Report from Fallujah -- Destroying a Town in Order to Save it Exposing the Conservative Straw Man - "Productivity" Bush Defends His Actions in Summer Before 9/11: President Says He Thought FBI, CIA Were on the Case Text of Aug. 6, 2001, memo to Bush News Analysis: CIA terror memo is the new campaign issue A New Meaning for 'Bully Pulpit'As for course corrections, indeed, pulling back and reducing our footprint in Iraq for example, is possible and doable. Instead of an announced plan to keep 80,000 to 100,000 troops in Iraq at our bases indefinitely, we should announce and implement a more drastic reduction to less than 10,000 troops, and simultaneously accelerate the self government of Iraq. To correct the wrongs done already in Iraq, contracts awarded to members of the US appointed governing council and their extended families should be invalidated and an open public bidding process initiated to ensure that we have not created an new secular Shia elite led by Ahmad Chalabi in Iraq to take the place of the secular Sunni elite of the Ba-ath Party.
Robert Dreyfuss & Laura Rozen | Still Dreaming of Tehran Family of Slain Soldier Pleads For Sisters U.S. Military: 76 Troops Die in Iraq Fighting This Month Army: 7 Employees of U.S. Firm Missing in IraqOne of the pious maxims of American politics for the last 40 years has been that a candidate should never be attacked on religious grounds. This stricture is eminently fair insofar as private faith is concerned. But when personal faith begins to determine public policy, then the issue becomes fair game.
'V word' is back as US public shows signs of turning Highway to hell: The road to Falluja Florida Seniors Look for Voting Absolution Brief Raises Credibility QuestionsSenior British commanders have condemned American military tactics in Iraq as heavy-handed and disproportionate.
One senior Army officer told The Telegraph that America's aggressive methods were causing friction among allied commanders and that there was a growing sense of "unease and frustration" among the British high command.
The officer, who agreed to the interview on the condition of anonymity, said that part of the problem was that American troops viewed Iraqis as untermenschen - the Nazi expression for "sub-humans".
Speaking from his base in southern Iraq, the officer said: "My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are. Their attitude towards the Iraqis is tragic, it's awful.
"The US troops view things in very simplistic terms. It seems hard for them to reconcile subtleties between who supports what and who doesn't in Iraq. It's easier for their soldiers to group all Iraqis as the bad guys. As far as they are concerned Iraq is bandit country and everybody is out to kill them."
As the Bush administration comes under increasing fire for its decision to attack Iraq, the Democratic contender, John F. Kerry, is profiting from his perceived status as a critic of Bush's foreign policy. A patrician grandee with a pleasing mix of liberal and patriotic views might seem to many Americans a welcome relief from the bellicose Texan with his faux swagger and his team of men who seem to have "military-industrial complex" written across their menacing foreheads. But if anti-war Americans do elect Kerry for that reason, they will have duped themselves. Warmongering will be worse under Kerry than under Bush, and real peaceniks should therefore vote for Dubya.
Also by John Laughland:
Le Monde | The Americans Pile up Military and Political Setbacks The Race Heats Up G.I.'s: Dust Made Us Ill Text of Bush's Aug. 6, 2001, Intel Brief Thousands in Fallouja Flee; Council Totters U.S. Losing Support of Key Iraqis Hugh Eakin | Roots of Terrorism (and bin Laden) Found in Cold War Marshal Defends Erasure of Scalia Speech Vietnam's Lessons Then and Now Knight Ridder photographer recounts harrowing day in Ramadi The planners of the war in Iraq have just one answer to their critics: 'shut up': Thanks to the subservience of many members of the press, the US administration has had an easy timeJust shut up. That's the new foreign policy line of our masters. When Senator Edward Kennedy dubbed Iraq "George Bush's Vietnam", US Secretary of State Colin Powell told him to be "a little more restrained and careful" in his comments. I recall that when the US commenced its bombing of Afghanistan, the White House spokesman claimed that some journalists were "asking questions that the American people wouldn't want asked". Back in the early 1980s, when I reported on the Iranian soldiers on a troop train to Tehran who were coughing Saddam's mustard gas out of their lungs in blood and mucus, a Foreign Office official told my then editor on The Times that my dispatch was "not helpful". In other words, stop criticising our ally, Saddam.
