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

Saturday, October 04, 2003

Saddam's nuclear arsenal? A scattering of yellow powder

Villagers sell deadly uranium to the US army at $3 a barrel

Patrick Graham in Al Mansia
Sunday October 5, 2003
The Observer

Dhia Ali makes a throwing motion as he tells how he dumped out the blue barrels of powder. The nine-year-old and his brother, Hussein, weren't looking for weapons of mass destruction when they went into the low brown buildings, known to UN weapons inspectors as Location C, near his home last April. They just wanted the blue barrels.

The yellow cake powder they poured out and breathed into their lungs - a form of natural uranium - was part of the nuclear programme which, the Iraq Survey Group's recent report claims, somewhat vaguely, was being restarted before the last war. The report won't do much for Dhia or Hussein - they haven't even been examined by a doctor yet.

'If you inhale even a small amount, it stays in your lungs,' said one of the senior scientists who worked on Iraq's atomic programme. He spoke anonymously because, like many of the country's best researchers, he didn't want any trouble from the Americans.

Even the ducks in the canal in the village of Al Mansia, where they dumped the barrels, later tested for increased radiation. When the US army offered a reward of $3 a barrel, the villagers fished them out and sold them.

The report's claim that Iraq was revamping its nuclear programme in such a way that it could constitute any serious threat was described as 'ridiculous' by the scientist. By 1991, when the he left the programme, Iraq had succeeded in producing no more than one kilogram of enriched uranium - 6 to 14 kgs short of a bomb. By 1997, the programme had been exposed and most of its capabilities destroyed.

To produce more would be impossible. Nuclear research, he pointed out, is a massive undertaking and difficult to conceal, especially under sanctions while being monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The report, at least the available declassified version, acknowledges as much. 'These initiatives did not in and of themselves constitute a resumption of the nuclear weapons programme, but could have been useful in developing a weapons-relevant science base for the long term,' it states.

The Iraqi scientist acknowledged that, while Iraq may have already had the theoretical basis for a nuclear bomb, 'they never reached the stage of trying'. Given enough plutonium or enriched uranium, he thought Iraq might have been able to produce a bomb in two to three years. But he doubted that, under sanctions, the country would ever have had access to sufficient material.

Interviewing scientists in Iraq is a tricky business. Through a well-connected intermediary we were turned down by four others. One of them, a leader of a chemical weapons programme we had met shortly after the war, denied ever having heard of us. The last time we talked he said Iraq had failed to stabilise nerve agents to put into warheads and the programme had been abandoned. Now many of the scientists who worked on these programmes have, or want, jobs with the administration and are reluctant to speak openly.

'It was just an excuse to attack,' the nuclear scientist said. 'Now it turns out there is nothing. They talk to everybody, they offer money and still nothing.'

But the search for weapons of mass destruction is really just a distraction from the main task, rebuilding Iraq and keeping the peace. Ask Sheikh Muttar Saheb Neama Al Musawi. Many of people from his village, like Dhia of Al Wardia, returned with barrels from the yellow cake storage facility at Tuwaitha Nuclear Centre.

The Sheikh has been asking for a health centre to keep an eye on the population but, so far, nothing. He strongly advised not talking to the people in the village - many organisations had come and gone but nothing had been done. They were extremely unfriendly, he said, and talked of the growing anger of the population toward the US army in the area south of Baghdad.

'The Americans have done nothing for us. They don't respect our customs, breaking into people's houses and searching their women.The UN would do a better job.'

Asked if he thought the situation would get worse, he said: 'Boom - Iraqis like a balloon waiting to burst.'

Outside Dhia's house, the dust blows across the barbed wire fence from Tuwaitha as his father Ali shows the open sewer in front of his mud brick house where he washed out the barrels of yellow cake. Inside the small dirt court yard where Ali and lives with his wife and six sons, the unemployed labourer shows us his water barrel. 'Poison' it reads, but he says he bought before the war from a friend.

'I worry about my kids - I want somebody to come and look at them,' he says. 'The Americans must come and decontaminate the area. And foreigners must to come and take the nuclear stuff away from the village.'

At the end of last April, Husham Abdul Malik, a former Iraqi nuclear inspector, came to the village and warned the people about the yellow cake. Now he works as a translator with US soldiers who wear radiation patches while guarding Tuwaitha. Standing outside Dhia's house, he looks sceptically at the blowing dust he believes is potentially radioactive.

'The effect of the yellow cake will appear in a year or two. They need medication right now and they are not getting it - all the Americans did was buy back the barrels.'

He advises the villagers to drink a lot of milk because the calcium compounds with uranium.

'No - they will never find weapons of mass destruction. Saddam wanted a bomb but all he did was propaganda,' he says.

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 6:28 PM

Dark heart of the American dream

It's the most polluted state in the planet's most powerful country. Ed Vulliamy goes into George Bush's backyard to reveal how big oil got in bed with big politics and the price paid by the little people

Sunday June 16, 2002
The Observer

There is a perverse beauty to the landscape arraigned below the iron bridge where Highway 255 strides the Houston Ship Channel: great towers of light and fire as far as the eye can behold; sinewy steel piping, plumes of smoke and flame twinkling into a Texas twilight coloured by a shroud of pollution hanging from the sky. The awesome prepotency of this smokescape is no illusion, for this is an epicentre of power, oil capital of the Western world and the most industrialised corner of the United States. It is also the capital of a power machine perfected in Texas, elevated to rule the nation and now unchallenged across the planet. A machine that operates in perpetual motion - an equilibrium of interests - between industry and politics. LaNell Anderson, former Republican voter, businesswoman and real-estate broker who lived many years in this land of smokestacks and smog, calls it 'vending-machine politics: you puts your money in and you gets your product out'.

'We don't see ourselves as a dynasty,' said George Bush Sr as his son launched the election campaign that won him the current presidency, raiding father's Rolodex to do so. 'We don't feel entitled to anything.' And yet at no point in the past 50 years - the half-century since 1952 which defines the modern age - has there not been a Bush in a governor's mansion (in Texas or Florida), on Capitol Hill or in the White House - and usually more than one of those at a time. The 'vending machine' is a single family whose tango with the powers which illuminate this endless horizon of light and flame is a dance around every corner in the labyrinth of Texan and now national - indeed global - politics. 'Everything they learned when they started out in west Texas,' says Dr Neil Carman, once a regulator of pollution in the state, 'they applied to the governor's mansion, the nation and the world... Power in America is not so much about George W Bush, it's about the people from Texas who put him there.'

This is the dynasty's throne, the state whose highways are lined with the spirited advice 'Don't Mess With Texas' (originally the slogan of an anti-litter campaign). As if litter would make much difference: Texas counts the worst pollution record in the US, top in the belching of toxic chemicals and carcinogens into the air, top in chemical spills, top in ozone pollution, top in carbon-dioxide emissions, top for mercury emission, top in clean-water violations, top in the production of hazardous waste. Houston overtook Los Angeles for the coveted title of 'most polluted city' in the early 90s.

'You are looking at the biggest oil refinery in the world,' indicates LaNell Anderson. She refers to the edifice that is the 3,000-acre Exxon Mobil plant at Baytown, near Houston, producer of 507,800 barrels a day. Here begins a story of both dynasty and destiny, for it was on this spot in 1917 that the Bush family's oil connection was forged - where the Humble Oil company, which struck black gold in the Houston suburb of that name, took root, later to be- come the Exxon behemoth. Humble's founder, William Stamps Farish, went on to become president of Standard Oil. His daughter became a friend of George Bush Sr and his grandson William Jr was taken in 'almost like family' (said Barbara Bush) while campaigning for George Sr's entrée into Washington Senatorial politics in 1964. Farish Jr claims to have been the first man to whom Bush Sr confided his ambition to be president one day, and was last year named US Ambassador to London.

At first, Anderson welcomed the benefits to a community of the 200 oil-related industries relocated to the Houston area by the time she and her second husband set up home in a suburb wedged between Exxon and the Lyondell chemical plant. Neither she nor he had any history of disease in their families. But in 1985, her husband's daughter gave birth to a girl, Alyssa, with a rare liver disease - she died aged six months. In 1986, Anderson's mother became ill and died of bone cancer a year later. The following year, Anderson and her sister were diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, as was a granddaughter in 1992, and an older sister with Crohn's disease. In 1991, her father died from emphysema; a year later the mother of Alyssa gave birth to a son immediately diagnosed with severe asthma. Anderson connects the litany of disease with mishaps by her industrial neighbours. She paraphrases their attitude thus: 'If someone doesn't like it, they can sue us if they can - and since we have more money than God, we will win.'

A thumbnail sketch of politics and the environment in the United States today depicts oil as the lifeblood running through every vein of an administration forging ahead with its energy policy. The White House has just been forced to disclose (after being faced with a Congressional subpoena) that it drew up a national energy plan based on increased production without regard to the environment or conservation, having failed to consult with anyone other than its friends among the producers themselves, notably the disgraced Enron. This despite the fact that an energy crisis in California last summer caused most analysts to draw the opposite conclusion, stressing the need to curb a gas-guzzling America.

At the hub of this turning wheel of influence is Vice President Dick Cheney, fresh into office from his post as chief executive of Halliburton, the world's second-largest oil-drilling services company, where he netted a personal fortune of $36m in the year before leaving, with help from contacts accumulated while serving under George Bush Sr. Just last week, however, Halliburton joined Enron in coming under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for the same system of publishing inflated revenues - 'aggressive accounting' - for which Enron has become a synonym for shame. These alleged misdeeds took place during Cheney's directorship. The company also faces a floodtide of civil lawsuits over asbestosis_ unless a model can be found (as has been established in Texas) to make such resort to the law nigh impossible for anyone without money.

The entwinement of the Bush dynasty with the energy barons of Texas has apparently humble beginnings, in the Lone Star State's wild west, on the plains around Midland and Odessa. This is barren land across which dust devils fly and trains rumble like iron snakes. This is where George Bush Sr was sent by his father, Senator Prescott Bush, to a trainee job with the International Derrick and Equipment Company, a subsidiary of Dresser Industries, controlled by the Bush family and selling more oil rigs than anyone in the world. (Dresser later became absorbed by Halliburton.)

