:: Has the whole world gone mad or is it just me. ::

:: Friday, August 29, 2003 ::

Los Angeles Times: Iraqi Misinformation or U.S. Disinformation?: "ttp://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-le-tip29aug29,1,4641755.story?coll=la-news-comment-letters

LETTER TO THE EDITOR








a d v e r t i s e m e n t








 





Iraqi Misinformation or U.S. Disinformation?













August 29, 2003

Re 'U.S. Suspects It Received False Iraq Arms Tips,' Aug. 28: The claim by U.S. intelligence agencies that they may have been duped by bogus Iraqi defectors into believing that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction ranks right up there with O.J.'s search for the real killers. Why would Saddam Hussein mislead the U.S. with information that would lead to his own destruction?

There is a far more plausible explanation. The neocons in the Bush administration wanted access to the second-largest oil reserve in the Middle East, a demonstration of our military might and a permanent base from which to operate. They were prepared to tell any lie necessary to accomplish their goals. The sad thing is that The Times treated this latest piece of disinformation as important 'news.'

Ernest A. Canning

Thousand Oaks

*

Now that it is beyond doubt that lies were told, that the Iraq war is hurting the U.S. budget and military and that the people who questioned and opposed this war were right, it's time for some apologies: From the corporate media, which differed in no way from Pravda during the lead-up to the war, completely giving up actual reporting (print excluded). From the people who backed this administration without questions, calling protesters traitors and renaming French food but never bothering to check facts. And %u2014 I won't hold my breath for this one %u2014 from the administration itself.

John Mathieu

Stevenson Ranch

*

We are now told that Hussein may have sent out phony defectors bearing phony stories about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, which is why we haven't found any. So Hussein tricked Bush into assaulting Iraq, overthrowing him and killing his sons. The wily devil!

Jerry Bradley

Santa Barbara

*

It's time for Bush to take his the-dog-ate-my-homework excuses for invading Iraq to the Comedy Channel. His invasion plans were as well thought out as a panty raid.

He has returned Afghanistan to the era of the warlords, and the Taliban and terrorism are finding new strength. The absence of a postwar program for Iraq is reducing it to chaos. And worse, we are taking an increasing number of American casualties.

Jerry Buck

Sherman Oaks



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:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 8:42 AM [+] ::
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Los Angeles Times: Deepening Doubts on Iraq: "http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-iraq29aug29,1,3221896.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials

EDITORIAL














 





Deepening Doubts on Iraq













August 29, 2003

Where are the weapons of mass destruction? As President Bush and other administration officials made the case for war with Iraq, their biggest selling point was the claim that Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime possessed chemical weapons. Allegations he had biological weapons were shakier; assertions he had nuclear arms or could build them were even more dubious. There were other ever-shifting official rationales for the Iraq invasion, like Hussein's torture and killing of his own people and promoting Mideast democracy through his ouster. The main justification, however, for sending Americans to die in the desert was Hussein's earlier use of chemical weapons, his continued possession of them and the imminent threat he would inflict them on the United States.

In this year's State of the Union speech, Bush cited United Nations reports or U.S. intelligence that showed that Hussein had failed to account for 25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin and material for 500 tons of sarin, mustard agent and VX nerve agent. 'From three Iraqi defectors, we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapon labs designed to produce germ warfare agents,' Bush said. Where are those chemicals, those poisons or those labs?

Times staff writer Bob Drogin reported Thursday the deeply disturbing news that U.S. intelligence officials were now laboring to learn whether they had been fed false information about Iraq's weapons, especially by defectors. U.N. inspectors' prewar searches found no chemical, biological or nuclear stockpiles. Hundreds of inspectors combing Iraq since major combat ended May 1 have fared no better. One U.S. intelligence official says analysts may have been too eager to find evidence to support White House claims about Iraqi arms. Intelligence and congressional sources told Times reporters in October, five months before the invasion, that senior Bush officials were pressuring CIA analysts to shape their assessments of the threat to build the case against Hussein.

On the eve of war, this editorial page said Iraq should be given more time to disarm, otherwise the U.S. 'risks being branded as the aggressive and arrogant superpower that disregards the wishes of the international community.' The United States now wears that label, especially in light of the administration's vacillations on involving other nations' forces in postwar Iraq.

But worse is the possibility that nearly 300 American personnel and dozens of British soldiers, plus U.N. officials and untold numbers of Iraqis, have died due to incredibly bad or corrupted intelligence. In Britain, a Sunday Telegraph poll showed that 67% of the public thought that their government, the main U.S. ally, had deceived the British people to get them into Iraq.

The war was more popular in the U.S. But Bush, administration officials, intelligence analysts and Congress need to keep asking: Where are the weapons of mass destruction? And if they are not found, was the defiant U.S. insistence that Iraq had them the result of incompetence or lies?