Steve Lopez | All's Well in Iraq - Just Ask the Dead The New York Times | The Rice Version Houston Firm Indicted For Role In Energy Crisis: Reliant Energy Accused of Forcing Up Electricity Prices Iraq in Turmoil on Anniversary of Saddam's Fall Patrick Sabatier | Rout Bush Told of Hijack Warning Weeks Before 9/11 Norman Solomon | The Quest for a Monopoly on Violence Time to dust off the 'Q-word' for Iraq? Hart wants to testify before 9-11 commission Scalia's Tape Tactics at Issue: Experts question legal basis for confiscation -- apparently on justice's orders -- of recordings. Legal Experts Express Concern About Erasure of Scalia TapesDear Ms. Rice:
I am writing to communicate four points regarding your testimony yesterday under oath before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.
Point #1: You are a liar.
Joe Conason | Condoleezza Rice, The Artful DodgerA federal marshal who required two reporters to erase audiotapes of a speech by Justice Antonin Scalia at a Mississippi high school on Wednesday may have violated the law, legal experts said yesterday.
[...]
Nehemiah Flowers, the United States marshal in Jackson, Miss., said the reporters had been advised of the ban "intermittently, individually."
"It is my understanding that Deputy Rube did not touch anyone and asked politely if they would erase the tape," Mr. Flowers added.
He denied that such a request was coercive or unlawful. "We do have that authority," he said. "This is a justice of the Supreme Court, and as far as we're concerned, we're following the court's orders."
In a statement released by the Marshals Service in Washington, a spokeswoman said Ms. Rube's actions "were based on the justice's standing policy prohibiting such recordings of his remarks."
"That policy," the statement continued, "was most recently enunciated immediately prior to the first speaking venue attended by Scalia that morning." The speech at the high school was in a different place and later in the day.
Legal experts said the deputy's actions were legally questionable.
"The seizure and destruction of a reporter's tape recordings is remarkable, and I think it would be difficult to find any law that would justify it," said Luther T. Munford, a First Amendment expert at Phelps Dunbar, a law firm in Jackson.
"In February [2000] when I entered Grozny, it was as if I was hit by an apocalyptic vision," Bouvet writes. "In 20 years of covering wars I never had the occasion to feel like a astronaut landing on another planet. I had visited Grozny four times in the last war, but this time I couldn't even be sure where I was. Where Minutka Square -- with it imposing buildings that lead to Lenin Avenue -- once was nothing remained, just a huge, imposing void. The Russians had dynamited the city, leaving it totally in ruins."
Sooner or later, in desperation, Bush will surely order the destruction of wide swaths -- inhabited by "bad guys" -- of Iraqi cities in response to the undefeatable Shia and Sunni uprisings against the occupation. It is inevitable. Like Sharon and the Likudites, Bush's ideological mentors, the US military will eventually repeat the atrocities and violations of human rights and international law the Israelis eagerly committed in the Jenin refugee camp in September of 2000. Civilians always pay the price for any "up tick" in support for the resistance -- be they Palestinians, Chechnians, or Iraqis.
Both Republicans and so-called liberal Democrats will fervently support the flattening of Iraqi cities and the mass murder of civilians, especially now that the Shia have joined the Sunnis in resisting Bush's neoliberal plans for Iraq. Or should I say the Likudite plan for the Arab Middle East?
[...]
As the events in Samarra last year reveal, US troops respond to attacks on convoys by slaughtering civilians in trigger-happy fashion. "There was an attack and an exchange of fire between the Americans and the resistance lasting half an hour," Samarra police chief, Colonel Ismail Mahmoud Mohammed, told the media. "The resistance withdrew, then [US] bombardments started, using all manner of weapons in all directions and without any discrimination." This resulted in numerous civilian dead and wounded. "We received the bodies of eight civilians, including a woman and a child," said hospital director Abd Tawfiq. "More than 60 people wounded by gunfire and shrapnel from US rounds are being treated at the hospital." Many of the wounded came from the al-Shafi mosque, targeted by US rockets and gunfire.
