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

Saturday, March 22, 2003

MARCH 21 - 27, 2003
An Orwellian Pitch
The inner workings of the war-propaganda machine
by John R. McArthur
(Photos by C.R. Stecyk)

The first time that a President Bush sold a war against Saddam Hussein, the PR package came wrapped in the flesh and blood of babies torn from incubators. On the second go-round, you might say that the media kit lacks what salesmen call the "touchie-feelie" dimension — for this year's propaganda season has been sponsored mainly by the cold alloy of 81mm high-grade aluminum tubes.

Comparing the advertising techniques of 1990-91 and 2002-3, I can't point to anything as dramatic as the White House/Kuwaiti/Hill & Knowlton fabrication of the great baby-incubator atrocity, allegedly committed by Iraqi soldiers in Kuwaiti hospitals. But I can cite numerous fraudulent assertions — aluminum tubes, in particular — by a Bush PR team that scatters Enlightenment notions of reason and logic (to paraphrase Bush the First's baby-killing metaphor) like so much firewood across the U.S. Capitol's floor.

Government manipulation of public opinion is an old story, of course, but the two Presidents Bush seem especially gifted in the black arts of publicity and sloganeering. In 1990, Bush the First — with brilliant support from a Kuwaiti "witness" named Nayirah — harnessed the fake baby-killing atrocity to help drive a reluctant Senate and public into rescuing the Kuwaiti royal family (and, as Bush the First's U.S. trade representative, Carla Hills, told me, "to guarantee the right to import oil"). The "liberation" of a tiny emirate that had never known liberty remains one of the great propaganda coups of recent times, and its lessons were not lost on Bush the Second. But in seeking to "liberate" Iraq itself from Saddam Hussein, the younger Bush and his counselors have shown themselves every bit the equals of the father.

Twelve years ago the case for war was easier to make — Saddam had, in fact, invaded Kuwait. More recently, George W. Bush possessed no such advantage. Except for the far-fetched (now refuted) connection between 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and the Iraqi government, George W.'s team began its race for congressional war authorization from a standing start. But beginning on September 7, they accelerated quickly, launching their campaign with a near total fabrication that was nothing more than a calculated scare story.

It was then that the president and British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had issued a "new" report describing a revived nuclear-weapons project in Iraq, built on the foundations of the old. Inarticulate to a fault, Bush backtracked a bit from "new" and stated that "when inspectors first went into Iraq and were . . . finally denied access, a report came out of . . . the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need."

Effective propaganda relies on half-truths and the conflation of disparate "facts" (like Saddam's genuine human-rights violations), so the notion of new IAEA evidence at least sounded plausible. Saddam almost certainly harbored ambitions to build an A-bomb — it was this that caused Israel to bomb Iraq's first and only nuclear reactor in 1981 (a pre-emptive act of war that drew unanimous condemnation from the U.N. Security Council). The trouble was that no such "new" report existed. Nor had there ever been an IAEA report containing the "six months away" assertion — not in 1991 after the war; not in December 1998 when the U.S. weapons inspectors pulled out of Iraq; not in September 2001.

More than three weeks elapsed before The Washington Times (not the "liberal" media) took the trouble to straighten out the story, but by then the administration was well on its way to panicking the Congress into authorizing war. The day after the Bush-Blair confidence trick, the newspapers and talk shows were flooded (through the good offices of Michael Gordon and Judith Miller of The New York Times) with an administration leak about Iraq's attempt to buy special aluminum tubes, supposedly destined for its "six months away" nuclear program. Suddenly (along with the phantom IAEA report), aluminum tubes had brought the world to the brink of a nuclear Armageddon.

Not until December 8, when 60 Minutes broadcast an interview with former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright, did any expert point out publicly that the aluminum tubes were probably meant for conventional weapons. Not until January 9 did Mohammed El Baradei, head of the IAEA, essentially bury the aluminum tubes (and the Iraqi nuclear weapons program) by confirming Albright's supposition. But it was too late; Congress had long ago given Bush carte blanche to attack Iraq with its open-ended war resolution of October 11.

Propaganda success breeds contempt for the old-fashioned notion that politicians require the informed consent of the people before they go to war. The media bears much of the blame; it has been so painfully slow in refuting administration double talk that Karl Rove and Andrew Card can count on a fairly long interval between propaganda declaration and contradiction; or they can bet that the contradiction will be so muted as to be insignificant. Thus could the president brazenly include the discredited aluminum tubes in his State of the Union address.

Meanwhile, stories designed to frighten the public onto a war footing proliferate. Colin Powell tells the Security Council of a "poison factory" linked to al Qaeda in northern Iraq. Reporters visit a compound of crude structures and find nothing of the kind, so an unidentified State Department official responds by saying that "a 'poison factory' is a term of art."

Powell cites new "British intelligence" on Saddam's "spying" capabilities; British Channel 4 reveals that this new dossier is plagiarized from a journal article by a graduate student in California.

The administration raises its terrorist threat level to orange, causing widespread anxiety and duct-tape purchases (a handy placebo for a faltering economy); ABC News reports (at last, a rapid response) that the latest terror alert was largely based on "fabricated" information provided by a captured al Qaeda informant who subsequently failed a lie-detector test.

Powell announces a new threat from an Iraqi airborne "drone"; the drone, patched together with tape and powered by a small engine with a wooden propeller, turns out to have a maximum range of five miles.

The administration trumpets alleged attempts by Iraq to purchase uranium from Niger; the IAEA concludes that the incriminating documents were forged.

On March 7, Powell is back in the Security Council brandishing . . . aluminum tubes!: "There is new information . . . available to us . . . and the IAEA about a European country where Iraq was found shopping for these kinds of tubes . . . [tubes] more exact by a factor of 50 percent or more than those usually specified for rocket-motor casings." When I ask the State Department the name of the European country, I am informed that said country wishes to remain anonymous. (So did Nayirah al-Sabah.) When I inquire with the IAEA about the "new evidence," I am told that El Baradei's analysis, presented before Powell's declaration, is unchanged: "Extensive field investigation and document analysis have failed to uncover any evidence that Iraq intended to use these 81mm tubes for any project other than the reverse engineering of rockets."



The question is, why do they get away with it?

George Orwell blamed "slovenliness" in the language, like the phrase "weapons of mass destruction." Most people think it means nuclear weapons, sure to kill hundreds of thousands. With no A-bombs in sight in Iraq, Bush can still shout about nerve gas and poison gas — also "weapons of mass destruction" — and unsophisticated folks think he's still talking about A-bombs. Bad as they are, chemical and biological weapons are very unlikely to kill in the same quantities as nuclear weapons, but Bush gets a free ride on sloppy English.

PR practitioners say it's easy for politicians to have their way. Peter Teeley, Bush the First's press secretary when he was vice president, explained it this way: "You can say anything you want during a debate, and 80 million people hear it." If it happens to be untrue, "so what. Maybe 200 people read [the correction] or 2,000 or 20,000."

Hermann Goering was more specific: "Why, of course, the people don't want war," he told G.M. Gilbert at the Nuremberg war-crimes tribunal. "Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders . . . All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

John R. MacArthur is the publisher of Harper's magazine and author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War.

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 3:09 PM

We are in a Nation Ruled by Madmen Who Will Bury the U.N.

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

Before announcing a state of war Bush pumps his fist and boasts, "Feels good."

Donald Rumsfeld walks around quoting Al Capone.

Richard Perle calls an internationally respected journalist a terrorist for disclosing how Perle would profit from an Iraq war.

And then Richard Perle celebrates the death of the U.N.

Like it's yet unleashed Guernica-bombing campaign, touted as "Shock and Awe," the brazen, thuggish extremism of the Bush administration is meant to numb the American public into submission.

And, for the most part, the strategy has succeeded.

From the beginning, after September 11th, America was united in the battle against terrorism. No one we know of spoke out on behalf of terrorism. The nascent debate, such as there was one, focused on HOW to fight terrorism, not on whether or not to fight it.

But the propaganda strategists of the Bush Cartel, led by Karl Rove, quickly marginalized any dissent against the White House's Dr. Strangelovian, doomsday world view by spreading the word that protests AIDED AND ABETTED terrorism. The Democratic leadership in Congress was never able to crawl out from under charges that any criticism of the Bush Cartel was treason and hindered Bush's "war on terrorism."

All the Democrats had to do was say, "Look here, we are all against terrorism. That's just common sense. But your strategy will spawn more terrorists and actually make us less safe here at home. On behalf of American families, I object to a reckless unilateral approach that puts us all more at risk for terrorism, not less."

But the Democrats remained dazed and confused by the brilliant propaganda battle plan -- relying mostly on lies on deception -- implemented by Rove and Rumsfeld.

As a result, a broad spectrum of American people, who saw through the Bush Cartel's fog and mirrors (and its incompetence), felt compelled to exercise their right to freely protest. They succeeded in drawing huge crowds, even though the anti-Iraq war rallies were often hindered by uncooperative police, restrictive permits and a dismissive, disdainful press.

But democracy is a powerful energizer and the protests grew, here and abroad. As a result, most of the nations of the world were able to withstand an unprecedented Mafia-like campaign of bribery, intimidation and financial threats by the Bush mob family. Small and large nations alike, including our two neighbors on the North American continent -- Mexico and Canada -- took a stand for the international rule of law and defied the incompetent Fredo, his consiglieri (Donald Rumsfeld), and his truly deranged enforcer Richard Perle.

While democracy in America has been hijacked by a right wing cabal of madmen bent on destroying our Constitution and peace among nations, democracy triumphed among the nations of the world. Most Americans are fed a daily diet of lies, phony documents and shifting rationales by this rogue administration, with the full consent of a fawning media. Karl Rove, a cross between Machiavelli and Goebbels, has helped shape a "frame" for the war in which criticism of Bush Cartel tactics is perceived as an attack on our troops.

But the nations of the world, for the most part, saw through the Soviet-inspired propaganda and stood up to an onslaught of brutish pressure.

