Hannah's Blog

Out of the Woodwork

Casual readers probably concluded that George W. Bush's recent "failures" have prompted someone like Brent Scowcroft to speak up and show him where he's gone wrong. But, since the New Yorker interview with Scowcroft was most likely conducted some time ago, its publication now may be entirely co-incidental and actually indicates a dissatisfaction with how the current crew in the White House is managing the world that's been festering for some time.

Now, Melvin Laird is coming out with a very long piece in "Foreign Affairs" in which he explains that we got it all wrong about Vietnam and, of course, he's going to set us right by telling us that it was all about spreading democracy way back then and Richard Nixon was actually to blame because he failed to get the Congress to keep doling out the scheckles until the job was done.
So, it might seem fair to conclude that the people who have been in the bowels of the government all along, making policy while the politicians honored the dictum that "partisanship stops at the water's edge," have called for re-enforcements from the original architects of the notion that America is destined to rule the world. Regardless of whether the world wants to be ruled by America or the majority of Americans are inclined in that direction.

Until I learned that President Kennedy feared that he would be impeached, if he didn't demonstrate toughness vis a vis the Soviet Union, and then discovered that he had been double-crossed by the people whom he had charged with keeping the missiles out of Turkey and had to strike a secret deal with Khrushchev to get rid of the ones in Cuba, I never suspected that his peace initiatives may have prompted his assassination. Nor that Nixon's agreeing to remove American forces from Vietnam prompted his betrayal and being set up for removal by impeachment--no doubt a better alternative than the Kennedy solution.

When you consider how many peace-makers have been eliminated through assassination it's quite startling. There's a fellow, Lloyd deMause, who's got a theory that nut-cases are influenced by rumors of assassination
http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/eln01_leader.html

Perhaps that's true for those who miss. The successes smack of expert organization which finds it convenient to set some nut-case up.
If Kennedy made a deal with Khrushchev and pledged to leave Cuba alone, what could have been Oswald's motivation?

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http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20051101faessay84604/melvin-r-laird/iraq-learning-the-lessons-of-vietnam.html

"having an abortion"--Updated

"Having an abortion" is wrong. Using this terminology to describe the premature evacuation or ejection of fetal tissue trivializes a gut-wrenching experience by comparing it to "having a manicure" or a "face lift" or even a "tummy tuck." While it would be more appropriate to classify "having an abortion" with "having a migraine headache," or even "having a heart attack," recognizing the seriousness of an event which is not only potentially fatal, but equally demanding of expert medical assistance, it's unlikely to silence the call for legislative regulation of this life-critical condition.

In part that's because passing laws to regulate situations over which the law has no control presents legislators with the opportunity to claim to exercise powers which have no practical significance.

Which is why I would suggest that any candidate for public office who answers the question "should abortion be made legal or illegal" with a "yes" or a "no" should be immediately disqualified from further consideration, not just by progressives, but by anyone who expects public officials to be honest.

But, there's another reason. Even though abortion, a natural spontaneous process, is outside the legislative purview, whether or not women are going to be provided with adequate and appropriate medical support for all aspects of the reproductive process, including the premature termination of a pregnancy by means of medical and/or surgical intervention, without interference by the judicial system, it is not only liable to legal restrictions, but the widespread propensity to impose such restriction jeopardizes the possibility of setting up a transportable, effective medical provider system (TEMPS) for the nation.

Even though an apparently large number of people (who reliably support Republican candidates) do not seem to mind having government officials stick their nose into their most intimate and private relationships, most people are reluctant to rely on government bureaucrats to determine which life-critical medical services and procedures they require. So, any effort to legislate the relationship between doctor and patient undermines our efforts to put a national health care system in place. Which is not to say that any medical or surgical intervention that isn't supported by the informed consent of the patient or his/her legal surrogates (in an emergency situation) should be exempt from legal review--a particularly important issue in regard to the providers of medical services to minors.

Particularly in reference to the latter, we have some specific experience to draw on as regards the provision of "mental health services" to minor children in the mid 1980s. At that time, because of an expansion of mental health coverage, including residential "treatment," both in private medical insurance contracts and the Medicaid program, there was a sudden surge in the building of juvenile mental health treatment facilities, the efficacy of whose services tended to be defined by when the insurance payment for "treatment" ran out. Since most of these programs seem to have little if any lasting benefit, except for relieving stressed out parents of the charge of recalcitranct adolescents for a while, the elimination of treatment programs designed by psychologists and social workers, should definitely be considered in setting up a medically based national life-care system.

In any event, it's going to be necessary to make some careful choices if we are going to achieve a transportable, efficient medical provider system (TEMPS). an important progressive goal. Arguing whether abortion should be legal or illegal will definitely keep us from getting there.
One hopes that Harriet Miers' failure to recognize that point signaled to everyone that she is not a fit candidate for the Supreme Court.

******
Halloween--
Now there's a new nominee, Sam Alito

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are so many reasons not to waste a lot of time and energy on this nomination to the Supreme Court, I don't even know where to begin.

First, it has been and continues to be a mistake to try to affect the law by focusing on those who are supposed to interpret the law, rather than on those who make the law. Of course, the various legislative bodies, made up of people who prefer promoting the business deals of their cronies to actually doing the hard work of drafting legislation that serves the best interests of the whole society, rather than special interests, have been quite happy to pass sloppy legislation and "let the courts straighten it out."
Also, it's a lot easier to oppose one or two people nominated to be judges than to select, support and vote for a slate of competent representatives every two years--every year on the local level. It's also a lot easier to let business persons who run for local office to promote the interests of their "associates" than selecting people with a broader constituency for these entry-level positions. If we don't want business cronies running our towns and cities and if we don't want the local Chamber of Commerce staffing community committees, then we're going to have to step up to the plate and take an active part.
Also, Democrats have already wasted too much time and energy on a faux nomination, Harriet Miers, to let themselves be diverted from their real work for much longer. If the laws were well written and consistent with the Constitution, there would be almost nothing for the Supreme Court to do.
So, let's make the Supreme Court irrelevant.
Finally, anybody that promises anybody that abortion is going to be declared illegal and suggests that this is going to have any practical effect is either stupid or lying. They might just as well promise declaring defecation illegal. And that's the point we need to make. And then we have to follow up with the position that medical procedures should NEVER be a subject of legislation by anyone who's not trained in the profession.

This last is an important principle because until we get government out of the doctor/patient relationship we are never going to have an efficient, effective national health coverage program that's fully transportable. Even state efforts to regulate medical procedures through the legal system work against getting a comprehensive transportable program. Just imagine what would happen if you could get flu shots in Maine but not in Missouri. If the issue is presented in that way to the elderly, they'll get it.

U.S. needs to "project power"

"But what you are seeing are capabilities to, in fact, deny the United States from projecting power in the region," said Dan Blumenthal, a former senior director for China and Taiwan in the US Secretary of Defense's office.

What's this "projecting power" thing all about?

I've given a lot of thought to this phrase since I fist heard it uttered by Donald Rumsfeld. How exactly does one project power and, more importantly, why on earth would one want to?

Since the quote I started out with comes from an analysis that identifies some nation's desire to refuse "access" to U.S. naval ships, planes and other military assets as a denial of something to which the U.S. is entitled, it would seem that "projecting power" simply refers to the ability of the American military to go wherever, whenever they want, making the concept of national sovereignty, like the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners, a quaint notion that no longer applies.

So, on its face, the concept seems rather simple. A couple of centuries ago I think it was referred to as "gun-boat diplomacy." Which suggests that it's perhaps not an appropriate strategy in the 21st Century. On the other hand, the proponents of this way of dealing with the world do refer to themselves as new conservatives--neocons.

Whether there has been any international consideration of this claim on the part of the American military to consider a closed door an actionable offense, I don't know. But, it does strike me as a peculiar position for a nation supposedly committed to national sovereignty, free market economics and the recognition of individual and human rights to take. I mean, how can you justify barging into someone's country when you claim to support homeland security.

In any event, it seems to me that there are only two logical explanations for our country assuming this position: the need to be able to project power as a primary national interest. Either the apparent need to rely on military force as a back-up to insure that other nations let our people and our corporations have free access to their resources and markets indicates a lack of confidence in the "free market" as the absolutely best economic system ever invented (easily recognizable as such by everyone who's introduced to it), or we have a large segment of the leadership of our nation severely addicted to "projecting power" for no practical purpose what-so-ever.

Now, there may well be a rational justification that I haven't been able to think of. If there is, I'd sure like to be informed what it is, because the ones I've been able to come up with so far strike me as piss-poor. Don't you agree.

Sitka's Fitzmas Present

The best one--so far.

http://www.hexadecimalx.com/video/noodles10.23.05.zip
http://www.thenoodles.us/

No Mistake

Enough already with calling Iraq a mistake
by Meteor Blades
Wed Oct 26, 2005 at 02:57:42 PM PDT

Someone said it again today. Invading Iraq was a mistake. Every time it gets said, I grind another layer of enamel off my teeth. Nancy Pelosi says it. John Kerry says it. Mikhail Gorbachev says it. Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero says it. Even the occasional Republican says it. And recent polls indicate 55% to 59% of Americans think it.

Every one of them is wrong. Invading Iraq was no mistake. It was bloody treason. And the traitors still rule us instead of breaking rocks at Leavenworth.

They knowingly, willingly, unhesitatingly pronounced what they knew to be lies and marginalized, denigrated and smeared contrary-minded people, manipulated real evidence, concocted fake evidence, tricked an American population traumatized, fearful and furious about terrorism and sent young men and women off to a war at the tip of a bayonet named "9/11."

A mistake is when you hammer your thumb instead of the nail. A mistake is when you choose c) instead of d) on the SAT. A mistake is when you put too much garlic in the minestrone. Invading Iraq was no damned mistake. And calling it a mistake is more than a mere slip of the tongue. It sets a precedent. Pretty soon, everybody will be saying invading Iraq was a mistake. And in 20 years, your grandkids will be studying out of textbooks that call it a mistake.

Instead of calling it what it really was. Sedition.

Over and over again for three years we've had our faces rubbed in the evidence. Yet, every day, someone calls this perfidious, murderous scheme a mistake. As if invading Iraq were a foreign policy mishap. Oopsy.

Stop it already. People do not commit treachery by mistake.

As we full well know, even before George W. Bush was scooted into office 5-to-4, the men he came to front for were already at work plotting their rationale for sinking deeper military and economic roots in the Middle East, petropolitics and neo-imperialist sophistry greedily intertwined. When they stepped into office, as Richard Clarke explained to us , terrorism gave them no worries. They blew off Clarke and they blew off Hart-Rudman with scarcely a fare-thee-well. Then, when they weren't figuring out how to lower taxes on their pals and unravel the tattered social safety net, they focused - as Paul O'Neill informed us - on finding the right excuse to persuade the American people to go to war with Saddam Hussein as a prelude to going to war with some of his neighbors. In less than nine months, that excuse dropped into their laps in the form of Osama bin Laden's kamikaze crews.