"So far, in the 'war on terror' initiated since 9/11, the USA and its allies have been responsible for over 13,000 civilian deaths, not only the 10,000 in Iraq, but also 3,000-plus civilian deaths in Afghanistan, another death toll that continues to rise long after the world's attention has moved on," reports the Iraq Body Count website. "Elsewhere in the world over the same period, paramilitary forces hostile to the USA have killed 408 civilians in 18 attacks worldwide. Adding the official 9/11 death toll (2,976 on 29 October 2003) brings the total to just under 3,500."
The Pentagon and Rumsfeld brag about avoiding "collateral damage," but the history of warfare over the last 60 or so years tells a different story. In fact, the deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure is a military strategy used over and over with gruesome results. From the Allied fire and nuclear bombings of German and Japanese cities during WWII to Bush Senior's calculated plan to destroy Iraqi sanitation and water purification plants during the Gulf War, the engineered mass murder of innocent civilians is a frequently used "tactic" of war. It will be no different in Iraq now that Shi'ite and Sunni resistance fighters have apparently come together to fight the US occupation.
Last year a newspaper in Ohio revealed the numerous war crimes committed against Vietnamese civilians by the US Army's Tiger Force in 1967. "The paper said the Army's investigation of Tiger Force found 27 soldiers who said the severing of ears from dead Vietnamese was an accepted practice," Reuters reported in October. "One soldier told the newspaper that troops would wear necklaces of ears to scare Vietnamese civilians."
As would-be president John Kerry admitted before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, US soldiers in Vietnam "raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country." Kerry admitted taking part in these war crimes. "Yes, I committed the same kinds of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages."
Since the Winter Soldier investigation and his testimony before the Senate, however, Kerry has undergone a remarkable transformation from an antiwar activist to a Republican Lite senator who wants to send an additional 40,000 troops to Iraq to bomb mosques and shoot down protesting Iraqis. "I have to tell you, sometimes in foreign policy, certain things are complicated," Kerry told MSNBC's Chris Matthews last October.
US bombs Iraq mosque, 40 dead Will Fallujah Be Leveled?Leading Democratic and Republican figures on Wednesday united in condemnation of the United Nation's oil-for-food programme in Iraq through which Saddam Hussein's regime diverted billions of dollars despite international supervision.
Baghdad BurningIraq analysts fear that the US is about to commit a war-crime by laying siege to Fallujah and punishing its citizens by disallowing shipments of food and water.
With no independent reports from Fallujah, Iraq analysts warn the world could be kept in the dark about scores of civilians likely to be caught in military confrontation between US forces and Iraqi resistance.
Christopher Layne: Deeper into the abyssFalloojeh has been cut off from the rest of Iraq for the last three days. It's terrible. They've been bombing it constantly and there are dozens dead. Yesterday they said that the only functioning hospital in the city was hit by the Americans and there's no where to take the wounded except a meager clinic that can hold up to 10 patients at a time. There are over a hundred wounded and dying and there's nowhere to bury the dead because the Americans control the area surrounding the only graveyard in Falloojeh; the bodies are beginning to decompose in the April heat. The troops won't let anyone out of Falloojeh and they won't let anyone into it either- the people are going to go hungry in a matter of days because most of the fresh produce is brought from outside of the city. We've been trying to call a friend who lives there for three days and we can't contact him.
This is supposed to be 'retaliation' for what happened last week with the American contractors- if they were indeed contractors. Whoever they were, it was gruesome and wrong? I feel for their families. Was I surprised? Hardly. This is an occupation and for those of you naïve enough to actually believe Chalabi and the Bush administration when they said the troops were going to be 'greeted with flowers and candy' then I can only wish that God will, in the future, grant you wisdom.
