May 15, 2004
I'm baaaaack!
After two days of 'server issues', I can post again. Coming soon - the Daily Op/Ed Wrap-up for today.
May 12, 2004
Daily Op/Ed Wrap-up
David Corn: Reckless Executive
"But the mind-boggling mistakes didn't start with Abu Ghraib. The Bush gang has bungled so many aspects of the Iraq occupation that its actions border on criminal recklessness. The most stunning revelation of Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack is not that Bush ordered the Pentagon to begin planning an invasion of Iraq in November 2001; it is what is absent from the book: any indication that Bush and his lieutenants engaged in high-level planning concerning what to do after the invasion. Bush repeatedly whistled General Tommy Franks into his office to go over the details of the war plans. He did not display interest in the hard work that would come afterward: how to reconstruct Iraq, how to build a democracy, how to provide security and basic services, how to deal with the competing political forces that could be expected to emerge; how to handle the remains of the military; how far to de-Baathify; how to bring other nations in the region and elsewhere into the process; how to conduct a transparent, fair and effective bidding process, how to budget for the war. That is, how to do the job correctly. If anyone else began such a complex and unprecedented project without mulling over the obvious pitfalls and complications, he or she would be out of work..."
Michael Meacher: Playing Bin Laden's Game
"Despite the revelations of torture, the US-British policy is unchanged: see this historic struggle through to its conclusion for the sake of democracy and civilization; apply overwhelming force against terrorists and extremists; and show unremitting resolve to root out resistance wherever it is found. Whether it is Americans in Iraq, Israelis in Palestine or the west against al-Qaida, the approach is the same: a policy proclaimed in the name of freedom, tolerance and a decent world order that, ironically, could hardly be better calculated to produce the opposite.
The policy is lethally flawed by its unwillingness to contemplate what lies behind the hatred: why scores of young people are prepared to blow themselves up, why 19 highly educated young men were ready to destroy themselves and thousands of others in the 9/11 hijackings, and why resistance is growing despite the likelihood of insurgents being killed. To deal with this reality, we first have to understand it. ..."
Robert Kuttner: What Greenspan won't admit about deficit
"ALAN GREENSPAN is a gold-plated hypocrite. Last week the Federal Reserve chairman, speaking at a conference in Chicago, warned that the endless federal deficits had become "a significant obstacle to long-term security because the budget deficit is not subject to correction by market forces." What does Greenspan think caused the deficit -- sunspots? He doesn't deign to say. But everyone else knows. While increased military spending is part of the story, the huge imbalances that rightly worry the Fed chairman are mainly the predictable result of President Bush's immense tax cuts..."
"Will the slim hope Justice Kennedy offered those who would challenge partisan gerrymandering prove to be a false hope? That remains to be seen. But in the meantime, no one should read the Vieth decision as a clean bill of health for our increasingly nasty and partisan politics..."
Jules Witcover: The new Teflon Don
"President Bush, who was in no hurry to apologize to the Iraqi people and the Arab world in general for the humiliating treatment portrayed in the photos from the Abu Ghraib prison, wasted no time declaring that Mr. Rumsfeld was "doing a superb job" and would remain in his Cabinet..."
Bill Berkowitz: Waiting for 'Torture Fatigue'
"Two weeks after photos depicting torture in Abu Ghraib prison became public, the right-wing media machine is telling America to get over it, already. According to the conservatives, the inhumane treatment of detainees is turning into a scandal because the liberal media is prolonging the attention, allowing lefty "Bush-haters" to politicize and capitalize on the affair. And all this hand-wringing will only hurt the troops in Iraq..."
truthout.org: CBS to Air U.S. Soldier's Video Diary of Iraq Abuse
"An American soldier's video diary showing her disdain for Iraqi detainees who died in her charge is to be broadcast by a U.S. network on Wednesday in a further escalation of the prisoner abuse scandal that has shaken the Bush administration and provoked world outrage..."
May 11, 2004
Daily Op/Ed Wrap-up
"Yet Mr. Bush, despite all his talk of good and evil, doesn't believe in that system. From the day his administration took office, its slogan has been "just trust us." No administration since Nixon has been so insistent that it has the right to operate without oversight or accountability, and no administration since Nixon has shown itself to be so little deserving of that trust. Out of a misplaced sense of patriotism, Congress has deferred to the administration's demands. Sooner or later, a moral catastrophe was inevitable..."
