As we've said here 1,000 times if we've said it once, the New York Times, as token "leader" of America's WHORE "major media," is in the LIE, CHEAT, STEAL, MISINFORM, DISTORT, DISTRACT, and help the radical right-wing loot, steal, and plunder business, in part because the Times is the official organ of the AIPAC neo-con lobby, and in part because Arthur Sulzberger & crew are insatiably greedy liars joining corporate America in an all out assault on 100 years of American social progress.
(That is, the whore, Lyin' Times, like Rush Limbaugh, Fox 'news," the Wall St. journal, and other right-wing publications, want to take America BACK to the pre-Depression days, when there was NO social safety net, VERY LITTLE restrictions or oversight on Big Business, women were not allowed to vote (until the 19th Amendment in 1919), and official, state-enforced SEGREGATION was the law of the land, even though it (segregation) violated the spirit and law of the 15th amendment.)
In this case, the successful insurgent attack that amazed the US command was likely SUNNI insurgents (being as the targets were Shiite-dominated Iraqi government facilities), and Iran is OPPOSED TO THE SUNNI INSURGENCY, whether secular (Baathist) or sectarian (Sunni fundamentalist, often Al Qaida.)
---------------------------------------------------------
Ghost of Judith Miller: NYT Drinks the Kool-Aid, Claims Iran is Behind Attacks on U.S. Soldiers in Iraq
Robert Naiman and Robert Naiman, Just Foreign Policy,
January 31, 2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-weisbrot-and-robert-naiman/ghost-of-judith-miller-n_b_40120.html
If there's something you were thinking of apologizing for, but you were holding back on the grounds that apologizing might be taken as an implicit commitment not to make the same mistake in the future, I can now reassure you.
No less venerable an institution than the New York Times has shown the path.
You can apologize, be contrite, tear your hair, rend your garments, and then do the same damn thing again.
This is what the New York Times wrote in May 2004 about its pre-war reporting on Iraq:
"information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged...Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all."
Today the New York Times, on page A10, informs us that "Iran May Have Trained Attackers That Killed 5 American Soldiers, U.S. and Iraqis Say"
Note that:
- the claim that Iran "may have" trained attackers gets the headline and the lede. Of course, green Martians "may have" trained the attackers. The key question is: is there real evidence?
- there is not a single named source in the article.
- there is no rebuttal, no point of view different from the allegation, even though plenty of knowledgable analysts (Juan Cole, Gareth Porter, Trita Parsi, for starters) could have easily been found to give a contrary view. A recent Los Angeles Times piece found "scant evidence" for the claim that Iran was behind attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
- no "direct evidence" exists, as the article acknowledges (further down.)
- the only "evidence" given is that the attack was sophisticated (what are they saying - Iraqis are too dumb to do this by themselves ?!) and that Iran has a motive for retaliating against the U.S. Which is no evidence at all - lots of folks have a motive for retaliating against the U.S.
In no way did this unsourced, unsubstantiated speculation deserve this article and this headline.
This is a dangerous development. Just as before the Iraq war, much of the media is drinking the Kool-Aid. That the New York Times is again drinking the Kool-Aid is particularly worrisome, given its (undeserved) role as a leader for other media.
---
Write the Times:
Letters to the Editor: letters@nytimes.com
Public Editor: public@nytimes.com
News Editor: nytnews@nytimes.com
---
Get involved:
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Monday, January 29, 2007
The president IS NOT the "commander in chief" of American Civilians. Media Whores LOVE the militaristic theme of society SUBSERVIENT to war...
<< Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s prescient last book, “Secrecy,” traced the ever-faster-growing secrecy of our government and said that it strikes at the very essence of democracy — accountability of representatives to the people. How can the people hold their representatives to account if they are denied knowledge of what they are doing? Wartime and war analogies are embraced because these justify the secrecy. The representative is accountable to citizens. Soldiers are accountable to their officer. The dynamics are different, and to blend them is to undermine the basic principles of our Constitution. >>
At Ease, Mr. President
By GARRY WILLS
Published: January 27, 2007
Evanston, Ill.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/27/opinion/27wills.html
WE hear constantly now about “our commander in chief.” The word has become a synonym for “president.” It is said that we “elect a commander in chief.” It is asked whether this or that candidate is “worthy to be our commander in chief.”
But the president is not our commander in chief. He certainly is not mine. I am not in the Army.
I first cringed at the misuse in 1973, during the “Saturday Night Massacre” (as it was called). President Richard Nixon, angered at the Watergate inquiry being conducted by the special prosecutor Archibald Cox, dispatched his chief of staff, Al Haig, to arrange for Mr. Cox’s firing. Mr. Haig told the attorney general, Elliot Richardson, to dismiss Mr. Cox. Mr. Richardson refused, and resigned. Then Mr. Haig told the second in line at the Justice Department, William Ruckelshaus, to fire Cox. Mr. Ruckelshaus refused, and accepted his dismissal. The third in line, Robert Bork, finally did the deed.
What struck me was what Mr. Haig told Mr. Ruckelshaus, “You know what it means when an order comes down from the commander in chief and a member of his team cannot execute it.” This was as great a constitutional faux pas as Mr. Haig’s later claim, when President Reagan was wounded, that “Constitutionally ... I’m in control.”
President Nixon was not Mr. Ruckelshaus’s commander in chief. The president is not the commander in chief of civilians. He is not even commander in chief of National Guard troops unless and until they are federalized. The Constitution is clear on this: “The president shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States.”
When Abraham Lincoln took actions based on military considerations, he gave himself the proper title, “commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” That title is rarely — more like never — heard today. It is just “commander in chief,” or even “commander in chief of the United States.” This reflects the increasing militarization of our politics. The citizenry at large is now thought of as under military discipline. In wartime, it is true, people submit to the national leadership more than in peacetime. The executive branch takes actions in secret, unaccountable to the electorate, to hide its moves from the enemy and protect national secrets. Constitutional shortcuts are taken “for the duration.” But those impositions are removed when normal life returns.
But we have not seen normal life in 66 years. The wartime discipline imposed in 1941 has never been lifted, and “the duration” has become the norm. World War II melded into the cold war, with greater secrecy than ever — more classified information, tougher security clearances. And now the cold war has modulated into the war on terrorism.
There has never been an executive branch more fetishistic about secrecy than the Bush-Cheney one. The secrecy has been used to throw a veil over detentions, “renditions,” suspension of the Geneva Conventions and of habeas corpus, torture and warrantless wiretaps. We hear again the refrain so common in the other wars — If you knew what we know, you would see how justified all our actions are.
But we can never know what they know. We do not have sufficient clearance.
When Adm. William Crowe, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, criticized the gulf war under the first President Bush, Secretary of State James Baker said that the admiral was not qualified to speak on the matter since he no longer had the clearance to read classified reports. If he is not qualified, then no ordinary citizen is. We must simply trust our lords and obey the commander in chief.
The glorification of the president as a war leader is registered in numerous and substantial executive aggrandizements; but it is symbolized in other ways that, while small in themselves, dispose the citizenry to accept those aggrandizements. We are reminded, for instance, of the expanded commander in chief status every time a modern president gets off the White House helicopter and returns the salute of marines.
That is an innovation that was begun by Ronald Reagan. Dwight Eisenhower, a real general, knew that the salute is for the uniform, and as president he was not wearing one. An exchange of salutes was out of order. (George Bush came as close as he could to wearing a uniform while president when he landed on the telegenic aircraft carrier in an Air Force flight jacket).
We used to take pride in civilian leadership of the military under the Constitution, a principle that George Washington embraced when he avoided military symbols at Mount Vernon. We are not led — or were not in the past — by caudillos.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s prescient last book, “Secrecy,” traced the ever-faster-growing secrecy of our government and said that it strikes at the very essence of democracy — accountability of representatives to the people. How can the people hold their representatives to account if they are denied knowledge of what they are doing? Wartime and war analogies are embraced because these justify the secrecy. The representative is accountable to citizens. Soldiers are accountable to their officer. The dynamics are different, and to blend them is to undermine the basic principles of our Constitution.
Garry Wills, a professor emeritus of history at Northwestern, is the author, most recently, of “What Paul Meant.”
At Ease, Mr. President
By GARRY WILLS
Published: January 27, 2007
Evanston, Ill.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/27/opinion/27wills.html
WE hear constantly now about “our commander in chief.” The word has become a synonym for “president.” It is said that we “elect a commander in chief.” It is asked whether this or that candidate is “worthy to be our commander in chief.”
But the president is not our commander in chief. He certainly is not mine. I am not in the Army.
I first cringed at the misuse in 1973, during the “Saturday Night Massacre” (as it was called). President Richard Nixon, angered at the Watergate inquiry being conducted by the special prosecutor Archibald Cox, dispatched his chief of staff, Al Haig, to arrange for Mr. Cox’s firing. Mr. Haig told the attorney general, Elliot Richardson, to dismiss Mr. Cox. Mr. Richardson refused, and resigned. Then Mr. Haig told the second in line at the Justice Department, William Ruckelshaus, to fire Cox. Mr. Ruckelshaus refused, and accepted his dismissal. The third in line, Robert Bork, finally did the deed.
What struck me was what Mr. Haig told Mr. Ruckelshaus, “You know what it means when an order comes down from the commander in chief and a member of his team cannot execute it.” This was as great a constitutional faux pas as Mr. Haig’s later claim, when President Reagan was wounded, that “Constitutionally ... I’m in control.”
President Nixon was not Mr. Ruckelshaus’s commander in chief. The president is not the commander in chief of civilians. He is not even commander in chief of National Guard troops unless and until they are federalized. The Constitution is clear on this: “The president shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States.”
When Abraham Lincoln took actions based on military considerations, he gave himself the proper title, “commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” That title is rarely — more like never — heard today. It is just “commander in chief,” or even “commander in chief of the United States.” This reflects the increasing militarization of our politics. The citizenry at large is now thought of as under military discipline. In wartime, it is true, people submit to the national leadership more than in peacetime. The executive branch takes actions in secret, unaccountable to the electorate, to hide its moves from the enemy and protect national secrets. Constitutional shortcuts are taken “for the duration.” But those impositions are removed when normal life returns.
But we have not seen normal life in 66 years. The wartime discipline imposed in 1941 has never been lifted, and “the duration” has become the norm. World War II melded into the cold war, with greater secrecy than ever — more classified information, tougher security clearances. And now the cold war has modulated into the war on terrorism.
There has never been an executive branch more fetishistic about secrecy than the Bush-Cheney one. The secrecy has been used to throw a veil over detentions, “renditions,” suspension of the Geneva Conventions and of habeas corpus, torture and warrantless wiretaps. We hear again the refrain so common in the other wars — If you knew what we know, you would see how justified all our actions are.
But we can never know what they know. We do not have sufficient clearance.
When Adm. William Crowe, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, criticized the gulf war under the first President Bush, Secretary of State James Baker said that the admiral was not qualified to speak on the matter since he no longer had the clearance to read classified reports. If he is not qualified, then no ordinary citizen is. We must simply trust our lords and obey the commander in chief.
The glorification of the president as a war leader is registered in numerous and substantial executive aggrandizements; but it is symbolized in other ways that, while small in themselves, dispose the citizenry to accept those aggrandizements. We are reminded, for instance, of the expanded commander in chief status every time a modern president gets off the White House helicopter and returns the salute of marines.
That is an innovation that was begun by Ronald Reagan. Dwight Eisenhower, a real general, knew that the salute is for the uniform, and as president he was not wearing one. An exchange of salutes was out of order. (George Bush came as close as he could to wearing a uniform while president when he landed on the telegenic aircraft carrier in an Air Force flight jacket).
We used to take pride in civilian leadership of the military under the Constitution, a principle that George Washington embraced when he avoided military symbols at Mount Vernon. We are not led — or were not in the past — by caudillos.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s prescient last book, “Secrecy,” traced the ever-faster-growing secrecy of our government and said that it strikes at the very essence of democracy — accountability of representatives to the people. How can the people hold their representatives to account if they are denied knowledge of what they are doing? Wartime and war analogies are embraced because these justify the secrecy. The representative is accountable to citizens. Soldiers are accountable to their officer. The dynamics are different, and to blend them is to undermine the basic principles of our Constitution.
Garry Wills, a professor emeritus of history at Northwestern, is the author, most recently, of “What Paul Meant.”
Sunday, January 28, 2007
DC press corpse a craven, corrupt, complicit adjunct to the PROPAGANDA LIES of the Bush administration.....
Cheney's staff, and a useful press
TIM RUTTEN
January 27, 2007
http://www.calendarlive.com/columnists/rutten/cl-et-rutten27jan27,0,5935282.story
IT wasn't what anybody intended, but this week Vice President Dick Cheney and some of his former aides gave the rest of us a rather instructive seminar in the symbiotic contempt that links the Bush administration and self-serving members of the Washington press corps.
The lesson began in the courtroom, where Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, is on trial for perjury, charged with lying to a grand jury about whether he told reporters that Valerie Plame — the wife of a prominent administration critic, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV — was a CIA agent. Libby's defense turns, in part, on assertions that the White House "sacrificed" him to protect Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political advisor, and that Libby and Rove had been instructed to manipulate the press in ways that discredited Wilson.
ADVERTISEMENT
Wilson had been sent by the CIA to the African country of Niger to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein had been trying to obtain yellow cake uranium mined there as part of his alleged nuclear weapon program. Wilson reported that nothing of the sort had occurred and went public with that fact when Bush and other members of the administration falsely alleged otherwise in making the case for war against Iraq.
Hussein, it turned out, had no program to develop weapons of mass destruction, and, depending on how you view things, the war in Iraq began with either lies or delusions.
Either could have been abetted by the sort of cynical media manipulation described this week when the vice president's former communications director, Catherine J. Martin, testified in Libby's trial. She described how Cheney was obsessed with Wilson's criticism, particularly after publication of an op-ed piece in the New York Times and how the vice president ordered a counteroffensive in parts of the press deemed receptive to whatever the administration wanted to dish out concerning the former diplomat. One of the options she recommended to Cheney was an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," because the program's host, Tim Russert, would allow the vice president to "control the message." (Russert, along with a number of reporters whom Libby attempted to make conduits of misinformation, will be testifying later in the trial.)
