Left I on the News  

Some good election news

"Montevideo, Uruguay, Oct. 31 - Tabare Vazquez, a Socialist doctor running as the candidate of an opposition coalition that includes former guerrillas, narrowly triumphed Sunday in the presidential election, bringing the left to power for the first time in this South American country.

"The victory by the coalition, the Progressive-Encounter-Broad-Front-New-Majority, whose largest faction consists of Tupamaro guerrillas turned politicians, strengthens a trend throughout the continent. As in the last presidential votes in Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador and Argentina, the candidate most opposed to American-supported free-market policies has defeated backers of those policies."

Followup: Will there be consequences of this election? At least two:

"Vazquez, 64, vows to restore relations with Cuba, which Uruguay severed in April 2002 after Castro insulted Batlle as Washington's lackey. He also vows to resume relations with Brazil, the U.S. policy rival in South America."

A "Stronger America"

For sure, what we do not need is a "stronger America." Because it's a "strong" America which got 3000 people killed on 9/11, and more than a thousand of its own soldiers killed since then, and it's a "strong" America which has caused the deaths of thousands of Afghans and tens of thousands of Iraqis (not to mention the half million to a million Iraqis who were killed by the U.S./U.N. embargo, which was also part of a "strong" America throwing its weight around the world). And not in a million years will I vote for a candidate who campaigns on the slogan of "a stronger America," no matter who he or she is running against, and no matter what dire consequences for the Supreme Court are foretold by his supporters.

And while we're on the subject of signs, here's my other observation for the day. I see a fair number of bumper stickers on cars. Being in Northern California, the (vast) majority are Kerry bumper stickers. Of the Bush-Cheney stickers I see, though, I swear that virtually every single one is on an SUV or a truck. Here's my prediction for the day - I'll bet you can't find a single Prius anywhere in the country with a Bush-Cheney sticker. See for yourself!

Riverbend? Or Arundhati Roy? A test.

Quote of the Day Week Month Year

"It never occurred to us that the commander in chief of the country would leave 50,000 citizens in the two towers to face those horrors alone ... because he thought listening to a child discussing her goats was more important."

- Osama bin Laden, on a tape released today

Stretching for a headline, and other questionable newspaper language

Campaigns enlist stars to sway swing voters
Springsteen, Gen. Franks boost candidates

In the same article, the Mercury News says [emphasis added]:

"[Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor...appeared to blame the troops explicitly on NBC's 'Today Show,' saying 'the president did what a commander in chief should do, and no matter how you try to blame it on the president the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough, or didn't they search carefully enough?'"

Then we have this headline from this morning's Los Angeles Times:

News Video Is at Center of Storm Over Iraq Explosives
Reporters taped troops apparently finding munitions. A Pentagon photo implies otherwise.

In the article itself, we find this: "Bush and Pentagon officials have suggested that the facility had been cleared of the explosives before the U.S.-led invasion on March 20." No. They suggested that the facility might have been cleared of the explosives, not that it had been cleared. Since they have no actual evidence, even they wouldn't have the chutzpah to come out and say that it had been cleared. Their only defense was to imply that there was doubt about when the weapons were removed (not, as I have now written twice, that that makes any difference in the conclusion which can be drawn from the episode). That defense would appear to me (though not to the LA Times, evidently) to be conclusively shattered.

Mass graves in Iraq

"Deaths of Iraqis have soared by 100,000 since the start of the Iraq war and many of the victims have been women and children, public health experts from the United States said on Thursday.

"'Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq,' researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland said in a report published online by The Lancet medical journal."

U.S. anti-Cuba coalition increases by 33%

Last year's vote was 179-3; unfortunately, it looks like Cuba is running out of countries to add to its coalition. The only abstention this year was Micronesia, and I'm afraid if they ever make up their mind, they just might go the way of Palau and the Marshall Islands. I guess it depends on how much the U.S. ambassador offers them. Or threatens them.

Followup: A long press release about the debate issued by the U.N. is here with a lot more detail than published in any newspaper, including the complete vote. Evidently Iraq doesn't have a vote yet. And here I thought they had been "given" "sovereignty."

A Jon Stewart "rub the eyes and go 'whaaaaa?'" moment

"The documents show IAEA inspectors looked at nine bunkers containing more than 194 tons of HMX at the facility. Although these bunkers were still under IAEA seal, the inspectors said the seals may be potentially ineffective because they had ventilation slats on the sides. These slats could be easily removed to remove the materials inside the bunkers without breaking the seals, the inspectors noted."

Again, as I wrote yesterday, even if this story is true it makes no difference. We don't know for certain when the explosives were taken from Al Qaqaa. But on the day that Baghdad fell, and the U.S. took nominal control of Iraq, there was every reason to believe that a huge stockpile of explosives, important enough to have been sealed (or should that be "sealed"?) by the IAEA, was still present at Al Qaqaa. And no effort was made to secure that stockpile (or to verify that there was nothing left to secure). And that is a known fact.

Followup: Atrios links to a story from a Minneapolis/St. Paul TV station (complete with pictures!) about an "embedded" crew of theirs who visited Al Qaqaa with American troops on April 10 and viewed vast stores of (unknown) explosives, easily accessed with a pair of bolt cutters and apparently unguarded.

Quote of the Day

"Since Sept. 11, 2001, we're reminded some nations don't have the rule of law or (know) that it's the key to liberty."

- Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, "extolling...the growing role of international law in U.S. courts" (Source)

Bringing it home

Killing people and shooting ourselves in the foot at the same time. What a deal. A classic "lose-lose" situation. Except, of course, for Halliburton et al..

The election approaches

"An uptick in airstrikes and other military moves point to an imminent showdown between U.S. forces and Sunni Muslim insurgents west of Baghdad -- a decisive battle that could determine whether the campaign to bring democracy and stability to Iraq an succeed."

Yesterday's news

He-who-can-now-be-named

Al Qaqaa - my $0.02

But the obvious corollary hasn't been dealt with. It most definitely was known that those explosives were there shortly before the war started, when the IAEA inspected the site. It is also definitely known that the IAEA warned the U.S. about the significance of the explosives stored at that site which was, after all, an "IAEA-sealed" site. So if the U.S. was at all unsure about whether any explosives were still there when they arrived, and let's take that as a given, then it was incumbent upon them to secure the site until it could be inspected, since if they didn't do so (and they didn't), then they were leaving a site where there was at least a very good probability that there was a huge supply of very significant explosives unguarded. And against that charge, as far as I can tell, there is no defense. Whether the site was actually looted before or after American troops arrived is essentially irrelevant.

In reality, this is one more piece of proof of something that I wrote about more than a year ago - this war was clearly not about WMD or any other kind of weapons, because

"if you did go to war because you thought there were WMD which might find their way into the hands of terrorists (the ostensible purpose for the war, since it was 100% clear that Iraq itself had no way of attacking the U.S. with any weapons at all), then you would have spent months preparing for an immediate, massive effort to seize them and prevent them from getting into the hands of terrorists. Instead, we saw a decidedly lackadaisical search, with known nuclear facilities left unguarded, teams not even ready to go for months after the fall of Baghdad, etc."

Man bites dog

"Mayor Gavin Newsom made good on his promise to join locked-out union members on the picket line Tuesday after a group of San Francisco hotels rejected his proposed 90-day cooling off period, extending a bitter labor dispute that has left 4,000 workers locked out of their jobs.

Newsom shook hands with locked-out workers during a short visit to the Westin St. Francis on Powell Street and vowed that the city would boycott the hotels by not sponsoring city events in any of them, including renowned venues such as the Fairmont and the Palace."

Massacre in Fallujah

"Today the Iraq Body Count (IBC) website has published its analysis of the civilian dealth toll in the April 2004 siege of Falluja. This analysis leads to the conclusion that betweeen 572 and 616 of the approximately 800 reported deaths were of civilians, with over 300 of these being women and children."

Riverbend picks the little shoe

"No one can be worse than Bush. It will hardly be fair to any president after Bush in any case- it's like assigning a new captain to a drowning ship. All I know is that Bush made the hole and let the water in, I want him thrown overboard."

"War and peace in America are in the average American’s hands about as much as they are in mine. Sure, you can vote for this man or that one, but in the end, there’s something bigger, more intricate and quite sinister behind the decisions. Like in that board game Monopoly, you can choose the game pieces- the little shoe, the car, the top hat… but you can’t choose the way the game is played. The faces change but the intentions and the policy remain the same."

Interesting choice of words

"'On Sept. 11, 2001, this country accepted a great challenge -- to inflict justice on terrorists who would attack us and to take every reasonable step to protect our homeland,' editors of The Denver Post wrote."

Quotes of the Day

"How is it that in one of the most densely populated areas in the world, that one third of the territory is populated by some 1,600 Jewish families, and that two-thirds of it is populated by 1.5 million Palestinians who don't even have room to breathe?"

- Israeli Justice Minister Tommy Lapid

"We cannot remain a Jewish and democratic state while we reign over millions of Palestinians."

- Israeli Labour leader Shimon Peres

"Fourteen Palestinians were killed in the latest bout of violence on Monday.

"The dead, among them an eight-year-old boy, were killed in either air strikes or from gunfire and tank shelling in the town of Khan Yunis. Most died when the army fired at least four air-to-ground missiles at the area, one of which hit a national security service position, security officials said.

"Palestinian medics said some 70 people had also been wounded, while Israeli military sources reported that two soldiers were lightly injured."

Battling headlines

• AFP: "Kerry Slams Bush Over Missing Iraq Explosives"
• AP #1: "Kerry Accuses Bush of Incompetence"
• AP #2: "Kerry Chides Bush on Missing Explosives"

"Chide" - "To scold mildly so as to correct or improve." Chide? I don't think so.

Miscalculations? Or calculations?

"[The Bush administration] miscalculated about how to go to war, miscalculated about the numbers of troops that we would need."

Miscalculations? Or careful calculations? You be the judge.

Interventionism

"There was plenty of outrage south of the border last week over the news that the British newspaper, the Guardian, had organized a letter-writing campaign to influence undecided American voters. "How dare they?" huffed CNN anchor Lou Dobbs.

"The denunciations of 'outside interference' were so fierce one could have easily been left with the impression that Americans are scrupulous themselves about never interfering in the affairs of other nations.

"Of course, we know this isn't the case. So it was hard not to see a double standard at work. Apparently, invading another country is okay, but writing letters to voters in another country is really crossing the line."

"Michael Mandel, a law professor at York University's Osgoode Hall, notes that the Nuremberg Tribunal following World War II ruled that starting a war of aggression is the supreme international crime, because it's the crime from which all the other war-related crimes flow.

"Mandel argues that the invasion of Iraq amounts to the supreme international crime.

"The Bush administration has tried to claim the high moral ground, stressing that it puts great effort into avoiding civilian casualties in Iraq.

"This is nonsense. If it is engaged in a war of aggression, any casualties it creates -- deliberate or accidental -- are a violation of international law, not to mention a gross injustice. And countless Iraqis have been killed by U.S. forces in Iraq.

Washington presents its ongoing attacks on insurgents as self-defensive, but Mandel insists that an aggressor has no right to self-defence. 'If you break into someone's house and hold them at gunpoint and they try to kill you but you kill them first, they're guilty of nothing and you're guilty of murder.'"

The explosions are coming fast and furious

"The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, produce missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.

"The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no-man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished after the American invasion last year.

"The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country."

"The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the material of the type stolen from Al Qaqaa, and somewhat larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people."

Followup: Talking Points Memo has a whole series of posts expanding on this issue, making clear that the U.S. government has been suppressing this story for more than a year, and that the New York Times is still pulling its punches on the story.

Feynman lives!

Richard Feynman was one of the great physicists, one of the great physics teachers, and one of the great "characters" of the 20th century. His adventures, chronicled in such books as "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" and "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" make for delightful reading. His last adventure, his search to learn more about the "lost land" of Tannu Tuva (now Tuva), is told in the book "Tuva or Bust!" Sadly, Feynman died shortly before he would have become one of the first Americans ever to have visited Tuva.

Last night I watched the delightful 1999 film Genghis Blues, the story of blind San Francisco blueman Paul Pena, his accidental discovery of the unique Tuvan form of music called "throat-singing," and his eventual trip to Tuva (an indirect result of Feynman's earlier efforts) and actually winning a throat-singing contest there. What an amazing story! And what an amazing place this world is, filled with interesting people living life in many different ways. And most of them, like Tuvan throat-singing master Kongar-ol Ondar who hosts Pena on his visit and is featured in the film, wanting only to be happy and live in peace with the rest of the people in the world.

