cream vendor, looked on with interest as the pilgrims filed out of the park. Many asked him for directions to Jerusalem hotels.

"This helps morally and psychologically," he said. "They are encouraging Israel despite the international criticism."

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Civilians bear brunt as Samarra `pacified`
By Kim Sengupta in Baghdad

04 October 2004

Iraqi government and US forces declared yesterday that they had "pacified" the rebel stronghold of Samarra, and stated that other "no-go" enclaves such as Fallujah would be recaptured before national elections due in January.

The Americans insisted that the estimated 125 people killed in the storming of the city were all insurgents. Doctors and local people reported women, children and the elderly among the dead, and that bodies were still being brought into hospitals.

There also appeared to have been discord over the military action between members of the US-sponsored Iraqi interim government. The Interior Minister, Falah Naqib, echoed the American line that no civilians had been killed and only "bad guys and terrorists" had suffered. It was, he said, a "great day for Samarra". But the Human Rights Ministry, in a letter to the Iraqi Red Crescent, described what happened in the city as a "tragedy" and called for urgent emergency assistance.

Local people in Samarra claimed that many of the 1,000 insurgents the Americans were targeting had escaped before the attack, and civilians had borne the brunt of the casualties. Of 70 bodies brought into Samarra General Hospital, 23 were children and 18 women, said Abdul-Nasser Hamed Yassin, a hospital administrator. There were also 23 women among the 160 wounded.

Families trying to bury the dead found the road to the cemetery had been blocked by American soldiers. One man, Abu Qa`qa, claimed he had seen dogs picking at corpses in the street. Abdel Latif Hadi, 45, said: "The people who were hurt most are normal people who have nothing to do with anything." Another resident, Mohammed Ali Amin, said: "There were American snipers on rooftops who were shooting people trying to get to their homes. Even at the hospital the Americans arrested injured boys of 15 saying they were insurgents."

CNN television was told by one man that his sister-in-law and her six daughters were killed when the vehicle they were travelling in was hit by an US air strike. Aid organisations said there was acute concern about continuing lack of water and electricity in Samarra and the difficulties faced by people attempting to seek medical treatment. More than 500 families had fled the city.

Major-General John Batiste, the commander in charge of the 5,000 US and Iraqi troops used in the assault, said: "This has been a successful operation ... Operations will continue for a few days before we are satisfied that we`ve killed or captured as many of the enemy that we can."

In Fallujah, where Jordanian-born militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is said to be based, and the scene of bitter fighting in the past, is seen as the next target for the US.

Mr Naqib said: "The Iraqi government is moving from a defensive position to offensive position to regain control over all of Iraq." It had been widely predicted, however, that an assault on Fallujah - expected to be a far bloodier enterprise - is unlikely to be authorised by Washington until after the US presidential elections next month.

According to diplomatic sources, Iyad Allawi`s Iraqi administration is urging American commanders to press on with an assault on Fallujah. One of the main reasons, it is said, is the fear that if John Kerry wins the election on 2 November, he may not want to begin his term in office with television images of bitter fighting in Fallujah and American casualties. US air attacks continued on Fallujah in what is viewed as a "softening-up" process before a full attack. A coalition spokesman said: " A large number of enemy fighters are presumed killed" in a bombing attack yesterday. But residents in Fallujah said one air strike had killed eight people at the home of Hamad Hdaib Mohammedi, who was known for his opposition to the militants. Television footage showed the body of a small girl being pulled from the rubble of the house.

US forces have also been attacking Sadr City, a vast slum and a "no-go" area on the edge of Baghdad, with helicopter gunships and tanks; 12 people were killed in the past 48 hours. In Ramadi, US soldiers are said to have killed a woman bystander after being ambushed.


4 October 2004 11:58


©2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd. All rights reserved

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The loss of Muslim lives matters, too
Muslims have put their lives on the line to save Bigley and others. Where is the reciprocity from Christians?
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

The Independent

04 October 2004

Just before the party conference, the irrepressibly New Labour Peter Hain breezily dismissed Iraq as a "fringe issue". Not a clever remark when the nation was gripped by the Kenneth Bigley crisis. He was forced to reverse out of the controversy (for he does have a reverse gear) but after a couple of days in Brighton, it was obvious to me that Mr Hain had mouthed a truth, a rare thing in this spinning party.

The automatons in the hall clapped as instructed, evoking the well-ordered Soviet Union. They looked ecstatic that their leader was once more deceiving them on Iraq and the state of the world with absolute conviction, his USP. A minority dissented - in particular at the Tribune rally where both Mr Hain and I were speaking. They wanted a hearty debate on the immorality of the military action and the occupation but were easily sidelined. The other delegates, ministers and special advisors I met were most satisfied that the planet was a safer place since the war and, with the job almost complete, they were ready to wave the issue away. It was passé.

Well, I am certainly not living on that planet, and nor are millions of others who watched this pantomime with a mixture of rage and incomprehension. It was offensive smugness at a time when Mr Bigley was begging for his life, other hostages were disappearing and reappearing headless, our bombs were ripping open ordinary Iraqis, and parts of Samarra, Fallujah and Sadr City were being pulverised.

In the middle of the New Labour revels came remarks which should have forced people into sobriety. But it didn`t happen. The party went on as the serious warnings came from the delegation of British Muslims in Baghdad seeking Mr Bigley`s release. One of them, Dr Daud Abdullah, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said the indiscriminate bombing of Iraqi civilians is "causing a lot of discontent among the people. They think they are innocent victims, like Ken Bigley."

Few politicians and commentators appear to comprehend the profound shift that is taking place in the too-long solipsistic Muslim leadership across the West, and elsewhere too. Beslan, endless kidnappings in Iraq and the barbaric decapitation of aid workers and other civilians have forced these leaders into a new activism. In France, since the kidnapping of two journalists in Iraq, Muslims of influence have pushed their people to embrace French nationhood even though there are serious conflicts between them and their state.

Here, the Muslim Association of Britain has issued straight statements condemning the inhumane hostage-taking by Muslims worldwide. Dr Ghayasuddin Siddique of the Muslim Parliament has, in my view, emerged as the most radical and informed Muslim scholar to confront the ignorance and malevolence within modern Islam. And the delegation in Iraq was yet more evidence of this striking and important development. This could mean real progress, a decisive step to lead us out of global chaos.

But only if there is reciprocity. Muslims have put their lives and reputations on the line to save Mr Bigley and others. The allies hold thousands of Muslims in illegal incarceration; they are tortured and killed too. The uncensored letter from Moazzam Begg in Guantanamo Bay tells us about the duress and inhumanity, the alleged deaths during interrogations of two inmates in that hellish concentration camp. Mr Bigley has been dressed in the costume of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners. His ruthless captors know that this will play well with furious young Muslims because it reminds them of the iniquitous double-standards the West has imposed on the world since September 2001.

Where are the "official" Christian delegations to protect Muslim victims in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay? Why do our baying newspapers not call for these faith communities to condemn the savagery perpetrated by the allies?

How they poison possibilities, these hypocrisies. Decent citizens of the world are being asked to sign up to values which are abhorrent, absolutely unacceptable. In his debate with John Kerry, George Bush talked of "the enemy" that attacked America and that is now in Iraq. The enemy for him is an amorphous mass of any Muslims who refuse his version or vision.

To be on side with Bush and Blair, it seems we must agree that Western lives, particularly white lives, matter vastly more than others. That all those who are resisting the occupation are the children of Satan, "insurgents", "extremists", "terrorists" and "foreigners" who hate the idea of democracy. (Psst: we are foreigners too in Iraq.)

Sami Ramadani, the respected UK academic, an exile from Saddam`s regime, rejects this as propaganda by the allies who pretend that the thousands of attacks on them every month come from a few sodding troublemakers who hate progressive government. There is a real, popular resistance going on by Iraqi people who simply want their country back.

That makes absolute sense. We have destroyed so much since we went in and before that too with the sanctions which killed. Fallujah has been under siege for months; countless women and children are dying there and elsewhere but the news is of little interest if they die as a result of our weapons.

Zeinab is a bright little Iraqi girl from Basra whose family was murdered by our bombs which took one of her legs too. I had her come over to play with my daughter. How she hates our soldiers. Hundreds of such children, orphaned and limbless, are seen on the streets according to her Iraqi doctor who came with her.

With all this going on, some commentators still insist that nothing our side does is worse than what Saddam Hussein did to his people. That is how low this debate has sunk. We compare ourselves favourably with the butcher dictator - that is our standard now. In truth, even that base comparison is now no longer sustainable.

Read the book Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib by Seymour Hersh, the New Yorker journalist. He describes, powerfully, the rape and torture used to break people in Iraq and Afghanistan. We in the West are protected from gazing at these facts - we have such delicate natures. But Iraqis and others know them well enough and now believe exaggerated stories because they cannot trust what they are told by official sources.

Guantanamo Bay has only made it worse. Those who went in as innocents must now be terrorists after such treatment and complete lack of due process.

These are the realities of this war against terror. And they are known worldwide. While researching his latest book on British Muslims (The Infidel Within), the historian Humayun Ansari discovered the extraordinary speed and spread of "cyber-Islam". These connected-up Muslims are questioning Islam itself as well as the ploys and games of the West. They understand the need to reform but call upon the powerful nations to reform themselves too.

That is the deal. It is the only one which can start a process of new international co-operation. Thoughtful Muslims have made their move. Your turn, Mr Blair.

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The writer`s collection of articles `Some of My Best Friends Are ...` is published this month by Methuen

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Der Mann hinter Bush, der Intrigant, der Mann fürs Grobe.

The Karl Rove Report
By James Harding

Financial Times

October 3, 2004

A parking lot in Waco, Texas. It was late August and George W. Bush had hived himself away at his country home - at that point, the 248th day of his presidency spent on the ranch. And as I headed to check into my hotel, I bumped into three men making their way back from dinner: Michael Gerson, the president’s speechwriter, Mark McKinnon, Bush’s media director, and Karl Rove, the chief political strategist, his head crooked over his BlackBerry as he scrolled through his incoming e-mail.

Rove was all jovial small-talk. He laughed off the latest, false rumour that the president was headed on a stealth mission to Athens, a clandestine stop-over at the Olympics. “He’ll go,” Rove said with a grin, “if you arrange the security.” Then there was more joking about the peculiar ability of the British to excel - or at least snatch the occasional bronze - in out-of-the-way sporting events: “racing pistols”, Rove teased, must be a speciality of Team GB.

Then, rather awkwardly, we got into the elevator. It was the journalistic equivalent of stagefright, the presidential aides’ version of running into a former lover: I didn’t know what to say first, they wanted to get away with saying nothing at all. Rove filled the uncomfortable moment with bonhomie, playing the valet with a cheerful declaration that he wanted to make sure that Mr Harding, a journalist from across the pond, was escorted safely to his room. I pressed seven and when the doors opened on the seventh floor, we all got out. I went to room 706, they went next door to room 708.

On the other side of a wall from the pivotal figure of the presidential election, there was an aching temptation to pick up the Duralex glass the hotel kindly provides and eavesdrop on a man who is, by universal acclaim, the most powerful political consultant at work in America today - and the most controversial.

After all, Rove had not always played so nice with me. Earlier this year, I flew to the west coast to interview a Republican Party power-broker. While I sat opposite him in his office, he called Karl Rove to get clearance to speak to me. Rove told him, he said, that I was “not one of us”. And that was that - after a few minutes of polite and empty conversation, I was ushered out of the building.

Perhaps that is why Bush has two nicknames for Rove - one is Boy Genius, the other Turd Blossom (for those who do not speak Texan, turd blossom refers to a flower which makes its home in manure). And with apologies to the 43rd president for intellectual plagiarism, Rove, as viewed through the eyes of his colleagues and his critics, the comments of both Republicans and Democrats as well as the acres of ink spilled on this one political consultant, is arguably best understood in exactly those twin terms - both as a cheerful wizard and a fragrant shyster.

On the one hand, the chubby-cheeked, wispy-haired and jolly 53-year-old is considered by fellow political operators, as well as the pundit class, to be a peerless strategic innovator who is redrawing the lines of the Republican Party. On the other, he is painted by the defeated Democrats he left behind in Texas, his vanquished Republican opponents over the years and liberal pundits in the Molly Ivins mould, as the embodiment of the worst of American politics: the dirty, but deniable, smear.

Rove, in that sense, is a Bush lightning rod much like Dick Cheney - Rove has the unique honour of being the only White House staff member to be attacked by name by John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate. He is also the first presidential political adviser in history to have a full-length film about him out in the cinemas: “If you were haunted by Fahrenheit 9/11, Bush’s Brain will give you nightmares,” the movie ad reads. “Meet Karl Rove, the most powerful political figure America has never heard of.”

There are those who revere him. “I don’t think there is any question that he is a genius,” says Brad Freeman, Bush’s close friend and chief fundraiser in California. “I don’t think there is anyone better to run a campaign in the country.” And he rattles off Rove’s qualities: his encyclopedic knowledge of the US electoral map and the country’s political history, a lifetime’s campaign experience which makes it hard for him to get sprung by opposition surprises, the assiduous cultivation of a national network of Republican contacts and his relentless appetite for the work - when quail hunting down in South Texas, he is tapping away on his BlackBerry during the shoot.

But there are as many, if not more, who acknowledge his brilliance, but fear his purpose. “There is one thing which is really special about him,” says Kevin Phillips, the author of the 1967 classic The Emerging Republican Majority and an esteemed conservative analyst of US presidential elections. “He is the first strategist to elect a schmuck as president of the United States - to orchestrate the triumph of a relatively mediocre thinker who lost the popular vote and now has the chance to become a historical figure thanks to Osama bin Laden.”

One senior Republican Party figure, who like many interviewed for this article would only speak about Rove on condition of anonymity - “People are scared to death of Karl” - said the architect of the president’s re-election strategy is an “enormously able, talented and driven political operator”, but one who seeks to destroy his opponents. James Moore, the author of the book (and now movie) Bush’s Brain, which casts Bush as monkey and Rove as the organ grinder, has examined Rove’s career and concludes: “The policy and politics of Karl Rove are a threat to our republic.”

When Rove heard Moore’s judgment of him on Fox News recently, he dismissed him as “a far left-winger who has been drinking too much swamp water”. A White House spokesperson, responding on Rove’s behalf, told me this week that the book was “filled with absurd charges which have been rehashed and dismissed numerous times over the years”.

What is in no doubt is that Rove occupies a unique place in modern American politics. His influence goes well beyond winning elections. He is more than just a counsellor to the president - he is a man abreast of the whole operation. In past White Houses, the politics shop and the policy shop were separate outfits. But Rove has straddled both. He has intervened in domestic economic policy matters: the “Mark of Rove”, as it is known, was evident in the application of steel quotas and the push for tax cuts, even when the administration has sworn blind that politics, polls and focus groups play no part in its decision-making.

Even more unusually, he has waded into foreign policy, too. When Jean-David Levitte, the French ambassador, wanted to engineer a thaw in the relationship between Paris and Washington, he went to Rove first to discuss the possibility of a phone call between Bush and Jacques Chirac.

When a US spy-plane was downed over China, the president consulted Rove on how to handle Beijing without alarming the China hawks on Capitol Hill. When national security adviser Condoleezza Rice mapped out US policy for the Sudan, closely watched as it is by the evangelical Christian community, she worked with Rove. And when Air Force One touched down in Egypt for a summit with Arab leaders at Sharm el-Sheikh to discuss the future of the Israelis and the Palestinians, we were surprised but not shocked to see Rove, who has made the Jewish vote a strategic priority, disembarking with the president.

Talking to Rove a few weeks ago as Bush addressed a crowd in Ohio, I was left in no doubt that policy-making by focus group was not only a Clinton phenomenon. Rove had just got word back from two focus groups held in Columbus, Ohio. The moderator had called him back saying that the president’s then undisclosed plans had tested well with independent voters. They liked them, Rove had been told, because they were “practical”. Three weeks later, the Bush-Cheney ‘04 campaign had a new ad out on healthcare - extolling the president’s plan for being “practical”.

In other campaigns, political strategy tends to be hammered out by a coterie of advisers. By the time a man rises to be president, he tends to have amassed a clutch of political consultants, pollsters and private counsellors.

And the Republican team is, certainly, more than one man: the “Breakfast Club”, the handful of senior cadres on the campaign who meet at Rove’s house on the weekends for a weekly strategy session over what he calls “eggies”, include Ken Mehlman, the campaign manager, Matthew Dowd, the chief pollster, McKinnon, the media strategist, Nicole Devenish, the communications director and a handful of others. But Rove is singularly in command. He wrote the campaign playbook. He designed the fundraising operation. He appointed the key personnel. And his authority has reach.

In western Ohio this summer, John “Bud” O’Brien, the Republican Party chair in the town of Troy, told me he is implementing a get-out-the-vote plan as written by Karl Rove - Rove instructed the Republican Party machine to recruit volunteers three months earlier than usual, he set the targets for Republican voter turnout county by county, he has forced the investment in the registration of Republican voters and he has constructed the crucial 72-hour operation to win the election, the final push to get out the vote in the last three days of the campaign.

Even Mary Beth Cahill, the campaign manager for John Kerry, says the Democrats have a team of tacticians, wordsmiths and enforcers, but not a singular Rove of their own: “There is no Great Oz behind the curtain.”

In one sense, certainly, Rove is the Wizard of the Emerald City: his powers are easily overestimated. Rove dismisses the Bush’s Brain storyline, the notion that the president is the puppet and he the puppeteer, as a reflection of the arch political culture of Washington, a town which needs a conspiracy theory to explain the obvious.

Indeed, the Bush-sceptics’ favourite urban myth, namely that Rove is the ventriloquist of the Bush presidency, has an obvious flaw. It is hard for the president to be the creature of Rove, if he is also said to be the creature of Dick Cheney and, for that matter, the creature of Don Rumsfeld, too.

No, Bush may not be an intellectual president, but he is a man with an appetite for forceful advice and, rightly or wrongly, a pride in his own abilities as a decision-maker. Let there be no doubt, Bush is a savvy political customer, Bush is a Christian conservative and it was Bush who decided to take on Saddam Hussein.

Still, if George W. Bush wins a second term on November 2, Rove will not have to share too much of the credit. And, if Bush loses, there will be one very obvious person to blame.

The big idea of Rove’s political helmsmanship is not just to win the 2004 election, but to cement a political realignment which sees the Republicans becoming the natural party of government in the US. Rove’s strategy for securing a Republican mandate for a lot more than four years is, therefore, more than just an election playbook. It is a judgment not only on the state of the US, but on the drift of the nation.

To be precise, it is a long-term Republican game-plan built around three principles: harnessing the momentum of social conservatism, establishing credibility as the war party and chipping away at the communities - the African-Americans, the Hispanics, the unions and the Jews - which sustain the Democratic Party.

The Republican realignment, as defined by the now-retired Texan political scientist Walter Dean Burnham, has in large part already happened. Republicans have long enjoyed a stranglehold of the south. The 2002 election and the California recall showed Republicans closing the gender gap, eroding support of the Democratic Party among women.

On Capitol Hill, the House of Representatives now looks safely Republican for the next two, if not four, years. Across the country, the political map has tilted in favour of the Republicans, who in 2002 won their first majority of state legislators (3,684 to 3,626) since 1952, who now control the majority of gubernatorial mansions and who can now boast nearly as many people identifying themselves as Republicans as Democrats, marking the end of an historic handicap. Rove never fails to mention what a tough election this will be, but the fact is, he is sailing with a following wind.

Still, Rove sees the 2004 election as a milestone in the Republican effort to secure tenure. This was the subject of the first long conversation we had, two years ago, when he made the case that Bush could become the McKinley of his age, the harbinger of a long-term Republican majority. William McKinley, the 25th president of the US, won the presidency in 1896 and, after years of political equilibrium, ushered in a generation of Republican political dominance which only came to an end with the Great Depression and the Democratic administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The first step towards securing that future has been to align the Republican Party with the most important expanding constituency in America: the devout. Since Bush lost the popular vote in 2000, Rove has been obsessed with the 4 million conservative Christian voters he calculates stayed away from the polls. He had banked on 19 million devout Christians turning out for Bush, but election returns showed that only 15 million cast their ballots.

The reason for the lower-than-expected turnout, Rove says, is that some have been turned off by the perceived corruption of politics, but others simply chose to stay at home after Bush’s drunk driving record was unearthed the weekend before the election. Not long after the election, Rove made clear to an audience at the right-wing think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute, that the Christian conservative community was a primary focus: “It’s something we have to spend a lot of time and energy on.”

And he has. Rove has only occasionally strayed from the Republican Party speaking circuit, but earlier this year addressed the graduating class of Liberty University, the Christian college founded and led by the Reverend Jerry Falwell.

He has made a point of tending to conservative groups such as the Free Congress Foundation, a think-tank dedicated to winning the Culture War by returning America to its “traditional, Judeo-Christian, western culture” and away from “the cultural and moral correctness”.

At a meeting in March 2002 at the Willard Intercontinental hotel, just a few blocks from the White House, Rove told a crowd of Christian political activists convened by the Family Research Council, an anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage group, that the Bush White House would stand with them to protect family values: “There’ll be some times you in this room and we over at the White House will find ourselves in agreement, and there’ll be the occasion when we don’t. But we will share a heck of a lot more in common than we don’t. And we’ll win if we work together far more often than the other side wants us to.”

Charlie Cook, the veteran political analyst whose own exhaustive knowledge of US politics borders on the omniscient, says the cultivation of the Pentecostalists, evangelicals and conservative Christian groups makes sound electoral sense.

Incumbents rarely win the swing voters. If they are not fans of the president by now, they are unlikely to be won over in the final weeks before the election. The rule for the incumbent, therefore, is this: “What you see is what you get.” The number of people who say they will vote for the president is the number of people who do - and not any more.

If you cannot bank on winning the voters in the middle, then expand your voting base on the right. Rove also learned from what he saw as one of George H.W. Bush’s signal failures, namely the relative disregard for the Christian base of the Republican Party. He left his right flank exposed, which allowed Pat Buchanan room to attack in 1992. And he turned off voters he badly needed to fend off Bill Clinton. The son - thanks, in large part, to Rove - is not about to repeat the mistakes of the father.

By ensuring that Bush cleaves to a conservative social agenda, Rove is choreographing a significant piece of political footwork - namely pampering the religious right, while luring the gun-loving, God-fearing, pro-life Democrats who no longer feel culturally at home in their party.

Brian Lunde, a former executive director of the Democratic National Committee who has become a convert to the Republican cause and, more pointedly, the Bush presidency, now works with Rove to win over Democrats. Rove, he says, “probably understands micro-politics better than anybody in the country: how to work up from the voter to the candidate”.

And, the Rove formula for getting Democrats to cross the Republican threshold is to press social issues, rather than economic ones. “Take a blue-collar Democrat in Pennsylvania,” says Lunde. “You combine social values, such as gun control, with the war on terrorism.”

Under Rove’s instruction, the Bush-Cheney ‘04 campaign is “micro-targeting” Democrats. Republican officials are going into Democratic precincts - either in person or by phone - and identifying people susceptible to crossing the aisle. They find out what magazines people read, what television shows they watch, what cars they buy. In swing states such as Minnesota and Wisconsin, for example, buying a hunting licence is a matter of public record. And “Sportsmen for Bush” is an offshoot of the campaign which targets hunters, Republican and Democrat alike.

Rove’s mastery of detail is born of his own expertise: direct mail. After his first, short-lived professional run in Washington came to an end, Rove moved to Austin and, not long afterwards, set up a direct mail business, Karl Rove Company.

In 2000 and 2004, the fundraising operation has, essentially, been run like a chain letter - rewarding individuals the more donors they recruit to the campaign. Voters are sifted and sorted, not just by zip code but also by financial profile, leisure interests and religious participation - much as a direct mail company targets a mass market. And the message is then tailored to meet the different, sometimes competing, mailing lists which make up the US electorate.

Rove’s chief contribution, though, has been macro, not micro. It is Rove, Republicans and campaign staff say, who has made the big strategic choices of the Bush campaign. He concluded that this is not a “change election”, that, as with Eisenhower’s re-election campaign in 1956 or Reagan’s in 1984, the American people were wary of switching commander-in-chief in turbulent times.

As a result, Bush has played up the fear of the unknown, which has meant stoking anxiety about new, untested leadership: Americans are right to be worried about terrorism, the Bush-Cheney message goes, and should be even more worried about John Kerry. And it has been Rove, too, who quickly latched on to the political potential of the war on terror.

On January 18 2002 - just four months after the terrorist attacks, less than two months after US troops moved into Afghanistan and as Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were just beginning to work on the Iraq war plan - Rove gave what was the most revealing speech of his time in the White House.

As members of the Republican National Committee tucked into a sizeable lunch at their winter meeting in Austin, Texas, that year, Rove told them the party should run on the war: “We can also go to the country on this issue because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America’s military might and thereby protecting America,” he said.

And that is precisely what they have done: Bush has styled himself “the war president”. He has made countless appearances before military crowds, thumping home to those in uniform his commitment to defend the US, a message that plays well both with the 26 million veterans, 1.4 million active military and 1.4 million members of the National Guard at whom it is directed, but also the soft Democrat women voters, the soccer moms of the 1990s who have become the security moms of post-9/11 politics.

He has framed the question of the 2004 election as this: who will make a better commander-in-chief in a time of war? Rove’s calculation is that the politics of fear will deliver victory.

So much for the high-minded stuff. From his time in Texas, Rove knows that a realignment comes one Democratic defeat at a time. When Rove came to the Lone Star state, it was still Democratic territory. Texan politics had been framed by such Democratic Party titans as Lyndon Baines Johnson and Sam Rayburn. Jimmy Carter carried Texas in 1976. At the time, it boasted just one prominent Republican, senator John Tower. James A. Baker III sought the office of attorney general in 1978 and lost.

”When I first arrived in Texas in January of 1977 in Austin, I went to work in the Texas legislature,” Rove recently told the political film-maker Paul Stekler. “Out of the 181 members of the legislature, I think there were maybe 15 or so Republicans. There were, I think, 12 Republicans in the House and three Republicans in the state Senate. And it really was a one-party state.” When Bill Clements was elected governor in 1978 - with Rove’s help - he was the first Republican to hold the office for 114 years.

Rove had left Washington after a brief and bumpy ride in national politics. He had waged and won a bruising battle to lead the College Republicans, which came to mean three things: he made some lifelong enemies and a reputation a controversial operator; he never graduated from college; and he got to know George H.W. Bush, chairman of the young Republicans’ group.

Rove was to become a central part of the Bush family history - a story which could hardly be more different than his own. Rove, who was born on Christmas Day in 1950 and is one of five siblings, witnessed his parents’ marriage break-up when he turned 19. Not long after, he discovered his father was not his natural parent. He remained close and loyal to his adoptive father, all the more so after the suicide of his mother when Rove was in his early 30s.

Loyalty and admiration have marked Rove’s relationship with George W. Bush from their first encounter. Rove was working for the father and had been asked to drop off the car keys when the son came down from college to Washington - and Rove recalled last year in The New Yorker that Bush had “huge amounts of charisma, swagger, cowboy boots, flight jacket, wonderful smile - just charisma... you know, wow!” It was a political love affair which developed into a courtship: it was Rove who approached Bush in the late 1980s to raise the idea of a run for the Texas governorship. And it has become an extraordinarily long and monogamous political marriage: when Bush took the White House, Rove moved into Hillary Clinton’s old office in the West Wing.

One of the early Rove legends came when Clements was fighting to regain the Texas governor’s mansion in 1986. It involved what appeared to be an infamous piece of foul play. As Mark White, the Democrat, appeared to be clawing back Clements’ lead in the polls, a story broke on the eve of the debate between the two men. Rove announced his office had been bugged. Who bugged him? The initial assumption, of course, was the Democrats.

But, as the Texas press reported at the time, suspicions still grew that the bug was planted by Rove himself, in an ingenious diversionary tactic drawing attention away from White’s gathering momentum and sullying the Democrats name. After an investigation, however, the FBI said that it had “no reason to believe that one of Mark White’s or Bill Clements’ campaign staff was involved in the bugging”.

Critics say that campaigns managed by Karl Rove have tended to follow a pattern.First there is message definition - Rove’s candidate adopts a narrow message, sticking to it relentlessly. Then, they say, comes the smear - a whispering campaign begins which suggests hidden filth in the opponent’s past.

This is followed by the counter-productive rebuttal - the opponent gets sucked into the gutter and responds by seeking to pin blame for the smear on Rove and his candidate, thereby only drawing more attention to the smear and away from his or her message. Rove’s candidate decries the smear and calls for a debate about the narrow issue he has chosen as the electoral battleground. By this time, say Rove’s critics, his opponent has lost time, momentum and control of the argument.

Rove has heard enough conspiracy theories to scoff at them. The allegations against him have become ever more elaborate, but the simple fact is that nothing has stuck. His own explanation of the claims of increasingly ingenious efforts to destroy his opponents is that people prefer myths to reality.

“There needs to be a myth by which this town operates, and if you want to believe that, like, the president isn’t that smart, you need to find an explanation, like I’m Bush’s brain,” Rove told The New York Times in August. “It’s just weird, the stuff I get credit for or blamed for that I just have nothing to do with. The things that people suggest I am saying or advocating, it’s just absurd. I’m not going get into it. I read about myself in the newspaper and I say they must be talking about someone else.”

Not so for Rick Davis, campaign manager for John McCain in 2000. In 2004, he has watched, as if reliving a car crash, the Kerry campaign derailed by a smear operation, much like the one detailed in Bush’s Brain that essentially destroyed McCain’s bid for the presidency.

It was the famous 19 days in South Carolina. McCain had just pulled off a thumping, if surprising, win in the New Hampshire primary. Rove’s candidate, George W. Bush, was slipping from favourite to also-ran. The view was that if McCain defeated Bush again in the South Carolina primary, then the Republican presidential nomination would be his.

Things suddenly got nasty for McCain. Fliers appeared on the windshields of cars in church parking lots suggesting McCain was the father of a black love-child, members of his campaign recall. (McCain and his wife had adopted a girl from Sri Lanka.) When McCain responded angrily to the slurs, the whisper went around that McCain was somehow mentally unstable after his seven years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

The Bush campaign insisted it had nothing to do with the ugly criticisms being made of McCain. But the McCain team was sucked in, wasting time and energy trying to pin the dirty allegations on the Bush campaign. “We made a strategic mistake, which is the same one that Kerry is making, right now,” says Davis. “And that is to try and attach his trials and tribulations to the Bush camp.”

Much the same, Davis says, happened to the Kerry campaign this summer. “They squandered the month after the convention,” Davis says, “by trying to tag the Bush campaign with the Swift Boats.” The Kerry campaign fretted for a fortnight over whether or not to rebut the allegations levelled by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, an anti-Kerry group of Vietnam veterans funded by Texas Republicans. Eventually, Kerry weighed in, rejecting the charges that he had fabricated tales of his own heroism on the Mekong Delta and claiming the Swift Boat Veterans were doing Bush’s “dirty work”. “Ultimately, you are not picking up any votes by playing that game.”

Even Rove’s admirers acknowledge the president’s chief political strategist is willing to do what it takes to win. “He has been in a lot of campaigns and he has won a lot of campaigns,” says one senior figure on the Bush-Cheney ‘04 campaign, “and I don’t know what to say other than he is tough.”

Another former Republican presidential campaign adviser says, in Rove’s defence, that he has only ever been “singed, never burned” by his association with dirty tricks. Rove, in fact has endured many attacks but nothing has stuck. There may have been some unsavoury activities in the penumbra of Rove-managed campaigns, but Rove himself has not been found to be personally responsible. Scott McLellan, the White House spokesman, said the stories have “all been discounted and discredited”.

Like him or loathe him, people are extremely cautious of Karl. One person recalls Ted Turner, the CNN founder and big Democrat donor, making a trip to Washington for the screening of a movie he had helped produce about the Civil War. Someone in the administration suggested bringing Turner into the White House mess for lunch. It was nixed by Rove. “There is no noblesse oblige about Karl.”

But there is great bonhomie. A few weeks ago, Bush was out on one of his bus tours through Ohio and as the president headed over to the podium to give his standard stump speech, Rove appeared and the travelling White House press corps descended on him. He was peppered with questions - about the state of the race, the state of Ohio, the state of Kerry’s campaign... the usual.

After about half an hour, everyone had asked their questions and each others’ too. People started to peel away to return to jot down notes or listen to Bush. Soon, there were only a handful of us standing around Rove and the gaps between the questions and answers grew longer. He had said his piece. And the journalists, addled by too many consecutive pre-dawn starts or simply too unimaginative, seemed to have run dry of things to ask the closeted mastermind of the Bush campaign.

After another pause, a Japanese journalist pointed to Rove’s canvas shoulder case bulging with papers and manila folders and asked him, half-question, half-small talk: “What’s in the bag?”

”Secret shit,” Rove said, letting out a laugh and putting a hand protectively on the case. “The codes,” he went on, making his own silly, self-referential mockery of the Myth of Rove. “I have the codes... name any city you want.” And he chortled and we chortled, awkwardly and briefly at this stupid, borderline disturbing, fun.

Then Bush was done, Rove hurried back to the president’s bus to head to the next town hall meeting. The press scrambled to get on the buses that follow in convoy. And, sitting on the coach as it rolled through the small towns of western Ohio, the fields of corn, potatoes and soybeans, the streets of the small towns lined with people cheering the presidential motorcade or brandishing their own homemade Kerry banners, you couldn’t help wondering: what is in that bag?

James Harding is the FT’s Washington bureau chief.

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Nein, meine Suppe eß ich nicht!

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THE WORLD
Iraq`s `Nuclear Mastermind` Tells Tale of Ambition, Deceit
By Bob Drogin
Times Staff Writer

October 3, 2004

WASHINGTON — On most days now, Mahdi Obeidi rides his new mountain bike, plays with his grandkids and works on getting a U.S. patent for technology he originally developed to build a nuclear bomb for Saddam Hussein.

Obeidi, who headed Hussein`s uranium enrichment program until it was shut down in 1991, is the only Iraqi weapons scientist that the CIA is known to have brought to the United States after the invasion last year. The CIA also flew eight of his family members here in August 2003 and secretly set them up in three adjoining apartments in a leafy Virginia suburb close to downtown Washington.

But it is far less clear what happened to most of the 500 other scientists U.S. officials considered to be at the core of Hussein`s programs to build missiles and nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

U.S. officials have intercepted offers from Iran in recent months to hire several former Iraqi nuclear and missile scientists. None are known to have gone to Tehran, which Washington believes is trying to build a nuclear weapon.

But U.S. officials are also concerned about the danger that remains inside Iraq. "The immediate fear is the proximity of these scientists to the insurgents and terrorists in Iraq," a U.S. official who travels frequently to Baghdad said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "That has become a compelling issue for us."

And Obeidi is speaking out now to warn how easy it would be for someone to build a nuclear weapon.

The search for Iraqi scientists, and evidence of programs to produce weapons of mass destruction, will take center stage Wednesday when Charles A. Duelfer, head of the CIA-run Iraq Survey Group, appears before the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees to present his final 1,500-page report on Iraq`s long-defunct efforts to produce chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Duelfer`s report is likely to spark renewed debate in the presidential campaign as President Bush and challenger Sen. John F. Kerry trade charges over whether the U.S. needed to go to war in Iraq.

Duelfer has found no evidence that Baghdad resumed its nuclear arms program or produced any chemical or germ agents for military weapons after 1991, officials said. Nor has Duelfer found evidence of ongoing efforts to develop such weapons before the 2003 war.

But Duelfer also has told colleagues that evidence indicated that Hussein intended to mobilize his scientists to resume production of illicit arms if Iraq ever were free of U.N. inspections, trade sanctions and other international oversight. He found evidence of small clandestine laboratories, procurement of banned materials overseas, and work on illegal missiles and drones.

Up to eight of the 500 weapons scientists remain in custody in Iraq and about 70 others work in two programs in Baghdad that the State Department set up to hire out-of-work weapons experts. Others are teaching, working for Iraqi industries or government ministries, or have moved to other Arab nations.

Many others — including Obeidi`s two former top deputies — have simply vanished.

Obeidi, who met Hussein three times, said there was "no question" that the former Iraqi president wanted to revive his illicit weapons programs, but added that it wasn`t clear whether the dictator knew his regime had no active programs to build them. Obeidi said Hussein was a "lunatic" whose grip on reality was increasingly unstable in the years before the war.

"He lived in a world of hallucination," Obeidi, a dapper man of 60, said over lunch. "You could see he was deceiving himself. But he not only fooled himself. He fooled the world."

Obeidi also fooled the world. He holds a master`s degree from the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colo., and a doctorate from the University College of Swansea in Wales. During the 1980s, he traveled across the United States and Europe to buy nuclear components, computer programs and research by lying about his plans.

In July 1987, Hussein`s top deputy ordered Obeidi to direct a covert crash program to enrich uranium. By the time the Persian Gulf War began in January 1991, he had built a prototype centrifuge system capable of turning Iraq`s small stockpile of enriched uranium into weapons-grade fuel for a crude atomic bomb. Obeidi suspects that Hussein would have used it against Israel.

"We were so close to getting a bomb," Obeidi said. "We were so close to getting tens or hundreds of bombs. To us, the sky was the limit…. Looking back, the world was lucky."

So was Obeidi. When Iraq shuttered its nuclear program after the cease-fire that ended the 1991 war, Obeidi buried his centrifuge designs and several key components in a 50-gallon barrel under a lotus tree in his backyard.

Over the next few years, under strict Iraqi orders to conceal himself and all signs of his mothballed program, he repeatedly lied to United Nations inspectors, disguised and destroyed evidence, and once ran out the back door and hid for hours behind a wall to evade a surprise U.N. raid.

But the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, unraveled the centrifuge program by 1995. Inspectors removed the stockpiles of enriched uranium and exposed Iraq`s global network of suppliers. They dismantled or destroyed all of Iraq`s nuclear infrastructure and material by 1998, and Iraqi officials never tried to revive it.

After the war began last year, U.S. officials published a list of 55 most-wanted Iraqi officials, starting with Hussein, and put their names and faces on playing cards. Obeidi was No. 66 on a longer, classified list of 200 most-wanted Iraqis.

Fearful of arrest amid the post-invasion chaos, he reached out by satellite phone to David Albright, a former IAEA inspector now in Washington. With his help, Obeidi ultimately bartered his buried barrel of nuclear documents and components — the only known remnants of Iraq`s nuclear program — for CIA-sponsored sanctuary.

Albright, who now heads the nonprofit Institute for Science and International Security, said Obeidi was "everybody`s nightmare" because he was able to avoid detection while buying crucial nuclear parts and research directly from universities and companies around the world.

But Albright said Obeidi never realized that he could have built a crude bomb with the 66 pounds of enriched uranium that Iraq possessed in the 1980s.

Beyond that, Obeidi would have needed to build more than 1,000 centrifuges — not just the 50 he planned — to enrich Iraq`s supply of low-grade uranium to bomb-grade quality.

"Iraq was still many years from operating a centrifuge program," Albright said. Still, "if a terrorist had the capability that Iraq had in 1991, you`d be deeply, deeply scared."

Obeidi has co-written a book, "The Bomb in My Garden," about his career. He hopes to find a job to resume research on nanotechnology, the science of building materials and systems at the molecular or atomic level. He is trying to get a U.S. patent for research in nanotechnology that he conducted early in his quest to build a nuclear bomb, he said.

And he warned that it was probably easier to build a nuclear bomb today than when he tried — and nearly succeeded.

"The danger is really imminent," he said. "Someone today could be more clever than I was. The black market is still open. The technology is more efficient and more accessible. My work can be repeated, or accelerated. That is the horror."

A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the case. Obeidi, who signed an agreement with the CIA that prohibits him from discussing the agency`s role, said he was relying on funds he brought from Iraq while he looked for work.

Obeidi described himself as "a high-rev engine," a scientist of incessant curiosity and intense energy. His dark eyes and mouth twitched nervously as he spoke. He was proud of his work, repeatedly calling himself "Saddam`s nuclear mastermind," and expressing no regrets or remorse.

"It never crossed my mind to take the other path and be a nobody."




Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Divided against itself

If Americans choose Bush over Kerry, it will be from fear, a lack of choice - and a preference for power over safety
Gary Younge
Monday October 4, 2004

The Guardian
If you`re interested in who`s going to be the next US president then forget the precedents. If history is anything to go by, both John Kerry and George Bush will win. No candidate who lost the popular vote but won the presidency (John Quincy Adams, 1824; Rutherford B Hayes 1876; Benjamin Harrison, 1888; George Bush, 2000) has ever been re-elected. But then no president has failed to be re-elected during a major war.

Since 1964, every incumbent with approval ratings below 50% in the spring of the year when they are running for re-election, which would include Bush, has lost. But then every incumbent who has had an approval rating above 50% at this stage, which would include Bush, has won. The truth is that nobody can predict the outcome of the presidential election. The polls are too volatile, the margins too close and the context in which they are being conducted too precarious. Anything from a large mortar attack in Iraq that kills several US soldiers (Iraqi casualties appear to have little impact on US public opinion) to a plant closure in Ohio could tip the balance either way.

Kerry has started to bounce back, helped in part by a strong debate performance. But for now, Bush is the narrow favourite. That forces the rest of us to wrestle with the prospect of four more years of the most rightwing administration most can remember. What should the world make of America and Americans if Bush wins?

In 2000, such a prospect was unpleasant but far less alarming. If anything, the world was more concerned by his unilateral withdrawal from the global arena (reneging on treaties like Kyoto) than his unilateral intervention into it. Moreover, the manner in which Bush assumed power - selected by judges rather than elected by people - denied him absolute legitimacy in the world`s eyes and helped us differentiate him from the people he claimed to represent.

This time things are different. Since September 11 2001, Americans have been forced to take a closer look at the world around them. Over the past two years they have seen their government prosecute an illegal war in a nation where they are unwelcome occupiers and flout the will of the UN, and their soldiers torture Iraqis in Abu Ghraib prison. In short, they have seen loathing for their country grow around the globe - even among those they once counted as allies - and more than a thousand of their countrymen killed in combat. If they lost their innocence on September 11 - never a particularly convincing assertion - then they cannot have it back now.

If Bush wins fair and square on November 2, then what conclusions can we draw about a nation that consciously decides this is the course it wants to take? We might start by ruling out a few. First, it will not mean that Americans are stupid. They aren`t. Compared with the rest of the world, they are pretty well educated and certainly no more stupid than Britons, French or Portuguese were when they had an empire. Nor will it mean they have been duped. They haven`t. They have been lied to constantly and their mainstream media has served them poorly, particularly over weapons of mass destruction, the connection between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein, and the Middle East.

But in a nation where the internet is widely available, and films, books and radio stations present other opinions, Americans have had access to a wide range of viewpoints, including Howard Dean and Michael Moore. True, dissident voices have been marginalised. But they have not been extinguished - and, if anything, have grown more mainstream in the past year. So if Americans come away from the plurality of opinions with which they have been presented to back Bush, it will not be because they did not know that other views were out there, but because they chose to believe one set of views over others.

The question is, why? Partly because they have not been presented with much of an electoral alternative. The choice, come November 2, is between a man who prosecuted the war and a man who voted for him to do so. Indeed, Kerry`s polling numbers have only started climbing since he began putting a distance between himself and Bush on the war, as he did during the debate.

The US is not exceptional in this regard. Across the western world people are facing unpalatable electoral choices. In the French presidential election run-off between Chirac and Le Pen, opponents of the incumbent urged voters to support "the crook, not the fascist". In Germany, recent regional elections show a huge increase in support for neo-Nazis and former communists, and a slump in backing for the two main parties. In Britain, we have Tony Blair or Michael Howard - two men who supported the war while most of the country did not. But given America`s huge military capability and the administration`s trigger-happy instincts, the stakes for the rest of the world - even with such a poor choice - are far higher than elsewhere.

Then there is fear - Bush`s invisible running mate. Republicans have explicitly claimed that the US will get hit again if Kerry wins. "Weakness invites those who would do us harm," says one radio ad, broadcast last week in the swing states. The Democrats are now at it too. In the past few weeks, they have argued that a second Bush term could cause more casualties, another Vietnam in Iraq, a military draft, a secret call-up of reservists and even a nuclear attack against the US.

More than anything else, though, a Bush victory would suggest that when given a choice between leading the world through force or through consensus (the notion that America should not lead the world has not arisen), most of those who expressed a preference preferred force. It will indicate a desire to preserve the nation`s military, economic and diplomatic hegemony and the cheap oil and protected industries it brings. In short, given a choice between being powerful and being safe, the Americans will have chosen power. They will have decided that global supremacy is more important to them than being either liked or respected.

But at the same time, it is important to remember that, given the relatively low turnouts and slim margins, a majority of those who expressed a preference will still be a minority of American people. The Bush agenda has also energised a huge section of the country which opposes him and that is every bit as vocal as those who back him

The country is riven on almost every axis possible - between red states (for Bush) and blue states (for Kerry), between the religious and the secular, the metro and the retro. "Not since the civil war has the country been so divided," argues John White, professor of politics at the Catholic University of America. Whether Bush wins or loses, these rifts will endure. America is not just a nation at war with the world; it is a nation at war with itself.

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Es wird immer vergessen, dass mit den Präsidentenwahl auch ein Drittel der Senatoren neu gewählt werden. Die Amtszeit für einen Senator beträgt 6 Jahre und alle 2 Jahre wird ein Drittel neu gewählt.
Dabei geht es um die Mehrheit im Senat. I.A. haben die Republikaner eine Stimme mehr.

8 states key in the battle for Senate
If Kerry wins, Dems could gain control by picking up one seat
- Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Monday, October 4, 2004

Washington -- Forget the battleground in the Midwest. The red-state hinterlands are producing some of the best political theater of the season in a dead-heat, eight-state battle for control of the U.S. Senate.

In South Dakota, combative Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle runs ads that show him bear hugging President Bush, his arch-foe back in Washington.

In Oklahoma, conservative GOP physician Tom Coburn admits that he sterilized a former patient, advocates the death penalty for women who have abortions and calls Indian treaties primitive and a joke. Such comments could have the scarlet prairie state sending a Democrat to the Capitol.

In North Carolina, President Bill Clinton`s former aide Erskine Bowles is busy distancing himself from his former boss; in Alaska, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski is busy distancing herself from her father, now the governor, who appointed her to his vacated Senate seat.

Two Latinos -- Republican Mel Martinez of Florida and Democrat Ken Salazar of Colorado -- are battling to become the Senate`s first Hispanic in a quarter century. Maybe they will make it two, divided between the parties.

TOP SENATE CONTESTS Here are the eight Senate election campaigns that analysts view as the most competitive: Seats now held by Democrats: -- Florida: Republican former Cabinet Secretary Mel Martinez versus Democrat Betty Castor, president of the University of South Florida and former state commissioner of education. -- Louisiana: Republican Rep. David Vitter is trying to become the first GOP candidate elected to the Senate from the state since Reconstruction. Treasurer John Kennedy and Rep. Chris John lead the Democratic contenders. -- North Carolina: Former White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles versus GOP Rep. Richard Burr. -- South Carolina: Three-term Republican Rep. Jim DeMint versus Inez Tenenbaum, twice elected statewide as education superintendent. -- South Dakota: Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle seeks his fourth term against former Rep. John Thune. Thune, recruited by party leaders to run, lost a Senate race two years ago by 524 votes. Seats held by Republicans: -- Alaska: GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski faces former Gov. Tony Knowles. -- Colorado: Beer baron Pete Coors is running against Democratic Attorney General Ken Salazar. -- Oklahoma: Former GOP Rep. Tom Coburn, an obstetrician, versus conservative Rep. Brad Carson in a state that last elected a Democratic senator in 1988.

In Illinois, the lead Republican candidate went down in a divorce scandal and conservative firebrand Alan Keyes filled in. Keyes called Vice President Dick Cheney`s lesbian daughter a "selfish hedonist," then managed to alienate conservatives by proposing to exempt African Americans from income taxes for "one or two generations" as reparations for slavery.

Democrat Barack Obama, also an African American, appears headed for a landslide.

Louisiana voters may end up putting the Senate decision off until December because the toss-up race between Democrat Chris John and Republican David Vitter in November is almost sure to cause a pre-Christmas runoff.

All eyes are on the battle for the White House, but control of the Senate -- and with it power over the next president`s agenda -- remains uncertain just a month from the election.

Eight Senate races, including Daschle`s, are too close to call.

With Republicans clinging to a 51-48-1 majority (one independent votes with the Democrats), a one-seat shift could hand control to Democrats if their presidential nominee John Kerry wins. In that case, newly elected Vice President John Edwards would break ties. A two-seat shift would give Democrats the majority if President Bush wins.

With a majority comes control of the Senate committees and much of the national agenda, as well as confirmation of Supreme Court nominees.

Along with South Dakota, the contests in Colorado, Oklahoma, Florida, Alaska, North Carolina, South Carolina and Louisiana remain tossups.

"We are in a strong position to take back the Senate," said Sen. John Corzine, the New Jersey Democrat heading what many acknowledge is a well- executed Democratic strategy to snatch back the chamber the party lost in November 2002.

Scoffs Dan Allen, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, "The Senate Democrat view of the world is far removed from political reality," adding that the Democrats spent heavily in September and Republicans are just now unleashing their money. Virginia Sen. George Allen, who heads the GOP Senate campaign, contends Republicans will expand their membership to 54 seats.

Objective observers say Democrats have a chance but are fighting uphill, noting that most of the tossup races are in states that Bush carried easily in 2000 and probably will win again.

"The path for Democrats to win the Senate is a steep one," said Nathan Gonzalez, an analyst for the Rothenberg Political Report, which tracks the races. "Each Democratic candidate is going to have to tap into Democratic enthusiasm against Bush, while encouraging some Bush voters to vote Democrat for Senate."

Democrats are defending five of the eight close races, because of a wave of retirements in the Republican-leaning South, and Republicans are defending three, all on their own turf.

By the same token, analysts say Republicans may have squandered an opportunity to expand their majority.

Their Illinois seat is all but gone. But that loss will probably be offset by the GOP picking up the Georgia seat vacated by Democrat-in-name-only Zell Miller.

In South Carolina, Republican Jim DeMint seemed to be a shoo-in for retiring Democrat Fritz Hollings, but finds himself in a tightening contest with Democrat Inez Tenenbaum, battling charges that he favors a national sales tax stemming from his proposal to reform the federal income tax.

In un-Clinton North Carolina, Republican Richard Burr likewise seemed to have a good shot picking up Edwards` seat against Bowles, who was beaten badly in his last Senate race against Republican Elizabeth Dole. But Bowles is running a better campaign this year, and trade has become a big issue.

The problem for Democrats is that like Kerry, they must win nearly every close contest. Indeed, for Democrats in some states, Kerry is the problem.

That would include Alaska, where Democratic candidate and former Gov. Tony Knowles is getting hammered by Kerry`s opposition to oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Opening the refuge to drilling is popular in Alaska, where citizens get a share of oil revenues.

Hurricanes have muddied the Florida race, where Democrat Betty Castor is running against Martinez to retain a seat being vacated by Democratic Sen. Bob Graham. Castor may benefit from Kerry`s all-out-effort there, including a strong voter registration drive, said Jennifer Duffy, who tracks the Senate for the Cook Political Report.

"There are races out there that are very, very close," Duffy said. But she still puts the odds of Republicans maintaining control at 70 percent. "The Democrats need a lot to go their way," Duffy said. Larry Sabato, who also tracks Senate races as director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, put the Democrats` odds a bit higher at 40 percent.

"It`s still going to be tough for them to win but it`s possible," he said. "If Kerry wins ... Democrats (can) take over the Senate. But I do think Kerry probably has to win for that to happen."

The Senate battles are waged on a personal level between the candidates, but come election day, presidential coattails will kick in, Sabato predicted.

"When people are pumped up about the presidential choice, they`re not going in to vote for senator, they`re going in to vote for president," Sabato said. "That`s going to add several points to the Republicans in these very red states."

Colorado, Oklahoma, South Dakota and the Carolinas are all expected to go with Bush -- some by wide margins. Hence Daschle`s sudden fondness for Bush in his commercials.

Daschle`s GOP opponent, former Rep. John Thune, calls Daschle the "obstructor-in-chief." Thune lost his 2002 Senate race to Democrat Tim Johnson by just 524 votes when Bush was not on the ballot. Daschle is a much stronger opponent, but Bush won the state by 22 points in 2000.

Democrats are fighting arithmetic. "To get the majority, Democrats have to win six of the eight if Kerry wins, and seven if he doesn`t," Duffy said. "That puts it in perspective."


E-mail Carolyn Lochhead at [e-mail].

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Informed Comment
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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/

Monday, October 04, 2004

The Iraqi Political Campaign has Opened

Scheherazade Faramarzi of AP has an excellent piece on the jockeying of Iraqi political parties with regard to the forthcoming elections.

She crucially points out that the party ticket system that has been adopted rewards parties with a percentage of seats in accordance with the percentage of votes they get. This system will hurt independents, since any one candidate can obviously only get a very small percentage of the vote. On reflection, I now think Grand Ayatollah Sistani`s opposition to the ticket system is probably rooted in his alliances with local Iraqi independents, such as tribal chieftains, who lack the backing of a national political party. Likewise, the big parties are dominated by expatriate politicians. Because the Baath banned other political parties, Iraqis who stayed inside the country aren`t likely to have a party and are disproportionately independents.

