Mark Morford:  George W. Bush Means Nothing
Posted Friday, August 1, 2003 by vgdesign

Note to self: The demons of sour conservatism cannot touch anything that truly matters. Just FYI

You cannot reach me, Dubya.

Go ahead, ya smirkin' Texas lug, stumble around all scrunched and blank eyed and pseudo-manly, shove this country into a bloody unwinnable war and lie about all the reasons why, gouge the economy and ruin the schools and embarrass the nation every single day as you mangle grammar and meaning and truth. It doesn't really matter.

Go ahead, toss those useless $400 rebate checks to the depressed and jobless populace as some sort of bogus humanitarian gesture as you quietly force an increase in their property taxes to pay for your record-breaking deficit brought on by the tax cut no one wants. Ha. You are so cute.

There is so much more going on than you know. There is so much deeper understanding and wider knowledge and higher winking and you can't touch any of it. Do you know this? You need to know this. >>More

Payments for Perle
Posted Friday, August 1, 2003 by vgdesign

By Ari Berman, The Nation

An odd thing happened in February when a European television station approached Richard Perle for an interview. Millions of antiwar protesters had rocked the globe a week prior, and the station badly wanted Perle, as chairman of the influential Defense Policy Board, to articulate the Pentagon's Iraq policy. But Perle, as he continues to do today, demanded a fee. Though startled by the request, the news station violated its strict no-pay policy for interviews and obliged the chairman.

The station's experience was not unique. During and after his chairmanship, Perle used his insider status to demand fees for appearances on a number of foreign broadcasts, which included British, Canadian, Japanese and South Korean television. While paying interviewees is common practice in some countries, a number of media outlets made exceptions for Perle. "We did pay Perle because of his position [in a] prominent advisorship to the Secretary of Defense," says a European correspondent who, like most journalists interviewed, requested anonymity because of network discomfort at publicly discussing payment policies.

Fees ranged from under $100 to $900--minor sums to someone like Perle, but federal regulations covering officials in his capacity make no distinctions based on amount. >>More

John Pilger:  War on truth
Posted Friday, August 1, 2003 by vgdesign

The White House sets the tone and the media echo a line that celebrates the victimhood of the invader and the evil of the Iraqis. And then London takes its cue.

We're above nations. We control the control
I'll eat you all in the end.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, on America

In Baghdad, the rise and folly of rapacious imperial power is commemorated in a forgotten cemetery called the North Gate. Dogs are its visitors; the rusted gates are padlocked, and skeins of traffic fumes hang over its parade of crumbling headstones and unchanging historical truth.

Lieutenant-General Sir Stanley Maude is buried here, in a mausoleum befitting his station, if not the cholera to which he succumbed. In 1917, he declared: "Our armies do not come . . . as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators." Within three years, 10,000 had died in an uprising against the British, who gassed and bombed those they called "miscreants". It was an adventure from which British imperialism in the Middle East never recovered.

Every day now, in the United States, the all-pervasive media tell Americans that their bloodletting in Iraq is well under way, although the true scale of the attacks is almost certainly concealed. Soon, more soldiers will have been killed since the "liberation" than during the invasion. Sustaining the myth of "mission" is becoming difficult, as in Vietnam.

This is not to doubt the real achievement of the invaders' propaganda, which was the suppression of the truth that most Iraqis opposed both the regime of Saddam Hussein and the Anglo-American assault on their homeland. >>More

Arrogance, or something darker?
Posted Thursday, July 31, 2003 by vgdesign

By John David Rose, Carolina Morning News

If you want to know why 9/11 was allowed to happen you may not have to look any further than the Oval Office.

A little more than a month before the attack, in his Aug. 6 daily intelligence briefing, Bush was "told that morning of the al-Qaida terror network's interest in conducting a strike within the U.S., and that it might involve highjacked airplanes," reports the Wall Street Journal (7/24/03.)

Why didn't he order airlines to be alerted, inform the Federal Aviation Administration of the threat, put the military air commands on a high level of readiness and tell the FBI, CIA and INS to be super vigilant?