She also told the court that she suggested that the vice president's office "leak" information that seemed to undercut Wilson's credibility to carefully selected reporters at the New York Times and Washington Post, arranged a lunch for Cheney with right-wing commentators and advised him to avoid the New York Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Nicholas Kristof because he had "attacked the administration fairly regularly." Other witnesses this week testified that Libby had been assigned to contact selected reporters deemed receptive to information that might discredit Wilson as a critic and to plant with them anonymously sourced stories.
Martin called the word "leak," which appeared in her notes as a "term of art" and testified, "If you give it to one reporter, they're likelier to write the story."
She has that about right, though the "art" she has in mind is deception.
The Washington Post's Dana Milbank had the best summation of Martin's testimony: "The trial has already pulled back the curtain on the White House's PR techniques and confirmed some of the darkest suspicions of the reporters upon whom they are used. Relatively junior White House aides run roughshod over members of the president's Cabinet. Bush aides charged with speaking to the public and the media are kept out of the loop on some of the most important issues. And bad news is dumped before the weekend for the sole purpose of burying it."
It's such an amateurish approach to news management, in fact, that you have to wonder how the Bush administration and, particularly, Cheney's office, got away with it for as long as they did. If you recall that there always are a certain number of high-level Washington journalists willing to play ball with any form of transparently self-interested deceit for the sake of a Page 1 byline or a few minutes of prime airtime, you don't have to wonder very long.
To get a firsthand look at this brutally cynical contempt for the public and its right to know in action, all you had to do was watch Cheney's own appearance on CNN's "Situation Room" this week. The vice president sat there straight-faced and told the show's host, Wolf Blitzer, that the media have been ignoring all the "enormous successes" in Iraq and are "eager to write off this effort or declare it a failure."
When Blitzer asked if "blunders and the failures" on the ground in Iraq had undercut the administration's ability to make its case for its policies, the vice president flatly asserted, "I simply don't accept the premise of your question. I just think it's hogwash."
When Blitzer said there is a terrible situation in Iraq, Cheney replied, "No there is not. There is not. There's problems — ongoing problems — but we have in fact accomplished our objectives."
As Blitzer pressed a mild series of questions about the war's conduct, Cheney snapped, "What you're recommending is, or at least what you seem to believe the right course is, is to bail out."
"I'm just asking," Blitzer interjected.
"No, you're not asking," the vice president replied.
This week, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center reported that "just 37% [of Americans] believe that America's security from terrorist attacks depends on our success in Iraq — a fundamental part of President Bush's case for the additional troops" he now wishes to send to Baghdad. Pew also found that 51% of Americans now believe that the decision to go to war in Iraq was wrong.
Cheney's demonstrated proclivity for rhetorical bullying aside, dismissing legitimate questions growing out of such views in the fashion aired by CNN this week is an expression of contempt for public opinion itself.
There's no particular reason why malfeasant members of the press or those who merely are incompetent shouldn't be held in contempt. The news media, after all, are like every American institution, home to its share of idiots, poseurs, slothful time-markers and self-interested time servers. The problem is that Cheney and his former aides aren't simply contemptuous of the individual reporters or even of the press itself. They're contemptuous of the principle under which the free press operates — which is the American people's right to have a reasonable account of what the government does in their name.
The lesson to take away from this week's unintended seminar in contemporary journalism is that the vice president and his staff, acting on behalf of the Bush administration, believe that truth is a malleable adjunct to their ambitions and that they have a well-founded confidence that some members of the Washington press corps will cynically accommodate that belief for the sake of their careers.
It's a sick little arrangement in which the parties clearly have one thing in common: a profound indifference to both the common good and to their obligation to act in its service.
timothy.rutten@latimes.com
TIM RUTTEN
January 27, 2007
http://www.calendarlive.com/columnists/rutten/cl-et-rutten27jan27,0,5935282.story
IT wasn't what anybody intended, but this week Vice President Dick Cheney and some of his former aides gave the rest of us a rather instructive seminar in the symbiotic contempt that links the Bush administration and self-serving members of the Washington press corps.
The lesson began in the courtroom, where Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, is on trial for perjury, charged with lying to a grand jury about whether he told reporters that Valerie Plame — the wife of a prominent administration critic, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV — was a CIA agent. Libby's defense turns, in part, on assertions that the White House "sacrificed" him to protect Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political advisor, and that Libby and Rove had been instructed to manipulate the press in ways that discredited Wilson.
ADVERTISEMENT
Wilson had been sent by the CIA to the African country of Niger to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein had been trying to obtain yellow cake uranium mined there as part of his alleged nuclear weapon program. Wilson reported that nothing of the sort had occurred and went public with that fact when Bush and other members of the administration falsely alleged otherwise in making the case for war against Iraq.
Hussein, it turned out, had no program to develop weapons of mass destruction, and, depending on how you view things, the war in Iraq began with either lies or delusions.
Either could have been abetted by the sort of cynical media manipulation described this week when the vice president's former communications director, Catherine J. Martin, testified in Libby's trial. She described how Cheney was obsessed with Wilson's criticism, particularly after publication of an op-ed piece in the New York Times and how the vice president ordered a counteroffensive in parts of the press deemed receptive to whatever the administration wanted to dish out concerning the former diplomat. One of the options she recommended to Cheney was an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," because the program's host, Tim Russert, would allow the vice president to "control the message." (Russert, along with a number of reporters whom Libby attempted to make conduits of misinformation, will be testifying later in the trial.)
She also told the court that she suggested that the vice president's office "leak" information that seemed to undercut Wilson's credibility to carefully selected reporters at the New York Times and Washington Post, arranged a lunch for Cheney with right-wing commentators and advised him to avoid the New York Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Nicholas Kristof because he had "attacked the administration fairly regularly." Other witnesses this week testified that Libby had been assigned to contact selected reporters deemed receptive to information that might discredit Wilson as a critic and to plant with them anonymously sourced stories.
Martin called the word "leak," which appeared in her notes as a "term of art" and testified, "If you give it to one reporter, they're likelier to write the story."
She has that about right, though the "art" she has in mind is deception.
The Washington Post's Dana Milbank had the best summation of Martin's testimony: "The trial has already pulled back the curtain on the White House's PR techniques and confirmed some of the darkest suspicions of the reporters upon whom they are used. Relatively junior White House aides run roughshod over members of the president's Cabinet. Bush aides charged with speaking to the public and the media are kept out of the loop on some of the most important issues. And bad news is dumped before the weekend for the sole purpose of burying it."
It's such an amateurish approach to news management, in fact, that you have to wonder how the Bush administration and, particularly, Cheney's office, got away with it for as long as they did. If you recall that there always are a certain number of high-level Washington journalists willing to play ball with any form of transparently self-interested deceit for the sake of a Page 1 byline or a few minutes of prime airtime, you don't have to wonder very long.
To get a firsthand look at this brutally cynical contempt for the public and its right to know in action, all you had to do was watch Cheney's own appearance on CNN's "Situation Room" this week. The vice president sat there straight-faced and told the show's host, Wolf Blitzer, that the media have been ignoring all the "enormous successes" in Iraq and are "eager to write off this effort or declare it a failure."
When Blitzer asked if "blunders and the failures" on the ground in Iraq had undercut the administration's ability to make its case for its policies, the vice president flatly asserted, "I simply don't accept the premise of your question. I just think it's hogwash."
When Blitzer said there is a terrible situation in Iraq, Cheney replied, "No there is not. There is not. There's problems — ongoing problems — but we have in fact accomplished our objectives."
As Blitzer pressed a mild series of questions about the war's conduct, Cheney snapped, "What you're recommending is, or at least what you seem to believe the right course is, is to bail out."
"I'm just asking," Blitzer interjected.
"No, you're not asking," the vice president replied.
This week, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center reported that "just 37% [of Americans] believe that America's security from terrorist attacks depends on our success in Iraq — a fundamental part of President Bush's case for the additional troops" he now wishes to send to Baghdad. Pew also found that 51% of Americans now believe that the decision to go to war in Iraq was wrong.
Cheney's demonstrated proclivity for rhetorical bullying aside, dismissing legitimate questions growing out of such views in the fashion aired by CNN this week is an expression of contempt for public opinion itself.
There's no particular reason why malfeasant members of the press or those who merely are incompetent shouldn't be held in contempt. The news media, after all, are like every American institution, home to its share of idiots, poseurs, slothful time-markers and self-interested time servers. The problem is that Cheney and his former aides aren't simply contemptuous of the individual reporters or even of the press itself. They're contemptuous of the principle under which the free press operates — which is the American people's right to have a reasonable account of what the government does in their name.
The lesson to take away from this week's unintended seminar in contemporary journalism is that the vice president and his staff, acting on behalf of the Bush administration, believe that truth is a malleable adjunct to their ambitions and that they have a well-founded confidence that some members of the Washington press corps will cynically accommodate that belief for the sake of their careers.
It's a sick little arrangement in which the parties clearly have one thing in common: a profound indifference to both the common good and to their obligation to act in its service.
timothy.rutten@latimes.com
Excellent article by Chicagot Trib. demonstrates the INSANE PRIORITIES of America's "entertainment uber alles" economics....
Excellent article by Chicagot Trib. demonstrates the INSANE PRIORITIES of America's "entertainment uber alles" economy.
America will NEVER be able to recreate the conditions at the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the entire world looked to America out of awe and respect as a bedrock of freedom and an economic powerhouse. Within weeks of the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union, James Baker, George Bush Sr, and other Rethuglican "foreign policy experts" washed their hands of the genocidal dissolution of Yugoslavia (Baker's infamous formulation was "we don't have a dog in that hunt"!), mass-murder and death-camps less than an hour's flight from St. Peters (the Vatican in Rome) notwithstanding. It took newbie President Bill Clinton five long years to amass the political capital to exert US power in the bloody Balkans (as smooth as the restoration of Democratically elected President Aristede in Haiti was, it was widely reviled by the right-wing and corporate media, and the Somalia "Black Hawk Down" debacle was an even more potent icon of Right-Wing "let 'em all die!" selfish isolationism. Clinton and the US military finally reasserted a cease fire in Bosnia and Kosovo, but only by destroying Serbia's industrial infrastructure, and spreading deadly US depleted uranium rounds all over the region.
Republican post-Cold War folly didn't even have to wait for foreign policy debacles to unfold under Bill Clinton: by 1991 George Bush Sr. and Defense Secretaries DICK CHENEY and DON RUMSFELD has already DISSIPATED the "PEACE DIVIDEND," by SLASHING US defense spending and base closings WITHOUT ANY "soft letdown" to help local, defense ("big government taxpayer spending") dependent economies TRANSITION to something else!
Which folly was, of course, ON TOP of the Republican dominated SAVINGS & LOAN scandal, which cost American taxpayers BILLIONS of dollars, over one trillion dollars.
Which LOST OPPORTUNITIES and FAILED POLICIES BASED on GREED, ISOLATIONISM, and "FREE MARKET" economics (which were code for "loot taxpayers to pay for private business follies") were only the tip of the iceberg:
the TRUE INSANITY of America's right-leaning agenda has been NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION, the insane, propagandistic Right-Wingers (who dominate the Rethuglican Party) REFUSING TO COMPLY with world nuclear non-proliferation accords, America's righties instead preferring America's NUCLEAR BRINKSMANSHIP, i.e. George W. Bush telling reporters that the US claims the right to bomb other nations who may be building nuclear weapons, even though the USA no longer abides by an entire catalog of treaties, including the Geneva Conventions and the nuclear-non-proliferation protocols.
Don't take our word for it: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are the very enbodiement of Right-Wing INSANITY, THREATS over treaties and cooperation, from small defenseless countries (Panama, Grenada, Haiti) to larger countries portrayed by Rethuglican propaganda as "threats" (Iraq, Venezueala), to formidable countries that the US government and media are CONTINUALLY making veiled threats to. (Iran, Russia, China, and eventually Pakistan..)
( Bush's nuclear threat -
http://www.war-times.org/issues/2art1.htm )
Far from worshipping "moral values," justice, and international comity, the reactionary right-wing and their corporate media stooges (and their cantakerous fire-and-brimstone lusting preachers) in America WORSHIP MAMON - MONEY, VIOLENCE, THREATS, and the ferocious pursuit of unbridled power.
=====================================================
An atomic threat made in America
How the U.S. spread bomb-grade fuel worldwide — and failed to get it back
By Sam Roe, Tribune staff reporter
Published January 28, 2007
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-061209atoms-day1-story,1,7163234.htmlstory?coll=chi-news-hed
Tribune special report: How the U.S. spread bomb-grade fuel worldwide and failed to get it back.
The urgent call reached Armando Travelli in Vienna.
Get to Romania as soon as you can, the voice on the phone told Travelli, an Argonne scientist-turned-diplomat. Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu is considering returning the bomb-grade uranium America had given him.
Within days, Travelli stepped inside a sprawling nuclear research reactor in the southern Romanian city of Pitesti. There he saw firsthand the chilling consequences of using highly enriched uranium to cement alliances with backwater dictators. He watched as one worker reached into a pipe and nonchalantly pulled out a spaghetti-like jumble of electrical wires. Later, he learned that other workers had wedged a hunk of wood between two uranium-filled rods to keep them from jostling in the reactor pool. The makeshift repair backfired when the wood swelled and couldn't be removed.
But Travelli, who shuttled back and forth to the facility from Chicago for several years in the 1980s, didn't know the worst of it. When his mission bogged down, Romania secretly used the reactor and the enriched uranium to help separate plutonium--the first step in building an atomic bomb.
Ceausescu has long since faced a firing squad, and his successors disclosed the secret effort. But a quarter-century after Travelli's first visit to the reactor, some of the dangerous material remains there.
Photo: Nuclear fission takes place at a U.S.-supplied research reactor in Pitesti, Romania.
Romania is but one example in a world that reverberates from the fallout of the United States' Cold War folly known as Atoms for Peace, a program that distributed highly enriched uranium around the world. That uranium was intended solely to be used as fuel in civilian research reactors. But it is potent enough to make nuclear bombs and can be found everywhere from Romania, now a crossroads for nuclear smuggling, to an Iranian research reactor at the center of that nation's controversial nuclear program.