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Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times"
:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 8:38 AM [+] ::
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ttp://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-reich29aug29,1,1643316.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

COMMENTARY

a d v e r t i s e m e n t

 

Time Bomb Ticks Beneath the Economy

Huge federal deficits could stall investment and send interest rates soaring.
By Robert B. Reich
Robert B. Reich, a former U.S. secretary of Labor, is a professor at Brandeis.

August 29, 2003

The Congressional Budget Office reported this week that the federal budget is completely out of control. Even if spending doesn't grow as a share of the national economy, the green eyeshades at the budget office forecast $400-billion deficits as far as the eye can see.

The last time the budget was nearly this far out of whack, the country got up in arms. In 1992, Bill Clinton used the runaway budget to beat up the elder George Bush. Once elected, Clinton had to shelve most of his "public investment" agenda to reduce what was then a $29-billion-a-year deficit and calm Wall Street's jitters. In 1995, Newt Gingrich threatened to push through a balanced budget amendment until Clinton agreed to cut spending even more. By this time, there was a consensus in both parties that deficit spending had to be reined in. By 1997, as the economy recovered, the deficit disappeared.

Now we're in worse shape than in 1992, but the deficit doesn't seem to arouse more than a giant yawn. What gives?

Democrats won't lead the charge. That's because they're in a bind. If they criticize Bush on the massive deficits, they have to have a plan for reducing them. But how? If they demand repeal of the Bush tax cuts, Republicans will blast them for wanting to raise taxes. If they call for spending cuts, they will have to come up with some big-ticket items to cut. Yet they don't want to appear soft on national defense, they back a Medicare drug benefit, and they want more spending on education and health care.

Besides, Democrats would rather attack Bush for his dismal record on jobs. They don't want to blur their economic message with a lot of breast-beating about deficits. The public cares more about jobs than deficits any day. And on this score, the Dems have plenty of ammunition — more than a million jobs lost since the recession officially ended in November 2001, and jobs are still hemorrhaging.

Bottom line: Democrats will grumble about Bush's "fiscal irresponsibility," but they won't make it a big deal.

Don't expect congressional Republicans to sound the alarm either, especially in the year before an election. They know the runaway budget is largely the Republican president's fault, and party loyalty runs thick. Even the Congressional Budget Office (headed by a former Bush White House staffer) says that if Bush gets everything he wants — extensions of his tax cuts, a Medicare drug benefit and money to rebuild Iraq and stabilize Afghanistan — the budget deficit goes into the stratosphere.

Anyway, if the runaway budget isn't Bush's fault, then it must be Congress' fault. And who's in charge of Congress? Republicans. That's the inconvenient thing about running all branches of government. You can't blame the other guys.

Republicans also learned an important lesson in the last budget crisis. The best way to fulfill their dream of a tiny government in Washington is to starve it. Make the deficit grow so big that in a few years Democrats will have no choice but to go along with massive spending cuts — slashing even sacred cows like Social Security and Medicare. The strategy worked before. The giant deficits that the first Bush ran up made it impossible for Clinton to do much of anything.

If neither party will make a big deal out of the runaway budget deficits, the American public won't much care. Here's another lesson from the '90s: Americans don't like the idea of gigantic budget deficits when they symbolize a government that's out of control. But large deficits in themselves don't bother most people. Who can possibly grasp the meaning of $1.4 trillion (the CBO's 10-year deficit forecast)? The public is worried about jobs, paychecks and terrorism. Budget deficits are abstractions.

Where's Wall Street in all this? In the early '90s, you may remember, bond traders were howling about out-of-control budget deficits because the government's voracious need to borrow was crowding out private investment. Not this time, at least not yet. The economy still is so flaccid that not even $400-billion deficits are putting a crimp in corporate borrowing. Most businesses have no interest in investing until there's enough demand for their products and services to warrant it. In fact, big federal deficits are needed right now to stimulate demand and get the economy back on track.

So what's the problem with Bush's deficits? The crunch will come a few years from now, once the economy is back on track. Then, the projected deficits will create havoc because they will use up scarce capital. The Medicare drug benefit that Bush wants is likely to balloon as boomers retire. Huge military outlays, combined with the billions needed for rebuilding Iraq and ensuring homeland security, will continue because the war against terrorism is likely to go on and on. And if Bush gets his way and makes permanent his temporary tax breaks, the budget gap will only get worse.

This means interest rates will go sky-high. They may already be heading that way. Wall Street is just beginning to feel nervous about the projected deficits. Mortgage rates are moving upward in many parts of the country. It stands to reason. Who wants to lend money at 6% for 15 years when there's a good chance of a capital squeeze in a few years that pushes long-term rates north of 10%?

Higher long-term rates can stall the recovery and hurt Bush's chance of being reelected. In other words, if Bush chokes on the projected red ink, it won't be because of Democrats or Republicans. It will be because Wall Street starts to worry about the future.


:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 5:11 AM [+] ::
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ttp://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-wmd28aug28,1,2697529.story?coll=la-home-headlines

a d v e r t i s e m e n t

 

U.S. Questions Pre-War Intelligence
By Bob Drogin
Times Staff Writer

7:38 PM PDT, August 27, 2003

WASHINGTON -- Frustrated at the failure to find Saddam Hussein's suspected stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, U.S. and allied intelligence agencies have launched a major effort to determine if they were victims of bogus Iraqi defectors who planted disinformation to mislead the West before the war.

The goal, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official, "is to see if false information was put out there and got into legitimate channels and we were totally duped on it." He added, "We're re-interviewing all our sources of information on this. This is the entire intelligence community, not just the U.S."

The far-reaching review was started after a political firestorm erupted earlier this summer over revelations that President Bush's claim in his State of the Union speech that Iraq had sought to import uranium from Niger was based on forged documents.

Although senior CIA officials insist defectors were only partly responsible for the intelligence that triggered the decision to invade Iraq last March, other intelligence officials now fear that key portions of the pre-war intelligence may have been flawed.

As evidence, officials say former Iraqi intelligence operatives have confirmed since the war that Saddam's regime sent "double agents" disguised as defectors to the West to plant fabricated intelligence. In other cases, Baghdad apparently tricked legitimate defectors into funneling phony tips about weapons production and storage sites.

"They were shown bits of information, and led to believe there was an active weapons program, only to be turned loose to make their way to Western intelligence sources," said the senior intelligence official. "Then, because they believe it, they pass polygraph tests . . . and the planted information becomes true to the West even if it was all made up to deceive us."

There is growing concern, said another U.S. intelligence official, that "people were just telling us what we wanted to hear."

Saddam's motives for such a scheme may have been to bluff his enemies abroad, from Washington to Teheran, by sending false signals of his military might. Experts also say the dictator's defiance of the West, and its fear of his weapons of mass destruction, boosted his prestige at home and was a critical part of his power base in the Arab world.

Saddam also may have gambled that the failure by United Nations weapons inspectors to find specific evidence identified by bogus defectors ultimately would force the Security Council to lift sanctions imposed after the 1991 Gulf War. U.S. officials now believe Saddam then hoped to covertly reconstitute his weapons programs.

"We're looking at that and every other possibility," the first intelligence official added. "You can't rule anything out . . . People are really second-guessing themselves now."

The current focus on Iraqi defectors reflects a new skepticism among members of the Iraq Survey Group, the 1,400-member team responsible for finding any illicit arms. In interviews, several current and former survey team members expressed growing disappointment over the inconclusive results of the search so far.

"We were prisoners of our own beliefs," said a senior U.S. weapons expert who recently returned from a stint with the survey group. "We said Saddam Hussein was a master of denial and deception. Then when we couldn't find anything, we said that proved it, instead of questioning our own assumptions."

The survey group is jointly led by David Kay, a former U.N. nuclear inspector who was named a CIA special advisor in June, and Army Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, who headed the "human intelligence" service at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Kay has said he will issue a preliminary report next month.

Evidence collected over the last two months suggests that Saddam's regime abandoned large-scale weapons development and production programs in favor of a much smaller "just in time" operation that could churn out poison gases or germ agents if they were suddenly needed. The transition supposedly took place between 1996 and 2000.

But survey group mobile collection teams are still unable to prove that any nerve gases or microbe weapons were produced during or after that period, the officials said. Indeed, the weapons hunters have yet to find proof that any chemical or bio-warfare agents were produced after 1991.

Some defectors previously have come under fire. U.S. experts long have questioned the value of informants provided by pro-invasion Iraqi opposition groups in exile, saying they routinely padded their resumes or exaggerated their knowledge in exchange for asylum, visas or money.

The CIA and State Department, in particular, distanced themselves from Iraqi defectors handed over by the Iraqi National Congress, a London-based umbrella group headed by Ahmed Chalabi. CIA and State Department officials repeatedly warned that the group's intelligence network had proved unreliable in the past.

Senior Pentagon officials, however, supported the former Iraqi banker's bid as a possible successor to Saddam. Chalabi, who now sits on the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council in Baghdad, has said his group provided the Defense Intelligence Agency with three defectors who had personal knowledge of Saddam's illicit weapons programs.

One, an Iraqi engineer, told the DIA in 2001 that he knew the location of biological weapons. No bio-weapons have been found at the sites he named.

A second defector from Chalabi's group described what he said were mobile labs that could produce several hundred tons of biowarfare agents per year. The CIA has concluded that two trucks found in northern Iraq after the war were most likely designed for biowarfare, but outside experts have sharply disputed those claims.

U.S. intelligence dismissed the third defector, who claimed to be an expert in nuclear isotope separation, as a fraud.