She also says that the Shiite parties, Da`wa and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, are trying to form an alliance and hope to attract the votes of the Sadr movement. If the latter becomes a party in its own right, I think it will be a major party in parliament, much bigger than SCIRI though perhaps smaller than Da`wa.

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports on the doubts of local politicians and experts about whether elections will actually be held in January. Shaikh al-Daraji of the Sadr movement said that elections must be held in all provinces simultaneously and under UN auspices, in contradiction to what US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recently suggested. Experts consulted in Iraq said that they had not heard anything about judges having been selected to oversee the elections. Issues in who has Iraqi nationality have not been ironed out, and must apparently be judged by the old Baathist law. Because of the millions of Iraqi expatriates and their children born abroad, this issue is non-trivial. There still has not been a proper census, and it is not clear how voter rolls will come into existence. (One expert consulted maintained that the voting rolls already exist, but if so it is unclear how that happened).

Looking forward to the parliament, if one can be formed, I think there will be more Sunni-Shiite cooperation than is usually now expected. Patrick Seale is arguing that we are now seeing an outbreak of Pan-Islam in the region as a whole. You could easily imagine the Shiite hardliners and the Sunni fundamentalists in Iraq voting together on replacing civil law with Islamic canon law or shariah, e.g. The Sunnis would probably want a guarantee that they would be under Sunni personal status law. Having gained that, they might well vote with Muqtada al-Sadr`s group on implementing Islamic law. In my own view, however, Sunni-Shiite unity will be fragile and mainly encouraged by opposition to the US presence. If the US withdraws, it is possible that the two sorts of fundamentalists will then clash with one another. Sunni-Shiite strife in Iraq is scary because it would become internationalized, with Iran supporting the Shiites and Saudi Arabia supporting the Sunnis.

Meanwhile, KarbalaNews.net reports that the council of Shiite Turkmen sent a letter to the Shiite leaders in Najaf asking that they reject the "racist" Temporary Administrative Law, which, they say, damages the interests of Shiites and Turkmen. (Presumably they are upset about a provision that gives the Kurds a veto over any new constitution hammered out by the elected parliament.)

Patrick Kerkstra of the Philadelphia Inquirer explores the reasons for which the large southern port city of Basra, under British military command, has been much more peaceful and prosperous than the cities of the north. Savvy British peacekeeping technique is obviously part of the answer. At least some British personnel got training in Arabic. But personally I think the difference is that Tony Blair is not intervening in Basra for narrow political purposes, whereas George W. Bush is making a lot of military policy in the north for the purposes of his reelection campaign.

posted by Juan @ [url10/4/2004 06:10:21 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2004_10_01_juancole_archive.html#109686828778514545[/url]

Bombings and other News

Associated Press reports the latest developments in Iraq. Highlights include the killing of 5 Iraqis in the Shiite ghetto of East Baghdad by US tank fire. Meanwhile, Muqtada al-Sadr is reportedly negotiating with the US for an end to military operations in Sadr City, a part of Baghdad named after his father, where he has many followers.

US warplanes and tanks also struck in Fallujah again on Sunday, leaving an estimated 4 persons dead, including one couple, and some 14 wounded.

Near Tikrit, guerrillas shot a Turkish truck driver to death.

Guerrillas blew up a roadside bomb at Abu Ghuraib on the western rim of Baghdad, killing one Iraqi and wounding 3.

Guerrillas in Baqubah set off a roadside bomb as a police car drove over it, injuring one policeman.

Near Ramadi, a US military vehicle struck a roadside bomb, but there is no word on casualties.

In Samarra, where a recent join US and Iraqi National Guards attack cleared guerrillas from the center of the city, local hospital authorities report that 70 corpses were brought in during the fighting, and that 23 of them were children and 18 were women.

posted by Juan @ 10/4/2004 06:07:53 AM

Larkin against Horowitz`s Neo-McCarthyism

Graham Larkin of Stanford has penned an important article arguing against David Horowitz`s sinister proto-Stalinist social engineering project of "balancing" universities ideologically. See also my "Are Professors Too Liberal?".

Larkin`s essay is especially good in pointing out that there are no obvious evaluation mechanisms for ideological balance.

If we go by opinion polls, about half of Americans reject Darwin, so Horowitz`s proposal would require that half of all biologists would have to be creationists. Then, with regard to party preference, opinion polls show that at some points in the past 8 months Ralph Nader has been favored by 6% of the electorate. At other points it has been 2%. So presumably between 2% and 6% of the professors would have to be Nader supporters. Indeed, we might have to put people on monthly contracts so that we can adjust the percentage in accordance with the latest polls. About 10% of Americans support radical fringe groups, so of course there would have to be a place for the American Nazi Party on the faculty, Horowitz seems to be arguing. Maybe we could have him teach modern German history.

Moreover, there is no obvious reason that "balance" should be conceived only along the narrow US spectrum. A fifth of human beings lives under Chinese Communism, so the logical conclusion is that Horowitz is insisting that 1/5 of all US university professors be believers in Chinese communism. And, of course, the Muslim Brotherhood and Jama`at-i Islami would have to have its faculty representatives in proportion to the popularity of those fundamentalist parties in the world.

If we limited the political spectrum to just US Republicans and Democrats, then hiring faculty 50/50 by party affiliation would have ethnic implications. If virtually all Jewish and African-American faculty in the liberal arts are Democrats, as Horowitz implies, then we`d half to fire half of them to make way for Republicans, most of whom would, proportionally speaking, be white.

And, as I argued in my piece for the History News Network, why shouldn`t the same rules apply to other professions? Military officers and CEOs, for instance?

posted by Juan @ 10/4/2004 06:01:10 AM
Sunday, October 03, 2004

What does "Global" Mean?

Detractors of John Kerry are making much of this passage in his Thursday debate with George W. Bush:


KERRY: The president always has the right, and always has had the right, for preemptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War. And it was always one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control.

No president, though all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America.

But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you`re doing what you`re doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.

Here we have our own secretary of state who has had to apologize to the world for the presentation he made to the United Nations.

KERRY: I mean, we can remember when President Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis sent his secretary of state to Paris to meet with DeGaulle. And in the middle of the discussion, to tell them about the missiles in Cuba, he said, "Here, let me show you the photos." And DeGaulle waved them off and said, "No, no, no, no. The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me."

How many leaders in the world today would respond to us, as a result of what we`ve done, in that way?



The attack ads and pundits are accusing Kerry of saying that any US military action must in his view meet a "global test" in the sense of being approved by the world community. George W. Bush has taken up this line and castigated what he calls a "Kerry doctrine" that you can`t go to war without global permission. Dr. Condaleeza Rice, who rather amusingly suggested she was staying above the political fray, said on Wolf Blitzer that Kerry intended to constrain US policy by making it dependent on the concord of countries like Cuba. (The fact that Cuba and Libya are in the UN is often used by unilateralists to denigrate it, even though neither country is typically on the Security Council and only five countries have the veto, including the US).

Kerry very clearly meant no such thing. He started by saying that he would not give up the prerogative of going to war preemptively. How much clearer could he have been? Bush has invented a so-called "Kerry doctrine" out of the air. Obviously, Kerry`s critics need a better dictionary. They don`t know what "global" means. Let us look, for instance, at Merriam-Webster Online.


Main Entry: glob·al
Pronunciation: `glO-b&l
Function: adjective
1 : SPHERICAL
2 : of, relating to, or involving the entire world : WORLDWIDE (global warfare) (a global system of communication); also : of or relating to a celestial body (as the moon)
3 : of, relating to, or applying to a whole (as a mathematical function or a computer program) (a global search of a file)
- glob·al·ly /`glO-b&-lE/ adverb



Kerry said, "that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you`re doing what you`re doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."

What does "global" mean in this sentence? Well, let`s work down. It clearly does not mean "spherical," so that is out.

But it clearly also cannot mean "worldwide," which is what the attack ads, and Condi Rice, are implying. The "global test" Kerry speaks of relates in his mind to convincing "your countrymen" of the legitimacy of what you are doing, first and foremost. Convincing your own citizens cannot possibly be a "worldwide" matter. It is only in the last clause of the sentence where the rest of the world comes up. And there, Kerry is not suggesting that it be asked its opinion beforehand. He used the past tense. He is saying that only by first passing the global test with Americans could the US hope, after the fact, to prove to the world that what had been done was legitimate. W. from all accounts was never much good with things like tenses of verbs.

So, if "global" here does not mean "spherical" and does not mean "worldwide," then what does it mean? Kerry was obviously using the word in the third sense above, of "complete." Military action has to pass a complete test, in order to gain the entire confidence of the US public, in preparation for making a convincing case in the aftermath of the war to other countries.

Kerry is saying that Bush`s reasons for going to war were flawed and incomplete, so that in some polls less than half of Americans now say it was justified. And if less than half of Americans can justify it, you can hardly expect that the Spanish should go on giving gold and lives for its sake. This unfortunate situation, Kerry is saying, is because the rationale for the war was deficient, incomplete, and less than global in the sense of thoroughgoing.

W. probably couldn`t get out a word like "thoroughgoing" without tripping all over it, so Kerry did him a favor in using the shorter word "global." Unfortunately, W.`s dictionary doesn`t seem to go all the way down to the third meaning of the word, which is the one Kerry used. Misunderstanding Kerry`s "global" to mean "worldwide" is just as bad an error as misunderstanding it to mean "spherical." If Bush came out attacking Kerry for proposing a "round test," and insisting the test must be square, it wouldn`t be less silly than what he is doing. Dr. Rice, who was provost at Stanford, knows better, but some persons with "Dr." before their name--one thinks of Faustus-- have long ago signed away their souls.

posted by Juan @ 10/3/2004 05:00:08 PM

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Samarra locals` fury at US raids
CAMERON SIMPSON October 04 2004
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/25269-print.shtml

US forces faced a backlash last night from the local population of Samarra after two days of ferocious fighting to reclaim the rebel-held Iraqi city.
Residents voiced their anger at the number of civilians killed, including women and children, and the lack of water and electricity.
The mood was in stark contrast to southern Iraq, where the Black Watch has been waging a hearts-and-mind campaign to win over the Marsh Arabs to help cut major arms and drugs smuggling routes.
The Perthshire-based regiment hopes the local Arabs will be the regiment`s "eyes and ears" as it tries to stem the tide of heroin, guns and explosives flowing over the Iran border.
The tale of two Iraqs was epitomised by two commanders, Major Alastair Aitken, the mastermind of the "Marsh Scouts" initiative in the insurgency hotbed of the Maysan province, and Major General John Batiste, commander of the US 1st Infantry Division.
Major Aitken said: "We`re here to build peace. It`s about the red hackle, football and good old Highland hospitality."
His American counterpart, however, toed the hardline. The end of the battle, General Batiste said, was "great news for the people of Samarra, 200,000 people who have been held captive, hostage if you will, by just a couple of hundred thugs".
However, these residents in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, condemned the cost in lives and suffering, effectively accusing the general of insensitivity. Aid organisations said they were also concerned about the fate of hundreds of families forced to flee.
Around 3000 US troops and 2000 Iraqi soldiers stormed Samarra on Friday to rid the city of its insurgent population. In 36 hours of fighting, the US military said it killed 125 guerrillas and seized 88.
Abdul-Nasser Hamed Yas-sin, spokesman for the Samarra general hospital, said they had seen 70 dead since the fighting erupted, including 23 children and 18 women. A total of 160 wounded were treated.
"The people who were hurt most are normal people who have nothing to do with anything," according to one resident, Abdel Latif Hadi.
Others said bodies were left in the streets because of the fear of snipers. Families tried to bury their dead yesterday, but the road to the cemetery was blocked off by US troops, witnesses said. Dozens of houses were reduced to rubble.
Some people unable to escape from the city by road travelled on small boats along a river holding up white flags as helicopters hovered overhead.
"The situation is very bad. No-one can move, even ambulances can`t move the wounded. All roads are blocked. If one road was open half of Samarra would have fled," said Khalil al Samiraei.
The Iraqi Red Crescent Society, the Muslim equivalent of the Red Cross, said it was trying to deliver food, water and first aid. It feared for the fate of at least 500 families forced to flee.
Firdoos al Ubadi, an Iraqi Red Crescent spokesman, said her group and other aid organisations had received a letter from Iraq`s Human Rights Ministry describing the situation in Samarra as a tragedy and calling for emergency assistance.
In Falluja, in further attacks to wrest key areas from insurgents before January elections, the US military said warplanes had conducted "another precision strike". However, such strikes were condemned by Ghazi Yawar, Iraqi president. "Air strikes on cities … are not acceptable in any way. I consider it collective punishment," he told al Arabiya television.
In a separate development, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi promised his help to free the British hostage, Ken Bigley, as the 62-year-old`s family sent a message of thanks to supporters at a prayer service in their native Liverpool.
Members of the Libyan leader`s family have promised to talk to their Middle East contacts after Mr Bigley`s brother Paul asked Colonel Gaddafi`s London-based son, Saif, for assistance.

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Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 243 Bush 295
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News from the Votemaster

If you didn`t visit the site yesterday, you might want to check out the story about the Senate races.

Today the site undergoes its first major change in methodology since its inception. Up until now, the only poll listed in the spreadsheet and the map was the most recent one. Early in the campaign, when polls were months apart, this approach made sense since a June poll was probably a better indicator than the average of the June, April, and February polls. Now with polls coming fast and furious, and the map changing wildly from day to day, I think it makes more sense to average the latest three polls. Why three? Ask your local anthropologist. Three is a magic number in western culture (three bears, three wishes, three chances, etc.)

If you want the actual formula for how the three polls are selected or want to construct the old-style spreadsheets yourself, see the Key, which is clickable to the right of the map.

Also new today, is a single .csv file with all the polling data since the beginning of Sept. This is the master file that drives the creation of the entire site. It can also be downloaded by clicking on Polling data to the right of the map. It will be updated daily. The Key page also explains what its fields mean.

As a result of switching to this averaging system, there is a dicontinuity between yesterday and today. Polls that were not the most recent one suddenly are factored in, so some states have changed since yesterday. This effect will not occur in the future (unless the averaging formula is changed).

The software that produces the dozens of HTML pages, charts, tables, graphs, maps and whatnot on this site every day is very complicated. It is all custom software--no commercial package could even come close to doing all this. There were some errors yesterday with the projected map which many people saw. Sorry about that. Hopefully most of the bugs are out now.

Newsweek has a new poll out showing Kerry ahead nationally 49% to 46% among REGISTERED VOTERS. Maybe they have caught on to the fact that the LIKELY VOTER screens aren`t very good. But just as I didn`t believe them when they had Bush more than 10% ahead, I don`t believe them now either. It takes a while for the debate to sink in.

The numbers in the polls never add up to 100% due to two factors: minor candidates and undecided voters. The people who are for Badnarik or Peroutka now will probably vote for them, but historically, not many people who tell the pollsters "Undecided" actually cast a write-in vote for "Undecided." They usually decide. To get some background information about predicting elections involving an incumbent, check out this article.
Projected Senate: 51 Democrats, 48 Republicans, 1 independent To bookmark this page, type CTRL-D (Apple-D on Macintoshes). If you are visiting for the first time, welcome. This site has far more about the election than just the map. See the Welcome page for more details.

-- The votemaster

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Der Bart ist ab.




„No more Bush“
Mit Intim-Rasur gegen US-Präsident
Die Plaboymodels zeigen Flagge.

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The Big Five-Oh
An incumbent who can’t break 50 percent is in trouble, even if he’s ahead. Not that we’re referring to anyone in particular.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWe…
By Guy Molyneux
Web Exclusive: 10.01.04

Print Friendly | Email Article

A careful reading of recent presidential-election polls shows that the race is very close, and that if were held today, the result would likely mirror 2000’s razor-close finish. If you had a different impression, that’s certainly understandable, for nearly all media reporting on these same polls has suggested that George W. Bush enjoys a significant lead and will win comfortably barring a change in the race’s dynamics. However, this media analysis is marred by a failure to take account of a phenomenon well-known to all political pollsters, the “incumbent 50-percent rule.”

Almost all poll reporting focuses on the “spread,” that is, the difference in the percentage supporting Bush and John Kerry. If we take an average of the most recent ABC/Washington Post, CBS/New York Times, and NBC/Wall Street Journal surveys, it shows Bush with 49 percent and Kerry with 44 percent among registered voters. Such survey results are invariably reduced to the shorthand “Bush up 5,” which sounds like a comfortable lead.

However, in incumbent elections, the incumbent’s percentage of the vote is a far better indicator of the state of the race than the spread. In fact, the percentage of the vote an incumbent president receives in surveys is an extraordinarily accurate predictor of the percentage he will receive on election day -- even though the survey results also include a pool of undecided voters. Hence the 50-percent rule: An incumbent who fails to poll above 50 percent is in grave jeopardy of losing his job.

But is it really possible for Kerry to close a 5-point gap, absent some fundamental change in voter preference? To find historical precedent, we must reach back in history all the way to 1996, the most recent incumbent presidential election. Bill Clinton averaged 51 percent in the final polls but received 49 percent on election day, while Bob Dole averaged 37 percent but received 41 percent -- a net shift of 6 points. Not only can Kerry close such a gap, it is extremely likely that he will.

There have been four incumbent presidential elections in the past quarter-century. If we take an average of the final surveys conducted by the three major networks and their partners, we find that in three of these the incumbent fell short of or merely matched his final poll number, while exceeding it only once, and then by just a single point (Ronald Reagan). On average, the incumbent comes in half a point below his final poll result.

Year Incumbent Final Polls (in percent) Actual Vote (in percent)
1996 Bill Clinton 51 49
1992 George Bush Sen 37 37
1984 Ronald Reagan 58 59
1980 Jimmy Carter 42 41

The numbers for challengers look quite different. In every case, the challenger(s) -- I include Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996 -- exceed their final poll result by at least 2 points, and the average gain is 4 points. In 1980, Ronald Reagan received 51 percent, fully 6 percentage points above his final poll results.

This happens because elections are fundamentally a referendum on the incumbent. The first step in voters’ decision-making process is to answer the question “does he deserve re-election?” Undecided voters have basically answered that question in the negative, and their undecided status reflects the fact that they don’t know enough about the challenger (yet) to feel comfortable stating a public preference.

Does this mean that literally all undecided voters cast their ballots for the challenger? Presumably not, though an overwhelming majority do. In addition, some who support the incumbent in pre-election polls are low-information voters basing their answer simply on name recognition, but who defect to the challenger at the last moment. In any case, the net effect is crystal clear: We can expect George W. Bush to receive about the same share of the vote -- or a bit less -- on November 2 as he receives in the final public polls.

Think of it this way: The percentage that Bush receives in polls represents his ceiling of support; he may get a little less, but won’t get more. In contrast, Kerry’s percentage represents his floor, and he will almost certainly do better on election day. Assuming that Ralph Nader and other minor candidates will receive about 2 percent -- which is what current surveys suggest -- 49 percent becomes the critical line of demarcation in this election. If Bush can get to 50 percent or above in the polls, he should be able to win. At 49 percent -- where he is today -- we’re probably looking at another photo finish, lots of recounts, and narrow state-by-state victories dictating the Electoral College outcome. And below 49 percent, Bush is almost certain to lose.

You may also have heard that Bush is surging ahead in the crucial “battleground states” that will determine the Electoral College outcome. However, polls in these states actually reveal an even more precarious position for the president. Taken together, Bush receives a bit less support in these critical states than in the nation overall. In the latest NBC/WSJ poll, Bush receives 49 percent support nationally but only 47 percent in the battleground states, a typical finding. (Bush and Al Gore split the vote in these states evenly, 48 percent to 48 percent.)

More importantly, if we take an average of recent published polls of registered voters in individual states, Bush falls short of the 49-percent benchmark in nearly every one, including Ohio (47 percent), Florida (47 percent), and Pennsylvania (46 percent). Wisconsin (51 percent) is the only crucial battleground state in which Bush appears to have a fairly solid lead. Bush even fails to clear the 49-percent bar in such 2000 Bush states as West Virginia (47 percent), Missouri (49 percent), and Arkansas (48 percent). This year, it is quite possible that it will be Bush who ends up wishing we had scrapped the Electoral College in favor of a straight popular vote.

How should political journalists deal with the misleading nature of poll spreads that appear to give Bush a significant lead? To be fair, they cannot report poll results in which Bush’s percentage exceeds Kerry’s by 5 or 6 points and simply call it a “tie.” Imagine the firestorm of protest that would erupt from conservative and GOP quarters, and with some merit. But political reporters can and should put these results in the proper historical context, informing viewers and readers that polls showing an incumbent president receiving 49 percent of the vote are consistent with a very close election result.

More fundamentally, polls drive the tone of media coverage of the race. When journalists believe one candidate has a substantial lead (in this case, Bush), campaign stories emphasize the popular appeal of that candidates’ message and the brilliant strategic decisions of his advisers (and the opposite for the challenger). This coverage has a real-world impact, as supporters of the “leading” candidate get energized and partisans on the other side become demoralized, potentially affecting turnout. This is why Karl Rove and Matthew Dowd have been spinning Bush’s strength in the polls so relentlessly. A fair reading of the polls by journalists would lead to more balanced coverage of the candidates and campaigns.

If political journalists interpret poll results in the correct context -- that of an incumbent president seeking re-election -- they will also become better analysts. If one understands that Bush is basically running even or slightly ahead of Kerry, the Bush team’s acceptance of three debates makes sense -- he has as much to gain from debates as Kerry does. The idea that Bush feared negative publicity for agreeing to only two debates, which is the consensus media interpretation, is preposterous. An incumbent president with a solid lead can easily dictate fewer debates, as Clinton showed in 1996.

A correct reading of polls would also help prevent journalists from being suckered by strategic feints from the campaigns, such as the Bush team’s proclaimed interest in “expanding the map” by pouring money into states such as New Jersey. Bush isn’t anywhere close to showing enough strength in New Jersey to make the state truly competitive. If Karl Rove wants to repeat his 2000 California mistake by wasting resources this year on the other coast, Democrats will be happy indeed -- but it seems unlikely. Moreover, if Bush really had a solid lead, why are the Bush-Cheney campaign and its “527” allies continuing to devote virtually all of their resources to personal negative attacks against Kerry? That is simply not how incumbents in a strong position wage campaigns.

The alternative, continuing to focus on the spread, ensures press coverage that remains one step behind the real story. If and when Kerry succeeds in narrowing or eliminating the polling gap between him and Bush, the media will report a “dead heat” when, in fact, Kerry will be positioned for victory. For now, those of us watching from home can stay ahead of the press coverage by keeping our eye on the ball, ignoring the spread, and tracking Bush’s percentage of the vote in the polls. We know -- just as the Bush campaign knows -- that this remains an extremely competitive election.

And there is one final factor to consider that isn’t captured in the polls at all: the ground war. Democratic 527s such as America Coming Together are conducting massive voter-registration and mobilization campaigns that could easily add 2 or 3 percentage points to Kerry’s vote. As the Service Employee International Union’s Andy Stern has observed, this field operation is “the greatest field-goal unit in history” -- if Kerry can keep the race close, voter mobilization will give him the last few points he needs.

The polls tell us it may already be close enough.

Guy Molyneux is a partner and senior vice president with Peter D. Hart Research Associates, a Democratic polling firm.
Copyright © 2004 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Guy Molyneux, "The Big Five-Oh", The American Prospect Online, Oct 1, 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 [e-mail].

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10-2004 4

http://icasualties.org/oif/

0/04/04 AP: U.S. Faces Complex Insurgency in Iraq
The U.S. military is fighting the most complex guerrilla war in its history, with 140,000 American soldiers trained for conventional warfare flailing against a thicket of insurgent groups with competing aims and no supreme leader.
10/04/04 Bloomberg: Good Recap of Today`s Violence In Iraq
An official at Iraq`s Science and Technology Ministry along with a female civil servant were shot dead in Baghdad, where two car bombs also exploded as insurgents stepped up attacks on Iraqis working with U.S. forces ...
10/04/04 AP: 1,600 N.J. Guard troops prepare for Iraq tour
More than 1,600 New Jersey Army National Guard soldiers are completing training for a yearlong tour of duty in Iraq, the largest single deployment of troops from New Jersey since World War II.
10/04/04 Herald-Argus: LaPorte County Army reservists leave for Iraq war effort
The 169 members of the 542nd Transportation Company U.S. Army Reserve departed its facility at 8200S CR-300E in Kingsbury Sunday morning to begin their support in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
10/04/04 AP: Sept. Is 2nd-Deadliest 2004 Month in Iraq
September was the second-deadliest month of the year for U.S. forces in Iraq and brought to nearly 500 the number who have died since the insurgency escalated in late March.
10/04/04 AP: Soldiers Charged in Iraqi General`s Death
Chief Warrant Officers Jefferson L. Williams and Lewis E. Welshofer Jr., Sgt. 1st Class William J. Sommer and Spc. Jerry L. Loper could get life in prison without parole if convicted in the Nov. 26 death of Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, 57 ...
10/04/04 CENTCOM: Confirmed: 2 Soldiers Killed By Small Arms Fire
Two Task Force Baghdad Soldiers were killed by small arms fire Oct. 3. The Soldiers were engaged by small arms fire at a joint traffic control point Sunday afternoon.
10/04/04 ABCNews.com: Naperville soldier killed in Iraq
Family and friends are mourning the death of a young Naperville soldier who was killed in Iraq. Sergeant Jack Taft Hennessey was manning a checkpoint in Baghdad when he was attacked.
10/04/04 AP: Central New York community mourns death of soldier
A central New York community is mourning the death of a soldier killed in Iraq. Sergeant Michael Uvanni was killed in action in Samarra, Iraq last Friday.
10/04/04 AP: Family: Kidnapped Iraqi Businessman Killed
The Italian Foreign Ministry has notified the family of a kidnapped Iraqi businessman who was a longtime resident of Italy that the man has been killed in Iraq, the businessman`s brother said Monday.
10/04/04 AP: Two U.S. soldiers killed in Baghdad
Two U.S. soldiers were killed by small arms fire at a checkpoint in Baghdad, the U.S. command said Monday.
10/04/04 AP: U.S. Supreme Court turns away bid to challenge Saddam`s detention
A lawyer`s long-shot bid to challenge the U.S. detention of Saddam Hussein as unconstitutional failed Monday after the Supreme Court declined to grant special permission to hear the case.
10/04/04 Reuters: Iraq militants release Indonesian hostages: TV
An Iraqi militant group has released two Indonesian women hostages who were handed over on Monday to the United Arab Emirates` embassy in Baghdad, Abu Dhabi Television reported.
10/04/04 RFE/RL: Armenians uneasy at proposed Iraq deployment
The Armenian government`s decision to send non-ombat personnel to serve with the international peacekeeping force in Iraq has met with resistance from civic groups, opposition parties ... and some senior military officers.
10/04/04 AP: Rhode Island National Guardsman killed at checkpoint in Iraq
A Rhode Island National Guardsman from Tiverton was killed on Sunday, his 38th birthday, while manning a checkpoint in Iraq. Sgt. Christopher Potts was shot at a checkpoint in Taji ...
10/04/04 Middle East Online: `Turkish, Iraqi-Italian spies` executed in Iraq
Islamic militants in Iraq said they had executed two men, shown in a video being shot dead after confessing to the camera that they were "Turkish and Iraqi-Italian spies" working for Turkish, Israeli and Iranian intelligence.
10/04/04 The Scotsman: Bigley `transferred to new captors`
Media reports in Kuwait claimed the fundamentalist Tawhid and Jihad group, which snatched Mr Bigley in Baghdad three weeks ago, was considering selling the 62-year-old on to another militant group.
10/04/04 AP: Ohio Scientists Develop Armor for Humvees
The military is ordering more lightweight armor developed in Ohio that protects troops in Humvees from automatic weapons fire and grenades without slowing the vehicles.
10/04/04 The Korea Times: Landmines Threaten ROK Troops
South Korean troops stationed in Iraq are exposed to a serious threat due to tens of thousands of land mines buried underground near their base, an opposition party lawmaker said Monday.
10/04/04 Reuters: UPDATE: Three Car Bombs in Iraq Kill at Least 26
A series of car bomb blasts tore through Baghdad and the northern Iraq city of Mosul on Monday, killing at least 26 people and wounding more than 100.
News Archive

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"I want my banana - right now!!"
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RING OF LIARS (Sorry Johnny!) Lies are a burning thing Inside the political ring Turned to the Fox Empire I tuned into a Ring Of Liars CHORUS: I tuned into a Burning Ring Of Liars My mood went down As the lies got higher And my anger burned (at) The Ring Of Liars The Ring Of Liars I tuned into a Burning Ring Of Lyin` And I frowned, frowned, frowned As the troops were dyin` And I turned, turned, turned (from) The Ring Of Liars The Ring Of Liars Results of lies are sweet When Fox makes viewers bleat Each repeats them like a child That`s when the lyin` burns wild CHORUS I tuned into a Burning Ring Of Liars My mood went down As the lies got higher And my anger burned (at) The Ring Of Liars The Ring Of Liars I tuned into a Burning Ring Of Lyin` And I frowned, frowned, frowned As the troops were dyin` And I turned, turned, turned (from) The Ring Of Liars The Ring Of Liars By Robert Morgan

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Doug Giebel: `Incurious George: What if Bush didn`t lie?`
Date: Monday, October 04 @ 10:06:07 EDT
Topic: Commander-In-Thief

By Doug Giebel

Mr. Lehrer: Right, well, what - he used the word truth again.
Mr. Bush: Pardon me?
Mr. Lehrer: Talking about the truth of the matter. Used the word truth again. Did that raise any hackles with you?
Mr. Bush: I`m a pretty calm guy. I mean, I don`t take it personally.
--from the September 30, 2004, Bush/Kerry debate.

Since the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, much has been written about the lies of George W. Bush, centered primarily on claims of weapons of mass destruction and the other bogus reasons offered for occupying Iraq. During the first presidential debate, even moderator Jim Lehrer raised the subject a couple of times, causing President Bush some apparent discomfort.



In his exchanges with John Kerry, President Bush repeated that Saddam had not "disarmed," which would seem to be the repetition of earlier misstatements of fact made over the past two years. Although Senator Kerry seemed too absorbed in his own thoughts to respond to the Bush claim, it is accepted fact that Saddam did in fact "disarm," since no WMD and related armaments have been found in Iraq. But was the president lying, or does he really believe what he says? And why might he believe it?

By the end of the first debate, George W. Bush appeared eager to just get the hell off the stage and go back out on the campaign trail where he is shielded from critical comments and probing questions. The deliberate insulating of the president, however, has a negative side. That is, when confronted with even moderately-critical questions or accusations, the insulated president lacks the experience to deal with them effectively. Instead, he bristles, as if to say, "I don`t want to hear bad news."

Throughout his entire political career, George W. Bush has relied on Karl Rove and others to advise him and often to tell him what he should think, what he should do. They told him what they wanted him to hear, avoided bringing bad news, and this pacified the President`s need to be soothed. "Everything is beautiful." As Governor of Texas, Bush apparently did not trouble himself with conflicting thoughts over whether or not Death Row inmates should be executed. He relied on the "word" of his chief legal advisorand that simplified what could otherwise have been a conscience-ruffling exercise. As "leader of the free world," the Bush circle of faithful sidekicks widened, but the process remained: I trust my advisors. I do not need to verify.

At the same time, President Bush appears to be,as he says, a man of deep faith. What happens when the irresistible force of "truth" confronts the immovable object of a reliance on "faith"? With faith in the God who speaks through him, Bush has been able to ignore, avoid and be protected from those who express alternative views. In the first debate, when both John Kerry and Jim Lehrer addressed the Truth Thing, George W. Bush could not conceal his irritation; but was he irritated because his veracity was being questioned or because for the first time in a crucial setting before a world-wide audience he was being asked to consider whether his library of spoon-fed facts lack credibility?

To what extent, prior to that first debate, has President Bush understood what a laundry-list of his "factual" statements have been found wanting? Could the president now be shaken to learn, not from critics but from the passing parade of events, that much of what his advisors told him was not the truth? Consider: despite his repeated assertions that the nation must "stay the course," late in that first debate George W. Bush reluctantly conceded that some "flip-flopping" was within his radar. "Of course, we change tactics when need to, but we never change our beliefs . . ."

It seems evident that those who would wrap the thick plastic bubble around President Bush did not him the truth about Saddam Hussein, Iraq, the WMD--and much, much more. Therefore, when he went before the nation and expressed his convictions regarding the threat posed by Iraq, he may not have been lying--he may have been stating what he truly believed to be the what it was, not just the way it ought to be.

Consider those often-repeated statements that "we relied on the best intelligence available" and "we were all fooled." Both propositions are thoroughly false. Not only were many experts and others not fooled into thinking Iraq had WMD or that it was a "gathering threat" to the United States, the nay-sayers didn`t keep their opinions to themselves. Yet those opinions did not reach the eyes and ears of President Bush. And as for relying on that "best" intelligence: if the intelligence stating Iraq had WMD, was an imminent threat, was ready to use nuclear weapons and all the rest were not factually correct, then that "intelligence" was not "the best," it was "the worst." And so it was. The worst.

For high-ranking counsellors to deliberately mislead the President of the United States into promoting and waging an unnecessary and illegal war seems criminal. It is no wonder President Bush has been counselled to abhor the International Criminal Court.

It seems clear that despite his lack of genuine curiosity, George W. Bush enjoys being President of the United States. For one thing, it gives him a feeling of success after his long string of personal screw-ups and failures. "Top of the World, Ma!" And he really seems to enjoy campaigning to his hand-picked audiences where it`s all cheer and no jeer. At the same time, the emerging facts about the disaster in Iraq and truths exposing the errors of the president`s ways are becoming apparent even to this most insulated leader in our history. Laura Bush knows it, and even she can`t protect her husband forever from the hurricane of facts that contradict his dearly-held beliefs.

What the world may have witnessed during that first debate was the tiniest gnawing realization on the part of George W. Bush that he has been misled and lied to by those nearest to him. That`s why it seems to be more and more difficult for him to keep up the cheerful outlook, despite his calls for positive thinking. As with drama`s great tragic figures, President Bush may be reaching the moment of enlightenment -- and enlightenment he most feared might come.

What does a man do when that in which he had absolute faith begins to crack up and fall apart not just before his eyes but before the eyes of the watching world? One recalls the words of the fictional New Englander: "My Faith is gone!"

And might begin the genuine Education of George W. Bush.

Doug Giebel is a writer and analyst who lives in Big Sandy, Montana. He welcomes comments at [e-mail]

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COMMENTARY
I, Moazzam Begg, Demand to Be Freed From Guantanamo

October 3, 2004

Moazzam Begg, 36, arrested in Islamabad, Pakistan, is one of four British citizens held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This uncensored letter addressed to U.S. officials, dated July 12, 2004, was made public by his attorneys. The Pentagon would not comment on the letter but said that "all the interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo are within the standards accepted internationally."

*

I, Moazzam Begg, citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, attributed the number 00558 (camp Echo), have felt it necessary to augment … my grievances and intentions.

After over 2 1/2 years in the custody of the U.S. military without charge, and by extension, without jurisdiction, I have yet to be afforded basic rights normally granted under the constitution of the U.S.A., and international law. I therefore demand, unconditionally and irrevocably, that I be released immediately and returned to my family and domicile in the U.K., together with all possessions, including all items and monies confiscated by U.S./Pakistani "agents" from my residence in Pakistan on 31st January 2002.

In the likely event that these demands are outrightly rejected or unnecessarily procrastinated, I demand the following rights under U.S. law:

1. A thorough and peremptory explanation of all statutory rights available within U.S. legislature, particularly with respect to foreign nationals.

2. Any and all charges/allegations be presented unambiguously and written.

3. Full access to international phone calls in order to communicate with family and lawyers.

4. Full access to legal representatives of my own choice and appointment.

5. A fully inventoried list detailing all property seized (as mentioned above).

6. Regular and timely access to postal communication with family and a halt to the obscuring and withholding of mail from home.

In addition to the aforementioned rights, I make it known that I expect … reasonable answers for the following violations and abuses and intend to seek justice and accountability:

i) The exact purpose for my abduction, kidnapping and false imprisonment of [Jan. 31] 2002, under the auspices of U.S intelligence and law enforcement.

ii) Subsequently, what legal jurisdiction they had for taking me forceably to Afghanistan.

iii) By what legal authority was property and money confiscated, leaving my wife and young children destitute and penniless, in their wake.

iv) Why I was brought into a designated war zone, and my life put at risk.

v) Why I was physically abused and degradingly stripped by force, then paraded in front of several cameras toted by U.S. personnel.

vi) The reason for being held in Bagram [Afghanistan] detention facility for a year, and consequently, being denied natural light and fresh food for the duration.

vii) The exact purpose for my incarceration in solitary confinement since 8th February 2003.

viii) Why all news pertaining to my own situation has been barred from me.

ix) The justification for withholding most of my family mail and incongruent obscurance of what little amounts have trickled through — even from 8-year-olds.

x) Why phone calls and legal representation have been continually denied, despite several reassurances to the contrary.

xi) Why despite copious requests, I have yet to meet with a chaplain during all this time.

xii) What was the legality and purpose of extracting my signature on a statement in early February 2003, by FBI and [other] agents, under threats of long-term imprisonment, summary trials and execution — all without legal representation.

I state here, unequivocally and for the record, that any documents presented to me by U.S. law enforcement agents were signed and initialed under duress, thus rendered legally contested in validity. During several interviews, particularly — though unexclusively — in Afghanistan, I was subjected to pernicious threats of torture and death threats — amongst other coercively employed interrogation techniques. Neither was the presence of legal counsel ever produced or made available.

The said interviews were conducted in an environment of generated fear, resonant with terrifying screams of fellow detainees facing similar methods. In this atmosphere of severe antipathy toward detainees was the compounded use of racially and religiously prejudiced taunts. This culminated, in my opinion, with the deaths of two fellow detainees, at the hands of U.S. military personnel, to which I myself was partially witness.

In spite of all the aforementioned cruel and unusual treatment meted out, I have maintained a compliant and amicable manner with my captors and a cooperative attitude. My behavioral record is impeccable, yet contrasts immensely to what I have experienced, as stated.

I am a law-abiding citizen of the U.K. and attest vehemently to my innocence, before God and the law, of any crime — though none has even been alleged. I have neither ever met Usama bin Laden, nor been a member of Al Qaidah — or any synonymous paramilitary organization, party or group. Neither have I engaged in hostile acts against the U.S.A., nor assisted such groups in the same — though the opportunity has availed itself many a time, and motive.

Regardless of the outcome of all my appeals to sanity, and protestations over the years, I reiterate my intention to seek justice at every possible level available to me….

[Signed] Moazzam Begg (00558)




Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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From AxisofLogic.com

Critical Analysis
Eternal Darkness of the American Mind
By Manuel Valenzuela
Oct 2, 2004, 05:38


The prevalent and continued decline of the Empire�s mind can be attributed to the evolving degeneration of American capitalism, through the inherent evils it espouses, its subjugation and control of human nature, and its consequences on a society entangled and indeed dependent on the very mechanisms of exploitation of self, addiction to materialism and the pandemic of greed. This latest stage of capitalism, the most sinister to arise from the realm of human conscious, has replaced once nobler, controllable, equal and just instruments. It is simply the erosion of capitalism, after having flourishing in previous stages of development, into a phase that has mutated beyond the control of humans and into a realm of damaging and malevolent repression and exploitation.

Thriving off of human nature, feeding and growing from its ability to dominate our animal instincts, our wants, needs and desires, capitalism as we know it today has become an unrelenting disease, jumping from host to host, contaminating a society that, more and more, lives in utter disconnect from a greater world community and that allows itself to be manipulated, dumbed down and owned by elite capitalists whose control over our lives grows more discernible every day. It is capitalism on steroids, a bulging muscled beast that has succeeded in mutating American society, transforming our culture to one whose assembly lines of human procreation manufacture millions of consumers, producers, worker bees, soldier ants and growing generations of unthinking automatons.

American capitalism in the first decade of the 21st century is the inevitable result of an economic form of governance whose stages have, over the last two centuries, and with exponentially-increasing dominance, power and control over our society, created a vicious cycle of evolving degeneration that today runs amok, destroying the environment and planet, human health and intelligence, individual thought and free-thinking minds, democracy and a once grand societal experiment of equality, justice and freedom. It is American capitalism, then, that now lives off of human exploitation and ignorance, breathing in and usurping our energy, exhaling poisons that blacken our eyes and minds while enveloping the Empire�s horizons with a darkness that infects us with its various forms of disease that are making our society, culture and way of life the nightmares of yesterday�s slaves and the controlled programs hardwired into tomorrow�s automatons.

The Light that brings forth Darkness

The darkness that has encircled the Empire and its people has over the last fifty years grown thanks to the continued evolution of the television monitor and the ever-expanding media tentacles of the corporate world. The TV has become the single biggest tool for the corporate beast, having morphed in the last few decades into the apparatus by which consumerism, materialism, belief in fantasy, mental manipulation, love of the almighty dollar and the virus of greed are extracted and exploited from the masses, thus enriching the corporate beast with both the treasure and the controlled, easily manipulated mind of the American populace.

As the popularity of the television media has grown over the years and with Americans watching more and more hours of the instruments of fantasy, propaganda and brainwashing fostered by the corporate Leviathan, the collective American mind has dissipated in power and intellect, over the last few decades degenerating and becoming instead a sponge readily accepting and believing anything and everything implanted into it by the monitor � the axis by which everything in our home revolves around � that now serves as its brain.

The television, that glowing light now reigning as the center of our homes, robbing us of analytical minds and healthy bodies, that invention celebrated and adored, has become the single biggest weapon the corporate capitalists have to dominate, control and program us. It lies as the great culprit in the continued regression of the American mind and erosion of intellect, the further dominance by corporations of our daily lives, the decay and festering ignorance of our youth, the indifference to world affairs and apathy to the plight of the peoples of the globe, the unconcern towards government politics, accountability and transparency, the growth of our world renowned amnesia and short-attention spans, and the increased conditioning of and appetite for violence, death and destruction.

From birth it becomes our adopted parent, our consumerist advisor and materialist shaman, guiding us with its hypnotic light through the dense fog of capitalistic indoctrination. Training us from birth how to become good parasitic consumers, bombarding our still undeveloped brains with fantasy and psychological manipulation, illuminating our virgin minds with a rapid influx of images that no incipient human mind has ever been subjected with, the television begins to distort our concept of reality, marketing fantasy and fiction, promoting and distorting human needs and wants, rewiring our fragile mind to suit the needs of the corporation and the government it owns. Almost from birth the programming making us obedient consumers trapped between the fantasy we see and the reality we experience distorts the life we live, forever to psychologically confuse the mammalian brain inside our skulls.

Indifferent to suffering, displaced from reality and sequestered from the constructs of human behavior, the innocent mind is, through television, manipulated to seek what it can never attain. The perfection of fiction, the happiness of fantasy, the allure of what will never be and the mesmerizing glow of a world beyond what humanity could ever become is nonetheless absorbed into our conscious understanding and subconscious being, haunting us seemingly from cradle to grave. Throughout our lives the belief that what we see on the screen is reachable invariably results in a reality altogether different. We entrap ourselves in a vicious cycle of a lifetime of production and consumption, as if buying and producing enough goods and services will lead to the perfection we have been conditioned to believe can be attained.

What follows over the course of one�s life, naturally, is a perceived belief in failure that the perfection we desperately seek to emulate and the fictions ingrained in our minds escaped us, thereby blaming ourselves or our loved ones for the unclimbable mountaintop whose passage no human could ever reach. The subsequent unhappiness that follows, of never reaching the beauty, wealth, happiness and perfection of the fictionally created characters we become enamored with, combine with other factors prevalent in our capitalist society to depress our emotions and feelings about ourselves and the life we lead. Even the accumulation of money, material goods and modifications of our physical selves fail to transport us into the fantasy world that invades our living rooms on a nightly basis.

In many ways, the Molotov cocktail of capitalistic unhappiness has led to the enormous growth in, demand of and addiction to pharmaceutical mind altering and hallucinatory drugs so prevalent in society today that act as conduits of escapism from the unhappy lives we portend to lead. It is these drugs, now pervasive in American society yet nonexistent for centuries and millennia before that have arisen along with the degrading stages of capitalism we now find ourselves immersed in. It is the television, along with the other tentacles of modern day capitalism, that is causing an eroded conscious of human psychology through the indoctrination of the human brain, from the time of birth, of seeking the perfection that in the human condition does not and cannot possibly exist but that thrives in the realm of television, movies and video games.

Seeking meaning and happiness through the possession of material goods and wealth, becoming insecure of our bodies and beauty by the incessant bombardment of human perfection and kneeling down to pray to the Almighty Dollar in front of its altar called the television, Americans are finding that the goals espoused by the corporate Leviathan are unattainable. When compared to the perfection we have seen on the monitor from our early age, the life we lead is boring, unexciting and imperfect. The real world thus cannot compete with the vision the corporate capitalists have marketed for us in order to manipulate buying patterns, control behaviors and expand profits margins.

The cause for concern among Americans is the effect capitalism and its tentacles, including the pervasive disease of television, is having on our psychology. The rise in pharmaceutical drugs designed for the human brain and our psychological behaviors should act as the canary sent down the mine shaft. More and more, America is a nation of pill poppers unhappy and depressed, preferring the escape of hallucination and the zombie-like behavior of anti-depressants to the realities facing us today. With 11 million children on anti-depressants and many more adults dependent on drugs, questions must begin to be raised as to the causes of such utter degeneration, the likes of which no society has ever experienced. This is but one more symptom of a disease the corrosive tumor of capitalism has engendered onto a society that offers so much wealth, freedom and materialistic bliss yet lacks enduring waves of human happiness or enlightenment.

Corporate owned television produces mind-numbing, ignorance-laden, thought-controlling, escapism-filled, fantasy-saturated and propaganda-laced programming designed for one simple reason: to hook us like fish out of water so that we are subjected to a barrage of advertisements that, it is hoped, inspire us to spend our hard earned wages on the products that best manipulate our human needs, wants, emotions and passions. Fiction-filled shows, laced in the aura of televised perfection and beauty, endeavor our minds to seek what cannot in reality exist. They are created so that addicted we become to the characters and story lines, thus becoming loyal viewers and possible prey. These programs are formulated to attract whichever demographic and target market a corporation wants as loyal consumers. The advertisements and products designed for this particular target are then plastered throughout the enormous window of opportunity, blitzkrieging our eyes and minds with a volley of images that attack our psychology, emotions, animalistic behaviors and human passions.

Methodically the attack starts in our youth as the marketing vipers seek to incarcerate us into their vast array of products from as early an age as possible. They know that once they succeed in squeezing into their grip a young child the strong possibility exists that a loyal and conditioned customer they will have for an entire lifetime. It is the undeveloped, susceptible, easily manipulated and conditioned mind, devoid of analytical thinking and human experience that the corporate marketers drool over. It is their Holy Grail, a virgin mind easily exploited and programmed, naïve to humanity and ignorant of experiences, slowly but surely becoming the mental and physical slave to those whose incessant brainwashing fills the airwaves. In the most pure and innocent among us the corporate sharks enjoy their greatest meals.

Copied from organized religion, which for centuries has perfected the formula for conditioning and brainwashing children into controlled and subservient followers of archaic myths and primitive fables, the systemic usurpation of innocent minds guarantees loyalty, lifetime consumers, unthinking individuals, psychologically fragile drones and easily controlled beings. With the twist of a marketing campaign, corporations can dictate tastes, trends, consumption patterns and the direction a society or a target market takes. Through the television, we thus become putty in the hands of those who are experts at exploiting our senses, feelings, emotions and passions.

Manipulating our minds and rewiring our thoughts, the television, nothing more than the mechanism by which the corporate world controls and dominates us, has transformed human thinking and behavior like no other instrument in our history. Our minds are being bombarded with image after image, fantasy after fantasy and manipulative emotion after manipulative emotion. Our still primitive brains have never evolved to this reality, and the damage can be seen in the rise of attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, lack of discipline and loss of intellectual capacity in children. It can be seen in a society that has not been able to adapt and handle the blitzkrieg we see on our monitors on a daily basis and that cannot escape the conditioning and brainwashing the corporate world and our government so readily apply into our minds. The proof is all-encompassing, surrounding us like a thick fog, doing tremendous damage to the still undeveloped brains of youth, shackling and controlling almost every activity we do as adults, and haunting our daily life until death finally opens the gates of escape.

The Bubble of Ignorance

From the cradle to the grave, the television works its corporate magic, helping make America the most consumerist, materialistic, gluttonous and wasteful society to ever grace the green lands of Earth. We gorge on food, we waste like no other, consume as if our life depended on it and pollute with devastating effect. Like a plague of locusts we are devouring the natural resources of the planet, indifferent to the plight of the oceans, the forests and the other 6 billion people we share this small planet with. Our thirst for oil can only be met through war, destruction and death, our appetite for cheap products and labor enslaves billions of humans worldwide and the need to quench our addiction to material wealth is rapidly hemorrhaging an Earth ready to purge us from its surface.

We are four percent of the world�s population yet contribute 25 percent of the world�s carbon dioxide emissions. We are four percent of 6.2 billion humans yet indifferent we remain to the damage our greed unleashes onto humanity. Global warming is now the greatest threat facing mankind, yet we ignore its truths and our complicity. Our greed and voracious appetite to consume blinds us to the rape of ecosystems, the extinction of cultures, the devastation of nations and the ever-growing despair among the billions of humans not lucky to live inside the belly of the beast.

We are 290 million people, most of whom believe the lands and inhabitants of this Earth have been placed by the Almighty in their rightful position as exploitable property and servants of America, the only nation allowed to dictate its commands on all others, even when tens of millions of us have not a clue or a remote idea that an outside world of peoples and nations exists outside our borders. Even as the globe becomes a giant village, where the actions of one affect all others and the collective destiny of humanity depends on the unity of the entire spectrum of world citizens we seem to care not a trickle what occurs outside our borders nor understand the complexities of human interaction.

Through the catastrophe we have created in Iraq our ignorance and lack of knowledge can be witnessed. In our failure to learn alien cultures, religions, beliefs and societies, by failing to understand peoples beyond our shores and remaining oblivious to the hatred our policies have created our lives have been made less safe, not more, condemning us to a fear that has augmented our already paranoid schizophrenia even more. The colossal mistakes in Iraq, Vietnam, the continued support of Israeli dehumanization of the Palestinians and our continued shunning of the global community are testament to the decline of world knowledge and the exponentially-growing ignorance that only serves to endanger our lives and further alienate the billions who once admired what America once stood for.

Cocooned and protected by a bubble that insulates us from the truths and realities affecting billions living at the edge of starvation, suffering, indigence and under constant threats of disease and death, we rejoice in our own arrogance and perceived omnipotence. Unfeeling and apathetic humans we have become to a planet and its inhabitants that more and more depend on the interconnectedness of man and synergy of nations to survive from the disaster humankind always seems to unearth. Yet instead of embracing the rest of humanity we isolate ourselves from it, hiding behind our wealth, our gluttony, our arrogance, our perceived aura of superiority and our incredible and ever-growing ignorance both of ourselves and the rest of humanity.

The Black Hole of American Education

In a nation of vast wealth, tremendous resources and great diversity one would expect ignorance to be extinct, intelligence to be all-encompassing and world and human knowledge to be absolute. Instead, in America we find the opposite to be true. Our educational system, reeling from under-funding, incompetence and a crater-like hole of indifference, resembles the quality of learning one would expect in an under-developed nation in Africa, where per capita investment in education is worth $8 dollars per year. The education system has failed miserably in the last few decades to instill the knowledge in our children necessary to foster free-thinking and analytical minds capable of being privy to the past history and present course of human existence.

Today, education to the vast majority of Americans is a fiasco. Instead of liberating minds it is enslaving children, programming our young to always stay in between the lines, becoming obedient drones whose independent thoughts are superceded by the corporate and state dictates. Textbooks and curricula distort American history, brainwashing our future to a revisionist past that fails to convey the state terrorism, genocide, ethnic cleansing, enslavement, incessant war and crimes against humanity it took to secure the home of the free and the land of the brave. The whitewashing of our past crimes, and what it took to achieve our present wealth, has been erased from memory, instead giving way to the fictional romance and revisionist nostalgia of how the United States became the Empire it is today.

By failing to teach history, with its plethora of lessons and truisms for understanding who and what we are, our government is making sure that it is repeated, once again to condemn entire generations for the mistakes they will commit. For those who have no concept of humanity nor its easily decipherable nuances and behaviors that manifest themselves through the eons of human existence will only repeat the errors of times past that perpetually linger in the human condition.

By preaching and indoctrinating that our nation can do no wrong, that it epitomizes the enlightenment of human thought, that we stand on the moral high ground of human affairs and that our government seeks only the protection of freedom, liberty and democracy is to do our progeny a great disservice, for to live in delusion and fiction only assures that all that is purged from history�s texts will resurface. The naïve assumption and distorted belief in our grandeur and altruism, simply because the state makes it so, robs us of understanding of why today the world hates America.

Instead of thinking on our own, demanding answers, seeking accountability and questioning authority we acquiesce to the terrorism the state spawns around the globe, its grip and control over our lives, and the crimes against humanity committed in our name. But because we have been trained to believe in the sanctity and perceived goodness of the state, where it has our best interests at heart, where it never lies and is incapable of the worst horrors of human evil, we fail to halt the handful of miscreants that power has endowed with our collective destiny.

The economic genocide labeled �sanctions� imposed on Iraq in the 1990�s that exterminated up to a million and a half human beings, 2/3 of them children, is a perfect example of the wickedness our government is capable of unleashing thanks to our silent passivity. The murder of three million Vietnamese by bombings, chemical poison and endemic disease and indigence brought on by American devastation is another poignant example.