Jim Lobe: Bush Circles Wagons, But Cavalry Has Joined the Indians
"While Bush praised Rumsfeld for "doing a superb job" during a rare visit to the Pentagon Monday morning, his words were somehow unable to overcome the distinct sounds of knives being sharpened in the hallways just outside, as well as across town on Capitol Hill and at the State Department, where Secretary of State (and former army general) Colin Powell compared the possible impact on U.S. foreign policy of the abuse photographs to the 1969 disclosure of the infamous My Lai Massacre in Vietnam..."
Robert Scheer: Thread of Abuse Runs to the Oval Office
"..The big lie that the United States is merely a selfless battler against terrorists, with no other agendas, opens the door for brutality against any who dare resist. Bush has exercised an arrogance unmatched by any U.S. president in a century and brandished God's will as his carte blanche. His unilateral, preemptive "nation-building" -- and the settling of old scores in the name of fighting terror -- grants license to treat anybody, including U.S. citizens, in a barbaric manner that cavalierly sweeps aside all standards of due process.."
Chridtian Science Monitor: Wage Rage
"Average weekly wages in 2003 for nonmanagement workers in private industry were actually $116 lower than 30 years before, in real terms, or about $6,000 less a year. This is according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data adjusted for inflation, and then calculated in 2003 dollars by the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan..."
John Nichols: Rumsfeld should quit a sinking ship
"Let's face it, Bush is the same disengaged, unprepared princeling that he was when the Supreme Court handed him the presidency. Cheney is the same self-serving schemer that he has been since the start of his long lunch at the public trough; minimally competent yet certain in his ideology and unyielding in his drive to implement it. Secretary of State Colin Powell is, as always, hustling to have it both ways: the insider who is not really on the inside, the responsible player who takes no responsibility, the "moral force" who compromises when the order comes from on high. And Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby and the rest of their circle are merely the flying monkeys to Cheney's wicked witch of the West..."
Cynthia Tucker: Getting rid of Rumsfeld won't change a thing in Iraq
"But it wouldn't change a thing. Rumsfeld is no errant incompetent in an administration full of hard-nosed realists, men and women dedicated to righting their policies when they discover that things have gone awry. No, indeed. The secretary of defense is a perfect representative of a group of people so convinced of their own righteousness that they can rarely be troubled with inconvenient facts..."
May 9, 2004
Daily Op/Ed Wrap-up
William Rivers Pitt: Tin Soldiers and We are Coming
"The claims about Iraq seeking uranium from Niger have been exposed as lies so deep and profound that America stands humiliated before the world. Those lies have also led to a federal investigation into this White House for, basically, treason: Because Ambassador Joseph Wilson - who investigated and discounted the uranium claims in the first place - Because Ambassador Joseph Wilson dared reveal these lies to the public, his wife, Valerie Plame, was exposed as a CIA agent in an act of revenge perpetrated by officials within the Bush administration..."
James K. Galbraith: When wartime economic reality sets in
"Soon enough, profiteers see their chances. Bottlenecks happen. Prices go up. Long before unemployment disappears, wars generate inflation. Indeed, inflation - and the depreciation of private wealth and public debt that it brings - is the ages-old way governments pay for war..."
Molly Ivins: Neo-con man-How did we get here? Ask Ahmed Chalabi.
"In our continuing quest to understand how we got where we are, let us turn our attention to Ahmed Chalabi. He's a most plausible con man and comes with excellent credentials. Born to a prominent Iraqi family in 1944, exiled in 1958 with buckets of family money, went to MIT at age 16, got his Ph.D. in math from the University of Chicago, where he first encountered one of the founders of the neo-conservative movement, Albert Wohlstetter. According to a profile in Salon.com, he there met future neo-con leaders Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz..."
" The first failure utterly undercut the original justification for waging war on Iraq -- the need to preempt another horrendous attack on the United States or its allies. The second failure seriously compromises the backup rationale -- the claim that we would provide a lesson in lawful democracy for a country that had known only abuse of power and police brutality.
Despite these twin failures by those on whom he has relied for military and intelligence advice, President Bush has expressed continued support for them and given no sign that he is about to replace either one..."