And finally, a word about Netflix which I mentioned the other day in conjunction with Hearts & Minds. Although several friends had strongly recommended it as far back almost as the day it began, I resisted for the same reason I don't subscribe to "premium cable" - I already watch too much TV, and if I had continuous access to good (or even bad) movies, I might never do anything else. But I was finally persuaded by the fact that Netflix (and possibly competing services, about which I know nothing) has an incredible supply of movies, particularly documentaries, which you just can't get at your local Blockbuster or even your local library. Since I signed up just a short while ago, I've been able to see movies like Genghis Blues, Hearts & Minds, Outfoxed, Touching the Void (which I mentioned yesterday), The Fog of War (which I discussed a few weeks ago), as well as a few fiction films. For me, the relatively modest monthly fee has been well worth it (needless to say, I do not write this out of any financial interest in Netflix, of which I have none).

A word about Netflix itself. I've been using it for about a month. Out of around a dozen movies I've checked out, every single one has had two-day turnaround, that is, I put a movie I've viewed in Monday's mail and a new one arrives in Wednesday's mail. Every one. This is a tribute not only to Netflix's efficiency, but also to that of the much-maligned U.S. Postal Service, whose performance far exceeds the common perception. Another thing worth mentioning - the "normal" Netflix service gives you unlimited movies, with three checked out at one time, for $17.99/month (the price just dropped). There is a lower cost service, which I signed up for, which gives you two at once, and a maximum of four/month. However you will not find any evidence of this rate if you go to sign up. You have to sign up at the normal rate, then, after you have done so, go online to "my account" and change your level of service to the lower, less expensive level (which now that they've lowered prices is less worth doing, since it's only $3/month less, and I don't expect they'll lower the low-price rate.).

Footnote: Feel free to use the Comments to recommend your own favorite documentaries (let's confine it to that, shall we; recommending movies in general is to put it mildly too broad a topic).

John Kerry fails the "global test"

This year's U.N. vote condemning the blockade is coming up on October 28.

Douchebag Quote of the Day

"What depresses me about it is all this whining about no flu shots. There's no flu epidemic. The federal health officials say that it looks like, so far, it's even lower than usual. And immediately, the people are whining, say, Isn't the government going to help me out? You know, I've never had a -- I'm 73 years old. I've had about every disease known to man. I've never had a flu shot. All these people so worried about it. There's something wrong with people in this country if they really think that this is a -- this is a matter that is of great concern."

- Robert Novak, on yesterday's Capital Gang, not to be confused with Mad Magazine's "Usual Gang of Idiots," who are way smarter and more perceptive about American politics.

The Battle of Algiers

Quote of the Next Day

"CNN says, 'You can depend on CNN.' Guess what? I watch CNN. No, you can't!"

Support a great organization - subscribe to Extra!.

Quote of the Day

"With the same energy ... I put into going after the Viet Cong and trying to win for our country, I pledge to you I will hunt down and capture or kill the terrorists before they harm us."

- John Kerry, campaigning today

It seems to me John Kerry ought to forget about running for President and just go enlist in the Army. Obviously he's itching to get his hands on a gun and shoot something more challenging than geese.

DNC protesters "dodged a bullet"

"The plastic balls of pepper spray, which are propelled from devices similar to paintball guns, are meant to prevent serious injury as police agencies try to control large groups. [Ed. note: meant to prevent serious injury to whom?]

"Boston police bought the projectile weaponry for crowd control during this summer's Democratic National Convention, but did not use it then because protests remained relatively subdued.

"Meanwhile, Seattle police said yesterday that the department has equipment similar to that used in the Boston incident."

"Bridgewater State College Police Chief David Tillinghist considered outfitting his 20-member campus department with high pressure guns that fire balls filled with a pepper-like powder to quell any student riots.

"Those plans are now on hold.

"The death of a 21-year-old East Bridgewater college student, struck in the eye with what authorities say was a pepper-loaded projectile fired by Boston police trying to disperse a crowd after the Red Sox beat the Yankees, is forcing law enforcement agencies such as Bridgewater State College's police department to rethink the safety and effectiveness of using products billed as 'less than lethal.'

"One study by the National Institute of Justice of 373 cases where so-called 'impact munitions' weapons that fired projectiles such as bean bags, foam rubber balls and gas found that someone died in one percent of the incidents. The study did not break out pepper spray or pepper powder weapons."

More on Castro's fall

"Cuba's representative in Washington yesterday said a State Department spokesman's comments about Cuban leader Fidel Castro's fall late Wednesday proved the immoral nature of the Bush administration.

"'These statements reflect to a large extent the low humane, ethical and moral standard of a terrorist regime -- pardon me, warring regime -- such as the United States,' Dagoberto Rodriguez told a group of reporters when asked about comments from State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

In the meantime, I've been thinking about some aspects of the event which haven't been commented on anywhere else. In the last day or so I've seen video footage of the fall not just on the news but also on the Jay Leno show, as Leno despicably yucked it up, comparing Castro's accident to the much-hyped (and totally contrived) pulling down of the Hussein statue after the fall of Baghdad. You can see the video yourself here (there's a brief ad at the beginning). A few things stand out in that footage. First, the reason this accident was so serious (resulting in a broken knee and arm) was not because the 78-year-old Castro is old and frail, but precisely because the opposite is true. After finishing his speech, Castro strides forward forcefully, and to my eye trips on the step because his eyes are on the audience in front of him who he is on his way to greet. If he were walking forward slowly and carefully like most 78-year-olds, he would have simply fallen in place; instead, his momentum carries him forward ten feet and makes him hit the ground much harder.

The second thing you notice is even more important - Castro is completely alone and unprotected as he strides forward toward the crowd. Compare this to the recent picture of Hamid Karzai that appeared recently in this blog, looking terrified even when surrounded by machine-gun toting guards, or similar pictures of Ayad Allawi. George Bush's guards don't carry machine guns, but he's even better protected; even three women wearing T-shirts reading "Protect Our Civil Liberties" were judged too much of a danger to him to attend his campaign rally.

Finally, I'll note from the video footage that, "less than a minute after the fall," Castro, with a broken knee and broken arm, calmly addressed the crowd and told them he was in one piece; the next day, he had only local anesthesia during a 3-hour surgery. I don't want to say he compares to Joe Simpson, whose Touching the Void tells the story of his harrowing descent from a treacherous mountain (from inside a crevasse!) with a shattered knee and broken leg (which I happened to see last night, and which I highly recommend as long as you're not looking for a relaxing evening and don't mind being tense for two hours), but nevertheless Fidel's behavior demonstrates a lot more bravery than the President of a certain other country that comes to mind.

Followup: Fidel is not a man of few words:

"When I reached the concrete area, some 15 or 20 meters from the first row of seats, I didn't notice that there was a relatively high sidewalk between the paving and the crowd. I took a step with my left foot into the space created by the difference in height between the area where the participants were located in their respective seats. Impulse and the law of gravity, discovered a long time ago by Newton, meant that the false step I had taken precipitated me forwards, in a fraction of a second, onto the paving. By pure instinct, my arms went out in front of me to cushion the blow; otherwise, my face and head would have hit the ground."

Jon Stewart

Deus ex machina?

"We prayed in the morning at breakfast, at lunch, before we went to sleep. Never give up on the Lord. He'll be there for you."

A funny thing happened while I was researching this post. One of the four rescues that occured, the one mentioned above, was clearly described in the press as having been made by the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Search and Rescue team. After checking a number of news articles on the other rescues, I was never able to determine exactly who was involved. Their were just "rescues," with neither individual rescuers nor agency credited for the rescue. Truly "deus ex machina." Little wonder people don't appreciate what government does for them.

Bush lies, people die (and then Bush lies to their families)

"Bush also expressed gratitude to Hispanic families that lost loved ones in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, adding that they died for a noble cause.

"'I would tell them the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the war against those who caused the deaths on 9/11 is necessary,' he said."

Iraqi election watch

Folks, when it's mid-October, and the road from the capital city to its airport is "one of the most dangerous" in the country, talking about elections in January is beyond being a joke.

Two Cuban stories

"The United States on Thursday refused to wish arch-foe Fidel Castro a speedy recovery from bone fractures sustained in an accidental stumble, saying the Cuban leader's injuries were of 'little concern' compared to the suffering of the Cuban people.

"'We heard that Castro fell,' state department spokesperson Richard Boucher said, professing ignorance as to which bones he may have damaged. 'You'd have to check with the Cubans to find out what's broken about Mr Castro.'

"'We, obviously, have expressed our views about what's broken in Cuba,' he told reporters, reiterating Washington's litany of complaints about Castro and his communist government which have been the target of a US trade embargo for more than 40 years.

"Asked whether the United States would wish Castro a speedy recovery, Boucher replied: 'No' and said Washington was far more concerned about the welfare of the Cuban people under what he called and undemocratic and repressive regime."

"They are not suspected terrorists. They are not 'enemy combatants.' They are not even charged with a crime. But on Oct. 13, in Clark vs. Martinez and Benitez vs. Rozos before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Bush administration defended the executive's authority to imprison them on U.S. soil until they are dead.

"Allowed to depart the island in 1980 from the port of Mariel, some 125,000 Cubans came to the United States over a six-month period.

"The U.S. government argues that the 917 Mariels currently in detention have no right to be free from detention here, ever.

"'If Mariel Cuban prisoners are not entitled to any more 'due process' than the administration claims,' wrote the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2003, 'we do not see why the United States government could not torture or summarily execute them.'

"Last week, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens raised the same question, wondering whether the government could just 'shoot' the Mariel Cubans. Government attorney Edwin S. Kneedler replied 'Absolutely not'' -- but gave no answer when Stevens asked why."

U.S. terrorism, U.S. lies, U.S. media complicity continue unabated in Iraq

"U.S. forces fired rockets in central Fallujah early Wednesday, hitting a teacher's college and leveling a house, killing six people, police and witnesses said.

"A family of six was killed when U.S. jets fired two rockets at their home in the central Wahda area, said neighbor Saeed Mohammed Bassem, 40.

"The couple and their four children had just returned to their home overnight after having fled the insurgent-torn city a week earlier, he said.

"Ten minutes later, a U.S. war plane lobbed a rocket that hit the Female Teachers' Preparation Institute in the Jumhuriya area but it did not detonate, said police officer Mohsen Adnan."

" U.S. aircraft mounted four strikes in Fallujah on what the U.S. military said were safehouses used by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terror network."

The Los Angeles Times chooses to report the story using as its source the world's most unreliable source, the U.S. military:

"U.S. military officials denied witness reports that the strikes hit a teachers college for women and a house where a family of six was killed. They said 'a known Zarqawi propagandist' was 'passing false reports to the media.'"

As has been the case on more than one occasion, the most useful reporting in the U.S. press comes from Knight-Ridder reporter Hannah Allam. Here's how she reports the story:

"One airstrike Wednesday reportedly killed an Iraqi family, as shown in video footage of rescue workers digging a couple and their four children from the rubble of their home. U.S. officials denied the civilian deaths, blaming the report on a 'known Zarqawi propagandist.' [Ed. note: one wonders if they added, "Who ya' gonna' believe? Me or your lyin' eyes?"]

"A senior Iraqi Defense Ministry official said the evidence pointed to a U.S. airstrike.

"'They told me they didn't have an air raid at that time and that it couldn't be them,' said the official, who asked to remain anonymous because he wasn't authorized to speak on the record. 'Who else could be dropping these bombs?'"

Polls - imprecise and inaccurate

A lot of people put their faith in "tracking polls," which average poll results over three successive days. Unfortunately, there are two problems with this approach. First, because the polls are conducted every day, the sample sizes are smaller, making the margins of error for each day's poll even larger. And second, assume that one day a "statistical glitch" causes one candidate to be at the upper reaches of the margin of error and the other at the lowest reach. In other words, let's say the two are tied 50-50, but one day's poll shows 54-46 (or worse - remember that a "margin of error" is one standard deviation; it is entirely possibly, though less likely, to have results even further askew). Now that erroneously high result will not only show up one day, but then, if the next two days are "normal" (say, 51-49 or 50-50), the moving 3-day average will gradually decline as the outlying day moves out of the window. This will make it look like the first candidate is "losing support," when in fact nothing of the kind has happened. Note that this is no worse, but also no better, than the impression one would obtain from comparing separate polls taken on individual days. The only way to increase the precision of a poll is to sample more people.

But polling is worse, because it is not only imprecise, as is any statistical exercise, but it is also inaccurate, in a multitude of ways. And, via Talking Points Memo, today we find this analysis of just one aspect of Gallup's polling bias, their determination of "likely voters." As you can read there in more detail, Gallup's latest data, which shows Bush with an 8 point lead, has only 14.5 percent minority representation and only 7.5 percent black representation, as well as only 11 percent of young (18-29 year old) voters. But minority voters, who are increasing in numbers, formed 19 percent of the voters in 2000, black voters were 10 percent, and young voters, were 17 percent of the electorate. The idea that all of these numbers are going to decline substantially in this election is simply preposterous. Yet that is the "unseen" data behind the much-publicized Gallup data.