The so called �war on terror�, and our indisputable belief in its valid implementation by the state, allows us to see the blind faith we place in a government that has mutated into a tool for the corporate Leviathan and the military-industrial complex. Never do we question or seek the truth to what might very well be a fiction that only serves to enrich wicked capitalists through the implementation of fear to control the populace and the introduction of perpetual war for perpetual profit.

The fictional war on terror is designed to breed insecurity and fear so that assembly lines continue spitting out profit and the corporatist ideology of total power and control arises. Enemies are thus manufactured, much like those Communist Reds we were once conditioned to hate and fear, thereby planting paranoia and schizophrenia onto a populace that blindly wraps itself around the flag every time our elected leaders press the buttons of psychological manipulation. It is because of our inability to stand up and question the state that this �war on terror� charade will continue to haunt our waking conscious and devastate our exponentially-growing fragile psyches.

It is our government that is perpetuating the vicious cycle of violence and whose actions will result in real terror being imported to our cities and streets. It is our government that, through our inability to question authority, will assure that perpetual conflict never ceases and terror remains planted firmly in our minds. The eternal darkness of the American mind is therefore helping to cement fear, insecurity and psychological stresses on our present population and future progeny.

American education has and continues to create unthinking automatons trained to follow the decrees of the state and the mandates of authority. Trained to never think for themselves, children are today prepared for standardized tests while being denied important liberal arts subject matter that instill analytical thinking, creativity and inquisitive thought. Thanks to the evisceration of educational funding and the appointment of George Bush to the White House, however, millions of children are today being programmed like robots, robbing them of intellect, knowledge and the power of liberation that education engenders. This is not by coincidence, as the corporate owners of government have succeeded in creating a populace whose only function is to become the slave labor of the capitalist elite.

Millions of children, many bursting with incredible talent and ability, are being deprived of opportunity, instead destined to remain fragmented in their allotted caste, becoming the work force of the corporatist few, content to sacrifice the keys to mobility for the comfort of exploitation. With minds that do not think or question, the few controlling the reigns of our society are free to implement the tools to further empower themselves at the expense and degradation of the masses. It is when the people are ignorant to what is being done to them that the powerful have succeeded in spawning the eternal darkness of the American mind. This is our reality today.

As American as Apple Pie

Conditioned through shows, movies and all-too real video games to violence, war, death and destruction, our minds easily accept the horrors of war and human evil unleashed by the state. War and violence has become as American as apple pie, resurfacing every decade to grease up the assembly line of death and the conveyor belts of human destruction. We have become rapacious animals addicted to bombs, bullets, explosions and guns, seeing in ourselves a Rambo society needy of enemies and battles. We are a war culture, carefully cultivated by the state and the corporate world, breast-fed the sanitized and whitewashed parameters of violence. In our minds, death and destruction are but special effects, the enemy a necessary entity providing the blood and guts that grace our monitors and screens.

To us, war remains a PG-13 or R rated Hollywood produced movie or show, full of pyrotechnics and special effects, heroes and enemies, good guys and bad dudes. Yet our love for war and violence is based on the fictions and creations of Hollywood, offering us only a detached semblance of reality. This, in turn, becomes our perception of real war, death and destruction, a completely distorted view of a reality that hundreds of millions worldwide have experienced.

In America, war is a video game, a Hollywood action movie where blood and guts are spilled and the hero, usually the US, is always declared the winner. The enemy, nowadays Arab bogeymen, are ingrained into our minds as the propaganda used to condition us to the war on terror is inculcated into society. In truth, the horror of war and violence, excluding 9/11, is as alien to our lands and cities as the sheer misery befalling billions of humans living outside our shores. It is because our nation has been safe for so long that we fail to understand violence and hinder war. Europe, after centuries of war, finally understands that war and violence are not a solution to anything human or a means to a viable end.

Our answer to trouble is always in the form of a smart bomb or a guided missile or through the barrel of a gun. Yet it is brains, not brawn, that makes humans out of animals. It is our humanity, not our weaponry, that brings about solutions. It is intelligence and knowledge, not ignorance and arrogance, that creates friends and brings forth adoration. Force can never foster emulation; occupation can never win hearts and minds; guns can never birth democracy; state terrorism can never defeat the hatred and thirst for vengeance it unearths. Five beheadings of Americans can never become more barbaric than the aerial bombing of cities, where hundreds of innocents are dismembered, maimed, killed and yes, even beheaded. We do not possess the monopoly on the moral high ground, and if a few beheadings are barbaric and medieval, then what are we to call the terrorism raining down from the sky above that exterminates and maims men, women and children?

Our government is as much a terrorist as those in Beslam, Bali, New York and Madrid. It is time we stop thinking ourselves the enlightened culture we are not. It is time to stop a hypocrisy that seems to validate the atrocities we commit while castigating those made against us. Up to 30,000 Iraqis have died from our candy-like cluster bombs, guided missiles, rampaging soldiers and hollow-tipped bullets. In our name the government falsely imprisoned thousands, raped hundreds and tortured untold numbers of innocents. In our name tens of thousands have been injured and millions now suffer the effects of our occupation. Let�s stop the bull manure. Our silence makes us all complicit in the state sponsored terrorism the Bush administration and the US military have exported into Iraq. Iraqi lives are not worth less than American ones simply because they are Arab or possess darker skin or believe in a different religion. They are human, like you and me, breathing air and bleeding red, burying loved ones and living under constant fear, so stop the hypocrisy.

American society must escape the chains of bondage our minds are presently trapped in. The dungeon that is our conditioned psychology must be burned to the ground if we are to exorcise the brainwashed demons that linger in our beliefs and society. We must do this to free the young from the darkness encircling them. They are our future, and our hopes, and must not be made to suffer the pandemic presently strangulating our society. Let us not condemn another generation of Americans to the virus destroying free thought. If we do they will be made to suffer from a perpetual fear and an incessant insecurity, forever fighting, killing and dying as cannon fodder for the corporate wars for profit and power. If we fail them they will grow up lacking the freedoms and rights we once took for granted.

Into the tunnel of the surreal

American society at the beginning of the 21st century is undergoing a monumental transformation into dimensions bordering on the surreal. As capitalism exerts tremendous pressure on parents to become machine-like, efficient-seeking, Puritanical work ethic slaves of the corporate Leviathan the television has become parent, teacher, role model and best friend to America�s youth.

It is manipulating, conditioning, brainwashing and programming their minds, creating obedient drones and unthinking sloths. Attention spans are being made extinct, collective amnesia is all-encompassing and anti-depressants are replacing candy as our children�s yummy treats. Relevant news and valuable knowledge are considered boring, not fast-paced or hip enough in a society born with a remote control in hand. Reading, the great empowerer of minds, has been all but abandoned by our young generations, replaced by the video game and the television. If books bring knowledge, which enables power, then television creates ignorance, which fosters mental indigence. Parents have stopped teaching, rearing, raising, disciplining and loving. Children have stopped learning the concepts of human interaction; they are losing all semblances of empathy, discipline and knowledge. The corporation now owns our youth�s future; the state now engineers their minds.

Capitalism has eroded happiness while birthing depression. It has programmed us for its wars and crimes, making us subservient and acquiescent beings. Like a marionette it controls us, pulling all the strings to get its desired results. Into the tunnel of the surreal our society finds itself, trapped in darkness, shackled to murky walls of shame, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel yet unable to move an inch away from the corrosive grip the latter stages of capitalism have on us.

In time this economic form of governance will implode upon itself. The wickedness of its existence and the demons of human nature it resurrects make this truism an inevitability. The exploitation, subjugation, and greed it fosters will one day soon force it to collapse under its own weight. Too many people are made to suffer; too much inequality and injustice roams the planet. The symptoms of its disease are presently wreaking havoc on American society. The signs are visible to anyone who can see how fast the degeneration of America has taken place, coinciding with the enormous rise of crony capitalism that has created unsustainable levels of consumerism, materialism, waste, unhappiness, corruption and greed.

The implosion of what today we call capitalism might take ten years before it commences, perhaps fifty, yet in human history this is but a hiccup of time, a mere nanosecond in the vast history of Earth. The love of the almighty dollar and her sister greed will be the downfall of the capitalist elite and the sinister form of governance that continues to devastate American society, our Earth, its lands, air, water and inhabitants. The eternal darkness of the American mind is but one more sign of an inevitability that is beginning to creep over the horizon.

In time, it will be the masses who will one day awake, once more ready, willing and able to experience a human renaissance, standing up in the face of everything malevolent that has taken place, demanding change and an evolved form of economic governance based upon the principles of equality, justice, morality and worldwide humanity. The vicious circle of capitalism, where only the few benefit and the many are in essence enslaved cannot sustain its circular motion for very much longer. The weight of its own crimes and the decline of its historical path are cracking its foundations.

Soon, the eternal darkness of the American mind will dissipate, allowing us the freedom to once more gaze upon the horizon where we can see the magnificent sunrise that has for too long been denied but that will finally rise to show us the path to a better day.


© Copyright 2004 by AxisofLogic.com


Manuel Valenzuela is social critic and commentator, activist, writer and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel to be published in mid October (for real this time) of 2004. A collection of essays, Beyond the Smoking Mirror: Reflections on America and Humanity, will be published in winter of 2004-2005. His articles appear weekly on axisoflogic.com where he is also contributing writer. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at [e-mail]

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PDF-Datei mit allen Zahlen:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/05/politics/campaign/05poll.h…

October 5, 2004
THE POLL
Poll Finds Kerry Assured Voters in Initial Debate
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
and JANET ELDER

Senator John Kerry came out of the first presidential debate having reassured many Americans of his ability to handle an international crisis or a terrorist attack and with a generally more favorable image, but he failed to shake the perception that he panders to voters in search of support, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The poll also found significant doubts about President Bush`s policies toward Iraq, with a majority of the public saying that the United States invaded too soon and that the administration did a poor job thinking through the consequences of the war. But Mr. Bush maintained an advantage on personal characteristics like strong leadership and likability, as well as in the enthusiasm of his supporters.

Four weeks from Election Day, the presidential race is again a dead heat, with Mr. Bush having given up the gains he enjoyed for the last month after the Republican convention in New York, the poll found. In both a head-to-head matchup and a three-way race including Ralph Nader, the Republican and Democratic tickets each won the support of 47 percent of registered voters surveyed in the poll.

Last month, Mr. Bush led Mr. Kerry by 50-42 in a two-way race and 50-41 in a three-way race.

The results, which parallel those of several other national polls in the past few days, are likely to intensify interest in tonight`s debate in Cleveland between the vice-presidential candidates, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina and Vice President Dick Cheney, as well as the two additional presidential debates, on Friday and Oct. 13.

Aides to both campaigns said yesterday that the running mates` debate, which begins at 9 p.m. Eastern time, was unlikely to have a major impact on the vote in November. That did not stop them, though, from trying once again to set high expectations for the other side, as each campaign pointed to the debating strengths of its opponents.

Some of the drop in Mr. Bush`s numbers appeared to reflect the traditional cycle in which a candidate`s standing surges after his nominating convention and then declines somewhat. Both the Bush and Kerry campaigns have said for months that they expect the race to be tight at the very end.

But Mr. Kerry also scored notable gains in several areas that could be vital in a campaign being largely fought over the war in Iraq and the threat of terrorism.

Forty-one percent of registered voters said they had confidence in Mr. Kerry`s ability to deal wisely with an international crisis, up from 32 percent before the debate. Thirty-nine percent said they had a lot of confidence that Mr. Kerry would make the right decisions when it came to protecting against a terrorist attack, up 13 percentage points.
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On both scores, however, Mr. Kerry still trailed Mr. Bush. Fifty-one percent of voters said they had confidence in Mr. Bush`s ability to deal with an international crisis, unchanged from before the debate, and 52 percent said they had a lot of confidence in his ability to protect against a terrorist attack, up slightly from 50 percent last month.

Mr. Bush`s strategy of portraying Mr. Kerry as an unprincipled flip-flopper appears to have stuck in the national consciousness. Sixty percent of registered voters said Mr. Kerry told people what they wanted to hear rather than what he really believed, about the same level as throughout the spring and summer. The corresponding figure for Mr. Bush was 38 percent.

It is unclear whether the race for the White House has merely reverted to a steady state in which neither candidate can establish a clear lead, whether Mr. Bush can regain the advantage with a strong performance in the next debates or whether Thursday was a turning point at which Mr. Kerry seized the initiative.

There is also considerable uncertainty over whether national polling numbers reflect the state of play in the 18 or so swing states where the election will be decided and where the relative success of get-out-the-vote efforts by both sides could prove to be the difference. In recent weeks there has been a surge of new voter registrations in many states as the two campaigns and their allies seek to ensure that every possible supporter goes to the polls on Nov. 2.

The Kerry campaign said the poll showed that the race was moving in its direction. The nationwide telephone poll of 979 adults included 851 registered voters. The margin of sampling error for the entire sample, and for registered voters, is plus or minus three percentage points.

"The public took a measure of John Kerry standing next to the president, and came to the conclusion that he had the strength, judgment and experience to be the commander in chief," said Joe Lockhart, a senior strategist for Mr. Kerry.

Mr. Bush`s team said he remained ahead in the ways that would count most on Election Day.

"We always said this race would be close," said Matthew Dowd, Mr. Bush`s chief campaign strategist. "When style fades quickly, leadership and policies remain, and that is where the president has the advantage."

Over all, Mr. Kerry appears to have come off well in the debate, which respondents to the poll said, 60 percent to 23 percent, that he won.

The proportion of registered voters saying they viewed Mr. Kerry favorably jumped to its highest level, 40 percent, from 31 percent in mid-September, while the number of people who said they did not view him favorably, 41 percent, did not change appreciably.

The percentage of voters who said their opinion of Mr. Bush was favorable dipped slightly, to 44 percent from 47 percent last month, while the percentage of voters who said they did not view Mr. Bush favorably increased to 44 percent from 38 percent in that period.

Mr. Kerry, who sought to emphasize during the debate how aggressive he would be in hunting down terrorists and protecting the nation from attack, made some headway in winning back women who had been drifting toward Mr. Bush. Mr. Kerry led Mr. Bush 48 percent to 46 percent among women; last month Mr. Bush led among women 48 percent to 43 percent.

The results show not only how closely divided the nation is, but also how clearly defined the differences are between the candidates, especially on foreign policy. Just under half of voters said both Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry would bring the right balance to judgments about when to go to war. But 46 percent said Mr. Bush would not be careful enough and 31 percent said Mr. Kerry would be too careful.

The poll indicated that Americans continued to have doubts about both candidates. Mr. Bush`s job approval rating, at 47 percent, was little changed from last month and close to what has traditionally been a danger zone for an incumbent seeking re-election. His approval ratings for his handling of foreign policy, Iraq and the economy were even lower, and a narrow majority of respondents, 51 percent, said the country was on the wrong track.

The poll suggested that the daily bloodshed in Iraq and Mr. Kerry`s strategy of hammering away at Mr. Bush`s handling of the war might be resonating among voters. Asked what kind of job Mr. Bush had done in anticipating what would happen in Iraq as a result of the war, 59 percent said he had done a poor job and 34 percent said a good job. A slight majority, 52 percent, said the United States had been too quick to go to war in Iraq, compared with 37 percent who said the timing was about right.

But Mr. Bush maintained his reputation as an effective leader in confronting terrorism, with 57 percent of respondents saying they approved of his handling of the issue and 37 percent disapproving. Asked whether they thought of Mr. Bush as someone they would like personally, even if they did not approve of his policies, 61 percent said yes, versus 48 percent for Mr. Kerry. Asked whether both candidates have strong qualities of leadership, 62 percent said yes for Mr. Bush and 56 percent said yes for Mr. Kerry.

Mr. Kerry continued to generate increased levels of enthusiasm for his candidacy among those who said they supported him, with 48 percent saying they strongly favored him, up from 40 percent last month. But, in a race that could hinge on turnout, Mr. Bush maintained a strong advantage on that measure, with 70 percent of his backers saying they strongly favored him, up from 63 percent.

Fifty-five percent of voters said Mr. Bush had made clear what he wants to accomplish in the next four years, a five-point increase since last month, while 45 percent of voters said Mr. Kerry had a clear agenda, up seven points in the same period.

The poll found that 65 percent of voters did not think Mr. Bush had a clear plan for getting American troops out of Iraq, and that 59 percent of voters did not think Mr. Kerry had one. Half of voters said they thought Mr. Bush made the situation in Iraq sound better than it is, and 43 percent said Mr. Kerry made it sound worse.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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October 5, 2004
INSURGENTS
At Least 26 Die as 3 Car Bombs Explode in Iraq
By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 4 - Three powerful car bombs exploded across Iraq on Monday morning, killing at least 26 people and wounding more than 100 others in a day of carnage that demonstrated the relative ease with which insurgents are striking in the hearts of major cities.

A firefight between police officers and insurgents broke out in the middle of downtown Baghdad after one of the explosions, security contractors at the scene said.

The first blasts hit Baghdad, where two suicide car bombs exploded within an hour of each other, one on either side of the Tigris River. The bomb in the west detonated after a car loaded with explosives rammed into a recruiting center for Iraqi plainclothes police officers. The attack took place near a checkpoint to the fortified headquarters of the interim Iraqi government and the American Embassy, and officials at one hospital counted at least 15 dead and 82 wounded.

The second attack struck north of the Baghdad Hotel, which is mostly occupied by foreign security contractors. A red station wagon packed with explosives sped down a wide commercial street and plowed into two sport utility vehicles, the cars often used by contractors, witnesses said. At least six people were killed and 20 wounded, an Interior Ministry spokesman said. The explosion scattered body parts and pieces of flesh across nearby blocks, and men rushed to the scene and began scraping the remains onto slabs of burnt car metal to ensure proper burials.
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An Iraqi working with a New York National Guard platoon interrogated a civilian in Samarra on Monday. He shouted and beat the man with a baton after a booklet with a picture of Osama bin Laden was found.
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The third suicide car bomb exploded near a primary school in the northern city of Mosul, killing at least five people, including two children, Reuters reported, citing Iraqi police officers. The car might have exploded prematurely, because there were no American soldiers or Iraqi security forces in the area, the officers said.

Car bombs have become the most lethal weapons employed by insurgents in Iraq. At least 35 exploded in September alone, more than in any other month since the war began. The surge in violence during this campaign has led many experts to voice serious doubts about whether the Bush administration and the Iraqi government can hold legitimate elections across the country in January, as scheduled.

This is a particularly crucial month for the American military here, as it struggles to stand up an Iraqi security force that so far has proven incapable of holding its own against the insurgency. The real test will come as the Americans try seizing cities controlled by guerrilla fighters and placing Iraqi policemen and soldiers in charge of security. Over the weekend, the First Infantry Division and Iraqi forces chased insurgents from the streets of Samarra in a relatively quick battle. But the bombings on Monday showed that guerrillas can readily answer such offensives with ones of their own, right in the heart of the capital.

After the second bomb exploded in Baghdad, angry and anxious Iraqi policemen began firing wildly with their AK-47 rifles, spurring onlookers to flee in a frenzy. Some security contractors at lookout points along surrounding buildings said they saw insurgents dashing through the area with automatic rifles and trading fire with the police. The shooting lasted a half hour, and at least one policeman was wounded.

At least four of the wounded from the second bombing were taken to Ibn al-Hathem Hospital, a nearby eye treatment center. In a dim, narrow corridor, two men crouched against the walls, their faces and clothes drenched in blood, hands clasped around their heads. "My eye, my eye, my eye," screamed one man whose left eye had been severely wounded.

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A foreigner was evacuated soon after a car bomb exploded in central Baghdad near two vehicles of the type often used by foreign contractors.
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The American military suffered its own losses. Two soldiers were killed by small arms fire at a traffic control checkpoint in Baghdad on Sunday afternoon, the military said. At least 1,059 American soldiers have died in the war, according to the Defense Department.

The military said it launched an airstrike at 1 a.m. Monday against what it called an insurgent safe house on the outskirts of Falluja. The military said in a statement that about 25 guerrilla fighters were storing weapons and conducting training sessions in the building. It added that "multiple measures were taken to ensure no innocent civilians were present at the time of the strike."

Doctors in the main hospital in Falluja said at least 11 people had been killed in the airstrike, 4 of them women, and at least 10 people had been wounded.

The military continued its airstrike campaign in the Sadr City district of Baghdad late Monday night, and troops were reported to be in heavy fighting with Shiite militiamen.

In Samarra, the first wave of American soldiers began rolling out of the city after the weekend battle, while others remained behind to help transfer authority over to Iraqi police and military units. They worked feverishly to convert some of the buildings used as command posts during the battle into police stations and barracks for Iraqi National Guard soldiers.

In one instance, soldiers searching a house found some propaganda from Al Qaeda, and an Iraqi National Guard officer had to be restrained by American soldiers when he tried to attack the cowering homeowner, the military said.

A militant group sent out a video that showed the killings of a Turk and an Italian resident of Iraqi origin, Reuters reported. The two were shown blindfolded and kneeling in front of a ditch before being shot. Another group released two Indonesian women to the United Arab Emirates Embassy in Baghdad, Abu Dhabi Television reported.

Rick Lyman contributed reporting from Samarra for this article, and Thaier Aldaami contributed from Baghdad.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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October 5, 2004
THE DEFENSE SECRETARY
Rumsfeld Sees Lack of Proof for Qaeda-Hussein Link
By THOM SHANKER

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that he had seen no "strong, hard evidence" linking Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, although he tempered his comment by noting that stark disagreements on that issue remained among American intelligence analysts.

"I have seen the answer to that question migrate in the intelligence community over the period of a year in the most amazing way," Mr. Rumsfeld said when asked about ties between Mr. Hussein and the terror network run by Osama bin Laden. Senior administration officials cited the existence of ties between them as a rationale for war on Iraq.

"Second, there are differences in the intelligence community as to what the relationship was," Mr. Rumsfeld said at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two."

Relationships among terrorists and terrorist networks are complicated to track, Mr. Rumsfeld said, because "in many cases, they cooperate not in a chain of command but in a loose affiliation, a franchising arrangement almost."

He said that even Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born terrorist leader blamed for some of the most violent attacks inside Iraq since the end of major combat operations, probably had no formal allegiance to Mr. bin Laden, although "they`re just two peas in a pod in terms of what they`re doing."

The extent of Iraq`s ties to Al Qaeda has been subjected to intense and often contentious scrutiny, especially this campaign season. While Mr. Rumsfeld often has cited C.I.A. reports of murky ties, including the presence of Qaeda operatives in Iraq, he has not been as adamant on the issue as other senior administration officials, in particular Vice President Dick Cheney.

"There is no question but that there have been interactions between the Iraqi government, Iraqi officials and Al Qaeda operatives," Mr. Rumsfeld said in November 2002. "They have occurred over a span of some 8 or 10 years to our knowledge. There are currently Al Qaeda in Iraq.``

But even when discussing intelligence pointing to Iraq- Qaeda links, he has noted the absence of certainty. In September 2002, he warned that it was not always possible for the government to satisfy a public desire for "some hard evidence" of Iraq`s ties to terrorist networks. "We have to face that fact that we`re not going to have everything beyond a reasonable doubt," he said.

Mr. Rumsfeld`s comments were made one day before Mr. Cheney is to meet Senator John Edwards in a vice-presidential campaign debate, during which the topic of administration statements on Iraq-Qaeda ties are likely to come up.

Mr. Rumsfeld issued a statement late last night in which he stated, "I have acknowledged since September 2002 that there were ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq."

That assessment, he said in the statement, was based on points provided by George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, to describe the C.I.A.`s understanding of the Qaeda-Iraq relationship. Those points, Mr. Rumsfeld said, included evidence of Qaeda members in Iraq, reports of senior-level contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda going back a decade and of possible chemical and biological agent training, and of information that Iraq and Al Qaeda discussed safe haven opportunities in Iraq.

In his speech yesterday, Mr. Rumsfeld praised a weekend offensive by the First Infantry Division and members of the new Iraqi security force that chased insurgents from Samarra. He said the offensive should serve as a warning to other guerrillas holding territory before elections scheduled for January.

In the face of a tenacious insurgency, he said, "your first choice is to talk and to gather people together.

"And that`s what they tried in some areas, and it worked, and in some areas it didn`t," he added. "And the next thing you have to do is have the threat of force. And finally you may have to use force. And that`s what happened in Samarra."

Mr. Rumsfeld also gave an impassioned defense of President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan for his actions in support of the military effort to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan and for serving as a voice of moderation in the Muslim world.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
Bremer Criticizes Troop Levels
Ex-Overseer of Iraq Says U.S. Effort Was Hampered Early On

By Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 5, 2004; Page A01

The former U.S. official who governed Iraq after the invasion said yesterday that the United States made two major mistakes: not deploying enough troops in Iraq and then not containing the violence and looting immediately after the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, administrator for the U.S.-led occupation government until the handover of political power on June 28, said he still supports the decision to intervene in Iraq but said a lack of adequate forces hampered the occupation and efforts to end the looting early on.

"We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," he said yesterday in a speech at an insurance conference in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. "We never had enough troops on the ground."

Bremer`s comments were striking because they echoed contentions of many administration critics, including Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry, who argue that the U.S. government failed to plan adequately to maintain security in Iraq after the invasion. Bremer has generally defended the U.S. approach in Iraq but in recent weeks has begun to criticize the administration for tactical and policy shortfalls.

In a Sept. 17 speech at DePauw University, Bremer said he frequently raised the issue within the administration and "should have been even more insistent" when his advice was spurned because the situation in Iraq might be different today. "The single most important change -- the one thing that would have improved the situation -- would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout" the occupation, Bremer said, according to the Banner-Graphic in Greencastle, Ind.

A Bremer aide said that his speeches were intended for private audiences and were supposed to have been off the record. Yesterday, however, excerpts of his remarks -- given at the Greenbrier resort at an annual meeting sponsored by the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers -- were distributed in a news release by the conference organizers.

In a statement late last night, Bremer stressed that he fully supports the administration`s plan for training Iraqi security forces as well as its overall strategy for Iraq.

"I believe that we currently have sufficient troop levels in Iraq," he said in an e-mailed statement. He said all references in recent speeches to troop levels related to the situation when he arrived in Baghdad in May 2003 -- "and when I believed we needed either more coalition troops or Iraqi security forces to address the looting."

He said that, to address the problem, the occupation government developed a plan that is still in place under the new interim Iraqi government.

Bremer also said he believes winning the war in Iraq is an "integral part of fighting this war on terror." He added that he "strongly supports" President Bush`s reelection.

The argument over whether the United States committed enough troops to the mission in Iraq began even before the March 2003 invasion.

Prior to the war, the Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, said publicly that he thought the invasion plan lacked sufficient manpower, and he was slapped down by the Pentagon`s civilian leadership for saying so. During the war, concerns about troop strength expressed by retired generals also provoked angry denunciations by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In April 2003, for example, Rumsfeld commented, "People were saying that the plan was terrible and there weren`t enough people and . . . there were going to be, you know, tens of thousands of casualties, and it was going to take forever." After Baghdad fell, Rumsfeld dismissed reports of widespread looting and chaos as "untidy" signs of newfound freedom that were exaggerated by the media. Rumsfeld and Bush resisted calls for more troops, saying that what was going on in Iraq was not a war but simply the desperate actions of Baathist loyalists.

In yesterday`s speech, Bremer told the insurance agents that U.S. plans for the postwar period erred in projecting what would happen after Hussein`s demise, focusing on preparing for humanitarian relief and widespread refugee problems rather than a bloody insurgency now being waged by at least four well-armed factions.

"There was planning, but planning for a situation that didn`t arise," he said.

A senior defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said yesterday that Bremer never asked for more troops when he was the administrator in Iraq -- except for two weeks before he left, when he requested forces to help secure Iraq`s borders.

Bremer said in his speech that the administration was clearly right to invade Iraq. Though no weapons of mass destruction have been found, he said, the United States faced "the real possibility" that Hussein would someday give such weapons to terrorists.

"The status quo was simply untenable," he said. "I am more than ever convinced that regime change was the right thing to do."

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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October 5, 2004
The Nuclear Bomb That Wasn`t

Of all the justifications that President Bush gave for invading Iraq, the most terrifying was that Saddam Hussein was on the brink of developing a nuclear bomb that he might use against the United States or give to terrorists. Ever since we learned that this was not true, the question has been whether Mr. Bush gave a good-faith account of the best available intelligence, or knowingly deceived the public. The more we learn about the way Mr. Bush paved the road to war, the more it becomes disturbingly clear that if he was not aware that he was feeding misinformation to the world, he was about the only one in his circle who had not been clued in.

The foundation for the administration`s claim that it acted on an honest assessment of intelligence analysis - and the president`s frequent claim that Congress had the same information he had - has been steadily eroded by the reports from the Senate Intelligence Committee and the 9/11 commission. A lengthy report in The Times on Sunday removed any lingering doubts.

The only physical evidence the administration offered for an Iraqi nuclear program were the 60,000 aluminum tubes that Baghdad set out to buy in early 2001; some of them were seized in Jordan. Even though Iraq had a history of using the same tubes to make small rockets, the president and his closest advisers told the American people that the overwhelming consensus of government experts was that these new tubes were to be used to make nuclear bomb fuel. Now we know there was no such consensus. Mr. Bush`s closest advisers say they didn`t know that until after they had made the case for war. But in fact, they had plenty of evidence that the claim was baseless; it was a long-discounted theory that had to be resurrected from the intelligence community`s wastebasket when the administration needed justification for invading Iraq.

The tubes-for-bombs theory was the creation of a low-level C.I.A. analyst who got his facts, even the size of the tubes, wrong. It was refuted within 24 hours by the Energy Department, which issued three papers debunking the idea over a four-month period in 2001, and by the International Atomic Energy Agency. A week before Mr. Bush`s 2003 State of the Union address, in which he warned of an Iraqi nuclear menace, international experts in Vienna had dismissed the C.I.A.`s theory about the tubes. The day before, the International Atomic Energy Agency said there was no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program and rejected the tubes` tale entirely.

It`s shocking that with all this information readily available, Secretary of State Colin Powell still went before the United Nations to repeat the bogus claims, an appearance that gravely damaged his reputation. It`s even more disturbing that Vice President Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, had not only failed to keep the president from misleading the American people, but had also become the chief proponents of the "mushroom cloud" rhetoric.

Ms. Rice had access to all the reports debunking the tubes theory when she first talked about it publicly in September 2002. Yet last Sunday, Ms. Rice said that while she had been aware of a "dispute" about the tubes, she had not specifically known what it was about until after she had told the world that Saddam was building the bomb.

Ms. Rice`s spokesman, Sean McCormack, said it was not her job to question intelligence reports or "to referee disputes in the intelligence community." But even with that curious job disclaimer, it`s no comfort to think that the national security adviser wouldn`t have bothered to inform herself about such a major issue before speaking publicly. The national security adviser has no more important responsibility than making sure that the president gets the best advice on life-and-death issues like the war.

If Ms. Rice did her job and told Mr. Bush how ludicrous the case was for an Iraqi nuclear program, then Mr. Bush terribly misled the public. If not, she should have resigned for allowing her boss to start a war on the basis of bad information and an incompetent analysis.

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Es ist schwer für einen US-Amerikaner zu begreifen, dass die Aufständigen gleichzusetzen sind mit einem Großteil der Bevölkerung. Und ein Vertreiben der Aufständigen wäre ein Vertreiben der Bevölkerung. Deshalb hat man von US-Seite versucht den Widerstand mit ausländischen Kämpfern zu erklären. Aus diesem Grund ist für die USA Zarqawi auch so wichtig, weil er für sie der Beweis für ihre Theorie ist, dass der Aufstand von fremden Kämpfern ausgeht. Zarqawi scheint eher eine Erfindung cleverer Informanten zu sein, die mit den `erfundenen` Geschichten gutes Geld verdienen. Und auf der anderen Seite wird der Name bei Entführungen als Druckmittel für Lösegeldforderungen benutzt. Manche behaupten, dass der Großteil der Entführungen bei den Ausländern, bei den Einheimischen sowieso, weniger politische Motive haben sondern eher einen kriminellen Hintergrund haben. Bei den Gewaltakten gegen die Besatzung wissen die Militärs vor Ort es besser, es sind zu weit über 90% Einheimische, die als Aufständische gegen die Besatzungsmacht kämpfen. Wobei auch da zu beachten ist, dass ein Teil der Gewaltakte kriminellen Hintergründe haben, allein vieles ist auf Racheaktionen von Irakern untereinander zurückzuführen. Das alles zusammen ergibt das Bild eines absoluten Chaos, welches die USA mit Bombardements von Städten und Stadtteilen lösen wollen. Ein systematisches Durchkämmen der Städte würde mehr Opfer kosten und wäre zwecklos denn nach Verschwinden der Truppen würden wieder die alten Zustände herrschen. Wobei die USA durch das Töten von Frauen und Kindern im Endeffekt immer noch mehr Gewalt erzeugen. Nach Untersuchungen sind in den letzten drei Monaten vor der `Machtübergabe` über 200 Kinder getötet worden durch US-Bomben und sonstige Angriffe, das entspricht der Zahl der getöteten Kinder in Breslan. Die genauen Zahlen sind von Reuters veröffentlicht worden und stehen hier im Thread. In diesem Zusammenhang noch eine Bemerkung. US-Patrouillen haben die Angewohnheit bei Halt Süßigkeiten zu verteilen und damit sehr viele Kinder anzulocken. Das führt dazu, da diese Konvois bevorzugte Ziele der Aufständischen sind, dass dann oft viele Kinder getötet werden. Ich hoffe, dass das reine Gedankenlosigkeit ist von den Soldaten, denn es wird auch von Kindern als Schutzschildern gesprochen. Ich glaube nicht, dass dies Probleme von den USA und der Koalition gelöst werden können, denn auch eine Verdopplung der Truppen, würde keine Garantie für eine Befriedung garantieren. Es gibt nur eine Möglichkeit, die Iraker müssen es selbst machen ohne die USA, die hat alles Vertrauen im Irak verspielt, aber es gibt augenblicklich für den Gesamtirak keine Kraft, die dazu in der Lage ist. Für den shiitischen Teil wäre die Sistani/Sadr/Iran-Verbindung dazu in der Lage, im Sunnitische Teil die alte Baath-Partei. Was dann aus dem Staat Irak wird, ist nicht zu sagen, denn auch im kurdischen Teil sind noch einige Machtfragen offen, alleine zwischen den beiden kurdischen Parteien und den dortigen Minderheiten. Es braucht einen Alexander, um den gordischen Knoten zu durchschlagen.

October 5, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Victory in Iraq, One City at a Time
By THOMAS X. HAMMES

Washington

The assault on Samarra by coalition forces over the weekend was probably the first step in a broader offensive intended to quell insurgent hot spots before the Iraqi elections in January. It was a promising start, as American and Iraqi forces quickly swept through the city, in the Sunni triangle north of Baghdad. Now comes the difficult part: establishing an effective government to prevent the return of the insurgents.

Yet even before the initial sweep of Samarra was completed, some officials, military commentators and pundits called for stepping up the wider offensive to "clean out" other insurgent strongholds, like Falluja, Najaf and the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad. This line of thinking holds that only rapid, decisive actions against all havens for guerrillas will break them and destroy their center of gravity. It`s a tempting idea, but a bad one: the problem is, insurgencies don`t have a physical center of gravity.

Insurgencies are first and foremost political struggles, not military ones. The only way to defeat them is to gain the widespread support of the people. So the real goal of any broader offensive in Iraq must be less to wipe out the rebel fighters than to give legitimacy to the government in Baghdad.

While a widespread offensive to clean out the strongholds might provide breathing room to conduct the elections, if done too hastily it would undoubtedly result in a major strategic gain for the insurgents. Aggressive offensives usually result in high civilian casualties and, in a country as large as Iraq, would badly overstretch the American military and Iraqi security forces. The combination of civilian deaths and an inability to provide real safety in the cities would be a severe blow to the legitimacy of the government.

Insurgencies are long struggles, measured in decades, not months. The Soviets "cleaned out" the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul at least seven times during their occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980`s. Each time the goal was to destroy the network of ethnic tribes called the Northern Alliance; each time the Soviets killed hundreds if not thousands of rebel soldiers and many more civilians.

Yet the Soviets could not turn tactical success into strategic progress. They could not establish a permanent government in the valley. Each time they thought they had destroyed the heart of the Northern Alliance resistance. Today, of course, many members of that alliance hold leading positions in the Afghan government.

While we cannot allow the Iraqi insurgents to have sanctuaries indefinitely, a rapid sweep of guerrilla-controlled cities and towns would do no good unless they can subsequently be secured by Iraqi troops and police forces. Let`s face it, until the local government achieved some level of effectiveness and acceptance by the locals, Iraqi security forces would have to cut off the liberated city from the outside insurgent influence. And, from schools to waste disposal to compensation for wrecked homes, the Iraqi government would have to bring in, swiftly, the people and resources to deal with all aspects of governance.

Isolating, searching and controlling a city take a great deal of manpower. These tasks require well-trained, disciplined troops, or the result will be further alienation of the population. A few police officers isolated in their stations are not enough. There must be enough policemen backed by strong military forces to provide a continuous Iraqi government presence throughout the city.

This is why the coalition`s focus over the last year on rebuilding the Iraqi security forces and establishing effective Iraqi ministries is essential. It is also why we cannot take the chance of seizing all the insurgent strongholds simultaneously. The Iraqi security forces simply do not have the numbers and experience to take responsibility for both security and effective governance of large new areas.

A vital rule of counterinsurgency is that once control has been established, the government must never withdraw. A city can be governed only with the active cooperation of a solid percentage of its residents. The good news is that many Iraqis in the more peaceful areas of the country have shown the courage to come forward and work with their local governments. But if these governments lose control to the insurgents, it would be a death penalty for those who had cooperated.

While all this may sound daunting, the extended nature of insurgencies can also help the counterinsurgent. One of the best examples came in 1948, when the Malayan Communist Party started a guerrilla war to overthrow the British colonial government. Caught off balance, short of troops and without a coherent strategy, the British were forced onto the defensive.

Then in 1950, Sir Harold Briggs, a retired general serving as the British director of operations in Malaya, devised a plan based on the idea that the war was really "a competition in government" that would be won by the side that best protected the people while leaving them free to pursue their lives.

To unify the British efforts, Briggs organized "war committees" in each state and district. While these were officially made up of the state or district governor, his information officer, the police commander, the police intelligence officer and the area`s military commander, each committee also had at least one unofficial member from each of the ethnic communities - Chinese, Malay and Indian. Since the governor and the commanders all had to attend each meeting, options could be discussed with advice from all parties, decisions reached and tasks assigned.

With this single innovation, Briggs ensured both unity of effort and consideration of all aspects of society. In keeping with the political nature of the war, all final decisions were made by the senior political leader. It was also important that the military was subordinated to civilian control. Most often the military would provide support to police operations. In addition, all intelligence, even the military operation, was put under the Special Branch, the intelligence agency of the police department.

Such unity of command was vital, and allowed the British to adjust even after the assassination of one high commissioner (the highest-ranking civilian official) and the sudden retirement of Briggs because of illness. Eventually, the top military and civilian posts were consolidated in one man, Gen. Sir Gerald Templer, who methodically and totally cleared each state of insurgents before moving onto the next one.

This well-conceived, well-executed civil-military plan is often referred to as the model for counterinsurgencies. Yet it is worth bearing in mind that, in a situation far less complex than that in Iraq today, it took a decade before the new Malayan government could declare the emergency over.

The incursion into Samarra showed that American and Iraqi forces can work together to cleanse cities of insurgents. But the fight for Iraq will not be resolved by a military offensive lasting a few weeks. While aggressive operations may give the impression of progress, the real issue is providing and sustaining security. Military action can only support the political effort.

The fledgling Iraqi security forces have shown promise in the last week, but they still need time to master the long-term security operations essential to counterinsurgency. We should not push them to take over before they are ready. Americans should be prepared for a lengthy, methodical campaign that clears the insurgents out and establishes Iraqi security and a functioning Iraqi government area by area. Only then should our forces come home.

Thomas X. Hammes, a Marine colonel, is a fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies of the National Defense University and the author of "The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century."

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October 5, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Falling Scales
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Last week President Bush found himself defending his record on national security without his usual protective cocoon of loyalty-tested audiences and cowed reporters. And the sound you heard was the scales` falling from millions of eyes.

Trying to undo the damage, Mr. Bush is now telling those loyalty-tested audiences that Senator John Kerry`s use of the phrase "global test" means that he "would give foreign governments veto power over our national security decisions." He`s lying, of course, as anyone can confirm by looking at what Mr. Kerry actually said. But it may still work - Mr. Bush`s pre-debate rise in the polls is testimony to the effectiveness of smear tactics.

Still, something important happened on Thursday. Style probably mattered most: viewers were shocked by the contrast between Mr. Bush`s manufactured image as a strong, resolute leader and his whiny, petulant behavior in the debate. But Mr. Bush would have lost even more badly if post-debate coverage had focused on substance.

Here`s one underreported example: So far, Mr. Bush has paid no political price for his shameful penny-pinching on domestic security and his refusal to provide effective protection for America`s ports and chemical plants. As Jonathan Chait wrote in The New Republic: "Bush`s record on homeland security ought to be considered a scandal. Yet, not only is it not a scandal, it`s not even a story."

But Mr. Kerry raised the issue, describing how the administration has failed to protect us against terrorist attacks. Mr. Bush`s response? "I don`t think we want to get to how he`s going to pay for all these promises."

Oh, yes we do. According to Congressional Budget Office estimates, Mr. Bush`s tax cuts, with their strong tilt toward the wealthy, are responsible for more than $270 billion of the 2004 budget deficit. Increased spending on homeland security accounts for only $20 billion. That shows the true priorities of the self-proclaimed "war president." Later, Mr. Bush, perhaps realizing his mistake, asserted, "Of course we`re doing everything we can to protect America." But he had already conceded that he isn`t.

It`s also not clear whether voters have noticed the collapse of Mr. Bush`s cover story for the disastrous decision to invade Iraq. In Coral Gables, Mr. Bush asserted that when Mr. Kerry voted to authorize the use of force against Saddam, he "looked at the same intelligence I looked at." But as The Times confirmed last weekend, the Bush administration suppressed intelligence that might have raised doubts in Congress.

The case for war rested crucially on one piece of evidence: Saddam`s purchase of aluminum tubes that, according to Condoleezza Rice, were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs." But the truth, never revealed to Congress, was that most of the government`s experts considered the tubes unsuited for a nuclear program and identical to the tubes used by Iraq for other purposes. Yes, Virginia, we were misled into war.

Now it`s Dick Cheney`s turn.

Mr. Cheney`s manufactured image is as much at odds with reality as Mr. Bush`s. The vice president is portrayed as a hardheaded realist, someone you can trust with difficult decisions. But his actual record is one of irresponsibility and incompetence.

Case in point: Mr. Cheney completely misread the nature of the 2001 California energy crisis. Although he has stonewalled investigations into what went on in his task force, there`s no real question that he placed his trust in the very companies whose market-rigging caused that crisis.

In tonight`s debate, John Edwards will surely confront Mr. Cheney over that task force, over domestic policies and, of course, over Halliburton. But he can also use the occasion to ask more hard questions about national security.

After all, Mr. Cheney didn`t just promise Americans that "we will, in fact, be welcomed as liberators" by the grateful Iraqis. He also played a central role in leading us to war on false pretenses.

No, that`s not an overstatement. In August 2002, when Mr. Cheney declared "we now know Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons," he was being dishonest: the administration knew no such thing. He was also being irresponsible: his speech pre-empted an intelligence review that might have given dissenting experts a chance to make their case.

So here`s Mr. Edwards`s mission: to expose the real Dick Cheney, just as Mr. Kerry exposed the real George Bush.

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Force alone will not curb the terror threat
By Michael O`Hanlon

Published: October 5 2004

Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, and Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defence - supposedly kindred ideological spirits - have revealed that they see the struggle against terror in very different ways. This is a political opportunity for the campaign of John Kerry and John Edwards and a reminder that America needs a much fuller debate about how to defeat terrorism.

The dichotomy between the vice-president and the defence secretary is becoming too obvious to dispute. In a leaked memo to other Bush administration officials, dated October 2003, Mr Rumsfeld asked sceptically how we could be sure that second-generation al-Qaeda operatives were not being recruited and trained more quickly than we were killing and arresting first-generation members. In Singapore, in June this year, he admitted that the US lacked a coherent long-term strategy to prevail in the war on terror. Mr Rumsfeld`s ruminations foreshadowed the often-overlooked arguments on the same subject of the commission on September 11 2001.

Now consider Mr Cheney`s views. He has consistently mocked Mr Kerry`s call, in a speech this summer, for a more sensitive war on terror. Some might counter that Mr Cheney is just jumping at an easy political opening; Mr Kerry probably regrets using that word and certainly did not use it again in his first debate with George W. Bush last Thursday. But the vice-president`s unwillingness to view the terrorism threat as anything but a military, intelligence and law enforcement problem is striking. The Washington Post has noted that his standard stump speech includes the following line: This is not an enemy we can reason with, or negotiate with, or appease. This is, to put it simply, an enemy that we must destroy. That is the extent of the vice-president`s thinking on the subject - at least based on his public utterances.

There is no doubt Mr Cheney is right on existing al-Qaeda members. They must be annihilated. But there is little doubt that he is wrong, or at least irrelevant, in regard to the second-generation problem. How can we prevent the disaffected, unemployed 16-year-old boy in a Pakistani madrasa, Saudi extremist mosque or Moroccan slum from giving in to the hateful propaganda of his surroundings and taking up arms against the west in the future? The vice-president has no answer. He does not even seem to recognise the importance of the question.

The Bush administration has done a few things to address the longer-term and more political aspects of the war on terror. But they have been too little too late. Belated efforts to promote Middle East peace talks have not overcome the widespread impression among Arabs that we are blindly supportive of Ariel Sharon, Israel`s prime minister, and right-wing settlers. Efforts to promote democracy in places such as Saudi Arabia have gone as fast as can be expected - but the slow and halting pace of any such reforms and the inherently limited American role in them mean that they cannot suffice as a counterterror policy. New Arabic-language radio and TV from the US, while a good idea, cannot be more credible than the government funding them.

Much more is needed. As Mr Kerry and Mr Edwards have been arguing, educational reform in the Islamic world needs to be a top priority, with lots of US dollars promised to those who need the assistance and will work with us. Bold educational initiatives are needed in the US too, not to understand the terrorists but to prepare a generation of Americans with many more Arabic speakers and Islam experts so that we can improve our diplomatic and intelligence capacities. There is a need for much more visible public diplomacy, too. It should use internet technology to expand facilities such as the cultural centres in the Islamic world that used to be run by the US Information Agency.

We should also initiate a new form of summitry. Not just heads of state, but journalists, scholars, historians and opposition politicians from all sides should be part of the dialogue. Ideally, such summits would be frequent - and televised. The goal would be to air grievances, inform publics, debate policy solutions and --break down communications barriers between Muslims and westerners.

Clearly this is just a start. A serious Middle East peace plan and a regional trade initiative are among the other elements that any such platform requires. But what is needed most of all is a commitment to the challenge and a recognition that American foreign policy must now be organised in large part around the avoidance of a looming clash of civilisations with a Muslim world of 1.2bn people. Anyone viewing the terror problem clearly, as Mr Rumsfeld has but Mr Cheney has not, must recognise a fundamental fact: we will not be secure as long as we are so widely and bitterly hated around the Islamic world.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington

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Robertson: If Bush `touches` Jerusalem, we`ll form 3rd party
Daphna Berman

Haaretz

Tishrei 20, 5765

Influential American evangelist Pat Robertson said Monday that Evangelical Christians feel so deeply about Jerusalem, that if President George W. Bush were to "touch" Jerusalem, Evangelicals would abandon their traditional Republican leanings and form a third party.

Evangelical Christians - estimated at tens of millions of Americans - overwhelmingly support Bush for his pro-Israel policies, Robertson told a Jerusalem news conference Monday.

But if Bush shifted his position toward support for Jerusalem as a capital for both Israel and a Palestinian state, his Evangelical backing would disappear, Robertson indicated.

"The President has backed away from [the road map], but if he were to touch Jerusalem, he`d lose all Evangelical support," Robertson said. "Evangelicals would form a third party" because, though people "don`t know about" Gaza, Jerusalem is an entirely different matter.

Robertson, an outspoken supporter of Israel who is in the country to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles, also added that visitors to Israel should not be overly critical of the government`s political decisions.

He has refrained from overtly criticizing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon`s disengagement plan and says only that he hopes the "Israeli people will make the right decision" in matters of territorial concessions.

"It is unwise for a visitor from America to get involved in Israeli politics," he stated at a press conference in the capital`s International Convention Center.

Together with an estimated 5,000 Christians from around the world, Robertson has been touring the Holy Land this week, in effort to support and pray for the people of Israel. He led a prayer service on Sunday outside the Knesset, where he blasted Hezbollah, Hamas, and the idea of jihad.

"Arab nations want a conflict and want to keep the suffering of people in Gaza," he said. "They don`t want peace; they want the destruction of Israel."

Robertson urged that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) be abolished, given what he called the organization`s active role in the "perpetuation" of the Palestinian refugee problem. He warned that a Palestinian state would become "a constant source of irritation" that would "endanger the territorial integrity" of Israel.

"A Palestinian state with full sovereignty would be a launching ground for various types of weapons, including weapons of mass destruction," the former presidential candidate said.

Thousands of Christians march for Jerusalem
As many as 20,000 marchers were expected to take part in the annual Jerusalem March procession, which was to pass through the heart of the city on Monday the afternoon, among them thousands of Evangelicals and other Christians.

Police officials began closing streets at 1:30 P.M. to allow marchers to pass. Among the central Jerusalem traffic arteries closed, either fully or in sections, were Ben-Zvi, Bezalel, Ben-Yehuda, King George, Jaffa, Shlomzion HaMalka, Koresh, Azza, Agron, Menashe Ben-Israel, HaEmek, HaRav Kook, Havatzelet, Heleni HaMalka, Histadrut, Shammai and Hillel Streets.

Most of the streets were to have been re-opened by 5:30 P.M.

In a gathering of more than 4,000 pilgrims at a Jerusalem convention center Sunday, Robertson warned that some Muslims were trying to foil "God`s plan" to let Israel hold on to its lands. The number of pilgrims was about 25 percent higher than the past three years, according to organizers with the International Christian Embassy.

"I see the rise of Islam to destroy Israel and take the land from the Jews and give East Jerusalem to [Palestinian Authority Chairman] Yasser Arafat. I see that as Satan`s plan to prevent the return of Jesus Christ the Lord," said Robertson, a Christian broadcaster.

In two Jerusalem appearances, Robertson Sunday praised Israel as part of God`s plan and criticized Arab countries and some Muslims, saying their hopes to include Israeli-controlled land in a Palestinian state are part of "Satan`s plan."

Robertson, who has made critical statements of Islam in the past, called Israel`s Arab neighbors "a sea of dictatorial regimes."

He said he "sends notice" to Osama bin Laden, Arafat and Palestinian militant groups that "you will not frustrate God`s plan" to have Jews rule the Holy Land until the Second Coming of Jesus.

Only God should decide if Israel should relinquish control of the lands it captured in the 1967 war, including the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem, Robertson said, in a reference to Sharon`s plan to pull out of Gaza next year.

"God says, `I`m going to judge those who carve up the West Bank and Gaza Strip,`" Robertson said. "`It`s my land and keep your hands off it.`"

Blowing rams` horns and exclaiming "Hallelujah," hundreds of pilgrims - including visitors from Norway, England and Germany - gathered in downtown Jerusalem to pray for peace and celebrate Israel`s unification of the city with the capture of East Jerusalem in 1967.

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Clay Bennett Cartoons
www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2004 The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.christiansciencemonitor.com/news/clayLatest15.htm…

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Patrick Cockburn: Elections will not end the fighting in Iraq
Against a countrywide rebellion, the capturing of Samarra is a bloody, but largely useless, gesture
Patrick Cockburn

The Independent

05 October 2004

American generals in Iraq triumphantly announced at the weekend that they had successfully taken over Samarra and killed 125 insurgents. They failed to mention that this is the third time they have captured this particular city on the Tigris river north of Baghdad in the past 18 months.

The campaign to eliminate the no-go areas under rebel control in Iraq is getting into full swing. Fallujah is being bombed every night and may soon be subjected to ground assault. Najaf was recaptured from Shia militiamen in August and much of the city is in ruins.

The current US military campaign is very much geared to getting President George Bush reelected to the White House in November. The aim of the bombing is to prove to American voters that their army is on the offensive, but without substantially increasing US casualties.

The situation on the ground in Iraq is far worse than what is portrayed by the media. Ironically, this is because it is now so dangerous for journalists and television crews to leave their heavily guarded hotels in Baghdad that they cannot refute claims by the American and British governments that much of Iraq is safe.

Nothing could be more untrue. I have spent most of the past year-and-a-half travelling in Iraq, and I have never known it so bad. The roads all around Baghdad are cut by insurgents. At Mahmoudiyah, just south of the capital, rebels in black masks felt confident enough last week to establish a checkpoint on the main road to Najaf.

In Baghdad, US planes regularly bomb Sadr City, home to two million out of the capital`s five million people. Haifa Street, a resistance bastion 400 yards from the Green Zone where American generals give relentlessly upbeat briefings, can only be entered by US heavy armour supported by helicopters.

