Liberal-oriented columns, commentary and archived articles on national and international news, politics, and the communication arts--with emphasis on China--by Joseph Bosco, author, journalist, director and actor; Professor of Drama and Communications at Beijing Foreign Studies University. 

Friday, October 31, 2003

If His Lips Are Moving, He's Lying

If His Lips Are Moving, He's Lying. Will this man ever stand by something he says without fishtailing and buck-passing? A real man isn't afraid to say, 'I got it wrong, folks, I'm human.' Bushes have never operated that way though, ever. Even some of the diehard Bush haters would have to take notice and give credit if the man pulled a Truman and said that the Buck Stops Here! The truth is, Bush does not trust the American public he alleges to want to lead, otherwise he wouldn't believe he had to lie to them to get them to do the right thing. Worse yet, he doesn't trust himself. Not only is Bush perhaps the lightest-weight intellect to occupy the oval office in our lifetime, he also owns its most dangerous inferiority complex--which is why he blusters and why he drank and why he needed to give his life (and ours?) over to his higher power (no, not Cheney the Great, but the AA born-again one) in order to function well enough to hold down a real job for the first time in his benighted life.
Yesterday, McClellan acknowledged that White House staffers routinely exercise tight control over the environment of a presidential appearance, especially when it will be televised. "Of course, our advance people work closely with people at event sites when the president is participating in an event," he said.

Indeed, the Bush White House has been particularly careful about attending to the details of a televised presidential appearance, said Martha Joynt Kumar, a political scientist at Maryland's Towson University who specializes in presidential communication strategy. "All of them [presidential staffs] have worked on it, but these people have been especially rigorous about controlling all parts of the event, including the resulting pictures," she said.

But McClellan said Bush had not meant to imply a complete absence of White House involvement in the banner, only that the idea had come from the crew. And he denied that the use of the banner was intended to convey an impression that the overall U.S. mission in Iraq had been accomplished. As for Bush's words, McClellan said he had proclaimed an end to "major combat operations" but had also warned that "there are difficulties that remain and dangers that continue to exist."

An examination of the text of Bush's carrier speech shows that his cautionary comments were largely limited to two sentences: "We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We're bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous." The rest of the lengthy address was a celebration of U.S. military success, with the tone set at the start: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."

As the Iraqi security situation has worsened and U.S. casualties have mounted, critics have ridiculed Bush's carrier appearance. The criticism continued yesterday as Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) called Bush's comments at the news conference his "latest fabrication" about the event.

"I'm sure they would love to extricate themselves from this whole affair," Daschle said. "It's got to be one of the most significant embarrassments of the entire Iraqi experience so far. We've lost more lives since he's declared victory than we lost prior to the time he declared victory."
If His Lips Are Moving, He's Lying.
  

11:52 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Forget the WMDs, Find this Son of a Bitch!

Forget The WMDs, Find This Son of a Bitch! Something doesn't add up here. It's not like Saddam is a suspect in a whodunnit. He was THE MAN there for almost 30 years. Everything needed for a successful manhunt is known about this murdering thug. From what he eats to what brand of pliars he uses to torture his friends with. Homicide detectives find their man when there is zero evidence in a random killing on the 405 Freeway in LA--in other words, when their suspect pool is about 26 million people and they don't even have a half-ass description of who they are looking for! A detective leading a squad of 4 gets demoted or hauled over the coals if he can't solve that kind of a nut-cracker case in 60 days. The several thousand Saddam hunters in Iraq get only praise from Dubya, pats on the back from Rummy and photo ops on CNN!
WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 — Saddam Hussein may be playing a significant role in coordinating and directing attacks by his loyalists against American forces in Iraq, senior American officials said Thursday.

The officials cited recent intelligence reports indicating that Mr. Hussein is acting as a catalyst or even a leader in the armed opposition, probably from a base of operations near Tikrit, his hometown and stronghold. A leadership role by Mr. Hussein would go far beyond anything previously acknowledged by the Bush administration, which has sought in its public remarks to portray the former Iraqi leader as being on the run and irrelevant.

Officials acknowledged that the reports of a significant role by Mr. Hussein could not be corroborated, and one senior official cautioned that recent intelligence reports contained conflicting assessments.

Nonetheless, three senior officials described reports of a larger role by Mr. Hussein as credible, and a Defense Department official said the information had given a fresh sense of urgency to the American-led manhunt for the former Iraqi leader.

"There are some accounts that say he is somehow instigating or fomenting some of the resistance," a second American official said of the intelligence reports. ...

Mr. Hussein is believed to have met with Izzat Ibrahim, an Iraqi general who was officially the second highest ranking member of the Iraqi government at the time of the invasion, and who is described by American officials as playing a significant role in the insurgency.

General Ibrahim, who is No. 6 on the American most-wanted list, has been described by some Defense Department officials as having recently been in contact with members of Ansar al-Islam, a militant group that had been based in northern Iraq before the American-led invasion and which is linked to Al Qaeda.
Here comes the kicker--I ask you, has any one you know ever said as many stupid things that came back to bite them in the ass as Dubya? I didn't think so. Here come some real goodies...
On July 2, Mr. Bush declared that Mr. Hussein was "no longer a threat to the United States, because we removed him." In more recent remarks, including those at a fund-raising event on Oct. 8, Mr. Bush has been proclaiming that Mr. Hussein is "no more," because he is no longer in power.

In Baghdad on Oct. 8, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top American commander in Iraq, said of Mr. Hussein "that he's hiding and running away constantly from the relentless hunt that we are on to find him, capture him, kill him." But in comments little-noticed at the time, General Sanchez went on to say: "Could he be a part of the attacks? He could."
Find this Son of a Bitch already!
  

10:59 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Are We Supposed to be Shocked When We Aren't Even Surprised?

Are We Supposed to be Shocked When We Aren't the Least Bit Surprised? Just business as usual in the good ol' USA. I mean, if you can't get by without a little help for your friends, you might just as well be a goshdarn socialist-commie-do goodin'-LIBERAL-pinko-fink-O.J is innocent-stooge!
WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 — Executives, employees and political action committees of the 70 companies that received government contracts for work in either Iraq or Afghanistan contributed slightly more than $500,000 to President Bush's 2000 election campaign, according to a comprehensive study of the contracts released on Tuesday.

The overwhelming majority of government contracts for billions of dollars of reconstruction work in Iraq and Afghanistan went to companies run by executives who were heavy political contributors to both political parties.

Though the employees contributed to both parties, their giving favored Republicans by a two-to-one margin. And they gave more money to Mr. Bush than any other politician in the last 12 years.

Among the biggest contributions to Mr. Bush's election and re-election efforts were those from executives and employees of Dell Computer at $113,000; of Bearing Point, a business consulting firm, at $119,000; of General Electric at $72,000 and of Halliburton Inc. at $28,000, according to the report.

Nine of the 10 biggest contractors — the biggest of which were Bechtel Corporation and Halliburton, either employed former senior government officials or had close ties to government agencies and to Congress.

