///Taking the Illusions Out of History-I would like to be able to love my country and justice///

Saturday, October 19, 2002

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October 20, 2002
Rove's Way
By MATT BAI


hite House tours don't pass through Karl Rove's office, but most everything else around the presidency does. Rove determines which lobbyists and supporters get access to the White House, and he weighs in with Bush on every major domestic-policy decision, from stem cells to farm subsidies. At the same time, he has de facto control of the Republican Party and has made it his crusade to win back the Senate; at least two Senate candidates are running this fall just because Rove decided they should, and several others ran unopposed for their party's nomination -- or might as well have -- because Rove bullied potential competitors out of the race.

Rove is hardly the first person to mix politics with policy in the White House, but no adviser before him has denied so stridently that there is any connection between the two. When I asked White House aides about the conflict inherent in being both the party's lead strategist and an influential policy adviser to the president, they seemed genuinely offended, as if I'd just asked whether Rove might be secretly borrowing Apache helicopters on the weekend to strafe Democratic districts. ''Karl would never make recommendations to the president for political reasons if it did not make sound policy sense,'' Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, assured me. ''That's a threshold he would never compromise.''

This isn't especially convincing, given Rove's influence on a number of issues on which the White House made decisions over the last several months -- the imposition of tariffs on foreign steel, the signing of a bill to create $180 billion in new farm subsidies -- that were flatly at odds with Bush's own policy principles but were expected to benefit G.O.P. candidates. But aides to the president seem to have successfully convinced themselves that the White House pays no heed to polling or political advantage; not only do they believe this, they have sought to make it a central theme of Bush's presidency.

There is a kind of Wonderland dynamic at work here, in which the White House asserts its own curious reality, no matter how plain the contradictions. I recently got a closer look at this phenomenon in Karl Rove's office. It was Ice Cream Day in the West Wing, a tradition Rove started for his staff when he was running Bush's presidential campaign, and so the two of us munched on frozen Crunch bars as we talked. Rove is a jovial and gracious guy, and there is something classically dweeby about him; his face is bespectacled and doughy, and when he talks, he always sounds as if he has a cold.

A good president, Rove told me, will be remembered for making courageous decisions, no matter what the political impact may be, no matter what all the polls or critics or reporters may say about it at the time. ''You may be misjudged in the short term, but ultimately history forms a judgment about a president based on the policies and actions taken, and all the little stuff drops away,'' he said. ''You know, Sam Houston had a great line. 'Do right and damn the consequences.'''

But not 10 minutes later, when I raised the subject of corporate scandals and asked whether the White House appeared too close to big business, Rove rose and retrieved a stack of papers from his desk.

''Do you trust Bush to do the right thing when it comes to regulating business to prevent accounting abuses from taking place in business?''' he recited, reading from a CBS poll. ''Sixty-one to 34, 'trust' -- don't trust.' Forty-five percent of the people think Bush's proposals for reforming accounting go too far or are about right, versus 39 percent who say they do not go far enough.''

Rove was delving deeper into the minutiae of the data, getting more intense as he descended. ''Now that's compared to 39 percent who said they go too far or are about right a month ago, and 43 who said they do not go far enough. So over time Bush has gotten better on this with the American people. There's one other one here. . . . '' I was wondering what had happened to damning the consequences when Rove caught himself.

''Not that we spend a lot of time on these,'' he said quickly, as if reading my mind.

istory's verdict may not be determined by how many votes you win in the short term, but in the meantime, Rove's not about to take any chances. Tim Pawlenty experienced Rove's influence firsthand. Pawlenty, the 42-year-old majority leader of the Minnesota statehouse, decided last year to run for the United States Senate against the liberal Paul Wellstone. Pawlenty was just the kind of candidate the Republican Party likes to tout: the son of a truck driver who worked his way through college and law school, a young star who had never lost an election.

The day before his big announcement speech, however, during an appearance at a town-hall meeting, Pawlenty's cellphone rang in his inside chest pocket. Karl Rove was calling. Rove kindly explained to Pawlenty that, with Democrats controlling the Senate by a single seat, the White House had decided it would be better if Norm Coleman, the more widely known former mayor of St. Paul, ran for the Senate instead. Rove wanted Pawlenty to cancel his announcement and get out of the race.

When Pawlenty resisted, Rove got Dick Cheney to call him the next morning and press the case. Pawlenty showed up at his own news conference a few hours later and announced that he would not, in fact, be running for the Senate.

''Once the White House says, 'We've made a decision and we're going in a different direction,''' Pawlenty said recently, ''there's not much you can say.'' He is now the party's nominee for governor. Coleman, meanwhile, acceded to Rove's wishes and is running just about even with Wellstone in a race Republicans see as one of their best chances to pick up a seat.

Even in an exceptionally close election year, Rove's personal and forceful intervention in state races is extraordinary. In South Dakota, he leaned on Representative John Thune -- who was also planning a run for governor -- to get out of the race and take on Tim Johnson, Tom Daschle's protege in the Senate, instead. In North Carolina, he helped clear the field for Elizabeth Dole. In Missouri, he got behind the former congressman Jim Talent early, dispatching both the older and younger George Bushes, several White House aides and a couple of cabinet secretaries to help Talent raise money to take on Jean Carnahan.

''He can go through nearly every race in every district,'' says Tom Rath, a Bush ally in New Hampshire. ''He can tell you more about the South Dakota Senate race than anyone in South Dakota.''

Rove's goal for the midterms was to find moderate candidates with statewide appeal. He says he has intervened only in states where there was a near-consensus among Bush's top supporters, but a lot of social conservatives were angry when their candidates got pushed aside in favor of moderates. ''What it does is it demoralizes your own party,'' a Georgia Republican says. In that state, Rove put the White House squarely behind Saxby Chambliss, a moderate congressman who is now running for the Senate against the Democrat Max Cleland.

It's not ideology that fuels Rove's crusade. He is a rightish Republican -- ''I grew up out West; I'm just a conservative'' -- but he says he believes that the only way to make the G.O.P. dominant is to reshape and expand the party, building on its base of ideological conservatives but broadening its appeal to reach traditionally Democratic voters like Latinos, African-Americans and union members. This means he has to play a political game of Twister, keeping one foot firmly planted on the far right -- pushing policies like Bush's faith-based initiative -- while reaching around to his left with popular centrist proposals on education and prescription drugs.

And so the midterm elections have become a referendum not just on the two parties, but also on Rove's particular brand of politics. If Rove wants social conservatives to continue to step aside while he builds a more inclusive party around candidates like Thune and Coleman, he has to prove that it works at the polls.

So far, Rove has found that influencing the outcome of state races is no easier than counting cards at a casino. After losing both governors' races last year, in New Jersey and Virginia, the White House suffered a third and very public defeat last March, when Rove's favored candidate in the California gubernatorial campaign, the former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan, lost the primary to the more conservative Bill Simon, a political novice.

Rove's role in this upset -- one that instantly made the re-election of the incumbent, Gray Davis, more likely -- was a little like the tightfisted owner of a reeling baseball team. On one hand, he insisted that Riordan had to win the race on his own. When Riordan asked the White House for help staffing his campaign, he was rebuffed; the party couldn't spare anyone until after the primary. ''He was flailing around and looking for a team,'' a California Republican says of Riordan. ''He asked them for help, and they gave him nothing.''

But having invested the prestige of the White House in Riordan's campaign, Rove called the candidate directly to talk strategy, according to sources close to Riordan, and grew angry as Riordan continued to slip. At one point, a Riordan supporter told me, Rove called someone on the campaign and angrily demanded to know why it was falling apart, threatening to cancel tentative fund-raisers planned with Bush. (Rove says that this call never took place and that he had no involvement in the campaign.)

Riordan's subsequent defeat left the state party more divided, and the White House did little to repair the rift it helped open.


Rove is Bush's point man with state parties and contributors, which means that all favors and appointments cross his desk. During a recent visit to Dallas, I sat in the front of a rental car while Rove, sprawled out in the back seat, opened a pile of mail that had been sent from the capital in an overnight parcel. ''I love this,'' he muttered, perusing a letter. ''Since nothing in Washington seems right for me,''' he read, ''can you put me on the list for ambassadorships?''' He shook his head and tossed the letter aside.

Rove adores politics; he has spent much of his life consumed by it. But unlike the late Lee Atwater, his close friend and mentor, Rove is not content to be seen as a political operative. A self-styled policy guru and manic reader, Rove is as comfortable weighing in on trade-promotion authority as he is discussing the electoral map. His grasp of wide-ranging policy issues in which he has no formal training is remarkable. During a single conversation with me, Rove expounded on the particulars of tariffs and trade laws, farm subsidies and budget projections. Most of this he did off the record, to avoid being cited on any data that might prove faulty in his recollection, but his facts and numbers turned out to be precise.

''He's a one-stop shop,'' says Mary Matalin, the longtime G.O.P. operative who now works for Vice President Cheney. ''He goes way deep into the arguments on both sides, replete with facts. A lot of people have one issue. But Karl knows where everybody is on an issue the president cares about, including all the individuals on the Hill. He knows where the press is on the issue. He knows the politics of the issue.''

No other aide has Rove's singular influence on both politics and policy. ''I think Karl's going to be one of the most effective and influential presidential advisers since Jim Baker, and maybe the most influential in the last 100 years,'' says Wayne Berman, a G.O.P. lobbyist who served in the last Bush administration. No wonder, then, that skeptics are inclined to dust Bush's new war plan for Rove's fingerprints. In private briefings with Republicans early this year, Rove identified the war on terrorism as a major selling point for the party's candidates. By August, however, that war was beginning to feel played out, and the ailing economy was creeping back into the headlines. Coincidentally or not, that's when Iraq suddenly seemed to take on new urgency at the White House, and Bush quickly made plans to take his case to Congress -- assuring that war preparations would dominate news coverage in the weeks before the election.