The creation of the no-go zones around Baghdad was largely the consequence of the way in which US strategy is dictated by the electoral needs of President Bush. The US marine commander in charge of western Iraq in April says it was against his advice that Fallujah was first besieged on orders from above. The siege enraged the Sunni Arab community in Iraq. The marine attack was then called off after a few days, again apparently on orders from the White House because it did not want Iraq leading the television news night after night.

The conquest of cities like Fallujah, Ramadi, Samarra and Baquba will not end the insurrection. In recent months, there have been more attacks on US troops and Iraqi security forces elsewhere in Iraq than in the original centres of the rebellion. In Mosul, the northern capital, the Iraqi police even contribute part of their salary to the resistance.

The upsurge in rebel attacks is being portrayed in London and Washington as an attempt to sabotage the Iraqi elections in January. There is no reason to think that the impending polls in Iraq have any connection with the increasing violence. The insurrection is spreading each month under its own momentum. It does so because the dominant fact in Iraqi politics is the overwhelming unpopularity of the US occupation.

One of the last opinion polls taken by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority this summer showed that just 2 per cent of Iraqi Arabs (Kurds were not included) supported the occupation. There is nothing surprising in this. How many foreign occupations are popular?

The Iraqi Sunni and Shia communities may have their differences, as do the Islamic militants and nationalists, but they hate the US army more than they hate each other. One Shia leader told me how in his city, Kerbala, the Shia radical Muqtada Sadr is deeply unpopular. But when a US helicopter dropped leaflets in Arabic denouncing him, local people rushed out and burned them. They would not be told by a foreign invader what to think about one of their own.

If an election is held in January, it will not end the fighting. If the Sunni Muslims do not take part, but the Shia and Kurds do, then Iraq will be even more divided. A great number of Iraqis also believes that you simply cannot have a free and fair election with 138,000 US troops in the country.

The system of voting has also been skewed towards producing a photocopy of the interim government and the parties of former exiles which compose it. A voter will cast his ballot for a central list of parties. The parties will then be allocated seats in a legislative assembly proportionate to their percentage of the overall vote.

The problem is that the Iraqi political parties are imported and are generally unpopular. Only the Kurdish parties have real roots. The Shia parties will come together - possibly including Muqtada Sadr - and Iyad Allawi, the prime minister, will ally himself with the Kurds. Many local leaders will not stand.

Any Iraqi politician who wants a long-term future in his country will have to demonstrate that he is playing a role in ending the US occupation. Those who do not will end up in exile or worse. Capturing cities like Samarra might be a sign of progress if the US were combating isolated bands of insurgents, but against a countrywide rebellion it is a bloody, but largely useless, gesture.

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Bei den christlichen Hardliners in den USA liegt die Hauptursache für die kritiklose Unterstützung der olitik Sharons durch Bush.

An unholy alliance with the Christian right
Akiva Eldar

Haaretz

The annual conference of the powerful pro-Israel AIPAC lobby in June disproved the conspiracy theory that claimed the Jews persuaded President Bush to conquer Iraq. According to the same theory, the lobby is now pressing him not to present the road map to put an end to the Israeli occupation of the territories.

On the first day of the AIPAC convention, a man named Gary Bauer took the podium. He reminded the cheering thousands that God gave the Land of Israel to the Jewish people and, therefore, there is an absolute ban on giving it to another people. Bauer is not a member of the National Religious Party, nor of the Likud central committee. He`s not even Jewish. He is a leading preacher from the Christian right in America, one of those who believe the Jews are The Chosen People and one day will even choose the right messiah. Bauer is a leading spokesman for arch-conservative policies, including a total ban on all abortions and favoring government funding for religious schools.

These are the people generating the spiritual energy fueling George Bush`s war on global terrorism. Evangelist Christians from South Carolina paid for the huge billboard on the Ayalon Highway declaring "There`s no land for peace." TV evangelist Pat Robertson last week reprimanded Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, saying "Who do you think you are, handing Jerusalem over to Arafat?"

With Christian friends like these close to the president`s ear, the right-wing government in Israel does not need Jewish friends to rebuff political initiatives like the road map. But the Jewish activists are not giving up. The religious sources of the values that drive the Christian right are not preventing some Jewish organizations from turning them into a natural ally. Among those organizations are some that only a decade ago were thriving by exposing the anti-Semitic sloganeering in the sermons of some of their newfound friends.

This coming Passover, those Jews will devotedly recite "Next year in Jerusalem rebuilt," and a few might even do so from one of the hotels in the capital, which have been empty for the last two years. Those same activists joining the crusade against renewal of the political negotiations and against a settlement freeze know what a bloody price Israel is paying for the conflict in the territories. They are familiar with the ominous economic data threatening the social stability of their beloved country. They all understand that by the end of this decade, the Jews will become a minority between the Jordan and Mediterranean.

So what drives these Jewish professionals? A new poll for one of the Jewish organizations shows that their policy does not represent the Jewish street in America. According to this poll, 63 percent of American Jewry supports active involvement by the U.S. administration in the peace process. This could confirm the assessment of one senior Israeli diplomat, who noted that the name Jay Fielder, a young Jewish football player, is much better known to American Jews than that of Malcolm Hoenlein, the eternal executive vice-chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

It is not because, as in Israel, the majority supports left-wing concessions but allows the political leadership to lead right-wing policies. The big difference between the two communities remains that Israeli Jews get blown up in buses, their sons have to guard settlers and their grandchildren can expect to grow up in a binational state or an apartheid regime. If it is difficult for those American Jewish busybodies to push the president and Congress into the cold water of the peace process, presumably one could expect they not try to force the administration to go in the opposite direction. They even have the right to draw fire to the Jews over the Iraq war, but they do not have the right to block even the slightest chance for peace here.

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Das ist heute ein Freudentag für xylo und Spicault u.a.
Heute sind in den USA zwei neue Bücher von Michael Moore rausgekommen, aus dem einen Buch Auszüge in dem Artikel aus dem Guardian.
Dann ist heute sein Film Fahrenheit 9/11 auf DVD erschienen.
Darauf kann sich W einen doppelten Gin genehmigen!

Dear Mike, Iraq sucks

Civilian contractors are fleecing taxpayers; US troops don`t have proper equipment; and supposedly liberated Iraqis hate them. After the release of Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore received a flood of letters and emails from disillusioned and angry American soldiers serving in Iraq. Here, in an exclusive extract from his new book, we print a selection
Michael Moore
Tuesday October 5, 2004

The Guardian
From: RH
To: [e-mail]
Sent: Monday, July 12, 2003 4:57 PM
Subject: Iraqi freedom veteran supports you
Dear Mr Moore,
I went to Iraq with thoughts of killing people who I thought were horrible. I was like, "Fuck Iraq, fuck these people, I hope we kill thousands." I believed my president. He was taking care of business and wasn`t going to let al Qaeda push us around. I was with the 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry, 3rd Infantry division out of Fort Stewart, Georgia. My unit was one of the first to Baghdad. I was so scared. Didn`t know what to think. Seeing dead bodies for the first time. People blown in half. Little kids with no legs. It was overwhelming, the sights, sounds, fear. I was over there from Jan`03 to Aug`03. I hated every minute. It was a daily battle to keep my spirits up. I hate the army and my job. I am supposed to get out next February but will now be unable to because the asshole in the White House decided that now would be a great time to put a stop-loss in effect for the army. So I get to do a second tour in Iraq and be away from those I love again because some guy has the audacity to put others` lives on the line for his personal war. I thought we were the good guys.
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From: Michael W
Sent: Tuesday July 13 2004 12.28pm
Subject: Dude, Iraq sucks

My name is Michael W and I am a 30-year-old National Guard infantryman serving in southeast Baghdad. I have been in Iraq since March of 04 and will continue to serve here until March of 05.

In the few short months my unit has been in Iraq, we have already lost one man and have had many injured (including me) in combat operations. And for what? At the very least, the government could have made sure that each of our vehicles had the proper armament to protect us soldiers.

In the early morning hours of May 10, one month to the day from my 30th birthday, I and 12 other men were attacked in a well-executed roadside ambush in south-east Baghdad. We were attacked with small-arms fire, a rocket-propelled grenade, and two well-placed roadside bombs. These roadside bombs nearly destroyed one of our Hummers and riddled my friends with shrapnel, almost killing them. They would not have had a scratch if they had the "Up Armour" kits on them. So where was [George] W [Bush] on that one?

It`s just so ridiculous, which leads me to my next point. A Blackwater contractor makes $15,000 [£8,400] a month for doing the same job as my pals and me. I make about $4,000 [£2,240] a month over here. What`s up with that?

Beyond that, the government is calling up more and more troops from the reserves. For what? Man, there is a huge fucking scam going on here! There are civilian contractors crawling all over this country. Blackwater, Kellogg Brown & Root, Halliburton, on and on. These contractors are doing everything you can think of from security to catering lunch!

We are spending money out the ass for this shit, and very few of the projects are going to the Iraqi people. Someone`s back is getting scratched here, and it ain`t the Iraqis`!

My life is left to chance at this point. I just hope I come home alive.

From: Specialist Willy
Sent: Tuesday March 9 2004 1.23pm
Subject: Thank you

Mike, I`d like to thank you for all of the support you`re showing for the soldiers here in Iraq. I am in Baghdad right now, and it`s such a relief to know that people still care about the lemmings who are forced to fight in this conflict.

It`s hard listening to my platoon sergeant saying, "If you decide you want to kill a civilian that looks threatening, shoot him. I`d rather fill out paperwork than get one of my soldiers killed by some raghead." We are taught that if someone even looks threatening we should do something before they do something to us. I wasn`t brought up in fear like that, and it`s going to take some getting used to.

It`s also very hard talking to people here about this war. They don`t like to hear that the reason they are being torn away from their families is bullshit, or that their "president" doesn`t care about them. A few people here have become quite upset with me, and at one point I was going to be discharged for constantly inciting arguments and disrespect to my commander-in-chief (Dubya). It`s very hard to be silenced about this when I see the same 150 people every day just going through the motions, not sure why they are doing it.

[ Willy sent an update in early August ]

People`s perceptions of this war have done a complete 180 since we got here. We had someone die in a mortar attack the first week, and ever since then, things have changed completely. Soldiers are calling their families urging them to support John Kerry. If this is happening elsewhere, it looks as if the overseas military vote that Bush is used to won`t be there this time around.
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From: Kyle Waldman
Sent: Friday February 27 2004 2.35am
Subject: None

As we can all obviously see, Iraq was not and is not an imminent threat to the United States or the rest of the world. My time in Iraq has taught me a little about the Iraqi people and the state of this war-torn, poverty-stricken country.

The illiteracy rate in this country is phenomenal. There were some farmers who didn`t even know there was an Operation Iraqi Freedom. This was when I realised that this war was initiated by the few who would profit from it and not for its people. We, as the coalition forces, did not liberate these people; we drove them even deeper into poverty. I don`t foresee any economic relief coming soon to these people by the way Bush has already diverted its oil revenues to make sure there will be enough oil for our SUVs.

We are here trying to keep peace when all we have been trained for is to destroy. How are 200,000 soldiers supposed to take control of this country? Why didn`t we have an effective plan to rebuild Iraq`s infrastructure? Why aren`t the American people more aware of these atrocities?

My fiancee and I have seriously looked into moving to Canada as political refugees.

From: Anonymous
Sent: Thursday April 15 2004 12.41am
Subject: From KBR truck driver now in Iraq

Mike, I am a truck driver right now in Iraq. Let me give you this one small fact because I am right here at the heart of it: since I started this job several months ago, 100% (that`s right, not 99%) of the workers I am aware of are inflating the hours they claim on their time sheets. There is so much more I could tell you. But the fact is that MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of dollars are being raped from both the American taxpayers and the Iraqi people because of the unbelievable amount of greed and abuse over here. And yes, my conscience does bother me because I am participating in this rip-off.

From: Andrew Balthazor
Sent: Friday August 27 2004 1.53pm
Subject: Iraqi war vet - makes me sound so old

Mr Moore, I am an ex-military intelligence officer who served 10 months in Baghdad; I was the senior intelligence officer for the area of Baghdad that included the UN HQ and Sadr City.

Since Bush exposed my person and my friends, peers, and subordinates to unnecessary danger in a war apparently designed to generate income for a select few in the upper echelon of America, I have become wholeheartedly anti-Bush, to the chagrin of much of my pro-Republican family.

As a "foot soldier" in the "war on terror" I can personally testify that Bush`s administration has failed to effectively fight terrorists or the root causes of terror. The White House and the DoD failed to plan for reconstruction of Iraq. Contracts weren`t tendered until Feb-Mar of 2003, and the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (the original CPA) didn`t even come into existence until January 2003. This failure to plan for the "peace" is a direct cause for the insecurity of Iraq today.

Immediately after the "war" portion of the fighting (which really ended around April 9 2003), we should have been prepared to send in a massive reconstruction effort. Right away we needed engineers to diagnose problems, we needed contractors repairing problems, we needed immediate food, water, shelter, and fuel for the Iraqi people, and we needed more security for all of this to work - which we did not have because we did not have enough troops on the ground, and CPA decided to disband the Iraqi army. The former Iraqi police were engaged far too late; a plan should have existed to bring them into the fold right away.

I`ve left the military. If there is anything I can do to help get Bush out of office, let me know.

From: Anthony Pietsch
Sent: Thursday August 5 2004 6.13pm
Subject: Soldier for sale

Dear Mr Moore, my name is Tony Pietsch, and I am a National Guardsman who has been stationed in Kuwait and Iraq for the past 15 months. Along with so many other guard and reserve units, my unit was put on convoy escorts. We were on gun trucks running from the bottom of Iraq to about two hours above Baghdad.

The Iraqi resistance was insanity. I spent many nights lying awake after mortar rounds had just struck areas nearby, some coming close enough to throw rocks against my tent. I`ve seen roadside bombs go off all over, Iraqis trying to ram the side of our vehicle. Small children giving us the finger and throwing rocks at the soldiers in the turrets. We were once lost in Baghdad and received nothing but dirty looks and angry gestures for hours.

I have personally been afraid for my life more days than I can count. We lost our first man only a few weeks before our tour was over, but it seems that all is for nothing because all we see is hostility and anger over our being there. They are angry over the abuse scandal and the collateral damages that are always occurring.

I don`t know how the rest of my life will turn out, but I truly regret being a 16-year-old kid looking for some extra pocket money and a way to college.
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From: Sean Huze
Sent: Sunday March 28 2004 7.56pm
Subject: "Dude, Where`s My Country?"

I am an LCPL in the US Marine Corps and veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Mr Moore, please keep pounding away at Bush. I`m not some pussy when it comes to war. However, the position we were put in - fighting an enemy that used women, children, and other civilians as shields; forcing us to choose between firing at "area targets" (nice way of saying firing into crowds) or being killed by the bastards using the crowds for cover - is indescribably horrible.

I saw more than a few dead children littering the streets in Nasiriyah, along with countless other civilians. And through all this, I held on to the belief that it had to be for some greater good.

Months have passed since I`ve been back home and the unfortunate conclusion I`ve come to is that Bush is a lying, manipulative motherfucker who cares nothing for the lives of those of us who serve in uniform. Hell, other than playing dress-up on aircraft carriers, what would he know about serving this nation in uniform?

His silence and refusal to speak under oath to the 9/11 Commission further mocks our country. The Patriot Act violates every principle we fight and die for. And all of this has been during his first term. Can you imagine his policies when he doesn`t have to worry about re-election? We can`t allow that to happen, and there are so many like me in the military who feel this way. We were lied to and used. And there aren`t words to describe the sense of betrayal I feel as a result.

From: Joseph Cherwinski
Sent: Saturday July 3 2004 8.33pm
Subject: "Fahrenheit 9/11"

I am a soldier in the United States army. I was in Iraq with the Fourth Infantry Division.

I was guarding some Iraqi workers one day. Their task was to fill sandbags for our base. The temperature was at least 120. I had to sit there with full gear on and monitor them. I was sitting and drinking water, and I could barely tolerate the heat, so I directed the workers to go to the shade and sit and drink water. I let them rest for about 20 minutes. Then a staff sergeant told me that they didn`t need a break, and that they were to fill sandbags until the cows come home. He told the Iraqis to go back to work.

After 30 minutes, I let them have a break again, thus disobeying orders. If these were soldiers working, in this heat, those soldiers would be bound to a 10-minute work, 50-minute rest cycle, to prevent heat casualties. Again the staff sergeant came and sent the Iraqis back to work and told me I could sit in the shade. I told him no, I had to be out there with them so that when I started to need water, then they would definitely need water. He told me that wasn`t necessary, and that they live here, and that they are used to it.

After he left, I put the Iraqis back into the shade. I could tell that some were very dehydrated; most of them were thin enough to be on an international food aid commercial. I would not treat my fellow soldiers in this manner, so I did not treat the Iraqi workers this way either.

This went on for eight months while I was in Iraq, and going through it told me that we were not there for their freedom, we were not there for WMD. We had no idea what we were fighting for anymore.

Will They Ever Trust Us Again? Letters from the Warzone to Michael Moore by Michael Moore, to be published by Allen Lane on October 7 at £12.99. Copyright © Michael Moore 2004. To order a copy for £12.34 with free UK p&p, call the Guardian Book Service on 0870 836 0875, or go to www.guardian.co.uk/bookshop.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Lining Up for Dangerous Work
Desperate Iraqi men covet jobs in the security forces, despite carnage at recruitment centers.
By Ashraf Khalil
Times Staff Writer

October 5, 2004

BAGHDAD — Two weeks ago, 25-year-old Maysan was heading to a police recruiting station on Haifa Street when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden car near a long line of aspiring officers. The blast killed 47 people and wounded 114.

Maysan, who arrived after the blast, recalled scraping the remains of some would-be recruits into banana crates. The next day, he returned to the police academy — to apply again, he said.

"Why should I worry?" he asked with a shrug last week, standing in the shade outside another recruiting center in the Dora district of the capital. "God will protect us."

Hundreds of potential recruits have been killed in attack after attack by insurgents, but the spiraling body count has failed to scare away large numbers of young men, who still line up to join Iraq`s nascent security forces. On Monday morning, a car bomb outside a recruiting center in Baghdad killed at least 15 Iraqis and wounded 80. Most of them were aspiring officers.

Iraqi officials boast that applicants for positions with the police and national guard far exceed vacancies. A Western diplomat in Baghdad marveled at the "high societal threshold for pain" that keeps the recruits coming back.

But many young Iraqis say they flock to recruiting stations not because they`re brave or patriotic. Applying to the police and guard merely offers them a chance to join one of the few paid occupations in the country.

"It`s either the army or the police, or you become a thief," said Jaafar, a 31-year-old applicant who, like Maysan and others, declined to give his full name.

Survivors of Monday`s attack said high unemployment left them little choice but to line up for police work.

"We have become stuck between the hammer of unemployment and the anvil of terrorism," said Riyadh Mehdi Salman, who traveled from the southern town of Nasiriya to apply. "We all know that several explosions targeted these centers, and even when we join our posts, we will be targeted as well, but we have no other choice."

U.S. and Iraqi officials are pushing hard to boost the ranks of the security forces to ease the burden on the 138,000 American troops in Iraq. The U.S. military hopes to have more than 60,000 police officers on duty before the elections planned for January.

The Iraqi police force now has 40,000 officers, but fewer than a quarter have taken the full eight-week training course. The rest have been given a three-week "transition integration program," a U.S. military official said.

A U.S. military official said militants had killed at least 700 members of Iraq`s security forces since Jan. 1. Many of the 35 insurgent car bombings in September targeted security forces and would-be recruits.

The crowds outside recruiting centers provide easy targets for militants, who are almost guaranteed carnage when they detonate their bombs.

Applicants who do get jobs find themselves in the crosshairs of insurgents who see them as collaborators with the Americans.

Recruits acknowledge that working as police officers carries risks, but they are quick to point out that ordinary Iraqis endure a steady wave of kidnappings, suicide bombings and intense clashes between guerrillas and U.S.-led forces.

"All of Iraq is dangerous. Life is dangerous. What`s the difference?" said Uday, 27, one of several men gathered outside a recruiting center in the former mansion of Khayrallah Tulfah, a relative of deposed President Saddam Hussein.

Recently, Iraqi officials have sought to protect would-be officers from attacks by reducing the number of recruiting stations and varying locations and dates. For example, the recruiting station in the former mansion was open for only three days. It is expected to reopen in several weeks. Recruiters plan to give applicants short notice before showing up, to avoid tipping off attackers.

At a recent recruiting session at Tulfah`s former home, Iraqi national guardsmen patrolled the entry road in pickup trucks mounted with guns.

American soldiers positioned their tanks closer to the mansion. Soldiers passed out MREs (meals ready to eat) and packs of cigarettes bearing stickers urging smokers to report suspicious activities to a counterinsurgency hotline.

Uday and his companions arrived after recruiters had selected 120 applicants and then slammed the doors shut. They were lured by the prospect of earning $220 a month, a living wage in Iraq. Despite the locked doors, the other hopefuls waited outside, clutching pink folders that contained their applications.

"Maybe they`ll need another person or two," Uday said.

Before the U.S.-led invasion, Uday worked as a commercial photographer in a Baghdad studio. Maysan, balding and with a droopy mustache, was in nursing school. Another applicant said he was a vegetable farmer who was driven to the recruitment line after his business failed amid a lack of seed and pesticide subsidies after Hussein`s regime fell.

The young men said they had never previously thought of joining the police and planned to return to their former professions "after the situation calms down," as Uday put it.

Sabah Kadhim, an Interior Ministry spokesman, credited the glut of aspiring officers to a recruiting drive launched by the interim government after the U.S. restored Iraqi sovereignty in June. Kadhim said many Iraqis wanted to help stabilize the country in order to speed the withdrawal of coalition forces.

"They see that the sooner we get our own forces going, the sooner the multinational forces can go home."

But Kadhim acknowledged that "a sense of desperation" fueled much of the recruiting program. "The fact that they might die doesn`t really worry" recruits.

The rush has reportedly slowed amid a government campaign to weed out criminals, incompetent officers and those with links to the insurgency.

Kadhim denied media reports that as many as 30,000 police officers were being fired, with payoffs to ensure they didn`t join the resistance. He acknowledged that the security forces were reviewing their enrollment but said it was being done in an ad hoc manner from province to province.

"We continue to recruit, and we continue to sack people," he said.

Indeed, successful applicants are not guaranteed a lengthy tenure, for various reasons. Standing outside the Dora recruiting center, Qassim Mohammed grimaced as he tasted an MRE of salsa cheese spread, tossing the package behind him. He recounted that he was a member of the national guard`s first class of recruits.

But shortly after joining, the 22-year-old said, he began receiving death threats. A letter slipped under his door urged him to quit.

"We know you," it read. "You`re a son of the area. We know your family."

He kept the job until several men stopped him on his way home from work, pointed an assault rifle at him and offered him a last chance to quit.

"I walked straight back to the base and turned in my ID," he said. The men who threatened his life "drove me home from the base."

Asked what he would do if the same thing happened after he joined the police, Mohammed said, "I`d quit again."






Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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ROBERT SCHEER
Buck Stops in the Voting Booth
ROBERT SCHEER

October 5, 2004

It is difficult for members of the U.S. Senate, where even the best are uncommonly proud, to admit that they are not always in the know. Perhaps that explains why Sen. John Kerry did not object in the first presidential debate when George W. Bush twice claimed that the two men had "looked at the same intelligence" on Iraq before the war when, in fact, they hadn`t.

The reality is that the Bush White House deceived Kerry and the rest of Congress by exaggerating and distorting intelligence and by systematically repressing analysis that contradicted its claim that Iraq posed a clear and imminent danger to the American people — especially regarding its most alarming conclusion, that Iraq had restarted its nuclear weapons program.

The Iraqi nukes snow job, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, national security advisor Condoleezza Rice and the president himself, was alarmingly effective because it conflated highly technical jargon and teasing hints at classified information with the most fearsome image in the modern psyche: the mushroom cloud.

"We do know that there have been shipments … into Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes that really are only suited … for nuclear weapons programs," Rice said on CNN on Sept. 8, 2002. Three days later, Bush said basically the same thing to the U.N. General Assembly.

Now a detailed investigative article in Sunday`s New York Times clarifies and reinforces earlier reports that the administration knew this evidence was being aggressively debunked by the country`s leading experts but the White House kept that criticism from Congress and the public by invoking national security.

The administration knew the facts, even as it was energetically leaking a raft of intelligence flotsam that buttressed its propaganda that Iraq posed an immediate threat to the world.

It is crucial to remember that the tale of the tubes was once the foundation of the "irrefutable evidence" Cheney cited when asserting that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding a nuclear weapons program dismantled by a decade of war, inspections and sanctions. He knew that the possibility of Hussein having nukes was the key to elevating Iraq from being a mere irritant to the United States to an actual threat, and this explains why the administration was willing to put so much public faith in such astonishingly weak intelligence.

For her part, Rice admitted Sunday on ABC-TV`s "This Week" that, before making her now-infamous remark in 2002 that "we don`t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," she knew there was a debate about the tubes between the CIA and experts at the Energy Department. However, she admitted, "I actually didn`t really know the nature of the dispute."

And when then-CIA chief George Tenet was successfully pressured in the fall of 2002 by a nervous White House to buck up congressional support for an Iraq invasion by creating an unclassified summary of intelligence on the Iraq threat, the agency flat-out lied: "All intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons and that these tubes could be used in a centrifuge enrichment program."

In hindsight, as the New York Times makes clear, the opposite was true. The Energy Department experts who formed what the Times refers to as "unambiguously the A-Team of the intelligence community" on matters of nuclear centrifuges took a close look at the frightening claims first made by an aggressive junior CIA agent and declared them "unlikely," noting that "a rocket production is the much more likely end use for these tubes."

That is exactly what the international inspectors found when they returned to Iraq before a war-hungry Bush pulled the plug on their nearly completed mission. "After three months of intrusive inspections, we have, to date, found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq," stated the International Atomic Energy Agency on March 7, 2003, just weeks before the U.S. and Britain bypassed the U.N. and invaded Iraq. Yet, rather than admit that he bent the facts to fit the narrative of fear he was pressing on the American people, the president now blames the CIA, his predecessor, his opponents — anybody but himself and his national security team. He carps constantly that, because others were duped, he shouldn`t be blamed.



If the buck does not stop with the commander in chief, where does it stop? With the American voters on Nov. 2.




Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/193695_means05.html

Darth Cheney meets Luke Edwards

Tuesday, October 5, 2004

By MARIANNE MEANS
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

WASHINGTON -- With voters still digesting the first presidential debate, the political focus quickly now moves to the only debate between the second bananas.

It happens tonight in Cleveland.

There is no evidence that vice presidents help their tickets very much, although an unwise choice has been known to hurt. Yet the Constitution requires a buddy backup for governmental continuity in case the president is disabled and unable to function. And as the candidate`s first major public decision, it usually provides a useful clue to his character.

This time, both presidential candidates chose the most obvious running mate. President Bush stuck with his current vice president, a longtime adviser, despite his controversial role in invading Iraq.

Sen. John Kerry went through an intensive vetting process before settling on a former competitor who proved popular with voters during the Democratic primaries and showed a lot of verve on the stump.

The contrast between the personalities and policies of dour Vice President Dick Cheney, 63, and his Democratic rival, sunny Sen. John Edwards, 51, is stark.

It`s Darth Vader versus Luke Skywalker. Experience and extremism against youthful optimism.

Bambi, however, has been sharpening his teeth lately and turns out to have been underestimated as a sweet, naive guy who cannot compete with the more ruthless Cheney. After all, Edwards made his fortune as a trial lawyer, winning millions from high-powered crumbums who wronged children and other innocent victims. This is a man with a quick tongue who can think on his feet under pressure.

After weeks in which Edwards seemed to virtually disappear in the media, he has supplanted his familiar upbeat but unexciting message with sharp words countering Cheney`s attacks -- and has begun to get more media attention.

We`ll see which persona he brings to the debate or whether he can successfully blend the two.

Cheney, meanwhile, continues his role as Bush`s rabid attack dog, refusing to back away from his repeatedly refuted claims that Saddam Hussein had substantial links to al-Qaida and the 9/11 terror attacks and that the violence and chaos in Iraq is coming under control.

Cheney stretches this fantasy scenario further than any other administration official, including the president.

Cheney has also suggested that electing Kerry would invite another terrorist attack because Kerry is too weak and wobbly to root out evil. "I never challenged his patriotism ... I challenge his judgment," Cheney says.

Voters don`t -- or shouldn`t -- buy that. How can charging Kerry with misunderstanding the military threat and wanting a more vulnerable America fail to question his patriotism?

Bush`s improving poll numbers reflect the success of his campaign`s drumbeat of attacks on Kerry`s capacity to protect the country as commander in chief.

The Bush campaign has been able to wrap the mess in Iraq into the overall war on terrorism and give the president good marks for the latter while ignoring the former. Kerry`s campaign has been slow to respond, only recently trying to shift the issue from Kerry`s confusing Senate record to Bush`s own mishandling of the post-Iraq war occupation.

So Edwards has been talking less about his favorite topic, the economy and all-American values, and more about foreign policy, a subject on which his professional credentials are slim. Recently Edwards claimed that "Iraq is a mess," noting that Americans are being kidnapped and beheaded, more than 1,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed, parts of the country are controlled by insurgents and terrorists are "flowing into the country from all over the world."

Edwards was hastily scheduled into a rally last week in New Jersey, a state Democrats had taken for granted, after new polling showed sagging numbers there.

Elizabeth Edwards, the senator`s wife, has also been campaigning. She sees the contrast between her husband and Cheney as that between one who "fought for entrenched interests like Halliburton" and one who "represented working men and women" (in court). Lynn Cheney is no slouch, either. She travels with her husband and pummels Kerry from the right with enthusiasm.

Neither man has the power, acting alone, to sway voters. In some polls, Cheney`s unfavorable ratings are above 50 percent, an astonishingly negative figure. The die-hard GOP partisans, however, love him. His audiences are small and hand-picked.

But Edwards is not benefiting from a positive contrast; less than 50 percent of voters know enough about him to have an opinion. And in North Carolina, his home state, a recent statewide poll indicates his negatives there are at 39 percent, only 2 percent less than Kerry`s. Democrats are no longer optimistic that he can help carry the state.

Tonight`s vice presidential debate should be entertaining, although not in any way decisive.

Marianne Means is a Washington, D.C., columnist with Hearst Newspapers. Copyright 2004 Hearst Newspapers. She can be reached at 202-263-6400 or [e-mail].

© 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Treat Terrorists As The Criminals They Are
VIEW FROM THE LEFT
- Harley Sorensen, Special to SF Gate
Monday, October 4, 2004

Sympathy for the exploitive class is not within the usual range of my emotions, yet I must admit I felt more than a tinge of pity last week as I watch George W. Bush twisting and squirming and praying for rain as he was eaten alive by his more polished debate opponent, John Kerry.

There he was, our "war president," commander-in-chief, POTUS himself, without his cue cards, without his vice president at his side or a military man with a chest full of ribbons, without a press secretary, and, worst of all, without a friendly, slavering audience prepared to clap and cheer wildly at the slightest hint of an applause line.

The absence of that worshipful audience may have been the cruelest blow of all for a man who has been insulated from reality his entire life. More than once I saw him repeat one of his tried and true applause lines and then look up as he waited hopefully for the response. Nothing. He got nothing. And nothing could get a politician defeated in just four short weeks.

When he expected applause and didn`t get it, the look on his face was heart-rending. An audience whipped into respectful silence by Jim Lehrer is a marvel to behold, and such an audience proved devastating for a man whose ego depends on the enforced acceptance of others.

I felt sorry for him.

Bush is a man who has done much wrong in the last 45 months. He has been so wrong so often that, if he were a character in a novel, he would be unbelievable. Imagine, if you will, a fictional president who alienates most of the world, starts an unnecessary war he has no plan to finish, just flat out ignores the threat of global warming, thumbs his nose at medical research, lowers taxes on the rich while the national debt is climbing ... you get the idea. Who would believe such a character exists?

But none of this is what I planned to write about this week. I planned to write about Bush`s insistence that we are fighting a "war" on terror. I see that terminology as yet another of Bush`s mistakes.

In that belief, I am joined by someone far more knowledgeable than myself, retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Samuel V. Wilson.

Gen. Wilson, who lied about his age to join the Army during World War II (he was 16), worked his way up to head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in the late 1970s. After his retirement, he became an educator.

Here`s what Gen. Wilson was quoted as saying by The New York Times on Sept. 11, 2002, one year after the terrorist attacks:

"It`s a pseudo-war, like the war against drugs, or the war against international criminals. It isn`t a war in the classic sense that we understand.

"And when we call it a war against international terrorism, we tend to legitimize someone, when what we need to do is keep them pinned down as cornered criminals, and not give them the status of co-belligerents."

That`s my point. The thugs blowing up women and children and old people are certainly not soldiers. They don`t deserve to be called rebels or insurgents or freedom fighters or even enemy combatants.

They`re just plain criminals, like Richard Allen Davis or Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer.

Those criminals who intentional kill themselves while committing their horrendous crimes, are not brave or heroic. They are stupid. They believe that such suicide will give them eternal grace in an afterlife, but common sense tells me what it ought to tell them, that killing defenseless innocents is not the ticket to glory in any religious belief.

If we claim to be at war with these people, we are, as Gen. Wilson indicated, giving them status they don`t deserve.

The only way we will defeat Islamic-inspired terrorism is to win the hearts and minds of moderate Muslims, by far the majority. When the average Muslims lose their tolerance for the mindless murderers among them, the violence will begin to abate.

George W. Bush, who would like to win the hearts of those who oppose us, expresses some very noble thoughts about winning their hearts, but he seems incapable of backing up those thoughts. In Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance, he wants to install new governments, but they are governments of our choice, not the choice of the Afghans or Iraqis.

He wants to rebuild Iraq, but only if his rich corporate friends can make money in the process.

And so on. That`s why my pity for Bush`s ineptness during last week`s debate was only fleeting. He`s an unfortunate little man, and one can pity him, but that is no reason to keep him on as president.

Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist. His column appears Mondays. E-mail him at [e-mail].


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/200…
©2004 SF Gate

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Die letzten Umfragen.
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Cheney gegen Edwards:
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

Sistani`s Threat: January Elections are a Must

Al-Zaman/DPA: The office of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has issued a demand that free and clean elections be held in every area of Iraq in January. He said that all necessary preparations must be taken to allow them to proceed in security. He warned that the supreme religious leadership would not take it lightly if the elections were postponed. He added that every vote is important, and that it is a religious duty laid upon every adult Muslim (mukallaf) to vote. (This last is the language of Shiite law, which requires that laypersons obey implicitly the Object of Emulation among the grand ayatollahs with regard to religious and ethical obligations. Believers who turn 15 are responsible (mukallaf) for obeying religious law. Sistani is saying that it would be a sin not to vote).

Meanwhile, Muqtada al-Sadr is now indicating once again that he will boycott the elections, since he views them as being held under the auspices of the American occupation.

Sistani`s threat should be taken very seriously. If at any point he despairs of getting what he wants from the Americans, he can single-handedly start an urban revolution against them (see below).

If the elections are held, they will be bloody and turnout will be light, unless the security situation improves markedly. It is a tough one.

posted by Juan @ 10/5/2004 06:40:21 AM

41 Dead, over 100 Wounded
2 US soldiers Killed Sunday

Al-Jazeerah is reporting heavy fighting in the Shiite slums of East Baghdad between US forces and the Mahdi Army of young Shiite clergy Muqtada al-Sadr on Tuesday morning. This follows on US military operations in the ghetto Monday, into Monday evening, as AC-130 howitzers struck repeatedly and tanks rolled in. Sadr City, with over 2 million Shiites, is a major center for the Sadr II Movement, the major leader of which is Muqtada al-Sadr. He has developed a significant paramilitary capacity, though it remains ragtag and poorly trained.

It seems to me that the likelihood that the US can defeat the Sadrists in Sadr City with tanks and AC-130s is extremely low, and that they are almost certainly driving more Shiites into Muqtada`s arms. Since the "Mahdi Army" is really just poor Shiite young men with guns and rpg`s, and since most poor young men have weapons, there are probably a good hundred thousand potential Sadrist fighters in the slum. The US cannot kill more than a small fraction of them if it isn`t going to commit genocide, and the ones it doesn`t kill are probably going to remain angry and take up arms themselves.

Patrick Kerkstra reports that some 40 persons were killed in violence in Iraq on Monday. Guerrillas blew up two massive car bombs in Baghdad, killing 21 and wounding 96. One bomb targeted recruits to the Iraqi army and police, who were lined up near the Green Zone, the barricaded fortress of government offices. Guerrillas detonated the other near the nice hotels that foreigners usually stay in.

Also in Baghdad, guerrillas shot to death two persons working for the Ministry of Science and Technology.

In Mosul, guerrillas used suicide bombs to kill 3 persons.

The US military bombed Fallujah again on Monday, killing 11. Richard Whittle of the Dallas Morning News courageously dares broach the question of whether bombing Iraqi cities is really the best way to win a guerrilla war. There have been few mainstream journalists who have dared raise this question.

I have never understood why it isn`t possible simply to surround Fallujah and prevent the guerrillas there from carrying out operations elsewhere. If what is objectionable is that there are Salafi fundamentalists and Baathists in positions of influence in the city, well, what in the world did the US expect to find in Fallujah?
They certainly cannot all be bombed to death if anything is to remain of the city.

A US military spokesperson said that guerrillas directed small arms fire at two American soldiers at a traffic checkpoint on Sunday, killing them.

Jim Krane of UP divides the insurgency into four groups: Neo-Baathists who want to get power back, radical Islamists influenced by foreign groups like Tawhid wa Jihad, Sunni conservatives, and the Shiite Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr. He notes that they are not united on any policy goals except the expulsion of the US, and puts their number at 20,000. I would dispute that last. The 20,000 guerrillas are the Sunnis. The Mahdi Army is a wild card and cannot be estimated, since it is just however many slum Shiite youth are willing to pick up a gun at any one time. That is, there could be tens of thousands of them under the right circumstances.

I wouldn`t put as much emphasis on Zarqawi as Krane does. Iraqi Muslim radicals don`t need that much coaching. And in an important article by Adrian Blomfield for the Telegraph that has gotten no play in the US, Zarqawi is plausibly portrayed as a "myth" promoted for political purposes by US officials. One US intelligence field officer told Blomfield, "We were basically paying up to $10,000 a time to opportunists, criminals and chancers who passed off fiction and supposition about Zarqawi as cast-iron fact, making him out as the linchpin of just about every attack in Iraq . . ." (Blomfield calls him an "agent," but the agents are the local people that the field officers recruit).

Ahmad Hashem at the Naval War College in Newport, RI has a more extended and detailed analysis of the insurgency.

What I miss in these discussions of the guerrillas, however, is an understanding of their ultimate goal. It is to mobilize the urban masses against the occupation. They cannot win militarily, and can never be more than mosquitos to the US military behemoth in their midst. Only when 70% of Baghdad, Basra, Nasiriyah and other major cities decides that continued US presence is intolerable, and only when they are willing to act on their outrage with huge demonstrations and other crowd actions, will the American position become untenable. All of the guerrillas` actions are aimed at hastening that urban revolution. It is why they target infrastructure, and all the businesses that support it. They want people to be miserable. It is why they blow up big bombs in civilian crowds. They want the masses to decide that the US presence is a constant incitement to violence and therefore must be ended for the sake of ordinary civilians in the country.

Neither the insurgency nor an urban crowd movement would require a single, unified command. As sociologist Charles Tilly has argued, all revolutions are actually multiple revolutions. It is only after the Americans are gone that these various movements would then likely fall upon one another.

posted by Juan @ 10/5/2004 06:30:50 AM

Corruption in the Interim Government
"The Planet`s Supreme Kleptocracy"

An informed reader writes:

` One aspect of the Iraqi reconstruction which hasn`t received sufficient attention is the effect of placing so many exiles and their families and friends in positions of authority through the CPA`s wholesale substitution of these "friendly" Iraqis in place of Baathist professionals throughout the Iraqi government. A former Jordanian taxi driver now holds a senior position in the Ministry of Finance!

My involvement in Iraq through contracts and contacts over the past year has led me to the sad conclusion that the United States has created the planet`s supreme kleptocracy in record time. The exiles have no legitimatacy among native Iraqis, but have the support of our troops. They are using their appointed positions in the ministries to extort enormous bribes either to finance a rapid return to London and New York or to secure enough finance to buy legitimacy in coming elections. Many contracts being awarded in reconstruction programs are to friends and family who invoice for large staffs of non-existent employees and never deliver anything of value.

The elections themselves may well be rigged by recognising overseas Iraqis as being entitled to vote while disenfranchising large segments of the native population.

I wish I could be less pessimistic, but Iraqis are reporting that the situation is ten times worse now that it was even under the CPA in July. The Iraqi interim government accomplishes nothing unless it lines its own pockets. Professionals who survived under Saddam fear the assassination squads serving the rival exile political wannabes in carrying out their jobs.

Meanwhile an Iraqi friend who was recently in Baghdad sadly reported, "The most lasting contribution of the United States will be hundreds of miles of concrete barriers." `



posted by Juan @ [url10/5/2004 06:00:13 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2004_10_01_juancole_archive.html#109690930988639835[/url]

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Hier zur Verwendung der volle Text der Rumsfeldbehauptung. Zu wenig beachtet wird BremersAussage über die falsche Iraknachkriegspolitik.
Schlagzeile der heutigen Post.

Full text: Donald Rumsfeld`s statement

Full text of Donald Rumsfeld`s statement about his comment on links between Iraq and al-Qaida
Tuesday October 5, 2004

The Guardian
A question I answered today at an appearance before the Council on Foreign Relations regarding ties between al-Qaida and Iraq regrettably was misunderstood.

I have acknowledged since September 2002 that there were ties between al-Qaida and Iraq. This assessment was based upon points provided to me by then CIA Director George Tenet to describe the CIA`s understanding of the al-Qaida-Iraq relationship.

Today at the council, I even noted that when I`m in Washington, I pull out a piece of paper and say: "I don`t know, because I`m not in that business, but I`ll tell you what the CIA thinks," and I read it.

The CIA conclusions in that paper, which I discussed in a news conference as far back as September, 2002, note that:

· We do have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al-Qaida members, including some that have been in Baghdad.

· We have what we consider to be very reliable reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida going back a decade, and of possible chemical and biological agent training.

· We have what we believe to be credible information that Iraq and al-Qaida have discussed safe haven opportunities in Iraq.

· We have what we consider to be credible evidence that al-Qaida leaders have sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire weapons of mass destruction capabilities.

· We do have one report indicating that Iraq provided unspecified training relating to chemical and/or biological matters for al-Qaida members.

I should also note that the 9/11 commission report described linkages between al-Qaida and Iraq as well.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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Der WaPost Artikel zu Bremers Kritik an der Nachkriegsirakpolitik steht der Artikel in #22368.
Eine Zwischenbilanz des heutigen Tages aus dem Irak von Reuters.
Yankeedoodles Blogger Seite wird i.A. nicht aktualisiert, da er zu viel zu tun hat s. http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/
http://icasualties.org/oif/ die Opferzahl News Home Page aktualisiert erst später. Die Zahl für Okt.04 hat sich auf 5 erhöht.


Britain`s Straw Visits Iraq Amid Violence
Tue Oct 5, 2004 08:28 AM ET

By Alistair Lyon

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw made a surprise visit to Iraq on Tuesday, with violence and kidnapping overshadowing plans for elections in January.

Straw met Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani in the northern city of Kirkuk for talks on "the challenges ahead from now until the elections," a British embassy spokeswoman said.

A British Foreign Office spokesman said Straw`s visit was not connected to efforts for the release of 62-year-old British engineer Ken Bigley, kidnapped in Baghdad on Sept. 16.

Britain has vowed not to bargain with Bigley`s captors, Islamic militants led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. They have already beheaded two Americans seized with the Briton.

The son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said he was using his charity foundation contacts in Iraq to help free Bigley. He said he believed the next 48 hours would be crucial for the British hostage`s fate.

"We have good contacts in Iraq. We have friends in hospitals, ... tribal leaders and we are talking to them. Today and tomorrow are crucial for him (Bigley)," Saif Gaddafi told a news conference in Vienna.

Straw`s visit to Iraq, his first since November, coincides with a bloody trial of strength between insurgents and U.S.-Iraqi forces trying to stop them from sabotaging the polls.

Three Iraqi civilians were killed and three wounded in the northern city of Mosul when U.S. troops opened fire after a car bomb blast targeting their convoy, witnesses said.

A car bomb exploded near a U.S. convoy in the western city of Ramadi, killing two civilians and wounding at least four.

Three headless bodies, all believed to be Iraqis, have been found dumped separately in Mosul, hospital officials said.

In Baghdad, mortar fire killed one civilian and wounded another near a passport office in the city center. A roadside bomb killed a U.S. soldier and wounded a second in the Iraqi capital on Monday night, the U.S. military said.

That raised to 807 the U.S. combat death toll since the United States invaded Iraq last year to topple Saddam Hussein and eliminate what Washington said was the peril posed by his weapons of mass destruction and links with al Qaeda.

No such weapons have been found and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Monday he knew of no "strong, hard evidence" linking Saddam with Osama bin Laden`s network that carried out the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Rumsfeld said on Tuesday his comment had been misunderstood. "I have acknowledged since September 2002 that there were ties between al Qaeda and Iraq," he said in statement issued after his remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

IRAQ FACTOR

Any admission by the U.S. administration that it had scant evidence to link Saddam with al Qaeda could embarrass President Bush in his campaign for re-election on Nov. 2.

Bush has said Zarqawi was "in and out of Baghdad" before the war and was the best evidence of an al Qaeda connection.

The Jordanian militant`s Tawheed and Jihad group has claimed responsibility for several hostage beheadings and some of Iraq`s deadliest suicide bombings in the past year or so.

With Bush under fire over Iraq, the man he sent to run the country appeared to join critics of the administration`s postwar planning, saying it had initially failed to send enough forces to ensure stability or stop looting after Saddam`s fall.

"We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," Paul Bremer said in a speech reported by the Washington Post on Tuesday. "We never had enough troops on the ground."

In a statement to the Post on Monday, Bremer said he backs the Bush administration`s plan for training Iraqi security forces, its overall Iraq strategy and current troop levels.

In the absence of banned weapons and proven Iraqi links to al Qaeda, U.S. and British leaders have said the war to depose Saddam has made Iraq -- and the world -- a safer place.

But the violence gripping Iraq, where three car bombs and a U.S. air strike killed 33 people on Monday, is not abating.

The U.S. military and Iraq`s U.S.-backed interim government have sworn to recapture cities and districts held by rebels this year so that national assembly elections can go ahead.

A fierce U.S.-Iraqi assault drove insurgents off the streets of the northern town of Samarra at the weekend. Police patrolled the town on Tuesday and water and electricity was restored.

But rebels remain in control of other areas such as the Sunni Muslim bastions of Falluja and Ramadi, west of Baghdad, and the Shi`ite slum district of Sadr City in the capital.

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The eyes that cannot see beyond Jabaliya and Samarra

Simon Tisdall
Tuesday October 5, 2004

The Guardian
At first glance the violence in Jabaliya in Palestine and in the Iraqi town of Samarra appear to be unconnected. The Israeli army`s incursion into northern Gaza looks like just another deadeningly familiar episode in the unending conflict between Palestinians and Jews.

The US-led weekend assault on insurgents in mainly Sunni Samarra seems to be broadly typical of the continuing turmoil in Iraq.

But peer beneath the headlines and it is clear that these ostensibly separate events are far from routine, and are closely linked in many ways, directly and indirectly.

In both Jabaliya and Samarra modern armies with state-of-the-art weaponry and unanswerable air power attacked residential areas, causing numerous civilian casualties.

In both cases the degree of lethal force used was grossly disproportionate to the assessed threat. Three US and two Iraqi battalions - about 5,000 men - were sent against 200-300 insurgents in Samarra.

In Gaza, in order to deter the sort of vicious home-made Hamas rocket attacks that killed two children in Sderot last week, the Israelis have deployed an estimated 2,000 soldiers and 200 tanks, and are threatening an escalation.

In both places, enormous damage has been done to homes and infrastructure, including basic services. The Palestinians are appealing for international assistance for what they say is a developing "humanitarian tragedy".

The Iraqi Red Crescent, reporting that 500 families were forced to flee Samarra, said the Iraqi interim government had asked for emergency aid.

Present horrors apart, Jabaliya and Samarra both offer disturbing portents, and both have considerable political significance.

In Gaza, Israel seems intent on establishing a buffer zone on Palestinian land, the equivalent of the wall with which it is enclosing the West Bank and which, despite official denials, is prospectively just as permanent.

This is linked in turn to the Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon`s controversial unilateral plan to evacuate most of the Gaza Strip next year while consolidating Israel`s grip on growing swaths of the West Bank.

The US attack on Samarra, a relatively easy target, appears to be a dress rehearsal for coming attempts to seize control of better defended insurgent strongholds such as Falluja, Sadr City and Ramadi.

On the success of this campaign rests, to a large degree, the Bush administration`s strategy for creating a democratic post-Saddam Iraq.

And thus are the personal political fortunes of Mr Sharon and the US president, George Bush, bound up to a critical degree in what happens in places such as Jabaliya and Samarra.

Both men are fighting to convince sceptical electorates, and their own parties, that they know what they are doing. When elected, Mr Sharon promised to achieve security for Israelis. Mr Bush declared victory in Iraq more than a year ago.

Each man has a credibility gap. To fill it, it seems ongoing civilian carnage is not too high a price to pay.

Jabaliya and Samarra may also be seen as linked symbols of a bigger problem. In Iraq and Palestine, two allied occupying powers - and democracies, at that - act with questionable or no legal authority and with evident impunity.

Resolutions and protests from the UN are ignored. European and Arab governments wring their hands impotently. Tony Blair is reduced to hinting at better times to come. Yet the bald fact remains: the US and Israel behave they way they do because they can; there is simply nobody to stop them.

And just as Israel`s unbending stance, favouring force over dialogue, threatens a spreading conflict, drawing in Syria and Lebanon, so does an aggressive US policy, confusing power and legitimacy, intensify the risk of an Iraqi fragmentation embroiling Iran, Turkey and other neighbours.

Jabaliya and Samarra, officially, are distinct theatres in the wider "war on terror".

But far from being unconnected, to many in the Arab world they look dismayingly like integral parts of a western crusade against both Muslims and Islam in general, to which violent resistance is the only possible response.

On both sides of the divide this dread downward spiral creates a kind of unseeing rage to which all are held hostage: blind in Iraq, eyeless in Gaza.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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Thomas F. Schaller: `Bush`s drunken rage`
Date: Tuesday, October 05 @ 10:23:16 EDT
Topic: Commander-In-Thief

Bush revealed his true dependency Thursday

By Thomas F. Schaller, The Gadflyer

We saw The Scowl, The Fidget, The Eye-Roll and The Grimace. We heard the ten repetitions that fighting terrorists and securing America`s homeland is "hard work." We heard another seven repetitions of "wrong war, wrong place, wrong time" - which only reinforced the notion that Iraq was a mistake more than they debunked it. And then, in a transparent attempt to pretend that the President Bush wasn`t incoherent, unsure and ill-prepared, we heard conservatives desperately try to score last Thursday`s presidential debate a "tie."

The President revealed something far darker during those ninety minutes in Miami. He proved that a man is never totally cured of his addictions, and that his alcohol dependency has transmuted into a public drunkenness with his own power. Without the enabling of staffers at work and the adoring audiences on the campaign trail who shield and worship him, Bush stammered and stumbled through a sobering debate in Coral Gables.

For all his talk about how humbling the awesome responsibilities of the presidency are, beware anyone who comes between Bush and the powerful tonic of his office. When John Kerry dared to do so last week, the President morphed into an angry, irascible drunk - a man not in full, but half-cocked with rage and seething denial.

Bottled up

Last Thursday the President`s endemic character flaws were exposed plainly, for all to see. Absent his handlers and note cards and teleprompters, we saw into his very core. At least four truths about the President`s personality - many of them long-suspected - were confirmed by his on-stage behavior in Miami:

He was too lazy and selfish to bother preparing. Bush was a mediocre student at Andover who nevertheless got into Yale; a mediocre Yalie who nevertheless got into Harvard Business School; and, despite scoring in the bottom quartile on the Air National Guard exam, he got a coveted billet ahead of hundreds above him on the list to fly in Texas rather than grab a rifle and helmet to fight for his country in Southeast Asia. Given how far he`s gone without really trying, why would we expect him to prepare for a debate?

Bush`s nonchalance disrespected all of those who donated money to his campaign or volunteered to hand out palm cards and register voters; the staffers who have worked 80-hour weeks on his behalf; and, heck, even those "unaffiliated" Swift Boaters who engaged in "uncoordinated" efforts to help get him re-elected. Their collective investments in Bush during the past year or two were erased in less than ninety minutes because their president was too lazy to validate all their hard work by doing a little homework of his own.

He is a pathological name-dropper. The single thread woven throughout the entirety of Bush`s life is the access and invidious influence his family name has provided him. A dropped name has often delivered to Bush what others must work to achieve. And the names - from Ben Barnes back in his draft-dodging days to James Baker during the Florida recount - are too numerous to list.

So when Bush began to stagger in Miami, he reached out for the vicarious legitimacy that others have always provided him: Betcha didn`t know I talk with Director Mueller - every day, in fact. Tony Blair is a strong ally of mine, and so is Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski. Prime Minister Allawi told me things are progressing in Iraq, and don`t you dare denigrate Mr. Allawi. And Vladurmur, Dear Vladurmur - he knows me, he can vouch for my soul like I did his.