Prepared by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit research group, the report said the contractors' executives and employees had contributed $49 million to political candidates and parties since 1990.

The new report is the first comprehensive independent study of companies involved in Iraqi reconstruction, and it provides evidence that the process for handing out big contracts has often been secretive, chaotic and favorable to companies with good political contacts. ...

One consultant, given a four-month contract to advise Iraqi government agencies, was the husband of Carol Haave, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for security and information operations. A Pentagon spokesman said that Ms. Haave did not see this as a conflict of interest, according to Bloomberg News.

The State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, told reporters on Thursday that "the reason that these companies get the contracts has nothing to do with who may have worked there before."

He added: "The decisions are made by career procurement officials. There's a separation, a wall, between them and political-level questions when they're doing the contracts."

One of the report's most basic conclusions is that neither the Pentagon nor the State Department or the Agency for International Development were eager to provide comprehensive or accurate information about contracts that total about $8 billion over the past two years.
If your blood pressure can handle it, read more about in The New York Times...
  

10:12 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Ms. Dowd Nails Dubya Again...

Ms. Dowd Taking on Dubya Isn't a Fair Fight...when last checked he displayed the brain wave activity of a cypress stump.
WASHINGTON — In the thick of the war with Iraq, President Bush used to pop out of meetings to catch the Iraqi information minister slipcovering grim reality with willful, idiotic optimism.

"He's my man," Mr. Bush laughingly told Tom Brokaw about the entertaining contortions of Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf, a k a "Comical Ali" and "Baghdad Bob," who assured reporters, even as American tanks rumbled in, "There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!" and, "We are winning this war, and we will win the war. . . . This is for sure."

Now Crawford George has morphed into Baghdad Bob.

Speaking to reporters this week, Mr. Bush made the bizarre argument that the worse things get in Iraq, the better news it is. "The more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react," he said.

In the Panglossian Potomac, calamities happen for the best. One could almost hear the doubletalk echo of that American officer in Vietnam who said: "It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it."
I really shouln't defame a cypress stump...
  

1:01 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



Thursday, October 30, 2003

It’s Not Vietnam, But it is Thomas L. Friedman

It’s Absolutely Not Vietnam, But it is Positively Thomas L. Friedman and Everyone Who Cares About This Mess We're In Needs to Read it.
Since 9/11, we've seen so much depraved violence we don't notice anymore when we hit a new low. Monday's attacks in Baghdad were a new low. Just stop for one second and contemplate what happened: A suicide bomber, driving an ambulance loaded with explosives, crashed into the Red Cross office and blew himself up on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. This suicide bomber was not restrained by either the sanctity of the Muslim holy day or the sanctity of the Red Cross. All civilizational norms were tossed aside. This is very unnerving. Because the message from these terrorists is: "There are no limits. We have created our own moral universe, where anything we do against Americans or Iraqis who cooperate with them is O.K."

What to do? The first thing is to understand who these people are. There is this notion being peddled by Europeans, the Arab press and the antiwar left that "Iraq" is just Arabic for Vietnam, and we should expect these kinds of attacks from Iraqis wanting to 'liberate' their country from "U.S. occupation." These attackers are the Iraqi Vietcong.

Hogwash. The people who mounted the attacks on the Red Cross are not the Iraqi Vietcong. They are the Iraqi Khmer Rouge — a murderous band of Saddam loyalists and Al Qaeda nihilists, who are not killing us so Iraqis can rule themselves. They are killing us so they can rule Iraqis.

Have you noticed that these bombers never say what their political agenda is or whom they represent? They don't want Iraqis to know who they really are. A vast majority of Iraqis would reject them, because these bombers either want to restore Baathism or install bin Ladenism.

Let's get real. What the people who blew up the Red Cross and the Iraqi police fear is not that we're going to permanently occupy Iraq. They fear that we're going to permanently change Iraq. The great irony is that the Baathists and Arab dictators are opposing the U.S. in Iraq because — unlike many leftists — they understand exactly what this war is about. They understand that U.S. power is not being used in Iraq for oil, or imperialism, or to shore up a corrupt status quo, as it was in Vietnam and elsewhere in the Arab world during the cold war. They understand that this is the most radical-liberal revolutionary war the U.S. has ever launched — a war of choice to install some democracy in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world.
Read the rest of it, please, in The New York Times...
  

9:51 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Good News From Beijing!

Very Good News From Beijing! Saw it on television here at the Foreign Affairs University in Beijing--didn't understand a lot, my Chinese is still embryonic after 15 months!
BEIJING (AP) -- China and North Korea agreed "in principle" Thursday to reconvene six-nation talks on Pyongyang's nuclear program, Chinese state television said, reporting on an unusual meeting between a top Chinese official and the North's reclusive leader.

China Central Television said the Beijing leadership expressed to Kim Jong Il that the concerns of both sides in the nuclear standoff -- the United States and North Korea -- should be resolved simultaneously.

State television showed Wu Bangguo, the second-highest Chinese Communist Party leader and head of his country's legislature, meeting with a smiling Kim in Pyongyang. Wu is on a three-day "goodwill" visit to the North at a pivotal time when China is trying to make sure the six-nation summit reconvenes.

"Both sides agreed in principle that the six-way talks should continue," the CCTV anchorwoman said over footage of the two.

"Both China and North Korea support the idea of a peaceful resolution to the North Korean issue through dialogue," the anchorwoman said.

The United States demands that North Korea dismantle its nuclear program immediately. Pyongyang says it will do that only if Washington agrees in writing not to attack the North and resumes the humanitarian aid needed for North Korea's starving population.

A spokesman who answered the phone at the press section of China's Foreign Ministry said he had nothing to add to the CCTV report.
From the A.P.
  

9:27 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



Wednesday, October 29, 2003

Memory of Holiday Offenses in Wars Past

The Last Few Days in Baghdad Remind You of Anything in Recent History? If you are old enough, surely.
AIMED AT THE Muslim holiday of Ramadan, the series of suicide bombings and other attacks by enemies of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq this week probably is intended to have the same effect as the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam: to convince Americans that their troops are committed to a losing cause and must withdraw -- even if, in military terms, that is not the case. Saddam Hussein, after all, is known to have studied recent U.S. history for examples of how to defeat the superpower, as have the Islamic terrorist groups also believed to be operating in Iraq. The attacks so far carried out in Baghdad and Fallujah, like those of Tet, pose no strategic threat to the U.S. military presence in the country; they also pale beside those of 1968, which cost the lives of more than 3,800 U.S. servicemen and 14,000 Vietnamese civilians. Still, the bombings have shocked Iraqis, intimidated some would-be allies and strengthened doubts in Congress and the public about the Iraq mission.

