The Prosecution Calls - The TomPaine.com Staff
Posted Thursday, July 24, 2003 by symbolman

Paine Editor's note: Members of Congress and major media outlets are pushing for comprehensive investigations of the Bush administration's manipulation of intelligence data. Although Republicans impeached President Clinton for fudging about the tawdry hours he spent with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, they have blocked open inquiries into the verity of the statements that led the country to war. As the media's shadow trial of these statements heats up, we present a partial list of witnesses the prosecution should tap.

On WMD
David Albright
Of the Institute for Science and International Security.
On the aluminum tubes: "A knowledgeable government scientist told me that the administration could say anything it wanted and about the tubes while government scientists who disagreed were expected to remain quiet."

Hans Blix
Former Chief Weapons Inspector for the United Nations.
"We never said that we had evidence of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but rather that we had evidence that unanswered questions remained."

Mohamed ElBaradei
International Atomic Energy Agency Director.
"Mr. President, to conclude, we have to date found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapon program since the elimination of the program in the 1990s... we should be able within the next few months to provide credible assurance that Iraq has no nuclear weapon program.">> More

This is GOOD - a MUST READ - Chock full of links for every quote!

U.S. media misleading public on Iraq casualties
Posted Thursday, July 24, 2003 by vgdesign

By Matthew Riemer, YellowTimes.org

Media outlets have been spinning the information on U.S. casualties in a most curious way. Instead of regularly updating viewers and listeners concerning the number of killed and injured U.S. servicemen and women since the beginning of the war in Iraq, an insidious and disingenuous distinction is being emphasized more than ever: that of the "combat deaths" and the "non-combat deaths." Phrases like "hostile fire," "friendly fire," and "in-action deaths" are now commonplace in Washington's and the media's handbook of propaganda and euphemisms.

News agencies are constantly making the above distinction, reporting the number of U.S. soldiers killed by "hostile fire" as well as those killed in other ways but only keeping a running tabulation of those who have lost their lives in combat. Updates are almost unheard of regarding the number of casualties resulting from non-fatal injuries.

As of July 21st, 233 U.S. soldiers have died and over 1200 have been injured since Operation Iraqi Freedom began. Yet the media focuses only on those killed by "hostile fire" as if those killed in other ways or those simply injured are less important. An Internet search will reveal a thousand stories about the numbers killed by "hostile fire" to every one that offers the complete details. >>More

SAFIRE: Bush's Four Horsemen
Posted Thursday, July 24, 2003 by vgdesign

On the domestic front, President Bush is backing into a buzz saw.

The sleeper issue is media giantism. People are beginning to grasp and resent the attempt by the Federal Communications Commission to allow the Four Horsemen of Big Media — Viacom (CBS, UPN), Disney (ABC), Murdoch's News Corporation (Fox) and G.E. (NBC) — to gobble up every independent station in sight.

Couch potatoes throughout the land see plenty wrong in concentrating the power to produce the content we see and hear in the same hands that transmit those broadcasts. This is especially true when the same Four Horsemen own many satellite and cable providers and already influence key sites on the Internet. >>More

This BBC row is not about sources - it is about power
Posted Thursday, July 24, 2003 by vgdesign

Downing Street and Rupert Murdoch want revenge - By Jackie Ashley, Media Guardian

What a difference a day makes. The daily skirmishes between the government and BBC have seen both sides at various points claiming victory. On Sunday, when the BBC confirmed Dr David Kelly had been "the source" for its claims about the mishandling of intelligence information, the government was bullish. Now, following reports that the Newsnight's Susan Watts has a tape recording of her conversation with Dr Kelly, ministers are sounding less confident.

Yet the question now being asked is this: even if the BBC wins the battle (in other words is vindicated by the Hutton report), will it lose the war? Has the BBC, in defending Andrew Gilligan so robustly, brought about its own downfall?

