~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

war passing over

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/11/279864.html

From Scottish CND, 03.11.2003 - Since Saturday, people in the Highlands of Scotland have been witnessing large movements of US warplanes overhead. Experienced observers say the large numbers are reminiscent of those that preceded the bombing of Iraq in 1998 and military strikes on Libyai in the1980’s as well as the first Gulf War.

At the weekend warplanes were flying over at a rate of roughly one every 15 minutes. As well as watching them from the ground the plane spotters have also been able to overhear pilots talking by listening to their radio frequencies.

It is thought that the planes have flown on a route from the US over the north pole to bases in Europe and the Mediterranean. The size and scale of the movement suggests that the US may be preparing to strike at a country in the Middle East in the next week to ten days.

Please pass this information on as widely as possible- the US may be planning to use the pretext of "foreign" terrorist attacks on US personnel in Iraq to attack Iran or Syria.

Please alert any sympathetic elected representatives, media representatives and other sympathetic organisations. Publicising this military movement may prevent the air-strikes.

SCOTTISH CND, 15 Barrland Street, Glasgow, G41 1QH. Tel: 0141 423 1222 scnd@banthebomb.org www.banthebomb.org

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not coming soon to a media outlet near you

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2127.shtml

The day declared by the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign in Palestine is gathering major momentum as cities across Europe, Canada, the US, Latin America, and Australia are joining in solidarity with the popular Palestinian mobilization that is to take place on November 9, the date of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

To see a list of the worldwide activities, visit stopthewall.org/worldwideactivism/62.shtml

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still dubious?

http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031101-114701-2370r.htm

JERUSALEM — A hard-hitting U.N. report has warned that Israel will effectively annex large tracts of Palestinian territory by ordering thousands of Arabs living near the new security wall to apply for permits to stay in their homes.

The wall has been built inside the internationally recognized Green Line, encroaching on about 18,000 acres of Palestinian land and cutting them off from the rest of the West Bank. They have now been declared a "closed military zone." Israelis living in settlements in the zone will receive automatic residence rights, but more than 10,000 Palestinians must apply for permission to continue living in the 15 villages affected.

...About 100 miles of the wall are now complete.

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YOUR commander in chief

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/04/politics/04CND-BUSH.html?ex=1068613200&en=e973b4eb729f4351&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

Nov. 4 — President [sic] Bush said today that despite the deadly attack on an American helicopter on Sunday, the United States was no longer involved in major combat in Iraq.

And he insisted that Saddam Hussein is no longer a danger... "He's no longer got rape rooms; no longer raping young girls or having young girls raped," he said, continuing, "He's no longer torturing people; he's no longer developing mass graves." He added: "I mean, he is no longer in power."

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run away! run away!

http://www.nuvo.net/archive/2003/11/05/a_new_underground_railroad.html

Service members know the consequences of going absent without leave (unauthorized absence in the Navy) — a maximum penalty of five years confinement, forfeiture of all pay and allowances and a dishonorable discharge. The maximum penalty for desertion in a time of war is death. Yet some military personnel are going AWOL or deserting to avoid returning to Iraq.

...The GI Rights Hotline, a national soldiers’ support service, told the New York Post that they’ve received more than 100 calls inquiring about the penalties associated for going AWOL. Some of the calls have come from soldiers home on leave, others have come from soldiers in the war zone. Some callers have said they will not return to Iraq.

... After a service member is AWOL for more than 30 days, he or she is dropped from the rolls and administratively classified as a deserter. When a soldier is classified as a deserter, a federal arrest warrant is issued. Local, state and federal law enforcement agencies may apprehend the deserter. The next of kin is contacted by letter after 10 days and asked to urge the member to return voluntarily to military control. Harboring a deserter is illegal. According to Claudia Cummings, public affairs officer for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Indianapolis, the maximum penalty is three years in a federal prison.

...“When I hear about these women and men that would kill themselves to escape, my duty as a veteran and a loyal American is to fight my government in whatever nonviolent manner is appropriate,” Carl Rising-Moore said in an e-mail to anti-war activists in Indianapolis. According to USA Today, 11 soldiers and three Marines have killed themselves in the past seven months in Iraq. Several other deaths are being investigated as suicides. In addition, the Army has sent 478 soldiers home from Iraq for mental health reasons.

...“If everything else fails, people should desert, just as George W. Bush did during the Vietnam War,” he said. There is a gap in Bush’s military service record from May 1972 to October 1973.

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kick the baby!

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/06/1068013327416.html

11/7 - Not since the Vietnam War has the US Army punished a soldier for being too scared to do his duty. But today, Sergeant Georg Andreas Pogany will appear in a military court in Colorado to face charges he was a coward.

The army says he is guilty of "cowardly conduct as a result of fear" and not performing his duties as an interrogator for a squad of Green Berets in Samarra, Iraq. But Pogany says he did not run from the enemy or disobey orders, and the only thing he was guilty of was asking for help for a panic attack.

On his second night in Iraq, one month ago, Pogany, 32, saw an Iraqi cut in half by a machine-gun. The sight disturbed him so much, he said, he vomited and shook for hours... "I couldn't function," Pogany said in an interview in his lawyer's office on Tuesday. "I had this overwhelming sense of my own mortality. I kept looking at that body thinking that could be me two seconds from now," Pogany said.

