Pentagon wants 'uplifting accounts' about Iraq

The Pentagon wants to control [bad] news from Iraq, another Mission Impossible
Terrorism & Security | csmonitor.com

Posted by: Douglas at 9/30/2004 03:33:28 PM | Permalink

washingtonpost.com: Dozens Killed as Violence Escalates in Iraq

a day of violence in Iraq: "Insurgents escalated the violence in Iraq dramatically Thursday, killing dozens and wounding hundreds in at least five separate bombing incidents.
The most lethal attack appeared to be directed at troops and security forces near a government-sponsored ceremony marking the reopening of a water treatment plant in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Bayaa.
While the U.S. military said ten troops were injured in three blasts at the scene, the attack killed mostly children who milled excitedly around the event. A hospital reported 34 of 37 dead were children, according to the Associated Press.
Many were killed by the second car bomber, who witnesses said steered into a crowd gathered around an ambulance that had arrived to carry away those wounded by the first blast just minutes earlier.
Separately, a car bomb killed one U.S. soldier and two Iraqi police at a checkpoint near Abu Ghraib on Thursday morning. Three American soldiers and 10 police were wounded in the Abu Ghraib attack, which also damaged a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, according to a statement by the U.S. military.
The Reuters news agency quoted a doctor at Abu Ghraib hospital saying that a total of around 60 people were wounded.'
washingtonpost.com: Dozens Killed as Violence Escalates in Iraq

Posted by: Douglas at 9/30/2004 07:04:09 AM | Permalink

John Eisenhower: 'Why I will vote for John Kerry for President'

John Eisenhower, son of the former Republican president Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower also broke with tradition and declared that for the first time we was going to vote for a Democratic candidate, writing: “As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration's decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry.” Ike’s son, a noted historian also wrote that “today's ‘Republican’ Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar. To me, the word ‘Republican’ has always been synonymous with the word ‘responsibility,’ which has meant limiting our governmental obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms. Today's whopping budget deficit of some $440 billion does not meet that criterion. Responsibility used to be observed in foreign affairs. That has meant respect for others. America, though recognized as the leader of the community of nations, has always acted as a part of it, not as a maverick separate from that community and at times insulting towards it. Leadership involves setting a direction and building consensus, not viewing other countries as practically devoid of significance. Recent developments indicate that the current Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris and arrogance.”
The Smirking Chimp: "John Eisenhower: 'Why I will vote for John Kerry for President'"

Posted by: Douglas at 9/29/2004 03:02:06 PM | Permalink

washingtonpost.com: Billionaire Against Bush

Soros vs Bush. Excerpts:
"If I could contribute to repudiating Bush's policies it would be the greatest good deed I could do for the world," says the philanthropist who has spent billions promoting democracy all over the world.
Soros has repeatedly talked about Bush's popularity as if it were one of the many inflated currencies he's bet against: as something illusory, an Internet stock, a bubble he could pop if he threw enough money at it.
Now the anticipated moment for Bush to bust has arrived. But with only 34 days to go, the president has a solid lead in the polls. Was it a wise investment, Soros is asked, and one can only say he hedged, by adopting the romantic pose of the underdog.
In his speeches and his writing, Soros backs the left's standard criticism of the war: that Bush took advantage of 9/11 to "further his own agenda"; that, seized with a mistaken vision of military omnipotence, he launched the country into a "vicious cycle of escalating violence."
But what really gets Soros going is what he calls Bush's "intimidation tactics," his attitude that "you are with us or with the terrorists" -- a way of stifling dissent that Soros recognizes from his youth.
"I find the Bush campaign quite reprehensible," he says. "Instead of discussing issues, they attack people who espouse those issues. It reminds me of my childhood, when you were discussing something with the communists and they say you're a bourgeois capitalist so what you say doesn't count. There has to be some respect for the truth."
He's compared the president's attitude to Nazi slogans and George Orwell's "Animal Farm." He's called the neoconservatives who guide Bush's foreign policy a "bunch of extremists guided by a crude form of social Darwinism."
Yesterday, though, Soros seemed more frustrated than combative. At several points he listed Bush's "lies," distortions that were so perfectly obvious to him, and yet, he complained, why didn't everyone see them?
"There must be something wrong with us if we believe it," he says in exasperation with his placid, adopted nation. "I want to shout from the rooftops: 'Wake up, America. Don't you realize that we are being misled?'"
washingtonpost.com: Billionaire Against Bush

Posted by: Douglas at 9/29/2004 02:16:03 PM | Permalink

washingtonpost.com: Interceptor System Set, But Doubts Remain

Rumsfeld's beloved missile defense (aka Star Wars) system still doesn't work; billions have been plundered on this fraud and this alone, independent of Iraq, should disqualify Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush and others who have pursued this fantasy
washingtonpost.com: Interceptor System Set, But Doubts Remain

Posted by: Douglas at 9/29/2004 10:07:26 AM | Permalink

The New York Times > International > Middle East > Insurgency: Iraq Study Sees Rebels' Attacks as Widespread

Almost everyday a survey comes out and there is a major story that things in Iraq are much worse than Bush administration lets on. Excerpt:
"Over the past 30 days, more than 2,300 attacks by insurgents have been directed against civilians and military targets in Iraq, in a pattern that sprawls over nearly every major population center outside the Kurdish north, according to comprehensive data compiled by a private security company with access to military intelligence reports and its own network of Iraqi informants.