Rove told me that he has spent ''very little time'' on Iraq, and that his role consists only of helping the president with his message and briefing outside groups and Congress. There's no question that Bush's push for a pre-election Congressional vote on Iraq helped Republican Senate candidates who might otherwise have had to answer questions about the economy. But those critics who suggest that Rove is huddled with generals, conspiring to bomb Baghdad at the most politically opportune moment, are missing an essential point about the way Rove's power actually works.

From the earliest days of the 2000 campaign, Bush and his advisers have defined themselves largely by their un-Clinton-ness. They detest what they are sure was the ethos of their predecessors: to govern by polls rather than by conviction. They are convinced that Bill Clinton and his aides sat around formulating policies according to the latest tracking numbers, and they are equally convinced that Bush is a president who leads rather than follows.

By taking such a characteristically black-and-white approach, however, Bush's team set a trap for itself. Polls and focus groups, which are often constructive indicators that help shape sound policy decisions, became symbols within the White House of everything Bush loathed. They became, in a way, unspeakable. Bush and his advisers, holding firm to the illusion that they are somehow above short-term politics entirely, consider it vulgar even to mention votes in a discussion about policy. ''If I went in there and talked about politics,'' said a G.O.P. lobbyist, ''I'd get tossed out.''

So when Rove argues in a White House meeting for a specific policy -- like signing the farm bill, for instance -- he does it by marshaling facts and data to make a policy-based argument, even if the policy isn't consistent with Bush's philosophy.

''Karl will almost never make a point that's explicitly about the politics of the issue,'' a White House aide says. ''He will almost always make a substantive point. You will know that part of his understanding of that policy is more likely to involve a political calculation than, say, Larry Lindsey's,'' referring to Lawrence B. Lindsey, the president's chief economic policy adviser. ''But he'll always argue an issue on the merits.''

Of course, everyone at the table knows that Rove has already pored through polls and consulted with campaign strategists, but no one says so. It is an odd morality-laundering scheme: if politics is never mentioned out loud, then politics can't possibly be behind the president's decision.

Nothing frustrates Democrats more than the pious image the White House has, with some success, created for itself. When I mentioned to Dick Gephardt, the Democratic leader in the House, that Rove likes to say ''good policy is good politics,'' he looked momentarily bemused, as if someone were insisting that the sunlight streaming through his Capitol window was actually a hurricane. ''They are about as political an administration,'' he said slowly, ''as I have ever seen.''

In plenty of cases, this White House has chosen political reality over its principles, as all administrations do. Bush shrewdly walked away from his proposal for school vouchers when it became apparent that the public wasn't following his lead. When the pro-business White House found itself on the wrong side of public outrage over corporate abuse, it quickly got behind a weak reform bill on Capitol Hill and claimed credit for cleaning up the mess. And Bush signed the new campaign finance law, even though he had long opposed it.

The classic example of how Rove operates, and how politics seeps silently into policy, is the debate over steel tariffs. Last winter, the steel industry hired two close Rove allies -- the political strategist Ed Gillespie and the former Minnesota congressman Vin Weber -- to lobby the administration. They told Rove and other top administration officials that the United States was being swamped by cheap foreign steel and asked for wide-ranging tariffs on imported steel.

At meetings in the Roosevelt Room on the issue, Bush and his West Wing aides -- Rove, Bartlett, the chief of staff Andrew Card and others -- sat across the table from economic and trade advisers. The economists argued against tariffs, saying they would constitute unwarranted protectionism.

Rove, who was by then well versed on the issue, helped steer the discussion by asking pointed policy questions of the advisers, making sure that Bush could hear the answers. What would happen, he wanted to know, if the steel companies didn't get relief?

Rove didn't once mention politics, but he had a deep political interest in the issue. In a private slide presentation Rove delivered to Republicans in June, Rove listed ''coal and steel'' as a constituency the party had to maintain. For Rove, that means labor as much as business -- one of the key priorities of his master plan for the party is to win over rank-and-file A.F.L.-C.I.O. members in spite of the union's pro-Democratic leadership. According to a source close to the White House, Rove was keenly aware that both the steelworkers and the electricians working in steel plants in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, key electoral states in 2004, belong to the A.F.L.-C.I.O.

In March, Bush sided with Big Steel, issuing broad tariffs to protect the industry and the unions. Almost immediately, the decision proved costly. Foreign competitors were outraged, well beyond what the administration had envisioned, and threatened to bring on a full-scale trade war. The G.O.P.'s free-traders rebelled, openly challenging the administration. A besieged Bush had to roll back the tariffs, granting 727 exemptions.

''The problems with the administration over the past year, and the reason they have fallen into disfavor with economic conservatives, is that it's pretty clear these decisions are being made on politics and not on principle,'' says Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, an influential conservative business group. ''The steel thing in particular was a political miscalculation by the White House and Karl Rove.''

Rove and other aides vehemently reject the idea that they are as mired in political calculations as any other White House. ''It depends what your definition of political is,'' Rove says, sounding oddly Clintonian. ''Do we advocate an agenda that we think is right for the country and try to persuade people that it is right, thereby garnering their support? Yes.'' But, he adds, ''if by political, you mean we take a poll and figure out where people are so we can get ahead of the parade and claim to be leading it, the answer is no.'' Rove points out that Bush has never wavered from his convictions on the key issues that defined his campaign: cutting taxes, reforming education, promoting faith-based programs. Faced with terrorist attacks, Bush showed a kind of leadership that redefined his image with the American public. And while Clinton polled on which vacation spot to use, Rove maintains that this White House consults polling and focus groups not to make policies but to figure out how to sell them.

It's in the nature of presidencies to be political, just as it's in their nature to deny that they are being political. But most advisers will do this with a kind of knowing wink. Rove is different; I had the sense that if I reached over and pinned a polygraph to his hand as he talked, he would pass easily. He refused to entertain the suggestion that even a single one of the administration's decisions was influenced by election-year politics. Instead, he used Sam Houston's word to describe all of them: they were the ''right'' policies to pursue.

This brought to mind the complaint that is often heard among members of Congress and the news media -- that Rove and Bush see every debate as a morality tale, with the White House on the virtuous side of every argument. Rove's insistence that every single decision is about right and wrong, and not about votes, can have the effect of making much of what he says seem incredible. It has also proved, so far at least, to be a very effective strategy.


Opponents often portray Rove as Rasputin with a Western twang, a shadowy figure making all the decisions for an immature president. In fact, their relationship is more intricate. Bush and Rove are bound together by mutual philosophy; Rove shares Bush's distaste for elitism and Ivy Leaguers. But unlike the popular and charismatic Bush, who glided through Yale and Harvard on personality, Rove lacked social skills and connections and knocked around five colleges without earning a degree. There was no Kennebunkport in Rove's childhood -- just a broken home and a lot of moving around out West.

Bush and Rove will often entertain themselves with inside jokes at staff meetings, breaking into laughter over characters they once knew in Austin. But aides say Rove is also Bush's favorite target when he's in a less charitable mood.

''If Karl makes a point that turns out to be wrong, the president will just jump on it,'' a White House insider told me. ''He might say, sarcastically, 'Oh, very nice point, Karl.' The president thinks Karl's invulnerable to the barbs.''

Is he, I asked?

''I don't know. He takes some rough ones.''

It has been this way since the late 1980's, when Rove grew close to Bush and saw, in his cool demeanor and electable name, serious political potential. At the time, Rove was already the lead strategist in a Republican takeover of Texas, where he was known as a ruthless and sometimes devious competitor -- a ''no-rules-in-a-knife-fight kind of guy,'' as one Texan put it. Rove's unshakable confidence in his own color-coded message charts, combined with a string of impressive victories, earned him a reputation -- which has only grown through the years -- as a kind of mad genius, someone who saw several steps ahead of most political hacks.

Like almost nothing else in Washington, this notion of Rove's brilliance has gone virtually unchallenged. The 2000 campaign seemed to solidify Rove's place in the political strategists' Hall of Fame; running against an incumbent vice president with a robust economy, advising a candidate who was perceived as intellectually indifferent, Rove's team laid waste to fund-raising records and hammered at their message with a kind of discipline normally reserved for prison camps.

But far from being infallible, Rove has also made some whopping political miscalculations, and these point to his vulnerability as a strategist. The word ''hubris'' comes up a lot when people talk about Rove. So entrenched is he in his own version of reality, so invested is he in his own elaborate plan, that he sometimes fails to see when events in the real world are headed in a different direction. And that's when Rove gets into trouble.

Take, for example, the primary campaign against John McCain. Confident that Bush couldn't possibly lose the primaries and already eyeing a national campaign, Rove went ahead and took the unprecedented step of opening expensive offices in all 50 states -- and Guam, of course -- while McCain worked the street corners in New Hampshire. ''We were doing high-fives,'' Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, recalls. ''We said, 'Great, go open an office in North Dakota.'''

McCain, casting himself as the agent of reform, demolished Bush in New Hampshire, putting Rove's Titanic-like campaign on the verge of sinking. It took an unseemly campaign in South Carolina by Bush to beat back McCain.

Then, in the last few weeks of the general election, Rove threw an estimated $12 million into California, a Democratic stronghold, because he claimed to see an opportunity that no one else did. He lost the state by 13 points, while other states that really were attainable -- New Mexico, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania -- ultimately slipped away. Rove's tactical acumen hasn't always been evident at the White House, either, where Bush's approval ratings were on the decline before Sept. 11. Ultimately, Rove has to shoulder much of the blame for the defining event of those first months: the calamitous defection of Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont from the Republican Party, which gave Democrats control of the Senate and Bush's agenda.
Jeffords had been threatening to leave the party, saying he'd been bullied by the White House over his refusal to support a tax cut. But Rove -- who was at that very time preoccupied with recruiting Senate candidates in Minnesota and South Dakota -- never even picked up the phone to call him.
There is in all of this the same discernible pattern that emerges in the rest of Rove's political life: a tenacious attachment to his own worldview, whether it serves him well or not. I asked Reggie Bashur, an Austin political consultant who is one of Rove's oldest friends, about this. ''On a pragmatic day-to-day level, he might make adjustments, but he's not going to make changes in a fundamental plan he's conceived and thought through,'' he told me, sitting in his office across from Texas's magnificent capitol. ''I've never sensed a lot of expressions of self-doubt. I don't know that that's part of his personality.'' I last sat with Rove during a two-hour drive from Waco to Austin. He had just returned from a campaign swing with Bush through Missouri and Oklahoma, and he had arranged for a rental car to be delivered to his hotel. It was too dark in the parking lot to see the car, so Rove cleverly hit the button on the Enterprise key chain that pops open the trunk, and we went out in search of a Mercury Sable with an open trunk, which wasn't hard to find. I asked him how it had gone in Oklahoma, and he instantly broke out loudly into song. ''Ohhhhhk-lahoma!'' Rove sang in a heartfelt baritone. Even after a 16-hour day of work and travel, he was buoyant.