Yet it would be wrong for the United States to conclude, as its enemies no doubt hope it will, that the time has come to embrace an exit strategy. There is no basis to believe that the U.S. goals of stabilizing Iraq under a representative government cannot be achieved. In much of the country there is little violence and coalition authorities have the support of most of the population. Even in Baghdad, there has been measurable progress in recent months: More power is on, the curfew is lifted, streets and shops are usually full. Most important, the coalition authority and most Iraqis share the same goal: to transfer authority to a sovereign government and replace U.S. forces with Iraqis as quickly as can be done safely. The enemy offers not an attractive alternative but an agenda of viciousness embodied in the attacks on the humanitarian workers of the United Nations and International Red Cross. This is the brutal trademark of al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein, whose return on the heels of departing U.S. troops is the future Iraqis fear most.
This Editorial in the Washington Post is Required reading...
 

11:19 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Losses in the Forgotten War

Losses in the Forgotten War are somebody's sons, brothers, husbands, courageous citizens doing a lonely, dangerous job that must be done.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 — Two Central Intelligence Agency operatives were killed in an ambush in Afghanistan over the weekend, the agency said Tuesday, bringing to four the number of C.I.A. operatives acknowledged to have been killed in the line of duty since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The two men were described by the agency as veterans of military Special Operations units who were killed while tracking terrorists in the region of Shkin, a village in southeastern Afghanistan. A statement released by the agency said they were working as contractors for the agency's Directorate of Operations, which conducts clandestine intelligence gathering and other covert activities.
Read about these heroes in The New York Times...
  

11:15 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Dubya Playing Catch-up?

Is Dubya Playing Catch-up? Of course he is; the question is can he do it? He'd best hope most Americans were not watching his press conference--his obvious disdain for the press corps before him, the by now patented twisted mouth scowl, and cork-screw head tilt, spoke loudly about how much he believes in the public's right to know about what is NOT in that unthinking brain of his. Has there ever been a president that displays as much undisguised arrogance? The man is a public relations disaster for anyone trying to portray the "American way" to a very doubting world.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 — Early on Tuesday morning, as many Americans were scanning newspaper headlines about the latest wave of deadly bombings in Iraq, President Bush met with his press secretary and his communications director in the Oval Office. He told them, aides said, that he wanted to hold a full-scale news conference a few hours later.

The idea had been under consideration for several weeks, but it was only after the attacks in Baghdad on Monday that Mr. Bush decided to take his message directly to the voters and the world.

For weeks, while opinion polls showed diminished support for his postwar leadership, he had accused the press of filtering out good news from Iraq and overplaying the bad.

The decision reflects how urgent it is for the White House to keep public opinion about Iraq from deteriorating to the point that it could limit the president's policy choices and threaten his chances for re-election.
Read it in The New York Times...
  

10:53 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Said a Little Late and Without Conviction

Dubya's disavowing his Christian Warrior comes a little late and without much conviction.
President Bush said Tuesday that controversial remarks by Lt. Gen. William G. 'Jerry' Boykin about Muslims and Islam do not 'reflect my point of view, or the view of this administration' — sharp language from an administration that tends to circle the wagons when a member is under attack.

Bush's move to distance himself from the outspoken general was the strongest administration response to date to disclosures of Boykin's frequent appearances before religious groups at which he characterized the war on terrorism as a battle between Judeo-Christian tradition and 'Satan.' His remarks have put the president in a difficult spot.

With hundreds of supportive calls coming into the Pentagon and Bush facing a reelection campaign in which he'll seek the help of Christian conservatives, it might be out of the question for the administration to fire Boykin.

"Gen. Boykin is kind of the living embodiment of a key Republican electoral constituency. So forcing him out would not be a very bright move with elections approaching," said military analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based public policy group.

But his continued presence as deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence is causing such trouble in the Muslim community, Congress and elsewhere that some senior defense officials and others have suggested privately that a less visible, strictly military post should be found for the oft-decorated soldier.

Bush's remarks Tuesday might make that a foregone conclusion. Said Thompson: "He may simply decide that he's become too much of an issue and seek another assignment."
Read the rest in the Los Angeles Times...
  

10:34 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



Tuesday, October 28, 2003

A Willful Ignorance

Mr. Krugman is being too kind--it's Arrogant Ignorance. The kind that the Bush family has projected and perfected for more than six decades now. This particular Bush, Dubya, has the worst case of it. To the baggage he received genetically and environmentally growing up in that most dangerously Blue Blood of American families (came over on the Mayflower, and related to over a dozen American presidents), is added the truly boorish arrogance of ignorance that is peculiar to born-again Christian, AA certified, alcoholics who by indoctrination learn to listen to no counsel other than their sacrosanct "Higher Authority" and fellow travelers along the 12 Step path.

Do us all a favor and read Paul Krugman.
According to The New York Times, President Bush was genuinely surprised to learn from moderate Islamic leaders that they had become deeply distrustful of American intentions. The report on the 'perception gap' suggests that the leader of the war on terror has no idea how badly that war — which must, ultimately, be a war for hearts and minds — is going.

Mr. Bush's ignorance may reflect his lack of curiosity: 'The best way to get the news,' he says, 'is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff.' Two words: emperor, clothes.

But there's something broader going on: a sort of willful ignorance, supposedly driven by moral concerns but actually reflecting domestic politics. Surely it's important to understand how others see us, but a new, post 9/11 version of political correctness has made it difficult even to discuss their points of view. Any American who tries to go beyond 'America good, terrorists evil,' who tries to understand — not condone — the growing world backlash against the United States, faces furious attacks delivered in a tone of high moral indignation. The attackers claim to be standing up for moral clarity, and some of them may even believe it. But they are really being used in a domestic political struggle.

Last week I found myself caught up in that struggle. I wrote about why Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia's prime minister — a clever if loathsome man who adjusts the volume of his anti-Semitism depending on circumstances — chose to include an anti-Jewish diatribe in his speech to an Islamic conference. Sure enough, I was accused in various places not just of "tolerance for anti-Semitism" (yes, I'm Jewish) but of being in Mr. Mahathir's pay. Smear tactics aside, the thrust of the attacks was that because anti-Semitism is evil, anyone who tries to understand why politicians foment anti-Semitism — and looks for ways other than military force to combat the disease — is an apologist for anti-Semitism and is complicit in evil.

Yet that moral punctiliousness is curiously selective. Last year the Bush administration, in return for a military base in Uzbekistan, gave $500 million to a government that, according to the State Department, uses torture "as a routine investigation technique," and whose president has killed opponents with boiling water. The moral clarity police were notably quiet.
Read it all, in The New York Times...
  

9:43 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Give It Up Now, Or Lose It All Later

What is Bush Hiding? "Executive Privilege" didn't work for Nixon, probably won't work for Dubya. Even if he wins 5-4 at the Supreme Court, the public outcry will send him home to Texas for an early start on his Presidential comic book library. If he doesn't want to go that way, he'd best bite the bullet and take his chances with the heat that whatever he's hiding about overlooked warnings he might have received prior to 9-11 will generate. Not even right-wing Republicans like to be stonewalled by autocratic, obviously self-serving maneuvering.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 — President Bush declined today to commit the White House to turning over highly classified intelligence reports to the independent federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, despite public threats of a subpoena from the bipartisan panel.

