This pretty much sums up the Village Idiot from Texas.

The Project for A New American Century
Educate yourself on the mission that shapes our U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East
by Ragu

This is the website for The Project for A New American Century. This is a Neo-conservative Political Action Committee thinly disguised as non-profit think tank. This website was originally launched around the 2000 elections as a platform for the politcal rhetoric of the neo-con's cabal of right wing heavy hitters. Namely William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and chairman of the PNAC, Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of the DoD, Richard Pearle, senior advisor to Dubya, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Ashcroft, Bush Jr., basically the whole crew. The site used to be heavy on the stars-and-stripes motif, with nice full color photos of all the boys, smiling and smirking like foxes in a henhouse. I notice recently it has been toned down considerably, so as to appear more non-partisian and more credible. The names and pictures of Cheney, Pearle, Rumsfeld, Bush and Ashcroft have been removed, as well as most/all mention of their association with the PNAC. Don't be fooled, the Bush Junta is still firmly esconched in the mix, and their dumbass policies are still driving the bus at the PNAC.

If you actually take the time to read the mission statement of the PNAC, you will most likely end up with with one of two impressions. Either you will be so Gung-Ho about American World Domination you will gladly sign off on the next 2-3 decades of U.S. imperialist military intervention in the Middle East (and the inevitable global Jihad that goes with it), or you will be so terrified you will do anything to see that George W. Bush and his administration never comes close to getting elected or appointed to any government office ever again. Seriously, if you truly fathom the cause of the PNAC, it will be one or the other.

Surprisingly, not too many people, especially conservative Republicans, have ever even heard of the PNAC. If they had been paying attention, they would know the PNAC proudly advocates long term American military presence in the Middle East in order to regulate the worlds oil distribution and therefore the world economy. As a bonus of the military presence, the PNAC advocates the spreading of democracy thoughout the Arab Middle East, at the end of a gun if necessary, in order to ensure that stability. That's it in a nutshell.

All i can say is, Militaristically Imposed Democracy seems someone paradoxical at best. But mark my words, regardless of the outcome of the current Iraq War and its aftermath, our military is never coming home from the Middle East. Iraq will become the new Korean DMZ, and never-ending occupation, only it will be exponentially uglier and more costly to the U.S., our economy, our culture, and our credibility abroad.

The PNAC manifesto was taken in large part from a White Paper written by Paul Wolfowitz and William Kristol during the waning days of Bush Sr's term in office. The paper, entitled "Defense Strategies for the United States, 1991-1992", advocated the overthrow of Iraq and the establishment of long-term military bases there, in order to control the acquisition and distribution of a large percentage of the world's oil reserves, and thereby provide for long term stability of the global and U.S. economy. I used to have a link to a pdf of this policy report, but it has since been moved/removed. Gee, i wonder why.
To surmise the situation, Wolfy couldn't sell Bush Sr. on the overthrow plan near the end of the 1st Persian Gulf War, so it was shelved during the Clinton admin's, only to be dusted off in the 2000 election as the plan that would turn an eventual Dubya presidency into an American Mission to Save the World. Noble cause? Maybe. Incredible Hubris? Most definitely.

What i'm getting at here is that the Iraq War was on the menu in the Bush Jr. White House from Day One. The catastrophe of 9/11 just made it easier to sell to the gullible and/or blindly allegiant segment of the American populace on the need to go fuck up Iraq.

And that's just what we've done. We've fucked up a situation in Iraq that we had a relatively good hold on. Sure, Saddam defied some 17 UN resolutions during the twelve year period of US/UN sanctions, but it didn't really mean all that much whether he complied or defied them. The US still held air control of over half of the country of Iraq during that period, we could still bomb and cruise missle strike anywhere in the country at any time with relative impunity, as was proven dozens of times during the Clinton Admin. During the sanctions, Saddam worked some backdoor oil deals to line his pockets, but his showed no military aggression to any of his neighbors, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, or even Israel. He had no more influence on events in the Middle East than any other leader of an Arab nation, and quite arguably he wielded less influence. And as is becoming more apparent all the time, he wasn't willing to leverage what little control he did have by joining forces with Al Qeada....but that's a whole 'nuther rant.

So read about The Project for a New American Century, and decide what you think. Maybe it will make a difference in your understanding of our U.S. Foreign Policy decisions of late, and the motives behind the Bush Doctorine and the War on Iraq. Maybe not, but at least you will understand this administration and it mission for what it really is.

Here are a couple of sites worth checking out if you're looking to vent a little anti-Bush sentiment.

http://www.sickofthiscrap.com/

http://www.bushforpresidentofiraq.com/

6.19.04
Bush told he is playing into Bin Laden's hands
Julian Borger in Washington
Saturday June 19, 2004
The Guardian

A senior US intelligence official is about to publish a bitter condemnation of America's counter-terrorism policy, arguing that the west is losing the war against al-Qaida and that an "avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked" war in Iraq has played into Osama bin Laden's hands.

Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, due out next month, dismisses two of the most frequent boasts of the Bush administration: that Bin Laden and al-Qaida are "on the run" and that the Iraq invasion has made America safer.

In an interview with the Guardian the official, who writes as "Anonymous", described al-Qaida as a much more proficient and focused organisation than it was in 2001, and predicted that it would "inevitably" acquire weapons of mass destruction and try to use them.

He said Bin Laden was probably "comfortable" commanding his organisation from the mountainous tribal lands along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Pakistani army claimed a big success in the "war against terror" yesterday with the killing of a tribal leader, Nek Mohammed, who was one of al-Qaida's protectors in Waziristan.

But Anonymous, who has been centrally involved in the hunt for Bin Laden, said: "Nek Mohammed is one guy in one small area. We sometimes forget how big the tribal areas are." He believes President Pervez Musharraf cannot advance much further into the tribal areas without endangering his rule by provoking a Pashtun revolt. "He walks a very fine line," he said yesterday.

Imperial Hubris is the latest in a relentless stream of books attacking the administration in election year. Most of the earlier ones, however, were written by embittered former officials. This one is unprecedented in being the work of a serving official with nearly 20 years experience in counter-terrorism who is still part of the intelligence establishment.

The fact that he has been allowed to publish, albeit anonymously and without naming which agency he works for, may reflect the increasing frustration of senior intelligence officials at the course the administration has taken.

Peter Bergen, the author of two books on Bin Laden and al-Qaida, said: "His views represent an amped-up version of what is emerging as a consensus among intelligence counter-terrorist professionals."
Anonymous does not try to veil his contempt for the Bush White House and its policies. His book describes the Iraq invasion as "an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantage.

"Our choice of timing, moreover, shows an abject, even wilful failure to recognise the ideological power, lethality and growth potential of the threat personified by Bin Laden, as well as the impetus that threat has been given by the US-led invasion and occupation of Muslim Iraq."

In his view, the US missed its biggest chance to capture the al-Qaida leader at Tora Bora in the Afghan mountains in December 2001. Instead of sending large numbers of his own troops, General Tommy Franks relied on surrogates who proved to be unreliable.

"For my money, the game was over at Tora Bora," Anonymous said.

Yesterday President Bush repeated his assertion that Bin Laden was cornered and that there was "no hole or cave deep enough to hide from American justice".

Anonymous said: "I think we overestimate significantly the stress [Bin Laden's] under. Our media and sometimes our policymakers suggest he's hiding from rock to rock and hill to hill and cave to cave. My own hunch is that he's fairly comfortable where he is."

The death and arrest of experienced operatives might have set back Bin Laden's plans to some degree but when it came to his long-term capacity to threaten the US, he said, "I don't think we've laid a glove on him".

"What I think we're seeing in al-Qaida is a change of generation," he said."The people who are leading al-Qaida now seem a lot more professional group.

"They are more bureaucratic, more management competent, certainly more literate. Certainly, this generation is more computer literate, more comfortable with the tools of modernity. I also think they're much less prone to being the Errol Flynns of al-Qaida. They're just much more careful across the board in the way they operate."

