Friday, October 14, 2005
Porn in High Places
New York Times reporter Judith Miller is out of jail. In all probability Miller played a role in revealing the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame and assisted the White House in discrediting Plame's whistle blower husband, Joseph Wilson. Whatever is ultimately revealed about Miller won't come from the pages of the Times. It has so far refused to come clean on her shilling for the Bush administration.
Bush's right hand henchman, Karl Rove, has testified four times before the grand jury investigating the case and special prosecutor James Fitzgerald may be ready to hand down indictments. It took quite a while for the corporate media to pay attention to the illegal outing of a CIA agent, and therein lies a very sordid tale.
Jeff Gannon, born James Guckert, is like the bad penny that won't go away. Gannon is the "reporter" from the now defunct Talon News Service. Talon was a Republican phony news service that existed only to bolster White House propaganda efforts. When would be reporter Gannon was still calling himself Guckert he was also advertising his services as a gay prostitute.
It is easy to be distracted by Gannon's personal life because this administration cynically uses anti-gay bigotry to energize its political base. As tempting as it would be to expose the ugly underbelly of the already ugly, that would not do justice to the point of this column.
While the private lives of the Bushmen may be ugly – no surprise there – it is their public lives which must be closely scrutinized. In the scheme of things it really is not important that Gannon used to be a professional whore. It is important that this former prostitute and phony reporter was allowed to gain access to the classified information that identified Plame. Gannon is a bit coy, saying only that "I acquired knowledge of the memo...."
We already know he wasn't really a reporter. If Gannon "acquired knowledge" of anything classified it is because someone gave him the information. The self-made web site porn star had a friend in a very high place.
Meanwhile, the worst and ugliest act undertaken by this administration, the occupation of Iraq, continues. President Bush made it clear in a recent speech that it isn't going to end anytime soon. We must not falter, we must stay the course, we must continue the war on terror and so on. While Bush speaks the same awful words that are used to hide the destruction of a nation, America's namby pamby media have sadly chosen to assist him in keeping that horror in the closet.
Occupations are inherently oppressive. You can't take over someone else's country without breaking bodies, homes and dignity. We saw a brief glimpse of the humiliation and violence waged against Iraqis when photos of abuse and death at Abu Ghraib prison were first made public. As awful as those images were, there are more to come that are apparently much, much worse.
The American Civil Liberties Union sued the federal government to force the release of an additional 87 photographs and 4 videos. The feds took the position that the images will ruin America's image abroad and increase the likelihood of terror attacks. That is quite an admission of guilt.
It has been reported that these new photos may depict the sexual abuse of women and minors. If that is true it will be further proof that the U.S. is in fact the infidel, the great Satan and anything else that will cause aggrieved people to want to kill us all.
Speaking of photos and Iraq, the mixture of violence and sex recently exposed yet another incident that goes under the heading of "scandals that should have been but were swept under the rug." A patriotic porn meister offered access to his web site to anyone who submitted photographic evidence of military service in Iraq or Afghanistan. Some soldiers sent humdrum shots of Baghdad while others felt compelled to use gruesome images of bodies blown to bits.
It seems the government doesn’t have to worry about more Abu Ghraib photos. They have to worry about horny soldiers emailing pictures of dead bodies so that they can see pictures of live nude girls.
The war in Iraq, like every other war, has killed and maimed thousands of people. Unlike other wars the killers in this conflict have digital cameras and can spread their handiwork thousands of miles away in a matter of seconds.
The New York Times has access to the same technology. The Gray Lady could show us how Iraqis are suffering because of the United States. Instead, their ace reporter Judith Miller gave us pornography when she aided the war mongers in their campaign of lies. Unless the Times fully discloses its role in this dirty story it is no better than Hustler. Actually it is worse. Hustler has no pretense about what it is selling.
Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BC. Ms. Kimberley is a freelance writer living in New York City. She can be reached via e-Mail at margaret.kimberley@blackcommentator.com. You can read more of Ms. Kimberley's writings at freedomrider.blogspot.com.
Bush's right hand henchman, Karl Rove, has testified four times before the grand jury investigating the case and special prosecutor James Fitzgerald may be ready to hand down indictments. It took quite a while for the corporate media to pay attention to the illegal outing of a CIA agent, and therein lies a very sordid tale.
Jeff Gannon, born James Guckert, is like the bad penny that won't go away. Gannon is the "reporter" from the now defunct Talon News Service. Talon was a Republican phony news service that existed only to bolster White House propaganda efforts. When would be reporter Gannon was still calling himself Guckert he was also advertising his services as a gay prostitute.