The president said in a brief meeting with reporters that the documents were "very sensitive" and that the White House was still discussing the issue with the panel's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey.

Mr. Bush's remarks and subsequent comments today from his press secretary suggested that the White House may ultimately refuse the commission's demand for access to the documents, setting up a possible showdown between the White House and the independent investigators.

Last week, Mr. Kean said for the first time that he was prepared to issue a subpoena and risk a courtroom battle with the White House if the documents were not turned over within weeks.

Commission officials say the documents include copies of the so-called Presidential Daily Briefing — the summary prepared each morning by the Central Intelligence Agency for the Oval Office — that President Bush received in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks. The White House refused to provide the briefing reports to House and Senate investigators last year for their investigation of the attacks, citing executive privilege.

As a result of Mr. Kean's comments on Friday, a number of prominent lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, have joined in urging the White House to make the documents available to the panel, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, which was created by Congress last year over the initial objections of the White House.
What is Bush Hiding? Read about in The New York Times...
  

8:48 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




"Decades of Good Deeds Provide No Armor"

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished in a Fabled Land of Blood, Sand and the Beginnings of Western Civilization. Why? Where is the answer? To whom do we even ask the question?
BAGHDAD, Oct. 27 -- They used unarmed guards and eschewed elaborate security because in Iraq, as elsewhere in the world, they felt protected by their instantly recognizable symbol of benevolent assistance: a red cross.

Then a car bomb exploded near their central Baghdad headquarters on Monday morning, killing 12 people and injuring at least 10 others.

"So many people are dead, why?" said Moutasser Jalal Taher, 23, a security guard who spoke angrily, through clenched teeth, about the attack on the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross, or ICRC. "They are innocent people and it's a humanitarian organization."

The question reverberated unanswered throughout the day, beginning when employees arrived for work and found pandemonium. The building's beige facade was a chalky, blackened mess of rubble. Water gushed onto the street from a pipe cracked by the blast. Cars were singed and burned. And a crater six feet deep remained where a vehicle resembling a Red Cross ambulance and packed with explosives blew up during rush hour.

For the humanitarian agency, the blast shattered the belief that 23 years of good deeds in Iraq could be worn like protective armor against violence. "We were always confident that people knew us and that our work here would protect us," said Nada Doumani, spokeswoman for the Red Cross in Baghdad. "How do we understand this?" ...

Since the group's inception in 1863, the red cross emblem -- a red crescent in Muslim countries -- has been a symbol of neutral humanitarian assistance in war-ravaged countries. The Red Cross has served as a mediator between combatants and a monitor of the rules of war, the Geneva Conventions.

Red Cross workers outside Iraq said Monday's suicide bombing was unprecedented even by the worsening standards of recent conflicts -- because a Red Cross compound was specifically targeted by a bomb and because the attacker used what looked like a Red Cross/Red Crescent ambulance to deliver the device.

"I can remember thefts and I can remember blockages -- when they didn't let us out of our compound, like in Somalia," said Nina Winquist, a Finn who worked for the Red Cross for 15 years in such trouble spots as Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia. But "I can't think of any incident where there was a car bomb at a delegation."

"This is very serious, because this is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and Iraq is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions," said Marc Gentilini, a physician and president of the French Red Cross.
Read it in the Washington Post...
  

1:12 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Baghdad Update In Blood

Hell Described...
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 27 — The morning that opened with the quiet air of a religious holiday was broken suddenly by the sound of a bomb.

And then another bomb, and another, and another still.

Of all the chaos and cacophony that gripped the scenes of the suicide attacks here on Monday, the eeriest sounds of all were the explosions in the distance.

One after another the suicide bombers struck, and only minutes apart. First, there were two nearly simultaneous blasts at Iraqi police stations in the Baghdad neighborhoods of Dora and Baya. Only five minutes later, a man drove an ambulance packed with explosives to the headquarters of the Red Cross and set them off.

Then, only minutes after that, there were two more, each of the explosions audible from the center of town.

"There's been two more bombs," an Iraqi police officer quietly said to his colleagues, and they knew from the sounds that he was right.

Car bombs had come before to Baghdad, big bombs that killed dozens, but never so many, and never like this. ...

Others were not as lucky as Mr. Hassan, who escaped unharmed. The bomber himself seemed to have vaporized; all that remained was a crater where his car had exploded and a scattering of metal shards. Behind the crater sat two cars, each blackened and burned. Inside each sat a charred body, frozen at the moment of death.

American investigators working the scene said they had counted 15 bodies, most belonging to people who lived in houses neighboring the Red Cross headquarters.

Two of the dead lay on the side of road, tangled in a pile of bricks and metal, their clothes burned from their bodies. Hunks of human flesh lay in piles here and there, the blood draining pink into the gutter. Part of a body sat stuck to a second-story wall of a building across the street.

In the horror of the moment, emotions tumbled forth. Hamid Khalaf, a 39-year-old security guard, said he suspected the bombs were set off by the supporters of Saddam Hussein, no friends of his. But there was someone else he thought to blame.

"The Americans are the reason," Mr. Khalaf said, standing in the rubble. "The Americans thought they could liberate us, but we will not accept them. We are an Islamic people."
Hell Described in The New York Times...
  

11:55 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



Monday, October 27, 2003

Hell Continues

The bombings came hours after clashes in the Baghdad area killed three U.S. soldiers overnight, and a day after insurgents devastated a hotel full of U.S. occupation officials with a rocket barrage, killing a U.S. colonel and wounding 18 other people.

It was two days of violence unprecedented in this city of 5 million people since the end of the U.S.-Iraq war last April, attacks aimed at the American-led occupation and those perceived as working with it.

''We feel helpless when see this,'' a distraught Iraqi doctor said at the devastated Red Cross offices. ...

At the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross in central Baghdad, witnesses said a suicide bomber drove an explosives-packed vehicle, apparently an ambulance, right up to security barriers outside the building at about 8:30 a.m. and detonated it, blowing down the Red Cross's front wall, devastating the interior and blowing shrapnel and debris over a wide area.

Through the morning, four other vehicles exploded at police stations in the Baghdad area. Ambulances, sirens wailing, crisscrossed the city all morning.
[But] Iraqi police reported some 27 people killed at police stations, including 15 Iraqis at the ad-Doura station in southern Baghdad. One U.S. soldier was among them, said Lt. Sarmad al-Hakim, an ad-Doura officer. ...

At a fifth police station in central Baghdad, officers stopped a suicide bomber before he could detonate his Land Cruiser. ''He was shouting, `Death to the Iraqi police! You're collaborators!''' said police Sgt. Ahmed Abdel Sattar.
Hell Continues...
  

11:40 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Hell Gets Worse

The Sons of Bitches Know What They're Doing; they believe we will cut and run.
European Union officials expressed outrage over Monday's string of bombings in Baghdad, particularly a strike against the international Red Cross. But they insisted officials in Iraq had security under control.

