Left I on the News

Demonstrations on Sept. 24 will give Americans a chance to add their voices to those of the one million Iraqis. Be there.

Update: Emphasizing the importance of the fact that the Times only covers this significant development in the 14th paragraph of its story is the copy of the article that appears in the paper I read, the San Jose Mercury News, which could only find room for the first twelve paragraphs of the story. In other words, the readers of the Mercury News, and no doubt of many other papers as well, will never learn about these one million signatures, because the news wasn't fit to print (or just didn't fit, whatever).

"Caleb McCarry, a veteran Latin America hand and congressional staffer, was named the US 'Cuba transition coordinator' tasked with helping speed Fidel Castro's downfall, officials said.

"US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced the appointment of McCarry to the position created on the recommendation last year of a panel established by President George W. Bush.

"Rice said the aim of the effort was to 'accelerate he demise of Castro's tyranny' on the Caribbean island 90 miles (140 kilometers) off the US coast that the Communist guerrilla leader has run since 1959.

"'For nearly 50 years, the regime of Fidel Castro has condemned the people of Cuba to a tragic fate of repression and poverty,' Rice told a gathering of US officials and Cuban dissidents at the State Department."

Is Cuba a "poor" country? Economically, no doubt it is, although no worse than a hundred other countries around the world. In every other way, not at all. And as far as "repression", one thing is for sure. There isn't a single Cuban like Jose Padilla who has spent the last three years in jail without having any charges brought against him.

"I predict that sooner or later that 'heavy jacket' is going to turn out to be just a normal jacket that a million people in Britain were wearing that day. The police have a vested interest in slanting the facts to make it appear they had SOME justification for thinking the man was wearing some kind of suicide bomb (although, it should be pointed out, as far as I know NO such bomb has ever been set off in Britain)."

"Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian shot dead in the head, was not wearing a heavy jacket that might have concealed a bomb, and did not jump the ticket barrier when challenged by armed plainclothes police, his cousin said yesterday.

"'He used a travel card,' she said. 'He had no bulky jacket, he was wearing a jeans jacket. But even if he was wearing a bulky jacket that wouldn't be an excuse to kill him.'"

"If the political process continues to go positively, and if the development of the security forces continues to go as it is going, I do believe we'll still be able to take some fairly substantial reductions after these elections in the spring and summer."

The lead phrase in the Post was particularly interesting: "There could be substantial withdrawals of some of the 135,000 U.S. troops in the country as early as next spring." "Substantial" withdrawals of "some" of the troops? What the heck does that mean? Heck, why not "total" withdrawal of "some" of the troops? And, of course, "next spring" isn't exactly next month, another fact which isn't exactly emphasized in the coverage.

Update: Reuters falls for the spin hook, line, and sinker: "U.S. aims to sharply cut Iraq force within a year." Right.

"I would like to convey the message that our system works. We did not need to use a secret military tribunal, or detain the defendant indefinitely as an enemy combatant, or deny him the right to counsel, or invoke any proceedings beyond those guaranteed by or contrary to the United States Constitution.

"'I would suggest that the message to the world from today's sentencing is that our courts have not abandoned our commitment to the ideals that set our nation apart. We can deal with the threats to our national security without denying the accused fundamental constitutional protections.

"'Despite the fact that Mr. Ressam is not an American citizen and despite the fact that he entered this country intent upon killing American citizens, he received an effective, vigorous defense, and the opportunity to have his guilt or innocence determined by a jury of 12 ordinary citizens.

"'Most importantly, all of this occurred in the sunlight of a public trial. There were no secret proceedings, no indefinite detention, no denial of counsel.

""The tragedy of September 11th shook our sense of security and made us realize that we, too, are vulnerable to acts of terrorism."

"'Unfortunately, some believe that this threat renders our Constitution obsolete. This is a Constitution for which men and women have died and continue to die and which has made us a model among nations. If that view is allowed to prevail, the terrorists will have won.

"'It is my sworn duty, and as long as there is breath in my body I'll perform it, to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. We will be in recess.'"

"Jessica Simpson wants to know where missing footage of her and husband Nick Lachey's harrowing trip to Iraq got to - because she thinks Americans would like to see just how bad conditions are there.

"The pop singers-turned-reality TV couple travelled to the war-torn nation to visit US troops as part of a recent ABC TV variety special, and they were both left shellshocked by what they saw.

"But all the controversial moments and harrowing footage of the trip didn't appear in the fun-filled TV show.

"Simpson says, 'It was unbelievable. They didn't show a lot of what really went on with the enemy attacks and the shelling. There was so much stuff that went on and somehow the tapes got mysteriously misplaced.'"

(Hat tip to Atrios).