It is easy to be distracted by Gannon's personal life because this administration cynically uses anti-gay bigotry to energize its political base. As tempting as it would be to expose the ugly underbelly of the already ugly, that would not do justice to the point of this column.
While the private lives of the Bushmen may be ugly – no surprise there – it is their public lives which must be closely scrutinized. In the scheme of things it really is not important that Gannon used to be a professional whore. It is important that this former prostitute and phony reporter was allowed to gain access to the classified information that identified Plame. Gannon is a bit coy, saying only that "I acquired knowledge of the memo...."
We already know he wasn't really a reporter. If Gannon "acquired knowledge" of anything classified it is because someone gave him the information. The self-made web site porn star had a friend in a very high place.
Meanwhile, the worst and ugliest act undertaken by this administration, the occupation of Iraq, continues. President Bush made it clear in a recent speech that it isn't going to end anytime soon. We must not falter, we must stay the course, we must continue the war on terror and so on. While Bush speaks the same awful words that are used to hide the destruction of a nation, America's namby pamby media have sadly chosen to assist him in keeping that horror in the closet.
Occupations are inherently oppressive. You can't take over someone else's country without breaking bodies, homes and dignity. We saw a brief glimpse of the humiliation and violence waged against Iraqis when photos of abuse and death at Abu Ghraib prison were first made public. As awful as those images were, there are more to come that are apparently much, much worse.
The American Civil Liberties Union sued the federal government to force the release of an additional 87 photographs and 4 videos. The feds took the position that the images will ruin America's image abroad and increase the likelihood of terror attacks. That is quite an admission of guilt.
It has been reported that these new photos may depict the sexual abuse of women and minors. If that is true it will be further proof that the U.S. is in fact the infidel, the great Satan and anything else that will cause aggrieved people to want to kill us all.
Speaking of photos and Iraq, the mixture of violence and sex recently exposed yet another incident that goes under the heading of "scandals that should have been but were swept under the rug." A patriotic porn meister offered access to his web site to anyone who submitted photographic evidence of military service in Iraq or Afghanistan. Some soldiers sent humdrum shots of Baghdad while others felt compelled to use gruesome images of bodies blown to bits.
It seems the government doesn’t have to worry about more Abu Ghraib photos. They have to worry about horny soldiers emailing pictures of dead bodies so that they can see pictures of live nude girls.
The war in Iraq, like every other war, has killed and maimed thousands of people. Unlike other wars the killers in this conflict have digital cameras and can spread their handiwork thousands of miles away in a matter of seconds.
The New York Times has access to the same technology. The Gray Lady could show us how Iraqis are suffering because of the United States. Instead, their ace reporter Judith Miller gave us pornography when she aided the war mongers in their campaign of lies. Unless the Times fully discloses its role in this dirty story it is no better than Hustler. Actually it is worse. Hustler has no pretense about what it is selling.
Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BC. Ms. Kimberley is a freelance writer living in New York City. She can be reached via e-Mail at margaret.kimberley@blackcommentator.com. You can read more of Ms. Kimberley's writings at freedomrider.blogspot.com.
Haiti's Children's Prison - Hope is Fading
Rays of Haiti's scorching noontime sun slip between the bars into the otherwise dark 8 by 10 foot cell, illuminating the sets of eyes that stare out at the visitors.
My eyes adjust and the forms of children emerge. I count 16 boys. Most squeeze seated together on the upper and lower levels of the three bunk beds that fit into a tight "U." A few sprawl behind the seated ones or sit in the tight space on the concrete floor that separates the beds. Three more cells, each with 16 boys, adjoin this one. The youngest of the 64 children is 10. There are at least three 10-year-olds. The oldest is 17. Many have lived in these cells for more than a year.
A journalist visiting Haiti for the third time, I'm accompanying San Francisco Bay Area human rights workers. With me at the children's prison is Sr. Stella Goodpasture, OP, Justice Promoter, Dominican Sisters of Mission San Jose and translator, guide, advisor and friend, Daniel Tillas.
My eyes adjust and the forms of children emerge. I count 16 boys. Most squeeze seated together on the upper and lower levels of the three bunk beds that fit into a tight "U." A few sprawl behind the seated ones or sit in the tight space on the concrete floor that separates the beds. Three more cells, each with 16 boys, adjoin this one. The youngest of the 64 children is 10. There are at least three 10-year-olds. The oldest is 17. Many have lived in these cells for more than a year.
