Robertson: I warned Bush on Iraq casualties; President’s response: ‘We’re not going to have any’ 19 Oct 2004 | CNN.com NEW YORK — The founder of the U.S. Christian Coalition said Tuesday he told President George W. Bush before the invasion of Iraq that he should prepare Americans for the likelihood of casualties, but the president told him, “We’re not going to have any casualties.” Pat Robertson, an ardent Bush supporter, said he had that conversation with the president in Nashville, Tennessee, before the March 2003 invasion. He described Bush in the meeting as “the most self-assured man I’ve ever […]
Brendan
1167 posts
18 Oct. 2004 | UN Observer Rampant voter fraud in Florida will disqualify 200,000 mainly Democratic and African American voters on November 2, according to an article in next week?s Harper?s by Greg Palast, the BBC investigative reporter who in 2000 broke the original story regarding the infamous felon list in Florida. Palast?s findings were echoed in the October 14 New York Times Op Ed by Paul Krugman…. In the Harper?s article, Palast illustrates how Bush has a ?head start? on the voting before the first ballot is cast: ? Palast documents that 180,000 votes will be cast but not […]
Oxfam America: ‘Where’s the Moral Fiber?’ October 18, 2004 | Oxfam America WASHINGTON – International agency Oxfam is concerned that the United States has signaled its intention to fight to defend its massive cotton subsidy program that is causing suffering to millions of poor African farmers. The US announced today that it is appealing a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling that had declared the majority of US cotton subsidies illegal. In a new report today, Oxfam details how US subsidies encourage overproduction and facilitate the dumping of excess cotton overseas, undermining the livelihoods of poor farmers in the developing world. […]
[ While George W. Bush repeatedly insists that his Administration has given the military everything it needs in Iraq, the story below is one of a persistent stream of reminders that Bush’s claim is false and that troop safety is less important than many other priorities of his Administration. From the piece: … the unit’s trucks were not yet armored… None of the trucks in his command were armored when they arrived in Iraq, General Chambers said. A sampling of related stories from the last year and a half: Bio/Chem Attack Protection Questioned (14 Feb 2003) U.S. Troops Buying Own […]
by Brendan Lalor In a land in which presidential candidate G.W. Bush delivers campaign speeches in halls to which only adoring fans are granted entrance, the crackdown against dissent continues. To point to just a couple representative cases from the regular slew of cases: “Police in riot gear fired paintballs filled with cayenne pepper Thursday night to disperse a crowd of protesters assembled in this historic gold mining town where President Bush was spending the night after a campaign appearance.” (Associated Press, 15 Oct 2004) “Three Medford school teachers were threatened with arrest and thrown out of the President Bush […]
[ From the piece: 2,500 ex-felons on the list had had their voting rights restored. Most were Democrats, and many were black. Hispanics, who often vote Republican in Florida, were almost entirely absent from the list due to a technical error. –BL ] October 17, 2004 | Associated Press Tallahassee, Fla. — Florida Gov. Jeb Bush ignored advice to throw out a flawed felon voter list before it went out to county election offices despite warnings from state officials, according to a published report Saturday.