He is a terrible listener. Countless conservative commentators on television, radio, or on websites lamented that Bush repeatedly fumbled easy opportunities to point out contradictions in Kerry`s statements, or to rebut the Senator`s statements with ready examples or tip-of-the-finger facts. Belligerent and scowling, the teetering president let himself be distracted from doing what a good debater does, namely, listen carefully to his opponent`s answers, and prepare the most relevant and proportional response. Instead he swung wildly, missing his punches, leaving himself open.

Again, the parallels here are obvious, and voluminous: Bush didn`t want to hear critics` warnings about post-war complications in Iraq; he didn`t want to hear the recommendations about troop size; etc. On most days, others pay the price for his petulance. On Thursday, his tin ear and dulled senses cost him dearly.

He is impatient to a fault. Bush could hardly wait for the red-yellow-green light system to offer his replies, and urged moderator Jim Lehrer to extend the discussion another 30 seconds for each candidate. (Once, Bush so lost his cool that he started to interject even though he was entitled to an automatic, 90-second rebuttal.) Champing at the bit prevented Bush from thinking carefully about how to deliver appropriate replies. And so he blurted out dumb answers, like his most embarrassing line of the night: "I know Osama bin Laden attacked us - I know that."

This was the most ironic of Bush`s flaws on display, for he was demonstrating impatience at the very moment Kerry was criticizing him for it, such as in the hasty re-allocation of troops from Afghanistan to Iraq.

Deep Bloat

Bush has grown into the presidency, but there is an ugly side to his comfort level in office which rises to the surface when his authority is challenged. Despite his constant refrains about how humbled he is by the awesome responsibility of the job, Bush has developed a bloated sense of himself. To substitute for the lifelong vice he gave up when he turned forty, the President now intoxicates himself with power.

He blurted, blundered and blameshifted, even pointing the finger at the Republican Congress for those record-setting deficits. Is it any wonder that, when pressed to cite a single mistake at his last press conference, he couldn`t think of anything?

Kerry was a one-man political intervention in Miami. When the Senator challenged the President`s facts, assertions and decisions, Bush showed what kind of president - and person - he really is: insular, immodest, irascible and intoxicated with the idea of his own imperial presidency. He showed that he is twelve steps away from reforming his presidency. The American people will have to decide whether they can enable him any more.

Reprinted from The Gadflyer:
http://gadflyer.com/articles/?ArticleID=226

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Baghdad Burning
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2004_10_01_riverbendblog_a…
... I`ll meet you `round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend...
Sunday, October 03, 2004

Samarra Burning...
The last few days have been tense and stressful. Watching the military attacks on Samarra and hearing the stories from displaced families or people from around the area is like reliving the frustration and anger of the war. It`s like a nightmare within a nightmare, seeing the corpses pile up and watching people drag their loved ones from under the bricks and steel of what was once a home.

To top it off, we have to watch American military spokespersons and our new Iraqi politicians justify the attacks and talk about `insurgents` and `terrorists` like they actually believe what they are saying... like hundreds of civilians aren`t being massacred on a daily basis by the worlds most advanced military technology.

As if Allawi`s gloating and Bush`s inane debates aren`t enough, we have to listen to people like Powell and Rumsfeld talk about "precision attacks". What exactly are precision attacks?! How can you be precise in a city like Samarra or in the slums of Sadir City on the outskirts of Baghdad? Many of the areas under attack are small, heavily populated, with shabby homes several decades old. In Sadir City, many of the houses are close together and the streets are narrow. Just how precise can you be with missiles and tanks? We got a first-hand view of America`s "smart weapons". They were smart enough to kill over 10,000 Iraqis in the first few months of the occupation.

The explosions in Baghdad aren`t any better. A few days ago, some 40 children were blown to pieces while they were gathering candy from American soldiers at the opening of a sewage treatment plant. (Side note: That`s how bad things have gotten- we have to celebrate the reconstruction of our sewage treatment plants). I don`t know who to be more angry with- the idiots and PR people who thought it would be a good idea to have children running around during a celebration involving troops or the parents for letting their children attend. I the people who arranged the explosions burn within the far-reaches of hell.

One wonders who is behind the explosions and the car bombs. Bin Laden? Zarqawi? Possibly... but it`s just too easy. It`s too perfect. Bin Laden hit the WTC and Afghanistan was attacked. Iraq was occupied. At first, any explosion or attack on troops was quickly blamed on "loyalists" and "Baathists" and EVERYTHING was being coordinated by Saddam. As soon as he was caught, it became the work of "Islamic extremists" and Al-Qaida and Zarqawi suddenly made his debut. One wonders who it will be after it is discovered that Zarqawi has been dead for several months or that he never even existed. Whoever it is, you can bet his name will three syllables or less because that is Bush`s limit.

A week ago, four men were caught by Iraqi security in the area of A`adhamiya in Baghdad. No one covered this on television or on the internet, as far as I know- we heard it from a friend involved in the whole thing. The four men were caught trying to set up some explosives in a residential area by some of the residents themselves. One of the four men got away, one of them was killed on the spot and two were detained and interrogated. They turned out to be a part of Badir`s Brigade (Faylaq Badir), the militia belonging to the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Should the culprits never have been caught, and should the explosives have gone off, would Zarqawi have been blamed? Of course.

I`m very relieved the Italian hostages have been set free... and I hope the other innocent people are also freed. Thousands of Iraqis are being abducted and some are killed, while others are returned... but it is distressing to see so many foreigners being abducted. It`s like having a guest attacked in your own home by the neighbor`s pit bull- you feel a sense of responsibility even though you know there was no way you could have prevented it.

I wasn`t very sympathetic though, when that Islamic group came down from London to negotiate releasing Kenneth Bigley. I do hope he is returned alive, but where are all these Islamic groups while Falluja, Samarra, Sadir City and other places are being bombed? Why are they so concerned with a single British citizen when hundreds of Iraqis are dying by the month? Why is it `terrorism` when foreigners set off bombs in London or Washington or New York and it`s a `liberation` or `operation` when foreigners bomb whole cities in Iraq? Are we that much less important?


- posted by river @ 8:03 PM

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October 5, 2004
Republicans Try to Dilute Provisions in Tax Bill
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 - Despite widespread agreement that abusive tax shelters are costing the federal government billions of dollars a year, House Republicans are working to eliminate or dilute provisions in a new corporate tax bill aimed at cracking down on illegal shelters.

The provisions, opposed by a range of business lobbyists and tax lawyers, are part of a larger battle in Congress over how hard to attack the rapidly expanding use of complex transactions that turn real-world profits into tax-world losses.

The issue is coming to a boil in a House-Senate conference committee that Monday night resumed considering a corporate tax bill that would provide up to $170 billion in tax breaks.

With only a few days left before Congress is supposed to adjourn, lawmakers are trying to make hundreds of last-minute changes that could affect tens of billions of dollars in tax revenue. Business groups, ranging from the National Association of Manufacturers to the Business Roundtable, have worked with tax lobbyists and accounting firms to protect the tax shelters.

A study prepared last year for the Internal Revenue Service estimated that abuse of tax shelters cost the federal government $12 billion to $18 billion a year.

A study last week by Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal research organization, reported that 82 of the nation`s most profitable companies paid no corporate taxes in at least one of the last three years.

Both the House and Senate have passed bills that would raise billions of dollars by shutting certain kinds of tax shelters. But House Republicans have balked at several provisions that the Senate passed with broad bipartisan support.

One crucial Senate provision, for example, would greatly increase penalties on people who spin complex transactions that serve no other purpose except to avoid taxes.

Supporters of the Senate bill say it would address a glaring weakness of the system: even when a court finds that a tax deal is abusive, it rarely imposes penalties beyond making a company or a person pay back taxes.

"Multinational corporations use complicated schemes to claim they`ve had losses when they`ve really had gains," said Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who has been pushing for such a provision since 1999. "These schemes are so complicated that even the experts have difficulty getting to the bottom of them. One way of challenging these apparent tax losses is to say this complex scheme that may involve many different entities has no economic substance."

The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, which provides the revenue estimates on proposed tax bills, estimated that just one of the disputed provisions would raise about $15 billion over the next 10 years.

But House Republicans oppose that measure. Representative Bill Thomas, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said two weeks ago that the provision was unnecessary and would have a chilling effect on legitimate business deals.

Mr. Thomas also opposes a provision in the Senate bill that would allow the Internal Revenue Service to demand that companies promoting tax shelters turn over a list of their customers.

Opponents of the Senate bill`s tax shelter provisions are particularly incensed about a provision that has strong support from Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

That provision would tighten the definition of tax shelters, putting into legislation the well-established judicial doctrine that a financial transaction has to have "economic substance," which means it has to have a purpose beyond reducing taxes.

Kenneth J. Kies, a prominent corporate tax lobbyist in Washington who has defended some of the biggest tax shelters, said the Senate bill would have ensnared scores of companies engaged in routine transactions.

"This is a much broader provision than its being made out to be," Mr. Kies said. "It would set up a standard for economic substance that would be very hard for garden-variety business transactions."

But supporters said the provision would simply add some teeth to a concept that courts have used for years.

The dispute goes to the heart of all kinds of tax shelters, but it could have a big impact on one of the biggest kinds of transactions in recent years: leasing deals in which cities, including New York City, sell subway trains and other public infrastructure to private investors, who then lease them back and take advantage of tax write-offs for equipment depreciation.

The goal of the deals is to give investors tax breaks that are of no use to municipal governments, including many cities and organizations outside the United States, that pay no federal taxes. For the cities, the deals reduce the cost of new equipment at the expense of the federal Treasury.

Both the House and Senate bills would prohibit such deals in the future, but the Senate bill could invalidate many deals that are already in existence. As a result, the Senate bill would raise about $45 billion over 10 years, while the House bill would raise about $19 billion.

But if the final law includes the Senate provisions on "economic substance," investors who entered into such deals could face stiff penalties on top of losing their tax shelters.

Joseph Bankman, a professor of tax law at Stanford University, says California has already reaped $1.3 billion from a similar provision it passed one year ago. The California law declared that any tax shelter that fails the test for economic substance could be subject to penalties but it offered an amnesty to people who came forward voluntarily.

"It is still very much the exception rather than the rule that people have to pay penalties," Mr. Bankman said.

Calvin Johnson, a professor of tax law at the University of Texas in Austin, said the Internal Revenue Service would have to impose "gargantuan" penalties before it really frightened off companies or individuals trying to shelter tens of millions of dollars.

But Mr. Johnson said there was a pressing need to attack the widespread view, which he said was generally accurate, that people can avoid penalties simply by obtaining an opinion from tax lawyers in advance of a deal that says the transaction fits the letter of the law.

"There is a common view that you can set up an elaborate scheme and that if you have the opinion of a respectable attorney that you can`t be assessed any penalties," he said.

But the conventional wisdom may be changing. In a decision that electrified tax-shelter promoters, a court ruled in August that Long-Term Capital Management, the huge hedge fund that nearly went bankrupt in 1998, took $106 million in improper tax deductions and owed $56 million in taxes and penalties.

"The Long-Term Capital case showed that the I.R.S. has many arrows in its quiver," said Tim McCormley, executive director of the Tax Executives Institute, an association of tax professionals who work at major corporations. "In the past, taxpayers had what they viewed as a `get out of jail free` card if they had an opinion from a highly respected law firm. That`s not the case anymore."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |

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US `war on terror` is unwinnable
http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=225&fArticleId…

By Allister Sparks

Sooner rather than later the United States will have to start thinking about withdrawing from Iraq. It won`t happen before the election of course.

As last week`s debate of the candidates showed, John Kerry is terrified of being labelled a potential quitter. So from his toy-soldier salute when he stepped on stage at the Democratic convention in July to his declaration in the debate that "I will hunt down the terrorists and I will kill them," he has tried to match Rambo step for gung-ho step. Only he says he will fight smarter.

As for Bush, he is committed to projecting an image of himself as the poor man`s Churchill, resolute if not literate. "We must not waver. We must persevere. We will prevail."

But the situation in Iraq is becoming untenable. A National Intelligence Estimate presented to the White House in July, summarising the views of all the major US intelligence services, presented a grim picture of the future of Iraq. Its best-case scenario was "a vulnerable and tenuous stability". Its worst, civil war.

America`s dilemma is that the longer it stays in Iraq as an occupying power, the more it undermines the Iraqi regime it wants to support. And the more it alienates the entire Islamic world, playing into the hands of al-Qaeda and other extremist organisations.

The so-called "war on terror" has become not only unwinnable but counter-productive, greatly exacerbating the threat of global terrorism.

On the other hand the US fears that if it leaves Iraq prematurely it risks leaving behind a weak government unable to cope with the chaos that is the breeding ground of terrorism.

It`s a catch 22 of America`s own making, for this was an ill-conceived war in the first place. But having created the mess, the US must now find a way out.

What is clear is that the present strategy is making the situation worse. That strategy is to try to crush the insurgency so that a process, beginning with elections in January, of democratising the country and handing over power to an elected Iraqi government by the beginning of 2006 can take place.

The problem is the Americans are seen as an occupying power intent on imposing a political system of their own design on the country. Not surprisingly, the locals see this as prescriptive imperialism.

A recent US government poll showed that 90% of Arab Iraqis see the Americans as an occupying power, only 2% as liberators. Occupying powers are always hated and their continued presence invariably leads to armed resistance.

Several factors have intensified the hatred. American efforts at pacifying the country have been crude. Reluctant to suffer more military casualties in the face of the upcoming election, the US has used battle tanks, bombers and helicopter gunships to "take out" supposed "terrorists" in slums like Falluja and Sadr City, killing thousands of innocent civilians in the process.

Some estimates put the Iraqi casualty rate as high as 37 000.

American forces have also adopted a strategy called "cordon and capture" which involves sweeping through a designated area and arresting hundreds of people who are then interrogated for information about the "terrorists".

Sounds like an apartheid-era police raid, doesn`t it? Worst of all has been the treatment of the thousands of people arbitrarily arrested in these raids.

They have been held for months without trial and many have been subjected to horrendous interrogation methods, deliberately designed to be specially humiliating to Muslims.

Osama bin Laden himself could not have designed a more potent recruitment poster for his organisation than those appalling pictures of female soldiers sexually abusing naked Muslim men.

But if staying in Iraq is counter-productive, how can America get out? Ideally it would like to hand over control of the country to a retrained Iraqi army and police force.

But the newly recruited forces are neither capable nor loyal. They have been recruited from the ranks of the desperate unemployed, and when it comes to combat many either melt away or join the insurgents. It is unlikely they will be able to stabilise the country in time for credible elections in January.

The problem starts at the top. To have credible elections there must first be credible leaders with the moral authority to impose the necessary peace.
The American appointee, Iyad Allawi, does not fit that bill. He is one of Iraq`s least popular politicians, whose appointment as interim prime minister was opposed by 61% of the population. He is seen as an American puppet.

Who to turn to, then? Two men have shown themselves as having the kind of popular authority needed. First is the 80-year-old Grand Ayatolla Ali al-Sistani, who returned from heart surgery in London recently and promptly negotiated a ceasefire in the city of Najaf where US troops were deadlocked in battle with the rebel forces of the angry young Shi`ite cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, and his Mahdi Army.

The other is Al-Sadr himself, who showed up with 61% popular support in the poll in which Allawi did so badly.

The US doesn`t like these men because both are clerics who want Iraq to be a Shi`ite Muslim state. But they do have the moral authority to end the fighting and in this situation US beggars, however evangelical in their democratic zeal, cannot be choosers.

A leading American specialist on Iraq, Peter Galbraith, has suggested what seems to me a practical way out of the Iraqi quagmire - one that has reportedly caught the attention of Kerry.

Galbraith proposes that the US settle for a loose federation in Iraq in which each of three distinct units - Kurds in the north, Shi`ite Muslims in the south and the so-called Sunni Triangle in the centre around Baghdad - could have the political system its people choose.

Kurdistan, whose leaders want a Western-style democracy, is already a virtually independent state in which the central government has no presence. Iraq`s three predominantly Shi`ite southern administrative districts want to form their own Shi`ite majority region and have asked for the same degree of autonomy as Kurdistan has.

That leaves the Sunni Triangle. Galbraith suggests that a Shi`ite-Kurdish coalition at the centre of a federated Iraq would represent 80% of Iraq`s people, and would be powerful enough to concentrate on containing the Sunni insurgency and bringing law and order to the capital.

It seems to me that what the Americans should consider is to call in Sistani and Al-Sadr, cut a deal with them to establish a federated Iraq, give them aid to train up new security forces - and then go.

Published on the web by Star on October 5, 2004. © Star 2004. All rights reserved.

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US pays a price for Samarrah

BAGHDAD - US and Iraqi forces are claiming victory in a bloody three-day battle to regain control of the Sunni triangle city of Samarrah. Some 70% of the city is believed to be under the control of US or Iraqi troops.

The US military says it is continuing mopping up operations in the city after American war planes again bombed targets on Monday night. The US military issued a statement calling the air raids "precision strikes" and said more than 200 insurgents have been either killed or captured. But at what cost?

Residents and hospital officials say many civilians, including children, have been killed or injured in the fighting. Aid groups are expressing concern about living conditions in the city. Meanwhile, Baghdad was rocked by two explosions on Monday morning, with at least 10 Iraqis dead.

US and Iraqi commanders say that the battle to retake Samarrah is a successful first step in a major push to regain key areas from the control of insurgents before January`s scheduled elections.

Iraqi Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib described the operation to reporters as "one the best operations that has taken place anywhere in Iraq". "We congratulate the people of Samarrah for getting rid of the criminals who were in control of the city from the beginning of July," al-Naqib said.

Military operations by some 5,000 US and Iraqi forces are continuing in the city, including strikes by US war planes overnight. US military officials said the worst of the fighting is over, and that 125 insurgents have been killed and 88 captured.

Some 70% of the city - 100 kilometers northwest of Baghdad - is reportedly in the control of US and Iraqi forces.

But local residents said the battle to retake Samarrah came at a huge cost to civilians. In an interview with Reuters, Samarrah resident Matra Shaker said her sister and mother were killed in the assault: "I hope God will destroy [US President George W] Bush`s house. It`s a tragedy. Two from our house died."

Associated Press quoted an official at Samarrah General Hospital, Abdul-Nasser Hamid Yassin, as saying that of the 70 dead brought to the hospital since fighting began, 23 have been children and 18 have been women.

The US military called the air attacks "precision strikes" and said everything is being done to keep civilian casualties to a minimum.

Aid organizations have expressed concern about a lack of water and electricity and the fate of hundreds of families who have been forced to flee. Reporters say many buildings in the city`s commercial district are severely damaged.

Samarrah resident Khalil Samarai said that he used the Tigris River to escape and that city residents are desperate, "All of the roads are closed. We crossed the river, and they shot at us three times. I don`t know if they are targeting us or not. You can see the children. If the roads were open, half of the city would leave."

Elsewhere in Iraq, US warplanes bombed another rebel-held city, Fallujah, early on Monday. Doctors said at least 11 Iraqis, including women and children, were killed in two strikes. The US military command in Baghdad said it was targeting bases of the Jordanian-born extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Fears in Arab world over Iraqi violence
Chilling scenes of indiscriminate car bombings, beheadings and mortar attacks, showing dozens of dead Iraqi civilians, have become a regular feature on Arabic TV news stations like alJazeera and al-Arabiyah, alongside footage of civilians killed during coalition bombing raids and firefights with insurgents. Viewed by large audiences in the Middle East, television coverage of the war has generated predictable condemnation of the US`s role in Iraq. At the same time, these reports have also created the image of Sunni insurgents, who claim to be battling coalition forces, but are often seen killing Shi`ite Muslims.

The recent upsurge in violence has led more Arab scholars, commentators and politicians to publicly condemn terrorism aimed at Iraqi civilians as counterproductive. Terrorism against civilians is not only incapable of forcing coalition troops out of the country, these critics claim, it could drag the entire Middle East into a sectarian civil war.

The Iraqi insurgents are "willing to kill 90 Iraqi civilians in order to kill one US soldier," Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah said in June, Beirut`s The Daily Star reported on August 20. "Saddam`s Ba`athists and even Wahhabis are willing to negotiate with the Americans, all in order to prevent a rise in Shi`ite power," the newspaper quoted the leader of the Lebanese Shi`ite group as saying. This network "will strike at Shi`ite targets in the Arab world, outside Iraq, very soon", he added.

In March 2003, Nasrallah condemned these killings and "warned al-Qaeda`s fighters ... that such behavior would damage the Palestinian cause because it would lead to Sunni-Shi`ite sectarian strife, an apparent goal of Zarqawi", The Daily Star reported.

That the invasion of Iraq has damaged the image of the US among Muslims has been widely reported. In such countries as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco, the ratings of the US are at their lowest ever. The findings of a June Zogby International poll "Impressions of America - How Arabs View America" concluded that "attitudes toward US policy in Iraq and Palestine are extremely low, in the single-digit range."

However, few polls have been taken to gauge the impact that terrorist acts against Iraqi civilians have had on the same audience. In lieu of hard polling data, one possibility is to turn to recent commentaries in the Arab press for an insight into how some influential Muslims view these events. A sampling of commentary in the Arab press after the hostage tragedy at a school in Beslan in Russia`s North Ossetia compiled by the Middle East Media Research Institute provides some examples.

Writing in the September 4 issue of the London daily al-Sharq al-Awsat, Abd al-Rahman al-Rashid, a former editor, commented, "Obviously not all Muslims are terrorists but, regrettably, the majority of the terrorists in the world are Muslims. The kidnappers of the students in [North] Ossetia are Muslims. The kidnappers and killers of the Nepalese workers and cooks are also Muslims. Those who rape and murder in Darfur are Muslims, and their victims are Muslims as well ... What a terrible record. Does this not say something about us, about our society and our culture?"

Iraqi columnist Aziz al-Hajj wrote on elaph.com on September 4, "The Arabs and Muslims today contribute nothing to civilization and progress except for blood, severed heads, scorched bodies and the abduction and murder of children. The jihad for religion and Arab chivalry have turned into the art of exploding, booby trapping, and spilling blood ..."

Bater Wardam, a columnist for the Jordanian daily al-Dustur wrote on September 5, "It is always easy to flee to illusions and to place responsibility for the crimes of Arabic and Muslim terrorist organizations on the Mossad, the Zionists, and on American intelligence, but we all know that this is not the case and that those who murder innocent civilians in Iraq after having kidnapped them ... came from our midst ... Even worse, we are employing the same moral double standard regarding people`s lives that the West uses."

The conflict in Iraq has been central in molding public opinion in the Arab world and many in the Middle East were suspected of accepting the claims of terrorist leaders such as al-Zarqawi about the Iraqi population and its "resolve and steely determination" in opposing the occupation armies. However, the real views held by Iraqis were unknown to their neighbors until a poll was conducted in the country in August 2003 by Zogby International.

Commenting on this poll, Abd al-Moneim Said, the director of the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Egypt, wrote in the Egyptian weekly al-Ahram of October 30-November 5, 2003, "When the first public opinion poll was carried out in Egypt by the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in 1998, some national newspapers denounced such research as a form of treason, the assumption being that foreign intelligence services must never know what is on our people`s mind. We need to keep public opinion secret to confound the enemy, even if we ourselves remain confused.

"Many Arabs would be surprised to know that Iraqis do not believe that the current occupation necessarily bodes ill for the country ... In all, the poll shows that Iraqis are relatively more united than commonly thought. They believe that what happened to Iraq is not all bad, that the country has a definite chance of improvement, and that the occupation has to end soon, preferably within a year."

The failure of a jihad that is killing more Muslims then avowed enemies was the subject of an article by David Ignatius in The Daily Star on September 29. Citing a new book by French Arabist Gilles Kepel, The War for Muslim Minds, Ignatius writes, "Rather than waging a successful jihad against the West, the followers of Osama bin Laden have created chaos and destruction within the house of Islam. This internal crisis is known in Arabic as fitna: `It has an opposite and negative connotation from jihad`, explains Kepel. `It signifies sedition, war in the heart of Islam, a centrifugal force that threatens the faithful with community fragmentation, disintegration and ruin`.

"The principle goal of terrorism - to seize power in Muslim countries through mobilization of populations galvanized by jihad`s sheer audacity - has not been realized," writes Kepel. "In fact, bin Laden`s followers are losing ground: the Taliban regime in Afghanistan has been toppled; the fence-sitting semi-Islamist regime in Saudi Arabia has taken sides more strongly with the West; Islamists in Sudan and Libya are in retreat; the plight of the Palestinians has never been more dire. And Baghdad, the traditional seat of the Muslim caliphs, is under foreign occupation. Not what you would call a successful jihad," Ignatius concludes.

Copyright (c) 2004, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC 20036

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Oct 5, 2004
No killing, just more pain for Iraq
By David Isenberg

WASHINGTON - It is a military axiom that every war is a testing ground for something - tactics, weapons, doctrine, logistic support arrangements, etc.

US forces in Iraq are continuing that tradition. But this time the lab rat is something distinctly unconventional: weapons that are less than lethal, commonly referred to as non-lethal weapons (NLW).

NLW are something the military has been working on for a number of years. It`s part sci-fi - think of "set phasers on stun" from Star Trek, and a lot of experimentation in both military and civilian labs.

The idea of using NLW to avoid death or permanent injury isn`t new. A report commissioned by the US National Science Foundation in 1971 on possible uses for law enforcement called for the development of non-lethal weapons such as soft-plastic ricochet rounds, lasers and foam generators. And since then many civilian law-enforcement agencies have supported research into NLW in an effort to come up with an alternative to shooting someone or using a nightstick or other blunt-force instrument.

But in the early 1990s, NLW began receiving high-level attention from the Pentagon. Military planners operated on the assumption that US forces would intervene overseas. But increasingly, they believed these interventions would be in civil and ethnic conflicts or peacekeeping operations such as have taken place in Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia, or limited attacks, such as in Panama and Grenada, what the military calls "operations other than war".

NLW first gained attention thanks to Somalia. When US forces escorted the last of the United Nations peacekeepers out of there they used a variety of non-lethals that already had proved effective in law enforcement, including "sticky foam", a sprayable substance that can glue a suspect to the ground; stinger grenades that explode into rubber shrapnel that deters; and spikes called caltrops capable of puncturing tires.

NLW were considered especially valuable in non-traditional operations where high collateral damage can inflame the situation, put US lives at risk, and undermine the political objectives of the mission. The idea was that non-lethal weapons could disable or incapacitate soldiers and equipment while causing minimal damage to civilians and property.

Of course, at that time NLW were not being considered for fighting an insurgency while occupying a country, but the core mission of incapacitating but not killing people remains the same.

NLW have always labored under the erroneous assumption that nobody gets killed. This can`t be guaranteed. A study released by the Pentagon`s Defense Science Board in 1994 found that "a usually non-lethal weapon may cause unintended lethality under certain conditions: A stun gun could kill someone with a weak heart. A `rubber` bullet could hit a particularly vulnerable body part like the throat, and thus become lethal. And microwave devices could have unintended affects."

Still, the concept has gained support. In March the Defense Science Board issued a report that, among other things, called for developing chemical agents, ie "calmative agents", for temporarily incapacitating humans.

As it turns out, the Pentagon had reportedly deployed such chemical agents to the Persian Gulf last year prior to the start of the war.

The military`s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) in Quantico, Virginia, the coordinating body for US military NLW research, always claims its products are non-lethal. But since their programs operate under high classification it is difficult to be certain. When there isn`t any public or legal policy discussion, one does not know if their use is consistent with international law.

Plus, given the variability among people, it is unlikely that what is non-lethal for one person will be the same for someone else. When it comes to chemical and biological "non-lethal" weapons, which are prohibited by treaty, JNLWD has the most explaining - and disclosing - to do.

The Boston Globe reported on September 24 that the US military is considering deploying a directed energy weapon to Iraq. The device, informally known as a pain ray, and formally as the Active Denial System (ADS), shoots an invisible beam of energy that leaves a burning sensation on the skin even through clothing. It operates by heating the water molecules in the skin with microwave energy.

The ADS reportedly can operate beyond small-arms range, enabling an operator to deter a foe long before a potentially fatal clash occurs.

The weapon is made by Raytheon. The Marine Corps and other services have paid at least US$51 million over 11 years to develop the technology. Raytheon, which developed the ADS for the Pentagon, says it is testing it in the field and fixing technical glitches before delivering a working system mounted on a Humvee that will be named Sheriffs, which may be delivered this year. US Army and Marine Corps units should receive four to six ADS-equipped Sheriffs by next September. But even if it is deployed, this will hardly be the first NLW in Iraq. Others are already there.

For example, the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), a device that can shoot compact sound waves across several hundred meters at up to 150 decibels, is for fending off insurgents, dispersing crowds, and flushing out buildings. It was developed after the 2000 attack on the USS Cole off Yemen as a way to keep operators of small boats from approaching US warships.

In February, the marines signed a $1.1 million contract for the devices; the I Marine Expeditionary Force took them to Fallujah and the navy`s 5th Fleet has them in the Persian Gulf.

David Isenberg, a senior analyst with the Washington-based British American Security Information Council (BASIC), has a wide background in arms control and national security issues. The views expressed are his own.

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [e-mail] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

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Die zerfallerscheinungen der Bush-Regierung geht weiter.

October 5, 2004
Bremer Says U.S. Was Short on Troops for Occupation of Iraq
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 — The former top American administrator in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer III, has told private audiences that the United States did not send enough troops to Iraq to establish security after driving Saddam Hussein from power.

The Kerry campaign today seized on his statements as evidence that the Bush administration has mismanaged the war, while the White House sought to minimize the significance of his remarks.

In two recent appearances, Mr. Bremer said he had been concerned about inadequate troop levels from the time he arrived in Baghdad in May, 2003. That left the White House struggling to explain his remarks, which contradicted his own past statements as well as administration statements on how the war has been handled.

In a speech on Monday to an insurance conference in White Sulphur Springs, West Va., Mr. Bremer said: "We never had enough troops on the ground" to stop the widespread looting immediately after the fall of Baghdad and the lawlessness and insurrection that followed. The group released portions of his remarks after the speech.

In a Sept. 16 appearance at DePauw University, Mr. Bremer said that "the single most important change — the one thing that would have improved the situation — would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout" the occupation. He said that he raised his concerns a number of times within the administration, but that he should have been even more insistent.

His remarks were posted on the DePauw Web site, but received little attention until today when they appeared in The Washington Post, along with remarks from his West Virginia speech. Mr. Bremer could not be reached for comment this afternoon.

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, implied that Mr. Bremer had never raised his concerns about troop levels with Mr. Bush, but he did not entirely rule out that such a conversation had occurred.

"They met on a regular basis; I don`t remember that Ambassador Bremer ever talked about that, but we never got into the habit of reading out any of those discussions," Mr. McClellan said.

Mr. Bremer served for more than a year in Iraq, up until the handover of power on June 28.

At the same briefing, Mr. McClellan also reasserted the White House`s position that there were ties linking Saddam Hussein to the Al Qaeda network, a day after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that he had not seen "any strong, hard evidence" to prove such a link.

"There are clearly ties between Iraq and, between the regime, Saddam Hussein`s regime and Al Qaeda." Mr. McClellan said. "And there are clearly some disturbing similarities that existed as well."

After making his remarks on Monday at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Mr. Rumsfeld issued a statement saying he had been misunderstood, and that "there were ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq."

Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, today seized on Mr. Bremer`s remarks as more evidence of what he called the administration`s wrong course in Iraq.

Mr. Kerry said the administration had made "a long list of mistakes" in Iraq, and added, "I`m glad that Paul Bremer has finally admitted at least two of them, and the president of the United States needs to tell the truth to the American people."

The two mistakes, Mr. Kerry said, were that "we didn`t deploy enough troops to get the job done, and, two, we didn`t contain the violence after Saddam was deposed."

In an e-mailed statement quoted by The Washington Post today, Mr. Bremer said that he fully supported the Bush administration`s course in Iraq.

"I believe that we currently have sufficient troop levels in Iraq," he said in the statement, according to The Post.

President Bush has said on several occasions that there were as many troops in Iraq as the military deemed necessary.

Mr. Bremer`s remarks in his two speeches were considerably at odds with his previous public statements about Iraq.

In an interview on the NBC news program "Meet the Press" on July 20, 2003, not quite 11 weeks after he arrived in Baghdad, Mr. Bremer was asked if the United States needed more troops in Iraq.

"I do not believe we do," Mr. Bremer replied. "I think the military commanders are confident we have enough troops on the ground, and I accept that analysis."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Das war ansich zu erwarten. Wenn man wie Bush-Regierung die CIA an der Nase herumgeführt hat, mußte man damit rechnen, dass ein so mächtige Institution sich rächt.
Es war nicht die CIA die die falschen Informationen über den Irak vor dem Krieg herausgegeben hatte. Der CIA hatte immer gewarnt, dass viele dieser Informationen nicht gesichert seien.
Das Pentagon und Cheney hatten sich ihre eigene Abteilung geschaffen unter der kräftigen Mithilfe der NeoCons wie Wolfowitz, Feith u.a. In dieser Abteilung wurden die Erkenntnisse der CIA ausgeschmückt und trotz der Warnungen als wahr verkauft.
Nun nachdem der ganze Schwindel aufgeflogen ist, muß die CIA als Sündenbock herhalten.
Wer läßt sich das schon gefallen.

SPIEGEL ONLINE - 05. Oktober 2004, 11:40
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,321477,00.html

CIA kontra Bush

Krieg mit dem Weißen Haus

Von Georg Mascolo, Washington

Knapp 30 Tage vor der Wahl tobt ein erbitterter Streit zwischen der Regierung von George W. Bush und dem CIA. Das Weiße Haus fürchtet, dass der wichtigste US-Geheimdienst eine Wiederwahl des Präsidenten verhindern will.

James L. Pavitt gehört in Washington D.C. nicht zu den Menschen, die man einer Übertreibung für fähig hält. Gerade erst im August ist Pavitt nach 31 Dienstjahren bei der CIA in Rente gegangen. "Von mir hört ihr nichts, ich ziehe mich zurück", hatte der Geheimdienst-Veteran, der zuletzt für den Einsatz aller CIA-Agenten weltweit verantwortlich war, seinen Kollegen beim Abschied versprochen.

Jetzt ist Pensionär Pavitt wieder zurück auf der Washingtoner Bühne, und seine Weggefährten erkennen den sonst so zurückhaltenden Mann gar nicht wieder. Pavitt ist voller Zorn und Sorge angesichts einer Auseinandersetzung, die von Tag zu Tag schlimmer wird: Es tobt ein erbitterter Streit zwischen der Regierung von George W. Bush und dessen eigenem Geheimdienst.

Pavitt hat es als erster offen ausgesprochen. Es herrscht ein Klima von "Boshaftigkeit und Rachsucht, schlimmer als ich es je erlebt habe", warnt er. Das Weiße Haus fühlt sich inzwischen von der CIA regelrecht verfolgt und argwöhnt, dass mit gezielten Intrigen von dort die Wiederwahl von Bush verhindert werden soll.

Im konservativen Lager hält man es für keinen Zufall, dass in den letzten Wochen immer wieder brisante Informationen durchsickerten, zuletzt eine geheime Analyse über die Zukunft des Irak. Das Papier aus der Feder des für den Nahen Osten zuständigen so genannten National Intelligence Officers zeichnet ein düsteres Bild, das jede Erklärung des Präsidenten, im Irak gehe es doch jetzt voran, als wirklichkeitsfremdes Wahlkampfgequatsche erscheinen lässt.


John Kerry nutzt die Prognose der CIA, die sogar einen Bürgerkrieg für nicht ausgeschlossen hält, inzwischen landauf, landab in seinen Wahlkampfreden. George W. Bush tut die Zweifler so gern als Pessimisten ab, die die große Zukunft des Saddam-freien-Irak einfach nicht sehen wollen. Neuerdings muss er sich die Frage gefallen lassen, ob die wirklichen Zweifler nicht bei ihm im Oval Office ein- und ausgehen.

Weil es keine dreißig Tage mehr bis zu den Wahlen sind und der Demokrat Kerry wieder knapp vorne liegt, lässt die Bush-Regierung den Aufruhr bei der CIA jetzt mit aller Härte bekämpfen: Das konservative "Wall Street Journal" vergleicht den Aufstand beim Geheimdienst schon mit dem im Irak und empfiehlt drakonische Maßnahmen. "Die CIA ist im Krieg mit dem Weißen Haus", schreibt die "Washington Times", eine Art Neues Deutschland der Neokonservativen. "Wenn der Präsident seiner eigenen CIA nicht trauen kann, drohen der Nation schreckliche Konsequenzen."

Die CIA empfindet die Kritik als ungerecht

Für die Eskalation der Auseinandersetzung gibt es verschiedene Gründe: In den USA wird nach dem kläglichen Versagen der gesamten Branche im Vorfeld des 11. September und des Irak-Krieges über eine umfassende Reform diskutiert. In der CIA ist die Nervosität groß. Bisher formal der wichtigste der amerikanischen Geheimdienste und entscheidender Ratgeber für den Präsidenten, fürchtet man jetzt der große Verlierer einer solchen Neuordnung zu werden. Viele in der Zentrale in Langley empfinden die scharfe Kritik an ihrer Arbeit als ungerecht: Ja, wir haben schwere Fehler gemacht, räumen CIA-Obere inzwischen ein, aber die Bush-Regierung, sagen sie, stehle sich aus ihrer Verantwortung. Viele der Übertreibungen und Zuspitzungen seien politisch gewollt gewesen.

Noch schwerer wiegt das Zerwürfnis über den richtigen Kurs bei der Bekämpfung des Terrorismus. Ein Bestseller, der mit der Anti-Terror-Politik der Bush-Regierung abrechnet, stammt von einem der führenden Terrorismus-Experten der CIA. Arroganz, vor allem aber der Einmarsch im Irak haben nach seiner Überzeugung den USA schwer geschadet. Die These hat inzwischen viele Freunde, einer heißt Rand Beers und hat aus Frust über Bushs Politik seinen Posten im Weißen Haus aufgegeben. Heute ist er Kerrys Nationaler Sicherheitsberater, und in der Regierung wird behauptet, dass einige der Dissidenten bei der CIA auf einen Sieg Kerrys und einen Job bei Rand Beers setzen.

Aber selbst wenn es so kommt, könnten bis dahin die Zeiten für die kritischen Geister beim Geheimdienst noch hart werden. Der gerade erst ernannte neue CIA-Direktor Porter Goss will den Strom der Bush-kritischen Indiskretionen mit harter Hand unterbinden. Goss, einst selbst ein CIA-Agent, der nach seinem Ausstieg republikanischer Senator Floridas wurde, hat begonnen Schlüsselpositionen innerhalb des Geheimdienstes mit Vertrauten vom Kapitolshügel zu besetzen.

Einen machte Goss gleich zum Exekutiv-Direktor und damit zu einem der mächtigsten Männer in Langley. Er sei früher schon einmal bei der CIA gewesen, der Mann habe Erfahrung, hat Porter Goss den steilen Aufstieg begründet. Die Heckenschützen haben auch ein biographisches Detail beigesteuert und durchsickern lassen, warum der neue Exekutivdirektor damals so überstürzt seinen Abschied nahm: Er war bei einem Ladendiebstahl erwischt worden.

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2004

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October 6, 2004
NEWS ANALYSIS
For Cheney and Edwards, Efforts to Improve on the Other Debate
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 - Once again, Dick Cheney sought Tuesday night to come to the rescue of a member of a political family that he has served so loyally for nearly a generation.

For most of the 90-minute encounter with his rival, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, Mr. Cheney tried to reassure Republicans unsettled by President Bush`s debate performance against Senator John Kerry last week, while hammering home the case against Mr. Kerry that polls now suggest Mr. Bush failed to make.

But if Mr. Cheney`s task was big Tuesday night, his path was not as easy as it was in 2000, when he faced a genial and unchallenging opponent, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, rather than the combative trial lawyer who sat at his left elbow on Tuesday. Again and again, Mr. Edwards - politely and deferentially referring to his opponent as "Mr. Vice President" - challenged Mr. Cheney`s attempt to discredit Mr. Kerry`s views and record, poking away at Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush.

As the challenger going up against a seasoned vice president, Mr. Edwards needed to demonstrate a sense of authority, his aides said, and to convince the nation that he could step into the presidency at a moment`s notice. For much of the night, he offered a competent, calm performance as he sought to turn back challenges to his experience.

Mr. Edwards frequently drew the vice president`s ire - and also drew Mr. Cheney`s attention away from Mr. Kerry, his intended target.

"Senator, you have a record in the Senate that is not very distinguished,`` Mr. Cheney said at one point, looking sternly at Mr. Edwards as he proceeded to scold him for missing votes in the Senate. It was 11 minutes before Mr. Cheney attacked Mr. Kerry.

Indeed, if Mr. Cheney came into the debate seeking to reverse the slippage the Republicans have witnessed since Mr. Bush`s answers and demeanor Thursday night distressed many supporters, Mr. Edwards succeeded in blocking him for much of the night, although certainly not all. Instead, viewers watched two stylistically different but clearly accomplished politicians in an intense and often grim debate, and loyalists of both parties can be forgiven for thinking that the No. 2 candidates were more slashing debaters than Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush.

Mr. Cheney startled Mr. Edwards when he suggested that both Mr. Edwards and Mr. Kerry had tailored their positions on the war in Iraq - in particular, by voting against an $87 billion appropriation that included financing for United States troops in Iraq - in response to the initial power of the candidacy of Howard Dean.

"Now, if they couldn`t stand up to the pressures that Howard Dean represented, how can we expect them to stand up to Al Qaeda?" Mr. Cheney asked.

But Mr. Edwards was on the attack from the moment the moderator, Gwen Ifill, turned to him, defending Mr. Kerry even as he attacked Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. He underscored what has been the central challenge Democrats have offered to Mr. Bush`s Iraq war: that it was a distraction from the war against Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

"Mr. Vice President, there is no connection between the attacks of Sept. 11th and Saddam Hussein,`` he said. "And you`ve gone around the country suggesting that there is some connection.``

While Mr. Lieberman let attack after attack on Al Gore go unanswered in 2000, Mr. Edwards seemed eager to defend his prospective boss after Mr. Cheney seized on Mr. Kerry`s voting record on military appropriation bills to portray him as weak on national security, or to attack him for being inconsistent.

"Whatever the political pressures the moment requires, that`s where you`re at,`` Mr. Cheney said. "But you`ve not been consistent, and there`s no indication at all that John Kerry has the conviction to successfully carry through on the war on terror.``

Mr. Edwards almost leapt from the chair that the debate rules required him to stay in.

"What the vice president has just said is just a complete distortion,`` he said. "The American people saw John Kerry on Thursday night. They don`t need the vice president or the president to tell them what they saw. They saw a man who was strong, who had conviction, who is resolute, who made it very clear that he will do everything that has to be done to find terrorists."

Mr. Edwards and Mr. Cheney offered a striking contrast in appearance as they sat side by side, with Mr. Cheney looking his 63 years and Mr. Edwards looking less than his 51. And Mr. Cheney took notice of Mr. Edwards`s lack of experience - he has yet to finish a full term in the Senate - as he questioned whether his opponent had the stature to step in as president if necessary.

Mr. Edwards sought to play down whatever advantage in experience Mr. Cheney might have had, saying: "A long résumé does not equal good judgment." But in addressing his qualification to serve as president, Mr. Edwards dodged a bit, emphasizing the general characteristics required to lead the country rather than his own credentials.

While history suggests that vice-presidential debates do not necessarily determine the outcome of a presidential election, this one came at a time when Republican confidence - which was so high before last week`s debate - was shaken by Mr. Bush`s performance on Thursday, putting unusual pressure on Mr. Cheney.

Mr. Cheney, like Mr. Bush last week, had the burden of defending a record in difficult times, particularly on a day when statements by the former top American administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, criticizing troop deployment, dominated the news. And other Republicans said he needed to be sensitive about doing so well that his performance might end up reinforcing the impression that Mr. Bush did not.

Vice-presidential debates have at times turned out to be treacherous terrain, especially for anyone whose ambitions go beyond the office of vice president, a list that this year starts and ends with Mr. Edwards. Politicians who were permanently defined by a moment in a vice-presidential race include Dan Quayle, who was told by his opponent, Lloyd Bentsen, that he was no John Kennedy, and Bob Dole, whose remarks about "Democrat wars`` cemented his reputation as being mean.

That was presumably of little concern to Mr. Cheney, who has made no secret that his political career will end whenever he leaves office. But win or lose, Mr. Edwards is looking to run for president again. He is well aware that Mr. Lieberman`s bid for the presidency this year was hampered by memories of his performance in the 2000 debate.

It remains to be seen what, if anything, Mr. Edwards did to help Mr. Kerry win the White House in November. But on Tuesday evening, Mr. Kerry clearly had the advocate he was looking for when he chose this young-looking and relatively inexperienced lawyer from North Carolina to join his ticket; and that is something that Democrats are apt to remember for a long time.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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http://www.debates.org/pages/trans2004b.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://www.debates.org/pages/trans2004b.html
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washingtonpost.com
Candidates Play to the Jurors -- That Is, Voters

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 6, 2004; Page A01

CLEVELAND, Oct. 5 -- Vice President Cheney and John Edwards turned the vice presidential debate here Tuesday night into a courtroom drama.

The Democratic challenger, reprising his former career as a trial lawyer, challenged Cheney mercilessly, as if prosecuting a cagey and possibly untruthful defendant, all the while charming the jury -- the viewing public -- with a winning smile. The Republican incumbent, obviously disdainful of the prosecutor, responded by questioning the prosecutor`s credentials, as if lecturing a dense student.

The jury is still out, of course. But Cheney and Edwards represented their sides forcefully in the 90-minute session, engaging in a sharp and frequently bitter exchanges. Unlike the presidential debate, the barbs were not only about Iraq and terrorism but also about more personal matters, such as Cheney`s tenure at Halliburton Corp. and Edwards`s attendance record in the Senate.

Both men had clear aims and pursued them relentlessly. Edwards sought to demonstrate that despite his inexperience, he has gravitas and a command of the issues. He attempted to score points by questioning Cheney`s optimism about Iraq and his assertions of ties between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Cheney retaliated by charging that there are inconsistencies in Sen. John F. Kerry`s views about the Iraq war and the allies` role there. As President Bush did in last Thursday`s debate -- but perhaps more effectively -- the vice president vigorously defended the administration`s record in Iraq and repeatedly turned the focus to Kerry`s credibility.

But if they were evenly matched on the substance -- which for the first 45 minutes covered much of the same ground as the presidential debate -- their styles could not have been more at odds. Edwards grinned easily and gestured demonstratively; only a slight tremor in his hand at the debate`s start betrayed his nerves. Cheney, elbows on the table, hands clasped, was serious and stern, delivering his barbs at Edwards acidly. It quickly became clear that Edwards would not be intimidated by Cheney and that Cheney would concede no ground -- leading to a sometimes explosive result.

In his prosecution of Cheney, Edwards, echoing many of the lines Kerry used against Bush last week, suggested that the administration is out of touch with reality. Edwards`s tactic was to urge Americans to believe their own eyes, not the administration`s words. As if appealing to viewers as the jury, he kept urging the audience to "listen carefully," as he accused Cheney of drawing false links between al Qaeda and former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, and of presenting an unrealistic portrait of success in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Mr. Vice President, you are still not being straight with the American people," Edwards said at the first opportunity, contrasting the administration`s "rosy scenario" with what Americans see on "television every single day."

Cheney, true to type, gave no ground, ignoring a question about former Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer`s assertion that there were insufficient troops in Iraq. "We`ve made significant progress in Iraq," he said, calling the situation "well in hand" and allowing no regrets. Cheney then delivered some blows Bush failed to land last week, saying the Democratic ticket was "for the war when the headlines were good and against it when the poll ratings were bad."

Repeatedly assaulting Kerry`s shifting views on Iraq, Cheney said: "Your rhetoric, Senator, would be a lot more credible if there was a record to back it up. There isn`t." Kerry, Cheney said, "doesn`t display the qualities of somebody who has conviction." In a particularly stinging line, Cheney said that if Kerry and Edwards changed views under pressure from primary challenger Howard Dean, "How can we expect them to stand up to al Qaeda?"

Cheney repeatedly raised doubts, subtly and otherwise, about Edwards`s qualifications. He repeatedly lectured Edwards, saying his figure on Iraq casualties was "dead wrong." Another time, Cheney responded: "It`s hard to know when to start, there`s so many inaccuracies there." When the two argued over the Iraq spending legislation, Cheney said contemptuously to Edwards, "You probably weren`t there to vote for that."

Cheney made no effort to conceal his disdain when he contrasted his constitutional role with the senator from North Carolina. "Frankly, you have a record in the Senate that`s not very distinguished," he said. Reminding Edwards that Cheney is the "presiding officer" of the Senate and there a weekly, he dismissed Edwards by saying: "The first time I ever met you was when we walked on the stage tonight." It was the third time they had met, Democrats pointed out.

Edwards, clearly expecting to be questioned on his experience, retorted that a long résumé does not equal good judgment -- and offered his own blistering critique of Cheney`s experience as vice president and earlier as a congressman.

"Millions of people have lost their jobs," he said. "Millions have fallen into poverty. Family incomes are down, while the cost of everything is going up. Medical costs up the highest they`ve ever been over the last four years. We have this mess in Iraq. Mr. Vice President, I don`t think the country can take four more years of this kind of experience."

Edwards succeeding in getting under Cheney`s skin by making half a dozen references to Halliburton, its "no-bid" government contracts and a probe into wrongdoing at the company. Cheney, given 30 seconds to respond, seemed exasperated. "It`s going to take more than 30 seconds," he said. Told by moderator Gwen Ifill that was all he had, Cheney branded Edwards`s charge a "smokescreen" with "no substance."

The two men softened their tone only briefly, when Edwards praised Cheney`s love for his lesbian daughter. Cheney thanked Edwards, and when asked to compare himself with the senator said they had "more similarities than differences" in their hardscrabble backgrounds.

Vice presidential debates historically do little to affect an election`s outcome, although this year could be different because Kerry`s strong showing in last week`s debate has lifted the Democrat back to parity with Bush in many polls, making it more likely that even small developments could shift the race. While that remains to be seen, the combination of Cheney, a sober former corporate CEO, and Edwards, a smiley former trial lawyer, certainly produced a more combustible mix than in the presidential debate.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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October 6, 2004
FACT CHECK
When Points Weren`t Personal, Liberties Were Taken With the Truth
By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM

In a debate laden with detailed assertions and rebuttals more than with rhetorical flashes, Vice President Dick Cheney and Senator John Edwards often stretched the facts last night on issues including the war in Iraq and medical malpractice lawsuits.

Often the matters were old saws, like Mr. Edwards`s suggestion of an improper relationship between the Bush administration and the Halliburton Company, or Mr. Cheney`s assertion that Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee and Mr. Edwards`s running mate, had voted nearly 100 times to raise taxes.

But on matters like Iraq, taxes and jobs, the liberties the vice presidential candidates took with the truth are worthy of scrutiny.

Iraq and Al Qaeda

Mr. Edwards accused the vice president of having justified the invasion of Iraq by saying a link existed between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Mr. Cheney declared, "I have not suggested there is a connection between Iraq and 9/11."

What Mr. Cheney said was only partly true, because while he has never explicitly made the link, he has on several occasions strongly suggested that evidence pointed to such a connection.

The vice president went furthest along these lines on Sept. 8, 2002, on "Meet the Press" on NBC.

"I`m not here today to make a specific allegation that Iraq was somehow responsible for 9/11," he said. "I can`t say that. On the other hand," he went on to say, since a previous interview on the show, "new information has come to light," adding "there has been reporting that suggest that there have been a number of contacts over the years."

He said that Mohamed Atta, one of the lead Sept. 11 hijackers, was "in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack on the World Trade Center. The debate`s about, you know, was he there or wasn`t he there. Again, it`s the intelligence business."

Investigations later concluded that Mr. Atta was not in Prague at that time. Nor did Mr. Cheney`s frequent accusations of deep contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda hold up, though there apparently were contacts. A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report concluded, "The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda throughout the 1990`s but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship."

The Senate report added that the C.I.A.`s assessment that "there was no evidence proving Iraqi complicity or assistance in an Al Qaeda attack was responsible and objective."

Weapons Votes

Mr. Cheney said that Mr. Kerry had repeatedly voted against spending for military weapons systems in the last years of the cold war. That is true. But Mr. Cheney, as secretary of defense in the first Bush administration, opposed some of the systems himself, including the Apache helicopter and the F-14 aircraft.

Halliburton

Mr. Edwards suggested an improper relationship between the Bush administration and Halliburton, the company with large contracts in Iraq that Mr. Cheney led before he ran for vice president.

Mr. Edwards was right that Halliburton holds a no-bid contract for services in Iraq, is under investigation for overcharges and is still being paid by the government. But there is no evidence Mr. Cheney has pulled strings on Halliburton`s behalf since becoming vice president. And the independent Government Accountability Office concluded that Halliburton was the only company that could have provided the services the Army needed at the outset of the war and was thus justified in having received the noncompetitive contract.

War Costs and Casualties

Some factual disputes were echoes from last week`s debate between the presidential candidates, including the cost of the war - Mr. Edwards put the figure at $200 billion, but only $119 billion has been spent so far. Another issue was the proportion of casualties borne by the United States: Mr. Edwards said 90 percent of fatalities, but that includes only foreign troops killed, and does not count approximately 700 Iraqi security forces said to have died.