For the word that recurs is "revenge". Downing Street insiders, ministers and backbench MPs are saying privately that No 10 intends to wreak vengeance on the BBC, whatever Lord Hutton decides. Forget palm pilots or tape-recordings; the real agenda now is to humble and curb Britain's public service broadcaster. This is not a row about journalistic standards. It is a fight about power. >>More

Pipes vote fails to draw quorum
Posted Thursday, July 24, 2003 by vgdesign

By Jennifer Salan, Arab American Institute

Washington, DC -- Today after a contentious executive session of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on the nomination of Daniel Pipes to the board of the U.S. Institute for Peace, the Committee lost a working quorum. Based on an AAI initiative, organizations present agreed that they would send a joint letter to the White House asking that the President withdraw this nominee from consideration.

During the Committee's discussion of the Pipes nomination, it became clear that many of the Senators had questions and concerns regarding whether or not Pipes should serve on the Board of the United States Institute of Peace. The ranking Democratic member, Senator Edward Kennedy, noted his dismay regarding Pipes offensive and alarmist quotes about "brown-skinned" immigrants. Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) agreed with Senator Kennedy and stated he was opposed to the Pipes nomination.
...
Senator John Warner (R-VA) added that given what he had heard, he had many more questions regarding the nominee and thought that it deserved closer investigation. At one point, Senator Kennedy could be seen leaning over to Committee Chairman Judd Gregg (R-NH) and whispering in his ear before leaving the room.

It was at that point that the Committee lost its working quorum. Previously the Committee had approved other nominees without debate and by unanimous consent. >>More

>>Arab American Institute information page on Daniel Pipes

Pelosi promises to wreak Democratic 'week from hell' on GOP legislation
Posted Thursday, July 24, 2003 by vgdesign

Tearful Thomas calls his action 'plain stupid' - By Carolyn Lochhead, San Francisco Chronicle

His voice trembling nearly to tears, Bakersfield Republican Bill Thomas -- one of the most acerbic and imperious members of Congress -- made an extraordinary apology on the House floor Wednesday for what he called his "just plain stupid" decision to ask Capitol Hill police to eject Democrats from a meeting room Friday.

But even as a publicly humiliated Thomas promised greater civility and bipartisanship, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi promised a "week from hell" of parliamentary guerrilla war to disrupt GOP legislation. Of Thomas' apology, she said, "That's not the end." >>More

>>GO Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi !

White House efforts to reframe Iraq debate complicated by shifting explanations
Posted Wednesday, July 23, 2003 by symbolman

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House has teamed with GOP congressional leaders in an aggressive damage-control campaign to counter embarrassing questions about prewar intelligence and lapses by President Bush's national security team.

But the effort is being hampered by an ever-changing White House story -- from first blaming the CIA and then the British to new revelations by Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley that contradict earlier statements by his boss, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Two high-ranking officials -- Hadley and CIA Director George Tenet -- have publicly apologized for not doing more to keep out of Bush's State of the Union address a discredited British claim that Iraq was trying to obtain raw uranium in Africa.

The president has dodged questions over whether he takes personal responsibility for those words.

Bush's approval ratings have been slumping. Recent surveys show that roughly half of Americans now believe the administration intentionally exaggerated the evidence for going to war.>> More

Hard to hold onto those slippery lies.

Journalist Eric Boehlert & John Hogan, CEO of Clear Channel Radio
Posted Wednesday, July 23, 2003 by vgdesign

Fresh Air with Terry Gross - Wednesday, July 23, 2003

Journalist Eric Boehlert writes for the online magazine Salon. He has been covering the story surrounding Clear Channel Communications Inc., a media conglomerate that owns 1,200 radio stations nationwide. Last January it was the subject of an inquiry by the Senate commerce committee because of claims that Clear Channel "bullies artists, replaces local programming with automated formats and uses hard-nosed tactics against competitors."