October 17, 2004 | New York Times by RON SUSKIND Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ”if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.” The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion. ”Just in the past few months,” Bartlett said, ”I think a light has gone off for people […]
16 Oct 2004 | Boston Globe by Bryan Bender WASHINGTON — About half of the roughly $5 billion in Iraq reconstruction funds disbursed by the US government in the first half of this year cannot be accounted for, according to an audit commissioned by the United Nations, which could not find records for numerous rebuilding projects and other payments. One chunk of the money — $1.4 billion — was deposited into a local bank by Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq but could be tracked no further: The auditors reported that they were shown a deposit slip but could find no […]
[ This follows up articles printed here on the economic attack on Iraq. –BL ] Why is war-torn Iraq giving $190,000 to Toys R Us? 16 Oct 2004 | Guardian Naomi Klein Iraqis are still being forced to pay for crimes committed by Saddam Next week, something will happen that will unmask the upside-down morality of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. On October 21, Iraq will pay $200m in war reparations to some of the richest countries and corporations in the world. If that seems backwards, it’s because it is. Iraqis have never been awarded reparations for any of the […]
October 15, 2004 | Guardian by Alan Travis George Bush has squandered a wealth of sympathy around the world towards America since September 11 with public opinion in 10 leading countries – including some of its closest allies – growing more hostile to the United States while he has been in office. According to a survey, voters in eight out of the 10 countries, including Britain, want to see the Democrat challenger, John Kerry, defeat President Bush in next month’s US presidential election. The poll, conducted by 10 of the world’s leading newspapers, including France’s Le Monde, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun, […]
SICKENED COSTA RICAN BANANA PICKERS FILE SUIT AGAINST TWO CHEMICAL COS. AND U.S. FRESH PRODUCE FIRMS October 6, 2004 | Reuters Thousands of banana pickers in Costa Rica have filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles against two chemical companies and three major U.S. fresh produce companies, claiming exposure to a toxic pesticide caused a range of reproductive disorders. The suit — filed against Dole Food Co., Chiquita Brands International Inc., Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc., Dow Chemical Co. and Shell Chemical Co., a subsidiary of Royal Dutch/Shell Group — accuses the companies of using dibromochloropropane on bananas in Central America […]
Scaring children is yet another way of dispiriting Palestinians 13 October 2004 | Aljazeera If Americans appreciated the scale of human-rights abuses committed by Israeli colonists in the occupied territories, they would condemn the journalists who keep them in the dark, a US peace activist says. Kim Lamberty, a member of the Christian Peacemakers Teams (CPT), has told Aljazeera.net on Tuesday that a cruel and criminal practice is largely going unreported: settlers are routinely attacking children on their way to school. And Lamberty should know. Unable to walk since a vicious attack on 29 September by Jewish colonists, she says physical […]
[ Unfortunately, these stories are all too common; and equally unfortunately, they are not carried by major U.S. media. This “blackout” aids both Bush and Kerry, neither of whom intend to meaningfully address this problem. –BL ] 14 October 2004 | Islam-online.net “Meanwhile, the Israeli army said it suspended an officer under investigation for firing at the dead body of 13-year-old girl, who was riddled with 20 bullets …” GAZA CITY – A 10-year-old Palestinian schoolgirl died Wednesday, October 13, of her wounds after Israeli occupation troops shot her in the chest while sitting inside a United Nations school in a […]
13 October 2004 | Los Angeles Times by Steven J. Ross One of the marks of authoritarian regimes is their effort to stop the spread of knowledge and free speech. In May 1933, Nazi sympathizers in Berlin burned 20,000 “degenerate” books, many of them written by Jews and anti-fascists such as Albert Einstein, Bertolt Brecht and Franz Kafka. Here at home, slaveholders were so frightened by the power of the word that throughout the antebellum South legislatures made it a crime to teach slaves to read and write. Now, Lynne Cheney, Vice President Dick Cheney’s wife and the former head […]
[ There is an alternate source of the video clip of what Bush actually said in 2002, but denied saying at last night’s “debate.” –BL ] October 14, 2004 | Misleader.org At last night’s debate President Bush claimed that, contrary to Sen. John Kerry’s assertion, he never said he was “not that concerned” about Osama Bin Laden. Bush chastised Kerry saying, “Gosh, I don’t think I ever said I’m not worried about Osama bin Laden. That’s kind of one of those exaggerations.”1 Bush was completely wrong. At March 13, 2002 press conference, Bush said “So I don’t know where he [Osama […]
[ For more on the Prisoner’s Dilemma, visit Serge Helfrich’s page. Thanks to Jared Childers for forwarding the article. –BL ] Oct. 13, 2004 | Wired by Wendy M. Grossman Proving that a new approach can secure victory in a classic strategy game, a team from England’s Southampton University has won the 20th-anniversary Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma competition, toppling the long-term winner from its throne. The Southampton group, whose primary research area is software agents, said its strategy involved a series of moves allowing players to recognize each other and act cooperatively.
[ Here’s an interesting piece presenting an argument that if you are “prolife,” you ought to vote against Bush because of the relationship between increased abortion and decreased funding for social programs. From the piece: “[Anti-abortion] rhetoric is hollow … without health care, health insurance, jobs, child care, and a living wage. Pro-life in deed, not merely in word, means we need policies that provide jobs and health insurance and support for prospective mothers.” –BL ]13 October 2004 | Sojourners by Dr. Glen Harold Stassen I am a Christian ethicist, and trained in statistical analysis. I am consistently pro-life. My son […]
October 12, 2004 | The Guardian by Alan Freeman Is social justice possible in a world dominated by corporate globalisation? This Friday, more than 20,000 people, drawn from social movements, peace organisations and trade unions across Europe and the world, will converge on London for the third European Social Forum to debate how to change direction. The experience of two countries, in particular, poses the question most starkly: Germany’s welfare state reforms under Gerhard Schr?der, and the transformation of Venezuela under Hugo Chávez. The fundamental issue is: does society serve the economy, or should the economy serve society?