The world first heard of Odessa on that fateful day in December 1998 when Bush Jr was governor of Texas and the sky turned black after an 'upset' at the Huntsman chemical plant literally on the wrong side of the railroad tracks it shares with poor housing, where Mexicans and blacks live. (An 'upset' is an unplanned accident releasing pollution, not part of the plant's normal running procedure, and which does not count in its regulatory tally.) Lucia Llanez, who lives in this tightly knit community of bungalows between plant and railroad, will never forget this one: 'It was dark all over; cars on the Interstate slowing down and putting their lights on because they couldn't see, though it was day. There was a rumbling like trains that rattled the windows, and people were going to hospital for watering eyes, allergies and problems breathing. The cloud stayed two weeks.'

The story of Huntsman goes back to the days of Bush Sr's arrival, when Odessa was a town of what retired fireman Don Dangerfield calls 'wildcatters'. In the 40s, the US Air Force bombed deep holes in the giant Permian oil basin in a search for oil which then attracted a stampede of speculators (including those from Humble) who would, recalls Dangerfield, 'spend the nights in a hotel, the End of the Golden West, and gamble their lots in rooms so thick with cigar smoke you could hardly see'. Among them was a man he remembers well: John Sam Shepherd, a former attorney general of Texas and member of the White Citizens Council - a political wing of the Ku Klux Klan - disgraced by a land scandal and come to seek his fortune out West by setting up the El Paso Products company, later Huntsman.

George Bush landed in this mayhem but quickly decamped 20 miles north to Midland, where new millionaires like him established a country club, a Harvard and a Yale club, met at the Petroleum Club and played golf on irrigated lawns. Midland was, recalls Gene Collins, a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Odessam 'one of two towns in America with a Rolls-Royce dealership and more millionaires per head than anywhere'. This was where Bush Sr built his oil fortune, launched a political career on its shoulders and raised his son George W Bush in the art and language of power he now feigns not to speak. The story of how Bush Sr constructed his empire is well known, as is that of how his son George W was groomed to follow in his footsteps. Less widely broadcast, however, are the depths and intricacies of a system the Bush family built in bonding with the energy industry, as the dynastic machine elevated its methods from Odessa to the Senate, the governor's mansion in Austin, the oil centres of Houston and Dallas, the White House and thereafter the globe.

Neil Carman has a professorial air to him that belies the sharpness of the surgical blade with which he tries to operate on 'Toxic Texas'. Originally a plant biologist, he was an investigator for the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission (TNRCC), responsible for issuing permits for agreed levels of pollution and enforcing environmental law. In 1989, he took on the General Tire and Rubber Company for 'systematic violations'.

The firm hired a lobbyist, Larry Feldcamp, from the Baker Botts law firm whose senior partner, James Baker III, was secretary of state to then president George Bush Sr and who later, as an attorney, secured the delivery of the state of Florida for Bush Jr during last year's election recounts. Baker Botts advertises itself as a 'full service firm', counting Shell, Mobil, Union Carbide, Huntsman, Amoco on its books. The other law firm indivisible from the energy lobby and the Bush fiefdom is Vinson & Elkins, which acts for both Enron and the Alcoa aluminium giant, whose former chief executive Paul O'Neill is now US Treasury Secretary. Between these law firms and the regulatory body supposed to face them down, says Dr Carman, 'there's a revolving door. Feldcamp's place was taken recently by the most active attorney on the oil scene, Pamela Giblin - one of the TNRCC's first appointees.'

Carman resigned because 'all they had to do was hire people like Feldcamp and you were off the case. They did not deny permits - they must have issued 50,000 permits for air pollution during my time and refused only two, on occasions when the public raised hell. And they don't revoke them - it's not like drunk driving: if you get caught, they just keep reissuing. They used to refer to these places as "industrial areas", as if that meant they were outside the law. I called them "sacrifice zones".'

There is another problem, unique to Texas: the 'grandfathering' rule. Grandfathering dates back to the Texas Clean Air Act of 1971, exempting existing installations from compliance with new regulations. The idea was that they would be modernised or become obsolete and close. In the event, firms found that not being obliged to spend on pollution control gave them a competitive edge, and nearly three decades later, grandfathering accounted for more than 1,000 plants and 35 per cent of all pollution in Texas. Nevertheless, in the early 90s, the TNRCC began to toughen its stance in accordance with a more aggressive federal approach to pollution by the new Clinton administration. Then, in 1994, Texas went to the polls to elect a new governor - 'And when Bush took over,' says Carman, 'everything changed.'

Two groups based in Austin - Texans for Public Justice (TPJ) and Public Research Works (PRW) - crunched the statistics on the wave of money on which George W Bush sailed into the governor's mansion. It was what Andrew Wheat of the TPJ calls 'something unheard of in Texas or anywhere else: $42m on two campaigns'. Grandfathered polluters poured $10.2m into the campaign coffers between 1993 and 1998, led by what PRW calls the 'dirty 30', including Exxon, Shell, Amoco, Enron and the Alcoa aluminium giant. Bush himself received $1.5m from 55 grandfathered companies, led by Enron, with a handsome $348,500 top-up from the man he calls Kenny Boy - Kenneth Lay, the company's chief executive, currently under criminal investigation.

Wheat's analysis of the new governor's 'personal time' shows a revolving door for campaign donors and the energy industry. Andrew Barrett, Bush's in-house environmental policy advisor, began daily visits to the TNRCC in preparation for the appointment of new commissioners: Ralph Marquez, lobbyist for the Texas Chemical Council and former executive of the Monsanto chemical firm, and Barry McBee, attorney with the law firm Thompson & Knight, a major contributor to Bush funds with a host of oil-industry clients.

Legislation based on the notion of 'self-regulation' followed: a law enabling companies to audit their own pollution records provided they reported them, in exchange for which there would be absolute protection from public disclosure. Big oil was delighted, as a memo obtained by an environmentalist group, the Texas SEED Coalition, illustrated: a record of a gathering in June 1977 at Exxon in Houston by 40 representatives of the Texas oil and gas industries - written by one of their number - said 'the "insiders" from oil and gas believe that the governor's office will persuade the TNRCC to accept whatever program is developed between the industry group and the governor's office'.

It was not until Bush became president that, in its 2001 state legislature, Texas finally decided to rein in the 'grandfathered' plants. A bill gave them until 2007 to come into line with federal law or shut down. Even then, there was a legal challenge to the TNRCC's science from the Houston Business Partnership, recently entrusted with millions in federal money to clean up the Gulf coastline. The partnership is a high-octane chamber of commerce, throwing up a few familiar names: Exxon, Conoco, Enron, James Baker's law firm Baker Botts - and George Bush Sr.

Most important of all - and best hidden - was Bush's programme for Tort Reform. It was this that his father's advisor Karl Rove (dispatched to steer Bush's presidential campaign and now the White House itself) insisted the new governor make his hallmark, and this is potentially the dynasty's greatest gift to big oil. Put simply, Tort Reform means making it harder for citizens to sue corporations. TPJ calculated that business interests specifically isolating Tort Reform on their political agenda poured money into Bush's gubernatorial campaigns. Soon after being elected governor, says Andrew Wheat, Bush declared Tort Reform an 'emergency issue'.

This meant appointing a judge to the Texas supreme court whom President Bush is tipped to bring aboard the Supreme Court in Washington (to which, some say, he owes his presidency). Alberto Gonzalez wrote a decision soon after his appointment to the Texas court which made it all but impossible for citizens to bring class actions. 'The result,' says Shawn Isbell, a lawyer working on environmental cases, 'is that it will simply be too expensive to bring cases against the corporations.'

Another ruling, says Sandra McKenzie, the lawyer who fought a long and bitter battle against the Formosa Plastics firm, stipulates that 'anyone trying to prove a personal chemical injury had to show that other people in a similar situation had suffered the same reaction, according to a study in a published journal'. The new precedents, says McKenzie, 'changed the laws to establish a no-compromise, "take no prisoners" approach by the Bushes'.

In 1989, George Bush presented the Governor's Award for Environ mental Excellence to the Valero chemical refining company. Foremost in the minds of the proud executives at the ceremony in Austin's luxury Four Seasons Hotel was their 'refinery of the future' at Corpus Christi, on the Gulf, at the far end of the coastal strip that runs through Houston to the Louisiana border.

Alfred Williams gets a better view of the refinery of the future across the freeway from the garden of his mobile home than Governor Bush did from the Four Seasons. He can smell it better too - the inimitable stench on the muggy delta air that signifies the cooking up of cheap crude-oil 'feed stock' to produce its chemical by-product and treating the neighbourhood to a dose of sulphur dioxide.

When Williams, an ex-Vietnam Marine, moved here in 1972, 'this was all farmland'. He now delivers an impassioned requiem for his garden, with its peach trees dead or buckling over. The light of a quicksilver moon catches the plume of sulphur along what they call Refinery Row.

'I'm in my golden years,' he reflects. 'But I can't sell my house because no bank will give a loan without 40 per cent down. And they won't relocate me, as I'd do if they offered.

'It started with having to wipe residue from off of my car. Then the iron on my rooftop here started to get corroded, and the trees were dying. Sometimes I have to come inside because my eyes are burning.'

Williams filed a civil suit against Valero, steered by attorney Shawn Isbell. The court in Corpus denied Williams class action status in accordance with the zeitgeist, but Isbell managed to discover how the refinery of the future was so poorly crafted that Valero had (unsuccessfully) sued the companies which had built it. She also found out how the Texas system of overlooking 'upsets' works. Since 1994, Valero had suffered more than 480 'upsets', but the TNRCC records each set of emissions separately - for example, Valero's sulphur-dioxide emissions for 1977 show up on the commission's website as 166.4 tons, while the reality including 'upsets' is closer to 700 tons. Nevertheless, says Isbell, 'I've seen the TNRCC go harder after a pig farmer than I have after these kinds of companies.'

Williams keeps a notebook by his phone to record the 'upsets' over the road. He reports them to the TNRCC. But, he says, 'I call them rainbows: they are shut at night and on the weekend when the sulphur is released, and they only come when the storm has come and gone.'