As we drove, I told Rove that members of both parties had complained to me that he and the administration insisted on making a moral issue of every disagreement, and were reluctant to consult with their opponents or with the Congressional leadership. ''Look,'' Rove replied, ''this president meets with Tom Daschle, Trent Lott, Denny Hastert and Dick Gephardt probably more regularly -- certainly more regularly -- than any president in modern times.'' His assessment could not be further from the way senior Democrats and some Republicans describe the Bush White House. ''They bring it in, and you're either for it or against it,'' Gephardt says. ''The whole economic program based on tax cuts, I think, has been a serious mistake, and they don't seem to be willing to change it or even talk about changing it. It's just: 'Over my dead body.'''

While members of the White House legislative staff frequently visit the Hill, senators and congressmen say Rove and the president's other top political advisers are detached. ''I don't think I have ever gotten a call from Karl Rove or anyone on his staff,'' a Republican member of Congress told me. ''I don't hear them up here. I don't see them up here. I think they're more insulated than any administration I have ever seen.''

The Bush team treats the press similarly, and White House reporters have grown so hostile that even some White House allies have suggested a lighter touch. ''Karl's attitude is, 'We're going to change Washington,''' a G.O.P. strategist told me. ''They're going to have to write what we say, because it's all we're going to give them.''' All of this is just buzz in the background as long as Bush's approval ratings remain anywhere near their present level, and as long as Rove has the party firmly in his grasp. If Republicans win back the Senate, and if a war with Iraq is successful, one can imagine Bush easily winning a second term, with Rove mapping out his strategy on color-coded charts.
But if Rove's strategy fails in November, the party's grass-roots activists will be saying they told him so, and Bush's agenda will be in the hands of a Congress that owes him no favors and a press that feels slighted.

If this concerns Rove at all, there wasn't a hint of it as we drove on through the darkness. We talked about serious issues, including Iraq, and Rove assured me once again that the president would not consider short-term politics in his deliberations.
''I really do think it is a moral imperative for the country that in this post-cold-war era we do not allow rogue regimes to stockpile weapons of mass destruction, to wait until they do before we deal with it,'' Rove said. ''Biological or chemical or radiological or nuclear attacks on the country would just be -- you know, we couldn't have it.''
Sam Houston might well have agreed. And yet I knew that Rove had other things on his mind too. He was headed to Austin for a round of meetings, and one of them, it turned out, was with his pollster.
Matt Bai is a contributing writer for the magazine. His last article was a report on the debate over the Democratic Party's rural strategy.

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accesswater2030@yahoo.com 3:07 PM

War Worries
Support for Attacking Iraq Begins to Wane Across the U.S.
ABC News

By Bill Redeker

Oct. 14 -- As the administration prepares for war with Iraq, a new mantra has emerged in the campaign to win the hearts and minds of Americans and, in effect, put Saddam Hussein on notice.

"America speaks with one voice," says President Bush. (Big Lie)

In Washington, Bush, having been empowered by both houses of Congress to use force, seems to face very little opposition on Iraq.

On the streets of America, nothing could be further from the truth.

Across the nation, in city after city, ABCNEWS found voices of opposition, and many of them were from military towns.

"I am not convinced President Bush has yet made the case," said Miles Harvey, a San Diego retiree. San Diego is home port to the Navy's Pacific Fleet, which directly employs more than 100,000 people.

"We have to be convinced that there is a credible threat from Iraq and that's what I haven't seen," said Harvey.

Algene Miller, a Vietnam War veteran, said he was worried about potential casualties.

"You can't have a war without them," he said. "I know, I've been there."

On the other side of the country, in Charleston, S.C. -- home to The Citadel military college and Charleston Air Force Base -- there is also opposition, especially from those who remember U.S. forces becoming bogged down in Vietnam while losing support back home.

"If the president could show a clear and present danger I would support action against Iraq, but I don't support it without any evidence, " said Robert Rhame, a retired businessman who served in Vietnam.

"To me, our economy is far more important than removing Saddam Hussein from power," he said.

Skepticism Over President's Motives (duh, how about oil,oil, oil and of course getting republican control of congress to complete the coup)

In the Central Plains states, there is concern about the prospect of the United Staets going to war alone.

At a coffee shop in Denver's Cherry Creek neighborhood, homemaker Christa Rogers said unilateral action would be a mistake. "I think we have to go with other people, other countries, I don't think we can take this on, on our own," she said.

Her friend Cathy Roper agreed. "It all seems too fast," Roper added. "We need to do something, but it seems like it's really being shoved onto everybody, it seems too fast."

In addition to concern over timing and unilateral pre-emptive action, people question the president's motives. Many people told ABCNEWS they thought it was a "diversion from the faltering economy."

Debra Cassens, a businesswoman from San Diego, said it was about revenge.

"Bush is trying to settle a score that began with his father," she said referring to the failed Iraqi assassination attempt on the president's father following the Persian Gulf War.

John Schneider, also from San Diego, said, "I think the president wants to take action to enhance his own position.

"The war powers resolution was timed to benefit those running for election this November," Schneider said.

Although organized demonstrations have yet to produce large crowds, there have been several protests. In Los Angeles, 3,000 people gathered outside the federal building this month and chanted "no war," while a group of American Indians staged a peace dance nearby.

In Portland, Ore., approximately 6,000 people recently crowded the narrow streets to march and be heard while about 10,000 people gathered in New York City's Central Park to oppose war plans.

"What concerns me," said Rhame, the retired Vietnam War vet, "is what we do over there could bring more terror to the United States."

Denver resident Cassens agreed. "We need to build some bridges with the Muslim world, not make things worse," she said.
Contrary to what the president says, when it comes to war, Americans do not speak with one voice. A national day of protest has been scheduled for Oct. 26.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)


© : t r u t h o u t 2002


accesswater2030@yahoo.com 2:55 PM

Thursday, October 17, 2002

This could be written about many a congressman>

Posted on Tue, Oct. 15, 2002

Nothing fond about farewell to Armey

Dave Lieber commentary


A congressman from our area, House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Flower Mound, is a tacky man. In less than three months, he will be out of office, and we will no longer have to listen to his stupid comments.

His son, Scott Armey, who could not win the House seat even though he shares his daddy's name, will still be a federal employee, thanks to political patronage. But neither father nor son will be an elected official, and for that, we should say a small prayer of thanks.

What motivates my call for prayer? Dick Armey's latest stunt. Still fuming over a series that The Dallas Morning News published on the eve of his son's loss in the Republican primary in April, Armey tried to pull an unbelievable power play this month. He attempted to insert language into a military appropriations bill that would have forced the Morning News' parent company, Belo, to sell one of its three media properties in the region. His Belo-related amendment alluded to, but did not name, these Belo properties: WFAA/Channel 8, the Morning News and the Denton Record-Chronicle. Armey's amendment stated that any media company that owns a network-affiliated TV station; a newspaper with a Sunday circulation of at least 750,000 that doesn't have a competitor with a Sunday circulation exceeding 350,000; and a second daily newspaper with a Sunday circulation of 25,000 or less -- all in the same market -- would have to divest the smallest property.

That type of vague language is how lawmakers have historically inserted last-minute amendments that aid cronies or target enemies. Therefore, in celebration of Armey's pending retirement, I suggest that the following amendments -- based on incidents culled from his career -- be inserted into bills:

• The Mispronounced Name Amendment: Applies to any congressional leader who in 1995 referred to an openly gay congressman with a term that rhymes with rag. The leader shall be forced to wear, for an entire year, a rainbow-colored tie with the words "Ask me what my first name is."

• The Fool-Me-Twice-Shame-on-You Amendment: Applies to any congressional leader who apologized for the above incident and then in 2000 made another derogatory joke about the same congressman. The leader shall be forced to do aerobics exercises with Richard Simmons on live television.

• The Failed Coup Amendment: Pertains to any top House leader who tried to orchestrate the ouster in 1997 of his boss, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and, when asked about it later, did not tell the truth about his role. The leader shall be forced to tell the story of George Washington and the cherry tree to every first-grader in Flower Mound.

• The Thanks for the Memories Amendment: Applies to any congressional leader who spread a false report on the House floor that comedian Bob Hope had died. The leader shall be forced to serve as an unpaid intern for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., for no less than one year.

• The False Pretenses Fund-raiser: Relates to any congressional leader who had a fund-raiser for his re-election campaign on Dec. 6 with Vice President Dick Cheney in Dallas, then announced six days later that he had no intention of running again. The leader shall repay, with interest, the more than $400,000 his campaign received from contributors.

• The Misleading Signs Amendment: Pertains to any congressional leader whose son has lost a primary to replace him in Congress. If supporters put up signs stating "Support the Armey Flat Tax" to confuse voters into thinking that the father was running for re-election, the congressional leader shall remove the nails from each wood stake using his front teeth.

• The Father-Son Nepotism Amendment: Relates to any congressman who helped get his son a job as the regional administrator for the General Services Administration in a city whose name is Fort Worth. If the father and son said afterward that the son got the plum patronage job on his own merits, then the congressional leader shall be forced to tell the story of George Washington and the cherry tree to every second-grader in Flower Mound.

You get the idea. Dick Armey's career has been one long comic routine of cheap tricks, half-truths and foolish remarks. In a few months, the area will start fresh with a new congressman who can restore dignity to the office as the people's representative.