12 Oct. 2004 | The Scotsman by IRWIN ARIEFF in New York Key points UN nuclear watchdog reports nuclear bomb materials disappearing from Iraq Satellite images show entire buildings full of materials have been dismantled Warning comes after CIA report on insurgents trying to get hold of WMDs
[ After helping orchestrate and support a coup against Aristide, the democratically elected leader of Haiti, U.S. officials have the audacity to complain that Haitian supporters of their former leader have still not accepted the U.S. interference in their country’s political process! Also notice how the Reuters piece below lets stand Boucher’s deceiving, propagandistic characterization of Aristide as using “street gangs to spread violence and political repression.” The article implies that the murders are committed by supporters of Aristide, but fails to mention the fatal attacks against hundreds of Aristide supporters after the U.S. coerced Aristide out of the country […]
12 Oct. 2004 | DemocracyNow! The Senate yesterday approved a $137 billion corporate tax cut marking the biggest restructuring of the corporate tax code in two decades. One of the biggest winners is the tobacco industry which will receive a $10 billion buyout. Senator John McCain described the bill as a “disgrace” and a “complete sellout to the tobacco companies.” Originally Congress planned to give the tobacco industry $10 billion in exchange for allowing the Food and Drug Agency to increase regulation of their products. But legislators removed the FDA provision while preserving the tax break. The Center for American […]
[ I have not noticed much coverage of this story by major media in the U.S. –BL ] 13 October 2004 | World Socialist Web Site WSWS correspondent The US government move to shut down nearly two dozen antiwar, anti-globalization web sites on October 7 is an unprecedented exercise of police power against political dissent on the Internet. The World Socialist Web Site denounces the attack on the Indymedia sites and demands a halt to all such attempts at suppressing political criticism of the US government.
[ Should Kerry get equal time? According to The Guardian (12 Oct. 2004), Under US broadcasting rules, the film actually gives airtime to Mr Kerry. Andrew Jay Schwartzman, who heads the Media Access Project watchdog, said: “The way our equal time law works depends on what candidate is appearing on the air – so the equal time rule would run to Bush, not to Kerry. It does not provide Kerry a right to reply.” –BL ]12 Oct. 2004 | DemocracyNow! The nation’s largest local television chain, the Sinclair Broadcasting Group, has ordered its 62 television stations to pre-empt its regular prime-time […]
11 Oct. 2004 | World Socialist Web Site by Joseph Kay and Samuel Davidson With US Airways? decision to file for bankruptcy on September 12, the crisis in the US airline industry has reached a new stage. The seventh-largest airline in the country now joins United Airlines, the second-largest, in Chapter 11 court proceedings. The country’s third-largest carrier, Delta Airlines, is threatening to declare bankruptcy as well.