Cornelius Harmon is a cab driver in Corpus, and takes a drive along Refinery Row, down a road he calls the 'buffer zone'. It divides a wasteland of former housing - where those relocated because of pollution by another plant, Koch, once lived - from the mostly black and Hispanic community of Hillcrest. 'Are you gonna tell me,' posits Harmon, 'that the hand of God Almighty drew a line down this road and He says: "Over yonder side is contaminated and this side is fit for folks to live ?" And what have we got here? Well, I'll be doggone if it's not a school, with children playing in the smell. The people who run these things, they give our kids a new pair of sneakers and go to church and think they're going to heaven. But at the pearly gates, they're going to find St Peter in his Afro saying: "Whassup cuz? Seems like you're trying to get into the wrong place."'

Time came for destiny to fulfil itself, for the son to stand for the high office in Washington which the Bush dynasty and its backers saw as having been usurped by Bill Clinton. The story of what carried George W Bush to the White House is well known: the most ruthlessly efficient campaigning machine ever assembled - by Karl Rove - with all the family's best connections filling a treasure chest that broke all records. As they returned to number-crunching in Austin, Texans for Public Justice and Public Research Works found little to surprise them save the machine's speed and efficacy. Within a month, Bush had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, with Enron leading the field and two law firms giving $146,900 - most prominently Vinson and Elkins, attorneys to Enron and the Alcoa aluminium giant, and James Baker's company, lawyers to the oil industry.

When Bush came to pick his cabinet, almost all pivotal positions went to Bush Sr's inner sanctum, apart from the posts of commerce secretary (Don Evans, longtime buddy of Bush Jr's and a fellow Midland oil man) and treasury secretary (Paul O'Neill, currently touring the globe with Bono of U2, and former chief executive of Alcoa, the world's biggest producer of aluminium).

Alcoa held a stockholders meeting to send O'Neill off with a torrent of eulogies and an annual pay packet worth $36m, but three speakers spoiled the party. Two were trade unionists from O'Neill's troubled plant at Ciudad Acuna in Mexico, challenging the chief executive's claim that conditions at their factory were so good 'they can eat off the floor'. The third was the soft-spoken Texan Ron Giles, drawing attention to the biggest of the state's 'grandfathered' polluters - the Alcoa smelting plant at Rockdale. If the Rockdale plant were a single state, it would count 40th for pollution among the 50 in the union, belching more than 100,000 tons of toxins in 1997.

The smokestacks of the largest aluminium smelter in North America fit incongruously into the pastoral ranch land northeast of Austin. And they seem especially odd as backdrop to the 300-acre ranch where Wayne Brinkley's family has raised cattle since the late 1800s, but over which hangs a stench wafting across the moonscape of Alcoa's lignite mine.

Brinkley looks as much the Texan as President Bush in his boots and Stetson - 'Only difference is,' he says, 'I am one, and Bush is not.' In his office is a hog, stuffed and mounted, and an awesome collection of vintage knives and firearms. On his desk is a survey by the independent Research Analysis Consultations group showing that concentrations of magnesium, calcium and aluminium register 'very high' around Brinkley's barn, and sodium and titanium over his fields. 'My son had cancer when he was just a young kid,' he says in a voice like sandpaper. 'They tried to buy us out. They keep offering various deals saying I can't talk to anyone about this for 35 years, and then they changed it to forever. But why should I leave? My family's been here 100 years; they've been here 50. They should do it by the book, and keep it clean for the rest of us.'

Alcoa continues regardless, feted by Wall Street for 'dazzling' returns. But in the last light of a warm evening, quiet rebellion stirs in the community room of a little town called Elgin. A group of local people, Neighbors for Neighbors, have obtained records that show Alcoa to be cheating, making improvements to its production plant worth some $45m without parallel investments in pollution control. As a direct result of the Neighbors' exposé, the company was investigated by a TNRCC with no place to hide this time.

Neighbors for Neighbors, enjoying statewide coverage and acclaim for its pluck, is itself suing the company. Billie Woods, Neighbors' president, says that Alcoa has responded by pressing ahead with its plans for a new lignite mine that would carve up 15,000 acres of farmland. The company has also made court applications to enter and search the homes of Neighbors activists. The request was denied, but the matter moved the usually conservative Daily Texan newspaper to demand: 'Stop the Alcoa Gestapo!'

Yesterday Texas, today Washington, tomorrow the world. With Bush family business back home in the US presidency, it now moves, in the form of the father, to the apex of global finance. The Carlyle Group defines the next phase of power: a Washington-based private equity fund with a difference. It is headed by Frank Carlucci, former CIA director and defense secretary under Ronald Reagan and lifelong friend of George Bush Sr. Bush (also once director of the CIA) sits next to Carlucci on the board with a portfolio specialising in Asia and does not hesitate to communicate with his son on concerns of regional relevance to Carlyle such as Afghanistan or the Pacific Rim. Bush Jr was once chairman of a Carlyle subsidiary making in-flight food.

On Carlucci's other flank is the ubiquitous James Baker III. Chairman of Carlyle Europe is John Major. The group's new asset management is headed by Afsaneh Beschloss, former treasurer of the World Bank. Carlyle has grown quickly to be worth some $12bn, specialising in energy and defence, with particular attention to the oil-producing Gulf states. Among its most eager investors is Prince Bandar, Saudi ambassador to Washington and his father Prince Sultan, the kingdom's defence minister. The group's most spectacular recent coup was to reap $400m in a stock sale of its subsidiary United Defence Industries, maker of the Crusader artillery system which most military experts argued was redundant, but which won $470m in development money from the Pentagon and whose future in the US arsenal still hangs in the balance after a series of recent meetings between Carlucci and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Within a month of 11 September last year, Carlucci was meeting with Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, and 10 days later offered an assessment which exactly predicted the endless-war scenario: 'We as Americans,' he said, 'have to recognise that terrorism is more or less a permanent situation.'

'What's the secret?' chided William Conway, a co-founder of the group. 'I don't think we have any secrets. We are a group of businessmen who have made a huge amount of money for our investors.' 'I never bought into this conspiracy theory about the Bush family, the energy companies or the Carlyle Group,' says Michael King, seasoned political editor of the Austin Chronicle , who has observed the phenomenon for decades. 'It is perfectly clear what they're aiming at from what they do in public: managing the global economy to their own advantage, and doing a pretty good job of it.'

On 11 September, while Al-Qaeda's planes slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Carlyle Group hosted a conference at a Washington hotel. Among the guests of honour was a valued investor: Shafig bin Laden, brother to Osama.
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 6:24 PM

Bush under fire

Leaks, scandal, war and a floundering economy are rocking the foundations of a once invincible White House. Paul Harris reports from New York on why the Democrats suddenly scent victory

Sunday October 5, 2003
The Observer

The first email was already waiting for most White House staffers when they switched on their computers last Tuesday. It was terse. The Justice Department was investigating the leak of the identity of an undercover CIA officer. Staff were ordered to 'preserve all materials that might be relevant'.

A second email, sent late last Tuesday night, was longer but brutally specific. It demanded emails, phone records, letters, diary entries and calendars all be saved. Just to hammer home the point, the email added 'even if (their) destruction might otherwise be permitted'.

The message was simple; a witch hunt is going on in Washington. A fall guy - or two - needs to be found to explain who blew the cover of CIA operative Valerie Plame as an act of revenge against her anti-war husband.

It sounds like an obscure row, but it is not. The scandal goes to the heart of an administration that is now widely seen as in crisis. Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, had gone public with allegations that the Bush administration had exaggerated its case for war against Iraq. In the Bush White House there can be no bigger sin.

Now Plame's career is over and other whistleblowers may think twice about voicing their criticism in public. But the leak has backfired spectacularly. The word inside Washington's gossipy Beltway is of 'Wilsongate'. This was no ordinary piece of spin. A crime has been committed; exposing a spy carries up to 10 years in jail. Somebody will have to pay.

But, more importantly, the scandal has cracked the illusion that the Bush administration is invincible. Deep fissures have been exposed at the highest level of a government that only a year ago appeared certain to secure a second term. A spotlight has been turned on the murky goings-on at the heart of the White House political operation and it has revealed a history of dirty tricks and webs of political patronage that could compromise the investigation. It could not have come at a worse time.

Bush was already in trouble. The daily killing of GIs in Iraq has sapped support for the war. Bush's poll figures are starting to sink alarmingly. Last week's CIA update on the hunt for weapons of mass destruction drew a blank. And - perhaps most importantly of all - America's economy is failing to create the jobs that are desperately needed in key battleground states in next year's elections.

For Democrats, stunned by the turnaround in fortune, there is now a strong smell of blood in the political waters. Whisper the possibility; could Bush be a one-term President?

'It is great schadenfreude ,' said Will Marshall, head of the influential Democratic think-tank, the Public Policy Institute. 'Now the chickens are finally coming home to roost.'

In a week of frenzied allegations, denials and outrage, one key figure has not spoken; Valerie Plame. Spooks rarely go public. But the pictures of her on Wilson's desk in his Washington office show a glamourous 40-year-old blonde - the mother of three-year-old twins. Until this summer her friends around Washington thought that she was an energy consultant. Now they know that she is a spy.

The facts of the scandal are simple. Wilson was sent to Niger in February 2002 to investigate allegations that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium in Africa. He concluded that the story was a crude fake and passed the information on to the CIA. But a year later Bush used the allegations prominently to justify going to war against Saddam. Wilson went public with his doubts in July and a week later at least two administration officials touted Plame's identity around six Washington reporters. One - conservative columnist Robert Novak - took the bait.

But, as the CIA referred the matter to the Justice Department last week, the simple leak exploded into a scandal. There is more than Plame's identity at risk. As a covert operative she made trips abroad to exploit her expertise in unconventional weapons. Her network of foreign agents could now be dangerously exposed. 'Lives are at stake. Outing someone like this is a "holy grail" issue for the CIA,' said Mel Goodman, a former senior CIA analyst.

Relations between the administration and the intelligence community are at a low ebb. 'It is bad. There were already so many other tensions before this week,' said Richard Betts, a consultant to the National Security Council.