Kay and Dayton, the survey group leaders, briefed Senate intelligence and armed services committees behind closed doors in late July. They later told reporters that the survey group was making "solid progress" at unraveling Hussein's illicit programs. That led to sharp criticism from some Democrats.

"I remain cautious about whether we're going to find actual WMD," said Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, D-W.Va., vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee. "Not just a program, but the very extensive weapons -- ready for attack -- that we all were told existed."

Rockefeller said he was "concerned" that the weapons hunters had not found "the 25,000 liters of anthrax, the 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, and the 500 tons of mustard, sarin and VX nerve gas" that President Bush cited in his State of the Union speech last January.

Administration officials say they are still confident that weapons of mass destruction will be found. They note a sharp increase in the number of Iraqis providing useful information over the last month. One such tip last week led to a cache of shoulder-held, surface-to-air missiles in northern Iraq, officials said.

In a television interview last Sunday, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, cited the discovery in early August of about 30 Soviet-era high-speed fighters and reconnaissance aircraft that had been buried in desert sands near the al-Taqqadum airfield west of Baghdad. U.S. troops had been operating in the area for more than three months before a sandstorm suddenly exposed a tailfin.

"They went to extraordinary lengths to bury an aircraft," Myers said. "A 55-gallon drum with anthrax in it would be a lot more difficult to find and dig up. So it will work ... and we'll find what we're after."


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August 27, 2003

Leap in Deficit Instead of Fall Is Seen for U.S.
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS


ASHINGTON, Aug. 26 — Even if the economy rebounds strongly over the next few years, the federal budget deficit could climb for the rest of the decade if Congress adopts proposals strongly supported by President Bush, the Congressional Budget Office said today.

Offering a sharp contrast to recent projections by the White House, which had said the budget deficit would hit $475 billion next year and decline significantly after that, the Congressional report warns that annual deficits could rise rather than fall.

The nonpartisan office said the deficit would be $480 billion next year but could reach a cumulative total of $5.8 trillion by 2013.

Administration officials quickly dismissed the Congressional projections as too speculative to take seriously, noting that long-term budget projections have been notoriously inaccurate.

But the new analysis is nonetheless based on fairly cautious assumptions. It assumes that economic growth will surge next year and remain solid for the rest of the decade. The biggest reason for potentially much higher deficits is the added cost of legislation that both the White House and the Republican majority in Congress support.

That agenda includes making almost all the tax cuts of the past three years permanent, which Congressional analysts said would cost $1.5 trillion over 10 years. It also includes the cost of a major new prescription drug program for the elderly, supported by Republicans and Democrats, that would cost $400 billion over 10 years.

And it includes the cost of overhauling the Alternative Minimum Tax, which under current law is expected to force tens of millions of taxpayers to pay much higher taxes as their incomes rise with inflation. That change, supported by Republicans and Democrats alike, would cost an additional $400 billion over 10 years.

Those adjustments alone would add about $500 billion to the deficit over the next 5 years and about $2.7 trillion over 10 years. If government spending continues to increase at anywhere near the rates of the past five years, the deficit would surge far higher.

That would be in sharp contrast to Mr. Bush's outlook. Last month, the White House Office of Management and Budget projected that the deficit would peak at $475 billion next year and decline to just $62 billion in 2008.

The Congressional "baseline" forecast, which is not allowed to consider the costs of any legislative proposals not yet enacted, shows a similar trend.

But when Congressional analysts spelled out in stark terms for the returning Congress the costs of additional tax cuts and new Medicare benefits, the deficit would remain at over $500 billion in 2008 and continue to climb after that.

Democrats immediately pounced on today's report to charge that Mr. Bush and his Republican Congressional allies were leading the country into a fiscal catastrophe just as today's baby-boom generation begins to approach retirement age and start drawing heavily on Social Security and Medicare entitlements.

"We have new numbers from the C.B.O., and what they show is that the president is taking us into the deep, dark hole of deficits and debt that will take the nation many generations to recover from," said Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee.

Trent Duffy, spokesman for the White House budget office, countered that long-term budget projections were inherently unreliable and said today's report merely supported Mr. Bush's promise to reduce government spending.

"The only thing we know about 10-year projections is that they are terribly, terribly wrong," Mr. Duffy said today. "In 1993, 10 years ago today, C.B.O. did not predict that in the late 1990's we would have a surplus."

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, director of the Congressional Budget Office, emphasized that his agency was not predicting huge new deficits so much as describing the likely consequences of different policy decisions.

"We don't mean these as projections," Mr. Holtz-Eakin told reporters today. "They are meant to illustrate the range of possible outcomes."

Nevertheless, today's attempt to estimate the broader fiscal outlook was similar to projections by analysts from across the political spectrum. In June, economists at Goldman Sachs predicted that the federal government would run a 10-year deficit of $4.5 trillion. Congressional Democrats have come up with a similar number, based on similar assumptions.