He brushed the warning aside.
...
But perhaps the Bushies had a reason for ignoring the warnings. Something brushed over in the Congressional 9/11 report suggests the possibility of one of the worst conspiracies of American history. >>More

State Department: Bush Renews Sanctions on Iraq
Posted Thursday, July 31, 2003 by vgdesign

Certifies to Congress That Iraq Is a Continuing Threat

President Bush has formally renewed the U.S. sanctions against Iraq, citing continued instability in the country, as well as the need to "ensure the establishment of a process leading to representative Iraqi self-rule."

To extend the sanctions, the president certified to Congress that Iraq continues to pose a threat to the United States. Former President George Bush first imposed sanctions on Iraq on August 2, 1990.

Following is the text of the certification notice: >>More

Robert Fisk: America Increasing Pressure on Al-Jazeera TV
Posted Thursday, July 31, 2003 by vgdesign

BAGHDAD - Only a day after US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz claimed that the Arabic Al-Jazeera television channel was “inciting violence” and “endangering the lives of American troops” in Iraq, the station’s Baghdad bureau chief has written a scathing reply to the American administration, complaining that in the past month the station’s offices and staff in Iraq “have been subject to strafing by gunfire, death threats, confiscation of news material, and multiple detentions and arrests, all carried out by US soldiers...”

The unprecedented dispute between an Anglo-American occupation authority supposedly dedicated to “democracy” in Iraq and an Arab station once praised by Washington for its services to free speech in the Arab world comes at a time when the US administration appears to be laying the ground work to close down Al-Jazeera’s operations in Iraq — along with those of the Arabia channel — for alleged “incitement to violence”.

America’s senior occupation proconsul in Iraq, Paul Bremer, has officially stated that he would close down newspapers or television stations guilty of “incitement to violence” — without, of course, explaining exactly what this phrase means. >>More

As soldiers die, Bush-Blair-Cheney lie
Posted Thursday, July 31, 2003 by vgdesign

By Bruce S. Ticker, The Smirking Chimp

Philadelphia - If the retired George Bush was casting a line for fish from his boat outside his Kennebunkport home on Sunday, Etta McMillin was told that she lost her 29-year-old son in Iraq that day.

The officers arrived at her Biddeford, Maine, home -- possibly within 10 miles of the Bush compound -- and informed her that her son, Heath, was killed when the military vehicle in which he was riding was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade. Her son had lived in New York state.

She told The Portland Press Herald: "They asked me if there were any words I would like them to take back. I said, 'Bring them all home.Get them out of there. They don't belong there.'" >>More

USA Means "Under Saudi Arabia"
Posted Thursday, July 31, 2003 by vgdesign

By Mike Hersh, MikeHersh.com - Dec 24, 2001

USA Means "Under Saudi Arabia" ...Thanks to the Bush Family

The Saudis bought both George W. Bush and his father. Ties between the Bush and bin Laden families, the Carlyle Group, and Saudi Arabia let the Riyadh regime beat America like a rented camel.

The Boston Herald  reported that members of both Bush administrations "reaped millions of dollars from arms and oil deals with the Saudi monarchy." There are clear indications this undue influence undermined our national security.

According to the Herald, we have to worry because "Those lucrative financial relationships call into question the ability of America's political elite to make tough foreign policy decisions about the kingdom that produced Osama bin Laden and is perhaps the biggest incubator for anti-Western Islamic terrorists."

How close are Bush family ties to Saudi Arabia? "Nowhere is the revolving U.S.-Saudi money wheel more evident than within President Bush's own coterie of foreign policy advisers, starting with the president's father, George H.W. Bush," explains this Herald  exposé.
>>More & Links

Times Editor to Select 'Reader Representative'
Posted Thursday, July 31, 2003 by vgdesign

By JACQUES STEINBERG, New York Times

Bill Keller, the new executive editor of The New York Times, announced yesterday that he would soon name a "public editor" to serve as a representative for the newspaper's readers.

Creation of the position was one of the recommendations of three internal committees named after damage to the newspaper's credibility and staff morale caused by the discovery last spring of extensive fabrications by a reporter.

Mr. Keller accepted the major recommendations yesterday, his first day as executive editor, and said the public editor, an ombudsman, would "have license to write about issues of our coverage, and to have those independent, uncensored commentaries published in our pages." >>More

[TBTM is looking forward to some "independent, uncensored commentaries" on that pesky little Judith Miller "issue"!]