Daniel Schorr: Abu Ghraib - an indelible stain on US
"The Army has gone into a familiar defensive crouch. "An aberration," Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Myers called it Sunday, adding that he'd not yet seen the 53-page internal report completed in late February. That report detailed the "sadistic, blatant, and wanton" abuse of prisoners. Nor had Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld seen the report until this week. Nor was Brig. Gen. Janice Karpinski aware of what was going on in a prison for which she bore command responsibility..."
Mickey Edwards: Right's Wrong Turn
"That emphasis on individual rights no longer seems to be the principal focus of conservatives. When voters in Oregon, for example, opted to permit physicians to help terminally ill patients speed their own deaths, conservatives in Congress rushed to pass a federal law that would supersede the state decision ? a shocking embrace of increased federal power ? and thus to insist, by federal order, that dying citizens must simply endure the agony of their final days. This was, indeed, a different sense of what American conservatism was all about...."
"You really wonder whether the Bush plan to Americanize the Middle East isn't being turned on its head. We now have an unaccountable government not elected in accordance with the will of the majority of Americans, which victimizes critics like Joe Wilson and engages in torture. Bush and Co. are emulating the worst aspects of the military governments of Egypt and Yemen. They have no credibility to push the latter toward democracy..."
"Even if the secretary survives, the Rummy Doctrine -- using underwhelming force to achieve overwhelming goals -- is discredited. Jack Murtha, a Democratic hawk and Vietnam vet, says "the direction's got to be changed or it's unwinnable," and Lt. Gen. William Odom, retired, told Ted Koppel that Iraq was headed toward becoming an Al Qaeda haven and Iranian ally..."
Robert Barry: Internationalize the Iraq prisons now
"IT SHOULD BE apparent to the Bush administration that the US-led coalition will have to hand over the Iraqi prisons to someone else before the Coalition Provisional Authority goes out of existence on June 30. For once, the United States should anticipate the inevitable and propose a solution before being told by allies, NATO, and the United Nations Security Council that this is a requirement if we are to gain more international support for the effort in Iraq. To accomplish this, the United States should jump start a proposal which has been gathering support on both sides of the Atlantic -- the creation of a multinational stability corps or conflict prevention force. Such a corps would consist of constabulary forces, civilian police, judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and correction officers. These forces could be deployed in future post-conflict situations to establish order as combat operations wind down..."
Bill Moyers: The Media, Politics and Censorship
"It wasn't supposed to be that way. The founders of our government didn't think it a good idea for the press and state to gang up on public opinion. So they added to the Constitution a Bill of Rights whose First Amendment was to be a kind of firewall between the politicians who hold power and the press that should hold power accountable. The very first American newspaper was a little three-page affair whose editor said he wanted to "cure the spirit of lying..." The government promptly shut him down on grounds he didn't have the required state license..."
May 8, 2004
Landslide vs. Bush
I can see the light at the end of Bush's tunnel vision and it's the 8:15 Clusterfuck Express train from Iraq.
Daily Op/Ed Wrap-up
Walter M. Brasch: Bush is runnin the ship of state aground
"...Innumerable times, President Bush told the nation he was giving his military all the resources they needed to fight. Either this was political spin of the truth, or his subordinates didn't take him seriously. Gen. Karpinski told Newsweek she didn't have enough troops or resources, that her brigade wasn't properly trained, and that when she complained to her superiors, they ignored her. "They just wanted it to go away," she said. Almost a year earlier, the inspector general of the Department of Justice revealed the detention of individuals in the United States was "indiscriminate and haphazard," and that there were "significant instances" of "a pattern of physical and verbal abuse," including beatings of illegal immigrants, most of them Muslim or Arab, almost all imprisoned for minor offenses, by various employees and officials of the Department of Justice. Included were employees of the FBI, Bureau of Prisons, Drug Enforcement Administration, and Immigration and Naturalization Service. In England, Lord Justice Johan Steyn, senior judge in the House of Lords, and one of the nation's most respected judges, said that conditions imposed by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay were of "utter lawlessness," a "monstrous failure of justice," and "not quite torture, but as close as you can get." BBC diplomatic correspondent Barnaby Mason pointed out, "It is rare for British judges to speak on contentious political issues and almost unheard of for them to attack a foreign government." President Bush may condemn the actions of a "few." He, like the rest of the world, was be personally "disgusted." He may rebuke his subordinates. His staff and cabinet secretaries may launch investigations. And, there will be courts martial, especially since the world now knows what happened in Iraq. But, the problem, as others are pointing out, goes far beyond the actions of "just a handful" to expose critical problems in how this country has undertaken its mission in the President's self-proclaimed "War on Terror." This President has defined himself as a commander-in-chief and as a war president. As the leader of this war, in which almost 800 American soldiers, and several thousand others, most of them civilians, have died. He is the one guiding this ship-of-state. The loss of civil rights of American citizens and human rights of all persons was, and is, his responsibility. It's one from which he can't deflect criticism or go AWOL."