10 October 2004 | New York Times by BENEDICT CAREY In 2001, two researchers and a Columbia University fertility expert published a startling finding in a respected medical journal: women undergoing fertility treatment who had been prayed for by Christian groups were twice as likely to have a successful pregnancy as those who had not. Three years later, after one of the researchers pleaded guilty to conspiracy in an unrelated business fraud, Columbia is investigating the study and the journal reportedly pulled the paper from its Web site. No evidence of manipulation has yet surfaced, and the study’s authors stand […]
[ From the article: In the wake of the report, President Bush has reframed the way he characterizes his rationale for the launching the war. A review of his public statements before the war and this week shows how broadly his public argument has shifted, away from warnings that Hussein actually possessed horrible weapons in favor of talking almost exclusively about the dictator’s intent. –BL ] 10 October 2004 | Washington Post [Page A32] by Glenn Kessler In announcing 19 months ago that the United States was poised to invade Iraq, President Bush told the nation: “Intelligence gathered by this and […]
[From the piece: Iraq is hardly the only country where American troops are risking their lives on a daily basis to protect the flow of petroleum. In Colombia, Saudi Arabia, and the Republic of Georgia, U.S. personnel are also spending their days and nights protecting pipelines and refineries, or supervising the local forces assigned to this mission. American sailors are now on oil-protection patrol in the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the South China Sea, and along other sea routes that deliver oil to the United States and its allies. In fact, the American military is increasingly being converted into […]
August 2004 | MuseLetter No. 149 by Richard Heinberg To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. –Thomas Jefferson For decades the US dollar has served as the world’s default currency. The phrase "sound as a dollar" has expressed the faith and confidence of generations, not only of Americans, but people worldwide. That situation is coming to end, and the consequences will be far-reaching. A Brief History of Money In order to understand why this sea change is about to […]
5 Oct. 2004 | DemocracyNow! A new report by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has found that 41 percent of the fatalities in Gaza over the past week have been civilians. The group estimates Israeli forces have killed 75 Palestinians – 31 of whom were civilians. Among the dead were 19 Palestinian children aged 17 and under. The group says 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza are living under complete siege without water and electricity and little food. B’Tselem also reports Israeli forces have demolished 55 houses in the Jabaliya refugee camp and another 50 additional houses have been severely damaged. […]
5 October 2004 | DemocracyNow! Report: Iraqi Resistance Uniting Against U.S. & Zarqawi A leading Kuwaiti newspaper is reporting that a number of Iraqi resistance groups are planning on uniting under a single umbrella group to oppose the US presence in Iraq. The paper reports the resistance group will command a total of 7,000 fighters across Iraq. In addition, the resistance groups are threatening to take up arms against suspected Al Qaeda leader Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi unless he stops carrying out attacks against Shiite Iraqis. A source for the new unity group said, “If Zarqawi does not abandon his plans […]
excerpted from 6 Oct. 2004 | MoveOnPac.org Email [Of the recent] vice presidential debate … CBS News reported … that Edwards “continued the Democratic ticket’s winning streak,” beating Cheney by 13 percentage points in a post-debate poll of uncommitted voters.[1] Again and again, Cheney tried to mislead the public about the war in Iraq and our economic problems here at home. He even claimed that he’d never met Edwards before when he had, in public, twice. But John Edwards wouldn’t let him get away with it: when Cheney tried once again to link al Qaeda and 9/11, Edwards said, “Mr. […]
Fox – the naked truth 5 October 2004 | The Guardian by Zoe Williams It’s rare for Fox, Rupert Murdoch’s American news channel, to admit that a story is total fabrication, but a recent report on John Kerry was so wild, and its falsity so easily verifiable, that an apology was the only option. The story was written by Carl Cameron, who has been following Kerry’s campaign trail. He attributed to him this remark: “I’m metrosexual – [Bush is] a cowboy,” following it with a swift, if curious, left hook to the candidate’s sexuality by saying that he liked manicures.
War Veterans Overloading VA 4 Oct. 2004 | HeraldNet
Rumsfeld: Iraq/al-Qaida remarks ‘misunderstood’ October 5, 2004 | The Guardian by Simon Jeffery The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, today attempted to distance himself from his earlier comments that there were no links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.
5 October 2004 | Misleader.org Vice President Cheney and President Bush have repeatedly claimed that al-Qaeda had a working relationship with Saddam Hussein which justified the invasion of Iraq. The key piece of evidence Cheney and President Bush have used to support this claim was that Hussein harbored Abu Musab al Zarqawi – a suspected associated of al-Qaeda. For example, on 6/21/04 Cheney said “Mr. Zarqawi, who is in Baghdad today, is an al Qaeda associate who took refuge in Baghdad, found sanctuary and safe harbor there before we ever launched into Iraq.”1 President Bush said on 6/15/04 “Zarqawi’s the […]
A Man of His Words September 8, 2004 | Alternet.org by George Lakoff, AlterNet The following is an excerpt from the first chapter of “Don’t Think Of An Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate,” published by Chelsea Green Publishing. Framing 101: How to Take Back Public Discourse January 21, 2004 — On this date I spoke extemporaneously to a group of about two hundred progressive citizen-activists in Sausalito, California. When I teach the study of framing at Berkeley, in Cognitive Science 101, the first thing I do is I give my students an exercise. The exercise is: Don’t […]
[ I ran another great piece on the pillaging of Iraq in June. Here’s Naomi Klein from the article below: In June, Bremer [former leader of the U.S. occupation of Iraq] flew to an economic summit in Jordan and announced that these firms would be privatized immediately. “Getting inefficient state enterprises into private hands,” he said, “is essential for Iraq’s economic recovery.” It would be the largest state liquidation sale since the collapse of the Soviet Union. But Bremer’s economic engineering had only just begun. In September, to entice foreign investors to come to Iraq, he enacted a radical set […]
by Bob Lee Did you catch the part of the debate where Cheney referred viewers to “factcheck.com”? I knew he had meant factcheck.org, which is critical of both campaigns, but I thought I would see what factcheck.com had to offer. Turns out, factcheck.com takes you to GeorgeSoros.com, where it says in all caps at the top, “WHY WE MUST NOT RE-ELECT PRESIDENT BUSH,” and the top column on the page is entitled, “President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests, and undermining American values.” How true; I hope everyone watching checked out factcheck.com.
