Reagan, in the roots of terrorism

President Bush, on 8/1/05, congratulating King Abdallah on assuming the Saudi throne:

"On behalf of the United States, I congratulate my friend, King Abdallah bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud, on assuming the Saudi throne and the position of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. We wish Saudi Arabia peace and prosperity under his leadership. I have spoken today to the new King, and the United States looks forward to continuing the close partnership between our two countries." [Emphasis added]

But "close partnership" is an understatement; Professor Juan Cole places the Saudi-American relationship in a historical context.

Noam Chomsky: We must act now to prevent another Hiroshima - or worse

The explosions in London are a reminder of how the cycle of attack and response could escalate

The recent explosions and casualties in London are yet another reminder of how the cycle of attack and response could escalate, unpredictably, even to a point horrifically worse than Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

The world's reigning power accords itself the right to wage war at will, under a doctrine of "anticipatory self-defence" that covers any contingency it chooses. The means of destruction are to be unlimited.

[...]

The world "came within a hair's breadth of nuclear disaster", recalls Robert McNamara, Kennedy's defence secretary, who also attended the retrospective. In the May-June issue of the magazine Foreign Policy, he accompanies this reminder with a renewed warning of "apocalypse soon".

[Listen to my interview with Noam Chomsky]

Disabled veterans criticize VA budget shortfall

Last week, the Veterans Affairs Department announced that its health care costs had risen faster than expected, "forcing the agency to shift money among accounts to cover the shortage." On Wednesday, the Senate unanimously approved $1.5 billion in emergency funds for VA health care programs.

"[Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim] Nicholson told lawmakers Tuesday that the administration had vastly underestimated the number of service personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who would seek VA medical treatment. The estimates had been based on outdated assumptions from 2002, he said."

David Gorman, the executive director of Disabled American Veterans discusses the funding shortfall and the politicization of veteran healthcare and services. [Listen to interview]

Walking a tight-rope

The O'Connor resignation raises great uncertainty. The President will most likely be rewarded with another vacancy, (Rehnquist will also resign) and thus the Democrats must be careful in how they play their cards. We must pick and choose our battles, fighting conservative reactionaries (yes, that's redundant) while agreeing to disagree with more moderate appointees (i.e. Alberto Gonzales). The balance must be preserved, a lot is at stake.

Abu Ghraib interrogators promoted to 'School of the Americas'

Extending impunity and strengthening American foreign policy doctrine:

The Pentagon has promoted or nominated for promotion two senior Army officers who oversaw or advised detention and interrogation operations in Iraq during the height of the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal.

The Army promoted Maj. Gen. Walter Wodjakowski, the former deputy commander of American forces in Iraq, earlier this month to be the head the Army's infantry training school at Fort Benning, Ga. It has also nominated Col. Marc Warren, the top military lawyer for the American command in Baghdad at the time, to be a one-star, or brigadier, general.

[...]

An independent inquiry led by a former defense secretary, James R. Schlesinger, last August faulted all three officers for their actions in Iraq, but a subsequent review by the Army's inspector general exonerated all of them, clearing the way for their advancement, military officials said.

Source: NYT

Sistani offers a political compromise

The President's lack-luster primetime address confirmed what we have all long suspected: the Bush administration is out of ideas when it comes to defeating the ever-growing insurgency in Iraq. On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that Iraq's leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has endorsed a voting system that would elect candidates via provinces, not national lists, giving the Sunni minority greater political power.

Will the insurgency abandon its violence in favor of joining the legitimate political process? Only time will tell... meanwhile our president still has no plan...

Bush hides uncomfortable CAFTA realities

The Bush administration claims that the Central American Free Trade Agreement would bring tougher labor standards to Central American workers. But the agreement, which would encompass the United States, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, would have just the opposite effect. Such was the conclusion of the Department of Labor, only it chose to dismiss the inconvenient findings as "inaccurate and biased."

Here is what the department was hiding:

Several countries the administration wants to be granted free-trade status have poor working conditions and fail to protect workers' rights.

Responsibility hypocrisy

The Washington Post is reporting that President Bush's proposed budget would "eliminate many of the federal rules requiring public housing authorities to serve extremely low income people" resulting in "one of the most dramatic policy shifts in the 68-year history of public housing." The President has wrapped the rule change in the rhetoric of "self sufficiency and encouraging home ownership."

And while Republicans frequently lecture Americans on fiscal discipline, they rarely apply the same standards to large multi- national corporations. Take, for instance, the example of Defense Department officials providing Dick Cheney's Halliburton with some $1.4 billion in "unjustified fees."

• $152,000 in movie library costs
• $1.5 million in tailoring costs
• $560,000 worth of unnecessary heavy equipment

The list goes on. Read the full report here.

For Bush, veteran health care is still not a priority (and never has been)

The Senate has voted to approve an additional $1.5 billion in emergency funds for Veterans Affairs health programs. The House is expected to vote similarly tonight. Yet President Bush and Republicans in Congress have previously obstructed Democratic efforts to make up for the anticipated shortfall. In a rather embarrassing “mistake,” (foreseen by many lawmakers and veteran advocates) the V.A. used pre Iraqi invasion statistics to estimate the number of veterans expected to be in need of treatment in the wake of the invasion.