"Among careful budget analysts there is not a great deal of controversy about what the forecast looks like, and it is grim," said Robert Greenstein, director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal policy research group in Washington.

To be sure, forecasting budget deficits has been about as accurate in the past few years as forecasting earthquakes. Neither Congressional analysts nor the administration predicted the flood of tax revenue at the height of the stock market boom. Nor did they predict that revenues would fall for each of the past three years.

One big uncertainty over the next few years will be the costs of occupying Iraq and Afghanistan. The basic Congressional forecast assumes that this year's war costs will essentially continue and increase with inflation over the next 10 years.

Most analysts say that is unrealistic, because war-related costs will almost certainly decline. But the administration, for its part, has yet to budget anything for war-related costs in 2004 and thereafter — a position that may be equally unrealistic.

The biggest uncertainty is about the trend in discretionary government spending — programs from defense to education that lie outside mandatory entitlement benefits like Social Security and Medicare.

Discretionary spending has risen by about 7.7 percent a year for the past five years, far faster than the rate of inflation. Under Mr. Bush, the biggest new spending has been for defense, counterterrorism and a few domestic programs like education.

The Bush administration assumes that discretionary spending will climb by only 4 percent annually in the years ahead. The Congressional Budget Office tested out several different possibilities, and these produced huge differences in the budget outlook.

When the office assumed that discretionary spending would remain absolutely flat, not even keeping pace with inflation, the projected cumulative deficit over the next 10 years would shrink by $1.2 trillion.

That prospect would entail deep cuts in real spending, adjusted for inflation.

But if spending climbs in line with overall economic growth, Congressional analysts estimated that the projected deficits would swell by $1.4 trillion over 10 years. And if spending continued to climb as fast as it has in the past five years, the deficits would swell by $2.8 trillion over 10 years.

Despite the range of possible outcomes, today's report left little doubt that Congress and Mr. Bush face difficult choices.

Edward McKelvey, an economist at Goldman Sachs who has predicted steep new deficits for the next 10 years, said today's report had reinforced his views.

"Our pessimistic view of the budget outlook will remain very much intact," Mr. McKelvey wrote in a research note today after seeing the Congressional report.

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:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 10:11 AM [+] ::
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TIME TO GET REAL IN IRAQ

Tue Aug 26, 8:04 PM ET



By Ted Rall

Iraqi Resisters are Patriots


Ted Rall


Related Links

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Ted Rall's Editorial Cartoons
 

NEW YORK--Nearly 70 percent of Americans tell Newsweek that "the United States will be bogged down in [Iraq ( news -web sites )] for years without achieving its goals." Yet 61 percent tell the same poll that invading Iraq was the right thing to do. The reason for this weird disconnect: people think that we're in Iraq to spread democracy and rebuild the Middle East. They think we're The Good Guys. But the longer we keep patting ourselves on the back, the more we tell ourselves that the Iraqi resistance is a bunch of evil freedom-haters, the deeper we'll sink into this quagmire.

It's time to get real.

In war, the side that most accurately sizes up the situation ultimately prevails. In this war in Iraq, our leaders thought the fall of Baghdad meant the end of the conflict. "Mission accomplished," as the banner behind George W. Bush read on the aircraft carrier. But Saddam understood the truth: the war began with the occupation . Guerilla warfare offered the only way for Iraq's tiny, poorly armed military to resist the U.S. The Baath Party planned to provoke U.S. occupation forces into mistreating the population.

It worked.

Random bombings and sniper hits have made the American occupiers jittery and paranoid. They've withdrawn into fortified cantonments where they've cut off contact with civilians. Their ignorance causes them to offend Iraqi cultural and religious sensibilities. Even better, from Saddam's perspective, U.S. troops push people around: shooting unarmed motorists, stealing their money and jewelry at roadblocks, breaking into houses in the middle of the night, manhandling wives and daughters, putting bags over men's heads and carrying them off to God knows where for who knows how long.

"U.S. troops put their boots on the back of men's heads as they lay face down, forcing their foreheads to the ground," the Associated Press' Scheherezade Faramarzi writes about the procedure used by U.S. troops during sweeps ."There is no greater humiliation...because Islam forbids putting the forehead on the ground except in prayer." Amnesty International says the U.S. subjects Iraqi prisoners to "cruel, inhuman or degrading" conditions.

In Iraq, we are the bad guys .

What about the "terrorists" who bombed the U.N. headquarters and Jordanian embassy in Baghdad, who sabotage oil and water pipelines, who use rifles and rocket-propelled grenades and remote-controlled mines to kill our soldiers? Aren't these "killers" evil, "killing people who just want to help," as another AP writer puts it?

In short: no.