Of course, there are many other systematic biases, and other problems with polling as well (the attempt to push "leaning" voters into committing to a choice, the failure to provide multiple choices like Green, Libertarian, Nader, etc.).

Why do I care about polls and their problems? Because they "suck all the air" out of real discussion. Forgetting about the candidates, here in California there are more than a dozen complex ballot propositions this year, some of them with far-reaching implications. While I've seen countless prejudicial ads for and against some of them which have given me precisely no reliable information, I have yet to hear a single word discussing them, or even explaining them, on any of the many news shows I watch. What is the truth about "frivolous lawsuits"? What is the legal basis for Indians having casinos in California, and what is the legal basis for the state government having any right to regulate them whatsoever? Who will benefit from the large bond measure being proposed to fund stem cell research? A few (a very few) words have been written about these subjects in the print media; none, so far as I've seen, have been broadcast. And that's just one of the reasons why all the talk about polls is not only a waste of time and breath, but worse.

This is capitalism

"Galesburg, Ill. - People in this big-shouldered town, birthplace of the poet Carl Sandburg, say Maytag broke their hearts. After a decade of tax breaks and union concessions to keep the company in a place that has been making refrigerators for more than 50 years, Maytag closed its factory last month, terminating 1,600 jobs.

"Maytag may be done with Galesburg, but Galesburg is not done with Maytag.

"District Attorney Paul L. Mangieri wants to sue Maytag to recoup what he says were excess tax breaks in a broad package of incentives to keep the company here. Much of the money, he said, came from a purse that would have gone to schools in this economically fragile community.

"'We gave Maytag these incentives, and they accepted them,' said Mr. Mangieri, a Navy veteran who grew up in a small town not far from here in western Illinois. 'We did it based on faith and trust. If we don't do anything now, it sends a message that we lack the resolve to treat the rich and privileged the same as everybody else.' [Ed. note: Trust, but verify]

"Maytag says it honored its agreement and took just the breaks to which it was entitled. [Ed. note: "Entitled"?]

"There are echoes of Mr. Mangieri's argument in Putnam County, Fla., which gave $4.5 million in cash and tax breaks to attract a call center owned by Sykes Enterprises, only to have it pull up stakes this month after less than five years in Palatka.

"'We ought to sue them,' said Timothy Keyser, a Putnam County lawyer who opposed the tax breaks from the start. 'They sold the county a bill of goods.'

"Galesburg and Putnam County are losers in the increasingly cutthroat game of using tax breaks to keep or attract jobs. Across the country, towns are competing with one another to offer the most lucrative incentives to lure good payrolls, from the giant assembly jobs at Boeing to small centers for processing credit cards, despite some studies that question the effectiveness of such tactics." (Source)

Operation Israeli Irony

For an intimate look at how the Israelis "atoned for their sins" by committing hundreds more, read this first-hand account.

Now pull the other leg

"At least two voters in suburban Cincinnati have received absentee ballots without Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's name.

"The voters received ballots with the words 'CANDIDATE REMOVED' printed in the space where Kerry's and running mate John Edwards' names were supposed to appear.

"Elections officials believe the error only occurred on the two ballots."

"Hamilton County Board of Elections chairman Tim Burke says he's afraid people will question the accuracy of the voting there because of the error."

Koch watch

After the show ended, I switched to the news on some other channel, and got to see a snippet of George Bush speaking at a campaign appearance. Within seconds, the audience was booing John Kerry in response to one of Bush's attacks. Indeed, according to the transcript, Kerry was booed no less than 15 (!) times during the course of that speech, each one dutifully recorded for posterity by the White House transcriber.

And speaking of posterity, that brings us back to Ed Koch, a real horse's posterior. A word to Ed. "Militant Muslims" are not "determined to kill us all." They are determined to get U.S. troops out of the Middle East and Israel out of Palestine. Of course that truth, especially the second of those, is one that you (and, unfortunately, Jon Stewart) will never utter.

Australia: "Don't ask us, send the poor black guys"

"Australia has turned down a request by the United Nations to send more troops to Iraq to protect U.N. personnel there. Australia has agreed instead to train a contingent of Fijian soldiers for the job." (Source)

"Slam-dunk" WMDs

"The Central Intelligence Agency's former spymaster, James Pavitt, said in an interview broadcast Sunday that America's pre-war intelligence on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction was no 'slam-dunk'.

"Pavitt ran the CIA's global covert operations until he resigned his job as deputy director for operations in June."

But I want to call attention to a different aspect of this story - the original "slam-dunk" reference. It is now "conventional wisdom" that you will see and hear repeated everywhere (e.g., the linked article above) that CIA director George Tenet told George Bush that the case for WMD in Iraq was a "slam-dunk." And how do we know that? Because Bob Woodward says so. And how does Bob Woodward know this? Does he have a tape? A transcript? Of course not. It's because George Bush, that paragon of veracity, says so. There is simply no reason to accept this "history" as good coin. The fact that Tenet hasn't protested against the characterization proves nothing; he's demonstrated adequately that he's a loyal soldier, ready to take the fall, so even if he didn't say it, expecting him to say so publicly is probably more than one should expect.

And even the phrase "slam-dunk" is questionable. I haven't read the book, but here's how CNN (previous link) reported the story when the book was published:

"According to Woodward, Tenet reassured the president that 'it's a slam dunk case' that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

"In his CBS interview, Woodward said he 'asked the president about this, and he said it was very important to have the CIA director, 'slam-dunk' is as I interpreted it, a sure thing, guaranteed.'"

Don't believe everything you read. Except on Left I on the News, of course. ;-)

The real face of terrorism

"The Israeli general who commanded the destruction of the only Jewish settlement in the Sinai before it was returned to Egypt recently offered Ariel Sharon advice on how to carry out his pledge to remove settlers from the Gaza strip.

"'Evicting someone from the home they've lived in for 20 years isn't a simple matter,' wrote Brigadier General Obed Tira. 'To remove a family from its home is embarrassing and difficult, and that is why the removal needs to be done with a lot of love and a lot of wisdom.'

The soldiers who arrived outside the home of Ghalia Abu Radwan, her octogenarian parents, blind siblings and assortment of children in Khan Yunis in the middle of the night showed no love, and, if they were embarrassed, there was no way to know it because they were hidden behind the armour of their bulldozers and tanks.

"As the loudspeakers on the tanks ordered the families out, and bursts of gunfire sharpened the terror, Mrs Abu Radwan shepherded her blind brother and sister to safety.

"'I grabbed them by the hand and shouted to my mother to follow us,' said Mrs Abu Radwan. 'Think of it - 25 children, two blind adults and my parents who cannot run. My sister-in-law left her three year-old behind in the chaos and had to go back to get him. When we came back they had destroyed all the houses.'

"While Mr Sharon agonises over how to draw 7,500 Jewish settlers out of Israel's Gaza colonies - offering hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation to each family - the army has already bulldozed close to 9,000 Palestinians from their homes in the Gaza strip this year alone.

"Most got no more than a few minutes notice to get out and lost all but the possessions they could hurriedly bundle together.

"The scale of the destruction - about 20 acres of homes, shops and roads razed or ground into the sand - matched the Israelis' controversial assault on Jenin refugee camp two years ago. But the death toll in Jabaliya was double that with about 130 people killed, one in six of them children 15 or younger."

Rewriting Haitian history

Here's the LA Times view of the world:

"Two weeks of rampage and intimidation by gun-toting street gangs...pro-Aristide demonstrations...menaced the capital...a campaign of terror by gunmen loyal to Aristide...frightened Haitians...exasperated relief workers...a few hundred hired thugs who they said were waging a campaign for Aristide's return from exile in South Africa...a holiday of fear."

"Armed units of the Haitian National Police (PNH) entered the pro-Ariside slum of Bel Air as thousands of residents took to streets to demand the return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Marchers defied a shutdown of the capital by the business community and threats issued by the former military. Heavy gunfire erupted as the police reportedly fired shots to disperse the crowd. The police were then forced to withdraw as unidentified gunmen returned fire from surrounding buildings in a thunderous volley.

"Haiti has been rocked by violence since September 30th after police opened fire on unarmed demonstrators demanding the return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and condemning political persecution of his Lavalas political party.

"Today's violence comes two days after the arrest of a Catholic priest, Father Gerard Jean-Juste, the government accused of trafficking in weapons and harboring gunmen in his parish. Human rights organizations and legal experts have condemned the arrest as "arbitrary" and an effort by the authorities to repress political dissent. Earlier this week, UN soldiers and Haitian police conducted numerous joint raids in several poor neighborhoods in the capital known for their support of Aristide. Hundreds have been arrested yet few weapons have been confiscated as the violence continues for a second straight week."

"A man whom Haitian media described as an Aristide ally was arrested Thursday at the capital's Toussaint L'Ouverture International Airport carrying $800,000 in cash. Radio Metropole and other independent commentators speculated that it was money Aristide and his associates took when they fled Feb. 29...The State Department, now accused by Aristide of driving him and his populist regime out of power eight months ago"

Mea mathematica culpa

Hopefully now that I call attention to it, you can spot the logical flaw too. Cell phones double the risk of one particular type of brain tumor, not of all brain tumors; clearly people have been getting brain tumors long before the invention of cell phones. What cell phones double (under the circumstances of the study) is the risk of acoustic neuroma, of which there are far fewer than 42,500 each year - in fact, the number is approximately 2,500 each year (in the United States). So when I said "be careful out there!", that's still true, but the risk is about 20 times less than implied in my post. Still nothing to sneeze at, particularly in conjunction with the fact I noted in the previous post - some (most!) of the kids growing up today will have been using cell phones for 30, 40, 50, or more years before they even reach "middle age"; so the dangers to them cannot be underestimated.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea mathematica culpa.

War - the gift that keeps on giving

"A federal panel of medical experts studying illnesses among veterans of the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf has broken with several earlier studies and concluded that many suffer from neurological damage caused by exposure to toxic chemicals, rejecting past findings that the ailments resulted mostly from wartime stress.

"Citing new scientific research on the effects of exposure to low levels of neurotoxins, the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses concludes in its draft report that 'a substantial proportion of Gulf War veterans are ill with multisymptom conditions not explained by wartime stress or psychiatric illness.'

"It says a growing body of research suggests that many veterans' symptoms have a neurological cause and that there is a 'probable link' to exposure to neurotoxins.

"The report says possible sources include sarin, a nerve gas, from an Iraqi weapons depot blown up by American forces in 1991; a drug, pyridostigmine bromide, given to troops to protect against nerve gas; and pesticides used to protect soldiers in the region."

What is "a substantial proportion"? Here's a clue from the studies:

"Among dozens of studies cited by the new report is a 1998 survey that looked at about 2,000 Kansas veterans, 1,548 of whom served in the gulf. It found that more than 30 percent of the gulf veterans report three or more such symptoms.

The coalition of the fleeing

"The prime minister of Poland told the nation's Parliament on Friday that he would begin drawing down Polish troops in Iraq in January, another blow to a U.S.-led coalition that already has lost nearly one-third of its members this year.

"Eight other countries have withdrawn all of their troops from the coalition since February: the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua, Norway, the Philippines, Singapore, Spain and Thailand.

"Officials of two other countries, Ukraine and Moldova, have indicated a desire to exit, and the subject has been under discussion in several other countries, such as the Netherlands and Denmark.

"Many members of the coalition have relatively few troops to withdraw. Of the 30 allied nations, only six have 1,000 or more troops in Iraq."

"International forces should expect to stay in Afghanistan for '10 to 20 years,' according to a Canadian commander who helped lead foreign troops in Kabul until February."

Irrationally exuberant quote of the day

" If history is any guide, oil will eventually be overtaken by less-costly alternatives well before conventional oil reserves run out."

- Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan speaking yesterday

Burying the lede

"The wireless phone industry Thursday downplayed a new Swedish study that found people who used cell phones for 10 years run a greater risk of developing a rare form of tumor inside their ears.

"The increased risk applied only after 10 years, and only among users of analog phones. They were among the earliest in use, and Scandinavians were among the first to use them. There was no increased risk for digital phone users -- today's dominant technology -- or for people who used hands-free devices.

"The study, published in the journal Epidemiology, is the latest of many looking into possible links between mobile phone use and tumors. To date, they have produced conflicting findings that leave researchers and public-health officials unable to say definitively whether cellular phones are dangerous to the nation's 170 million wireless phone subscribers."