The sweeping geographical reach of the attacks, from Nineveh and Salahuddin Provinces in the northwest to Babylon and Diyala in the center and Basra in the south, suggests a more widespread resistance than the isolated pockets described by Iraqi government officials.

The type of attacks ran the gamut: car bombs, time bombs, rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades, small-arms fire, mortar attacks and land mines.

"If you look at incident data and you put incident data on the map, it's not a few provinces, " said Adam Collins, a security expert and the chief intelligence official in Iraq for Special Operations Consulting-Security Management Group Inc., a private security company based in Las Vegas that compiles and analyzes the data as a regular part of its operations in Iraq.

The number of attacks has risen and fallen over the months. Mr. Collins said the highest numbers were in April, when there was major fighting in Falluja, with attacks averaging 120 a day. The average is now about 80 a day, he said."
The New York Times > International > Middle East > Insurgency: Iraq Study Sees Rebels' Attacks as Widespread
Another Wash Post story, based on recent NYT story, indicates that
"People at the CIA "are mad at the policy in Iraq because it's a disaster, and they're digging the hole deeper and deeper and deeper," said one former intelligence officer who maintains contact with CIA officials. "There's no obvious way to fix it. The best we can hope for is a semi-failed state hobbling along with terrorists and a succession of weak governments."

"Things are definitely not improving," said one U.S. government official who reads the intelligence analyses on Iraq.

"It is getting worse," agreed an Army staff officer who served in Iraq and stays in touch with comrades in Baghdad through e-mail. "It just seems there is a lot of pessimism flowing out of theater now. There are things going on that are unbelievable to me. They have infiltrators conducting attacks in the Green Zone. That was not the case a year ago."

This weekend, in a rare departure from the positive talking points used by administration spokesmen, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell acknowledged that the insurgency is strengthening and that anti-Americanism in the Middle East is increasing. "Yes, it's getting worse," he said of the insurgency on ABC's "This Week." At the same time, the U.S. commander for the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, told NBC's "Meet the Press" that "we will fight our way through the elections." Abizaid said he believes Iraq is still winnable once a new political order and the Iraqi security force is in place.

Powell's admission and Abizaid's sobering warning came days after the public disclosure of a National Intelligence Council (NIC) assessment, completed in July, that gave a dramatically different outlook than the administration's and represented a consensus at the CIA and the State and Defense departments.

In the best-case scenario, the NIC said, Iraq could be expected to achieve a "tenuous stability" over the next 18 months. In the worst case, it could dissolve into civil war.

The July assessment was similar to one produced before the war and another in late 2003 that also were more pessimistic in tone than the administration's portrayal of the resistance to the U.S. occupation, according to senior administration officials. "All say they expect things to get worse," one former official said.

One official involved in evaluating the July document said the NIC, which advises the director of central intelligence, decided not to include a more rosy scenario "because it looked so unreal."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58183-2004Sep28.html

Posted by: Douglas at 9/29/2004 09:50:01 AM | Permalink

'Kerry will restore American dignity': Bush's hometown paper endorses Kerry

Bush's local paper The Lone Star Iconoclast Endorses Kerry
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=18044
2004 Iconoclast Presidential Endorsement
Few Americans would have voted for George W. Bush four years ago if he had promised that, as President, he would:
Empty the Social Security trust fund by $507 billion to help offset fiscal irresponsibility and at the same time slash Social Security benefits.
Cut Medicare by 17 percent and reduce veterans' benefits and military pay.
Eliminate overtime pay for millions of Americans and raise oil prices by 50 percent.
Give tax cuts to businesses that sent American jobs overseas, and, in fact, by policy encourage their departure.
Give away billions of tax dollars in government contracts without competitive bids.
Involve this country in a deadly and highly questionable war, and
Take a budget surplus and turn it into the worst deficit in the history of the United States, creating a debt in just four years that will take generations to repay.
These were elements of a hidden agenda that surfaced only after he took office.
The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda.
Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry, based not only on the things that Bush has delivered, but also on the vision of a return to normality that Kerry says our country needs.
Four items trouble us the most about the Bush administration: his initiatives to disable the Social Security system, the deteriorating state of the American economy, a dangerous shift away from the basic freedoms established by our founding fathers, and his continuous mistakes regarding terrorism and Iraq.