"The 16th annual KIDS COUNT Data Book, released today by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, shows a half million more children living in poverty in 2003 than 2000, for a total of nearly 13 million. The study also concludes that five out of 10 child well-being indicators worsened since 2000. In addition to child poverty, there was an increase in the percentage of low-birthweight babies between 2000 and 2002; an increase in infant mortality for the first time in 40 years, having reached an all-time low in 2001; and a slight rise in the teen death rate between 2000 and 2002. These findings are in stark contrast with data in last year's KIDS COUNT study that showed eight out of 10 key indicators improved from 1996 to 2001, a period of economic growth and significant expansion of public programs.

"'The nearly 4 million children living in low-income households where neither their parent(s) nor any other adult in the household worked at all in the past year is an alarming increase of more than 1 million children since 2000,' says Douglas W. Nelson, president of the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore. 'The best way to improve the future for America's most disadvantaged kids is to improve the financial security of their parents today.'"

"Armstrong in a recent interview laid out his views on a number of issues, describing himself as 'against mixing up state and Church, not keen on guns, pro women's right to choose. And very anti war in Iraq.'"

"Hugo Chavez is a menace in our hemisphere who wishes to disrupt our lives by the influence he has with his oil and by the arrangements he's made with Fidel Castro to potentially try to do harm to the United States through any means."

- U.S. "Representative" Connie Mack IV, explaining why he amended a bill Wednesday to require a federal agency to begin beaming pro-U.S. television and radio broadcasts at Venezuela.

Poor, deluded Rep. Mack. He actually thinks Hugo Chavez (or Fidel Castro) give a fig about disrupting his precious life, rather than devoting every ounce of their mental energy to improving the lives of the people of their own countries. Of course, it's no surprise that Mack thinks so:

"Mack said Chavez came to his attention earlier this year as he began to educate himself about foreign affairs."

"Mack warned that Chavez's TV network, Telesur, was patterned after the pro-Islam network Al-Jazeera and could similarly stoke anti-American sentiment throughout Central and South America."

Sadly, it isn't just South Florida Republicans who are so miseducated:

"Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., agreed with Mack.

"'Chavez reportedly entered into a $200 million deal with China's national space administration to launch a satellite into orbit from which he could beam his anticipated hateful media content into homes across Latin America, the Caribbean and beyond,' Lantos said."

"'Chavez makes almost daily verbal attacks against the U.S. government, against freedom, calling the U.S. an 'imperialistic menace' and accusing us of trying to topple his regime and kill him.'"

"A U.S. immigration judge denied bail on Monday for an asylum-seeking former CIA operative from Cuba and asked for legal briefs on whether his role in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion was a terrorist act.

"Lawyers for Luis Posada Carriles called the request 'surprising' because they said if Posada is found to have engaged in terrorism, it would imply the CIA did also."

"Posada will 'work with the government in good faith' to answer the terrorism question, said [his lawyer]. 'Mr. Posada doesn't want the U.S. government to jump through hoops.'"

The story is indeed strange, however. Consider this:

"[The judge] said he would likely consider Posada's conviction in Panama on charges of possessing explosives as a valid prior criminal record barring him from admission to the United States -- despite a Panamanian presidential pardon last year that enabled Posada and three other exiles to walk free after being arrested in connection with an alleged plot to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

"Under immigration law, a foreign pardon does not protect a foreign national from being denied admission into the country."

"The new American ambassador to Iraq waded into the debate over its constitution on Monday, signaling that the United States would work to guarantee the rights of Iraqi women and to blunt the desires of ethnic and religious factions pushing for broader autonomy in the new Iraqi state.

"With less than three weeks to go before the country's permanent constitution is supposed to be completed, the new ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, indicated that the United States would play an active and, if need be, public role in brokering what he called a 'national compact' among the country's ethnic and sectarian groups."

Democracy - of the people, by the people, and for the people. Just so long as those "people" are the U.S. ruling class and not the Iraqi people (or the American people, for that matter).

"The biggest downside to a war in Iraq is what you could do with that money. What does a war in Iraq cost a week? A billion? Maybe a billion a day? The budget for the National Cancer Institute is four billion. That has to change.

"Polls say people are much more afraid of cancer than of a plane flying into their house or a bomb or any other form of terrorism. It is a priority for the American public."

- Lance Armstrong, speaking after his victory yesterday in the Tour de France

Armstrong also yesterday said "never say never" when asked if he might get into politics. What are his politics? I don't know, but the quote above is at least a start.

"Actress and activist Jane Fonda says she intends to take a cross-country bus tour to call for an end to U.S. military operations in Iraq.

"Fonda said her anti-war tour in March will use a bus that runs on 'vegetable oil.' She will be joined by families of Iraq war veterans and her daughter.

"Prompted by a question from the audience, Fonda said war veterans that she has met on a nationwide book tour have encouraged her to break her silence on the Iraq war.

"'I've decided I'm coming out,' she said.

"Hundreds of people in the audience cheered loudly when Fonda announced her intentions to join the anti-Iraq war movement."