Jonathan Tasini: A Cronkite Moment?
"I experienced a Walter Cronkite moment last week that signaled to me that something is in the air about what people feel about the Iraq war. No, it didn't come from Ted Kopple's reciting of the Iraq war dead, nor the polls showing declining support for the war, nor from any of the other pundits, prognosticators, analysts and experts who fill the airwaves and pages of what we see and read. My moment came after reading Rick Reilly's column in Sports Illustrated. Yes, SI, magazine to the sports-obsessed (to which I proudly belong)..."
International Herald Tribune: The U.S. military archipelago
"The interrogation and detention methods that the Pentagon acknowledges having regularly used include forms of physical and psychological abuse that violate American values, international standards of human dignity and the lawful rules of war. These include sleep deprivation and forcing prisoners' bodies into "stress positions" for hours at a time. Until recently, detainees were commonly interrogated with hoods over their heads. Stripping them naked was permitted so long as a general signed off on the request. Judging from the photos, that wasn't much of a barrier..."
"Rumsfeld deserves to be sent to prison for his acts as Secretary of Defense. So the President is doing the right thing: he is keeping Rumsfeld in place in order to give the legal system time to do maximum damage against our country?s arrogant, pompous and unrepentant war chief..."
"Murtha, a decorated Marine veteran and senior member of the subcommittee that deals with Pentagon appropriations, poured scorn on the administration's optimistic predictions about Iraq.
Without explicitly stating that the war was ''unwinnable'', he at one point said the public had turned against it and that it was unlikely the administration would provide the troops needed to stabilize the situation to such an extent that other countries would be willing to help out..."
Washington Post: An Inadequate Response
"...The Pentagon leadership would like to limit the scandal, and the scrutiny, to a handful of soldiers at one prison during two months of last year. But investigations by the International Committee of the Red Cross and independent human rights groups have demonstrated that abuses occurred elsewhere. The Army now has admitted that at least 25 prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan have died in U.S. custody. These are the signs not of isolated acts but of a broken system, one that is leading to criminal abuses. If Mr. Rumsfeld and President Bush are unwilling to fix it, Congress must step in."
May 7, 2004
Daily Op/Ed Wrap-up
"...If George Bush loses in November -- and the race is his to lose, not Kerry's to win -- it will be because of questions of competence, not ideology. Slowly but surely, the sense seems to be growing in Red America that this crew of ideologues is incompetent. If that impression Doesn't turn around, all the advertising money in the world won't help in November."
"Thanks to the mess in Iraq -- including a continuing campaign of sabotage against oil pipelines -- oil exports have yet to recover to their prewar level, let alone supply the millions of extra barrels each day the optimists imagined. And the fallout from the war has spooked the markets, which now fear terrorist attacks on oil installations in Saudi Arabia, and are starting to worry about radicalization throughout the Middle East. (It has been interesting to watch people who lauded George Bush's leadership in the war on terror come to the belated realization that Mr. Bush has given Osama bin Laden exactly what he wanted.)..."
Christopher Scheer: Bush's New, New Lie
"In reality, the United States plans to send new troops to Iraq. It is building 14 "enduring" bases in the Tigris and Euphrates river basins. And we have appointed tough-guy Reagan-era hatchet man John Negroponte to run the world's biggest embassy in the same building that currently houses the CPA. The United States will continue to control all the money, all the military forces (U.S. and Iraqi) and all the key political appointments in Iraq. To call this "limited" sovereignty is a bit like describing the situation in Iraq as "volatile..."