When he told his superior that he was having a panic attack and needed to see someone, Pogany said he was given two sleeping pills and told to go away. A few days later, he was sent home. Now he faces a possible court martial. If convicted, the punishment ranges from a dock in pay to the death penalty.

...Bartlett Carroll, a retired army colonel who prosecuted cowardice cases during the Vietnam War... said the occupation in Iraq, with its steady death toll, could foment a new generation of cowardice charges. "The first Iraq war was 100 hours, and there wasn't enough time to be scared," he said. "But now the guys in Iraq have enough time to dwell on their mortality."

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and i will dwell in the house of my own mortality forever

http://www.delmarvanow.com/news/stories/20031028/localnews/533565.html

DOVER -- A new, $30 million military mortuary was dedicated at Dover Air Force Base on Monday, a gleaming, brightly lit, state-of-the-art facility.

...The new mortuary was built with efficiency in mind. Air flowing through its ventilation system is turned over 15 times an hour... It has almost 200 linked computer stations... with a real-time computerized tracking system. A safe room where remains are scanned for unexploded ordnance has foot-thick concrete walls and blast-proof doors and windows that can withstand the force of half a pound of C-4 explosive... The new mortuary has rack storage for 380 caskets and is equipped with 24 autopsy/embalming stations, compared to four permanent stations at the old facility.

"I never want to run 24 autopsy stations at a time," [Karen Giles, 41, a former Air Force officer tapped in August to become the new director,] said.

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archived from february 21, 2003

http://www.ridiculopathy.com/news_detail.php?id=765

WASHINGTON, D.C.- Just this week, the Pentagon placed an order for 75,000 rip-resistant zippered bags. Pentagon officials are quick to point out that while the items may resemble body bags, they are nothing of the sort.

...According to the manufacturer, Happy Fun Bags have so many uses that trying to count them would be an insanity-inducing act of futility. The bags can be used to store shoes, filled with rocks and swung around until dizziness sets in, even covered with axle grease and ridden down sand dunes. A popular use among the soldiers we saw was to get inside them and allow their buddies to drag them around.

...Also of interest has been the introduction of something called ToeTagz. A very simple idea, just a thick yellow piece of cardboard with a length of wire running through a hole in one corner, these tags have generated quite a bit of buzz among the troops stationed in the Persian Gulf. Soldiers took to them immediately, using them to label their clothing, personal effects, even their own toes.

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fast-forward to now

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1067728207768&call_pageid=1038394944805&col=1038394944443

Today's military doesn't even use the words "body bags" — a term in common usage during the Vietnam War, when 58,000 Americans died. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the Pentagon began calling them "human remains pouches" and it now refers to them as "transfer tubes."

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hey, how 'bout that morbidity?

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=17799&archive=true

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany — As the flow of patients from Iraq continues unabated, Ramstein officials have decided to build a semipermanent home for a contingency medical ward now in an air base gym... Since the contingency ward was set up in mid-March, only the northside gym has been open for use, causing crowded conditions — especially on the basketball courts, Cotta said.

The decision to build a new structure comes as the steady flow of patients from Iraq continues, with Landstuhl Regional Medical Center receiving an average of 44 patients a day. More than 80 Air Force reservists set up the staging facility in the gym in March... to move the patients from Ramstein’s flight line to the hospital for treatment. After treatment, patients return to the staging facility, where airmen prepare them for flights out of Germany.

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patrick cockburn reporting live

http://www.counterpunch.com/patrick10312003.html

Paul Bremer, the chief US civilian administrator who heads the Coalition Provisional Authority, has been claiming, somewhat ludicrously, that life in Baghdad is back to normal.

...It is true that the streets look cleaner and the heaps of rubbish are disappearing: 180,000 street cleaners have been hired at three dollars a day. Some of them are assiduously painting curbstones white and yellow. The electricity supply is better and there are fewer power cuts than there were at the height of the summer heat.

There are thousands of US-recruited police back on the streets, so Iraqis are less frightened of being robbed, raped or murdered than they were three months ago. They no longer lock themselves in their houses or refuse to send their daughters to school for fear of kidnappers. But they don't compare the situation today with what things were like during the first two terrible months after the US captured Baghdad: they compare it with life as it was 12 months ago under Saddam Hussein.

And for most Iraqis life has not improved. For many it has got worse. The overwhelming political and economic fact is that 70 per cent of the labour force--12 million people out of a total population of 25 million, according to the Ministry of Labour--are out of work... As under Saddam Hussein, it's only the ration of basic foodstuffs provided almost free by the state that fends off starvation. There is a horrible desperation in the hunt for work. A Russian company asked a man who was trying to get a job as a driver about his qualifications. He said he felt he should get the job because, quite apart from his great experience as a driver, he had a live grenade in his pocket. He then showed the grenade to the Russian interviewing him and threatened to remove the pin unless he was immediately taken on.