Three dozen other nations also obtained highly enriched uranium from the U.S. Then in 1974, India set off its first nuclear weapon, and America scrambled to get the bomb fuel back--an effort led by Travelli out of Argonne National Laboratory near southwest suburban Lemont.
The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, gave the mission a new sense of urgency: For terrorists or rogue nations, highly enriched uranium is by far the easiest way to build a nuclear bomb. Only 55 pounds are required. Double that and terrorists would need only limited technical skill to slam two pieces together to start a chain reaction--the same technique used in the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Even since 9/11, though, the worldwide mission to retrieve this uranium repeatedly has fallen short. Now, through exclusive access to the government archive chronicling the effort, the complete story behind that failure can be pieced together for the first time.
When Travelli embarked on his quest in 1978, he thought it could be accomplished with relative ease, taking maybe five years. He was wrong.
Atomic age breeds hope
In the middle of Rome sits one of the city's most famous fountains: the marble and bronze Fontana delle Naiadi, depicting four nymphs riding a swan, snake, horse and dragon. During the waning days of World War II, when Armando Travelli was just a boy, he and his mother would stop at the fountain on their way home from church or while walking in the neighborhood.
"I wish you could see it with the electricity on," he recalled her telling him. "It is so beautiful with lights and the water running."
"What's electricity?" he had asked. With the war on, he had known only candles.
When the conflict ended after the U.S. dropped two atom bombs on Japan, Travelli became part of the nuclear generation that grew to fear atomic energy but also marvel at its power. U.S. officials predicted nuclear bombs would blast holes for harbors, and electricity would be so cheap it wouldn't be metered. Travelli envisioned cars, boats--even his neighborhood fountain--powered by the atom.
Audio: Hear Eisenhower's 1953 speech.
Such dreams were energized by a bold new American experiment called Atoms for Peace. Unveiled by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1953, the program promised to share some U.S. nuclear technology with foreign nations that vowed to forgo atomic weapons.
"It was the grand bargain," said Ellie Busick, who helped oversee non-proliferation efforts at the State Department in the 1980s and '90s. "We were way ahead in building bombs, but we were not naive enough to think that nobody could ever do this but us."
The Soviets started sharing nuclear technology, too, and a Cold War chess match ensued, with the two superpowers and a few other nations supplying uranium and dozens of nuclear research reactors to their allies. U.S. reactors, for instance, went to Iran, Pakistan and Colombia; Soviet reactors to Libya, Bulgaria and North Korea. Romania, a Soviet satellite courted by the Americans, got two reactors: one from the U.S., another from the Russians.
Reactors became the equivalent of international status symbols; church groups funded some to win overseas converts. U.S. firms vied for lucrative contracts, and Argonne became the heart of Atoms for Peace research, building foreign-bound reactors dubbed Argonauts.
By the mid-1970s, Travelli was a rising young star at the lab. He was designing a research reactor so powerful that it would need two tons of highly enriched uranium fuel--enough, in the wrong hands, to make 72 nuclear bombs.
Washington's bungled moves
America didn't give away its most potent fuel--not at first.
The Eisenhower administration decided to supply foreign nations with only low-enriched uranium, which would be far less useful to bombmakers. But in the early 1960s, when reactor operators complained about the fuel's effectiveness, the U.S. government started providing highly enriched uranium instead.
"That was dumb--to send the easiest material in the world from which to make nuclear bombs to civilian facilities all over the world," said Matthew Bunn, a nuclear fuel expert and science adviser to the Clinton White House.
America initially provided this dangerous uranium fuel with the provision that foreigners return the used material, which remained weapons-grade. But in 1964, the Johnson administration started selling the fuel with no such requirement.
After India detonated its first nuclear weapon, built with the help of a reactor from Canada and heavy water from America, everything changed.
Suddenly, the U.S. wanted its most valuable nuclear material back. One of its first attempts played out 10 months later, in 1975, at the end of the Vietnam War. Two federal nuclear engineers volunteered for a daring raid in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. The mission: rescue bombmaking plutonium from a research reactor supplied by the U.S.
With sniper fire crackling all around, the engineers sneaked inside the reactor, packaged the material and were airlifted to safety. Hours later, the Viet Cong overran the area.
Only later was it determined that the engineers had made an embarrassing mistake: In the chaos of the mission, they took the wrong container. They hadn't rescued plutonium, but rather polonium-210, a radioactive material not as useful in weaponry (though the substance recently captured headlines when it killed a former KGB agent). Rather than relying on haphazard missions such as the one in Vietnam, the U.S. decided it needed a formal, concerted effort to retrieve bombmaking material, particularly highly enriched uranium fuel, that America had shipped overseas.
President Jimmy Carter knew something about reactors as he had done graduate work in nuclear technology. But he faced a diplomatic quandary: He couldn't just demand the fuel back, because other nations legally owned it.
Instead, the U.S. set out to do what it had failed to do in the 1960s: Invent a variety of replacement fuels that could adequately power the reactors but be useless for bombs. Then the U.S. could offer these replacement fuels to foreign nations in exchange for the highly enriched uranium.
To lead this effort, Energy Department officials wanted someone who knew reactors inside and out.
They turned to Travelli.
For scientist, a quest begins
Then 44, Travelli had built an impressive résumé that included teaching at MIT and designing and testing advanced reactors at Argonne.
Colleagues found him genial, meticulous and restrained. "You could yell at him and he wouldn't yell back," recalled Jim Snelgrove, an Argonne fuel specialist.
Travelli also had an international flair: He was dapper, well traveled and fluent in Italian, English, French and German.
When his bosses asked him if it were possible to develop fuels that could replace highly enriched uranium in research reactors, Travelli concluded it was.
But when they asked him whether he would lead the effort to invent these new fuels and persuade foreigners to make the switch, he was taken aback.
His life's work had been to spread nuclear technology, not rein it in. Now he was supposed to do a complete turnabout and remove enriched uranium from research reactors, facilities that didn't produce one watt of power?
"I didn't want this to be the accomplishment of my life," Travelli recalled. "My goal was to try to find a source of energy for the whole world."
But his bosses convinced him it was foolish to use weapons-grade fuel in reactors if something safer could be substituted, and so he decided to give it a shot.
Operating out of a small office in Building 362, a three-story brick structure on Argonne's 1,500-acre campus, Travelli started with just two staffers, a $645,000 annual budget and little idea of where to begin. No one even had a list of all the research reactors the U.S. had exported. He assigned one of his workers to try to track down the reactors by scouring the scientific literature and government documents. Occasionally the staffer would burst into his office and exclaim: "I found another one!" CIA agents eventually started coming to Travelli for information, not the other way around. Travelli hung a 5-foot-long metallic map of the world in his office, putting green triangular magnets in spots with Atoms for Peace reactors.
But his first mission would be so secret--and so odd--that he promised at the time never to utter a word about it, let alone mark it on his office map. The State Department was sending him to Taiwan, which U.S. officials suspected of secretly developing nuclear weapons.
There, in the countryside, sat a research reactor that looked fairly typical: a large, circular, windowless building with a domed roof.
But when Travelli stepped inside, he was astonished. The dark room the size of a theater was completely empty except for a massive, tomblike structure rising 30 feet. There were no signs of researchers or experiments. Soft Chinese music flowed from hidden speakers. Squinting through the dim, green-tinted light, Travelli and his team quietly moved forward, as if entering a temple. Their Taiwanese hosts led them to the structure in the middle, a concrete block that held the reactor core and its valuable nuclear material.
Later, out of earshot of his hosts, Travelli would tell his colleagues: "There is no research going on in there. That's just a machine for churning out plutonium for a nuclear weapon." The State Department told Travelli's team that everything they saw in Taiwan must be held in strict confidence, more so than a standard classified mission. Nothing could be committed to writing. No trip reports, memos or notes. It wasn't just because the U.S. believed the Taiwanese were trying to build the bomb. The secrecy was to protect Canada.
Canada not only supplied Taiwan's reactor, but the facility's core was identical to the one that the Canadians had provided to India, which had used the reactor to help build that nation's first bomb.
So the Americans took the responsibility for trying to neutralize Taiwan's reactor by altering its fuel. Unlike the other reactors Travelli would encounter, this one was fueled by natural uranium, not highly enriched uranium. But when natural uranium is burned, it produces plutonium, which also can be used to make nuclear bombs.
For two years, in 1979 and 1980, Travelli traveled back and forth to Taiwan, poring over schematics of the reactor and calculating how best to change its fuel. At one point, Travelli's team was invited to a reception held by the Taiwanese defense minister.
"I assure you that the reactor you are interested in has no military connection whatsoever," Travelli recalled the minister saying. "There is nothing sinister about it." Travelli thought this statement peculiar, given that no one from his team had directly accused the Taiwanese of trying to build weapons. Not long after, the Taiwanese, weary of the scrutiny, decided to shut the reactor. Travelli went back to his Argonne office and looked at his wall map. The Taiwan case had taken two years to complete. How could he possibly address all of the other research reactors on the U.S. target list in the next three years, as he originally envisioned?
A path strewn with obstacles
The U.S. thought its plan would go smoothly: Argonne would develop new fuels, America would offer them to other nations, and the foreigners would quickly trade in their enriched uranium. Though some nations agreed to the plan, most fiercely opposed it. They feared such a swap would slow their reactors, interrupt research and result in costly safety reviews. Profit and prestige also played a part. Some reactor operators charged scientists tens of thousands of dollars to conduct experiments. If the facilities used a less powerful fuel, they might be seen as second-rate. A few reactors even displayed brass signs boasting: "Fueled with highly enriched uranium."
But the greatest obstacles to retrieving bomb fuel were of America's own making. When Ronald Reagan defeated Carter in 1980, the retrieval effort fell out of favor. With memories of India's test fading and terrorism still viewed as a foreign problem, the Energy Department in 1981 proposed shutting down Travelli's mission, according to government records.
Though the program survived, the message was clear: Influential forces in the department didn't have much use for it. "They just wanted it to all go away," recalled Busick, the former State Department official.
As Travelli wrestled with his own government, he had an unsettling encounter that magnified his plight.
In 1981, during the height of the Cold War, he was attending a nuclear conference in what was then West Germany when a thin man in black glasses and a black suit approached him, stony-faced. The details of that conversation always have stuck with Travelli:
"Is my understanding of U.S. policy correct, that you are trying to retrieve highly enriched uranium from research reactors?" the man asked.
"That is correct," Travelli replied.
"And the reason is to reduce the chance that this material might fall into the wrong hands?"
"That's right."
"And the primary emphasis is on reactors that the United States supplied to its allies?"
"Correct."
"Not those the Soviet Union supplied to her allies?"
"Correct."
The man smiled slowly, shook Travelli's hand and walked away.
Travelli did not know whether this man was a scientist, bureaucrat, spy or some combination. But the meeting made him realize he had little idea what the Soviets and their satellites were up to. He soon would find out: Travelli became deeply involved with the reactor in Romania, a facility beset by problems since America provided it in the 1970s to Ceausescu, the repressive and mercurial dictator. Those working at the reactor were not immune to Ceausescu's bizarre policies. Every spring and fall, buses would pull in front of the facility, and its scientists were herded aboard and driven to nearby fields to plant corn or pick tomatoes.
"Why can't they get the peasants to do this?" one of the scientists, Corneliu Costescu, recalled complaining. "We're nuclear scientists." But Romania's dictator believed it was much easier to round up scientists at nuclear facilities than peasants in villages. Travelli invited Costescu and two other Romanian physicists to America to study whether the bomb fuel used in their facility could be replaced by something safer. After months of work, the Romanian scientists concluded that it could. But higher-ups in Romania weren't convinced, especially because the U.S. refused to pay for the new fuel. Normally, America didn't cover the cost of replacement fuel when swapping it for bomb-grade material. Instead, the U.S. waited until countries used up all theirs, then asked them to pay for the replacement fuel.
But Romania was operating its reactor less and less in order to conserve its highly enriched uranium. A standoff ensued, and several years passed with no progress. During this long delay, Romania, unbeknownst to the U.S., used the American-supplied reactor to help separate plutonium, a serious violation of international rules governing the development of nuclear weapons. Travelli and U.S. officials would not learn of the Romanian action until after the Berlin Wall came down and Ceausescu was executed by his own people. In 1992, seven years after the nuclear infraction, the new Romanian government voluntarily reported the case to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The agency, satisfied that corrective action had been taken, reported the infraction to the UN Security Council for informational purposes only--one of just a handful of cases ever reported to the council. But even after Romania's admission, the American government did not invest more in its effort to retrieve bomb-grade fuel worldwide.
Instead, it took steps that ensured failure for several years to come.
Reaching out to former foes
Despondent over a lack of progress, Travelli began to neglect his wall map. When people brushed up against it, shifting the magnets around, he didn't bother to fix them. It wasn't as though he had made no headway: By 1993, he had helped retrieve bomb fuel from 19 reactors--about a quarter of all U.S.-supplied facilities--and invented safer fuels that could be used in several dozen more. But in further cost-cutting moves, the Energy Department had eliminated his research budget, preventing him from developing the new fuels needed for the remaining reactors still using highly enriched uranium. Worse, the U.S. was refusing to stop using enriched uranium in more than a dozen reactors on American soil. In fact, in 1993 President Bill Clinton backed a plan in Tennessee to build a giant, $3 billion research reactor complex--a facility that would use bomb-grade fuel.
The plan eventually was canceled, but foreigners derided America's attitude as a colossal double standard: It was OK for the U.S. to use bomb-grade fuel but not for other countries. The foreigners began holding on to their uranium more tightly than ever. With few champions in Congress or the federal bureaucracy, Travelli's program became an orphan, bounced from agency to agency. When Travelli tried to apply pressure from behind the scenes--appealing to congressional staffers for more support, for example--he alienated those in Washington already skeptical of a national security program being run by scientists out of Chicago.
Allan Krass, a retired State Department official, supported Travelli's effort but realized others did not. These officials "really saw it as a bunch of guys who just wanted to get more money so that they could keep their program alive but who didn't have any good ideas and weren't making much progress," Krass said.
