From today's New York Times, "New Book Says Bush Officials Were Told of Detainee Abuse":
Senior military and national security officials in the Bush administration were repeatedly warned by subordinates in 2002 and 2003 that prisoners in military custody were being abused, according to a new book by a prominent journalist.Seymour M. Hersh, a writer for The New Yorker who earlier this year was among the first to disclose details of the abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, makes the charges in his book "Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib" (HarperCollins), which is being released Monday. The book draws on the articles he wrote about the campaign against terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Mr. Hersh asserts that a Central Intelligence Agency analyst who visited the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in the late summer of 2002 filed a report of abuses there that drew the attention of Gen. John A. Gordon, a deputy to Condoleezza Rice, the White House national security adviser.
But when General Gordon called the matter to her attention and she discussed it with other senior officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, no significant change resulted. Mr. Hersh's account is based on anonymous sources, some secondhand, and could not be independently verified.
Although a number of senior officials were briefed on the analyst's findings of abuse, the high-level White House meeting did not "dwell on" that question, but rather focused on whether some of the prisoners should not have been held at all, the book says. A White House official said Saturday that the meeting was held, but said that it was solely focused on whether people at Guantánamo were being improperly held. The official also said the C.I.A. analyst who visited the Guantánamo detention center filed a report that concerned only the question of improper detention, not abuses.
Mr. Hersh also says that a military officer involved in counterinsurgency operations in Iraq learned of the abuses at Abu Ghraib in November and reported it to two of his superiors, Gen. John P. Abizaid, the regional commander, and his deputy, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith.
"I said there are systematic abuses going on in the prisons," the unidentified officer is quoted as telling Mr. Hersh. "Abizaid didn't say a thing. He looked at me - beyond me, as if to say, 'Move on. I don't want to touch this.' "
But Capt. Hal Pittman, a Central Command spokesman, said in a statement Saturday, "General Abizaid does not recall any officer discussing with him any specific cases of abuse at Abu Ghraib prior to January 2004, nor do any of the officers of the Centcom staff who travel with him."
Mr. Hersh also says that F.B.I. agents complained to their superiors about abuses at Guantánamo, as did a military lawyer, and that those complaints, too, were relayed to the Pentagon.
Mr. Hersh's thesis is that "the roots of the Abu Ghraib scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists" who have been charged so far, "but in the reliance of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld on secret operations and the use of coercion - and eye-for-eye retribution - in fighting terrorism."
In particular, Mr. Hersh has reported that a secret program to capture and interrogate terrorists led to the abuse of prisoners.
In a statement posted on its Web site, the Pentagon said: "Based on media inquiries, it appears that Mr. Seymour Hersh's upcoming book apparently contains many of the numerous unsubstantiated allegations and inaccuracies which he has made in the past based upon unnamed sources."
The statement added that several investigations so far "have determined that no responsible official of the Department of Defense approved any program that could conceivably have authorized or condoned the abuses seen at Abu Ghraib."
That is essentially the same reaction issued by the Pentagon when Mr. Hersh first reported, in May, that Mr. Rumsfeld, with White House approval, established a secret program under which commandos would capture and interrogate suspected terrorists with few if any constraints, and that eventually that program's reach extended into the Abu Ghraib prison.
While working relentlessly to portray Democratic Sen. John Kerry as a ''flip-flopper,'' President Bush has his own history of changing his position, from reversals on steel tariffs and ''nation-building'' to reasons for invading Iraq.Most recently, Bush did an about-face on whether the proposed new director of national intelligence should have full budget-making powers as the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission recommended. Bush at first indicated no, then last week he said yes.
Just as GOP efforts to question Kerry's military record in Vietnam helped revive nagging questions about Bush's service in the Air National Guard, the ''flip flop'' attacks on Kerry could boomerang against an incumbent running on his record and reputation as a straight talker.
[. . .]
If he is a flip-flopper, Kerry has company.
In 2000, Bush argued against new military entanglements and nation building. He's done both in Iraq.
He opposed a Homeland Security Department, then embraced it.
He opposed creation of an independent Sept. 11 commission, then supported it. He first refused to speak to its members, then agreed only if Vice President Dick Cheney came with him.
Bush argued for free trade, then imposed three-year tariffs on steel imports in 2002, only to withdraw them after 21 months.
Last month, he said he doubted the war on terror could be won, then reversed himself to say it could and would.
A week after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Bush said he wanted Osama bin Laden ''dead or alive.'' But he told reporters six months later, ''I truly am not that concerned about him.'' He did not mention bin Laden in his hourlong convention acceptance speech.
Bush keeps revising his Iraq war rationale: The need to seize Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction until none were found; liberating the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator; fighting terrorists in Iraq not at home; spreading democracy throughout the Middle East. Now it's a safer America and a safer world. (AP, via the Salt Lake Tribune)
From today's Washington Post, "A Failed Investigation":
A day of congressional hearings yesterday confirmed two glaring gaps in the Bush administration's response to hundreds of cases of prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan. The first is one of investigation: Major allegations of wrongdoing, including some touching on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials, have yet to be explored by any arms-length probe. The second concerns accountability. Although several official panels have documented failings by senior military officers and their superiors in Washington, those responsible face no sanction of any kind, even as low-ranking personnel are criminally prosecuted. To use the phrase of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), this "is beginning to look like a bad movie."Mr. Rumsfeld has frequently boasted of the number of Pentagon investigations into the abuse scandal and has maintained that no others are necessary. Yet the senior officer in charge of one of those probes, Gen. Paul J. Kern, told the Senate Armed Services Committee of two major areas that remain unexplored. One is the Army's accommodation of dozens of "ghost prisoners" held by the CIA and deliberately hidden from the International Red Cross in violation of the Geneva Conventions and Army regulations. Mr. Rumsfeld has acknowledged that at least one of those prisoners was held by his personal order -- an order that two former secretaries of defense, James R. Schlesinger and Harold Brown, testified was "not consistent" with international law. Gen. Kern reported that the CIA had flatly refused to provide his team with information about the ghost prisoners or their handling -- prompting Mr. McCain's acerbic comment.