Outrage over photos of Uday and Qusay's corpses
Posted Thursday, July 31, 2003 by vgdesign

World Views by Edward M. Gomez, San Francisco Chronicle

Bush's military leaders received little praise for their decision to give the media photos of the bloody corpses of Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, whom heavily armed U.S. soldiers killed during a five-hour raid in Mosul, in northern Iraq.

Kenya's Daily Nation editorialized, "Airing the bloody and gruesome photographs of the dead Husseins on TV was callous and insensitive. It was bad enough that the U.S. military did not exercise better judgment in executing the two when they could have captured them alive. To compound the mistake by gloating over and displaying the disfigured bodies to the public was tasteless and unprofessional."

Egypt's Al-Ahram, in a comment picked up in other regional publications, such as Kuwait's Arab Times, noted that "[t]he official American and Western position [against] the publication of the photos of the American dead [during the early days of the U.S.-led war in Iraq], then the publication of the photos of the bodies of Uday and Qusay, is an example of double standards."

Similarly, Al-Hayat scoffed, "What is the difference between showing pictures of dead American soldiers on a decision taken by the former Iraqi regime and publishing the photos of Udai and Qusai on a decision taken by the Pentagon?... The mentality is the same, and so are the objectives. But the American mind differentiates between one person and another, and even between two rights. What the Pentagon may do no one else may do." >>More

Iraq war may help al-Qaida, MPs report
Posted Thursday, July 31, 2003 by vgdesign

Press Association, The Guardian

The overthrow of Saddam Hussein has not lessened the security threat to Britain from weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism, MPs warned today.

The Commons foreign affairs committee said that the war in Iraq may actually have "impeded" efforts to combat Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terror network.

In a report on the foreign policy aspects of the war against terrorism, the committee said it was essential to rebuild relations with allies such as France, following the disagreements over Iraq, in order to tackle terrorism effectively. >>More

ACLU Files First-Ever Challenge to USA PATRIOT ACT
Posted Thursday, July 31, 2003 by vgdesign

American Civil Liberties Union

The ACLU files the first legal challenge to the USA PATRIOT Act, taking aim at a section of the controversial law that vastly expands the power of FBI agents to secretly obtain records and personal belongings of innocent people in the United States, including citizens and permanent residents.

"Ordinary Americans should not have to worry that the FBI is rifling through their medical records, seizing their personal papers, or forcing charities and advocacy groups to divulge membership lists," said Ann Beeson, Associate Legal Director of the ACLU and the lead attorney in the lawsuit.

"We know from our clients that the FBI is once again targeting ethnic, religious, and political minority communities disproportionately," she added. "Investing the FBI with unchecked authority to monitor the activities of innocent people is an invitation to abuse, a waste of resources, and is certainly not making any of us any safer." >>More

The usual mangled speech but Bush is let off the hook
Posted Thursday, July 31, 2003 by vgdesign

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington, The Independent

It didn't reveal much, but the White House press corps were grateful for anything. George Bush's press conference yesterday was only the ninth he has held in 30 months of office and a offered rare chance for reporters to get to grips with the most disciplined, and arguably the most secretive, White House of modern times. Except that they didn't.

This ought to have been a tricky occasion for the President. His poll ratings are sagging, budget deficits are ballooning, jobs are vanishing and American soldiers are dying almost daily in Iraq. And not one of Saddam's alleged weapons has turned up. But in the end it was a breeze.

The main lesson to emerge from the 50-minute session, the first since the invasion of Iraq four months ago, was how easily the chief executive evaded any serious damage - and how the reporters made it easy for him to do so.
...
As usual, reporters did not follow up each other's questions. At one point Mr Bush was pressed on the dodgy pre-war intelligence (and the even dodgier use made of it) about Saddam's supposed weapons' programmes. Predictably, he launched into an answer about how much better the world off was without Saddam Hussein.

The reporter pressed him but Mr Bush cut him off, calling the next question >>More

CIA 'questioned UK uranium claim'
Posted Thursday, July 31, 2003 by symbolman

The CIA called into question UK claims in last September's dossier that Saddam Hussein was buying in uranium from Africa even before the document was published, it has been confirmed.