As for weapons of mass destruction, he thinks that if al-Qaida does not have them already, it will inevitably acquire them.

The most likely source of a nuclear device would be the former Soviet Union, he believes. Dirty bombs, chemical and biological weapons, could be home-made by al-Qaida's own experts, many of them trained in the US and Britain.

Anonymous, who published an analysis of al-Qaida last year called Through Our Enemies' Eyes, thinks it quite possible that another devastating strike against the US could come during the election campaign, not with the intention of changing the administration, as was the case in the Madrid bombing, but of keeping the same one in place.

"I'm very sure they can't have a better administration for them than the one they have now," he said.
"One way to keep the Republicans in power is to mount an attack that would rally the country around the president."

The White House has yet to comment publicly on Imperial Hubris, which is due to be published on July 4, but intelligence experts say it may try to portray him as a professionally embittered maverick.
The tone of Imperial Hubris is certainly angry and urgent, and the stridency of his warnings about al-Qaida led him to be moved from a highly sensitive job in the late 90s.

But Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of operations at the CIA counter-terrorism centre, said he had been vindicated by events. "He is very well respected, and looked on as a serious student of the subject."

Anonymous believes Mr Bush is taking the US in exactly the direction Bin Laden wants, towards all-out confrontation with Islam under the banner of spreading democracy.

He said: "It's going to take 10,000-15,000 dead Americans before we say to ourselves: 'What is going on'?"

In the immortal words of Dragnet's Joe Friday, "Just the facts, maam."
Indeed. Here is a nonparisian website devoted to debunking the political spin you hear from Presidents, pundits and politicians from both sides. Just because you like the messenger, that doesn't mean the message is necessarily true. Educate yourself, then vote your conscience.

http://factcheck.org/default.aspx/

If you've been following the testimonies before the 9/11 Commision,
I highly recommend you read this.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18368

Calling of a Generation
By Bill Moyers, AlterNet
April 7, 2004

President Bush spoke eloquently the other day about what the war on terror requires of us. He said, "The war on terror is not a figure of speech. It is an inescapable calling of our generation."

Those words ring true. Whatever drives them, whatever grieves them, Islamic fanatics have declared war and seem willing to wage it to the death. If they prevail, our children will grow up in a world where fear governs the imagination and determines the rules of life. Mr. Bush clearly believes what he said: The war on terror is an inescapable calling of the generation now in charge.

Like most Americans, I want to support him in that work. I want to do my part. But the president makes it hard. He confused us by going after Saddam Hussein when the villain behind the mass murders of 9/11 was Osama bin Laden. He seems not to realize how his credibility has been shredded by all the false and misleading reasons put forth to justify invading Iraq.

Lyndon Johnson never recovered from using the dubious events at the Gulf of Tonkin as an excuse to go to war in Vietnam. Even if Mr. Bush wins reelection this November, he, too, will eventually be dragged down by the powerful undertow that inevitably accompanies public deception. The public will grow intolerant of partisan predators and crony capitalists indulging in a frenzy of feeding at the troughs in Baghdad and Washington. And there will come a time when the president will have no one to rely on except his most rabid allies in the right wing media. He will discover too late that you cannot win the hearts and minds of the public at large in a nation polarized and pulverized by endless propaganda at odds with reality.

So what to do? How to assure we win this war?

The hearings in Washington suggest a start. It is clear now that the Bush White House bungled the warnings about Al Qaeda. But it's also clear that the Democrats under Bill Clinton made plenty of mistakes, as well. Why can't both parties come clean, apologize and start over? Either party could lose this war but both parties together just might win it. Why not a wartime cabinet to serve a wartime nation? Al Gore as head of Homeland Security. Gary Hart at Defense. The independent-minded John McCain or Warren Rudman at State. The world would get the point: This time we mean it, all of us – the war on terror no longer a partisan cause.

Surely, too, there are ways to subject all of us to the moral equivalent of the draft. The president put it well in another speech last week when he said, "I've seen the spirit of sacrifice and compassion renewed in our country. We've all seen our country unite in common purpose when it mattered most."

Those words ring true, as well. But so far sacrifice has been asked only of the men and women in uniform and their families: Nearly 600 dead since the war began – over 400 of them since the President landed on that aircraft carrier under a banner reading "Mission Accomplished."

Even now the privates patrolling the mean streets of Baghdad and the wilds of Afghanistan, their lives and limbs constantly at risk, are making less than $16,000 dollars a year in base pay. Here at home, meanwhile, the rich get their tax cuts – what Vice President Cheney calls "their due." Favored corporations get their contracts, subsidies and offshore loopholes. And as the president praises sacrifice, he happily passes the huge bills that are piling up debt on to children not yet born.

My thoughts started running on this track a couple of weeks ago when my wife Judith came across a relic of the past in our attic – a ration book issued by the OPA (the Office of Price Administration) with stamps for the purchase of essential goods. It's dated 1943 and it's aged so much you can barely make out the name on it – "Billy Don Moyers," the alias my mother gave me at birth. I was nine years when this ration book was issued, and America was fighting a war on two fronts, against both Nazis and Japanese warlords. Just about everything vital was going to feed the war machine, so just about everything was rationed: gasoline, tires, sugar, butter, meat, tea, diapers, kitchen utensils, lawnmowers. When stockings became scarce, women painted seams down their calves to simulate the real thing. You stood in line to get scarce items; and all of us were called upon to eat less, drive less, and do without.

Kids weren't exempt. I took this book with me to the store, and tore off exactly the number of stamps required to buy something. I never used all the stamps in this one book – that's how parsimonious people were. Or maybe it was patriotism. Anyway, I think of this now as a kind of war souvenir, a keepsake to remind me that victory on the home front began at 801 East Austin Street.

Where does the home front begin today? President Bush hasn't told us. I believe him when he says the war on terror is the inescapable calling of our generation. But it is one thing to say it, and yet another to lead all of us, and not just a partisan few, to answer it.

Bill Moyers is the host of the PBS program "Now with Bill Moyers."

The Junk Science of George W. Bush
By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., The Nation
February 26, 2004

As Jesuit schoolboys studying world history we learned that Copernicus and Galileo self-censored for many decades their proofs that the earth revolved around the sun and that a less restrained heliocentrist, Giordano Bruno, was burned alive in 1600 for the crime of sound science. With the encouragement of our professor, Father Joyce, we marveled at the capacity of human leaders to corrupt noble institutions. Lust for power had caused the Catholic hierarchy to subvert the church's most central purpose – the search for existential truths.

Today, flat-earthers within the Bush Administration – aided by right-wing allies who have produced assorted hired guns and conservative think tanks to further their goals – are engaged in a campaign to suppress science that is arguably unmatched in the Western world since the Inquisition. Sometimes, rather than suppress good science, they simply order up their own. Meanwhile, the Bush White House is purging, censoring, and blacklisting scientists and engineers whose work threatens the profits of the Administration's corporate paymasters or challenges the ideological underpinnings of their radical anti-environmental agenda. Indeed, so extreme is this campaign that more than sixty scientists, including Nobel laureates and medical experts, released a statement on February 18 that accuses the Bush Administration of deliberately distorting scientific fact "for partisan political ends."

I've had my own experiences with Torquemada's modern successors, both personal and related to my work as an environmental lawyer and advocate working for the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Waterkeeper Alliance. At the time of the World Trade Center catastrophe on September 11, 2001, I had just opened an office at 115 Broadway, cater-corner from the World Trade Center and within the official security zone to which access was, afterward, restricted for several months. Upon returning to the office in October my partner, Kevin Madonna, suffered a burning throat, nausea and a headache that was still pounding twenty-four hours after he left the building. Despite the Environmental Protection Agency's claims that air quality was safe, Kevin refused to return and we closed the office.