The only investigation of those cases underway -- other than the internal review the CIA claims to be conducting behind its stone wall -- is assigned to the Army's inspector general, Lt. Gen. Paul Mikolashek. Yet Gen. Mikolashek has already delivered one report purporting to find no evidence of such detainees, and according to reporting by Elise Ackerman of the Knight Ridder news service, Gen. Mikolashek himself commanded ground forces in Afghanistan at a time when ghost detainees were being held.Gen. Kern also acknowledged that the Pentagon has never answered the critical question of how harsh interrogation techniques promoted by Mr. Rumsfeld and other political appointees at the Pentagon and the Justice Department "found their way into documentation that we found at Abu Ghraib," the notorious prison outside Baghdad. As Sen. Lindsay O. Graham (R-S.C.) pointed out, those techniques were "way out of bounds"; "inappropriately" classified memos, he said, show that professional military lawyers opposed them from the beginning because "they violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, they violated international law and they would get our people in trouble."
Nevertheless, as Gen. Kern put it, tactics that were "being debated back here in the United States found [their] way into the hard drives of the computers that we found in the prison." No investigation has clarified that "migration," or why Mr. Rumsfeld and other senior officials allowed it to occur even after the methods they proposed were determined to be improper.
Nor has the malfeasance by senior officials so far documented been attached to any formal consequences. Investigators confirmed that senior officers in the headquarters of Iraq commander in chief Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, including two generals, knew of the illegal abuses at Abu Ghraib but failed to report them to more senior commanders. Gen. Sanchez himself twice signed off on interrogation policies that, the investigators found, contained illegal methods and opened the way to abuses. Yet none of these senior officers face the courts-martial of more junior personnel, or any other sanction. Rather, the Bush administration's investigators are striving to protect them: Gen. Kern insisted that Gen. Sanchez was "a hero."
To his credit, Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, refused to accept this dodge. Instead, he asked that Gen. Kern and his associates reexamine the cases of Gen. Sanchez and other senior officers, and he pledged to investigate the ghost prisoner affair. Yet it seems unlikely that a single congressional committee, buffeted by the pressures of an election year, will succeed in filling the holes it has uncovered.
The best solution is that recommended this week by eight retired generals and admirals, including a former U.S. commander in the Middle East: an independent commission like the one that which studied the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The former officers said the panel was needed "to investigate and report on the truth about all of these allegations, and to chart a course for how practices that violate the law should be addressed." As yesterday's hearings showed, the Bush administration has failed at both those tasks.
If the Bush-Cheney campaign is having trouble coming up with real issues to talk about, we're here to help. How about we start with the big sucking sound we're hearing from the economy:
Even if the United States saved billions of dollars by withdrawing all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, President Bush would still be unlikely to fulfill his promise to reduce the federal budget deficit by half within five years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday.In the final independent assessment of Mr. Bush's fiscal policies before the November election, the Congressional agency predicted that, if no existing laws changed, the federal deficit would see a much smaller decline, to $312 billion in 2009 from a record of $422 billion in 2004.
[. . .]
Over the next 10 years, the budget office said, the federal debt could swell by $4.9 trillion and climb rapidly after that as the nation's baby boomers start to draw Social Security and Medicare.
If Mr. Bush persuades Congress to make his tax cuts permanent, the federal deficit will increase to about $500 billion in 2009. The new estimate is the first time the Congressional agency has projected that Mr. Bush will probably fail to achieve his goal of reducing the deficit by half in five years.
[ . . .]
But this new report is sobering because Congressional analysts reached their conclusions even when they used extremely optimistic assumptions about war costs in Iraq and robust economic growth over the next few years.
"The message is that you cannot grow your way out of this," said Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin, director of the Congressional Budget Office. (New York Times)
Apparently, the Bush administration has no record to run on, because today Dick Cheney told Americans that they better duck and cover if John Kerry becomes president:
"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.''
So much for the issues -- that's just dirty politics.
From today's Toronto Star, "Terror case collapse blow to Bush":
The collapse in Detroit of the U.S. Justice Department's first post-Sept. 11, 2001, prosecution of an alleged terrorist sleeper cell has left the Bush administration with few high-profile major criminal victories in the war on terrorism — and a growing list of losses and questionable cases.Justice department officials insist their record since the attacks on the United States reflects a successful strategy of catching suspected terrorists long before they can launch deadly plots, even if that involves charging them with lesser crimes. Yet some legal experts and Bush administration critics say many such cases are pumped up by overzealous prosecutors.
"There's been a tendency of the justice department to act overly aggressively, to hold news conferences, to seek headlines, but when the facts come out they are often shown to be exaggerated," said David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor and frequent critic of Bush administration counterterrorism policies.
According to the latest available figures, since Sept 11, 2001, the justice department has charged more than 310 people in terrorism-related cases and won 179 convictions — many for such relatively minor infractions as document and credit card fraud and immigration violations.
With fighting terrorism a cornerstone of President George W. Bush's re-election campaign, the Bush administration has been unapologetic in its aggressive approach. "You have to have a zero-tolerance policy for anything that could germinate into a terrorist plot or facilitate a terrorist plot," said U.S. Attorney David Kelley of New York.
In the Detroit case, the justice department agreed last week with defence lawyers that charges of material support for terrorism should be dropped against two men who were convicted in the first major terrorism prosecution after the attacks.
An internal probe uncovered prosecutorial misconduct that included withholding evidence that tended to bolster the men's claims of innocence.
From Bob Herbert's editorial in today's New York Times, An Economy That Turns American Values Upside Down:
The Labor Department reported last week that 144,000 payroll jobs were created in August. Let's put that in perspective.The number was below market forecasts. It was also below the number of jobs needed to accommodate the growth in the employment-aged population. In short, this was not good news. It's only by the diminished job-creation standards that have prevailed since the last recession that any positive spin could be put on last month's performance.
As the Economic Policy Institute tells us, in a book-length report it is releasing today: "The United States has been tracking employment statistics since 1939, and never in history has it taken this long to regain the jobs lost over a downturn."
In "The State of Working America 2004/2005," the institute shows in tremendous detail how those lost jobs and other disappointing aspects of the recovery are taking a severe economic toll on working families.