Posted by: Douglas at 9/29/2004 08:30:56 AM | Permalink

The New York Times >> John Kerry's Journey: A Fast Finisher's Reputation Now Faces the Ultimate Test

hopefully, Kerry can meet his reputation as a fast and successful finisher
The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > John Kerry's Journey: A Fast Finisher's Reputation Now Faces the Ultimate Test

Posted by: Douglas at 9/29/2004 08:06:42 AM | Permalink

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: How to Debate George Bush

Gore tells Kerry how to debate Bush: its the record, stupid: Bush's record is one of "catastrophic failure" and Kerry should make this clear and that he has an alternative. In Gore's words, " clear majority of Americans believe that we are heading in the wrong direction. The reasons are obvious. The situation in Iraq is getting worse. Osama bin Laden is alive and plotting against us. About 2.7 million manufacturing jobs have been lost. Forty-five million Americans are living without health insurance. Medicare premiums are the highest they've ever been. Environmental protections have been eviscerated.
In the coming debates, Senator Kerry has an opportunity to show voters that today American troops and American taxpayers are shouldering a huge burden with no end in sight because Mr. Bush took us to war on false premises and with no plan to win the peace. Mr. Kerry has an opportunity to demonstrate the connection between job losses and Mr. Bush's colossal tax break for the wealthy. And he can remind voters that Mr. Bush has broken his pledge to expand access to health care.
Senator Kerry can also use these debates to speak directly to voters and lay out a hopeful vision for our future. If voters walk away from the debates with a better understanding of where our country is, how we got here and where each candidate will lead us if elected, then America will be the better for it. The debate tomorrow should not seek to discover which candidate would be more fun to have a beer with. As Jon Stewart of the "The Daily Show'' nicely put in 2000, "I want my president to be the designated driver.''
The debates aren't a time for rhetorical tricks. It's a time for an honest contest of ideas. Mr. Bush's unwillingness to admit any mistakes may score him style points. But it makes hiring him for four more years too dangerous a risk. Stubbornness is not strength; and Mr. Kerry must show voters that there is a distinction between the two.
If Mr. Bush is not willing to concede that things are going from bad to worse in Iraq, can he be trusted to make the decisions necessary to change the situation? If he insists on continuing to pretend it is "mission accomplished," can he accomplish the mission? And if the Bush administration has been so thoroughly wrong on absolutely everything it predicted about Iraq, with the horrible consequences that have followed, should it be trusted with another four years?"
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: How to Debate George Bush

Posted by: Douglas at 9/28/2004 10:08:00 PM | Permalink

Something rotten in the state of Florida

Florida's a Big Mess and its not just the hurricanes
Independent News

Posted by: Douglas at 9/28/2004 10:04:38 PM | Permalink

The New York Times > Business > Saudi Arabia to Boost Oil Production as Price Hits $50

Saudi Arabia is desperately trying to boost oil production to drive prices down to help Bush in final weeks of election, but oil prices keep spiralling up and up; I also read that sectors of Saudi elite think Bush's re-election would be a catastrophe; anyway, it will be interesting to watch oil prices, stock market and global finance to see if these sectors will or will not boost Bush
The New York Times > Business > Saudi Arabia to Boost Oil Production as Price Hits $50

Posted by: Douglas at 9/28/2004 08:40:48 AM | Permalink

Blame Global Warming For Florida's Hurricane Conga Line

Global Warming and Florida's Hurricanes. Article=
Hurricane Ivan, the powerful storm that killed at least 120 people in the Caribbean and southern United States, may be a harbinger of the Earth's hotter future, say experts.

"As the world warms, we expect more and more intense tropical hurricanes and cyclones," said James McCarthy, a professor of biological oceanography at Harvard University.

Large parts of the world's oceans are approaching 27 degrees C or warmer during the summer, greatly increasing the odds of major storms, McCarthy told IPS.

When water reaches such temperatures, more of it evaporates, priming hurricane or cyclone formation. Once born, a hurricane needs only warm water to build and maintain its strength and intensity.

Over the last 100 years, the Earth has warmed by about .6 degrees C, according to the 2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international scientific body that studies the relationship between human activity and global warming.

The IPCC report was based on research by more than 2,500 scientists from about 100 countries who determined that emissions of gases such as carbon dioxide act as a blanket that prevents much of the sun's energy from dissipating into space.

Much of the extra energy from this "greenhouse effect" is being absorbed by the oceans.

The "proof" that the oceans are warming is the fact that global sea levels have risen 3.1 cm in the past 10 years, said Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

Water expands when heated, and sea levels are expected to continue rising by as much as 50 cm by 2100.

While the warming of the oceans is not uniform -- the North Pacific and North Atlantic are a bit cooler -- the hurricane-producing mid-Atlantic and Caribbean oceans have warmed significantly.

"Global warming is creating conditions that are more favourable for hurricanes to develop and be more severe," said Trenberth.

Will that result in more Category 4 or 5 storms like Ivan?

"That's the logical conclusion, although it may be somewhat controversial," he said.