...'The first mistake occurred when they disestablished the Army and police forces,' said Nouri Jafer, the labour under-secretary in the interim government created by the US-appointed Governing Council. 'This created more unemployment because Saddam Hussein had more than a million in the security forces.'... Former conscripts and soldiers queue for hours trying to pick up a final pay-off of $40, and there are often riots... 'If the US would just pay the salaries of those who have recently lost their jobs I promise you that resistance attacks would go down by 50 per cent,' [said] Nahed al-Ghazi, a sheikh in a village north of Baghdad.

...The overall mood of Iraqis has darkened over the last months as they have come to feel that, with the UN on the sidelines, they are dealing with an old fashioned colonial regime... There is a self-defeating crudity about the occupation's methods. US troops routinely tie up those they detain, force them to lie on the ground and put bags over their heads.

Saddam Hussein should not have been a hard act to follow. Iraqis know that he ruined their country with his disastrous wars against Iran and Kuwait. But in Baiji a clerk at the local registration office for births and deaths said he noticed that over the last couple of months parents of newborn babies had started to name them 'Saddam'.

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harden those hearts

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/06/1068013331454.html

11/7/03 - Los Angeles: The Los Angeles Times has ordered its journalists to stop describing anti-American forces in Iraq as resistance fighters, saying the term romanticises them and evokes World War II-era heroism.

An email circulated this week asked staff to instead use the terms insurgents or guerillas. An assistant managing editor, Melissa McCoy, said on Wednesday that the memo followed a discussion among top editors at the paper and was not sparked by reader complaints.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

reap those whirlwinds

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1076503,00.html

The successful attack on a US helicopter six miles to the south, was a cause for celebration for the neighbourhood graffiti artists. Youths with spray cans competed with each other to be the first to celebrate the "successful operation" against American soldiers... Welcome to Falluja.

... US forces viewed the areas in and around Falluja, with a majority population of Sunni Arabs, as a testbed for their much vaunted bid to win the hearts and minds of those Iraqis who had been favoured under the previous regime, and who were most anxious about their status in the new Iraq.

But Falluja residents quickly complained of heavy-handed tactics by US soldiers searching homes, "and stealing our belongings". Increased US military operations in the area appeared to be drawing more attacks. "That's our purpose out there", to "engage," Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of ground forces in Iraq, said. But the perceived failure of the US forces controlling the town to provide basic services and jobs appears to have hardened hearts.

...Sheikh Farhan Jumeilly, a local tribal leader, said... "After each attack they come to my house to question me or to ask for my help with the tribe. But I'll never let them in or grant them our hospitality. Because they are occupiers. They want to rob us of our dignity and our wealth. Resistance will not stop in this town until the last one of us is dead."

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for example

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1105/p01s02-woiq.html

ABU GHRAIB, IRAQ - Just this month the new market had opened, a symbol of reconstruction progress in this poor agricultural town just west of Baghdad - and on the fringes of the violent Sunni Triangle. But by Sunday, what was intended as a community-improvement project, planned and executed by the US military in cooperation with the local town council, lay in ruins. It was crushed by American tanks.

...The new market was designed to get vendors - whose numbers had mushroomed after the war as nearby factories closed - off the streets and into new stalls... As attacks against US forces have increased in Fallujah - where a helicopter was downed Sunday, killing 15 American soldiers - keeping the highway clear has become a higher priority.

Offering more than 400 stalls, the new market looked like it would be a success. But when the town council decided to impose a small daily fee for stall space, some vendors balked, and returned to laying out their goods beside the highway. With congestion building again, the new Iraqi police on Friday decided to return order and clear the street. Rocks were thrown, and the police, feeling threatened, called in the Americans... As at least a dozen individuals retreated with arms into the new market, the Americans turned to blasting the very walls that so recently they had helped build.

...By the time it was all over, at least seven Iraqis were dead - although [Maj. Eric Wick from wisconsin] acknowledges that some of the injured had been removed from the scene by locals, and that 14 funerals were held in Abu Ghraib on Monday.

"The Americans arrest people just for selling in the streets, and now they kill them, so how is this better than Saddam?" says Ali Ahmed Saleh, standing by the flattened hulk that was once the rusty pickup from which he operated a moving business... "The Americans used to walk through the market and buy things, it was nice, but about a month ago they changed. They showed less respect, and now this. I'm afraid that with so many people out of work in the market," he adds, "if someone comes and offers them $200 to kill an American, they won't hesitate to do it."

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today's big big big story

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/06/politics/06INTE.html?ex=1069131790&ei=1&en=53b3003f5783198f

Nov. 5 — As American soldiers massed on the Iraqi border in March and diplomats argued about war, an influential adviser to the Pentagon received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman: Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal.

Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct a search.

...The overtures... were ultimately rebuffed.

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and the back back back story

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/002171.html

Newspaper stories see the light of day for all sorts of strange and inscrutable reasons... You've likely already seen or will soon see the story running in several major news outlets this evening about apparent last minute overtures that Iraq made to the US, looking for a deal just before the outbreak of the war [http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/international/worldspecial/05CND-INTEL.html].

...I think you'll find a lot of the backstory for why we're hearing now about this business.

...To start getting a feel for that backstory, see this piece [http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/6439555.htm] from Knight Ridder's Warren Strobel from August 1st ("U.S. revokes security clearance for Pentagon employee.")

