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Video: Alternative
Views
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Censured Casualties
features rare footage
of war crimes against the Iraqi people suffered during
and after the Gulf War. The footage is from former Attorney
General Ramsey
Clark in his attempt to document the injustice
of United States military actions in the region.
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Video: Alternative
Views
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Another Unknown
War
features a film on the
struggle of the indigenous people of West Papua to remain
sovereign in the face of an Indonesian invasion backed
by world capital. Footage of Noam
Chomsky on Western involvments in the region and
the relation to East Timor.
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Doug's New Books & Related
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TV/Radio
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Sunday, June 30, 2002
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Some Bush Stories From Last Week
From the Weekly Washington News Service Scripps-Howard News Service round-up:
The Bush administration has unveiled a new strategy for dealing with endangered species - turn 'em into dog food. Greenland has sought and received administration permission, through an international agreement on commercial fishing, to "harvest" the endangered North Atlantic salmon in U.S. waters even though the fish are "not needed for subsistence" and are largely expected "to be used as dog food," according to the World Wildlife Fund. "This decision to risk extinction of the few remaining wild salmon in Maine to feed dogs in Greenland is inexplicable," huffed the fund.
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Give President Bush credit for one educational accomplishment. He's got Americans scurrying for their dictionaries. They're looking up such Bushisms as "exemplarary," "analyzation" and "resignate."
"These stumbles are good for the dictionary business. They create interest in the language," said John Morse, publisher of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. "Not because these words will ever become part of our language, but because they prompt people to ask the question: 'Could that be right?'"
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Look for the "dirty bomb" scare to revitalize the United States' own "orphan nukes" program. The Department of Energy has had a recovery project on the books for more than three years. The plan calls for collecting and storing the highly radioactive material stored at more than 5,000 sites around the country. But the budget for the project has been dwindling. This all leaves critics wondering why domestic materials are less a priority than abandoned Russian nukes, when the home-grown stuff wouldn't have to be smuggled in.
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Bush has been promoting fitness and nutrition, but that message doesn't seem to fly on Air Force One. On the same day Bush was touting health, the presidential jet served up corned beef sandwiches, steak fries and strawberry cheesecake for lunch. While the press feasted on fatty foods, a spokesman said Bush was having egg salad on toast.
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Saturday, June 29, 2002
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Friday, June 28, 2002
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Australia
I'm about to take off for a couple of weeks in Australia lecturing, sightseeing (my first trip there) and International Sociology Association conference. I'll be offline until mid-July but hope that Richard Kahn can post some articles. For good news updates, you can go to buzzflash.com and bushwatch.com. cheers, dk
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Economic crisis?
Samuel Day Fassbinder said: A lot of this \"the stock market\'s down\" stuff reminds me of the economic discussion of Robert Brenner and Harry Shutt. Shutt\'s idea, at least, is that the present-day global economy is characterized by redundant capital, labor, and production, and that what keeps the whole thing afloat today is a US-led propaganda machine broadcasting the \"Washington line,\" a punitive global banking system that keeps nations chained to their IMF loan debts, a US economy kept fortified by protectionism, cheap consumer goods from abroad, corporate welfare to keep Wall Street afloat, and an ever-upward-spiraling national debt for which nobody has the ganas to demand repayment. Meanwhile the rest of the world languishes under IMF debt, stagnant economies, low wages. Eventually, predicts Shutt, the whole thing will collapse, and we can expect some version of post-capitalist social democracy, or dictatorship. Brenner is more cautious, makes no predictions. The question is, of course, when is it going to happen? The stock market decline has really been small potatoes so far.
DK responds: I posted a doom and gloom analysis a couple of days ago that forecasts stock market collapse but as Samuel says so far the decline is relatively benign given all the poor economic indicators, the scandals, the decline of foreign investor confidence, and so on. One wonders, however, how secure the market and global economy really is and one can imagine that if the big kaboom comes the bushies won't have a good response or a rational "plan." In early 1970s when there was a big economic downturn, Nixon adopted rather Keynesian policies to jumpstart the economy but its hard to see Bush doing this, so far his "economics" have been largely plots to rip off tax money for the rich and handouts to his major corporate contributers.
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The Consortium
Excellent article by investigative reporter Sam Parry that Bush DID try to save Enron...
The Consortium
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Thursday, June 27, 2002
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cyberwar
sassafrass said: Given that Wired has already mapped out The Great Cyberwar of 2002, why assume no hacker would ever investigate whether or not it could work?
DK responds: Thanks to sassafrass for posting Wired's extensive article on cyberwar; I posted a WP article below that indicates new fears of terrorist cyberwar; these fears have been around for some time and many are surprised that AQ hasn't been more aggressive in cyberspace all fears are there that they will be
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Wednesday, June 26, 2002
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iWon - News
Leahy argues Bush seeks department "below the law"
iWon - News
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US Bear Market Commentary
very frightening summaries of stock market crashes are circulating on the Net, I have no way of evaluating these reports, but its Heads Up and Watch Out time!
US Bear Market Commentary
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Tuesday, June 25, 2002
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"Embarrassment of Riches" by Bruce Reed A review of Kevin Phillips's Weath and Democracy
If Karl Marx had wanted to lay the groundwork for class uprising, he could hardly have done a better job than George W. Bush. First, take power in a disputed election, then move quickly to give the very rich a big tax cut. Raid the Social Security Trust Fund so multimillionaires can keep their trust funds. Look the other way while Enron executives make a bundle driving their company into the ground while swindling workers out of their jobs and pensioBut a funny thing happened on the way to the class war: The rich won, and the rest of the country hardly noticed. If the masses are about to storm the gates, they forgot to tell their representatives in Congress. This month, the Senate will decide whether to make permanent the repeal of the estate tax, and Republicans are just a few votes short. The man for our times is Gatsby, not Marx. In the words of that great compassionate conservative, the Duchess of Windsor, "You can never be too rich or too thin."ns.
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DYNASTIES! (1)
corruption of US democracy by Bush and other dynasties; an excellent political commentary by honorable (one of the few) republicans Kevin Phillips
DYNASTIES! (1)
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Monday, June 24, 2002
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Redflagsweekly.com
Barbara Hatch Rosenberg on what FBI knows about anthrax attacks Redflagsweekly.com
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more conspiracies and Bush administration accountability
Samuel Day Fassbinder said: Thanks for responding, Douglas. Just to pursue Michael Ruppert\'s line of reasoning some more -- there\'s a reasonable suspicion that the Bush Administration not only did nothing to stop the hijackers, but got in the way of those who _were_ trying to stop the hijackers, by (for instance) keeping the FBI from investigating the bin Laden family. What evidence do we have?
DK answers: go to my full analysis of 911 on my home page; here is an excerpt that responds to Samuel's question=
Not only did the Bush administration fail to act on warnings of imminent terrorist attacks and the need to provide systematic government responses to coordinate information and attempt to prevent and aggressively fight terrorism, but, shamefully, the Bush administration halted a series of attempts to fight the bin Laden network that had been undertaken by the Clinton administration. Just after the September 11 attacks, a wave of revelations came out, ignored completely in the U.S. media, concerning how high-ranking officials in the Bush administration had neglected threats of terrorist attacks by the bin Laden network and even curtailed efforts to shut-down the terrorist organization that had been initiated by the Clinton administration. An explosive book published in France in mid-November, Bin Laden, la verite interdite (2001), by Jean Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, claimed that under the influence of oil companies, the Bush administration initially blocked ongoing U.S. government investigations of terrorism, while it bargained with the Taliban over oil rights and pipeline deals and handing over bin Laden. This evidently led to the resignation of a FBI deputy director, John O’Neill, who was one of the sources of the story. Brisard and Guillaume contend that the Bush administration had been a major supporter of the Taliban until the September 11 events and had blocked investigations of the bin Laden terror network. Pursuing these leads, the British Independent reported on October 30: "Secret satellite phone calls between the State Department and Mullah Mohammed Omar and the presentation of an Afghan carpet to President George Bush were just part of the diplomatic contacts between Washington and the Taliban that continued until just days before the attacks of 11 September." Furthermore, Greg Palast had published a FBI memo that confirmed that the FBI was given orders to lay off the bin Laden family during the early months of George W. Bush’s rule.
The U.S. media completely ignored these and other reports concerning how the Bush administration had shut down or undermined operations against the bin Laden network initiated by the Clinton administration. An explosive article by Michael Hirsch and Michael Isikoff on “What Went Wrong” published in the May 28 Newsweek, however, contained a series of revelations of how the Bush administration had missed signals of an impending attack and systematically weakened U.S. defenses against terrorism and the bin Laden network. According to the Newsweek story, the Clinton administration national security advisor Sandy Berger had become “’totally preoccupied’ with fears of a domestic terror attack and tried to warn Bush’s new national security advisor Condoleezza Rice of the dangers of a bin Laden attack.” But while Rice ordered a security review “the effort was marginalized and scarcely mentioned in ensuing months as the administration committed itself to other priorities, like National Missile Defense (NMD [i.e. National Missile Defense]) and Iraq.”
Moreover, Newsweek reported that John Ashcroft, U.S. Attorney General, was eager to set a new rightwing law and order agenda and was not focused on the dangers of terrorism, while other Bush administration high officials also had their ideological agendas to pursue at the expense of protecting the country against terror attacks. Ashcroft reportedly shut down wiretaps of al Qaeda-related suspects connected to the 1998 bombing of African embassies and cut $58 million from a FBI request for an increase in its anti-terrorism budget (while at the same time switching from commercial to government jets for his own personal flight). On September 10, when Ashcroft sent a request for budget increases to the White House, it covered 68 programs, none of them related to counter-terrorism. Nor was counter-terrorism in a memorandum he sent to his heads of departments stating his seven priorities. According to Newsweek, in a meeting with FBI chief Louis Freeh, he rebuffed Freeh’s warnings to take terrorism serious and turned down a FBI request for hundreds more agents to be assigned to tracking terrorists. In the Newsweek summary:
It wasn’t that Ashcroft and others were unconcerned about these problems, or about terrorism. But the Bushies had an ideological agenda of their own. At the Treasury Department, Secretary Paul O’Neill’s team wanted to roll back almost all forms of government intervention, including laws against money laundering and tax havens of the kind used by terror groups. At the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld wanted to revamp the military and push his pet project, NMD. Rumsfeld vetoed a request to divert $800 million from missile defense into counterterrorism. The Pentagon chief also seemed uninterested in a tactic for observing bin Laden left over from the Clinton administration: the CIA’s Predator surveillance plane. Upon leaving office, the Clintonites left open the possibility of sending the Predator back up armed with Hellfire missiles, which were tested in February 2001. But through the spring and summer of 2001, when valuable intelligence could have been gathered, the Bush administration never launched even an unarmed Predator. Hill sources say DOD didn’t want the CIA treading on its turf.
As these revelations unfolded, Democrats and others called for blue-ribbon commissions to study intelligence and policy failures that made possible the September 11 terrorist attacks. Republicans, led by Vice-President Dick Cheney, predictably attacked the patriotism of anyone who ascribed blame to the U.S. government concerning the September 11 attacks. Moreover, according to Democratic Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle, Cheney had repeatedly urged him not to hold hearings on U.S. intelligence and policy failures that led to the September 11 attacks. Bush administration spokespeople attacked as well California Senator Dianne Feinstein who retorted in a memo:
I was deeply concerned as to whether our house was in order to prevent a terrorist attack. My work on the Intelligence Committee and as chair of the Technology and Terrorism Subcommittee had given me a sense of foreboding for some time. I had no specific data leading to a possible attack.