Bush's administration was quickly forced on to the defensive. The flat denials at the start of the week changed instead to a promise of full co-operation. Tuesday is now the deadline for White House officials to hand over all their documents. Staff at the State and Defence departments have received similar instructions. Then the interviews will begin and the investigators have the power to bring in lie detectors.

The key question is simply who authorised the leak. Wilson himself has pointed the finger in one direction - Bush's special political adviser, Karl Rove. He described last week how several reporters had told him that Rove had said: 'Joe Wilson's wife is fair game.' Rove has denied the charge. Presidential spokesman Scott McClellan dismissed the notion. 'This is ridiculous,' he said.

But the allegation has thrust Rove into the spotlight from the back corridors and smoky rooms where he does his usual work as Bush's most trusted fixer and adviser. Few political relationships - except perhaps Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell - are as close in modern times as Rove and Bush.

He is a political animal who has been the guiding force in propelling Bush first to the governorship of Texas and then to the White House. He is a lifelong Republican and ruthless to his enemies. Bush dubs him 'the man with the plan' and the 'boy genius'. His enemies deride him as 'Bush's brain'.

But Rove has a murky history. In the 1970s he was investigated for running 'dirty tricks' seminars for Republican activists at the time of Watergate. In 1986, while running a Texas governorship campaign, he announced that a bugging device had been found in his office. The discovery hurt Rove's Democrat opponent, who promptly lost the election. Yet it was never discovered who planted the bug and - despite his denials - it is widely believed that Rove put it in his office himself.

One man who has fallen victim to Rove is Jim Hightower, who faced off against Rove's Republican candidate in a Texan election in 1989. Rove leaked extensively to the local press that Hightower was facing an FBI investigation. The allegations decimated Hightower's polls and he went on to lose the election. Hightower was never charged, by the FBI or anyone else.

For Hightower, last week's scandal bears all the hallmarks of Rove's tactics. 'No kind of political action like this is going to be taken without Rove's office putting the stamp of approval on it,' he told The Observer. 'He may not have made the actual phone calls, but that's irrelevant.'

Critics accuse Rove of bringing such tactics into the White House. Certainly he has made the Bush administration one of the most leak-proof ever to take power in Washington. Unlike the more open - and leaky - Clinton era, speaking to reporters is seen as a punishable offence for many Bush officials. Many announcements of bad news - such as last week's poverty increase - are now released late on Friday ahead of the weekend newspapers, which are not as widely read in America as in Britain.

But there are other possible culprits. Some commentators are pointing to a growing rift between Bush and the hawkish wing of his administration in the shape of Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. While Bush has recently sought to distance his government from linking Iraq with the 11 September terrorist attacks, Cheney has persisted.

It was also members of Cheney's staff, including top aide Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, who pushed the Niger uranium story long after Wilson had investigated the matter. Cheney and Libby are both said to have been furious with Wilson's decision to go public. 'I think the signal could have come from the Vice-President to go after Wilson, to make sure that no one else speaks out,' Mel Goodman said.

But whoever was responsible for the leak, it certainly came from somewhere near the top. In an operation as tightly controlled as the Bush administration, it is unthinkable that this was a junior staff member working 'freelance'.'This is not a normal leak, this is scorched-earth politics,' said Larry Haas, a White House communications aide under Bill Clinton. 'This kind of strategic decision is taken at a very senior level.'

But the investigation of the leak has also exposed another facet of the tightly knit Bush administration - patronage. In resisting calls for a special counsel, the investigation is in the hands of Attorney-General John Ashcroft. Bush appointed Ashcroft to his job, meaning he is now effectively being asked to investigate his own boss. Rove has also worked for several of Ashcroft's campaigns in the past. He was also influential in getting him appointed to his current post when Bush's first choice fell through. 'They will never appoint a special counsel. This shows ruthlessness gone awry,' said Joe Conason, author of Big Lies, a book on the Bush administration and its use of the media.

Now an administration that seemed unbeatable after 11 September is facing a need to act. What the mounting casualties in Iraq could not achieve, Bush's sliding poll numbers may do. Rove, whose instinct for the public mood is renowned, will know that some form of change is going to be needed soon. 'It will either be personnel or policy,' said Goodman. If it's the former, then leading hawks such as Cheney and Rumsfeld, or their top officials, could soon be fearing for their own jobs.

Yet the crisis stretches far beyond the Beltway. The down-at-heel city of Akron, Ohio, is a long way from the frenzied media circus of Washington, but the people losing their jobs there are just as much of a worry to Bush's team. Or they should be. 'Bush doesn't have a plan, he doesn't even have a clue,' said David Prentice, 52, who has worked in a Goodyear factory in Akron for the past 33 years but now fears for his future.

Ohio is a key battleground state in next year's election. No Republican President has ever been re-elected without winning the state. Bush's campaign team knows that and the President has visited it 11 times so far, but the message from voters like Prentice is that these tough, blue-collar Republicans are starting to get angry.

In the past week two more factories around Akron have shut, costing 140 jobs and laying off many of Prentice's friends. He had wanted to retire in a few years but now does not dare. 'I have played by the rules all my life, but now I will try and work until I'm in my sixties,' he said. 'I just don't know if my factory will still be here then.'

America is getting poorer. Census figures, released a week ago, show that 1.7 million more people have dropped below the poverty line over the past year. Nearly 34.6 million Americans are living in poverty. The middle classes and the Midwest - people like Prentice and places like Ohio - have suffered badly. Income levels for the middle class have dipped 1.1 per cent, after rising throughout the 1990s. At the same time, Bush's tax cuts have turned a budget surplus into a predicted deficit of $480 billion for next year. The cumulative deficit over the next decade is now expected to hit a staggering $1.4 trillion.

This is the so-called 'jobless recovery'. Although many economic indicators reveal an improvement, heaving the country out of the after-effects of recession, they fail to create enough employment.

The bare statistics are shocking; employment growth is the lowest for any recovery period since labour statistics were first kept in 1939. More than three million jobs have been lost since Bush took power in 2001, a record not seen since the days of President Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression.

Along with Wilsongate, Iraq and WMD, the economy can now be added to the list of woes on which Bush's administration is being attacked. Certainly the 10 Democrat candidates battling for the right to face off against Bush next year have suddenly realised that capturing the White House is no longer a dream; it is a real possibility. They have gone on the offensive mercilessly, including against each other.

'There has been a huge shift in the national atmosphere. It is no longer considered unpatriotic to ask questions, to be critical,' Conason said.

Certainly the polls are not helping Bush. Last week statistics showed that six out of 10 Americans - and four out of 10 Republicans - believe the economy is worse now than when Bush took over. His approval rating is only 51 per cent, down from the the high eighties in the wake of 11 September and from the high sixties at the beginning of the Iraq war.

But most worrying of all is the issue of trust and national security. Wilsongate, the lack of weapons of mass destruction and the botched intelligence leading up to the Iraq war have all harmed the Republicans on issues previously considered their home territory. It is no coincidence that the one Democrat - Wesley Clark - who beats Bush in national polls is also a four-star general with an anti-war position.

So far the Democrats have done well in tapping the growing anti-war sentiment of the nation. The other front-runner, Howard Dean, has built much of his support on his anti-war stance. Party planners know that if they can also tap into other issues, such as the economy, with equal success, then next year's election could be there for the taking. 'Bush is really starting to look like the sort of President he was on 10 September 2001,' Conason said. 'Very vulnerable.'

But it is not over yet, not by a long shot. Bush's electoral weapons are still formidable. Last Tuesday - as his staff were being told to preserve their phone records - Bush himself was in Chicago on other business. Election business. He held a 12-hour stopover, speaking at two receptions in the city. Each of the 1,700 supporters who came to see him - and were treated to a cold sandwich and a 28- minute speech - paid $3,000 for the privilege. That helped to raise $5.3m in a single day, a personal record for a President who has already broken all fundraising records.

There are still 13 months to go until the election. 'A month can be an eternity in this game,' said Haas and Bush's team is already preparing its battle plan. The team is expected to raise between $200m and $250m for its electoral war chest -likely to be four or five times larger than any Democratic opponent. The Democratic field is still weak and divided. With 10 candidates running, only Clark and perhaps Dean have any sort of national name recognition. It is hard to beat an incumbent President when you come from nowhere. Bush's approval ratings may be low, but they are not as low as Clinton's, and even Ronald Reagan's, sank before they went on to win second terms. The jobless recovery may finally start to produce jobs; figures released on Friday indicated the first increase in eight months.

And then, of course, there is Rove; the man with the plan. It has been a long time since any candidate of Rove's has lost an election. It is a certainty that he will do anything he can to continue that winning streak.

At the moment, Bush's team is reeling. It is taking hits. It knows it now has a fight on its hands. But if there is one thing the Bush administration knows how to do, it is how to fight.

What commentators say about George W Bush

'Bush and his crew are looking desperate as the Iraq occupation becomes more of a problem ... Even Republicans on Capitol Hill are restless over his $87 billion budget request for Iraq ... people are questioning Bush's credibility over Iraq. They should'
Leader in the Nation

'Bush is in a lot of trouble. I think they know that now. They could lose this election'
Mel Goodman, senior fellow, Centre for International Policy

'This particular squad of scoundrels is desperate. They are no longer able to bludgeon dissenters with facts; the justifications Bush and his co-conspirators used for this pre-emptive war have been revealed as dissembling, distortion and outright lies'
Columnist Cynthia Tucker, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

'He wasn't involved. The President knows he wasn't involved. It's simply not true'
Scott McClellan, presidential press spokesman, defending Karl Rove from leak allegations

'A little cloud of illegality is forming over George W. Bush's White House. If the President does not act quickly to dissipate it, he may well be swimming for his political life in the deluge of accusations that surely will follow'
Leader in The Cleveland Plain Dealer
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 6:11 PM

Accused Graduates Remain in Military
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

DENVER, Oct. 4 (AP) — Sixteen Air Force Academy graduates accused of rape or sexual assault while attending the academy are still on active duty as officers in the United States military, the Air Force has said.

A total of 18 cadets accused of sex crimes from 1993 to 2002 were allowed to graduate, Lt. Col. Dewey Ford told The Rocky Mountain News in an article published on Saturday. One has died and another left the Air Force, Colonel Ford said.