It was a shining moment for the U.N.

But BuzzFlash predicted that such a triumph of the international rule of law would be used by the Bush Cartel to justify burying the U.N.

In our editorial of March 4, "The U.N. 'Win-Win' for the Bush Cartel: Security Council Supports Iraq War Or U.N. Disbands," we commented:

The Bush Cartel doesn't really view the U.N. as a decision making body that has any authority.

From the perspective of the resurrected-from-the-dead John Birch Society members in the White House, the U.N. is a useless vestige of a cold war Communist plot to undermine the United States.

Make no mistake about it, Bush and his crew are going through the motions of trying to obtain Security Council approval for the Iraq War only as a concession to Poppy Bush and Colin Powell. As far as the Bush Cartel is concerned, they have as much use for the U.N. as an athlete has for a cancerous leg.

You don't believe BuzzFlash?

Here is what King George reportedly said in an off-the-record talk with members of the Republican National Committee in an East Room White House meeting last month. (The comments were written down by one of the attendees who forwarded them, admiringly we might add, to an Alabama newspaper columnist):

"I don't know what they're going to do," he [Bush] said. "But I can tell you this: I know what I'm going to do, and Saddam Hussein is going to be disarmed. I told them they could be the League of Nations or the United Nations. That's up to them and the history books. But I know what my duty is. ... Believe me, there is a day coming far worse than Sept. 11, if we don't do what we have to do, and faced with what I know, I simply have no choice."

After all, the Bush Cartel hasn't spent two years ripping up international treaties left and right for the fun of it. Just like it wants "show" democracies in the Middle East that are really puppet U.S. governments, the Bush Cartel wants a U.N. that is really a rubber stamp for whatever the White House tells it to do. Otherwise, the Bush Cartel has about as much need for the U.N. as they had for a vote recount in Florida.

Remember, Bush may be a bit light in the loafers, walking around thinking he's a reincarnation of Jesus, but Karl Rove and Dick Cheney are sharp cookies. They had this one figured out from the beginning as a "win-win" situation.

"If the Security Council votes with us, we've got them by the balls -- and we get the international legitimacy for our conquering of the Middle East (and seizure of the second largest oil fields as booty). If the Security Council doesn't vote with us, it's "Sayonara" Kofi Annan. Pack your bags, take your delegates and have fun in France setting up your little play school for diplomats in Gay Paris, because we need your U.N. building in New York for our new U.S. Department of War. So get lost, Now!"

Trust us. They mean it.

(See: http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/03/03/04.html)

It is no surprise to see Richard Perle confirm our editorial in his obituary for the U.N. as excerpted in the March 21st edition of the Guardian. It is candidly entitled, "Thank God for the death of the UN," with the subtitle, "Its abject failure gave us only anarchy. The world needs order." Here are some "Perles" of Richard's deranged "wisdom":

Saddam Hussein's reign of terror is about to end. He will go quickly, but not alone: in a parting irony, he will take the UN down with him. Well, not the whole UN. The "good works" part will survive, the low-risk peacekeeping bureaucracies will remain, the chatterbox on the Hudson will continue to bleat. What will die is the fantasy of the UN as the foundation of a new world order. As we sift the debris, it will be important to preserve, the better to understand, the intellectual wreckage of the liberal conceit of safety through international law administered by international institutions.

The chronic failure of the Security Council to enforce its own resolutions is unmistakable: it is simply not up to the task. We are left with coalitions of the willing. Far from disparaging them as a threat to a new world order, we should recognize that they are, by default, the best hope for that order, and the true alternative to the anarchy of the abject failure of the UN.

(See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,918812,00.html)

Forget for the moment that the cynically named "coalition of the willing" is primarily composed of third-tier countries blackmailed or bribed into putting their names on a list (almost none of them, except for Britain, are involved in any of the fighting or in any other way with the Iraq war. See: http://www.areporter.com/sys-tmpl/thecoalitionofthewilling/). Forget that Perle and the entire fanatical right wing war cabinet were Chickenhawks during the Vietnam War (with the exception of Powell; See: http://www.nhgazette.com/chickenhawks.html). Forget that Perle advocates attacking nations thousands of miles away, but doesn't even know that the U.N. is on the East River and not the Hudson River (see above).

Just remember these comments from an article in the International Herald Tribune:

What's driving this war is President George W. Bush's Manichaean view of the world and messianic vision of himself, the dangerously grandiose perception of American power held by his saber-rattling advisers, and the irresistible lure of Iraq's enormous oil reserves.

Polls show that the public is terribly confused about what's going on, so much so that some 40 percent believe Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.

That's really scary.

Rather than correct this misconception, the administration has gone out of its way to reinforce it.

I think the men and women moving militarily against Saddam are among the few truly brave and even noble individuals left in U.S. society.

They have volunteered for the dangerous duty of defending the rest of the American people. But I also believe they are being put unnecessarily in harm's way.

(See: http://www.iht.com/articles/90501.html)

America's finest resource -- its brave young men and women -- have already begun to die in a war conceived of by radical madmen years ago. They waited to seize our precious democracy -- and after they did, they waited for the moment to launch their hellish plan of world domination.

In December of 2001, Perle wrote:

An alliance today is really not essential, in my opinion. We don't need the bases, or at least we don't need much in the way of bases. And those bases that we do need are in places Where individual arrangements can be made -- with Uzbeks, who are interested in what we can do for Uzbekistan and there's a lot we can do and it isn't really very expensive. The term "alliance" confuses the phenomenon that's taking place there. It's good to have the Europeans supporting us to the degree they do, and the British have certainly been enthusiastic in our support, but the enthusiasm drops off substantially when you cross the channel and the price you end up paying for an alliance is collective judgment, collective decision-making.

Long ago the fanatics who have hijacked the American government began digging the grave of the U.N.

Now, in the Al Capone style so revered by Rumsfeld, they are going to shoot it and kick it into its grave.

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 2:52 PM

Friday, March 21, 2003

03-21-03 03:31 AM EST

BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP)--Hundreds of U.S. troops fanned out through the mountains and villages of eastern Afghanistan Friday, in the second full day of a new military mission to hunt down al-Qaida remnants, a U.S. Army spokesman said.

The deployment met no enemy fighters Thursday in the southern Sami Ghar mountains.

However, attackers fired 11 rockets at a U.S. base in the eastern town of Orgun-E, near the Pakistani border, on Thursday.

None landed closer than 500 yards from the base, Col. Roger King said.

"We had a lot of rockets," King told reporters at Bagram Air Base, headquarters for the coalition in Afghanistan. "Last night, if you go with the total number of rockets that were launched it was probably the most in one evening in two months or two and a half."

Another rocket attack and small arms fire took place early Friday on a U.S. position in the central town of Deh Rahwood, King said. No coalition soldiers were injured, and it was not clear who carried out the attack.

King said it was not clear whether the rocket attacks were linked to the start of a U.S.-led war in Iraq. Anti-American fighters have vowed to intensify their attacks on the coalition if Washington launched war on Saddam Hussein.

Rebel fighters hope a strike on Iraq will stir public anger against the U.S., army officials said. In turn the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan hopes the latest offensive in southern Afghanistan will dampen the rebels' ability to retaliate.

In eastern Khost, an Afghan border post came under rocket and small arms fire before dawn on Friday, King said. U.S. forces responded with mortars and gunfire, and A-10 aircraft provided close air support with rockets, bombs and 30 mm cannon fire.

There was no indication of who carried out the attacks or whether the Afghan border post guards had been injured.

A day earlier, as many as 1,000 U.S.-led forces launched operation "Valiant Strike" in the caves and villages in southern Kandahar province in an intense hunt for remnants of the former Taliban and al-Qaida fugitives. Support personnel and about 600 soldiers on the ground were involved.

King said the forces were moving on target areas and conducting searches Friday.

Kandahar province is the former spiritual headquarters of the ousted Taliban regime, which is allied with the al-Qaida network suspected of carrying out the Sept. 11 attacks.

The timing of the new Afghan operation - at least two months in the making - was "coincidence" with the start of an Iraq campaign, King said, adding that it was only one in a series of major operations.


Dow Jones Newswires
03-21-03 0339ET


accesswater2030@yahoo.com 9:32 AM

washingtonpost.com
Students Stage Walkouts to Protest Fighting
Few Face Consequences After Negotiating Terms With School Officials

By Linda Perlstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 21, 2003; Page B05


Thousands of Washington area students walked out of high schools yesterday to protest the war, rain soaking their "What Would Gandhi Do?" T-shirts but not drowning out their chants.

In groups of 10 or 100 -- or at least 1,000 in the case of Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring -- students at dozens of schools marched and shouted similar refrains, such as, "Hey hey, ho ho, we won't kill for Texaco!"

First, though, many sought assurances that they wouldn't get in trouble.

They expression passion about the issue. But before they walked out, wary of detention, they negotiated for hours in advance with principals about whether absences would be excused (most weren't), whether they'd get permission slips (some did) and which patch of school property they'd stay within.

As the teenagers prepared via online message boards -- the Internet helped make organization manageable -- at times they talked more about methods than about message. Even in protest, they bemoaned the fact that their demonstrations came with any consequence at all.

At Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, where about 150 students shivered in the rain, they shouted along with peace studies teacher Coleman McCarthy as he alternated chants of "We want peace!" with "We want the auditorium!"

While a classmate with a peace sign painted on his face shouted, "Terrorists aren't in Iraq, they're in D.C.!" into a school-provided megaphone, freshman Lauren Padgett, 15, paged through a soaked set of Montgomery County student rules to find where it says that if they get permission, students can protest and still be excused from class.

"Take that!" Lauren said of her principal. "Oh wait. Don't tell her I said that."

About 150 students walked out of T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria during the morning Pledge of Allegiance, gathered in front of the flagpole and at one point tried to lower the school's flag to half-staff, they said, until the principal intervened. If they went back to class after 90 minutes, they were told, they would only be held accountable for an unexcused absence

"We didn't expect this much of a turnout,'' said 18-year-old Mark Tenney, a junior. "People knew they could possibly get in trouble."