In fact, I was so concerned that I contacted Vice President Cheney's office that same month [i.e. July 2001] to urge that he restructure our counter-terrorism and homeland defense programs to ensure better accountability and prevent important intelligence information from slipping through the cracks.
Despite repeated efforts by myself and staff, the White House did not address my request. I followed this up last September 2001 before the attacks and was told by 'Scooter' Libby that it might be another six months before he would be able to review the material. I told him I did not believe we had six months to wait.
This is highly shocking and calls attention to the role of Vice President Dick Cheney in failing to produce an adequate response to the dangers of terrorism. A year previous, in May 2001, the Bush administration announced that “Vice-President Dick Cheney is point man for administration… on three major issues: energy, Global warming, and domestic terrorism.” On a May 19, 2002 Meet the Press, Cheney acknowledged that he had been appointed head of a Bush administration task force on terrorism before September 11, and claimed that he had some meetings on the topic. Yet Cheney and others in the Bush administration seemed to disregard several major reports that cited the dangers of terrorist attacks, including congressional reports by former Senators Gary Hart and Howard Rudman in early 2001 that had called for a centralization of information on terrorism, but it appeared that the Bush administration failed to act on these reports. Obviously, Cheney concentrated on energy issues, to the detriment of paying attention to terrorism and should thus be held in part responsible for Bush administration failure to deal with pre-September 11 terrorist threats.
Crucially, plans to use airplanes as vehicles of terrorist attack should have been familiar to the intelligence agencies and to Cheney and the Bush administration. Furthermore, there were many other reports circulating from foreign and domestic intelligence services that the U.S. had reason to fear terrorist attacks from the bin Laden network just previous to the September 11 terror attacks. Thus, there should have been attempts to coordinate intelligence, warnings to the airlines industry regarding potential hijacking, and security alerts to the public to be on the lookout for potential terrorist attacks.
Consequently, serious questions should be raised to the Bush administration, and to the head of their anti-terrorism Task Force Dick Cheney, concerning what they knew and did not know, and what they did and did not do in response to the reports from domestic and foreign intelligence concerning the likelihood of al Qaeda airplane hijackings and terrorist attacks on the U.S. As head of the Bush administration task force on terrorism, Dick Cheney should be held especially accountable, but so far the media and Democrats have not raised this issue and Cheney himself is aggressively attacking anyone who raises such issues as an unpatriotic enemy of state. Obviously, there was no apparent coordination of information in the Bush administration and if Cheney was head of the task force that was supposed to deal with terrorism, it is disgraceful that he did not establish a group to centralize information.
It therefore appears as I write in summer 2002 that top officials of the Bush administration did little or nothing to protect the U.S. against domestic terror attacks. When confronted with reports that Bush had been advised of impending terror attacks and had not acted on them, Bush was highly indignant, attacking those who criticized him for “second guessing” and engaging in partisan politics. He shrilly retorted that had he known exactly what was to happen, he would have prevented it. This was not, of course, the issue, but rather that of the failure of the Bush administration to take seriously the threats of terrorism and to develop an anti-terror policy. In fact, Bush was on an unprecedentedly long one-month summer vacation at his ranch in Crawford when he was briefed on the dangers of impending al Qaeda attacks, and no one could expect the highly unqualified president-select to “connect the dots” and see the need to organize the country against domestic terrorist attacks. But his administration as a whole is responsible for neglecting a wide series of warnings and engaged in a series of actions that made the attacks more likely, as I argue above.
Thus different pundits and critics blame different fractions of the U.S. government for failing to prevent the September 11 attack, with some going after the FBI, others the CIA, and others either the Clinton or Bush administration -– or a combination thereof. Republicans and rightwingers continue to blame the Clinton administration, while serious questions are now being raised concerning Bush administration policy failures that made possible the September 11 terror attacks. I would argue that the collective failure is that of both the Bush administration as a whole and the national security apparatus, in particular the FBI and CIA. The Bush administration is responsible for failing to organize an anti-terrorist task force to coordinate information and action, cutting back on efforts that the Clinton administration had made in this direction, and ignoring government reports that highlighted the need to organize the government to better deal with terrorism, while also failing to respond to a large number of specific warnings about impending al Qaeda attacks from a wealth of sources.
Of course, failures of specific intelligence agencies were also in question, as well as the issue of coordinating information between the CIA, FBI, and other agencies. Responding to what now appears as the greatest U.S. intelligence fiasco in history, Congress began hearings into FBI failures in May 2002 after revelations of the failure of the agency to respond to the Phoenix Arizona FBI memos concerning potential Osama bin Laden al Qaeda terrorists taking flight lessons and the arrest in Minnesota of a potential hijacker, Zacarias Moussaouri, who had alleged al Qaeda connections. The result of investigating these intelligence failures was shocking revelations of FBI bureaucratic inertia and failure to respond to local intelligence reports, to coordinate information with the CIA, and in general to provide adequate analysis and actions. Serious debates over the FBI, CIA, and other intelligence failures were being aired in the media and it appeared that the Bush administration was content to take the heat for the failures that had helped facilitate the September 11 terror attacks.
One shocking revelation disclosed that Coleen Rowley, a FBI operative in the Minnesota office, sent Congress a 13-page letter to the Congressional committee that is investigating the government’s lack of preparedness for the September 11 attacks. Rowley’s memo documented frustration with the FBI bureaucracy’s inability to respond to serious concerns about an imminent terrorist attack and to get the agency to investigate potential al Qaeda terrorists more seriously. Published in the May 21, 2002 issue of Time magazine, the memo provide a sharp critique of FBI bureaucratic inertia and incompetence.
Indeed, it is highly shocking to read media reports, or Congressional testimony, of FBI and CIA bureaucratic inability to properly interpret intelligence reports from the field concerning dangers of a pending al Qaeda terrorist attack, the lack of information sharing between the FBI, CIA, and other intelligence agencies, and the Bush administration disinterest in addressing these problems pre-September 11. It is clear that the FBI, CIA, and U.S. government is mired in bureaucracy and that the national security apparatus needs to be completely reorganized. Obviously, there should be blue-ribbon investigations of exactly what went wrong and why. But it is the responsibility of the sitting political administration to protect the country and in the case of September 11 the Bush administration failed in multiple ways.
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Sunday, June 23, 2002
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Saturday, June 22, 2002
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Independent News
US Cartoonists under pressure to conform to patriotic line
Independent News
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Cheney's Trifecta
In an article on corporate greed in the Bush era, NYT commentator Frank Rich notes how Dick Cheney seems to have his sticky fingers wherever the scams are most extreme and sleazy:
Sacrifice Is for Losers
And then there's Dick Cheney, who has achieved a trifecta through his official dealings with Enron, his stewardship of Halliburton during alleged accounting irregularities and his on-camera appearance in a 1997 Andersen promotional video touting the firm's "good advice." (It's too late to find a Rosemary Woods who might erase it.)
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Trifecta Lies
As deficits grew out of control with the spending needed to respond to the September 11 terror acts, the Bush administration continued to lie about budget figures, about how the Afghan Terror War and other programs would be paid for, the extent of the burgeoning deficit and the worsening economic situation. In one of the most disgusting comments of his presidency, Bush stated while campaigning for Elizabeth Dole: “You know, I was campaigning in Chicago and somebody asked me, is there ever any time where the budget might have to go into deficit? I said only if we were at war or had a national emergency or were in recession. (Laughter.) Little did I realize we'd get the trifecta. (Laughter.)” ([Emphasis added.] — White House press release dated February 27, 2002). Astonishing, Bush repeated this snide joke, delivered with his trade-mark smirk and snortish chuckle, more than fifteen times into June 2002, and critics noted that in fact Bush had never specified these three conditions as justifications for deficit-spending, and that therefore the whole nasty political ploy was simply a lie, providing another example of the intimate connection between Bushspeak and lying.
[See Brendan Nyhan, “Losing the ‘trifecta’,” Salon (June 18, 2002), who documents Bush’s use of the “trifecta” example in his recent speeches and claims the story “is blatantly false. No one has found any evidence that Bush made such a statement, and the White House has pointedly failed to provide any.]
The “trifecta” scandal puts on display the true Bush, arrogantly boasting of getting away with his manipulative economic program based on lies and fuzzy math (Krugman 2001), while making light of the September 11 tragedies that enabled him to justify deficit spending for his special interests.
Indeed, the Bushies continued to lie about many things and Bush’s press secretary Ari Fleischer became known as a highly skillful dissembler, with his begging questions from reporters, refusing to answer questions by cutting questioners off with dubious premises that invalidated the questions, and flat-out lies with which he manipulated the press. Bush’s communication specialist and key political advisor Karen Hughes was also infamous for prevarication. For years, Hughes had lied about Bush’s personal life, covering over his sins and helping him hide his many skeletons. As noted above, Hughes had not distinguished herself as a propagandist in the public opinion war. According to the Roll Call, Hughes told a closed-door meeting that “a divine plan” had enabled the Bush team to get through the September 11 catastrophe and was reportedly “shocked” to learn that the Taliban barred women from schools and outlawed movies, thus displaying total ignorance of Afghanistan. She raised eyebrows on the occasion of Bush’s “axis-of-evil” speech when she declared that 100,000 terrorists were trained as killers and were threatening the U.S.
Yet when Hughes announced that she was leaving Washington to return to Texas with her “home sick” family, she was celebrated as one of Bush’s most valued employees and herself spun her leaving as evidence of Bush administration concern for families. Cynics noted that Hughes had lied for Bush for years at relatively low pay and could make a bundle taking on corporate board positions, political consulting fees, and giving lectures. Yet insiders fretted that without the relatively pragmatic and down-to-earth Hughes rightwing hard-liners and Karl Rove would take over the White House, to Bush’s detriment.
Karl Rove got into Republican party politics in the 1970s by carrying out dirty tricks against political opponents as a leader of the Young Republicans. Working from the beginning with George W. Bush in his quest for the Texas Governorship, Rove was known in Texas as “Bush’s Brain” and was called by Bush “Turd Blossom.” Also influenced by Bush I political honcho Lee Atwater, Rove was a hardball political operative and rightwing ideologue who brought Nixonian tactics into the Bush administration. Deeply influenced by Nixon dirty tricksters Murray Chotiner, Rove also refined the technique of the Big Lie developed by Hitler and Goebbels against Bush’s Democratic opponents in Texas and later Washington. Rove got into trouble when Bush went to Washington and he consulted with firms like Enron, Intel, Dell, and other companies in which he held stock who had to do business in Washington (the sleazy Rove sold almost a million dollars worth of stock three weeks after Bush had announced his energy plan, getting his “bounce” before unloading. But Rove survived the scandals and helped push through Bush’s hardright agenda during the first months of his presidency (see Kellner 2001). In retrospect, Rove can be seen as Richard Nixon’s revenge, combining Nixon’s Machiavellianism with a complete disregard for truth and integrity, in pursuing a politics of spin, slime, and slander.