From that terrible day forward, Richard Cheney and his sidekick Donald Rumsfeld and their like-minded coterie of rogues engineered the invasion. They didn't slip the U.S. into Iraq by mistake. Like the shrewd opportunists they have shown themselves to be in the business world, they saw the chance to carry out their invasion plan and they moved every obstacle - most especially the truth - out of their way to make it happen.

When they couldn't get the CIA to give them the intelligence that would justify their moves they exerted pressure for a change of minds. They exaggerated, reinterpreted and rejiggered intelligence assessments. For icing they concocted their own.

Larry Wilkerson merely confirms what O'Neill and Clarke previously had told us: The traitors didn't mistakenly stumble their way into invasion pushed along by world events; they created a cabal of renegades specifically to carry out the Project for a New American Century's plans for hegemony, first stop - Baghdad. They didn't carefully weigh options and evaluate the pros and cons and make error in judgment, the kind of wrong choice that could happen to anyone. They studiously ignored everyone who warned them against taking the action they had decided upon years before the World Trade Centers were turned to ashes and dust.

The traitors ignored Brent Scowcroft when he wrote in August 2002, "Don't Attack Saddam". They ignored the Army War College when it warned of the perils of invasion and occupation in a February 2003 report, "Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, And Missions For Military Forces In A Post-Conflict Scenario".

When their propaganda failed to measure up as a justification for expending American lives and treasure, they fabricated evidence. Aluminum tubes that experts said could in no way be used to help make nuclear weapons were turned into prima facie evidence of Saddam's intent to do so. Documents that intelligence veterans said from the get-go were forged remained the basis for the traitors' claims. With the straightest face he'd mustered since taking the oath of office, Dubyanocchio declared: "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

If the ousted Colin Powell can be believed, they sandbagged him into publicly providing the United Nations with information the traitors knew to be false.

Senators and Congressmen were lied into granting the President authority to take military action to protect the United States from a threat that the traitors knew didn't exist.

When the weapons inspectors under Hans Blix couldn't find anything, but asked for more time to look, they brushed him off and began pounding Baghdad and other Iraqi targets with a display of raw power they labeled, like ad writers for some ultimate cologne, "Shock and Awe."

Every smidgen of this betrayal of the American people was purposely calculated, even if poorly planned and frequently incompetently handled. Just as invading Iraq was no mistake, the pretense that Bush hadn't made up his mind months before the invasion was no mistake. It was a calculated ploy to suggest falsely that the President and the ideological crocodiles in the White House gave two snaps about cooperating with the international community other than as a means to camouflage their unalterable determination to stomp Iraq, plundering it under the guise of righteous magnanimity.

Just as the war was no mistake, torturing prisoners was no mistake. It was a deliberate, premeditated policy of international outlawry and inhumanity guided by legal arguments requested and approved by the man who soon got his reward, appointment as attorney general, and carried out on the direct orders of men like General Geoffrey Miller at the "suggestion" of Don Rumsfeld and under the command George Walker Bush.

It was no mistake that the vice president's company collected billions in no-bid contracts and that the White House attempted to cover up massive over-charges by that company.

Just as planning for invasion, the concoction of evidence, the ignoring of counter-advice, and the lying to Congress, to the United Nations and to the American people were not mistakes, the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson was no slip of the tongue, but a conscious, purposeful and deliberate act. Nor did the traitors mistakenly smear Ambassador Joe Wilson - a smear which continues today. It was the intentional plot of men fearful of having their treacherous lies exposed.

Mistakes were definitely made. Three years ago, too many elected Democrats and too many other Americans believed the president and vice president of the United States to be honorable men. To be patriots. To have the best interests of Americans at heart. They believed them and they believed a megamedia that operated like government-owned megaphones instead of independent watch dogs. Those were gigantic mistakes.

I haven't told you a single thing you haven't heard dozens of times previously. And yet, every day, people who I am positive are as well or better acquainted than I with the facts I've outlined here say or write: "Invading Iraq was a mistake."

Nooooooooooo!

Our leaders betrayed us and aided our enemies. They worked overtime to silence dissident voices. They deliberately took us into war under a cloak of deceit and the outcome, so far, is tens of thousands of dead soldiers and civilians, a weakened national security, a diplomatic catastrophe, a sullied American voice, a dwindling treasury and increased terrorism, with no end in sight.

Stop calling what they did a mistake.

CANWFZ

Secretary Rumsfeld really has a nerve. He gets invited to visit a Chinese missile base and then he complains that his hosts aren't showing him enough and pretend to be spending less than they are. And he doesn't even mention one of the most important developments in that part of the globe, the Central Asia Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (CANWFZ).

Perhaps it was just a matter of not being able to pronounce the new acronymn. More likely, Rumsfeld didn't want to talk about it because, together with Britain and France, he's already sent objections to the United Nations.

While it isn't necessary for the five Central Asian nations to get their treaty approved by the nuclear club, since Russia and China have already agreed that it's a good idea, it would be nice if the other nuclear powers endorsed it too.

But, the United States, the country most concerned about nuclear proliferation; the one that went to war on the mere suspicion that the people living in the deserts of Iraq might be hiding some weapons of mass destruction; the nation that agitates itself on a daily basis that Iran might accumulate enough enriched uranium to make itself a bomb (in maybe a decade), objects to five nations declaring that they want nothing to do with the stuff. What is Rumsfeld thinking?

Well, if the pattern runs true to form, then Rumsfeld's suspicions of China's bad faith and denigration of the Central Asian agreement is yet another example of ascribing one's own motives and behavior to others. In this case, Rumsfeld suspects the Chinese of hiding something, because that's what he's doing. Because, having gotten the UN inspectors and the IAEA to certify that Iraq is "clean" ("no WMD there" as Bush declared in his comedy act), the American Department of Defense is busily constructing missile bases in Iraq so "we can fight them over there and don't have to fight them over here."

But Bush was referring to terrorists, you object, not Russian and Chinese missiles. The missile defense shield we are building is going to protect us from those--the missile defense shield whose interceptor tests keep failing, falling short in the Pacific and whose precise location is never specified. Seems to me that if missiles are going to be intercepted, it would make sense to do it closer to where they take off, rather than where they are expected to land. Which may be why China repeated its commitment not to use nuclear missiles first--a subtle hint that whatever concerns are prompting the furious construction in Iraq, which China is surely able to detect, even if Syrian and Irania snooping is prevented from seeing it up close, is a lot of wasted effort.

Because, of course, once the bases and bunkers are ready to receive the nuclear weapons (flown in perhaps from Germany where they are no longer needed and wanted), China and Russia are going to object, just as the Soviet Union did when we planted missiles in Turkey and they had to send some over to Cuba to get US to take those out.

Maybe Rumsfeld thinks this time it will be different; that because Russia and China have put up with our nuclear missiles in Turkey (yes, they're back), Italy, Spain, Germany and Britain, having them in Iraq as well won't be a bother. Or maybe Rumsfeld thinks that once they are in, Russia and China would have to do something drastic to get them out and they've already promised not to use their missiles first--a similar promise on which the US has already renegged.

Anyway, with all these weighty issues on and under the table, the New York Times saw fit to report on Rumsfeld's whilrwind trip, in his high-tech command center jumbo jet by telling us about the Mongolian horse he couldn't bring back home.

*******
Short quiz:
What other nation on the face of the earth has it's weapons of mass destruction set up in other countries? None

What is the Pentagon building in Iraq with a construction budget that is twice as large for this year as for the previous four combined? Your guess is as good as mine. For certain they aren't building a hundred more temporary bases like those they already have.

Once China's oil pipeline from Venezuela to the Pacific is complete, what security measures will it have to take to keep it safe from "terrorist" attacks? Again, your guess is as good as mine.

********
US analysts, officials worry about China's military rise
`ANTI-ACCESS': Although US leaders may visit China, they are only allowed limited access, and are concerned that the US is clearly considered the hypothetical enemy

AFP , WASHINGTON
Sunday, Oct 23, 2005,Page 5

"You have this disconnect between what China says it's doing and what it's actually doing."

China is doing little to ease concerns over its rapid military buildup which is threatening US dominance in a wide range of areas, from Asian sea lanes to outer space, US experts said on Friday.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld went on a maiden trip this week to Beijing to directly express US worries over China's growing military power, but the experts felt the assurances he received had failed to lift long-held suspicions.

While Chinese leaders allowed an unprecedented visit for Rumsfeld to the Strategic Rocket Forces headquarters in Beijing, he was not be allowed into the national military command center, the Chinese version of the Pentagon.

"The Chinese in their own context made a small step forward, but in reality there is no indication they are ready to embark on a new era of military transparency in the American or European sense," said Richard Fisher of the US-based International Assessment and Strategy Center.

"Not only can Chinese nuclear missiles now target the continental United States, the whole configuration of the new Chinese force is clearly designed with the United States as the hypothetical enemy," Fisher said.

Randall Schriver, a senior State Department official who was in charge of East Asian policy until early this year, said that "the core issue of our concerns over China's military buildup and its transparency remains unresolved," despite Rumsfeld's rare trip.

While the US defense chief has maintained Beijing's military expenditure was two to three times greater than publicly acknowledged, his Chinese counterpart, Cao Guangchuan, (???) denied any understatement of military spending.

Specific concerns about the lack of transparency in China's military budget and capability were also not addressed, including the deployment of medium- and short-range missiles that can hit US airbases.

Some experts believe China will develop a world-class defense industry within the next 10 to 15 years and seeks to replace the US as the preeminent power in the Pacific -- even globally. By some estimates, China now has the world's third-largest defense budget, after the US and Russia, spending from US$70 billion to US$90 billion per year. But China says defense spending would be just US$30 billion this year.

"I think it was good for the Chinese to hear directly from the secretary of defense as he actually in many ways was speaking for more than the United States," said Peter Brookes, a former US deputy assistant secretary of defense.

"There are concerns about the transparency of China's military budget and its growth from others in the region who are nervous as well, including Japan, Taiwan and even Southeast Asia, but reluctant to speak up about it," he said.

China argues its military budget is dwarfed by US spending, which last year totaled US$440 billion, and that its preoccupation is to lift living standards of the poor.

"But what you are seeing are capabilities to, in fact, deny the United States from projecting power in the region," said Dan Blumenthal, a former senior director for China and Taiwan in the US Secretary of Defense's office.

"So you have this disconnect between what China says it's doing and what it is actually doing," he said.

One area of concern that has given the US sleepless nights is what Blumenthal calls China's anti-access capabilities.

"China is developing military capabilities that make it much more difficult for the United States to access hot spots in the region and, therefore, to meet its various defense commitments which have underguarded security order in the region for half a century," he said.

Beijing has deployed various classes of destroyers with cruise missiles that can fire upon US carrier battle groups, "which is a matter of great concern," he said.

In addition, Blumenthal said, China's deployment of diesel submarines made it "much more difficult and complicated for US carrier battle groups to get into areas that they need to get into."

China is also accused of using its manned space program to achieve its military ambitions.

"Every mission performed either electronic or military surveillance for the PLA [People's Liberation Army] but China is loathe to admit, from the very inception, that its manned space program has directly served military purposes," Fisher said.