Just when it appeared Travelli's quest would die, the State Department in the mid-1990s became increasingly alarmed at reports of thieves stealing small amounts of highly enriched uranium in Russia and other former Soviet republics.
Travelli proposed an idea: What if he expanded his efforts to include the tons of highly enriched uranium the Soviets had distributed over the last three decades?
The State Department had a similar idea. It gave Travelli $1.5 million--money that could be spent only overseas--and in 1993 he flew to Moscow. It was his first trip there, and he did not know what to expect.
To his surprise, he discovered that the Russians had been monitoring his work for years. They had read all of his papers, knew all of his team members' names--even copied his effort by retrieving some of their own nuclear fuel.
"It was eerie, like meeting your long-lost twin brother," Travelli recalled.
He also was startled to see the same mysterious, stony-faced man who had approached him 12 years earlier in West Germany and pumped him for information. The man's name, it turned out, was Nikolay Arkhangelsky, an influential nuclear official. But Arkhangelsky remained elusive.
Travelli would go on to meet with him about 20 times and even travel with him to three countries to tour nuclear facilities. But he never learned basic information about the Russian. His business card simply read "scientific adviser," and some members of Travelli's team came to suspect that he was working for the Russian secret police--a charge Arkhangelsky later would laugh off.
Over the course of several more visits to Moscow, Travelli proposed to Arkhangelsky and the other Russians that the two countries work together to solve the fuel problem once and for all.
Retrieving it one nation at a time, he concluded, was failing desperately. There were just too many reactors requiring too many kinds of fuel.
But what if the U.S. and Russia started from scratch, returned to the lab and tried to invent a single fuel that could replace bomb material in every reactor in the world?
No longer would they have to fear rogue states, friends becoming enemies, unchecked reactors or nuclear terrorists. All the world's bombmaking fuel could be removed from civilian use, and the Atoms for Peace debacle would be over.
After considering it, the Russians agreed to try. Even the reluctant U.S. Energy Department was willing to help pay for the effort.
Finally, Travelli felt success might be at hand.
How we reported this series
To chronicle America's failed quest to retrieve uranium, Tribune staff reporter Sam Roe obtained exclusive access to the government archive of the effort through scientist Armando Travelli.
Roe examined thousands of records never before publicly reviewed, including scientific trip reports, internal memorandums and e-mails, and government correspondence.
He also reviewed congressional testimony, previously classified records, foreign and U.S. research papers, and reports by government agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Roe conducted extensive interviews with Travelli, who led the uranium retrieval effort for a quarter of a century. He also interviewed dozens of U.S. and foreign scientists, nuclear reactor operators, current and former government officials, and top energy officials here and in Russia.
He can be reached at sroe@tribune.com
America will NEVER be able to recreate the conditions at the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the entire world looked to America out of awe and respect as a bedrock of freedom and an economic powerhouse. Within weeks of the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union, James Baker, George Bush Sr, and other Rethuglican "foreign policy experts" washed their hands of the genocidal dissolution of Yugoslavia (Baker's infamous formulation was "we don't have a dog in that hunt"!), mass-murder and death-camps less than an hour's flight from St. Peters (the Vatican in Rome) notwithstanding. It took newbie President Bill Clinton five long years to amass the political capital to exert US power in the bloody Balkans (as smooth as the restoration of Democratically elected President Aristede in Haiti was, it was widely reviled by the right-wing and corporate media, and the Somalia "Black Hawk Down" debacle was an even more potent icon of Right-Wing "let 'em all die!" selfish isolationism. Clinton and the US military finally reasserted a cease fire in Bosnia and Kosovo, but only by destroying Serbia's industrial infrastructure, and spreading deadly US depleted uranium rounds all over the region.
Republican post-Cold War folly didn't even have to wait for foreign policy debacles to unfold under Bill Clinton: by 1991 George Bush Sr. and Defense Secretaries DICK CHENEY and DON RUMSFELD has already DISSIPATED the "PEACE DIVIDEND," by SLASHING US defense spending and base closings WITHOUT ANY "soft letdown" to help local, defense ("big government taxpayer spending") dependent economies TRANSITION to something else!
Which folly was, of course, ON TOP of the Republican dominated SAVINGS & LOAN scandal, which cost American taxpayers BILLIONS of dollars, over one trillion dollars.
Which LOST OPPORTUNITIES and FAILED POLICIES BASED on GREED, ISOLATIONISM, and "FREE MARKET" economics (which were code for "loot taxpayers to pay for private business follies") were only the tip of the iceberg:
the TRUE INSANITY of America's right-leaning agenda has been NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION, the insane, propagandistic Right-Wingers (who dominate the Rethuglican Party) REFUSING TO COMPLY with world nuclear non-proliferation accords, America's righties instead preferring America's NUCLEAR BRINKSMANSHIP, i.e. George W. Bush telling reporters that the US claims the right to bomb other nations who may be building nuclear weapons, even though the USA no longer abides by an entire catalog of treaties, including the Geneva Conventions and the nuclear-non-proliferation protocols.
Don't take our word for it: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are the very enbodiement of Right-Wing INSANITY, THREATS over treaties and cooperation, from small defenseless countries (Panama, Grenada, Haiti) to larger countries portrayed by Rethuglican propaganda as "threats" (Iraq, Venezueala), to formidable countries that the US government and media are CONTINUALLY making veiled threats to. (Iran, Russia, China, and eventually Pakistan..)
( Bush's nuclear threat -
http://www.war-times.org/issues/2art1.htm )
Far from worshipping "moral values," justice, and international comity, the reactionary right-wing and their corporate media stooges (and their cantakerous fire-and-brimstone lusting preachers) in America WORSHIP MAMON - MONEY, VIOLENCE, THREATS, and the ferocious pursuit of unbridled power.
=====================================================
An atomic threat made in America
How the U.S. spread bomb-grade fuel worldwide — and failed to get it back
By Sam Roe, Tribune staff reporter
Published January 28, 2007
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-061209atoms-day1-story,1,7163234.htmlstory?coll=chi-news-hed
Tribune special report: How the U.S. spread bomb-grade fuel worldwide and failed to get it back.
The urgent call reached Armando Travelli in Vienna.
Get to Romania as soon as you can, the voice on the phone told Travelli, an Argonne scientist-turned-diplomat. Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu is considering returning the bomb-grade uranium America had given him.
Within days, Travelli stepped inside a sprawling nuclear research reactor in the southern Romanian city of Pitesti. There he saw firsthand the chilling consequences of using highly enriched uranium to cement alliances with backwater dictators. He watched as one worker reached into a pipe and nonchalantly pulled out a spaghetti-like jumble of electrical wires. Later, he learned that other workers had wedged a hunk of wood between two uranium-filled rods to keep them from jostling in the reactor pool. The makeshift repair backfired when the wood swelled and couldn't be removed.
But Travelli, who shuttled back and forth to the facility from Chicago for several years in the 1980s, didn't know the worst of it. When his mission bogged down, Romania secretly used the reactor and the enriched uranium to help separate plutonium--the first step in building an atomic bomb.
Ceausescu has long since faced a firing squad, and his successors disclosed the secret effort. But a quarter-century after Travelli's first visit to the reactor, some of the dangerous material remains there.
Photo: Nuclear fission takes place at a U.S.-supplied research reactor in Pitesti, Romania.
Romania is but one example in a world that reverberates from the fallout of the United States' Cold War folly known as Atoms for Peace, a program that distributed highly enriched uranium around the world. That uranium was intended solely to be used as fuel in civilian research reactors. But it is potent enough to make nuclear bombs and can be found everywhere from Romania, now a crossroads for nuclear smuggling, to an Iranian research reactor at the center of that nation's controversial nuclear program.
Three dozen other nations also obtained highly enriched uranium from the U.S. Then in 1974, India set off its first nuclear weapon, and America scrambled to get the bomb fuel back--an effort led by Travelli out of Argonne National Laboratory near southwest suburban Lemont.
The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, gave the mission a new sense of urgency: For terrorists or rogue nations, highly enriched uranium is by far the easiest way to build a nuclear bomb. Only 55 pounds are required. Double that and terrorists would need only limited technical skill to slam two pieces together to start a chain reaction--the same technique used in the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Even since 9/11, though, the worldwide mission to retrieve this uranium repeatedly has fallen short. Now, through exclusive access to the government archive chronicling the effort, the complete story behind that failure can be pieced together for the first time.
When Travelli embarked on his quest in 1978, he thought it could be accomplished with relative ease, taking maybe five years. He was wrong.
Atomic age breeds hope
In the middle of Rome sits one of the city's most famous fountains: the marble and bronze Fontana delle Naiadi, depicting four nymphs riding a swan, snake, horse and dragon. During the waning days of World War II, when Armando Travelli was just a boy, he and his mother would stop at the fountain on their way home from church or while walking in the neighborhood.
"I wish you could see it with the electricity on," he recalled her telling him. "It is so beautiful with lights and the water running."
"What's electricity?" he had asked. With the war on, he had known only candles.
When the conflict ended after the U.S. dropped two atom bombs on Japan, Travelli became part of the nuclear generation that grew to fear atomic energy but also marvel at its power. U.S. officials predicted nuclear bombs would blast holes for harbors, and electricity would be so cheap it wouldn't be metered. Travelli envisioned cars, boats--even his neighborhood fountain--powered by the atom.
Audio: Hear Eisenhower's 1953 speech.
Such dreams were energized by a bold new American experiment called Atoms for Peace. Unveiled by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1953, the program promised to share some U.S. nuclear technology with foreign nations that vowed to forgo atomic weapons.
"It was the grand bargain," said Ellie Busick, who helped oversee non-proliferation efforts at the State Department in the 1980s and '90s. "We were way ahead in building bombs, but we were not naive enough to think that nobody could ever do this but us."
The Soviets started sharing nuclear technology, too, and a Cold War chess match ensued, with the two superpowers and a few other nations supplying uranium and dozens of nuclear research reactors to their allies. U.S. reactors, for instance, went to Iran, Pakistan and Colombia; Soviet reactors to Libya, Bulgaria and North Korea. Romania, a Soviet satellite courted by the Americans, got two reactors: one from the U.S., another from the Russians.
Reactors became the equivalent of international status symbols; church groups funded some to win overseas converts. U.S. firms vied for lucrative contracts, and Argonne became the heart of Atoms for Peace research, building foreign-bound reactors dubbed Argonauts.
By the mid-1970s, Travelli was a rising young star at the lab. He was designing a research reactor so powerful that it would need two tons of highly enriched uranium fuel--enough, in the wrong hands, to make 72 nuclear bombs.
Washington's bungled moves
America didn't give away its most potent fuel--not at first.
The Eisenhower administration decided to supply foreign nations with only low-enriched uranium, which would be far less useful to bombmakers. But in the early 1960s, when reactor operators complained about the fuel's effectiveness, the U.S. government started providing highly enriched uranium instead.
"That was dumb--to send the easiest material in the world from which to make nuclear bombs to civilian facilities all over the world," said Matthew Bunn, a nuclear fuel expert and science adviser to the Clinton White House.
America initially provided this dangerous uranium fuel with the provision that foreigners return the used material, which remained weapons-grade. But in 1964, the Johnson administration started selling the fuel with no such requirement.
After India detonated its first nuclear weapon, built with the help of a reactor from Canada and heavy water from America, everything changed.
Suddenly, the U.S. wanted its most valuable nuclear material back. One of its first attempts played out 10 months later, in 1975, at the end of the Vietnam War. Two federal nuclear engineers volunteered for a daring raid in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. The mission: rescue bombmaking plutonium from a research reactor supplied by the U.S.
With sniper fire crackling all around, the engineers sneaked inside the reactor, packaged the material and were airlifted to safety. Hours later, the Viet Cong overran the area.
Only later was it determined that the engineers had made an embarrassing mistake: In the chaos of the mission, they took the wrong container. They hadn't rescued plutonium, but rather polonium-210, a radioactive material not as useful in weaponry (though the substance recently captured headlines when it killed a former KGB agent). Rather than relying on haphazard missions such as the one in Vietnam, the U.S. decided it needed a formal, concerted effort to retrieve bombmaking material, particularly highly enriched uranium fuel, that America had shipped overseas.
President Jimmy Carter knew something about reactors as he had done graduate work in nuclear technology. But he faced a diplomatic quandary: He couldn't just demand the fuel back, because other nations legally owned it.
Instead, the U.S. set out to do what it had failed to do in the 1960s: Invent a variety of replacement fuels that could adequately power the reactors but be useless for bombs. Then the U.S. could offer these replacement fuels to foreign nations in exchange for the highly enriched uranium.
To lead this effort, Energy Department officials wanted someone who knew reactors inside and out.
They turned to Travelli.
For scientist, a quest begins
Then 44, Travelli had built an impressive résumé that included teaching at MIT and designing and testing advanced reactors at Argonne.
Colleagues found him genial, meticulous and restrained. "You could yell at him and he wouldn't yell back," recalled Jim Snelgrove, an Argonne fuel specialist.
Travelli also had an international flair: He was dapper, well traveled and fluent in Italian, English, French and German.
When his bosses asked him if it were possible to develop fuels that could replace highly enriched uranium in research reactors, Travelli concluded it was.
But when they asked him whether he would lead the effort to invent these new fuels and persuade foreigners to make the switch, he was taken aback.
His life's work had been to spread nuclear technology, not rein it in. Now he was supposed to do a complete turnabout and remove enriched uranium from research reactors, facilities that didn't produce one watt of power?
"I didn't want this to be the accomplishment of my life," Travelli recalled. "My goal was to try to find a source of energy for the whole world."
But his bosses convinced him it was foolish to use weapons-grade fuel in reactors if something safer could be substituted, and so he decided to give it a shot.
Operating out of a small office in Building 362, a three-story brick structure on Argonne's 1,500-acre campus, Travelli started with just two staffers, a $645,000 annual budget and little idea of where to begin. No one even had a list of all the research reactors the U.S. had exported. He assigned one of his workers to try to track down the reactors by scouring the scientific literature and government documents. Occasionally the staffer would burst into his office and exclaim: "I found another one!" CIA agents eventually started coming to Travelli for information, not the other way around. Travelli hung a 5-foot-long metallic map of the world in his office, putting green triangular magnets in spots with Atoms for Peace reactors.