But the major liar in the Bush White House was George W. Bush himself. Bush had lied about his past for decades, a symptom that was embarassingly evident when he was confronted with his close Nconnections with Enron’s Ken Lay. As the Enron scandal was exploding, Bush claimed that Lay had not even supported him for governor and that he had only known Lay since the mid-1990s. In fact, Lay himself admitted that he strongly supported Bush against Ann Richards in 1994 in the race for Texas governor and had known George W. Bush personally since the mid-1980s. Although Bush claimed that he would bring a “new era of responsibility” to the presidency, Bush had never shown a strong streak in this area and throughout his presidency was refusing responsibility for anything that went wrong. As noted, when Bush was confronted with problems of the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, he would huff and puff and direct all questions to General Tommy Franks, refusing to take responsibility for setbacks or mishaps. When Enron erupted, he denied any personal responsibility or connection with the corporation that might have contributed to the scandal. When Israeli and Palestine hostilities intensified, Bush blamed Clinton for being too involved and refused to take any responsibility himself, sending CIA head George Tenet, Colin Powell, or others to mediate. When Bush was queried by the press anxious to see if he had a plan or would play a role in mediating the conflicts, Bush referred to the Saudi peace plan, or prior U.S. proposals.
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A Comment about conspiracies theories and a response
Samuel Day Fassbinder said: What\'s curious to me is that you have people such as Marty Jezer (http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0621-02.htm ) and David Corn of The Nation magazine (http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=66 ) who work hard to deride the \"conspiracy theory\" discussion incited by Michael Ruppert (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/ ), who argues a rather simple thing: the Bush Administration was _negligent_ in that it knew what was happening with al Qaeda and the hijackings, all along, and yet it let the events of September 11th happen so that the Bush Administration could have carte blanche to turn the White House into an autocracy. Which is what you\'re denouncing here. Frankly, my money\'s with Ruppert.
Only one thing disturbs me about all this: what sort of agenda drives these guys to bicker?
DK responds: Unfortunately, social and media critics tend often to bicker among themselves, focusing critical energies on each on rather than on targets like the Bush administration or US policy. This is also a danger I'm noting on BLogs where a lot of the energy is focused on what other Blog writers say, thus generating a lot of internal debate. This is sometimes very interesting but I want to focus this Blog on the Bush administration, Terror War, and its consequences. On the other hand, I agree with Sam that there is a tremendous amount of evidence that the Bush administration had numerous warnings that something like the terror attacks of September 11 coming down and did nothing and THEN jumped into the war mode to push through its rightwing and military agenda.I'll continue to post articles and make comments charting the vicissitudes of the Bush administration and have an entire e-book on the topic on my home page. Cheers, dk
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Friday, June 21, 2002
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Monkeyfist.com: The Law of Force
Critique of Bush first strike policy; see the film The Sum of All Fears for another critique of military madness
Monkeyfist.com: The Law of Force
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Thursday, June 20, 2002
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Wednesday, June 19, 2002
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Tuesday, June 18, 2002
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Times Online
Aussies claim US Afghanistan operation was botched
Times Online
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Monday, June 17, 2002
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Independent Argument
Wild West hitmen not going over well in the civilized world
Independent Argument
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Sunday, June 16, 2002
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Massacre in Mazar?
The posting just made "Were US Troops in Afghanistan complicit in a massacre" is very disturbing.
A story has surfaced that at the time of the prison uprising at Qala Jangi which produced the American Taliban, John Walter Lonhd, another prison massacre was happening in the region. According to Taliban leaders who surrendered the city of Kunduz about 8,000 Taliban and al Qaeda troops surrendered with 500 taken to Qala Jangi where the press focused attention on the prison revolt, while around 7,500 were processed through another fort Qalai-Zeini. Hundreds were allegedly transported to the Sherberghian prison in shipping containers and according to witnesses hundreds died of suffocation while Northern Alliance troops fired into the containers killing many more. Witnesses also saw American troops telling the Northern Alliance to get rid of the bodies and that the containers were taken into the desert and buried in a mass grave that could hold thousands of executed prisoners in the biggest massacre of the war.
Remains of the dead prisoners were found by the Physicians for Human Rights and reported on by some journalists and an Irish documentary filmmaker, Jamie Dorn, who has worked for the BBC compiled documentary footage of witnesses who attested to the massacre and other visual evidence that it had occurred. Dorn screened twenty minutes of the unfinished documentary “Massacre at Mazar” to the European and German Parliament in mid-June 2002 and participated in interviews where he claimed that he had on film witnesses who observed American soldiers torturing prisoners, working with the Northern Alliance to dispose of bodies, and being implicated in the massacre. It remains to be seen if there will be further inquiries into war crimes in Afghanistan or if the climate of general terror hysteria will preclude such inquiries.
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Saturday, June 15, 2002
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The US Government and the Anthrax Attacks
Yesterdatm I posted some very frightening stories that indicated that the Ames-anthrax strain used in the attacks on Washington liberal politicians and New York media had been in the hands of the CIA. Summarizing several news reports, Richard Ochs writes:
The CIA has cultures of the Ames strain.[46] The Agency has been conducting secret experiments with powdered germs since 1997 at Battelle Memorial Institute in Ohio.[47] Battelle received the Ames strain from Fort Detrick in May of 2001.[48] The CIA said it was trying to develop defenses against anthrax, but did not explain why it was doing what other defense labs were set up to do. As of December 16, 2001, one FBI investigator said that the CIA’s anthrax project was the “best lead they have at this point.”[49]
As noted above, the FBI admitted that they allowed the Iowa State lab to destroy the original batch of the Ames strain, making tracing the type of anthrax more difficult and giving rise to speculation that destroying the original strain was part of a cover-up to protect individuals inside the U.S. government who had access to the anthrax. In retrospect, it is also suspicious that the anthrax attacks happened at a time when Congress was discussing the USA Patriot Act and was sent to two Congressmen, Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, who had reservations about the legislation. Further, it was suspicious that a leading U.S. bioscientist who might have information concerning the anthrax attacks mysteriously died. In Och’s summary:
A leading anthrax expert, Dr. Don C. Wiley, who may have been in a position to know of such a cover-up, died under suspicious circumstances a month after the attacks began.[31] According to Memphis police officials, the bridge which Dr. Wiley fell off on November 15, 2001, had a railing “high enough that even the 6’3” Wiley could not have accidentally fallen over without assistance.” The local police suspicion of homicide was overruled by the FBI “and other U.S. agencies,” who insisted it was a suicide.[32]
Would an U.S. agency kill a non-cooperator? According to former South African National Intelligence Agency deputy director Michael Kennedy, when another top bioweapons expert Dr. Wouter Basson refused a job offer, the CIA allegedly threatened to kill him.[33]
For two summaries of the anthrax evidence, see the well-documented study by Richard Ochs, “Government by Anthrax,” at www.freefromterror.net/ and Wayne Madsen “Anthrax and the Agency – Thinking the Unthinkable,” April 8-9, 02, Pg.3
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Friday, June 14, 2002
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Book length Manuscript on September 11, Terror War, and the New Barbarism available free on-line
I've just finished a book-length Manuscript available from my home page on:
September 11, Terror War, and the New Barbarism
By Douglas Kellner
Table of Contents
Preface
1. Theorizing September 11
1.1. Social Theory, Falsification, and the Events of History
1.2 The Bush Administrations, the CIA, and Blowback
1.3 September 11 and Terror War: Has Everything Changed?
2. September 11, the Media and War Fever
2.1 The Terror Spectacle
2.2 Conceptualizing the Event: September 11 and Political Discourse
2.3 War-Mongering, Patriotism, and the Failure of the Media
3. Operation Enduring Freedom and the Proliferation of Terror War
3.1 Osama bin Laden’s Media War
3.2 Operation Infinite War
3.3 All Anthrax, All the Time
4. Month One: Special Operations, Bombing, and Propaganda War
4.1 Hearts and Minds
4.2 Back to Politics
5. Month Two: The Retreat of the Taliban and Afghan Chaos
5.1 The Fall of Mazir-I-Sharif and Kabul
5.2 Tragedy and Fear, Welcome to the Terror Age
5.3 Ironies of the Cold War and the Bush-Bin Laden Connections
6. Collapse of the Taliban
6.1 The Battle for Kunduz and Prison Uprising
6.2 The American Taliban
6.3 A Few Honorable People
6.4 The Fall of Kandahar
7. The Hunt for bin Laden
7.1 At Home with bin Laden
7.2 Omar Under the Gun, Afghans Bombed, and a New President
8. The New Barbarism: World in Turmoil
8.1 Regression, Reaction, and Barbarians Amok
8.2 Prisoners, New U.S. Military Bases, and Proxy War
9. The War at Home: Political Battles and the Enron Scandal
9.1 Family Friends: Bush Administrations and Enron
9.2 Enron, the S&L Scandal, and the Bush Family
9.3 Pretzels, the Enron Collapse, and Bush’s Insider Trading
9.4 Enron in the Public Eye
10. The Afghan Quagmire, the "Axis of Evil," and Dangers of Bush Administration Unilateralism
10.1 "Detainees," "Unlawful Combatants," and the Guantanamo Bay Fiasco
10.2 Afghan and Other Military Interventions
10.3 The "Axis of Evil," Unilateralism Amok, and Bush’s Cock-eyed Imperialism
11. The New Militarism, Lies and Propaganda, and more Afghan Adventures
11.1 The Rise (and Fall?) of the Pentagon Ministry of Truth and the Lies of Bushspeak
11.2 The Battle of Anaconda and Other Afghan Skirmishes
11.3 Waiting for the War on Iraq and Growing Criticism of Bush and Cheney
Conclusion, For Democracy and Against Terrorism and Militarism
References
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Bush Administration Lies and Propaganda in Terror War
11.1 The Rise (and Fall?) of the Pentagon Ministry of Truth and the Lies of Bushspeak
On the whole, the military and Bush administration did not fare well in the propaganda war. Early in the Afghan war, the Pentagon had hired the public relations firm Rendon Group to try to spin a more positive image with which to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. The Bush administration also hired advertising agency executive Charlotte Beers to serve as an Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy. A former CEO for both the Ogilvy & Mather and J. Walter Thompson advertising giants, Ms. Beers had specialized in fine-tuning brand names for big corporations and there was speculation concerning how the new U.S.A brand would be defined.
As noted earlier (see section 4.2), in the public relations war the Bush administration organized propagandists from Britain and the U.S. to form a PR offensive that would provide a 24/7 spin on the news in the Afghan war. Beers’ “public diplomacy” agency was also to provide segments with U.S. celebrities, giving rise to speculation that Michael Jordan might be called up to produce spots telling the world to “be like us.” Indeed, Ms. Beers gushed that it would be easy to sell the world attractive brands like George W. Bush and Colin Powell.
In testimony to Congress in October 2001 shortly after her confirmation, Beers explained that as Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, she would be “responsible for the overall planning and management” of the global propaganda war against terrorism. She explained all of the ways that her agency was working with world media, using U.S. embassies to circulate positive information, increasing radio services to 53 languages, and organizing series of speakers to promote pro-U.S. positions all over the world. Beers noted that she had met with the Ad Council the previous week “to discuss a series of public service announcements, here and overseas, that distill the values and virtues of American democracy and the many good things we have achieved on the international front.” American advertising had gone to war.