The Air Force released reports on the graduates to the newspaper and to Senator Wayne Allard, Republican of Colorado, on Friday after they requested it. Mr. Allard said all the cases should be reviewed to "make sure nobody bargained their way out when they should have faced a penalty for what they did."

None of the 18 graduates were identified. Of the 16 still in the military, one is in the Army and 15 are in the Air Force.

Some were disciplined for misconduct, according to the reports. One was acquitted in a court-martial and is now an Air Force officer, while another is still under investigation.

Many of the reported assaults involved alcohol, and in some there were disputes about whether sexual contact was consensual. In one case, the accuser recanted, the reports said.

Since the sexual assault scandal surfaced this year, the Air Force has replaced the academy's top four commanders and demoted one before he retired. Air Force Secretary James G. Roche's nomination to become Army secretary has been held up over questions about his handling of the scandal.

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 5:59 PM

A Missing Statistic: U.S. Jobs That Went Overseas
By LOUIS UCHITELLE

Published: October 5, 2003

The job market finally showed some life in September, but not enough to sidetrack a growing debate over why employment has failed to rebound nearly two years after the last recession ended. The debate intrudes increasingly on election politics, but in all the heated back and forth, an essential statistic is missing: the number of jobs that would exist in the United States today if so many had not escaped abroad.
Advertisement

The Labor Department, in its numerous surveys of employers and employees, has never tried to calculate this trade-off. But the "offshoring" of work has become so noticeable lately that experts in the private sector are now trying to quantify it.

By these initial estimates, at least 15 percent of the 2.81 million jobs lost in America since the decline began have reappeared overseas. Productivity improvements at home — sustaining output with fewer workers — account for the great bulk of the job loss. But the estimates being made suggest that the work sent overseas has been enough to raise the unemployment rate by four-tenths of a percentage point or more, to the present 6.1 percent.

That leakage fuels the political debate. The Bush administration is pushing the Chinese to allow their currency to rise in value, thus increasing the dollar value of wages in that country, a deterrent to locating work abroad. The Democrats agree, but some also call for trade restrictions, and they attack Republicans for cutting from the budget funds to retrain and support laid-off workers in the United States.

While most of the lost jobs are in manufacturing or in telephone call centers, lately the work sent abroad has climbed way up the skills ladder to include workers like aeronautical engineers, software designers and stock analysts as China, Russia and India, with big stocks of educated workers, merge rapidly into the global labor market.

"All of a sudden you have a huge influx of skilled people; that is a very disruptive process," said Craig R. Barrett, chief executive of Intel, the computer chip manufacturer.

Intel itself has maintained a fairly steady 60 percent of its employees in the United States. But in the past year or so, it has added 1,000 software engineers in China and India, doing work that in the past might have been done by people hired in the United States. "To be competitive, we have to move up the skill chain overseas," Mr. Barrett said.

The trade-off in jobs is not one for one. The work done here by one person often requires two or three less-efficient workers overseas. Even so, given the very low wages, the total saving for an American company can be as much 50 percent for each job shifted, even allowing for the extra cost of transportation, communication and other expenses that would not be needed if the work was done in the United States. That is the message of the nation's management consultants, who are encouraging their corporate clients to take advantage of the multiplying opportunities overseas.

" `Encourage' is a difficult way to put it," said Harold Sirkin, a senior vice president at the Boston Consulting Group. "What we are basically saying is that if your competitors are doing this, you will be at a disadvantage if you don't do it too."

The estimates of job loss from offshoring are all over the lot. They are back-of-the-envelope calculations at best, inferred from trade data and assumptions about the number of American workers needed to produce goods and services now coming from abroad, or no longer exported to a growing consumer market in, say, China.

Among economists and researchers, the high-end estimate comes from Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com, who calculates that 995,000 jobs have been lost overseas since the last recession began in March 2001. That is 35 percent of the total decline in employment since then. While most of the loss is in manufacturing, about 15 percent is among college-trained professionals.

Boeing, for example, employs engineers at a design center in Moscow, while having shrunk its engineering staff in Seattle. Morgan Stanley, the investment firm, is adding jobs in Bombay, but not in New York — employing Indian engineers as well as analysts who collect corporate data and scrutinize balance sheets for stock market specialists in New York.

Near the low end of the job-loss estimates sit John McCarthy, research analyst at Forrester Research Inc., and Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at Global Insights. For them the loss is 500,000 to 600,000 jobs over the past 30 months, again mostly in manufacturing — with Mr. McCarthy suggesting that the 600,000 might turn out to be 800,000. His research focuses more on the future: Starting in January 2000 and running through 2015, globalization of American production will have eliminated 3.3 million jobs at home, he estimates.

Some are trying niche estimates. Roshi Sood, a government analyst at the Gartner Group, for example, estimates roughly that state government cutbacks have pushed overseas the work of 3,400 people once employed in the United States, either on public payrolls or on the payrolls of companies that contract with state government.

In Indiana, for example, the Department of Workforce Development recently chose an Indian company, TCS America, to maintain and update its computer programs, using high-speed telecommunications to carry out the contract. The TCS bid was $8 million below those submitted by two American competitors, Mr. Sood said.

Now political groups are offering estimates. The Progressive Policy Institute, which is affiliated with the Democratic Party, will soon publish its calculation of manufacturing jobs shifted overseas since George W. Bush took office just before the recession began, said Rob Atkinson, a vice president. Not surprisingly, the estimate — imputed from trade data — is on the high side: 800,000 jobs lost to overseas production.




Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top



accesswater2030@yahoo.com 5:47 PM

Greg Palast The Observer - Britain's Premier Sunday Newspaper - Guardian Media Group
Arnold Unplugged - It's hasta la vista to $9 billion if the Governator is selected
Friday, October 3, 2003

It's not what Arnold Schwarzenegger did to the girls a decade back that should raise an eyebrow. According to a series of memoranda our office obtained today, it's his dalliance with the boys in a hotel room just two years ago that's the real scandal.

The wannabe governor has yet to deny that on May 17, 2001, at the Peninsula Hotel in Los Angeles, he had consensual political intercourse with Enron chieftain Kenneth Lay. Also frolicking with Arnold and Ken was convicted stock swindler Mike Milken.

Now, thirty-four pages of internal Enron memoranda have just come through this reporter's fax machine tell all about the tryst between Maria's husband and the corporate con men. It turns out that Schwarzenegger knowingly joined the hush-hush encounter as part of a campaign to sabotage a Davis-Bustamante plan to make Enron and other power pirates then ravaging California pay back the $9 billion in illicit profits they carried off.

Here's the story Arnold doesn't want you to hear. The biggest single threat to Ken Lay and the electricity lords is a private lawsuit filed last year under California's unique Civil Code provision 17200, the "Unfair Business Practices Act." This litigation, heading to trial now in Los Angeles, would make the power companies return the $9 billion they filched from California electricity and gas customers.

It takes real cojones to bring such a suit. Who's the plaintiff taking on the bad guys? Cruz Bustamante, Lieutenant Governor and reluctant leading candidate against Schwarzenegger.

Now follow the action. One month after Cruz brings suit, Enron's Lay calls an emergency secret meeting in L.A. of his political buck-buddies, including Arnold. Their plan, to undercut Davis (according to Enron memos) and "solve" the energy crisis -- that is, make the Bustamante legal threat go away.

How can that be done? Follow the trail with me.

While Bustamante's kicking Enron butt in court, the Davis Administration is simultaneously demanding that George Bush's energy regulators order the $9 billion refund. Don't hold your breath: Bush's Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is headed by a guy proposed by … Ken Lay.

But Bush's boys on the commission have a problem. The evidence against the electricity barons is rock solid: fraudulent reporting of sales transactions, megawatt "laundering," fake power delivery scheduling and straight out conspiracy (including meetings in hotel rooms).

So the Bush commissioners cook up a terrific scheme: charge the companies with conspiracy but offer them, behind closed doors, deals in which they have to pay only two cents on each dollar they filched.

Problem: the slap-on-the-wrist refunds won't sail if the Governor of California won't play along. Solution: Re-call the Governor.

New Problem: the guy most likely to replace Davis is not Mr. Musclehead, but Cruz Bustamante, even a bigger threat to the power companies than Davis. Solution: smear Cruz because -- heaven forbid! -- he took donations from Injuns (instead of Ken Lay).

The pay-off? Once Arnold is Governor, he blesses the sweetheart settlements with the power companies. When that happens, Bustamante's court cases are probably lost. There aren't many judges who will let a case go to trial to protect a state if that a governor has already allowed the matter to be "settled" by a regulatory agency.

So think about this. The state of California is in the hole by $8 billion for the coming year. That's chump change next to the $8 TRILLION in deficits and surplus losses planned and incurred by George Bush. Nevertheless, the $8 billion deficit is the hanging rope California's right wing is using to lynch Governor Davis.

Yet only Davis and Bustamante are taking direct against to get back the $9 billion that was vacuumed out of the state by Enron, Reliant, Dynegy, Williams Company and the other Texas bandits who squeezed the state by the bulbs.

But if Arnold is selected, it's 'hasta la vista' to the $9 billion. When the electricity emperors whistle, Arnold comes -- to the Peninsula Hotel or the Governor's mansion. The he-man turns pussycat and curls up in their lap.

I asked Mr. Muscle's PR people to comment on the new Enron memos -- and his strange silence on Bustamante's suit or Davis' petition. But Arnold was too busy shaving off his Hitlerian mustache to respond.

The Enron memos were discovered by the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, Los Angeles,
www.ConsumerWatchdog.org




Site Design by Creative Constructs - www.CreativeConstructs.com

accesswater2030@yahoo.com 5:03 PM

Factory Closures Devastate U.S. Towns
Sat October 4, 2003 03:42 PM ET
By Andrea Hopkins

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When Jerry Wilmouth moved to
Galesburg, Illinois, five years ago, everyone told him
to get a job at Maytag Corp.'s refrigerator plant.
Maytag paid the best, they said, and the 50-year-old
factory was the lifeblood of the city.

Now, Wilmouth and 379 others are spending their first
week of life after Maytag -- the first of 1,600
workers to be laid off between now and the end of
2004, when the plant closes for good and Maytag moves
the work to Mexico.