But his first mission would be so secret--and so odd--that he promised at the time never to utter a word about it, let alone mark it on his office map. The State Department was sending him to Taiwan, which U.S. officials suspected of secretly developing nuclear weapons.
There, in the countryside, sat a research reactor that looked fairly typical: a large, circular, windowless building with a domed roof.
But when Travelli stepped inside, he was astonished. The dark room the size of a theater was completely empty except for a massive, tomblike structure rising 30 feet. There were no signs of researchers or experiments. Soft Chinese music flowed from hidden speakers. Squinting through the dim, green-tinted light, Travelli and his team quietly moved forward, as if entering a temple. Their Taiwanese hosts led them to the structure in the middle, a concrete block that held the reactor core and its valuable nuclear material.
Later, out of earshot of his hosts, Travelli would tell his colleagues: "There is no research going on in there. That's just a machine for churning out plutonium for a nuclear weapon." The State Department told Travelli's team that everything they saw in Taiwan must be held in strict confidence, more so than a standard classified mission. Nothing could be committed to writing. No trip reports, memos or notes. It wasn't just because the U.S. believed the Taiwanese were trying to build the bomb. The secrecy was to protect Canada.
Canada not only supplied Taiwan's reactor, but the facility's core was identical to the one that the Canadians had provided to India, which had used the reactor to help build that nation's first bomb.
So the Americans took the responsibility for trying to neutralize Taiwan's reactor by altering its fuel. Unlike the other reactors Travelli would encounter, this one was fueled by natural uranium, not highly enriched uranium. But when natural uranium is burned, it produces plutonium, which also can be used to make nuclear bombs.
For two years, in 1979 and 1980, Travelli traveled back and forth to Taiwan, poring over schematics of the reactor and calculating how best to change its fuel. At one point, Travelli's team was invited to a reception held by the Taiwanese defense minister.
"I assure you that the reactor you are interested in has no military connection whatsoever," Travelli recalled the minister saying. "There is nothing sinister about it." Travelli thought this statement peculiar, given that no one from his team had directly accused the Taiwanese of trying to build weapons. Not long after, the Taiwanese, weary of the scrutiny, decided to shut the reactor. Travelli went back to his Argonne office and looked at his wall map. The Taiwan case had taken two years to complete. How could he possibly address all of the other research reactors on the U.S. target list in the next three years, as he originally envisioned?
A path strewn with obstacles
The U.S. thought its plan would go smoothly: Argonne would develop new fuels, America would offer them to other nations, and the foreigners would quickly trade in their enriched uranium. Though some nations agreed to the plan, most fiercely opposed it. They feared such a swap would slow their reactors, interrupt research and result in costly safety reviews. Profit and prestige also played a part. Some reactor operators charged scientists tens of thousands of dollars to conduct experiments. If the facilities used a less powerful fuel, they might be seen as second-rate. A few reactors even displayed brass signs boasting: "Fueled with highly enriched uranium."
But the greatest obstacles to retrieving bomb fuel were of America's own making. When Ronald Reagan defeated Carter in 1980, the retrieval effort fell out of favor. With memories of India's test fading and terrorism still viewed as a foreign problem, the Energy Department in 1981 proposed shutting down Travelli's mission, according to government records.
Though the program survived, the message was clear: Influential forces in the department didn't have much use for it. "They just wanted it to all go away," recalled Busick, the former State Department official.
As Travelli wrestled with his own government, he had an unsettling encounter that magnified his plight.
In 1981, during the height of the Cold War, he was attending a nuclear conference in what was then West Germany when a thin man in black glasses and a black suit approached him, stony-faced. The details of that conversation always have stuck with Travelli:
"Is my understanding of U.S. policy correct, that you are trying to retrieve highly enriched uranium from research reactors?" the man asked.
"That is correct," Travelli replied.
"And the reason is to reduce the chance that this material might fall into the wrong hands?"
"That's right."
"And the primary emphasis is on reactors that the United States supplied to its allies?"
"Correct."
"Not those the Soviet Union supplied to her allies?"
"Correct."
The man smiled slowly, shook Travelli's hand and walked away.
Travelli did not know whether this man was a scientist, bureaucrat, spy or some combination. But the meeting made him realize he had little idea what the Soviets and their satellites were up to. He soon would find out: Travelli became deeply involved with the reactor in Romania, a facility beset by problems since America provided it in the 1970s to Ceausescu, the repressive and mercurial dictator. Those working at the reactor were not immune to Ceausescu's bizarre policies. Every spring and fall, buses would pull in front of the facility, and its scientists were herded aboard and driven to nearby fields to plant corn or pick tomatoes.
"Why can't they get the peasants to do this?" one of the scientists, Corneliu Costescu, recalled complaining. "We're nuclear scientists." But Romania's dictator believed it was much easier to round up scientists at nuclear facilities than peasants in villages. Travelli invited Costescu and two other Romanian physicists to America to study whether the bomb fuel used in their facility could be replaced by something safer. After months of work, the Romanian scientists concluded that it could. But higher-ups in Romania weren't convinced, especially because the U.S. refused to pay for the new fuel. Normally, America didn't cover the cost of replacement fuel when swapping it for bomb-grade material. Instead, the U.S. waited until countries used up all theirs, then asked them to pay for the replacement fuel.
But Romania was operating its reactor less and less in order to conserve its highly enriched uranium. A standoff ensued, and several years passed with no progress. During this long delay, Romania, unbeknownst to the U.S., used the American-supplied reactor to help separate plutonium, a serious violation of international rules governing the development of nuclear weapons. Travelli and U.S. officials would not learn of the Romanian action until after the Berlin Wall came down and Ceausescu was executed by his own people. In 1992, seven years after the nuclear infraction, the new Romanian government voluntarily reported the case to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The agency, satisfied that corrective action had been taken, reported the infraction to the UN Security Council for informational purposes only--one of just a handful of cases ever reported to the council. But even after Romania's admission, the American government did not invest more in its effort to retrieve bomb-grade fuel worldwide.
Instead, it took steps that ensured failure for several years to come.
Reaching out to former foes
Despondent over a lack of progress, Travelli began to neglect his wall map. When people brushed up against it, shifting the magnets around, he didn't bother to fix them. It wasn't as though he had made no headway: By 1993, he had helped retrieve bomb fuel from 19 reactors--about a quarter of all U.S.-supplied facilities--and invented safer fuels that could be used in several dozen more. But in further cost-cutting moves, the Energy Department had eliminated his research budget, preventing him from developing the new fuels needed for the remaining reactors still using highly enriched uranium. Worse, the U.S. was refusing to stop using enriched uranium in more than a dozen reactors on American soil. In fact, in 1993 President Bill Clinton backed a plan in Tennessee to build a giant, $3 billion research reactor complex--a facility that would use bomb-grade fuel.
The plan eventually was canceled, but foreigners derided America's attitude as a colossal double standard: It was OK for the U.S. to use bomb-grade fuel but not for other countries. The foreigners began holding on to their uranium more tightly than ever. With few champions in Congress or the federal bureaucracy, Travelli's program became an orphan, bounced from agency to agency. When Travelli tried to apply pressure from behind the scenes--appealing to congressional staffers for more support, for example--he alienated those in Washington already skeptical of a national security program being run by scientists out of Chicago.
Allan Krass, a retired State Department official, supported Travelli's effort but realized others did not. These officials "really saw it as a bunch of guys who just wanted to get more money so that they could keep their program alive but who didn't have any good ideas and weren't making much progress," Krass said.
Just when it appeared Travelli's quest would die, the State Department in the mid-1990s became increasingly alarmed at reports of thieves stealing small amounts of highly enriched uranium in Russia and other former Soviet republics.
Travelli proposed an idea: What if he expanded his efforts to include the tons of highly enriched uranium the Soviets had distributed over the last three decades?
The State Department had a similar idea. It gave Travelli $1.5 million--money that could be spent only overseas--and in 1993 he flew to Moscow. It was his first trip there, and he did not know what to expect.
To his surprise, he discovered that the Russians had been monitoring his work for years. They had read all of his papers, knew all of his team members' names--even copied his effort by retrieving some of their own nuclear fuel.
"It was eerie, like meeting your long-lost twin brother," Travelli recalled.
He also was startled to see the same mysterious, stony-faced man who had approached him 12 years earlier in West Germany and pumped him for information. The man's name, it turned out, was Nikolay Arkhangelsky, an influential nuclear official. But Arkhangelsky remained elusive.
Travelli would go on to meet with him about 20 times and even travel with him to three countries to tour nuclear facilities. But he never learned basic information about the Russian. His business card simply read "scientific adviser," and some members of Travelli's team came to suspect that he was working for the Russian secret police--a charge Arkhangelsky later would laugh off.
Over the course of several more visits to Moscow, Travelli proposed to Arkhangelsky and the other Russians that the two countries work together to solve the fuel problem once and for all.
Retrieving it one nation at a time, he concluded, was failing desperately. There were just too many reactors requiring too many kinds of fuel.
But what if the U.S. and Russia started from scratch, returned to the lab and tried to invent a single fuel that could replace bomb material in every reactor in the world?
No longer would they have to fear rogue states, friends becoming enemies, unchecked reactors or nuclear terrorists. All the world's bombmaking fuel could be removed from civilian use, and the Atoms for Peace debacle would be over.
After considering it, the Russians agreed to try. Even the reluctant U.S. Energy Department was willing to help pay for the effort.
Finally, Travelli felt success might be at hand.
How we reported this series
To chronicle America's failed quest to retrieve uranium, Tribune staff reporter Sam Roe obtained exclusive access to the government archive of the effort through scientist Armando Travelli.
Roe examined thousands of records never before publicly reviewed, including scientific trip reports, internal memorandums and e-mails, and government correspondence.
He also reviewed congressional testimony, previously classified records, foreign and U.S. research papers, and reports by government agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Roe conducted extensive interviews with Travelli, who led the uranium retrieval effort for a quarter of a century. He also interviewed dozens of U.S. and foreign scientists, nuclear reactor operators, current and former government officials, and top energy officials here and in Russia.
He can be reached at sroe@tribune.com
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Cheney was AT CENTER of WH efforts to DISCREDIT Amb. Wilson... by OUTING HIS WIFE as a secret CIA operative
Note how the WHORE Washington Post editors title this post: "Cheney led rebuttal effort."
That is an ERRONEOUS, LYING headline.
What is most amazing about this whole story - the INTENTIONAL "outing" of an entire CIA operation by the Bush-Cheney White House to discredit an outspoken war critic - is that it demonstrates just how ferocious and efficient the Bush-Cheney-Rove Rethuglican SMEAR machine was (and is).
They set out to do nothing less than SMEAR a HERO of the Gulf War1 - Ambassador Joe Wilson was recognized by President Bush1 for courageously negotiating with Saddam Hussein for the release of American and European hostages in the short days before American boms landed in Baghdad in that 1991 war.
And they did it by... "outing" his wife, EXPOSING Valerie Plame as AN UNDERCOVER CIA OPERATIVE engaged in dangerous counter-proliferations work in "threat" nations!
ONLY the cowardly, craven, corrupt, and supremely arrogant Bush-Cheney adminstration could SEEK TO BOLSTER THEIR OWN STANDING, by SMEARING a decorated Gulf War1 hero, and "outing" an UNDERCOVER CIA OPERATIVE who had dedicated her life to - undercover counter-proliferations work!
(To repeat!) the Bush-Cheney White House sought to advance their own power and prestige by SMEARING a Gulf War1 hero, and EXPOSING not only an undercover CIA agent, but RUINING FOREVER her entire cover organization, Brewster-Jennings Co, and ALL the people (including other undercover CIA agents) EVER associated with that cover company!
Of course, the Bush-Cheney White House could ONLY get away with such an appalling display of cynicism and treachery WITH THE FULL COMPLICITY of the whore corporate media, who IMMEDIATELY jumped on the administration's version of the story ("Ambassador Wilson is a scoundrel taking JUNKET trips to Niger because his wife is a corrupt nepotistic overpaid CIA desk jockey!"), and failed to ask the obvious question we just twice posted, "HOW THE HELL can you boost your own prestige, by OUTING an ENTIRE CIA undercover organization, and SMEARING a Gulf War1 hero?"
Washington media whores, THY NAME is LIES and TREACHERY.
=========================================
Ambassador Joe Wilson proved beyond a doubt that President George W. Bush LIED when he included the "Niger yellowcake uranium ore shipped to Iraq for Saddam's WMD program" in his (Bush's) bombastic 2003 State of the Union address. The "Niger yellowcake uranium ore for Iraq" story had BEEN DISPROVED by Ambassador Wilson's visit to Niger, on behalf of the CIA, and Mr. Bush was well aware that this rational for war with Iraq had been disproved when he included it in his SOTU speech in January of 2003.
(TRANSCRIPT from Bush's 2003 SOTU speech INCLUDED AT BOTTOM this comment!)
It was Ambassador Wilson who REBUTTED the White House "yellowcake ore for Iraq's WMD program" story.
It was Dick Cheney and the George W. Bush White House who sought, NOT to "rebutt" Ambassador Wilson, but to THOROUGHLY SMEAR HIM as a liar and partisan and (after "outing" his wife as a CIA operative) as some kind of NEPOTISTIC hack taking a JOY RIDE JUNKET to Niger at a time that America was at war with global terrorists.
Within that distinction - SMEAR JOB vs honest rebuttal - lies the Washington Post's MEDIA WHOREDOME and NAZIESQUE SMEAR-MONGERING.
The WHORE Post well knows that Ambassador Wilson's story was CORRECT, and that the Bush-Cheney White House sought to SMEAR him, even at the expense of "OUTING" and ENTIRE CIA UNDERCOVER OPERATION.
But, the WHORE Post would PREFER TO MISLEAD THEIR READERS, even after all these years.
Blood on their hands, lies in their pages, and relentlessly joining the Rethuglican White House in SMEARING honest critics of an appallingl, abusive government. The Washington Whore Post is DESPICABLE.