...Let me be a bit more clear about what I'm getting at here. Let's say I'm a career defense bureaucrat struggling to get my security clearances restored... And let's say one of the reasons I can't get them restored is because of some unauthorized contacts I had with a Lebanese-American businessman under investigation for running guns to Liberia. And let's further add to the mix that my whole mess with the security clearances is part of a larger struggle between different factions in the national intelligence bureaucracy. Oh, and one last thing: let's say I'm a protégé of Richard Perle.

Okay. Now, if I'm on the line for these unauthorized contacts... wouldn't it be a lot harder to punish me for it if it looked like that contact almost allowed me to secure a deal that would have averted the need for war?

And if that's the case, wouldn't it be cool if my buddies and mentors went to the press with the story of how I almost saved the day?

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oh by the way

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/sns-ap-netherlands-iraq-shells,0,4792752.story?coll=ny-worldnews-headlines

November 5, 2003 AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- Dutch marines said Wednesday that several dozen artillery shells discovered last month in Iraq contain no biological or chemical agents.

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no decaf for the east coast

http://editorandpublisher.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&expire=&urlID=8151819&fb=Y&partnerID=60

In an about-face, leading U.S. newspapers on Monday reported the number of total U.S. military deaths in Iraq, not just those the Pentagon attributes to combat or hostile action. On Monday, USA Today, The New York Times, and The Washington Post all cited the number of total U.S. deaths in Iraq -- 378 or 379 as of Monday, in addition to the killed-in-action number. "Since the war began March 19, 378 U.S. service members have died: 251 from hostile actions and 127 from accidents and non-combat-related incidents," USA Today reported... On Sunday, The New York Times, which did not mention the total number of injured troops, did say that "For every soldier killed, Pentagon officials estimate, another seven are wounded." Source: Editor & Publisher Online.

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oh and by the way

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59675-2003Nov3?language=printer

Nov. 3 -- The U.N.'s top nuclear weapons inspector Monday called on the United States to provide his agency with a copy of a classified American report on Iraq's banned weapons and to allow his inspectors to return to Iraq.

...ElBaradei said the United States, like all U.N. member states, is obliged under the terms of Security Council resolutions to provide his agency with information that advances its knowledge of Iraq's past nuclear ambitions. But he said the United States has yet to respond to a request he made last month for a copy of the classified version of a report by David Kay, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, that indicated there was no new evidence Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

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i TOLD you so. ADMIT IT.

http://www.counterpunch.com/lindorff11052003.html

Using a Defense Department news website called DefendAmerica [http://www.defendamerica.mil/articles/sss092203.html] that provides Pentagon reports about the so-called "War on Terrorism" to "military communities," the government put out a call for volunteers to help fill the hundreds of vacancies in over 2000 local draft boards and draft appeals boards.

Current draft board members also report that last summer, they were urged to go out and recommend people to fill those vacancies, which currently run at about 16 percent nationwide. The goal, according to a Selective Service spokesman, is to have the draft machinery ready to go "at the click of a finger."

Of course, the time between that "click" and the delivery of the first cannon fodder to Army boot camps for training would not be such a smooth or quick process. First, Congress would have to pass a bill authorizing a draft. Then it would have to be signed by the president. At that point, the Selective Service law says the Selective Service System has 193 days to deliver the first draftees to the tender mercies of the military.

A draft would be a political disaster for the president, so most military experts say it is unlikely that a return to conscription would occur before the November 2004 presidential election, but if the guerrilla war in Iraq continues to get worse, the day after that election, the president could well be forced to decide on either a phased withdrawal or escalation--and a national call-up.

Faced with the same choices in Southeast Asia, Presidents Lyndon Johnson [dem] and Richard Nixon [repug] both chose escalation over withdrawal... Recall that during the Vietnam War, when the U.S. had a military about twice as large as today, fielding a force of 500,000 soldiers required a major conscription program. Clearly, if the war keeps getting worse, there is a draft in the forecast.

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let ashcroft be ashcroft

http://www.tricityherald.com/24hour/nation/v-printer/story/1044871p-7344684c.html

November 5th, 2003 - WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI will be able to check a person's background for potential terrorist activities more easily under national security guidelines issued Wednesday by Attorney General John Ashcroft... The guidelines enable the FBI to conduct a "threat assessment" of potential terrorists or terrorist activity without initial evidence of a crime or national security threat.

The purpose is to ensure the FBI approaches these investigations "with an eye toward early intervention and prevention of acts of terrorism before they occur," according to the guidelines.

The FBI will be allowed to collect information on "individuals, groups and organizations of possible investigative interest" in national security cases... the relaxed guidelines would, for example, enable the FBI to run a credit check on an individual or run a person's name through law enforcement databases without opening a formal investigation.

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this home's privacy protected by the a.c.l.u.

http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=14336&c=206

The American Civil Liberties Union today urged Congress to keep a keen eye on whether an increasingly unchecked Justice Department is snooping into lawful political activity.

"Liberals remember Watergate -- conservatives remember Waco and Ruby Ridge," said Timothy Edgar, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. "All were the result of overzealous - and unchecked - federal power. Giving the FBI carte blanche to initiate highly invasive and super-secret intelligence investigations, without any indication of actual wrongdoing, invites a repetition of these past abuses."