The ad hoc Iraqi resistance is comprised of indigenous fighters ranging from secular ex-Republican Guards to radical Islamist Shiites, as well as foreign Arab volunteers waging the same brand of come-one-come-all jihad that the mujahedeen fought against Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan ( news -web sites ). While one can dismiss foreign jihadis as naïve adventurers, honest Americans should call native Iraqi resistance fighters by a more fitting name: Iraqi patriots.

I collect propaganda posters. One of my favorites, from World War II, depicts a strapping young SS officer holding a smiling local kid in his arms. "Trust the German soldier," the caption exhorts citizens of occupied France. But when liberation came in 1945, Frenchmen who had obeyed that poster were shot as collaborators. The men and women who resisted--the "terrorists" who shot German soldiers, cut phone lines and bombed trains--received medals and pensions. Invaders always say that they come as liberators, but it's almost never true. Whether you live in Paris or Baghdad or New York, you're expected to know that, and to act accordingly.

"We want deeds, not words," says Abu Mohammad, a retired teacher about our inability (unwillingness?) to restore basic services to the city of Baghdad. Here are our deeds: Talking about democracy as we cancel elections. Guarding the oil ministry building while museums are sacked. Exporting Iraqi oil to Turkey as Iraqis suffer fuel and power shortages. Iraq's natural resources are being raped. Its people are being murdered. Yet it's the patriotic Iraqi resistance, which is trying to stop these outrages by throwing out the perpetrators of an illegal war of aggression, that the Bush Administration dares call "terrorists."

On July 5 a bomb killed seven recruits for a U.S.-trained Iraqi police force in Ramadi. U.S. occupation administrator Paul Bremer deplored the murder of "innocent Iraqis." Cops who work for a foreign army of occupation are not innocent. They are collaborators. Traitors. They had it coming.

Under George W. Bush, truth and justice are no longer the American way. The U.S. occupation of Iraq is misguided, evil and doomed to failure. The sooner we accept this difficult truth, the sooner we decide to stop being the bad guys, the sooner we'll withdraw our troops. The bloodshed may continue after we leave--and we'll be partly to blame for that. But until we pull out, the carnage is all ours.

Sami Tuma's brother was shot to death when he drove past a U.S. military checkpoint. (The psychotic U.S. military policy in Iraq, despite countless killings of innocent civilians and at least five reporters to date, is not to warn victims before opening fire.) "It is simple," says Tuma. "If someone kills your son, wife or brother without any reason but only that they happen to be walking or driving in the street, what you will do? You retaliate."

It's what I'd do. It's probably what you'd do too.

Ted Rall is the author of the graphic travelogue "To Afghanistan and Back," an award-winning recounting of his experiences covering the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. It is now available in a revised and updated paperback edition containing new material. Ordering information is available at amazon.com.)

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Published on Sunday, August 24, 2003 by Reuters

Analysis: Is 'Perfect Storm' Brewing for Bush?

by Carol Giacomo

 

WASHINGTON - As the 2004 election nears, President Bush could face an international "perfect storm" -- more attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, an overextended deployment of U.S. troops eager to come home and blackening clouds over the Middle East, North Korea and Iran.


President George W. Bush walks across a rainy runway in Redmond, Oregon August 22, 2003 heading for Air Force One and a flight to Pasco, Washington. As the 2004 election nears, Bush could face an international "perfect storm" -- more attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, an overextended deployment of U.S. troops eager to come home and blackening clouds over the Middle East, North Korea and Iran. The confluence of world events will test Bush's foreign policy leadership even as he must concentrate on the U.S. economy and other domestic issues that could determine whether he wins a second term. (Photo by Rick Wilking/Reuters)
The confluence of world events will test Bush's foreign policy leadership even as he must concentrate on the U.S. economy and other domestic issues that could determine whether he wins a second term.

Although most Americans still have a favorable opinion of the president, his job performance rating has slipped to 52 percent positive and 48 percent negative in a recent poll of 1,011 likely U.S. voters by Zogby International. This compares with a post-Sept. 11, 2001, peak rating of 82 percent positive.

The president and his top aides have repeatedly insisted that their course in Iraq is the right one.

But last week's bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, which killed 24 people, has provoked demands for a reassessment of U.S. Iraq policy.

Meanwhile:

-- Renewed Israeli-Palestinian violence may have scuttled a U.S. peace plan for the region.

-- Six-party talks in Beijing this week raise both peril and promise in dealing with the North Korean nuclear crisis.

-- A U.S. push to have the United Nations address concerns about Iran's nuclear ambitions could provoke a crisis.

STORM BREWING

"A perfect storm (on security) is brewing for the rest of the year," said one military planner, referring to a catastrophic clash of three storms that menaced the U.S. Northeastern coast in 1991.

In Iraq, a major lightning rod is the issue of troops -- whether the 139,000 U.S. military on the ground should be supplemented with more Americans or foreign forces.