Good riddance.

© 2001 startelegram and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.dfw.com

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 8:05 PM

washingtonpost.com
Report: Terror Funds Flow Through Saudi Arabia
Fundraising by Al Qaeda Sympathizers Continues Unabated in the Kingdom

By Douglas Farah
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 16, 2002; 7:43 PM


The Bush administration's efforts to cut off funds for international terrorism are destined to fail until it confronts Saudi Arabia, whose leaders have tolerated some of its wealthy citizens raising millions of dollars a year for al Qaeda, according to a new report from an influential foreign policy organization.

The report from the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, scheduled for release today, contends that the administration must pressure the Saudis-as well as other governments – to crack down on terror financing, even at the risk of sparking a public backlash that could jeopardize the Saudi government.

"It is worth stating clearly and unambiguously what official U.S. government spokespersons have not," the report notes. "For years, individuals and charities based in Saudi Arabia have been the most important source of funds for al Qaeda, and for years the Saudi officials have turned a blind eye to this problem."

Administration criticism of Saudi Arabia, the top oil supplier to the United States and a crucial ally if the Bush administration takes military action against Iraq, has been largely muted since the Sept. 11 attacks, despite the belief of many law enforcement and intelligence officials here and abroad that al Qaeda relies on wealthy Saudis for most of its funding.

Earlier this year, however, relations became strained when a defense consultant told a Penatagon advisory committee that Saudis were active at all levels of the terror chain.

The Saudi government had no immediate response to the report. Its embassy in Washington put out a statement praising U.S.-Saudi cooperation in freezing terrorist assets and cracking down on charities, saying the support and financing of terrorism "cannot be tolerated."

But the report drew a sharp rebuttal from the Bush administration. Robert Nichols, the Treasury Department's deputy assistant secretary for public affairs, said the report was "seriously flawed" and that his department considered it a "Clinton-era snapshot of what al Qaeda looked like in 1999 or 2000" without taking into account the new resources and strategies to combat terror financing.

"We are not claiming victory, we are not spiking the football, but we are off to a good start," Nichols said.

Administration officials said they were angry that Treasury and other agencies had not been invited to brief the panel. But Maurice R. Greenberg, the panel's chairman, said that in late August the council extended a written invitation to the NSC to address the group and an oral invitation to Treasury. Both were declined, he said.

The report, prepared by a bipartisan panel of financial and terrorism experts, reveals no new details about U.S. or Saudi efforts to staunch terror funding. But it plainly asserts what many officials have said privately for some time.

"I know a lot of people in the administration are really upset with this, but it essentially lays out what many of us have been saying," said one senior administration official. "That is, we need to come up with strategies that are as creative as those of the enemy, and that, like it or not, many of the financial roads to al Qaeda go through Saudi Arabia."

While the United Nations and others have recently warned that the financial war on terror was sputtering, analysts inside and outside government said the conclusions of the panel carry particular weight because it is bipartisan. Greenberg is an influential Republican fund-raiser and corporate executive. The two co-directors, William F. Wechsler and Lee S. Wolosky, tracked terrorist financing while serving in the Clinton administration's National Security Council.

The report concludes that al Qaeda retains access to millions of dollars and that as long as its financial network is viable, the terrorist organization "remains a lethal threat to the United States." Financing for Osama bin Laden's terror network is often routed through charities, front companies and shell banks in offshore havens.

In recent testimony to Congress, senior administration officials, have acknowledged that al Qaeda retains the financial capability to carry out attacks against the United States and elsewhere. Administration officials have said that since Sept. 11, the United States has designated 240 people and organizations as terrorist supporters and blocked $112 million in suspected terrorist assets.

"The problem (of terrorist financing) is of enormous magnitude," Jimmy Gurule, undersecretary of Treasury for enforcement, told the Senate Finance Committee last week. "We have made a dent, but we have a long way to go."

The report touched on another sensitive issue, saying the administration's difficulties in tracking and disrupting al Qaeda's financial empire "have been exacerbated by the lack of interagency coordination within the U.S. government," citing duplication of tasks and information sharing difficulties among the CIA, FBI and Treasury departments.

Nichols said that, while there were initially problems with inter-agency coordination, "the kinks have been worked out, and inter-agency cooperation is alive and well."

The report was especially harsh on the Bush administration's relationship with Saudi Arabia. The administration "appears to have made a policy decision not to use the full power of U.S. influence and legal authorities to pressure or compel other governments to combat terrorist financing more effectively."

Greenberg, chairman and CEO of AIG, said the administration needs to "much more forceful" in dealing with Saudi Arabia, and that the administration "should be all over" the Saudi government whenever terrorist financial ties were found.

"Sitting in a corner is not the answer," Greenberg said. "Whatever we are doing, it isn't working."

The report acknowleged that criticizing Saudi Arabia publicly and demanding a crackdown on Islamic banks, charities and wealthy sponsors of al Qaeda could create a backlash that would jeoprodize the survival of the Saudi government.

But it said the risk of inaction was even greater, because it will allow terrorist supporters to "gain strength and influence steadily among their own population," which ultimately will put the Saudi government at risk anyway.


© 2002 The Washington Post Company

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 9:50 AM

Tuesday, October 15, 2002

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

October 14, 2002
Auditors Say U.S. Agencies Lose Track of Billions
By JOEL BRINKLEY


ASHINGTON, Oct. 13 — Year after year, auditors studying the financial records of federal government departments find many of them so disorganized, even chaotic, that the agencies cannot account for tens of billions of dollars.

What is more, when many agencies realize that they have made major accounting errors, rather than looking back to see where the money went, they simply enter multibillion-dollar balance adjustments, writing off the money.

That is just one of many problems that auditors typically find in annual financial statements of government agencies. The 2001-2002 fiscal year ended Sept. 30, so government agencies are preparing statements now.

In the last year, the Office of Management and Budget has taken on the financial accounting problem in something like an auditor's holy war. In a letter to Congress on Oct. 7, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., director of the budget office, said the federal government's accounts would "never be tolerated in the private sector," adding that "repair of a system so badly broken will not happen overnight."

In part to embarrass the agencies so they will improve their financial performance, the budget office early this year began rating the 24 largest federal departments, scoring each green, yellow or red. Green indicates that the agency's financial systems are acceptable, yellow that they are troubled but improving and red that there are serious, chronic problems. In the most recent rating, completed in June, only one agency was rated green, the tiny National Science Foundation. Twenty were rated red.

The Department of Defense routinely makes the largest financial blunders. In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2000, auditors found, the department entered unsubstantiated balance adjustments totaling $1.1 trillion. That was an improvement over the previous year, when the figure was $2.3 trillion.

"They just made the adjustments up," said a senior official with the Defense Department's inspector general's office.

That does not mean $1.1 trillion is missing. Some adjustments were deposits, others were debits. For example, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service found last year that its accounts were out of balance with the Treasury Department, the bank, by $3.9 billion. Instead of determining the source of the discrepancy, the service simply entered a balance adjustment for that amount. Hundreds of similar adjustments are behind the $1.1 trillion total.

Over all, the department's financial records are so chaotic — the agency has more than 1,100 accounting systems — that Congress advised the agency's auditors not to bother even trying to audit them.

Three other federal agencies — the Agriculture Department, NASA and the Agency for International Development — had unauditable books in 2000-2001. But even many of the agencies that received so-called clean audits — with books well organized enough to be audited — had serious financial shortcomings.

The Internal Revenue Service, for example, is unable to produce a hard figure for the amount of tax payments due the government. Instead it runs a statistical sample of taxes due and from that derives an estimate — an arduous process that takes several months. That estimate is one of the figures the government uses to plan spending for the year.

All told, for the 2000-2001 fiscal year, the Treasury Department entered a balance deduction from the government's general fund of $17.3 billion to make up for financial errors throughout the government. The government also recorded at least $33 billion in erroneous payments last year, like improper Medicare payments of $12.1 billion.

"We have to pump money into the executive branch to help them balance these things out," said Representative Steve Horn, the California Republican who is chairman of the House Subcommittee on Government Management.

Audits of the departments' financial statements for the fiscal year 2001-2002 are due early next year.

For most of the nation's history, no one asked much of government agencies in terms of financial accounting. The Constitution said only that "a regular statement and account of the receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time."

Early last century Congress passed laws prohibiting government agencies from spending more than Congress appropriated. These laws have not been entirely successful. For example, in the 2000-2001 fiscal year the Forest Service alone overspent its budget by $1.1 billion.

Starting in the 1990's, Congress began passing more requirements. One law, in 1994, required each agency for the first time to produce annual financial statements. Those reports would be subject to audit, and in 1996, the first year audited statements were due, only 6 of the 24 agencies produced statements that it was possible to audit.

An additional law, in 1996, required major agencies to install a financial accounting system that could generate auditable statements and give managers the ability to examine the agency's situation before making decisions on programs or policies — something they could not do.

Now, six years later, only the National Science Foundation has a financial accounting system, and most of the major agencies are still years away from attaining one.

As a result, the annual task of preparing a financial statement is a Herculean effort involving hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people at every level of a department, who must pull together records of everything a department has done over the year.

At the Internal Revenue Service, for example, "it's a massive effort that begins in the mid-July time frame and typically continues well into late January," said Steven Sebastian, a senior official in the agency's inspector general's office.

Several officials said this labor-intensive process distracted from the agencies' principal work. The Immigration and Naturalization Service, for example, "had to count manually approximately five million immigration applications" to determine fees due the government, said an inspector general's report, adding that the work "shut down production at several sites for more than a week and caused delays in processing applications."

In the end, to make the books balance, agencies make "billions of dollars in adjustments," the 2000-2001 audit of the federal government said.

The government's financial rating system shows the Department of Agriculture to be the worst managed major agency.

The agency's financial statements are in such disarray that they have been unauditable since 1994. But Edward R. McPherson, the department's chief financial officer, insisted in a recent interview that most of the problems had been solved and that future audits would be much improved. His predecessors have made similar assertions.