The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times all did better than Knight-Ridder at minimizing the importance of the story -- they didn't cover it at all.

Smoke a Cuban cigar - anywhere - go to jail

"Citizens of or permanent residents in the United States cannot now buy a Cuban cigar in another country, even if they are thinking of smoking it outside of their homeland."

"There is now an across the board ban on the importation into the United States of Cuban-origin cigars and other Cuban-origin tobacco products, as well as most other products of Cuban origin. This prohibition extends to such products acquired in Cuba, irrespective of whether a traveler is licensed by OFAC to engage in Cuba travelrelated transactions, and to such products acquired in third countries by any U.S. traveler, including purchases at duty free shops. Importation of these Cuban goods is prohibited whether the goods are purchased directly by the importer or given to the importer as a gift. Similarly, the import ban extends to Cuban-origin tobacco products offered for sale over the Internet or through the catalog mail purchases.

"The question is often asked whether United States citizens or permanent resident aliens of the United States may legally purchase Cuban origin goods, including tobacco and alcohol products, in a third country for personal use outside the United States. The answer is no. The Regulations prohibit persons subject to the jurisdiction of the United States from purchasing, transporting, importing, or otherwise dealing in or engaging in any transactions with respect to any merchandise outside the United States if such merchandise (1) is of Cuban origin; or (2) is or has been located in or transported from or through Cuba; or (3) is made or derived in whole or in part of any article which is the growth, produce or manufacture of Cuba. Thus, in the case of cigars, the prohibition extends to cigars manufactured in Cuba and sold in a third country and to cigars manufactured in a third country from tobacco grown in Cuba.

"Criminal penalties for violation of the Regulations range up to $1,000,000 in fines for corporations, $250,000 for individuals and up to 10 years in prison. Civil penalties of up to $65,000 per violation may be imposed by OFAC."

What a revolting situation this is!

"A 17-member Army Reserve platoon with troops from Jackson and around the Southeast deployed to Iraq is under arrest for refusing a 'suicide mission' to deliver fuel, the troops' relatives said Thursday.

The soldiers refused an order on Wednesday to go to Taji, Iraq — north of Baghdad — because their vehicles were considered 'deadlined' or extremely unsafe, said Patricia McCook of Jackson, wife of Sgt. Larry O. McCook."

An embargo? Or a blockade?

"The Dutch Intervet Company has halted the delivery of a quadruple vaccine to Cuba after being notified by the U.S. government of the risk of being fined, given that the product contains an antigen manufactured in the United States.

"Along with other dramatic cases of being unable to buy medicines for the treatment of cancer and other diseases, there are other ridiculous ones such as the refusal of the Zurich branch of the XEROX Company to renew a leasing contract for a photocopier in the Cuban embassy in Switzerland.

"XEROX in Paraguay also refused to sell a photocopying machine to the Cuban diplomatic mission, as did RICOH. Even more absurd was what occurred on May 10 this year, when Hitachi Printing Solutions Europe declined to sell a simple ink cartridge to the Cuban embassy in the Netherlands, with the argument that it is the subsidiary of a U.S. company.

"The blockade, which has cost the island $79.325 billion has had other more painful effects, such as the impossibility of acquiring the I-125 isotope for the treatment of children with ocular cancer. For that reason, the public health system has been forced to send children suffering from that illness to be treated abroad, at an extremely high cost.

"Another of the difficulties for cancer related diseases is the impossibility of acquiring bone endo-protheses to replace amputations, an implement that increases in size as a child grows, thus allowing him or her to keep a limb. In Mexico, on acquiring the Mexican Refractarios, the U.S. Harbison Walker Refractones Company refused to offer Cuba any of its products."

Quote of the Day

"It is extremely dangerous for humanity that the president of the mightiest power on the planet publicly says that he speaks with and acts on behalf of God. What lies ahead for us? More of what is happening today in Afghanistan or Iraq? Is that the future for our children? We need to pull all our strength together to avoid such a future.

"Today, more than ever before, it is important that thousands of people are coming together to confront this situation and to look for ways to achieve a more just and equal world.

"We all need to live in a better world. Solidarity and unity are indispensable in these times. Let us do our best. It is likely that only humans can dream. I do not know. But what I know is that only we have the capacity to make our dreams come true.

"A better world is possible. The challenge lies in being able to act, rather than just talk."

- Aleida Guevara, daughter of Che Guevara (Source)

Start using that earpiece!

"While lawsuits and some media reports feed the notion that cell phones cause brain cancer, scientific evidence is increasingly suggesting there is no such link. The latest negative findings come from a Danish study of more than 400,000 cell phone users that turned up no heightened risk of brain cancer, or cancer in general."

"The Danish researchers concede that since they followed study participants for only 3 years on average, there may yet be long-term effects they could not detect."

"In what could bolster an $800 million lawsuit against Motorola and major cell phone carriers, a new study found a possible link between older cell phones and brain tumors.

"Although many studies have found no cancer risk from cell phone use, the research published in the latest European Journal of Cancer Prevention said long-term users of analog phones are at least 30 percent more likely than nonusers to develop brain tumors.

"[Swedish oncologist Dr. Lennart] Hardell studied 1,617 patients with brain tumors and compared them with a similar sized group of people without tumors. He found that patients who used Sweden's Nordic Mobile telephones were 30 percent more likely to have brain tumors, especially on the side of the head that touched the phone most often. Those who used the phones longer than 10 years were 80 percent more likely to develop tumors."

"Newman's attorneys presented scientific evidence showing that analog phones may cause tumors, but Blake ruled it was overwhelmed by evidence showing no relationship between cell phone radiation and cancer."

"Ten or more years of mobile phone use increases the risk of developing acoustic neuroma, a benign tumor on the auditory nerve, according to a study released on Wednesday by Sweden's Karolinska Institute.

"'The risk of acoustic neuroma was almost doubled for persons who started to use their mobile at least 10 years prior to diagnosis,' the institute said.

"'When the side of the head on which the phone was usually held was taken into consideration, we found that the risk of acoustic neuroma was almost four times higher on the same side as the phone was held and virtually normal on the other side.'"

Unfortunately, the latest study doesn't provide any definitive answers about digital cell phones, which haven't been in use as long, but prudence would suggest a "better safe than sorry" attitude (nor is there any indication in the press that the study measured, or attempted to correlate, extent of usage with tumors - after all, some people use a cell phone maybe five minutes a day, while others use it hours at a time). It is worth noting, although the coverage of the latest study doesn't, that brain tumors are not exactly common, so even a doubling of risk doesn't mean a large risk. But it's far from insignificant either. Data shows the overall incidence rate for primary brain and central nervous system tumors is 12.7 per 100,000 person-years. However since life span is around 80 years, that's really 12.7 per 1250 person-lifetimes, or about 1 in a hundred. A doubling of that to 2 in a hundred would be quite noticeable. 42,500 people develop brain tumors in a typical year (from one study); a doubling of that would mean 42,500 more people with brain tumors!

And why stop at doubling? This study studied people who had been using cell phones for ten years. But these days, children are using cell phones, and using them regularly, from a young age, and extensively starting as teens (if not earlier). By the time they reach middle-age, they will have been using cell phones for 30 or 40 years. It's not unreasonable to think, based on extrapolating the studies that have been done, that such usage could easily produce a tripling, quadrupling, or even more of brain tumor frequency.

As they use to say on a TV show (Hill Street Blues) I never watched, "Let's be careful out there!" Use that earpiece if you're on the phone for long periods of time, and keep working for a society where research into the safety of various products, be they cell phones, tobacco, or the latest drug, is funded primarily by the government, and not by the manufacturer of the product, a society based on human needs and not profit.

Bush blames foreigners, gives credit to Americans

"We relied upon a company out of England to provide about half of the flu vaccines for the United States citizen, and it turned out that the vaccine they were producing was contaminated. And so we took the right action and didn't allow contaminated medicine into our country."

"Chiron Corporation announced (October 5) that the UK regulatory body, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), has today temporarily suspended the company's license to manufactore Fluvirin influenza virus vaccine in its Liverpool facility, preventing the company from releasing any of the product during the 2004-2005 influenza season...MHRA has asserted that Chiron's manufacturing process does not comply with UK Good Manufacturing Practices regulations and has suspended the company's Liverpool facility license to manufacture influenza vaccine for three months."

For a guy who pretends to know something about the Dred Scott decision from 1857, Bush's lack of knowledge about something that happened a week ago isn't too impressive. Perhaps it might help if he read the papers...

Of course the real guilty party in this fiasco which threatens the lives of tens of thousands of Americans, the system which manufactures drugs for profit instead of for human needs, wasn't mentioned by either Bush or Kerry.

As for the "debate," the less said the better. Insipid questions were the rule. Feh. I only watched one good discussion among Presidential candidates this year, and it didn't involve Kerry or Bush. The other night CSPAN had a third-party debate, hosted at Cornell University, at which students (I assume) just got up and got the microphone and asked questions (without prescreening!), and the four candidates just answered, no time limits, no fancy colored lights. It was by far a more interesting "debate", in terms of both questions and answers, than any of the Bush-Kerry encounters. You can watch it for yourself on the C-SPAN home page, where it's linked from "Road to the White House: Third Party Candidates Debate (10/10/2004)" [Note added later - it's no longer on the home page, you have to click on "All recent programs" and scroll down to programs of 10/10/2004]

The rule of law

"More than three months after the Supreme Court declared that hundreds of detainees at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have the right to challenge their imprisonment in U.S. courts, none has appeared in a courtroom.

"Of the 68 alleged al Qaeda and Taliban fighters who have so far petitioned for access to federal court in Washington, only a handful have even spoken to their lawyers.

"Less than half the detainees with lawyers have been given the government's reason for holding them; the government has broken a court-ordered Sept. 30 deadline to justify most of those detentions, the lawyers said." (Source)

Liberals say "Kerry is no liberal"

"The 2003 rating of Kerry as the top liberal was based only on the 19 votes he cast on economic issues.

"Eight of Kerry's 'liberal' votes last year dealt with cutting back Bush's tax giveaway to the 1% richest Americans. Another four reflected moderate pro- environment positions, while two others should have been supported by all Americans: an extension of benefits for folks thrown out of work, many by the outsourcing abroad of decent jobs, and a challenge to the Bush assault on overtime pay.

"The DLC guys further point out that Kerry's 'centrism' has been affirmed in the last decade by his votes for measures that many liberals rightly opposed, such as the 1997 balanced-budget agreement, free-trade extensions without commensurate protections for the environment and workers' rights, and the knee-jerk 1994 law-and-order '100,000 cops' anti-crime bill.

"So, once again, as with Bill Clinton, I find myself supporting a Democrat with a domestic agenda to the right of Richard Nixon."

Hearts, Minds, and "Stolen Honor"

If Sinclair really wanted to balance their "news" about the Vietnam War, they could do no better than to broadcast a second movie instead. Hearts & Minds, which I had the opportunity (thanks to Netflix and its extensive inventory of otherwise inaccessible documentaries) to watch last night, is a movie made in 1974, when the Vietnam war wasn't even over (although U.S. troops had left Vietnam), but it provides extremely important lessons not only about the past (the Vietnam war), but about the present (the war in Iraq) as well. This is the movie that shows you the footage that you should be seeing, but aren't, every night on your news. Footage of North Vietnamese people, grieving over the loss of their elderly relatives and young children to American bombing, followed by American diplomats telling you how the "Orientals" don't "value life like we do." Footage of seemingly random saturation bombing of the Vietnamese countryside, directed at what seem to be no targets at all (now the U.S. can precisely bomb "targets" like restaurants and kill their night watchmen - quite an improvement!). Footage of American pilots, talking about how it was just a technical exercise, and how they couldn't see the people and hear the screams, and they were just doing a "job." Footage of Vietnamese fleeing their cities as American bombing targeted at "insurgents" destroys them. Footage showing the use of torture, as American helicopter pilots talk about taking two Vietnamese up in a helicopter and throwing one out to his death in order to get the second one to talk. Footage of American G.I.s, having lost legs and arms, struggling to walk again and get on with their shattered lives.

We see two of the most famous and powerful still photographs of the Vietnam war, one of a young girl, her skin burned from Napalm, running down a highway, and another of a handcuffed prisoner being shot point-blank in the head by a Vietnamese policeman, come to life in even more powerful video footage. This is a film which shows war as it is, death and destruction rained down upon the heads of innocent people as the Americans attempt to do the impossible and install "democracy" at the point of a gun.

One line stuck in my mind, I think it was spoken by Clark Clifford, former Secretary of Defense. "Some people said we were on the wrong side in the war. That's not true. We were the wrong side."