The 46-year-old father of three said he has little
hope of finding work in Galesburg to match the $15 an
hour he made on the assembly line, and now his
17-year-old daughter is thinking about joining the
army to pay for college.

"Every decent-paying job in the area is going, going
or already gone and I'm faced with taking a job for
$6, $7, $8 an hour," said Wilmouth.

The loss of 2.5 million manufacturing jobs since
January 2001 has devastated factory towns across
middle America, where once-dominant local employers
are pulling up stakes and heading to Mexico or Asia in
search of lower costs and cheaper labor.

The exodus of 1,600 Maytag jobs is only the tip of the
iceberg in Galesburg. Everyone from sheet metal
suppliers to local firms providing toilet paper and
light bulbs rely on the plant for business in the town
of about 33,700 about 150 miles southwest of Chicago

According to a study by the Institute for Rural
Affairs at Western Illinois University, the Maytag
plant is the dominant industry for nine surrounding
counties. For every Maytag worker laid off, nearly
three other jobs will disappear as the loss of so many
high-paying jobs ripples through the economy -- taking
total jobs losses to 4,166.

"Never in my life have I lived in a place that is sort
of going backwards like this," said Chris Merrett, an
associate professor at the institute.

"Along with agriculture, this kind of manufacturing
was the economic base and those jobs are going
elsewhere."

PINK SLIP DREAMS

Since the end of the 2001 U.S. recession, job losses
have ballooned in many sectors despite economic
growth. This "jobless recovery" has drained one in six
factory jobs, squeezing many of the nation's more
highly paid workers.

Manufacturing pays an average $45,580 in annual wages
-- about 17 percent higher than the average U.S. job,
according to the National Association of
Manufacturers.

The layoffs have carved a swath of unemployment
through the Midwest, where cornfields made way for
factories after World War II as industry shifted from
big cities to comparatively low-cost rural areas.

In Wichita, Kansas, some 11,000 aerospace workers have
lost their jobs since 2001 as employers outsourced
both parts supply and assembly overseas, sideswiping
the local economy.

Carolyn Summers, a 41-year-old mother of two was laid
off from her job at Boeing Co.'s Wichita plant two
years ago, and she mourns the devastation she has
seen.

"I see so many people that I worked with at Boeing,
and they're still unemployed just as I am," said
Summers. She blames free trade and President Bush for
allowing U.S. companies to outsource overseas.

"I wish the government would really see what it is
doing to the American people. We built this country,
and I feel that they're letting it turn into almost a
ghost town," she said.

A single mother, Summers most regrets the impact the
loss her $18.67-an-hour job has had on her 21-year-old
daughter, who was away at college studying nursing
when the pink slip came. She now works at Wal-Mart to
pay for her part-time studies at Wichita's local
community college.

"That's one dream you're always saying -- 'My child is
going to go to college'," lamented Summers. "All my
American dreams just seem to (have been) written on a
pink slip."


accesswater2030@yahoo.com 4:55 PM

Rank and Bile
By Eric Boehlert

Thursday 02 October 2003

G.I.'s speaking out, angry vets signing petitions, generals attacking him. George Bush's once-rosy relationship with the military is turning sour.

Rarely in recent memory has a president seemed to enjoy such a close personal -- and political -- relationship with the U.S. armed forces as President Bush does. A few hundred of Florida's overseas military ballots narrowly helped him become president in 2000, after all. And since Sept. 11, the Bush White House has unleashed the armed forces to wage two wars in two years.

For the first time in a decade, Army generals have become household names, U.S. soldiers have discovered newfound admiration among the general public, and in May, Bush himself donned a flight suit in an elaborate visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln to announce that major fighting in Iraq had ended. Immediately after Bush's whirlwind victory in Iraq, his relationship with the armed forces seemed untouchable.

But in recent months, the GOP and the Bush White House have suddenly faced a new, increasingly chilly reception from men and women in uniform. There are the growing ranks of retired generals who have turned Bush critics, like Gen. Anthony Zinni, former head of the U.S. Central Command and a special envoy to the Middle East. Zinni endorsed Bush in 2000, but recently during a particularly scathing public critique compared Iraq war strategy to a "brain fart" emitted from a Bush "policy wonk."

But perhaps more troubling for Bush is the increasing frustration and anger being voiced by officers and enlisted personnel alike. It's a frustration fueled not only by the unexpectedly difficult military situation in Iraq and the absence of a clear exit strategy, but by broken promises over veterans issues. Could 2004 be the year when the military vote swings to the Democrats? That might seem too farfetched a hope for Democrats, who have watched the military become a solidly Republican bloc over the past 30 years, to the point where a recent study found Republicans outnumber Democrats 8-to-1 among today's officers. But that trend, at least, could very well come to an end -- and the entry of four-star Gen. Wesley Clark into the presidential race as a Democrat and powerful Bush critic surely helps.

"What you have going into 2004 is the potential for some [political] forces, usually pushing in the direction of Republicans, to not be pushing so hard, or some maybe even be pushing towards Democrats," says Peter Feaver, military expert and professor of political science at Duke University. Feaver says Bush starts out with the political support of the armed forces. "But if Iraq worsens -- if Bush faces hostile relations both on the ground overseas and economically at home -- and the Democrats nominate somebody who looks strong on national defense, like Wesley Clark, then the military vote becomes more ambivalent."

It's already easy to spot strains in the once unwavering relationship between the White House and the armed forces. The blunt assessments of the administration are often scathing. "[Bush] pats us on the back with his speeches and stabs us in the back with his actions," Charles Carter, a retired Navy senior chief petty officer, recently told a Knight-Ridder reporter. "I will vote non-Republican in a heartbeat if it continues as is."

A recent posting on a Military.com chat room bulletin board is not atypical: "It is likely a lot of Active and Retired Military who supported this President will find 'staying home' a strong option at the next election. We put our trust in President Bush and he has let us down."

Even more stinging was this first-person Army account: "For the past six months, I have been participating in what I believe to be the great modern lie: Operation Iraqi Freedom." That was published last month in the Peoria Journal Star, by a U.S. soldier named Tim Predmore serving on active duty with the 101st Airborne Division, based near Mosul in northern Iraq. (And there is this complaint of an ex-G.I. whose wife was deployed.) The harsh words from military men are especially poignant "when you consider how Bush became president by a few military absentee ballots," says retired U.S. Army Col. David Hackworth. "I suspect a huge number of those overseas ballots will not be marked Republican in 2004."

The reason is simple, says Hackworth, a White House critic whose Web sites, Soldiers for the Truth and Hackworth.com, have been documenting the contempt many service men and women feel for the Iraq war planners. "Most military guys who understand war, professional soldiers, they recognize America is engaged in its largest and nastiest war. And like in Vietnam, they don't see any light at the end of the tunnel," he says. "My e-mail, overwhelmingly from soldiers and vets, says these guys are really pissed off about the handling of the war. And what's amazing is the huge number of folks from this group no longer relating to the Republican Party."

Today's list of military complaints is long: Many fighting men and women are upset over how the war in Iraq has been conducted (i.e. trying to prosecute the war "on the cheap"); feel that forces are being stretched too thinly; think that Pentagon civilian planners are not listening to generals; worry that part-time National Guard and reservists are being asked to carry too much of a burden; and find the administration's rationale for the war slippery. They also seem to have a visceral dislike for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who's seen as having a vendetta against the Army, and think the Bush White House seems eager to send troops off to war yet reluctant to help Congress pass more comprehensive health benefits for disabled veterans.

During a 1999 campaign speech at the Citadel military school in South Carolina, Bush complained that under President Clinton, military "resources are over-stretched. Frustration is up, as families are separated and strained. Morale is down. This administration wants things both ways: To command great forces, without supporting them. To launch today's new causes, with little thought of tomorrow's consequences."

Today, those critiques strangely mirror the precise complaints being leveled against the Bush White House by some within the military. Veterans groups, for instance, are furious that the White House is blocking legislation that would help ease the burden of medical bills for 670,000 disabled vets. The Pentagon says it cannot afford the $5 billion-a-year budget buster and has recommended a presidential veto.

Vets fume when they contrast that belt-tightening talk against Bush's request to Congress for $87 billion to secure and rebuild Iraq, a number that's sure to escalate in the coming years. The former G.I.'s have even launched an online campaign, dubbed "Out the Door in 2004," targeting politicians who stand in the way of the bill's passage. Chief among those politicians is Bush.

The veterans bill remains bottled up in Republican committees -- and in a strange role reversal, it's the Democrats wearing the white hats in this Capitol Hill showdown over the military. Democrats are collecting congressional signatures for a "discharge petition" in an effort to the get the benefits bill to the floor for a vote where it would certainly pass in an up-or-down roll call. The Republican leadership, though, has forbidden its members from signing the petition despite the fact more than 100 of them cosponsored the bill.

Drawing even more ire today is the stretched-too-thinly troop rotation schedule for Iraq, exacerbated by the administration's inability to get additional allies to send soldiers to ease the burden on the U.S. That failure has placed extraordinary strains on young families in America, especially for National Guard members and reservists, some of whom, instead of being called up for five days of local flood duties, are being lifted out of their communities and jobs for more than a year at a time to serve in Iraq.

Adding to the drip-drip frustration was a trial balloon floated this summer by the Pentagon to cut hazardous pay for soldiers in Iraq. Also, some G.I.'s recovering from battle wounds were getting billed for their hospital meals.

"An opportunity has been created to talk to this group. We'll see if Democrats take advantage of it," said Steven Nider, director of foreign and security studies at the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist Democratic think tank in Washington. It will be tough. In part, because Democrats will have to thread the needle in criticizing the Iraq war effort without being seen as criticizing the troops.

More importantly, the military, once seen as so apolitical that Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower's party affiliation remained a mystery right up until he entered the 1952 presidential campaign, has become an increasingly Republican voting bloc.

During the post-Vietnam 1970s, Democrats were perceived as being anti-military. In the 1980s, President Reagan broke ranks with traditional fiscal conservatives and ushered in massive defense spending increases. And during the 1990s, President Clinton forever alienated the military with his gays-in-the-military initiative.