Handling the 'outlaw' Ukraine troops leave Iraqi city in hands of radical ShiitesFOR the US, things in Iraq have gone from bad to worse during the past week. The grisly killing and mutilation of four American civilians in the city of Fallujah - a hotbed of anti-US resistance in the so-called Sunni triangle - was bad enough. The fallout from that incident is likely to be compounded by the US Marine Corps' retaliatory raid on that city on Monday.
'Dream' PAC Not Living Up To Goal: Little Money Goes To Elect MinoritiesIEV (AFP) - Ukrainian troops withdrew from the Iraqi city of Kut, south of the capital Baghdad, after heavy fighting with supporters of radical Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr who now control the city, the defence ministry said.
"At the request of the Americans, and to preserve the life of our military, the commander of the Ukrainian contingent decided to evacuate the civil administration staff and Ukrainian troops from Kut," the ministry said in a statement.
"The operation began at dawn on Wednesday ... under escort from attack helicopters," the ministry added.
Univ. drops Cheney forum charges: Students who yelled at Second Lady ask for apology from administratorsWhen Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-Tex.) took charge of an independent political fund called American Dream PAC in 1999, he made clear that its mission was "to give significant, direct financial assistance to first-rate minority GOP candidates."
Since then, only $48,750 -- or 8.9 percent -- of the $547,000 the southwest Texas congressman has raised for his political action committee has gone to minority office-seekers while more than $100,000 has been routed to Republican Party organizations or causes, including a GOP redistricting effort in Texas, a legal defense fund for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) and Bonilla's reelection campaign. Most of the remainder of the money went to legal fees, fundraisers in Miami and other cities, airline tickets, hotels, catering services, consultants and salaries.
The conflict stemmed from a comment and two questions Cawdery, DeVoe and Grim shouted outside the prescribed format during the Feb. 29 Brody Public Policy Forum for which Cheney was the featured guest. The program invites policy experts to discuss events of national and international importance. However, most of the discussion centered on Cheney's children's books and love of history.
Audience members had been provided with cards to submit questions for the moderator to ask. In response to one of Cheney's statements, Cawdery shouted "bulls---." DeVoe later called out a question about slavery reparations and Cheney responded by saying she did not support the idea.
Grim's question, which he called out as the event ended, pertained to same-sex marriages in San Francisco and Cheney's openly gay daughter, Mary. Cheney did not reply.
The students said they are happy the charges have been dropped but said the action was motivated by media attention instead of the merits of the case.
"I just think it's shameless how quickly [university officials] folded and how obvious they made it that they're willing to intimidate speech until they're pressured by an outside authority," Grim said. "I wish that their student code of conduct was enough, in and of itself, to protect the student body."
Cheney Tax Plan From '86 Would Have Raised Gas Prices Experts split on effects of 'terror chemical' Bush Compares a Guest to His Mother: President Bush, Unable to Help Himself, Compares a Guest to His Mother, but She Is Not AmusedThe US envoy to Afghanistan has angered Pakistan by warning the country that it must eliminate "terrorist sanctuaries" near their common border or US forces will have to step in. In a speech Monday at a private Washington think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Zalmay Khalilzad said that if Islamabad doesn't solve the problem then "we [the US] will have to do it ourselves."
Kennedy: 'Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam' On Visit to Haiti, Powell Says the U.S. Weighs Prosecution of Aristide on Corruption ChargesEL DORADO, Ark. April 6 -- President Bush has a penchant for dishing out good-natured insults, and usually the victim laughs along. But Sammie Briery didn't seem much amused when Bush fired one at her Tuesday.
Bush was wrapping up a town hall-style appearance at South Arkansas Community College when he let the jest fly. It was a mother joke, a blonde joke and an insult all in one.
"You and my mother go to the same hair-dye person," Bush said to Briery, whose blondish bob bore little resemblance to Barbara Bush's shock of white hair.
The audience in the gymnasium laughed, and Briery smiled, but replied firmly: "President Bush, I'm a natural blonde."