Hearts & Minds isn't a great film, although it's a good one (it did win the Academy Award for Best Documentary). But it is a must-see film, even more so today than in 1974, when we're again faced with that famous question - "How do you ask a man to be the last one to die for a mistake?" Now, more than ever, the lesson must be learned that a continuation of the war will just lead to more Americans who have died trying in vain to impose their will upon another country, and of course to the death of ten or a hundred times more Iraqis, be they completely innocent bystanders or insurgents struggling to free their country of foreign domination. Now, just as in the 60's and 70's, the answer is contained in just two words - Out Now!

Political humor of the day

"You're not going to have fiscal sanity when John Kerry is President."

- George Bush, the man who has been acting President for the last four years and turned a $313 billion budget surplus into a $415 billion deficit (Bush quote from yesterday's campaign appearance, heard on TV news)

The search for nuclear material in Iraq comes full circle

"Bush knew very well there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. If there were really good evidence on which to make an educated guess that there were, then the administration wouldn't have had to fabricate nearly every bit of evidence it presented in order to make its case (read this particularly detailed analysis of Colin Powell's speech to the U.N. for elaboration of that point). Besides for the fact that you don't go to war and kill tens of thousands of people on a "guess", if you did go to war because you thought there were WMD which might find their way into the hands of terrorists (the ostensible purpose for the war, since it was 100% clear that Iraq itself had no way of attacking the U.S. with any weapons at all), then you would have spent months preparing for an immediate, massive effort to seize them and prevent them from getting into the hands of terrorists. Instead, we saw a decidedly lackadaisical search, with known nuclear facilities left unguarded, teams not even ready to go for months after the fall of Baghdad, etc."

"The government's claim that Iraq could fire chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes was formally withdrawn by the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, yesterday."

The not-so-hidden cost of war

"Authorities say a 37-year-old Fort Eustis soldier recently back from Iraq hanged himself in jail over the weekend.

"Police say Brian McKeehan hanged himself with a bedsheet early Saturday in the Virginia Peninsula Regional Jail in James City, about 12 hours after being arrested on a charge of assaulting his wife at their York County home.

"A Fort Eustis spokesman says McKeehan returned in September from a 45-day deployment to Iraq.

"York County Sheriff Danny Diggs says that in the four weeks since his return, deputies responded to about six complaints against McKeehan by his wife and a neighbor. Diggs says most of the calls did not result in an arrest because of lack of evidence."

Lust in their hearts

"The defenders of the White House now seem intent on lowering the bar to the most comical of levels, arguing that Saddam Hussein had not relinquished the "desire" or the "ambition" to have nuclear weapons. But by this standard (viz, Matthew 5:27-30) probably half the married men in America have cheated on their wives with Pam Anderson or Angelina Jolie."

Anonymous sources

"Under these circumstances, what anonymous sourcing offers is largely a kind of deniability. The 'sources' will remain unaccountable for policy statements and policy that may soon enough prove foolish or failed. We're clearly not talking of the leaking of secrets here, but of the leaking of advantageous publicity material.

"My own feeling is that anonymity should generally be confined to use to protect the physical or economic well-being of someone, usually a subordinate and so a whistleblower, who might otherwise suffer from publicly saying something of significance to the rest of us. Hardly the situation of a group of high government and military officials trying to spin the public via a major newspaper.

"This would obviously have been a very different story if it had said, for instance, that Paul Wolfowitz and/or Condoleezza Rice and/or Donald Rumsfeld and/or Joint Chiefs head Gen. Richard Myers and/or any of their underlings had by name made such statements. Without the grant of anonymity, the statements in this piece would, ironically enough, have looked far more like what they are: spin, lies, and fantasy.

"What does anonymity actually do, other than counterintuitively establish the authority of sources who would have far less authority in their own skins? Through anonymity of this sort, what the press protects is not its sources, but its deals."

When Jews attack

Anyone wondering why I, and many other people, wouldn't vote for John Kerry even if he were the only candidate on the ballot, can read this outline of his positions on Israel for a clue, and then take a look at this picture of a 13-year-old Palestinian girl, her body riddled with 20 bullets after an Israeli commander "emptied his magazine" into her oh-so-threatening (and already dead) body. She was killed for carrying a book bag filled with her school books. Of course it was a "mistake."

Have these people read the Bible?

"Galvanized by battles against same-sex marriage and stem cell research and alarmed at the prospect of a President Kerry - who is Catholic but supports abortion rights - these bishops and like-minded Catholic groups are blanketing churches with guides identifying abortion, gay marriage and the stem cell debate as among a handful of 'non-negotiable issues.'" (Source)

Darryl Cherney (yes, that Darryl Cherney) and the Chernobles put it this way in their song, Take Away My Name, from their wonderful album Real American:

I'm the man that they call Jesus Christ, you may remember me well
In the year number one I took my life in my hands
And brought faith to a world to make way for the rest
And they formed a religion to carry my name
But the people forget all the reasons I came
The warfare and hatred have followed with time
And when people say they are Christians
Do they really believe they are people of mine?

There's a religion in my name I don't want it
I won't be associated with religion like that
Hypocrisy's rampant and my love's faded quickly
No, no, no, no take away my name

Fine-print news

"The number of U.S. military personnel in Colombia will double, to 800, in the coming months, based on a weekend vote in the U.S. Congress."

The conundrum

Left I and Scott Ritter

"I absolutely agree that the facts can only lead you in one direction, that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction capability, that the United Nations had, indeed, succeeded in disarming Iraq in 1991. The programs were dismantled by 1995. And Charles Duelfer's report clearly underscores this.

"Where I disagree is the notion of intent. I don't think we can afford to take at face value anything the Bush administration or Bush administration appointees say regarding weapons of mass destruction that paint the Bush administration's decision to go to war in a favorable light. There is no substantive factually based data that sustains the notion of intent. We have Charles Duelfer providing speculation, innuendo, hearsay and rumor. But we don't have a confession from Saddam Hussein or his senior leadership. And void of that, I think, we need to question this assertion."

Things left unsaid

"Senate approves $136 billion corporate tax cut"

War crimes against Yugoslavia

During the war against Yugoslavia, water systems, power and heating plants, hospitals, universities, schools, apartment complexes, senior citizens' homes, bridges, factories, trains, buses, radio and TV stations, the telephone system, oil refineries, embassies, marketplaces and more were deliberately destroyed by U.S./NATO planes in a ruthless 10-week bombing campaign, highlighted (or should that be low-lighted) by the quite deliberate bombing (not that the other things just mentioned were not deliberate, but this one was vigorously defended by US/NATO) of a Belgrade television station killing 16 people - camera technicians, makeup people, sound technicians and copyeditors. None of those people was military. None was a government employee tied to either Slobodan Milosovic or the Yugoslav military. They were average citizens of Belgrade simply making a living, killed because the U.S. government claimed they were spouting "propaganda" as if that were a crime punishable by death (it is most definitely not, as much as one might wish otherwise when watching Fox News).

You'll find a long list of the targets of U.S. bombing here. The fact is that there was a deliberate campaign to destroy the economic capacity of Yugoslavia, not just bombing weapons factories, but factories of all kinds. This didn't "just happen." The US/NATO plan was not to invade Yugoslavia on the ground, but to simply bomb it for weeks on end and cause suffering to the Yugoslavian people so that they would overthrow their government. That was the plan, not an accidental side result.

With specific regard to the bombing of the Belgrade television station, it's interesting to note that there was a post-facto claim that this station was "hardened dual-use facility." Interesting because British Prime Minister Tony Blair was reported as saying in The Times that the media "is the apparatus that keeps [Milosevic] in power and we are entirely justified as NATO allies in damaging and taking on those targets" (24 April, 1999). In a statement of 8 April 1999, NATO also indicated that the TV studios would be targeted unless they broadcast 6 hours per day of Western media reports: "If President Milosevic would provide equal time for Western news broadcasts in its programmes without censorship 3 hours a day between noon and 1800 and 3 hours a day between 1800 and midnight, then his TV could be an acceptable instrument of public information." These statements make clear that it was the alleged "propaganda" being broadcast by Serbian television that was the reason these civilian facilities were bombed.

It is a war crime to "attack civilian targets or to destroy or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population." Bombing the infrastructure of a country-the waterworks, electricity plants, bridges, factories and so on is barred under international law. Bombing chemical plants and using radioactive weapons also violate international conventions. All of these things were done during the war against Yugoslavia.

Some (but definitely not all, such as the bombing of the TV station) of the bombings were called "accidents" by NATO, but when you bomb a cigarette factory (one of many things that happened) that is nowhere near a military target, this claim is specious in the extreme. And, of course, when essentially the entire war was conducted from 50,000 feet (or however high planes fly), there are no such thing as an accident. If you know, and you do, that 10% of your bombs will miss their targets, and you drop 10000 bombs, then for all intents and purposes you are deliberately, knowingly, dropping 1000 bombs on civilian targets. Whether you know the name of the person on whose head you are "accidentally" dropping the bomb or not isn't relevant, not in my book.

It is a fact that a UN Commission decided not to prosecute (or even seriously investigate) NATO for these war crimes. Of course Harry Truman wasn't charged with war crimes for dropping atomic bombs on Japan and killing hundreds of thousands of people; victors in war never are. It's actually instructive to read the "Recommendations" paragraph of the U.N. report to understand on what flimsy grounds they decided not to press charges (emphasis added):

"The committee has conducted its review relying essentially upon public documents, including statements made by NATO and NATO countries at press conferences and public documents produced by the FRY. It has tended to assume that the NATO and NATO countries' press statements are generally reliable and that explanations have been honestly given. The committee must note, however, that when the OTP requested NATO to answer specific questions about specific incidents, the NATO reply was couched in general terms and failed to address the specific incidents. The committee has not spoken to those involved in directing or carrying out the bombing campaign. The committee has also assigned substantial weight to the factual assertions made by Human Rights Watch as its investigators did spend a limited amount of time on the ground in the FRY. Further, the committee has noted that Human Rights Watch found the two volume compilation of the FRY Ministry of Foreign Affairs entitled NATO Crimes in Yugoslavia generally reliable and the committee has tended to rely on the casualty figures for specific incidents in this compilation. If one accepts the figures in this compilation of approximately 495 civilians killed and 820 civilians wounded in documented instances, there is simply no evidence of the necessary crime base for charges of genocide or crimes against humanity. Further, in the particular incidents reviewed by the committee with particular care (see paras. 9, and 48-76) the committee has not assessed any particular incidents as justifying the commencement of an investigation by the OTP. NATO has admitted that mistakes did occur during the bombing campaign; errors of judgment may also have occurred. Selection of certain objectives for attack may be subject to legal debate. On the basis of the information reviewed, however, the committee is of the opinion that neither an in-depth investigation related to the bombing campaign as a whole nor investigations related to specific incidents are justified. In all cases, either the law is not sufficiently clear or investigations are unlikely to result in the acquisition of sufficient evidence to substantiate charges against high level accused or against lower accused for particularly heinous offences."

The voice of the people

"The Bush administration will delay major assaults on rebel-held cities in Iraq until after U.S. elections in November, say administration officials, mindful that large-scale military offensives could affect the U.S. presidential race.

"Although American commanders in Iraq have been buoyed by recent successes in insurgent-held towns such as Samarra and Tall Afar, administration and Pentagon officials say they will not try to retake cities such as Fallujah and Ramadi -- where insurgents' grip is strongest and U.S. military casualties could be the greatest -- until after Americans vote in what is likely to be a close election.

"'When this election's over, you'll see us move very vigorously,' said one senior administration official involved in strategic planning, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"'Once you're past the election, it changes the political ramifications' of a large-scale offensive, the official said. 'We're not on hold right now. We're just not as aggressive.'

"U.S. officials point out that there have been no direct orders to commanders in the field to pause operations in the weeks before the Nov. 2 election. Top administration officials in Washington are simply reluctant to sign off on a major offensive in Iraq at the height of the political season."

Why was Kenneth Bigley killed?

International court: "Evidence? We don't need no steenkin' evidence!"

"Fresh controversy has hit the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic with a claim from a senior intelligence analyst that the Yugoslav leader is innocent of genocide.

"Dr Cees Wiebes, a professor at Amsterdam University, now says there is no evidence linking Milosevic to the worst atrocity of the Bosnian war, the massacre of 7,000 Muslims at the town of Srebrenica.

"Srebrenica, which was overrun by Serb forces in July 1995, forms the basis of the genocide charge against Milosevic, but Wiebes, a member of a Dutch government inquiry into the atrocity, said there is nothing to link Milosevic to the crime.