But not too much trouble. Today's protesters, unlike their counterparts of four decades ago, generally have the support of their elders. Don Clausen, Annandale High School principal, chuckles at the thought of students asking his advice on how to orchestrate a protest. "I was in the school system back during the Vietnam War, and we would just walk out," he said.

There were far more students who stayed in class yesterday than left. Among those who oppose the war, several blamed the rain or the unexcused absence.

Brian Hernandez, a 16-year-old junior who walked out of Magruder High School in Rockville, said his generation is so sheltered -- no draft, no segregation -- that they don't feel compelled to risk harsh consequences in order to have their say. Besides, he said, they don't need to. "If we can do it and not get in trouble," he said, "then why not do it and not get in trouble?"

Their style, far more subdued than during Vietnam War protests, mirrors the antiwar demonstrations adults have had recently, in which organizers secure permits and for the most part comply with police demands to keep things orderly. The students at a recent Maryland student council convention seemed vociferous about the possibility of war, but not compared to the next topic that came up: a bill in the state legislature to restrict teenage driving privileges.

Certainly some students proved willing to risk greater consequences to protest the war. About 40 students from Friendship-Edison Collegiate Academy, a public charter school in Northeast Washington, slipped past security guards at the front and side doors and headed for the Minnesota Avenue Metro station, where they hopped a train to protest across from the White House.

"They threatened us with 25 days of suspension, but that's against our freedom of speech," said Dominique Vinson, 16, of the Petworth section of Northwest Washington. She said the students would seek help from the lawyer-husband of one of their teachers if the school sought to punish them.

Her classmate Monique Dancy, 17, had never attended a political demonstration and was euphoric about taking part. "We are standing up for what we believe in," she said. "This is what we felt we had to do."

Across the region, many students have found that even if their school administrators did not agree with their beliefs, the adults agreed, tacitly or aloud, that it was important to express them.

When organizers at Northwest High School in Hyattsville wanted to draw all 2,600 students outside two weeks ago to stage an antiwar demonstration along Adelphi Road, Principal Bill Ritter said they'd be held responsible if anyone got hurt. He encouraged them to consider an indoor assembly. Students were told they'd get an unexcused absence but were permitted to "seize control" of the auditorium, for an 800-student event in which staff members helped with lights and Power Point presentations.

In Purcellville yesterday, Loudoun Valley High School Principal Kenneth W. Culbert told returning protesters that they'd have to attend Saturday school and help plant trees on the grounds. As he handed them towels to dry off, he said he'd plant trees with them, too.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 9:12 AM

HOW MUCH MUST YOU SUCK TO LOSE A POPULARITY CONTEST WITH SADDAM?
Michael Moore

Dear Governor Bush,

So today is what you call "the moment of truth".

I'm glad to hear it has finally arrived. Because, I gotta tell ya, having survived 443 days of your lying and conniving, I wasn't sure I could take much more. As it's Truth Day, I have a few truths I'd like to share with you:
There is virtually no one in America (talk-radio nutters and Fox News aside) who is gung-ho about going to war. Trust me. Try to find five people on the streets who are passionate about wanting to kill Iraqis. You won't find them! Why? Because no Iraqi has even threatened to come here and kill any of us! You see, this is how we average Americans think - if a certain so-and-so is not perceived as a threat to our lives, then, believe it or not, we don't want to kill them!

THE majority of Americans - the ones who never elected you - are not fooled by your weapons of mass distraction. We know what the real issues are that affect our daily lives - - 2.5 million jobs lost since you took office, the stock market having become a cruel joke, no one knowing if their pensions are going to be there, fuel at $2 a gallon...

Bombing Iraq will not make any of this go away. Only you need to go away for things to improve.

HOW bad do you have to suck to lose a popularity contest with Saddam Hussein? The whole world is against you, Mr Bush. Count your fellow Americans among them.
THE Pope has said this war is wrong, that it is a sin. You are an army of one on this war. Of course, you personally won't have to fight. Just like when you went Awol while the poor were shipped to Vietnam.

OF the 535 members of Congress, only one has a son or daughter in the armed forces! If you really want to stand up for America, send your daughters to Kuwait and let them don chemical warfare suits. And let's see every member of Congress with a child of military age also sacrifice their kids.

FINALLY, we love France. Yes, some French people can be annoying. But we wouldn't even have an America if it weren't for the French. It was their help in the Revolutionary War that won it for us. It was France which gave us our Statue of Liberty, a Frenchman who built the Chevrolet and French brothers who invented the movies. And now they're doing what only a good friend can do - tell you the truth about yourself.
You know, you really should have travelled more (like, er, once) before you took over. Your ignorance of the world has not only made you look stupid, it has painted you into a corner you can't get out of.
Still, cheer up, there is good news. The war is likely to be short because I'm guessing there aren't a lot of Iraqis willing to lay down their lives to protect Saddam.
After you "win" it, you'll enjoy a huge bump in the popularity polls because everyone loves a winner - and who doesn't like to see a good ass-whoopin' every now and then. And, just like with Afghanistan, we'll forget about what happens to a country after we bomb it, because that's just too complex!

So try your best to ride this victory all the way to next year's election. Of course, that's still a long way off but, who knows, maybe you'll find Osama bin Laden a few days before the election. See, start thinking like that! Keep hope alive! Kill Iraqis - they got our oil!!

Yours,

Michael Moore








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accesswater2030@yahoo.com 9:02 AM

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URL: http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=6008


Halliburton Makes a Killing on Iraq War

Cheney's Former Company Profits from Supporting Troops

Special Series
By Pratap Chatterjee
Special to CorpWatch
March 20, 2003


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As the first bombs rain down on Baghdad, CorpWatch has learned that thousands of employees of Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, are working alongside US troops in Kuwait and Turkey under a package deal worth close to a billion dollars. According to US Army sources, they are building tent cities and providing logistical support for the war in Iraq in addition to other hot spots in the "war on terrorism."

While recent news coverage has speculated on the post-war reconstruction gravy train that corporations like Halliburton stand to gain from, this latest information indicates that Halliburton is already profiting from war time contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Cheney served as chief executive of Halliburton until he stepped down to become George W. Bush's running mate in the 2000 presidential race. Today he still draws compensation of up to a million dollars a year from the company, although his spokesperson denies that the White House helped the company win the contract.

In December 2001, Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, secured a 10-year deal known as the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), from the Pentagon. The contract is a "cost-plus-award-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity service" which basically means that the federal government has an open-ended mandate and budget to send Brown and Root anywhere in the world to run military operations for a profit.

Linda Theis, a public affairs officer for the U.S. Army Field Support Command in Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois, confirmed for Corpwatch that Brown and Root is also supporting operations in Afghanistan, Djibouti, Georgia, Jordan and Uzbekistan.

"Specific locations along with military units, number of personnel assigned, and dates of duration are considered classified," she said. "The overall anticipated cost of task orders awarded since contract award in December 2001 is approximately $830 million."

Kuwait
The current contract in Kuwait began in September 2002 when Joyce Taylor of the U.S. Army Materiel Command's Program Management Office, arrived to supervise approximately 1,800 Brown and Root employees to set up tent cities that would provide accommodation for tens of thousands of soldiers and officials.

Army officials working with Brown and Root says the collaboration is helping cut costs by hiring local labor at a fraction of regular Army salaries. "We can quickly purchase building materials and hire third-country nationals to perform the work. This means a small number of combat-service-support soldiers are needed to support this logistic aspect of building up an area," says Lt. Col. Rod Cutright, the senior LOGCAP planner for all of Southwest Asia.

During the past few weeks, these Brown and Root employees have helped transform Kuwait into an armed camp, to support some 80,000 foreign troops, roughly the equivalent of 10% of Kuwait's native born population.

Most of these troops are now living in the tent cities in the rugged desert north of Kuwait City, poised to invade Iraq. Some of the encampments are named after the states associated with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 -- Camp New York, Camp Virginia and Camp Pennsylvania.

The headquarters for this effort is Camp Arifjan, where civilian and military employees have built a gravel terrace with plastic picnic tables and chairs, surrounded by a gymnasium in a tent, a PX and newly arrived fast food outlets such as Burger King, Subway and Baskin-Robbins, set up in trailers or shipping containers. Basketball hoops and volleyball nets are set up outside the mess hall.

Turkey
North of Iraq approximately 1,500 civilians are working for Brown and Root and the United States military near the city of Adana, about an hour's drive inland from the Mediterranean coast of central Turkey, where they support approximately 1,400 US soldiers staffing Operation Northern Watch's Air Force F-15 Strike Eagles and F-16 Fighting Falcons monitoring the no-fly zone above the 36th parallel in Iraq.

The jet pilots are catered and housed at the Incirlik military base seven miles outside the city by a company named Vinnell, Brown and Root (VBR), a joint venture between Brown and Root and Vinnell corporation of Fairfax, Virginia, under a contract that was signed on October 1, 1988, which also includes two more minor military sites in Turkey: Ankara and Izmir.

The joint venture's latest contract, which started July 1, 1999 and will expire in September 2003, was initially valued at $118 million. US Army officials confirm that Brown and Root has been awarded new and additional contracts in Turkey in the last year to support the "war on terrorism" although they refused to give any details.

"We provide support services for the United States Air Force in areas of civil engineering, motor vehicles transportation, in the services arena here - that includes food service operations, lodging, and maintenance of a golf course. We also do US customs inspection," explained VBR site manager Alex Daniels, who has worked at Incirlik for almost 15 years.

Cheap labor is also the primary reason for outsourcing services, says Major Toni Kemper, head of public affairs at the base. "The reason that the military goes to contracting is largely because it's more cost effective in certain areas. I mean there was a lot of studies years ago as to what services can be provided via contractor versus military personnel. Because when we go contract, we don't have to pay health care and all the another things for the employees, that's up to the employer."