A journalist visiting Haiti for the third time, I'm accompanying San Francisco Bay Area human rights workers. With me at the children's prison is Sr. Stella Goodpasture, OP, Justice Promoter, Dominican Sisters of Mission San Jose and translator, guide, advisor and friend, Daniel Tillas.
Black Mecca: The Death of an Illusion
It was the place to be, we were told throughout the Eighties and Nineties. The housing was cheap, the weather benign, the social and business networks poppin’, the elected officials black and enlightened, and the opportunities limitless. Twenty years before it had been "the city too busy to hate." Now it was the "Black Mecca," and pilgrims streamed in by the tens of thousands each year.
Maynard Jackson was elected Atlanta's first black mayor in 1973, only 5 years after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King. According to a June 29, 2003 Atlanta Journal-Constitution article by Ernie Suggs:
Those first 25 millionaires, with the assistance of the next three black Atlanta mayors, have helped to create scores of additional black millionaires along with the thriving, empowered, well-connected and ambitious business and professional class which identifies with the people who run Atlanta to this day.
Maynard Jackson was elected Atlanta's first black mayor in 1973, only 5 years after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King. According to a June 29, 2003 Atlanta Journal-Constitution article by Ernie Suggs:
"In 1973, fewer than 1 percent of the city's contracts went to minorities. Five years later, it was 38.6 percent. At one point, more than 80 percent of all minority contracts at U.S. airports were in Atlanta, prompting Jackson once to boast that he had helped create 25 new black millionaires..."
Those first 25 millionaires, with the assistance of the next three black Atlanta mayors, have helped to create scores of additional black millionaires along with the thriving, empowered, well-connected and ambitious business and professional class which identifies with the people who run Atlanta to this day.
Bush Teleconference with Soldiers Staged
FROM TRUTHOUT
It was billed as a conversation with U.S. troops, but the questions President Bush asked on a teleconference call Thursday were choreographed to match his goals for the war in Iraq and Saturday's vote on a new Iraqi constitution."This is an important time," Allison Barber, deputy assistant defense secretary, said, coaching the soldiers before Bush arrived. "The president is looking forward to having just a conversation with you."
Barber said the president was interested in three topics: the overall security situation in Iraq, security preparations for the weekend vote and efforts to train Iraqi troops.
As she spoke in Washington, a live shot of 10 soldiers from the Army's 42nd Infantry Division and one Iraqi soldier was beamed into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building from Tikrit - the birthplace of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
"I'm going to ask somebody to grab those two water bottles against the wall and move them out of the camera shot for me," Barber said.
A brief rehearsal ensued.
"OK, so let's just walk through this," Barber said. "Captain Kennedy, you answer the first question and you hand the mike to whom?"
"Captain Smith," Kennedy said.
"Captain. Smith? You take the mike and you hand it to whom?" she asked.
"Captain Kennedy," the soldier replied.
And so it went.
"If the question comes up about partnering - how often do we train with the Iraqi military - who does he go to?" Barber asked.
"That's going to go to Captain Pratt," one of the soldiers said.
"And then if we're going to talk a little bit about the folks in Tikrit - the hometown - and how they're handling the political process, who are we going to give that to?" she asked.
Before he took questions, Bush thanked the soldiers for serving and reassured them that the U.S. would not pull out of Iraq until the mission was complete.
"So long as I'm the president, we're never going to back down, we're never going to give in, we'll never accept anything less than total victory," Bush said.
The president told them twice that the American people were behind them.
"You've got tremendous support here at home," Bush said.
Less than 40 percent in an AP-Ipsos poll taken in October said they approved of the way Bush was handling Iraq. Just over half of the public now say the Iraq war was a mistake.
Pinter: Torture and misery in name of freedom
FROM THE INDEPENDENT
By Harold Pinter who yesterday won the Nobel Prize for LiteraturePublished: 14 October 2005
The great poet Wilfred Owen articulated the tragedy, the horror - and indeed the pity - of war in a way no other poet has. Yet we have learnt nothing. Nearly 100 years after his death the world has become more savage, more brutal, more pitiless.
But the "free world" we are told, as embodied in the United States and Great Britain, is different to the rest of the world since our actions are dictated and sanctioned by a moral authority and a moral passion condoned by someone called God. Some people may find this difficult to comprehend but Osama Bin Laden finds it easy.
What would Wilfred Owen make of the invasion of Iraq? A bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of International Law. An arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public. An act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading - as a last resort (all other justifications having failed to justify themselves) - as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands upon thousands of innocent people.