"'In our report, which is about 7,000 pages long, we come to the conclusion that Milosevic had no foreknowledge of the subsequent massacres,' he says in a radio programme, The Real Slobodan Milosevic, to be broadcast by BBC Five Live tonight. 'What we did find, however, was evidence to the contrary. Milosevic was very upset when he learnt about the massacres.'

"Wiebes also says his team offered their evidence to the Hague tribunal chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte, but were brushed off. 'What I heard from good sources in The Hague is that Miss del Ponte thinks that we're too nuanced and not seeing things in black and white,' he said.

"Wiebes is the first senior figure to say publicly what many Hague sources have been saying privately for some time - that there is simply no evidence to back the genocide charge.

"Prosecutors have spent months trying to prove otherwise, but have drawn a series of blanks, despite the appearance of high-profile witnesses. These have included former Nato commander Wesley Clark, whose evidence in The Hague last December was that Milosevic told him he knew about the crime and tried to stop it."

Hoping for divine intervention?

Things change

If America Is Richer, Why Are Its Families So Much Less Secure?
For 25 years, government and business have forced workers to take on mounting risk. A Times analysis shows ever-larger swings in household incomes.
"Starting in the late 1970s, the nation's leaders sought to break a corrosive cycle of rising inflation and stagnating output by remaking the U.S. economy in the image of its frontier predecessor -- deregulating industries, shrinking social programs and promoting a free-market ideal in which everyone must forge his or her own path, free to rise or fall on merit or luck. On the whole, their effort to transform the economy has succeeded.

"But the economy's makeover has come at a large and largely unnoticed price: a measurable increase in the risks that Americans must bear as they provide for their families, pay for their houses, save for their retirements and grab for the good life.

"A broad array of protections that families once depended on to shield them from economic turmoil -- stable jobs, widely available health coverage, guaranteed pensions, short unemployment spells, long-lasting unemployment benefits and well-funded job training programs -- have been scaled back or have vanished altogether.

"'Working Americans are on a financial tightrope,' said Yale University political scientist Jacob S. Hacker, who is writing a book called 'The Great Risk Shift.' 'Business and government used to see it as their duty to provide safety nets against the worst economic threats we face. But more and more, they're yanking them away.'"

You know, the Titanic probably could have sailed a little bit faster if it wasn't weighted down with all those lifeboats. Is the U.S. economy headed for an iceberg? I don't know, but that $53/barrel oil slick headed our way just might be a forewarning.

The other shoe drops

Report Shows Insurgents Pursuing Chemical Weapons
"Insurgent networks across Iraq are increasingly trying to acquire and use toxic nerve gases, blister agents and germ weapons against U.S. and coalition forces, according to a CIA report, and investigators said one group recruited scientists and sought to prepare poisons over seven months before it was dismantled in June.

"An exhaustive report released last week by Charles A. Duelfer, the CIA's chief weapons investigator in Iraq, concluded that Saddam Hussein destroyed his stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s and never tried to rebuild them. But a little-noticed section of the 960-page report warns that the danger of a "devastating" attack with unconventional weapons has grown since the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq last year."

No sex, just lies and videotape

• "Saddam Hussein [has] biological weapons sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax -- enough doses to kill several million people," Bush said in his 2003 State of the Union address. He also cited reports that Iraq had "materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin -- enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure."


• "Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent; in such quantities, these chemical agents could also kill untold thousands," Bush continued. He also said Hussein had "upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents," and "several mobile biological weapons labs."


• Bush also asserted that if Hussein obtained key nuclear material, he could produce a bomb within a year.


• A CIA report released by the administration in October 2002 said: "Since inspections ended in 1998, Iraq has maintained its chemical weapons effort, energized its missile program, and invested more heavily in biological weapons; most analysts assess Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."


• The CIA also said Iraq "has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard, sarin, cyclosarin, and VX." It said "all key aspects" of Iraq's biological weapons program "are active and most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War." The report said Iraq was developing drones likely "intended to deliver biological warfare agents."

Capitalist health care

"Wanda Blackmore I met here from Missouri, the first time she bought drugs with her drug discount card, she paid $1.14, I think it was, for about $10 worth of drugs."

Afghan democracy: One man, one vote

"Afghanistan's historic presidential election closed on Saturday without any of the feared large-scale violence but the vote was thrown into turmoil instead by a boycott called by most of the candidates.

"All 15 of President Hamid Karzai's rivals said they were withdrawing from the election because systems to prevent illegal multiple voting had gone awry. The move effectively left Karzai as the only candidate in the fray."

Inane Bushism of the Day

"Another example would be the Dred Scott case, which is where judges, years ago, said that the Constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights. 

"That's a personal opinion. That's not what the Constitution says. The Constitution of the United States says we're all -- you know, it doesn't say that. It doesn't speak to the equality of America."

The Dred Scott decision was actually a very complex decision, which certainly did relate to the fact that slaves were property in 1857, at least in some states, and under some circumstances; exactly when and where that applied was the complex decision addressed by the court in the decision. Was it a "personal opinion"? Sure, as much as every Supreme Court decision is a personal opinion, and certainly a 2004 Supreme Court would have decided in favor of Dred Scott (Scalia and Thomas dissenting, of course). What that has to do with the type of judges Bush would appoint to the Court is anybody's guess.

What Bush really means when he talks about "personal opinion" is his personal opinion, as made clear by his closing remark: "No litmus test except for how they interpret the Constitution." Anyone who agrees with Bush's personal opinion about what the Constitution means will be judged by Bush to be "interpreting the Constitution" and will thereby be eligible for appointment; anyone who disagrees with Bush will be judged by Bush to be "using his personal opinion" and thereby ineligible for appointment.

54,000 job shortfall last month

It is commonly agreed that, with current trends of birth, population aging, immigration, etc., that there are 150,000 net workers added to the workforce each month; that is the "job inflation" rate. In the course of the last 45 months, that amounts to 6,750,000 jobs. During that time, the loss of actual jobs has been 800,000. That might sound like a big number. But the fact of the matter is, the "job inflation-adjusted" number is 7,550,000 jobs lost! And that, my friends, is a huge number. The only reason that the so-called "unemployment rate" hasn't gone up a commensurate amount is that the "unemployment rate" is a largely bogus number.

R.I.P. Occam's Razor

In the last 24 hours, the news has been filled with the latest "terror warning" to schools, fearing a repetition of the Beslan incident because of detailed school layout plans that were found "on a computer in Iraq." Now that phrase, needless to say, aroused my suspicion because of its curious lack of detail, although I haven't heard a single newscaster question exactly which computer it was, or where in Iraq it was, and how it was it came to be searched.

Just now, however, more information has emerged:

"The U.S. military in Iraq has discovered two computer disks containing photographs, layouts and other material pertaining to American schools in six states, U.S. government officials said.

"The Department of Homeland Security official said the material was associated with a person in Iraq, and it could not be established that this person had any ties to terrorism. He did have a connection to civic groups doing planning for schools in Iraq, the official said.

"U.S. officials said they don't know how to explain why such material would be found on computer disks in Iraq. They said the information recovered is publicly available through the Internet or other means.

"The Department of Homeland Security official said the information included a Department of Education guide on how to plan for a crisis in schools."

Dangers

The U.S. has started (although not yet finished) two wars and killed tens of thousands of people pursuing its "war on terrorism." Is terrorism the #1 problem facing humanity? You would certainly get that idea listening to George Bush, or the U.S. media for that matter.

Here are some random facts I scrounged from the web. This is a table I would love to see someone with more time and expertise expand on, in order to paint a fuller picture, but here's my start:

• Hunger-related deaths - 9,000,000/year
• Diarrhea - 1,500,000/year
• Traffic accidents - 1,000,000/year
• Terrorism - <5,000/year (much less)

Imagine a world in which several hundred billion dollars were spent on public health or nutrition instead of war. Instead of killing thousands of innocent people, millions of lives could be saved (and, quite probably, the threat from terrorism reduced at the same time). If only Halliburton were in the health-care business.

"Over the last three years, the United States government has spent several billion dollars preparing for a biological attack by terrorists. Yet it now seems likely that starting in the next couple of weeks, tens of millions of Americans will be defenseless and thousands will die because we have botched preparations for a natural biological attack everyone knew was coming: the flu.

"One wonders why, given what is at stake - flu kills about 36,000 people each year and sickens millions more -- flu vaccine problems are not being addressed at the highest level.

"And it's not just the ordinary flu seasons, bad as they can be, that we should be worried about. The flu failures we have witnessed over the last two years are particularly alarming given that most disease experts believe we are long overdue for a flu pandemic.

"A pandemic is what happens when a new and horrifyingly virulent strain of flu emerges for which people have little if any natural protection. The pandemic that hit in 1918 and 1919 killed 500,000 people in the U.S. and millions worldwide.

"Which brings us back to the billions recently spent in the U.S. on public health preparedness. How could we have invested so much yet really be no better prepared than we were three years ago for a major biological threat like the influenza virus?

"A key reason is that the health preparedness effort has focused almost exclusively on agents that might be used by terrorists, despite the fact that flu invasions are much more likely and, if it's a pandemic strain, will be much more deadly than an attack involving anthrax or smallpox.

"So, as we stand grossly unprepared for the upcoming flu season and the threat of an impending pandemic, it is cold comfort knowing that we have warehouses being stocked with smallpox vaccine and sophisticated sensors designed to detect biowarfare agents deployed in major cities."

Quote of the Day

"We want and demand that the Americans evacuate the Green Zone because it contains Iraqi state and private properties. We believe that Iraqi authorities should regain control of this area."

- Baghdad Gov. Ali al-Haidari (Source, via First Draft)

And when the Americans do evacuate the Green Zone as the Governor of Baghdad wants, perhaps they can take the hint and keep on going and not stop until they reach the border.

Kerry and Powell argue over who's "right"

Colin Powell: "Fidel Castro is a problem for the Cuban people. I don't view him as that much of a problem for the rest of the hemisphere."

"Seeking to gain inroads within the critical bloc of Cuban American voters, Sen. John Kerry on Wednesday immediately pounced on remarks made by Secretary of State Colin Powell. Kerry, whose campaign hopes to siphon even a sliver of the reliably Republican voting bloc from President Bush, rapidly assailed the remarks, calling it 'shocking that the Bush administration is telling the world that Fidel Castro no longer poses a problem for this hemisphere.'

"''Fidel Castro is a tyrant who brutally oppresses the Cuban people,' Kerry said in a statement. 'Castro's Cuba is the last bastion of communism in our region and a major obstacle to the triumph of democracy in this hemisphere.'"

"Seeking to contain a minor political storm over his recent remarks on Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday that Castro has 'never stopped being a troublemaker' in Latin America and that the region will be better off when he's gone.

"'Castro is an anachronism. He is causing his own people to suffer greatly. He is a troublemaker in the rest of the region. He is a troublemaker in Venezuela. He's a troublemaker in Colombia. He's never stopped being a troublemaker. But he is not the kind of threat he was when he had the Soviet Union backing him,' he said."

And while we're discussing Secretary Powell, here's the transcript of him addressing the United Nations on February 5, 2003, justifying the then-impending invasion of Iraq. If anyone can find a single charge that Powell made against Iraq that day which has proven true, let me know. The man, and the country he represents, has zero credibility. Zero.

Followup: Al Franken on Air America Radio is now interviewing Joe Garcia, President of the Cuban American National Foundation, the reactionary heart of the right-wing Miami Cuban-American community. Of course the thrust of the interview is how some Cubans are unhappy with Bush and are going to vote for Kerry. During the course of this interview, Franken talked about how Clinton was "wrong" about Elian Gonzalez, but Gore was "right." Gore, of course, pandered to the right-wing Cubans by opposing sending Elian back to Cuba with his father. Garcia managed to (dis)inform the audience that "elections in Cuba are a joke, you just go in and pull the lever for the one person on the ballot," which is completely false. It is America where the vast majority of members of Congress are in "safe" seats, with either nominal or even no opposition, whereas in Cuba, it is actually a law that there have to be multiple people on the ballot for each office.

Credibility and security in Iraq

"U.S. aircraft attacked what the U.S. command said was a hide-out of terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Al-Fallujah, the Associated Press reported. The military said 'credible intelligence sources' reported terrorist leaders were meeting there."

"An Al-Fallujah doctor said the attack killed 10 people, including a groom on his wedding night, and wounded the bride and 16 others."

"Thursday's green-zone bomb, thought to be the first insurgents had planted in the secured area, was discovered in a burlap bag at the Green Zone Cafe minutes before a U.S. Embassy official was to enter for lunch Wednesday, according to the cafe's owner and witnesses. The device, which was stashed behind an air conditioner, was found by a bomb-sniffing dog that was conducting a security sweep before the official arrived."