CEO of Clear Channel Radio, John Hogan. Radio is just a part of Clear Channel Worldwide, headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. It includes TV stations, outdoor advertising displays and live entertainment productions and venues throughout the United States and in 65 countries around the world. >>Listen

Free Press: Understanding Tuesday's House Vote
Posted Wednesday, July 23, 2003 by vgdesign

Some offices reported as many as 100 calls in the hour before the vote. The timing could not have been better.

Last night, advocates of rolling back the FCC rules won a huge victory. Why and how it was a victory is a complicated and remarkable story. Here’s how it happened.

After weeks of high-pressure backlash from public voices from across the political spectrum, the normally disciplined House Republicans first cracked last week. In the full committee mark-up of the CJS appropriations bill (which allocates funding for the FCC), 11 Republicans joined all 29 Democrats on the committee to successfully adopt an amendment offered by ranking Democrat Mr. David Obey. This amendment would block funding for the implementation of the new rule that would extend the national TV ownership cap from 35% to 45%.

Against pressure from Republican leaders and a veto threat from White House advisors, the passage of this amendment was highly significant. >>More

Press watchdog warns over Iraq safety
Posted Wednesday, July 23, 2003 by vgdesign

By Owen Gibson, Media Guardian

International press watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres has warned the US and British forces occupying Iraq that the current state of lawlessness could cause the nascent independent media groups in the country to be strangled at birth.

In a report on developments in the three months since the war that claimed the lives of at least 10 journalists, RSF said working conditions in the area were still perilous and attacks on the media were continuing.

Earlier this month, British freelance cameraman Richard Wild was shot and killed at point blank range in Baghdad while the Mosul bureau chief of a Kurdish TV station was also killed in an armed clash.

Now RSF has expressed fears that the new freedoms ushered in by the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime could be eroded. >>More

Miller's 2nd Draft of WMD History
Posted Wednesday, July 23, 2003 by vgdesign

'NY Times' Still Has Questions to Answer - By William E. Jackson Jr., Editor & Publisher

Buried in a July 19 New York Times  article ("British Arms Expert at Center of Dispute on Iraq Data Is Found Dead") by Warren Hoge and Judith Miller was a cryptic allusion: Dr. David Kelly referred to "many dark actors playing games" within military and intelligence circles of the British government. Kelly's remarks were included in an e-mail message to a reporter, sent shortly before Kelly committed suicide. The reporter, later identified in news reports, was none other than Miller, a friend of the deceased. As in the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq this past spring, she had become a subject of the news, not just a reporter of it.

The following day, the Times  published a story by Miller under her sole byline for the first time since she departed the war zone in May. Entitled "A Chronicle of Confusion in the U.S. Hunt for Hussein's Chemical and Germ Weapons," the lengthy analysis amounted to a mea culpa on the part of the star reporter and an attempt by "the newspaper of record" to play catch-up in covering the most controversial issue following the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- the search for the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that had been cited by the Bush administration as an imminent threat.

In effect, Miller substantially revised her first draft of history, written when reporting from the field as an embedded part of a Central Command search unit, some two months after her widely criticized stories had made the case that evidence of Saddam's unconventional weapons was being found. >>More

House votes 400-21 to throw out FCC media ownership rules
Posted Wednesday, July 23, 2003 by vgdesign

By Heather Fleming Phillips, Mercury News

A political show-down is shaping up in Washington over federal rules that govern how many TV stations a single company can own.

Defying the will of the White House and the Republican-controlled Federal Communciations Commission, the House voted 400-21 today to overturn controversial rules adopted by the FCC in June that would allow a single company to own TV stations serving 45 percent of TV viewers nationwide.
...
The measure was added as an amendment to a vital government spending bill, making it politically dicey to kill. The next move will be for the Senate to consider its version of the bill. Any differences between the two measures will be hammered out in a House-Senate conference, and House Republican leaders have vowed to kill the media ownership language in those discussions.
...
The White House has threatened to veto any measure that would overturn the national TV ownership rule or any other media ownership rules recently revised by the agency. >>More

Fox Television Station (a.k.a.: The Communications Arm of the Bush White House) Refuses to air DNC Ad in Wisconsin
Posted Wednesday, July 23, 2003 by symbolman

Washington DC-- The following is a statement released today by Terry McAuliffe, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee:

"As if Americans needed any more evidence of its political bias, Fox became the only network in Wisconsin to reject a new Democratic National Committee ad that calls for an investigation of President Bush's misleading statements in the State of the Union address. Apparently Fox has changed its slogan from 'We Report, You Decide' to 'We let Bush decide what we air.'