4 October 2004 | DemocracyNow! The New York Times has published a major 10,000 word investigation into how the Bush administration ignored claims from within its own government that Saddam Hussein did not have an active nuclear program before the invasion of Iraq. The article examines the story behind the claim that Iraq possessed aluminum tubes that could be used in a nuclear weapons program. The Bush administration repeatedly cited the existence of the tubes as definitive evidence that Iraq had a nuclear program. But what the Bush administration never revealed was that the top officials inside the Energy Department […]
US bases in Iraq: sticky politics, hard math September 30, 2004 | Christian Science Monitor by David R. Francis If a new Iraq government should agree to let American forces stay on, how many bases will the US request? One, as the United States Army currently maintains in Honduras? Six, the number of installations it lists in the Netherlands. Or maybe 12? The Pentagon isn’t saying.
30 Sept. 2004 | GregPalast.com by Greg Palast Our President told the debate audience, “You cannot lead if you send mexxed missiges.” I certainly hope not.
30 Sept. 2004 | EnvironmentalDefense.org NY – Environmental Defense president Fred Krupp praised the Russian Government’s decision today to submit the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change to the Russian Duma for ratification. “It’s the first clear sign since May that Russia is committed to taking the steps to usher in the age of carbon limits and climate stabilization. Sadly this leaves the U.S. isolated in its refusal to join the international effort to reduce greenhouse gas pollution,” said Krupp. “Russian ratification will bring into force a landmark international treaty under which for the first time nations will work together to […]
30 Sept. 2004 | DemocracyNow! The New York Times is reporting a major new governmental study has found that global warming is likely to produce a significant increase in intensity and rainfall of hurricanes in coming decades. The study is being described as the most comprehensive computer analysis of hurricanes to date. It was done in Princeton at the Commerce Department’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. One leading scientist at MIT said the study offers a definitive link between global warming and larger hurricanes. Hurricane expert Dr. Kerry Emmanuel said “This clinches the issue.” The study did not determine whether hurricanes […]
excerpted from September 28, 2004 | TomPaine.com by Paul Rogat Loeb In an election likely to be decided as much by voter turnout as by convincing the remaining undecided, how do we maintain the hope that’s necessary to keep making the phone calls, knocking on the doors, funding the key ads and doing all the other critical tasks to get Bush out of office? Even those of us working hard for change hit walls of doubt and uncertainty about whether our actions really matter…. Last year, when millions of us rose up against the Iraq war, many felt like their […]
Oct. 1, 2004 | Toronto Star MICHELLE SHEPHARD The White House has endorsed a proposed bill that would make it legal for U.S. intelligence officials to deport individuals to countries known to use torture to extract information.