In a letter to Bush last week, Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Chuck Hagel, members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the Baghdad attack showed the "urgent need" for more foreign forces in Iraq.

They urged Bush to find a way to broaden the U.N.'s role, so leaders of countries that opposed the war can have the "political cover" to justify post-war cooperation.

"It is worth enhancing the role of the United Nations because it will allow us to share the huge risk and expense of securing, policing, and reconstructing Iraq -- tasks that will take tens of thousands of troops and tens of billions of dollars over many years," the senators wrote.

More compelling to the White House, perhaps, may be the stance of William Kristol and Robert Kagan, neo-conservatives who helped create the intellectual climate that propelled Bush's decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

In The Weekly Standard, which Kristol edits, they warned that the future of U.S. world leadership and security is at stake in Iraq but Bush has "failed to commit resources to the rebuilding of Iraq commensurate with these very high stakes."

TOO FEW TROOPS

There are too few U.S. troops and too little money committed to Iraq and another $60 billion and two army divisions are needed, they said.

"This is the time to bite the bullet and pay the price. Next spring, if disaster looms, it will be harder. And it may be too late," they wrote.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has insisted that no more troops are required, just that the United States must hasten preparations for Iraqis to take over security duties.

Nevertheless, Washington has revived discussions with the United Nations on a resolution to encourage countries like France, Turkey, Germany and India to send troops and resources.

Military planners say if the U.N. did pass a resolution that France and others approved, it could take eight weeks for troops from those countries to arrive on the ground in Iraq.

That would bring them to Iraq's one working port and airport about the time thousands of U.S. forces are due to rotate out.

But as the administration remains adamantly opposed to sharing power in Iraq with the United Nations, agreement may be impossible, or at least a long time in coming.

Over time, if security in Iraq does not improve, the original occupation force may have to return for another tour of duty, said Phillip Gordon of the Brookings Institution.

That could mean thousands of disgruntled military and their families in an election year, experts say.

Copyright 2003 Reuters Ltd

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Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | 'A wake-up call to fix the grid': "New York Times Editorial, August 18


'George Bush received the blackout as a 'wake-up call' to fix the grid, though he made no vow to leap at a fine opportunity now accidentally at hand. This is the omnibus energy bill that, until the lights went out, had been a derelict vehicle for bad ideas, political gridlock and procrastination in the Republican-led Congress ... For a true wake-up, we urge the president to put aside the ideological priorities that drive his energy policy - like oil drilling in Alaska - and lead Congress to deal separately with the here-and-now power problems buried in the bill's fine print ...

'There had been no shortage of dire warnings from experts that the grid was fraying to the point of potential disaster. The pity is the warnings came with parallel predictions that leadership would be lacking until politicians were prodded by just the sort of crisis that brought down the Northeast grid.' "
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Tuesday, August 26, 2003

 



International

 



Saddam running out of options, claims US Army

 

Andrew Cawthorne

 

TIKRIT, Aug 25: Iraq's ex-dictator Saddam Hussein is probably still shuttling between safe houses every few hours but is running out of places to hide in his fifth month on the run, according to top US commanders hunting him. ‘‘The estimate right now is that he moves every two hours,’’ said Colonel James Hickey who heads the brigade running Saddam’s home town Tikrit where there is speculation he could be hiding.

‘‘We have taken a lot of important folk down in the last few weeks. So he (Saddam) and other bad guys are running out of spaces to hide in. If he is in my area, his days are numbered,’’ added Hickey, whose men carry out round-the-clock raids in Tikrit.

Hickey and other senior commanders in the Tikrit area interviewed by Reuters in recent days said they were still working on the premise Saddam was in the ‘‘Sunni Triangle’’.

Saddam was a Sunni Muslim and drew strong support from the Sunni heartland north and west of Baghdad including the towns of Tikrit, Baquba and Ramadi. Dubbed the ‘‘Sunni Triangle’’, the area is now a hotbed of anti-American guerrilla activity. ‘‘I believe (Saddam) is moving round the Sunni Triangle,’’ said Major General Raymond Odierno, who controls the 26,000-strong division in charge of the area. ‘‘He will have to continue to move on a routine basis or else we will catch him.’’

Iraqis, however, are far more sceptical than the Americans. Graffiti such as ‘‘Saddam is a ghost’’ and ‘‘Saddam is strong in times of trouble’’ can still be seen in some parts of Tikrit, where the toppled president has for many taken on an almost mythical quality. ‘‘They can send millions of soldiers but they will never find him,’’ said student Mohamed Hashim. ‘‘If they do, he will die with a gun in his hand.’’ (Reuters)


 




 




URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=30278


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http://www.calendarlive.com/books/cl-et-book25_aug25,2,4146868.story?coll=cl-books-util

BOOK REVIEW

Bringing flaws of electricity deregulation to light

Power Play: The Fight to Control the World's Electricity; Sharon Beder; New Press: 416 pp., $25.95
By Merle Rubin
Special to The Times

August 25 2003

If you've ever suspected that most, if not all, of the deregulation that has been going on in the last few decades is a con job, Sharon Beder's eye-opening "Power Play" will more than confirm your suspicions. If you have put your faith in mantras like "deregulation," "privatization" and "the marketplace," Beder's account of the campaign to control the world's electricity may open your eyes or, at the very least, make you think twice about the gap between rosy promises and blackout-filled realities.