It was the bloodiest day in Baghdad since Saddam Hussein's regime fell in April, with at least 39 people, mostly Iraqis, killed in bombings at several police stations and the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

"The situation is not very good but I don't think it is going to get out of control at all," the EU's foreign policy representative, Javier Solana, said before a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw reacted with "shock and outrage at the latest terrorist incident."

"I will just make this clear: We will not be deterred by this kind of outrage," Straw said.

He called the security situation in Baghdad "unsatisfactory" but said "overall the situation across Iraq is getting better."

"The fact that terrorists have yet again targeted not U.S. or U.K. troops but an international organization ... shows the depth of depravity to which they stoop," he said.

France condemned the attacks and said a key to combatting such violence was to restore sovereignty to the country.

"In the face of such acts of violence, it is more urgent than ever to embark on a political process, based on the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty, mobilizing all energy toward the country's reconstruction," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous.
All togerther now: FUCK THE FRENCH AND THE ESCARGOT THEY SLIMED IN ON!
  

10:53 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




War is Hell.

It hurts. And we mourn. But we cannot quit.
BAGHDAD, Oct 27 - A mortar attack killed one U.S. soldier and injured two others at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison on the western outskirts of the Iraqi capital, a U.S. military spokeswoman said on Monday.

She said one military policeman died in the attack at about 10:30 pm on Sunday night. The soldier was the 110th killed in action in Iraq since Washington declared an end to major conflict on May 1.
In the Washington Post...
  

7:42 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




We Cannot Quit

We Cannot Quit. Dubya & Company took us into a war without sufficiently diverse support in a part of the world where Anglo-American unilateralism is in itself cause enough for fanatical insurgents to fight until a bitter end. The administration also took us into a war with almost no plan for winning the "peace." However, we can deal with that in voting booths, but geo-politically we can realistically only deal with the "war" we are in by seeing it through until there is a complete military victory. Anything less would be as bad as leaving Saddam Hussein in despotic power.
BAGHDAD, Oct 27 Bombers struck at least three times in Baghdad at rush hour on Monday morning, killing at least 18 people near a Red Cross building and two police stations.

A blast near an International Committee of the Red Cross building killed 10 people and wounded at least 15, an ICRC official said. One witness said the bomb appeared to have been packed into an ambulance.

In the northeast of the Iraqi capital, a U.S. military policeman said eight people had been killed in a blast near a police station.
There will be updates to this morning's events in Baghdad throughout this day. In the Washington Post...
  

7:26 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Read it and Explain, Dubya: No WMDs

The President of the United States is either a reckless liar, or recklessly incompetent. There are no other choices: Iraq was simply not a nuclear threat at the time of the invasion, and had not been for some years prior. What should be done with lying, incompetent elected officials? Defeat them at the ballot box when they come up for reelection. Impeachment should not be used as recklessly as Republicans did when confronted with a president who lied about sex, even when this president's lie is so much more consequential.
According to records made available to The Washington Post and interviews with arms investigators from the United States, Britain and Australia, it did not require a comprehensive survey to find the central assertions of the Bush administration's prewar nuclear case to be insubstantial or untrue. Although Hussein did not relinquish his nuclear ambitions or technical records, investigators said, it is now clear he had no active program to build a weapon, produce its key materials or obtain the technology he needed for either.

Among the closely held internal judgments of the Iraq Survey Group, overseen by David Kay as special representative of CIA Director George J. Tenet, are that Iraq's nuclear weapons scientists did no significant arms-related work after 1991, that facilities with suspicious new construction proved benign, and that equipment of potential use to a nuclear program remained under seal or in civilian industrial use.

Most notably, investigators have judged the aluminum tubes to be "innocuous," according to Australian Brig. Gen. Stephen D. Meekin, who commands the Joint Captured Enemy Materiel Exploitation Center, the largest of a half-dozen units that report to Kay. That finding is pivotal, because the Bush administration built its case on the proposition that Iraq aimed to use those tubes as centrifuge rotors to enrich uranium for the core of a nuclear warhead.
Read the troubling facts in the Washington Post...
  

7:08 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Want Liberty, Will Travel

If you really want unfettered liberty and are willing to relocate, this just might be your cup of freedom--but it gets cold, very cold.
KEENE, N.H. — A few things stand out about this unprepossessing city. It just broke its own Guinness Book world record for the most lighted jack-o'-lanterns with 28,952. It claims to have the world's widest Main Street.

And recently, Keene became the home of Justin Somma, a 26-year-old freelance copywriter from Suffern, N.Y., and a foot soldier in an upstart political movement. That movement, the Free State Project, aims to make all of New Hampshire a laboratory for libertarian politics by recruiting libertarian-leaning people from across the country to move to New Hampshire and throw their collective weight around. Leaders of the project figure 20,000 people would do the trick, and so far 4,960 have pledged to make the move.

The idea is to concentrate enough fellow travelers in a single state to jump-start political change. Members, most of whom have met only over the Internet, chose New Hampshire over nine other states in a heated contest that lasted months.

(The other contenders were Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming. One frequently asked question on the project's Web site was "Can't you make a warmer state an option?")

Once here, they plan to field candidates in elections and become active in schools and community groups, doing all they can to sow the libertarian ideals of curbing taxes, minimizing regulation of guns and drugs, privatizing schools and reducing government programs.

"We want to make New Hampshire our home, and we want to make it a better place for everybody," said Elizabeth McKinstry, a project spokeswoman. "Many times government gets in the way." ...

New Hampshire's constitution guarantees the "right of revolution" if "the ends of government are perverted and public liberty manifestly endangered."

But that is not their intention, Ms. McKinstry said, pointing to their mascot, a porcupine — "a friendly little forest creature who doesn't harm anyone else, minds his own business, but is not really someone that you want to mess with or you might get stuck and a little ouchy."
Don't laugh, these folks are serious and they have a plan. Read more about it in The New York Times...
  

5:35 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Update

U.S. Military Officer Dies in Rocket Barrage at Baghdad Hotel.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 26 — A senior American military officer was killed and more than a dozen other individuals were wounded early this morning when a barrage of air-to-ground missiles slammed into a hotel inside one of the most secure compounds in Baghdad, where most of the personnel who are part of the American-led occupation here live and eat. Balconies were blasted off of two rooms, and windows were blown out in the Rashid Hotel.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, the intellectual architect of the war against Iraq, who arrived here Friday for a quick look, had spent the night in the hotel, and was one floor above where one of the rockets hit, officials said. He was not injured.

Five other American soldiers were injured, as were seven American civilians working in various Iraqi ministries as part of the American-led effort to rebuild Iraq, officials said. Four non-American civilians were also injured.

The attack, which officials suggested had probably been carried out by men loyal to Saddam Hussein, had been carefully planned, perhaps over two months, and had involved some surveillance and rehearsal, American military officials said.
Read it in The New York Times...
  