Many workers did not have that option; their employers relied on the EPA's nine press releases between September and December of 2001 reassuring the public about the wholesome air quality downtown. We have since learned that the government was lying to us. An Inspector General's report released last August revealed that the EPA's data did not support those assurances and that its press releases were being drafted or doctored by White House officials intent on reopening Wall Street. On September 13, just two days after the terror attack, the EPA announced that asbestos dust in the area was "very low" or entirely absent. On September 18 the agency said the air was "safe to breathe."

In fact, more than 25 percent of the samples collected by the EPA before September 18 showed presence of asbestos above the 1 percent safety benchmark. Among outside studies, one performed by scientists at the University of California, Davis, found particulates at levels never before seen in more than 7,000 similar tests worldwide. A study being performed by Mt. Sinai School of Medicine has found that 78 percent of rescue workers suffered lung ailments and 88 percent had ear, nose and throat problems in the months following the attack and that about half still had persistent lung and respiratory illnesses nine months to a year later. Dan Tishman, whose company was involved in the reconstruction at 140 West Street, required his crews to wear respirators but recalls seeing many rescue and construction workers laboring unprotected – no doubt relying on the government's assurances. "The frustrating thing is that everyone just counts on the EPA to be the watchdog of public health," he says. "When that role is compromised, people can get hurt."

I also recall the case of Dr. James Zahn, a nationally respected microbiologist with the Agriculture Department's research service, who accepted my invitation to speak to an April 2002 conference of more than 1,000 family farm advocates and environmental and civic leaders in Clear Lake, Iowa. In a rigorous taxpayer-funded study, Zahn had identified bacteria that can make people sick – and that are resistant to antibiotics – in the air surrounding industrial-style hog farms. His studies proved that billions of these "superbugs" were traveling across property lines daily, endangering the health of neighbors and their herds.

I was shocked when Zahn canceled his appearance on the day of the conference under orders from the Agriculture Department in Washington. I later uncovered a fax trail proving the order was prompted by lobbyists from the National Pork Producers Council. Zahn told me that his supervisor at the USDA, under pressure from the hog industry, had ordered him not to publish his study and that he had been forced to cancel more than a dozen public appearances at local planning boards and county health commissions seeking information about health impacts of industry mega-farms. Soon after my conference, Zahn resigned from the government in disgust.

Ignoring Bad News
The Bush Administration's first instinct when it comes to science has been to suppress, discredit or alter facts it doesn't like. Probably the best-known case is global warming. Over the past two years the Administration has done this to a dozen major government studies on global warming, as well as to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its own efforts to stall action to control industrial emissions. The list also includes major long-term studies by the federal government's National Research Council and National Academy of Sciences, and by scientific teams at the EPA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA, and a 2002 collaborative report by scientists at all three of those agencies.

The Administration has taken special pains to shield Vice President Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, which is part of an industry that has contributed $58 million to Republicans since 2000. Halliburton is the leading practitioner of a process used in extracting oil and gas known as hydraulic fracturing, in which benzene is injected into underground formations. EPA scientists studying the process in 2002 found that it could contaminate ground-water supplies in excess of federal drinking water standards. A week after reporting their findings to Congressional staff members, however, they revised the data to indicate that benzene levels would not exceed government standards. In a letter to Representative Henry Waxman, EPA officials said the change was made based on "industry feedback."

As a favor to utility and coal industries, America's largest mercury dischargers, the EPA sat for nine months on a report exposing the catastrophic impact on children's health of mercury, finally releasing it in February 2003. Among the findings of the report: The bloodstream of one in twelve US women is saturated with enough mercury to cause neurological damage, permanent IQ loss and a grim inventory of other diseases in their unborn children. The list goes on. In October 2001 Interior Secretary Gale Norton, responding to a Senate committee inquiry on the effects of oil drilling on caribou in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, falsely claimed that the caribou would not be affected, because they calve outside the area targeted for drilling. She later explained that she somehow substituted "outside" for "inside." She also substituted findings from a study financed by an oil company for some of the ones that the Fish and Wildlife Service had prepared for her.

In another case, according to the Wall Street Journal, Norton and White House political adviser Karl Rove pressed for changes that would allow diversion of substantial amounts of water from the Klamath River to benefit local supporters and agribusiness contributors. Some 34,000 endangered salmon were killed after National Marine Fisheries scientists altered their findings on the amount of water the salmon required. Environmentalists describe it as the largest fish kill in the history of the West. Mike Kelly, the fisheries biologist on the Klamath who drafted the biological opinion, told me that under the current plan coho salmon are probably headed for extinction. According to Kelly, "The morale is very low among scientists here. We are under pressure to get the right results. This Administration is putting the species at risk for political gain. And not just in the Klamath."

Roger Kennedy, former director of the National Park Service, told me that the alteration and deletion of scientific information is now standard procedure at Interior. "It's hard to decide what is more demoralizing about the Administration's politicization of the scientific process," he said, "its disdain for professional scientists working for our government or its willingness to deceive the American public."

Getting the Right Answer
But suppressing or altering science can be a tricky business; the Bush Administration has found it easier at times simply to arrange to get the results it wants. A case in point is the decision in July by the EPA's regional office overseeing the western Everglades to accept a study financed predominantly by developers, which concludes that wetlands discharge more pollutants than they absorb. There was no peer review or public comment. With its approval, the EPA is giving developers credit for improving water quality by replacing natural wetlands with golf courses and other developments.

The study was financed by the Water Enhancement and Restoration Committee, which was formed primarily by local developers and chaired by Rick Barber, the consultant for a golf course development for which the EPA had denied a permit because it would pollute surrounding waters and destroy wetlands. The study contradicts everything known about wetlands functioning, including a determination by more than twenty-five scientists and managers at the Tampa Bay Estuary Program that, on balance, wetlands do not generate nitrogen pollution. Bruce Boler, a biologist and water-quality specialist working for the EPA office, resigned in protest. Boler says the developers massaged the data to support their theory by evaluating samples collected near roads and bridges, where developments discharge pollutants. "It was like the politics trumped the science," he told us.

In a similar case, last November the EPA cut a private deal with a pesticide manufacturer to take over federal studies of a pesticide it manufactures. Atrazine is the most heavily utilized weedkiller in America. First approved in 1958, by the 1980s it had been identified as a potential carcinogen associated with high incidences of prostate cancer among workers at manufacturing facilities. Testing by the US Geological Survey regularly finds alarming concentrations of Atrazine in drinking water across the corn belt. Even worse, last year scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, found that Atrazine at one-thirtieth the government's "safe" 3 parts per billion level causes grotesque deformities in frogs, including multiple sets of organs. And this year epidemiologists from the University of Missouri found reproductive consequences in humans associated with Atrazine, including male semen counts in farm communities that are 50 percent below normal. Iowa scientists are finding similar results in a current study.

The Bush Administration reacted to the frightening findings not by banning this dangerous chemical, as the European Union has, but by taking the studies away from EPA scientists and, in an unprecedented move, giving the chemical's manufacturer, Switzerland-based Syngenta, control over federal research. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Sherry Ford, a spokesperson for Syngenta, praised without irony the advantages of having the company monitor its own product. "This is one way we can ensure it's not presenting any risk to the environment."

In a dramatic expansion of this disturbing strategy, the Bush Administration now plans to systematically turn government science over to private industry by contracting out thousands of science jobs to compliant consultants already in the habit of massaging data to support corporate profits. The National Park Service is preparing a first phase of contracting reviews, involving about 1,800 positions, including biologists, archeologists and environmental specialists. Later phases may entail replacement of 11,000 employees, more than two-thirds of the service's permanent work force. At least federal employees enjoy civil service and whistleblower protection intended to allow them to operate professionally and independently. Private contractors don't enjoy the same level of protection. "You can shop for the right contractor to give you the kind of result you want," says Frank Buono, a retired Park Service veteran who now serves on the board of a nonprofit whistleblower protection organization.