A 1999 survey directed by Feaver and historian Richard H. Kohn, conducted for the Triangle Institute for Security Studies, found that 64 percent of officers identify themselves as Republicans, while only 8 percent call themselves Democrats. Indeed, Clark himself recently admitted that as an officer he routinely voted for Republican White House candidates. (It's true the Army's enlisted ranks are made up increasingly of minorities and women, but studies show those soldiers vote for a more conservative ticket than their counterparts in the general population, who lean strongly Democratic.)

Merle Black, professor of government at Emory University in Atlanta and an expert on politics in the modern South, thinks that for now the military is with Bush. But a change in fortune would be disastrous for the White House: "If Bush loses the military vote, he loses the election," says Black. While the number of votes that come out of the military community, including family members and retired veterans, is relatively small in comparison to all the ballots counted on Election Day, Florida's disputed recount proved just how critical a voting bloc it is. (As a political entity, there are roughly 2 million active-duty soldiers and reservists currently serving, not to mention their extended families. There are an additional 10 million veterans, with the largest percentage made of up of aging World War II fighters.)

More importantly, the voting bloc represents a larger civilian population, largely white, male and somewhat Southern, that today places national security at the top of its concerns. It's a voting bloc that has become increasingly hostile to the Democratic Party in recent years.

That's where the Democrats' retired general comes in. "If Clark were able to pull the military his way, the likelihood is he would have greater support from the general population as a whole," says ex-Marine Lou Cantori, who has taught at West Point and is an expert in military policies in the Middle East at the University of Maryland.

"That's why Republicans fear him the most," says Clark campaign advisor Mike Frisby. "He's the one Democrat who can attract attention from that segment of the American society that care about our military and America being strong in the world."

To be sure, Clark does not enjoy unanimous support within the military community. Last week, Clark's former colleague, retired Gen. H. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 9/11, made it known that if Clark were nominated by the Democrats, "Wes won't get my vote." Some old Army professionals, who say Clark had the reputation as a brown-noser, joke that the applause he won upon entering the presidential race was equal to the applause he received behind his back when he exited the Army. But Hackworth, who recently posted an interview with Clark on his Web site, reports that two former three-star generals called asking for Clark contact information because they want to establish "generals for Clark" fundraising programs. "There is a certain amount of magic that comes out of West Point," he says.

If there is any magic surrounding Clark, it stands in stark contrast to the loathing that clouds Rumsfeld's relationship with the Army. "It's taken on an almost mythical, urban-legend quality," says Feaver, author of "Armed Servants," an examination of the civilian relationship with the military. "Everybody knows somebody who heard about how Rumsfeld dissed a general."

"This is the most anti-soldier secretary [of defense] we've had since Robert McNamara," says Ralph Peters, a retired Army intelligence officer, referring to the architect of President Johnson's Vietnam War troop buildup in the 1960s. "Rumsfeld is hated by the officer corps."

Part of the friction stems from Rumsfeld's obsession with transforming the "heavy" Army, equipped and trained to fight battles on the open fields of Eastern Europe, into something more modern, more agile and more responsive. He became convinced wars could be won with air power and small bands of special operations troops, not hundreds of columns of tanks.

In Iraq, a great showcase for his modern strategy, Rumsfeld got it half-right. The U.S. did not need 300,000 boots on the ground, or overwhelming force, to oust Saddam Hussein and take control of Iraq. But Rumsfeld's transformation blueprint has fallen apart during postwar reconstruction. The Army urged him to commit 200,000 troops to oversee a nation of 25 million. Rumsfeld refused, and today, in the wake of daily attacks on American soldiers and weekly terrorist attacks, there's near universal agreement that his Pentagon plan was a major blunder. (Rumsfeld insists the battle plan was approved by the Army; military critics say it was approved by a couple of chosen yes men.) "This administration came in with an idea of transforming the military into something -- God knows what -- lighter, smaller, quicker, whatever," says Zinni. "The bill payer was going to be [Army] ground units, heavy units. And now we have a shortage of exactly what we needed out there."

But the Rumsfeld-Army battle is not just over guns and ammo; it's also about a feeling that the secretary and his civilian Pentagon aides hold the Army in contempt. "Within the military there's a perception they don't care. That they -- Rumfseld and the OSP crowd -- have their strategy and don't care what the military thinks about how to conduct war in Afghanistan and Iraq," says Nider.

One former senior military official recalls the cynical joke making the rounds inside the Pentagon just days after the Sept. 11 attacks: "If Saddam Hussein wasn't responsible for 9/11, he should have been, because we're going to nail him for it." It was being told among officers who saw exactly where the administration hawks were taking the war on terrorism, regardless of whether the targets were connected to actual terrorist attacks.

According to one veteran military insider, Bush's political guru, Karl Rove, has been briefed about the growing political problem Rumsfeld is creating among military voters, but Rove made it clear that nothing is going to change since Rumsfeld has Vice President Dick Cheney's full backing.

Peters, a hawk on the Iraq war and a supporter of Bush's war on terrorism, doubts Rumsfeld will hurt the president politically. "Troops compartmentalize," he says. "One friend of mine, highly placed in Iraq and who hates Rumsfeld, who thinks he's put troops at risk unnecessarily, he said, 'I'd crawl over barbed wire to vote for George Bush again.'"

But for now, the frustration grows louder and louder as a traditional Republican bedrock community makes its feelings known about Bush.

Last week, Larry Syverson, a Richmond, Va., father with two military sons serving in Iraq, was featured in a full-page New York Times ad. "Donald Rumsfeld Betrayed My Sons and Our Nation. It's Time For Him to Go," read the headline. It called for Rumsfeld's resignation as secretary of defense.

Also last week, Fernando Suarez, whose 20-year-old son Jesus was among the first fatalities in Iraq, told reporters, "My son died because Bush lied."

In his Peoria Journal opinion column, the G.I. Predmore wrote: "There is only one truth, and it is that Americans are dying. There are an estimated 10 to 14 attacks every day on our servicemen and women in Iraq. As the body count continues to grow, it would appear that there is no immediate end in sight." He added, "I can no longer justify my service on the basis of what I believe to be half-truths and bold lies."

And at his Naval Institute address, Zinni, who served in uniform for 39 years, compared Iraq to Vietnam. Speaking of his contemporaries in the room, he said: "Our feelings and our sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice. We swore never again would we allow it to happen. And I ask you, Is it happening again? And you're going to have to answer that question, just like the American people are. And remember, every one of those young men and women that come back [a casualty] is not a personal tragedy, it's a national tragedy."

-------

Jump to TO Features for Saturday 04 October 2003


© Copyright 2003 by TruthOut.org


accesswater2030@yahoo.com 4:44 PM

Study Finds Direct Link Between Misinformation and Public Misconception

Thursday 02 October 2003


Study Finds Widespread Misperceptions on Iraq Highly Related to Support for War Misperceptions Vary Widely Depending on News Source Fox Viewers More Likely to Misperceive, PBS-NPR Less Likely

A new study based on a series of seven nationwide polls conducted from January through September of this year reveals that before and after the Iraq war, a majority of Americans have had significant misperceptions and these are highly related to support for the war with Iraq.

The polling, conducted by the Program on International Policy (PIPA) at the University of Maryland and Knowledge Networks, also reveals that the frequency of these misperceptions varies significantly according to individuals' primary source of news. Those who primarily watch Fox News are significantly more likely to have misperceptions, while those who primarily listen to NPR or watch PBS are significantly less likely.

An in-depth analysis of a series of polls conducted June through September found 48% incorrectly believed that evidence of links between Iraq and al Qaeda have been found, 22% that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, and 25% that world public opinion favored the US going to war with Iraq. Overall 60% had at least one of these three misperceptions.

Such misperceptions are highly related to support for the war. Among those with none of the misperceptions listed above, only 23% support the war. Among those with one of these misperceptions, 53% support the war, rising to 78% for those who have two of the misperceptions, and to 86% for those with all 3 misperceptions. Steven Kull, director of PIPA, comments, "While we cannot assert that these misperceptions created the support for going to war with Iraq, it does appear likely that support for the war would be substantially lower if fewer members of the public had these misperceptions."

The frequency of Americans' misperceptions varies significantly depending on their source of news. The percentage of respondents who had at least one or more of the three misperceptions listed above is shown below.




FOX

CBS

ABC

NBC

CNN

Print
Sources

NPR/
PBS

None of the 3

20%

30%

39%

45%

45%

53%

77%

1 or more
misperceptions

80

71

61

55

55

47

23

Variations in misperceptions according to news source cannot simply be explained as a result of differences in the demographics of each audience, because these variations can also be found when comparing the rate of misperceptions within demographic subgroups of each audience.

Another key perception -- one that US intelligence agencies regard as unfounded -- is that Iraq was directly involved in September 11. Before the war approximately one in five believed this and 13% even said they believed that they had seen conclusive evidence of it. Polled June through September, the percentage saying that Iraq was directly involved in 9/11 continued to be in the 20-25% range, while another 33-36% said they believed that Iraq gave al-Qaeda substantial support. [Note: An August Washington Post poll found that 69% thought it was at least "somewhat likely" that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11 -- a different question than the PIPA/KN question that asked respondents to come to a conclusion.]

In the run-up to the war misperceptions were also highly related to support for going to war. In February, among those who believed that Iraq was directly involved in September 11, 58% said they would agree with the President's decision to go to war without UN approval. Among those who believed that Iraq had given al Qaeda substantial support, but was not involved in September 11, approval dropped to 37%. Among those who believed that a few al Qaeda individuals had contact with Iraqi officials 32% were supportive, while among those who believed that there was no connection at all just 25% felt that way. Polled during the war, among those who incorrectly believed that world public opinion favored going to the war, 81% agreed with the President's decision to do so, while among those who knew that the world public opinion was opposed only 28% agreed.

While it would seem that misperceptions are derived from a failure to pay attention to the news, in fact, overall, those who pay greater attention to the news are no less likely to have misperceptions. Among those who primarily watch Fox, those who pay more attention are more likely to have misperceptions. Only those who mostly get their news from print media have fewer misperceptions as they pay more attention.