"The ad accurately quotes President Bush and points out that his statements have been proven false. It is also being run by every other station that the DNC contracted with in Wisconsin. This is a crushing blow to the First Amendment and another effort to silence opposition.

"Even the reluctant and dodgy White House admits that the language should not have been in the president's speech. This isn't simply poor judgment on the part of Fox; this is a blatant, partisan attempt to aid the Bush White House. Any fair-minded person at Fox ought to hang their head in shame.

"The Bush sycophants are going to have to make a lot of room in the White House because the Fox people are moving in, and they're not leaving until the words 'Fox' and 'Bush' are interchangeable."

TBTM Newsflash from a TBTM WATCHER

The Integrity and Dignity of the White House Become a Scum Pond of Betrayals and Gutter Smears Under Bush
Posted Wednesday, July 23, 2003 by symbolman

A BuzzFlash Editorial

Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, one of the smartest and most forthright senators BuzzFlash has met, is accusing the White House of trying to smear him as untrustworthy.

What is their goal? Removing him from the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Why are the thugs in the White House upset with Durbin? Because he told the truth about the uranium lie: the CIA had warned the White House that the Niger document was probably forged, but the White House went ahead and included it in Bush's speech anyway.

It doesn't matter that the White House has now been forced to admit that Durbin was right. Durbin embarrassed the White House by exposing their lie, and for that they are wreaking their thuggish revenge.

"Sadly, what we have here is a continuing pattern by this White House," Durbin said. "If any member of this Senate ... questions this White House policy ... be prepared for the worst."

The irony for BuzzFlash is that we had asked David Corn of The Nation, last Friday, what would happen if Dick Durbin had publicly identified a "deep cover" CIA operative as two unidentified senior administration officials had done just last week.>> More

Bush Aides Disclose Warnings From CIA - Oct. Memos Raised Doubts on Iraq Bid
Posted Wednesday, July 23, 2003 by symbolman

The CIA sent two memos to the White House in October voicing strong doubts about a claim President Bush made three months later in the State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear material in Africa, White House officials said yesterday.

The information, provided in a briefing by Hadley and Bush communications director Dan Bartlett, significantly alters the explanation previously offered by the White House. The acknowledgment of the memos, which were sent on the eve of a major presidential speech in Cincinnati about Iraq, comes four days after the White House said the CIA objected only to technical specifics of the Africa charge, not its general accuracy.

Yesterday's disclosures indicate top White House officials knew that the CIA seriously disputed the claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium in Africa long before the claim was included in Bush's January address to the nation. The claim was a major part of the case made by the Bush administration before the Iraq war that Hussein represented a serious threat because of his nuclear ambitions; other pieces of evidence have also been challenged.>> More

Let's remember when we hear the crowing of BUSH that ONCE AGAIN Saddam is defeated [the charred remains they claim are his sons - brought to you in ziplock baggies by the same forces that FAKED the Lynch rescue] that you CANNOT BELIEVE A SINGLE WORD THEY SAY. This was snuck out there on a fairly "winning" day for BUSHCO - but since they basically control the info the press receives what else can we expect - oh, yeah, MORE LIES.

Robert Scheer: The Witch Hunt Against the BBC
Posted Wednesday, July 23, 2003 by vgdesign

In England, they shot the messenger. True, the death of British biological weapons expert David Kelly was a suicide. But if the reserved scientist took his own life, it was in response to the British Ministry of Defense outing and reprimanding him as the alleged whistle-blower behind the BBC's controversial report that the government "sexed up" its intelligence information to make the case for war.