Soon after the contract was signed Incirlik provided a major staging post for thousands of sorties flown against Iraq and occupied Kuwait during the Gulf war in January 1991 dropping over 3,000 tons of bombs on military and civilian targets.

Central Asian Contracts
Still ongoing is the first LOGCAP contract in the "war on terrorism" which began in June 2002, when Brown and Root was awarded a $22 million deal to run support services at Camp Stronghold Freedom, located at the Khanabad air base in central Uzbekistan. Khanabade is one of the main US bases in the Afghanistan war that houses some 1,000 US soldiers from the Green Berets and the 10th Mountain Division.

In November 2002 Brown and Root began a one-year contract, estimated at $42.5 million, to cover services for troops at bases in both Bagram and Khandahar. Brown and Root employees were first set to work running laundry services, showers, mess halls and installing heaters in soldiers' tents.

Future Contracts in Iraq
Halliburton is also one of five large US corporations invited to bid for contracts in what may turn out to be the biggest reconstruction project since the Second World War. The others are the Bechtel Group, Fluor Corp, Parsons Corp, and the Louis Berger Group.

The Iraq reconstruction plan will require contractors to fulfill various tasks, including reopening at least half of the "economically important roads and bridges" -- about 1,500 miles of roadway within 18 months, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The contractors will also be asked to repair 15% of high-voltage electricity grid, renovate several thousand schools and deliver 550 emergency generators within two months. The contract is estimated to be worth up to $900 million for the preliminary work alone.

The Pentagon has also awarded a contract to Brown and Root to control oil fires if Saddam Hussein sets the well heads ablaze. Iraq has oil reserves second only to those of Saudi Arabia. This makes Brown and Root a leading candidate to win the role of top contractor in any petroleum field rehabilitation effort in Iraq that industry analysts say could be as much as $1.5 billion in contracts to jump start Iraq's petroleum sector following a war.

Wartime Profiteering
Meanwhile Dick Cheney's 2001 financial disclosure statement, states that the Halliburton is paying him a "deferred compensation" of up to $1million a year following his resignation as chief executive in 2000. At the time Cheney opted not to receive his severance package in a lump sum, but instead to have it paid to him over five years, possibly for tax reasons.

The company would not say how much the payments are. The obligatory disclosure statement filled by all top government officials says only that they are in the range of $100,000 and $1million. Nor is it clear how they are calculated.

Critics say that the apparent conflict of interest is deplorable. "The Bush-Cheney team have turned the United States into a family business," says Harvey Wasserman, author of The Last Energy War (Seven Stories Press, 2000). "That's why we haven't seen Cheney - he's cutting deals with his old buddies who gave him a multimillion-dollar golden handshake. Have they no grace, no shame, no common sense? Why don't they just have Enron run America? Or have Zapata Petroleum (George W. Bush's failed oil-exploration venture) build a pipeline across Afghanistan?"

Army officials disagree. Major Bill Bigelow, public relations officer for the US Army in Western Europe, says: "If you're going to ask a specific question - like, do you think it's right that contractors profit in wartime - I would think that they might be better [asked] at a higher level, to people who set the policy. We don't set the policy, we work within the framework that's been established."

"Those questions have been asked forever, because they go back to World War Two when Chrysler and Ford and Chevy stopped making cars and started making guns and tanks. Obviously it's a question that's been around for quite some time. But it's true that nowadays there are very few defense contractors, but go back sixty years to the World War Two era almost everybody was manufacturing something that either directly or indirectly had something to do with defense," he added.

Sasha Lilley and Aaron Glantz helped conduct interviews for this article.



Pratap Chatterjee is an investigative journalist based in Berkeley, California. He traveled to Afghanistan and Uzbekistan in January 2002 and to Incirlik, Turkey, in January 2003 to research this article.





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accesswater2030@yahoo.com 8:58 AM

Anti-War Demonstrations Cause Mayhem
16 minutes ago Add U.S. National - AP to My Yahoo!


By JUSTIN PRITCHARD, Associated Press Writer

SAN FRANCISCO - Anti-war activists rolled out another wave of demonstrations Friday in their campaign against the war on Iraq (news - web sites) that includes sit-ins in the streets and at federal buildings, mass rallies and quiet vigils. Hundreds have been arrested.


AP Photo


AFP
Slideshow: Anti-War Protests

Anti-war Protests Swell in Wake of Attack on Iraq
(AP Video)




Latest news:
· Bush: U.S. 'Making Progress' in Iraq
AP - 11 minutes ago
· B-52s Leave U.K. for Likely Iraq Strikes
AP - 19 minutes ago
· U.S. Confirms Saddam Hussein in Video,
AP - 30 minutes ago
Special Coverage





Vowing to shut down the city for a second day in a row, protesters descended on the streets of San Francisco's financial district Friday morning. In East Lansing, Mich., about 100 protesters, including some who were chained together, blocked a main road near Michigan State University. Five arrests were made initally, and more were expected, said East Lansing Police Lt. Kevin Daley.


About 70 protesters dropped to the ground on damp grass outside a federal courthouse in Baltimore. One protester held a sign saying "This is what war looks like."


The war has stirred one of the broadest rounds of anti-government protesting in years, with demonstrations and civil disobedience in dozens of cities coast to coast. However, the outbreak of fighting has also given rise to cross-country counterdemonstrations and rallies to support American soldiers.


On Thursday, San Francisco police wearing helmets and carrying nightsticks arrested more than 1,300 people Thursday as a shifting mass of thousands of anti-war protesters commandeered the streets and paralyzed the evening commute.


Traffic was snarled Thursday in cities from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., as anti-war protesters blocked off major intersections, some chaining themselves together. Scores of high school and college students walked out of class. In all, more than 1,800 people were arrested.


"The United States is acting in a completely aggressive way," said Howard Lisnoff, who donned a rubber President Bush (news - web sites) mask at a protest in Providence, R.I., and held a sign reading "War Criminal."


Thousands of counterdemonstrators included some 2,000 who gathered outside the state Capitol in Mississippi.


Marlena Puckett, who is engaged to a Marine in the war zone, fought back tears as she watched people waving American flags and carrying handmade signs with slogans like "God bless our troops" and "Let's roll."


Sheila Murphy attended a rally in Lincoln, Neb., where more than 200 people sang, cheered and prayed. "This is a time they need to know that everyone is behind the troops and supporting the troops," she said.


Though most of the anti-war rallies were peaceful, pockets of protesters in San Francisco scuffled with police, broke windows and heaved newspaper racks and debris into streets. Some protesters hurled rocks at trains, briefly halting service at a station in nearby Oakland.


"We went from what I would call legal protests to absolute anarchy," Assistant Police Chief Alex Fagan Sr. said.


One protester died after tumbling from the Golden Gate Bridge. Authorities were investigating the death as a possible suicide.


In Portland, Ore., protesters smashed in three windows at a McDonald's restaurant, set a flag on fire and sprayed graffiti on a sign at a Shell gas station. More than 100 people were arrested.


"I like the idea of shutting down commerce and the city to counteract Bush's economic motives for this war," said Eric Anholt, 19, of Portland.


About 1,000 anti-war protesters demonstrated outside the West Los Angeles Federal Building, briefly clashing with police and forcing the closure of one of the city's busiest intersections at rush hour. At least 14 were arrested, and 50 were arrested in Santa Rosa for blocking traffic.


Several thousand marchers snarled afternoon rush-hour traffic along Chicago's main arteries, repeatedly breaking through lines of police on horseback or in riot gear.





In Washington, D.C., dozens of activists temporarily shut down inbound lanes of a Potomac River crossing, holding up the morning commute. Outside the White House, about 50 shouted, "No blood for oil!"

Anti-war activists in Philadelphia blocked entrances to the downtown federal building, forcing police to detour motorists away from the area. More than 200 people were arrested in protests across Pennsylvania.

In New York, more than 300 protesters snarled traffic in Times Square during the evening commute. Police arrested 36 people.

Counterdemonstrators gathered alongside anti-war protesters in many places, shouting patriotic slogans and encouraging support of the president.

"The debate is over, we've had the debate," Robert Strickland, an Army veteran, said as he waved an American flag in Louisville, Ky. "It's time to rally around our troops and rally around our leaders."

Dennise Linville, 33, stood at the edge of a rally in Cleveland, with a placard declaring President Bush a hero.

"I have children and if this (Iraq) is not taken care of now, in five or 10 years they're going to be the ones who will have to go in the military and take care of it," Linville said.

Some anti-war demonstrators took pains to express their support for U.S. troops as they denounced the policy that sent them into Iraq.

"We support them so much that we don't want one to die in an unjust war," said Mike Slaton, who demonstrated in Louisville, Ky.

Students walked out of class at some high schools, while protests were held at several colleges.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (news - web sites), in Cambridge, about 600 students converged on the student center, some chanting and wearing mock biochemical protective suits. A protest and sit-in at the University of California at Berkeley, led to 110 arrests.

In Texas, several hundred University of Texas at Austin students linked arms and sat down in a busy street. Several hundred people blocked traffic in Asheville, N.C., and about 20 were arrested.

In St. Louis, as many as 1,000 anti-war protesters linked arms to form a human chain around the federal courthouse. Peaceful marches of about 2,000 people were held in Seattle and Madison, Wis.

Other demonstrations were solemn, with the reciting of Christian, Jewish and Muslim prayers through a bullhorn at a federal building in Pittsburgh.

On the Net:


accesswater2030@yahoo.com 8:44 AM

U.S. to seize Iraqi assets
Treasury secretary also calls on other nations to confiscate funds held by Iraq.
March 20, 2003: 8:12 PM EST

WASHINGTON (CNN) - The U.S. Treasury Department announced Thursday the federal government will seize $1.4 billion in Iraqi assets frozen since the first Gulf War, and use the money for humanitarian aid and reconstruction in Iraq.