"Oh, yes," Bush agreed.
"I'm just a natural blonde," she repeated.
"I couldn't help myself, sorry," Bush shrugged.
With that, Bush moved quickly to end the session. He turned to Bob Watson, superintendent of the El Dorado Public Schools who had opened the meeting by inadvertently insulting Bush.
"Governor excuse me, President," Watson said.
Bush muttered, "How quickly they forget."
When Watson offered to shake Bush's hand, the president shot back: "Just don't hug me."
Blix Says Iraq Worse Off After War Blix: Iraq Worse Off Now Than With Saddam On the Brink of Anarchy: US Now Fighting on Two Fronts Le Monde | The Iraqi ImbroglioPORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, April 5 ? Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said during a visit here on Monday that American judicial authorities were looking into prosecuting the former Haitian president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, on corruption charges.
Sadr's Men Begin Broadcasting, Fallujans Feel Squeeze Prober: I knew in days U.S. 'wrong' on WMDThe clue for seventeen across, a seven-letter empty space in the Friday March 26 New York Times crossword puzzle was "detainee's entitlement." It took me a while to break the code -- the Friday crossword's always a nightmare -- and discover that the "entitlement" was "one call" (which fit with five down, "obsessed captain" -- Ahab). I thought to myself, isn't that a clue for another lifetime. More up-to-date might have been, "no calls," even if "obsessed captain" (of which we have more than a few at the moment) would have had to move elsewhere. Actually, we should probably do some other cultural revising to fit our changed circumstances. Now, for instance, when E.T. finds himself trapped on Earth, there will be no calls home and no help will be at hand. After all, this is Guantanamo World.
President Bush Discusses Iraq, 911 Commission with ReportersWASHINGTON - The CIA's former weapons hunter in Iraq realized within days of arriving in Baghdad last summer that dictator Saddam Hussein was no longer stockpiling a banned arsenal, according to a new report.
David Kay, with whom the Bush administration placed its hopes of finding Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, sent a startling E-mail to CIA Director George Tenet in early July 2003.
"I wrote that it looks as though they did not produce weapons," Kay reveals in an interview with the new Vanity Fair.
Remarks by the President to the Travel Pool
Central Piedmont Community College-Central Campus
Charlotte, North Carolina
US helicopters fire on Sadr supporters in BaghdadIn this particular incident, with Sadr, this is one person who is deciding that rather than allow democracy to flourish, he's going to exercise force. And we just can't let it stand. As I understand, the CPA today announced a warrant for his arrest. This is one person -- this is a person, and followers, who are trying to say, we don't want democracy -- as a matter of fact, we'll decide the course of democracy by the use of force. And that is the opposite of democracy.
Shiite Uprising Signals Double Trouble for U.S. - ExpertsUS Apache helicopters sprayed fire on the private army of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr during fierce battles today in the western Baghdad district of Al-Showla, witnesses and an AFP correspondent said.
"Two Apaches opened fire on armed members of the Mehdi Army," said Showla resident Abbas Amid.
The fighting erupted when five trucks of US soldiers and the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC) tried to enter the district and were attacked by Sadr supporters, Amid said.
Coming under fire, the ICDC, a paramilitary force trained by the Americans, turned on the US soldiers and started to shoot at them, according to Amid.
The soldiers fled their vehicles and headed for cover and then began to battle both the Mehdi Army and the ICDC members, he said. Their vehicles were set ablaze.
Report: U.N. cites police for being too forceful at rally UN Criticizes U.S. Treatment of Anti-War Protesters Kennedy Likens Bush to Nixon 'Credibility Gap' Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) Speech on Domestic Policy IssuesIndependent analysts, such as Anthony Cordesman of the conservative Center for Strategic and International Studies here, have long warned that active opposition by the Shiite population would doom the occupation and make Iraq ungovernable.