----------------------------------------------------------
President Bush's LYING "Saddam WMD Program!" comments
from his 2003 SOTU speech, from official US govt. White House website:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html
<< The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide. >>
------------------------------------------------------------
Ex-Aide Says Cheney Led Rebuttal Effort
By Carol D. Leonnig and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 26, 2007; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/25/AR2007012500171.html?referrer=delicious
Vice President Cheney personally orchestrated his office's 2003 efforts to rebut allegations that the administration used flawed intelligence to justify the war in Iraq and discredit a critic who Cheney believed was making him look foolish, according to testimony and evidence yesterday in the criminal trial of his former chief of staff.
Cheney dictated talking points for a White House briefing in the midst of the controversy that summer, his former press aide, Cathie Martin, testified, stressing that the CIA never told Cheney that a CIA-sponsored mission had found no real evidence that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa.
That is an ERRONEOUS, LYING headline.
What is most amazing about this whole story - the INTENTIONAL "outing" of an entire CIA operation by the Bush-Cheney White House to discredit an outspoken war critic - is that it demonstrates just how ferocious and efficient the Bush-Cheney-Rove Rethuglican SMEAR machine was (and is).
They set out to do nothing less than SMEAR a HERO of the Gulf War1 - Ambassador Joe Wilson was recognized by President Bush1 for courageously negotiating with Saddam Hussein for the release of American and European hostages in the short days before American boms landed in Baghdad in that 1991 war.
And they did it by... "outing" his wife, EXPOSING Valerie Plame as AN UNDERCOVER CIA OPERATIVE engaged in dangerous counter-proliferations work in "threat" nations!
ONLY the cowardly, craven, corrupt, and supremely arrogant Bush-Cheney adminstration could SEEK TO BOLSTER THEIR OWN STANDING, by SMEARING a decorated Gulf War1 hero, and "outing" an UNDERCOVER CIA OPERATIVE who had dedicated her life to - undercover counter-proliferations work!
(To repeat!) the Bush-Cheney White House sought to advance their own power and prestige by SMEARING a Gulf War1 hero, and EXPOSING not only an undercover CIA agent, but RUINING FOREVER her entire cover organization, Brewster-Jennings Co, and ALL the people (including other undercover CIA agents) EVER associated with that cover company!
Of course, the Bush-Cheney White House could ONLY get away with such an appalling display of cynicism and treachery WITH THE FULL COMPLICITY of the whore corporate media, who IMMEDIATELY jumped on the administration's version of the story ("Ambassador Wilson is a scoundrel taking JUNKET trips to Niger because his wife is a corrupt nepotistic overpaid CIA desk jockey!"), and failed to ask the obvious question we just twice posted, "HOW THE HELL can you boost your own prestige, by OUTING an ENTIRE CIA undercover organization, and SMEARING a Gulf War1 hero?"
Washington media whores, THY NAME is LIES and TREACHERY.
=========================================
Ambassador Joe Wilson proved beyond a doubt that President George W. Bush LIED when he included the "Niger yellowcake uranium ore shipped to Iraq for Saddam's WMD program" in his (Bush's) bombastic 2003 State of the Union address. The "Niger yellowcake uranium ore for Iraq" story had BEEN DISPROVED by Ambassador Wilson's visit to Niger, on behalf of the CIA, and Mr. Bush was well aware that this rational for war with Iraq had been disproved when he included it in his SOTU speech in January of 2003.
(TRANSCRIPT from Bush's 2003 SOTU speech INCLUDED AT BOTTOM this comment!)
It was Ambassador Wilson who REBUTTED the White House "yellowcake ore for Iraq's WMD program" story.
It was Dick Cheney and the George W. Bush White House who sought, NOT to "rebutt" Ambassador Wilson, but to THOROUGHLY SMEAR HIM as a liar and partisan and (after "outing" his wife as a CIA operative) as some kind of NEPOTISTIC hack taking a JOY RIDE JUNKET to Niger at a time that America was at war with global terrorists.
Within that distinction - SMEAR JOB vs honest rebuttal - lies the Washington Post's MEDIA WHOREDOME and NAZIESQUE SMEAR-MONGERING.
The WHORE Post well knows that Ambassador Wilson's story was CORRECT, and that the Bush-Cheney White House sought to SMEAR him, even at the expense of "OUTING" and ENTIRE CIA UNDERCOVER OPERATION.
But, the WHORE Post would PREFER TO MISLEAD THEIR READERS, even after all these years.
Blood on their hands, lies in their pages, and relentlessly joining the Rethuglican White House in SMEARING honest critics of an appallingl, abusive government. The Washington Whore Post is DESPICABLE.
----------------------------------------------------------
President Bush's LYING "Saddam WMD Program!" comments
from his 2003 SOTU speech, from official US govt. White House website:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html
<< The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide. >>
------------------------------------------------------------
Ex-Aide Says Cheney Led Rebuttal Effort
By Carol D. Leonnig and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 26, 2007; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/25/AR2007012500171.html?referrer=delicious
Vice President Cheney personally orchestrated his office's 2003 efforts to rebut allegations that the administration used flawed intelligence to justify the war in Iraq and discredit a critic who Cheney believed was making him look foolish, according to testimony and evidence yesterday in the criminal trial of his former chief of staff.
Cheney dictated talking points for a White House briefing in the midst of the controversy that summer, his former press aide, Cathie Martin, testified, stressing that the CIA never told Cheney that a CIA-sponsored mission had found no real evidence that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa.
Ha! Media whores document each other's whoreishness. WP article serves up uber whore TIM RUSSERT as "OPTION 1" when VP wanted to CONTROL THE MESSAGE
Well, it's amusing to read uber-whores THE WASHINGTON POST report from the Libby (TREASONOUS OUTING of an undercover CIA operation for political revenge) trial that Vice President Dick Cheney's office considered UBER-WHORE TIM RUSSERT to be their "#1 [choice to] CONTROL THE MESSAGE," to downplay the MALICE and DECEPTION the Bush White House used to launch the United States on a costly INVASION OF IRAQ, when it was AL QAIDA, and 15 SAUDI HIJACKERS, who attacked on America on 9-11-2001.
You hear that Tim Russert, you media WHORE? The White House USED YOU to JUSTIFY THEIR INVASION of a nation of 25 million people. Now that more than half-a-million Iraqis and over 3,150 American soldiers have been killed, we hope Mr. Russert, the Washington Post, and the other blood-money whores of the DC media enjoy their million dollar salaries earned in blood (of others) and propaganda lies.
(With a hat-tip to Bartcop for pointing us to this latest WP tidbit or actual journalistic truth, and to the former MediaWhoresOnline.com, who put TIM RUSSERT, CHRIS MATHEWS, and the Washington Post's HOWARD FINEMAN as their MEDIA WHORES OF THE YEAR back when MWO was still running.)
<< Flashed on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions. Option 1: "MTP-VP," she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under "pro," she wrote: "control message."
"I suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used," Martin testified. "It [Russert's pathetic dereliction of journalistic duty as subservient Meet the Press host] is our best format." >>
=========================================================
In Ex-Aide's Testimony, A Spin Through VP's PR
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 26, 2007; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/25/AR2007012501951.html
Memo to Tim Russert: Dick Cheney thinks he controls you.
This delicious morsel about the "Meet the Press" host and the vice president was part of the extensive dish Cathie Martin served up yesterday when the former Cheney communications director took the stand in the perjury trial of former Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Flashed on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions. Option 1: "MTP-VP," she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under "pro," she wrote: "control message."
"I suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used," Martin testified. "It's our best format."
It is unclear whether the first week of the trial will help or hurt Libby or the administration. But the trial has already pulled back the curtain on the White House's PR techniques and confirmed some of the darkest suspicions of the reporters upon whom they are used. Relatively junior White House aides run roughshod over members of the president's Cabinet. Bush aides charged with speaking to the public and the media are kept out of the loop on some of the most important issues. And bad news is dumped before the weekend for the sole purpose of burying it.
With a candor that is frowned upon at the White House, Martin explained the use of late-Friday statements. "Fewer people pay attention to it late on Friday," she said. "Fewer people pay attention when it's reported on Saturday."
Martin, perhaps unaware of the suspicion such machinations caused in the press corps, lamented that her statements at the time were not regarded as credible. She testified that, as the controversy swelled in 2004, reporters ignored her denials and continued to report that it was Cheney's office that sent former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate allegations of Iraq's nuclear acquisitions. "They're not taking my word for it," Martin recalled telling a colleague.
Martin, who now works on the president's communications staff, said she was frustrated that reporters wouldn't call for comment about the controversy. She said she had to ask the CIA spokesman, Bill Harlow, which reporters were working on the story. "Often, reporters would stop calling us," she testified.
This prompted quiet chuckles among the two dozen reporters sitting in court to cover the trial. Whispered one: "When was the last time you called the vice president's office and got anything other than a 'no comment'?"
At length, Martin explained how she, Libby and deputy national security adviser Steve Hadley worked late into the night writing a statement to be issued by George Tenet in 2004 in which the CIA boss would take blame for the bogus claim in Bush's State of the Union address that Iraq was seeking nuclear material in Africa.
After "delicate" talks, Tenet agreed to say the CIA "approved" the claim and "I am responsible" -- but even that disappointed Martin, who had wanted Tenet to say that "we did not express any doubt about Niger."
During her testimony, Martin, a Harvard Law School graduate married to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and a close pal of Bush counselor Dan Bartlett, seemed uncomfortable, shifting in her chair, squinting at her interrogators, stealing quick glances at the jury, and repeatedly touching her cheek, ear, nose, lips and scalp.
Martin shed light on the mystery of why White House press secretary Scott McClellan promised, falsely, that Libby was not involved in outing CIA operative Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife. After McClellan had vouched for Bush strategist Karl Rove's innocence, Libby asked Martin, "Why don't they say something about me?"
"You need to talk to Scott," Martin advised.
On jurors' monitors were images of Martin's talking points, some labeled "on the record" and others "deep background." She walked the jurors through how the White House coddles friendly writers and freezes out others. To deal with the Wilson controversy, she hastily arranged a Cheney lunch with conservative commentators. And when New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof first wrote about the Niger affair, she explained, "we didn't see any urgency to get to Kristof" because "he frankly attacked the administration fairly regularly."
Questioned by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Martin described how Hadley tried to shield White House spokesmen from the Niger controversy. "Everybody was sort of in the dark," she explained. "There had been a decision not to have the communicators involved."
But Martin, encouraged by Libby, secretly advised Libby and Cheney on how to respond. She put "Meet the Press" at the top of her list of "Options" but noted that it might appear "too defensive." Next, she proposed "leak to Sanger-Pincus-newsmags. Sit down and give to him." This meant that the "no-leak" White House would give the story to the New York Times' David Sanger, The Washington Post's Walter Pincus, or Time or Newsweek. Option 3: "Press conference -- Condi/Rumsfeld." Option 4: "Op-ed."
Martin was embarrassed about the "leak" option; the case, after all, is about a leak. "It's a term of art," she said. "If you give it to one reporter, they're likelier to write the story."
For all the elaborate press management, things didn't always go according to plan. Martin described how Time wound up with an exclusive one weekend because she didn't have a phone number for anybody at Newsweek.
"You didn't have a lot of hands-on experience dealing with the press?" defense attorney Theodore Wells asked.
"Correct," Martin replied. After further questions, she added: "Few of us in the White House had had hands-on experience with any crisis like this."
Staff writer Carol D. Leonnig contributed to this report.
You hear that Tim Russert, you media WHORE? The White House USED YOU to JUSTIFY THEIR INVASION of a nation of 25 million people. Now that more than half-a-million Iraqis and over 3,150 American soldiers have been killed, we hope Mr. Russert, the Washington Post, and the other blood-money whores of the DC media enjoy their million dollar salaries earned in blood (of others) and propaganda lies.
(With a hat-tip to Bartcop for pointing us to this latest WP tidbit or actual journalistic truth, and to the former MediaWhoresOnline.com, who put TIM RUSSERT, CHRIS MATHEWS, and the Washington Post's HOWARD FINEMAN as their MEDIA WHORES OF THE YEAR back when MWO was still running.)
<< Flashed on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions. Option 1: "MTP-VP," she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under "pro," she wrote: "control message."
"I suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used," Martin testified. "It [Russert's pathetic dereliction of journalistic duty as subservient Meet the Press host] is our best format." >>
=========================================================
In Ex-Aide's Testimony, A Spin Through VP's PR
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 26, 2007; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/25/AR2007012501951.html
Memo to Tim Russert: Dick Cheney thinks he controls you.
This delicious morsel about the "Meet the Press" host and the vice president was part of the extensive dish Cathie Martin served up yesterday when the former Cheney communications director took the stand in the perjury trial of former Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Flashed on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions. Option 1: "MTP-VP," she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under "pro," she wrote: "control message."
"I suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used," Martin testified. "It's our best format."
It is unclear whether the first week of the trial will help or hurt Libby or the administration. But the trial has already pulled back the curtain on the White House's PR techniques and confirmed some of the darkest suspicions of the reporters upon whom they are used. Relatively junior White House aides run roughshod over members of the president's Cabinet. Bush aides charged with speaking to the public and the media are kept out of the loop on some of the most important issues. And bad news is dumped before the weekend for the sole purpose of burying it.
With a candor that is frowned upon at the White House, Martin explained the use of late-Friday statements. "Fewer people pay attention to it late on Friday," she said. "Fewer people pay attention when it's reported on Saturday."
Martin, perhaps unaware of the suspicion such machinations caused in the press corps, lamented that her statements at the time were not regarded as credible. She testified that, as the controversy swelled in 2004, reporters ignored her denials and continued to report that it was Cheney's office that sent former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate allegations of Iraq's nuclear acquisitions. "They're not taking my word for it," Martin recalled telling a colleague.
Martin, who now works on the president's communications staff, said she was frustrated that reporters wouldn't call for comment about the controversy. She said she had to ask the CIA spokesman, Bill Harlow, which reporters were working on the story. "Often, reporters would stop calling us," she testified.