Like it or not, celebreties are important - they attract attention in a way that the most articulate non-celebrities just can't do. It is somewhat bizarre that someone who hasn't even said a word on the subject previously suddenly wants to go on a nationwide speaking tour against the war, but perhaps we can chalk this up to Fonda's "special status", i.e., wanting to avoid being a lightning rod. But here's the thing - anyone likely to utter the words "Hanoi Jane" wasn't likely to become an opponent of the war in Iraq anyway.

A majority of Americans already oppose the war; the biggest task isn't so much broadening that opposition as deepening it, and that's something that Jane Fonda may well be able to help accomplish. And her focus now, as was the case with her opposition to the war in Vietnam, on veterans, is a good one.

After his first four days in solitary confinement at an American military prison in Iraq, Cyrus Kar was taken from his small cell and brought before two F.B.I. agents, who before questioning him gave him a sheet of paper listing his rights.

"I have the right to a lawyer?" Mr. Kar, an aspiring filmmaker from Los Angeles, said he asked as he scanned the list.

"Yes," he said he was told by one of the agents, whom he knew only as Robert.

"Do you actually have lawyers here?" Mr. Kar inquired.

"No," he quoted the agent as explaining. "The last guy who requested one is still waiting two years later, in Afghanistan."

Job gains lag; profits soar

"The Bush administration in recent days has been lobbying to block legislation supported by Republican senators that would bar the U.S. military from engaging in 'cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment' of detainees, from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, and from using interrogation methods not authorized by a new Army field manual."

"An important gauge of future economic activity rose strongly in June and jobless benefit claims dropped last week by the greatest amount in more than two years, suggesting that the U.S. economy is continuing to grow.

"But many analysts say the expansion has begun slowing from last year's torrid pace in response to Federal Reserve hikes in U.S. interest rates."

• Tuesday: HP to cut 14,500 jobs
• Wednesday: Kodak to cut 10,000 more jobs, 25,000 total
• Friday: Kimberly-Clark to cut 6,000 jobs
• Also Friday: Ford likely to cut 10,000 jobs

"It's been an unusually torrid summer in terms of trimming payrolls. U.S. corporations announced plans in June to cut 110,996 jobs -- the highest monthly total in 17 months -- and July's toll could turn out to be steeper. Overall job cuts are on the rise in 2005, reaching 538,274 through June."

Newsweek ran a sensational claim based on an anonymous source who turned out to be completely wrong. While one can't blame the subsequent violence entirely on this report, it's fair to say that credulous reporting like this contributed to a climate in which many innocent Muslims died.

The inaccurate Newsweek report appeared in the magazine's March 17, 2003 issue, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. It read in part:

Saddam could decide to take Baghdad with him. One Arab intelligence officer interviewed by Newsweek spoke of "the green mushroom" over Baghdad -- the modern-day caliph bidding a grotesque bio-chem farewell to the land of the living alongside thousands of his subjects as well as his enemies. Saddam wants to be remembered. He has the means and the demonic imagination. It is up to U.S. armed forces to stop him before he can achieve notoriety for all time.

Unlike a more recent Newsweek item (5/9/05) involving accusations that Guantanamo interrogators flushed a copy of the Quran down a toilet, Newsweek has yet to retract the bogus repor about the "green mushroom" threat.

As an example of the value of Pentagon denials, take the February 2003 statement of Gen. Daniel K. McNeill, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, that "we are not chaining peole to the ceilings...Our interrogations techniques are...in accordance with what is generally accepted interrogation techniques" (New York Times, 3/4/03). More than two years later, on May 20, 2005, the New York Times reported that just two months before McNeill's denial, at least two prisoners were beaten to death while chained to the ceiling at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan, by U.S. troops under his command.

The "exit strategy" in Iraq, promoted by supporters of the invasion as well as opponents of the invasion who are now supporters of the occupation (a.k.a. the "finish the 'job' position), is one of training an Iraqi army to take over from the Americans. Once the Iraqis are ready to assume responsibility for the security of their country, the Americans will leave, or so the story goes.

But one look at the recent American offensive in northern Iraq, and before that offensives in Fallujah and elsewhere, makes it clear that this strategy is a fantasy. Because the only way in which the Americans, the best-equipped ground force in the world, have managed to score major victories against the resistance is through the massive use of aerial power, in the form of attack planes and helicopter gunships. Is there any chance at all that the U.S. is not only training Iraqi pilots, but also preparing to leave attack planes, helicopters, and cruise missiles behind for the Iraqi government to use on that mythical day when American forces leave? Are you kidding? And let them fall into the "wrong hands" when that government falls the week after the Americans leave? Not on your life. Which tells you that the entire plan for the U.S. to train Iraqi forces and then leave is a complete sham. It's not going to happen. If the U.S. forces leave Iraq, it will be because they are forced out by the combination of the Iraqi resistance and the worldwide antiwar movement, just as was the case in Vietnam.