If we are to view this latest snafu in conjunction with the president’s broader veteran policy, his incompetence, aloofness and lack of foresight all become apparent. The Center for American Progress reports on Bush’s veteran record. Consider the following:

Under President Bush, the VA…

• cut 170,000 middle-income veterans out of the health care system
• sought to increase prescription drug costs
• imposed enrollment fees as a precursor to obtaining health care
• closed down several VA hospitals
• stopped marketing services to veterans

Following the lead of top administration officials (who have continuously miscalculated the strength of the Iraqi insurgency and the resilience of the Taliban in Afghanistan) Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson placed the number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans at 23,000 soldiers. The actual number is close to 103,000, "leaving a funding gap of $2.6 billion for the next fiscal year.”

One thing is clear: for a president who manipulated Americans into supporting his re-election bid by politicizing war, veterans and soldiers, the ever growing gap between rhetoric and action has reached its breaking point.

Lies in Primetime

For those who heard or read President Bush’s Saturday June 25th radio address, his speech last night, touting a connection between 9/11 and Saddam, was hardly surprising. In an article published on Scoop, investigative reporter Jason Leopold, the journalist who broke the California Blackout and Enron stories, weighed in on Bush’s radio deception-- providing the context and framework within which Bush’s lies can be identified. (Jason Leopold was also a guest on my radio show, click here to listen in mp3 format).

That the President can still tout a connection in the wake of reports to the contrary by the 9/11 Commission and Senate Foreign Intelligence Committee is truly astounding. It speaks volumes of our failed media system and the ignorance of most Americans.

The Bush administration is deliberately deceiving the public. Last night President Bush claimed that we must “defeat [the terrorists] abroad before they attack us at home.” But Bush-appointed CIA chief Porter Goss has previously claimed that Iraq is only increasing the terror threat and this latest CIA study substantiates his theory. Yet government reports have little affect on a pathetical administration. It is far easier to tell a lie than to dispute one. And in this case, delivering a “repeat of a speech he delivered 13 months ago,” and offering no new ideas for defeating an ever-growing Iraqi insurgency only goes to explain the president’s plummeting approval ratings.

One thing was made clear last night: President Bush has ridden us into a dangerous war quagmire with no plan for reconstruction or evacuation. But if you read the Downing Street Memo you already knew that.

CIA report: Iraq is a fertile training ground for terrorists

A classified CIA assessment has revealed that young jihads are leaving Iraq "experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism" and "form a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries."

According to the report, President Bush's invasion is "likely to produce a dangerous legacy by dispensing to other countries Iraqi and foreign combatants more adept and better organized than they were before the conflict."

I have long argued that Iraq is the Afghanistan of the '80s, and the authors of this report listened. From the NYT piece:

"They said the assessment had argued that Iraq, since the American invasion of 2003, had in many ways assumed the role played by Afghanistan during the rise of Al Qaeda during the 1980's and 1990's, as a magnet and a proving ground for Islamic extremists from Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries."

For more on this, read this column published in Marist's "The Circle" on February 24, 2005.

PBS funding debate

The House Appropriations Committee approved a bill that would cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) by 25% in October. The original proposal would have completely eliminated "funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 2008, but a Democratic amendment earmarked $400 million so that public broadcasting could use the money in the future."

CPB "provides less than 10% of PBS's annual budget and less than 1% of NPR's. But CPB is a vital source of funding for individual public radio and TV stations. And CPB provides crucial development money for a number of PBS shows, such as "Sesame Street," "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" and "Washington Week in Review." [Emphasis added]

Democrats Byron L. Dorgan (N.D.), Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Frank R. Lautenberg (N.J.) sent a letter to Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, the Bush-appointed CPB chairman, "expressing 'serious concerns about reports of your interference in the programming decisions and governance' of the agency."

News reports indicate that "Tomlinson and his fellow Republicans who dominate the CPB board are moving quickly to appoint Patricia de Stacy Harrison, a former co-chairman of the Republican National Committee, to be the corporation's new president and chief executive."

This is somewhat ironic since Tomlinson has attacked PBS/NPR for being too liberal. He himself is now politicizing the organization. But according to F.A.I.R. PBS and NPR are no Air America.

The public agrees. A recent poll financed by Tomlinson himself found that "80 percent of Americans saw PBS programming as "fair and balanced" ... while 90 percent believed that PBS "provides high quality programming." Furthermore, a majority of respondents called PBS "more trustworthy than CNN, Fox News Channel and other mainstream news outlets." Tomlinson "buried [the results] in an annual report to Congress" without releasing them to the
press or even sharing them with PBS and NPR."

Thoughtful soundbites:

• Peter Hart of FAIR discusses the conservative assault on PBS (5/2/05, 'Luske-Volsky Show', 26m-34s)
• Igor analyzes the importance of public television and examines the ideology behind the latest cuts (6/10/05, 'Political Thought with Igor Volsky', 20m-2s)

Downing Street Memo Hearings

Thirty U.S. lawmakers gathered in the basement of the U.S. Capital on Thursday to discuss the so-called Downing Street Memo. Chaired by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the hearing featured former ambassador Joseph Wilson, veteran CIA analyst Ray McGovern, and attorney John Bonifaz.