Yet there was no measurable success in the propaganda war and whatever information and hype the U.S. circulated was countered by images of dead or injured Muslims, victims of U.S. bombing. Nor did the images of Afghan refugees and those displaced by war win hearts and minds for the U.S.. Accordingly, after the Afghanistan War wound down, in late April 2002, propaganda chief Charlotte Beers asked a House subcommittee for a five percent hike in the public diplomacy budget to $595 million. The former advertising CEO said the U.S. has to "improve and magnify the ways in which we are addressing people of the world -- not necessarily other world governments -- but people." The propaganda outreach would be especially targeted at "disaffected populations" in the Middle East and South Asia, where a poor perception of the U.S. "leads to unrest, an unrest that has proven to be a threat to our national and international security," Beers stated during her April 24 testimony.
Citing a common fixture of political and advertising campaigns, Beers insisted that increased polls would be a necessary component of measuring Arab public opinion and then discerning a strategy to improve communication. Accordingly, Beers told the House panel she wanted to increase polling by the Bureau of Intelligence and Research in "Muslim countries and communities to provide policymakers with information on foreign publics' attitudes, perceptions and opinions so public diplomacy messages can be more effectively targeted." Further, she cited a need to track opinion over time in Afghanistan and in Muslim communities. Polling and focus-groups could also be used all over the world to gain information about foreign publics and their attitudes toward the U.S., with studies in Europe to gauge the level of anti-American sentiment and views of missile defense, and targeted polling in the Middle East on a variety of issues.
In addition, Beers said that the State Department is committed to working with foreign broadcasters to produce documentaries which highlight positive aspects of American life, culture or community. She noted that the State Department was using $15 million from the Emergency Response Fund to purchase “an aggressive campaign of message placement” and was planning to install “American Corners” in Muslim universities. There was much criticism of Beers’ PR approach to public diplomacy and many doubted whether U.S. advertising techniques were the best ways to create more productive relations with the Arab and Muslim worlds.
While the debate over public diplomacy simmered, a stunning leak in the New York Times on February 19 revealed that the Pentagon was planning a totally Orwellian Office of Strategic Influence to systematically convey Pentagon propaganda on a variety of issues. The new office was reportedly circulating classified proposals for aggressive campaigns that plant stories in foreign media and use the Internet and e-mail to circulate information and disinformation from fake addresses not traceable to the Pentagon. Some in the agency were bothered by discussions that the Office would systematically lie to foreign countries, as if it were uncouth for the U.S. to have a Ministry of Lies. Journalists were up in arms worrying that the Pentagon would systematically deceive them, as if it were not already a cauldron of lies, dis- and misinformation. On February 26, Rumsfeld announced that the Bush was officially shut down. When Rumsfeld and Bush were publicly pressed, they were forced to declare that they did not officially endorse lying and George W. Bush ended the controversy with the promise “we'll tell the American people the truth.”
This is perhaps the most hypocritical statement imaginable since Bush administration and Pentagon policies had systematically practiced the arts of deception and lying. In my book Grand Theft 2000 (Kellner 2001), I argued that Bushspeak constituted a systematic distortion of language and collapse of the distinction between truth and falsity. Like Orwell’s Newspeak, Bushspeak systematically inverts the meaning of language (i.e. “War is Peace,” “Slavery is Freedom”) and copiously uses the Big Lie as an instrument of public policy. Bush campaigned in Election 2000, for instance, on a platform that he was a “compassionate conservative,” whereas in fact, as his record as Texas governor made clear, and now his record as U.S. President shows, Bush is a hardright conservative who carries out the agendas of corporations that grease his palms. Bush lied regularly during the campaign, claiming that he was for a patients’ bill of rights whereas he opposed meaningful legislation in that direction, or that his tax cut would benefit everyone, whereas the Democrats’ tax reforms would only benefit “special interests, while in fact the Bush tax cut benefited largely the top 1% while sending the budget into deficit.
During the Battle for the White House in the Florida Recount wars after the deadlocked election, Bushspeak lied daily, claiming that all votes were counted, many times over, that machines were more reliable than people, that Bush had won fair and square, and that Gore was a sore loser. Built on a foundation of lies and intrigue, the new Bush administration started out with a Big Lie, claiming that in vacating the White House in January for the new administration, the Clinton staff had trashed the building. Moreover, the new Bush administration leaked stories that the Clintons had stolen gifts from the White House for their personal use, and that Clinton’s people had also stolen items from Air Force One on the trip to New York, which appeared for sale on the Internet shortly thereafter. These stories were headlined in the press and endlessly dissected on talk radio, television, and the Internet, overshadowing Bush’s early days in the White House.
Bush’s disinformation specialist Karl Rove was well-known in Texas politics for his whispering campaigns to smear opponents, and it was clear that the Bush PR strategy was to tar Clinton and his administration to the maximum so that the Bush crew would look good by comparison. Rove’s strategy was to open the Bush presidency by presenting a Good vs. Evil image, as if the bad Clintonites were vulger and disrespectful and the new Bush administration were honest and well-behaved. There were investigations by press and government of the allegations, and it turned out that Rove and company’s stories of White House vandalism were greatly exaggerated, the claim of theft on Air Force One was pure disinformation, and Clinton’s gifts were not significantly larger than those of Reagan and Bush senior. It was clear that the whole affair had been orchestrated simply to embarrass Clinton as he left office and to elevate Bush to an image of squeaky clean respectability.
Bush’s White House would regularly leak rumors to friendly journalists, or those managing rightwing websites such as the Drudge Report, and the stories would quickly circulate and be taken up by the mainstream media; there would then be days of impassioned discussion, and eventually reputable newspapers like the New York Times would publish stories deflating claims, as previously noted, that the departing Clintonites trashed the White House or took mementos from Air Force One. In addition to leaks and rumor-mongering, the Bushites also regularly practiced the Big Lie. During the 2000 election and its first months in office, the Bush administration systematically lied concerning its tax cut program. If the public knew that the Bush tax-cut “plan” would only benefit the top 1% of tax-payers, it would be hard to sell to the public so the Bushies lied saying that everyone would benefit.
Although Bush claimed to be a “compassionate conservative” and for education, cheaper prescription medicines for elders, and improved social security, in fact his most deeply felt commitment was to cut taxes, and in a moment of exuberance he even increased his proposed cut from $1.3 trillion to $1.6 trillion. While economic czar Alan Greenspan, the Ayn Rand enthusiast who many believe runs the U.S. economy, was at first reluctant to support big tax cuts and stressed the importance of continuing to pay off the deficit, he eventually endorsed the tax cut. As the hogs gathered to feed in the federal trough, the main conflict was over how much taxes would be cut and who would receive the benefits of tax reductions.
The process recalled the first big Reagan tax cut when budget Director David Stockman began devising across-the-board tax cuts for individuals, ending with a corporate greedfest that sent the national debt and interest rates soaring. Later, Stockman recalled: “The hogs were really feeding. The greed level, the level of opportunism just got out of control.” Indeed, in pondering Bush’s brazen tax give-away-to-the-rich program, one might recall the effects of the Reagan tax cut, which helped raise unemployment and interest rates, while the stock market declined and the federal deficit soared.
As deficits grew out of control with the spending needed to respond to the September 11 terror acts, the Bush administration continued to lie about budget figures, about how the Afghan Terror War and other programs would be paid for, the extent of the burgeoning deficit and the worsening economic situation. In one of the most disgusting comments of his presidency, Bush stated while campaigning for Elizabeth Dole: “You know, I was campaigning in Chicago and somebody asked me, is there ever any time where the budget might have to go into deficit? I said only if we were at war or had a national emergency or were in recession. (Laughter.) Little did I realize we'd get the trifecta. (Laughter.)” ([Emphasis added.] — White House press release dated February 27, 2002). This puts on display the true Bush, arrogantly boasting of getting away with his manipulative economic program, while making light of the September 11 tragedies that enabled him to justify deficit spending for his special interests.
Indeed, the Bushies continued to lie about many things and Bush’s press secretary Ari Fleischer became known as a highly skillful dissembler, with his begging questions from reporters, refusing to answer questions by cutting questioners off with dubious premises that invalidated the questions, and flat-out lies with which he manipulated the press. Bush’s communication specialist and key political advisor Karen Hughes was also infamous for prevarication. For years, Hughes had lied about Bush’s personal life, covering over his sins and helping him hide his many skeletons. As noted above, Hughes had not distinguished herself as a propagandist in the public opinion war. According to the Roll Call, Hughes told a closed-door meeting that “a divine plan” had enabled the Bush team to get through the September 11 catastrophe and was reportedly “shocked” to learn that the Taliban barred women from schools and outlawed movies, thus displaying total ignorance of Afghanistan. She raised eyebrows on the occasion of Bush’s “axis-of-evil” speech when she declared that 100,000 terrorists were trained as killers and were threatening the U.S.
Yet when Hughes announced that she was leaving Washington to return to Texas with her “home sick” family, she was celebrated as one of Bush’s most valued employees and herself spun her leaving as evidence of Bush administration concern for families. Cynics noted that Hughes had lied for Bush for years at relatively low pay and could make a bundle taking on corporate board positions, political consulting fees, and giving lectures. Yet insiders fretted that without the relatively pragmatic and down-to-earth Hughes rightwing hard-liners and Karl Rove would take over the White House, to Bush’s detriment.
Karl Rove got into Republican party politics in the 1970s by carrying out dirty tricks against political opponents as a leader of the Young Republicans. Deeply influenced by Nixon dirty tricksters Murray Chotiner, Rove also refined the technique of the Big Lie developed by Hitler and Goebbels. Later influenced by Bush I political honcho Lee Atwater, Rove was a hardball political operative who brought Nixonian tactics into the Bush administration and can be seen as Richard Nixon’s revenge, combining Nixon’s Machiavellianism with a complete disregard for truth and integrity, in pursuing a politics of spin, slime, and slander.
But the major liar in the Bush White House was George W. Bush himself. Bush had lied about his past for decades, a symptom that was embarassingly evident when he was confronted with his close connections with Enron’s Ken Lay. As the Enron scandal was exploding, Bush claimed that Lay had not even supported him for governor and that he had only known Lay since the mid-1990s. In fact, Lay himself admitted that he strongly supported Bush against Ann Richards in 1994 in the race for Texas governor and had known George W. Bush personally since the mid-1980s. Although Bush claimed that he would bring a “new era of responsibility” to the presidency, Bush had never shown a strong streak in this area and throughout his presidency was refusing responsibility for anything that went wrong. As noted, when Bush was confronted with problems of the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, he would huff and puff and direct all questions to General Tommy Franks, refusing to take responsibility for setbacks or mishaps. When Enron erupted, he denied any personal responsibility or connection with the corporation that might have contributed to the scandal. When Israeli and Palestine hostilities intensified, Bush blamed Clinton for being too involved and refused to take any responsibility himself, sending CIA head George Tenet, Colin Powell, or others to mediate. When Bush was queried by the press anxious to see if he had a plan or would play a role in mediating the conflicts, Bush referred to the Saudi peace plan, or prior U.S. proposals.