As a Last Resort, Fire the Messenger
Most federal employees have gone along with the Bush Administration's wishes, but a few have tried to stand up for sound science. The results are predictable. When a team of government biologists indicated that the Army Corps of Engineers was violating the Endangered Species Act in managing the flow of the Missouri River, the group was quickly replaced by an industry-friendly panel. (In an unexpected – and fortunate – development, the new panel ultimately declined to adopt the White House's pro-barge-industry position and upheld the decision to manage the river to protect imperiled species.) Similarly, last April the EPA suddenly dismantled an advisory panel that had spent nearly twenty-one months developing rules for stringent regulation of industrial emissions of mercury.

Or consider the case of Tony Oppegard and Jack Spadaro, members of a team of federal geodesic engineers selected to investigate the collapse of barriers that held back a coal slurry pond in Kentucky containing toxic wastes from mountaintop strip-mining. The 300-million-gallon spill was the largest in American history and, according to the EPA, the greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of the Eastern United States. Black lava-like toxic sludge containing sixty poisonous chemicals choked and sterilized up to 100 miles of rivers and creeks and poisoned the drinking water in seventeen communities. Unlike in other slurry disasters, no one died, but hundreds of residents were sickened by contact with contaminated water.

The investigation had broad implications for the viability of mountaintop mining, which involves literally lopping off mountaintops to get access to the underlying coal. It is a process beloved by coal barons because it practically dispenses with the need for human labor and thus increases industry profits. Spadaro, the nation's leading expert on slurry spills, recalls, "We were geotechnical engineers determined to find the truth. We simply wanted to get to the heart of the matter – find out what happened and why, and to prevent it from happening again. But all that was thwarted at the top of the agency by Bush appointees who obstructed professionals trying to do their jobs."

The Bush Administration appointees all had coal industry pedigrees. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao (the wife of Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate's biggest recipient of industry largesse) appointed Dave Lauriski, a former executive with Energy West Mining, as the new director of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, which oversaw the investigation. His deputy assistant secretary was John Caylor, an Anamax Mining alumnus. His other deputy assistant, John Correll, had worked for both Amax and Peabody Coal. Oppegard, the leader of the federal team, was fired on the day Bush was inaugurated in 2001. All eight members of the team except Spadaro signed off on a whitewashed investigation report. Spadaro, like the others, was harassed but flat-out refused to sign. In April of 2001 Spadaro resigned from the team and filed a complaint with the Inspector General of the Labor Department. Last June 4 he was placed on administrative leave – a prelude to getting fired.

Bush Administration officials accuse Spadaro of "abusing his authority" for allowing a handicapped instructor to have free room and board at a training academy he oversees, an arrangement approved by his superiors. An internal report vindicated Spadaro's criticisms of the investigation, but the Administration is still going after his job. "I've been regulating mining since 1966," Spadaro told me. "This is the most lawless administration I've encountered. They have no regard for protecting miners or the people in mining communities. They are without scruples."

Science, like theology, reveals transcendent truths about a changing world. At their best, scientists are moral individuals whose business is to seek the truth. Over the past two decades industry and conservative think tanks have invested millions of dollars to corrupt science. They distort the truth about tobacco, pesticides, ozone depletion, dioxin, acid rain and global warming. In their attempt to undermine the credible basis for public action (by positing that all opinions are politically driven and therefore any one is as true as any other), they also undermine belief in the integrity of the scientific process.

Now Congress and this White House have used federal power for the same purpose. Led by the President, the Republicans have gutted scientific research budgets and politicized science within the federal agencies. The very leaders who so often condemn the trend toward moral relativism are fostering and encouraging the trend toward scientific relativism. The very ideologues who derided Bill Clinton as a liar have now institutionalized dishonesty and made it the reigning culture of America's federal agencies.

The Bush Administration has so violated and corrupted the institutional culture of government agencies charged with scientific research that it could take a generation for them to recover their integrity even if Bush is defeated this fall. Says Princeton University scientist Michael Oppenheimer, "If you believe in a rational universe, in enlightenment, in knowledge and in a search for the truth, this White House is an absolute disaster."

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council and president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, is working on a book about President Bush's environmental policies, Crimes Against Nature, to be published this spring by HarperCollins.

Feb. 18, 2004
The Bush administration has distorted scientific fact leading to policy decisions on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry, a group of about 60 scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent organization, also issued a 37-page report, "Scientific Integrity in Policymaking," detailing the accusations. The statement and the report both accuse the Bush administration of distorting and suppressing findings that contradict administration policies, stacking panels with like-minded and underqualified scientists with ties to industry, and eliminating some advisory committees altogether.

The scientists listed various policy issues as being unfairly influenced by the administration, including those concerning climate change, mercury emissions, reproductive health, lead poisoning in children, workplace safety and nuclear weapons. New regulations and laws are necessary to fix the situation, the statement says.

"We found a serious pattern of undermining science by the Bush administration, and it crosses disciplines, whether it's global climate change or reproductive health or mercury in the food chain or forestry -- the list goes on and on," said Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
President Bush's science adviser, John Marburger, said he was disappointed in the report, and called it biased.

He said he was troubled by the fact that some very prestigious scientists signed the statement.
"We have to find a way to reach out to them and try to come to an understanding, because this administration has in fact been very supportive of science," Marburger said. He noted the administration has doubled the National Institutes of Health budget and increased the National Science Foundation budget.

The Union of Concerned Scientists began investigating the Bush administration's scientific policy-making last summer in response to numerous complaints from members of the scientific community, Knobloch said. The report documents various instances of the administration undercutting science, scientists and the public welfare, he said.

For example, the panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on lead poisoning was recently planning to strengthen the lead poisoning regulations, in response to science showing that smaller amounts than previously understood could cause brain damage in children, Knobloch said.
Before the panel could act, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson rejected the recommendation and replaced two members of the panel with individuals tied to the lead industry, Knobloch said.

Marburger said he wasn't familiar with the details of the panel changes, "but I'm pretty sure there were other reasons for making changes on the panel," he said. "I think there are reasonable explanations for nearly all the things in the report, and rather than look for what those explanations might be, I think the (researchers were) somewhat biased in favor of a sweeping opinion of what this administration is all about, and I just don't think that's justified."

The researchers also took issue with a White House Office of Management and Budget bulletin regarding peer review, a process fundamental to science by which researchers check each other's work for accuracy and balance before it's published. The bulletin (PDF), drafted in August 2003, would allow the government to hand-pick scientists to second-guess scientific research, opponents say.

The text of the bulletin says its purpose would be to ensure that all research affecting federal regulations, such as environmental or health advisories, would be thoroughly peer-reviewed by unbiased researchers. But opponents say the bulletin's guidelines would scrutinize only academic researchers for bias, not industry scientists.

(What the rest of the world is saying on the second anniversary of 9/11...)

Two Years On, World Media Sympathy Comes With Warnings
By Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com Staff
Thursday, September 11, 2003

On Sept. 12, 2001, the Parisian daily Le Monde ran a famous banner headline: "We are all Americans now," a sentiment that resonated in media around the world.

Two years later, the international media commentary on the anniversary of the devastating and humiliating attacks on New York and Washington is distinctly less sympathetic. Wariness and warnings are the rule.

"Compassion has been replaced by the fear that ill-considered actions will make things worse, and that the fight against terrorism could be a pretext for the extension of American hegemony," says Le Monde (in French) in today's editorial.

The view from Paris is that "the United States cannot, by itself, 'make the world safe for democracy', according to the expression of their President Woodrow Wilson in 1917. It must listen to its allies, take into account the differing situations in which it intervenes, comply with the international rules that it has helped enact. The reckoning of the last two years sounds like a recall of these principles."

Peshawar, Pakistan is about as far away from Paris as you can get. It is an impoverished, often lawless city near the border of Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden is thought to be hiding somewhere nearby. But the editors of the Peshawar Post see things much the same as Le Monde.

"Perhaps this is not the time to criticise a country that is observing the mourning of the second anniversary of the horrified deaths of her thousands of innocent civilians," says commentary writer Syed Atiq ul Hassan. "However, sometime one has to swallow the bitter truth and face the realities of the time when analyzing and documenting the facts.