A senior auditor in the inspector general's office, while acknowledging that "there have been changes" at the department, added that "we won't know anything until we complete the audit" early next year.

The audit for the 2000-2001 fiscal year, completed last February, showed that the department made unsubstantiated balance adjustments totaling $2.9 billion.

"I can't tell you what's in that figure," said the senior auditor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I don't think they even know."

Behind it, audit reports show, is a department in financial disarray. After seven years of trying, the Agriculture Department recently completed installation of a financial accounting system. But another inspector general's audit, last summer, found the system to be largely dysfunctional because of user errors and unauthorized modifications.

For example the system uses a "funds control" program to limit spending to the budgeted amount. In 68 accounts, the audit said, agency employees had overridden the control, or not turned it on, leading to $1.3 billion in what was apparently overspending. When auditors tried to view the system's override log, to see how the overspending had occurred, they found it turned off.

The system included a payment limit for each check of $999,999. But users who could not be identified by auditors had added a digit, changing the limit to $9,999,999. Contrary to agency rules requiring approval from supervisors, more than 2,200 agency employees had been authorized to process certain payments with no oversight or approval, raising the risk of fraud, auditors said. In addition, 186 people who no longer worked for the department still had approved access to the system.

The Forest Service, a division of the department, tries to hold back money each year so it has money available to fight forest fires. In 2001, as in most years, the service could not figure out how much money it had available and overspent by $274 million, auditors found.

At the end of the fiscal year, in a feverish and ultimately futile effort to make the agency's books balance, the Forest Service made 15,337 adjustments, credits and debits, over several weeks. They totaled $11 billion. Auditors examined 144 of those adjustments, totaling $7.9 billion, and found that 73 percent were "unsupported, unapproved and erroneous."



Copyright The New York Times Company | Permissions | Privacy Policy

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 12:06 PM

October 15, 2002

Jerry Falwell to Oversee Law School that Will Groom Future Republican Administration Supreme Court Appointments


A BuzzFlash News Analysis

Not long ago, in an underreported speech, Justice Antonin "The Fixer" Scalia spoke about how the Constitution was derived from God, and, therefore, in essence, God was sometimes to be factored into Supreme court decisions. Scalia, a member of a powerful conservative Catholic sect called Opus Dei, was merely reconfirming the Bush Cartel commitment to governing America not through laws, but through laws interpreted through a theocratic prism. Just ask John Ashcroft, who regularly anoints himself, and has repeatedly declared that God is the King of America.

With all the right wing judges sitting on America's courts, you would think there would be enough of them to meet the Stepford-like loyalty oath to God-before-democracy required by the Bush Administration.

But apparently, there must be a shortage of judges hot-wired to heaven, because Jerry Falwell is opening a law school to create a sort of farm league for the God Squad judiciary.

In his most recent "Falwell Confidential" e-mail alert, Jerry breathlessly announces. (BuzzFlash is not making this up. This is an actual Falwell e-mail alert sent out on October 11th):

"FROM: Jerry Falwell

Liberty University to Initiate School of Law Next Year

In my writings for "Falwell Confidential," I try to remain focused on the pertinent issues of the day. However, I am so excited about a new endeavor here at Liberty University, I decided to use this edition to share an important announcement with my weekly readers.

Since I founded Liberty University in 1971, I have envisioned that our first professional school would be a school of law. On October 8, my dream was realized. On that day, the Liberty University Board of Trustees officially approved the formation of the Liberty University School of Law and commissioned our president, John M. Borek Jr., to take the necessary steps to begin classes in the 2003 fall semester. Needless to say, I am excited beyond words about this bold move that I believe will ultimately have a nationwide impact.

Liberty University's School of Law will employ professors who are: committed to the inspiration and infallibility of the Bible; committed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ; committed to a strict constructionist view of the U.S. Constitution; committed to training godly attorneys for the law profession, for service in American government or as judges and justices. Our law school, like Liberty University, will recruit students who have a desire to impact our nation and the world for our Savior.

In a nation that, in one generation, has legalized abortion on demand, removed prayer and Bible reading from our schools and more recently attempted to outlaw the Pledge of Allegiance because of the words "under God," it is high time that we create a law school that will produce men and women who are committed to the Judeo-Christian ethic, the preciousness of human life and the defense of the Judeo-Christian values that formed this great nation.

In recent years, we have witnessed an acceleration of discrimination and persecution against people of faith in the workplace and in our nation's public schools. The Liberty University School of Law will intently focus on training attorneys who will aggressively defend the religious rights of people of faith in this nation. I envision our graduates going forth to win many important battles against the anti-religious zealots at the American Civil Liberties Union.

In the past, our pre-law students have gone on from Liberty to the great law schools of America. My son, Jerry Falwell Jr., attended the University of Virginia School of Law and is today chief counsel of Liberty University. David Gibbs III went out from Liberty to the Duke University School of Law and today he and his father lead the very influential Christian Law Association. Many other Liberty graduates are now making an impact in the legal world after earning their law degrees in a variety of institutions. Now we will have the opportunity to train future conservative lawyers right here at Liberty!

As you can see, we are prepared to make a momentous impact on our nation very quickly. I request that readers keep Liberty University in your prayers. I truly believe that we are training future generations of conservative warriors who will dramatically impact our culture.

I encourage my "Falwell Confidential" friends to pray for Liberty University's leadership as we provide guidance and direction for God's University."

There you have it. In no time at all, Jerry Falwell will be producing little Antonin Scalia and William Rehnquist clones in his Liberty University Law School laboratory.

Of course, BuzzFlash is amazed that Mr. Falwell (we can't bring ourselves to call the charlatan Reverend) has the time to embark upon an enterprise of this magnitude. After all, he has been so busy inciting the Moslem world by calling the founder of their religion a "terrorist." I mean, when one man can provoke riots in Islamic countries, without a word of chastisement coming from the White House, you would think he might be a bit preoccupied. But not our Jerry!

The next step, BuzzFlash kids you not, will be Jerry obtaining "faith-based funding" (AKA religious pork) from his good friend Mr. Bush. Yes, those will be our taxpayer dollars going to support a flim-flam bigoted preacher. Heck, Pat Robertson has already gotten $500,000 of our money through a Bush Cartel "faith-based" grant. And we thought these guys were supposed to be on the outs with the White House after they suggested that gays and the "moral decay" of America were responsible for the September 11th terrorist attack. Silly us!

So, in a few years, if the Bush regime establishes permanent rule over America, expect to see Liberty School Law School graduates on the Supreme Court bench. You'll know them because they will be the ones with antennas protruding from their heads, so as better to receive ruling instructions from God -- or maybe it will be Karl Rove at the other end of the line.

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 8:55 AM

Sunday, October 13, 2002

October 11, 2002

Crunch Time

Southern Style
by Rebecca Knight

How are you feeling today about the United States House of Representatives and Senate? How did your representative and senators vote on the Bush war resolution? Are you satisfied with that vote? If not, what do you plan to do about it? What can we do about it? Do we have any voice left in this country? Has the legislative branch caved in and given up too much of its authority? What about oversight? What about balance of powers? What about Congressional authority to declare war? What would our founders be thinking of this grasp for power by the executive branch?


Questions, questions, and more questions. We have a right to ask questions and we have a responsibility to hold our elected officials accountable. That is what we must do. But how to do it is the quandary we face.


The events of the last few weeks as Bush has pounded his war drum have been indescribable. Words fail us as we try to find a rationale that would explain why officials elected to represent us, constitutionally required to represent us, have so easily handed over so many of their responsibilities to the executive branch.


Wait! Could there be a method to this madness? Could our elected officials in the Capitol have had the foresight to think that Bush would take the country to war no matter what they decided? Could they have set him up for failure? Could they possibly have decided to grant authority for him to make war, knowing that the people of this nation in the end would not accept his bullying tactics?


Surely not. Surely that approach is too cynical. Surely they would not send our men and women of the military into harms way for political advantage. Oh, but Mr. Bush would and that is what may bring about his downfall.


When Mr. Bush's war against Iraq begins, most experts believe it will have to be fought on the ground to a certain degree. To overthrow a dictator like Saddam it would have to be fought on the ground. The man apparently has as many as eight or ten doubles. In order to make sure they have gotten the real mad man out of power, it will require up close and personal fighting.


How will Americans respond to our men and women coming home in body bags? How will Americans react to the death and destruction of the people of Iraq? History indicates that it will not be accepted as easily as Mr. Bush may think. Oh, but will that deter Mr. Bush from his maddening push for war? Probably not.


Does the fact that Osama bin Laden, once the target, still eludes our forces have any bearing on Bush's war push? Of course it does. Instead of finishing the task at hand, he merely shifted the focus to Iraq, even though there is still much to be done in Afghanistan. Watch for the same pattern in Iraq, if efforts to get Saddam are as difficult as some believe they could be. Watch for another enemy to focus on. Watch for enemy after enemy to be named. Watch for war after war to be declared. Where and when will the politics of war end?


Just take a look at the resolutions passed by Congress.


HJ Res. 114 -- http://www.cspan.org/iraq/hjres114.pdf
SJ Res. 45 -- http://www.cspan.org/Iraq/sjres45.pdf


In summary Congress finds that:

Iraq sponsors international terrorism
Iraq harbors terrorists
There is a "high risk" that Iraq is planning a "surprise attack"
against the United States
Any non-Iraqi terrorists are hereby declared to be Iraqi surrogates
The invasion of Iraq is, therefore, hereby found to be
(i) "defensive" and (ii) just part of the "war on terrorism" anyway
Furthermore, the Congress hereby declares that George W. Bush has
full Constitutional authority to do whatever he pleases, militarily,
just as long as he claims he's doing it for "national security"
reasons.
Pursuant to this, "national security" is hereby defined to include
the pursuit (by military force and invasion) of "international peace
and security", and such interests will now include the
entire "Persian Gulf region."
Notice that this states THE ENTIRE PERSIAN GULF REGION. Yes, that is the authority Bush has been given. He has been authorized to declare war as he sees fit against any country in the Persian Gulf region.