Moreover, as we shall see in section 11.3, when confronted with the responsibility of his administration in allowing the September 11 terror attacks to occur, Bush heatedly disavowed any responsibility, attacked critics, and eventually blamed the failures on the FBI and CIA, refusing to acknowledge any responsibility for failings of his administration, or his own lack of involvement in the issue. Likewise, he had never acknowledged any problems with the U.S. Afghanistan intervention, always celebrated it as a triumph of his administration, and refused to consider the need for developing more constructive engagement with the problems of Afghanistan, as opposed to primarily military intervention.
11.2 The Battle of Anaconda and Other Afghan Skirmishes
Meanwhile, during the spring and summer of 2002, the Terror War in Afghanistan appeared to be winding down, punctuated with U.S. military search and destroy missions against remnants of al Qaeda and Taliban troops. As noted in the past several chapters, since the collapse of the Taliban in November, U.S. operations seemed to be killing more anti-Taliban civilians than AQT (i.e. al Qaeda and Taliban forces) and the U.S. was rapidly losing support for their military interventions in Afghanistan. The U.S. had repeatedly refused to support global humanitarian efforts to police and reconstruct Afghanistan, claiming that such efforts would hamper their military activity. The U.S. did allow, however, some Canadian, Australian, and British forces to join in their search and destroy missions, with mixed results.
On March 2, U.S. military commanders launched what they named Operation Anaconda against AQT forces, beginning a major search and destroy operation in the Shahikot valley, a desolate area of Eastern Afghanistan south of Gardez. Code-named for a Union Army plan to encircle and strangle the Confederacy as a South American snake crushes its prey, the operation involved more than 1,500 U.S. soldiers, 100 Australians, 100 other allied soldiers and 450 Afghan fighters. The plan involved efforts to search and engage large numbers of AQT troops with the U.S.-led forces supported by U.S. airpower and divisions of troops that would seal off the the escape routes, preventing the sort of escape of al Qaeda forces in the Tora Bora region.
Yet the Operation Anaconda metaphor was not really accurate as the valley, traditionally the domain of Afghan resistance fighters, opened to a series of mountain ranges that tower to 10,000 feet and that unfolded all the way to Pakistan. The region also traditionally had well-fortified guerilla positions and a network of caves, that could hide weapons and fighters. In earlier eras, many British and Russian troops had lost their lives to Afghan guerillas in this area, a stronghold and sanctuary whose name signifies “place of the King.”
The plan involved using friendly local Afghan troops in a three-week-long U.S.-led sweep intended to clear the region of AQT forces. The mission would be supported by seven groups of U.S. Special Forces and elite fighting teams who would be brought into specific areas by helicopter, with U.S. troops set to seal off the southern end of the valley, while Afghan fighters would seal off the north. On the morning of March 2, the 7 U.S. teams took off for their destination but the Afghan troops advance was stalled, when they encountered heavy resistance from AQT fighters in the region. A U.S. Special Forces Warrant Officer, Stanley Harriman, was killed, along with Afghan fighters, as the Afghan unit tried to fight its way out of what appeared to be an ambush.
The U.S. Special Forces teams were also subject to enemy fire, but six of the seven groups managed to land and position their forces for reconnaissance and fighting AQT in the area. The seventh team, however, involving Navy SEALS in a Chinook helicopter, was heavily assaulted from AQT fighters in the mountains. After repeating bombing the area, the U.S. had sent up the SEALS to the ridgetop of the mountain, believed to be uninhabited, to have an observation post overlooking the valley.
As the SEALS began to descend the chopper, they were hit by machine-gun fire from several directions, obviously caught in an ambush. The chopper took off, but a crewmember fell off and the badly damaged helicopter barely managed to take off. The Chinook chopper managed to land a few miles north, its controls freezing and its radio out. In a tense rescue mission, another chopper crew rescued the downed SEAL team, took them back to Gardez and then set off to the mountain ridge to retrieve the soldier who had fallen off. A Predator drone showed the downed SEAL engaging what appeared to be al Qaeda troops, then captured and apparently shot.
More Chinooks with U.S. troops were sent to the mountain site code-named “Ginger” to retrieve the downed SEAL and insert Special Forces to engage the AQT. Two copters in the Ginger area unloaded their teams who encountered heavy fire, with one chopper pulling away while the other was disabled. The Special Forces teams on the mountain scrambled to set up defensive positions, but were fiercely attacked and six more Americans were killed, apparently in the opening moments of the fight.
For twelve hours, the surviving U.S. troops fought on in a mountain-version of the Black Hawk Down scenario in Somalia. U.S. jet fighters, AC-130 gunships, and attack helicopters flew in non-stop combat bombarding the AQT troops in the mountain ridges. In early evening, 18 hours after the mission had begun, the surviving U.S. troops were evacuated by helicopter in what was one of the fiercest battles since Vietnam and Somalia, and it was also the most costly of the war in terms of U.S. casualties.
The U.S. continued saturation bombing of the area for the next few days and on March 18 U.S. General Tommy Franks called Operation Anaconda “an unqualified and absolute success.” Critics, however, said that both the Afghan and U.S. forces had been critically ambushed in the operation, that it was poorly planned and executed, that communications failed in the heat of battle, that most of the AQT forces escaped, and that it was in many ways a disaster.
There was also no consensus on how many enemy casualties were inflicted and whether substantial numbers of AQT fighters in the area did or did not manage to escape. As Operation Anaconda entered its second week, one U.S. commander claimed that over 800 AQT had been killed and when pressed Donald Rumsfeld testily replied that while he didn’t want to get into the “numbers game,” “certainly hundreds” of AQT forces had been killed. A chilling report from an U.S. soldier who had participated in the operation indicated that there were potential scenes of carnage: “We were told that there were no friendly forces… If there was anybody there, they were the enemy. We were told specifically that if there were women and children to kill them.” This could have been mere bragging, however, and after the operation, as Afghans and reporters entered the scene, the death toll fluctuated from 800, to 500, to 300, 200, and 100, with only 20 confirmed dead and widespread suspicions that many AQT had managed to escape.
The bombing of the Shahikot valley region in Operation Anaconda was fierce, including thermobaric bombs that spread an explosive cloud through caves, caves, igniting deep regions of the caverns that had previously been inaccessible to traditional bombs. In the weeks following Operation Anaconda there were a series of earthquakes in late March, including one that killed over 1000 Afghans. It is true that in the Hindu-Kush region surrounding the battles that comprised Operation Anaconda earthquakes are not uncommon events. But this region has also been targeted recently as one of the most environmentally sensitive mountain ranges in the world by the United Nations University in Japan, and the years of warfare and related environmental destruction were noted as chief reasons as to why these mountains are now prime candidates for natural disasters. The war-damaged and scarred earth had suffered years of drought and when it finally rained this spring there were damaging floods, followed by a plague of locusts.
Therefore, and this went completely unreported by the media, Operation Anaconda did not simply occur on a "mountainslope," but rather the U.S. military chose to stage a "thermobaric" intervention into a drought-ridden, ecologically-threatened, geologic region primed for catastrophe. Thus, while the resulting large quakes that followed could not be directly linked to U.S. military actions, it cannot be denied that these bombing campaigns contributed to the further ecological instability of the area. This above and beyond the typical environmental disaster wrought by previous U.S. wars like Vietnam, the Gulf War, and N.A.T.O.'s intervention into Kosovo
The same day that Tommy Franks proclaimed Operation Anaconda an “unqualified success,” there were reports that 1700 British marines were flying to east Afghanistan to relieve U.S. forces and to chase down remaining AQT fighters in the area. British papers noted that U.S. troops were not used to fighting in such high altitudes and were not experienced in mountain guerilla fighting. Over the next several months, British troops launched three highly touted operations that they described as “clean and sweep” and not the Vietnam-era “search and destroy” to get AQT. But the British forces had no major encounters and the AQT seemed to have disappeared from the area. In a useful summary British Guardian reporters Kim Sengupta and Colin Brown (May 19, 2002) provided an overview of British operations and attitude:
The development [of 36 British servicemen becoming ill with a virus] follows a week of increasing controversy over the British mission, with accusations that the Government was using overwhelming spin to camouflage the fact that three separate operations had achieved little tangible success.
The mission has become mired in recriminations, accusations and confusion. The mood in the heat and dust of Bagram airbase, its headquarters, is fractious. The frustration of the marines at the lack of contact with the enemy was said to have been increased by unrealistic demands from politicians in London and a stormy relationship with the media.
So has the mission been an overwhelming success, as Mr Hoon and the MoD claim, or a failure which should be wound up? This is how the mission unfolded.
Ptarmigan
The first mission in Afghanistan, which began in the middle of April. Around 400 marines from 45 Commando were deployed in southeast Afghanistan accompanied by acres of coverage in the media. In reality it was an acclimatization exercise and found little apart from some corpses left over from Anaconda. There was a flurry of excitement when journalists taken up to the hills were told that some sudden explosions were incoming mortar rounds. They turned out to be sheep getting blown to bits after stepping on mines.
Snipe
This one was meant to be for real. In a late-night briefing in a tent, Brigadier Roger Lane, the British commander told a group of us journalists that he was sending 1,000 men into the mountains. The Marines were told to expect up to 1,000 enemy fighters in the targeted area.
By the end of the 13-day mission the enemy had been neither been seen nor engaged. Nine caves full of arms and ammunition were, however, found in the Drangkhel Ghar range in Paktika. This was described as an al-Qa'ida arsenal and blown up. A local (allied) warlord claimed the arms were his. The military continued insisting that they were al-Qa'ida's.
Afterwards Brigadier Lane pronounced that the success of the operation should not be counted in the number of "body bags" but the fact that the enemy could no longer use a key base and supply route.
Condor
The Australian SAS became involved in a firefight, killed several gunmen, and requested assistance from Bagram headquarters. At the same time US warplanes bombed "enemy positions", killing 10.
Normally the response to the Australian request for help would have been by the US Army's 101st Airborne, who acts as the Quick Reaction Force. But, according to American sources, the Marines, stung by criticism over lack of contact, demanded that they get the mission. Brigadier Lane announced the mission in an unexpected appearance at the 9am briefing at Bagram.
"It is clear that it is a substantial enemy force," said the Brigadier.
But Afghan officials claimed that the Australians had not, in fact, engaged al-Qa'ida but stumbled into a skirmish for land between two clans. Tribal elders insisted that the American warplanes had bombed a wedding party, which had been firing celebrations shots into the air.
The U.S. also invited Canadian forces to help them search for AQT fighters and in one highly embarrassing episode on April 18 U.S. planes bombed Canadian troops engaged in training exercizes, killing four from “friendly fire.” The U.S. press hardly mentioned the episode and while President Bush made several public appearances the day after the “friendly fire” bombings, he made no statement of apology or regret concerning the incident, fiercely angering the Canadians. The next day a contrite Bush made a public apology, but soon thereafter the Canadians announced that they were withdrawing their troops in the summer and the British too were debating whether or not to remain in Afghanistan.