According to the institute:
"After almost three years of recovery, our job market is still too weak to broadly distribute the benefits of the growing economy. Unemployment is essentially unchanged, job growth has stalled, and real wages have started to fall behind inflation. Today's picture is a stark contrast to the full employment period before the recession, when the tight labor market ensured that the benefits of growth were broadly shared.
"Prolonged weakness in the labor market has left the nation with over a million fewer jobs than when the recession began. This is a worse position, in terms of recouping lost jobs, than any business cycle since the 1930's."
What is happening is nothing less than a deterioration in the standard of living in the United States. Despite the statistical growth in the economy, the continued slack in the labor market has resulted in declining real wages for anxious American workers and a marked deterioration in job quality.
From 2000 through 2003 the median household income fell by $1,500 (in 2003 dollars) - a significant 3.4 percent decrease. That information becomes startling when you consider that during the same period there was a strong 12 percent increase in productivity among U.S. workers. Economists will tell you that productivity increases go hand-in-hand with increases in the standard of living. But not this time. Here we have a 3.4 percent loss in real income juxtaposed with a big jump in productivity.
"So the economic pie is growing gangbusters and the typical household is falling behind," said Jared Bernstein, the institute's senior economist and a co-author of the new book.
This is the part of the story that spotlights the unfairness at the heart of the current economic setup in the U.S. While workers have been remarkably productive in recent years, they have not participated in the benefits of their own increased productivity. That doesn't sound very much like the American way.
From Friday's Boston Globe, "Card says president sees America as a child needing a parent":
White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said yesterday that President Bush views America as a ''10-year-old child" in need of the sort of protection provided by a parent.Card's remark, criticized later by Democrat John F. Kerry's campaign as ''condescending," came in a speech to Republican delegates from Maine and Massachusetts that was threaded with references to Bush's role as protector of the country. Republicans have sounded that theme repeatedly at the GOP convention as they discuss the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq.
''It struck me as I was speaking to people in Bangor, Maine, that this president sees America as we think about a 10-year-old child," Card said. ''I know as a parent I would sacrifice all for my children."
The comment underscored an argument put forth some by political pundits, such as MSNBC talk-show host Chris Matthews, that the Republican Party has cast itself as the ''daddy party."
A Kerry spokesman, seizing on Card's characterization of Bush as a parental figure for the nation, contended that the president had failed.
''Any parent that ran a household the way George W. Bush runs the country would find themselves in bankruptcy court on the way to family court," said Phil Singer, a Kerry spokesman. ''Just over the last year, 1.3 million people have fallen into poverty, including 700,000 children, and 1.4 million people have lost their health insurance while family incomes have declined three years in a row. America can do better."
Research doesn't back your policies? For the Bush administration, the answer is clear: stop collecting the data:
The Department of Education is sharply cutting back on the information it collects about charter schools for a periodic report that provides a detailed national profile of public, private and charter schools.Confirmation of the change, originally relayed in an e-mail message to a university professor, came on Wednesday from a spokeswoman for the Education Department. Last week, the first national comparison of test scores showed students in charter schools largely trailing comparable students in traditional public schools.
The federal report, known as the Schools and Staffing Survey, provides a wealth of information about charter schools, including the location and number of such schools, their share of low-income students, the qualifications of principals and teachers and the ratio of teachers to students.
In the future, however, the National Center for Education Statistics, which conducts the survey, will cover only a random sample of about 300 charter schools. (New York Times)
Finally, we heard something of a domestic agenda from the President last night. It wasn't much -- details were few, and he did not address how he would get many of his plans approved by a narrowly divided Congress -- but at least it was something after the All War All The Time battle cry we've been hearing from the podium all week.
Bush promised to reform the tax code, provide tax credits for health savings accounts, open rural health clinics and increase community college funding. Small items that had been carefully vetted by his handlers [we caught Karen Hughes on C-Span mouthing the words to the speech]. He also gave a nod to his base while carefully avoiding controversial buzzwords -- promising to protect life and to save the institution of marriage from "activist judges".
During this part of the speech, the President spoke slowly, carefully enunciating the phrases before him and delivering the words with a slight hint of something between boredom and fear.
He only grew passionate when he talked about the war on terror, recalling standing at ground zero, consoling those who had lost loved ones, deciding to take the nation to war. Though unprepared to become a war president, Bush has clearly stepped into the role, relishing the top gun image and mastering the language of good and evil.
But this is an America three years post 9-11. It's an America that has been hit hard by a recession, that has lost its standing in the world, that faces new threats from North Korea and Iran. It's an America that sees beyond the rhetoric of war and holds the hope it can do good in the world again.
This is the America that Bush had nothing to give in his speech last night. He failed to address the massive fiscal deficit caused by his tax cuts and increased spending on defense and homeland security. He did not mention North Korea or Iran. He said his administration had created jobs, but he left out the fact that it has lost more than double the jobs created. He did not say we should be compassionate towards gays or giving towards those who need a helping hand. He did not say better times lie ahead.
Last night Bush offered his vision for America, but his is not the America that many of us see. It's time for America, and Mr. Bush, to move on.
Last night's Republican Convention speakers made one thing very clear: they sure do value their grandchildren:
Dick Cheney: Since I last spoke to our national convention, Lynne and I have had the joy of seeing our family grow. We now have a grandson to go along with our three wonderful granddaughters. And the deepest wish of my heart and the object of all my determination is that they and all of America's children will have lives filled with opportunity, and that they will inherit a world in which they can live in freedom, in safety and in peace.
The vitriolic Zell Miller: Since I last stood in this spot, a whole new generation of the Miller family has been born: four great grandchildren. Along with all the other members of our close-knit family, they are my and Shirley's most precious possessions. And I know that's how you feel about your family, also. Like you, I think of their future, the promises and the perils they will face. Like you, I believe that the next four years will determine what kind of world they will grow up in.
According to them, the only way to protect future generations, to love and care for our children and grandchildren, is to fight George Bush's war against terrorism.