Out now! It's the only realistic exit strategy, and the only just one.

"Christians", meanwhile, are busy using their political muscle to agitate against gay marriage.

"To re-phrase the Downing Street memo: 'How will the policy ever fix these facts?'"

- Jane Wells, writing on the Huffington Post about the data released yesterday by Iraq Body Count on civilian deaths in Iraq.

"I have no problem about the money -- but my wife has a problem with that. She was worried that means less diamonds every year or something like that."

- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, talking about his decision (under pressure) to cancel his contract with fitness magazines and forego $3.5 million still coming to him under that contract.

So George "Says What He Means, Means What He Says" Bush changed his tune today and says "if someone has committed a crime, they will no longer work in this administration."

Except for John Poindexter, Elliott Abrams and Otto Reich. I suppose we can cut him some slack on famous unindicted co-conspirators like John Negroponte and Michael Ledeen.

• 24,865 civilians were reported killed
• US-led forces killed 37% of civilian victims
• Anti-occupation forces/insurgents killed 9% of civilian victims
• Post-invasion criminal violence accounted for 36% of all deaths
• At least 42,500 civilians were reported wounded

Not to worry, though; Iraqis don't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. At least, that's what George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, CondoLIEzza Rice, and the rest of the war criminals in Washington are thinking. How else can you justify dropping bombs on places when you really have no idea who might be inside, only vague "tips" that they might be "insurgent hideouts"? And is this callous disregard for the lives of Iraqis something new? You know it's not. We need only remember the intentional bombing of the al-Ameriyya air raid shelter on February 13, 1991, in which 310 Iraqis, including 130 children, were obliterated by American bombs.

"Fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here"? Even if that were true (it isn't, it's absurd, as the events in London most recently proved), 25,000+ Iraqi civilians dead could only be justified as a way of preventing the potential (and very unlikely) deaths of another 3,000 Americans if you subscribed to Westmoreland's racist beliefs.

"The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient, and as the philosophy of the Orient expresses it, life is, uh, is not important."

- racist (and now dead) General William Westmoreland, speaking in the film Hearts and Minds about his experiences leading American forces in the Vietnam war.

Terrorists:

"A man tortured by order of terrorist Luis Posada Carriles in Venezuela has revealed how more than 60 people were murdered by groups supervised by that Cuban-born criminal in the South American country.

"In an article published in the weekly Todos Adentro, Bastidas recounts how Posada was one of the Cuban counterrevolutionaries hired by the Venezuelan government from 1965 to 1970 to head up the repression.

"The group also included Orlando Bosch, Ricardo 'El Mono' Fernandez Navarrete and Orlando Garca, among others."

"The detention of five Cubans found guilty of espionage in the United States is arbitrary and in violation of international law, according to a UN panel in a finding to which AP had access.

"The ruling of the UN working group on arbitrary detentions states that the five Cubans - convicted in 2001 of trying to infiltrate US military bases and exile groups in Florida - were denied access to the totality of the evidence against them, as were their lawyers.

"The panel determined that the trial did not take place in the climate of objectivity and impartiality required to reach the conclusion that the regulations for an impartial trial were observed.

"The legal procedure in the case was incompatible with international agreements signed by the United States, which guarantee that any person accused of a crime has the right to make use, with full equality, of all the facilities necessary for preparing his or her defense, said the panel.

"The working group concluded that those deficiencies are so grave that they confer an arbitrary character to the privation of liberty of those five persons, according to the AP cable."

"For the last four months, investors and employees of Hewlett-Packard have been wondering how new Chief Executive Mark Hurd plans to turn around the company."

All of the above:

"Hewlett-Packard said this morning it will cut 14,500 jobs, or 10 percent of its worldwide workforce, over the next year and a half."

"HP also said it will scale back its retirement benefits for employees."

"Iraqi and international officials who gathered Monday to discuss reconstruction in Iraq said the $18.4 billion U.S.-led rebuilding program has failed to provide Iraqis with adequate power, water and sanitation more than two years after the invasion."

"While couching criticism in diplomatic language, officials from the World Bank and the United Nations made it clear that the $13.5 billion international rebuilding effort would differ from the U.S. approach.

"The international officials said they would learn from the U.S. experience by relying more on Iraqi contractors. Besides being cheaper, Iraqi contractors often face fewer security concerns, said Michael Bell, a Canadian official overseeing part of the international reconstruction effort.

"Bell said about 2 percent of World Bank and U.N. project costs are for security. The U.S. estimate for security costs is 16 percent to 22 percent."

"While not acknowledging any mistakes, U.S. officials at the meeting said they, too, were committed to using more local contractors with input from recently elected provincial councils."