Brookes said that the US' immediate concern is that China will try to use its new military might on Taiwan to effect unification. Also, China has as many as 750 ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan, according to the Pentagon. Many of them are reportedly also capable of striking US forces stationed in Japan.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/10/23/2003276996

Fitzmas is Coming

It's beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas. Indictments are coming and the truth will be known.

Leahy Tells the Truth

But not all of it. That the U.S. is constructing military bases in Iraq from which to target Russia and China and India and whoever else seeks to "deny the United States from projecting power in the region" is still classified information which even Senators are reluctant to reveal on the floor of the Senate.

Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy
The War In Iraq
Senate Floor
October 25, 2005

[Following is Sen. Patrick Leahy?s address on Iraq, delivered Tuesday morning on the Senate Floor. Leahy (D-Vt.) is the ranking member of the Appropriations panel that handles the Senate?s work in funding the State Department and U.S. foreign operations and aid, and he also is a senior member of the Appropriations panel with jurisdiction over the annual defense budget bill. Leahy was one of 23 senators who voted against the resolution that authorized the invasion of Iraq.]

MR. LEAHY. Three years ago when the Congress and the country debated the resolution to give President Bush the authority to launch a preemptive war against Iraq, reference was often made to the lessons of Vietnam.

Unheeded Lessons

There are many lessons, both of that war and of the efforts to end it. But one that made a deep impression on me came from former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the architect of that war, who said our greatest mistake was not understanding our enemy.

Vietnam was a relatively simple country that had changed little in the preceding 3,000 years. It was, for the most part, racially, ethnically, linguistically and religiously homogenous. One would have thought it would have been easy for U.S. military and political leaders to understand.

Apparently it was not. The White House and the Pentagon, convinced that no country, particularly not a tiny impoverished land of rice farmers, could withstand the military might of the United States, never bothered to study and understand the history or culture of Vietnam, and they made tragic miscalculations. They lacked the most basic knowledge of the motivation, the capabilities and the resolve of the people they were fighting.

At the start of the Iraq war, those who drew some analogies to Vietnam were ridiculed by the Pentagon and the White House. Iraq is not Vietnam, they insisted. Our troops would be greeted as liberators. Troop strength was not a concern. Our mission would be quickly accomplished. Democracy would spread throughout the Middle East. Freedom was on the march.

It is true that Vietnam and Iraq are vastly different societies. But the point was not that they are similar, but that some of the same lessons apply. We did not understand Vietnam -- a simple country -- and we paid a huge price for our ignorance and our arrogance.

Iraq -- a complex country comprised of rival clans, tribes and ethic and religious factions who have fought each other for centuries -- we understand even less.

If this were not apparent to many at the start of this ill-conceived and politically motivated war -- a war I opposed from the beginning -- it should be obvious today. Yet to listen to the Secretary of Defense, or to the President or the Vice President, one would never know it.

Misled Into War

We know today that President Bush decided to invade Iraq without evidence to support the use of force and well before Congress passed the resolution giving him the authority to do so -- authority he did not even believe he needed -- despite the Constitution which invests in the Congress the power to declare war. Twenty-three Senators voted against that resolution, and I was proud to be one of them.

We know today that the motivation for a plan to attack Iraq, hatched by a handful of political operatives, had taken hold within the White House even before 9/11, and without any connection to the war on terrorism that came later.

We know that the key public justifications for the war -- to stop Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons and supporting al Qaeda -- were based on faulty intelligence and outright distortions and have been thoroughly discredited. United Nations weapons inspectors, who were dismissed by the White House as naïve and ineffective, turned out to have gathered far better information with a tiny fraction of the budget than our own intelligence agencies.

And we know that the insurgency is continuing to grow along with American casualties -- 1,999 killed and at least 15,220 wounded, as of yesterday -- despite the same old light at the end of the tunnel assertions and clichés by the White House and top officials in the Pentagon.

The sad but inescapable truth, which the President either does not see or refuses to believe or admit, is that the Iraqi insurgency has steadily grown, in part because of our presence there.

?Bring Them On?

After baiting the insurgents to ?bring them on,? we got what the President asked for. More than two years later, the pendulum swung against us, and the question is no longer whether we can stop the insurgency, but how to extricate ourselves.

According to soldiers who volunteered for duty in Iraq believing in the mission and who have returned home, many Iraqis who detest the barbaric tactics of the insurgents have grown to despise us. They blame us for the lack of water and electricity, for the lack of jobs and health care, for the hardships and violence they are suffering day in and day out.

Unlike our troops and their families who make great sacrifices, most Americans have been asked to sacrifice nothing for this war. The bills are being sent to our children and grandchildren, by way of our rapidly escalating national debt and annual deficits. Yet as the hundreds of billions dollars to pay for the war continue to pile up and domestic programs like Medicaid, job training and programs for needy students are cut, the sacrifices will be felt today as well.

Slogans have become little more than political rallying cries for the White House. Slogans as empty and unfulfilled as ?mission accomplished.? Our troops were sent to fight an unnecessary war without sufficient armor against these ruthless and barbaric bombing attacks, without adequate reinforcements, without a plan to win the peace, and without adequate medical care and other services when they return home on stretchers or crutches or with eye patches, unable to walk, to work, to pay their mortgages, or to support their families.

Many of our veterans have been treated shamefully by their government when it sent them into harm?s way under false pretences, and again after they returned home.

Today I worry about places like Ramadi, where more than 300 members of the Army National Guard from my State of Vermont are currently serving valiantly alongside their comrades in the Marine Corps and the Pennsylvania National Guard. Dozens of other citizen-soldiers from the Vermont Guard are serving across Iraq, while hundreds are deployed throughout the Persian Gulf region.

Many Vermonters have been killed in Ramadi and elsewhere by roadside bombs and all-too accurate sniper attacks.

The insurgents too often seem to attack and then escape with impunity. You can open a newspaper and see photos of armed insurgents walking the streets in broad daylight. Many of these cold-blooded attacks are by people who are willing to trade their own lives to kill civilians, security guards, and our soldiers who have no way of knowing who they can trust among the general population.

?More Of The Same? Is Not Working

The President has no plan to deal with Ramadi, let alone the rest of Iraq, except doing more of what we have been doing for more than two years, at a cost of $5 billion a month -- money we do not have and that future generations of Americans will have to repay. Nor has he proposed a practical alternative to our wasteful energy policy that guarantees our continued dependence on Persian Gulf oil for decades to come.

I am sure that what our military is doing to train the Iraqi Army and what our billions of dollars are doing to help rebuild Iraq -- whatever is not stolen or wasted by profiteering contractors -- are making a difference. Iraq is no longer governed by a corrupt, ruthless dictator, and there have been halting but important steps toward representative government.

I applaud the Iraqis who courageously stood in long lines and cast their ballots for a new constitution, despite the insurgents? threats. There are many profiles in courage among the Iraqi people, just as there are in the heroic daily endeavors of U.S. soldiers there.

But this progress masks deeper troubles and may be short lived, threatened by a widening insurgency and a divisive political process that is increasingly seen as leading to a Shiite dominated theocracy governed by Islamic law and aligned with Iran, or the dissolution of Iraq into separate Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite states.

Escalating Toll, Escalating Costs

Mr. President, this war has been a costly disaster for our country. More than half of the American people now say they have lost confidence in the President?s handling of it.

Far from making us safer from terrorists, in fact it has turned Iraq into a haven and recruiting ground for terrorists and deflected our attention and resources away from the fight against terrorism. If anything, it has emboldened our enemies, as it has become increasingly apparent that the most powerful army in the world cannot stop a determined insurgency.

Regrettably, it is no longer a secret how vulnerable we are, and Hurricane Katrina showed how tragically unprepared we are to respond to a major disaster -- four years after 9/11 and after wasting billions on an unnecessary war.

Our cities are little further than the drawing board when it comes to developing workable evacuation plans for a terrorist attack or other emergency, not to mention how to feed, house and provide for millions of displaced people.

This war has caused immense damage to our relations with the world?s Muslims, a religion practiced by some 1.2 billion people and about which most Americans know virtually nothing. We cannot possibly mount an effective campaign against terrorism without the trust, the respect and the active support of Muslims, particularly in the Middle East where our image has been so badly damaged. Our weakened international reputation is another heavy price that our country has paid for this war.

Each day, as more and more Iraqi civilians, often children, lose their lives and limbs from suicide bombers and also from our bombs, the resentment and anger toward us intensifies.

And every week, the number of U.S. service men and women who are killed or wounded creeps higher, will soon pass 2000, and shows no sign of diminishing.

This war has isolated us from our allies, most of whom want no part of it, and if we continue on the course the President has set it could also divide our country.

Course Correction

Other Senators and Representatives, Republicans and Democrats, have expressed frustration and alarm with the President?s failure to acknowledge that this war has been a costly mistake, that more of the same is not a workable policy, and that we need to change course. My friend Senator Hagel, a Vietnam veteran, has pointed out the increasing similarities with Vietnam. We learned this week that the Administration has even resumed the discredited Vietnam-era practice of measuring progress by reporting body counts.

White House and Pentagon officials, and their staunchest supporters in Congress, warn of a wider civil war if we pull our troops out. They could be right. In fact, it could be the first thing they are right about since the beginning of this reckless adventure.

My question to them is, when and how then do we extract ourselves from this mess? What does the President believe needs to happen before our troops can come home, and what is his plan for getting to that point?

If we cannot overcome the insurgency, what can we realistically expect to accomplish in Iraq, and at what cost, that requires the continued deployment of our troops?

What is it that compels us to spend billions of dollars to rebuild the Iraqi military, when our own National Guard is stretched to the breaking point and can?t even get the equipment it needs?

Unfortunately I doubt that the President or the Secretary of Defense will answer these questions. Instead of answers, we get rhetoric that conflicts with just about everything we hear or read, including from some of this country?s most distinguished retired military officers who served under both Republican and Democratic presidents.

Six months ago the Vice President said the insurgency was in its last throes. That was just the latest in a long string of grossly inaccurate statements and predictions and false expectations about Iraq.

Secretary Rice, when asked recently when U.S. forces could begin to come home assuming the Administration?s rosy predictions come true, could not, or would not, even venture a guess.

Without answers -- real answers, honest answers -- to these questions, I will not support the open-ended deployment of our troops in a war that was based on falsehoods and justified with hubris.

Even though I opposed this war, I have prayed, like other Americans, that it would weaken the threat of terrorism and make the world safer, that our troops? sacrifices would prove to have been justified and that the President had a plan for completing the mission.

Instead, it has turned Iraq into a training ground for terrorists, it is fueling the insurgency, it is causing severe damage to the reputation and readiness of the U.S. military, and it is preventing us from addressing the inexcusable weaknesses in our homeland security.

The Iraqi people, at least the Shiites and Kurds, have voted for a new constitution, as hastily drafted, flawed and potentially divisive as it may be.

Saddam Hussein, whose capacity for cruelty was seemingly limitless, is finally facing trial for his heinous crimes.

And elections for a new national government are due by the end of the year.

By then, it will be more than two and a half years since Saddam?s overthrow, and we will have given the Iraqi people a chance to chart their own course. The sooner we reduce our presence there, the sooner they will have to make the difficult decisions necessary to solve their own problems.