As if war is the only and ultimate answer. The very idea of working with the international community was ridiculed. As was anyone who questioned the need to go after Saddam Hussein (yes, he may sit in a jail cell tonight, but a thousand dead soldiers have been lost, and their grandchildren - most of whom will never get to be - are certainly not better for it).
No word on how we are loving our grandchildren by handing them the biggest debt burden ever passed from one generation to another. Or on how we are making them safer by cutting social services to give tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.
"I don't do nuance" said Bush some time ago. Neither, it seems, does the Republican party, which does not tolerate debate on the most essential of issues.
Yes, physical safety is important. But so is peace, which will only come about if future generations of Arabs see America as something other than the enemy. The Bush Administration has gone to war on many fronts, but it has yet to address any of the reasons why America is hated in so many areas of the world. Until we do so, until we are willing to look at ourselves critically, we will never stop fighting this war.
This is the legacy of the last four years. Terror attacks continue across the globe. Al Qaeda continues to operate. Afghanistan has been all but abandoned and Iraq is the most unstable place on the globe.
Our grandchildren deserve better.
Tuesday's theme at the Republican National Convention was "People of Compassion." We listened intently so that you didn't have to:
Arnold Schwarzenegger: Arnold immediately showed his compassion with a helpful bit instructing immigrants on how they can tell if they're Republicans (helpful tip #7 - if you're an economic girlie-man, you're not a Republican). And then came the immigrant bear hug: "… I want you to know how welcome you are in this party. We Republicans admire your ambition. We encourage your dreams. We believe in your future."
Well, yes, but that's only as long as you aren't stealing across rivers to get here, or stuffing yourself into a rickety boat, or attempting to immigrate while brown.
But after the shout out to his co-immigrants, Arnold stuffed the rest of his compassion down the deep pockets of one George W. Bush:
"He's a man of perseverance. He's a man of inner strength. He is a leader who doesn't flinch, who doesn't waiver, and does not back down."
"The president did not go into Iraq because the polls told him it was popular. As a matter of fact, the polls said just the opposite. But leadership isn't about polls. It's about making decisions you think are right and then standing behind those decisions."
No word from Arnold on what kind of leadership it is if it turns out that your decisions are wrong but, not knowing what else to do, you stand behind them anyway.
Survey says: Arnold clearly showed compassion for immigrants, as long as it is the pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps kind of compassion and not the hand-out-money kind of compassion. Otherwise, the Terminator was pumped up about the war.
Laura Bush: We were counting on Laura to be the standard bearer for compassion in the Republican Party. So we were encouraged when she brought out a hypothetical cup of coffee and told us all the things she could talk about when recommending her husband for a second term:
I could talk about my passion, education.I could talk about the small business owners and entrepreneurs who are now creating most of the new jobs in our country.
I could talk about health care.
I could talk about the fact that my husband is the first President to provide federal funding for stem cell research. [! - eds.]
I could talk about the record increase in home ownership.
But she didn't talk about these things. She talked about war:
All of these issues are important. But we are living in the midst of the most historic struggle my generation has ever known. The stakes are so high. So I want to talk about the issue that I believe is most important for my own daughters, for all our families, and for our future: George's work to protect our country and defeat terror so that all children can grow up in a more peaceful world.
Survey says: compassion preempted by war yet again. We're begining to understand the whole "compassionate conservative" thing.
We'll cut to the chase. Here's what passed for compassion on Tuesday at the Garden:
Rod Paige touting the Leave No Child Behind Act, which pulls the rug out from under struggling schools, leaving school districts, kids and entire communities behind.
Bill Frist hawking the troubled prescription drug discount card for seniors.
George P. Bush adding some much needed color: "Juntos, debemos abrir la puerta de oportunidad por la reelecion del Presidente George W. Bush!"
And Elizabeth Dole, standing far to the right of anyone at the podium as she reminded us of the true compassion in the Republican platform: praising marriage between a man and a woman as the "cornerstone of civilization and the foundation of the family." Insinuating that only Republicans support the sacred lives of the "frail elderly and the infirm." Lambasting "activist judges trying to strip the name of God from the pledge of allegiance, from the money in our pockets, and from the walls of our courthouses." And holding up as sacred the "compassionate life of service," by which she meant sending our sons and daughters to war.
In the end, compassion for the Republicans extends only as far as they want it to. If it does not fit into the GOP's box of "right" behavior (a right way to be an immigrant, a right way to marry, a right way to honor God, a right way to honor life), well, you can forget about any of that compassion.
We thought compassion meant extending yourself to help those whose circumstances fall outside of your own. From what we could tell during last night's "People of Compassion" gala, the Republicans prefer to view their world through the WAR ON TERROR! lens. We can feel compassion for the father struggling to make sense of his children's pink laundry while his spouse goes off to war, for example, but only if that spouse is a woman, and only if she salutes a god of a particular stripe.
That's not compassion. It's faking your way through. And it's a reason to dump Bush on Election Day.
Last night in New York, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Senator John McCain started off the Convention on a war footing.
Giuliani Highlights
For those of us who had forgotten, Rudy reminded us that on Sept. 11, 2001, America was attacked by terrorists. He mentioned "Sept. 11" eleven times and "terrorism," "terror," or "terrorist" 38 times. He recalled his first thoughts on that fateful day when he realized the magnitude of what had happened: “Thank God George Bush is our President.” [If we had a nickel for everyone who thought that when they turned on their televisions that morning....]
Rudy reminded us that Saddam Hussein was a threat (there seems to have been some confusion on the point) and that Bush, like Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan, will remain "rock solid" no matter how he is demonized, ridiculed, and misinterpreted by the media.
"President George W. Bush," said Rudy, "already has earned a place in our history as a great American President."
McCain Highlights
John McCain didn't need to remind us about terrorism. He told us that we are at war (23 times) and that this is a war against evil pure and simple. We are on the side of freedom, and "Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war."
So once again, those against Bush's war are enemies of freedom and, in a new twist, outright deluded. (Take that, lefty protester pigs.)
McCain went on to place the Presidential Election itself in the context of the battlefield, although, he made clear, "we are not enemies, but comrades in a war against a real enemy...."
We "take courage from the knowledge that our military superiority is matched only by the superiority of our ideals, and our unconquerable love for them."