The new set of guidelines - a heavily redacted version of which was obtained and reported on by the Washington Post - are apparently designed to allow detailed monitoring of both citizens and non-citizens without any indication of ongoing or intended espionage. Previously, internal guidelines - put in place after the abuses of Watergate and the FBI’s McCarthy-era COINTELPRO political spying initiative - required the FBI to initiate a preliminary inquiry, using limited means, to satisfy itself that there existed sufficient grounds to begin an full-blown investigation... Since 9/11, however, the Department of Justice has continually tried to weaken such safeguards.

...The relaxed guidelines could likely be used to target, for instance, anti-war protestors. However, the new set of guidelines should also concern conservatives, the ACLU said, given that under a future left-leaning presidency, it could also be used to target lawful militia groups or anti-abortion activists.

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declan mccullagh runs it down

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107_2-5102379.html

Federal agencies have been quietly censoring information that previously had been available on their Web sites and otherwise curbing public oversight.

About a week ago, the U.S. Army surreptitiously pulled the plug on one of its more popular Web sites, call.army.mil, after The Washington Post wrote about a report that had been posted on it. The Post's October 25 article said "the U.S. military intelligence gathering operation in Iraq is being undercut by a series of problems in using technology, training intelligence specialists and managing them in the field," citing the report prepared by the Center for Army Lessons Learned at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. The report, which the Post had the foresight to mirror on its own Web site, talked about the "poor quality" of mission planning and "marginally effective" training for certain reserve troops. The report was not classified.

...This is not an isolated example... Attorney General John Ashcroft set the tone in an Oct. 12, 2001, memo that urged agencies to withhold information from requests that were made under the Freedom of Information Act.

Then, in January, Rumsfeld claimed that too much data was popping up on military Web sites... Rumsfeld's directive explains why, a few weeks ago, another part of the Pentagon decided to shroud its actions in secrecy. Until recently, the Web site for the Defense Science Board--an obscure but influential advisory body that influences military policy and had a budget of $3.6 million a year--had listed the board's membership. Today, the board's Web site still includes links to "members" and "task force members," but one link requires a password, and the other link returns a "404: file not found" error... As with the now-unavailable Army site, national security was hardly at risk.

...Once in a while, though, the government can be shamed into backing down. About a month ago, the Defense Department blocked public access to a Web site that lists internal regulations. Examples include "Prevention of Oil Pollution From Ships" and "Enforcement of the State Traffic Laws on (Defense Department) Installations." No reason for the block was given. But after the Associated Press ran an article about it and TheMemoryHole.org posted its mirror of the site, the Pentagon relented and restored public access to the regulations.

...Then there's the White House... On Sept. 24, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice gave a briefing to the press on the condition that she be identified only as a "senior administration official"... The transcript was posted to the Whitehouse.gov site. One reporter, however, had addressed her as "Dr. Rice," a statement the White House faithfully included in the posted transcript.

By the next morning, those words had disappeared from the White House's Web site.

In July, the Department of Energy surreptitiously deleted from its Web site documents that relate to its 2004 budget request. If you look at the HTML source code today, you'll see this note: "7/28/03 removed per J. Campbell request," a reference to James Campbell, the department's acting chief financial officer.

It turns out that the Federation of American Scientists was suing the CIA to learn the dollar size of the U.S. intelligence budget (countries such as United Kingdom, Canada, and the Netherlands routinely disclose theirs)... "Shortly afterward, the intelligence budget data was removed from the (Energy Department Web) site," wrote Steven Aftergood, head of the group's Project on Government Secrecy... Aftergood verified that the deleted information was not classified and then promptly republished it on his own Web site. [and so on.]

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lone voice shouting no

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/04/politics/04COST.html?pagewanted=print&position=

Nov. 3 — The Senate gave its final approval on Monday to President Bush's request for $87.5 billion to occupy and rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan, completing Congressional action on the largest emergency spending bill ever sought by a president. The Senate's action came on a voice vote with only six members present, meaning that the decisions of individual members on the administration's vision for Iraq were not recorded.

...Senator Robert C. Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat who has been the loudest Congressional challenger of the administration's Iraq policy, was the lone voice shouting no during the vote.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

byrd singin in the dead a night

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1104-09.htm

THE CRAMPED little gift shop on the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol offers only one book for sale by a sitting senator -- a slim red volume misleadingly entitled The Senate of the Roman Republic. It's misleading because its author, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D.-W.Va.), composed it not as straight history, but as a cautionary tale about the death of the Roman Republic -- a heartbreaking story of self-inflicted decline, intended by Byrd to galvanize Americans into defending their constitutional treasures.

...Addressing his colleagues on Oct. 17, Byrd had outdone himself rhetorically -- and come as close to losing his temper as his ingrained courtliness would permit. Railing against the $87 billion supplemental-appropriations bill for occupation and "reconstruction" in Iraq, Byrd reprised the fairy tale "The Emperor's New Clothes" to illustrate how the country had been marched into war by a Praetorian Guard of confidence men, egged on by a president's vanity -- and how the con game persists.