The BBC charge against the government in this instance was quite mild, because what Tony Blair did was not merely hype the case for preemptively invading Iraq. Rather, he deliberately lied to his public about the certainty of his claims to frighten the people into sending their children off to war. In this case, the Brits said — wrongly — that Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons in 45 minutes, a lie also employed by our president as one of his hysterical claims to justify the invasion of Iraq.

But in England, Kelly's death and the unraveling justifications for war have created a governmental crisis and prompted calls for Blair to resign.

The prewar confetti of frightening claims about Iraq has been exposed as nothing more than cherry-picked snippets from intelligence reports that generally regarded that nation's threat to the world as modest and shrinking. Instead of admitting this now-obvious fact, the Blair government unleashed a witch hunt against the BBC and anyone in the Blair administration who might have been a source for the news agency's reporting. >>More

Lawmaker Criticizes Secret Service for Investigating Cartoonist
Posted Wednesday, July 23, 2003 by vgdesign

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Secret Service used "profoundly bad judgment" in seeking to question a Los Angeles Times  cartoonist over a political cartoon depicting a man pointing a gun at President Bush, a senior House Republican said Tuesday.

Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the Secret Service owed Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez an apology "and the public is owed an explanation both of how this happened and why it will not happen again."

The use of "federal power to attempt to influence the work of an editorial cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times," Cox said in a letter to U.S. Secret Service Director Ralph Basham, "reflects profoundly bad judgment." >>More

>>L.A. Times: Cartoon Prompts Inquiry by Secret Service

Seymour M. Hersh: THE SYRIAN BET
Posted Wednesday, July 23, 2003 by vgdesign

Did the Bush Administration burn a useful source on Al Qaeda?

On the night of June 18th, Task Force 20, an American Special Operations team stationed in Iraq, expanded its operations dozens of miles inside Syria. Military intelligence had observed large numbers of cars and trucks speeding toward the border, and senior officers suspected that the vehicles were carrying fleeing members of the Iraqi leadership. Communications intercepts had indicated that there were more Syrian soldiers congregated along the border than usual, including some officers. The military concluded, according to a senior Administration official, that “something down there was going on.” Two days earlier, one of Saddam Hussein’s closest aides, Abid Hamid Mahmud, had been captured, and told his interrogators that he and Saddam’s two sons had sought refuge in Syria but were turned back. Although the Syrian government denied knowledge of the brothers’ whereabouts, the military was now ready to cross the border to stop any future flight attempts. >>More

Michael Powell's Communication Failure
Posted Wednesday, July 23, 2003 by vgdesign

Commentary by Jane Black, Business Week

When Michael K. Powell took the helm of the Federal Communications Commission in 2001, he was unequivocal about his objectives. He would free the Bells -- Verizon, BellSouth, and Qwest -- from local competitors, liberate the media from ownership caps, and spare cable and telecom companies from having to open their lines to competitors that wanted to offer high-speed Internet service. Powell the Regulator had just one goal: to deregulate.

Two-and-a-half years later, Powell has seen his dreams of deregulation dashed. In February, his vision for the local-phone carriers suffered a stinging political defeat when fellow Republican Commissioner Kevin J. Martin joined forces with two Democrats to support a competing plan. In May, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals grilled FCC attorneys in a case challenging the agency's decision to grant exclusive control over Internet access to cable giants. This month, committees in both houses of Congress moved to reverse the liberalization of the cap of national TV ownership.

No wonder rumors are swirling that Powell could resign as early as September. Such speculation is bolstered by the recent departure of Susan Eid, his former spokesperson, who has been replaced by an "interim" appointee. Sources say two other staff members have also been putting out feelers. The FCC has denied that Powell, who is on a two-week vacation, intends to resign.

What happened? >>More