The Foreign Office in London - which made the admission - also said that, despite US concerns, Britain decided to go ahead and publish the claims because they believed their intelligence to be reliable.

A decision was therefore taken not to include the doubts expressed by America.

The news comes in the latest report by the Commons foreign affairs committee which has been investigating the way the government's case for war with Iraq was presented.>> More

How is it that this Uranium from some "African" country is/was so much of a concern, yet little is being reported that Iraq already had tons of the stuff? (UN knew it was there, and had it in a secure site)

We can recall our own (US) troops going in, breaking the IAEA seals on a containment facility in Iraq, then saying "AHA!!! We found WMD!!!". Then it was revised to "Oops, our bad". The troops then left this site unguarded. The place was looted, radiocative barrels dumped and used as drinking water containers of all things.

BUSH KNEW. He's claimed responsibility - so with this Admission we need to begin the process of Impeachment and Indictment.

Bush Considers New Overhaul of Postwar Iraq Administration
Posted Thursday, July 31, 2003 by symbolman

White House Aims to Address Concerns as Cost, Casualties Mount.

President Bush is contemplating the second overhaul in three months of his post-war administration of Iraq, as the White House faces up to the enormity of the task and the need to demonstrate progress to maintain political support for the effort, administration officials said today.

A series of polls has show U.S. voters becoming increasingly impatient at the prospects of large number of troops remaining in Iraq indefinitely, as the cost rises and guerrilla attacks continue inflicting military casualties long past the fall of Saddam Hussein's government.

As part of an effort to beef up the reconstruction, the White House is considering asking several major figures, including former secretary of state James A. Baker III, to help with specific tasks like seeking funds from other countries or helping restructure Iraq's debt.

An aide said Baker is on vacation, and he did not immediately return messages left at his law firm, Baker Botts LLP in Houston.>> More

They don't even hide their plan anymore - Baker IS the CARLYLE GROUP and if you haven't heard of them you better start GOOGLING them NOW. They are part of the controlling interests that have LIED us into this mess. They make the bombs and tell Bush WHERE TO POINT and scream "Terrorists!" so that we buy more of their bombs - over and over again our tax dollars make them all rich. And they keep killing our troops daily as part of their War Machine while they frighten Americans to death daily with faked enemies, infantile color coded "alerts" and plain DAMN lies. You are being GAMED America and you'd better wake up and start PROTESTING or we may be frightened sheep PAYING for the experience the rest of our lives. IMPEACH BUSH for War Profiteering and Indict his Henchmen.

War veteran questions Iraq decisions, vet apathy
Posted Thursday, July 31, 2003 by symbolman

As Medal of Honor winner Paul Bucha stood to speak to a convention of Vietnam veterans in St. Louis on Wednesday, he removed the distinctive blue-ribboned medal from around his neck and tucked it inside the lectern.

Bucha spoke to the national convention of the Vietnam Veterans of America, at the Adam's Mark Hotel. As he took off the medal at the start of his speech, he said, "With what I'm going to tell you today it's inappropriate to wear it."

Bucha then proceeded to tear into federal officials, accusing them of:

Branding those who question the war in Iraq as unpatriotic.

Going into Iraq without a clearly defined mission.

Stinting on benefits for veterans.

Bucha insisted that the veterans had earned the right to criticize the war in Iraq. But he told his fellow veterans, "Those who have been there have got to stand up and say, `We fought for the right to question.' "

The convention's major theme is health care for veterans. The U.S. House recently cut $1.8 billion from the budget for such care.

President George W. Bush will speak Aug. 26 at the Convention Center to the 13,000 delegates to the national convention of the American Legion, which has 2.7 million members.>> More

Haven't people learned it YET? Look at the trend - whenever Bush shows up to give a speech at a function they immediately cut funding for that organization. Looks like Bush is cutting Veterans benefits in advance and saving himself a little time since he's on vacation while the economy sinks and TROOPS DIE DAILY in Iraq for his LIES. IMPEACH Him now. Save the troops.