By May, it appeared that the Afghan Terror War had entered a guerilla war phase where AQT forces had blended into the country, or gone to Pakistan for sanctuary. Senior leaders of both al Qaeda and the Taliban remained at large and the U.S. and its allies had encountered or apprehended few AQT fighters since Operation Anaconda. The U.S. forces continued to search the countryside for AQT forces and in late May, an U.S. airborne assault on a village Bandi Temur, on the edge of the desert 60 miles from Kandahar, killed the respected 100-year old village elder and others. A graphic story in the British Guardian by Carlotta Gall, “A Raid Enrages Afghan Villagers” (May 27, 2002), presents graphic description of the carnage wrote by the U.S. forces and notes:
The raid has caused Afghans here to compare the tactics of the American-led coalition to brutal raids by the Soviet Army in the 1980's.
"They are thinking of when the Russians came and killed a lot of people, and they are thinking that the Americans and British will also repeat that," said General Akram, the regional police chief in Kandahar.
Military officials said the raid on Friday was based on intelligence that the village was a sanctuary for senior Taliban and Al Qaeda figures.
Obviously, if the U.S. continued to make mistakes and attack innocent civilians, guerilla resistance would increase and Afghanistan would indeed become another Vietnam. Some commentators who had supported U.S. military action in Afghanistan were beginning to see that Bush’s military intervention had been ill conceived, beset with blunders, and had failed in significant ways, as I have been arguing from the beginning of this narrative. David Talbot, for instance, noted that while he initially found Bush’s straight-forward rhetoric bracing, he came “to think of Bush’s rhetoric as part of the problem instead of the solution,” and found the “axis of evil” speech to be “a flight of idiocy.” Likewise, while he supported Bush’s military attack on al Qaeda and the Taliban, he worried about future military interventions and argued that the times called for “less swagger and more diplomacy.”
There were also reports of mistreatment of AQT prisoners in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay Cuba. The Pentagon had admitted in March that among the 194 prisoners held in Cuba and the hundreds still held in Afghanistan, they had failed to find a single person who they could prosecute as being involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks. Yet at the end of March, Donald Rumsfeld stated that the Pentagon planned to keep prisoners from the Afghan war in captivity in Cuba indefinitely, even if they are acquitted in military tribunals. The British, by contrast, stated that they would treat AQT fighters captured in Afghanistan as prisoners of war and a group of experienced civil rights lawyers planned to take the U.S. to court for a breach of Camp X-Ray detainees’ rights.
Meanwhile into the summer, Afghanistan officials continued to plead for a beefed up international security force to help maintain order in the country. But the U.S. refused to add its own peacekeepers, stating instead that their plan was to help build and train an Afghanistan army -– a task that would surely take years. Critics noted that the Pentagon was basically running U.S. Afghan policy, that other agencies of the U.S. government should work with aid groups and other interested parties to help advance reconstructing the country, that the U.S. was largely aiding warlords in the country and contributing to its militarization and long-term instability, and that basically the U.S. lacked completely any political or economic strategy for Afghanistan.
11.3 Waiting for the War on Iraq and Growing Criticism of Bush and Cheney
In early February, reports circulated that U.S. attacks on Iraq were inevitable. Richard Perle, a senior adviser to United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, indicated that war with Iraq was likely even if Baghdad backed down and allowed inspectors back in to hunt for weapons of mass destruction, according to an interview on Monday.
"I don't think there's anything (Iraqi leader) Saddam Hussein could do that would convince us there's no longer any danger coming from Iraq," said Richard Perle, head of the Defense Policy Board of the US Department of Defense... Perle, quoted in an interview with the German edition of the Financial Times at the Munich Security Conference, said the only thing that would convince the US regarding Iraq would be a change of regime. US President George W. Bush was now on "a very clear path" heading toward war with Iraq, said Perle...
In March, Vice President Dick Cheney visited 11 countries in the Middle East to garner support for the U.S. war against Iraq, and every country he visited publicly told him that they were against such aggression and chided the U.S. for not doing more to help with the volatile Israel-Palestine situation. Cheney was publicly lectured and rebuked in every Arab country he visited that insisted the U.S. should not attack Iraq and should put more pressure on Israel. The Crown Prince of Bahrain, for instance, told Cheney, “The people who are dying today on the streets are not a result of any Iraqi action… The people are dying as a result of an Israeli action. And likewise the people in Israel are dying as a result of actions taken in response.” The conservative Weekly Standard concluded that: "Not since Secretary of State Warren Christopher returned from Europe with egg on his face in May 1993 has a high-ranking American official had such a bad week abroad as Vice President Dick Cheney just spent in the Middle East.”
Still, the Bush administration seemed to go ahead with plans for war against Iraq. The British Guardian reported that the U.S. had begun preparations to move its Gulf headquarters from Saudi Arabia to Qatar to by-pass Saudi objections to launching a military attack against Iraq from Saudi soil.
The independent Saudi Information Agency, based in Washington, reported that US military trucks had been seen leaving the base at al Kharj, 50 miles south of Riyadh, and arriving at the border with Qatar in the second week of March. The vast al-Udeid air base in Qatar has become increasingly important to the US air force since the Saudi government refused to allow air raids on Afghanistan to be launched from its soil. The movement of trucks to Qatar may represent a temporary redistribution of resources to pursue the Afghan war, but the request for bids to move sophisticated equipment suggests a more permanent relocation, analysts said.
The move to Qatar, which has been the subject of speculation in Washington for the past few weeks, would allow the US to conduct an air campaign against Iraq in the face of Saudi refusal to collaborate, overcoming a serious obstacle to the second phase of the US "war on terror". There have also been unconfirmed reports, in the US press and from Iraqi opposition groups, of a quiet US military build up in Kuwait to between 25,000 and 35,000 troops.
By late April, there were reports that the Pentagon was putting final touches on a plan to invade Iraq, perhaps as early as the summer of 2002. But U.S. plans may have been dashed when a high ranked U.S. military leaked that “the uniformed leaders of the U.S. military believe they have persuaded the Pentagon’s civilian leadership to put off an invasion of Iraq until next year at the earliest and perhaps not to do it at all, according to senior Pentagon officials.” The May 24 Washington Post story indicated that the Joint Chiefs of Staff waged a determined “behind-the-scenes campaign to persuade the Bush administration to reconsider an aggressive posture toward Iraq in which war was regarded as all but inevitable,” as the Pentagon did not have the troops or material to fight a sustained war against terror and Iraq at the same time. In addition, U.S. allies strongly opposed an U.S. intervention in Iraq due to fears that a military conflict would destabilize the regime and because of concerns over the uncertainties of a post-Saddam Hussein regime.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration had to deal with another contentious issue. As noted in the Preface to this study, on May 15 CBS News played a memo that indicated that the CIA had briefed President George W. Bush some weeks before the September 11 terror attacks indicating the possibility of al Qaeda assaults on the U.S. and the President evidently did nothing, remaining on vacation in his ranch for the longest presidential vacation in recent memory. For the first time since September 11 there was serious discussion concerning Bush administration responsibility for the terrorist bombings and in the days following there were daily exposes of warnings that had been given to the FBI, the CIA, and various sectors of the Bush administration concerning the dangers of impending al Qaeda attacks. Newsweek (May 20, 2002) published a cover story concerning how Bush administration had downplayed efforts to stop al Qaeda and fight terrorism by the Clinton administration, including Bush Justice Department cutting of budgets to fight terrorism, the lack of concern by Bush’s national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, Bush administration Treasury Department loosening of controls over money and finance that helped terrorists move money, and how Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, had shut down a program that attempted to keep a Predator missile aimed at bin Laden for possible retaliation.
To deflect attention from growing criticism, Vice president Dick Cheney appeared on television saying in effect that it was unpatriotic and abetting the enemy to criticize the president during a time of war. Cheney himself had repeatedly warned Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle against holding hearings concerning how U.S. intelligence and political failures had led to the September 11 attacks. Indeed, Cheney would have good reason to fear such investigation since he had been put in charge of a Bush administration task force to address issues of terrorism and energy policy in May 2001 and had obviously devoted his energies to gaining energy policy favorable to his friends and Bush administration supporters in the oil and energy industries. Cheney had been asleep at the wheel and his failure should have evoked fierce criticism although as of summer 2002 he has eluded scrutiny.
Bush himself, as usual, refused to face the press concerning what he did or did not know about impending terrorist attacks before September 11. In addition to Cheney’s statement, Bush’s national security advisor Condoleezza Rice appeared at a press conference on May 16 and insisted that the Bush administration was not more concerned about the August 6 CIA memo because it only had warned about “traditional hijacking” plots, as if this was not sufficiently important to warn airlines and the public. Rice continued her extremely inept explanation, stating: "I don't think anybody could have predicted these people would...use an airplane as a missile."
In fact, there were a flurry of reports that since the mid-1990s terrorist groups had contemplated using planes as missiles, a danger warned against in the summer 2001 G-8 conference in Genoa that Bush and Rice had attended. For the first time since September 11 notions like "serious credibility gap” were being leveled at the Bush administration and CBS's Dan Rather, who had reveled in an orgy of patriotism post-September 11 told the BBC in an interview: "Patriotism became so strong in the United States after 11 September that it prevented US journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions about the war against terrorism," adding, "I do not except myself from this criticism." Rather went on to note: “It’s an obscene comparison… but you know there was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around peoples’ necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck.”
Yet finally criticism of Bush administration failures regarding terrorism in their pre-September 11 neglect of the issue was accelerating, and to damper this discourse, the Bush administration put out a flurry of warnings concerning dangers of imminent terror attacks. Cheney said that new assaults were inevitable and likely to come soon, and Condoleezza Rice was all over television talking about an increase in “chatter” from intelligence sources and dangers of more terror attacks, perhaps over the Memorial Day holiday weekend. There were specific warnings that apartment buildings could be rented and used to blow up buildings, and another flurry of warnings concerned dangers that New York sites like bridges or the Statue of Liberty could be hit. FBI Director Robert Mueller warned of the dangers of suicide bombers of the sort that had plagued Israel for years. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned again of the danger of terrorists using weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear ones. Other reports mentioned more airline hijacking, attacks on malls or sports events, and even dangers from terrorist scuba divers!
Some of these reports came from al Qaeda officials arrested in Afghanistan or held in Guantanamo Bay. Of course, one of the goals of terrorists is to spread terror, so a clever terrorist would want to create anxiety concerning major institutions, sites, and sectors of the economy, and the Bush administration seemed to be helping the terrorists achieve their goal of spreading generalized anxiety through the country. Yet, since there had not been one attack since September 11, despite frequent Bush administration warnings, skepticism was emerging that the Bush administration was exploiting terrorism dangers to push its own rightwing agenda.
In a rare moment of candor, Bush administration press secretary Ari Fleischer admitted that the recent raft of terrorist alerts were issued "as a result of all the controversy that took place last week." Fleischer was reportedly “referring to reports that the president received a CIA briefing in August about terror threats, including plans by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network to hijack U.S. commercial airliners.” This admission, of course, increased outrage and for the first time the Bush administration had a serious public relations crisis to deal with.