The department also called on Britain, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands and other governments and institutions that have an estimated $600 million in frozen Iraqi assets to do the same.

The announcement by Treasury Secretary John Snow came after President Bush Thursday issued an executive order confiscating "non-diplomatic Iraqi government assets in the United States" and authorizing the Treasury Department to "marshal the assets and to use the funds for the welfare of the Iraqi people."

In a statement, Bush said he had "determined that such use would be in the interest of and for the benefit of the United States."

Thursday's confiscation of Iraqi assets is the president's first use of such power under the U.S. Patriot Act, enacted in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Iraqi assets frozen since the first Gulf War in 1991 are in 18 U.S. banks.

Snow also called on other nations to identify and freeze Iraqi government assets, saying, "We are directing a worldwide hunt for the blood money that Saddam (Hussein) and his associates have stolen from the Iraqi people." A senior Treasury official said there is believed to be at least $6 billion dollars worldwide and possibly twice that amount in "corrupted funds" -- including money from "smuggled oil" -- that may be traceable.

"We have reason to believe concealed assets are out there," said the official. "We plan to make a concerted hunt for that money."

A congressional source briefed on the administration's plans said there are other Iraqi assets scattered worldwide, and there is concern that France, Russia, Germany and other nations that are owed money by Iraq will want to use those assets to repay the debts.

Snow said his department could "take countermeasures and sanctions against any institution that does not comply with these international objectives, including cutting off access to the U.S. financial system."

U.S. officials want other countries and institutions to wire-transfer the money to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for safekeeping.

The congressional source said the administration may have to go through the United Nations to secure international help in its efforts.






accesswater2030@yahoo.com 8:43 AM

SEC denies Halliburton request to drop proxy vote
Thu March 20, 2003 05:24 PM ET
HOUSTON, March 20 (Reuters) - U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission staff rebuffed a Halliburton Co. HAL.N request for permission to omit a shareholder proposal regarding its operations in Iran, a large shareholder said on Thursday.
New York City Comptroller William Thompson Jr., on behalf of two New York City pension funds, asked Halliburton to put before its shareholders a vote to review the company's activities in Iran and other nations.

Thompson said he made the proposal out of "concerns about corporate ties to states sponsoring terrorist activity."

Houston-based Halliburton asked the SEC to say it would take no action if the proposal from the New York City Police and Fire Department Pension Funds, which have $18 million invested in the company, was omitted from the company's 2003 proxy. The agency declined to do so.

The resolution calls for a shareholder vote to set up a board of directors committee to review Halliburton's offshore operations, Thompson said.

"A loss of consumer confidence could result from the continuation of Halliburton's operations in Iran," Thompson said in a statement. "This could have a negative impact on shareholder value. As responsible shareholders, this is an issue that we must take seriously."

The pension funds have made similar proposals regarding the Iranian operations of ConocoPhillips Inc. COP.N and General Electric Co. GE.N . ConocoPhillips also has Syrian operations.

The SEC could sanction Halliburton if the resolution is kept off of the proxy and the regulatory agency finds that was a violation of shareholder disclosure rules.

Halliburton said it is negotiating with the pension funds.

"We're continuing our discussions with the organization that filed the proposal and we're hopeful we can come to an agreement," Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said.

Halliburton, the second-largest oilfield services company in the world, opened an office in Iran in 2000 under the name Halliburton Products and Services Ltd., its Cayman Islands subsidiary. Vice President Dick Cheney was the company's chief executive before taking office. (Reporting by Erwin Seba; editing by Eric Walsh; Reuters Messaging: erwin.seba.reuters.com@reuters.net; +1 713 210 8508; erwin.seba@reuters.com)

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 8:40 AM

Daily Briefing


March 20, 2003
Reauthorization of Defense procurement bill delayed

By Margo MacFarland, CongressDaily



Just hours before a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began Wednesday, Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California raised questions about whether top Bush administration officials had conflicts of interest in calling on U.S. companies to rebuild post-war Iraq.


Waters questioned the propriety of including Kellog Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Haliburton Co.—the company that Vice President Cheney once led—in a list of companies being invited to bid on Iraq reconstruction projects.


"It really doesn't look good for the vice president of the United States ... to be able to increase the contracts" under the authority of the Defense Production Act, Waters told a House Financial Services subcommittee during the panel's scheduled markup of the act's reauthorization (H.R. 1280). The markup was recessed before the panel could complete work on the measure.


The DPA, which became law during the Korean War and is reauthorized periodically, gives the president authority to cut through procurement red tape to assure swift delivery of equipment, supplies and services to troops. Administration officials testifying at a hearing preceding the markup denied that the law could be used to increase the size of contracts. Rather, they said, the act provides authority to accelerate delivery of goods and services on existing agreements.


Saying there were "rampant rumors" and "suspicions" about conflicts of interest on the part of top administration officials, Waters offered an amendment that would bar companies whose former executives now serve as senior administration officials from participating for at least four years in contracts to which the act applies.


Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Trade and Technology, admonished Waters for raising questions about the administration's rebuilding plan. "I think it's really irresponsible on the eve of the war to be (doing) this and implying something" about possible conflicts of interest, he said.


Waters replied that it is "irresponsible to wave the flag of war" in the face of potential conflicts of interest that could involve billions of dollars.


Kellogg Brown and Root is one of several U.S. companies that have been asked by the government to bid on rebuilding projects in Iraq. Others include Bechtel Group, Parson Corporation and Washington Group International. The Wall Street Journal, citing administration sources who had seen confidential plans for rebuilding Iraq, reported Monday that $1.5 billion was being offered to the companies, with only $50 million being made available to non-profit organizations.


Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York, the subcommittee's ranking Democrat, expressed concern about the Waters amendment, saying that it would bar defense giant Lockheed-Martin from providing "needed defense supplies" because Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had once served on the company's board. "As drafted, the amendment could do unintended harm," Maloney said.


But Maloney added that she does not want the act to be applied to contracts for rebuilding Iraq. "The rebuilding is not an emergency and in my opinion the DPA should not be used," Maloney told administration witnesses at the hearing.


Suzanne Patrick, the Defense Department's deputy under secretary for industrial policy, told Maloney the department did not plan to use the act for rebuilding projects, but other federal agencies, such as the Agency for International Development could apply the law's authority to reconstruction contracts for Iraq.


The Waters amendment was defeated 4 to 12.


Waters' amendment shook up a markup that had been expected to be routine. On the table was King's manager's amendment, which he said would make technical changes to the law and reauthorize it for four years instead of the five requested by the administration. Democrats wanted a reauthorization for four years instead of five so that Congress can reassess the legislation sooner.


The authorization for the DPA does not expire until the end of this fiscal year. But lawmakers are moving to reauthorize the law because they do not want to risk a repeat of the 1990-1991 Gulf War, when the authorization expired in the middle of the conflict.


Brought to you by GovExec.com

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 8:37 AM

C B C . C A N e w s - F u l l S t o r y :
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Churches deplore war in Iraq
Last Updated Thu Mar 20 20:07:09 2003
GENEVA-- Christian leaders around the world condemned the U.S.-led war against Iraq Thursday, pleading for an end to the bombing and a resumption of diplomacy.

In Geneva, the World Council of Churches called the assault "immoral, illegal and ill-advised."

The group, made up of 342 churches in 100 countries, urged Christians to stand together with members of all other faiths, especially Muslims, "to restore confidence and trust amongst the nations of the world."

At the Vatican, one of Pope John Paul's closest aides said the Roman Catholic Church is "deeply pained by the latest developments in Iraq."

Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the Pope is disappointed by both sides, but is especially alarmed that Washington ended diplomatic efforts.

"On the one hand (the Vatican) laments the fact that the Iraqi government did not accept the resolutions of the United Nations and the appeal by the Pope himself, which asked for the country to disarm," he said.

"On the other hand, it deplores the interruption of the path of negotiations, according to international law, for a peaceful solution to the Iraqi drama."


FROM MARCH 19, 2003: War participants will answer to God: Pope
In Britain, Christian and Muslim leaders issued a statement denouncing war. They also expressed alarm that some people view the conflict as a battle between religions.

"In this time of crisis and deep disappointment, it is vitally important that, despite the occasional unhappy use of 'crusade' language by some American political leaders, none should see the conflict as one between faiths," said two groups – Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI) and the Muslim Council of Britain.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, leader of about 70 million Anglicans around the globe, said the world had entered "dangerous new terrain with consequences that cannot be surely known or predicted." His statement was issued jointly with the Archbishop of York, David Hope.



Written by CBC News Online staff


Copyright © 2003 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - All Rights Reserved


accesswater2030@yahoo.com 8:36 AM

washingtonpost.com
Some 40,000 Protest as France Denounces Iraq War



Reuters
Thursday, March 20, 2003; 3:53 PM



By Toni Vorobyova

PARIS (Reuters) - France on Thursday warned of serious consequences no matter how long hostilities lasted in Iraq, and 40,000 anti-war demonstrators marched on the U.S. embassy to protest the start of the conflict.

Demonstrators smashed the window front of a McDonald's restaurant in south Paris, forcing police in riot gear to move in to protect staff and customers, a Reuters reporter said. The attackers sprayed obscenities and "boycott" on the windows of the U.S. hamburger chain, whose restaurants are frequently targeted by anti-U.S. and anti-globalism protesters.

The violence came after President Jacques Chirac, who helped stymie U.S.-British attempts to win U.N. backing for military force against Baghdad, said France remained convinced that only the United Nations could sanction an attack on Iraq.

"France regrets this action taken without the approval of the United Nations," Chirac said on national television.

"I hope these operations are as fast as possible, with the fewest fatalities, and that they do not lead to a humanitarian catastrophe. No matter how long this conflict lasts, it will have serious consequences for the future," he added.

Chirac, who was due later to travel to Brussels to attend a European Union summit, said Europe must present its own view of the world's problems and form a common defense policy.

Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said war would "only worsen the situation in an already fragile region."