"In the last two years, has the U.S. found more opponents or sympathizers, more friends or enemies, more stability or insecurity? . . . This is what needs to be evaluated by the people of the United States," Atiq writes.

The editors of the Manila Inquirer in the Philippines see only "Insecurity," as their editorial is headlined, on the second anniversary of Sept. 11.

"The military conquest of Afghanistan and Iraq has not only failed to root out the cause of terrorist attacks but also failed to install democracy in these two countries. The costs of war and occupation have prompted Bush to ask Congress for $87 billion in emergency spending for military operations and rebuilding," the editorial says. "[President Bush's Sunday] speech foreshadows an open-ended military presence in Iraq that is turning into a seemingly bottomless hole devouring U.S. economic resources."

In Australia, one of the main allies in the war on Iraq, a leading national daily newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald turned to political activist and Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguistics professor Noam Chomsky, a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy, for a look back.

"On September 11, the world reacted with shock and horror, and sympathy for the victims," Chomsky writes. "But it is important to bear in mind that for much of the world, there was a further reaction: 'Welcome to the club.' For the first time in history, a Western power was subjected to an atrocity of the kind that is all too familiar elsewhere."

In Malaysia's leading daily, the New Straits Times, law professor Shad Faruqi makes the same point more harshly.

Other tragedies of Sept. 11 have gone unmourned, Faruqi says, citing two examples. On Sept. 11, 1922, the British government promised European Zionists it would support the establishment of a Jewish state in the land known as Palestine. On Sept. 11, 1973, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, backed by the CIA, overthrew a democratically elected government in Chile, and launched a military regime that killed 3,000 of its opponents in the next 17 years.

"Somehow when Asians or Arabs commit terrorism, that is a crime against humanity," he says. "When Americans, Europeans and Israelis bomb, burn and brutalize the colored people, that is a war against terrorism or (as in Iraq) a war of liberation. Such hypocrisy and racism must be condemned."

The coincidental anniversaries of the Sept. 11 attacks and the 1973 coup in Chile was widely noted in Latin America. Miguel Angel Granados Chapa notes in the Mexico City daily Reforma (in Spanish) that "nobody in his right mind could feel joy at the North American misfortune of two years ago, nor evoke some form of justice for offenses that Washington has committed in different times and places. But the coincidence of two calamaties lead us to remember the North American influence in the military coup that 30 years ago interrupted Chilean democracy, where the dictatorship caused as many deaths in its first days as when the Twin Towers of New York fell."

The Saudi Gazette, the English-language edition of one of Saudi Arabia's biggest circulation newspapers, notes that the United States has suffered no new terrorist attacks in two years while Saudi Arabia has.

"This has brought the United States and Saudi Arabia on the same side in this war against terrorism and, therefore, they need to cooperate with each other and also with all other nations of the world against the common enemy," the Gazette editorial says.

"Nonetheless, the victims of terrorism, particularly the United States, should note that international terrorism has increased in spite of the war on terrorism," the editorial notes. "While the war has not ended yet and new fronts against it can be opened as and when the situation demands, the United States must rethink its policy against terrorism."

In Indonesia, which suffered the worst al Qaeda terror attack since Sept. 11, the Jakarta Post editors stress their sympathy for America and their hope that Americans will be "more reflective" on the second anniversary of the attacks.

The United States "must work hand in hand with other nations around the globe to combat this global scourge. But how can the U.S. persuade other nations to join its antiterrorism drive when they can so easily put a finger on U.S. arbitrary actions? It seems that, for the present at least, the Bush administration has its hands so full with fighting its own battles against its enemies that it has no time to reflect on the fact that other nations also have a right to exist on this planet," the Post says.

In the Times of India, columnist Jug Suraiya fears that the commemoration of 9/11 "will increasingly become a calendar event, a ritualistic exercise in mass memory. Ritualistic because all such conjurations are selective, and are as much about forgetting as about remembering."

The second anniversary, he says, "will divert attention from a number of related questions that remain unanswered. For instance, what happened to the top priority given to the hunting down of Osama bin Laden as the man behind 9/11, though he himself denied it? Since he wasn't found there, what was the justification for invading Afghanistan and then abandoning it in a state of virtual civil war? Where are the WMD which justified the attack on Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein? Or were they only weapons of mass distraction?

"Memory as an individual narrative is what makes us uniquely human," Suraiya writes. "But when memory is institutionalized by a larger entity, like a nation or a community or an ideology, it becomes the most powerful weapon in the arsenal of propaganda."

A Few Words From Our President, George W. Bush
(satire or truth?)

Ok, it is time for me to fess up. I am a rich man who likes to try to enhance the power of the ruling class of this country by exploiting the masses.

I am attempting to increase the exploitation through many different means, such a war, increases on regressive taxes, decreases on progressive taxes, cutting social programs that benefit the common American, the starving of funds for our government so that social programs need to be cut, and by pretending to support democracy when I know damn well I didn't even get the popular vote and wouldn't have even won the presidency if not for my brother Jeb, (governor of Florida, the state that couldn't get the vote right) and the Supreme Court, which has quite a conservative and Republican bias, just like myself.

As for planning and being behind the 9-11-2001 terrorist attacks, as many of you know, my admistration and I are far to intellectually impaired to even come close to planning or successfully executing such an ingenious and delicate operation. As can be seen, almost everything my administration does is a failure. Look at the situation in Iraq...or forget Iraq and take a look at the situation right here in America. I can't even speak correctly! I had an intelligent man rewrite and proof this so I didn't come off as complete idiot.

No, I am not responsible for the terrorist attacks of 9-11-2001, but like any other greedy, opportunistic, selfish, short-sighted, corrupt far right-wing Republican, even I was able to see the opportunity to turn the tragedy of that day to support for my ridiculous policies. Fear is one of the most powerful tools in manipulating the human mind. By driving the fear of terrorism fueled by 9-11-2001 attacks with idea like buying duct tape and issuing orange alerts (thanks, Homeland Security!), I was able to do many things.

My main agenda was to destroy liberal and progressive advances of the past here at home, while extending the American economic empire abroad, namely in a place that has a lot of worth and very little loyalty to my regime. (And it is a regime!!!) By connecting my (when I say "my" or use any other first-person pronoun, do realize I am referring more to the members of my regime than myself...after all, they are the brains behind it, not me) desire for a new economic hold on the middle-east along with the terrorist attacks, I was able to oversimplify the situation and imply that arab-based Al-Qaeda was one in the same with arab Saddam Hussein and the arab government of Iraq. This is clearly false, but all that's important is that most American's fell for it long enough for me to get my war on.

Once the war on terrorism was started, and later the war on Iraq, the American people were more than distracted enough from my social and economic aspirations. I am slowly, but surely working to reverse the progressive nature of the 20th century with many different plans, like my tax cuts for the rich, my dismantling of social programs like Head Start, and my bad economic policies that starve other social programs the government offers so that they are ill-equipped to run and then later I can cite their lack of performance as an excuse to get rid of them. I do all of this while supporting other conservative candidates for government. In fact, I spend more time raising money for my party than I do raising money for my country. By both dismantling the liberal and progressive triumphs of the past here at home and increasing the economic power of the American economic empire abroad, I am setting up the perfect conservative climate for the ruling "elite" to flourish in.

On a final note, though, don't put all of the blame on us. Even with my right-wing buddies going as far as to fix elections by using mysterious electronic ballot machines whose workings are unknown to all but the companies who make them, the majority of the American people are still at fault. In our society most people would rather watch "The Simpsons" than the news. And for the rare few that do watch the news, most are too lazy to get a variety of sources and/or think for themselves; these people find it easier just to watch mass-media news broadcasts unaware of the large corporations that are behind it--large corporations of which my conservative ends benefits, unlike the people, meaning they are most likely not going to give you news if it means publicizing a policy of mine that hurts the average American but benfits them. I mean, really, more than half of people don't even vote!!! I am not complaining though, as long as America WANTS to be ignorant, it will be easy for me and people like myself to bend the country to do what we want, even until it breaks. I would never win against a free-thinking society, but I don't have to fight a free-thinking society because that is not what American is for the most part. It is enough for people to have the illusion of being free-thinking and then sit down with a beer and leave it to someone else.