"Yesterday, I read how it was going to take up to $90 billion to rebuild Iraq. Bremer was shooting out numbers about how much it was going to cost to replace buildings and bridges and electricity, etc.

"Listen to this little anecdote. One of my cousins works in a prominent engineering company in Baghdad- we’ll call the company H. This company is well-known for designing and building bridges all over Iraq. My cousin, a structural engineer, is a bridge freak. He spends hours talking about pillars and trusses and steel structures to anyone who’ll listen.

"As May was drawing to a close, his manager told him that someone from the CPA wanted the company to estimate the building costs of replacing the New Diyala Bridge on the South East end of Baghdad. He got his team together, they went out and assessed the damage, decided it wasn’t too extensive, but it would be costly. They did the necessary tests and analyses (mumblings about soil composition and water depth, expansion joints and girders) and came up with a number they tentatively put forward- $300,000. This included new plans and designs, raw materials (quite cheap in Iraq), labor, contractors, travel expenses, etc.

"Let’s pretend my cousin is a dolt. Let’s pretend he hasn’t been working with bridges for over 17 years. Let’s pretend he didn’t work on replacing at least 20 of the 133 bridges damaged during the first Gulf War. Let’s pretend he’s wrong and the cost of rebuilding this bridge is four times the number they estimated- let’s pretend it will actually cost $1,200,000. Let’s just use our imagination.

"A week later, the New Diyala Bridge contract was given to an American company. This particular company estimated the cost of rebuilding the bridge would be around- brace yourselves- $50,000,000 !!"

"I always say this war is about oil. It is. But it is also about huge corporations that are going to make billions off of reconstructing what was damaged during this war. Can you say Haliburton?"

"Ex-inspector Rod Barton, an Australian biologist who was a key deputy to Duelfer, said it's 'outrageous' that the Iraqis are still held, and cited the example of Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, a bioweapons specialist in the 1980s.

"'Huda is there accused of restarting the bioweapons program in the mid-1990s. And there was no such program,' he said."

As a reminder of the outrageous way in which these people, who surrendered voluntarily to American authorities, have been treated, here's an excerpt from a post from May, 2004:

[Gen. al-Saadi has been] held in solitary confinement for that entire time, with the "privilege" of receiving one letter a month from his wife, and denied the right to read newspapers, listen to the radio, or watch television.

In his essential book Rogue State, William Blum outlines 24 different cases of U.S. intervention in foreign elections from 1950 to 1998, and that doesn't even include interventions such as the most recent one in Haiti, in which the U.S. was instrumental not in helping to elect a favored candidate, but in removing an already-elected unfavored one.

God forbid, though, that the Times would remind its readers of that history, as a piece of significant knowledge by which the veracity of the Administration's denial (actually more of a "non-denial denial" anyway) can be judged.

Gelb spent those ten days in Iraq "as a guest of our State Department", and had conversations with "upwards of 150 Iraqi leaders and our senior military offeicers and diplomatic officials." What is missing from this picture?

Gelb's article, "When Can We Leave Iraq?", contains some frequently made observations (Americans and Iraqi leaders only leave the Green Zone in armed SUV convoys or sheltered by tanks, only three of 81 Iraqi battalions are capable of fighting "independently", etc.). But it also contains some strange material. Searching for the "good things" that "we" have going for us, he talks about the "sense of idealism, nobility, and dedication" of the Americans serving there. But the one he chooses to quote, a Hispanic-American foreign service officer, says "The American public put me through college and law school, and I wanted to give something back." If that's the best example of "idealism, nobility, and dedication" he could find, I'm afraid I'm not too impressed. And Gelb claims that "not a one [of the Americans he talked to] complained about having to be in Iraq," which should give you some idea of the type of person he chose to (or was allowed to) talk to, since we know there are thousands of soldiers who have deserted rather than being sent back to Iraq, and even some who have committed suicide.

Gelb also talks about the "promising and impressive" Iraqi leadership. His example? The speaker of the National Assembly, who spent 25 years in exile in the U.S. and now "wants to cut political deals" and demostrates the "widespread instinct for political wheeling and dealing." "Promising and impressive" leadership?

Gelb acknowledges that water and electricity are in bad shape, but in the same breath repeats a commonplace assertion: "We proudly build many schools and hospitals." Really? Everything I've read indicates the health care system in Iraq is in crisis, and although some schools have received new paint and desks and pencils, I'm not sure that any have been "built" as Gelb asserts. He cites no evidence, and I can certainly find none to back up those claims. Gelb should stop listening to State Department boasts and ask for actual data. It's called journalism.