7 more cases of mystery illness from Iraq
Posted Thursday, July 31, 2003 by symbolman

LAKE OF THE OZARKS -- Seven more soldiers in Iraq have contracted the same puzzling illness that has killed two soldiers, including one from the lake area.

The latest cases bring the number of affected troops to 19. All have been evacuated to the same Landstuhl, Germany, hospital where Spec. Josh Neusche, 20, of Montreal was treated before he died July 12.

It is believed Neusche contracted the illness, first thought to be pneumonia, while conducting cleanup operations with the 203rd Engineer Battalion in Baghdad.

U.S. Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. James Peake has ordered teams of medical experts and epidemiology specialists to retrace the soldiers' steps from the second they set foot in the Middle East.

When Neusche's parents arrived in Germany on July 9, the illness had already begun ravaging his muscles, liver and kidneys. Neusche died in an ambulance on the way to another hospital for dialysis.

Cindi and Mark Neusche said that as they watched their son's health get worse, they noticed other soldiers were beginning to fill nearby hospital rooms.

Acute respiratory distress syndrome, which mimics some of the symptoms exhibited by the ailing soldiers usually targets the lungs and is not known to break down other organs.>> More

THIS should be bigger news folks - what if the mystery illness IS a WMD - just delayed a bit? If someone was attacking my country and I was disarmed and doomed I might as well infect the troops so they bring it back home with them - guess I'd win in the end. This is frightening - who is covering it in the media? FOXCNNABCCBSNEWS?

Hail, Tony Blair! British Blisterers Saved Democracy
Posted Wednesday, July 30, 2003 by vgdesign

By Philip Weiss, New York Observer

In sandals and open shirts, with earrings, poor posture, black jeans and mumbling plummy accents, a bunch of English journalists shuffled into the New School University on July 24 to remind their coalition partners what it is to be a journalist.

The last British invasion of American journalism, over a decade ago, schooled us in celebrity, toadying, aristocracy and Diana’s bling-bling. This one is about something else entirely: the role of an independent press in an imperial society.

The conference at the New School, titled "The Media at War," was hosted by The Guardian  newspaper and New York  magazine. The Guardian  has lately established a beachhead in America because readers here (two million a month, it says) have sought out the war coverage on its superb Web site. Those readers are getting a strong alternative voice that is not available in our own mainstream media.

"When the President comes into the room, American journalists stand erect with their backs rigid, British journalists stay slouched in their chairs," John Kampfner, a reporter for the British Broadcasting Corporation, said at the conference. "American journalists regard the people in authority as good men who should have the benefit of the doubt. In Britain, we work on the assumption that they need to prove to us that we should believe them." >>More

IRAQ: CPJ calls on U.S. for information about detained Iranian journalists
Posted Wednesday, July 30, 2003 by vgdesign

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

Dear Mr. Bremer:

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is concerned about the fact that U.S. forces have detained Said Abu Taleb and Soheil Kareemi, two journalists with Iranian State Television, since July 1.

Iranian journalists in Iran's capital, Tehran, and an Iranian journalist in Iraq's capital, Baghdad, told CPJ that both men were working on a documentary film for Iran's Channel 2 television in Diwaniyah, a town in southern Iraq. Gholem Reza Kutchak, Islamic Republic Iran Broadcasting chief in Baghdad, was quoted in news reports as saying that on July 7, U.S. forces confiscated the journalists' belongings from a hotel in Karbala, in southern Iraq.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported today that a coalition spokesman told reporters that the journalists were being held for committing "security violations" and that they were "not acting in a journalistic capacity when they were arrested." However, CPJ would like to know the basis for those accusations. CPJ has yet to receive a response from Centcom for information regarding the detention of these journalists.

We are also investigating reports that U.S. troops have recently harassed other journalists. For example, AFP reported yesterday that Japanese cameraman Kazutaka Sato, of the independent news outlet Japan Press, was beaten and briefly detained by U.S. troops in Baghdad after he filmed the bodies of people being removed from a car after they were killed in a raid by U.S. forces. During the weekend, other wire services reported that U.S. troops briefly detained four Turkish journalists and a correspondent with the Qatar-based satellite channel Al-Jazeera. >>More

[Of course, American journalists are not investigating this. They should--because they will be next. - Robert Fisk]