And once McCain gets us on this war footing, he takes us straight into the heat of battle:
We fight for love of freedom and justice, a love that is invincible. Keep that faith. Keep your courage. Stick together. Stay strong.Do not yield. Do not flinch. Stand up. Stand up with our President and fight.
We’re Americans.
We’re Americans, and we’ll never surrender.
Although we do thank the Republicans for reminding us that war and terror lurk around every corner, we have to wonder: is this all they got? Because you can only get away with the "war on terror" excuse for a year, maybe two, before you need to start addressing things like why you've racked up deep budget deficits in record time, or why you've slashed environmental protections while allowing corporate polluters to increase emissions, or why you respond to scientific facts that don't agree with your policies by saying we don't need the science because it doesn't tell us the truth.
Let's hope we'll hear about those things in the days ahead. Otherwise, we're going to take very serious issue with Bush's "place in our history as a great American President." And so will those folks marching across the city, banging on the doors of the Garden.
The Bush 'hear no evil, see no evil' doctrine continues.
From Rumsfeld Denies Abuses Occurred at Interrogations in the New York Times:In his first comments on the two major investigative reports issued this week at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Thursday mischaracterized one of their central findings about the American military's treatment of Iraqi prisoners by saying there was no evidence that prisoners had been abused during interrogations.
The reports, one by a panel Mr. Rumsfeld had appointed and one by three Army generals, made clear that some abuses occurred during interrogations, that others were intended to soften up prisoners who were to be questioned, and that many intelligence personnel involved in the interrogations were implicated in the abuses. The reports were issued Tuesday and Wednesday.
But on Thursday, in an interview with a radio station in Phoenix, Mr. Rumsfeld, who was traveling outside Washington this week, said, "I have not seen anything thus far that says that the people abused were abused in the process of interrogating them or for interrogation purposes." A transcript of the interview was posted on the Pentagon's Web site on Friday. Mr. Rumsfeld repeated the assertion a few hours later at a news conference in Phoenix, adding that "all of the press, all of the television thus far that tried to link the abuse that took place to interrogation techniques in Iraq has not yet been demonstrated." After an aide slipped him a note during the news conference, however, Mr. Rumsfeld corrected himself, noting that an inquiry by three Army generals had, in fact, found "two or three" cases of abuse during interrogations or the interrogations process. In fact, however, the Army inquiry found that 13 of 44 instances of abuse involved interrogations or the interrogation process, an Army spokeswoman said. The report itself explicitly describes the extent to which each abuse involved interrogations.
Fromn today's Guardian (UK), "Howard hits back over Bush rebuff":
Michael Howard last night delivered a robust attack on George W Bush for 'protecting' Tony Blair after it was revealed that the US president's staff told him he was not welcome in the White House.Aides to the Conservative leader confirmed that Howard had been told in February that he should not pursue plans to visit the White House after he had called on the prime minister to resign over claims about the threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
The extraordinary statement came after revelations in yesterday's Sun newspaper that Bush's closest aide, Karl Rove, had phoned Howard's advisers to tell him: 'You can forget about meeting the president full stop. Don't bother coming. You are not meeting him.'
Howard hit back last night with an unrepentant statement: 'A Conservative government would work very closely with President Bush or President Kerry but my job as leader of the opposition is to say things as I see them in the interests of our country and to hold our government to account.
'If some people in the White House, in their desire to protect Mr Blair, think I am too tough on Mr Blair or too critical of him, they are entitled to their opinion. But I shall continue to do my job as I see fit.'
One senior Howard aide said: 'The story relating to events in February is true. Michael attacked Tony Blair over his failure to recognise the nature of the threat to British bases in Cyprus and called on him to resign.'
The row is all the more extraordinary as the Conservatives and the Republicans have, in the past, been seen as the closest of political allies - epitomised by the close friendship between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
From today's Houston Chronicle, "With GOP, what you see not necessarily what you get":
If the Federal Trade Commission happens to watch the Republican National Convention, it may be moved to take action against the quadrennial political show. It will be a classic case of bait-and-switch.On display will be virtually every major figure in the party who supports abortion rights, gay rights, embryonic stem-cell research or even gun control. But then the party will renominate a president who is for little, if any, of that.
It will be the same George W. Bush who four years ago, at a similarly arch display in Philadelphia, trumpeted himself as a "compassionate conservative" then produced the most hard-right administration in years and record federal deficits.
Given the promise of 2000 and the performance of the past four years, it's amazing chutzpah, even for New York, even for Madison Square Garden. The Bush campaign counts heavily on Americans' incredibly short political memories.
The need for Republicans to take this approach is clear, but if you need some reinforcing data, look no further than the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC poll.
The Bush policies that have cemented his position with the unshakable right, the heart of the Republican base, leave him vulnerable and unconvincing to centrist voters who may decide the election.
This may be one reason that Bush's narrow lead nationally in the survey, 47-45 percent, disappears in 17 closely contested states, where the Journal-NBC poll found John Kerry 4 percentage points up.
What to do, in terms of its quadrennial convention, has been obvious to Republican planners for months: Put on a prime-time festival of moderation, featuring, in key speaking roles, party leaders who are as left as they come, which is, of course, not very left at all.
The leading quartet is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, Gov. George Pataki of New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City and his predecessor, Rudolph Giuliani.
It's Karl Rove dealing a game of three-card monte on Seventh Avenue.
"An unfortunate charade, a masquerade ball," Elizabeth Cavendish, interim president of NARAL-Pro Choice America, said as the Republican platform committee turned aside muted efforts from within the party to soften its call for a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion.
Professional Republicans approach this, uh, dichotomy in several ways.
Elected officials, such as Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, a long-time party strategist and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, are magnanimous with the more moderate elements of the party, which they can be because their side has many more votes.
"They represent millions of Republicans," Barbour said of social moderates. "They're just as good a Republican as I am."
Representatives of more doctrinaire factions are dismissive.
"They're noisy and ineffective," said Richard Lessner, executive director of the American Conservative Union.
"They show up and they complain. The fact is that the vast majority of Republicans are pro-life, and that's why they prevail."