France, which is now trying to ensure the United Nations is not bypassed over Iraqi reconstruction, believed the world body alone had the authority to rebuild Iraq, said Villepin. And he repeated his call for an international Middle East conference.

Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said France was ready to respond to the most urgent needs of civilian populations.

SECURITY BOOST

The Interior Ministry said it was deploying a further 500 soldiers to join police and an existing deployment of 300 soldiers to monitor railway stations and other public areas.

Security was boosted around the U.S. embassy in Paris with nearby streets cordoned off and riot police deployed.

Imposing steel barriers were in place before thousands of protesters marched to the adjacent Place de la Concorde, where revolutionaries beheaded the last French king in 1793.

Police said some 40,000 protesters had demonstrated in the vast square, chanting "Bush, Bush Assassin" and "Resistance in Iraq." Some youths torched the U.S. and British flags to cheers.

Protests were also staged in several other French cities.

"We're more motivated than ever to show that Bush remains alone, for the bombing to stop quickly and for Chirac to continue to oppose war," said teacher Nicole Babatz.

Deputies in the nearby National Assembly denounced an "illegitimate and dangerous war" and suspended their session to demonstrate support for Chirac.

Aside from a few dissenting voices within Chirac's own conservative ranks, his anti-war stance has won wide political and public approval in France, boosting his popularity ratings.

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, France has feared a similar strike on its territory. Government officials said a spate of arrests of Islamic radicals in Paris suburbs last year pre-empted at least one planned attack.


© 2003 Reuters

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 8:35 AM

March 21, 2003
U.S. Ready to Rescind Clinton Order on Government Secrets
By ADAM CLYMER


wASHINGTON, March 20 — Making it easier for government agencies to keep documents secret, the Bush administration plans to revoke an order issued by President Bill Clinton that among other provisions said information should not be classified if there was "significant doubt" as to whether its release would damage national security.

The new policy is outlined in a draft executive order being circulated among federal agencies. A final version is expected to be adopted before April 17, when the last elements of the Clinton order would take effect, requiring automatic declassification of most documents 25 or more years old. Under the draft, such automatic declassification would be postponed until Dec. 31, 2006.

Other provisions of Mr. Clinton's order, which was issued in 1995, are already in force. But major changes to them contemplated in the draft would treat all information obtained from foreign governments as subject to classification and end the requirement that agencies prepare plans for declassifying records.

The new policy would also permit reclassification of documents that have already been made public, and give the Central Intelligence Agency special authority to resist decisions by an interagency panel that considers classification appeals, typically from researchers.

Sean McCormack, spokesman for the National Security Council, declined to comment on the ground that the Bush order was not final. But William Leonard, director of the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives, defended the proposal, saying it "comes as close to institutionalizing automatic declassification as possible."

Historians and other critics of government secrecy had mixed reactions. Bruce Craig, director of the National Coalition for History, said of the draft, "In general it's far better than what many in the historical community had expected to see coming out of the Bush administration." He called it "more an edit than a substantial rewrite."

Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said, "One might have expected a more aggressive, pro-secrecy policy than this draft." He said its strength was that it preserved both automatic declassification and the interagency appeals panel from the Clinton administration.

"This draft does not shred the existing policy; it merely attenuates it somewhat," said Mr. Aftergood, who made the draft public last week in Secrecy News, his Internet publication.

But Anna K. Nelson, an American University historian, was more critical, saying: "This is in context with the way this administration has done the whole bit on secrecy. They have left a skeletal process."

The document does retain many central provisions of the Clinton directive, notably that "in no case shall information be classified in order to (1) conceal violations of law, inefficiency or administrative error; (2) prevent embarrassment of a person, organization or agency; (3) restrain competition; or (4) prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of national security."

Dr. Nelson, however, complained in particular about the deletion of the sentence in Mr. Clinton's order that said, "If there is significant doubt about the need to classify information, it shall not be classified." She called that change "a clear fire bell in the night." Mr. Aftergood agreed, saying, "It signals a preference for secrecy."

Mr. Leonard, who was appointed to his post by the national archivist with the approval of President Bush, took a different view. He said the Clinton administration had inserted that provision to overturn a Reagan administration policy that took the opposite tack, calling for classification in cases of doubt. He said the new deletion would mean that the order "doesn't say one way or the other — a change of tone more than anything else."

The practical effect will be "nil," Mr. Leonard continued, because the draft order retains provisions urging agencies to see declassification's values, for instance the national progress that results from the free flow of information.

Tom Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive, a group that publicizes government documents, also objected, though, particularly to the provision on information from foreign governments. It says, "The unauthorized disclosure of foreign government information is presumed to cause damage to national security." The phrase "damage to national security" is defined in the order, and in law, as the basis for classifying documents as confidential, secret or top secret.

Mr. Blanton said the language on foreign government information was too broad, and would extend even to information given the Department of Commerce or the Export-Import Bank.

"Making all foreign government information presumptively classified," he said, "means we're lowering our openness standard to the lowest common denominator of our ostensible allies."

A frequent critic of government secrecy, Mr. Blanton did praise the draft for retaining the concept of automatic declassification.

The Clinton order required that documents generally be classified for no more than 10 years. But it allowed for periods up to 25 years in several specific circumstances, including those involving information on weapons of mass destruction.

The Bush administration's draft, on the other hand, does not require a specific reason for the 25-year standard, saying instead that it can be applied if the classifying authority determines that "the sensitivity of the information" demands it.

Mr. Leonard, of the National Archives, said an important element of the draft was its retention of the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel, which decides appeals from decisions by agencies to classify or not to declassify documents. He said the panel had overruled agency decisions in about 70 percent of the cases brought before it.

But the administration's draft gives the Central Intelligence Agency special standing. While other agencies can appeal to the president if they feel that panel decisions against them are wrong, the director of central intelligence would be permitted to block panel declassification orders unless the president overruled him.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 8:34 AM

We Begin Combing in Five Minutes!


By Lloyd Grove

Friday, March 21, 2003; Page C03


The White House is vowing a strong retaliatory response after the BBC aired live video of President Bush getting his hair coiffed in the Oval Office as he squirmed in his chair and practiced on the teleprompter minutes before Wednesday night's speech announcing the launch of military operations against Saddam Hussein.

The British network broadcast 1 minute and 37 seconds of presidential primping to hundreds of millions of viewers in 200 countries around the world (and locally on WETA, Channel 26) before Bush's formal address at 10:15 p.m. Yesterday the BBC's White House producer, Mark Orchard, profusely and repeatedly apologized to irked staffers for airing video of an "unauthorized" portion of the pool feed while Washington anchor Mishal Husain chatted up a colleague about the significance of the moment.

CBS News Washington bureau chief Janet Leissner, whose news crew was responsible for pool coverage of the speech, also apologized to the White House, explaining that a technician accidentally flipped a switch that fed the images of a not-ready-for-prime-time Bush -- his eyes darting to and fro as a female stylist sprayed, combed and patted down his hair.

A BBC spokeswoman told us that her network promptly realized the video was not for broadcast "but they couldn't pull away because of technical difficulties." Meanwhile, we hear that in Britain, the commercial network ITV also aired the hair-raising feed.

"It was an honest mistake," Leissner told us yesterday -- but the Bushies were not impressed.

"The facts are that it was an unauthorized use of footage and video," a senior White House official told us, asking not to be named. "Both the BBC and CBS have apologized, and it would be understandable if this were the only time this has happened. I'm not suggesting it was intentional, but this kind of thing has happened more than once."

Henceforth, the official said, the White House -- not the networks -- will throw the switches that make pool feeds available to broadcast outlets. "There have been too many incidents," the official said, listing various presidential speeches allegedly marred by pool-feed glitches. "We have to make sure we are comfortable with the situation."


accesswater2030@yahoo.com 8:33 AM

BuzzFlash.com's Media Watch
by Gloria R. Lalumia

March 18, 2003 MEDIA WATCH ARCHIVES
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Boycott Mainstream Media and Tune in the World: How To Listen to Shortwave Broadcasts via Radio and the Internet

A BUZZFLASH MEDIA WATCH SPECIAL REPORT
by Gloria R. Lalumia

SURGING SHORTWAVE
SHORTWAVE RADIO FOR BEGINNERS
WHICH RADIO?
LISTENING TO SHORTWAVE BROADCASTS—RADIO
LISTENING TO SHORTWAVE BROADCASTS—VIA THE INTERNET
TIME ZONES
SURGING SHORTWAVE

The recent firing of Phil Donahue by MSNBC because of the political views aired on his show rather than his ratings (the highest on the network) underscores the growing restrictions on political analysis and unbiased reporting of current news events available from the corporate American media. So, to get their news Americans are being forced to look elsewhere.

A recent article posted at www.Journalism.co.uk, a site with "online news for online journalists," reports that 50 per cent of BBC News Online web site visitors log on from outside the UK. According to Mike Smartt, BBC News Online editor-in-chief, "Page views on the site have risen between 10 and 20 per cent and feedback tells us that visitors come to us for more impartial, even-handed news coverage as American reportage can be rather US-centric." The Guardian has also received an upsurge in traffic from the U.S., while World News Network reports a 60 per cent rise in traffic since January. (http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story576.html, US public turns to Europe for news, Posted: 21 February 2003 By: Elizabeth Croad. Full sources of data provided.)

Meanwhile, an older way of tapping into world news is seeing its own resurgence. Since 911 shortwave radio sales have increased. (See "Short wave radios gaining popularity in U.S. again," Detroit Free Press, November 6, 2001 for a brief rundown on short wave radio trends here and in Europe http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwend6_20011106.htm.) To illustrate, during the first week of March 2003, my local Radio Shack had none in stock and when I placed an order for a radio, it was on a 3-week backorder!