Before it struck Cuba a glancing blow, Ivan was a Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, which rates hurricanes from 1 to 5 according to wind speeds and destructive potential. Category 5 hurricanes have winds that blow continuously above 250 kilometers an hour. Ivan's gusts topped 320 kilometers an hour at times, making it the sixth most powerful hurricane on record for the Atlantic Basin.

Hurricane Ivan's 12-day rampage killed 70 people in the Caribbean and 50 in the United States. It will be some time before the full extent of the damage is known, but some estimates put it at $10 billion for the United States alone.

As emissions of greenhouse gases continue to trap more and more of the sun's energy, that energy has to be dissipated, resulting in stronger storms, more intense precipitation and higher winds, says McMcarthy.

However, the statistical record of hurricanes hitting the U.S. shows a decrease in the past 50 years.

Most hurricanes do not strike land, McCarthy points out, and up until the past 25 years, with the advent of satellite tracking, there was scant data on the storms.

But there is abundant evidence of an unprecedented number of severe weather events in the past decade, McCarthy says. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch killed nearly 20,000 people in Central America, and more than 4,000 people died during disastrous flooding in China. Bangladesh suffered some of its worst floods ever the following year, as did Venezuela. Europe was hit with record floods in 2002, and then a record heat wave in 2003.

More recently, Brazil was struck by the first-ever recorded hurricane in the South Atlantic last March.

"Weather records are being set all the time now. We're in an era of unprecedented extreme weather events," McCarthy said.

Historical weather patterns are becoming less useful for predicting the future conditions because global warming is changing ocean and atmospheric conditions.

"In 30 to 50 years' time, the Earth's weather generating system will be entirely different," he predicted.

What hasn't changed in the United States is the public's lack of concern about climate change, said Ross Gelbspan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of two books on global warming, most recently one titled: "Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil And Coal, Journalists and Activists Are Fueling the Climate Crisis -- And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster."

Sharp reductions of emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide on the order of 70 percent are urgently needed to minimise the impacts, Gelbspan said.
But despite the recent destructive series of hurricanes and tornadoes, global warming is off the radar screen of the U.S. presidential election campaign, he said.
Gelbspan is not surprised at this, given the power and influence of the fossil fuel lobby in Washington, which he outlines in great detail in his book.
"America's oil and coal industries receive more than $20 billion a year in subsidies," he said. "Imagine what could be done if that money was invested in green energy."
Albion Monitor (frames)

Posted by: Douglas at 9/28/2004 06:45:23 AM | Permalink

Guardian | Jimmy Carter fears repeat of election fiasco in Florida

Jimmy Carter warns of another election fraud in Florida, JebBushLand is worse than a banana republic
Guardian | Jimmy Carter fears repeat of election fiasco in Florida

Posted by: Douglas at 9/27/2004 07:44:34 PM | Permalink

The New York Times >The Candidates: Strong Charges Set New Tone Before Debate

This is a week of waiting for the debates. In a US presidential election, the debates are often the crucial determinant of an election. Although both parties work to forge messages and consensus during the primaries, present their candidate and program in a convention spectacle, bombard the airwaves with ads, organize daily media events, deluge the press and public with daily messages, and organize support groups who telephone, write, email, and text-message to try to win voters, the debates have focused national attention more than any other element in recent US presidential elections.
Over the weekend, both sides sharpened their claws for the gladiator confrontation of the two candidates coming on Thursday. Excerpt:

"And over the weekend in an advertisement financed by the Progress for America Voter Fund, a Republican advocacy group, which includes images of the ruins of the World Trade Center, as well as Mr. bin Laden, Mr. Hussein and Mr. Atta, the announcer asks, "Would you trust Kerry up against these fanatic killers?"
It was Mr. Bush's aides who originally pressed to have the first debate fought out on what should be the president's strongest ground, terrorism and foreign affairs. Typically, the first debate draws the most viewers and has the most influence on voters.
But Mr. Kerry's advisers, pointing to continued evidence of turmoil in Iraq and the threat of a terrorist attack at home, have increasingly warmed to the subject, saying voters seemed eager for a debate on the issue. Mr. Kerry has over the past two weeks confronted Mr. Bush head-on over Iraq, in a shift of strategy that his aides said Sunday was showing signs of success.
In Wisconsin on Sunday, Mr. Kerry seized on reports of an interview the president gave to Bill O'Reilly on Fox News in which he said he had no regrets about donning a flight suit to give his "Mission Accomplished" speech on Iraq in May 2003 and that he would do it all over again if given the chance, according to a partial transcript of the interview released to the Reuters news service. (Fox News and the White House declined to provide the excerpts to The New York Times).
"It is unbelievable that just this morning we learned that the president has said he would do it all over again and dress up in a flight suit, and land on an aircraft carrier, and say 'mission accomplished' again," Mr. Kerry said. "Well, my friends, when the president landed on that aircraft carrier, 150 of our young sons and daughters had given their lives. Since then, tragically, since he said mission accomplished, tragically over 900 have now died.''
The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > The Candidates: Strong Charges Set New Tone Before Debate