Our military commanders say that Iraq?s problems increasingly need to be solved through the political process, not through military force. We must show Iraq and the world that we are not an occupying force, and that we have no designs on their country or their oil. The American people need to know that the President has a plan that will bring our troops home.

Once a new Iraqi government is in place, I believe the President should consult with Congress on a flexible plan that includes pulling our troops back from the densely populated areas where they are suffering the worst casualties and to bring them home. Those consultations should begin in earnest as soon as Iraq?s new government is in place.

It is also long overdue for the White House and the Congress to reassess our policy towards the region. The President has declared that democracy is taking root throughout the Middle East, and there have been small, positive steps. But they are dwarfed by the ongoing threat posed by Iran, Syria?s continued meddling in Iraq and Lebanon, repression and corruption in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the danger that the momentum for peace from Israel?s withdrawal from Gaza will be lost as settlement construction accelerates in the West Bank, and the widespread -- albeit mistaken -- belief among Muslims that the United States wants to destroy Islam itself.

Just as the White House?s obsession with Iraq has diverted our resources and impeded our efforts to strengthen our defenses against terrorism at home, so has it made it more difficult to work constructively with our allies to address these regional threats.

Mr. President, as I have said, I did not support this war, and I believe that history will not judge kindly those who got us into this debacle by attacking a country that did not threaten us, after deceiving the American people and ridiculing those who appealed for caution and for instead mobilizing our resources directly against the threat of terrorism.

I worry that many of our young veterans -- nearly one million so far -- who have gone to Iraq and experienced the brutality and trauma of war and who may already feel guilty for having survived, will increasingly question its purpose. As the architects of this war move on to other jobs, fear that we are going to see another generation of veterans, many of them physically and psychologically scarred for life, who feel a deep sense of betrayal by their government.

Mounting Trade-Offs

If President Bush will not say what remains to be done before he can declare victory and bring our troops home, then the Congress should start voting on what this war is really costing this Nation.

We should vote on paying for the war versus cutting Medicaid, as some of those across the aisle are proposing.

Or versus cutting VA programs that are already unable to pay the staggering costs of treatment and rehabilitation for our injured veterans.

Or versus rebuilding our National Guard.

Or rebuilding FEMA.

Or securing our ports and our borders.

Or investing in our intelligence so we can finally capture Osama bin Laden.

Or investing in health care for the tens of millions of Americans who can not afford to get sick.

Or fixing our troubled schools, so our children can learn to do a better job than we have of making the world a safer place for all people.

Mr. President, these, and the tarnished reputation of a country that so many once admired as not only powerful but also good and just, are the real costs of this war.

# # # # #

What's a Gov'mint For?

There are some people (I think they are born that way) whose main delight comes from manipulating other people. If people were made of clay or some other inert substance, it wouldn't matter. But since people are living, breathing, moving creatures with their own agenda of things to do and places to go, efforts to manipulate them, even if the effort to direct them is for their own good, are almost certain to generate resistance.

In addition, the nature of manipulation is such that to be really evident, the effect of the manipulation has to hurt, or at least discomfit, the victim. Which is why, at the point where manipulation meets resistance, the lie is born. Indeed, even when the manipulation is for the victims own good ("this won't hurt" says the nurse, as she sticks the needle in), deception is an integral part. Without the lie, manipulation is not likely to get far.

Now the manipulator faces a bit of a quandry. Why does behavior which brings such delight require more or less deception? In other words, why does something that feels so good have to involve perverting the truth--i.e. doing something bad?

Over the centuries, at least in the so-called Western Civilizations, this quandry has generated a multitude of explanations and justifications. Some have dealt with the intent of the manipulator, his peculiar need that others seem not to share, leading to the conclusion that deception on behalf of a good cause is not bad. Others have dealt with the victim's attitude, the failure to offer strenuous resistance to the manipulation, or any resistance at all, leading to the conclusion that the manipulation is either deserved or not particularly hurtful, after all. Or, perhaps, the victim is just insensitive and, like the other dumb creatures on the planet, made to be manipulated by those who know better how creatures ought to behave. In that case, of course, it easy to argue that manipulation, regardless of whether it needs to be disguised with a lie, is actually good.

Then, once you accept the argument that some people deserve to be manipulated because they are either too stupid to notice or too lazy to care, it's easy to take the next step and conclude that those who know better actually have an obligation to provide direction and govern the rest. Indeed, the absence of adequate resistance, the normal response to manipulation, can be interpreted as an indication that the subject population, in addition to or because of their stupidity and indolence, are actually bad. In which case, any effort to correct them is not just good, but a virtue.

Leaving the accuracy of this conclusion aside for a moment, let me turn to another most certainly in-born characteristic of almost all people--the inclination to socialize and arrange themselves in mutually supportive groups. Though there are some people who argue that social organization among humans is something that either has to be imposed from outside or results from a common response to the perception of danger (behavior that's been documented in the wild among our close cousins), I'm convinced that just as some people are born to manipulate, almost all of them, even those lacking some of the essential senses, are born to participate in a larger group.

Whether or not people forming themselves into groups is an in-born trait is only significant in relation to the interaction between groups and individuals who are born to manipulate. If manipulating one person is attractive to the latter, the prospect of manipulating a group of a dozen, or a hundred, or even a million is positively irresistable. And the rationalization that any large group "needs" to be governed follows almost automatically.

But, since in any large group there are bound to be some people who react poorly to being injured or restrained, being endowed, perhaps, with a keener sense of self-preservation and self-direction than the rest, resistance, which would be considered normal behavior in an individual, is not only magnified by its presence in a group (even if not all participate) but presents as a positive menace to the inclination to manipulate and govern.

At the least, when resistance is a component of a group, it's unlikely that deception will suffice to maintain the manipulator's control. When manipulation meets the resistance of a group, there are only two outs. Either the manipulator gives up the game and looks for another target, or he resorts to the use of force. And the problem using force is that it not only generates resistance much more surely and quickly, but ultimate force is self-defeating, dead people being beyond manipulation.

Whether or not manipulating other people is inherently good or bad, it's something that people do. And, although the consequences for the victim are often injurious, that's not necessarily so. The people who delight in manipulating others do have other choices. They can target other people who actually like it, have thick skins and/or are able to induce them to take turns. After all, that's what wrestling is all about, isn't it.

On the other hand, it wouldn't be necessarily to go through all these mental gyrations to justify behavior with false assumptions, if the manipulators were to redirect their attention from other people to the physical environment and come to realize that what humans form themselves up into groups for in the first place is to confront the forces of nature, which they can't control or manipulate as individuals for their own benefit or that of the group. In other words, if resistance and human conflict is to be avoided, then the manipulators need to accept that it's the environment that needs to be manipulated and governed, not other people.

But, that's hard work and "you can't fool mother nature." Which raises the question: who's really been lazy and stupid?

Hannah News

For the last two nights now I've dreamt about pushing my mother around some strange environments in a wheel-chair. Most interesting was some sort of medical/educational campus with lots of walk-ways and easy steps that a wheel-chair could actually be rolled up.

In one dream she had a little lap dog that we took along. Sort of like Toto in the school-teacher's basket in the Wizzard of Oz. In another, I parked her in the midst of a bunch of seniors taking an art class and went off on a stroll by myself. Almost forgot to retrieve her. When I brought the wheel-chair back, she hugged it and kissed it--which was actually preferable to her doing that to me.

I think that behavior with the chair represents her gradually coming to an appreciation that she's actually well cared for--a novel awareness, since she perceived herself to have been abused most of her life.

Otherwise these dreams are a little peculiar because we haven't actually taken her out in the wheel-chair for over a month and not much before that.
In fact, since she's spent most of her time in bed the last month, we've been working on doing a little more walking every day, just to keep her muscles in shape. There doesn't seem to be any real physical impediment.
So, I'm thinking that prior infirmities were largely an act that had been well practiced for many years.

How else to explain the sudden disappearance of all aches and pains?

*****

Should probably note that waiting for Fitzmas is proving rather nerve-wracking. Watergate was easier because we had no idea what to expect. This time we have all kinds of expectations about what SHOULD happen, but too much experience to believe that it really will.

Besides, the architects of the debacle in our democracy have been working at it for decades and their supporters are multitudinous. Exposing the whole of their nefarious schemes to transform America into a world empire, not just primus inter pares, is a big order and will take a lot of time.

**********

Meanwhile, it keeps raining and our fields still haven't been cut.

************

October 24--For the last two days the Omi has been back to setting her own schedule. Getting up and going to the bathroom and then getting back in bed when she's had enough. Tomorrow she plans to debone the dog's chicken. Today she gave herself a manicure.
And she's talking. Doesn't comprehend as well as the dog, but better.

Target China

"underguarded security order in the region for half a century"

Surely that's a slip of the tongue, but accurate. Secretary Rumsfeld's under-reported trip to China while the American media are fixated on bird flu and the weather reminds be of Rumsfeld's over-reported trip to Abu Ghraib while Wolfowitz went before Congress making the case for new classes of nuclear weapons to keep our allies and enemies from hiding things in their mountains. One would think that even the Swiss would object to that.

Target China

Secretary Donald Rumsfeld paid a historic visit to China last week, his first since he was President Ford's Chief of Staff.

But, while the Chinese graciously let him visit a nuclear missile base, Mr. Rumsfeld was not impressed and his minions have gone to some length to make the point that the "inscrutible orientals" still lag in the modern virtue, transparency.

Also, even though a five-nation agreement has been endorsed by both Russia and China to make Central Asia a Nuclear-Free Zone, it was not discussed. That's because the U.S., Britain and France have already decided to oppose this ground-breaking agreement.
An analysis in the Taipei Times provides a number of "reasons" for U.S. suspicions:

>`ANTI-ACCESS': Although US leaders may visit China, they are only allowed >limited access, and are concerned that the US is clearly considered the >hypothetical enemy

>AFP , WASHINGTON
>Sunday, Oct 23, 2005,Page 5

>"You have this disconnect between what China says it's doing and what it's >actually doing."

>China is doing little to ease concerns over its rapid military buildup which >is threatening US dominance in a wide range of areas, from Asian sea >lanes to outer space, US experts said on Friday.

>US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld went on a maiden trip this week >to Beijing to directly express US worries over China's growing military >power, but the experts felt the assurances he received had failed to lift >long-held suspicions.

While an objective observer might conclude that being surrounded by U.S. military forces stationed in South Korea, Japan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Turkey might give China a reason to protect itself, that's not OK with the U.S.

You see, we've got this new principle: To deny the U.S. unfettered access wherever it wants to go is considered an offense.

>China argues its military budget is dwarfed by US spending, which last >year totaled US$440 billion, and that its preoccupation is to lift living >standards of the poor.

>"But what you are seeing are capabilities to, in fact, deny the United States >from projecting power in the region," said Dan Blumenthal, a former senior >director for China and Taiwan in the US Secretary of Defense's office.

>"So you have this disconnect between what China says it's doing and what >it is actually doing," he said.

>One area of concern that has given the US sleepless nights is what >Blumenthal calls China's anti-access capabilities.

>"China is developing military capabilities that make it much more difficult >for the United States to access hot spots in the region and, therefore, to >meet its various defense commitments which have underguarded security >order in the region for half a century," he said.