...Byrd has been speaking since September 2002 to a Senate Chamber as bare of people as the emperor was of garments. Largely ignored by war-fevered Republicans and most of the "sheep-like" Democrats -- as well as the media -- Byrd this time hit home with his scathing eloquence. An angry rejoinder -- at once nasty and ignorant -- came from Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, the Republican chairman of the Appropriations Committee: "Think of the young men and women in Iraq... what they are thinking when a senator says they are over there because of a falsehood... Those who vote against this bill will be voting against supporting our men and women in the field."

Unsurprisingly, Stevens expressed childlike faith in the president's fairy tale. Unsurprisingly, Byrd responded... "There are many men and women in Iraq who believe that we who vote aginst this bill today speak for them... I voted against sending troops into Iraq. Yes, I am one of the 23. And if I had it to do over again, I would vote the same way again, 10 times, 10 times a hundred, against this doctrine of pre-emptive strikes. Fie on that doctrine! Fie on it!"

On this occasion, Oct. 17, the dean of the Senate was one of the 12 to vote no to the $87 billion bill for Iraq.

...Byrd understands from experience the danger of open-ended war resolutions. Having been misled into voting for Lyndon Johnson's fraudulent Gulf of Tonkin resolution, in 1964, he wasn't about to be fooled again. And the current law is even worse, he said, because at least the Tonkin Gulf "authorization" specified Congress's right to terminate military action.

..."Vote to save your country," Byrd exhorted his colleagues when he clashed with Senator Stevens. "No commander in chief brought me here, and no commander in chief is going to send me home. My first and last stand by which I live and by which I hope to die is this Constitution of the United States."

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more fun with the memory hole from nov. 2nd.

http://www.calpundit.com/archives/002547.html

+++ +++ +++

April 23, 2003, USAID administrator Andrew Natsios chats with Ted Koppel about the cost of rebuilding Iraq on Nightline:

TED KOPPEL (Off Camera) And we're back once again with Andrew Natsios, administrator for the Agency for International Development. I want to be sure that I understood you correctly. You're saying the, the top cost for the US taxpayer will be $1.7 billion. No more than that?

ANDREW NATSIOS For the reconstruction. And then there's 700 million in the supplemental budget for humanitarian relief, which we don't competitively bid 'cause it's charities that get that money.

TED KOPPEL (Off Camera) I understand. But as far as reconstruction goes, the American taxpayer will not be hit for more than $1.7 billion no matter how long the process takes?

ANDREW NATSIOS That is our plan and that is our intention. And these figures, outlandish figures I've seen, I have to say, there's a little bit of hoopla involved in this.

+++ +++ +++

Calpundit comments: This is from the Google cache. Oddly, though, it seems to have been removed from the USAID site itself although the link is still alive and well. [see the govt site http://www.usaid.gov/updates/apr/ --scroll to april 23rd and click on Assistance for Iraq, Speeches and Transcripts. you will note that no april 23rd transcript appears... mrs.h]

comment by jadegold [scroll down on calpundit]: "Presumably, Koppel works in association with ABC News; Koppel has just been told--by a senior Administration official---the US price tag for reconstructing Iraq won't exceed $2B. Later when Bush Jr. is asking for $87B on top of the already spent $90B--where's Koppel and ABC? When Paul Bremer says the cost to rebuild Iraq "cannot be exaggerated"--where is ABC News?"

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adventures in legislation

http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=143-10312003

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The final version of the $87 billion spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan is missing provisions the Senate had passed to penalize war profiteers who defraud American taxpayers. House negotiators on the package refused to accept the Senate provisions. The Senate provision was authored by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), and Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.).

...U.S. fraud statutes protect against waste of tax dollars at home, but none expressly prohibit war profiteering and none expressly confer extraterritorial jurisdiction overseas. The Leahy-Feinstein-Durbin amendment would criminalize "war profiteering" -- overcharging taxpayers for any good or service with the specific intent to excessively profit from the war or reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

...Leahy, Feinstein and Durbin will re-introduce the legislation again as a separate bill and will work to win its passage. But because criminal penalties cannot be made retroactive, the absence of penalties in this supplemental appropriations bill will hamper efforts to crack down on war profiteering that involves funds from this bill.

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eric alterman repeats history

http://www.centerforamericanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?cid={E9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A521-5D6FF2E06E03}&bin_id={AA66D3CC-64CE-417F-AA41-C71AAC691132}

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." Dick Cheney Speech to VFW National Convention, Aug. 26, 2002.

”We know they have weapons of mass destruction. There isn't any debate about it." Donald Rumsfeld, Sept. 2002.

"We know for a fact that there are weapons there." Ari Fleischer [white house spokeman] press briefing, Jan. 9, 2003.

"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." George W. Bush address to the nation, March 17, 2003.

...Many of the very same people who deliberately created the misimpression about Iraq to goad the American people into supporting a war had already executed a run-through of the same strategy in the 1970s.

Back then, establishment hardliners associated with the now defunct “Committee on the Present Danger” heaped scorn upon the professional intelligence services for their alleged underestimation of Soviet military capabilities. They succeeded in convincing then-CIA Director, George H.W. Bush, to appoint a now infamous "Team B" to go through the same material and come up with an answer that would justify a vast increase in U.S. defense spending.