Supporters of abortion rights within the party "are swimming against the tide," Lessner said.
Cavendish dared the party to feature its antiabortion position during the convention.
Feeling that it is a losing position for Republicans in general if fully aired, she urged the party to "talk about it in prime time," not just in a platform that, if the past is a guide, will be debated briefly, if at all, and passed before the major networks tune in for their brief bit of coverage.
That would change nothing within the party, Lessner said, again accentuating the powerlessness of moderates to affect GOP policy.
"Any prospect they have to become the majority view within the party is so remote as to be out of view," Lessner said.
Phyllis Schlafly, veteran conservative campaigner, said she was happy as long as the moderates' "views are not reflected in the platform."
"They are getting all the prime time," Schlafly said, but Pataki, Bloomberg and Giuliani are convention hosts, she conceded, so "we kind of have to be courteous."
Two new official reports on the treatment of foreign prisoners have dragged the Bush administration and Pentagon brass a couple of steps closer to facing the truth about how and why U.S. soldiers and interrogators committed scores of acts of torture and abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan. An Army investigation released yesterday showed that culpability for the criminal mistreatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison lay not just with a handful of reserve soldiers but with more than two dozen military intelligence officers and civilian contractors. On Tuesday a panel appointed by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld demolished the fiction, clung to until now by President Bush, Mr. Rumsfeld and the Pentagon's whitewashers, that prisoner abuse in Iraq was an aberration for which no senior officials were responsible. "The abuses were not just the failure of some individuals to follow known standards, and they are more than the failure of a few leaders to enforce proper discipline," said the report of the panel chaired by former defense secretary James R. Schlesinger. "There is both institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels."[…]
These errors point to a fundamental lack of competence on the part of Mr. Rumsfeld and senior commanders in conducting the war. But even more important, in our view, is the panel's support for the truth most fiercely resisted by the administration and its allies: that the crimes at Abu Ghraib were, in part, the result of the 2002 decision by the president and his top aides to set aside the Geneva Conventions as well as standard U.S. doctrines for the treatment of prisoners. Mr. Bush's political appointees in the Justice and Defense departments redefined the meaning of torture and pressed for interrogation techniques regarded by the Pentagon's own lawyers as excessive. Those techniques, the report says, "migrated to Afghanistan and Iraq where they were neither limited nor safeguarded." In Iraq, commanding Lt. Gen Ricardo S. Sanchez, "using reasoning from the President's memorandum" of 2002, approved some practices that had been outlawed at the Guantanamo Bay prison -- even though detainees in Iraq, unlike those at Guantanamo, were covered by the Geneva Conventions.
(Washington Post editorial, Aug. 26)
Every American who pays federal income taxes benefited from the Bush tax cuts, and so has our economy. For the last 11 consecutive months we've created jobs -- since last August, about 1.5 million new jobs.Vice President Dick Cheney
Remarks by the Vice President at a Victory 2004 Rally
Pottsville, Pennsylvania
August 25, 2004
Cheney is too smart to sound stupid on the campaign trail. Instead, he lies:
"Every American who pays federal income taxes benefited from the Bush tax cuts …."
President George W. Bush's tax cuts have transferred the federal tax burden from the richest Americans to middle-class families, with one-third of the cuts benefiting people with the top 1 percent of income, according to a government report cited in newspapers Friday.[. . .]
Taxpayers whose incomes range from $51,500 to about $75,600 saw their share of federal tax payments increase, according to CBO figures cited by The Washington Post. (CNN)
". . .and so has our economy."
The White House continues to claim its tax cuts have brought an economic recovery to the nation. In the short term, the tax cuts did modestly boost consumer spending.But the jury's still out on a larger economic recovery. The administration is quick to latch onto positive news, but slow to explain the less-than-stellar economic news.
[. . .]
There is also the matter of the government's record deficit, created in part by an increase in war spending and the cost of the Bush tax cuts. Smarter minds than us are warning that the administration has boxed itself in. It can't cut taxes again to spur more job growth and the Fed isn't likely to drop interest rates to help the economy heat back up.
There are plenty of morals to this economic story, the most obvious being the nation's need to wean itself from foreign oil.
The other is that a president up for re-election can't jawbone the country into believing in an economic recovery. Especially when the economic numbers still show a bear, not a bull. (The Saginaw (MI) News)
"For the last 11 consecutive months we've created jobs -- since last August, about 1.5 million new jobs."
This one may be technically true, but it ignores the full picture:
The economy has 1.1 million fewer jobs than the day Bush took office, making it more than likely he will join Herbert Hoover as the second president to see the nation suffer a net job loss on his watch. The economy is 7 million jobs short of the level the White House had predicted when trying to sell the tax cuts.[. . .]
"The economy is strong, and it's getting better," Bush said in the Oval Office on Monday, repeating a months-old mantra from the campaign trail. "In spite of a recession, emergency, attacks, war and corporate scandals, we're growing, and growing quite substantially. We've added nearly 1.5 million jobs over the last 12 months."
The president did not mention that those went toward replacing 2.6 million that were lost during his term. (Washington Post)
Employers added 32,000 workers to their payrolls in July, the smallest monthly gain since December and the fourth consecutive month in which the pace of job growth has slowed, the Labor Department reported.Hiring also was weaker in May and June than previously thought, according to the department's revisions of earlier figures, which sliced 61,000 jobs off the earlier totals. That means the economy added an average of 106,000 jobs a month since May, far below the 150,000 monthly pace many economists believe is needed to keep up with population growth. (Washington Post)
The economic numbers are bad enough - the manipulation of the facts is worse.
From the President's Remarks at Ask President Bush Event
Hudson, Wisconsin
August 18, 2004I'll tell you what else will make America a better place. It's a place where those of us in government understand the limitations of government. See, money can hand out -- (applause.) Government hands out money, but it cannot put hope in a person's life. That happens when people who have been called to love a neighbor step up and put their arm around a lonely soul, or somebody who hurts, or somebody who needs compassion, and says, what can I do, how can I help you. And so I'm running again to continue to rally the armies of compassion, to encourage people who want to love a neighbor like they'd like to be loved themselves to continue to do so. And equally as well is to open up federal monies, federal grants to faith-based organizations, people that are able to -- (applause.)