[ Once again, U.S. reports of casualties may be too rosy: According to doctors on the ground, about half of the bodies are noncombatants’. From the piece: An American spokesman … insisted that almost all the Iraqi dead were combatants. But according to doctors at the Samarra general hospital, of the first 47 bodies brought in, 11 were women, five children and seven elderly men. The hospital said it was running out of emergency supplies as more and more casualties arrived…. Homes were flattened and dozens of cars were set alight in yesterday’s operation. The people of Samarra, their electricity […]
27 September 2004 | World Socialist Web Site by Joseph Kay The current issue of Forbes Magazine contains the publication?s annual list of the wealthiest Americans, ranked by net worth. While one?s first instinct might be to turn away in disgust from such a flaunting of individual wealth and greed, it is instructive to consider the figures, for they provide an important indication of the nature of American society. According to Forbes, ?The economy?s recovery may be a little shaky, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at this year’s Forbes 400. The combined net worth of the nation’s wealthiest […]
[ As DemocracyNow! (1 Oct. 2004) reports: Bush Campaign Helped Write Allawi Speech The Washington Post is reporting that the U.S. government and a representative of President Bush’s reelection campaign were “heavily involved” in drafting Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s speech before the U.S. Congress last week. Unnamed administration officials told the Post that Dan Senor sent Allawi recommended phrases and helped him rehearse the speech. Senor is the former spokesperson for the Coalition Provisional Authority during the official U.S. occupation of Iraq. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the British Foreign Service also reportedly helped Allawi with the text […]
9 Sept. 2004 | East Hampton Star by E.L. Doctorow I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-Day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear. But this president does not know what […]
by Quentin Pratt Bill O’Reilly repeatedly insulted the Daily Show’s audience during an interview with John Stewart, referring to them as “stoned slackers” several times during the interview. This prompted some research which found the following: Viewers of Jon Stewart’s show are more likely to have completed four years of college than people who watch “The O’Reilly Factor,” according to Nielsen Media Research. “Daily Show” viewers are 78 percent more likely than the average adult to have four or more years of college education, while O’Reilly’s audience is only 24 percent more likely to have that much schooling. On top […]
29 September 2004 | The Independent Pregnant chads, vanishing voters… the election fiasco of 2000 made the Sunshine State a laughing stock. More importantly, it put George Bush in the White House. You’d think they’d want to get it right this time. But no, as Andrew Gumbel discovers, the democratic process is more flawed than ever …
[ Thanks to Bob Lee for spotting this piece. –BL ] Keywords: depleted uranium September 29, 2004 | New York Daily News In early September 2003, Army National Guard Spec. Gerard Darren Matthew was sent home from Iraq, stricken by a sudden illness. One side of Matthew’s face would swell up each morning. He had constant migraine headaches, blurred vision, blackouts and a burning sensation whenever he urinated. The Army transferred him to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington for further tests, but doctors there could not explain what was wrong. Shortly after his return, his wife, Janice, became pregnant. […]
26 Sept 2004 | Toronto Star by SANDRO CONTENTA LANDSTUHL, Germany?At the U.S. military hospital on a wooded hilltop here, the cost of the Iraq war is measured in amputated limbs, burst eyeballs, shrapnel-torn bodies and shattered lives. They’re the seriously wounded U.S. soldiers who arrive daily at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a growing human toll that belies American election talk of improving times in Iraq. They’re the maimed and the scarred that hospital staff believe are largely invisible to an American public ignorant of their suffering. “They have no idea what’s going on here, none whatsoever,” says Col. […]
[ So it is not only Dick Cheney who “traded with the enemy”! From the piece: the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis’ plans and policies, [Prescott Bush] worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler’s rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty. Thanks to Matt Miller […]
27 Sept. 2004 | Misleader.org President Bush and his allies have insisted that violence in Iraq is limited to a few isolated pockets of resistance. President Bush said last Wednesday that there are a “handful of people who are willing to kill in order to stop the process.”1 The next day, Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi told reporters at a press conference in the Rose Garden “there is nothing, no problem, except on a small pocket in Fallujah.”2 Information in a secret report compiled for the administration suggests that Bush and Allawi are misleading the public about the scope […]
28 Sept. 2004 | DemocracyNow! The Guardian of London is reporting that links have been discovered between senior U.S. military officials and a failed coup plot in the oil-rich African nation of Equatorial Guinea. The Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary of Defense for African affairs reportedly met twice with a British man who has been accused of being one of the coup organizers. The coup has received considerable attention in Britain because former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s son Sir Mark Thatcher was arrested for helping to fund the failed plot. The president of Equatorial Guinea has accused the US of backing […]
28 Sept. 2004 | DemocracyNow! The New York Times is reporting that the CIA’s National Intelligence Council warned President Bush in two classified reports in January 2003 that an invasion of Iraq would increase support for political Islam and would result in a deeply divided Iraqi society prone to violent internal conflict. The existence of these two classified reports had not been previously disclosed and offer new proof that the President was warned before the invasion that the Iraq invasion could lead to destabilize the region. The report was written by the same group that wrote the recent classified National […]
28 Sept. 2004 | DemocracyNow! Time Magazine has revealed that the White House had developed a secret plan where it would covertly use the CIA to help pro-U.S. candidates win in the upcoming Iraqi election. The plan was reportedly discarded after protests from lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Time reports House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to voice her opposition. Some officials within the Bush administration have defended the plan saying it is needed to counter outside influence from other countries including Iran. This comes as the Los Angeles Times is reporting that in Afghanistan numerous […]
28 Sept. 2004 | DemocracyNow! More than one third of the retired soldiers being reactivated for duty in Iraq are refusing to go. The Army is threatening to charge some of the former soldiers with desertion. This according to a report in USA Today. The Army has called up about 1600 former soldiers as part of what is known as the Individual Ready Reserve. More than 600 have not shown up; many have requested exemptions for health and personal reasons. 14 of these soldiers have already been declared AWOL. Senator John Kerry has accused President Bush of instituting a backdoor […]
27 Sept. 2004 | DemocracyNow! CBS News has taken the unusual step of publicly admitting that it has killed a major story because the network feels it would be ?inappropriate” to air it before the presidential election. The story is the result of a major six-month investigation into how the Bush administration obtained forged documents that made it appear Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium from the African nation Niger. The uranium claim was cited by President Bush during his 2002 State of the Union as a reason to go to attack Iraq.