Think of that. Of course, a nation in which a man's home is no longer his castle, can't be expected to respect the borders and territorial waters of other nations either.

But, when was all this decided?

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/10/23/2003276996

Money for Nothing

Howard Dean has been talking about the culture of corruption. Probably he has no idea how right he is.
Just in case anybody's confused about what corruption means in the political arena, it's basically getting money for services that aren't delivered or, if we're lucky, people getting paid twice for the same service--i.e. accepting bribes.

http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_10_24/cover.html

Money for Nothing

Billions of dollars have disappeared, gone to bribe Iraqis and line contractors? pockets.

by Philip Giraldi

The United States invaded Iraq with a high-minded mission: destroy dangerous weapons, bring democracy, and trigger a wave of reform across the Middle East. None of these have happened.

When the final page is written on America?s catastrophic imperial venture, one word will dominate the explanation of U.S. failure?corruption. Large-scale and pervasive corruption meant that available resources could not be used to stabilize and secure Iraq in the early days of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), when it was still possible to do so. Continuing corruption meant that the reconstruction of infrastructure never got underway, giving the Iraqi people little incentive to co-operate with the occupation. Ongoing corruption in arms procurement and defense spending means that Baghdad will never control a viable army while the Shi?ite and Kurdish militias will grow stronger and produce a divided Iraq in which constitutional guarantees will be irrelevant.

The American-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority could well prove to be the most corrupt administration in history, almost certainly surpassing the widespread fraud of the much-maligned UN Oil for Food Program. At least $20 billion that belonged to the Iraqi people has been wasted, together with hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Exactly how many billions of additional dollars were squandered, stolen, given away, or simply lost will never be known because the deliberate decision by the CPA not to meter oil exports means that no one will ever know how much revenue was generated during 2003 and 2004.

Some of the corruption grew out of the misguided neoconservative agenda for Iraq, which meant that a serious reconstruction effort came second to doling out the spoils to the war?s most fervent supporters. The CPA brought in scores of bright, young true believers who were nearly universally unqualified. Many were recruited through the Heritage Foundation website, where they had posted their résumés. They were paid six-figure salaries out of Iraqi funds, and most served in 90-day rotations before returning home with their war stories. One such volunteer was Simone Ledeen, daughter of leading neoconservative Michael Ledeen. Unable to communicate in Arabic and with no relevant experience or appropriate educational training, she nevertheless became a senior advisor for northern Iraq at the Ministry of Finance in Baghdad. Another was former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer?s older brother Michael who, though utterly unqualified, was named director of private-sector development for all of Iraq.

The 15-month proconsulship of the CPA disbursed nearly $20 billion, two-thirds of it in cash, most of which came from the Development Fund for Iraq that had replaced the UN Oil for Food Program and from frozen and seized Iraqi assets. Most of the money was flown into Iraq on C-130s in huge plastic shrink-wrapped pallets holding 40 ?cashpaks,? each cashpak having $1.6 million in $100 bills. Twelve billion dollars moved that way between May 2003 and June 2004, drawn from accounts administered by the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The $100 bills weighed an estimated 363 tons.

Once in Iraq, there was virtually no accountability over how the money was spent. There was also considerable money ?off the books,? including as much as $4 billion from illegal oil exports. The CPA and the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Board, which it controlled, made a deliberate decision not to record or ?meter? oil exports, an invitation to wholesale fraud and black marketeering.

Thus the country was awash in unaccountable money. British sources report that the CPA contracts that were not handed out to cronies were sold to the highest bidder, with bribes as high as $300,000 being demanded for particularly lucrative reconstruction contracts.

The contracts were especially attractive because no work or results were necessarily expected in return. It became popular to cancel contracts without penalty, claiming that security costs were making it too difficult to do the work. A $500 million power-plant contract was reportedly awarded to a bidder based on a proposal one page long. After a joint commission rejected the proposal, its members were replaced by the minister, and approval was duly obtained. But no plant has been built.

Where contracts are actually performed, their nominal cost is inflated sufficiently to provide handsome bribes for everyone involved in the process. Bribes paid to government ministers reportedly exceed $10 million.

Money also disappeared in truckloads and by helicopter. The CPA reportedly distributed funds to contractors in bags off the back of a truck. In one notorious incident in April 2004, $1.5 billion in cash that had just been delivered by three Blackhawk helicopters was handed over to a courier in Erbil, in the Kurdish region, never to be seen again. Afterwards, no one was able to recall the courier?s name or provide a good description of him.

Paul Bremer, meanwhile, had a slush fund in cash of more than $600 million in his office for which there was no paperwork. One U.S. contractor received $2 million in a duffel bag. Three-quarters of a million dollars was stolen from an office safe, and a U.S. official was given $7 million in cash in the waning days of the CPA and told to spend it ?before the Iraqis take over.? Nearly $5 billion was shipped from New York in the last month of the CPA. Sources suggest that a deliberate attempt was being made to run down the balance and spend the money while the CPA still had authority and before an Iraqi government could be formed.

The only certified public-accounting firm used by the CPA to monitor its spending was a company called North Star Consultants, located in San Diego, which was so small that it operated out of a private home. It was subsequently determined that North Star did not, in fact, perform any review of the CPA?s internal spending controls. Today, no one can account for billions of those dollars or even suggest how the money was spent. And as the CPA no longer exists, there is also little interest in re-examining its transparency or accountability.

Bremer escaped Baghdad by helicopter two days before his proconsulship expired to avoid a possible ambush on the road leading to the airport, which he had been unable to secure. He has recently been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an honor he shares with ex-CIA Director George ?Slam-dunk? Tenet.

Considerable fraud has been alleged regarding American companies, much of which can never be addressed because the Bush administration does not regard contracts with the CPA as pertaining to the U.S. government, even though U.S. taxpayer dollars were involved in some transactions.

Many of the contracts for work in Iraq were awarded on a cost-plus basis, in which an agreed-upon percentage of profit would be added to the actual costs of performing the contract. Such contracts are an invitation to fraud, and unscrupulous companies will make every effort to increase their costs so that the profits will also increase proportionally.

Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney?s former company, has a no-bid monopoly contract with the Army Corps of Engineers that is now estimated to be worth $10 billion. In June 2005, Pentagon contracting officer Bunny Greenhouse told a congressional committee that the agreement was the ?most blatant and improper contracting abuse? that she had ever witnessed, a frank assessment that subsequently earned her a demotion.

Halliburton has frequently been questioned over its poor record keeping, and critics claim that it has a history of overcharging for its services. In May 1967, a company called RMK/BRJ could not account for $120 million in materiel sent to Vietnam and was investigated several times for overcharging on fuel. RMK/BRJ is now known as KBR or Kellogg, Brown and Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that has been the focus of congressional, Department of Defense, and General Accountability Office investigations. Defense Contract Audit Agency auditors have questioned Halliburton?s charges on a $1.6 billion fuel contract, claiming that the overcharges on the contract exceed $200 million. In one instance, the company charged the Army more than $27 million to transport $82,000 worth of fuel from Kuwait to Iraq. Halliburton has also been accused of billing the Army for 42,000 daily meals for soldiers, though it was only actually serving 14,000. In another operation, KBR purchased fleets of Mercedes trucks at $85,000 each to re-supply U.S. troops. The trucks carried no spare parts or even extra tires for the grueling high-speed run across the Kuwaiti and Iraqi deserts. When the trucks broke down on the highway, they were abandoned and destroyed rather than repaired.

Responding to complaints, Halliburton refused to permit independent auditing and inspected itself using so-called ?Tiger Teams.? One such team stayed at the five-star Kuwait Kempinski Hotel while it was doing its audit, running up a bill of more than $1 million that was passed on to U.S. taxpayers.

Another U.S. firm well connected to the Bush White House, Custer Battles, has provided security services to the coalition, receiving $11 million in Iraqi funds including $4 million in cash in a sole-source contract to supply security at Baghdad International Airport. The company had never provided airport security before receiving the contract. It also received a $21 million no-bid contract to provide security for the exchange of Iraqi currency. It has been alleged that much of the currency ?replaced? by Custer Battles has never been accounted for. The company also allegedly took over abandoned Iraqi-owned forklifts at the airport, repainted them, and then leased them back to the airport authority through a company set up in the Cayman Islands. Custer Battles reportedly set up a number of shell companies in offshore tax havens in Lebanon, Cyprus, and the Cayman Islands to handle the cash flow.

Two former company managers turned whistleblowers have charged that the company defrauded the U.S. government of at least $50 million. The Bush administration?s Justice Department has only reluctantly, and under pressure from a Newsweek exposé, supported the rights of the plaintiffs in the case. The White House has indicated that it is not interested in assisting other investigations of fraud in Iraqi contracting, preferring to regard the CPA as a ?multinational entity? and thereby limiting its vulnerability in American courts.

Another American contractor, CACI International, which was involved in the Abu Ghraib interrogations, was accused by the GAO in April 2004 of having failed to keep records on hours of work that it was billing for and of routinely upgrading employee job descriptions so that more could be charged per employee per hour. Both are apparently common practices among contractors in Iraq, and audits routinely determine that there is little in the way of paperwork to support billings. The GAO report also confirms that many private security contractors in Iraq have been charging the U.S. government exorbitant fees for their services, frequently because the contracts allow security costs to be rolled into the overall cost of the contract without being itemized. In one case, contract security guards were effectively being billed at $33,000 per guard per month while the average rate for a security specialist worked out to between $13,000 and $20,000 per month.

The CPA also spread its largesse around the U.S. armed forces, distributing over $600 million in cash to four regional commanders to fund reconstruction projects as part of the Commanders? Emergency Response Program. An audit of one region disclosed that 80 percent of the funds could not be accounted for, and more that $7 million in cash was missing. It is widely believed that many of the contracting agents working under the regional commands literally stole the money. In one reported instance, an American contracting officer doubled the price of a multimillion-dollar contract and brazenly explained that the extra money would be for his retirement fund.

Unfortunately, the corruption of the occupation outlived the departure of Paul Bremer and the demise of the CPA. A recent high-level investigation of the Iraqi interim government concluded that the corruption is now so pervasive as to be irreversible. One prominent businessman estimates that 95 percent of all business activity involves some form of bribery or kickback. The bureaucrats and fixers who live off of bribery are referred to by ordinary Iraqis as ?Ali Babas,? named after the character in The Thousand and One Nights who was able to access riches from a treasure cave by saying ?open sesame.? For the average Iraqi businessman, there was formerly only one hand out, that of Saddam?s designated minion. Now every hand is out. The educated and entrepreneurial are leaving the country in droves, as is most of the beleaguered Christian minority. Huge government appropriations are approved by Iraqi lawmakers and then simply disappear. Meanwhile, life for the average Iraqi does not improve, and oil production, water supplies, and electricity generation are all at lower levels than they were when the U.S. took control in 2003. The only thing that everyone knows is that all the money is gone and daily life in Iraq is worse than it was under Saddam Hussein.