Steve Chapman: Partisan redistricting turns democracy into a mirage
"Gerrymandering has been a part of our political order for more than 200 years. But thanks to modern technology, it now bears about as much resemblance to the original type as an M-16 does to a musket..."
"I disagreed with Bush's war from the outset, but I've been clinging tepidly to John Kerry's uninspiring call to "stay the course." No longer.
We're done in Iraq. The genie of Arab outrage is flowing over the Babylonian desert and we will never jam it back into the bottle. We've lost all hope of winning hearts and minds. The longer we stay, the more we'll aggravate the problem, and the more soldiers we'll lose..."
"Solicitor General Ted Olson appeared on "Larry King Live" to complain about the conduct of the public hearings before the 9/11 Commission. His remarks are representative of the growing chorus of Republican complaints about the Commission on this score..."
Jackson Diehl: Nader seems to be zeroing in on Kerry
"As Nader sees it, while those imaginary troops magically restored order in Fallujah and Najaf, "free and fair elections" would be held. But how would Iraqis agree on a governmental and constitutional framework? Nader admits this will be difficult but says Iraq "should be able to sort out these issues more easily" without the United States. Americans should provide humanitarian aid and help rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, he adds -- but only if no U.S. company is allowed to profit from such work..."
Boston Globe: A privatized war
"...The Pentagon's increasing reliance on contractors is a privatizer's way to have the military fight more wars without reverting to the political third rail of the draft or incurring the substantial cost of recruiting and retaining more volunteer troops. But at Abu Ghraib prison, relying on a shadow army of civilian contractors raises the issue of whether the Defense Department is not paying attention or whether it is consciously trying to avoid accountability."
Arianna Huffington: Democracy: Version Bush
"Welcome to George W. Bush's version of America?Bush Democracy. Apparently, he's had his fanatical neocon programmers working overtime to iron out all those bothersome bugs and kinks that have been holding the United States back for the last 228 years?exasperating glitches like openness, integrity, accountability, responsibility and the value of an informed public..."
Los Angeles Times: In Judgment of the Judges
"Scalia has been pilloried for his each-man-is-an-island view of ethics, not just by TV pundits and in letters to the editor but by judges in courthouse lunchrooms across the country. To these men and women, Scalia's unwillingness to step aside after his January duck-hunting trip with Cheney ? right after the court agreed to hear the vice president's case and not long before the oral arguments ? clearly violated federal rules instructing a judge to disqualify himself "in any proceeding in which his impartiality might be questioned." Their concern goes beyond Scalia; they fear that in the public mind, it casts a shadow on every judge..."
May 6, 2004
Daily Op/Ed Wrap-up
Steven Hill: Europe leaves the U.S. behind
More inclusive democratic institutions create superior democracies
"Why are Europeans outpacing Americans on so many social, political and economic fronts? The answers are complex but basically they boil down to the fact that, for the last 60 years in the post-WWII period, Europeans have been incubating markedly different "fulcrum institutions" -- the key institutions and practices on which everything else pivots. In particular, three fulcrum institutions form the foundation for the rest -- the political, economic, and media institutions. These three play an Archidemean role in deciding ever-evolving policies that affect people's lives, on matters ranging from health care, education, housing, transportation, the environment and taxes to the energy regime, corporate structure, immigration, foreign policy and national security..."
Tamim Ansary: 9/11: What Could Have Been
"The day after the Taliban fled Kabul, the United States was poised to make enormous headway toward a new era of peace and progress. At that historical moment, as a victim of the 9/11 attacks, America enjoyed unprecedented goodwill around the world, even among the uncommitted masses in the Muslim world. Had the United States focused all its efforts at that moment on restoring Afghanistan to the course the Soviet invasion interrupted 23 years earlier--a course pointed toward moderation, secular modernity and development, all within an Afghan cultural context--it would have weakened the Jihadist movement dramatically by stripping away its most powerful arguments and examples..."
Detroit Free Press: No Apology-On prison abuses, Bush's statements fall short
"Apparently being George W. Bush means not having to say you're sorry..."
Joyce Marcel: The Grin that Destroys the World
"But how do we accept the photographic reality of ourselves as revealed in those pictures from Abu Ghraib prison? That we demonized these people? That we tortured them? That we humiliated them? That we stripped them of their humanity, sexually abused them, shamed them in the eyes of their God and shamed ourselves in the eyes of the world?