Taxes

Mr. Edwards said that under the Bush-Cheney tax laws, millionaires receiving dividends paid taxes at a lower rate than did troops fighting in Iraq. The 2003 tax law lowered the rate on stock dividends to 15 percent. Many soldiers pay a rate higher than that on some of their income.

Mr. Cheney said that Mr. Kerry had voted 98 times to raise taxes. No question, he cast votes for higher taxes. But the number Mr. Cheney cited included multiple votes on the same legislation. Mr. Edwards said Mr. Kerry had voted against the overall legislation to cut taxes because the benefits went largely to the wealthy.

Mr. Cheney said that 900,000 small businesses would be affected by the Kerry proposal to raise taxes on individuals with incomes of more than $200,000. The Tax Policy Center found that only about 5 percent of small businesses would be affected by the Kerry plan and that much of the income of the business operators who would be affected came from sources other than their businesses.

Afghanistan

Mr. Cheney said that two and a half years ago, Mr. Edwards said the situation in Afghanistan "was chaotic, the situation was deteriorating, the warlords were about to take over." Noting that elections are scheduled to take place in four days, the vice president said his opponent "just got it wrong."

In an October 2002 speech in Washington, Mr. Edwards called Afghanistan "largely unstable," with much of the country "under the control of drug lords and warlords."

Last night Mr. Edwards stuck to essentially that description, saying that contrary to the "rosy scenario" described by Mr. Cheney, "What`s actually happened is, they`re now providing 75 percent of the world`s opium" and "large parts of the country are under the control of drug lords and warlords."

The Drug Enforcement Administration has reported that opium production in Afghanistan has soared since the end of Taliban rule in 2001, from 74 metric tons in 2001 to 2,965 metric tons last year. The government of President Hamid Karzai does not control large parts of the country.

Jobs

Mr. Edwards said that the nation has lost 1.6 million private-sector jobs since Mr. Bush took office, while Mr. Cheney said the nation has added 1.7 million jobs in the past year.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of payroll jobs has declined by about 900,000 since Mr. Bush took office. Mr. Edwards`s higher number comes from isolating private-sector jobs, not taking into account increases in state, local and federal government jobs.

Mr. Cheney was correct in saying that the nation has added about 1.7 million jobs in the past year. But employment has yet to return to its level before the 2001 recession and a sharp decline in manufacturing employment continued for nearly two years after the recession officially ended in November 2001.

More importantly, in the view of many economists, employment growth has lagged even further behind the growth in population. The nation`s adult work force climbs by more than a million people every year. So even if the number of jobs returns to its level of January 2001, as many as three million more people would still be unemployed or underemployed than they were then.

Voting Records

Mr. Cheney said correctly that Mr. Edwards had missed most votes in the Senate this year, as well as many committee meetings. Candidates for president and vice president generally skip all but the most important votes because they are on the campaign trail.

Mr. Cheney said that Mr. Edwards had been absent so often that he had never even met him before last night. Mr. Edwards said later last night that he and Mr. Cheney had in fact met twice before, at a prayer breakfast in 2001 and at the swearing-in last year of Senator Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina.

Mr. Edwards was correct in saying that Mr. Cheney, as a member of the House, had voted against such measures as the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, Head Start and creation of the Department of Education.

Contributing reporting for this article were David E. Sanger, Edmund L. Andrews, Robert Pear and ScottShane.

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US changes tack over Iraq al-Qaeda link
By James Harding in Washington
Published: October 5 2004 21:45 | Last updated: October 6 2004 00:30
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/197041fe-170d-11d9-bbe8-00000e2511c…
The Bush administration on Tuesday rolled out a freshly formulated rationale for the invasion of Iraq, claiming there were "disturbing similarities" between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.


The White House comments, just hours before the televised vice-presidential debate between Dick Cheney and John Edwards, his Democratic rival, were designed to re-establish a clear line on Iraq after two of the leading figures involved in the occupation appeared to question the case for war.

Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, insisted on Tuesday he had been "misunderstood" when he said he had "not seen any strong, hard evidence that links" Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

In the run-up to the war in September 2002, Mr Rumsfeld spoke of "bullet-proof" evidence of al-Qaeda operating in Iraq.

The Pentagon said on Monday that based on information provided by the CIA he had seen "solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al-Qaeda members".

The White House was also forced to explain comments by Paul Bremer, the former US administrator in Iraq, who was quoted as saying that "we paid a big price for not stopping [the looting in the aftermath of Mr Hussein`s overthrow] because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness".

Mr Bremer, speaking in what he thought was a private function, said: "We never had enough troops on the ground."

White House officials on Tuesday maintained that Mr Bush had made available sufficient resources in response to the requests from Mr Rumsfeld and his military commanders. Amid the conflicting statements on the link between Mr Hussein and al-Qaeda, Mr Bush will on Wednesday go to the swing state of Pennsylvania to make what the White House is billing as a significant speech on the war on terrorism.

Scott McClellan, White House spokesman, previewing the themes of Wednesday`s address, sought to emphasise the connections between Mr Hussein and the terrorist organisation that struck the US on September 11 2001. "There were disturbing similarities between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda," Mr McClellan said, noting that both were "sworn enemies" of the US and "both share the same ideology" of hatred. Mr McClellan also noted "senior level contacts" between Mr Hussein`s government and al-Qaeda, pointing to the presence in pre-war Iraq of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born terrorist thought to be behind recent car bombings and beheadings.

The 9/11 Commission found no "collaborative relationship" between Mr Hussein`s regime and Osama bin Laden`s al-Qaeda. A new CIA assessment, reported on Tuesday by Knight Ridder, found no evidence that the regime had harboured Mr al-Zarqawi. In June, Mr Bush said Mr Zarqawi was "the best evidence of connection" between Mr Hussein and al-Qaeda. Mr Bush`s justification for war is expected to be revisited on Thursday, when Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, presents the survey of Iraqi weapons programmes to Congress.

The report is expected to show that Mr Hussein had no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

Additional reporting by Joshua Chaffin in Iowa

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October 6, 2004
INTELLIGENCE
A New C.I.A. Report Casts Doubt on a Key Terrorist`s Tie to Iraq
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 - A reassessment by the Central Intelligence Agency has cast doubt on a central piece of evidence used by the Bush administration before the invasion of Iraq to draw links between Saddam Hussein`s government and Al Qaeda`s terrorist network, government officials said Tuesday.

The C.I.A. report, sent to policy makers in August, says it is now not clear whether Mr. Hussein`s government harbored members of a group led by the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the officials said. The assertion that Iraq provided refuge to Mr. Zarqawi was the primary basis for the administration`s prewar assertions connecting Iraq to Al Qaeda.

The new C.I.A. assessment, based largely on information gathered after the American-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, is the latest to revise a prewar intelligence report used by the administration as a central rationale for war.

Other reports have cast doubt on the idea that Iraq provided chemical and biological weapons training to Al Qaeda, and the report of the Sept. 11 commission found no "collaborative relationship" between the former Iraqi government and Al Qaeda.

In the months before the war, George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell were among administration officials who asserted without qualification that Iraq had harbored Mr. Zarqawi and members of his terror group.

In June of this year, President Bush described Mr. Zarqawi as "the best evidence of connection to Al Qaeda affiliates and Al Qaeda." But while Mr. Zarqawi was once thought to be closely linked to Al Qaeda, his affiliations are now less certain.

Some American and European officials have said there is no clear coordination between Mr. Zarqawi and Al Qaeda, though their aims are similar. In the meantime, Mr. Zarqawi has emerged as an architect of repeated car bomb attacks and as the most active and deadly foreign terrorist operating in Iraq as part of the anti-American insurgency.

The C.I.A.`s new assessment states that it could not be conclusive even about his relationship with Mr. Hussein`s government. The C.I.A. review, first reported by Knight Ridder newspapers, did not say on what basis the earlier assessment was being softened, and government officials declined to explain on Tuesday.

On Monday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld appeared to back away from earlier claims about the close relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

"I just read an intelligence report recently about one person who`s connected to Al Qaeda who was in and out of Iraq, and there`s the most tortured description of why he might have had a relationship and why he might not have had a relationship," Mr. Rumsfeld told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Mr. Rumsfeld later issued a statement saying that he continued to believe that there had been "solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of Al Qaeda members" before the 2003 war and that "we have what we believe to be credible information that Iraq and Al Qaeda have discussed safe haven opportunities in Iraq."

A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment about any new intelligence assessment. The government officials who outlined its findings represented several different agencies, but all were guarded in discussing it, saying they did not want to add to tensions between the C.I.A. and the White House.

One government official said the new report "doesn`t make clear-cut assertions one way or another" about whether Iraq harbored Mr. Zarqawi. But officials said that it had established beyond doubt that Mr. Zarqawi spent time in Baghdad in 2002, that from there he ordered the assassination of an American diplomat in Jordan and that he was in contact with members of the insurgent group Ansar al-Islam in northern Iraq.

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Lex Schwarzenegger.

Posted on Tue, Oct. 05, 2004


Senate holds hearing on allowing foreign-born presidents

By Jim Puzzanghera
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The Senate took a first step Tuesday toward opening the presidency to foreign-born citizens, including a particular Austrian-born actor who`s running the nation`s most populous state.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, held a two-hour hearing on his proposal, one of several in Congress to amend the Constitution by removing the requirement that only people born in the United States can be president. A half-dozen members of Congress and three constitutional scholars testified in support of the idea, with some telling poignant stories of young children, adopted as infants from foreign countries, being unable to dream of becoming president one day.

But the image, mostly unstated, that was hanging over the hearing and the whole nascent congressional movement was the well-sculpted one of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. He`s been a U.S. citizen since 1983, conveniently fulfilling the 20-year requirement Hatch is proposing.

"This hearing would not be complete if the name of Arnold Schwarzenegger were not mentioned at least once," testified Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., a close friend of Schwarzenegger`s who introduced a companion version of Hatch`s proposal last month in the House of Representatives.

But Rohrabacher and others said there were many other politicians who would become eligible for the presidency if the Constitution were changed. Hatch noted that about 20 million people have become naturalized citizens since 1907.

"The United States is known as the land of opportunity, but there is one opportunity that these American citizens will never be able to attain under current law," Hatch said. "They can never hold the office of the president."

No vote is scheduled on the proposed amendments, and even supporters acknowledge that one will be difficult to pass. A constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate, then approval by 38 of the 50 state legislatures.

The Founding Fathers included the native-born provision in the Constitution because of fears that a wealthy European aristocrat with allegiances to another country could buy his way into control of the United States, said Akhil Reed Amar, a professor of law and political science at Yale University. The requirement is outdated and unfair, he said.

"America should be more than a land where every boy or girl can grow up to be governor," he said.

Schwarzenegger`s name was mentioned only twice in the hearing. He has said he supports the idea of allowing immigrants to become president, but is focused on running California.

Schwarzenegger, 57, has been touted as a potential Republican presidential candidate if the Constitution were changed.

One proposed amendment, by Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Ark., would make him wait, requiring that a person be a citizen for 35 years before becoming eligible for the presidency.

Matthew Spalding of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington research center, said he was tempted to suggest that an amendment shouldn`t take effect for about 10 years to prevent people from supporting it to help a particular politician.

But that`s exactly why Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones, 47, of Menlo Park, Calif., thinks it should be approved. The co-chair of Schwarzenegger`s gubernatorial campaign in the San Francisco Bay Area last year and founder of the Web site www.amendforarnold.com, she flew to Washington to attend the hearing, distributing "Amend for Arnold" buttons, bumper stickers and T-shirts.

"The fact of the matter is nobody would be saying squat about this if it weren`t for Arnold," she said.




© 2004 KR Washington Bureau and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.realcities.com

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October 6, 2004
The Running Mates Debate

uring the final summation in last night`s vice-presidential debate, John Edwards focused on the new Kerry campaign theme: that a vote for George Bush and Dick Cheney would mean "four more years of the same." And Mr. Cheney, when his turn came, said it was important to re-elect the president so he could keep doing what he has been doing. It was a rare moment of agreement.

Like the presidential foreign policy debate that preceded it, the clash of the vice-presidential candidates was 90 minutes of serious talk about the issues.

It was also very hard-fought - the contenders managed to be remarkably aggressive for two men who were sitting next to each other at a small table. Mr. Cheney called Mr. Edwards`s remarks so thick with misrepresentation that he hardly knew how to respond. Mr. Edwards, when talking about the economy, said, "Mr. Vice President, I don`t think the country can take four more years of this kind of experience."

Mr. Cheney, who won over many voters four years ago with his grandfatherly demeanor during a debate with Joseph Lieberman, seemed tired and angry. He was particularly dyspeptic when he responded to criticism of his relationship with Halliburton by claiming that Mr. Edwards had a bad attendance record in the Senate.

Mr. Edwards is normally known for his wide grin and boyish appearance, but he was serious and tough last night. If his main task was to show that he could stand up to the older and more experienced vice president, he did everything he needed to do, especially during the discussion of foreign policy - the area that is supposed to be his weak suit. Mr. Edwards was particularly on point when Mr. Cheney attacked John Kerry as a lawmaker who had consistently voted against military expenditures. Much of the arms spending Mr. Kerry voted against, Mr. Edwards noted, was for the same programs Mr. Cheney had fought to cut when he was secretary of defense.

When talk turned to Iraq, viewers must have wondered whether the two men were discussing the same war. Mr. Cheney stuck to the Bush administration`s mantra, insisting that the invasion had been carried out for all the right reasons and that things were going well in Iraq, and very well indeed in Afghanistan. Mr. Edwards described a war that was badly planned, launched on the basis of incorrect intelligence and turned into a morass that sucks American attention away from a struggling Afghanistan and the war on terror.

Mr. Cheney had by far the harder job because even loyal supporters of the administration acknowledge that things are not going all that well overseas. It was hard to seem credible when he insisted repeatedly that the Bush administration had done "exactly the right thing" in Iraq and that if he had to do it again, he would recommend the "same course of action."

One of the most poignant moments in the evening occurred when Mr. Cheney, who has a gay daughter, was asked about the administration`s support for a constitutional amendment against gay marriage. He danced gingerly around the topic, expressing loyalty to the president without indicating that he really agreed with him. After Mr. Edwards said he admired the vice president`s support for his daughter, Mr. Cheney declined to discuss the matter further, limiting himself simply to thanking his opponent for his comments.

That moment of congeniality aside, if those famous few undecided voters were waiting for a real debate about different positions and philosophies, they got it last night.

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Rumsfeld, Bremer and WMD inspectors cast shadow on war
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington

06 October 2004

President George Bush`s rationale for the Iraq war, and his subsequent handling of the conflict, have been separately undermined by two of his own top officials ­ handing precious new ammunition to the Democrats as the election campaign enters a crucial phase.

The first blow came when Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary and a prime architect of the war, told foreign policy experts that he had never seen "strong, hard evidence" linking Saddam Hussein with al-Qa`ida.

His words, answering questions at a Council of Foreign Relations meeting in New York, implicitly take issue with one of Mr Bush`s long-standing arguments to justify the March 2003 invasion. They were also likely to be seized upon by John Edwards in his debate last night with Vice-President Dick Cheney, who has laid special stress on the Saddam-al-Qa`ida connection.

Hours later, the man who was the US pro-consul in Iraq for 15 months until June 2004 complained that the Bush administration failed to send a large enough force to deal with the violence and looting after Saddam had been toppled. "We never had enough troops on the ground," Paul Bremer told an insurance conference in West Virginia. Yesterday the Democratic challenger, John Kerry, leapt on the admission by Mr Bremer, who headed the Coalition Provisional Authority until it was disbanded. "Now we learn that America`s top official in Iraq acknowledges that we didn`t deploy enough troops and didn`t contain the violence ­ I hope that Mr Cheney can acknowledge those mistakes tonight," Mr Kerry declared.

Mr Bremer tried to repair the damage, issuing a statement that he was referring only to the immediate post-war period and that he fully supported current efforts to train an Iraqi force to take over security duties. But the damage was done, with the remarks from a man who has been a staunch supporter of the President.

In an earlier and hitherto unnoticed speech at DePauw University in Indiana last month, Mr Bremer confessed he "should have been even more insistent" in his advice to the administration. Had he been so, the situation today in Iraq might be much improved, he said.

If that were not enough, almost every day brings new reminders of how Mr Bush`s main rationale for the war ­ the threat posed by Saddam`s supposed arsenal of illicit chemical, biological and nuclear weapons ­ has crumbled. At the weekend, The New York Times published new evidence that the administration presented Saddam`s purchase of aluminium tubes as proof that he was reconstituting Iraq`s nuclear programme ­ even as it was being told by its own experts that the tubes were destined not for centrifuges to enrich uranium, but for much smaller (and perfectly legal) artillery rockets.

Today, Charles Duelfer, the chief US arms inspector in Iraq, is due to present a 1,500-page report to Congress concluding that Iraq neither had weapons of mass destruction, nor significant WMD production programmes at the time of the invasion. The only crumb Mr Duelfer can offer the White House is that Saddam intended to reactivate his plans to produce such weapons once UN sanctions were lifted.

The array of challenges to his Iraq strategy comes at a bad moment for the Bush campaign, as the President tries to regain the ground lost after his heavily panned showing in his first debate with Mr Kerry.

The debate`s topic of foreign policy was assumed to favour Mr Bush. Instead the President appeared testy, lacklustre and poorly prepared. Mr Kerry by contrast shone, and has now pulled back level in the polls.

In a sign of the mounting concern at the White House, Mr Bush`s handlers abruptly tore up a speech on medical liability he was due to deliver in the swing state of Pennsylvania today. Mr Bush will now make a "significant" address dealing with the economy and the "war on terror" ­ the latter is still his strongest suit, polls say.

Whether Mr Rumsfeld`s candour will change the way the country thinks is another matter. A CNN/Gallup poll has found that 42 per cent of Americans still believe that the former Iraqi leader was involved in the attacks, and an astonishing 32 per cent that Saddam had planned them in person.


6 October 2004 12:06


©2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd. All rights reserved

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Bush allies admit war blunders

Bremer: too few troops
Rumsfeld: no al-Qaida link
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Wednesday October 6, 2004
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America`s former proconsul in Baghdad delivered a damning critique of the Bush administration`s policy on Iraq yesterday, saying the US had made two grave errors of judgment in the early days of the war.

Paul Bremer, who was America`s most senior official in Baghdad until the handover last June, said the US committed two major blunders which compromised the course of events in Iraq: it went to war without enough troops and it did not contain the looting and violence after Saddam Hussein`s regime fell.

"We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," Mr Bremer told a conference of insurance agents in West Virginia. "We never had enough troops on the ground."

Mr Bremer is the latest in a stream of US government officials to voice doubts on the administration`s strategy on Iraq, but such criticism is surprising from a man who says he "strongly supports" the re-election of President George Bush .

The comments, surfacing only hours ahead of last night`s vice-presidential debate between John Edwards and Dick Cheney, were very badly timed for the administration - and a boon for the Democrats.

Mr Cheney is widely regarded as the architect of the war and came under renewed pressure to account for what the Democratic challenger, John Kerry, yesterday called a "long list of mistakes" on Iraq. "I hope Mr Cheney can take responsibility," Mr Kerry said.

Mr Bremer`s comments are also a belated rebuke to the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who overruled his army chief of staff and other military officials by opting for a smaller invasion force, and who famously dismissed reports of looting in April 2003 by saying "Stuff happens" and "Freedom is untidy".

Mr Rumsfeld attempted yesterday to undo the damage from statements made hours earlier, in which he acknowledged there was no connection between al-Qaida and Saddam. "To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two," Mr Rumsfeld told the Council on Foreign Relations .

The statement - a u-turn on Mr Rumsfeld`s assertion in September 2002 that the CIA had "bulletproof" evidence of a connection - appeared in line with a new intelligence review that failed to find a connection.

Mr Rumsfeld later said his comments to the council had been "misunderstood".

More attention was devoted to the comments from Mr Bremer, who shared Mr Cheney`s and Mr Rumsfeld`s views on Iraq, and who maintained yesterday that America was right to go to war.

The White House yesterday refused to say whether Mr Bremer had asked for more troops during his frequent visits to Washington.

Meanwhile, Mr Bremer released a statement claiming that his remarks were intended for a private audience, and that the US now had sufficient troops on the ground.

He also reaffirmed that the war in Iraq is an "integral part of fighting this war on terror".

However, Mr Bremer began expressing doubts about the administration`s strategy before his speech to the insurance conference. During a September 17 appearance at Indiana`s DePauw University he accused the administration of disregarding his advice to bring in more troops.

"The single most important change - the one thing that would have improved the situation - would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout [the occupation]," Mr Bremer was reported to have said.

The debate on America`s preparations for war on Iraq was opened in early 2003 when the then army chief of staff, General Eric Shinseki, said the invasion needed an occupying force of several hundred thousand soldiers - much to the fury of Mr Rumsfeld whose battle plans called for a streamlined force.

In January, the chief weapons inspector, David Kay, testified that western intelligence agencies "were all wrong" in their assessment that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

Last month, a former CIA official Paul Pillar told a private dinner that the White House disregarded intelligence reports two months before the invasion warning that a war could unleash a violent insurgency.

Mr Bremer claimed that US planners had failed to anticipate the chaos that would follow Saddam`s departure, saying that planners were more concerned with preventing a refugee exodus and a humanitarian crisis that did not arise. "There was planning, but planning for a situation that didn`t arise," he said.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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Bush is dead wrong

Joseph Stiglitz
Wednesday October 6, 2004

The Guardian
Many around the world are surprised at how little attention the economy is receiving in President Bush`s re-election campaign. But I am not surprised: if I were Bush, the last thing I would want to talk about is the economy. Yet many people look at America`s economy, even over these past three-and-a-half years, with some envy. Annual economic growth - at an average rate of 2.5% - may have been markedly slower than during the Clinton years, but it still looks strong compared with Europe`s anaemic 1%.

But these statistics mask a glaring fact: the average American family is worse off than it was three-and-a-half years ago. Median income has fallen by over $1,500 in real terms, with families being squeezed as wages lag behind inflation. In short, all that growth benefited only those at the top of the income distribution, the same group that had done so well over the previous 30 years and benefited most from Bush`s tax cut.

For example, some 45 million Americans have no health insurance, up by 5.2 million from 2000. Families lucky enough to have health insurance face annual premiums that have nearly doubled, to $7,500. Families also face increasing job insecurity. This is the first time since the early 1930s that there has been a net loss of jobs over the span of a presidential administration.

Bush supporters ask: is Bush really to blame for this? Wasn`t the recession already beginning when he took office?

The resounding answer is that Bush is to blame. Every president inherits a legacy. The economy was entering a downturn when Bush took office, but Clinton also left a huge budget surplus - 2% of GDP - a pot of money with which to finance a robust recovery. But Bush squandered that surplus, converting it into a deficit of 5% of GDP through tax cuts for the rich.

The productivity growth that was sustained through the downturn presented an opportunity and a challenge. The opportunity: if the economy was well managed, the incomes of Americans could continue to rise as they had done in the 1990s. The challenge: to manage the economy so that growth would be robust enough to create the new jobs required by new entrants to the labour force. Bush failed the challenge, and America lost the opportunity.

True, the economy was stimulated a little by the tax cuts. But there were other policies that would have provided far more stimulus at far less cost. Bush`s objective was to push forward a tax agenda that shifted the burden away from those who could best afford to bear it.

Bush`s failed policies have cost the economy dearly, and have left it in a far weaker position going forward. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office agrees that the deficit will not be eliminated in the foreseeable future - or even cut in half, as Bush has promised. Expenditures on which America`s future economic health depends - infrastructure, education, health and technology - will be crowded out.

Because fiscal policy did not stimulate the economy, a greater burden was placed on monetary policy. Lower interest rates worked (a little), but for the most part by encouraging households to refinance their mortgages, not by stimulating investment. The increased indebtedness of households is already leading to higher bankruptcy rates, and will likely dampen the recovery.

National debt too has risen sharply. The huge trade deficit provides the spectacle of the world`s richest country borrowing almost $2bn a day from abroad, contributing to the weak dollar and representing a major source of global uncertainty.

There might be some hope for the future if Bush owned up to his mistakes and changed course. But no: he refuses to take responsibility for the economy, just as his administration fails to take responsibility for its failures in Iraq. In 2003, having seen that its tax cuts for the rich had failed to stimulate the economy, the administration refused to revise its strategies.

In August, I joined nine other American Nobel prize winners in economics in signing an open letter to the public. We wrote: "President Bush and his administration have embarked on a reckless and extreme course that endangers the long-term economic health of our nation ... The differences between President Bush and John Kerry with respect to leadership on the economy are wider than in any other presidential election in our experience. President Bush believes that tax cuts benefiting the most wealthy Americans are the answer to almost every economic problem."

Here, as elsewhere, Bush is dead wrong, and too dogmatic to admit it.

Joseph Stiglitz is professor of economics at Columbia University and a Nobel prize winner

© Project Syndicate

www.project-syndicate.org
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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"Experts are saying if (the debate) had been a game show, Bush would`ve gone home with a handshake and a quart of motor oil."

-- David Letterman

"Political experts say President Bush was off his game. He looked distracted, confused, a little at a loss for words. Off his game? That is Bush`s game!"

"President Bush got some bad news today: another debate on Friday."

-- Jay Leno

“I drank six beers and W drank 12. That’s how he got his nickname W. Whatever you drink he’d double you.” http://www.bushvets.org/index.php?id=wm_lg&filename=TXAirNtn…

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"In a stunning statement in a lecture at Harvard, ultra conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said, `I have even taken the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged.` And all those times you thought he and Dick Cheney were just duck hunting. I don`t think so."
[/TABLE]-- Jay Leno

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To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two.
Das ist die Rede von Rumsfeld mit der Bemerkung zu den Beziehungen von Saddam und Al Kaida. Im letzten Drittel des Textes findet sich dieo.a. Bemerkung.
Der von mit eingestellte Text in #22395 war seine Bemerkung zu dieser Rede, dass er falsch interpretiert worden ist.

http://www.cfr.org/pub7424/louis_v_gerstner_jr_donald_rumsfe…
An Update on the Global War on Terror with Donald Rumsfeld

Speaker: Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. secretary of defense
Presider: Louis Gerstner, former chairman, IBM Corporation
Council on Foreign Relations
New York, N.Y.
October 4, 2004

SECRETARY DONALD RUMSFELD: [Applause.] Thank you very much, Lou, ladies and gentlemen, Pete, David, Richard. It`s good to be back here, and as before, it`s a very full crowd in a small room, tightly packed in. So I thank all of you for being here as well.

Now, last month we observed the third anniversary of the day that awakened our country to a new world--a day that extremists killed so many innocent men, women and children. Thursday will mark the third anniversary of the commencement of Operation Enduring Freedom, when America resolved to take the battle to the extremists, and we attacked the al Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan. Three years into the global war on terror, some understandably ask, Is the world better off? Is our country safer? They`re fair questions, and today I want to address them by taking a look at the last three years at what the world looked like then, compared to what we find today, and what has been accomplished, and to be sure, what remains to be done.

It`s been said that the global struggle against extremism will be the task of a generation--a war that could go on for years--I should say, will likely go on for years, much like the Cold War, which of course lasted for decades. We look back at the Cold War now as a great victory for freedom, and indeed it was. But the 50-year span of battle between the free world and the Soviet empire was filled with division, uncertainty, self-doubt, setbacks, and indeed failures along the way, as well as successes. Territories were seized, wars were fought. There were many times when the enemy seemed to have the upper hand. Remember when Euro-communism was in vogue, when the West considered withdrawing. I was ambassador to NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] in the early [19]70s, and had to fly back to testify against an amendment in the Senate to withdraw all of our troops back in the `70s. And a lot of people from time to time over that long span considered withdrawing from the struggle exhausted. The strategies varied--from co-existence, to containment, to detente, to confrontation. Alliances wavered. In NATO, there were disputes over diplomatic policy, weapons deployments, military strategies, the stance against the Soviets.

In the 1960s, France pulled out of the military organization of NATO and asked NATO out of France. In America, columnists and editorialists questioned and doubted U.S. policies. There were vocal showings of support for communist Russia, marches against military buildup, proposed freezes--even instances where American citizens saw their own government challenges as warmongers and aggressors. Clearly, many did not always take seriously the challenge posed by communism or the Soviet appetite for empire. But our country, under leaders of both political parties over a sustained period of time, and with our allies again of mixed political parties over time, showed perseverance and resolve.

Year after year they fought for freedom. They dared to confront what many thought might be an unbeatable foe, and eventually the Soviet regime collapsed.

That lesson has to be relearned throughout the ages, it seems--the lesson that weakness can be provocative. It can entice people into doing things they otherwise would avoid--that a refusal to confront gathering dangers can increase, rather than reduce, future peril. That while there are risks to acting, to be sure, there also can be risks to not acting, and that victory ultimately comes to those who are purposeful and steadfast. It`s with those lessons in mind that the president and a historic coalition of some 80 or 85 countries have sought to confront a new and perhaps even more dangerous enemy--an enemy without a country or a conscience, and an enemy who seeks no armistice or truce--with us or with the civilized world.

From the outset of this conflict, it was clear that our coalition had to go on the offense against terrorists. The goals included: the need to pursue terrorists and their regimes that provide them aid and comfort--havens; to establish relationships with new allies and bolster international coalitions to prosecute the war; to improve considerably America`s homeland defense; and to advance freedom and democracy, and to work with moderate leaders to undermine terrorism`s ideological foundation.

In the last three years, progress has been made in each of these areas. Four years ago, al Qaeda was already a growing danger well before 9/11. Terrorists had been attacking American interests for years. The leader, Osama bin Laden, was safe and sheltered in Afghanistan. His network was dispersed around the world. Three years later, more than two thirds of al Qaeda`s key members and associates have been detained, captured or killed. Osama bin Laden is on the run. Many of his key associates are behind bars or dead. His financial lines have been reduced, but not closed down. And I suspect he spends a good deal of every day avoiding being caught.

Once controlled by extremists, Afghanistan today is led by [President] Hamid Karzai, who is helping to lead the world in support of moderates against the extremists. Soccer stadiums in Kabul, once used for public executions under the Taliban, today are used for soccer.

Three years ago in Iraq, Saddam Hussein and his sons brutally ruled a nation in the heart of the Middle East. Saddam was attempting regularly to kill American air crews and British air crews that were enforcing the northern and southern no-fly zones. He ignored more than a dozen U.N. Security Council resolutions and was paying some $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers to encourage and reward them.

Three years later, Saddam Hussein is a prisoner awaiting trial by the Iraqis, his sons are dead, most of his senior associates are in custody. Some 100,000 trained and equipped Iraqis now provide security for their fellow citizens. Under the new prime minister, Mr. [Ayad] Allawi, and his team, Iraq is a new nation, a nation determined to fight terrorists and build a peaceful society.

And Libya has gone from being a nation that sponsored terrorists and secretly sought a nuclear capability to one that has renounced its illegal weapon programs, and now says that it`s ready to re-enter the community of civilized nations.

The rogue Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan`s nuclear proliferation network, [which] was providing lethal assistance to nations such as Libya and North Korea, today has been exposed and dismantled, and is no longer in operation.

Pakistan three and a half or four years ago, was close to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Today, under President [Pervez] Musharraf, Pakistan is working effectively and closely with the global coalition against terrorism. Thanks to the coalition, terrorist safe havens have been reduced, major training camps have been eliminated, their financial support structures have been attacked and disrupted, and intelligence and military cooperation with countries all around the world has dramatically increased.

NATO is now leading the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, and is helping to train Iraqi security forces. This is an historic move for NATO. Not only is it out of the NATO treaty area, but it`s out of Europe--this activity on their part. The U.N. has taken a role in helping the free elections in both Afghanistan and Iraq, which are coming up very soon in Afghanistan later this week, and we anticipate in Iraq in January.

And over 60 countries have expressed support for an effort to halt the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Here at home, the demands of the global war on terror have accelerated the need to transform our armed forces, and to undertake an increasingly complex array of missions around the world. We`ve increased the size of the active duty army by about 30,000 troops, and we`re reorganizing it into more agile, lethal, and deployable brigades with enough protection, fire power, and logistics assets to sustain themselves. And we`re increasing the number of these brigades from currently 33 to 43, or possibly 48, over the coming two and a half to three years. We`re re-training and re-structuring the active and reserve components to achieve a more appropriate distribution of skill sets [in order] to improve the total force responsiveness to crises, and so that individual reservists and guardsmen will mobilize less often, for shorter periods of time, and with somewhat more predictability.

We`re increasing the ability of the branches of the armed services to work seamlessly together. Joint operations are no longer an exception. They must become the rule. Communications and intelligence activities have been improved in the department. We`ve significantly expanded the capabilities and missions of the special operations forces and much more.

Since the global war on terror began, we have sought to undercut the extremists` efforts to attract more recruits. The world has been divided between regions where freedom and democracy have been nurtured, and other areas where people have been abandoned to dictatorship or tyranny. Yet today, the talk on the street in Baghdad and Kabul is about coming elections and self-government. In Afghanistan, over 10 million people have registered to vote in this month`s election. They estimate that some 41.4 percent of them are women. Iraq has an interim constitution that includes a bill of rights and an independent judiciary. There are municipal councils in almost every major city and most towns and villages, and provincial councils for the provinces.

Iraqis now are among those allowed to say and write and watch and listen to whatever they want, whenever they want. And I sense that governments and people in the Middle East are taking note of that. Have there been setbacks in Afghanistan and Iraq? You bet. It is often, on some bad days, not a pretty picture at all. In fact, it can be dangerous and ugly. But the road from tyranny to freedom has never been peaceful or tranquil. On the contrary, it`s always been difficult and dangerous. It was difficult for the United States. It was difficult with respect to Germany and Japan and Italy.

The enemy cannot defeat the coalition in a conventional war on any battlefield. But they don`t seek conventional war. Their weapons are terror and chaos, and they want us to believe that the coalition cannot win; that the free Iraqi and Afghan governments cannot win; that the fight is not worth it, that the effort will be too hard and too ugly. They attack any sort of hope or progress in an effort to try to undermine morale. They are convinced that if they can win the battle of perception--and they are very good at managing perceptions--that we will lose our will and toss it in. I believe they are wrong. Failure in Afghanistan or Iraq would exact a terrible toll. It would embolden the extremists and make the world a far more dangerous place. These are difficult times.

From Baghdad, Kabul, Madrid, Bali, the Philippines, the call to arms has been sounded, and the outcome of this struggle will determine the nature of our world for some decades to come. Our enemies will not be controlled, or contained or wished away. They do seek to enslave, and they have shown that they are willing to die to achieve their goals. The deaths of innocent people are not incidental in this war. Innocent people indeed are in fact their targets, and they will willingly kill hundreds and thousands more.

The world has gasped at the brutality of the extremists--the hundreds of children in Russia who were killed or wounded on their first day of school; the commuters blown up in the trains in Madrid; innocents murdered in a night club in Bali; the cutting off of heads on television. And should these enemies acquire the world`s more dangerous weapons, more lethal weapons--and they are seeking them, to be sure--the lives of hundreds of thousands could be at stake.

There have been costs, and there will be more. More than 1,000 U.S. soldiers--men and women--have died--killed, or in accidents, in Iraq, and some number more since the global war on terror began. Every loss is deeply felt. It is in freedom`s defense that our country has had the benefit of these wonderful volunteers deployed, these the most courageous among us. And whenever freedom advances, America is safer.

And amid the losses, amid the ugliness, the car bombings, the task is to remain steadfast. Consider the kind of world we would have if the extremists were to prevail.

Today, as before, the hard work of history falls to our country, to our coalition, to our people. We`ve been entrusted with the gift of freedom. It`s ours to safeguard. It`s ours to defend. And we can do it, knowing that the great sweep of human history is for freedom, and that is on our side.

Thank you very much. [Applause.]

LOUIS GERSTNER: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Now, I want to remind you all of our procedures. I think you all are aware of that. If you`re called on, wait for a microphone. When you get a microphone, please stand, and for the benefit of colleagues and our speaker, identify yourself and your affiliation. And please, we really like brevity here. We want to avoid that rare but occasional circumstance here where, somehow, a questioner turns him or herself into a panelist in the event and asks a question that rivals in length the speaker`s remarks, and is actually simply the text of a forthcoming book or article. So, please, let`s keep it brief so a lot of people can participate.

Now, we do have participating by TelePrompTer, members from around the country, and I want to welcome them. And, I actually am going to ask the first question, which comes from one of those participants. Donald Straus from Maine, Mr. Secretary, asks what specific efforts are we making to gather more allies in the war on terrorism? And then I`m going to let you handle the questions yourself. I think you prefer to do that. [Laughter.]

RUMSFELD: Unless I need help. All right. First, coalitions are enormously important. They are critical. There are things that cannot be done by a single country, no matter what country, and we all know that. The coalition that the president and [United States] Secretary [of State Colin] Powell and others have put together for the broad global war on terror is, I`m going to guess, the largest coalition in the history of mankind. It`s somewhere between 80 and 90 countries. And the sharing of intelligence, the cooperation on trying to squeeze down some answers, and the work they`re doing, has put pressure on terrorist networks in an important way.

The coalition for Iraq--the effort was made immediately to enlarge and create a coalition. They went to the United Nations, the president did. We--I believe at one point, they had 34 countries, and I believe two are now not there with forces on the ground, but at the present time I think it`s 32 total countries--33 as this piece of paper says to me. The total numbers of troops from the coalition is relatively small compared to the U.S. forces, or compared to the Iraqi forces. The Iraqi currently have 105,000 fully-trained and equipped [troops] in the coalition, and I would include them. The United States has 133,000 in the coalition. The Iraqis will pass us some time in the next month or two, one would think. And coalition--other coalition forces besides the U.S. and Iraq have a total of 23,500.

I believe in the coalition in Afghanistan we currently have 26 or 27 countries, plus the NATO countries, which are 26 countries alone, and some of those are doubles, so it`s probably now in the thirties if you count all of the NATO countries. And the efforts for both Afghanistan and Iraq were made immediately. We went right to Brussels and talked to the people. We`ve made constant efforts to increase the size of the coalition because, needless to say, we want as many countries as possible to have a stake in the success of what`s going on in Afghanistan, and to have a stake in the success of what`s going on in Iraq.

But I do think it`s wrong to look at either of those countries through a soda straw, so to speak. They are interesting to look at through a soda straw, but they are part of something much bigger, and it is a global struggle between extremists and moderates--people who are determined to impose their will on others and to terrorize others into acquiescing in what it is they want for this world, and it is a dark world they want.

Yes. Oh, I should go with someone who is near a mike? Where are the mikes? Here they are. Good.

QUESTIONER: I have one. Mr. Secretary, my name is Roland Paul. I`m a lawyer. Some years ago, I was counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Military Commitments. And even though I am a registered Democrat, I believe--and still believe--the administration was right in invading Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein. I always thought the reason--a quite simple reason--and that was because, sooner or later, he would acquire nuclear weapons or other weapons--and other weapons of mass--of mass destruction. But what is it today, with the benefit of hindsight--what would you say in your mind, as the secretary of defense, is the number [one] reason for the--for the war?

RUMSFELD: The president made the judgment, and he went to the United Nations, he went to the Congress, and he set out the reasons he believed that it was unwise for the civilized world to allow Iraq to continue rejecting some 16 or 17 U.N. resolutions, and that it was--it was not good for the United Nations, it was not good for the world, and that Saddam Hussein was an individual who ran a vicious regime that had used weapons of mass destruction on its own people as well as its neighbors, and that it was important to set that right, by removing that regime before they in fact did gather weapons of mass destruction--either themselves, or transferring them to terrorist networks. That was his--his view, and that is what he presented, and that is what the United Nations voted on when they--when they addressed the resolution.

It turns out that we have not found weapons of mass destruction, and do--does everyone know he had them at one point? Certainly. Does everyone believe, even those in the U.N. who voted the other way, acknowledge the fact that he had filed a fraudulent declaration with the United Nations? And what--why the intelligence proved wrong, I`m not in a position to say--I simply don`t know. But the world is a lot better off with Saddam Hussein in jail than they were with him in power. The possibility--and I--maybe I`m an optimist, maybe I`m just a hopeful person, but I do honestly believe that Iraq has a good crack at becoming a country that is a single country, at peace with its neighbors, without weapons that are threatening its neighbors, and that is reasonably respectful of the various, diverse, religious and ethnic groups in that country. And that, if it happens--and I believe they`ve got a very good crack at doing this--it won`t be easy, it will be tough, it will be bumpy, and people will get killed along the way, but that`s a dangerous part of the world, and has been for a long time. If they are able to do that, the potential impact in that part of the world could be significant, truly significant. Historic.

Yes. Oh, no mike again.

QUESTIONER: Hello. My name is Khalid Azim. Mr. Secretary, you have a very impressive career both in the public and the--I mean within the government sector and outside the government sector. As such a credible leader, could you please explain to us what your definition of the word accountability is?

RUMSFELD: Capability?

QUESTIONER: Accountability.

RUMSFELD: Accountability. Oh no, I don`t know that I can. [Laughter.] And I can`t do it any better than anyone else in this room. I guess some of us, when we think of that world--word--we understand the importance of checks and balances. We understand that there are some things that--where accountability is near instantaneous, and that there are other things where there are gray areas and it`s much less difficult. But what it means, very simply, is to--to me, anyway--is that people understandably look to individuals, who have responsibilities, to be accountable for the conduct of those responsibilities.

And there are--you know, someone said to me one day, that with a million-four men and women in the armed forces, and a number of reserves on active duty, and six [hundred thousand] or eight hundred thousand civilian employees, you`ve got an organization spread all across the world of over 2.5 million people. At any given moment of the day or night, some one of them is doing something wrong. [Laughter.] And I read in this morning`s newspaper about some woman who had worked in the Air Force, and who had done something very, very wrong, and is being punished for it. And we had a--I can`t talk about some of the other things that happened in the last 24 hours in different countries around the world because of command influence, and some of them may be talking, but--but it is a--you need to put in place a series of things that hold people reasonably accountable for their actions, and people, I think, expect that.

There`s a mike--you`ve got a mike, good. There`s somebody over there--

QUESTIONER: My name is Ed Vick. I`m former chairman of Young & Rubicam, and also a Vietnam veteran. I`m concerned about medical care for returning troops and for veterans. By almost any account, whether it`s research or anecdotal, it seems like we really need to try to do more. And I wonder what your thoughts are on how that might be done?

RUMSFELD: The Congress has each year addressed the subject and added various things, whether it be for the active force, or for the Guard, or Reserve, and in some cases for retired personnel. The cost is enormous, and what it requires is just what you would do at Young & Rubicam, or any other company in the world. You have to look at the full range of incentives--pay, retirement, health care, day care--all the things that one might [need] to attract and retain employees, and then fashion packages that fit the various types of people you need in both the active force, and the Guard and Reserve.

I think it`s a mistake, personally, to do what the Congress does--to reach in the middle of that and pick out a single thing, whether it`s pay, or health care, or retirement, for this group or the other, because almost immediately, inequities occur because the--it was only--it only dealt with the retired community as opposed to the Reserve or the Guard, or it only dealt with the Guard or Reserve and not the active force. And what we really need--urgently need--is a kind of a master overview of how we`re doing in managing our force. And we`ve got truly wonderful people, and at least for the moment, our recruiting and retention are working well.

The challenge is to see that we get the skill sets balanced so we don`t overuse Guard and Reserve, and to see that we balance the incentives in a way that they fit across the spectrum for people so that we are able to continue to attract and retain the force we need to serve this country. We`re so lucky that they keep raising their hands and say, Send me. Every one of them is a volunteer, and God bless them for it. But we`ve got to see that we look ahead and manage that force with a full range of incentives in a way that makes sense for them.

Yes.

QUESTIONER: Allen Adler. The president has said that, without question, there would be elections in January. If some of the major cities are not subdued, safe, will elections take place anyway? And how would you look at those results?

RUMSFELD: It seems to me that that`s up to the Iraqis, number one. They have a sovereign country. They`re going to decide what their elections are. They`re going to--they`re going to make every call with respect to it. The United Nations is in there working with them at the present time. Countries are beginning to step up and offer some troops to provide additional assistance. Needless to say, your first choice is to say that every--we know every Iraqi deserves the right to vote, and one would--one would anticipate that that would be the case.

I--what judgments the Iraqi government would make at any given time is entire[ly] up to them, not me, not the United States, and not the coalition.

Hi, Richard. One more mike up here maybe. There we go. Thank you. Dr. Garwin, how are you, sir?

QUESTIONER: I`m Dick Garwin. I served with the secretary in 1998 on the commission to assess the ballistic missile threat to the United States.

Now, you said that by invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein, we have kept him from providing weapons of mass destruction to terrorists, and that`s a good thing. The president has said that the A.Q. Khan network in Pakistan has been brought to justice, and A.Q. Khan was certainly dealing with Libya and North Korea, and people all over the world, providing nuclear-related technology which could have ended up over here. But in ways, speaking of accountability, has the A.Q. Khan network been brought to justice?

RUMSFELD: Well, it`s not for me to be judgment in this instance. [Laughter.] It isn`t. Let me tell you why. You laugh. Listen first, then laugh. [Laughter.] Musharraf is criticized by a lot of people, President Musharraf. I would say that I think that the world is enormously fortunate that he is where he is, doing what he is doing, and doing it the way he is doing it. And God bless him. His life is at risk every day. There have been repeated attacks on his life. He severed his relationship with the Taliban. He has been going into the tribal areas where no Pakistan government had ever gone previously. He is a moderate voice in the world--in the Muslim world--for moderation, which is what`s needed. It isn`t going to be the people in this room that are going to lead the Muslim people away from those who are trying to hijack that religion. It`s going to be the Karzais and the Allawis and the Musharrafs of the world who are going to carve a path towards moderation.

Now, what did he do? He discovers--we discovered, others discovered, that an icon in Pakistan named A.Q. Khan was conducting a private network to sell for profit the nuclear--elements of nuclear technologies that would enable countries to develop nuclear weapons. Richard mentioned two of the countries; there are undoubtedly more.

When that was discovered, Musharraf stepped up and stopped him, and that network was rolled up insofar as the United States or the U.K. [United Kingdom], or to my knowledge Pakistan, know where that network was. So the network is gone.

Now, what`s happened to A.Q. Khan? The implication of your question was that he should have been punished in some way other than that which he was punished. And I said, Gee, it`s not for me to be judgmental about it. I don`t know, but if I had been in Musharraf`s shoes, I would have done the same thing maybe. I don`t know that. But I know he`s got a lot of extremists in that country that are trying to kill him. There are a lot of people who are against him--determined against him--and this man [A.Q. Khan] was a hero, not just in Pakistan, but all across that part of the globe.

Now, he had a choice. He could have killed him. He could have thrown him in a cell someplace. What did he do? I think he put him in house arrest. He has stopped his freelancing, and the world is an awful lot better off. And I`ll say it again--I`m not going to stand here and criticize Musharraf for the way he handled it. I think he`s--he`s--every day when he gets up, he`s walking on a tightrope. And, by golly, he [is] a courageous person, and he`s a skillful person, and the world is very lucky he`s there doing what he`s doing. [Applause.]

Yes, sir? I`m going to go in the back in a minute now, so get those mikes ready.

QUESTIONER: Mr. Secretary, my name is Steven Mukamal. On your previous visit, I thanked you for liberating the country of my birth. Today, I have a question for you: Do you have a scenario in case there is a civil war?

RUMSFELD: There is a risk of things happening in any country that one doesn`t want to happen. And when a particularly repressive government is removed, the repression ends, freedom is there. People are then free to be rational, or to be vicious killers. I mean, once you`re free, you are free to be a criminal, or you can be an anti-Semite; you can be a--go out and engage in ethnic cleansing, and do all kinds of things that are--that free people do in different parts of the globe.

Do I think it will happen? No. Do we worry about it? Anyone worries about all kinds of bad things happening, and thinks about them and what might be done. But at the moment, we are seeing a behavior pattern by the Shi`a, by the Sunnis, by the Kurds, that is uneven in different parts of the country. There isn`t one template you can say, That`s what`s happening in Iraq. It`s different in the north, it`s different in the south, it`s different in the Sunni Triangle and in Baghdad. There isn`t one thing that`s happening.

And what one has to do is to keep doing everything humanly possible to see that the people in that country--all elements in that country--come to develop [a] conviction that they have a stake in the future of that country. And that means you can`t carve out and leave some off to the side. You simply--you cannot allow retribution. You have to find ways for reconciliation. There has to be something done in the north, for example, where Saddam Hussein went, and his people went up there and moved a whole lot of people out of their homes and put other people into those homes. There has to be a process. We have to have hope that there`s going to be justice done.

Now, you know, people say, Well, what are you going to do about this?, and, What are you going to do about that?--I hate to even talk about it, because it sounds like we think it`s going to happen, and I don`t think it`s going to happen. But what has to be done in that country is what basically was done in Samarra over the last 48 hours. You have to first threaten the use of force if things--you cannot allow a series of safe havens, or a consistent pattern of misbehavior--anti-social behavior, violence against the government of Iraq--to go on over a sustained period of time. You can`t allow that, or you don`t have a country, or people won`t feel they have a stake in it. So you have to do something about it. Your first choice is diplomacy. Your first choice is to talk, and to gather people together. And that`s what they tried in some areas, and it worked, and in some areas it didn`t. And the next thing you have to do is have the threat of force.

And finally, you may have to use force. And that`s what happened in Samarra. And my guess is that what you`ll see in that country is the government of Iraq systematically deciding that they are not going to accept the idea of safe havens and foreign terrorists and former regime elements running around threatening and killing people. Think of the number of Iraqis that are getting killed. We see every day the number of coalition people that are getting killed--we know that. It`s the Iraqis that are getting killed in large numbers--civilians, innocent people--because these folks are running around, chopping off heads. They are running around--the terrorists--are running around, and former regime elements, blowing up people willy-nilly--to try to create chaos, and to try to force the coalition countries to leave, and to try to snuff out any aspect of success they see. If there`s a governing council, they try to kill--they killed one of the women on the governing council some months back. If there`s a police station that`s recruiting people, they try to blow up the police station. If there`s a provincial governor who`s doing well, they go after the provincial governor.

They`re trying to--they`re engaging in a test of wills. They`re engaging in the management of perceptions, and they are determined to think from their standpoint, what if--just what if Iraq makes it. Think of where the extremists are. Their goal is to flip the governments in that part of the world, one after another, and to take them over and re-establish a caliphate. That`s their hope, is to have a small handful of clerics determine how everybody lives. And if--if--if [we are] successful in Afghanistan, and you have a moderate regime, and if it is successful, as I believe it will be in Iraq, think what it does for them. It sets them back. And they`re not going to go down easily. They`re going to keep fighting, and it isn`t going to be won by a coalition. It isn`t going to be--it`s going to be Iraqis over time that tip, and make a judgment that they`d rather have it one way than another way. And ultimately--I mean, it sounds ridiculous to say it, but if you think of--you`re running down the street with your hand on the back of the bicycle with your youngster on the seat, and they`ve never ridden, and you`re running and you`re running, and you`re getting tired, and you know you`ve got to go from a full holding onto the seat to three fingers, and then to two fingers, and then to one finger, and then you let it go, and they might fall. But if you don`t, you`re going to have a 40-year-old that can`t ride a bicycle. [Laughter.] And we cannot force this to happen. The world can`t force this to happen. All we can do is everything humanly possible to create an environment that`s hospitable for them making it happen.

Way in the back. I worry when someone`s that eager, but, [laughter]--

QUESTIONER: It`s Raghida Dergham of Al-Hayat. Recently, there had been a tripartite agreement--the United States, Iraq, and Syria--working together on the borders--Iraqi-Syrian borders, that is--and of course, intelligence sharing. How important has this development become? Is it a good example to apply to Iran? And what was it--carrots or sticks that made this happen?

RUMSFELD: It`s too soon to tell. Syria has been notably unhelpful. They have refused to release the frozen Iraqi assets in Syria, they are continuing to cooperate with Iran, and fund and support Hezbollah. They are still occupying Lebanon, for all practical purposes, with troops and intelligence people. They have used their border with Iraq to facilitate terrorists moving back and forth, money moving back and forth, and they`ve been unhelpful. There have been meetings lately, and whether they`ll change their way and be more helpful prospectively, time will tell. But I`d like to see it.

And it`s too early to say there`s been any progress at all, in my view.

Yes? I keep forgetting to go where there`s a mike already. Yes, ma`am?

QUESTIONER: Thank you. Dr. Mia Bloom, University of Cincinnati. In the spring campaign in Falluja, most of the--or a good number of the Iraqi police either mutinied, or went over to the side of the militants. We seem to be thinking that the Iraqi military and the police will be a sound investment for the future to take over from U.S. forces. What have we done to ensure that that`s not going to be repeated in the future?

RUMSFELD: It`s interesting. Again, this is a perfect example of the impression that`s left. There have been some instances where the Iraqi police and Iraqi border guard, or Iraqi National Guard, have not performed well. That`s a fact. It is also true that hundreds of Iraqi security people have performed brilliantly. They just did in Samarra--very well. The army has been doing a good job. And there have been instances where Iraqi security forces were not well-enough trained or well-enough equipped, and they ran up against folks that were better trained and better equipped, and they left. I do not consider that cowardice. I consider it prudent.