The undocumented cash flow continued long after the CPA folded. Over $1.5 billion was disbursed to interim Iraqi ministries without any accounting, and more than $1 billion designated for provincial treasuries never made it out of Baghdad. More than $430 million in contracts issued by the Petroleum Ministry were unsupported by any documentation, and $8 billion were given to government ministries that had no financial controls in place. Nearly all of it disappeared, spent on ?payroll,? wages for ?ghost employees? in the Ministries of the Interior and Defense. In one case, an Army brigade receiving money to support 2,200 men was found to have fewer than 300 effectives. 602 actual guards at the Ministry of the Interior were billed as more than 8,200 for payroll purposes.

Iraqi Airways carried 2,400 employees even though it had not operated for over a year and had no planes. The airline itself was sold to an unidentified buyer without any paperwork to show for how much it was sold and what assets were included. It has been alleged that the buyer might well have been Pentagon favorite Ahmad Chalabi.

Nearly all payrolls in the national guard and national police were also inflated, leading to uncertainty over how large the security forces actually were?still an open question. Absentees from the nominal rolls of police and soldiers provided by government ministries are believed to number in the tens of thousands, and as the United States Congress has figured out, frequently cited figures on available trained manpower are largely imaginary.

Even the ?coalition of the willing? partners have been quick to cash in. Polish helicopters purchased as part of a $300 million deal with arms maker Bumar Ltd. were found to be obsolete, largely unflyable, and were actually rejected by the Iraqis. Bullets purchased from Poland by the Defense Ministry cost three times the normal international price. Five Polish peacekeepers have been arrested for demanding $90,000 in bribes. Both British and American soldiers have also demanded bribes from shopkeepers and travelers.

In yet another instance of take-it-while-you-can, a senior Interior Ministry official flew to Beirut in a helicopter accompanied by $10 million in newly printed Iraqi dinars. He has yet to return. Interim Iraqi President Iyad Allawi?s Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan transferred $500 million to a bank account in Lebanon, allegedly to buy weapons, in a case that continues to be murky. Shaalan is reportedly vacationing abroad and has not returned to Iraq. A Bremer favorite at the Defense Ministry, Ziad Tareq Cattan, was responsible for a number of shady arms-procurement deals. A warrant has been issued for his arrest, an unusual occurrence, and he is avoiding detention by staying with family in Erbil in Kurdistan.

Countless billions will never be accounted for, and the full cost of corruption has yet to be tallied. Sources report that much of the money that was designated for the development of a national army and police force is actually going to units that are exclusively Kurd or Shi?ite in expectation of a day of reckoning over the country?s oil supplies. The Kurds have made no secret of their desire to continue their autonomy-bordering-on-independence and have stated that they regard Kirkuk as their own. The Shi?ites have possession of the oil-producing region to the south and are using their control of the Interior Ministry to fill police ranks with their own pro-Iranian Badr Brigade members as well as militiamen drawn from radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr?s Mehdi Army. The Sunnis are the odd men out, virtually guaranteeing that, far from becoming the model democracy the U.S. set out to build, Iraq will descend deeper into chaos?aided in no small part by the culture of corruption we helped to fortify.
_______________________________________________

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer, is a partner in Cannistraro Associates, an international security consultancy.

9/11 Gagged

There's actually a good reason why the 9/11 Commission report hasn't had a critical review by the Congressional Committees on Intelligence. The gag order issued by the White House on October 5, 2001 prohibits the disclosure of information on the U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks to all but eight members of the House and Senate. While the Chair and Vice Chair of the Committees can still be briefed by members of the Cabinet or their direct subordinates, the other members of the committees and the committee staff can't. So, who would take the minutes?

******
Given this restriction on the disclosure of classified information, it would seem that the only reason Ambassador Joe Wilson was able to bring the yellow cake to the table was because the intelligence about it was demonstrably false.

National Security Experts Speak Out:
9/11 Commission Falls Short

Date: September 13, 2004

To The Congress of The United States:

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States ended its report stating that "We look forward to a national debate on the merits of what we have recommended, and we will participate vigorously in that debate."

In this spirit, we the undersigned wish to bring to the attention of the Congress and the people of the United States what we believe are serious shortcomings in the report and its recommendations.

We thus call upon Congress to refrain from narrow political considerations and to apply brakes to the race to implement the commission recommendations. It is not too late for Congress to break with the practice of limiting testimony to that from politicians and top-layer career bureaucrats-many with personal reputations to defend and institutional equities to protect.

Instead, use this unique opportunity to introduce salutary reform, an opportunity that must not be squandered by politically driven haste.

Omission is one of the major flaws in the Commission?s report. We are aware of significant issues and cases that were duly reported to the commission by those of us with direct knowledge, but somehow escaped attention.

Serious problems and shortcomings within government agencies likewise were reported to the Commission but were not included in the report. The report simply does not get at key problems within the intelligence, aviation security, and law enforcement communities. The omission of such serious and applicable issues and information by itself renders the report flawed, and casts doubt on the validity of many of its recommendations.

We believe that one of the primary purposes of the Commission was to establish accountability; that to do so is essential to understanding the failures that led to 9/11, and to prescribe needed changes.

However, the Commission in its report holds no one accountable, stating instead "our aim has not been to assign individual blame". That is to play the political game, and it shows that the goal of achieving unanimity overrode one of the primary purposes of this Commission?s establishment.

When calling for accountability, we are referring not to quasi-innocent mistakes caused by "lack of imagination" or brought about by ordinary "human error". Rather, we refer to intentional actions or inaction by individuals responsible for our national security, actions or inaction dictated by motives other than the security of the people of the United States.

The report deliberately ignores officials and civil servants who were, and still are, clearly negligent and/or derelict in their duties to the nation. If these individuals are protected rather than held accountable, the mindset that enabled 9/11 will persist, no matter how many layers of bureaucracy are added, and no matter how much money is poured into the agencies. Character counts.

Personal integrity, courage, and professionalism make the difference. Only a commission bent on holding no one responsible and reaching unanimity could have missed that.

We understand, as do most Americans, that one of our greatest strengths in defending against terrorism is the dedication and resourcefulness of those individuals who work on the frontlines.

Even before the Commission began its work, many honest and patriotic individuals from various agencies came forward with information and warnings regarding terrorism-related issues and serious problems within our intelligence and aviation security agencies.

If it were not for these individuals, much of what we know today of significant issues and facts surrounding 9/11 would have remained in the dark. These "whistleblowers" were able to put the safety of the American people above their own careers and jobs, even though they had reason to suspect that the deck was stacked against them. Sadly, it was.

Retaliation took many forms: some were ostracized; others were put under formal or informal gag orders; some were fired. The commission has neither acknowledged their contribution nor faced up to the urgent need to protect such patriots against retaliation by the many bureaucrats who tend to give absolute priority to saving face and protecting their own careers.

The Commission did emphasize that barriers to the flow of information were a primary cause for wasting opportunities to prevent the tragedy. But it skipped a basic truth.

Secrecy enforced by repression threatens national security as much as bureaucratic turf fights. It sustains vulnerability to terrorism caused by government breakdowns. Reforms will be paper tigers without a safe channel for whistleblowers to keep them honest in practice.

It is unrealistic to expect that government workers will defend the public, if they can't defend themselves. Profiles in Courage are the exception, not the rule.

Unfortunately, current whistleblower rights are a cruel trap and magnet for cynicism. The Whistleblower Protection Act has turned into an efficient way to finish whistleblowers off by endorsing termination.

No government workers have access to jury trials like Congress enacted for corporate workers after the Enron/MCI debacles.

Government workers need genuine, enforceable rights just as much to protect America's families, as corporate workers do to protect America's investments. It will take congressional leadership to fill this hole in the 9/11 Commission's recommendations.

The Commission, with its incomplete report of "facts and circumstances", intentional avoidance of assigning accountability, and disregard for the knowledge, expertise and experience of those who actually do the job, has now set about pressuring our Congress and our nation to hastily implement all its recommendations.

While we do not intend to imply that all recommendations of this report are flawed, we assert that the Commission?s list of recommendations does not include many urgently needed fixes, and further, we argue that some of their recommendations, such as the creation of an ?intelligence czar?, and haphazard increases in intelligence budgets, will lead to increases in the complexity and confusion of an already complex and highly bureaucratic system.

Congress has been hearing not only from the commissioners but from a bevy of other career politicians, very few of whom have worked in the intelligence community, and from top-layer bureaucrats, many with vested interests in saving face and avoiding accountability.

Congress has not included the voices of the people working within the intelligence and broader national security communities who deal with the real issues and problems day-after-day and who possess the needed expertise and experience-in short, those who not only do the job but are conscientious enough to stick their necks out in pointing to the impediments they experience in trying to do it effectively.

We the undersigned, who have worked within various government agencies (FBI, CIA, FAA, DIA, Customs) responsible for national security and public safety, call upon you in Congress to include the voices of those with first-hand knowledge and expertise in the important issues at hand. We stand ready to do our part.

Respectfully,

1. Costello, Edward J. Jr., Former Special Agent, Counterintelligence, FBI

2. Cole, John M., Former Veteran Intelligence Operations Specialist, FBI

3. Conrad, David "Mark", Retired Agent in Charge, Internal Affairs, U.S. Customs

4. Dew, Rosemary N., Former Supervisory Special Agent, Counterterrorism & Counterintelligence, FBI

5. Dzakovic, Bogdan, Former Red Team Leader, FAA

6. Edmonds, Sibel D., Former Language Specialist, FBI

7. Elson, Steve, Retired Navy Seal & Former Special Agent, FAA & US Navy

8. Forbes, David, Aviation, Logistics and Govt. Security Analysts, BoydForbes, Inc.,

9. Goodman, Melvin A., Former Senior Analyst/ Division Manager, CIA; Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy

10. Graf, Mark, Former Security Supervisor, Planner, & Derivative Classifier, Department of Energy

11. Graham, Gilbert M., Retired Special Agent, Counterintelligence, FBI

12. Kleiman, Diane, Former Special Agent, US Customs

13. Kwiatkowski, Karen U., Lt. Col. USAF (ret.), Veteran Policy Analyst-DoD

14. Larkin, Lynne A., Former Operation Officer, CIA

15. MacMichael, David, Former Senior Estimates Officer, CIA

16. McGovern, Raymond L., Former Analyst, CIA

17. Pahle, Theodore J., Retired Senior Intelligence Officer, DIA

18. Sarshar, Behrooz, Retired Language Specialist, FBI

19. Sullivan, Brian F., Retired Special Agent & Risk Management Specialist, FAA

20. Tortorich, Larry J., Retired US Naval Officer, US Navy & Dept. of Homeland Security/TSA

21. Turner, Jane A., Retired Special Agent, FBI

22. Vincent, John B., Retired Special Agent, Counterterrorism, FBI

23. Whitehurst, Dr. Fred, Retired Supervisory Special Agent/Laboratory Forensic Examiner, FBI

24. Wright, Ann, Col. US Army (ret.); and Former Foreign Service officer

25. Zipoli, Matthew J., Special Response Team (SRT) Officer, DOE

CC:

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Chairman Pat Roberts & Vice Chairman John D. Rockefeller

Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Chairman Orrin G. Hatch & Ranking Democratic Member Patrick Leahy

Senate Committee on Armed Services, Chairman John Warner & Ranking Member Carl Levin

Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Chairman Susan Collins & Ranking Member Joseph Lieberman

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Chairman Porter J. Goss & Ranking Member Jane Harman

House Committee on the Judiciary, Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. & Ranking Member John Conyers

House Armed Services Committee, Chairman Duncan Hunter & Ranking Member Ike Skelton

House Committee on Government Reform, Chairman Tom Davis & Ranking Member Henry A. Waxman

House Select Committee on Homeland Security, Chairman Christopher Cox & Ranking Member Jim Turner

Senator Charles Grassley

PR government

Greg Greene tells it like it is on Blog for America:

Forgive us if we refrain from putting our Iraqi-election-analyst hats on. Still, we thought the President had a goal of using democracy as a pressure valve in order to reduce violence, and allow our troops to leave. If that's the case, the U.S. should have bent over backwards to prevent even an appearance of fraud ? right? Right?
Posted by Greg Greene at 02:03 AM

Wrong, Greg. You don't seem to get it. Democracy is the "opportunity" to cast a ballot. What's on it and whether or not it gets counted is totally irrelevant. See. It's a public relations exercise--just like those polls we are always taking part in and the manufacturers of soap and cars are always conducting. It's the process that's important, the feeling that public opinion is being considered. But, it would be stupid to let it affect anything. Don't you know that was Clinton's big problem? He actually paid attention to the polls and tried to do what people wanted. What a schmuck.