We have all used the expression: "I never thought I would live to see the day." Precisely. No other expression applies. We never thought we would live to see the day when a president would be granted such unparalleled authority to wage war. It is a disgrace. Congress may rue the day they voted approval of these monstrous resolutions.


We can take satisfaction in only one aspect of this situation. At least Congress managed to scale back what Bush originally asked for, meaning he probably got what he really wanted. That is an old tactic. Go in asking for the stars and the moon, but settle for just the moon because that was the goal all along.


We cannot afford to be disheartened. The mid term elections are only a little more than three weeks away. We have much work to do and little time to do it. We must take pride in the Democrats and Independents who stood against the Bush regime. We must acknowledge their diligence and determination. Senator Robert Byrd was a shining beacon of patriotism during the debate. He should be congratulated. Check out who voted against the resolutions and let them hear from you.


Next we should demand that the debate return to matters of domestic importance. It's the economy. Hey stupid! It's the economy. It's the failing stock market, increasing unemployment, rising prescription medicine costs, cuts in environmental policies, cuts in educational programs, cuts in programs for the needy. This war has to be paid for somehow. It will be paid for through cuts in programs that help the average hard-working American and through astronomical deficit spending and compounding national debt.


These are our issues. These issues should be pounded into the public debate in the next three weeks as never before. Start demanding that of Democrats and Independents right now!


The election we are approaching may very well be one of the most critical in our history. The Democrats need our support. The Democrats MUST keep control of the Senate and regain control of the House. Imagine what we might face should the Republicans control both houses of Congress with Bush in the White House. We already think of him as dictatorial. There would be nothing standing in his way if this election turns in favor of the Republicans.


So, as angry as we may be towards Democrats who voted for the war resolutions, we must put our anger aside and get out the vote for them.


Yes, indeed, it is crunch time!





* * *

Rebecca Knight is a native Tennessean, who grew up in Nashville, and currently resides in a small town near Nashville. Ms. Knight's political awareness evolved through the civil rights movement, the Vietnam era, the Watergate era, and the cold war. The debacle of the 2000 election increased her sense of responsibility for political activism. You may contact Rebecca Knight via e-mail at tennessee_gal655@yahoo.com.


accesswater2030@yahoo.com 10:22 PM

U.S. admits germ war tests in Britain

By Charles Aldinger
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has acknowledged it carried out a sweeping Cold War-era test programme of chemical and germ warfare agents in Britain and North America.

An unknown number of civilians were exposed at the time to "simulants", or what were then thought to be harmless agents meant to stand in for deadlier ones, the Defense Department said. Some of those were later discovered to be dangerous.

"We do know that some civilians were exposed in tests that occurred in Hawaii, possibly in Alaska and possibly in Florida," said William Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs.

Also exposed or possibly exposed were civilians in or around Vieques, Puerto Rico, and an unknown number of U.S. service personnel, said Michael Kilpatrick of the Pentagon's Deployment Health Support Directorate.

As many as 5,500 members of the U.S. armed forces were involved, including 5,000 who took part in previously disclosed ship-board experiments in the Pacific in the 1960s, the Pentagon said.

So far, more than 50 veterans have filed claims related to symptoms they associate with exposure to the tests, the Department of Veterans Affairs said.

The tests of such nerve agents as Sarin, Soman, Tabun and VX were carried out from 1962 to 1973 both on land and at sea "out of concern for our ability to protect and defend against these potential threats," a Pentagon statement said on Wednesday. The tests were co-ordinated by an outfit called the Deseret Test Center at Fort Douglas, Utah.

The reports amounted to an acknowledgement of much wider Cold War testing of toxic arms involving U.S. forces than earlier admitted by the Pentagon.

"During this period there were serious and legitimate concerns about the Soviet Union's chemical and biological warfare programme," Winkenwerder added at a Pentagon news briefing.

But the tests also had applications to the offensive chemical and biological weapons stocks then maintained by the United States, he said. President Richard Nixon ordered an end to U.S. offensive chemical and biological weapons programmes in 1970.

Britain and Canada joined the United States in a series of tests on their military proving grounds from July 1967 to September 1968, a document released by the Pentagon said.

These joint exercises, known as Rapid Tan 1, 2 and 3, were designed to investigate "the extent and duration of hazard" following a Tabun, Soman or other nerve agent attack, a fact sheet said. These agents, along with VX, were sprayed in both open grassland and wooded terrain at the Chemical Defence Establishment in Porton Down, Wiltshire, the document said.

Similar tests took place at the Suffield Defence Research Establishment in Ralston, Canada, the Pentagon said.

"The weapons systems germane to this test were explosive munitions (Soman-filled), aircraft spray, rain-type munitions (using both Tabun and Soman), and massive bombs (Tabun- and Soman-filled), the fact sheet said.

CANADA, BRITAIN

Both Canada and Britain made public information about these tests years ago, Kilpatrick said, citing word received from their governments as part of the process of co-ordinating the U.S. release of information.

But in Ottawa, Canadian Defense Minister John McCallum told reporters he had just learned of the experiments.

"My understanding is that this was ... for the purposes of defence against biological or chemical weapons ... My understanding also is that no human beings were deliberately exposed to any of these agents." he said.

The department said it had contracted with the Institute of Medicine, a private group with ties to the National Academy of Sciences, to carry out a three-year, $3 million (1.92 million pounds) study of potential long-term health effects of the tests conducted aboard U.S. Navy ships.

The reports on the U.S. land tests in Alaska, Hawaii, Maryland and Florida did not all involve deadly agents and were used to learn how climate and a battle environment would affect the use of such arms, the Pentagon said.

The information was released amid U.S. charges that Iraq has continued building weapons of mass destruction despite disarmament requirements at the end of the 1991 Gulf War.

Iraq flatly denies having such weapons programmes.

Within minutes, Sarin can trigger symptoms including difficult breathing, nausea, jerking, staggering, loss of bladder-bowel control and death.

Extremely lethal VX is an oily liquid that is tasteless and odourless and considered one of the most deadly agents ever made by man. With severe exposure to the skin or lungs, death usually occurs within 10 to 15 minutes.


accesswater2030@yahoo.com 2:43 PM

Is Truth Bush's #1 Enemy?
Why the 'Best American' is a Misinformed American
by Maureen Farrell

Last spring, BBC News ran a segment on depleted uranium (DU). Featuring an Iraqi doctor discussing increased cancer rates in areas where DU-tipped artillery shells were dropped during the Gulf War, the report chronicled the plight of 13 and 14-year-old girls undergoing mastectomies. In doing so, it delved into territory rarely seen. The clincher wasn't just that the BBC addressed uranium-associated horrors, which, in itself, was a TV-Land rarity, but that they did so without some British Paula Zahn accusing them of "drinking Saddam Hussein's Kool-Aid." Sans Fox Newsian experts discrediting testimony, the piece was entirely convincing. Though, admittedly, it was difficult for this American to fathom that the U.K was seriously considering discontinuing its use of DU ammunition, due to ethical concerns. Would another nation actually admit it might have made a terrible mistake? And that it could somehow be culpable? Here in the Land of Pentagon Infallibility, where we export seeds for germ warfare (and act shocked afterwards), that was hard to imagine. And frankly, one felt "anti-American" for noticing.

DU Dancing

Certainly, though some journalists, scientists and citizens struggle for clarity, it's as if caring about the fate of Iraqis or suggesting the U.S might be harming its own soldiers is treasonous -- even if it's true. Thankfully, some forge ahead regardless. The Christian Science Monitor, for example, should be commended for its valiant efforts with its "Trail of a Bullet" series, while Gulf War veterans should be applauded for their untiring search for answers. And despite the government's aversion to inquiry, Dr. Asaf Durakovic, former research scientist with the U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs, is a hero for investigating the link between DU and Gulf War Syndrome. Now a professor of medicine, this former U.S. Army colonel has found a "significant presence" of depleted uranium in the bones of Gulf War veterans and estimates that tens of thousands of Gulf War veterans suffer the effects of radiation. With veterans of the conflict in Croatia showing similar symptoms, this can't be blamed on Saddam.

Moreover, if DU is "safe" why do military safety regulations call for those working near DU sites to wear heavily insulated clothing? And why have cancer rates risen 400% in Iraq since 1991? Are American tax dollars paying for mass genocide, as some suggest? "I believe that Americans are basically decent people," former U.N. humanitarian official Denis Halliday said, in a recent Salon interview. "If they understood that Iraq is not made up of 22 million Saddam Husseins, but made up of 22 million people. . . they would be horrified to realize that the current killing of innocent Iraqi civilians by the U.S. Air Force, or what happened in the Gulf War, is being done in their name."

That may be so, but when well-meaning souls try to inform Americans, Americans don't believe them. And those who speak out are often vilified and shouted down. Rep. Jim McDermott's latest statements on Iraq's DU-related birth defects confirm others' ethical concerns. But as politicians and pundits depict McDermott as a traitor (even though, unlike the squawking chicken hawks, he's a Vietnam vet), few listen to what he has to say. It's anti-American to have a conscience, it seems.

Misrepresentations

Representative McDermott is in hot water for other "sins," too, especially for suggesting President Bush would mislead the American people in order to drag them into war. Though the Guardian's Simon Tisdall calls Bush "America's great misleader," and CIA officials say the president is using "cooked information" to falsify Iraq's threat, American pundits cry foul. Why, one wonders, is McDermott's observation such a shocker? Is it really so outrageous to suggest that Bush would say or do anything to make sure the war progresses as planned -- especially when government insiders confirm that's the case? Whether today's excuse is "weapons of mass destruction" or "regime change" or "disarmament," or Saddam's alleged attempt to snuff Bush the Elder, war is on the agenda and has been since before the 2000 selection. Not only did pre-election think tank studies form national policy, but the GOP included "regime change" as part of its 2000 platform.