If you`ve got a squirt gun and they`ve got an AK-47, it`s best to come back another day. Furthermore, there isn`t a city in the world--certainly not in the United States, that I know of--that has not hired somebody who turned out to be a bad apple in the police force. We`ve had that trouble in [Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations] Pete Peterson`s hometown, Chicago--[laughter]--my hometown. It happens. And we`ve got a vetting process that`s imperfect. We look at a couple of databases, check their names, go to the tribal leaders, ask them, What they think about them--does it look all right? They say yes, no, or maybe. You hire the person, you give them a uniform, you train them, you equip them, you send them out, and sometimes they don`t work out. And what do you do? You know, you get rid of them and go hire somebody else and try it again. That`s just like we do in companies, Young & Rubicam, or wherever. [Laughter.]

Yes?

QUESTIONER: My name is Glenn Hutchins. Mr. Secretary, what exactly was the connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda?

RUMSFELD: I tell you, I`m not going to answer the question. I have seen the answer to that question migrate in the intelligence community over the period of a year in the most amazing way. Second, there are differences in the intelligence community as to what the relationship was. To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two. There are--I just read an intelligence report recently about one person who`s connected to al Qaeda, who was in and out of Iraq, and there`s the most tortured description of why he might have had a relationship, and why he might not have had a relationship. There are reports about people in Saddam Hussein`s intelligence service meeting in one country or another with al Qaeda people from one person to another, which may have been indicative of something, or may not have been. It may have been something that was not representative of a hard linkage.

What we do know is that Saddam Hussein was on the terrorist list. We do know they were giving $25,000 to suicide bombers. So, this is not the Little Sisters of the Poor. [Laughter.] But, what I would--to answer it, when I`m in Washington, I pull out a piece of paper and say, I don`t know, because I`m not in that business, but I`ll tell you what the CIA thinks, and I read it--the public version of it. If you want a--not terribly current now, but [former Director of Central Intelligence] George Tenet did testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a version of it was unclassified--declassified--later which you can get and read if you want to see the answer that he gave.

But it is--it is--the relationships between these folks are complicated. They evolve and change over time. In many cases, these different networks have common funders. In many cases, they cooperate not in a chain of command, but in a loose affiliation--a franchising arrangement almost, where they go do different things and cooperate, but they`re not, in the case of al Qaeda, most--my impression is, most of the senior people have actually sworn an oath to Osama bin Laden, and even, to my knowledge, even as of this late date, I don`t believe [Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi, the principal leader of the network in Iraq, has sworn an oath, even though what they`re doing--I mean, they`re just two peas in a pod in terms of what they`re doing.

So, it is too complicated for me to try to pretend I`m the expert analyst on the subject, and for that I apologize.

Yes sir.

QUESTIONER: I`m Gary Ross of Power Energy Group. How much meddling in Iraq is being done by Iran? And what`s the extent of Iran`s cooperation with al Qaeda?

RUMSFELD: The answer to the first portion of the question is a lot of meddling. They have a very big interest in the outcome in Iraq. It`s a country that has been at war with Iraq. It`s a country that had been--Iraq, having been run by the Sunni, and Iran by the Shi`a--it`s a country that had been secular where Iran had been a--the small group of clerics running it. It is a country that is unhappy about the fact that the Shi`a shrines are not in Iran, they`re in Iraq. They have millions of refugees and pilgrims going back and forth across that border, so it`s the easiest thing in the world to make mischief. There`s no way we could stop the flow of these pilgrims back and forth across that border. The border is reasonably porous.

They--they have been notably unhelpful in terms of--they clearly want to affect the outcome of the election, and they are aggressively trying to do that. They`re sending money in, they`re sending weapons in, and they`re notably unhelpful.

The second part of the question, what`s their relationship with al Qaeda? It`s a funny one, as far as I can tell. There have been a lot of al Qaeda--senior al Qaeda--in and out of that country over time. Do I know for sure that they were facilitated, or that they were authorized? No, I don`t. But we do know that there have been a lot of senior al Qaeda that have moved in and out of Iran over a period of time.

We also have the impression today that there are senior al Qaeda there now. But there is at least an impression that they`re not fully free to do anything they want at the moment. I don`t know quite what that means. I--it`s not like--I don`t think they`re in prison cells, but I think that there may be that the Iranian leadership--first of all, it`s not completely homogenous. I don`t think everyone in the Iranian leadership agrees with everyone else. Of course, I`ve never seen that in any country. [Laughter.] What`s new? Why state the obvious? [Laughter.] But, it may be that they are managing the senior al Qaeda that are in their country at the present time in a way that they hope might benefit them. And how that might be is not quite clear to me.

Yes. Just--you decide. You`ve got the mike.

QUESTIONER: Sorry. Claire Gaudiani of the [George H.] Hyman[, Jr.] Center [for Philanthropy and Fundraising] at NYU [New York University] and [inaudible]. As a wife and mother of two Princeton graduates, I want to underscore and agree with what Mr. Gerstner said about your background and your contribution to our nation.

RUMSFELD: Thank you.

QUESTIONER: So, thank you, as a fellow Princetonian.

RUMSFELD: Thank you.

QUESTIONER: I think one of the critical issues now for all of us believing--going forward, is trying to figure out about what we believed going into this whole business. I was one of three people attached to the Yale Law School--I`m only kidding--who wanted--who was in favor of going in to Iraq. New Haven was--is--known by some of my friends as the Republic of New Haven. But I have to ask, what scenarios did we run in the Defense Department that would have prepared us for a--Saddam Hussein`s guard that disappeared and then contributed to a very different year, following a magnificent technological display by the U.S. military?

RUMSFELD: Well, the Pentagon--thank you--does an awful lot of analysis and exercises and scenarios and studies and contingency plans. And the dilemma going in, as [former Commander in Chief for the United States` Central Command] General [Tommy] Franks would tell you, was that each one of the neighbors--I shouldn`t say each one--most of the neighbors--favored the U.S. going into Iraq. But they were very nervous about how long it would take. And the amount of time it would take was something that concerned them because they were worried about the street that they had to face, and their populations. And they knew what the press and the media would be showing, and they therefore wanted whatever happened to go very fast.

General Franks designed a plan that used speed instead of mass--speed and precision in weapons. And it--it saved a lot of potential damage in neighboring countries in terms of revolutions, or overthrowing governments, or street uprisings. It saved a lot of harm to human beings inside of Iraq because of its speed. But the disadvantage of the speed, as opposed to mass and time--one of the disadvantages was that it happened so fast that a large fraction of the entire Iraqi military just disappeared, just quit. It was over so fast. And they--they were then available to fight another day. And they had weapons. And they had money. And there are a lot of them still around doing things that are harmful, and hoping against hope that the dominance of the Ba`ath Party will not be lost completely.

So, in any--you know, no war plan survives first contact with the enemy because you`ve got enemies with brains. These are people who think, and they--they`re going to--they see one thing happening and they`ll adapt just like today with the terrorists. And it seems to me that in life you have to take the benefit--and there were a lot of benefits. They didn`t have the time to destroy the oil wells. They didn`t have time to blow up the bridges. There was no big humanitarian crisis. There weren`t a lot of--a lot of refugees fleeing the country because of disorder. There were not a lot of civilians killed. All of those things are good that one had to plan that might go bad. But by the same token, the [Iraqi paramilitary group] Fedayeen Saddam were able to infiltrate the populations and shoot people who refused to--who were inclined to cooperate with the coalition forces coming in, and [who] refused to cooperate with the Fedayeen Saddam.

It`s a--it`s a mixture of, I guess--most things are in life--of some things that work very well, and some things that don`t work quite so well. And I`ve rarely seen everything work perfectly at once.

GERSTNER: One more question, please. One more question.

RUMSFELD: Yes, sir.

QUESTIONER: Chris Isham, ABC. Mr. Secretary, I wonder if you could address--

RUMSFELD: Did you say ABC?

QUESTIONER: ABC. Correct. Yeah.

RUMSFELD: I thought you said the press weren`t going to ask question. [Laughter.]

GERSTNER: There are a few.

RUMSFELD: There are a few. Oh, they`re members. Ahh!

QUESTIONER: There are a few. We`re scattered.

RUMSFELD: Fair enough. [Laughter.]

QUESTIONER: Two hats.

I wonder if you could address the question of disability payments to the seriously injured?

RUMSFELD: I`m sorry, of what?

QUESTIONER: Disability payments to the seriously-injured soldiers. Several thousand have come back from Iraq. They`ve got serious injuries, partly because of the good medical care they`ve received. A lot of these folks are saying that they really have a hard time making ends meet, that the disability payments are not sufficient. I wonder if you could just say, are you satisfied with this at the moment, or do you think there are things we could do be doing better on that front--just specifically on the payments to these folks?

RUMSFELD: You know, you could always say--no one could say they`re satisfied. How could anyone say they`re satisfied? Someone loses a leg, an arm, an eye, two eyes, and you ask, Well, what`s that worth, and whether it`s a life not lived at all, or a life that`s going to be lived notably differently? I go to [the National Naval Medical Center in] Bethesda and to [the] Walter Reed [Army Medical Center] and to other hospitals around the country, and visit with these folks who survived. And as you say, they do get superb medical attention. And you go in, and there`s a wonderful young guy sitting there with his girlfriend, and his--both eyes are out forever, and he`s got a bad left knee [inaudible] and he looks at you--he turns his head and says, "My knee is going to be fine, and I`m going to be up and out of here next month." And you think, Oh, goodness.

Now, I can`t say whether I`m satisfied. I`m obviously--no one`s ever satisfied. You--I watched one young fellow who lost leg. He got out, he went back to jump school, and finished first in his class. The most amazing thing to me is the spirit of these folks. They--they and their families understand what they`re doing is--is historic. They understand that it`s--it is noble for a person to be willing to put their lives at risk and their--their bodies at risk for the countries. And--and they`re proud of their service. And I--I guess I can only say that this is a very lucky country to have so many folks willing to do that. And we`ve got to see that we treat them right while they`re in, and we`ve got to see that we treat them right when they`re out.

Thank you very much, folks. [Applause.]

GERSTNER: Thank you very much.


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THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Najaf Accepts Price of Stability
Residents are relieved by militants` departure but bemoan damage and lost business after the deadly battle. The U.S. is aiding rebuilding effort.
By Patrick J. McDonnell
Times Staff Writer

October 6, 2004

NAJAF, Iraq — They destroyed the Old City in order to save it.

More than a month after a U.S.-led offensive against the militia of Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr, the historic core of this holy city remains a sealed-off zone of devastation and rubble.

The utilitarian hotels that sheltered pilgrims are gutted and charred. Blown-out storefronts line the once-bustling labyrinth of alleys leading to the gold-domed shrine of Imam Ali, which remains resplendent amid the post-apocalyptic cityscape. Stray dogs paw the ruins along deserted streets in a district that for centuries has been the domain of turbaned holy men, their acolytes and the devout masses.

The bleak panorama is testament to the destructive power used by U.S. forces for three weeks in August to flush militants from their havens amid the warren of shops and hostels, as well as from the tombs in the adjacent cemetery, sacred ground to Shiites. Hundreds were killed and injured before a political settlement was reached that left Sadr free but removed his Mahdi militia from the city.

Despite misgivings about the devastation, there is much relief in this war-weary town that the young men in black with Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers appear to be gone — at least for now. The Shiite guerrillas were unpopular with large segments of Najaf`s generally conservative, business-oriented populace, which relies on a religious tourist trade that evaporated with the fighting.

"We all live with hardships, but the people of Najaf are pleased with the tranquillity and stability they are enjoying now," said Sayed Baqir Qubbanchi, a high-ranking cleric here. "This is much better than the time of war."

Large-scale U.S. reconstruction projects were launched immediately after combat ended in the city of 500,000 about 100 miles south of Baghdad.

Throughout Najaf, schools, clinics and other facilities are being refurbished as part of the $200-million, U.S.-funded rehabilitation plan, which includes extensive repairs to roads, sewers and water infrastructure.

"We have to be able to get the contractors to work and not get shot at," said Erich Langer of the Iraq Project and Contracting Office, the Pentagon agency charged with distributing the multibillion-dollar aid package nationwide.

The U.S. estimates that the fighting caused at least $500 million in damage, well beyond its $50-million compensation fund.

The Marines offer no apologies for the extent of the destruction and blame part of it on errant insurgent mortar rounds.

"We went to extensive measures to minimize damage to the city," said Col. Anthony M. Haslam of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit. "That`s why the people of Najaf are so happy. Even though buildings were destroyed, they know that buildings can be rebuilt."

As many as 1,000 people were killed in Najaf and neighboring Kufa during the three weeks of fighting that ended Aug. 27 with a truce brokered by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the nation`s preeminent Shiite cleric. According to the Health Ministry, 157 civilians lost their lives and more than 900 were injured. Forty policemen were among the dead. Also killed were seven U.S. Marines and two Army soldiers, the military said.

In the 90% of Najaf outside the Old City, life has returned to a semblance of normality. Street sweepers in orange jumpsuits clear the roads. Donkey carts, cars and trucks vie for space on the clogged avenues. The souks once again bristle with commerce.

Residents wave at passing Marines — a remarkable sight amid the hardly veiled hostility that has become the norm in much of this turbulent nation. The tension so palpable among U.S. troops as they leave the secure confines of their bases elsewhere is no longer evident here.

The Mahdi militiamen "will never come back to Najaf," U.S.-backed Gov. Adnan Zurfi told reporters recently at his heavily guarded compound.

Security is now extremely tight. Heavily armed contingents of Iraqi police and national guardsmen, backed by Marines, have replaced Sadr`s fervent guerrillas. Checkpoints outside town restrict entry to block the return of Mahdi forces from Baghdad or anywhere else.

Many worshipers have returned to the Imam Ali shrine on Fridays. Residents tend to praise the resumption of law and order but bemoan the damage to the Old City and the continued lack of business.

"The situation is much improved from a security standpoint, but economic life is stagnant," said Muqdad Sami Abdul-Sahib, a grocery-store owner.

The military is trying not to repeat earlier missteps, including the battles last spring that ended in stalemate, leaving the Mahdi militia in place to fight another day. This time, U.S. forces are putting maximum effort into ensuring that there are ample Iraqi forces to maintain order —and who will not jump to the other side.

Police recruits are turning up by the hundreds in Najaf. The reinvigorated force is vowing to confront any remnants of the same Mahdi militia that routed them from their stations in the spring, during the first Mahdi rebellion.

"We will crush them when we find them," promised police Col. Amir Hamza Aldami.

As he spoke, U.S. trainers in the courtyard of his police station were instructing recruits in the use of a newly issued, expandable steel baton. Many lawmen still lack sufficient body armor, vehicles, weapons and communications equipment, police said, and training is far from complete. That reflects shortcomings throughout Iraq.

Sadr`s representatives have accused U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies of breaking the cease-fire pact by harassing sympathizers. Sadr has consistently demanded the withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign troops from Iraq and prompt elections.

"Conditions of the truce are just ink on paper" to U.S. and Iraqi forces, a Sadr aide, Sheik Ahmed Shibani, complained to journalists recently in Sadr`s offices near the shrine. "We are saying that we want free elections and demand that the foreign forces get out of Iraq. That`s all. Of course, this does not please them."

Two days after his comments, Shibani was arrested when arms caches were found in the Sadr headquarters, Iraqi authorities said. Ayatollah Sistani condemned the raid as heavy-handed.

But the move underscored the determination of U.S. and Iraqi officials to block Sadr`s apparent plans to create a Hezbollah-style political-military organization that would vie for power in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.

Sadr`s movement remains a potent force in Shiite areas of Baghdad as well as Basra, Amarah and other largely Shiite cities in the south. Sadr`s representatives have indicated a desire to participate in January`s elections, but U.S. and Iraqi officials have said the Mahdi militia must first disarm.

Much of Sadr`s militia is believed to have retreated to his home base in the sprawling east Baghdad district of Sadr City, named after the young cleric`s late father, who was assassinated by the Hussein regime, according to most accounts here. After an uneasy peace this summer, Sadr City has again become a battleground where militiamen plant homemade bombs and U.S. forces strike from the ground and air.

Ideally, the U.S. would like to see Sadr City become like Najaf today — a largely militia-free place where authorities could begin to dole out the millions earmarked for redevelopment.

"We are not able to do very much right now [in Sadr City] as most of the parts that really need the work are the most dangerous," a U.S. commander in Baghdad said recently. "That`s why we have to get rid of the militia once and for all."

However, the civilian support for U.S. forces evident in Najaf is not duplicated in Sadr City, where Sadr`s fighters have substantial backing. And all the while, hostility for the U.S. remains rampant in Sunni Muslim towns such as Fallouja, where residents reject the U.S.-sponsored political process that will probably strip Sunnis of the favored position they have enjoyed for decades.

*

Times staff writer Suhail Ahmed and special correspondent Saad Sadiq in Najaf contributed to this report.






Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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COMMENTARY
The No-Win Solution
American withdrawal without victory seems inevitable. It`s just a matter of when.
By Rajan Menon
Rajan Menon, a New America Foundation fellow, teaches international relations at Lehigh University.

October 6, 2004

George W. Bush and John F. Kerry have more in common on Iraq than is generally believed, or than either acknowledges.

Both candidates would continue the war, and they agree that withdrawing without victory is not an option. Both would increase the training of Iraqi soldiers and police so that the Iraqis themselves, ultimately, can fight their own battles. Both would draw the United Nations and other countries in, although Kerry promises to do so with more energy and credibility. Both believe an elected Iraqi government will yield a legitimate Iraqi government and enable the war to wind down.

There`s only one problem with this reasoning: It`s wrong.

No doubt an American defeat in Iraq — defined as withdrawal stemming from failure to quell the insurgency — would increase strife in that country and probably precipitate a civil war. But continuing the war may well produce the same result. And it would also result in still more casualties among U.S. troops, more Iraqi civilians inadvertently killed during military operations in the Sunni Triangle and in Muqtada Sadr`s Baghdad strongholds, more terrorist attacks and a continued influx of Muslim militants from beyond Iraq.

Under these conditions, the elections planned for Iraq in January will either not be held or they will go forward but lack legitimacy because voting will not be able to take place in many Sunni areas in central Iraq, where it`s just too dangerous. Either way, there will not be a government that commands sufficient loyalty from Iraqis for its leaders and troops to be accepted and the insurgents to be marginalized. And that means that the United States will continue bearing the brunt of the fighting for years.

With the insurgency on the increase and with daily life so hazardous in so much of Iraq, schemes to internationalize the war by enlisting more countries and the U.N. (like those being proposed by Kerry and Bush) are a chimera. Some states may be persuaded to write checks, but they won`t send in substantial numbers of troops.

Iraq is a quagmire; everyone knows it, and no one is crazy enough to wade into it. Even the Poles, whom President Bush has praised for their steadfastness in Iraq, have announced they will scale back their presence. Kerry hopes to gain enough partners and train enough Iraqi soldiers to start reducing the number of American troops within six months. But an American disengagement isn`t the same as a victory in any meaningful sense of the term because no one will be able to fill the military void that will be left by an American departure, or even a major American troop cutback.

There are only two reasonable choices, now that we have taken responsibility for an insurgent-infested country of 25 million people, the majority of whom have turned against the U.S. because it has brought neither peace nor economic improvements. And neither choice is a good one.

The first is to acknowledge, as Kerry has, that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and to withdraw regardless of whether Iraqi elections are held or a robust Iraqi military is ready. True, announcing a date of departure for our troops would boost the insurgents` morale and could lead to a civil war culminating in Iraq`s fragmentation. But it could also force Iraqis to come up with creative, indigenous solutions. It might also pressure Arab countries, which have more to lose than the U.S. from chaos in Iraq, to do something more than watch nervously and condemn the American war. For Bush, this approach would amount to eating crow. But is that worse than endless war in Iraq?

The second choice is to continue fighting in Iraq and hope that eventually there will be enough stability to hold an election that produces an Iraqi government that enjoys legitimacy among Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and other groups. By then, there will also have to be a trained Iraqi army with enough manpower and weaponry to defeat the insurgents, who, regardless of the election`s outcome, will not lay down their arms or defuse their bombs. Unlike the first option, this one requires our staying in Iraq for more than six months, with all that that implies. But it does contain the proverbial exit strategy and it doesn`t rely on the pipe dream of international support. What`s more, a clear timeline could be stipulated.

We are in a situation where the question is not what the best choice is, but which choice is the least bad.

The risks of a U.S. departure are real: Things could get worse in Iraq. But it`s hardly clear that we are making things better by staying.

Meanwhile, we are promised an Iraq that sows democracy in the Middle East by force of example, told that a new occupant in the White House will assemble a truly international coalition that will ease our burdens, and treated to the mantra that the war must be won. This is a denial of reality.

Sooner or later, the American public will catch on. Most Iraqis already have.



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bremer: Deserting a Sinking Ship

How to understand the sudden outbreak of candor among Bush administration officials (or former officials) about Iraq in the past couple of days?

In the vice presidential debate on Tuesday evening, Dick Cheney said, "I have not suggested there`s a connection between iraq and 9/11." Well, maybe not in so many words, but Cheney hinted around about this sort of thing relentlessly.

E.g. consider this from an appearance on Meet the Press:

"Cheney: "If we`re successful in Iraq, if we can stand up a good representative government in Iraq, that secures the region so that it never again becomes a threat to its neighbors or to the United States, so it`s not pursuing weapons of mass destruction, so that it`s not a safe haven for terrorists, now we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11." [NBC, Meet the Press, 11/14/03]



It is hard to read this statement in any other way than that Cheney mistakenly thought Iraq was the "geographic base" of al-Qaeda. So why is Cheney backtracking now? It is because before, he could get away with saying these things despite their falsehood, because no one was seriously challenging him and the press did not want to get out ahead of a major political figure. But now it is the election season, such that the press can always find a legitimate counter-voice. In this situation where you cannot depend on a monopoly over official information, it starts to become dangerous to lie outright, because you know an opponent will call you on it and maybe weaken your credibility.

On Monday, remarks of L. Paul Bremer were released AP reports that he said of the looting in April-May 2003,

"We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," Bremer said during an address to an insurance group. It released a summary of his remarks in Washington. "We never had enough troops on the ground," Bremer said, while insisting that he was "more convinced than ever that regime change was the right thing to do."



CNN notes some backtracking:

"Bremer attempted to clarify his comments in a statement released Tuesday, saying his remarks referred only to "the situation as I found it on the ground, when I arrived in Baghdad in May 2003, and when I believed we needed either more Coalition troops or Iraqi security forces to address the looting."



The problem is that a statement like "we never had enough troops on the ground," if it is what he said, cannot possibly refer only to May, 2003. It seems to be a more honest evaluation of Bremer`s year in Iraq.

Bremer`s remark clearly puts the blame for the Iraq quagmire squarely on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the two architects of the new Pentagon policy of "small force wars." Both were harsh to Gen. Shinseki for daring to suggest that pacifying Iraq would require 300,000 troops. Actually, this is already a low estimate. Calculating on the basis of the situation in the Balkans, some security specialists at the National Security Council estimated in spring of 2003 that 500,000 troops would be needed. In contrast, Rumsfeld forced the Joint Chiefs of Staff to accept an invasion force of only 100,000, which was good enough to win the war but not enough to secure the peace.

Why did Bremer speak out now in the middle of the election season? It may just have been an error of judgment on his part. He was speaking to an insurance association in West Virginia, and may not have intended his remarks to become public. As for the substance of his original statement, it is clearly an attempt on his part to begin shifting some of the blame for the Iraq debacle from himself onto other players, chiefly Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. Bremer`s place in history, not to mention any future career in Washington, depends on his ability to convince analysts that he was not principally at fault for how things went bad in Iraq.

I remember there being rumors that Bremer pressed Washington for more troops in summer of 2003, to no avail, so he could be settling scores on that rebuff.

Then there was this amazing admission by Rumsfeld at a news conference:


QUESTIONER: My name is Glenn Hutchins. Mr. Secretary, what exactly was the connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda?

RUMSFELD: I tell you, I`m not going to answer the question. I have seen the answer to that question migrate in the intelligence community over the period of a year in the most amazing way. Second, there are differences in the intelligence community as to what the relationship was. To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two.



Why did Rummy suddenly have this episode fo conscience? It may well be a sign of a rift with the Neoconservatives in the Pentagon. They made him look like a fool, and he seems happy to repudiate them. I suspect he is setting up the Neonservatives to take the fall, after the election, when he will ask for their resignations. And it won`t be pro forma.

posted by Juan @ 10/6/2004 06:45:56 AM

Kerry on Iraq: Guest Editorial by Joseph White

Professor Joseph White, Director of the Center for Policy Studies at Case Western Reserve University, has kindly agreed to share the following guest editorial here.



Iraq Then and Now
or:
Why invading Iraq was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, but, once the U.S. is there, trying to win may be the best among bad choices.



In the current presidential campaign, Senator Kerry has been criticized for being inconsistent or flip-flopping because he supposedly supported the war and now criticizes it. This little essay is an attempt by a non-specialist, writing from very much an American perspective, to summarize the merits of the case.

Dick Cheney and George Bush say we had to invade Iraq to protect ourselves against terrorism. That shows they totally misunderstood the enemy.

The Wrong Enemy

The U.S. was attacked by Al Qaeda, not Saddam Hussein. That’s a truism, though apparently unrecognized by the Vice President. The larger context is that Al Qaeda is part of a Sunni fundamentalist movement that, for lack of an agreed term, I’ll call the jihadis. This movement believes the Arab world would be restored to greatness if it was governed by a medieval vision of Islam. It has tried to seize power in many countries across the Arab and Muslim worlds. But it had been defeated everywhere except Afghanistan – partly because of repression by regimes allied with the U.S., and partly because, though many people in those countries hate their governments, they also did not want such an extreme Islamic government.

So Osama bin Laden decided to change the subject. By attacking the U.S., he wanted to turn widespread resentment of the U.S., a feeling of humiliation by the westerners, into a reason to support the broader jihadist agenda. His message was that fundamentalists were standing up to the western infidels, so all good Muslims should support them.

Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with that. Saddam Hussein is a Baathist, an Arab Nationalist. Osama bin Laden called Saddam an “infidel” and Saddam brutally repressed the Sunni fundamentalists, along with everyone else. Saddam was one of a bunch of people in the Middle East who didn’t like us but didn’t like Al Qaeda either. The Iranian Mullahs, for example, are Shiite fundamentalists. Sunni extremists like Osama view the Shia as heretics or schismatics. It’s much like how Catholics viewed Protestants during the Reformation – which led to over a century of religious wars in Europe. Even in Iraq some of the bombings have been Sunnis blowing up Shia.

So attacking Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with attacking Osama. In fact, it was exactly what Osama would want. First, it got rid of one of his enemies in the Arab world. More important, the American invasion of Iraq gave him an opportunity to get allies in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Before we invaded Iraq, we were fighting Sunni jihadis. Lots of other people didn’t like us, for all sorts of reasons, but were not trying to kill Americans. Now, in Iraq, the Al Qaeda types are joined by Baathist Arab nationalists; by the radical Shia led by Muqtada al-Sadr; by Iraqi nationalists who don’t like having the U.S. occupying their country; and by tribal groups that just don’t like having any foreigners around, and who feel they have to take revenge if any of their members are killed. The rest of the Arab world sees the conflict on Al-Jazeera, where brutality based on a medieval distortion of Islam is presented as the way to overcome humiliation, be strong, and drive out the infidels. So by invading Iraq, Bush and Cheney took our conflict with jihadis into the worst possible conditions. Definitely the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. It would have been much better, for example, to put more effort into catching Bin Laden and turning Afghanistan into a decent place to live.

How Could They Get It So Wrong?

There’s a lot of theories, but one thing is clear: Bush and Cheney were not focused on Al Qaeda and the larger jihadist movement at all.

Look at what Cheney said on August 26, 2002, when he made the case for invading Iraq to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Nashville:


“We now know Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons… Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop 10 percent of the world’s oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world’s energy supplies, directly threaten America’s friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail.”
(New York Times October 3, 2004, p17)


Ignore the fact that Cheney and the rest of the administration vastly exaggerated Saddam’s nuclear threat, badly distorting the facts. Cheney’s rationale has nothing to do with Al Qaeda. As Bob Woodward’s book, Plan of Attack, makes clear, Cheney and others in the administration wanted to eliminate Saddam Hussein before 9-11 happened. The very first National Security Council meeting of Bush’s Presidency, on January 30, focused on Iraq. As Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill recalled, Condi Rice said the main agenda item was “How Iraq is destabilizing” (her words) the Middle East, and argued that, in O’Neill’s summary, “Iraq might be the key to reshaping the entire region.” (Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty, 72). As many other sources, such as Richard Clarke’s book and reporting in The New Yorker show, this administration paid little attention to Al Qaeda before 9-11, and President Bush immediately focused on Iraq after 9-11.

If you were worried about Muslim radicals getting The Bomb, you would worry more about the prospect of radicals taking over Pakistan. After all, those radicals are a lot stronger in Pakistan than they were in Iraq, and Pakistan already has The Bomb. So people who seriously worried about Osama’s brand of radical Islam would at least ask whether invading Iraq might destabilize Pakistan. But there is no evidence in Plan of Attack that Bush and Cheney considered those kinds of issues at all.

Some people in the administration, known as the “neocons” (neoconservatives), believed that we could create a democracy in Iraq, and that the example of that democracy would transform the Muslim (especially Arab) world, and so defuse the threat from Muslim fundamentalist movements. President Bush makes that his main argument now. Even George F. Will calls the idea that we can build democracy in other countries a “lethal idea” (Newsweek, Sept 27 2004) based on fantasy. At a minimum, we should expect our leaders to think about what could go wrong if we tried. But Bush and Cheney appear to have paid no attention at all to the risks. Instead, they sold the idea of the war on false data about “weapons of mass destruction,” especially nuclear weapons. In Thursday’s debate President Bush said:

“My opponent says we didn’t have any allies in this war. What’s he say to Tony Blair? What’s he say to Alexander Kwasniewski of Poland?”

But even Kwasniewski, asked about weapons of mass destruction in March, said:

“They deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that’s true. We were taken for a ride.” (taken from the Newsweek website Sunday, October 03, 2004)

The facts are obvious. This administration came into office determined to overthrow Saddam Hussein. That was a goal long before 9/11. Attacking Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda and nothing to do with radical Sunni fundamentalism. Cheney wanted to attack Iraq because he thought Saddam would dominate the Middle East with nuclear weapons that Saddam did not have. The administration grossly distorted intelligence to make that case. What attacking Iraq did do was play directly into Osama bin Laden’s hands. Bush and Cheney show no signs of even understanding the issue.

Now What?

But now the U.S. is occupying Iraq. Actually, “occupying Iraq” may be a bit too positive a term; part of the problem in terms of security is that the U.S. is not doing much of a job of occupying significant portions of the country. What should be done now?

Senator Kerry’s position is that, once there, the U.S. can’t afford to lose. Ignore for the moment what “lose” and “win” might mean. An outcome that would be viewed as defeat for the U.S. would be seen by the Arab world and much of the Muslim world as a victory for jihadi’sts. Bush and Cheney turned Iraq into a giant recruiting poster for Al Qaeda. But it will be much worse if the fundamentalists can say they won, so that Iraq is proof that their approach can restore the pride and power of Arab and Muslim peoples.

The question then is whether Senator Kerry has a better chance of avoiding such a loss than President Bush does. That gets translated politically into whether Kerry has a better “plan” than Bush, but demanding a “plan” is plain dumb. Iraq is past the opportunity for planning. Kerry can’t possibly know what the situation on the ground will be on January 20, so what he will do then, should he be elected. Instead, Kerry can legitimately argue that he offers a more promising approach.

His first argument would be that Bush has already shown that he doesn’t deserve trust on the issue. Bush has had lots of “plans” for Iraq, all of which have failed. At a minimum, Kerry can and has said that you can’t solve a problem if you aren’t willing to figure out what it is, or even to acknowledge it. So one advantage of Kerry’s approach would be realism.

But what then? Kerry can’t legitimately promise that he will get a lot of help from allies and international organizations. They must calculate their own national interests and domestic politics (or, for international organizations, where they’ll get staff willing to risk going to Iraq), and the costs may exceed the benefits. What Kerry can argue is that he has a better chance of getting help from allies and international organizations than Bush does. Consider the situation of the French:

The French government opposed invading Iraq for very good reasons: that invading Iraq was a diversion from the real task, fighting jihadis, and that Saddam could be kept in a box by inspections. They were right. But, as noted above, now Iraq IS a front in a conflict with jihadis. There is a French interest in avoiding jihadist victory in Iraq, because, expanded beyond Iraq, the movement is highly likely to have nasty effects on French interests. But it has to be very hard for the French to turn around and support the U.S. with Bush as president: partly because of personal feelings among leaders and partly because Bush has proven that his judgment in operational decisions cannot be trusted. There is a further problem, to which Kerry had referred. The Bush administration has been so focused on keeping contracts for American corporations, using contract decisions to punish the French and others, that it would be very hard for any French government to cooperate unless it could show that the French were no longer being discriminated against in economic terms. I suspect that the material value of contracts in the short run is not the major issue. After all, the average French contractor, like all others, must have serious doubts about sending their staff to Iraq at the moment. But the French must care about both the principle and the long run, whether there would be any business prospects if Iraq is ever stabilized. So Kerry makes a good substantive point when he talks about contracts.

Hence Kerry can offer realism, some practical measures to enlist others, and simply the advantage of not being Bush, so making a fresh start. Beyond that, however, he and Bush would face much the same constraints. Everybody is for training more Iraqi soldiers and policemen; the challenge is to ensure they’re competent and don’t go over to the other side(s). Kerry is more likely than Bush to admit a need for more force, and has called for a larger Army. But it’s not clear where the extra volunteers could be found under current conditions, and the political constraints against deploying more troops in Iraq are strong. Neither Kerry nor Bush has evident ways to make the Shia trust the Sunnis, or the Turks accept Kurdish autonomy. Kerry may be seen in most of the world as very different from Bush, so have a better chance of winning cooperation from forces outside Iraq. Unfortunately, it is not at all clear that the contending forces inside Iraq will make the distinction between Kerry and Bush. If Kerry wins he has a better chance of some sort of “success” than Bush does, but it’s still going to be very difficult.

A Note on the Politics

Readers will note that everything I’ve said here is compatible with the substance of Senator Kerry’s campaign positions, but somewhat different from what he has said.

The Bush campaign charges it is inconsistent to say Iraq was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, yet still say we need to win. Their position ignores the fact that the conflict in Iraq is now far wider than a conflict with Saddam Hussein.

The Bush campaign also says Kerry “backed” the war when he voted for the resolution giving Bush authority. As an observer, I find it fair to say that many Democrats made a political calculation to back that resolution. They knew they could be blamed for opposing it, and surely assumed that, if there were a war, and it turned out badly, Bush would get more of the blame than they would. But Kerry does have a substantive point. Bush and Cheney and their advisers greatly exaggerated the evidence about the potential threat from Saddam. Yet most outsiders thought Saddam had some sort of WMD, and thought he harbored aggressive intent. Under these conditions it made sense to resume inspections, and it is highly unlikely that Saddam would have allowed the inspections without the threat of an invasion. It is reasonable for a Senator to expect a normal President to threaten force, when that is useful, yet use force only when necessary. We now know better – that Bush meant to invade Iraq all along. But Kerry could not, and even if he did, he could not have proved it at the time.

Bush also says Kerry does not “support our troops.” That charge has two components. One is Kerry’s series of votes on the famed $87 billion supplemental appropriation. Anyone who knows Congress knows that votes are framed as packages, amendments are offered, and sometimes a legislator wants one version but not another, so votes against the final version of legislation. Kerry may have made a mistaken political calculation (in this case, to object to how the reconstruction of Iraq would be financed), but to say he did not “support our troops” is a distortion (though one Kerry made possible). A more fundamental part is Bush’s argument that, in order to support the troops, you have to support the war.

Many liberals or peace advocates find Bush’s position incomprehensible. The best thing that could happen to the troops would be to come home, unharmed. If opposing the war means ending the war, then it would get the troops out of Iraq, giving them the help they need most. Bush’s argument has a lot of political resonance because “support” in this case means emotional support. If you were stuck in Iraq, you would want to believe you were there for a good reason. It’s hard enough to be in a hellhole, having to kill or be killed, continually wondering who just wants to be your friend and who wants to blow you up, without suspecting that you shouldn’t be there in the first place.

Kerry can give three answers to this criticism. One would be that at least some of who the troops are fighting are the right enemy, even if they should not have been fighting on this ground. A second would be that having a leader who recognizes reality makes it more likely that their efforts will make us more secure. Finally, he can argue that we just should not lie to soldiers; that they can recognize the truth for themselves, and being lied to just makes them feel their government is selling them out.

Kerry can make the final argument from experience. That is how he felt in Vietnam. Yet a whole lot of other soldiers – the kind whose views are represented in the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” – felt very differently. Their need to feel their sacrifices were justified is so great that even 30 years later they can’t let go.

The average voter understands the feelings of soldiers who need to believe what they’re doing is worthwhile. Perhaps that explains why Kerry can’t make some other points as strongly as an analyst would wish.


Joseph White, Ph.D.
Luxenberg Family Professor and Chair
Department of Political Science
Director, Center for Policy Studies
Case Western Reserve University
Mather House 111
11201 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland OH 44106-7109
joseph.white _a_t_ case d o t edu


posted by Juan @ [url10/6/2004 06:01:46 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2004_10_01_juancole_archive.html#109704058014024223[/url]

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Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 232 Bush 285
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News from the Votemaster

John Edwards won the vice-presidential debate 41% to 28% among uncommitted voters according to a CBS poll. An online poll conducted by MSNBC makes the margin of Edwards victory even larger: 67% to 33%. While the MSNBC poll was not a scientific poll, it did have 885,000 responses, so it was a very large poll of Internet users.

The effect of the first presidential debate is starting to kick in. Kerry is surging and Bush is dropping. Kerry has retaken the lead in all-important Ohio by 49% to 48%, New Mexico by 46% to 43%, and Iowa by 48% to 47%. While all of these are within the margin of error, previous polls had Bush ahead in these states by more than the margin of error. Clearly the forward motion Kerry has been experiencing in the national polls this week is starting to show up in the state polls as well. On the other hand, Bush has taken the lead in Pennsylvania by a margin of 48% to 47%.

I got tons of mail about averaging. The response is overwhelmingly against averaging. When I wasn`t doing it, many people said I should do it. Now that I am doing it, many people say I shouldn`t. If I may paraphrase a famous Republican, "You can please some of the people all of the time and you can please all of the people some of the time but you can`t please all the people all the time." I dropped the averaging and went back to the old scheme of listing the most recent poll. If two polls have the same middle date, the shorter one wins. If two (or more) polls have exactly the same polling interval, they are averaged.

Many teachers have sent me mail telling me how they use the site to discuss the election in their classes. There is material for history classes (why is there an electoral college?), geography (why are some states red and some states blue?), math (how can you predict a whole state by asking 800 people?) and more. If you are a teacher looking for more material about the election to use in your classes, take a look at the Lesson Plans Page.
Projected Senate: 49 Democrats, 50 Republicans, 1 independent To bookmark this page, type CTRL-D (Apple-D on Macintoshes). If you are visiting for the first time, welcome. This site has far more about the election than just the map. See the Welcome page for more details.

-- The votemaster

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Die geteilte USA.

And so they met
-
Wednesday, October 6, 2004

IF NOTHING else, Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. John Edwards last night offered Americans a dramatic choice in style and substance. The only thing they seemed to have in common during the vice presidential debate was a disdain for each other.

The two candidates drew clear distinctions on issues such as Iraq, tax policy and job creation.

But the starkest distinction of all was in their relative perceptions of the state of this nation and the world.

Cheney offered an upbeat portrayal of the postwar situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the health of the American economy. Cheney then used his closing statement to raise the specter of terrorists using nuclear or biological weapons in a U.S. city.

Edwards` view of present and future was a reverse image of Cheney`s. Edwards deplored the postwar chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan and emphasized the loss of jobs during the Bush administration. His closing statement talked of restoring a lost sense of optimism and opportunity to this nation.

Unlike the Kerry-Bush debate, where the challenger clearly knocked the president out of his comfort zone, neither Cheney nor Edwards seemed overly ruffled by what were often extraordinarily hard shots at each other. Each stayed in character, for better and worse.

"Mr. Vice President, you are still not being straight with the American people," Edwards said an early exchange, setting the edged tone.

Cheney did not flinch from verbal combat. He accused Edwards at several points of having his facts wrong, and he dryly dismissed the North Carolina senator as having a "not very distinguished" record, citing frequent absences. Cheney, who visits the Senate on official duty every Tuesday, said it was telling that they had never met.

The choices were laid out. Is sage experience or youthful optimism the greater virtue? Is a strain of surliness or bursts of glib overexuberance the greater concern about a man who would be a heartbeat away from the presidency? Are trial lawyers or Halliburton profiteers the greater drain on society? Is postwar Iraq on the right or wrong track?

The conventional wisdom is that elections do not turn on vice presidential nominees -- and there is no reason to believe 2004 will be an exception. This debate was a draw, more likely to rally the partisans on both sides than to change minds before the next Kerry-Bush debate Friday night.

It`s on to St. Louis.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archiv…
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

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Why Don`t Americans Care?
Do you know who Halliburton is? Dick Cheney? How about Karl Rove? Alas, most Americans don`t
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, October 6, 2004

Let`s be honest. Percentage-wise, few people in America really give much of a crap about what`s going on in the hallowed halls of politics and power.

This is what we in the media and maybe you in the media-consuming audience tend to forget far too easily: This country is simply jam-packed with millions of people who have no time for, or interest in, politics, or media, or environmental policy, or education, or global issues, or which presidential candidate lied his ass off about which aspect of his military career and which Orange Alert is totally bogus and how many soldiers are dying for what imbecilic war.

It seems hard to believe. But the general rule of thumb is that major cities are slightly more attuned due to aggressive media saturation and how issues tend to make themselves known more urgently, more immediately, whereas Middle America is a scattershot conglomeration of the politically apathetic and the actively disenfranchised, full of people far too busy with their lives and kids and jobs and zoning out on "Fear Factor" and "Monday Night Football" to care about following the elitist, ever dire dramas playing out on the nation`s gilded stages.

Most Americans, in other words, have no idea what the hell a Halliburton is. Or a Karl Rove. Or a Donny "Shriveled Soul" Rumsfeld. Or a Lockheed Martin. Or a Carlysle Group. Or have any idea that Saddam had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11. Or that WMDs were never found. Or that President Bush has taken more vacation time than any president in U.S. history. Or that Jesus thinks Dubya is "sort of a dink." Or where Iraq is on a map.

Fact is, in the past decade, TV-news ratings -- cable and network, combined -- has shrunk to a fraction of its former numbers. Newspaper subscriptions have been either flat or dropping for just about as long. Newsmagazines, radio, historical nonfiction: flat or dropping fast. Even the Internet, that vast teeming customizable firestorm of news and info streaming in from all over the planet, even the awesome Net draws far more people to its porn and gossip and shopping departments than any e-news joint could ever wet dream.

Is this unfair? Does it sound elitist and biased? It`s not. There have been studies. And reports. And alarming indicators of all kinds telling us time and again that, for example, fully 50 percent of eligible Americans don`t even bother to vote (a 15 percent drop since 1964), and many have no idea who`s on the Supreme Court or what Congress does, and many can`t even point to France on a globe.

Voter turnout, comparatively, in Italy, Spain, the U.K., or Germany? Anywhere from 75 to 92 percent, every time. The sad fact is, the United States ranks 139th out of 172 countries in voter turnout. Wave that flag proudly, baby.

You`ve seen the headlines. Alarming numbers of American high school students can`t even identify the current vice president, much less name a half dozen presidents from history. Far too many citizens can`t name the capital of their own home state or recognize their own senators, much less discern how Bush`s environmental policy is poisoning their water or how Ashcroft wants to scan their email and tap their phones and suck the pith from their souls.

A recent report by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development states that upward of 60 percent of Americans ages 16-25 are `functionally illiterate`, meaning they can`t, for example, fill out a detailed form or read a numerical table (like a time schedule). A recent Florida study shows at least 70 percent of recent high school graduates need remedial courses -- that is, basic reading and math -- when they enter community college. These are kids who, you can be assured, think Colin Powell is that nasty British dude on "American Idol."

And everyone you know seems to have a parent or a sister-in-law living somewhere conservative and podunk for whom politics and news media is like some sort of impossibly dense morass, alien and strange and vaguely threatening, like a nasty, painful growth on their big toe, best ignored in hopes that it will just dry up and go away.

Maybe this, then, is the most pressing question of our time: How to get the vast majority of Americans to care? To pay attention? To read? To effect change and demand accountability from bumbling spoon-fed leaders who count on voter apathy and force-fed ignorance to cram through their environmental rollbacks and homophobic laws and draconian Patriot Acts? Is it even possible? Are we too far gone?

How to make America more like, say, Europe, where knowledge of current events and political intrigue is not only hugely important to the vast majority of citizens but is also deeply woven into the very fabric of daily life, an integral part of the educational system and the café conversation and the workplace water-cooler chats, and to ignore it is considered, well, irresponsible and even a mite traitorous?

True, part of why they care so much is because America is the foremost bully on the block and it pays to know what makes the bully tick. And whine. And kill. In short, as the theory goes, most Americans don`t give a damn because we`re on top and we own everything and have more nukes than anyone and we`re never the ones getting invaded. It`s our unofficial motto -- America: We Don`t Have to Care.

And this very column is frequently slapped with the accusation that it merely "preaches to the choir," and if I really want to affect minds I should consider tempering or sanitizing my opinions for a more "moderate" mainstream readership, as if the nation was chock-full of opinionated, well-read, temperate thinkers ready to be gently informed of new ideas, when in fact this group is but a fraction, a sliver, far overshadowed and overpowered by the real majority in America: The detached. The disinterested. The intellectually lazy.

So, what`s the solution? It is as simple as dramatically changing the way we educate our children, our population? Is it desanitizing our vacuous history textbooks and making media studies and political science and current events as mandatory to the educational diet as macho sports and bad lunches and playground kickball?

Or maybe it`s a new national draft? Will that galvanize the rest of the populace sufficiently? How about Iraq devolving even faster into Vietnam 2.0? Is it 10,000 dead U.S. soldiers and nary an imprisoned terrorist or fresh barrel of oil to show for it? How about five bucks a gallon? Ten? Is it legalizing pot and banning guns? What will it take?

Maybe another massive national catastrophe? Maybe a 9/11 cubed, and cubed again, something unthinkably horrific and unleashed upon the innocents and the children and the puppies, something that so jars and infuriates and undermines our desperate empire that even the cold-blooded neoconservative Right can`t possibly leverage our sorrow and pain for its own political gain? Very possible. After all, nothing like a little hard-earned apocalypse to make you consider voting independent.

Or maybe it`s something entirely different, maybe some sort of potent, unimaginable spiritual enlightenment that looks like revelation and smells like Vishnu and sounds like harmonic convergence and tastes like Buddha and has nothing whatsoever to do with fundamentalism or Christianity or Bush`s angry homophobic flag-wavin` God. The mystics say we`re very close. They claim the next decade will offer, to those who care to participate, one helluva transformational vibrational wallop. Possible?

Whatever it looks like, we can rest assured we`re still not out of the dark, dank woods just yet. Our national apathy is well protected, our intellectual ignorance secure and our fears well fed and carefully, perpetually reinforced by the Powers That Be and the fact that the overall 50 percent voter turnout never moves by more than a point or two, usually downward.

And the Establishment, it only smiles knowingly, and nods, and says there there now. It`ll be all right. Just go back to sleep.


Mark Morford`s Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does. Subscribe to this column at sfgate.com/newsletters.


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/200…
©2004 SF Gate

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Unbedingt anschauen!

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This is a fascinating application of Flash technology to produce a great interactive artwork. You zoom in and out of the image with your up and down cursor keys.

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CIA Report Finds No Conclusive Zarqawi-Saddam Link
Wed Oct 6, 2004 12:24 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A CIA report has found no conclusive evidence that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein harbored Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which the Bush administration asserted before the invasion of Iraq.

"There`s no conclusive evidence the Saddam Hussein regime had harbored Zarqawi," a U.S. official said on Tuesday about the CIA findings.

But the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, stressed that the report, which was a mix of new information and a look at some older information, did not make any final judgments or come to any definitive conclusions.

"To suggest the case is closed on this would not be correct," the official said in confirming an ABC News story about the CIA report that the network said was delivered to the White House last week.

ABC quoted an unnamed senior U.S. official as saying that the CIA document raises "serious questions" about Bush administration assertions that Zarqawi found sanctuary in pre-war Baghdad.

"The official says there is no clear cut evidence that Saddam Hussein even knew Zarqawi was in Baghdad," ABC reported.

The CIA report concludes Zarqawi was in and out of Baghdad, but cast doubt on reports that Zarqawi had been given official approval for medical treatment there as President Bush said this summer, ABC said.

Earlier on Tuesday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan reasserted that there was a relationship between Saddam and Zarqawi.

"He was in contact from Baghdad with Ansar al-Islam in the northeastern part of Iraq. He had a cell operating from Baghdad during that period, as well. So there are clearly ties between Iraq and -- between the regime, Saddam Hussein`s regime and al Qaeda," McClellan told reporters.

Before last year`s invasion to topple Saddam, the Bush administration portrayed Zarqawi as al Qaeda`s link to Baghdad.

Following Saddam`s capture in December and waves of suicide attacks on U.S. and Iraqi security forces which followed, Zarqawi quickly became America`s top enemy in Iraq. The United States placed a $25 million bounty on his head.

The Jordanian-born Zarqawi and his militant Tawhid and Jihad group have claimed responsibility for a string of suicide bombings, kidnappings and hostage beheadings.

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Car Bomb in Western Iraq Kills at Least 10
Wed Oct 6, 2004 08:49 AM ET

By Alistair Lyon

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A suicide car bomb blew up near a National Guard center in western Iraq on Wednesday, killing at least 10 people, as U.S. and Iraqi forces struggled to quell insurgents bent on derailing elections due in January.

An Interior Ministry official said the bomb targeted recruits for the paramilitary force in the town of Anah, 163 miles northwest of Baghdad, near the Syrian border. He said 20 people had been wounded and the death toll could rise.

Witnesses said they saw the car hurtling toward the National Guard center just before it exploded.

Elsewhere, U.S. and Iraqi forces were pursuing a security sweep in a deadly triangle southwest of Baghdad as part of a strategy to prevent insurgents from torpedoing the elections.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told a news conference in Baghdad he was impressed by the interim government`s election preparations and confident the polls would go ahead.

Parts of Iraq have serious security problems, he said. "But there is another story going on of the new Iraq seeking to break out of the oppression and tyranny of Saddam (Hussein) and also from the oppression and tyranny of the terrorists."

There was no sign of the violence easing and no breakthrough in talks between a radical Shi`ite militia and the government to end nightly clashes in a sprawling Baghdad slum district.

Abdel-Hadi al-Daraji, chief spokesman for rebel Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, said negotiations were still going on to stop the Sadr City fighting. "There`s no deal yet," he told Reuters.

A source close to Sadr said the cleric was demanding that U.S. forces stop shelling Sadr City, stop arresting Sadr`s followers, release all senior Sadr aides being held, and rebuild the district, home to some two million people.

The cleric has also demanded reparations be paid for damage done to the area by sustained U.S. attacks in recent weeks.

The source said talks on Wednesday morning had ended inconclusively but would resume later in the day.

Sadr, a firebrand cleric who is about 30 years old, has led two uprisings against U.S. forces in the past six months. His Mehdi Army militiamen are entrenched in Sadr City, in northeast Baghdad, from where they attack U.S. patrols and convoys.

In recent days, U.S. warplanes and gunships have repeatedly attacked neighborhoods in Sadr City.

STRUGGLE WITH INSURGENCY

In other violence, a roadside bomb killed a civilian and wounded four policemen in the southern city of Basra. A Kurdish tribal leader and a companion were shot dead in the northern city of Mosul. And the U.S. military mounted more overnight air strikes on suspected militant hideouts in the rebel-held western town of Falluja. Residents said a child was wounded.

The U.S. military and Iraq`s U.S.-backed interim government have pledged to retake all insurgent-held areas by the end of the year to ensure that elections can proceed on time.

Some 3,000 U.S. marines, soldiers and Iraqi troops thrust into a volatile triangle southwest of Baghdad on Tuesday, surging across the Euphrates river, seizing a bridge, overrunning a rebel camp and detaining 30 suspects.

A U.S. spokesman said he expected the offensive to last several days, adding that there had been little fighting so far.

"It`s a large operation. So far it`s gone pretty well, but it`s a little premature to talk about the degree of success," said Lieutenant Colonel Steven Boylan.

The sweep in the area that includes the troublespot towns of Mahmudiya, Yusufiya and Latifiya follows a weekend offensive that drove rebels from the streets of Samarra, north of Baghdad.

Mahmudiya, about 28 miles southwest of Baghdad, has earned a fearsome reputation for guerrilla ambushes of military convoys and vehicles carrying contractors and journalists.

Straw argued that the Iraq invasion was justified by the threat of Saddam`s weapons of mass destruction, even though no such weapons have been found since the war began in March 2003.

"Had we walked away from Iraq and left Iraq to Saddam, Saddam would have indeed built up his capabilities, built up his strength and posed an even greater threat to international peace and security," Straw declared.

He was speaking before U.S. inspectors were due to confirm they had found no stockpiles of the banned arms that London and Washington cited as their main reason for going to war. (Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny, Mussab al-Khairallah, Khaled Oweis in Baghdad, Maher al-Thanoon in Mosul, and Abdul Razzak Hameed in Basra)

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washingtonpost.com
Report Discounts Iraqi Arms Threat
U.S. Inspector Says Hussein Lacked Means

By Mike Allen and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 6, 2004; Page A01

The government`s most definitive account of Iraq`s arms programs, to be released today, will show that Saddam Hussein posed a diminishing threat at the time the United States invaded and did not possess, or have concrete plans to develop, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, U.S. officials said yesterday.