An independent and totally objective account of the Iraqi civilian dead in the medical magazine The Lancet estimates that the figure approaches 100,000. But neither the US or the UK bother to count the Iraqi dead. As General Tommy Franks of US Central Command memorably said: "We don't do body counts".
We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery and degradation to the Iraqi people and call it " bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East". But, as we all know, we have not been welcomed with the predicted flowers. What we have unleashed is a ferocious and unremitting resistance, mayhem and chaos.
You may say at this point: what about the Iraqi elections? Well, President Bush himself answered this question when he said: "We cannot accept that there can be free democratic elections in a country under foreign military occupation". I had to read that statement twice before I realised that he was talking about Lebanon and Syria.
What do Bush and Blair actually see when they look at themselves in the mirror?
I believe Wilfred Owen would share our contempt, our revulsion, our nausea and our shame at both the language and the actions of the American and British governments.
Adapted by Harold Pinter from a speech he delivered on winning the Wilfred Owen Award earlier this year
A Nazi in the (pocket) is worth four in the Bush (family)
What is interesting about the history of the Bush family are the connections; Avril Harriman, Allen Dulles, the Rockefellers (the start of the oil connection), James Baker III, Gulf Oil, Pennzoil, Osama bin Laden…on and on it goes.
"On October 20, 1942, the US Alien Property Custodian, under the "Trading With the Enemy Act," seized the shares of the Union Banking Corporation (UBC), of which Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder. The largest shareholder was E. Roland Harriman. (Bush was also the managing partner of Brown Brothers Harriman, a leading Wall Street investment firm.)
"The UBC was established to send American capital to Germany to finance the reorganization of its industry under the Nazis. Their leading German partner was the notorious Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen, who wrote a book admitting much of this called "I Paid Hitler."
"Among the companies financed was the Silesian-American Corporation, which was also managed by Prescott Bush, and by his father-in-law George Herbert Walker, who supplied Dub-a-Ya with his name. The company was vital in supplying coal to the Nazi war industry. It too was seized as a Nazi-front on November 17, 1942. The largest company Bush's UBC helped finance was the German Steel Trust, responsible for between one-third and one-half of Nazi iron and explosives.
"Prescott Bush was also a director of the Harriman Fifteen Corporation, (this one owned largely by Roland's brother, Averell Harriman), which owned about a third of the Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation, the rest owned by Friedrich Flick, (a member of Himmler's "Circle of Friends" who donated to the S.S.)."
Source: http://www.lpdallas.org/features/draheim/dr991216.htm
What is interesting about the history of the Bush family are the connections; Avril Harriman, Allen Dulles, the Rockefellers (the start of the oil connection), James Baker III, Gulf Oil, Pennzoil, Osama bin Laden…on and on it goes. It looks like this’ll have to be part one of an on-going series on the Bush dynasty and their dirty dealings.
"On October 20, 1942, the US Alien Property Custodian, under the "Trading With the Enemy Act," seized the shares of the Union Banking Corporation (UBC), of which Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder. The largest shareholder was E. Roland Harriman. (Bush was also the managing partner of Brown Brothers Harriman, a leading Wall Street investment firm.)
"The UBC was established to send American capital to Germany to finance the reorganization of its industry under the Nazis. Their leading German partner was the notorious Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen, who wrote a book admitting much of this called "I Paid Hitler."
"Among the companies financed was the Silesian-American Corporation, which was also managed by Prescott Bush, and by his father-in-law George Herbert Walker, who supplied Dub-a-Ya with his name. The company was vital in supplying coal to the Nazi war industry. It too was seized as a Nazi-front on November 17, 1942. The largest company Bush's UBC helped finance was the German Steel Trust, responsible for between one-third and one-half of Nazi iron and explosives.
"Prescott Bush was also a director of the Harriman Fifteen Corporation, (this one owned largely by Roland's brother, Averell Harriman), which owned about a third of the Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation, the rest owned by Friedrich Flick, (a member of Himmler's "Circle of Friends" who donated to the S.S.)."
Source: http://www.lpdallas.org/features/draheim/dr991216.htm
What is interesting about the history of the Bush family are the connections; Avril Harriman, Allen Dulles, the Rockefellers (the start of the oil connection), James Baker III, Gulf Oil, Pennzoil, Osama bin Laden…on and on it goes. It looks like this’ll have to be part one of an on-going series on the Bush dynasty and their dirty dealings.