6:21 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



Sunday, October 26, 2003

The One True God Lobby Rules

Evangelicals have more than just Bush's ear, they hold his political future and, unless he is a complete liar, his heart, mind and soul. Is he then the President of all Americans? Judeo-Christian beliefs and values no doubt lie at the foundation of the Republic, but does blind faith in a supernatural being who did or did not live and then did or did not re-live two millenniums ago belong as the fundamental criterion upon which to base decisions that effect all nations and belief-systems in the 21st Century? The question is only rhetorical at the moment because the fact is that it is a fait accompli.

A century and more after the Bible has been irrefutably proven by the discovery of beasts and humans that lived millions of years ago to be a lively, literary collection of religious musings, parables, philosophical allegories, ethical teachings and creation myths not unlike religions now considered to be paganish, ours and the world's future is in the hands of people who believe in ghosts and spirits and places such as a literal Heaven and Hell. You may be comfortable with that, I am more than just troubled by it, I fear for humankind's very survival because of it. In whose names are we still fighting wars with casualties counted in the hundreds of thousands? Jesus Christ. Allah. Jehovah. Yahweh.

If our leaders believed a bit more in the value of human life on this Earth which is a certainty, as opposed to the value of a life after death with spirits which is more than just a little speculative, might we not kill less of us in anger or for territorial and ideological hegemony? Unfortunately, my concerns are shared by a very silent majority terrified to go up against the fervor of people with faith but not humanity. And who can blame this silent majority when the superstitious minority is so very, very lethal?
Administration officials and members of Congress say the religious coalition has had an unusual influence on one of the most religious White Houses in American history. The groups have driven aspects of foreign policy and won major appointments, and they were instrumental in making sure that the president included extensive remarks on sex trafficking in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September.

No one disputes that Mr. Bush already cares deeply about those issues and has a personal faith that his advisers say brings a moral dimension to a foreign policy better known for war. "To put it simply, it's a fairly radical belief that a child in an African village whose parents are dying of AIDS has the same importance before God as the president of the United States," said Michael Gerson, Mr. Bush's chief speechwriter and an important White House policy adviser who is a born-again Christian.

But it is also true, religious leaders and administration officials note, that white evangelicals accounted for about 40 percent of the votes that Mr. Bush received in the 2000 presidential election. In 2004, political analysts say, he is unlikely to be re-elected without the strong support of this constituency, which is predominately but not wholly Republican, and which in other years has thrown significant support to southern Democrats like Bill Clinton. Mr. Rove is now tending to the constituency with great care.

"You're not going to run into too many people who are smarter than Karl," said Dr. Richard D. Land, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, who is in regular contact with Mr. Rove. "Karl understands the importance of this segment of his coalition, and I think the president understands it. The president feels that one of the contributory factors to his father's loss is that he didn't get as many evangelical votes as Reagan did."

The human rights issues offer a politically safe way for the president to appeal to his base of white evangelicals, who leading scholars and pollsters define by their membership in historically white evangelical denominations, like the Southern Baptists and the Assemblies of God. Evangelical churches believe that the Bible is truth, that members have an imperative to proselytize and convert and that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation. ...

Other religious leaders say that this White House far surpasses the administrations of Ronald Reagan and Mr. Bush's father in its attentiveness.

"Under previous Republican administrations, they would take our calls and often return them," Dr. Land said. "In this administration, they call us. They say, you know, `What do you think about this?' " ...

Mr. [Charles W. Colson, the born-again Christian who spent seven months in jail for his role in Watergate], who has enormous influence among evangelicals because of his books, lectures and radio program, said President Bush personally told religious leaders that he was supporting them on the A.B.C. campaign in a meeting at the White House this spring.

After the meeting, Mr. Colson said he went up to Mr. Bush and said emphatically that faith-based policy worked. "He said, `You don't have to tell me,' " Mr. Colson said the president replied. "He said, `I'd still be drinking if it weren't for what Christ did in my life. I know faith-based works.' "
If that doesn't frighten most of you, then I am terrified for all of us.

Read the whole story in The New York Times...
  

8:36 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Update on Rashid Hotel Attack

U.S. Soldier is Killed in Attack on Baghdad Hotel. While Mr. Wolfowitz was unharmed, an American G.I. was not so fortunate.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sunday, Oct. 26 — A rocket attack on a Baghdad hotel where U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying killed an American soldier and wounded 15 people on Sunday, the U.S. military said.

"Six to eight rockets struck the Rashid hotel, fired by terrorist elements," a spokeswoman said. "As a result, one U.S. soldier assigned to the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) was killed and 15 (people) were wounded." Wolfowitz was not hurt.
It's in The New York Times...
 

6:39 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Does This Fit the Definition of "Slog"?

Is This What Rummy Meant by "Slog"? Surely Mr. Wolfowitz will consider this an indication that the security issues concerning a liberated Iraq are not being too greatly exaggerated. Unless it was just an amazing coincidence, the timing and location of the attack might suggest that the insurgents' intelligence is not indicative of the absence of a command and control structure as has so aften been asserted by coalition officials. Let us hope that Ms. Ann Coulter will not now add a chapter to her latest book-length revisionist rant and accuse liberal members of the coaltion of treason.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sunday, Oct. 26 — The hotel where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz stayed overnight during a visit to Iraq was hit by what American soldiers said were rockets early Sunday morning, wounding a number of people. Mr. Wolfowitz was not hurt.

Shortly after 6 a.m., three or four explosions were heard outside the Rashid Hotel, where Mr. Wolfowitz and his delegation are staying. The hotel is also a center for American contract workers in Baghdad.

Shortly after 6 a.m., three or four explosions were heard outside the Rashid Hotel, where Mr. Wolfowitz and his delegation are staying. The hotel is also a center for American contract workers in Baghdad.

Although details remained sketchy shortly after the attack, it appeared that rockets hit on the 3rd, 8th and 11th floors. There were an unknown number of people wounded. At least three were seen being carried though the lobby on stretchers. Mr. Wolfowitz appeared to be unhurt, and he was rushed by security guards out a side door of the lobby. He appeared unfazed, and even exchanged greetings with correspondents who had rushed to the lobby. Smoke filled some of the upper floors, but there were no signs of a fire immediately after the attack.

The attack on the well-known Rashid, especially during the visit of a high-ranking American dignitary, will only serve to underscore security concerns for the American-led stabilization effort and questions about how best to rout loyalists of the Saddam Hussein government.

The rockets fired at the hotel came from beyond a tall security wall that marks the perimeter. One left a line of fireworks-style sparks as it came toward the building, and the 11th floor, where correspondents traveling with Mr. Wolfowitz were staying, shuddered.

One soldier outside the compound said 12 rockets had been left nearby on a generator. Six or seven remained, all set to go off. "It looks professional," the soldier said. "Whoever set this up knew what they were doing."
It should be noted that there was much good news to report about the Deputy Defense Secretary's visit to Iraq, especially in the northern city of Kirkuk.

Read about it in The New York Times...
  

6:23 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




What Is Happening Here?