22 Sept. 2004 | Daily Kos . com Dan Rather, CBS News Anchor 1. given documents he thought were true 2. failed to thoroughly investigate the facts 3. reported documents to the American people as true to make his case 4. when confronted with the facts, apologized and launched an investigation 5. number of Americans dead: 0 6. should be fired as CBS News Anchor George W. Bush, President of the United States 1. given documents he thought were true 2. failed to thoroughly investigate the facts 3. reported documents to the American people as true to make his case […]
2004 | NewsGateway [ click here for the video (Windows Media format) ] Stan Goff comments: “The ‘tell’ is in the audio. When the pilot asks permission to fire, he reports a large number of people? not armed people. People. And permission is granted instantly. This is an indication that the mission guidance is to shoot anyone who is in the street. This is a clear war crime, and one that begins with the commander?s stated intent in the operations order. The pilot?s exclamation of satisfaction, ‘Aw dude!’, at the end just underlines how this casual sadism comes to dominate the psyches […]
[ Unfortunately, the Bush campaign might be right that, statistically, its target voter group — under-educated fundamentalists — can be manipulated by such kooky, deceptive scare tactics. –BL ] September 24, 2004 | New York Times by DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK The Republican Party acknowledged yesterday sending mass mailings to residents of two states warning that “liberals” seek to ban the Bible. It said the mailings were part of its effort to mobilize religious voters for President Bush.
25 September 2004 | World Socialist Web Site by Bill Van Auken Nature has dealt a cruel blow to the people of Haiti, deepening the intense suffering and oppression that centuries of imperialist domination have inflicted upon the Caribbean nation’s impoverished population. Tropical Storm Jeanne has buried Gonaives, the birthplace of Haiti’s struggle to cast off slavery and colonialism 200 years ago, in a sea of mud. Over 1,700 bodies have been recovered and dumped in mass graves. Thousands more people in the city as well as in cut-off rural areas are presumed dead. Tens of thousands have been left […]
[ As reconstruction monies are diverted to “security” … –BL ] September 25, 2004 | New York Times by JAMES GLANZ BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 24 – A virulent form of hepatitis that is especially lethal for pregnant women has broken out in two of Iraq’s most troubled districts, Iraqi Health Ministry officials said in interviews here this week, and they warned that a collapse of water and sewage systems in the continuing violence in the country is probably at the root of the outbreak. The disease, called hepatitis E, is caused by a virus that is often spread by sewage-contaminated drinking […]
22 Sept. 2004 | DemocracyNow! In others from the United Nations, the Scotsman newspaper is reporting the Bush administration is facing condemnation for failing to join more than 100 countries as part of a new campaign to raise an extra $50 billion annually to combat global hunger. The U.S. rejected proposals to raise money to fight global hunger that included a global tax on financial transactions and a tax on the sale of heavy arms. Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva responded to the US decision by saying, “How many more times will it be necessary to repeat that […]
Anglican Network Urges Sanctions on Israel: Report 24 Sept. 2004 | IslamOnline.net London — Inspired by an earlier successful campaign against apartheid in South Africa, a leading international Anglican group has asked sanctions on Israel and a boycott of businesses there to protest the occupation of Palestinian lands, a leading British newspaper reported Friday, September 24. The call by the influential Anglican Peace and Justice Network (APJN) comes amid growing concern in Israel at rising support among churches, universities and trade unions in the west for a divestment campaign modelled on the popular boycott of apartheid South Africa, The Guardian […]
24 Sept. 2004 | DemocracyNow! Rumsfeld: Up to 25% Of Iraq May Not Vote in Election [The nonelected prime minister of Iraq, Ayad] Allawi, vowed the Iraqi elections scheduled for January would go ahead as planned. But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday revealed that between 20 to 25 percent of the country may not take part in the elections because of continued violence. Rumsfeld admitted it would be “an election that’s not quite perfect.” Pentagon Plans 15,000 More Troops For Iraq The Wall Street Journal is reporting the Pentagon has plans to send 15,000 more troops to Iraq ahead of […]