'Frauds-R-Us' The Bush Family Saga
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you have to focus on" – GW Bush
"You have to look at the entire Bush Family in this context -- as if the family ran a corporation called ‘Frauds-R-Us,’
George Jr.’s specialty was insurance and security fraud.
Jeb’s specialty was oil and gas fraud.
Neil’s specialty was real estate fraud.
Prescott’s specialty was banking fraud.
And George Sr.’s specialty? All of the above." -- Lt. Cmdr. Al Martin, US Navy,(Ret)
"While opportunism isn’t new in U.S. politics, never did so many in one family extract so many dollars from taxpayers as when George Bush senior was president a decade ago" -- David E. Scheim, author of Contract on America.
"What you’ve got with Bush [George senior] is absolutely the largest number of siblings and children involved in what looks like a never-ending hustle." -- Republican pundit Kevin Philips
"Texas businessmen [are] not crooks, "they just have an over-developed sense of the extenuating circumstance."" -- Molly Ivins
TO READ MORE
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Remembering Suharto, the West's Fallen Hero. Nothing Has Changed.
From truthout
"The propagandist's purpose," wrote Aldous Huxley, "is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human." The British, who invented modern war propaganda and inspired Joseph Goebbels, were specialists in the field. At the height of the slaughter known as the First World War, the prime minister, David Lloyd George, confided to C P Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian: "If people really knew [the truth], the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don't know, and can't know."What has changed?
"If we had all known then what we know now," said the New York Times on 24 August, "the invasion [of Iraq] would have been stopped by a popular outcry." The admission was saying, in effect, that powerful newspapers, like powerful broadcasting organisations, had betrayed their readers and viewers and listeners by not finding out - by amplifying the lies of Bush and Blair instead of challenging and exposing them. The direct consequences were a criminal invasion called "Shock and Awe" and the dehumanising of a whole nation.
This remains largely an unspoken shame in Britain, especially at the BBC, which continues to boast about its rigour and objectivity while echoing a corrupt and lying government, as it did before the invasion. For evidence of this, there are two academic studies available - though the capitulation of broadcast journalism ought to be obvious to any discerning viewer, night after night, as "embedded" reporting justifies murderous attacks on Iraqi towns and villages as "rooting out insurgents" and swallows British army propaganda designed to distract from its disaster, while preparing us for attacks on Iran and Syria. Like the New York Times and most of the American media, had the BBC done its job, many thousands of innocent people almost certainly would be alive today.
When will important journalists cease to be establishment managers and analyse and confront the critical part they play in the violence of rapacious governments? An anniversary provides an opportunity. Forty years ago this month, Major General Suharto began a seizure of power in Indonesia by unleashing a wave of killings that the CIA described as "the worst mass murders of the second half of the 20th century". Much of this episode was never reported and remains secret. None of the reports of recent terror attacks against tourists in Bali mentioned the fact that near the major hotels were the mass graves of some of an estimated 80,000 people killed by mobs orchestrated by Suharto and backed by the American and British governments.
Pipelineistan's Biggest Game Begins
From Focus News
History may judge it as one of the capital moves of the 21st century's New Great Game: May 25, the day high-quality Caspian light crude started flowing through the Caucasus toward the Mediterranean in Turkey. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC) - conceived by the US as the ultimate Western escape route from dependence on oil from the Persian Gulf - is finally in business.This is what Pipelineistan is all about: a supreme law unto itself - untouchable by national sovereignty, serious environmental concerns (expressed both in the Caucasus and in Europe), labor legislation, protests against the World Bank, not to mention mountains 2,700 meters high and 1,500 small rivers. BTC took 10 years of hard work and at least US$4 billion - $3 billion of which is in bank loans. BTC is not merely a pipeline: it is a sovereign state.
WHITE HOUSE IGNORED CIA WARNINGS ON IRAQ
National Security Archive Update, October 13, 2005
Postwar Projections "had little or no impact on policy deliberations"
Declassified Kerr Report Available on National Security Archive Website
http://www.nsarchive.org
Washington D.C. October 13, 2005 - The White House disregarded intelligence projections on post-Saddam Iraq according to a newly-declassified CIA report, "Intelligence and Analysis on Iraq: Issues for the Intelligence Community," posted today on the website of the National Security Archive.
"In an ironic twist," the report finds, "the policy community was receptive to technical intelligence (the weapons program), where the analysis was wrong, but apparently paid little attention to intelligence on cultural and political issues (post-Saddam Iraq), where the analysis was right."