Posted by: Douglas at 9/27/2004 07:07:04 AM | Permalink

The Choice on the Environment (washingtonpost.com)

For the Wash Post, Kerry is the winner on the environment:
Bush: "Certainly there is no doubt about President Bush's belief in the need to reduce environmental regulation in order to ease the constraints on industries most affected by it. Although the administration has made few dramatic changes, it has rewritten an extraordinary number of rules, for example, to allow older utilities to upgrade their facilities without adding pollution control equipment; to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating carbon dioxide emissions, the most important source of "greenhouse gases"; to loosen the regulation of mercury emissions; to limit the amount of land that can be formally declared "wilderness"; to make logging easier in old-growth forests. The president himself has flip-flopped, as his campaign would put it, on the question of the urgency of climate change, first expressing interest in the issue, then walking away from it, then delaying discussion by proposing "further studies."

Kerry: "By contrast, the record of Sen. John F. Kerry reflects a long and deep commitment to environmental regulation, although not necessarily a rigid or dogmatic one: In debating environmental votes with his staff and outsiders he does talk about the need to balance environmental and economic concerns. Still, his voting record is one of the most pro-environmentalist in the Senate. He has voted repeatedly for measures that would enforce strict observance of the Clean Air and Clean Water acts as well as wilderness protection. He has more than once helped defeat bills that would allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Mr. Kerry's environmental positions cannot be described as unusually creative: He has generally backed the regulatory consensus, which even supporters agree could usefully be updated. Yet that consensus has, over several decades, produced cleaner air and water, and preserved more wilderness. Simply rolling it back without replacing it would achieve nothing except a reversal of those gains. Far preferable would be a president interested in modernizing environmental rules without abandoning their ultimate goal: a better environment."
The Choice on the Environment (washingtonpost.com)
This is, however, pretty wishy-washy. Bush is much worse than WP indicates. In George Orwell’s dystopic novel 1984 a future state is at permanent war and uses language to describe the opposite. In Orwell’s universe, War is peace, Freedom is slavery, and Ignorance is strength. In a caricature of Orwellian language, the Bush administration called its Iraq occupation a “liberation” and its imposition of a government on Iraq “democracy.” On the domestic front, it calls its cutbacks on pollution control and environmental regulation A “Clear Skies Initiative” and A Healthy Forest Act mandates protecting forests by logging and mining them. As Marilyn Young describes it, the Bush administration systematically uses Orwellian language:
In order to “better harmonize the environmental, social and economic benefits of America’s greatest natural resources, our forests and grasslands,” the administration gave the Forest Service the power to skip environmental reviews before approving lumber company requests to log national forest land. In order to move “toward more effective prevention of black-lung disease,” the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration raised the limit on the amount of coal dust allowed in mines. In order to “save hundreds of lives,” the Department of Transportation increased the number of hours long distance truckers could drive before a mandated rest period. Through budget cuts, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has lost seventy-seven enforcement agents; it created two new jobs for staff who would “help industry comply with agency rules.” Rules on mercury, the efficiency of air conditioners, food labeling, training of health care workers, restoration of wetlands, and media concentration have all been weakened. As “regulatory initiatives,” these achievements on behalf of business require no new legislation and can be halted only through costly legal action. According to the president’s spokesman, the new rules are the expression of the “President’s common-sense policies [which] reflect the values of America, whether it is cracking down on corporate wrong-doing or eliminating burdensome regulations to create jobs.” This is a sentence of genuine Orwellian grandeur.

Posted by: Douglas at 9/27/2004 06:56:48 AM | Permalink

Iraq Elections a Disaster in the Making - by Juan Cole

Iraq election farce... the Bush Gang is taking a big chance on running on elections as so much could go wrong before they even take place, if they take place
Iraq Elections a Disaster in the Making - by Juan Cole

Posted by: Douglas at 9/27/2004 06:14:56 AM | Permalink

The New York Times > Body Count: Killings Surge in Iraq, and Doctors See a Procession of Misery; National Guard Corruption; Time to Pull out?

more mess in Iraq as morgues fill, Bush should be run out of the country
The New York Times > International > Middle East > Body Count: Killings Surge in Iraq, and Doctors See a Procession of Misery
corruption in Iraq national guard and
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/26/international/middleeast/26CND-IRAQ.html?hp
time to just pull out? could it be worse?
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/26/weekinreview/26cohe.html?pagewanted=print&position=