The upcoming election will be a true test for America. If I lose, then there may still be hope for those who don't believe in the screw-or-be-screwed capitalist ethic of most conservatives. If I win, however, it will just be another sign of a stagnating America; an America of degradation and decay. A society to big to handle itself, a society on the downward slope of empire with it best days behind it, and like all other empires, will slowly, but most certainly fall. The choice is yours...

(DISCLAIMER - Ok, so I am not George W. Bush, but I truly believe this is what he would say if he were both intelligent and truthful, of which he is neither. Also note that almost all (a disclaimer in itself) of what was stated was derived from reputable sources, so if you don't like it, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! VOTE! It's your right, and our only hope.)

Present at the Dissolution
Editorial from The Nation.

Washington has shifted into scandal gear. The Administration offers one explanation after another for the President's discredited claim in the State of the Union address that British intelligence had "learned" Iraq was seeking to buy lightly refined uranium from Niger. Each explanation contradicts the last. None so far is believable. Talk of resignations is in the air. Perhaps it will be George Tenet, who supposedly "threw himself on his sword," as people keep saying, when he publicly took responsibility for the President's mistake. (It turns out that the sword must have been made of rubber, since, two weeks after throwing himself on it, Tenet is still alive and well and in charge of the CIA--a CIA that, furthermore, has partially repudiated Tenet's gesture by disclosing that it had in fact warned the White House that the President's claim was shaky.) Next it was National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's deputy, Stephen Hadley, who was throwing himself on his sword (rubber or otherwise)--by revealing that he had not passed along the CIA's warning to his boss Rice. Then there was talk that Rice might have to throw herself on her sword, in order to protect the President. Now the President has said he takes "personal responsibility for everything I say, of course," but without confirming that the uranium claim was mistaken or disclosing how it got into his speech.

The scandal--which might be called wargate (you only have to remove two letters from "Watergate"), since the cost of the mistake was a war--rightly preoccupies the capital. Yet the problem is not only the fact that Tenet didn't tell Hadley or that Hadley didn't tell Rice or that Rice didn't tell the President, or any other failure or manipulation of intelligence or even flat-out lie (though all these occurred and are important). For the roots of the debacle lie in the policy--it is sometimes called the "Bush doctrine"--in whose name the Administration propelled the country into war. That policy unfolded in a series of bold speeches and documents in the months after September 11. The first step was to designate the American response to the September attack a "war on terror." By naming "war" (as distinct from police action) as his means, the President put the world on notice that the full, stupendous power of the American military machine would be brought to bear; by naming "terror" (as distinct from the group responsible for the attack, the Al Qaeda network) as the enemy, he signaled that the operations would be global in scope. Next, in his first statement to the joint session of Congress, the President announced that not only "terror" but any regimes that sponsored it would be placed on the list of enemies. Vice President Cheney soon put their number at more than sixty. The first target was the government of Afghanistan, which was duly overthrown.

In the State of the Union speech of 2002, Bush expanded the range of his new doctrine still further. Most important, he incorporated into it the gravest issue that any President of our era has had to face: the danger from nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction. Bush named an "axis of evil" consisting of three countries that allegedly were seeking such weapons: Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Defining nuclear danger as proliferation--both to new states and to terrorist groups--he asserted that the means to stop it was war. "The United States of America," he said, employing the classic language of military ultimatums, "will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." With these words, the cause of safety in the nuclear age was subsumed by the war on terror.

Four months later, in a major speech at West Point on June 2, 2002, Bush elaborated the means by which his ambitious new policy would be pursued. The policy of "deterrence" and "containment" had prevailed throughout the cold war. But now, he said, "deterrence--the promise of massive retaliation against nations--means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend." And "containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies." In this speech, too, the President for the first time made an extraordinary claim: The United States would reserve to itself a global monopoly on effective military power, restricting other nations to nonmilitary activities. In his words, "America has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge, thereby making the destabilizing arms races of other eras pointless, and limiting rivalries to trade and other pursuits of peace." Throughout history, the choice between war and peace had been open to all nations. Now the United States was claiming war as its exclusive domain and confining other nations to peace.

The elements of the new doctrine were assembled, summed up, elaborated and proclaimed to the world in September 2002, in a White House document called "The National Security Strategy of the United States of America." It stated that America's global military superiority would be able not only to "decisively defeat any adversary" but "dissuade future military competition." The pre-emptive policy was stated even more boldly. The United States reserved the right to attack "even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack." The proper term for such a policy, as many political scientists have pointed out, is not in fact pre-emptive war (forestalling an attack that is planned and imminent) but preventive war (destroying military forces that might one day be used against you). At the document's core was still the resolve to stop proliferation of weapons of mass destruction--whether to states or to terrorists--by military force.

This is the policy whose unraveling across the board we are now witnessing. Condoleezza Rice likened the post-September 11 moment to the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the cold war. President Truman's Secretary of State Dean Acheson titled his memoir of the period Present at the Creation. The Bush doctrine was self-consciously patterned upon it. Now, less than two years later, we are present at the dissolution.

The Bush policy has failed in Iraq. The Iraq war gave life to every one of the main tenets of the Bush doctrine: It was an exercise in the raw, overwhelmingly unilateral use of American military power; its chief justification was stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction (the Congressional resolution passed last October authorized forcing compliance with UN resolutions, which dealt almost exclusively with the disarmament issue); and it was preventive par excellence. Now the weapons of mass destruction are nowhere to be found. To the arguments that preventive war is illegal (a clear violation of the UN Charter) and strategically reckless (if taken as a model by other states, it is a formula for international anarchy), we must add that it is unusually prone to catastrophic error. The President's spokesman has commented, "the President is not a fact-checker." But he had better become one if he wishes to pursue a policy of pre-emptive war, whose justifications depend entirely on the accuracy of facts.

Intelligence failures--a serious problem in any war--fatally undercut a pre-emptive war policy. The recent arguments by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and others in the Administration that the war was worth it even if the intelligence was "murky" (i.e., wrong) is unlikely to persuade the families, American and Iraqi, of those who died in the war. (As the factual basis of the war justification collapses, the words of the National Security Strategy of the United States make interesting reading: "To support pre-emptive options, we will: build better, more integrated intelligence capabilities to provide timely, accurate information on threats, wherever they may emerge.") Meanwhile, the war itself spins out of control. The plan for global military domination, it has turned out, had no political underpinnings. The Administration knew it had a regime to destroy but apparently forgot that it would then be in possession of a country to govern. In what is the most colossal intelligence failure of them all, the Bush Administration scarcely seems to know what a country is, or what is required to keep one--its electricity, its schools, its local governments, its hospitals, its museums--running.

The policy has failed in North Korea. While attacking a country that had no known, current program for building weapons of mass destruction, the Administration proved helpless to deal with a country that, by its own account, has moved swiftly and brazenly to acquire them. Former Secretary of Defense William Perry has said that he cannot even detect that the Administration has a policy toward North Korea. In truth, there was a policy--it was the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive attack announced in statement after statement by the President--but the problem was that it simply had no feasible application to a country that, like North Korea, had a significant conventional force and, allegedly, several nuclear weapons. The United States might drop the policy of deterrence in favor of pre-emption/prevention; but in the event it was itself deterred, leaving it with the absence of policy noted by Perry. It was left in the position--diametrically at odds with its own repeated warnings--of saying that the appearance of a nuclear arsenal in North Korea was "not a crisis." Perry now counsels a belated turn to negotiation, and his proposal is well worth trying, but the likelihood of success is uncertain. North Korea has witnessed regime change in Iraq and shows every sign of believing that a growing nuclear arsenal is its best means of heading off the same fate for itself.