Illustrating Gelb's biased sourcing are two nearly identical passages in the article. First [emphasis added]: "To hear Iraqi leaders talk, it is even more obvious that the great majority of Iraqis hate the insurgents and terrorists." And, in the next paragraph, "The great majority of Iraqis do not want to see an American military withdrawal any time soon, to hear Iraqi leaders discuss the subject." Unfortunately for Gelb, those "Iraqi leaders" he's listening to aren't representative of the Iraqi people. A March survey (taken by the U.S. government) showed that a majority of Iraqis oppose having the U.S.-led multinational force in their country, and an even more recent U.S.-sponsored poll showed that an astonishing 45 percent of the population supported the insurgent attacks (and were willing to admit that to a pollster!), and that only 15 percent of those polled said they strongly supported the US-led coalition.

And the really sad part of Gelb's analysis? Even given his rosy and inaccurate sources of information, here's his conclusion:

"What are the odds for success? If the U.S. stays there in force for several more years and does a lot of hard things right, and if Iraqis see real progress and don't lose hope, the country has a decent chance."

In 1993, there was an alleged Iraqi-based assassination plot against former President George Bush. There was no assassination attempt, and it is questionable not only whether Iraq had anything to do with it, but whether there was even a real assassination plot. Nevertheless, in response, Bill Clinton ordered an attack on Iraq, which killed an unknown number of Iraqis, among them at least eight civilians, including Layla al-Attar, one of Iraq's most gifted artists. A decade later, George W. Bush on more than one occasion talked about how "Saddam tried to kill my daddy", and there are those who believe that this was a significant factor in his decision to invade Iraq. As a result of that invasion, tens of thousands, probably well more than 100,000, Iraqis have died, not to mention more than 2000 American and allied forces and contractors.

As of this date, no charges have been filed against George W. Bush.

The Washington Post headlines its story: "Israeli Strikes Kill 7 in Hamas As 5-Month Truce Comes to End" (the local paper that I first saw this story in just said "Israeli Strikes Kill 7"). Tacked on at the end of the second paragraph, almost as an afterthought (but at least it wasn't the fourteenth paragraph) comes this: "More than a dozen bystanders were also killed, according to hospital officials here."

Update: I wrote the above in a bit of a hurry yesterday, but the story deserves more comment. Take careful note in the Post story of the description of the murder of the Hamas members:

"Three Hamas fighters were killed when an Apache helicopter and ground troops fired into a hillside redoubt near Salfit, a town in the northern West Bank. Soon after, an Israeli drone aircraft fired a missile into a van in Gaza City, killing four Hamas members, the group said."

Gov. to Be Paid $8 Million by Fitness Magazines

The publications rely heavily on advertising for dietary supplements. Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have regulated their use.

Bush talks
"President George W. Bush said Wednesday he would withhold judgment about top aide Karl Rove's involvement in leaking the identity of a CIA operative until a federal criminal investigation is complete."

"Every rule has an exception. My mama always told me to compliment the chef at dinner. But that doesn't apply when the chef pees in your soup. Likewise, there's an exception to the rule of source protection. When officialdom uses 'you-can't-use-my- name' to cover a lie, the official is not a source, but a disinformation propagandist -- and Miller and The Times have been all too willing to play Izvestia to the Bush's Kremlinesque prevarications.

"And that is what Miller is protecting: the evil called 'access.'"

- Greg Palast, writing about the jailing of Judith Miller

"Part of her oddball defense is that The Times never ran the story about Wilson's wife. They get no points for that. The Times should have run the story with the headline: BUSH OPERATIVE COMMITS FELONY TO PUNISH WHISTLEBLOWER. The lead paragraph should have been, 'Today, Mr. K--- R--- [or other slime ball as appropriate] attempted to plant sensitive intelligence information on The New York Times, a felony offense, in an attempt to harm former Ambassador Joseph Wilson who challenged the President's claim regarding Iraq's nuclear program.'"

"The top U.S. commander in Baghdad said yesterday that a two-month counterinsurgency sweep has 'mostly eliminated' the enemy's ability to 'conduct sustained high-intensity operations' around the Iraqi capital.

"Wave of Attacks Kills Nearly 50 in Iraq" [the majority of them in Baghdad]

"If Iraq is like flypaper, it unfortunately looks like we’re the ones who are stuck there."

- the oft-quotable Arianna Huffington

She also notes this fundamental contradiction (not that they're hard to find!) in the Bush administration pronouncements about the invasion of Iraq:

"Not only was this flypaper theory empirically disproved by the London carnage, it directly contradicts the president’s other most often used justification for the war -- that we invaded to liberate the Iraqi people. So let me get this straight: we invaded them to liberate them... and to use them as bait to attract terrorists who we could fight on the streets of Baghdad rather than the streets of London and New York?"

Truth (contained in the actual story, emphasis added): "President Bush and the leaders of seven other major industrialized nations pledged Friday to double the amount of aid for Africa in five years."

Truth (not contained in the story): President Bush's "pledges" aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

"The world must deal with the underlying causes of terrorism, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said, insisting that security alone could not protect the country from attacks.