Audio excerpts of the hearings:
Part I
Part II
Part II

Ray McGovern introduces and discusses the memo on the May 6th edition of Political Thought. McGovern analyzes the media's failure to properly cover the memorandum.

Professor Bruce Luske and Igor Volsky discuss the Downing Street Memo and all other related documents on the June 13th edition of the Luske-Volsky Show.

[More]

Debt relief adopted

Kevin Danaher, founder of Global Exchange explains the politics of debt relief (mp3, 50 sec)

Finance ministers of the world's wealthiest nations agreed to wipe out "$40 billion in debt owed by 18 of the world's poorest countries as part of a major assault on global poverty." G8 nations (Britain, the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and Russia) will replenish the reserves of the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund in order to relieve debtor nations of $15.6 billion in payments on the $40 billion over the next 10 years.

"The 18 countries that would qualify immediately for debt relief have already been approved under the World Bank's Heavily Indebted Poor Country Initiative, in which they commit to good governance, adhering to an IMF-endorsed financial plan and rooting out corruption."

Danaher discusses the "structural reforms" countries have to adopt (mp3, 2m-57s)

Critics claim that relief "amounted only to about $1.5 billion in relief per year for the eligible countries. Western experts believe an extra $50 billion a year is needed by African nations to overcome a legacy of poverty, political instability, corruption and disease."

Danaher details his strategy for greater debt relief. (mp3, 3m-30s)

More Thoughtful Coverage:
John Perkins author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Why do third-world nations find themselves in debt?
What role do U.S. corporations play in their plight?
How does world debt threaten our security?

U.S./U.K. tried to provoke Saddam

The Sunday Times UK is reporting that Blair and Bush “more than doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war.”

Tommy Franks has also “admitted this operation was designed to ‘degrade’ Iraqi air defenses in the same way as the air attacks that began the 1991 Gulf war.”

Was the United States in search of a diplomatic solution to the ‘conflict?’ Was force a tool of last resort? Carefully crafted P.R. arguments now lie in shatters, yet nobody is holding our leaders accountable. Conservatives continue to argue that the U.S. and Iraq were engaged in a ‘war situation.’ The more a lie is repeated, the harder it is to dispute.

Americans agree: Bush is not our president

DOES BUSH SHARE YOUR PRIORITIES FOR THE COUNTRY?
Yes 34%
No 61%

DOES CONGRESS SHARE YOUR PRIORITIES FOR THE COUNTRY?
Yes 20%
No 68%

BUSH’S OVERALL JOB RATING
Approve 46%
Disapprove 48%

DIRECTION OF COUNTRY
Right direction 34%
Wrong track 60%

Source: CBS Poll

The latest from the Patriot Act renewal 'debate'

"The central question is no longer whether the government's antiterrorism powers should be scaled back in the face of criticism from civil rights advocates, but whether those powers should be significantly expanded to give the F.B.I. new authority to demand records and monitor mailings without approval from a judge.

The divergent views were on full display Tuesday as the committee began its debate in earnest over the future of the Patriot Act and 16 provisions in the law that will expire at the end of the year. On Thursday, the committee will hold a closed-door hearing on a proposal to renew and expand major provisions, but critics are attacking the committee's decision to hold the debate in secret."

'Freedom Fries' pioneer flip-flops

North Carolina Republican Walter Jones, "the brains behind French toast becoming freedom toast in Capitol Hill restaurants" and critic of France in the lead-up to the Iraqi invasion recently told the North Carolina News and Observe that the U.S. went to war "with no justification."

"If we were given misinformation intentionally by people in this administration, to commit the authority to send boys, and in some instances girls, to go into Iraq, that is wrong. Congress must be told the truth."

Could this be the beginning of a new American Enlightenment? We'll just have to wait and see.

More money for Iraq

A House subcommittee appropriated another $45 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, bringing total military costs to more than $300 billion. The Pentagon had just received $76 billion for the wars from an $82 billion emergency bill Congress passed this month.

But fiscal discipline is still in effect, you see. Republicans just recently passed a budget that "would shave automatically increasing benefit programs by $35 billion over five years while also cutting taxes by as much as $106 billion over the same period. Medicaid gets marked for a $10 billion reduction over four years."

Avoiding an illegal invasion could have saved more money. (This way it's more convenient to slash funding for social programs.) Oh but nevermind, we should just move on and 'get over' the deception. Impunity today, impunity tomorrow, impunity forever!

With egg on their faces

"Nearly a dozen detainees at the Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba told FBI interrogators that guards had mistreated copies of the Koran, including one who said in 2002 that guards "flushed a Koran in the toilet," according to new FBI documents released today."

Newsweek and Michael Isikoff should be ashamed for allowing themselves to be boolied by the administration. Their behavior is symbolic of the greater U.S. mainstream media failure. Don't expect Isikoff to apologize for the retraction.