What's so special about shortwave? There's the ability to hear news, current affairs, and topical programming on a variety of subjects broadcast from many different international broadcasters which often broadcast in English as well as native languages. For the traveler, it means being able to tune into an English-language broadcast even if there are none on the AM-FM dials. Although shortwave broadcasts are now on the Internet, if the net goes down that option is gone. And during emergencies, when timely news is important, telephone lines often become jammed and the possibility of unreliable Internet service exists. With shortwave radios now pocket-sized and reasonably priced, now may be the time to start listening!

So, in this article I will offer some basic information on how to start listening to shortwave radio, followed by a discussion of how to listen on the Internet if you're not quite ready to dive in and purchase a shortwave receiver.

SHORTWAVE RADIO FOR BEGINNERS

For a short and clear overview of shortwave radio check out the following link: http://www.astrosmo.unam.mx/~alan/swl/starting.html. This concise page compiled by Alan Watson will give you a good idea as to whether you want to delve deeper into the subject.

WHICH RADIO??

Radios in the $50-$150 price range can generally offer enough features for the beginner in shortwave. There are numerous sites with information about buying a radio. RadioIntel.com, A Global Radio Portal (http://www.radiointel.com/press.htm) has reviews of radios, club and newsletter listings, as well as the latest developments in the shortwave world. Radio Netherlands has one of the better compilations of radio reviews; their staff actually tests the sets for performance under a variety of conditions (http://www.rnw.nl/realradio/rx_index.html).

Recently, a shortwave enthusiast posting at the Democratic Underground offered a VERY inexpensive suggestion for buying a shortwave radio via a mail order house. He thought this set offered good reception at a bargain price. I tracked down more information on this radio and where to buy it at the RadioIntel site in the following commentary:

Just How Cheap Can You Buy a SW Radio? http://www.radiointel.com/oldnews.htm

I don't know about you but once a year I usually buy a small shortwave radio to give to someone as a Christmas present. My hopeful convert is usually a family member or a good friend that I think has the best chance to "make the cut" and catch the radio bug. I don't think it has worked yet as none of them have rushed out to buy a Sony 2010 or $1K table top. With that in mind, Blair passes along this interesting tidbit on some cheap Bell & Howell SW portables.

While clearing out the newspapers he noticed an ad for a radio by PublishersChoice for $19.95 plus $3.95 for S&H in the USA Weekend Magazine . But if you order by phone (800-889-4926), you can buy a second radio for the cost of S&H only. As Blair points out, this is almost $28 for two radios. But he found an even a better deal at Carol Wright for $9.95 plus $3.40 for S&H. S&H for a second radio is only a total of $4.40. That's two radios for $24.30! Carol Wright's item number is 94654.

"For shortwave coverage, this radio has the 49 m, 41 m, 31 m, 25 m, 21 m, 19 m, and 16 m bands. Further, it appears from the photo in the ad that those bands overlap, so there might be nearly complete coverage of frequencies from 5.5 MHz to 19 MHz. It also has MW (US AM) of 530-1600 kHz and an FM band that covers 54 MHz to 108 MHz." "The radio's dimensions are 5" by 3" by 1", it weighs 8 oz, and power is provided by two AA cells."

This radio is cheap but don't expect miracles.

Within the last week, I've seen the PublishersChoice ad for this radio in the USA Weekend Magazine with a different 800 number (1-800-727-4402, presumably for tracking purposes), and American Profile magazine (1-800-627-3598). The Carol Wright offer is still available, although the radio is on backorder (www.carolwright.com).

(NOTE: Neither the author or BuzzFlash endorses this radio.)

LISTENING TO SHORTWAVE BROADCASTS--RADIO

Short wave reception depends on many factors including your location. Generally, signals are best heard during the evening hours. What comes in off the airwaves depends in large part on what stations are targeting your area. Some of the strongest signals come from the BBC World Service, Radio Canada International, Radio Netherlands, and Deutsche Welle (Germany). You can also check our own Voice of America. The BBC has stopped broadcasting directly to Canada, the U.S. and Australia, preferring to air their broadcasts on FM stations. However, if you are on the East Coast you should try to pick up the Caribbean signal; if on the West Coast, you can also try to tune in the broadcast emanating from Asia.

Schedules are often provided at the broadcasters' websites. A listener may therefore choose to listen randomly until he or she stumbles upon something interesting or use the schedules to locate favorite programming.

A well-organized site compiled in Sweden called Listen to the World lists shortwave broadcasts with frequencies and times by country http://www.swl.nu/listen/index.htm. Links to the station websites are also provided (many sites also provide internet listening--see below). The listings include many countries not found on many sites such as the "Stans" of Central Asia and radio from Albania. And if you're up at about 7:30 AM EST, you might be able to catch the irregular broadcast of Radio Iraq, which broadcasts to North America.

LISTENING TO SHORTWAVE BROADCASTS—VIA THE INTERNET

Many broadcasts are now streaming continuously via the Internet, offering their programming in English 24 hours a day. Other stations stream in English on the net only when they are beaming their radio signals in English via shortwave (parallel broadcasting). Many broadcasters also provide current news sections right on their sites. Here are several websites that can get you started listening with or without a radio!

Perhaps the easiest site to use is one entitled Shortwave Broadcasts LIVE On The Internet http://www.dxworld.com/sw_live.html. This site is basically an alphabetical listing of countries, with links to streaming broadcasts via Real Audio or Windows Media. Most countries stream continuously in the native language; others stream and also offer "in demand" archived broadcasts in English. Some stations provide only limited schedules and some parallel the shortwave broadcasts which are aired at certain times of the day. At the bottom of each listing there are links to the website of the broadcaster. As previously mentioned, these home pages often provide complete daily and weekly schedules of programming, including when broadcasts are aired specifically for North American audiences. Check out the TV feed from Cuba!

Another good site is the World Radio Network http://www.wrn.org/index.html. Based in London, this site offers a variety of ways to tune in. WRN culls some of the most popular news and cultural broadcasts from across the globe and bundles them into a variety of schedules geared for different regions http://www.wrn.org/listeners/schedules/. For example, English broadcasts are available in formats for WRN English for Africa/Middle East, Europe, Asia Pacific, North America, and South America. As an example, on the WRN English for North America channel, weekday evenings feature programming from Russia, Slovakia, China, Israel, Poland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and UN Radio. NPR Radio programs from the US also show up on the schedules. There are also multilingual broadcasts for North America. By selecting any of these formats you will see a daily schedule in Universal Time (UTC) along with the applicable time zones for that part of the world. Or, you can click on "Listen Now" and pick up whatever is broadcasting at the moment.

There is also a listing of all the broadcasters that are available on WRN http://www.wrn.org/listeners/stations/index.php?CurrentLetter=1. Clicking on a station brings you to a page which describes the broadcast availability (language and time) as well as a direct link to the station's website. These informational pages are also available by clicking the program names on the master schedule for that region.

TIME ZONES

Whether you listen via a radio or the Internet, you'll have to deal with time zones. Broadcast times are presented in UTC (Coordinated Universal Times), also referred to as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The USNO Time Service site provides a table for converting UTC times to US time zones http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/zones.html. Another handy site is Time and Date.com http://www.timeanddate.com/time/. You can set up your own "personal world clock" and keep track of time at cities that you select. And a list of time zone abbreviations is very useful for places outside the US when making a conversion between local times and UTC or vice versa—you can get one here http://www.timeanddate.com/time/abbreviations.html.

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

Now you're pretty well set up to listen to world broadcasts, which will can help you gain a broader view of the news than we can get via the media here in the US! But if you get tired of hearing reports and analyses, there's more to be had on world radio. There's plenty of cultural and music programming available. Why not check out the Pulse, the latest music from Australia and the Pacific on Fridays....or is that Thursdays??? ...Time to get out that time zone conversion chart...

A BUZZFLASH MEDIA WATCH SPECIAL REPORT

* * *

Copyright 2003, Gloria R. Lalumia


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accesswater2030@yahoo.com 8:28 AM

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March 21, 2003
Protests in Many Nations Swell for Second Day
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


Filed at 7:24 a.m. ET

TOKYO (AP) -- Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Australia, Japan and Malaysia on Friday for a second day of protests against the U.S.-led war in Iraq, as Muslim leaders around the world denounced the U.S. strikes as imperialist aggression.

Demonstrations also were held India, Thailand, China and other countries across Asia. They echoed an outpouring of anti-war sentiment in the United States, where more than 1,500 people were arrested Thursday from San Francisco to Washington, D.C.

Authorities were bracing for new protests in predominantly Muslim countries including Pakistan and Indonesia, whose president has condemned the war as a violation international law.

In Tokyo, at least 11,000 people took advantage of warm spring weather and a national holiday to march for peace.

The protests came hours after President Bush called Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to thank him for joining Bush's ``coalition of the willing.'' Koizumi backs efforts by the United States, Japan's main ally, to disarm Saddam Hussein and has promised to provide aid for refugees and help rebuild Iraq after the fighting is over.

Students and families carrying placards and giant paper cranes -- a symbol of peace -- were joined by flag-waving representatives of Japan's main opposition parties and labor unions.

One demonstrator brandished a poster captioned ``Oil War'' showing Bush's face superimposed on Darth Vader.

``When I thought of the children in Iraq, I felt like I had to come,'' said housewife Fumiko Nakajima, 38, who was marching with her husband and their two children. ``If our government can't stand up to the United States, then we citizens have to.''

In Melbourne, Australia, about 5,000 protesters marched to the sound of mock air raid sirens. The demonstration came as officials confirmed for the first time that units of the nation's military were engaged in operations in Iraq.

Labor unions in Greece declared a four-hour strike starting at noon Friday that was expected to shut down airports, banks, public services and transportation.

Schools and universities closed to allow students to participate in protests, and consumer unions called for a boycott of all American products.

Greece's socialist government, which holds the European Union presidency, has supported the protests. Rallies were planned Friday in Athens.

In Germany, police broke up a sit-down protest outside the U.S. military's European Command in Stuttgart. In Berlin, schoolchildren placed candles on a street leading to the U.S. Embassy, which was protected by heavy concrete barriers and fences.