Bursting bubbles

No, George Bush wasn't responsible for this, nor was Bill Clinton. Blame irrational capitalism instead.

Historical revisionism

"So the Bush administration, along with countless others, was dead wrong in insisting Saddam was sitting on vast stockpiles that he could pass on to terrorists or use to threaten the region."

Left I is anti-semantic

Where is the American Orla Guerin?

In tonight's report, after a general introduction to what's happening in Gaza, she interviewed a young wounded Palestinian boy lying in a hospital, followed by a Palestinian doctor who showed her bullet holes in the wall and told of how the Israeli soldiers routinely fired into the hospital. She then interviewed an Israeli Army spokesperson, and when he claimed that "they do all they can to avoid civilian casualties," she pointedly responded, "How can you say that when you bring tanks into one of the most crowded places on earth?"

The last time I saw any report even remotely like this on an American network news broadcast? Never, to the best of my recollection. Rarely do those reports speak to anyone but an "official Israeli government spokesperson"; the idea of presenting any kind of balance doesn't seem to even occur to them.

In the words of Amy Goodman (the American Orla Guerin, except she's on the Pacifica network, rather than on the major broadcast network), this is real journalism - "to go to where the silence is, to give voice to the silenced majority."

A music video to watch for

"It's a chilling social statement from a musician better known for talking sexy: Prince's video for the song 'Cinnamon Girl' depicts an Arab-American girl detonating herself in a crowded airport terminal on what looks like U.S. soil.

"Featuring Keisha Castle-Hughes from the movie 'Whale Rider,' the four-minute clip opens in a stylized urban schoolyard, rendered in pen-and-ink and stylized gray watercolors drawn by artist Greg Ruth. A group of teen girls reacts with horror to the whining roar of jet engines that fades into the opening notes of the song. When it becomes clear who's responsible for what we presume is a Sept. 11-style terrorist attack, classmates of Castle-Hughes' character torment her for her ethnicity, and she flees for home, only to find her parents covering over the Arabic script on the sign outside the family store. Someone has scrawled 'terrorist scum' on one of the store's windows.

"'Cinnamon girl mixed heritage/Never knew the meaning of color lines,' Prince sings. '9/11 turned that all around/When she got accused of this crime.'

"Intercut with straightforward scenes of the singer and his band playing on a blasted, war-torn landscape, the video shows Castle-Hughes donning traditional dress and head scarf and videotaping what appears to be a statement of martyrdom. In the next scene, she's back in Western garb and arriving at the airport. Perhaps for emphasis, the camera lingers on the U.S. passport she shows to airport officials.

"Then she's standing in the terminal with a detonator in her hand. She closes her eyes and presses down on the red button with both hands. The perspective shifts outdoors as flames rip through the glass-paneled front wall.

"It's only for a moment, though, and then the scene reverses itself to the moment just before Castle-Hughes hits the button.

The economy is just "perking along"

Story:

AT&T to Cut 7,000 Jobs
"The company announced Thursday that it now plans to shrink its work force by a fifth, or about 12,320 jobs, during 2004 -- up from a previous target of about 4,900 jobs.

About 9,000 of the positions have already been eliminated, according to a source familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity."

Bank of America to Cut 4,500 Jobs
"Bank of America Corp. said Thursday it will cut another 4,500 jobs beginning this month as a result of its merger with FleetBoston Financial Corp. and declining business in mortgages.

"The 2.5 percent reduction of the work force, disclosed Thursday, comes on top of 12,500 layoffs that the bank previously said it expected to see from the mega-merger with FleetBoston, which went through earlier this year."

Oh yeah, perking right along.

Everybody's getting into the act

Unclear on the concept

Brass balls

Dick Cheney Says Weapons Inspector's Report Justifies President Bush's Decision to Attack Iraq
"Vice President Dick Cheney asserted on Thursday that a report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, who found no evidence that Iraq produced weapons of mass destruction after 1991, justifies rather than undermines President Bush's decision to go to war."

Digesting and regurgitating the debates

Peace process? What peace process. Gaza withdrawal? What Gaza withdrawal?

"A senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in an interview published Wednesday that Sharon's plan to withdraw troops and Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip had 'frozen' the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and guaranteed that Israel would never have to remove 80 percent of its settlers from the occupied West Bank. He said it was all done with the 'blessing' of the U.S. government.

"The aide, Dov Weisglass -- until recently Sharon's chief of staff, his personal attorney and still one of his closest advisers -- said a primary goal of the proposal to withdraw the 8,100 Jewish settlers from Gaza was to strengthen Israel's hold on its more numerous settlements in the West Bank and to freeze the political process as a way to indefinitely block the creation of a Palestinian state.

"'What I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns,' Weisglass said in an interview with the daily Haaretz newspaper. Under that formula, he estimated that 'out of 240,000 settlers [in the West Bank], 190,000 will not be moved from their place.'

"In the interview, Weisglass contended that the United States fully supported not only the Gaza withdrawal plan but the resulting impediment to creation of a Palestinian state. 'Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda -- and all this with authority and permission,' Weisglass said, 'all with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.'"

By the way, note the racism inherent in Weisglass' attempt at humor about how the settlements will be dealt with when the Palestinians turn into Finns.

Thought for the Day

Fuzzy math

"The allies have stepped forward and agreed to reduce and forgive Iraqi debt to the tune of nearly $80 billion by one estimate. That, plus $14 billion they promised in terms of direct aid, puts the overall allied contribution financially at about $95 billion, not to the $120 billion we've got, but, you know, better than 40 percent. So your facts are just wrong, Senator."

Followup: My curiosity piqued by Cheney's use of the term "by one estimate," coupled with his general mendacity, I decided to try to find out where Cheney's $80 billion figure of debt forgiveness came from, and did a little Google searching. Here's what I found, from just four days ago:

"A day after President Bush took a jab at Paris over its opposition to the Iraq war, France said it had amassed an alliance behind its proposal that leading creditors initially forgive just half of their share of Iraq's $120 billion debt load, and revisit the issue after three years.

"Russia, Germany and Italy all supported France's proposal, French Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters."

"The IMF pegs Iraq's total pre-war debt at $120 billion, some $40 billion of which is debt and arrears to Paris Club member nations [to which all the G7 states belong].

Out now!

And in the San Jose Mercury News, columnist Mike Cassidy starts to worry about his two young daughters, even though the oldest is only 10:

"It was the man on the radio who started me worrying this time.

"He was asking political operatives how long U.S. troops would be in Iraq. And I started worrying about where all these U.S. troops were going to come from.

"But then there was the man on the radio talking to retired Gen. Wesley Clark, a John Kerry supporter. Kerry had said he could have the troops home within four years. Was that realistic?

"Clark, himself once a candidate for president, knew better than to answer directly. Still, he all but said four years was a very optimistic time frame.

"And me? I was thinking, these are the guys who want the troops out of Iraq sooner. And they're saying we'll be there four years, easy? What will it really be? Six? Eight? Ten years?

"The math was automatic. My daughter Bailey, now 10, will be draft age in eight years. In 12 years her sister, Riley, would be eligible."

Iraqi "sovereignty" works in mysterious ways

"A court of Iraq's interim government has brought criminal charges against a prominent politician for attending an antiterrorism conference in Israel and publicly suggesting that Iraq should open talks with Israel.

"The indictment and arrest warrant, based on a 1969 law promulgated by the Baath Party that bars Iraqis from having contacts with enemy states, are likely to anger the United States government, which has sponsored Iraq's new courts and is a close ally of Israel.

"The politician, Mithal al-Alusi, was until recently a leader of the Iraqi National Congress, the former exile movement and now one of Iraq's most powerful political parties, and was a close associate of the party's chairman, Ahmad Chalabi."

Iraqi elections

Quotes of the Day

"[Our Iraqi allies] are doing a superb job." [Man, I'd hate to see what would happen if they were doing a bad job.]

" We know he [Zarqawi]'s still in Baghdad today." [Really? Well, since "we" are in control of Baghdad, not to mention 15 out of 18 provinces according to "Prime Minister" Allawi, why don't we send some of those Iraqi forces who are doing such a "superb job" to go arrest him?]

Misc. debate notes: If you were watching on C-SPAN, as I am, you would have seen the most curious thing (don't know about other channels). Before the debate started, both men came out and sat down at the table. They then both proceeded to take out pen and paper and scribble notes furiously for the next few minutes. I presume they spent the last few minutes before coming out madly memorizing facts and figures, and then came out on stage and quickly wrote them down before they forgot them. I can't think of any other explanation. It was very strange.

John Edwards was in Israel three years ago when six children were killed in a suicide bombing. Is he aware that six Palestinian children were killed in the last week in Gaza? Is he aware that 77 Palestinians have been killed in the last week, people ranging in age from 4 to 77? Not to hear him speak.

As in the previous debate, this debate continues the bizarre tradition of arranging cameras in such a way that both speakers are looking off camera (at the moderator, presumably) rather than directly into the camera. Very strange. Further...during the closing statements, both men face the camera. So they knew they weren't facing the camera, and did so deliberately. Maybe it's just me, but this just seems like a very strange decision.

Numb

Meanwhile, George Bush and John Kerry are busy arguing about how best to "win" the war in Iraq, and busy avoiding saying anything about the massacre in Palestine.

Followup: To no one's surprise, the U.S. vetoed the Security Council resolution.

Campaigning, Afghan-style

The major difference with George Bush's campaign is that the latter establishes a wider security perimeter. Karzai's team evidently hasn't yet learned the value of a carefully composed photo op.

Gold Star Mothers, dead and alive

"Only days after learning her son had died fighting in Iraq, Karen Unruh-Wahrer collapsed and died suddenly in her Tucson home.

"Although the cause of Unruh-Wahrer's Saturday death has not been released, friends say her family is blaming it on 'a broken heart' over losing her son, Army Spc. Robert Oliver Unruh, 25, to enemy fire near Baghdad Sept. 25.

"'She was very, very devastated - she just couldn't stop crying,' said Cheryl Hamilton, a friend and co-worker who had seen the distraught mother several times during the week after her son's death.

"'Her grief was so intense - it seemed it could have harmed her, could have caused a heart attack. Her husband described it as a broken heart,' said Hamilton."

"Dolores Kesterson sat in her Santa Clara living room last week, tuned to the presidential debate on Iraq. It was not easy for her to watch.

"She is alone, terribly alone, because of this war she never believed in.

"Her only child, Erik Kesterson, died 11 months ago when his Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Mosul. He had graduated in the top 5 percent of his flight school class and was attached to the 101st Airborne Division. He was 29.

"Dolores still cries at the memory of the day last November when an Army chaplain knocked on her door. She was thinking about it during the debate when President Bush talked about his meeting with the wife of one of the soldiers killed in Iraq.

"'I wonder why the president didn't mention his meeting with Dolores Kesterson,' she said later, with a dry chuckle. 'I wonder why he didn't mention the letter I gave him.'

"Dolores met with the president in June when he was visiting Fort Lewis in Washington state to speak to the families of fallen soldiers. She went with her ex-husband and his family. She wore a locket around her neck that had a picture of her son in uniform.

"She wanted to tell the president about Erik, the funny and brave wild-child who grew up determined to serve his country in the military. She wanted to tell the president what it felt like to lose him in a war fought for a lie.

"Where was the evidence that Iraq had anything to do with the attacks on Sept. 11? Where were the weapons of mass destruction that were supposedly hidden in the desert?

"Dolores said she was sure the president already knew her position before he walked in to meet with her that day at Fort Lewis. When he introduced himself, he stood toe-to-toe with her. 'His face was right in mine,' she said. 'It was very clear that his attitude is 'My way or the highway.''

"But she spoke her piece. Afterward, she said the president asked her, 'Dolores, do you realize we were attacked on Sept. 11?'"

Talk about mixed messages

Headline: "Bush Campaign Says Bremer Didn't Agree with Commanders on Troop Strength"

And, courtesy of the ever-vigilant Atrios, this Knight-Ridder story from July 1, 2003:

Bremer requests more troops as violence, tension escalate
"The top American administrator in Iraq, confronting growing anti-U.S. anger and guerrilla-style attacks, is asking for more American troops and dozens of U.S. officials to help speed up the restoration of order and public services.

"Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld was reviewing the request from L. Paul Bremer, U.S. officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

"Bremer's request underscores how difficult it has been for his small civilian staff and some 158,000 U.S.-led troops to meet the demands of Iraqis for security and other basic needs. It also conflicts with upbeat public statements from President Bush, Rumsfeld and Bremer himself on the progress made on Iraq's political and economic reconstruction."

The economic draft...in Iraq

"Weam Mohammed and five friends left their hometown of Al-Kut this week to look for work in Baghdad, desperate after a year's unemployment.