Jump directly to a given section of the speech:
NEWSWEEK EXCLUSIVE: Before Rice Agreed to Testify in Public, 9/11 Commission Executive Director Faxed White House 1945 Photo Showing Presidential Chief of Staff Appearing Before Pearl Harbor Congressional PanelThe Brazilian government has refused to allow U.N. nuclear inspectors to examine a facility for enriching uranium under construction near Rio de Janeiro, according to Brazilian officials and diplomats in Vienna, home of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Bush Loyalists Pack Iraq Press OfficeZelikow Warned White House Counsel That Unless Rice Testified in Public, Photo Would '...Be All Over Washington in 24 Hours'
AP blasts Post for smearBAGHDAD, Iraq - Inside the marble-floored palace hall that serves as the press office of the U.S.-led coalition, Republican Party operatives lead a team of Americans who promote mostly good news about Iraq.
Iraq's top Shiite cleric refuses to meet BremerThe Associated Press is ripping the New York Post for an editorial that implied the news service was in cahoots with Iraqi insurgents who killed Americans.
Kelly Smith Tunney, AP's vice president and director of corporate communications, said the respected news service had told the Post that it "takes great exception" to the editorial "disparaging AP news teams in areas of conflict in the Middle East."
"Your remarks indicate a fundamental lack of understanding of the dangers and tremendous challenges for all journalists in all media covering war and conflict," Tunney says she told the Post.
Americans shrinking as junk food takes its toll: Poverty and poor diet mean the average US man is getting smaller, while Europeans keep growing taller Bush attacks environment 'scare stories' Secret email gives advice on denying climate change Bush and Blair made secret pact for Iraq warA spokesman for the Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Sistani rejected any contact between the Ayatollah and American occupiers, UAE's al-Bayan newspaper said on its website Saturday, quoting Abdolmehdi Karbalaei, the Ayatollah's spokesman
A few miles north, black hearts were breaking at the sound of this proud parade of white liberals. Air America is still finding placement on stations across the country, but in New York it is leasing the time for its 19-hour broadcast day on WLIB-AM 1190, which was until this week a pillar of the black community. For three decades, the station had broadcast a mix of talk radio, funky music and news reports on local and Caribbean issues.
But 'LIB was a perennial money loser, unable to pull enough advertisers to its tiny market share, and Air America made an offer the owners apparently couldn't refuse. To some in the black community the action looked predatory, the political stripes of the predator irrelevant because they don't see a difference anyway between Democrats and Republicans.
Be careful what you say on campusWASHINGTON, April 1 -- Forty-five senators and 10 state attorneys general asked the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday to withdraw its proposal on how to regulate mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants and replace it with a more stringent proposal.
The agency said in December that it would abandon a Clinton administration plan in favor of a market system that would let plants buy and sell the rights to emit mercury.
In separate letters to the agency, the senators and the attorneys general said the new proposal would not do enough to protect children's health and would violate the Clean Air Act. Cynthia Bergman, the E.P.A. spokeswoman, responded with a statement that said, "The final rule will be defined by the availability of technology that has been adequately tested and available for industrywide deployment."
Congressmen seek probe of public relations contract to promote logging in Sierra forestsThe most ominous threat to academic freedom in decades looms in a seemingly innocuous Senate bill expected to come up for vote shortly. A short but critical clause would rob our society of the open exchange of ideas on college campuses that is vital to our democracy.
House Resolution 3077 passed last fall. It included a provision to establish an advisory board to monitor campus international studies centers in order to ensure that they advance the national interest. While the law would apply to all federally funded institutes with an international focus, the target is clearly the nation's 17 centers for Middle East studies. The driving force behind this provision is the same group of conservative ideologues who have long promoted the war on Iraq and who support the extreme right-wing politics of the Sharon government in Israel. Their aim is to defend the foreign policy of this administration by stifling critical and informed discussion on U.S. campuses.
Be careful what books you buy or check out from the library. You could be monitored under the terms of the U.S. Patriot Act. A further provision of that law threatens criminal prosecution of anyone alerting you to government inspection of your selections.
Be careful what readings you assign. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was sued by the American Family Association Center for Law and Policy for assigning a book on Islam for incoming freshman students. The university held firm, and, fortunately, the court of appeals dismissed the suit.