Why wouldn't George II mislead us? From Database Technology Florida shenanigans to our "humble" foreign policy to corporate and election reform, he's already told some pretty serious fibs. Plus, his father was a master of manipulation, contriving events and perpetuating propaganda to achieve his ends. "October Surprises" and media strangleholds notwithstanding, can we ever forget April Glaspie's "green light" meeting with Saddam, where she told Hussein, one week prior to the invasion, that the U.S had "no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait?" There were also forged photos of troops at the Saudi border and discarded babies in incubators fabrications, which goaded teetering representatives into supporting Gulf War I. If Bush #41 would subvert democracy through deceit, why wouldn't Bush #43 do likewise? As Jeb Bush's recent revelations indicate, "devious plans" seem to run in the family.

And don't forget war profiteering. According to Seymour Hersh, Neil and Marvin Bush and James Baker, among others, struck up sweet post-Gulf War deals. At the time, James Baker represented Enron, and as one Enron executive asked Hersh, "Is there any reason American companies shouldn't profit from the war in Kuwait?" Enron's Gulf War attitude foreshadowed things to come.

Dirty Secrets

"Profiting from war," of course, is one of Bush Inc.'s dirtiest secrets. Citizens shell out up to half of their income to fund a bulging beast while others in this country go hungry and uninsured. The United States' annual defense budget is $260 billion, while Russia, next in line, spends less than $80 billion a year. And guess who profits? Despite being under investigation for corporate wrongdoing, Halliburton continues to rake in the government contracts for overseas military bases and Gitmo cells, while George Bush Sr., James Baker and other Carlyle Group members make a killing through defense contracts.

As the Sunday Herald's Neil Mackay recently reported, the U.S planned a military attack on Iraq five months before Sept. 11, in order to "secure control of its oil." Citing a document called, "Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century" which has been linked to James Baker, Dick Cheney and other Captains of Industry, Mackay says America's 'military intervention' is meant to "to fix the [approaching] US energy crisis" and insure American dominance in the Middle East.

But Empire and Democracy can't exist side by side, and "we the people" will become but tools of the state. If developing revelations about Bush's Enron-like Harken misconduct weren't bad enough, recently released information about the government's use of citizens as bio-terror guinea pigs confirms that there's an "us" vs. "them." If you want to get beyond the Disneyfied version of reality the networks broadcast daily and don't trust G.W. Bush (or those he serves) to be on your side, educate yourself. Investigate seedier historic moments, for example, by researching Operation Northwoods, Operation Paperclip and Operation Mockingbird. Or look up "John Foster Dulles" along with "Prescott Bush." You can cross-reference "the National Security Memorandum 200," with "depopulation" and "biological warfare," if you like, or google "Chile, Nixon and Pepsi." And though searching "BCCI, Bush and bin Laden," or "BCCI, Bush and Iraq" or "BCCI, Bush and Iran" might make you permanently lose your innocence and faith, it's fun for the whole family, I swear. If you're especially ambitious, check out the dubious deaths of Don C. Wiley or Danny Casolaro, though you might want to save those for Halloween.

Truth as a Terrorist

Keep educating yourself, and while you're at it, ask: Who stands to gain by having citizens believe the avalanche of lies we're fed? Sooner or later, you'll realize that what amounts to anti-Americanism these days is often an affinity for Truth. As a Vietnam veteran, Congressman McDermott has every reason to question the government's official line before the bloodshed commences. All of us, each and everyone, should have an idealized vision of what America can be -- and work towards that goal. The neo-cons who've stolen America can't comprehend that. To them, and their benefactors, the best American is a misinformed American. But whose country is this? Theirs? Or yours?

"The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology," author Michael Parenti wrote. Push that mythology aside and endure the howls of anti-Americanism. Because though Truth is the enemy of the state, it's the only thing that will set you free.

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October 13, 2002
America's For-Profit Secret Army
By LESLIE WAYNE


With the war on terror already a year old and the possibility of war against Iraq growing by the day, a modern version of an ancient practice — one as old as warfare itself — is reasserting itself at the Pentagon. Mercenaries, as they were once known, are thriving — only this time they are called private military contractors, and some are even subsidiaries of Fortune 500 companies.
The Pentagon cannot go to war without them.

Often run by retired military officers, including three- and four-star generals, private military contractors are the new business face of war. Blurring the line between military and civilian, they provide stand-ins for active soldiers in everything from logistical support to battlefield training and military advice at home and abroad.Some are helping to conduct training exercises using live ammunition for American troops in Kuwait, under the code name Desert Spring. One has just been hired to guard President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, the target of a recent assassination attempt. Another is helping to write the book on airport security. Others have employees who don their old uniforms to work under contract as military recruiters and instructors in R.O.T.C. classes, selecting and training the next generation of soldiers.

In the darker recesses of the world, private contractors go where the Pentagon would prefer not to be seen, carrying out military exercises for the American government, far from Washington's view. In the last few years, they have sent their employees to Bosnia, Nigeria, Macedonia, Colombia and other global hot spots.

Motivated as much by profits as politics, these companies — about 35 all told in the United States — need the government's permission to be in business. A few are somewhat familiar names, like Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of the Halliburton Company that operates for the government in Cuba and Central Asia. Others have more cryptic names, like DynCorp; Vinnell, a subsidiary of TRW; SAIC; ICI of Oregon; and Logicon, a unit of Northrop Grumman. One of the best known, MPRI, boasts of having "more generals per square foot than in the Pentagon."
During the Persian Gulf war in 1991, one of every 50 people on the battlefield was an American civilian under contract; by the time of the peacekeeping effort in Bosnia in 1996, the figure was one in 10. No one knows for sure how big this secretive industry is, but some military experts estimate the global market at $100 billion. As for the public companies that own private military contractors, they say little if anything about them to shareholders.

"Contractors are indispensible," said John J. Hamre, deputy secretary of defense in the Clinton administration. "Will there be more in the future? Yes, and they are not just running the soup kitchens."

That means even more business, and profits, for contractors who perform tasks as mundane as maintaining barracks for overseas troops, as sophisticated as operating weapon systems or as secretive as intelligence-gathering in Africa. Many function near, or even at, the front lines, causing concern among military strategists about their safety and commitment if bullets start to fly.

The use of military contractors raises other troubling questions as well. In peace, they can act as a secret army outside of public view. In war, while providing functions crucial to the combat effort, they are not soldiers. Private contractors are not obligated to take orders or to follow military codes of conduct. Their legal obligation is solely to an employment contract, not to their country. (Are they bound by our laws?)

Private military contractors are flushing out drug traffickers in Colombia and turning the rag-tag militias of African nations into fighting machines. When a United Nations arms embargo restricted the American military in the Balkans, private military contractors were sent instead to train the local forces.
At times, the results have been disastrous.

In Bosnia, employees of DynCorp were found to be operating a sex-slave ring of young women who were held for prostitution after their passports were confiscated. In Croatia, local forces, trained by MPRI, used what they learned to conduct one of the worst episodes of "ethnic cleansing," an event that left more than 100,000 homeless and hundreds dead and resulted in war-crimes indictments. No employee of either firm has ever been charged in these incidents.
In Peru last year, a plane carrying an American missionary and her infant was accidentally shot down when a private military contractor misidentified it as on a drug smuggling flight.
MPRI, formerly known as Military Professionals Resources Inc., may provide the best example of how skilled retired soldiers cash in on their military training. Its roster includes Gen. Carl E. Vuono, the former Army chief of staff who led the gulf war and the Panama invasion; Gen. Crosbie E. Saint, the former commander of the United States Army in Europe; and Gen. Ron Griffith, the former Army vice chief of staff. There are also dozens of retired top-ranked generals, an admiral and more than 10,000 former military personnel, including elite special forces, on call and ready for assignment.
"We can have 20 qualified people on the Serbian border within 24 hours," said Lt. Gen. Harry E. Soyster, the company's spokesman and a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. "The Army can't do that. But contractors can."

For that, MPRI is paid well. Its revenue exceeds $100 million a year, mainly from Pentagon and State Department contracts. Retired military personnel working for MPRI receive two to three times their Pentagon salaries, in addition to their retirement benefits and corporate benefits like stock options and 401(k) plans. MPRI's founders became millionaires in July 2000, when they and about 35 equity holders sold the company for $40 million in cash to L-3 Communications, a military contractor traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

Within the military, the use of contractors is Defense Department policy for filling the gaps as the number of troops falls. At the time of the gulf war, there were 780,000 Army troops; today there are 480,000. Over the same period, overall military forces have fallen by 500,000.

Pentagon officials did not respond to many telephone calls and e-mail messages requesting interviews, but they have maintained that contractors are a cost-effective way of extending the military's reach when Congress and the American public are reluctant to pay for more soldiers.

"The main reason for using a contractor is that it saves you from having to use troops, so troops can focus on war fighting," said Col. Thomas W. Sweeney, a professor of strategic logistics at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. "It's cheaper because you only pay for contractors when you use them."

But one person's cost-saving device can be another's "guns for hire," as David Hackworth, a former Army colonel and frequent critic of the military, called them.

"These new mercenaries work for the Defense and State Department and Congress looks the other way," Colonel Hackworth, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, said. "It's a very dangerous situation. It allows us to get into fights where we would be reluctant to send the Defense Department or the C.I.A. The American taxpayer is paying for our own mercenary army, which violates what our founding fathers said."

They are not mercenaries in the classic sense. Most, but not all, private military contractors are unarmed, even when they oversee others with guns. They have even formed a trade group, the International Peace Operations Association, to promote industry standards.
"We don't want to risk getting contracts by being called mercenaries," said Doug Brooks, president of the association. "But we can do things on short notice and keep our mouths shut."That, some critics say, is part of the problem. By using for-profit soldiers, the government, especially the executive branch, can evade Congressional limits on troop strength. For instance, in Bosnia, where a cap of 20,000 troops was imposed by Congress, the addition of 2,000 contractors helped skirt that restriction.

Contractors also allow the administration to carry out foreign policy goals in low-level skirmishes around the globe — often fueled by ethnic hatreds and a surplus of cold war weapons — without having to fear the media attention that comes if American soldiers are sent home in body bags.