What could the White House be hiding about 9-11? How can this administration be fearful of any truth concerning 9-11? This does not make sense. No responsible citizen has accused the Bush administration of anything nefarious concerning the worst attack on American civilians in the nation's history. A serious breakdown in communications between intelligence agencies is the worst accusation that even partisan politics has generated. What could Bush possibly want to hide?
MADISON, N.J., Oct. 25 — The chairman of the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks says that the White House is continuing to withhold several highly classified intelligence documents from the panel and that he is prepared to subpoena the documents if they are not turned over within weeks.

"Any document that has to do with this investigation cannot be beyond our reach," Mr. Kean said on Friday in his first explicit public warning to the White House that it risked a subpoena and a politically damaging courtroom showdown with the commission over access to the documents, including Oval Office intelligence reports that reached President Bush's desk in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks.

"I will not stand for it," Mr. Kean said in the interview in his offices here at Drew University, where he has been president since 1990.

"That means that we will use every tool at our command to get hold of every document." ...

"Anything that has to do with 9/11, we have to see it — anything. There are a lot of theories about 9/11, and as long as there is any document out there that bears on any of those theories, we're going to leave questions unanswered. And we cannot leave questions unanswered."

While Mr. Kean said he was barred by an agreement with the White House from describing the Oval Office documents at issue in any detail — he said the White House was "quite nervous" about any public hint at their contents — other commission officials said they included the detailed daily intelligence reports that were provided to Mr. Bush in the weeks leading up to Sept. 11. The reports are known within the White House as the Presidential Daily Briefing. ...

Last year, the White House confirmed news reports that President Bush received a written intelligence report in August 2001, the month before the attacks, that Al Qaeda might try to hijack American passenger planes. ...

After months of stating that it believed subpoenas to the executive branch would not be necessary, the commission voted unanimously this month to issue its first subpoena to the Federal Aviation Administration after determining that the F.A.A. had withheld dozens of boxes of documents involving the Sept. 11 attacks.

The subpoena appeared to be a turning point for the commission and for Mr. Kean, a moderate Republican known for his independence. In a statement on Oct. 15, the commission said it was re-examining "its general policy of relying on document requests rather than subpoenas" as a result of the issues with the F.A.A.

The commission, which has a membership that is equally divided among Republicans and Democrats, was created by Congress last year over the initial opposition of the White House. The law creating the panel requires that it complete its work by next May, a deadline that commission members say may be impossible to meet because of the Bush administration's delays in turning over many documents.

Mr. Kean's comments on Friday came as another member of the commission, Max Cleland, the former Democratic senator from Georgia, became the first panel member to say publicly that the commission could not complete its work by its May 2004 deadline and the first to accuse the White House of withholding classified information from the panel for purely political reasons.

"It's obvious that the White House wants to run out the clock here," he said in an interview in Washington. "It's Halloween, and we're still in negotiations with some assistant White House counsel about getting these documents — it's disgusting."

He said that the White House and President Bush's re-election campaign had reason to fear what the commission was uncovering in its investigation of intelligence and law enforcement failures before Sept. 11. "As each day goes by, we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before Sept. 11 than it has ever admitted."

Interviews with several other members of the commission show that Mr. Kean's concerns are widely shared on the panel, and that the concern is bipartisan.
Read it in The New York Times and ask yourself why? Silence or the lack of a defense in the face of accusations are proscribed by law and tradition from being inculpatory of wrongdoing, but the inference of such has always been powerful ammunition for public suspicion and doubt. Whatever it is, coming out with it now would be politically expedient as opposed to later considering the imminent re-election campaign.
  

5:25 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



Saturday, October 25, 2003

Kristof is Crystal

Gay at Birth? It will be very interesting to see the response to Nicholas Kristof's eloquent, reasoned, compassionate column in today's The New York Times. At the very least, we will see if Andrew Sullivan, who seldom agrees with Kristof's alleged "liberal media bias," will acknowlege it. But, more importantly, how will the Gay/Lesbian community respond? We already know how self-righteous Christians and ignorant homophobes will respond and we don't care unless they act-out their boorish self-loathing upon others.

For what it's worth, it makes so much sense to me--a nonscientific type--that sexual persuasion would be a part of our genetic package upon arrival into this world. It also makes sense that this is not the case all of the time and that environmental factors and choices that we make play a role in which gender we choose to sleep with regularly.

What makes no sense to me is that we are not yet a live and let live society. I don't have to like what you do to believe in your right to do it. As long as what you do does not infringe upon my rights or others, please feel free and happy to do whatever you wish and by all means marry and cherish and live with whomever you choose. Not that you, or anyone else, need my approval, of course. It would be appropriate and welcomed for state and federal laws to approve, however.
"There is now very strong evidence from almost two decades of `biobehavioral' research that human sexual orientation is predominantly biologically determined," said Qazi Rahman, the University of London researcher who led the blinking study. Many others don't go that far, but accept that there is probably some biological component.

Gays themselves are divided. Some welcome these studies because they confirm their own feeling that sexual orientation is more than a whim. Others fret that the implication is that homosexuals are abnormal or defective — and that future genetic screening will eliminate people like them.

For me the implication, if these studies are to believed, is different: It is that something is defective not in gays, but in discrimination against them.

A basic principle of our social covenant is that we do not discriminate against people on the basis of circumstances that they cannot choose, like race, sex and disability. If sexual orientation belongs on that list (with the caveat that the evidence is still murky), then should we still prohibit gay marriage and bar gays from serving openly in the armed forces?

Can we countenance discrimination against people for something so basic as how they blink — or whom they love?
Gay at Birth?
  

10:24 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Results Are In From the Donor Drive

It Isn't Much, But Every 10 Billion Counts, my papa always said; didn't yours? Times are tough, he would say, you'll have to make do with a used bike, and be damned glad you have one. And I was, weren't you? We were all in the crunch together, right?
MADRID, Oct. 24 — The United States, completing an extraordinary campaign for economic aid to Iraq, won commitments on Friday of at least $13 billion over five years for reconstruction of water, power, health care and other systems devastated by the American invasion six months ago.

The total surpassed what many had expected, although roughly two-thirds of the aid appeared to be in the form of loans rather than grants, which might complicate efforts by the Bush administration to beat back a drive in Congress to make more American aid in the form of loans.

Administration officials have said repeatedly that Iraq needs grants and cannot afford to add to its debt. ...

Exactly how much of the figure mentioned Friday was in the form of grants was not immediately clear. But it appeared that total grants between now and the end of 2004 would come to between $3 billion and $4 billion.
Whoa! Hang on a minute--the war/peace is costing us about $4 Billion a month, right? So, these friends of ours, these countries that respect--or at least are intimidated by our strength and our reach--are ponying up about a month's worth of dough? Some respect. There's not much fear factor apparent in their ardor to remain on the good side of the world's only "superpower," either.
Some donors apparently pledged sums that they had already announced and transmitted earlier. Others included import credits, relief assistance — including $500,000 worth of rice from Vietnam — or other items not on the list of reconstruction and security needs for which the Madrid conference was called. Nor is it clear how much money will be available how soon.