Sep. 23, 2004 | OneWorld US by Jim Lobe WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Bush administration has failed to realize the hopes and dreams of women and girls in much of post-Taliban Afghanistan, according to several human and women’s rights groups who warned Wednesday that the time to redress the situation is fast running out. Washington has largely failed so far to take women’s roles into account in relief and reconstruction projects, to provide remotely adequate funding for women’s groups, and above all, to secure most of the country against the violence and misrule of warlords and armed groups, according to […]
According to Michael Moore, most Americans are much more progressive than we know, perhaps more than they themselves know. If Mike is right, it would be worth sending any friends that you suspect might be unaware of how anti-Bush they really are to some of the vote matching sites on the net. The Christian Science Monitor’s Election 2004 Quiz The VotingCatholic.org Catholic Voting Project Voting Quiz The PoliticalCompass.org Political Categorization Quiz The OnTheIssues.org PresidencyMatch-2004 Quiz
September 21, 2004 | The Guardian by Neil Clark ‘Wars, conflict – it’s all business,” sighs Monsieur Verdoux in Charlie Chaplin’s 1947 film of the same name. Many will not need to be convinced of the link between US corporations now busily helping themselves to Iraqi state assets and the military machine that prised Iraq open for global business. But what is less widely known is that a similar process is already well under way in a part of the world where B52s were not so long ago dropping bombs in another “liberation” mission.
by Bob Nichols Project Censored Award Winner Oklahoma City – Twenty three or more of the bomb makers at the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant, called simply “The Plant” locally, have caught “acute hemolytic anemia.” [ see the McAlester News Capital-Democrat news stories ] All the sickened production employees worked on the 2000 Pound Penetrator Bomb (“Bunker Busters”) line. [ link ] It is also possible that they have radiation poisoning from handling, ingesting, swallowing, breathing, and being exposed to Uranium oxide, uranium, and other forms of the deadly metal in the air. There are 22,000,000 pounds of uranium stored on base according to […]
22 Sept. 2004 | Salon.com In war, you deny information, spread lies and use psychological warfare. An expert on military information operations explains how Bush has mastered this technique — and used it against the American people. by Sam Gardiner On Thursday, Iraq’s interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, will speak before a joint meeting of Congress, and from what he said in London on his way to the United States, it looks like Americans are going to be getting more of the strategic information operations that have been crucial to Bush’s policy on Iraq from the beginning. On Monday, Allawi […]
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004 | michaelmoore.com 9/22/04 Dear Mr. Bush, I am so confused. Where exactly do you stand on the issue of Iraq? You, your Dad, Rummy, Condi, Colin, and Wolfie — you have all changed your minds so many times, I am out of breath just trying to keep up with you! Which of these 10 positions that you, your family and your cabinet have taken over the years represents your CURRENT thinking: 1983-88: WE LOVE SADDAM. On December 19, 1983, Donald Rumsfeld was sent by your dad and Mr. Reagan to go and have a friendly meeting […]
[ According to the new Johns Hopkins study twenty-four countries ranked better than the United States in infant mortality rates in 2000. Out of 191 countries, the United States ranked 33rd in its death rate for children under age 5. The United States, out of 187 countries, ranked 68th in immunizing children against diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus; 89th for polio; and 84th for measles. U.S. teens ranked 18th out of 28 industrialized countries in a self-reported survey of not feeling healthy. [P]artial explanations for the United States? low rankings may be the country’s income inequity and inadequacy of the health services system. The United States […]