For the millions in the Arab world who already believe that women should have no civil rights, what could be more devastating, than that grinning female soldier? She revels in her ultimate power over these men. Instead of bringing the ideals of democracy - with its lovely strands of feminism - to the Arab world, we've given them a million years of reasons to keep women in burqas and maybe even to start binding their feet..."
Robert Fisk: 'Good Guys' Should be Ashamed
"That man's fate -- and the documentary evidence proving that he was murdered -- was first revealed by The Independent on Sunday in January. Didn't the CIA boys at Abu Ghraib know that Ivan "Chip" Frederick and Lynddie England, two of the American soldiers in the photographs published last week, were obscenely humiliating their prisoners?
Of course they did. The last time I saw Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade in Iraq, she told me she had visited Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo and found nothing wrong with it. I should have guessed then that something had gone terribly wrong in Iraq..."
Debra J. Saunders: Prisoners of war
"But what kind of country would America be if our government did nothing to punish criminal behavior by U.S. troops sent to do good abroad? Army Chief of Staff George Casey called the prison episodes a sign of "a complete breakdown of discipline." But the ritual humiliation of prisoners -- in the absence of any intelligence imperative, but just for the kick of hurting others -- also shows a breakdown of decency, and an absolute erosion of the social pact..."
Robert L. Bastian Jr.: Exporting America's Shame
"But again, we are deluding ourselves. The hard fact is that the U.S. did install in Iraq an American-style approach to prison management. Like the U.S. prison system, it is underfunded and inadequately supervised, lacks civilian oversight and accountability and is secretive and tolerant of inmate abuse until evidence of mistreatment is pushed into the public light. That, regrettably, is the American model..."
Baltimore Sun: Losing it, in science
"Signs of America's decline show up in prizes for scientific achievement and in papers published by professional journals. Increasingly, these distinctions are going to researchers from elsewhere. The New York Times reported this week that Asia is boosting its number of patents, even as American numbers are dropping. Similarly, Europe is outpacing the United States at awarding doctorates for science and engineering..."
Ellen G. Rafshoon: He's the best defender Kerry will never have
"It is significant that more than a decade before anyone had any inkling that Kerry would run for U.S. president, Puller singled him out for praise in his autobiography. "One articulate young combat veteran named John Kerry delivered a moving address before a special session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that, for me, summed up the sense of betrayal and the disillusionment I felt toward the administration and the leadership that had directed the course of the war from the safety of its Washington power base," Puller wrote..."
May 5, 2004
Daily Op/Ed Wrap-up
Chicago Tribune: Howard's revenge
"We run a great risk when our legislation threatens to undermine both our Constitution and our creativity," she (Rep. Jan Schakowsky D-Ill.) said. "The stakes are high and the threat to free speech is all too real..."
Molly Ivins: Just like Saddam?
" Even though I still consider getting rid of Saddam Hussein an unmitigated good, we may have lost the peace very early on. Peter Galbraith, writing in the May 13 New York Review of Books, reports that the initial looting right after the war ended was unbelievably costly in both monetary terms and Iraqi support. Others have concluded that the corruption, so familiar under Hussein and now again in full flower with the private contractors, has so wiped out respect for our efforts that Iraqis are concluding we are "just like Saddam." For us to continue killing Iraqis for their own good is not a policy likely to redound to our benefit..."
"...The options available today are few and bad, a measure of the staggering misjudgments that have plagued post-war management from the start, and there is no guarantee that even these steps can stem Iraq's descent toward instability and civil war. Nor is there any guarantee that this approach will find takers. But a U-turn from a stubborn administration and engagement from a skeptical international community may represent the last remaining chance of success."
Gwynne Dyer: It looks as if game is up for Americans in Iraq
"...So the entire U.S. neoconservative adventure in the Middle East, never very plausible, is now doomed, though it will drag on in a broken-backed way for some time to come. Even the option of handing Iraq over to the United Nations and replacing American troops there with Muslim troops under U.N. command, still viable a month ago, will soon be foreclosed unless U.N. officials take a firmer stand against the occupation regime. It is going to get very messy."