The officials said that the 1,000-page report by Charles A. Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, concluded that Hussein had the desire but not the means to produce unconventional weapons that could threaten his neighbors or the West. President Bush has continued to assert in his campaign stump speech that Iraq had posed "a gathering threat."

The officials said Duelfer, an experienced former United Nations weapons inspector, found that the state of Hussein`s weapons-development programs and knowledge base was less advanced in 2003, when the war began, than it was in 1998, when international inspectors left Iraq.

"They have not found anything yet," said one U.S. official who had been briefed on the report.

A senior U.S. government official said that the report includes comments Hussein made to debriefers after his capture that bolster administration assertions, including his statement that his past possession of weapons of mass destruction "was one of the reasons he had survived so long." He also maintained such weapons saved his government by halting Iranian ground offensives during the Iran-Iraq war and deterred coalition forces from pressing on to Baghdad during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the official said.

The official also said that Duelfer`s Iraq Survey Group had uncovered Iraqi plans for ballistic missiles with ranges from 400 to 1,000 kilometers and for a 1,000-kilometer-range cruise missile, farther than the 150-kilometer range permitted by the United Nations, the senior official said.

The official said Duelfer will tell Congress in the report and in testimony today that Hussein intended to reconstitute weapons of mass destruction programs if he were freed of the U.N. sanctions that prevented him from getting needed materials.

Duelfer`s report said Hussein was pursuing an aggressive effort to subvert the international sanctions through illegal financing and procurement efforts, officials said. The official said the report states that Hussein had the intent to resume full-scale weapons of mass destruction efforts after the sanctions were eliminated, and details Hussein`s efforts to hinder international inspectors and preserve his weapons of mass destruction capabilities.

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), vice chairman of the House intelligence committee, said she had not read Duelfer`s report but has been told that it thoroughly undercuts the administration`s assertions that Iraq posed a serious threat.

"Intentions do not constitute a growing danger," Harman said. "It`s hardly mushroom clouds, hardly stockpiles," she added, a reference to administration rhetoric used in the run-up to the war.

The report`s release comes at a point in the presidential campaign when Democratic candidate John F. Kerry is aggressively challenging the Bush administration about its prewar justifications for invading Iraq, which centered largely on the contention that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. People familiar with the report said it is being released today because Duelfer was ready and his schedule permitted him to testify to Congress.

Yesterday, administration officials discussed some of the report`s findings publicly, arguing that it showed Hussein was a long-term threat even though no weapons of mass destruction were found.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan called Hussein`s effort to evade the U.N. sanctions "very revealing." "We all thought that we would find stockpiles, and that was not the case," McClellan said.

"The fact that he had the intent and capability, and that he was trying to undermine the sanctions that were in place is very disturbing. And I think the report will continue to show that he was a gathering threat that needed to be taken seriously, that it was a matter of time before he was going to begin pursuing those weapons of mass destruction."

The report includes page after page of names of individuals and companies -- many from China, Russia and France -- that had traded illegally with Iraq, the senior government official said. The State Department began briefing the named governments on the report yesterday, the official said.

Duelfer`s findings follow reports by the Senate intelligence committee and his predecessor, David A. Kay, that criticized the prewar assessment that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. But Bush has pointed to the Duelfer report as the last word on the state of Iraq`s weapons programs. Asked in June if he thought such weapons had existed in Iraq, Bush said he would "wait until Charlie gets back with the final report."

Another government official who was briefed on the report said that many U.S. officials had thought Hussein would "get down to business" in developing weapons when the U.N. inspectors left. "There`s no evidence of that," the official said.

The official said that Iraq`s nuclear-related activity in particular had been dormant for years before the invasion. "They probably didn`t have a program for some period of time, well before we went in there," he said.

The Bush administration has held out the possibility that illicit weapons and their components were secreted by Hussein across the border into Syria. This may still be true, but Duelfer`s team did not find any proof to support this notion, the official said. "They have no evidence of this," the official said. "It`s an unresolved issue." Syria denies it aided the hiding of illicit materials.

Duelfer replaced Kay in January as the chief U.S. weapons hunter after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. In title, he was the CIA`s special adviser for strategy regarding Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction. As head of the Iraq Survey Group, he worked independent of the CIA and his report was not vetted or changed by the agency, said one U.S. government official familiar with Duelfer`s work.

The president met with Duelfer at the White House on Feb. 6. Bush said during a prime-time news conference in April that during Duelfer`s return to Iraq, he had been "amazed at how deceptive the Iraqis had been" toward U.N. inspectors, as well as "deceptive in hiding things."

The report also includes an investigation of a broad range of subjects that are either loosely or not at all connected to weapons of mass destruction, a foreign intelligence official said. These include Iraq`s conventional weapons programs, evidence of corruption and abuse in the U.N.-monitored oil-for-food program, and dual-use equipment -- which could be used for either peaceful or military programs -- that U.N. inspectors may not have been aware of.

Staff writer Dafna Linzer contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
Oil Fantasies

By Robert J. Samuelson

Wednesday, October 6, 2004; Page A27

The recent surge in oil prices to roughly $50 a barrel teaches some useful lessons. One is that surprises happen. A year ago futures contracts predicted today`s price would be $25. A second is that the economy has grown less vulnerable to oil "shocks." Compared with 1973, we now use almost 50 percent less energy for each dollar of output. New industries (software, theme parks) need less than the old (steel, chemicals). But the largest lesson is depressingly familiar. Americans won`t think realistically about oil. We consider cheap fuel a birthright, and when we don`t get it, we whine -- rather than ask why or what we should do.

If prices rise, we blame a conspiracy of greedy oil companies, OPEC or someone. The reality is usually messier. Energy economist Philip Verleger Jr. attributes the present price run-up to massive miscalculation. Oil companies and OPEC underestimated global demand, particularly from China. Since 2001 China`s oil use has jumped 36 percent. This error led OPEC and companies to underinvest in new production capacity, he says. In 2002 the world had 5 million barrels a day of surplus production capacity; now it has little. Unexpected supply interruptions (sabotage in Iraq, civil war in Nigeria) boost prices.

Verleger says prices could go to $60 next year or even $80 if adverse supply conditions persist. No one really knows. Analyst Adam Sieminski of Deutsche Bank thinks prices may retreat to the low $30s in 2005. A slowing Chinese economy could weaken demand. But the uncertainties cannot obscure two stubborn realities. First, world oil production can`t rise forever; dwindling reserves will someday cause declines. And, second, barring miraculous discoveries, more will come from unstable regions -- especially the Middle East.

We need to face these realities; neither George Bush nor John Kerry does. Their energy plans are rival fantasies. Kerry pledges to make us "independent" of Middle East oil, mainly through conservation and an emphasis on "renewable" fuels (biomass, solar, wind). Richard Nixon was the first president to promise energy "independence." It couldn`t happen then -- and can`t now. The United States imports about 60 percent of its oil. A fifth of imports come from the Persian Gulf. Even if we eliminated Persian Gulf imports, we`d still be vulnerable. Oil scarcities and prices are transmitted worldwide. The global economy -- on which we depend -- remains hugely in need of Persian Gulf oil.

Bush`s pitch is that we can produce our way out of trouble. No such luck. Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with possible reserves of 10 billion barrels, might provide 1 million barrels a day, or 5 percent of present U.S. demand. Fine. But the practical effect would be to offset some drop in production elsewhere. American oil output peaked in 1970; it`s down 34 percent since then.

A groundbreaking study from the consulting company PFC Energy illuminates our predicament. The world now uses 82 million barrels of oil a day; that`s 30 billion barrels a year. To estimate future production, the study examined historical production and discovery patterns in all the world`s oil fields. The conclusion: The world already uses about 12 billion more barrels a year than it finds. "In almost every mature [oil] basin, the world has been producing more than it`s finding for close to 20 years," says PFC`s Mike Rodgers. That can`t continue indefinitely.

The study is no doomsday exercise. Rodgers says that future discovery and recovery rates could be better -- or worse -- than assumed. With present rates, he expects global oil supply to peak before 2020 at about 100 million barrels a day. Whatever happens, the world will probably depend more on two shaky regions: the Persian Gulf and the former Soviet Union. The Gulf now supplies a quarter of the world`s oil; PFC projects that to rise to a third in a decade.

Although the future is hazy, what we ought to do isn`t. We need to dampen oil use, expand production and -- if oil prices recede -- significantly increase the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. These steps can`t end our vulnerability to global price surges or the effects of a catastrophic loss of oil supplies from, say, war or terrorism. But they can reduce it. Most important, Americans should curb gasoline use. The Energy Information Administration reports the following: Gasoline represents about 45 percent of U.S. oil demand; since 1991 the explosion of SUVs and light trucks has meant no gains in average fuel mileage efficiency; and over the same period, typical drivers travel almost 1,000 miles more annually.

We should be promoting fuel-efficient vehicles, particularly "hybrids." Combining gasoline and electric power, they get 20 percent to 40 percent better mileage than conventional vehicles, says David Greene of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. They also cost from $3,000 to $4,000 more than conventional cars, he says, mainly because they have two power sources. But Greene plausibly asserts that if production expanded, the cost gap would shrink. The way to expand demand would be to adopt a gasoline tax of $1 to $2 a gallon. Americans would know that fuel prices would stay high. They`d have reason to economize.

The tax should be introduced over five to 10 years to give drivers and auto firms time to convert.

Of course, a fuel tax is a political showstopper. It isn`t in Bush`s or Kerry`s plan. They promote hydrogen-powered cars. These sound great but -- given the technical obstacles -- won`t become widespread for many years, if ever. This captures our choice: taking modestly unpleasant preventive steps; or running greater future risks by clinging to our fantasies. History favors our fantasies.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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U.S. may be too quick to blame al-Zarqawi
Arab intelligence reports say U.S. too quick to solely blame militant for carrying out violence in Iraq




By Mohamad Bazzi
Middle East Correspondent

October 4, 2004

BEIRUT -- Whenever a car bombing, beheading or other spectacular act of violence takes place in Iraq these days, U.S. officials are quick to blame Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. If he hasn`t already taken credit himself.

But according to an Arab intelligence assessment, al-Zarqawi is not capable of carrying out the level of attacks in Iraq that he has claimed and that American officials have blamed on him.

Al-Zarqawi`s own militant group has fewer than 100 members inside Iraq, although al-Zarqawi has close ties to a Kurdish Islamist group with at least several hundred members, according to two reports produced by an Arab intelligence service. The Kurdish group, Ansar al-Islam, has provided dozens of recruits for suicide bombings since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the reports say. And while U.S. forces relentlessly pound the insurgent strongholds of Fallujah and Samarra, claiming to hit al-Zarqawi safe houses, the elusive militant could be hiding in the northern city of Mosul.

The Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi, 37, has used the media effectively to inflate his role in the Iraqi insurgency. In recent months, he and his supporters have claimed credit for scores of suicide bombings, attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces, kidnappings and beheadings of foreigners, and coordinated uprisings in several Iraqi cities.

The reports say al-Zarqawi is likely responsible for the beheadings of American contractor Nicholas Berg and several other foreigners. But the sheer level of other attacks that he has claimed is not consistent with the number of supporters he has inside Iraq and his ability to move around the country, according to the analysis. The reports say former members of Saddam Hussein`s Baathist regime are responsible -- either directly or by paying others to carry them out -- for many of the attacks, especially sophisticated roadside bombings and ambushes of U.S. troops.

Terror links in doubt

The assessment contradicts many of the Bush administration`s statements about al-Zarqawi and his terrorist network. Before invading Iraq in March 2003, the administration argued that al-Zarqawi was a top lieutenant of Osama bin Laden. U.S. officials said al-Zarqawi had taken refuge in Baghdad and was a major link between Hussein`s regime and bin Laden`s al-Qaida network. But that assertion has never been proven, and there are doubts about al-Zarqawi`s relationships with both bin Laden and Hussein`s government, as some Bush administration officials have acknowledged in recent months. In July, U.S. officials raised the reward for information leading to al-Zarqawi`s arrest or killing to $25 million -- equal to the bounty on bin Laden`s head.

A senior Arab intelligence official shared the contents of the report with Newsday last week on the condition neither he nor his country would be identified. The intelligence service has a track record of infiltrating militant groups, and it kept a close watch on Hussein`s regime for decades.

U.S. officials have erred in focusing so much attention since February on al-Zarqawi as the main force behind the insurgency, according to the reports, which were produced for the Arab country`s political leadership. The analysis has not been shared with U.S. officials.

"The Americans are inclined to focus on one individual as the mastermind of all the troubles," says one of the reports. "In reality, the situation in Iraq is more complex. There are many small groups that sometimes work together, but at other times they have different agendas ... There are former Saddam loyalists, home-grown Islamic extremists, foreign extremists and Kurdish elements."

More details in documents

Among the other findings in the intelligence reports:

Mosul has become a haven for Islamic militants, and especially for members of Ansar al-Islam. The city is a center for training and dispatching suicide bombers to other parts of Iraq, and a coordination hub between ex-regime loyalists and Islamic militants. Ansar moved many of its operations to Mosul after it was driven out of a remote, mountainous part of northern Iraq by U.S. bombardment during the war. The Baathist regime had strong support in Mosul, and Hussein`s two sons were killed in a gun battle with U.S. troops after taking refuge there.

Al-Zarqawi has spent considerable time in Mosul, and he might be hiding there rather than in Fallujah, where U.S. forces have launched numerous air strikes since June on what they describe as al-Zarqawi safe houses. Al-Zarqawi is drawn to Mosul because of the concentration of Ansar members there, and because the city of 2 million people is easier to hide in than Fallujah.

Al-Zarqawi`s ties to al-Qaida are unclear, and he is more likely an independent operator than a lieutenant of bin Laden`s. (That has been the view of Arab and European intelligence officials for several years.) Al-Zarqawi is also likely to see his own group, Tawhid and Jihad (Arabic for "Unity and Holy War"), as being in competition for recruits with al-Qaida.

Foreign militants need strong Iraqi allies to operate inside the tribal, tightly knit communities of Anbar province, which includes the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. There have been growing tensions in recent months between some foreign militants and their Iraqi hosts. "The U.S. military has not been able to exploit those tensions because it does not understand the tribal relationships in Iraqi society," says one of the reports.

Al-Zarqawi and his supporters have learned to use the media better than many other segments of the Iraqi insurgency. By sending out a steady stream of audio and videotapes claiming responsibility for suicide bombings, mortar attacks and beheadings, al-Zarqawi appears to have a larger network of supporters than he really does. But one report notes, "There are indications that the public attention is helping al-Zarqawi win more recruits."

Still `dangerous terrorist` The Arab intelligence official said the reports are not intended to minimize the danger posed by al-Zarqawi and other foreign militants operating in Iraq. "This man, al-Zarqawi, is a very brutal and dangerous terrorist," the official said. "But we do not believe that he is the architect of everything in Iraq. There are many other players on the ground."

The assessments are based on informants who send reports back from Iraq, the intelligence service`s own monitoring of developments inside the country and interrogations of so-called "Arab volunteers" who had entered Iraq ahead of the U.S. invasion to fight alongside Hussein`s regime. After returning to their homelands, many of those volunteers are being watched by domestic security services because of their Islamist sympathies.

The reports underscore the U.S. need for Arab intelligence cooperation. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the security services of several U.S. allies in the Arab world -- most notably Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- have increased their cooperation with U.S. agencies. Even non-American allies, especially Syria, stepped up their information-sharing with the United States, partly for fear of being targeted in the Bush administration`s "war on terrorism."

Al-Zarqawi first came to prominence in a February 2003 speech by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations Security Council. Powell claimed that al-Zarqawi had arrived in Baghdad in May 2002 to have a leg amputated and establish a base of operations there, and described him as "an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants."

Since Powell`s speech, some U.S. officials backed away from the story of al-Zarqawi`s Baghdad hospital visit, saying the militant still has both his legs.

By mid-June of this year, the administration also shifted its view of al-Zarqawi`s relationship to al-Qaida. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld conceded that al-Zarqawi might be more of a rival than an associate of bin Laden`s. Al-Zarqawi "may very well not have sworn allegiance to [bin Laden]," Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing. "Maybe he disagrees with him on something, maybe because he wants to be `The Man` himself and maybe for a reason that`s not known to me."

Rumsfeld added, "someone could legitimately say he`s not al-Qaida."

Despite Rumsfeld`s comments, the administration has not backed away from describing al-Zarqawi as a main force behind the Iraqi insurgency. To some analysts, the U.S. focus on al-Zarqawi is part of a political strategy to portray the insurgency as something that is not homegrown and instead driven by Islamic militants and foreigners.

"A year ago, hardly anyone had heard of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Today, he is a superman who is responsible for bringing chaos to Iraq," said Diaa Rashwan, a leading expert on Islamic militants at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. "The Americans overestimated him for political reasons. It is easier to put all the blame on one man than to deal with an insurgency that includes Iraqi nationalists, former Baathists and Islamists."

Rashwan noted that al-Zarqawi does not have a track record of religious declarations and other ideological statements that would help him attract followers and rise within the world of militant Islam. By contrast, bin Laden has been issuing fatwas, or religious decrees, attacking the United States and Arab regimes since the mid-1990s.

"People who gravitate toward militant movements are attracted to the ideology, and al-Zarqawi has very little to offer," Rashwan said. "He does not have a jihadist manifesto."

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

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Take them out, dude: pilots toast hit on Iraqi `civilians`
Video nur über die Seite broadcast by Channel 4 News:

http://informationclearinghouse.info/video1011.htm

Take them out, dude: pilots toast hit on Iraqi `civilians`
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington

10/06/04 "The Independent" -- The Pentagon said yesterday it was investigating cockpit video footage that shows American pilots attacking and killing a group of apparently unarmed Iraqi civilians.

The 30-second clip shows the pilot targeting the group of people in a street in the city of Fallujah and asking his mission controllers whether he should "take them out". He is told to do so and, shortly afterwards, the footage shows a huge explosion where the people were. A second voice can be heard on the clip saying: "Oh, dude."

The existence of the video, taken last April inside the cockpit of a US F-16 fighter has been known for some time, though last night`s broadcast by Channel 4 News is believed to be the first time a mainstream broadcaster has shown the footage.

At no point during the exchange between the pilot and controllers does anyone ask whether the Iraqis are armed or posing a threat. Critics say it proves war crimes are being committed.

Copyright: Text: ©2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd. All rights reserved

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TigrisTales

I am in a police convoy speeding south of Baghdad. Then the young officer in charge gives an order that shocks us all
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
Wednesday October 6, 2004

The Guardian
For the first time in more than 35 years Iraqis are free to talk, discuss and debate - publicly and relatively without fear - the political and social aspects of their daily life. But for most of them all they can talk about is violence.

What happened this morning? How many mortars fell on your neighbourhood yesterday? Did the Americans free your cousins or are they still being "interrogated"? All these questions have become part of the daily chit-chat of Iraqis when they meet in the souq, bus or cafe.

Words like "intihary" (suicide bomber), or "ubuwa -ied" and "mudahamat" (the terms for raids conducted by US forces) have become part of the daily speak. Whenever men get together in tea houses, or women stand outside their doors with their kids chatting, violence is always the topic.

"Is the resistance good or bad?" is Question Number One in Iraq. Of course the answer depends if you are Shiite, Sunni or Kurdish, and if you were a former military officer or a political prisoner.

A few weeks ago the Iraqi government, with the help of the Americans, decided to conduct a big sweep looking for weapons, insurgents and hostages in the town of Latifiya, 30kms south of Baghdad. The town is a hotbed of Sunni insurgents and one of the many no-go zones engulfing Baghdad these days.

Squeezed in the back of a police SUV with two AK-47 guns dangling next to my head, I listened to a couple of police officers chatting as 60 police cars, with half a dozen US Marine vehicles in attendance, screeched their way from Baghdad.

Eight police officers were cramped in the car under the command of a young twentysomething lieutenant, a recent graduate from a US-sponsored training course in Amman. He is one of the new recruits on whom the government and the Americans are building their hopes to rebuild the country. His number two was a Shiite police officer in his 50s who first joined the force under Saddam.

The lieutenant turned out to be a Sunni, originally from the area in which the raid was taking place. Understandably, he started freaking out the moment we hit the road, fearing that someone might recognise him. His suffering didn`t ease when the convoy hit a huge traffic jam, and two men standing suspi ciously on the roadside next to a car waved at him.

He tuned to his aide and said, as he started to unbutton his shirt:

"If the mujahideen open fire at you, be sure not to fire back."

"What do you mean sir?"

"I mean, make sure not to fire back because those are mujahideens, holy warriors."

"But those people are shooting at us and trying to kill us all the time," said the aide, his eyes wide, unable to believe what he was hearing.

"Of course they shoot at us! We are collaborators."

"What do you mean sir?" asked the aide.

"We are working with Americans, the infidel occupiers. This is why they are allowed to kill us."

"But we are stopping the criminals, arresting thieves and protecting the citizens - isn`t this what police should do? Do you call this collaboration?"

"Yes, because sometimes the police help the Americans to arrest the resistance fighters."

"But those people are terrorists. They are killing and kidnapping civilians," said the increasingly incredulous junior officer.

"First," said the lieutenant, "the resistance don`t kill civilians; they only attack the Americans. They are trying to liberate our country. Second, they only kidnap the Jews."

"And what about all the people who get killed in the car bombs? Are they occupiers too?" By now the aide was shaking with anger.

"Oh no, these car bombs are planted by the Americans and the Jews to smear the reputation of the resistance."

"What about the Russian contractors who were working to fix the electrical plants? Are those also Jews and collaborators?"

"See, the resistance detain people and investigate them. If they are OK they will be released, and by the way, they are all taught about Islam while they are being held, and are given Korans before being released. Or else they are killed if they are found guilty by the Sharia court."

Everyone in the car fell silent, and by now we were on the outskirts of Latifiya and we could here the explosions. The lieutenant, now wearing a coloured T-shirt, tucked his gun in his trousers and jumped out of the car and mixed with crowds. Later, four policemen were killed in the raid when insurgents attacked them.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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Noch ein Schlummervideo für die Nacht.

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Danke Cheney

A behind the scenes look as Dick Cheney Warms up For The Vice Presidential Debate
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http://informationclearinghouse.info/video1017.htm
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And the US system of social insecurity comes with a sociological add-on: when you fall outside the realm of a safety net, you risk being caught in a police and penal dragnet. The percentage of people in jail in the US is six to 10 times as high as in the European Union. About 5 percent of 18-year-old-plus Americans have problems with the law, and this includes one black man in five. Almost a third of the population has a criminal record.

Und solche Leute wollen auch noch wählen!

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Tom schreibt ein Vorwort und dann der Artikel einmal die Woche. Die rtikel lohnen sich immer zu lesen. Diese geht es um das Thema polling as a political narcotic. Gerade nach diesen äußertst merkwürdigen Ergebnissen der Umfragen in den letzten Monaten mit über 20% Unterschied ohne herausragende Ereignisse, werden doch alle diese Polls stark in Frage gestellt.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/

Tomgram: Schwartz on polling as a political narcotic

This post can be found at http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=1881

One August night when my son was not yet four, we returned home late. Because his bedtime was around 8 p.m., and because eleven months a year he was a city boy, he did not normally see the stars. This night, as we trooped from the car to the door, with the Milky Way overhead, and the stars shimmering high in the darkness, he stopped before a small pine tree. He seemed to study it for a moment and then a single star that glimmered just above it. Finally, he looked up at me. "Dad, that`s a very, very big tree, isn`t it?"

I was charmed, as one invariably is by such comments from small children, no less one`s own small child. I smiled in the darkness and agreed. "Yes, that`s a big tree." For him, it was true.

He paused another moment, considering the matter or perhaps following some untranslatable stream of thought who knew where, and then added, "And that`s a very, very small star?"

Noticing the star for the first time, I agreed.

"It`s very, very small and very, very far away, right Dad?" Each sentence was both a statement of fact and, in the upward lilt of its ending, a questioning of fact, a search for a confirming assurance from an adult that what seemed to be, was.

"Very far away, indeed," I assured him.

"That tree," he said, "is much bigger than that tiny, tiny star." And in this statement for the first time there was almost no question at all.

I restrained my urge to laugh at the way the logic of what seemed visibly self-evident led so directly to an absurd conclusion. In this lay the very charm of childhood. And yet his statement called out for response -- agreement, assurance or, of course, correction. And correct I did. I began, as parents will, to discourse on the vastness of stars and the smallness of trees, but somewhere along the way, I caught the tone of my voice, which had fallen into that slightly syrupy timber in which adults regularly patronize children for their amusing "wisdom," magical "innocence," and lack of grounding in scientific reality.

What took me back, however, was the realization that my own barely suppressed laughter was actually meant to reassure myself at my son`s expense; or rather, I was struck by how slender was the thread of knowledge that allowed me to laugh at him. I had, after all, never taken a course in astronomy, or talked to an astronomer, or even as an adult read a book on the stars. I knew what every child of a certain age knew, that stars were vast beyond imagining, and I knew it the way most people, not just children, in our world know most things scientific or technological -- ninth hand.

In my personal experience of the stars, my mindset was little short of Medieval. Those glittering dots might as well have been distant crystalline spheres in fixed orbits around our planet or, for that matter, holes poked in the scrim of the heavens, revealing points of light from another world. Only my unspoken faith in a knowledge I but faintly possessed told me otherwise -- that and my son`s ignorance. If I was patronizing my son, it only followed that I was by extension -- like some relative "twice removed" -- patronizing myself. As long as I could laugh at my son`s attempts to grasp our world, that world in some small measure appeared a sturdier place and I, a more controlling presence.

This incident came to mind yesterday while I was reading former pollster Michael Schwartz`s discussion below of our societal poll addiction. I`ve certainly become one of those addicts. Remembering my own shaky grasp of the most basic astronomical facts, I had to suppress the urge to laugh at all of us "political junkies" for our increasing devotion to an election process underpinned by mathematical methodologies so abstruse (not to say questionable) that few of us would likely grasp them. This is but another version of faith-based politics, as Schwartz makes clear. The very idea that, in a term Jonathan Schell first used sometime in the 1990s, we would conduct -- via our media (which loves the continual "horserace" of politics) -- an endless "serial election" based on the mathematical manipulation by various private polling companies and media outfits of the opinions of relatively small numbers of possible or potential or registered voters seems, on further thought, absurd and undemocratic, not to say, as Schwartz indicates, dangerous.

For the anti-Bush camp in particular, a poll-based politics (despite the present "bounce" for Kerry) offers special dangers this year. After all, a whole series of possibly unprecedented voter mobilizations seem to be taking place in swing states across the country. There are evidently significant upsurges in minority registration and new voter registration generally, especially in urban Democratic areas. I`ve personally never known so many -- perhaps any -- friends and acquaintances who headed for swing states to register voters (sometimes just on a weekend off) or are planning to head for swing states (New York, where I live, being more or less a presidential non-event) to help ensure Election Day turn-out elsewhere.

Readers write me regularly at the Tomdispatch website of such efforts, as one California resident did recently, telling me that she and her friends were hoping to contact 1,500 voters in Nevada by cell phone over several days. By the way, youthful cell-phone parties, utilizing all those free late night and weekend hours and organized around calls into swing states, have hardly made it into the political news and yet they too may be significant -- just as the cell phones of the young haven`t yet made it into political phone polling, another way in which what`s measured by our pollsters may be less than real. Polls can`t measure all sorts of things and yet trusting the polls is almost an item of faith by now. What the constant polling does, though, is to continue the transformation of our political system -- once so sturdy --into a strange house of cards.

For those of you who are already poll-addicted, however, let me at least offer you some of the better tools in the on-line polling trade: You can start by going bananas with anxiety checking out the Rasmussen Reports presidential tracking poll posted every day (along with various state polls posted less regularly). If you want to see the almost bizarre range of the latest presidential polls, the best site to go to is Pollingreport.com where they`re simply piled one atop the other like a skyscraper of impossible to sort out information. I find the Zogby polling site an interesting one to poke around in -- with its news on polls, Zogby`s own polling (only some of which is available to non-subscribers), and John Zogby`s interpretative pieces, the latest of which explains why, this presidential election is still John Kerry`s to lose.

For swing state polls, check out the rolling polling map at the Los Angeles Times. If you want to be overwhelmed, visit the Presidential Election News and Election Polls page at the Better World Links website, scroll down to the polling section and go berserk. If you prefer to see, what polls can do best (as described by Schwartz below), check out the Bush approval ratings chart from 2001 to the present at Professor Poll Katz`s Pool of Polls site. Finally, Ruy Teixeira`s Rising Democratic Majority website offers perhaps the most sophisticated polling analysis around on a day by day basis. Now see if you can kick the habit. Tom

The Opiate of the Electorate
By Michael Schwartz

If your anti-Bush sentiments have turned into electoral passion, then you probably restrained your exhilaration after last Thursday`s debate until you got a sense of how it played to the American electorate; which means, how it played in the polls that began to pour out only moments after the event ended. The first "instant" polls seemed to indicate a Kerry victory, and by Sunday the Newsweek poll (considered notoriously unreliable by the pros) had appeared with the news that Kerry had pulled even or might be ahead in the presidential sweepstakes. If it was then that the real rush of excitement hit you, face it, like a host of other Americans, you`re a polls addict.

Opinion polls are the narcotic of choice for the politically active part of the American electorate. Like all narcotics, polls have their uses: they sometimes allow us to function better as political practitioners or even as dreamers, and don`t forget that fabulous rush of exhilaration when our candidate shows dramatic gains. But polls are an addiction that also distort our political feelings and actions even as they trivialize political campaigns -- and they allow our political and media suppliers to manipulate us ruthlessly. The negatives, as pollsters might say, outweigh the positives.

But let`s start with the good things, the stuff that makes people monitor polls in the first place, relying on them to determine their moods, their attitudes, and their activities. The centerpiece of all that`s good in the polls lies in the volatility of public opinion, a trait that polls certainly discovered. The scientific consensus before World War II had it that political attitudes were bedrock, unchanging values.

Take, for example, Bush`s "job rating", as measured by that tried and true polling question: "How would you rate the overall job President George W. Bush is doing as president?` The Zogby Poll`s results are typical; until September 11, 2001, the President had low ratings -- about 50% of Americans rated him "excellent" or "good." Then his approval ratings surged to a stratospheric 82%. This makes sense; people rally around a president during a time of crisis.

What happened next is harder to explain. Despite the fact that wartime presidents almost always have huge support for the duration of the conflict, Bush`s approval rating began a sustained decline, losing 20 points in the next 12 months (leading up to the first anniversary of 9/11) and another 12 points the following year. By September 2003, his approval rating had hit the 50% level again.

Virtually every group of political activists quickly grasped the significance of this decline: Something surprising was happening to our "war president." In this case, the polls helped to inspire peace activists to rebuild a quiescent anti-war (or at least anti-Bush) movement, because they knew (from the polls) that the decline in his approval rating was largely due to the war. The same figures convinced a whole host of important Democratic politicians to declare for the presidency, bringing well-healed financial backers with them. And they triggered a campaign by Karl Rove and his posse of Bush partisans to discredit Bush`s attackers.

Poll results can be a boon to informed and effective politics; they alert activists and others to the receptiveness of the public on important issues. But the key fact that makes polls valuable -- that public opinion is a volatile thing -- also turns polls into an addictive drug that distorts and misleads. Once the addiction forms, we all want to know (immediately, if not sooner) the "impact" of every event, large or small, on the public`s attitudes, so that we can frame our further actions in light of this evidence. And this responsiveness means that instead of sustained organizing around important issues that can have long-lasting impact on political discourse, we increasingly go for the "quick fix," especially attention-getting gimmicks that can create short-term shifts in the public-opinion polls which then, of course, feed more of the same.

Blunt Instruments

The use of polls to determine the immediate impact of less-than-monumental events is a fruitless -- and often dangerous -- enterprise. There are two interconnected reasons why this is true. First, polls are at best blunt instruments. They can measure huge changes over time, like the enduring shifts of 30%, 20% and 12% in Bush`s ratings, but they are no good at measuring more subtle changes of opinion in, say, the 3-5% range. As the famous (and much ignored) "margin of error" warning that goes with all polls indicates, this incapacity is built into the technology of polling and cannot be eliminated by any means currently available. One sign of it is the often-used phrase in news reports that a 3% difference between candidates is a "statistical tie" (which everyone promptly ignores and which in any case might actually indicate a 6% difference in the candidates). And that 3% "margin of error" is only one of five or six possible inaccuracies. The sad fact is that even a 15% difference between two candidates might not exist, unless it is replicated over time and/or across several different polls.

Let`s take an example that, for most people, no longer carries the emotional weight it once did -- the 2000 election. If you had consulted the Gallup poll on most days late in that campaign, you would not have known that the vote would prove to be a virtual dead heat. On October 21, with a little more than two weeks to go, Gallup did show Gore ahead by 1%. Three days later, Bush had surged in the same poll and was ahead by a staggering looking 13%. The election appeared to be over.

We now know that this surge was a blunder by Gallup. For one thing, other polls simply did not record it. But more important we know that, as volatile as public opinion can indeed be, it is not nearly this volatile, except under the stimulus of events like 9/11. This "surge," like virtually all such surges, actually reflected the fundamental inability of polls to measure day-to-day changes in attitudes -- especially voting intention. This is so because of all sorts of arcane polling problems which would take a semester of graduate school to fully review. But let`s look at just two examples.

Consider, for instance, the fact that many young adults party on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Since the trends recently have been for young singles to be Democratic, you can expect fewer Democrats and more Republicans to be home during polling hours on those days. And that`s but a single example of changes in polling audiences. Daily polls, in other words, often record large fluctuations in attitudes because questions are being asked of very different audiences. Even time of day can make a big difference. (Think of who is at home on Sunday afternoons during football season.) This, in turn, forces pollsters to make all sorts of adjustments (with fancy scientific names like "stratified sampling" and "weighted analysis"). And these adjustments are problematic; in the context of daily electoral polls they often add to that margin or error instead of reducing it.

No One Knows Who is Going to Vote

There are lots of other problems, but the big kahuna, when it comes to an election, is that we only want to interview people who are actually going to vote (a little over 50% of all eligible voters in a typical presidential election -- and possibly closer to 60% in this atypical year). One way to eliminate the non-voters is by looking only at registered voters, but that is just a partial solution, since in most elections fewer than 80% of registered voters actually vote. What pollsters need to find out is: Which of those registered voters are actually going to vote. This is made particularly crucial, because while there are a great many more registered Democrats than Republicans, the Republicans usually narrow that gap by being more diligent in getting to the polls.

But there is no way to figure out accurately who is going to vote. Going to the polls on Election Day is a very complicated phenomenon, made even more so this year by the huge number of new registrations in swing states. It is almost impossible for pollsters to know who among these new voters will actually vote. While many potential voters have a consistent track record -- always voting or rarely voting -- many others are capricious. For these "episodic voters," factors like weather conditions and distance to the polls mix with levels of enthusiasm for a favorite candidate in an unstable brew that will determine whether or not they get to the polling station. In fact, who is "likely to vote" actually varies from day-to-day and week-to-week and there`s just about no way of measuring (ahead of time) what will happen on the only day of the only week that matters, November 2.

Pollsters, in fact, are really in a pickle. If they rely on previous voting behavior (as many polls do), they`re likely to exclude virtually all first-time voters. Since the preponderance of newly registered voters are young singles (who, we remember, tend to be Democrats), they will be underestimating the Democratic turnout. So many polls (including Gallup) ask episodic and first-time voters about their enthusiasm for their candidate and their commitment to voting, in order to weed out those who have little real interest and very little energy for dragging themselves to the polls.

But this creates new distortions. For example, a big news story, including a polling-influenced one like the recent Bush "surge," can suddenly (but usually briefly) energize potential new Bush voters, turning them into "likely voters"; at the same time, it may demoralize Kerry backers, removing some of them from the ranks of "likely voters." Two days or two weeks later another event (the first Presidential debate, any sort of October surprise, or you name it) may create an entirely different mixture. And come election time, none of this may be relevant. On that day the weather may intervene, or any of a multitude other emotions may arise. So "likely voter" polls are always extremely volatile, even though the underlying proportion of people who support each candidate may change very little.

What this means is that a large proportion of all dramatic polling fluctuations --this year and every year -- are simply not real in any meaningful sense. But this does not stop election campaign managers and local activists from developing or altering their activities based on them, which only contributes to a failure to mount sustained campaigns based on important issues, while focusing on superficial attention-getting devices.

You Can`t Tell Which Poll is Right

This leads us to the second huge problem with polls: Different polls taken at the same time often produce remarkably different results. Fifteen percent discrepancies between polls are not all that rare. If a group of polls use just slightly different samples (all of them reasonably accurate), slightly different questions (all reasonable in themselves), and slightly different analytic procedures (all also reasonable), the range of results can be substantial indeed. If, in addition, they call at different times of the day or on different days of the week, the differences can grow even larger. And if they use different definitions of "likely voters," as they almost surely will, the discrepancies can be enormous.

To see how such a cascade of decisions really screws up our ability to rely on polls, consider the now famous "bounce" that Bush got from the Republican Convention. The media, using selected opinion polls, conveyed the impression that Bush surged from a "statistical tie" to a double-digit lead. Many of my friends -- Kerry supporters all -- felt the election was lost. (Some of them would certainly have fallen from the ranks of Gallup`s "likely voters"). Things got so bad that Michael Moore sent a letter to all the Kerry supporters he could reach, telling them to stop being crybabies and get back to work.

This is a prime example of the polls having a profoundly detrimental effect on public behavior, because the bounce for Bush was moderate at best. In fact, the most reasonable interpretation of the polls as a group suggests that there may have been a shift in public opinion from slightly pro-Kerry (he may have had as much as a 3% advantage) to slightly pro-Bush (perhaps as much as 4%). A plausible alternative view, supported by a minority of the reliable polls, would be that the race was a "statistical dead heat" before the convention and remained so afterward, interrupted only by an inconsequential temporary bounce.

To see why a moderate interpretation is a reasonable one, you need to consider all the polls, not just the ones that grabbed the headlines. I looked at the first 20 national polls (Sept 1 to Sept 22) after the end of the Republican convention, as recorded by PollingReport.com, the best source for up-to-date polling data. Only three gave him a double-digit lead. Two others gave him a lead above 5%, and the remaining 15 showed his lead to be 4% or less -- including two that scored the race a dead heat. In other words, taking all the polls together, Bush, who was probably slightly behind before the convention, was probably slightly ahead afterward. Certainly the media are to blame for our misimpression, but before we get to the media, let`s consider how various polls could disagree so drastically.

Fortunately there are some energetic experts, especially Steve Soto and Ruy Teixeira, who have sorted this discrepancy out. The bottom line is simple: the double-digit polls far overestimated the relative number of Republicans voters. Gallup, the poll that has been most closely analyzed, had 40% Republicans in their sample of likely voters, and only 33% Democrats along with 27% Independents. This might seem okay to the naked eye, but it turns out that in the last two elections, about 4% more Democrats than Republicans trooped into the voting booths; and this, logically enough, was the proportion that the other polls used. Since 90% of Republicans right now claim they will choose Bush and 85% of Democrats say they will choose Kerry, this explains the gross difference between Gallup and most other polls; Gallup, that is, would have given Bush a 4% lead if it had used the same party proportions as the other polls.

How, then, could Gallup do such a thing? Though Gallup`s explanation is complicated, it relies on the fact that, until Election Day, nobody can actually know how many Republicans and Democrats are going to show up at the polls. All polling agencies are actually predicting (or less politely, guessing) how many Democrats and Republicans will vote. Scientific and journalistic ethics might seem to dictate basing your present guesses closely on past elections, but Gallup can always simply claim that their information suggests a shift toward Republican affiliation and/or a much higher Republican turnout. In this case, the lack of any substantiating evidence for such a claim has led to accusations that Gallup`s decision was politically motivated.

But in some ways, those exaggerated Gallup results are only a side issue when it comes to polls and this election. Don`t lose track of the fact that even the "good" polls show a startling range of results that renders them almost useless in accurately determining the relative position of the candidates. Remember… the post-convention non-corrupt polls still ranged from zero to 8% in favor of Bush. That spread may sound modest, but in real-world terms its extremes represent the difference between a dead heat and a landslide. And there is really no way to tell who is right. In addition, because the media are under no obligation to report all of them, they can select the poll or polls that come closest to their predilection (or that simply offer the most shock or drama) and present them as the definitive results, ignoring or suppressing those that offer a contrasting portrait of the situation.

To see how pervasive this problem is, consider this sobering fact: The media have been reporting that the first debate pulled Kerry back into a "statistical dead heat." This is a source of exhilaration in the Kerry camp and (if we can believe media reports) significant re-evaluation in the Bush camp. It has certainly affected the moods of their supporters. But there is a good chance that this Kerry bounce was inconsequential. According to Zogby and Rasmussen -- two of the most reliable and respected polling agencies -- the Bush lead had already devolved into a "statistical dead heat" and the debate had no significant impact on the overall race.

Granted, these two polls are a minority, but in polling, unfortunately, the minority is often right. For a vivid example, consider the polls taken the last weekend before the 2000 presidential election. Since the election itself was a virtual dead heat, well conducted polls should have called it within that 3% margin of error -- with some going for Gore and some going for Bush. But that is not what happened: PollingReport.com reports scientifically valid polls taken in the last weekend before the 2000 presidential election. Fully 17 gave Bush a lead, ranging from 1% to 9%, while only two predicted that Gore would win (by 2% and 1%); one called it a tie. Even if you remove the absurd 9% Bush advantage, the average of the polls would have been a Bush would win by 3% -- which in our Electoral College system would have translated into something like a 100 vote electoral majority. In other words, even in a collection of the best polls doing their very best to predict an election, the majority was wrong and only a small minority was right.

Consider then that there are three extant interpretations of what has happened since just before the Republican Convention. In one rendering, promulgated almost unanimously by the media, Bush experienced a double-digit convention surge and held onto most of this lead until Kerry brought the race back to even with his sterling debate performance. This widely held interpretation is almost certainly wrong, but two plausible interpretations remain. The first, supported by the preponderance of polls, tracks a modest post-convention bounce for Bush and an offsetting modest bounce for Kerry after the initial debate. The second, supported by at least two respected polling agencies, finds no real bounce after either media event. We don`t know which of these is correct, but it would certainly be refreshing if the American electorate was making up its mind on the basis of real issues and not staged media circuses that center on essentially unreadable polling results.

Kicking the habit

Three things are worth remembering, if you can`t kick the poll-watching habit:

(1) Any individual poll can be off by 15%.

(2) Any collection of honestly conducted polls, looked at together, will show a very wide range of results and you won`t be able to tell which of them is right.

(3) Even the collective results of a large number of polls probably will not give you an accurate read on a close election.

From these three points comes the most important conclusion of all -- don`t let the polls determine what you think or what you do.

Watch out for the pushers

Finally, let`s look briefly at the way the mass media -- the pushers of this statistical drug -- use the polls to build their ratings or sales and advance their political agendas.

The Gallup double-digit lead after the Republican convention was certainly an attention-getter: Bush supporters couldn`t hear enough about their winner and Kerry supporters compulsively began to view their campaign as a train wreck. After the first shock, everyone -- addicts all -- came back for more just as the media might have desired. Bush supporters were ready to hear more good news and Kerry supporters were waiting for better news.

So why not the same in reverse? Based on subsequent polls, the media could easily have claimed that Kerry was on his way to a remarkable comeback -- a number of polls seemed to indicate this within days -- which would have triggered the same pattern in reverse. They didn`t do it, however, and as a result created an ongoing pattern of demoralization among Kerry supporters and confident enthusiasm among Bush supporters for the better part of a month.

This political favoritism was, in fact, part of a larger pattern in which even the "liberal media" give the administration a "pass" on certain issues. (The New York Times and the Washington Post have even admitted that they did this on the run-up to the war.) Such favoritism is by no means inevitable, as the exposure stories on Abu Ghraib demonstrate and as the present post-first-debate Kerry "bounce" makes clear enough. Driven by poll-addicted reporters, that "bounce," based on no less reliable polling procedures than the original "Bush Convention Bounce," is getting a full measure of media attention, belatedly but effectively reversing the exhilaration-demoralization equation.

The emotional roller coast that results from misleading fluctuations in poll results, managed by manipulative media outlets is the most dramatic symptom of the larger problem. They keep us riveted on the minutia of the debates (in this case, "presentation and demeanor" are the major foci of the analyses of why Kerry won), while distracting the electorate from the underlying issues that have animated people`s discontent with the Bush administration in the first place. Lost in the excitement over the Kerry first-debate victory are his promises of more troops and a more aggressive foreign policy. The rise in the polls makes this belligerent posture acceptable, and even dedicated anti-war activists end up suspending their politics in the excitement over the return of the Presidential race to a "statistical dead heat."

Our reliance on polls for political validation combines with unscrupulous press coverage of these polls to create a lethal threat to our political sanity and our political effectiveness. Our addiction to polls has done more than enhance the already unacceptable power of the media; it has also redirected our attention and efforts away from policy and toward trivial personality contests at a time when much is at stake.

Isn`t it about time we began to think about how to kick the habit?

Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has worked for 30 years measuring and analyzing public opinion. Once upon a time, he was also a founding partner of MarketCast, where he pioneered the use of multivariate analysis in measuring attitudes toward movies while designing and executing over 1000 attitude surveys for major movie studios. He writes regularly for Tomdispatch.com. His email address is [e-mail].

Copyright C2004 Michael Schwartz

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posted October 6, 2004 at 10:37 am

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Comprehensive Report
of the
Special Advisor to the DCI
on Iraq’s WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction)

http://news.findlaw.com/nytimes/docs/iraq/cia93004wmdrpt.htm…

September 30, 2004

This report is in PDF format and can be viewed using Adobe Acrobat Reader.


The Final Report may also be downloaded in sections by clicking on the links below:

[urlKey Findings]http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/iraq/dciwmd93004kf.pdf[/url] [304 KB]
[urlVolume 1]http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/iraq/dciwmd93004rpt-1.pdf[/url] [53,862 KB (Please be patient while file downloads)]

* Charles Duelfer’s Transmittal Message
* Acknowledgements
* Scope Note
* Regime Strategic Intent
* Regime Finance and Procurement
[urlVolume 2]http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/iraq/dciwmd93004rpt-2.pdf[/url] [76,128 KB (Please be patient while file downloads)]

* Delivery Systems
* Nuclear

[urlVolume 3]http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/iraq/dciwmd93004rpt-3.pdf[/url] [69,952 KB (Please be patient while file downloads)]

* Iraq`s Chemical Warfare Program
* Biological Warfare
* Glossary and Acronyms

http://news.findlaw.com/nytimes/docs/iraq/cia93004wmdrpt.htm…

To view PDF files listed on this page you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader

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October 7, 2004
INSPECTOR`S JUDGMENT
U.S. Report Finds Iraqis Eliminated Illicit Arms in 90`s
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 - Iraq had destroyed its illicit weapons stockpiles within months after the Persian Gulf war of 1991, and its ability to produce such weapons had significantly eroded by the time of the American invasion in 2003, the top American inspector for Iraq said in a report made public Wednesday.

The report by the inspector, Charles A. Duelfer, intended to offer a near-final judgment about Iraq and its weapons, said Iraq, while under pressure from the United Nations, had "essentially destroyed`` its illicit weapons ability by the end of 1991, with its last secret factory, a biological weapons plant, eliminated in 1996.

Mr. Duelfer said that even during those years, Saddam Hussein had aimed at "preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction when sanctions were lifted.`` But he said he had found no evidence of any concerted effort by Iraq to restart the programs.

The findings uphold Iraq`s prewar insistence that it did not possess chemical or biological weapons. They also show the enormous distance between the Bush administration`s own prewar assertions, based on reports by American intelligence agencies, and what a 15-month inquiry by American investigators found since the war.

Mr. Duelfer said he had concluded that between 1991 and 2003, Mr. Hussein had in effect sacrificed Iraq`s illicit weapons to the larger goal of winning an end to United Nations sanctions. But he also argued that Mr. Hussein had used the period to try to exploit avenues opened by the sanctions, especially the oil-for-food program, to lay the groundwork for a plan to resume weapons production if sanctions were lifted.

In addition, the report concluded that Mr. Hussein had deliberately sought to maintain ambiguity about whether it had illicit weapons, mainly as a deterrent to Iran, its rival.

The American inspector presented his conclusions to Congress on Wednesday, including highly charged public testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

With Iraq figuring prominently in the last dash toward the presidential election, Democrats argued that the report had undermined the administration`s case for war, while the White House and its Republican allies called attention to elements in the report that highlighted potential dangers posed by Mr. Hussein`s government.

"There is no doubt that Saddam was a threat to our nation, and there is no doubt that he had W.M.D. capability, and the Duelfer report is very clear on these points,`` said James Wilkinson, a White House deputy national security adviser, using the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction.

The three-volume report, totaling 918 pages, represented the most authoritative attempt so far to unravel the mystery posed by Iraq between 1991 and 2003, beginning with the point after the Persian Gulf war when Iraq still possessed chemical and biological weapons and an active nuclear-weapons program. The conclusions suggest that the main war aim cited by the White House in March 2003 - to disarm Iraq, which American intelligence agencies said possessed chemical and biological weapons and was reconstituting its nuclear program - was based on an outdated view of Iraq`s weapons stockpiles.

At the time of the American invasion, Mr. Duelfer said in the report, Iraq did not possess chemical and biological weapons, was not seeking to reconstitute its nuclear program, and was not making any active effort to gain those abilities. Even if Iraq had sought to restart its weapons programs in 2003, the report said, it could not have produced militarily significant quantities of chemical weapons for at least a year, and it would have required years to produce a nuclear weapon.

"Saddam Hussein ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the gulf war,`` Mr. Duelfer said in the report. It said American inspectors in Iraq had "found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program.``

After a closed briefing by Mr. Duelfer to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the committee, described the report as "a devastating account.``

"The administration would like the American public to believe that Saddam`s intention to build a weapons program, regardless of actual weapons or the capability to produce weapons, justified invading Iraq,`` Mr. Rockefeller said in a statement. "In fact, we invaded a country, thousands of people have died, and Iraq never posed a grave or growing danger.``

In accounting for what happened beginning in 1991, Mr. Duelfer said Mr. Hussein made a fundamental decision after the Persian Gulf war to get rid of Iraq`s illicit weapons and accept the destruction of its weapons-producing facilities as part of an effort to win an end to sanctions imposed by the United Nations to achieve those ends.

Although Mr. Duelfer concluded that Mr. Hussein had intended to restart his programs, the report acknowledged that that conclusion was based more on inference than solid evidence. "The regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of W.M.D. after sanctions,`` it said.

The report notes that its conclusions were drawn in part from interrogation of Mr. Hussein in his prison cell outside Baghdad. Mr. Duelfer, a special adviser to the director of central intelligence, said he had concluded that Mr. Hussein had deliberately sought to maintain ambiguity about whether Iraq possessed illicit weapons, primarily as a deterrent to Iran, Iraq`s adversary in an eight-year war in the 1980`s.

It was not until a series of meetings in late 2002, just months before the American invasion, that Mr. Hussein finally acknowledged to senior officers and officials of his government that Iraq did not possess illicit weapons, Mr. Duelfer said.

The report said American investigators had found clandestine laboratories in the Baghdad area used by the Iraqi Intelligence Service between 1991 and 2003 to conduct research and to test various chemicals and poisons, including ricin. As previously reported, it said those efforts appeared to be intended primarily for use in assassinations, not to inflict mass casualties.

Mr. Duelfer said in his report that Mr. Hussein never acknowledged in the course of the interrogations what had become of Iraq`s illicit weapons. He said that American investigators had appealed to the former Iraqi leader to be candid in order to shape his legacy, but that Mr. Hussein had not been forthcoming.

The report said interviews with other former top Iraqi leaders had made clear that Mr. Hussein had left many of his top deputies uncertain until the eve of war about whether Iraq possessed illicit weapons. It said he seemed to be most concerned about a possible new attack by Iran, whose incursions into Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 were fended off by Baghdad partly with the use of chemical munitions.

Mr. Duelfer said Iraq had tried to maintain the knowledge base necessary to restart an illicit weapons program. He said Iraq had essentially put its biological program "on the shelf," after its last production facility, Al Hakam, was destroyed by United Nations inspectors in 1996, and could have begun to produce biological questions in as little as a month if it had restarted its weapons program in 2003.

But the report said there were "no indications`` that Iraq was pursuing such a course, and it reported "a complete absence of discussion or even interest in biological weapons`` at the level of Mr. Hussein and his aides after the mid-1990`s.

The report will almost certainly be the last complete assessment by the team led by Mr. Duelfer, which is known as the Iraq Survey Group. But he said he and the 1,200-member team would continue their work in Iraq for the time being. He said the team had not completely ruled out the possibility that some Iraqi weapons might have been smuggled out of Iraq to a neighboring country, like Syria.

The report did revise several earlier judgments, including a report by the Central Intelligence Agency in May 2003 that said mysterious trailers found in Iraq after the American invasion in 2003 were intended for use in a biological warfare program. Mr. Duelfer said that the trailers could not have been used for that purpose, and that their manufacturers "almost certainly designed and built the equipment exclusively for the generation of hydrogen,`` upholding claims by Iraqi officials that linked the trailers to weather balloons used for artillery practice.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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