After the firestorm of controversy surrounding Bush administration and U.S. intelligence agencies’ apparent pre-September 11 information about an impending bin Laden attack on the U.S. using airplanes, Bush took off in late May for a trip to Europe. As he prepared to leave the U.S., there were a flurry of reports that Bush administration policy had systematically decentered focus on terrorist operations and systematically cut back budgets and personnel for dealing with terrorism in the Justice Department, FBI, military, and other areas of government, thereby hampering efforts to deal with bin Laden and terrorism begun by Clinton. While British papers, the BBC, and various Internet and foreign sources had long documented that the Bush administration had told U.S. and foreign agencies to “go easy on bin Laden and the Saudis” and had blocked investigations into their activities begun by the Clinton administration, these explosive stories had not yet circulated in U.S. mainstream media.
Meanwhile, on the eve of his European visit, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright published a Washington Post piece on “Why Europe Doubts” (May 22, 2002), laying out some of the reasons that Europe has become extremely hostile to Bush administration policy and was distancing itself from its policies and actions. In particular, she noted that while Europe appreciated that terrorism was a common problem requiring serious efforts, Europeans were fed up with Bush administration unilateralism, which privileged military-led solutions and which failed to allow for either the active participation of NATO forces or any nation not hand-picked by the U.S.. This, Albright argued, led to the perception by Europeans that U.S. policy showed “an embarrassing unwillingness to use the European military capacities that are relevant.” Europeans also were concerned about Bush administration failures to adequately engage the broader diplomatic, political, legal, and economic dimensions to halting terrorist networks. In addition, Albright claimed that that European were angry about Bush administration positions on missile defense, their failure to address international treaties on biological weapons and arms control, on international justice, on ecology and climate change, and a wealth of other issues in which the Bush administration openly refused to participated in global commissions and treaties.
Just before Bush’s first trip to Russia, U.S. media revealed that Bush’s nickname for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was “Pootie Poo,” disclosing once again Bush’s embarassingly juvenile tendency to construct insulting nicknames for his associates and people of importance with whom he had to deal. Although the talks with Putin and the Russians appeared cordial and the states signed a planned nuclear weapons reduction treaty, Putin was firm to lecture back to Bush when Bush evoked U.S. concern over Russian support of an Iranian nuclear energy facility. Putin responded by pointing out that Russia and others were concerned about U.S. military deliveries to Taiwan and U.S. support of a nuclear power plant in North Korea (Bush seemed taken by surprise by the latter issue and did not respond).
Defense analysts said that while it was useful to sign a missile reduction treaty, no adequate provisions had been made for protecting and disposing of obsolete missiles, creating dangers that rogue missiles could be sold on the black market or get into dangerous hands. Likewise, on Bush administration insistence, the treaty did not call for the immediate destruction of the weapons to be taken down and stored, they could be held for up to ten years, and either side could abrogate the treaty at short notice. Thus, experts believed that the treaty really did not improve nuclear security and was just a cosmetic photo opportunity to give Putin and Bush good spin.
Moreover, the Pentagon had leaked a Nuclear Posture Review report that had called for more flexible nuclear weapons, argued for a resumption of weapons testing, and the exploring of “contingencies” that could require nuclear attack on Russian, China, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Iraq or Iran. These states were not happy to be on a nuclear targeting list and commentators noted that while arguments for tactical use of nuclear weapons are not new, the endorsement of a policy of first-use nuclear strikes marks a dramatic policy shift. Moreover, in a speech to West Point cadets on June 1 Bush proclaimed a new “doctrine” that the U.S. would strike first against enemies.
Bush’s trip to Germany after his Russian visit revealed his declining stature and how he was held in contempt by large masses of people. There were giant demonstrations against Bush and when he spoke in the German parliament attacking Iraq and trying to get European support for the venture he was booed by parliamentarians who held up a peace flag and walked out of the arena, an unparalleled protest within the German parliament. There were many comparisons between JFK’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech and the tumultuous welcome Ronald Reagan received in Germany after the fall of communism, compared to the hostile reception of Bush.
In France, Bush managed to further embarrass and humiliate himself, clearly demonstrating his inability to govern and represent the U.S. After a two-hour meeting with French president Jacques Chirac, at a long press conference Chirac voiced French and European opposition to Bush administration policy on the Middle East, global warming, trade (the Bush administration had just approved steel tariffs and federal aid to farmers that angered the French), and the environment. Chirac insisted that countries should learn to reduce pollution and the consumption of “resources that cannot be renewed,” gaining a blank stare from the U.S. president who had spent almost his entire career before politics in the oil industry. During his press conference with Chirac Bush stumbled and mumbled with the French president looking on in astonishment when after Bush rambled incoherently and admitted that he forgot the question, explaining: “That’s what happens when you get past 55.”
Bush was described by Dana Milbank (Washington Post, May 28, 2002)), as “in a rather skittish and unfocused mood after a demanding five-day tour to Germany and Russia. He referred twice to Mr. Chirac as ‘President Jacques’ and pronounced the French Presidents second name throughout as “’shrak.’” As described by Bill Sammon , “Weary, Bush mocks reporter, The Washington Times (May 27, 2002):
In the live-televised question and answer section, Bush testily responded to a question by NBC reporter David Gregory who asked:
"I wonder why it is you think there are such strong sentiments in Europe against you and against this administration?" the reporter said. "Why, particularly, there's a view that you and your administration are trying to impose America's will on the rest of the world, particularly when it comes to the Middle East and where the war on terrorism goes next?"
Turning to Mr. Chirac, he added in French: "And, Mr. President, would you maybe comment on that?"
"Very good," Mr. Bush said sardonically. "The guy memorizes four words, and he plays like he's intercontinental."
"I can go on," Mr. Gregory offered.
"I'm impressed — que bueno," said Mr. Bush, using the Spanish phrase for "how wonderful." He deadpanned: "Now I'm literate in two languages."
Continuing his ill-tempered response, Bush accused Gregory of “showing off as soon as you get in front of a camera,” forgetting that performing in front of cameras and asking critical questions are what TV reporters are supposed to do. Bush’s attempts at humor during his European trip also fell flat, as when he admired the immaculate grounds of Russian President Putin and commented: “Nice of you to mow the grass for us.” When discussing plans with Putin to dispose of nuclear material, he said industrialized countries would pay $20 million “to help Russian securitize the dismantled nuclear warheads” (whereas the verb “to securitize” means to turn a commodity into a stock that can be traded). Bush also spoke of “uninalienable rights” and continued to finger-wag and pontificate on the dangers of Iraq and terrorism. Russian television repeatedly played footage of Bush chewing gum upon entering a meeting with Putin, and then spitting it out in his hand before the press conference. Bush also practiced what one wit called “robo-tourism,” after he raced through the Kremlin’s Cathedral Square, a treasure house of churches and historical sites, in 7 minutes, tore through the Russian museum in 30, and attended an abridged version of the “The Nutcracker” staged to “accommodate the president’s schedule” (and his short attention span).
Most embarassingly, the German news magazine Der Spiegel (May 19, 2002) reported that during a conversation with Brazil’s president Cardozo, Bush bewildered his colleague by asking: “ Do you have blacks too,” requiring his national security advisor Condoleezza Rice to point out that Brazil more blacks than the U.S. Meanwhile, as the Moron-in-Chief ripped through Europe and embarrassed the civilized world, violence continued to heat up in the Middle East, Pakistan and India stood on the brink of nuclear war, with warnings of U.S. and British citizens to leave the countries immediately, Afghanistan still did not have a reconstruction plan and was subject to sporadic violence, including a May 31 “friendly fire” incident where the U.S. killed 3 pro-Afghanistan government troops, signaling again the lack of a coherent U.S. policy in Afghanistan. The world was suffering mightily from having a completely incompetent U.S. president who was becoming a global as well as national embarrassment.
It was a major tragedy that such an incompetent, irresponsible, and deeply flawed individual found himself administering a complex Terror War and dealing with a variety of national and global issues that he could not really handle or help produce solutions. It was becoming increasingly clear that George W. Bush was a figurehead president run by rightwing extremists and militarists, and that the country and world were suffering the consequences. During the midst of Mideast turmoil, a Washington Post reporter noted: “As Israeli troops and tanks stormed Yasser Arafat’s compound today, President Bush played with his dogs, went for a job and worked around his ranch.” As India and Pakistan approached the brink of nuclear war, Bush went fund-raising and continued business as usual, sending his subordinates to deal with the problem.
Indeed, George W. Bush is the dispensible man. There has probably never been a president in recent U.S. history less qualified to deal with the complexity of contemporary problems and less able to play a constructive role in terms of policies, ideas, or personal diplomatic intervention. Bush’s main function is to serve as figurehead and spokesperson for his rightwing handlers. His key role is to be popular and get votes. No one really expects him to have any ideas, any engagement in serious issues, or to make any contribution whatsoever to national political life or culture. Bush is truly dispensable, a man more interested in his Texas ranch and daily workouts than foreign affairs. It is a tragedy that in an era of complex global politics the U.S. has a mediocre provisional at the ship of state, destined under his unwatchful watch to fall into treacherous global waters.
[to be continued]
This is a section from a book length manuscript now available at my home page
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Thursday, June 13, 2002
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Wednesday, June 12, 2002
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Tuesday, June 11, 2002
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Independent News
political motivation for return to terror war?
Independent News
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Independent News
Brits and Euros skeptical about Bush dirty bomb claims; and the guy has no legal rights, can be held in perpetuity...
Independent News
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Monday, June 10, 2002
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US knew of hostage rescue: Manila - JUNE 9, 2002
This story questions US denial of preknowledge of hostage rescue; the whole botched thing was suspicious; if US helped plan, why not include some of best US pros in the operation? why did US allow an operation risking American lives? or did they cynically not care since once the hostages were out they could go full steam ahead with military assaults. as usual, the mainstream media, as far as i've seen, has raised no questions on this...
US knew of hostage rescue: Manila - JUNE 9, 2002
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Sunday, June 09, 2002
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Saturday, June 08, 2002
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Friday, June 07, 2002
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Star Trek
hilarious multimedia political satire
Star Trek
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Wednesday, June 05, 2002
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Independent News
US military denied freedom of speech and discourse of truth!
Independent News
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Tuesday, June 04, 2002
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How Sustainable is the Talk of Sustainability?
As world government gets geared up for Earth Summit II in Johannesburg this August and the requisite ton of money gets spent (and resources used) in the name of producing this Lollapalooza of global political spectacle, the buzzword of the day appears to be "sustainability." I use it. Monsanto uses it. Heck, now that the Bush administration has finally admitted that global warming is a serious, human industry-created problem that will greatly affect our future, even G.W. himself appears to want to get in on the act. But are we all speaking the same language here? How can someone interested in animal rights, or non-toxic community gardens, or local, organic produce possibly intend the same thing by speaking about "sustainable living practices" as a giant transnational corporate venture which is bent on outmoding exactly those very things?
Truth be told -- there are many "sustainable futures" out there as the term becomes commodified and enters the marketplace. Guy Debord, in his Return of the Society of the Spectacle, spoke of how the spectacle of global capitalism has the magical power to acquire and implode into itself even the most anti-capital of concepts and practices -- anything can be commodified: even the slogans of anti-commodification! Images of the '50s sci-fi thriller The Blog come to mind, an amorphous mass with only one purpose -- to eat -- eating everything in sight, with little or no phase change save for the size of the undertaking.