Perhaps I should explain that I've spent a couple of hours this morning reading my latest New Yorker. Then I had to stop. I just couldn't take it anymore. Though I will admit that this issue has a varied content that I guess is supposed to appeal to someone who's into social issues.

But, since I'm not an appreciator of comedy (don't understand the comics, though I like Oscar's tags), I was not enthused to learn about Sara Silverman who thinks it's funny to put red paint on her costume and let people think she's having her period and then announce that: no, she'd just had a peculiar sexual experience. From where I sit, the world would be a much better place if private behaviors were kept private. I mean, how can we agitate for a right to privacy in the Constitution when we flaunt our most intimate behaviors on the public stage?

It's true that one can make the effort to respect someone's privacy by closing one's eyes and trying not to hear their farts, but don't people also have an obligation to moderate offensive behaviors or do them behind closed doors?

One of the main New Yorker articles is about a guy named Viereck (no mention of the fact that viereck is the German word for 'square') who's supposed to be the "father" of neoconservatism, but who's rejected what the movement has evolved into. I think he mainly objected to liberalism because he really hated his father, a liberal and an early Nazi, but thinks that patriarchy is a good idea.

That led me to think that maybe where our problems with all these ideas comes from is that they all assume "government" as a given. Indeed, they assume that government is synonymous with society. But, if you accept that principle, you're already lost because government implies an outside control of the individual and then, to justify imposing control on an entity that wants to be free and unrestricted, you have to make the second assumption--that the individual deserves to be controlled because he's basically bad.
Never mind that, to begin with, the essence of that badness is nothing more than the reluctance of a mobile creature to be controlled.

******
The big difference between liberals and conservatives when it comes to government is figuring how control of the population is best achieved. Our traditional liberals were convinced that if people were bribed with good things, social benefits, so they would conform their behavior to what was expected. Conservatives preferred to go the cheaper route of using threats of bad things happening, if people don't behave. Since bad things or the use of physical force tend to generate resistance, most recent conservatives have relied on predictions of bad things coming from outside, if the population didn't behave as directed.

The problem with this strategy (crying wolf on a large scale) is that it loses its effect, if nothing bad actually happens over a long period of time. So, for example, the demise of the Cold War wasn't so much an end to actual conflict, as an end to the reliability of the promise that a really nasty attack was in the offing.

To deal with this problem, the people who believe in governing with threats have had to be more and more inventive. Which, in effect, means that the lies have had to be more and more blatant and, as the mechanisms for verification have improved (the new technological capability in every living room), it was only a matter of time until the pattern of lies was fully exposed.

Which is where we are at now.

Where we are not at is the realization that all the assumptions about government are false--that, indeed, the organization of society isn't a matter of control at all, but a matter of mutual benefit. And further, that although individual interests are likely to conflict, since not everyone can have everything they want at the same time, time is of the essence. More particularly, that most people can get most of what they want, if they'll just take turns.

In part, that's because most of what people think they want before they get it, they don't actually want after they have it. So, they're more than glad to get rid of it and let one person's trash be another's treasure. In part, it's because people are fickle and more inclined to change rather than permanence. Another way of saying that is that people are easily bored, especially with what they have. So, taking turns actually fits nicely with enjoying a change.

The assertion that people resist change is also false. Humans like change. What they don't like is to BE CHANGED by someone else.

Perhaps one reason the PR people were actually successful in usurping the government was because, for the most part, their persuasion was gentle and what they were promising didn't sound like it was going to hurt. But, the reality has turned out to be different. The control they have wrested has turned out not to be gentle at all and the promises they made have turned out to be lies.

And that's where we're at. And the problem we face is how to wrest the instruments of force out of the hands of these people, who don't mean us well. In the nuclear age, that's going to have to be handled with particular sensitivity. People who govern with threats are not likely, when their power is challenged, to be particularly reluctant to actualize those threats with a show of force.
That might just be a promise they keep.

Waiting for Fitzmas

It's really quite stressful. Watergate was easier because there wasn't the anticipation; we had no idea what to expect.
So what are my reflections at this point?

For some reason, the revelation that President Kennedy had ordered the nuclear missiles not to be deployed in Turkey and they were anyway and the inevitable conclusion from this fact that the Cuban missile crisis need not have happened has generated a bunch of new perceptions.

Because, if in fact, Kennedy gave in to the Soviet demands that the missiles be removed and provided a guarantee that Cuba would not be invaded again by the U.S., then his assassination by a supposed supporter of Castro and the Soviet Union makes no sense at all. So, perhaps both he and his brother were eliminated by those who had different plans for the Eastern hemisphere.

When you then consider that it is likely that the withdrawal from Vietnam was associated with a pledge from China that it would not attempt to annex the vacated area, then perhaps Nixon's abandonment of U.S. military assets in Indochina contributed to his betrayal by his own subordinates. Which may be why he resigned rather than admit how his administration had been undermined.

There are a couple of things that are puzzling. One is why Jimmy Carter dismissed Bush from his position as head of the CIA. It's not usual for agency heads to be considered political appointments and it would seem to have been out of character for an obvious organization man like Carter.

The other thing that doesn't make any sense is why Saddam Hussein drained the marshes at the mouths of the Tigris and Euphratis and why, even more puzzling, recreating the marshes was one of the first things the U.S. did after the invasion. Ecologically sound practices are not the hallmark of the Bushes. There must be another reason.

Was the draining of the marshes intended to facilitate the building of docking facilities? Does the U.S. simply not need them since it has adequate naval facilities in Kuwait? Is the U.S. Navy still being undervalued in preference to land-based military facilities?

I'm reminded that in the mid-seventies much of out Navy had been moth-balled. And, of course, Kennedy as a navy man thought that submarine-based missiles would be a better bet than missiles sitting on launch pads in Turkey.

So, are the land, air and sea services still in competition with each other? If so, what's the significance of a marine being designated as the head of the joint chiefs?

Clueless in NO

Death in streets took a back seat to dinner

By Hope Yen

The Associated Press
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002574244_fema21.html

E-mail excerpts

Marty Bahamonde, regional director for New England, to David Passey, regional director for the Gulf Coast, Aug. 28, 4:46 p.m.

"Issues developing at the Superdome. 2000 already in and more standing in line. ... The medical staff at the dome says they will run out of oxygen in about 2 hours and are looking for alternative oxygen."

Bahamonde to Deborah Wing, FEMA response specialist, Aug 28, 5:28 p.m.

"Everyone is soaked. This is going to get ugly real fast."

Passey to group, Aug 28, 7:16 p.m.

"The current population at the Superdome in New Orleans is 25,000. That's a large crowd during a normal event. Among the shelter population are 400 special needs evacuees and 45-50 sick individuals who require hospitalization. The on-hand oxygen supply will likely run out in the next few hours. According to the ... [health and medical services] folks, the local health officials have struggled to put meaningful resource requests together."

Passey to Bahamonde, Aug. 28, 9:58 p.m.

"Our intel is that neither the ... [Oklahoma medical-disaster team] nor the public health officers staged in Memphis will make it to the Superdome tonight. Oxygen supply issue has not been solved yet either."

Bahamonde to Michael Heath, FEMA official, Aug. 29, 7:33 a.m.

"Some pumping stations failed but no widespread flooding yet. The reall worry will be in the next 3 hours when he storm passes and we get the northerly winds blowing thwe lake into the city

Bahamonde to Nicole Andrews, FEMA spokeswoman, Aug. 30, 7:02 a.m.

"The area around the Superdome is filling up with water, now waist deep."

Bahamonde to Taylor, Sept. 3, 1:06 a.m.

"The leadership from top down in our agency is unprepared and out of touch. ... But while I am horrified at some of the cluelessness and self concern that persists, I try to focus on those that have put their lives on hold to help people that they have never met and never will. And while I sometimes think that I can't work in this arena, I can't get out of my head the visions of children and babies I saw sitting there, helpless, looking at me and hoping I could make a difference and so I will and you must to."

The Associated Press
**************************************************************************
On Aug. 31, Bahamonde e-mailed Brown to tell him that thousands of evacuees were gathering in the streets with no food or water and that "estimates are many will die within hours."

"Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical," Bahamonde wrote. "The sooner we can get the medical patients out, the sooner we can get them out."

A short time later, Brown's press secretary, Sharon Worthy, wrote to colleagues, in an e-mail containing numerous misspellings, to complain that the FEMA director needed more time to eat dinner at a Baton Rouge restaurant that evening. "He needs much more that 20 or 30 minutes," Worthy wrote.

"Restaurants are getting busy," she said. "We now have traffic to encounter to get to and from a location of his choise, followed by wait service from the restaurant staff, eating, etc. Thank you."

"OH MY GOD!!!!!!!" Bahamonde messaged a co-worker. "I just ate an MRE [military rations] and crapped in the hallway of the Superdome along with 30,000 other close friends so I understand her concern about busy restaurants."

Saddam Smiles

Base Construction

Iraq, Afghan Commitments Fuel U.S. Air Base Construction

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 17, 2005; Page A18

BAGRAM, Afghanistan -- The Soviets built a runway here more than 20 years ago to land fighter jets. The Americans, having pretty much worn that one out with their jumbo cargo planes, are building a new, longer strip meant to withstand the U.S. military's heaviest loads.

The construction, at the four-year mark in America's military presence in Afghanistan, isn't stopping there. Plans call for expanded ramps for fighter jets and helicopters, multiple ammunition storage bunkers and a six-story control tower, for a total bill exceeding $96 million.

Bagram air base north of Kabul is one of several being upgraded to handle heavy U.S. military traffic.

An even more expensive airfield renovation is underway in Iraq at the Balad air base, a hub for U.S. military logistics, where for $124 million the Air Force is building additional ramp space for cargo planes and helicopters.