One of the examples I like to use is if somebody is addicted to drugs, sometimes a counselor can work. But a lot of times it requires a change of heart in order to change life. And the faith-based programs are those programs that are able to help a person change their heart, to get them less hooked on drugs or alcohol. And so there's a -- part of my vision is for a better country. I want everybody in America to realize the great promise of this land.
Just so we get it straight: Government can't fix social problems, we need the "armies of compassion" to do that. Government hand outs don't work, but government hand outs to faith-based organizations do because they "encourage people who want to love a neighbor like they'd like to be loved themselves to continue to do so."
Of course, if a faith-based organization or anyone else wants to love a gay neighbor by supporting her full and equal rights, that's not okay. It's also not okay to love a neighbor in trouble by helping her find abortion services. Sex ed about anything other than abstinence? Not neighborly. Nor is increased spending for social services. Tax cuts are way more neighborly.
It's the Bush Social Doctrine, and it stinks like road kill on a hot Crawford day. It's ludicrous that he's campaigning on this record.
From "Do You Hear What I Hear?" by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post:
The 2004 presidential campaign sometimes resembles the children's game of "telephone." Here are some quotations as they came out of Democratic nominee John F. Kerry's mouth -- and how President Bush and Vice President Cheney later recounted them."Every performer tonight in their own way, either verbally or through their music, through their lyrics, have conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country." -- Kerry, July 8
"The other day, my opponent said he thought you could find the heart and soul of America in Hollywood." -- Bush, Aug. 18
"My goal, my diplomacy, my statesmanship is to get our troops reduced in number and I believe if you do the statesmanship properly, I believe if you do the kind of alliance building that is available to us, that it's appropriate to have a goal of reducing the troops over that period of time [the first six months of a Kerry administration]. Obviously, we'd have to see how events unfold. . . . It is an appropriate goal to have and I'm going to try to achieve it." -- Kerry, Aug. 9
"I took exception when my opponent said if he's elected, we'll substantially reduce the troops in six months. He shouldn't have said that. See, it sends a mixed signal to the enemy for starters. So the enemy hangs around for six months and one day. . . . It says, maybe America isn't going to keep its word." -- Bush, Aug. 18
[. . . skipping another sample of Cheney's hypocritical riff on "sensitive war". . .]
"Lee Hamilton, the co-chairman of the 9/11 commission, has said this administration is not moving with the urgency necessary to respond to our needs. I believe this administration and its policies is actually encouraging the recruitment of terrorists. We haven't done the work necessary to reach out to other countries. We haven't done the work necessary with the Muslim world. We haven't done the work necessary to protect our own ports, our chemical facilities, our nuclear facilities. There is a long, long list in the 9/11 recommendations that are undone." -- Kerry, Aug. 2
"My opponent says . . . that going to war with the terrorists is actually improving their recruiting efforts. I think the logic -- I know the logic is upside down. It shows a misunderstanding of the nature of these people. See, during the 1990s, these killers and terrorists were recruiting and training for war with us, long before we went to war with them. They don't need an excuse for their hatred. It's wrong to blame America for anger and the evil of these killers. We don't create terrorists by fighting back. You defeat the terrorists by fighting back." -- Bush, Aug. 18
"Yes, I would have voted for the authority [to use force in Iraq]. I believe it is the right authority for a president to have. But I would have used that authority, as I have said throughout this campaign, effectively. I would have done this very differently from the way President Bush has. My question to President Bush is: Why did he rush to war without a plan to win the peace? Why did he rush to war on faulty intelligence and not do the hard work necessary to give America the truth?" -- Kerry, Aug. 9
"He now agrees it was the right decision to go into Iraq. After months of questioning my motives, and even my credibility, the Massachusetts senator now agrees with me that even though we have not found the stockpiles of weapons we all believed were there, knowing everything we know today, he would have voted to go into Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power." -- Bush, Aug. 18
President Bush defended his pursuit of a costly missile defense system on Tuesday and said those who oppose the idea do not understand the dangers the country faces in the 21st century.[. . .]
Bush said a system to shoot down any incoming missiles armed with chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons is needed to defend the country.
"We want to continue to perfect this system, so we say to those tyrants who believe they can blackmail America and the free world: 'You fire, we're going to shoot it down."'
Bush said those who oppose the system "really don't understand the threats of the 21st century. They're living in the past." (Reuters)
1) "Continue to perfect" implies that the system is effective. It isn't. And with Bush's plan it's ineffective to the tune of about $50 billion over the next five years.
2) "So we say to those tyrants who believe they can blackmail America and the free world: 'You fire, we're going to shoot it down'" - even a White House news release stops short of that kind of reckless bravado:
Missile Defense: The United States will soon begin the operational deployment of an initial capability to defend against long-range ballistic missiles from rogue states such as North Korea. While this initially will be a limited capability, it will provide a basis for improvements as the threats and technologies evolve.
Maybe Bush should hold off on his "You fire" version of diplomacy until then.
3) Those who oppose the system "really don't understand the threats of the 21st century" - the mind boggles. Long range missile defense of the type Bush is touting was Reagan's baby in the '80s, as in the 1980s, as in the 20th century. It would have done nothing to prevent the attacks on September 11th, 2001. It would do nothing to protect us from chemical, biological, or nuclear device smuggled into this country.
There are better ways to spend 50 billion dollars.
Since the attacks of Sept. 11, the president and his administration have converged a religious fundamentalist worldview with a political agenda -- a distinctly partisan one, wrapped in the mantle of national interest but crafted by and for only those who share their outlook. It is a modern form of political fundamentalism -- that is, the adaptation of a self-proclaimed conservative Christian rectitude, by way of strategic language choices and communication approaches designed for a mass-media culture, into political policy.Motivated by this ideology, the Bush administration has sought to control public discourse and to engender a climate of nationalism in which the public views presidential support as a patriotic duty and Congress (and the United Nations) is compelled to rubber-stamp administration policies.