In the '80s and '90s the politics of "political correctness" deftly swallowed (and thereby neutralized) an emerging radical language bent on critiquing and transforming the status-quo of patriarchial history. More recently, terms like "multi-culturalism" or "de-colonization" appear to be headed for a similar fate, as they become assimilated into any number of right-wing and/or conservative projects that have their conceptual base in the very histories which these terms were initially used to call into question.
Now, despite the very hard work of many ecologists, environmentalists, philosophers, activists, social theorists, and radical economists, the term "sustainability" hangs in the balance over a steep precipice of meaninglessness. The society of the spectacle threatens to meet the great extinction of life which its prior practices have brought us to with sustainable fast food, plant-killers, and slave trades. More neutral in appearance, the language of public policy is all a buzz with sustainable debate. For instance, I was emailed this Report of the Second National Conference on Science, Policy and the Environment the other day -- "Hoorah!" was the supposition, "Look, Washington has heard us! Republicans and Democrats alike are on board!" But on board for what? Clicking through and examining the corresponding website finds that this report was handily paid for by all the giant corporate entities that the politics of sustainability was created to empower unwitting publics against. Since when, can I ask, does big transnational oil have any rights to signing on for a sustainable world?
Not that I don't envision a world in which the Monsantos and Amocos, etc. etc., can and do sign on for just such a vision...that's not the point. The point is that there is a difference between having one's day in court, being found guilty, and properly paying one's fine to society and slipping out the back door through a bit of legal-ease magic because your lawyer is good friends with the judge.
In this battle over the terms of sustainability, I would argue, that now more than ever before, we are each asked to play the role of judge in a significant manner. Thus, I ask you, judge(s), can this blatant mis-use of the talk of "sustainability" be allowed to continue? I move that it be stricken from the record and barred from these proceedings...
I hereby append my motion, your honor(s), in the hopes that it will be sustained.
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Monday, June 03, 2002
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Egypt Warned U.S. of a Qaeda Plot, Mubarak Asserts
It's curious how one by one reports of warnings to US of al Qaeda strike are coming out; all of these stories appeared in European press within days of September 11, including this one, but only now are surfacing in US press.
Egypt Warned U.S. of a Qaeda Plot, Mubarak Asserts
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Sunday, June 02, 2002
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Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Forgotten victims
Here's the Guardian article that I excerpted from in previous post citing as many as 20,000 deaths of Afghan civilians from US bombing if one factors in "indirect victims"
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Forgotten victims
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Los Angeles Times: 'The Americans ... They Just Drop Their Bombs and Leave'
This article contains many poignant examples of Afghan civilian casualties from US bombing but then concludes that casualties were much lower than previous estimates without making convincing case for lower numbers;
Los Angeles Times: 'The Americans ... They Just Drop Their Bombs and Leave'
An earlier Guardian study had much higher numbers as this summary indicates:
AFGHANISTAN: MORE CIVILLIAN CASULATIES THAN FEARED
US warplanes reportedly prevented an attack by Afghans on a US airbase yesterday, more evidence that that war is hardly over. Meanwhile the Guardian is out with a report that says the number of civilian casualties is far greater than earlier estimated: "A Guardian report in February estimated these casualties at between 1,300 and 8,000 deaths. A Guardian investigation into the "indirect victims" now confirms the belief of many aid agencies that they exceeded the number who died of direct hits.
"As many as 20,000 Afghans may have lost their lives as an indirect consequence of the US intervention. They too belong in any tally of the dead.
"The bombing had three main effects on the humanitarian situation. It caused massive dislocation by prompting hundreds of thousands of Afghans to flee from their homes.
"It stopped aid supplies to drought victims who depended on emergency relief. It provoked an upsurge in fighting and turned a military stalemate into one of chaotic fluidity, leading yet more people to flee.
"Counting these victims with accuracy is impossible. As Muslims, Afghans bury their dead within 24 hours and the graves of those who died in the mountains as they fled their homes are only known to their closest relatives.
"No one has the time to interview survivors or check their stories. The only way to reach even an estimated figure is by extrapolation and intelligent guesswork.."
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The Smirking Chimp
Cheney's Halliburton in trouble; see also other Cheney articles
The Smirking Chimp
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Saturday, June 01, 2002
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Global Embarassment
After the firestorm of controversy surrounding Bush administration and U.S. intelligence agencies’ apparent pre-September 11 information about an impending bin Laden attack on the U.S. using airplanes, Bush took off in late May for a trip to Europe. There had also been revelations that Bush administration policy had systematically decentered focus on terrorist operations and systematically cut back budgets and personnel for dealing with terrorism in the Justice Department, FBI, military, and other areas of government, thereby hampering efforts to deal with bin Laden and terrorism begun by Clinton. While British papers, the BBC, and various Internet and foreign sources had long documented that the Bush administration had told U.S. and foreign agencies to “go easy on bin Laden and the Saudis” and had blocked investigations into their activities begun by the Clinton administration, these explosive stories had not yet circulated in U.S. mainstream media.
Meanwhile, on the eve of his European visit, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright published a Washington Post piece on “Why Europe Doubts” (May 22, 2002), laying out some of the reasons that Europe has become extremely hostile to Bush administration policy and was distancing itself from its policies and actions. In particular, she noted that while Europe appreciated that terrorism was a common problem requiring serious efforts, Europeans were fed up with Bush administration unilateralism, which privileged military-led solutions and which failed to allow for either the active participation of NATO forces or any nation not hand-picked by the U.S.. This, Albright argued, led to the perception by Europeans that U.S. policy showed “an embarrassing unwillingness to use the European military capacities that are relevant.” Europeans also were concerned about Bush administration failures to address the broader diplomatic, political, legal, and economic dimensions to halting terrorist networks. In addition, Albright claimed that that European were angry about Bush administration positions on missile defense, their failure to address international treaties on biological weapons and arms control, on international justice, on ecology and climate change, and a wealth of other issues in which the Bush administration openly refused to participated in global commissions and treaties.
Just before Bush’s first trip to Russia, U.S. media revealed that Bush’s nickname for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was “Pootie Poo,” disclosing once again Bush’s embarassingly juvenile tendency to construct insulting nicknames for his associates and people of importance with whom he had to deal. Although the talks with with Putin and the Russians appeared cordial and the states signed a planned nuclear weapons reduction treaty, Putin was firm to lecture back to Bush when Bush evoked U.S. concern over Russian support of an Iranian nuclear energy facility. Putin responded by pointing out that Russia and others were concerned about U.S. military deliveries to Taiwan and U.S. support of a nuclear power plant in North Korea (Bush seemed taken by surprise by the latter issue and did not respond).
Defense analysts said that while it was useful to sign a missile reduction treaty, no adequate provisions had been made for protecting and disposing of obsolete missiles, creating dangers that rogue missiles could be sold on the black market or get into dangerous hands. Likewise, on Bush administration insistence, the treaty did not call for the immediate destruction of the weapons to be taken down and stored, they could be held for up to ten years, and either side could abrogate the treaty at short notice. Thus, experts believed that the treaty really did not improve nuclear security and was just a cosmetic photo opportunity to give Putin and Bush good spin.
Bush’s trip to Germany after his Russian visit revealed his declining stature and how he was held in contempt by large masses of people. There were giant demonstrations against Bush and when he spoke in the German parliament attacking Iraq and trying to get European support for the venture he was booed by parliamentarians who held up a peace flag and walked out of the arena, an unparalleled protest within the German parliament. There were many comparisons between JFK’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech and the tumultuous welcome Ronald Reagan received in Germany after the fall of communism, compared to the hostile reception of Bush.
In France, Bush managed to further embarrass and humiliate himself, clearly demonstrating his inability to govern and represent the U.S. After a two-hour meeting with French president Jacques Chirac, at a long press conference Chirac voiced French and European opposition to Bush administration policy on the Middle East, global warming, trade (the Bush administration had just approved steel tariffs and federal aid to farmers that angered the French), and the environment. Chirac insisted that countries should learn to reduce pollution and the consumption of “resources that cannot be renewed,” gaining a blank stare from the U.S. president who had spent almost his entire career before politics in the oil industry. During his press conference with Chirac Bush stumbled and mumbled with the French president looking on in astonishment when after Bush rambling incoherently Bush admitted he forgot the question and explained: “That’s what happens when you get past 55.”
Bush was described as “in a rather skittish and unfocused mood after a demanding five-day tour to Germany and Russia. He referred twice to Mr. Chirac as “President Jacques” and pronounced the French Presidents second name throughout as “shrak.” As described by an U.S. reporter:
In the live-televised question and answer section, Bush testily responded to a question by NBC reporter David Gregory who asked:
"I wonder why it is you think there are such strong sentiments in Europe against you and against this administration?" the reporter said. "Why, particularly, there's a view that you and your administration are trying to impose America's will on the rest of the world, particularly when it comes to the Middle East and where the war on terrorism goes next?"
Turning to Mr. Chirac, he added in French: "And, Mr. President, would you maybe comment on that?"
"Very good," Mr. Bush said sardonically. "The guy memorizes four words, and he plays like he's intercontinental."
"I can go on," Mr. Gregory offered.
"I'm impressed — que bueno," said Mr. Bush, using the Spanish phrase for "how wonderful." He deadpanned: "Now I'm literate in two languages."
Continuing his ill-tempered response, Bush accused Gregory of “showing off as soon as you get in front of a camera,” forgetting that performing in front of cameras and asking critical questions are what TV reporters are supposed to do. Bush’s attempts at humor during his European trip also fell flat, as when he admired the immaculate grounds of Russian President Putin and commented: “Nice of you to mow the grass for us.” When discussing plans with Putin to dispose of nuclear material, he said industrialized countries would pay $20 million “to help Russian securitize the dismantled nuclear warheads” (whereas the verb “to securitize” means to turn a commodity into a stock that can be traded). Bush also spoke of “uninalienable rights” and continued to finger-wag and pontificate on the dangers of Iraq and terrorism. Russian television repeatedly played footage of Bush chewing gum upon entering a meeting with Putin, and then spitting it out in his hand before the press conference. Bush also practiced what one wit called “robo-tourism,” after he raced through the Kremlin’s Cathedral Square, a treasure house of churches and historical sites, in 7 minutes, tore through the Russian museum in 30, and attended an abridged version of the “The Nutcracker” staged to “accommodate the president’s schedule” (and his short attention span).
Most embarassingly, the German news magazine Der Spiegel (May 19, 2002) reported that during a conversation with Brazil’s president Cardozo, Bush bewildered his colleague by asking: “ Do you have blacks too,” requiring his national security advisor Condoleezza Rice to point out that Brazil more blacks than the U.S. Meanwhile, as the Moron-in-Chief ripped through Europe and embarrassed the civilized world, violence continued to heat up in the Middle East, Pakistan and India stood on the brink of nuclear war, with warnings of U.S. and British citizens to leave the countries immediately, Afghanistan still did not have a reconstruction plan and was subject to sporadic violence, including a May 31 “friendly fire” incident where the U.S. killed 3 pro-Afghanistan government troops, signaling again the lack of a coherent U.S. policy in Afghanistan. The world was suffering mightily from having a completely incompetent U.S. president who was becoming a global as well as national embarrassment.
[to be continued]
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