Los Angeles Times: Sharon May Have Helped Create a Monster -- Israel's Settler Movement
"Ariel Sharon is not a rabbi, and the Kabbalah is a closed book to him. But he has created a Golem: the settlement movement in the occupied territories..."
Robert Kuttner: Bush's mess is Kerry's peril
"The 9/11 Commission hearings made clear that Clinton had a far better sense of the terrorist threat than the Bush people and a better sense of proportion regarding when it made sense to intervene militarily. Truman, likewise, opted for containing the Soviet Union rather than launching World War III. Kennedy steered the United States away from nuclear confrontation and began the era of arms control, all the while being firm against Soviet expansionism. It was Johnson's delusional policy in Vietnam, followed by the backlash of much of the Democratic rank and file, that left the Democratic Party with a fractured legacy of seeming both reckless and feeble, a legacy that Kerry is still trying to live down on behalf of his party..."
Seattle Times: Responsibility at Abu Ghraib
"Hersh quotes Taguba's report that Army intelligence officers, CIA agents and private contractors "actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses." That translated into a variety of terrifying indignities inflicted by those relaxed enough for souvenir snapshots...."
Anne Applebaum: Willing Torturers
"The American soldiers and civilians responsible for humiliating, torturing and possibly murdering Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad over the past few months do not belong in the same category as Nazi or Soviet camp guards. But their actions do prove, if further proof were needed, that no culture is incapable of treating its enemies as subhuman. We've now seen the horrific evidence: American soldiers, brought up in an American culture, stripped and sexually humiliated Iraqi prisoners. They dressed them in black hoods and laughingly threatened them with electrocution..."
Zachary Roth: The Making of George Bush, Macho Man
"The American people may not yet have made up their minds about their leaders, but the media certainly have. Whatever its outcome, Election 2004 has already been cast as the battle between the strong but stubborn George Bush and the nuanced but flip-flopping John Kerry..."
May 4, 2004
Daily Op/Ed Wrap-up
Paul Krugman: Battlefield of Dreams
"Much has been written about the damage done by foreign policy ideologues who ignored the realities of Iraq, imagining that they could use the country to prove the truth of their military and political doctrines. Less has been said about how dreams of making Iraq a showpiece for free trade, supply-side tax policy and privatization - dreams that were equally oblivious to the country's realities - undermined the chances for a successful transition to democracy...."
Robert Scheer: When We're the Evildoers in Iraq
"Recall that a key excuse for the U.S. invasion was to ensure the safety of Iraqi scientists and others in the know so that they might feel free to reveal the location of weapons of mass destruction or evidence of Saddam Hussein's potential ties to Al Qaeda. Shockingly, some of those scientists are now in coalition prisons, even though the weapons clearly don't exist.
In this context, of course, it makes sense that U.S. interrogators would feel enormous pressure to use any means necessary to verify the absurd claims made so aggressively by the president and his Cabinet before the war. Far from the jurisdiction of the U.S. legal system, they apparently felt quite free to approve techniques clearly banned by war crimes statutes..."
Juan Cole: Battle of the Photographs
"Even high Bush administration officials cannot seem to remember how many dead U.S. soldiers there have been at any one time as a result of the war. In congressional testimony on April 29, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said he thought there had been "approximately 500" troops killed since the beginning of the war, of which "350" were combat deaths. In fact, as of that day 724 US troops had died in Iraq, of which 522 were combat deaths. His office later said that he "misspoke." But this error is instructive of the way in which the hawks in Washington have hidden the costs of their Iraq adventure from the public so assiduously that they have even begun hiding it from themselves...."
John Nichols: McCain knows the truth about Feingold
"Unfortunately, not all Republicans earn the "thinking" modifier. Last month, one of Feingold's Republican challengers in Wisconsin, millionaire auto dealer Russ Darrow, suggested that when the state's junior senator voted against the much-condemned Patriot Act, he acted in a manner that was somehow un-American and that Feingold had not thought through the legal constitutional issues that were at stake. It was an absurd statement that revealed Darrow's ignorance with regard to the man he seeks to challenge..."
Robert Gelfand: 25 Ways to Distort the Truth
"...What is amusing about this ad is the underlying attitude that any criticism of the president is now somehow unacceptable. It's also amusing that the Bush campaign couldn't bring itself to allow the viewer to hear Kerry speak the job loss number. Couldn't they find any better Kerry clip to use in this tawdry attempt at vilification?"