Posted by: Douglas at 9/26/2004 12:10:29 PM | Permalink

washingtonpost.com: U.S. Soldier Gets 25 Years In Murder of Iraqi Guard

Another bloody and horrible day in Iraq:
"A U.S. soldier was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of an Iraqi National Guardsman in May, the U.S. military said Saturday.
The announcement came as a spate of attacks involving insurgents and U.S.-led forces spread across Iraq. The U.S. military announced that four Marines were killed in three separate incidents in Anbar province Friday and that another soldier was killed by a roadside bomb Saturday in Baghdad, the capital.
In the restive city of Fallujah 35 miles west of Baghdad, U.S. warplanes launched airstrikes early Saturday and again at night. The attacks killed 16 people and wounded 37, doctors in the city told the Associated Press.
In Baghdad, gunmen fired on a vehicle carrying Iraqi National Guard applicants, killing six people, police told the Associated Press. ...In addition to the kidnappings, insurgents have continued to attack police and National Guard recruits from the nascent Iraqi security forces, the linchpin of a U.S. strategy to hold nationwide elections in January. Hours after the attack on the National Guardsmen, four mortar rounds landed in a Baghdad sports club where hundreds of police recruits had been summoned for a meeting.
The fighting in Fallujah began at 11:30 p.m. Friday, when U.S. forces attacked what a U.S. military statement said was a "an offensive obstacle belt" composed primarily of concrete and earthen barriers containing bombs. Construction of the barriers was "considered a hostile act," the statement said, and served to "undermine and discredit the authority of Iraqi civic leaders and restrict the people of Fallujah from living a normal life."
Around 3:30 a.m. Saturday, insurgents operating out of vacant houses in the Askari neighborhood launched rocket-propelled grenades and mortars at a U.S. base on the periphery of the city.
At 4:05 a.m., witnesses said, U.S. warplanes and attack helicopters destroyed five houses that were used by the insurgents and another that was occupied by a family.
Rafid Hiyad Isawi, the director of Fallujah General Hospital, said a couple and their two children were among the dead. The U.S. military said in a statement: "There were no innocent civilians reported in the immediate area at the time of the strike."
After dark, explosions were reported in the city again.
Ahmed Zawbae said his brother Mahmoud and his family were killed in the raid early Saturday morning. He said insurgents had warned the family to leave the area but his sister-in-law had been too ill to be moved.
"This area is turned into a war zone for both sides; this resulted in the killing of my brother and his family," Zawbae said. "They are civilians and innocent. What could they do?"
washingtonpost.com: U.S. Soldier Gets 25 Years In Murder of Iraqi Guard

Posted by: Douglas at 9/26/2004 10:49:38 AM | Permalink

The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > Kerry as the Boss: Always More Questions

this article suggests that Kerry questions, probes, discusses, investigates, debates, and forges informed positions. As we all know, Bush just blabbers and says what he's programmed to say without any real knowledge or interest in the topic-- except poll numbers which according to this article is not Kerry's forte or interest
The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > Kerry as the Boss: Always More Questions

Posted by: Douglas at 9/26/2004 09:37:05 AM | Permalink

The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > A Big Increase of New Voters in Swing States

An eye-opening survey on enrollment of new voters in swing states indicates that the Democrats are doing much better than the Republicans in getting new voters enrolled. The question, of course, is will they get to the polls, vote for their class interests, and have their votes be counted. Excerpt: "A sweeping voter registration campaign in heavily Democratic areas has added tens of thousands of new voters to the rolls in the swing states of Ohio and Florida, a surge that has far exceeded the efforts of Republicans in both states, a review of registration data shows.

The analysis by The New York Times of county-by-county data shows that in Democratic areas of Ohio - primarily low-income and minority neighborhoods - new registrations since January have risen 250 percent over the same period in 2000. In comparison, new registrations have increased just 25 percent in Republican areas. A similar pattern is apparent in Florida: in the strongest Democratic areas, the pace of new registration is 60 percent higher than in 2000, while it has risen just 12 percent in the heaviest Republican areas.
While comparable data could not be obtained for other swing states, similar registration drives have been mounted in them as well, and party officials on both sides say record numbers of new voters are being registered nationwide. This largely hidden but deadly earnest battle is widely believed by campaign professionals and political scientists to be potentially decisive in the presidential election.
"We know it's going on, and it's a very encouraging sign," said Steve Elmendorf, deputy campaign manager for Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee. The new voters, Mr. Elmendorf said, "could very much be the difference."
The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > A Big Increase of New Voters in Swing States