The policy has failed in Iran, also apparently on its way to building nuclear weapons. Like North Korea, Iran has not canceled or shelved but stepped up its nuclear program in response to the war in Iraq. Does the Bush doctrine offer a solution? Unable to govern Iraq, can it add Iran to the list of countries it seeks to rule? American military forces are already stretched to the breaking point by the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, and other deployments, and soldiers are simply not available to invade Iran, even if the Administration should wish to undertake such a lunatic project. The high-tech forces so useful for annihilating conventional armies have proved useless for running the countries thus acquired. You can knock down government ministries with precision-guided munitions; you can't pick up garbage with them.

The policy has failed in the world as a whole. It has encouraged the proliferation it was meant to stop, leaving the United States and the world without an effective nonproliferation strategy. It has dishonored the democratic system it was meant to promote. The political disaster in Iraq is writ large in the decline of US reputation and power among the nations of the world, almost all of whom opposed the war and are now perfectly ready to watch on the sidelines as the United States sinks in the Iraq bog. It has estranged America's traditional friends, including its NATO allies. It has created a divide between the United States and Europe. It has demeaned and damaged the UN. It has placed a roadblock in the way of the international cooperation necessary to solve the most important economic and social problems of the twenty-first century: saving the global environment and working to fashion a more just and prosperous global economy.

Wargate must be investigated, and those responsible must be brought to account, but none of this will matter if the policy stays the same. Building an alternative vision will be the work of the political opposition to this Administration--and, we hope, a new administration in 2004--but already the general outlines of one are obvious: The United States needs to choose cooperation over coercion; multilateralism over unilateralism; respect for international opinion over defiance; defense over offense; containment and deterrence over prevention; diplomacy over force; peace over war. Neither the resignation of Tenet nor of Hadley nor of Rice nor of all of them together will check the mounting damage. Not even the replacement of the President will in itself be enough. That, too, important as it is, will be significant only to the extent that it is one more means for changing the fundamental direction of the foreign policy of the United States.

Copyright © 2003 The Nation

Essay by television journalist Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers is the host of NOW With Bill Moyers, a weekly television show on PBS where these comments were broadcast on May 23, 2003.

From your letters I know some of you are curious as to why journalists like me keep opening the Pandora's box of democracy; why we come round and round to what ails America -- the bribing of Congress, the desecration of the environment, corporate tax havens, secrecy, fraud on Wall Street, the arrogance of ideology, the pretensions of power. Do we delight in the dark side of human experience? you ask. Do we never see good in the world? Or was Nietzsche right: that the Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad?

I can only speak for myself, of course. And I confess to thinking of journalism as the social equivalent to a medical diagnosis. My doctor owes me candor; I pay him for it. Candor could save my life.

I like to think journalists are paid for candor, too; society needs to know what could kill us, whether it's too many lies or too much pollution. Napoleon left instructions that he was not to be awakened if the news from the front were good; with good news, he told his secretary, there is no hurry. But if the news were bad, he said, "Rouse me instantly, for then there is not a moment to be lost." Think of journalism as a kind of early warning system -- iceberg spotting in the choppy waters of democracy.

But there's another reason for what we do. I'm reminded of it every year at this time, when my thoughts about the honor and respect we pay to our nation's soldiers on Memorial Day are colored by its proximity to D-Day.

I was just 10 years old when the allies landed on Normandy on June 6, 1944. I couldn't then imagine what it must have been like on those beaches when our world was up for grabs and men spilled their blood and guts to save it. I never knew what it was like until 15 years ago when I accompanied some veterans from Texas who had fought at Normandy and survived, and were now returning to retrace their steps. Jose Lopez was one of the veterans that joined me on that journey.

Lopez said of his experiences as a soldier, "I was really very, very afraid. That I want to scream. I want to cry and we see other people was laying wounded and screaming and everything and it's nothing you could do. We could see them groaning in the water and we keep walking."

Jose Lopez went on to win the Congressional Medal of Honor, our nation's highest honor for gallantry in action. But searching for the place he landed that day, he didn't want to talk about the Medal of Honor. He just wanted to be alone with his memories.

Every Memorial Day I think about what these men did and what we owe them. They didn't go through hell so Kenny Boy Lay could betray his investors and workers at Enron, or for a political system built on legal bribery. It wasn't for corporate tax havens in Bermuda, or an economic system driven by the law of the jungle, or so a handful of media buccaneers could turn the public airwaves into private sewers.

Sure, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, freedom makes it possible for people to be crooks, but so does communism, and fascism, and monarchy. Democracy is about doing better. It's about fairness, justice and human rights, and yes, it's about equality, too; look it up.

I was never called on to do what soldiers do; I'll never know if I might have had their courage. But a journalist can help keep the record straight, on their behalf. They thought democracy was worth fighting for, even dying for. The least we can do is to help make democracy worthy of them.

United States Sen. Robert Byrd, (D) West Virginia
Senate Floor Remarks -- May 21, 2003

"Truth has a way of asserting itself despite all attempts to obscure it. Distortion only serves to derail it for a time. No matter to what lengths we humans may go to obfuscate facts or delude our fellows, truth has a way of squeezing out through the cracks, eventually.

Regarding the situation in Iraq, it appears to this senator that the American people may have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing international law, under false premises. There is ample evidence that the horrific events of September 11 have been carefully manipulated to switch public focus from Osama bin Laden and al Queda who masterminded the September 11th attacks, to Saddam Hussein who did not. The run up to our invasion of Iraq featured the president and members of his cabinet invoking every frightening image they could conjure, from mushroom clouds, to buried caches of germ warfare, to drones poised to deliver germ-laden death in our major cities. We were treated to a heavy dose of overstatement concerning Saddam Hussein's direct threat to our freedoms. The tactic was guaranteed to provoke a sure reaction from a nation still suffering from a combination of post-traumatic stress and justifiable anger after the attacks of 9/11. It was the exploitation of fear. It was a placebo for the anger.

Since the war's end, every subsequent revelation which has seemed to refute the previous dire claims of the Bush administration has been brushed aside. Instead of addressing the contradictory evidence, the White House deftly changes the subject. No weapons of mass destruction have yet turned up, but we are told that they will in time. Perhaps they yet will. But, our costly and destructive bunker busting attack on Iraq seems to have proven, in the main, precisely the opposite of what we were told was the urgent reason to go in. ...

Meanwhile bin Laden is still on the loose and Saddam Hussein has come up missing. ...

What has become painfully clear in the aftermath of war is that Iraq was no immediate threat to the U.S. Ravaged by years of sanctions, Iraq did not even lift an airplane against us. Iraq's threatening death-dealing fleet of unmanned drones about which we heard so much morphed into one prototype made of plywood and string. Their missiles proved to be outdated and of limited range. Their army was quickly overwhelmed by our technology and our well-trained troops.

But the Bush team's extensive hype of WMD in Iraq as justification for a preemptive invasion ... has raised serious questions about prevarication and the reckless use of power. Were our troops needlessly put at risk? Were countless Iraqi civilians killed and maimed when war was not really necessary? Was the American public deliberately misled? Was the world?

What makes me cringe even more is the continued claim that we are "liberators." The facts don't seem to support the label we have so euphemistically attached to ourselves. True, we have unseated a brutal, despicable despot, but "liberation" implies the follow-up of freedom, self-determination and a better life for the common people. In fact, if the situation in Iraq is the result of "liberation," we may have set the cause of freedom back 200 years.

Senator Robert Byrd of W.Va.Despite our high-blown claims of a better life for the Iraqi people, water is scarce, and often foul; electricity is a sometime thing; food is in short supply; hospitals are stacked with the wounded and maimed; historic treasures of the region and of the Iraqi people have been looted; and nuclear material may have been disseminated to heaven knows where, while U.S. troops, on orders, looked on and guarded the oil supply.

Meanwhile, lucrative contracts to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure and refurbish its oil industry are awarded to administration cronies, without benefit of competitive bidding, and the U.S. steadfastly resists offers of U.N. assistance to participate. Is there any wonder that the real motives of the U.S. government are the subject of worldwide speculation and mistrust?