At least five DynCorp employees have been killed in Latin America, with no public outcry. Denial is easier for the government when those working overseas do not wear uniforms — they often wear fatigues or military-looking clothes but not official uniforms.
"If you sent in troops, someone will know; if contractors, they may not," said Deborah Avant, an associate professor of political science at George Washington University and author of many studies on the subject.
Only a few members of Congress have expressed concern about the phenomenon.

"There are inherent difficulties with the increasing use of contactors to carry out U.S. foreign policy," said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and the chairman of the foreign operations subcommittee. "This is especially true when it involves `private' soldiers who are not as accountable as U.S. military personnel. Accountability is a serious issue when it comes to carrying guns or flying helicopters in pursuit of U.S. foreign policy goals."
In the House, Representative Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, led the battle against a Bush administration effort to remove the cap that limits the number of American troops in Colombia to 500 and private contractors to 300.

"American taxpayers already pay $300 billion a year to fund the world's most powerful military," Ms. Schakowsky said. "Why should they have to pay a second time in order to privatize our operations? Are we outsourcing in order to avoid public scrutiny, controversy or embarrassment? Is it to hide body bags from the media and thus shield them from public opinion?"


SUCH concerns are hardly slowing the pace across the Potomac, at MPRI in Alexandria, Va. The company may look like hundreds of other white-collar concerns that fill small office buildings in northern Virginia, but there are telltale signs to the contrary: the sword that serves as the corporate logo and conference rooms named the Infantry Room, the Cavalry Room and the Artillery Room. Its art consists of paintings of celebrated battles, largely from the Civil War.

It's hard to tell where the United States military ends and MPRI begins. For the last four years, MPRI has run R.O.T.C. training programs at more than 200 universities, under a contract that has allowed retired military to put their uniforms back on. It recently lost the contract to a lower bidder, but MPRI offset the loss with one to provide former soldiers to run recruitment offices.

The company, which has 900 full-time employees, helps run the United States Army Force Management School at Fort Belvoir. It also provides instructors for advanced training classes at Fort Leavenworth, teaches the Civil Air Patrol and designs courses at Fort Sill, Fort Knox, Fort Lee and other military centers.
The Pentagon has even hired MPRI to help it write military doctrine — including the field manual called "Contractors Support on the Battlefield" that sets rules for how the Army should interact with private contractors, like itself.

Overseas, MPRI is, if anything, more active. Under a program it calls "democracy transition," the company has offered countries like Nigeria, Bosnia, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Ukraine, Croatia and Macedonia training in American-style warfare, including war games, military instruction and weapons training.In Croatia, MPRI was brought in to provide border monitors in the early 1990's. Then, in 1994, as the United States grew concerned about the poor quality of the Croatian forces and their ability to maintain regional stability, it turned to MPRI. A United Nations arms embargo in 1991, approved by the United States, prohibited the sale of weapons or the providing of training to any warring party in the Balkans. But the Pentagon referred MPRI to Croatia's defense minister, who hired the company to train its forces.

In 1995, MPRI started doing so, teaching the fledgling army military tactics that MPRI executives had developed while on active duty commanding the gulf war invasion. Several months later, armed with this new training, the Croatian army began Operation Storm, one of the bloodiest episodes of "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans, an event that also reshaped the military balance in the region.

The operation drove more than 100,000 Serbs from their homes in a four-day assault. Investigators for the international war crimes tribunal in the Hague found that the Croatian army carried out summary executions and indiscriminately shelled civilians. "In a widespread and systematic matter, Croatian troops committed murder and other inhumane acts," investigators said in their report. Several Croatian generals in charge of the operation have been indicted for war crimes and are being sought for trial.

"No MPRI employee played a role in planning, monitoring or assisting in Operation Storm," said Lieutenant General Soyster, the MPRI spokesman. He did say that a few Croatian graduates of MPRI's training course participated in the operation.

Yet what happened in Croatia gave MPRI international brand recognition and more business in that region. When Bosnian Muslims balked in 1995 at signing the Dayton peace accords out of fear that their army was ill-equipped to provide sufficient protection, MPRI was called in.

"The Bosnians said they would not sign unless they had help building their army," said Peter Singer, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution who is writing a book on contractors. "And they said they wanted the same guys who helped the Croatians."

That is who they got. Under a plan worked out by American negotiators, the Bosnian Muslims hired MPRI using money that was provided by a group of Islamic nations, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Brunei, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia. These nations deposited money in the United States Treasury, which MPRI drew against.
"It was a brilliant move in that the U.S. government got someone else to pay for what we wanted from a policy standpoint," Mr. Singer said.
At the moment, MPRI is advertising for special forces for antiterrorist operations, is bulking up to train American forces in Kuwait and is looking for people with special skills like basic-training instruction and counterintelligence. Recently, however, it lost a $4.3 million contract to provide training to the army in Colombia when officials there complained about what they called the poor quality of MPRI's services.
In Africa, MPRI has conducted training programs on security issues for about 120 African leaders and more than 5,500 African troops. Most recently, it went toe to toe with the State Department, and won, gaining permission to do business in Equatorial Guinea, a country with a deplorable human rights record where the United States does not have an embassy.
After two years of lobbying at the State Department, and after being turned down twice on human rights grounds, MPRI was finally given approval last year to work with President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, whom the State Department describes as holding power through torture, fraud and a 98 percent election mandate. MPRI advised President Obiang on building a coast guard to protect the oil-rich waters being explored by Exxon Mobil off the coast.
More recently, when MPRI and President Obiang proposed that MPRI also help the country build its police and military forces, the State Department objected and the project is now dormant.

"We thought helping the coast guard would be pretty innocuous in terms of human rights," Lieutenant General Soyster of MPRI said. But Ms. Avant of George Washington University disagreed, saying any alliance with United States military contractors would strengthen President Obiang's power.

MPRI is not the only company to have run into problems overseas. DynCorp, a privately held company in Reston, Va., with nearly $2 billion in annual sales, has been tapped to provide protection for Mr. Karzai in Afghanistan. DynCorp also provides worldwide protective services for State Department employees.
In late September, DynCorp settled charges — for an undisclosed sum — brought by a whistle-blower the company had fired after he complained of a sex ring run by DynCorp employees in Bosnia. In August, a British court, meanwhile, ruled in favor of another former DynCorp employee in a separate whistle-blower case. DynCorp is appealing.

The two employees made similar accusations: that while working in Bosnia, where DynCorp was providing military equipment maintenance services, DynCorp employees kept underaged women as sex slaves, even videotaping a rape. Among the charges was that while the DynCorp employees trafficked in women — including buying one for $1,000 — the company turned a blind eye. Since the DynCorp employees involved were not soldiers, their actions were not subject to military discipline. Nor did they face local justice; they were simply fired and sent home.

In both cases, after complaining, the two employees who blew the whistle were fired. Ben Johnston, one of them, said last April in Congressional testimony: "DynCorp employees were living off post and owning these children and these women and girls as slaves. Well, that makes all Americans look bad. I believe DynCorp is the worst diplomat our country could ever want overseas."
A DynCorp spokesman, Chuck Taylor, said the company "felt horrible" and held its own internal investigation before firing the employees who operated the ring. DynCorp also handles aerial anti-narcotics efforts for the United States government in the skies over Colombia and nearby countries — where several employees have been killed. Because of Congressional caps on the use of private military contractors, DynCorp has hired local citizens; two were recently killed.

Still, in its recruiting material, the company plays up the excitement of this type of work: "Being the best is never easy and when your office is the cockpit of a twin-engine plane swooping low over the Colombian jungle, the challenges can often be enormous."

Incidents like these — sex rings, deals with dictators, misused military training and tragic accidents — raise questions about the use of contractors. To whom are they accountable: the United States government or their contract? When such incidents occur, who bears the responsibility?

Moreover, while the general mantra about military privatization is that it saves money, there are few studies to prove the case — and in fact, reports exist to the contrary.
For instance, Kellogg Brown & Root, which was paid $2.2 billion to provide logistics support to American troops in the Balkans, was the subject of a General Accounting Office report entitled, "Army Should Do More to Control Contract Costs in the Balkans." The office found that the Army was not exercising enough oversight on Kellogg Brown & Root as contract costs rose, to the benefit of the company. Still, the company continues to pick up new business.Questions about security and control are even more basic. In the battlefield, a commander cannot give orders to a contractor as he can a soldier. Contractors are not compelled by an oath of office, as soldiers are, but instead by an employment contract that provides little flexibility. Nor are contractors subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Contractors cannot arm themselves — they risk losing their status as noncombatants if they do and, in the extreme, could be declared mercenaries and subject to execution if captured. Yet in the gulf war, contractors were in the thick of battle, providing maintenance to tanks and biological and chemical vehicles as well as flying air support.

Should there be a war in Iraq, the line could be even blurrier.

"There are no rear areas anymore," Colonel Sweeney of the Army War College said. With chemical and biological weapons, "no place is safe," he said."You can't draw a map and say `no contractors forward of this line,' " he added. "The American concept of combat is to take the battle to the rear areas and be as disruptive as possible. The other guy is thinking the same thing."
One tenet of warfare is that soldiers handling support functions can grab a gun and hit the front lines if needed. While this is often dismissed as a quaint World War II concept, it happened in Somalia in 1993 when Army rangers were in trouble and military supply clerks came to their rescue. When the support staff is filled with contractors, would they do the same? Or would commanders in the field become responsible for the safety of the growing number of contractor employees at the expense of advancing the battle?
The issue is just beginning to generate some attention in military circles.

"We sort of blur the lines," Col. Steven J. Zamparelli of the Air Force said in an interview. In an article in 1999 for the Air Force Journal of Logistics, Colonel Zamaparelli said: "The Department of Defense is gambling future military victory on contractors' performing operational functions in the battlefield."Others in the military are more blunt about the effect on soldiers. "Are we ultimately trading their blood to save a relatively insignificant amount in the national budget?" said Lt. Col. Lourdes A. Castillo of the Air Force, a logistics expert, in a 2000 article in Aerospace Power Journal. "If this grand experiment undertaken by our national leadership fails during wartime, the results will be unthinkable."

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