The level of misperceptions varies according to Americans' political positions. Supporters of President Bush and Republicans are more likely to have misperceptions. However, misperceptions do not appear to only be the result of bias, because a significant number of people who do not have such political positions also have misperceptions.

For the entire study of seven polls the total sample was 9,611 respondents, and for the in-depth analysis for the polls conducted June through September the sample was 3,334 respondents. The polls were fielded by Knowledge Networks using its nationwide panel, which is randomly selected from the entire adult population and subsequently provided internet access.

-------

Program on International Policy Attitudes
1779 Massachusetts Avenue NW,
Suite 510 Washington DC 20036
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 4:42 PM

Go to Original

'Slime and Defend'
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times | Opinion

Friday 03 October 2003

On July 14, Robert Novak published the now-famous column in which he identified Valerie Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, as a C.I.A. "operative on weapons of mass destruction," and said "two senior administration officials" had told him that she was responsible for her husband's mission to Niger. On that mission, Mr. Wilson concluded - correctly - that reports of Iraqi efforts to buy uranium were bogus.

An outraged President Bush immediately demanded the names of those responsible for exposing Ms. Plame. He repeated his father's statement that "those who betray the trust by exposing the names of our sources" are "the most insidious of traitors." There are limits to politics, Mr. Bush declared; Mr. Wilson's decision to go public about his mission had embarrassed him, but that was no excuse for actions that were both felonious and unpatriotic.

Everything in the previous paragraph is, of course, false. It's what should have happened, but didn't. Mr. Bush took no action after the Novak column. Before we get bogged down in the details — which is what the administration hopes will happen — let's be clear: we already know what the president knew, and when he knew it. Mr. Bush knew, 11 weeks ago, that some of his senior aides had done something utterly inexcusable. But as long as the media were willing to let the story lie — which, with a few honorable exceptions, like David Corn at The Nation and Knut Royce and Timothy Phelps at Newsday, they were — he didn't think this outrage required any action.

And now that the C.I.A. has demanded a Justice Department inquiry, the White House's strategy isn't just to stonewall, Nixon-style; as one Republican Congressional aide told The New York Times, it will "slime and defend."

The right-wing media slime machine, which tries to assassinate the character of anyone who opposes the right's goals — hey, I know all about it — has already swung into action. For example, The Wall Street Journal's editorial page calls Mr. Wilson an "open opponent of the U.S. war on terror." We've grown accustomed to this sort of slur — and they accuse liberals of lacking civility? — but let's take a minute to walk through it.

Mr. Wilson never opposed the "war on terror" — he opposed the war in Iraq precisely because it had no obvious relevance to the campaign against terror. He feared that invading a country with no role in 9/11, and no meaningful Al Qaeda links, would divert resources from the pursuit of those who actually attacked America. Many patriots in the military and the intelligence community agreed with him then; even more agree now.

Unlike the self-described patriots now running America, Mr. Wilson has taken personal risks for the sake of his country. In the months before the first gulf war, he stayed on in Baghdad, helping to rescue hundreds of Americans who might otherwise have been held as hostages. The first President Bush lauded him as a "truly inspiring diplomat" who exhibited "courageous leadership."

In any case, Mr. Wilson's views and character are irrelevant. Someone high in the administration committed a felony and, in the view of the elder Mr. Bush, treason. End of story.

The hypocrisy here is breathtaking. Republicans have repeatedly impugned their opponents' patriotism. Last year Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, said Democrats "don't want to protect the American people. . . . They will do anything, spend all the time and resources they can, to avoid confronting evil."

But the true test of patriotism isn't whether you are willing to wave the flag, or agree with whatever the president says. It's whether you are willing to take risks and make sacrifices, including political sacrifices, for the sake of your country. This episode is a test for Mr. Bush and his inner circle: a true patriot wouldn't hesitate about doing the right thing in the Plame affair, whatever the political costs.

Mr. Bush is failing that test.

•

Correction: Many people, including Paul Bremer in recent testimony and myself in my Sept. 30 column, have linked Churchill's remark about the "most unsordid act" to the Marshall Plan. In fact, Churchill was referring to an earlier program, Lend-Lease. But one suspects that he wouldn't have minded the confusion.

-------

Jump to TO Features for Saturday 04 October 2003


© Copyright 2003 by TruthOut.org


accesswater2030@yahoo.com 4:38 PM

Slain CIA Agent's Dad Calls Leak Treason
By Devlin Barrett
The Associated Press

Thursday 02 October 2003

WASHINGTON - The father of slain CIA officer Johnny "Mike" Spann said Thursday he believes an independent counsel should investigate allegations that someone in the Bush administration exposed a CIA officer's identity — an act he called treasonous.

Spann, the first American killed in Afghanistan, died in a prison uprising. His father, also named Johnny Spann, said he is still angry because he feels his son's identity and hometown were disclosed before his son's family could be adequately protected.

Democrats in Congress, led by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., are calling for a special counsel to be appointed to investigate who exposed a CIA operative who is married to a former ambassador, Joseph C. Wilson. Wilson had accused the administration of manipulating intelligence to exaggerate the threat posed by Iraq .

"If someone in the Bush administration leaked this, they need to be punished, and they need to be made an example of, because that's not just a leak, that's treason," Spann, of Winfield, Ala., told The Associated Press. "They should appoint an independent counsel so the American people can be sure, and let the chips fall where they may."

The officer's name first appeared in a July 14 story by syndicated columnist Robert Novak, and she was identified later by Newsday as an undercover officer.

Former CIA covert operations officer Bart Bechtel said the key issue is exactly what the officer's position was at the CIA at the time her name appeared.

"In general terms, it is not all right to identify a covert employee," said Bechtel. "That being said, many covert employees, especially case officers out there doing their jobs, it doesn't take long for them to be recognized as agency."

-------
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 4:33 PM

ABC News

Friday 03 October 2003

Schwarzenegger: ‘I Cannot Remember’ Expressing Admiration for Hitler

San Diego, Calif - Arnold Schwarzenegger was ready to put his California gubernatorial campaign into high gear with five days left before the election, but after facing allegations of sexual harassment he is now trying to explain claims that he praised Adolf Hitler.

ABCNEWS obtained a copy of an unpublished book proposal with quotes from what was called a "verbatim transcript" of an interview Schwarzenegger gave in 1975 while making the film Pumping Iron.

Asked who his heroes are, he is quoted as saying, "I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education, up to power. I admire him for being such a good public speaker and for what he did with it."

He is also quoted as saying he wished he could have an experience, "like Hitler in the Nuremberg stadium. And have all those people scream at you and just being total agreement whatever you say."

The story broke just as Schwarzenegger was kicking off his bus tour of California — an event that was supposed to be the crescendo of his campaign leading up to the Oct. 7 recall election.

The author of the book proposal, Pumping Iron's director, George Butler, told ABCNEWS that the quotes needed to be seen in the context of Schwarzenegger's admiration of powerful men, and that he never said anything anti-Semitic.

In an interview with ABCNEWS, Schwarzenegger said he didn't recall making the remarks, but said he has no admiration for Hitler or the Nazis.

"I cannot remember any of this, all I can tell you is that I despise anything that Hitler stood for," he said. "I despise anything what the Nazis stood for … anything that the Third Reich stood for. Anything that they've done, the atrocities that they've created … and this is why for many many years I've been fighting against prejudice.

He said he has given "millions of dollars" to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and called Wiesenthal "one of my heroes … because he always preaches justice."

Later Thursday evening, at a news conference with wife Maria Shriver at his side, he repeated the denial.

"I don't remember any of those comments because I always despise everything that Hitler stood for," Schwarzenegger said, calling the Nazi leader a "disgusting villain."

This is not the first time Schwarzenegger has had apparently pro-Nazi remarks come back to haunt him. Last week he was reminded of a toast he gave to Austrian President Kurt Waldheim at his wedding. At the time Schwarzenegger gave the toast, it had just been exposed that Waldheim had committed Nazi war crimes.

"That was a mistake, and I know but we can grow and it's always easy to be smart in hindsight," the actor-turned-candidate said.

Sexual Indiscretions

There have also been a growing number of allegations about Schwarzenegger mistreating women.

A front-page story in Thursday's Los Angeles Times, California's largest newspaper, quoted six women who claim Schwarzenegger groped or made sexually offensive remarks to them. One woman told ABCNEWS she encountered Schwarzenegger in the 1970s when he was a bodybuilder.

"The gym was quite full and Arnold was there and I remember him passing by me and groping my breast," Elaine Stockon told ABCNEWS. "And I was just in sheer shock."

Of the six women who spoke to the newspaper, four would not give their names. One claimed that 20 years ago, Schwarzenegger "grabbed and squeezed" her left breast. She told the Los Angeles Times she "just started crying and crying." She said he did not rape her, but he humiliated her.

The Los Angeles Times also quoted a woman, who asked not to be named, and worked on the movie Terminator 2, who claimed Schwarzenegger "would pin me against the corner of the elevator" and try to pull off the straps of her bathing suit.

He confronted the allegations directly Thursday. "I have done things that at the time I thought then was playful but now I recognize that I have offended people. And those people that I have offended, I want to say to them I am deeply sorry about that and I apologize."

On the heels of the recent allegations, a new TV ad attacking Schwarzenegger and urging California voters to vote against the recall is set to hit the airwaves this weekend. The ad is sponsored by moveon.org, the Internet-based political action committee that backs progressive candidates, and other organizations opposed to the recall.

"If you're a woman … or your mother is a woman, you cannot vote for this man," the commercial says in part."Because Arnold Schwarzenegger has a serious problem with women. … Every woman and every man should vote no on the recall."

Gov. Gray Davis, the man Schwarzenegger is hoping to replace as governor, told ABCNEWS he did not feel comfortable commenting on the allegations against Schwarzenegger of sexual misconduct that have appeared in the media because they have not been substantiated, but he said that the former bodybuilder's remarks about Hitler shocked him.

"I don't see how anyone can admire Adolf Hitler. Any decent American has to be offended by that phrase," Davis said. "I am prepared to say that anyone who says they admire Hitler shocks the public conscience, because there's nothing about Hitler that warrants admiration, nothing at all."
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 4:30 PM