The report, from July 2004, is the third of three prepared by a group of intelligence experts led by Richard J. Kerr, a former deputy director of central intelligence, to examine the U.S. Intelligence Community's assessments in the months before the U.S. invasion. The first two reports remain classified despite the fact that many of their key findings are summarized in the July report and in unclassified reports produced by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction.
The Kerr report also identifies a number of weaknesses in the Intelligence Community's analytical products, particularly the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraqi weapons programs, which the report says was prepared "under an unusually tight time constraint" and was "the product of three separate drafters, drawing from a mixed bag of analytic product." The October 2002 NIE was at the center of Bush administration claims about Iraq's weapons programs in the prewar period.
The report also finds that intelligence analysts were under constant pressure to find "links between Saddam and [al-Qa'ida]" causing them to take a "purposely aggressive approach" to the issue, "conducting exhaustive and repetitive searches for such links." No such ties were ever found, however, and "the Intelligence Community remained firm in its assessment that no operational or collaborative relationship existed."
The Kerr report was first reported by USA Today on October 12 and is featured in an article by Douglas Jehl in today's New York Times. The text of the report was published this month with an edited introduction in the CIA's Studies in Intelligence journal (Vol. 49, No. 3). The complete, unedited version of the report was declassified in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and appeal by National Security Archive senior fellow Jeffrey Richelson.
Please follow the link below to read the full report:
http://www.nsarchive.org
______________________
Postwar Projections "had little or no impact on policy deliberations"
Declassified Kerr Report Available on National Security Archive Website
http://www.nsarchive.org
Washington D.C. October 13, 2005 - The White House disregarded intelligence projections on post-Saddam Iraq according to a newly-declassified CIA report, "Intelligence and Analysis on Iraq: Issues for the Intelligence Community," posted today on the website of the National Security Archive.
"In an ironic twist," the report finds, "the policy community was receptive to technical intelligence (the weapons program), where the analysis was wrong, but apparently paid little attention to intelligence on cultural and political issues (post-Saddam Iraq), where the analysis was right."
The report, from July 2004, is the third of three prepared by a group of intelligence experts led by Richard J. Kerr, a former deputy director of central intelligence, to examine the U.S. Intelligence Community's assessments in the months before the U.S. invasion. The first two reports remain classified despite the fact that many of their key findings are summarized in the July report and in unclassified reports produced by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction.
The Kerr report also identifies a number of weaknesses in the Intelligence Community's analytical products, particularly the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraqi weapons programs, which the report says was prepared "under an unusually tight time constraint" and was "the product of three separate drafters, drawing from a mixed bag of analytic product." The October 2002 NIE was at the center of Bush administration claims about Iraq's weapons programs in the prewar period.
The report also finds that intelligence analysts were under constant pressure to find "links between Saddam and [al-Qa'ida]" causing them to take a "purposely aggressive approach" to the issue, "conducting exhaustive and repetitive searches for such links." No such ties were ever found, however, and "the Intelligence Community remained firm in its assessment that no operational or collaborative relationship existed."
The Kerr report was first reported by USA Today on October 12 and is featured in an article by Douglas Jehl in today's New York Times. The text of the report was published this month with an edited introduction in the CIA's Studies in Intelligence journal (Vol. 49, No. 3). The complete, unedited version of the report was declassified in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and appeal by National Security Archive senior fellow Jeffrey Richelson.
Please follow the link below to read the full report:
http://www.nsarchive.org
______________________
Operation Latin American Freedom (yeah right!)
From Upside Down World
Preparations are underway for renewed US militarization and intervention in Latin America. To protect its own hegemony and economic interests, the US government is using the threat of terrorism as an excuse for military operations aimed at destabilizing leftist movements and governments and securing natural resources such as oil and gas.By focusing on social programs in education, land reform and healthcare, many of the region's new leaders have put the needs of the people ahead of the demands of multinational companies. This leftist resurgence makes corporate investors and other harbingers of the free market nervous. Recently, the Bush administration has gone to extreme measures to ensure that this leftist trend is put in check.
Hundreds of US troops arrived in Paraguay on July 1st for secretive operations and are believed to be populating a military base 200 kilometers from the Bolivian border. Political analysts in the region consider this questionable activity to be part of a strategy to quell popular uprisings in Bolivia – where upcoming presidential elections are expected to favor a leftist candidate – and take over the country’s vast gas reserves.
Venezuela to Expel U.S. Evangelical Group
From IPS News
Venezuela will expel the U.S. evangelical group New Tribes Mission, which has been active in indigenous communities along the southern border with Colombia and Brazil since 1946, President Hugo Chávez announced Wednesday."They will leave Venezuela," said the president. "They are agents of imperialist penetration. They gather sensitive and strategic information and are exploiting the Indians. So they will leave, and I don't care two hoots about the international consequences that this decision could bring."