"'Probably with this type of terrorism the solution cannot only be the security measures,' Blair said in an interview recorded on Friday and broadcast Saturday morning.

"If terrorists were prepared to blow up people on trains or buses at random 'you can have all the surveillance in the world and you couldn't stop that happening', he said.

"'That is why ultimately, although we have to take the measures necessary, the underlying issues have to be dealt with too.'"

"Well, only a fool would say that, and only a fool would believe that. In fact, the terrorists themselves have said in the website to which your previous caller referred, that that's exactly why they carried out the act. So, only a fool believes that this came out of nowhere. It came out of a deep swamp of hatred and bitterness that we have soaked in blood these last few years. This is obvious to any sentient being."

- British MP George Galloway, responding on Democracy Now! to criticism of his earlier comments by Home Secretary Charles Clark, who said that this has nothing to do with Iraq or any other particular foreign policy, that it was about a fundamentalist attack on the way we live our lives.

"The terrorist most wants people to stop using the Tube. The terrorist wants tourists to stay away from the central area. The terrorist wants Londoners to remain at home, stop working, haul their children out of school. The terrorist wants shops and theatres to suffer, the Stock Market to crash, the Olympic spirit to fade. The terrorist wants everyone to feel perpetually terrorized, to look askance at every Arab faces and dress, to overreact, cut and run for cover from the world."

And what Islamic militants also object to, I feel confident in saying, is the racism which permeates the world. Today, 37 people were killed in London and world leaders (and probably every single American politician, if I had heard what each one had to say) condemned the killings and offered sympathy for the victims. Three days ago, 17 Afghan civilians were killed by U.S. bombs. Did a single one of those world leaders or politicians condemn those killings and offer sympathy for those victims? You bet your life they didn't. And "you bet your life" is almost the right expression. Except, to be accurate, it's George Bush and Tony Blair betting your life.

Although no politicians or media "pundits" will make this observation, there will be tens of thousands of people who will be saying it, on September 24 in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, and cities around the country and the world. Join us.

"Judy is a good, honorable, principled reporter."

Keller also claimed that "Judy Miller is not placing herself above the law." But that is precisely what she was (and is) doing. No matter what you think the law should be, Keller later admitted that, even under the 49 state laws which do provide a reporter's shield (this is a federal case, where no such law exists), that this case would not be one of those protected. And, of course, all the courts have ruled against her and that she must testify. One has to wonder what both ignoring court rulings and even ignoring one's own conclusions about what the law requires would be called, other than "putting oneself above the law"? That isn't to say that putting oneself above the law isn't sometimes justified; it certainly is (cf. Thoreau, Henry David). But that isn't what Keller claimed.

The Times wasn't the only one spouting absurdities last night. Reporter Matt Cooper, who escaped jail by agreeing to testify, claimed that it was "a sad day" when reporters "working on an important story" had to go to jail. An important story? A member of the administration is trying to use them to out a covert CIA agent in an attempt to discredit and/or intimidate her husband who dares to tell a bit of the truth about the Bush administration's lies which are being used to justify the invasion of a foreign country and the subsequent deaths of tens of thousands of people, and he calls that "an important story"? An important story would be doing some investigative reporting to back up Wilson's claims and to uncover the truth about all the other lies, before the invasion. Not serving as a mouthpiece for the administration.

Both Keller (speaking for Miller) and Cooper kept talking over and over about the sanctity of the promise between reporter and source as if it were holy writ. Nonsense. What if the source had told them, after obtaining a promise of confidentiality, that he planned to murder the President the next day? Would they think it was their sacred duty as a reporter to stick by their pledge of confidentiality? I seriously doubt it.

The ability of reporters to maintain the identity of confidential sources is important. And, despite dire predictions from some about how this case will sound the death knell of that ability, reporters have gone to prison to protect their sources long before Judy Miller (attorney Floyd Abrams claimed in the press conference last night that Benjamin Franklin's brother had been sent to prison for refusing to reveal a source even before the Revolution), and that principle is not only as strong as it ever was, but stronger, given the existence of 49 state laws on the subject. But the implication that protecting Karl Rove (or whomever else the mysterious source or sources is) is equivalent to protecting Daniel Ellsberg is just absolute nonsense. Going to jail to protect Daniel Ellsberg would mark a reporter as "honorable". Going to jail to protect Karl Rove just brands a reporter as a willing tool of the administration's lying and murderous ways. Or worse.

Update: Here's how FAIR put it a year ago:

"The First Amendment exists so that the press can be a check on government [Ed. note: and, I might add, corporate] abuse of power, not a handmaiden to it."