Be careful what you say in or out of class. Campus Watch and other hawkish, pro-Israeli right-wing organizations have launched campaigns to pressure and discredit professors judged to be un-American for questioning U.S. policy in the Middle East. Some organizations openly recruit students to inform on their teachers.
...
Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn., announced his intent last April to introduce legislation cutting federal funding to institutions of higher learning where students or faculty criticize Israel, labeling such criticism -- regardless of its content or basis in fact -- as anti-Semitic.
All of this will seem like child's play, though, if the attempt to stifle academic freedom is formalized through Congress.
If the legislation before the Senate passes, an advisory board would monitor area studies programs that receive money from the U.S. government under the Title VI program. The Association of American University Professors, the ACLU and most professional organizations have raised alarms about this unprecedented government invasion of the classroom. Among their concerns are the board's sweeping investigative powers, lack of accountability and makeup, which would be composed in part from two agencies with national security responsibilities.
'The Wizard of Oz Letter': Bush pulls back the curtain on who really runs the White HouseTwo congressmen want an investigation of whether the U.S. Forest Service illegally hired a public relations firm to promote a plan to cut wildfire danger by increasing logging in Sierra Nevada forests.
Democratic Reps. Nick Rahall of West Virginia, on the House Resources Committee, and Jay Inslee of Washington, on the forests subcommittee, noted the contract echoes a similar pact canceled five years ago involving the same Forest Service officials.
Born Under a Bush Sign Will the US Army Attack the (Turkish) Kurds? Anti-American Voices Get Louder Across Iraq EU: IDF actions that harm civilians akin to 'acts of terror'April 2 - This was the week the curtain got pulled back on the Bush presidency. In exchange for allowing Condoleezza Rice to testify under oath, President Bush gets to bring along his vice president when he appears privately before the commission.
A top Republican strategist dubbed the legal document striking the unusual deal "the Wizard of Oz letter" because it strips away the myth that Bush is in charge. Until now, it's been all speculation about Vice President Cheney's influence. With the revelation of the tandem testimony, nobody with a straight face can deny Cheney is a co-president or worse, the puppeteer who pulls Bush's strings.
Bush to reassure PM: Israel won't have to retreat to Green Line Howard Zinn: The Ultimate Betrayal Treasury Analyzes Kerry's Tax Proposals Americans killed in Iraq; bodies hanged from bridge Democrats Attack Use of Treasury Dept. to Criticize Kerry Democrat Budgets Reviewed Protecting Civil Servants Bush Counsel Called 9/11 Panelist Before Clarke Testified U.S. traded Iran oil deal for SDF in Iraq: DemocratMusings about a second Bush term typically assume another four years of the same right-wing policies we've had to date. But it'd likely be far worse. So far, the Bush administration has had to govern with the expectation of facing American voters again in 2004. But suppose George W. Bush wins a second term. The constraint of a re-election contest will be gone. Knowing that voters can no longer turn them out, and that this will be their last shot at remaking America, the radical conservatives will be unleashed.
A friend who specializes in foreign policy and hobnobs with subcabinet officials in the Defense and State departments told me that the only thing that's stopped the Bushies from storming into Iran and North Korea is the upcoming election. If Bush is re-elected, "[Dick] Cheney and [Donald] Rumsfeld are out of the box," he said. "They'll take Bush's re-election as a mandate to wage the 'war on terror' everywhere and anywhere."
WASHINGTON (Kyodo) A U.S. representative said Tuesday that the administration of President George W. Bush allowed Japan to invest in a major oil field project in Iran in exchange for its dispatch of Self-Defense Forces troops to Iraq.
"An administration desperate for re-election will take 550 soldiers from Japan, which provide the veneer of international support and credibility for our relations in Iraq, which is the preoccupation of the electorate, and give the green light to $2.8 billion going from Japan to Iran," said Brad Sherman, a California Democrat.
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Last modified: Sun May 9 18:42:33 CDT 2004