New Tribes, an evangelical organisation that has long had close ties with the U.S.-based Summer Institute of Linguistics, is active in a number of countries in Asia and Latin America, and in Venezuela has focused its efforts on the Yanomami, Ye'kuana and Panare indigenous groups and other ethnic communities in the southern part of the country.
The Summer Institute of Linguistics was founded in 1934 with the declared purpose of translating the Bible into indigenous languages.
Chávez was delivering collective land titles, boat motors, vehicles and credits to indigenous communities in the plains region in southern Venezuela on Wednesday, the date he had declared "day of indigenous resistance," when he made the surprising announcement on the New Tribes Mission in a nationally broadcast speech.
"I have seen reports and videos on the activity of these New Tribes. We don't want them here; we all form part of an old tribe," Chávez quipped.
Since the 1970s, New Tribes has drawn heavy criticism from many quarters, including leftist political groups, environmentalists, indigenous organisations, academics, Catholic Church leaders and even members of the military. The controversial group has been accused of prospecting for strategic minerals on behalf of transnational corporations and of the forced acculturation and conversion of indigenous people.
Sociologist and environmentalist Alexander Luzardo, who 20 years ago published a report on the New Tribes Mission's operations in the Amazon jungle, welcomed Chávez's decision.
He told IPS that the decision "complies with what is stipulated in the constitution of 1999, which establishes indigenous peoples' right to self-determination and to respect for their beliefs, values and customs.
President Bush's job-approval rating among African Americans has dropped to 2 percent
From The Washington Post
In what may turn out to be one of the biggest free-falls in the history of presidential polling, President Bush's job-approval rating among African Americans has dropped to 2 percent, according to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.The drop among blacks drove Bush's overall job approval ratings to an all-time low of 39 percent in this poll. By comparison, 45 percent of whites and 36 percent of Hispanics approve of the job Bush is doing.
Iraq has descended into anarchy, says Fisk
From The Independent
Most of Iraq is in a state of anarchy, with insurgents controlling parts of Baghdad just half a mile from the so-called Green Zone, an Independent debate was told last night.Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for The Independent, whose new book The Great War for Civilisation: the Conquest of the Middle East has just been published by 4th Estate, painted a picture of deepening chaos and misery in Iraq more than two years after Saddam Hussein was toppled.
He said that the "constant, intensive involvement" in the Middle East by the West was a recurring pattern over centuries and was the reason why "so many Muslims in the Middle East hate us". He added: " We can close doors on history. They can't."
Fisk doubted the sincerity of Western leaders' commitment to bringing democracy to Iraq and said a lasting settlement in the country was impossible while foreign troops remained. "In the Middle East, they would like some of our democracy, they would like a couple of boxes off the supermarket shelves of human rights as well. But I think they would also like freedom from us."
Religion May Be Dangerous to Our Health
From Dissident Voice
The Roman Catholic Jesuit Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska, in its Journal of Religion and Society recently published a report by social scientist Gregory Paul. The report is entitled "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies."The study contradicts a commonly held belief that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society. Belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society, but may actually contribute to social problems.
Mr. Paul's report is based on a decade long, cross-national collaboration on social science surveys of 38 nations and 23,000 interviews. The study assessed such issues as societal health and dysfunction, measuring rates of homicide, youth suicide, sexually transmitted disease, teen pregnancy, and abortion data. This data was analyzed relative to the nations that had the highest rates of absolute belief in God as creator, attendance at religious services, frequency of prayer, and Biblical literalism.
The report concludes, "The populations of secular democracies are clearly able to govern themselves and maintain societal cohesion. Indeed, the data demonstrates that only the more secular, pro-evolution democracies have, for the first time in history, come closest to achieving practical 'cultures of life' that feature low rates of lethal crime, juvenile-adult mortality, sex related dysfunction, and even abortion. The least theistic secular developing democracies such as Japan, France, and Scandinavia have been most successful in these regards."
Fog Facts
From The Huffington Post
Fog Facts are things that have been made public, but have somehow disappeared into the mist.Thereby becoming invisible.
Here are some examples: seven of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers have phoned in to say they were alive.
After the US took over Iraq, including the oil for food program, $19 billion of Iraq’s money disappeared.
The Florida recount, completed in 2001, showed that Al Gore got more valid, countable votes than George Bush.