This prompted quiet chuckles among the two dozen reporters sitting in court to cover the trial. Whispered one: "When was the last time you called the vice president's office and got anything other than a 'no comment'?"
At length, Martin explained how she, Libby and deputy national security adviser Steve Hadley worked late into the night writing a statement to be issued by George Tenet in 2004 in which the CIA boss would take blame for the bogus claim in Bush's State of the Union address that Iraq was seeking nuclear material in Africa.
After "delicate" talks, Tenet agreed to say the CIA "approved" the claim and "I am responsible" -- but even that disappointed Martin, who had wanted Tenet to say that "we did not express any doubt about Niger."
During her testimony, Martin, a Harvard Law School graduate married to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and a close pal of Bush counselor Dan Bartlett, seemed uncomfortable, shifting in her chair, squinting at her interrogators, stealing quick glances at the jury, and repeatedly touching her cheek, ear, nose, lips and scalp.
Martin shed light on the mystery of why White House press secretary Scott McClellan promised, falsely, that Libby was not involved in outing CIA operative Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife. After McClellan had vouched for Bush strategist Karl Rove's innocence, Libby asked Martin, "Why don't they say something about me?"
"You need to talk to Scott," Martin advised.
On jurors' monitors were images of Martin's talking points, some labeled "on the record" and others "deep background." She walked the jurors through how the White House coddles friendly writers and freezes out others. To deal with the Wilson controversy, she hastily arranged a Cheney lunch with conservative commentators. And when New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof first wrote about the Niger affair, she explained, "we didn't see any urgency to get to Kristof" because "he frankly attacked the administration fairly regularly."
Questioned by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Martin described how Hadley tried to shield White House spokesmen from the Niger controversy. "Everybody was sort of in the dark," she explained. "There had been a decision not to have the communicators involved."
But Martin, encouraged by Libby, secretly advised Libby and Cheney on how to respond. She put "Meet the Press" at the top of her list of "Options" but noted that it might appear "too defensive." Next, she proposed "leak to Sanger-Pincus-newsmags. Sit down and give to him." This meant that the "no-leak" White House would give the story to the New York Times' David Sanger, The Washington Post's Walter Pincus, or Time or Newsweek. Option 3: "Press conference -- Condi/Rumsfeld." Option 4: "Op-ed."
Martin was embarrassed about the "leak" option; the case, after all, is about a leak. "It's a term of art," she said. "If you give it to one reporter, they're likelier to write the story."
For all the elaborate press management, things didn't always go according to plan. Martin described how Time wound up with an exclusive one weekend because she didn't have a phone number for anybody at Newsweek.
"You didn't have a lot of hands-on experience dealing with the press?" defense attorney Theodore Wells asked.
"Correct," Martin replied. After further questions, she added: "Few of us in the White House had had hands-on experience with any crisis like this."
Staff writer Carol D. Leonnig contributed to this report.
Mr. Sulzberger and the NY lyin' Times KNOW how illegal the Bush administration is... which makes their crony media coverage all the more despicable...
Perhaps bashing a 'news' organization for having an 'honest moment' is impolitic or not polite... but in the case of the appalling New York Times, IF this Times editorial is correct, that the Bush administation has a propensity to:
ASSAULT on the rule of law...
- DISDAIN for the [rightful, constitutional] powers of Congress....
- willingness to CON THE PUBLIC...
- refusal to heed expert advice.....
- refusal... to recognize facts on the ground...
- witholding evidence....
- imposing outrageous secrecy and control over the courts....
- [running] OUTLAW eavesdropping operations....
- Orwellian claims of secrecy....
- ttorney General Alberto Gonzales routinely stonewalls legitimate Congressional requests for documents and information on a wide range of issues
- trampling on civil liberties and the constitutional balance of power
THEN we can only ask, WHY THE HELL isn't the Lyin' Times in a FULL COURT PRESS for HONESTY, INTEGRITY, and THE RULE OF LAW by the US government, in the way they (the NY Times) once helped the Rethuglicans in Congress make a CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS (impeachment) out of President Clinton's aborted, fleeting, short-lived affair?
(All the above listed elements are DIRECT QUOTES from the NY Times' OWN EDITORIAL! and do NOT include other SERIAL ABUSES and CRIMES by the Bush White House, including OUTSOURCING TORTURE to "terrorist nation" Syria!! LIES-to-WAR, and the criminal OUTING of an entire UNDERCOVER CIA OPERATION as a means of running a PROPAGANDA DISINFORMATION CAMAPAIGN against an outspoken critic of the invasion of Iraq (i.e. smearing Ambassador Joe Wilson, who publicly denounced President Bush for including the "Niger uranium yellowcake ore for Iraq's WMD program" when Bush well knew the story was unsubstantiated, unproven - false.)
The NEW YORK TIMES is as aware of ALL the above outrages, and many more, as the readers of this blog are... yet they CONTINUE to give the administration the BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT, and soft-reporting on the hard stories, KNOWING FULL WELL the Bush administration's propensity to "CON THE PUBLIC"... from the "BAIT & SWITCH WHITE HOUSE"!
The NY Times can't help their wicked, lyin' ways. On the SAME DAY as the above, honest editorial, the Times phrases the headline for the massive anti-escalation protest in Washington DC in the PASSIVE, MISLEADING voice:
"Protest Focuses on Troop Increase for Iraq"
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/washington/28protest.html
How about an HONEST, active-voice headline, you NYT whores?!
Like, maybe, "Tens of thousands PROTEST WAR ESCALATION in Iraq" ??
--------------------------------------------------------
The Bait-and-Switch White House
(unsigned editorial) published January 27, 2007
by the NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/27/opinion/27sat1.html
We often wonder whether there is a limit to the Bush administration’s obsession with secrecy, its assault on the rule of law, its disdain for the powers of Congress, its willingness to con the public and its refusal to heed expert advice or recognize facts on the ground. Events of the past week suggest the answer is no.
In his State of the Union speech, Mr. Bush stuck to his ill-conceived plans for Iraq, but at least admitted the situation was dire. He said he wanted to work with Congress and announced a bipartisan council on national security.
That lasted a day. By Wednesday evening, Vice President Dick Cheney was on CNN contradicting most of what Mr. Bush had said. We were left asking, once again, Who exactly is running this White House?
While Mr. Bush has been a bit more forthright lately about how badly things have gone in Iraq, Mr. Cheney spoke of “enormous successes” there and refused to pay even curled-lip service to consulting Congress. Whatever votes Congress takes on Iraq, Mr. Cheney said, “it won’t stop us.”
Whenever the vice president does this sort of thing, and it’s pretty often, Americans are faced with an unpleasant choice: Are Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney running a bait-and-switch operation, or does the vice president simply feel free to cut the ground out from under Mr. Bush?
All of that was distressing enough. But in Friday’s Times, Adam Liptak gave an account of the way the administration — after grandly announcing that it was finally going to obey the law on wiretapping — is trying to quash lawsuits over Mr. Bush’s outlaw eavesdropping operations by imposing outrageous secrecy and control over the courts.
Justice Department lawyers are withholding evidence from plaintiffs and even restricting the access of judges to documents in cases involving Mr. Bush’s decision to authorize the warrantless interception of e-mail and phone calls. In one suit, Justice Department lawyers tried to seize computers from the plaintiffs’ lawyers to remove a document central to their case against the government.
In response to these and other serious concerns, the Justice Department offered only the most twisted excuses, which a federal judge rightly compared to “Alice in Wonderland.”
When government lawyers tried to take back a document that has circulated around the world, the judge asked a Justice Department lawyer, “Who is it secret from?” The answer: “Anyone who has not seen it.”
These are not isolated events. The government has made the same Orwellian claims of secrecy in a lawsuit over the president’s decision to create secret C.I.A. prisons for terrorism suspects. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales routinely stonewalls legitimate Congressional requests for documents and information on a wide range of issues. He negotiated a secret agreement to give supposed judicial oversight to Mr. Bush’s wiretapping program, with a court that does not permit anyone into its hearings to argue against the government.
Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney claim that they are protecting the powers of the presidency. At least that’s the bait they use to explain their trampling on civil liberties and the constitutional balance of power. But by abusing the government’s legitimate right to claim secrecy in court hearings, they will make it harder for other presidents to do that when it is actually justified. And with that switch, they have done grievous harm to the credibility of the Oval Office and the country.
ASSAULT on the rule of law...
- DISDAIN for the [rightful, constitutional] powers of Congress....
- willingness to CON THE PUBLIC...
- refusal to heed expert advice.....
- refusal... to recognize facts on the ground...
- witholding evidence....
- imposing outrageous secrecy and control over the courts....
- [running] OUTLAW eavesdropping operations....
- Orwellian claims of secrecy....
- ttorney General Alberto Gonzales routinely stonewalls legitimate Congressional requests for documents and information on a wide range of issues
- trampling on civil liberties and the constitutional balance of power
THEN we can only ask, WHY THE HELL isn't the Lyin' Times in a FULL COURT PRESS for HONESTY, INTEGRITY, and THE RULE OF LAW by the US government, in the way they (the NY Times) once helped the Rethuglicans in Congress make a CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS (impeachment) out of President Clinton's aborted, fleeting, short-lived affair?
(All the above listed elements are DIRECT QUOTES from the NY Times' OWN EDITORIAL! and do NOT include other SERIAL ABUSES and CRIMES by the Bush White House, including OUTSOURCING TORTURE to "terrorist nation" Syria!! LIES-to-WAR, and the criminal OUTING of an entire UNDERCOVER CIA OPERATION as a means of running a PROPAGANDA DISINFORMATION CAMAPAIGN against an outspoken critic of the invasion of Iraq (i.e. smearing Ambassador Joe Wilson, who publicly denounced President Bush for including the "Niger uranium yellowcake ore for Iraq's WMD program" when Bush well knew the story was unsubstantiated, unproven - false.)
The NEW YORK TIMES is as aware of ALL the above outrages, and many more, as the readers of this blog are... yet they CONTINUE to give the administration the BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT, and soft-reporting on the hard stories, KNOWING FULL WELL the Bush administration's propensity to "CON THE PUBLIC"... from the "BAIT & SWITCH WHITE HOUSE"!
The NY Times can't help their wicked, lyin' ways. On the SAME DAY as the above, honest editorial, the Times phrases the headline for the massive anti-escalation protest in Washington DC in the PASSIVE, MISLEADING voice:
"Protest Focuses on Troop Increase for Iraq"
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/washington/28protest.html
How about an HONEST, active-voice headline, you NYT whores?!
Like, maybe, "Tens of thousands PROTEST WAR ESCALATION in Iraq" ??
--------------------------------------------------------
The Bait-and-Switch White House
(unsigned editorial) published January 27, 2007
by the NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/27/opinion/27sat1.html
We often wonder whether there is a limit to the Bush administration’s obsession with secrecy, its assault on the rule of law, its disdain for the powers of Congress, its willingness to con the public and its refusal to heed expert advice or recognize facts on the ground. Events of the past week suggest the answer is no.
In his State of the Union speech, Mr. Bush stuck to his ill-conceived plans for Iraq, but at least admitted the situation was dire. He said he wanted to work with Congress and announced a bipartisan council on national security.
That lasted a day. By Wednesday evening, Vice President Dick Cheney was on CNN contradicting most of what Mr. Bush had said. We were left asking, once again, Who exactly is running this White House?
While Mr. Bush has been a bit more forthright lately about how badly things have gone in Iraq, Mr. Cheney spoke of “enormous successes” there and refused to pay even curled-lip service to consulting Congress. Whatever votes Congress takes on Iraq, Mr. Cheney said, “it won’t stop us.”
Whenever the vice president does this sort of thing, and it’s pretty often, Americans are faced with an unpleasant choice: Are Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney running a bait-and-switch operation, or does the vice president simply feel free to cut the ground out from under Mr. Bush?
All of that was distressing enough. But in Friday’s Times, Adam Liptak gave an account of the way the administration — after grandly announcing that it was finally going to obey the law on wiretapping — is trying to quash lawsuits over Mr. Bush’s outlaw eavesdropping operations by imposing outrageous secrecy and control over the courts.
Justice Department lawyers are withholding evidence from plaintiffs and even restricting the access of judges to documents in cases involving Mr. Bush’s decision to authorize the warrantless interception of e-mail and phone calls. In one suit, Justice Department lawyers tried to seize computers from the plaintiffs’ lawyers to remove a document central to their case against the government.
In response to these and other serious concerns, the Justice Department offered only the most twisted excuses, which a federal judge rightly compared to “Alice in Wonderland.”
When government lawyers tried to take back a document that has circulated around the world, the judge asked a Justice Department lawyer, “Who is it secret from?” The answer: “Anyone who has not seen it.”
These are not isolated events. The government has made the same Orwellian claims of secrecy in a lawsuit over the president’s decision to create secret C.I.A. prisons for terrorism suspects. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales routinely stonewalls legitimate Congressional requests for documents and information on a wide range of issues. He negotiated a secret agreement to give supposed judicial oversight to Mr. Bush’s wiretapping program, with a court that does not permit anyone into its hearings to argue against the government.
Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney claim that they are protecting the powers of the presidency. At least that’s the bait they use to explain their trampling on civil liberties and the constitutional balance of power. But by abusing the government’s legitimate right to claim secrecy in court hearings, they will make it harder for other presidents to do that when it is actually justified. And with that switch, they have done grievous harm to the credibility of the Oval Office and the country.
Media whores CENSOR the story that Rethuglican Senators FILIBUSTER Minimum Wage Bill...!!
Our GODDAMNED MEDIA WHORES, after DEMEANING the Democrats every attempt to assert SOME control over the Rethuglican Congress and Bush administration (by ridiculing the Dems rare attempts at invoking the FILIBUSTER threat before the November 2006 elections switched control of Congress to the Democrats), now CENSOR the story of Republicans actually USING the FILIBUSTER to STOP.... AN INCREASE IN America's minimum wage!
Americans media WHORES, you are actively working WITH the reactionary Rethuglican Party to IMPOSE POVERTY and IGNORANCE on America, and to DESTROY the American middle class, by LYING in your reporting, and self-censoring those stories that indicate Republican misgovernance and political fraud.