And in what may be the most damaging development, the U.S. appears to be pushing off Iraq's clamor for self-government. Jay Garner has been summarily replaced, and it is becoming all too clear that the smiling face of the U.S. as liberator is quickly assuming the scowl of an occupier. The image of the boot on the throat has replaced the beckoning hand of freedom. Chaos and rioting only exacerbate that image, as U.S. soldiers try to sustain order in a land ravaged by poverty and disease. "Regime change" in Iraq has so far meant anarchy, curbed only by an occupying military force and a U.S. administrative presence that is evasive about if and when it intends to depart.

Democracy and Freedom cannot be force-fed at the point of an occupier's gun. To think otherwise is folly. One has to stop and ponder: How could we have been so impossibly naive? How could we expect to easily plant a clone of U.S. culture, values and government in a country so riven with religious, territorial and tribal rivalries, so suspicious of U.S. motives, and so at odds with the galloping materialism which drives the Western-style economies? ...

The path of diplomacy and reason have gone out the window to be replaced by force, unilateralism and punishment for transgressions. I read most recently with amazement our harsh castigation of Turkey, our longtime friend and strategic ally. It is astonishing that our government is berating the new Turkish government for conducting its affairs in accordance with its own constitution and its democratic institutions.

Indeed, we may have sparked a new international arms race as countries move ahead to develop WMD as a last-ditch attempt to ward off a possible pre-emptive strike from a newly belligerent U.S., which claims the right to hit where it wants. In fact, there is little to constrain this president. Congress, in what will go down in history as its most unfortunate act, handed away its power to declare war for the foreseeable future and empowered this president to wage war at will.

As if that were not bad enough, members of Congress are reluctant to ask questions which are begging to be asked. How long will we occupy Iraq? We have already heard disputes on the numbers of troops which will be needed to retain order. What is the truth? How costly will the occupation and rebuilding be? No one has given a straight answer. How will we afford this long-term massive commitment, fight terrorism at home, address a serious crisis in domestic health care, afford behemoth military spending and give away billions in tax cuts amidst a deficit which has climbed to over $340 billion for this year alone? We cower in the shadows while false statements proliferate. We accept soft answers and shaky explanations because to demand the truth is hard, or unpopular or may be politically costly.

But, I contend that, through it all, the people know. The American people unfortunately are used to political shading, spin and the usual chicanery they hear from public officials. They patiently tolerate it up to a point. But there is a line. It may seem to be drawn in invisible ink for a time, but eventually it will appear in dark colors, tinged with anger. When it comes to shedding American blood -- when it comes to wreaking havoc on civilians, on innocent men, women and children, callous dissembling is not acceptable. Nothing is worth that kind of lie -- not oil, not revenge, not re-election, not somebody's grand pipe dream of a democratic domino theory.

And mark my words, the calculated intimidation which we see so often of late by the "powers that be" will only keep the loyal opposition quiet for just so long. Because eventually, like it always does, the truth will emerge. And when it does, this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall."
-- Sen. Robert Byrd (D) of West Virginia has been a member of the Senate since 1958.

Email Senator Robert C. Byrd

Above: Bush prepares to symbolically cut veterans' benefits
on the deck of the U.S.S. Harry S Truman.

Bush Visits U.S.S.Truman For Dramatic Veterans'-Benefits-Cutting Ceremony
satire from The Onion.

NORFOLK, VA—With more than 5,400 jubilant Marines and sailors cheering him on, President Bush landed on the deck of the U.S.S. Harry S Truman in a Navy jet Monday to preside over a historic veterans'-benefits-cutting ceremony.

"Your brave and selfless service to your country will not soon be forgotten," Bush told the recently returned Operation Iraqi Freedom soldiers. "At least, not for another five or ten years."

After congratulating the soldiers on their victory over Saddam Hussein, Bush announced that the new budget passed by the Senate includes a $14.6 billion reduction in veterans' benefits. He then held aloft a pair of oversized scissors and snipped a ribbon bearing the words "Veteran's Benefits."

"No one knows the meaning of the word 'sacrifice' quite like our men and women in uniform," Bush said. "Whether sacrificing their lives or their health coverage, these brave Americans are willing to do whatever it takes to help this nation, and for this I salute them."

As the ship lay at anchor in the Atlantic Ocean, Bush, holding a helmet emblazoned with "Prez-1" along the side, expressed his gratitude to the troops for the hardships they endured in the Persian Gulf, and for the hardships they would be enduring at home in the future.

"When I look at the members of the United States military, I see the best of our country, and I am honored to be your Commander-In-Chief," Bush said. "I am equally honored that you are stoically accepting Congress' elimination of a large percentage of the benefits you were promised upon enlisting so that I can finance a massive tax cut."

The speech was brought to a temporary halt as the troops' enthusiastic cheers drowned out the public-address system. Bush then raised his hands to silence the crowd, his face turning somber.

"You have shown the world the skill and might of the American armed forces," Bush said. "You have exhibited a willingness to do what your country has asked of you. In return, I would like to personally show my gratitude by guaranteeing that your pension will not completely dry up until you turn 40."

As a ray of sunlight broke through the clouds, Bush explained that the cuts were necessary to ensure that the servicemen who received aid were those who really needed it and not the parasites looking to take advantage of a bloated bureaucracy and veterans' welfare state.

"This is a battle to root out waste in the dispensation of veterans' funds," Bush said. "And, as you know all too well, casualties are inevitable in a battle. If some of you are cut off from compensation payments for injuries, take comfort in the knowledge that your sacrifice was not in vain, for you have helped liberate billions of tax dollars for our country's taxpayers."

Upon the conclusion of the president's speech, the troops once again rose to thunderous applause. After posing for photographs with various officers and enlisted men on board, the president returned to his jet and departed.

Reactions to the speech were overwhelmingly positive.

"We all stand behind our Commander-In-Chief," said Petty Officer 3rd Class Henry Williams, 23, of Norfolk, VA. "When he started this war, President Bush called upon Americans to support its troops. Now, he's calling upon his troops to accept six-month waits for hospital visits and pauper's funerals. In these times of economic crisis and uncertainty, it is our duty to stand behind our president, whether or not he is standing behind us."

Washington shelved report of 44-trillion-dollar deficit
Thu May 29, 8:53 AM ET

LONDON (AFP) - In the midst of negotiating a steep tax cuts package, the US government shelved a report that showed the United States faces future federal budget deficits of more than 44.2 trillion dollars.

President George W. Bush's administration chose to keep the findings -- commissioned by then-Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill -- out of the 2004 annual budget report, published in February, London's Financial Times reported. The newspaper desribed the study as "the most comprehensive assessment of how the US government is at risk of being overwhelmed by the 'baby boom' generation's future healthcare and retirement costs."

The Financial Times hinted that the decision not to publish the report may have been because the White House was campaigning for a massive tax-cut package that critics claim will expand future deficits.

The study, according to the same source, said that sharp tax increases, massive spending cuts or both are unavoidable if the US is to meet benefit promises to future generations.

"It estimates that closing the gap would require the equivalent of an immediate and permanent 66 percent across-the-board income tax increase," the Financial Times said.

"The study was being circulated as an independent working paper among Washington think-tanks as Bush on Wednesday signed into law a 10-year, 350-billion-dollar tax-cut package he welcomed as a victory for hard-working Americans and the economy," the newspaper said.

Kent Smetters, then-Treasury deputy assistant secretary for economic policy, and Jagdessh Gokhale, then a consultant to the Treasury, were in charge of the analysis, the newspaper said.

"When we were conducting the study, my impression was that it was slated to appear (in the budget). At some point, the momentum builds and you think everything is a go, and then the decision came down that we weren't part of the prospective budget," Gokhale was quoted a saying in the front-page article.

O'Neill, who was fired last December, refused to comment, according to the same source. The Bush administration has come under severe criticism for the tax cuts package, which come on top of a 10-year 1.65 trillion tax cut program enacted in 2001, at a time when the US economy is sputtering and unemployment is steadily rising.