With the powerful political patronage of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, its members, including Paul Wolfowitz, came up with astronomical numbers for alleged Soviet military spending and capabilities... Sounding very much as if he were talking about Iraqi WMD capabilities 30 years later, Rumsfeld claimed, “No doubt exists about the capabilities of the Soviet armed forces.”

In fact, in 1989 the agency admitted that, contrary to the Team B analysis, it had "substantially overestimated" the Soviet threat in almost every aspect [and so on].

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

i'll show YOU

http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/7153446.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

11/1/03 - WASHINGTON - Ten lawmakers whose trip to North Korea was canceled by the White House have sent a scathing letter to President Bush, complaining of the "arrogant and disrespectful" treatment from his national security advisers.

...The lawmakers' letter said they don't believe a president has ever prohibited congressional travel, except to an active war zone. "It is extremely ironic that in this case you canceled military transport of a bipartisan delegation that is in total and complete support of your state foreign policy agenda in North Korea," they said. [go figyah --mrs.h]

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in re st. ron

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/04/business/media/04CND-TUBE.html

Nov. 4, 2003 -- CBS announced today that it will not broadcast a four-hour mini-series, "The Reagans," the unflattering portrayal of the former president and his wife that had been the subject of intense criticism by conservatives who launched a full-scale lobbying effort to get the network to kill the series.

...Much of the furor was unleashed after The New York Times, which obtained a final copy of the script, said the show depicted Mr. Reagan as a skilled politician and cheerful, but distant and a bit out of touch, and his wife as controlling and fiercely determined, with poor relations with her children.

Of particular concern to conservative critics was a scene in which Mr. Reagan says of gays who have AIDS: "They that live in sin shall die in sin." Mr. Reagan made no such public remark, and opponents of the mini-series say the line was an indication of liberal bias against the two-term president.

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the awful truth

http://www.glaad.org/media/newspops_detail.php?id=3518&PHPSESSID=a56ee117705e16c2d09bc377d3dedb8d

Media coverage of the controversy over CBS' The Reagans miniseries -- and an AIDS-related line in the script -- has largely ignored the reality of the Reagan Administration's record on AIDS... Reagan did not publicly utter the word "AIDS" during the first six years of his administration (his first public mention of the disease was made to the Third International AIDS Conference on May 31, 1987).

The Kaiser Family Foundation's Daily HIV/AIDS Report for June 7, 2001 also notes that the San Diego Union Tribune quoted Reagan as telling the conference, "Final judgment is up to God." [see http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?hint=1&DR_ID=5036]

In a 2001 speech at the Kaiser Family Foundation's National Symposium on U.S. AIDS Policy, Dr. C. Everett Koop, Reagan's surgeon general, said that due to "intradepartmental politics" he was cut out of all AIDS discussions for the first five years of the Reagan Administration -- and that "because transmission of AIDS was understood primarily in the homosexual population and in those who abused intravenous drugs, the advisors to the President, [sic] took the stand, they are only getting what they justly deserve." [see http://www.kaisernetwork.org/health_cast/uploaded_files/morningtrns2.pdf]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

and then

http://billmon.org/archives/000856.html

June 12, 2004 -- CBS said today that it will not air the five-part biography "Nixon," after Republicans said the show unfairly portrays the late president as being responsible for one of the worst political scandals in American history.

The controversy began after the New York Times obtained a draft version of the script, which portrays Mr. Nixon as a brooding, insecure man who believed himself to be surrounded by enemies. Of particular concern to conservatives is a scene in which Mr. Nixon describes the Watergate break-in as "a third rate burglary." That line was, in fact, spoken by White House press secretary Ron Ziegler. Critics say attributing it to Mr. Nixon is proof of liberal bias against the late president. CBS says the controversial movie will be shown in the History Channel's 4:00 AM time slot.

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and THEN

http://billmon.org/archives/000856.html

Apr 1, 2010 -- CBS says it agrees with Department of Homeland Security censors that a purported video about the seven-year-long conflict in Iraq should be banned from the U.S. airwaves.

Conservatives say the show -- allegedly being produced by underground subversives -- unfairly blames former President George W. Bush for pushing America into an unwinnable war in a deeply fragmented Third World country. Government informants have told the DHS (which in turn has told the New York Times) that the film will portray Bush as an ignorant but arrogant man convinced the Lord God chose him to bring peace to the Middle East.

Supposedly, the documentary also alleges that Saddam Hussein's regime did not possess weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invasion. Conservative critics say the search for WMD in Iraq continues to make good progress. Suggesting otherwise, they note, is strictly prohibited by the VICTORY III Act, the Official Secrets Act of 2005, and the Sedition Act of 2007.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

and now. for example. the original version on the heritage foundation site.

http://www.avatara.com/image001.gif

[columnist Kathleen Parker giving an example of pragmatic patriotism:] "Here's a note I got recently from a friend and former Delta Force member who has been observing American politics from the trenches: 'These bastards like Clark and Kerry and that incipient ass, Dean, and Gephart and Kucinich andf that absolute mental midget Sharpton, race baiter, should all be lined up and shot.'"

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none dare call it treason. the new revised heritage foundation edition.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/kathleenparker/kp20031101.shtml

"These bastards... should all be lined up and slapped."