And farther south, in Qatar, a state-of-the-art, 104,000-square-foot air operations center for monitoring U.S. aircraft in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa is taking shape in the form of a giant concrete bunker. The $500 million price tag includes a set of support facilities that would be the envy of any air force.

All in all, the U.S. military has more than $1.2 billion in projects either underway or planned in the Central Command region -- an expansion plan that U.S. commanders say is necessary both to sustain operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and to provide for a long-term presence in the area.

But the building boom has raised questions, particularly in view of expectations that fewer U.S. troops will be engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan starting next year.

"With all this construction, how long are we going to be here?" an Air Force captain asked Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the Central Command's top officer, as the general toured a line of A-10 attack jets here this week. In the distance, 12-wheel dump trucks hauled loads of dirt and phalanxes of bulldozers pushed fresh earth to make way for the new runway.

"I don't know myself," Abizaid replied. He noted that the base could end up being turned over to the Afghans. But U.S. combat operations may be required "for quite a while," he added, "so making it right to start with is not a bad investment."

U.S. military commanders anticipate that reductions in ground forces in the region will not necessarily mean reductions in air power -- or at least not as quickly.

In Afghanistan, where plans call for NATO troops to supplant some U.S. soldiers, possibly by next year, U.S. aircraft will still be needed to provide cover, officers said. In Iraq, where homegrown forces are the key to withdrawing U.S. troops, development of an Iraqi air force lags well behind formation of the new army.

"As the ground force shrinks, we'll need the air to be able to put a presence in parts of the country where we don't have soldiers, to keep eyes out where we don't have soldiers on the ground," said Lt. Gen. Walter E. Buchanan III, who oversees Central Command's air operations.

At its peak strength in the region during the "shock and awe" phase of the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. Air Force operated from about three dozen bases. Some were in Central Asian countries that previously had been closed to U.S. military aircraft, others in Middle Eastern countries that expanded the number of airfields available for U.S. flights.

In the past two years, the number of bases in the region used by U.S. military planes has dropped by more than half, to about 16, as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have evolved into grinding ground campaigns against elusive insurgents.

But U.S. aircraft still fly often -- an average of 170 sorties a day last month for strike, airlift, refueling and surveillance missions over Iraq, and 65 a day over Afghanistan, according to Central Command figures. And combat planes frequently are being used in nontraditional ways -- for instance, to scout for suspicious activity or to ferry supplies to reduce the load for more vulnerable ground convoys.

Here at Bagram, about 40 miles north of Kabul, concrete slabs on the runway surface have literally been crumbling under the weight of heavy transport aircraft. Repair teams attempt to patch cracks as many as six times a day. But U.S. commanders ultimately concluded that it would be easier and cheaper to build a new 11,800-foot runway.

The project is due for completion in March, and the timing has proven fortuitous. Last month, the government of Uzbekistan ordered the United States to stop flying out of Karshi-Khanabad air base, known as K2, which had become a vital logistics hub for U.S. military and humanitarian operations in Afghanistan. While the Pentagon has shifted the C-130 transport planes once stationed in Uzbekistan to Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan, plans call for at least some of those planes to move eventually to Bagram, enhancing its growing role as a major air logistics center.

The efforts at Bagram, along with a $34 million runway improvement project at Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, are being driven by the military mission in Afghanistan, according to Buchanan and other senior commanders.

But other major airfield expansion work in the region, notably at al-Udeid air base in Qatar and al-Dhafra in the United Arab Emirates, is related not to any specific conflict but rather is meant to establish these locations as "enduring bases" for U.S. military aircraft, Buchanan said. The expectation is that these bases will remain available for U.S. use for at least another decade or two.

"In a number of cases, we're asking host countries to contribute, and in most cases they are," said Col. Josuelito Worrell, who manages Air Force construction in the Central Command region. For example, a substantial share of the bill for the new operations center and aircraft support facilities at al-Udeid is being funded by the Qatari government, U.S. officers said.

War is Peace

William Blum has his own site where he publishes pertinent information with footnotes:

http://www.killinghope.org

War is Peace, Occupation is Sovereignty
The town of Rawa in Northern Iraq is occupied. The United States has built an Army outpost there to cut off the supply of foreign fighters purportedly entering Iraq from Syria. The Americans engage in house searches, knocking in doors, summary detentions, road blocks, air strikes, and other tactics highly upsetting to the people of Rawa. Recently, the commander of the outpost, Lt. Col. Mark Davis, addressed a crowd of 300 angry people. "We're not going anywhere," he told the murmuring citizens. "Some of you are concerned about the attack helicopters and mortar fire from the base," he said. "I will tell you this: those are the sounds of peace."{1}
He could have said, making as much sense, that they were the sounds of sovereignty. Iraq is a sovereign nation, Washington assures us, particularly in these days of the constitutional referendum, although the vote will do nothing to empower the Iraqis to relieve their daily misery, serving only a public relations function for the United States; the votes, it should be noted, were counted on an American military base; on the day of the referendum, American warplanes and helicopters were busy killing some 70 people around the city of Ramadi.{2}
London also insists that Iraq is a sovereign nation. Recently, hundreds of residents filled the streets in the southern city of Basra, shouting and pumping their fists in the air to condemn British forces for raiding a jail and freeing two British soldiers. Iraqi police had arrested the Britons, who were dressed as civilians, for allegedly firing their guns (at whom or what is not clear), and either trying to plant explosives or having explosives in their vehicle. British troops then assembled several armored vehicles, rammed them through the jailhouse wall, and freed the men, as helicopter gunships hovered above.{3}
An intriguing side question: We have here British soldiers dressed as civilians (at least one report said dressed as Arabs), driving around in a car with explosives, firing guns ... Does this not feed into the frequent speculation that coalition forces have been to some extent part of the "insurgency"? The same insurgency that's used as an excuse by the coalition to remain in Iraq?
Afghanistan is also sovereign we are told. In July a statement by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization -- made up of Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan and its Central Asian neighbors -- asked the United States to specify a date of its troop withdrawal from Central Asian bases on the ground that operations in Afghanistan were winding down. But in September we could read in a Washington Post report from Afghanistan: "The Soviets built a runway here more than 20 years ago to land fighter jets. The Americans, having pretty much worn that one out with their jumbo cargo planes, are building a new, longer strip meant to withstand the U.S. military's heaviest loads. The construction, at the four-year mark in America's military presence in Afghanistan, isn't stopping there. Plans call for expanded ramps for fighter jets and helicopters, multiple ammunition storage bunkers and a six-story control tower, for a total bill exceeding $96 million. An even more expensive airfield renovation is underway in Iraq at the Balad air base, a hub for U.S. military logistics, where for $124 million the Air Force is building additional ramp space for cargo planes and helicopters. And farther south, in Qatar, a state-of-the-art, 104,000-square-foot air operations center for monitoring U.S. aircraft in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa is taking shape in the form of a giant concrete bunker. The $500 million price tag includes a set of support facilities that would be the envy of any air force.
"All in all, the U.S. military has more than $1.2 billion in projects either underway or planned in the Central Command region -- an expansion plan that U.S. commanders say is necessary both to sustain operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and to provide for a long-term presence in the area."{4}
There are of course areas other than the military which illustrate Washington's continuing exercise of sovereignty over Iraq, areas such as those concerning multinational corporations. Sales of Iraqi assets and laws and decrees concerning deregulation, privatization, corporate taxes, etc. were promulgated early on by Washington's Coalition Provisional Authority to make life easy for Halliburton and its partners in crime. These laws and decrees still remain in force and were set up to be rather difficult to amend. From all accounts, the new Iraqi constitution makes no mention of them.
And let us not forget: All Americans in Iraq, and all their allies, military or civilian, have complete immunity from any Iraqi law enforcement or judicial body, no matter what they do.

{4} Washington Post, September 17, 2005, p.18

Freewaybloggers

As you all know, a blogger is a person who keeps a diary or "log" of daily events on the world wide we'b'. It's a new creation in that it makes something that used to be private very public. This idea of public exposure of strongly held ideas (serious or frivolous) has expanded to the freeway or public highways. Here's an example

Now, it's apparent to a lot of people that this is an effective way to send a message temporarily (longer than was expected since the banner on the bridge can now be found by searching images in google on the internet) and so it has been decided that when the 2000th troop is killed in Iraq, people all over the country will head to the highways and byways as FREEWAYBLOGGERS in protest of this wanton destruction of our youth.

Iraq Timeline

http://www.politicalclothing.com/iraq_timeline_letter.pdf

Iraq News

http://www.uruknet.info/?l=x&p=-6&size=1&hd=0

China Card

What if the President of the United States, who's responsible for formulating foreign policy, determines that it is in the best interest of the nation that it establish long range missiles bases, complete with nuclear warheads, in countries within range of China, India and Russia? What if the countries adjudged most suitable aren't willing (unlike Italy, Spain, Turkey, Germany and Britain) to have our weapons of mass destruction stationed within their borders? And what if the President's advisors were uncertain that the American people would appreciate the wisdom of the President's judgement? Would that justify an invasion of the targeted country under false pretenses?

Given that the United States has a long history of spreading its nuclear arsenal around the globe in secret, as recently revealed in documents covering the post World War II period up to 1977, these questions are not entirely hypothetical. Indeed, it is pretty well established that US weapons of mass destruction are located in the above-mentioned nations. The question is where else? And where are they planned to be, but aren't there yet?

The recently revealed side-agreement to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey in order to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis is instructive in this regard. That President Kennedy had no difficulty agreeing to this Soviet demand is not surprising, since he'd already ordered them not to be deployed when he took office in 1961. That the agreement about what, in retrospect, prompted the Soviet placement of missiles in Cuba in the first place was kept secret can probably be accounted for by Kennedy's reluctance to admit that the American military had not been as responsive to civilian direction as most Americans have been taught to expect.

In any event, that the missiles are back in Turkey is not a well-covered story. Certainly not as well-covered as the fact that many Germans aren't at all happy with the missiles still left in their country and will be happy to see them removed. But where are they going to go?

Since the refrain hasn't been nearly as persistent as the one about WMDs in Iraq, most people have probably missed recent references to the growing worry that is China and it's resurrection of relations with Russia. And, as most people have probably forgotten, that was a big concern during the Cold War.

Some people have argued that this problem was addressed by the United States' policies creating a rift between those two powers and, specifically, by Richard Nixon making nice with China. But, that may not be accurate. After all, we have recently discovered in the case of Iraq that the United States making “nice” with a country doesn't necessarily mean a lot. Which suggests that Nixon going to China may simply have been the result of a realistic assessment that the effort to “contain” China by locating permanent military bases on its southern flank in Vietnam, as the American military were planning, was not going to be realized and that the best the United States could hope for was that China would not over-run Vietnam when we left. In other words, just as the United States agreed not to invade Cuba, if the Soviets took out their missiles, China agreed not to invade Vietnam if the U.S. withdrew its forces and gave up its ambition for permanent bases from which to threaten China with its nuclear missiles.

While this would seem to have been an equitable solution, I suspect that the military establishment was no happier with it than it was with Kennedy's. Indeed, if I were a full-fledged conspiracy theorist, I'd sug