Anti-war activists set up a 10-foot steel peace symbol and an 800-pound bell near the embassy. They said they would ring the bell every half-hour until the war is over.

Muslim leaders around the world condemned the war against Iraq as a product of American imperialism.

``Every intelligent decent person in the world knows that Bush is lying and that his goal is to control Iraqi oil and to spread his control of countries in the region one after the other,'' said Sheik Taj El Din Al Hilaly, 62, the spiritual leader of Australia's Islamic community .

Thousands of Muslims in eastern Malaysia burned British and U.S. flags and effigies of the two countries' leaders. Chanting ``Destroy Bush,'' and ``Long Live Islam,'' about 7,000 protesters filled a busy road in Kota Baharu city as police stood guard, witnesses told The Associated Press.

In Bangladesh, thousands marched through the streets of Dhaka, shouting such anti-American slogans as: ``Stop the attack on Iraq,'' ``Bush is a war criminal.''

In Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation, police were beefing up security at foreign embassies and businesses ahead of large protests expected over the weekend.

Shouting ``Americans are terrorists!'' members of Thailand's small Muslim community led a march on the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok.

In Pakistan, the nation's religious right called for peaceful protests against the war but withdrew demands for a nationwide strike, saying it would hurt ordinary Pakistanis. But in the tribal northwest -- the stronghold of the religious coalition organizing anti-war protests -- shops were closed and a strike went ahead.

In neighboring India, police fired tear gas at about 50 people who marched through Srinagar, summer capital of the nation's only Muslim-majority state.

``Don't kill Iraqi children! They didn't kill yours!'' the protesters shouted.

Demonstrations were expected in other cities in India, whose government called the U.S. attack unjustified.

Two dozen foreigners in Beijing gathered at the north gate of the city's Ritan Park, located in the embassy district, to protest the military action.

The group marched through the park carrying banners emblazoned with slogans in Chinese, English and Spanish, some of them reading ``Not in our name,'' and ``No War.''



Copyright 2003 The Associated Press | Privacy Policy

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 8:26 AM

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

March 20, 2003
Senator Deplores Attack on Iraq
By THE NEW YORK TIMES


ASHINGTON, March 19 — Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, the senior member of the Senate, said today that he mourned the prospects for his nation at the start of the war with Iraq that he has long opposed.

Mr. Byrd, a Democrat first elected in 1958, said the Bush administration had made the world a more dangerous place by flaunting the nation's superpower status and asserting a new doctrine of pre-emption without international sanction.

"Today I weep for my country," Mr. Byrd, said, in his latest floor speech against the war. "I have watched the events of recent months with a heavy, heavy heart. No more is the image of America one of a strong yet benevolent peacekeeper. The image of America has changed."

Now, he said, the nation is mistrusted around the world, its intentions are questioned. The administration has forgotten, he said, that the country's true power lies in its ability to inspire, not intimidate.

"When did we become a nation that ignores and berates our friends and calls them irrelevant?" he asked. "When did we decide to risk undermining international order by adopting a radical doctrinaire approach to using our awesome military might?"

Mr. Byrd said he would pray for the safety of American troops and innocent civilians in Iraq.



Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 8:25 AM

washingtonpost.com
Bush's Strong Arm Can Club Allies Too
Lawmakers, Activists Say Tactics for Enforcing Loyalty Are Tough and Sometimes Vindictive

By Dana Milbank and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 21, 2003; Page A06


Editor's note: This article was withheld from later editions of yesterday's paper to accommodate coverage of the start of the war in Iraq.

After a Newsweek cover story in 1987 titled "Bush Battles the Wimp Factor," the label stuck to George H.W. Bush for years. Now, his son is creating the opposite perception: the Bully Factor.

As the United States wages war this week following a pair of ultimatums to the United Nations and Iraq, the airwaves and editorial pages of the world have been full of accusations that President Bush and his administration are guilty of coercive and harrying behavior. Even in typically friendly countries, Bush and the United States have been given such labels this week as "arrogant bully" (Britain), "bully boys" (Australia), "big bully" (Russia), "bully Bush" (Kenya), "arrogant" (Turkey) and "capricious" (Canada). Diplomats have accused the administration of "hardball" tactics, "jungle justice" and acting "like thugs."

At home, where support for the war on Iraq is strong and growing, such complaints of strong-arm tactics by the Bush administration nonetheless have a certain resonance -- even among Bush supporters. Though the issues are vastly different, Republican lawmakers and conservative interest groups report similar pressure on allies at home to conform to Bush's policy wishes.

Although all administrations use political muscle on the opposition, GOP lawmakers and lobbyists say the tactics the Bush administration uses on friends and allies have been uniquely fierce and vindictive. Just as the administration used unbending tactics before the U.N. Security Council with normally allied countries such as Mexico, Germany and France, the Bush White House has calculated that it can overcome domestic adversaries if it tolerates no dissent from its friends.

In recent weeks, the White House has been pushing GOP governors to oust the leadership of the National Governors Association to make the bipartisan group endorse Bush's views. Interest groups report pressure from the administration -- sometimes on groups' donors -- to conform to Bush's policy views and even to fire dissenters.

Often, companies and their K Street lobbyists endorse ideas they privately oppose or question, according to several longtime Republican lobbyists. The fear is that Bush will either freeze them out of key meetings or hold a grudge that might deprive them of help in other areas, the lobbyists said. When the Electronic Industries Alliance declined to back Bush's dividend tax cut, the group was frozen out when the White House called its "friends" in the industry to discuss the tax cut, according to White House and business sources.

Under such pressure from the administration, lobbyists and lawmakers who voiced doubts about Bush's economic policies have publicly reversed themselves. "I think I should have kept my mouth shut," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said in one such recantation last month.

The forms of pressure -- exclusions from White House guest lists, a loss of access to key Bush aides, calls to dissenters' superiors, veiled threats saying the White House has noted the transgression or even shouted accusations -- convey the same message. Grover Norquist, a conservative activist who enforces loyalty for the White House, puts it this way: "If I bitch, guess what? I get coal in my socks."

The technique has served the Bush White House well by maintaining the lockstep support among Republicans needed to pass Bush policies in a closely divided Congress. "It's fascinating the extent to which this administration has been able to hold troops in line for an extended period of time," said Thomas E. Mann of the Brookings Institution.

But on the latest round of tax cuts, there are signs of a backlash against Bush's tough tactics. In Congress, a group of moderate GOP senators and representatives said they would only support a tax cut much smaller than Bush's. And lawmakers suggest that resentment is growing beneath the surface.

More than a dozen members of Congress interviewed for this article said support for Bush's economic plan is weaker than the public might realize because lawmakers don't want to challenge the president publicly. "We don't want to stick it in the president's eye -- at the moment," said Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.). He said as many as 20 House Republicans oppose Bush's tax cuts, and an additional 40 or 50 are uneasy about the details and timing.

The White House says its style is vigorous but not strong-armed. "The president believes strongly in issues and he diligently pursues what he believes in on the basis of policy, and that's why he's won so many votes -- because members agree with him," press secretary Ari Fleischer said.

But GOP lawmakers have other reasons for their support. "People have come to realize that it is better to be seen helping the administration than pulling down parts of his plan," said Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.). Foley knows the consequences. He opposed Bush on a free-trade vote despite intense pressure. So when Bush senior adviser Karl Rove recently encouraged Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel R. Martinez to run for the Senate from Florida -- the same seat Foley is seeking -- many on Capitol Hill suspected it was Bush's revenge on Foley. Foley, in an interview, said he was worried he might get the "Pawlenty" treatment, a reference to last year's Minnesota Senate race, in which the Bush White House pushed out Tim Pawlenty, the GOP majority leader in the Minnesota House, to clear the way for handpicked candidate Norm Coleman.

Some of the White House's tactics have become lore. After Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.) opposed Bush's first tax cut, White House slights and threats to cut his pet programs drove Jeffords from the GOP. Last year, after Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) voiced concern about Bush's immigration policy, Rove told him to never again "darken the door" of the White House.

But the hardball tactics are deeper and more pervasive.

Eager to send a message to the National Governors Association to reflect a GOP majority, the White House for the first time excluded Raymond C. Scheppach, the NGA's executive director, from the governors' annual dinner at the White House last month. Encouraged by the administration and its allies, a few Republican governors -- including the president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush -- threatened to stop dues payments or quit the group. After a bipartisan NGA committee drafted a statement seeking more federal money for the states, the White House let its displeasure be known to the governors, and Republicans arrived at the meeting last month demanding the rejection of the "partisan" statement.

Conservative interest groups get similar pressure. When the free-market Club for Growth sent a public letter to the White House to protest White House intervention in GOP primaries for "liberal-leaning Republicans," the group's president, Stephen Moore, picked up the phone at a friend's one evening to receive a screaming tirade from Rove, who had tracked him down. On another occasion when Moore objected to a Bush policy, Rove called Richard Gilder, the Club for Growth's chairman and a major contributor, to protest.

"I think this monomaniacal call for loyalty is unhealthy," Moore said. "It's dangerous to declare anybody who crosses you an enemy for life. It's shortsighted." Leaders of three other conservative groups report that their objections to Bush policies have been followed by snubs and, in at least one case, phone calls suggesting the replacement of a critical scholar. "They want sycophants rather than allies," said the head of one think tank.

Corporations are coming under increasing pressure not just to back Bush, but to hire his allies to represent them in meetings with Republicans. As part of the "K Street Project," top GOP officials, lawmakers and lobbyists track the political affiliation and contributions of people seeking lobbying jobs.

In a private meeting last week, chief executives from several leading technology firms told Rep. Calvin M. Dooley (Calif.) and other moderate Democrats that they were under heavy pressure to back the Bush tax plan, even though many of them had reservations about it. "There is a perception among some business interests there could be retribution if you don't play ball on almost every issue that comes up," Dooley said.

Staff writer Dan Balz contributed to this report.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 7:47 AM