The goal is a national mood of spiritual superiority under the guise of a just sovereignty. The ultimate irony is that in combating the Islamic extremists responsible for Sept. 11, the administration has crafted, pursued and engendered its own brand of political fundamentalism -- one that, while clearly tailored to a modern democracy, nonetheless functions ideologically in a manner similar to the version offered by the terrorists.
David Domke in the Seattle Post Intelligencer
In a tightly wound city of soaring bridges, mysterious tunnels and towers that reach into the clouds, how do you make sure that terrorists won't strike again?I would focus on little things - like making sure folks can't wander onto the grounds of Kennedy Airport without permission.
I would focus on big things - like seeing that Washington gives New York at least as much anti-terrorism money per capita as Wyoming gets.
I would focus on challenges - like getting Washington's intelligence spooks to share what they know with others who may need to know it.
But then, my name isn't John Ashcroft, and I don't run the U.S. Justice Department.
Ashcroft is a strange one.
The attorney general never seems happier than when he's using dubious, heavy-handed methods in defense of classic American freedoms. And at the same time, as the dreary fight against terrorism drags on, he always seems ready to send his troops to the places where we need them least.
This week, for example, The New York Times reported that the FBI has dispatched counterterrorism squads to seek out and chat up a list of known anti-war protesters. Agents are also contacting friends and relatives of these official malcontents. How this exercise will make New York City safer as the Republican National Convention opens here at the end of this month is not immediately clear.
The feds portray the drill as just a friendly house call - a counseling session, really - from your old buddies in Washington. But the subtext is clear: Washington has taken pains to let a premium list of hard-core anti-war, anti-Bush types know that it has cast suspicious eyes upon them. So forget the smooth words. This is a warning.
But - niceties aside - is this message necessary?
Give me a break. These are excruciating times, no doubt about it. But opposition to the war in Iraq does not mean you're squishy on terrorism. Neither does a march through the streets of Manhattan to vent your notions - however half-baked or astute - about President George W. Bush and his war of choice. Several hundred years of American history say this could even be construed as a patriotic act.
So does common sense. Someone needs to speak truth to power. And yes, it helps to have the cameras rolling in a public venue while you are doing your talking.
For their part, the leaders of the biggest anti-war protest while the Republicans meet in the city - a bunch called United for Peace and Justice - say they haven't met up yet with the Ashcroft visitation team. Still, grouses group spokesman Bill Dobbs: "The right to protest in this country is being hammered."
He's right. The New York Police Department likes to keep protesters - as well as the press - in metal pens. At the Democratic convention in Boston, the cops essentially kept demonstrators in cages.
No one denies the need for tight security in these times. No one wants a repeat of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. No one wants a replay of the more recent mayhem that broke out at meetings on world trade.
But there's a big difference between ensuring an orderly march and ringing marchers' doorbells in the magic name of counterterrorism. For all their sparring over a march route and other details, I think the NYPD and United for Peace and Justice want the same thing at the end of the day - a safe production.
But what about Ashcroft? Why are his counterterrorism guys fishing in these waters? I don't think al-Qaida will have a major presence among the expected 250,000 protesters as the extravaganza unfolds.
There are quick answers to this: They're doing it because they don't want to see Bush embarrassed. They're doing it because they hate unrest of any variety. They're doing it because they're jittery about security in general. They're doing it because they can. I don't know the right answer.
I just know that Ashcroft needs to back off now and let America be America.
Joseph Dolman in New York Newsday
The President has found another reason why Iraqis were lucky to have hosted the American occupation:
At a speech in Beaverton, Ore., last Friday, Bush attached himself to the Iraqi soccer team after its opening-game upset of Portugal. "The image of the Iraqi soccer team playing in this Olympics, it's fantastic, isn't it?" Bush said. "It wouldn't have been free if the United States had not acted."
Bush is so proud of the Iraqi soccer team’s accomplishments in Athens that he added a reference to the team in his latest campaign ad.
In those spots, the flags of Iraq and Afghanistan appear as a narrator says, "At this Olympics there will be two more free nations -- and two fewer terrorist regimes."
Of course, this does not sit well with the Iraqi athletes themselves, who are decidedly angry at the Bush team’s frequent campaign-related references to their success.
"Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign," [Salih] Sadir told SI.com through a translator, speaking calmly and directly. "He can find another way to advertise himself."Ahmed Manajid, who played as a midfielder on Wednesday, had an even stronger response when asked about Bush's TV advertisement. "How will he meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women?" Manajid told me. "He has committed so many crimes."
Bad News on the Charter Front, op-ed in yesterday's New York Times:The Bush administration's education program received a devastating setback this week when long-awaited federal data showed that children in charter schools were performing worse on math and reading tests than their counterparts in regular public schools. Among other things, the data casts doubt on a central provision of the No Child Left Behind Act that encourages the states to hand over failing schools to commercial companies and nonprofit community groups that want to run them as charter schools.
Such schools can circumvent some union rules and customary management methods while operating outside the influence of school boards and state authorities.
The new data is consistent with what states like Michigan and California have already learned about the pitfalls of the charter process. There have been individual success stories among the charter schools, but no one seems to have found the key to replicating them on a wider basis. And eliminating the much-criticized educational bureaucracy seems to have created at least as many problems as it has solved.
In addition to poor academic performance, there have been many cases of financial and administrative failures. Some charter schools have been forced to close after being cited for financial irregularities that resulted from a lack of oversight by the states and the local school boards. In some cases, charter schools that boasted about high student achievement have been unwilling to share test data that would support their claims. Others have been accused of generating better scores by screening out the disabled and dumping weaker students back into the public system.
The new data that came to public attention this week was unearthed from a mound of federal reports, where it seemed to have been buried. While government officials denied that they were trying to hide the report, there's no denying that it casts a cloud on the gospel of privatization pushed by the Bush administration.
The report shows that there is nothing magical about the charter system when it comes to rebuilding failing schools. Instead of encouraging the states to set up thousands of unsupervised charter schools, the education secretary, Rod Paige, and his associates should concentrate on the No Child Left Behind provisions that require the states to place a qualified teacher in every classroom and make sure that all of the country's children are being held to the same high standards. That means more oversight and more scrutiny by the states, not less.
See news report here.