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and now, back to law and order

http://truthout.org/docs_03/110703E.shtml

Thursday 06 November 2003 - LINCOLN, Neb. - A federal judge blocked implementation of a federal ban on certain late-term abortions Wednesday, less than an hour after President Bush signed the measure into law.

...U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf issued a temporary restraining order, citing concerns that the law did not contain an exception to the ban for preserving the health of a woman seeking the abortion.

... The judge stopped short of prohibiting the new law from being enforced nationwide. He said his order would apply only to the four doctors who filed the lawsuit in Nebraska and their "colleagues, employees and entities ... with whom plaintiffs work, teach, supervise or refer" patients.

...U.S. Justice Department attorney Anthony Coppolino told Kopf that he should show deference to Congress' findings that the abortion procedure has not been studied enough to prove it's necessary. "We ask that you give consideration to the deep concerns that were expressed by Congress," Coppolino said. "It is an abhorrent and useless procedure."

Kopf said he could find no record of a doctor who performs abortions in the second and third trimesters testifying before Congress on late-term abortions. "Isn't that important if Congress was really interested in knowing about this procedure?" Kopf said.

The law also appears to have a "serious vagueness problem," Kopf said. [judge kopf is invited to MY birthday party --mrs. h]

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human interest

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6973-2003Nov6.html

National Public Radio will announce today the largest donation in its history, a cash bequest from the will of the late philanthropist Joan Kroc [widow of mcdonald's oligarch] of about $200,000,000.00... It amounts to almost twice NPR's annual operating budget.

...Kroc, 75, died of brain cancer on Oct. 12... Last week the University of San Diego and the University of Notre Dame announced they each had been given $50 million by Kroc's estate... In 1998 she gave $25 million to USD for the establishment of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice. Notre Dame hosts a similar institution, the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, which was established in 1986.

...Joan Beverly Mansfield was born in 1928, the daughter of a railroad man who was often out of work during the Depression. Still, he made sure his daughter received piano lessons, and eventually she became a piano player in a St. Paul restaurant. She met Ray Kroc in 1957.

...She gave more than $90 million to the Salvation Army... She also helped build the St. Vincent de Paul Joan Kroc Center for the homeless, a palliative care center, and the Kroc-Copley Animal Shelter... She was also a major benefactor of the Carter Center of Emory University in Atlanta, and in 1987 she gave $1 million to the Democratic National Committee, at the time believed to be the largest single contribution to a political party in U.S. history.

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stardust, golden, back to bolinas

http://www.salon.com/mwt/wire/2003/11/05/bolinas/index.html

Nov. 5, 2003 | BOLINAS, Calif. (AP) -- Residents of this quirky coastal town north of San Francisco decided overwhelmingly to declare their love of nature... Measure G won 314 to 152 in the town of 1,200.

The text of the measure, in its entirety: ‘‘Vote for Bolinas to be a socially acknowledged nature-loving town because to like to drink the water out of the lakes to like to eat the blueberries to like the bears is not hatred to hotels and motor boats. Dakar. Temporary and way to save life, skunks and foxes (airplanes to go over the ocean) and to make it beautiful."

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the healing of tammy faye. BE NICE. mrs. henry hearts tammy faye.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2003/09/25/tammy/index1.html

TAMMY FAYE: You know, back in the olden days, when you killed somebody, rather than putting you in prison, they would strap that dead body onto your back, and what that dead body ended up doing was killing you. And Jerry Falwell was strapped on my back. I carried him with me all the time. I hurt all the time. It was all I could talk about. It was all I could think about. That hurt was unbearable.

And one day, I felt like God said to me, "Tammy, lay him down. Lay him down at the cross that I bled and died on. Just lay him there and I'll take care of him." And I literally, physically, pretended like I was unstrapping a body from my back, and I laid it down, and when I did, I got peace for the first time.

Because, see, holding bitterness and holding unforgiveness only hurts you. It makes your blood pressure high. It makes your heart rate increase. It does all these bad things to you. And why destroy yourself over something they'd be glad about? I mean, he'd be glad to know if I was still hurting.

...The calling of God is like a little puppy dog chasing you, nipping at your heels: "Pick me up, pick me up, pick me up." And that little dog will not stop running after you till you pick it up.

[On another subject:] You know, I've got a 9-inch scar from my cancer surgery and I thought, wouldn't it be fun to go to a tattoo artist and have him tattoo a zipper? Wouldn't that be fun? I think that would be so funny. Or like a rose stem or something?

INTERVIEWER: Why not? As you like to say, if life gives you lemons--

TAMMY FAYE: Make some lemonade.

INTERVIEWER: If life gives you a scar--

TAMMY FAYE: Make a zipper.

INTERVIEWER: What are your days like now?

TAMMY FAYE: It goes between cleaning the house and scrubbing toilets and picking up wee-wee from the puppies. I use more Clorox Cleanup than any human being in the world with those two little puppies of mine, Muffin and Tuppins. I also make cigar-box purses, as a hobby.

INTERVIEWER: What's a cigar-box purse?

TAMMY FAYE: Oh man, they are darling... [cue soft-focus. music up and over --mrs.h]