"Vazquez, 55, knows this from his own family's personal experience. His grandparents fled the Mexican Revolution and emigrated to the United States in 1914, where they migrated between Colorado, Nebraska and Missouri, picking beets and working coal mines. Vazquez's mother was born in Colorado in 1927, and was therefore a U.S. citizen. But when the Great Depression hit in 1929, America needed someone to blame, and Mexican-Americans proved handy. Under a 'repatriation' program created by President Herbert Hoover that ran from 1929 to 1940, Vazquez's mother and grandparents were deported to Mexico, along with 1 million other Mexican-Americans. Like Vazquez's mother, 60 percent of the deportees were U.S. citizens; 400,000 were California residents."

"Last year, responding to a lawsuit seeking damages for the Depression-era deportations, the state Legislature passed a reparations bill for the estimated 5,000 Mexican-American deportees who are still alive. Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill."

"The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was ratified in 1848, ending the war between Mexico and the United States and effectively handing over control of the modern Southwest from Mexico to the United States. Under the terms of the Treaty, Mexican property holders were to retain full enjoyment and protection of their property as if they were citizens of the United States."

No "mulling" involved. Just bulldozing. Here's what "mulling" involves:

"The construction of the houses has continued over the past months, despite an agreement between the IDF and the Mateh-Binyamin council that the settlers would not continue building the houses or move into them.

"The homes in Amuna, like the entire outpost, were built illegally, without a permit, on private Palestinian land."

"The court's move Tuesday followed a petition submitted by Peace Now, demanding the enforcement of orders to stop the construction and to demolish the illegal houses."

"Amuna was built on a hill east of Ofra in 1995, without the cabinet or any state or public body having allocated it lands. The demolition orders for the nine houses were issued in October 2004, but were not implemented."

• The United States was supposed to destroy the world's last remaining supply of smallpox virus in 1999.
• In 1999 they postponed the destruction date to 2002.
• In 2002 they not not only put off the destruction, but petitioned the World Health Organization to be able to expand their research into the deadly substance.
• The U.S. recently petitioned the WHO in order to allow it to experiment with genetically modified smallpox, a petition which has been at least temporarily denied (but that doesn't mean the U.S. is abiding by that restriction, needless to say).

Want to know what the U.S. government is guilty of? Just take note of the accusations they hurl at others.

The bottom line is that the men were acquitted of giving money to al Qaeda, and convicted of providing funding to Hamas. Here's the catch: fund-raising for Hamas is entirely legal in Yemen and also in Germany, and the two had never done any fund-raising in the United States at all. Nevertheless they have been convicted in a United States court of sending funds to Hamas, and are currently awaiting sentencing. Just to restate the obvious - two men who are not American citizens and who had never set foot in America were convicted in an American court of breaking American law. No wonder the United States is so opposed to a International Criminal Court - they think that's what the U.S. courts are for. And, for the record, whether you consider the actions of Hamas in Palestine (and Israel) to be acts of terrorism or justified acts in support of the liberation of the Palestinian people, Hamas has never committed a single act of terrorism against the United States.

More information about the case and suggestions for action are here.

But, believe it or not, this story quotes both well-known independent journalist Dahr Jamail and Steve Rendell of FAIR (as well as a couple other left-of-center sources). Dahr Jamail is, of course, the most well-known and widely respected indendent American reporter to have reported extensively from Iraq, and who has been interviewed repeated on Democracy Now! and Flashpoints!. As far as I can tell from some searching, he has not been interviewed, or quoted, a single time by either the New York Times, the Washington Post, or CNN. Only by FOXNews.

And, while I've got your attention, what is the difference between "as far as I can tell" and "as near as I can tell"? As far near far as I can tell, the anwer is: nothing. Ah, the English language.

"U.S. forces regret the loss of innocent lives and follow stringent rules of engagement specifically to ensure that non-combatants are safeguarded. However, when enemy forces move their families into the locations where they conduct terrorist operations, they put these innocent civilians at risk."

The idea that "enemy forces" "put innocent civilians at risk" may be true factually, in that they were facing a ruthless enemy who cares not a fig for morality or international law, but the real source of risk for those innocent civilians was precisely that ruthless enemy and their "Don't ask, don't tell. Just bomb" rules of engagement. I've used this analogy before, but I'll use it again: if a bank robber, even one who has killed the bank guard, takes everyone in the bank hostage, the idea that because he has "put those hostages at risk" that that would justify dropping a bomb on the bank and killing them all in order to kill the robber/murderer, is nonsense. And that is equally true if, as does in fact happen, the person holding the hostages was related to the hostages - that doesn't make the hostages "fair game" to be killed. Only those "stringent rules of engagement" do that.

"Cooperation between Venezuela and the United States to fight terrorism and drug-trafficking has run into problems and could be improved, the U.S. ambassador to Caracas said on Sunday...He said there had been problems in obtaining extradition from Venezuela of drug-trafficking suspects."

Isn't it time for some prominent politicians to join newspeople like Al Neuharth and Helen Thomas (not to mention online magazine publisher Eli Stephens) in saying "Out Now!"?

Pat Oliphant