What keeps us oblivious to these things is the failure to frame them, the failure of somebody to push them, and sometimes the deliberate manufacture of fog.
In turn, ignorance of the facts, keeps us from seeing the real picture.
A lot what has happened in the last six years is baffling. Let's focus on one area, our response to the 9/11 attacks.
Uranium fallout
From The Guardian
Coverage of the Plame affair has been tainted by the press's cosy duet with the White House From the steakhouses of the lobbyists to the cloakroom of the Senate, from the book-launch parties to the news bureaux, the main subject in Washington is who will be indicted, and when. As the inquiry of independent counsel Patrick Fitzgerald into the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity approaches its deadline of October 28, the cast of characters appears for final performances before the grand jury. Trailing clouds of mystery, they disappear into the windowless chamber to emerge illuminating nothing. Fitzgerald's airtight office, leaking to no reporter, only fuels the fires of rumour by its silence.
The President's day: One high crime and two misdemeanors
From Attytood
Many have been agitating in recent days for the impeachment of President Bush, primarily on the grounds of deliberately lying to the American people about Iraq. But why stop there. Just today alone, Bush committed at least one "high crime" and two "misdemeanors," by our casual tally.Let's review:
The act: President Bush said Wednesday that Harriet Miers' religious beliefs figured into her nomination to the Supreme Court as a top-ranking Democrat warned against any "wink and a nod" campaign for confirmation.
"People are interested to know why I picked Harriet Miers," Bush told reporters at the White House. "Part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion."Misdemeanor No. 1: In using religion as a key basis for offering Miers a job, the president would appear to have violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. According to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Title VII of the law "prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin."
Misdemeanor No. 2: More specifically, one could make the case that Bush's actions are also in violation of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which specifically covers federal employees. According to the same EEOC primer: "The CSRA prohibits any employee who has authority to take certain personnel actions from discriminating for or against employees or applicants for employment on the bases of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age or disability."
High crime: As you might expect, the "high crime" here is more serious, and is also the area where it's hardest to argue that the president did not cross the line. We are referring to Article VI, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which states that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
Do you honestly believe that Harriet Miers -- with all her other qualifications exactly the same -- would have been nominated to the Supreme Court if she had been Jewish, or an atheist, or Muslim? Of course not, because the president and Karl Rove, or Andy Card, or whoever's really running things these days, knew that such a choice would not pass muster with the radical clerics who sit on "the board of directors" of Bushco.
A mid-level bureaucrat who treated a job vacancy in this manner would surely be fired. Shouldn't we hold the president of the United States to an even higher standard?
George W. Bush has an easy choice now. He can withdraw Miers' nomination. Or he can be impeached.
The President's day: One high crime and two misdemeanors
From Attytood
Since Attytood is now officially a "liberal journalist" according to Slate.com, we feel it's our duty to report that many on the farther left have been agitating in recent days for the impeachment of President Bush, primarily on the grounds of deliberately lying to the American people about Iraq. But why stop there. Just today alone, Bush committed at least one "high crime" and two "misdemeanors," by our casual tally.Let's review:
The act: President Bush said Wednesday that Harriet Miers' religious beliefs figured into her nomination to the Supreme Court as a top-ranking Democrat warned against any "wink and a nod" campaign for confirmation.
"People are interested to know why I picked Harriet Miers," Bush told reporters at the White House. "Part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion."Misdemeanor No. 1: In using religion as a key basis for offering Miers a job, the president would appear to have violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. According to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Title VII of the law "prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin."
Misdemeanor No. 2: More specifically, one could make the case that Bush's actions are also in violation of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which specifically covers federal employees. According to the same EEOC primer: "The CSRA prohibits any employee who has authority to take certain personnel actions from discriminating for or against employees or applicants for employment on the bases of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age or disability."
High crime: As you might expect, the "high crime" here is more serious, and is also the area where it's hardest to argue that the president did not cross the line. We are referring to Article VI, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which states that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
Do you honestly believe that Harriet Miers -- with all her other qualifications exactly the same -- would have been nominated to the Supreme Court if she had been Jewish, or an atheist, or Muslim? Of course not, because the president and Karl Rove, or Andy Card, or whoever's really running things these days, knew that such a choice would not pass muster with the radical clerics who sit on "the board of directors" of Bushco.
A mid-level bureaucrat who treated a job vacancy in this manner would surely be fired. Shouldn't we hold the president of the United States to an even higher standard?
George W. Bush has an easy choice now. He can withdraw Miers' nomination. Or he can be impeached.
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