Posted by: Douglas at 9/26/2004 09:31:02 AM | Permalink

washingtonpost.com: Violence in Iraq Belies Claims of Calm, Data Show

As the pundits debated the merits of Bush and Kerry’s positions on Iraq and the war on terror over the weekend of September 25-26, and the candidates prepared for the all-important debates the following week, a striking article appeared by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “Violence in Iraq Belies Claims of Calm, Data Show,” in the September 26 Washington Post that documented the decline in the situation in Iraq, sharply undermining the “optimistic” portrayal of Iraq by Bush and his stooge Allwai:
"Less than four months before planned national elections in Iraq, attacks against U.S. troops, Iraqi security forces and private contractors number in the dozens each day and have spread to parts of the country that had been relatively peaceful, according to statistics compiled by a private security firm working for the U.S. government.
Attacks over the past two weeks have killed more than 250 Iraqis and 29 U.S. military personnel, according to figures released by Iraq's Health Ministry and the Pentagon. A sampling of daily reports produced during that period by Kroll Security International for the U.S. Agency for International Development shows that such attacks typically number about 70 each day. In contrast, 40 to 50 hostile incidents occurred daily during the weeks preceding the handover of political authority to an interim Iraqi government on June 28, according to military officials.
Reports covering seven days in a recent 10-day period depict a nation racked by all manner of insurgent violence, from complex ambushes involving 30 guerrillas north of Baghdad on Monday to children tossing molotov cocktails at a U.S. Army patrol in the capital's Sadr City slum on Wednesday. On maps included in the reports, red circles denoting attacks surround nearly every major city in central, western and northern Iraq, except for Kurdish-controlled areas in the far north. Cities in the Shiite Muslim-dominated south, including several that had undergone a period of relative calm in recent months, also have been hit with near-daily attacks.In number and scope, the attacks compiled in the Kroll reports suggest a broad and intensifying campaign of insurgent violence that contrasts sharply with assessments by Bush administration officials and Iraq's interim prime minister that the instability is contained to small pockets of the country."
Indeed, Bush is such a LIAR on Iraq, just read the daily reports from the field
washingtonpost.com: Violence in Iraq Belies Claims of Calm, Data Show

Posted by: Douglas at 9/25/2004 10:05:35 PM | Permalink

The New York Times 7 Iraqi Guard Applicants, 4 U.S. Marines and a Soldier Are Killed

Another chaotic day in Iraq:
"Seven Iraqi men applying for jobs with the Iraqi National Guard were ambushed and killed in western Baghdad on Saturday morning, while the United States military said four marines and a soldier had been killed over 24 hours.
The military also said it had conducted an airstrike early Saturday morning in the volatile city of Falluja to kill militants holding a meeting. The military said the targets were members of the network led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant.
The Americans did not give any casualty estimates, but doctors in the emergency room of the main Falluja hospital said 9 people were killed and 16 were wounded, all of them civilians. They said the strike took place in a residential area of eastern Falluja and one woman and a child were among the dead.
In its statement, the American military said, "There were no innocent civilians reported in the immediate area at the time of the strike." Though the military always labels these attacks "precision strikes," doctors and residents in Falluja routinely say the assaults kill civilians. Because of the danger of entering Falluja, a city controlled by insurgents who have installed a Taliban-like rule, foreign reporters are unable to verify the claims of either side."
The New York Times > International > Middle East > 7 Iraqi Guard Applicants, 4 U.S. Marines and a Soldier Are Killed
Its interesting that everyday the US bombs Falluja they claim they are using "precision strikes," but everyday doctors and residents there claim that it is civilians who are bombed, with many pictures of innocent victims shown on global, but usually not US, TV networks. Here's an article that documents that there are more Iraqi civilian casualties than insurgents.
"Operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis - most of them civilians - as attacks by insurgents, according to statistics compiled by the Iraqi Health Ministry and obtained exclusively by Knight Ridder.

According to the ministry, the interim Iraqi government recorded 3,487 Iraqi deaths in 15 of the country's 18 provinces from April 5 - when the ministry began compiling the data - until Sept. 19. Of those, 328 were women and children. Another 13,720 Iraqis were injured, the ministry said.

While most of the dead are believed to be civilians, the data include an unknown number of police and Iraqi national guardsmen. Many Iraqi deaths, especially of insurgents, are never reported, so the actual number of Iraqis killed in fighting could be significantly higher.

During the same period, 432 American soldiers were killed.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=17982

Posted by: Douglas at 9/25/2004 10:59:06 AM | Permalink

Guardian | How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

an All-Too-Rare major media look at Bush-Nazi connections. This story has been long known, was retold in the Kevin Philips and Kitty Kelley books on the Bush Dynasty but has been generally ignored by US media
Guardian | How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

Posted by: Douglas at 9/24/2004 10:03:48 PM | Permalink

The New York Times > Washington > State Dept. Says Iraq Elections Must Be Held in All Regions

Yesterday, Bush and Allawi both insisted that the Iraq elections were going on as scheduled for January. In the afternoon, Rumsfeld theorized before another Capitol Hill hearing on Thursday that elections might be held in only "three-quarters or four-fifths of the country" because some regions are not yet secure enough. Today, however, The second-ranking official at the State Department said today, in an apparent contradiction of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, that the elections scheduled for Iraq in January must be "open to all citizens."
"We're going to have an election that is free and open," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said at a House committee hearing, "and that has to be open to all citizens."
In fact, Iraq is such a mess no one knows what will be going on there next week let alone by January. It is interesting, though, that the Bush administration has devolved into utter incoherence.
The New York Times > Washington > State Dept. Says Iraq Elections Must Be Held in All Regions

Posted by: Douglas at 9/24/2004 12:53:15 PM | Permalink

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Bush Upbeat as Iraq Burns

Both Bob Herbert and Paul Krugman today in the NYT hit a similar theme that Bush is blind to realities in Iraqi and is living in a fantasy world. Herbert: "Mr. Bush cannot explain our mission in Iraq and has nothing resembling an exit strategy, and his troops - hobbled by shortages of personnel and by potentially fatal American and Iraqi political considerations - are certainly not fighting to win.