THE STORY BEDER TELLS COULDN'T BE TIMELIER, PARTICULARLY FOR CALIFORNIANS. A CHAPTER IS DEVOTED EXCLUSIVELY TO DEREGULATION IN CALIFORNIA AND IS FOLLOWED BY TWO CHAPTERS ON THE RISE AND FALL OF ENRON. NOT ONLY DOES SHE PROVIDE A CLEAR EXPLANATION OF WHAT SHE BELIEVES LED TO THE STATE'S INFAMOUS POWER CRISIS OF JANUARY 2001, BUT SHE ALSO DESCRIBES A GROUP CALLED "THE AMERICAN TAXPAYERS ALLIANCE, HEADED BY A REPUBLICAN CAMPAIGN MANAGER AND WITH SECRET FUNDING SOURCES, SAID TO BE ENERGY INTERESTS [THAT] SPENT SOME $2 MILLION ON TELEVISION COMMERCIALS BLAMING [GOV. GRAY] DAVIS FOR THE CRISIS."
Who was to blame? In Beder's considered opinion, the deregulation of the energy market, not only in California but all over the world, has led to the very conditions that regulations were designed to prevent: private power companies manipulating the supply of energy, causing artificial shortages, driving up prices.

The author of "Global Spin," "Selling the Work Ethic" and other books, Beder also examines what has been going on in Australia, Britain, India and Brazil, where, she concludes, privatization of public utilities has led to less reliable service, higher costs, increased pollution and cuts in the workforce.

Beder explains why the currently hallowed nostrums of market forces, competition and choice mean little when it comes to electricity, as distinct from products like automobiles, clothing, books or films. With electricity, there is "a physical need for supply and demand to be balanced at all times to prevent the electricity grid from being damaged. This means that supply and demand cannot be left automatically to the market"

As for competition, Americans were already discovering in the latter part of the 19th century that what began as competition often ended in monopoly. By the early 20th century, publicly owned municipal utilities were a notable feature of American life, offering lower rates to customers and bringing revenue into the public coffers. In 1933, President Roosevelt established the Tennessee Valley Authority, building large-scale hydroelectric facilities to take electricity to rural areas.

A second viable route, favored by some shrewd power moguls, was to regulate private utilities, not only to prevent them from gouging the public but also to protect them from cutthroat competition that might force them to sacrifice safety to expediency.

Too often, Beder explains, the need to make short-term profits led private companies to delay or abandon expensive but necessary long-term projects like building new generators.

If publicly owned utilities have been such a boon, why a campaign to privatize? If regulation of private utilities has been an American success story, why a campaign to deregulate? And if privatization and deregulation have led to higher prices, shortages, pollution, layoffs and disregard for safety, why do so few members of the victimized public seem to be aware of the problem? This twofold question is at the heart of Beder's book.

What caused the change in public opinion that brought on this deregulatory revolution? From the start, in the last years of the 19th century, private companies fought to wrest control of electricity from municipal companies.

They organized a campaign to portray municipal companies as "socialistic," hence "Communistic," hence "un-American." This was a campaign of enormous scope, subtlety and sophistication, as Beder shows.

From 1928 to 1934, the Federal Trade Commission investigated the power companies' propaganda campaign and concluded that "no campaign approaching it in magnitude had ever been conducted except possibly by governments in wartime."

Along with the standard tactic of lobbying politicians, the energy industry launched a huge grass-roots campaign. Leaflets extolling the virtues of privately owned companies were churned out by the hundreds of thousands and distributed to schools.

Power companies regularly bought millions of dollars worth of advertising space in newspapers, not just to get their message across to the public but also to be able to threaten to pull their advertising if a newspaper endorsed public programs or criticized private ones.

The National Electric Light Assn., formed in 1885, had committees surveying school textbooks, targeting those that mentioned successful examples of public ownership. They also commissioned textbooks, which, naturally, sang the praises of private ownership.

Beder tells us how power companies got into the business of funding professorships and research at universities to promote the kind of thinking that favored their cause.

They also found ways of inserting their spokespersons into a broad spectrum of civic and social life.

Lucidly written, strongly argued, highly informative and deeply alarming, "Power Play" should serve as a wake-up call — unless we've been too thoroughly brainwashed to smell the coffee.




Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times
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