Arab nations did not come through with the large number of grants that the administration had sought, in part because of antipathy toward the war in Iraq and, more recently, the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. The United Arab Emirates offered $200 million to $250 million. Saudi Arabia offered $1 billion in low-cost loans and an additional $500 million to finance Saudi export credits. Kuwait came up with $500 million.
Jeezumtally! The Saudis spend that much on their mistresses' shopping sprees on Rodeo Drive! They spend many times that financing the Islamic fundamentalism that started all this mess! And these are loans. Surely I am missing something here.
The senior administration official said that while much of the money would be received as loans, interest rates and repayment schedules would be highly favorable to Iraq. Loans, he added, will supply quick infusions of cash to get construction projects going quickly.

Asked why loans were acceptable from the international agencies and other donors but not from Congress, American officials said that they had to recognize the reality of donor finances and that this did not diminish the need for Congress to provide grants.

"Sure, we prefer grants," Treasury Secretary John Snow said. "But what we really are counting on here is financial support, lines of credit, money in the bank that can be drawn on to finance the rebuilding of Iraq."

As delegates left Madrid on Friday evening, many questions remained about the sums pledged. Many development officials cautioned, for example, that the nations pledging them might not live up to their promises. That is what has happened, at least in part, with the $5 billion raised for Afghanistan last year.
Okay, I get it, it's like a public television pledge drive. You get your name mentioned during the telethon, then stiff 'em with "the check's in the mail" routine afterwards. Amazing how Americanized the third world is becoming; they learn fast: Do as we do, not as we say.
Accompanying the pledges were heated demands and warnings from donor nations and from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other international institutions that the United States and Iraq must do a better job in disclosing how money is spent.

"So far there hasn't been a good accounting of how the money was used," said Mark Malloch Brown, head of the United Nations Development Program, referring to the several billion dollars already spent in Iraq from oil revenues and seized Iraqi assets.

American officials bridled at those accusations, saying there had been a full accounting even though it had not yet been made public. L. Paul Bremer III, administrator of the American-led Iraqi occupation, said the accounting would be on a Web site soon.
Yes indeed they learn fast--they want to know how we are going to spend their money. Imagine that? They want an accounting. Why don't we give the job to those guys who kept the books for Enron or WorldCom. That would at least continue to line Cheney the Great's pockets and he's going to be Emperor of something someday and maybe he will give us some of it back as foreign aid.

Read all about it in The New York Times...
  

8:55 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Hu Isn't Who? Any Longer

Hu Isn't Who? Any Longer. Don't look back, Dubya, something is gaining on you--a very BIG something. To the great relief of America--if not the White House and all neo-cons--this giant is not a menace. The China I live, write and teach in wants to be and should be America's best friend and equal partner in stabilizing a chaotic world that lies between these two great nations on opposite sides from each other on this spinning rock called Earth. Just as the United States can be said to have defined the 20th Century, China will define the 21st Century--for good or for bad--it's a fact, and we have to get used to it. If we want not to diminish our defining influence--co-definers, if you will--then we need to ensure that the Chinese government and the Chinese people believe we want to be their friend and not their enemy--or in Bush-speak, "strategic competitor," which they interpret as an "unfriendly" term at the very best, and as an "enemy aggressor" term at far less than worst in their cultural perspective on such things. Apparently Australia, one of our most traditional and faithful allies though muck and shine have an accurate view of China's role in their future.
CANBERRA, Australia, Oct. 25 — The Chinese president, Hu Jintao, addressed Australia's Parliament on Friday, a privilege accorded to him just one day after President Bush, and a juxtaposition almost inconceivable even a year ago in a nation long fearful of China.

Mr. Hu officially laid out in his speech what has become obvious: Australia's natural resources, particularly oil and gas, are playing a critical role in fueling China's fast-growing economy.

But in his parliamentary appearance, Mr. Hu went beyond economics by painting China as an all-around global player that was reaching out for broad diplomatic and cultural relations, including an increase in the already tens of thousands of Chinese students attending Australian universities.

In contrast, Mr. Bush in his address on Thursday, dwelled on a narrow agenda of the campaign against terrorism, and his gratitude to Australia for sending troops to Iraq.

The biggest difference was in style, with an almost complete role reversal of what might be expected. The Chinese leader was gregarious; the American president, aloof.

Mr. Bush left after 21 hours in Australia, stuck to this sleepy capital, and was whisked around in motorcades on routes swept clear of ordinary people. He declined to hold a news conference, and was criticized in the usually pro-American press here for offering little beyond a pledge to complete the outline of a free trade agreement with Australia soon.

Mr. Hu is lingering for three days. He took the traditional outing for visiting dignitaries — a cruise on Sydney's splendid harbor. He met with Australian business executives at a working lunch, and, in an unusual move for a Chinese leader, held a news conference, albeit a fairly scripted affair.

"Bush came, Hu conquered," headlined the Financial Review, the conservative business newspaper.

To reinforce the Chinese leader's theme, the two sides signed a letter of intent for a $21 billion deal calling for the China National Offshore Oil Corporation to take an equity stake in an Australian natural gas field, and to buy the gas over a 25-year period. ...

In choosing to give Mr. Bush and Mr. Hu what amounted to symbolic parity, Mr. Howard was making a keen departure for Australian foreign policy, analysts here said.

Mr. Howard's mentor in politics, Prime Minister Robert Menzies, regularly won re-election in the 1950's and 1960's with campaigns based on the threat of Communist China and with campaign literature illustrated with bold red arrows descending on Australia from China in the north.

During a Labor government, Australia opened diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1973 but for years afterward, many Australians regarded China as Red China.
Read the rest in The New York Times...
 

7:26 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



Friday, October 24, 2003

See Rummy Run?

See Rummy Run? Running away from a political fight has never been Mr. Rumsfeld's style. It appears that he is in fact running into one. Soon I think we will find out who really has the courage of their convictions--wrongheaded as those convictions might be--or is in this thing purely for the politics of it and not the good of the Republic and the world. Of course, even as Dubya blinks first--surely the coward in him will come out reflexively--he has the bluster down pat and he's a Bush, they win even when they lose. It's a family trait which for some reason my colleagues in the press have chosen always to ignore--for almost 60 years.
[Still] White House officials have also made clear that they are increasingly frustrated and impatient with Mr. Rumsfeld, particularly after he publicly criticized the president's closest foreign policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice, earlier this month in an internal power struggle that the defense secretary made public.

A Republican who is close to the White House said the view there had been that Mr. Rumsfeld 'went off the deep end' in his reaction earlier this month to Mr. Bush's decision to designate Ms. Rice as the overall coordinator of Iraq policy. 'The worst thing that can happen in Washington is if you're a cabinet member, you think you're bigger than the president,' the Republican said.
The memo by Mr. Rumsfeld that came to light this week warned of a 'long, hard slog ahead' in rebuilding and pacifying Iraq, a description ver