As the situation in Iraq moves from bad to worse, the president, based on his public comments, seems to be edging further and further from reality. This is disturbing, to say the least. The news from Iraq is filled with reports of kidnappings and beheadings, of people pleading desperately for their lives, of American soldiers being ambushed and killed, of clusters of Iraqis being blown to pieces by suicide bombers, and of the prospects for a credible election in January tumbling toward nil.

The war effort has deteriorated so drastically that the administration is planning to take more than $3 billion earmarked for crucial reconstruction projects and shift them to security programs designed to ward off the increasingly deadly insurgency. A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for the president contained no really good prospects for Iraq. The best-case scenario was a country with only tenuous stability. The worst potential outcome was civil war.

The intelligence estimate was prepared in July, and the situation has only worsened since then.

Even Republicans are starting to voice their concerns about the unfolding disaster. When asked on CBS's "Face the Nation" whether the U.S. was winning the war in Iraq, Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, said, "No, I don't think we're winning." He said the U.S. was "in deep trouble in Iraq" and that some "recalibration of policy" would be necessary to turn things around.

Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, said on "Fox News Sunday": "The situation has obviously been somewhat deteriorating, to say the least." He said "serious mistakes" have been made and that most of them "can be traced back to not having sufficient numbers of troops there."

These are not doves talking. These are supporters of President Bush who support the war in Iraq and believe it can be won. But they're also in touch with reality.

President Bush does not share their sense of alarm. He acknowledged that "horrible scenes" are being shown on television and the Internet, but he was unmoved by the gloomy intelligence estimates. According to Mr. Bush: "The C.I.A. laid out several scenarios. It said that life could be lousy, life could be O.K., life could be better."

Que sera, sera.

The president said he is personally optimistic and he delivered an upbeat assessment of conditions in Iraq to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday. Iraq, he said, is well on its way to being "secure, democratic, federal and free."

If you spend more than a little time immersed in the world according to Karl Rove, you'll find that words lose even the remotest connection to reality. They become nothing more than tools designed to achieve political ends. So it's not easy to decipher what the president believes about Iraq.

This is scary. With Americans, Iraqis and others dying horribly in the long dark night of this American-led war, the world needs more from the president of the United States than the fool's gold of his empty utterances.

Perhaps someone can dislodge the president from Karl's clutches, shake him and tell him that his war is a tremendous tragedy with implications far beyond the election in November.
At the moment there is no evidence the president understands anything about the war. He led the nation into it with false pretenses. He never mobilized sufficient numbers of troops. He seemed to believe the war was over in May 2003. And he seems not to know how to proceed now.
The tragic lesson of Vietnam is staring the president in the face. But he'll have to become better acquainted with the real world before he can even begin to learn from it.
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Bush Upbeat as Iraq Burns
Krugman says its time to get real: "ever mind the inevitable claims that John Kerry is soft on terrorism. What he must address is the question of how his policy in Iraq would differ from President Bush's. And his answer should be that unlike Mr. Bush, whose decisions have been dictated at every stage by grandiose visions and wishful thinking, he will get real - focusing on what is really possible in Iraq, and what needs to be done to protect American security.

Mr. Bush claims that Mr. Kerry's plan to secure and rebuild Iraq is "exactly what we're currently doing." No, it isn't. It's only what Mr. Bush is currently saying. And we have 18 months of his administration's deeds to contrast with his words.

The actual record is one of officials who have refused to admit that their fantasies about how the war would go were wrong, and who have continued to push us ever deeper into the quagmire because of their insistence that everything is going according to plan.

There has been a lot of press coverage of the administration's failure to do anything serious about rebuilding Iraq. Less attention has been given to its parallel failure to take the security problem seriously until much of Iraq had already been lost.

Long after it was obvious to everyone else that we were engaged in an escalating guerrilla war, Bush appointees clung to the belief that they were fighting a handful of dead-enders and foreign terrorists.

As a result, they casually swelled the ranks of our foes - remember, Moktada al-Sadr was never going to be our friend, but he didn't have to be our enemy. They even treated Iraqi security forces with contempt, not bothering to provide them with adequate training or equipment.

In an analysis titled "Inexcusable Failure," Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies details how the U.S. "failed to treat the Iraqis as partners in the counterinsurgency effort." U.S. officials, he declares, are "guilty of a gross military, administrative and moral failure."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/24/opinion/24krugman.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=