"Four of them were killed Monday morning, along with at least 11 other recruits, as they lined up to apply for work in Iraq's army and police force. A suicide bomber blew up a four-wheel-drive vehicle near the green zone, sending shrapnel whizzing through a crowd of about 1,000 waiting applicants. About 85 were wounded.

"t was the latest in a series of insurgent strikes targeting Iraqi recruits and security personnel that have killed at least 100 in the past month.

"But the applicants keep coming.

"'They told us to come back next Saturday if we still want the job. And I will come back,' said Mohammed, 24. 'Either I will die or I will have this job.'

"It isn't love of country or hatred for the insurgents that motivates Mohammed. He called interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi a 'terrorist' and 'worse than Saddam.'

"'But I have to live. There are no other job opportunities. I have looked everywhere,' he said.

"In a country where the official unemployment rate tops 50 percent -- and many think it's much higher -- there's been no shortage of people ready to risk their lives for a job that pays about $230 a month."

Gambling in the casino!

"The BBC chief who played a pivotal role in how the corporation covered the Iraq war and the David Kelly affair, stands to profit out of a firm with lucrative military contracts in Iraq.

"Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, a BBC governor, emerged as one of the main figures in the feud between the BBC and the government in the fallout of the Hutton inquiry into the death of weapons scientist Dr David Kelly, being blamed personally by former-director general Greg Dyke for his sacking.

"Neville-Jones, a former chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, took an unusually active role in the Kelly affair, criticising Andrew Gilligan's reporting and also expressing unease about Kelly's expertise.

"Now it has emerged that Neville-Jones chairs a company providing military equipment for US Humvees and Black Hawk helicopters, both of which are used in Iraq, leading to calls for her to reconsider her position as a governor.

"Documents from Companies House reveal that Neville-Jones earned 133,000 pounds last year as chairman of Qinetiq, the privatised research arm of the MoD.

"The company recently bought two US defence firms that have intimate ties to the Pentagon and multi-million-dollar contracts supplying the US forces in Iraq.

"The company's accounts also disclose that Neville-Jones owns 50,000 pounds worth of shares in Qinetiq which are held through the controversial US fund the Carlyle Group."

Who "took" Samarra?

"Early Friday, 3,000 U.S. troops and more than 2,000 members of the Iraqi Army and National Guard stormed the city that had been taken over by several hundred armed militants."

"The 1st Infantry Division, which lost one soldier in two days of battle, was followed into the city by 2,000 Iraqi forces, most of them freshly trained guardsmen, commandos and police. U.S. and Iraqi officials said real success would come only if the Iraqis managed to hold the peace when the armored U.S. forces withdraw."

Followup: AP carries this rather improbable claim:

"[Iraqi Defense Minister Hazem ] Shaalan, the defense minister, said Iraqi forces carried out most of the fighting and U.S. troops 'only provided cover for our operations.'"

Those "Zarqawi safe houses" in Fallujah...probably aren't

"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."

The "worst of the worst"...were neither

"Prisoner interrogations at Guantanamo Bay, the controversial US military detention centre where guards have been accused of brutality and torture, have not prevented a single terrorist attack, according to a senior Pentagon intelligence officer who worked at the heart of the US war on terror.

"Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Christino, who retired last June after 20 years in military intelligence, says that President George W Bush and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have 'wildly exaggerated' their intelligence value.

"Christino's revelations, to be published this week in Guantanamo: America's War on Human Rights, by British journalist David Rose, are supported by three further intelligence officials. Christino also disclosed that the 'screening' process in Afghanistan which determined whether detainees were sent to Guantanamo was 'hopelessly flawed from the get-go'.

"It was performed by new recruits who had almost no training, and were forced to rely on incompetent interpreters. They were 'far too poorly trained to identify real terrorists from the ordinary Taliban militia'.

"According to Christino, most of the approximately 600 detainees at Guantánamo - including four Britons - at worst had supported the Taliban in the civil war it had been fighting against the Northern Alliance before the 11 September attacks, but had had no contact with Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda."

The virtual reality President

"We're fighting them now. And it's hard work. I understand how hard it is. I get the casualty reports every day. I see on the TV screens how hard it is."

Here's an idea, George. If you really want to "understand how hard it is," why don't you go back to Baghdad, in the daytime this time, and actually go someplace other than the airport or the Green Zone? Heck, I hear Samarra is now in "our" hands, maybe you could take a little tour of Samarra while you're there. Why, on TV just now, I heard a military spokesperson claiming that they were rescuing 200,000 residents of Samarra from "a couple hundred" insurgents, and since they now claimed to have killed 100 and captured 85, the way I figure it there's at most 15 more insurgents left in town. Should be safe enough.

Quote of the Day

"He's [Kerry] decided to put his faith in the wisdom of the government. I will always put my faith in the wisdom of the American people."

- George Bush at his latest campaign appearance

Punk'd? Or Punking us?

Followup: Again via Atrios, we learn that the story gets better, and that Fox News has now added an editor's note to their story, thereby providing us with real insight on their journalistic standards:

Editor's Note:

In an version of this article that was published earlier, the Communists for Kerry were portrayed as a group that was supporting John Kerry for president. FOXNews.com's reporter asked the group's representative several times whether the group was legitimate and supporting the Democratic candidate, and the spokesman insisted that it was. Communists for Kerry is, in fact, a parody group.

Better late than never?

There are some on the left who think the invasion of Iraq was inevitable, that antiwar demonstrations were just masturbation, the left making itself feel happy by doing something, even though it was impossible to stop the war. I most definitely do not subscribe to that view. If war is inevitable, why hasn't the U.S. invaded Cuba (since the Bay of Pigs)? Why haven't they invaded Iran yet? Syria? North Korea? Certainly subjugating Iraq, like subjugating every third world country so that its people and resources can be exploited, was and is on the agenda of the U.S. ruling class. But there are many tactics, and many strategies, for achieving those goals. No one strategy or tactic is inevitable. And so the role of the New York Times (and the Post and other major outlets of the corporate media) is very much a part of why those favoring invasion were able to succeed in having their strategy implemented. And this is why the publication of this major article today by the New York Times, while welcome, is regrettably much too late, and no doubt intended much more as a partisan shot across the bow of the Republicans in support of John Kerry than it is a real blow for the truth and against the war.

Incidentally, it's worth noting that the Times didn't deem this story significant enough to appear on page one.

Here are excerpts from the article taking note of the role the Times itself played in this con. Despite this they still haven't learned their lesson; any similar leak today from "senior Administration officials" about North Korea or Syria or Iran would be printed by the Times in a heartbeat:

"A few days later, on Sept. 8 [2002], the lead article on Page 1 of The New York Times gave the first detailed account of the aluminum tubes. The article cited unnamed senior administration officials who insisted that the dimensions, specifications and numbers of tubes sought showed that they were intended for a nuclear weapons program.

"'The closer he gets to a nuclear capability, the more credible is his threat to use chemical and biological weapons,' a senior administration official was quoted as saying. 'Nuclear weapons are his hole card.'

"The article gave no hint of a debate over the tubes.

"On Sept. 13, The Times made the first public mention of the tubes debate in the sixth paragraph of an article on Page A13. In it an unnamed senior administration official dismissed the debate as a 'footnote, not a split.' Citing another unnamed administration official, the story reported that the 'best technical experts and nuclear scientists at laboratories like Oak Ridge supported the C.I.A. assessments.'

"Members of the Energy Department team took a highly unusual step: They began working quietly with a Washington arms-control group, the Institute for Science and International Security, to help the group inform the public about the debate, one team member and the group's president, David Albright, said.

"On Sept. 23, the institute issued the first in series of lengthy reports that repeated some of the Energy Department's arguments against the C.I.A. analysis, though no classified ones. Still, after more than 16 months of secret debate, it was the first public airing of facts that undermined the most alarming suggestions about Iraq's nuclear threat.

The reports got little attention, partly because reporters did not realize they had been done with the cooperation of top Energy Department experts. The Washington Post ran a brief article about the findings on Page A18. Many major newspapers, including The Times, ran nothing at all.

"The New York Times reported today that the administration was aware that some in the government had disputed intelligence information that Iraq's purchase of aluminum tubes was related to development of nuclear weapons. The Times assessment is similar to a report by Knight Ridder about two years ago."

Less than twice as guilty as Martha?

"A former top Pentagon procurement official was sentenced to nine months in prison Friday after making a surprise admission that she favored Boeing Co. on several major Air Force contracts because the company gave her family jobs.

"While with the Department of the Air Force in 2001, Druyun acknowledged that she picked Boeing over four competitors for a $4-billion contract to upgrade the cockpits of C-130 cargo planes as 'indebtedness to Boeing for employing her future son-in-law and daughter.'

"Boeing had hired the couple a year earlier to work at its St. Louis operations at Druyun's request, according to prosecutors.

"Druyun said she agreed in 2002 to pay Boeing $100 million more than what she believed was appropriate to restructure an early-warning radar plane deal for NATO. The decision was 'influenced by her daughter's and son-in-law's relationship with Boeing,' she said in the court filings.

"Druyun also agreed to pay Boeing $412 million to settle a contract dispute over the production of C-17 transport planes, which are assembled in Long Beach. The settlement was reached while Druyun was seeking employment for her son-in-law, who at the time was her daughter's boyfriend.

"And in the most controversial deal of all -- to acquire 100 Boeing 767s for $23 billion for use as aerial refueling tankers -- Druyun admitted to agreeing to pay a higher price for the aircraft than 'she believed was appropriate,' according to the statement of facts filed in court.

"She also admitted that in 2002, when her daughter expressed concern that her job performance at Boeing might lead to her being let go, Druyun contacted a senior Boeing executive who was involved in the tanker negotiations. The daughter ultimately was shifted to another position and not fired."

"Shortly after retiring as the Air Force's second-highest-ranking civilian procurement official in November 2002, Druyun began working for Boeing as vice president of missile defense programs at the company's Washington office."

The oh-so-reliable media

Good job, media!

(Indirect) Quote of the Day

"Mr. Tall [John Kerry] could have won my vote with two words. It's the two-word answer John Kerry gave three decades ago when asked the same question -- 'How can we get our troops out of a disastrous war?'

"Then, the clear-minded, tall young men said, 'In ships.'"

- Greg Palast, critiquing the "debate" between "Mr. Tall" (Kerry) and "Mr. Small" (Bush)

Debate meta-coverage

I'm not going to comment on the just-finished Presidential debate; virtually all of what was said by Bush and Kerry has been said before, and commented on by me. Just one interesting note for debate watchers for future debates - all of the channels went with a single-camera coverage of the speaker, with an occasional "cutaway" shot...except one. If you watched the debate on C-SPAN, as I did, you got to see the entire debate on a split-screen view, with both candidates occupying half the screen, so you could watch all the off-camera as well as the on-camera moments. Personally I found it very interesting to watch Bush in particular, who to me seemed to be routinely distainful of his opponent, as well as to exhibit characteristics of Attention Deficit Disorder. Just my $0.02.

It was interesting to see what was not discussed, which is mostly the fault of Jim Lehrer, but certainly could have been corrected by either Bush or Kerry if they cared to. The issue of Israel and Palestine was not discussed at all. Kerry (I believe) did say that a "free Iraq" was important for the security of Israel, and I think Bush mentioned Israel in a similar context. However the word "Palestine" was not uttered, and the centrality of ending the oppression of the Palestinian people to ending the "war on terror" was certainly not acknowledged by either candidate. The draft was also unmentioned, until Bush mentioned in his summation that he was for an all-volunteer Army. Cuba and Venezuela were also unmentioned (thank God!). I believe I'm correct in saying that the wholesale slaughter of the Iraqi people by American bombs was also subjecta non grata in this debate.

OK, just one thing I have to say which applies to both Bush and Kerry in this debate. Both of them talked about Iraq in 2003 as if it was a country that needed to be disarmed, with the only difference being that Bush claimed we needed to invade immediately to complete the process, while Kerry argued that more U.N. inspections, bigger alliances, etc. were the ticket. Neither one (nor the moderator) acknowledged the simple fact that history has proven that Iraq was completely disarmed (of WMD) in March, 2003. [Followup: one analyst, and only one I heard, actually made note of this fact. Of course it was Jon Stewart]

Followup: Just as a point of reference, here's what was happening today in a place that Lehrer, Bush, and Kerry didn't think was worth mentioning:

"At least 28 Palestinians and three Israelis were killed Thursday as Israeli troops pushed into a densely packed refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip and battled militants darting among the narrow alleys. It was the deadliest day in more than two years."

Still more followup: Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! reminds me that Haiti was also completely unmentioned in the debate.