Ruth Rosen: 'Merchant of Shame'
"The reasons for these practices, according to Jessica Grant, an attorney with the San Francisco firm that represents the workers, is that Wal-Mart habitually understaffs its stores. Workers must skip breaks and work unpaid overtime or risk getting fired. Grant also told me that Wal-Mart has recently asked workers to sign waivers for meal breaks. When the case goes to trial, the corporation will then argue that workers didn't really want any time to eat...."
May 3, 2004
Problems with the DNS
Various problems kept the site offline yesterday and I'm pretty busy today and won't get to update anything this afternoon. Hopefully, everything will be rectified soon and we will get back to business. Thanks.
May 1, 2004
Daily Op/Ed Wrap-up
Shibley Telhami: Double Blow To Mideast Democracy
"No matter what else we do in the region, the Arab-Israeli conflict remains the "prism of pain" for Arabs through which they read U.S. intentions, in the same way that the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, and associated terrorism are now the prism of pain through which Americans will continue to see the Arab and Muslim worlds. Regardless of the objective meaning of the administration's support for Sharon, the regional perception of that support is likely to outweigh anything we say on reform -- or even Iraq..."
Boston Globe: Abused by Americans
"That said, the story is one not only of depravity but also of colossal stupidity. How could these Americans not know that in addition to persecuting the detainees in gross violation of the Geneva Conventions, they would subject the already fragile US occupation of Iraq to global condemnation?..."
Joyce Marcel: Her Beautiful Mind
"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths," Barbara Bush said on ABC's "Good Morning America" on March 18, 2003. "Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?..."
"The political leanings of Sinclair executives also may have played a part in the company's decision to block the popular ABC news program. In 2004, Sinclair executives gave 98 percent of their political contributions to GOP candidates..."
Jim Lobe: Congress Ignores 'Dirty War' Past of New Iraq Envoy
"At that point, he stood up and, in a determined voice, said: ''There is no sovereignty, Mr Ambassador, if the U.S. continues to exercise security. Senators, please ask the ambassador about Battalion 316. Ask him about a death squad in Honduras that he supported''.Security personnel quickly confronted Conteris and escorted him from the room, while Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar gaveled the hearing back to order, and Negroponte, the smooth-as-silk career diplomat fluent in five languages, went on as if nothing had happened..."
International Herald Tribune: Nearly defenseless in Iraq
"It's hard to imagine what the Pentagon was thinking when it told the U.S. Army and Marine replacement divisions bound for Iraq earlier this year to leave their tanks and other heavily armored vehicles behind. U.S. military planners seem to have ignored evidence that armed resistance to the occupation was far from suppressed. As a result, they failed to anticipate the kinds of ambushes and urban firefights these troops are now face and against which tanks and armored personnel carriers afford the best protection..."
Ben Hubbard: Degrees Of Separation
"The irony in all of this, of course, is that Horowitz is seeking political affirmative action on campus (the very practice conservatives despise) to protect oppressed conservative victims. He's doing it by passing laws in state legislatures (the same government conservatives wish would leave us alone)?a move that would infringe academic freedom while purporting to protect it. But mythmakers have little need for facts, and opportunists rarely stick to principle..."
St. Petersburg Times: Privatization nightmare
"Welcome to the future. The Correctional Privatization Commission, created to oversee some $90-million in private contracts for five state prisons, is being delivered the legislative equivalent of a lethal injection. It is being disbanded primarily because it dared to question the two companies, Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group, that are paid to run the prisons. The commission's attempt to explore whether other companies could do the job cheaper was met with legal challenges and a full-scale lobbyist assault..."
Los Angeles Times: National Parks Hypocrisy
"The National Parks Conservation Assn. estimates that the annual $1.6-billion National Park Service budget for operations and maintenance is $600 million short of what's needed. The administration has acknowledged advising regional park directors to quietly cut services to save money. Suggested "service level adjustments" included closing visitor centers on federal holidays, cutting back ranger talks and tours and closing entire parks for some days of the week. David Barna, a Park Service spokesman, suggested that the reductions be spread out as much as possible "so that it won't cause public or political controversy..."