The New York Times and Washington Post: they will put 100 reporters on KEN STARR's illegally leaked Grand Jury report on Bill Clinton's brief affair, but they WON'T TELL YOU that the Republican White House ILLEGALLY "outed" an entire CIA undercover organization to legitimize their lies to war; and that the Rethuglicans now use the FILIBUSTER to prevent minimum wage Americans from getting an increase in pay for the first time in over 10 years!
-------------------------------------------
Note: the short answer to Senator Kennedy's question "what do Republicans have against America's working men and women?" is that the Republican reactionary right-wing PREFERS CHATTEL SLAVERY as an economic model, with the great white race "CHOSEN," by god, to dominate and subjugate all lesser races, as the ante-bellum economic model existed in the Deep South before the Civil War.
In the cold, black hearts of reactionary right-wingers, ANY improvement in working conditions (for whites as well as blacks and other minorities) is akin to the traumatic fear of "SLAVE INSURRECTION!" - i.e., the destruction of the great master race by animal-like subhumans. This latent fear and loathing on the part of the reactionary right has building for decades. In the years shortly after WWII America produced fully 50% of the world's global production output; and in 1800s white Europeans and Americans represented almost 1/2 of the world's population. Since those benchmarks, European and American dominance in both population and economic production have been in great (relative) decline, heightening the reactionary fear that white America will be overrun by the "great unwashed brown-skin masses" that just a few generations ago were completely dominated by Anglo/Euro/American control.
Right-Wing contempt for working Americans is actually minor compared to Right-Wing CONTEMPT for our environment!
The reactionary right-wing agenda is SO filled with HATE (for their fellow human beings) that, as an intellectual or mental effort to CONTROL what they perceive as an "evil world," tens of thousands of RIghties actually PRAY for the fate that befell Pompey during the Imperial Roman era: they PRAY for FIRE AND BRIMSTONE to descend on America's cities, they PRAY for the DESTRUCTION of America and the world, and they will tolerate ARSENIC in their drinking water, MERCURY in their fish, pesticides and toxins in their food, and tons of other toxins in their air, as long as they perceive that their "plantation owners" glorious confederate leadership is leading them in the fight against all the savage races that are "overruning" the world.
------------------------------------------------
Kennedy to Republicans: "What is it about working men and women that you find so offensive?"
By Bob Geiger
Jan 25, 2006
http://bobgeiger.blogspot.com/2007/01/kennedy-to-republicans-what-is-it-about.html
It's a sure bet that Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) has a lot of bottled-up frustration from years of fighting the Republican party to get a simple minimum wage increase for America's families and it boiled over on the floor of the Senate Thursday night.
Angry about Republican filibustering of the minimum wage increase that easily passed the House of Representatives two weeks ago, Kennedy erupted on the Senate floor, demanding of the other side of the aisle "When does the greed stop?"
After listing many of the unrelated and pricey amendments for business that the GOP has tried to join to a minimum wage hike, Kennedy blasted Republicans and demanded to know how they can be as cruel as they are to the working poor in America.
"We have now had amendments that have been worth over 200 billion dollars… Amendments that have been offered. We've had amendments on education of 35 billion dollars. We've had health-savings amendments that will benefit people with average incomes of $112,000… We've had those kinds of amendments and we're looking at the Kyl amendment at 3 billion dollars. But we still cannot get two dollars and fifteen cents -- over two years. Over two years!
"What is the price, we ask the other side? What is the price that you want from these working men and women? What cost? How much more do we have to give to the private sector and to business? How many billion dollars more, are you asking, are you requiring?
"When does the greed stop, we ask the other side? That's the question and that's the issue."
Kennedy, upset about the noises Republicans made just three weeks ago about their renewed bipartisan spirit and seeing them already blocking simple legislation that is favored by the vast majority of Americans, angrily chided them for the ridiculous number of amendments they have offered on a bill that went untouched through the House.
"Make no mistake about it -- they have on the Republican side, 70 more amendments. 70 more amendments!" said Kennedy. "We have none. We're prepared to vote now. 70 more amendments… 'Oh yes, we want an increase in the minimum wage, we want this, we want that but… let's have some other kinds of amendments that have virtually nothing to do with this.'"
But Massachusetts' Senior Senator -- who has seen his efforts to increase the minimum wage shot down in the Senate three times in the last two years -- really unloaded on his Republican colleagues for their utter contempt for working people in this country.
"240 billion dollars in tax breaks for corporations. 36 billion dollars in tax breaks for small businesses. Increase in productivity -- 42 percent over the last 10 years," yelled Kennedy emotionally. "But do you think there's any increase in the minimum wage? No. At 12 after five today, on Thursday, I speak for all of our Democrats and say we're prepared to vote now. Now!"
"Do you have such disdain for hard-working Americans that you want to pile all your amendments on this? Why don’t you just hold your amendments until other pieces of legislation? Why this volume of amendments on just the issue to try and raise the minimum wage? What is it about it that drives you Republicans crazy? What is it? Something. Something! What is the price that the workers have to pay to get an increase? What is it about working men and women that you find so offensive?"
And at this early stage of the 110th Congress, Kennedy has already had it with the hypocrisy that has always characterized the Republicans in dealing with Senate Democrats -- and he called them on it.
"We don’t want to hear any more from that side for the rest of this session about permitting or not permitting votes in here when you're denying it on the most simple concept of an increase in the minimum wage," said Kennedy. "We don’t want to hear any more about that."
"This is filibuster by delay and amendments. I've been around here long enough to know it when I see it and smell it, and that's what it looks like, that's what it is, make no mistake about it. Make no mistake about it."
Friday, January 26, 2007
NY Times, Washington Post CENSOR Libby perjury and CIA-outing story...
A quick glance at the front pages of the New York Times and Washington Post today reveals how we, Americans, got into this horror of an ever-expanding war for Iraqi oil and whichever targets the Bush-Cheney-Rethuglican Party decides to attack next.
While this MSNBC (Chris Mathews) video clip details how the Bush-Cheney White House with prior intent sought to learn as much about Ambassador Joe Wilson so as to discredit his opposition to the US invasion of Iraq, and with this PREMEDITATED EFFORT learned that Ambassador Wilson's wife was actually an undercover CIA counter-proliferation agent,
http://video.msn.com/v/us/fv/msnbc/fv.htm??g=05a1123d-f3e7-46b1-b6af-d0bb2bb99f72&f=00&fg=copy
....a quick glance at the Post and Times front pages reveals that the Times puts.. INDIA YOGA in public schools story ABOVE the Libby PERJURY and OUTING OF CIA OFFICER story! and the whore Washington Post follows suit by "US troops Authorized to KILL IRANIANS in Iraq" story.
Well, we repeat... with Saddam Hussein in power, their were neither Al Qaida Sunni terrorists in Iraq, nor many effective Iranian agents. Now that the Times and Post have ENABLED the US invasion of Iraq, BOTH Al Qaida AND Iran are now actively engaged in Iraq. GOOD GOING, WHORES!
As if that isn't bad enough, not only have the Post and Times tried to WHITEWASH the ETHNIC CLEANSING and Guernica-eque reality of life in Iraq (Fallujah was America's first Guernica in that hapless nation); not only do the Times and Post help the Bush administration push THOUSANDS MORE US TROOPS into a sniper haven where an unemployed Iraqi male can become a feared and respected warrior simply by shooting at American soldiers... but the Times and Post are now ratchetting up their "SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL, SPEAK NO EVIL" agenda re the Cheney-Bush administration's CRIMINAL OUTING of an ENTIRE CIA UNDERCOVER OPERATION to INTIMIDATE a war critic.
Yes, the whores at the Post and Times pretend that only Valerie Plame and her "bad egg" husband were the victims of the Plame-gate "outing" of Valerie Plame's identity; when in fact HER ENTIRE COVER ORGANIZATION, Brewster-Jennings Energy consultants; and ALL the contacts of that CIA undercover organization, were irreprably DAMAGED as Mr. Cheney, Mr. Bush, Mr. Libby, and Mr. Rove sought to publish Valerie Plame's name in the whore US media as "payback" against her outspoken husband.
The Washington Post and New York Times: RELENTLESS WHORES for the DISSOLUTION OF AMERICAN LAW and democracy.
While this MSNBC (Chris Mathews) video clip details how the Bush-Cheney White House with prior intent sought to learn as much about Ambassador Joe Wilson so as to discredit his opposition to the US invasion of Iraq, and with this PREMEDITATED EFFORT learned that Ambassador Wilson's wife was actually an undercover CIA counter-proliferation agent,
http://video.msn.com/v/us/fv/msnbc/fv.htm??g=05a1123d-f3e7-46b1-b6af-d0bb2bb99f72&f=00&fg=copy
....a quick glance at the Post and Times front pages reveals that the Times puts.. INDIA YOGA in public schools story ABOVE the Libby PERJURY and OUTING OF CIA OFFICER story! and the whore Washington Post follows suit by "US troops Authorized to KILL IRANIANS in Iraq" story.
Well, we repeat... with Saddam Hussein in power, their were neither Al Qaida Sunni terrorists in Iraq, nor many effective Iranian agents. Now that the Times and Post have ENABLED the US invasion of Iraq, BOTH Al Qaida AND Iran are now actively engaged in Iraq. GOOD GOING, WHORES!
As if that isn't bad enough, not only have the Post and Times tried to WHITEWASH the ETHNIC CLEANSING and Guernica-eque reality of life in Iraq (Fallujah was America's first Guernica in that hapless nation); not only do the Times and Post help the Bush administration push THOUSANDS MORE US TROOPS into a sniper haven where an unemployed Iraqi male can become a feared and respected warrior simply by shooting at American soldiers... but the Times and Post are now ratchetting up their "SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL, SPEAK NO EVIL" agenda re the Cheney-Bush administration's CRIMINAL OUTING of an ENTIRE CIA UNDERCOVER OPERATION to INTIMIDATE a war critic.
Yes, the whores at the Post and Times pretend that only Valerie Plame and her "bad egg" husband were the victims of the Plame-gate "outing" of Valerie Plame's identity; when in fact HER ENTIRE COVER ORGANIZATION, Brewster-Jennings Energy consultants; and ALL the contacts of that CIA undercover organization, were irreprably DAMAGED as Mr. Cheney, Mr. Bush, Mr. Libby, and Mr. Rove sought to publish Valerie Plame's name in the whore US media as "payback" against her outspoken husband.
The Washington Post and New York Times: RELENTLESS WHORES for the DISSOLUTION OF AMERICAN LAW and democracy.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Washington Post whores "Iraq oil is OUR oil" theme...
The Washington Post is in a full-court press, as they were in the late 1990s to IMPEACH the democratically elected president over a string of TRIVIAL, often FABRICATED SCANDALS. ("Travel-office-gate," "file-gate," "LINCOLN BEDROOM SCANDAL," "White House TRASHING scandal," all four of which were ENTIRELY FABRICATED "scandals.")
Having helped the Rethuglican Party IMPEACH the Democratic President (Bill Clinton) by tag-teaming the above scandals; having helped the Rethuglican Party STEAL the election of 2000 by joining in with the Rethuglicans in saying "minority voters in Florida should have no more influence on America's elections than Jews had in Nazi Germany;" having helped the Rethuglican Party NEUTER the Democratic Opposition in early 2001 by publishing the FABRICATED "White House Trashing Scandal", which effectively SMEARED Al Gore and the Democrats, and drove the popular-vote winner of the November 2000 election (Gore won the popular vote in November 2000 by over 500,000 votes) clean out of Washington DC; and of course having BUILT UP GEORGE BUSH as a HERO after 9-11, and helped the Bush-Rethuglican Party PUSH THEIR LIES-to-WAR AGENDA at FULL TILT, as fast as the whore Post's presses could print the latest garbage "Saddam is going to fly radio control airplanes into your homes tomorrow morning!" lies....
WELL, NOW THE WASHINGTON POST WANTS TO DIVY UP IRAQ's OIL, WHILE THAT NATION IS UNDER OCCUPATION BY THE US MILITARY.
Well, at least the ghoulish SOBs at the Whore Post are consistent - consistently predatory, parasitic, democracy gutting LIARS.
=================================================
Iraq Struggles to Finish Oil Law
Forging an Agreement Requires Balancing Sharply Divided Interests, Ethnic Groups
By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 24, 2007; D01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/23/AR2007012301534.html
Four months ago, about 80 oil company executives and consultants packed an office on St. James's Square in London for a briefing on exploration prospects in Iraq's Kurdish region and a Kurdish draft of an Iraqi national petroleum law.
Despite the immense risks of working in Iraq -- pipeline explosions, kidnappings, insurgency, political infighting -- the oil company executives were lured by the potential rewards, which are immense, too. Outside Saudi Arabia, no country has proven oil reserves as big as Iraq's. And the oil there is high quality, easy and cheap to produce, and bottled up in reservoirs that many major oil companies were familiar with three decades ago before wars and sanctions drove them out.
"Exxon Mobil has more seismic data on Iraq than on Houston real estate," says Fadel Gheit, an oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. who used to work for Mobil. "If Exxon had security on the ground, the following day it would have crews there," Gheit said. "And money would be no object."
Gheit estimated that Iraq could easily produce 6 million barrels a day, more than three times its current output and enough to help keep a lid on world prices.
Four months after the London meeting, however, security remains elusive and so does the national petroleum law. Barham Saleh, Iraq's deputy prime minister, said in a recent telephone interview that a compromise was "very, very close."
The proposed law has taken on significance beyond oil. While Iraq and foreign oil companies are eager to tap new revenue, the Bush administration and many Iraqis also hope that the law can be a model for resolving disputes and can bind Iraq's warring factions together.
Agreement has been reached on sharing oil revenue on a per-capita basis, a benefit for Sunnis who live mostly in areas with less production. A deal also has been struck that recognizes the power of regional authorities, such as the Kurdish Regional Government, to award oil contracts, but establishes a national petroleum commission with the power to review contracts within 60 days. A "revamped" national oil company would continue to manage existing production while new regional affiliates would participate in new exploration and production.
"We need to close the deal on one or two small issues," Saleh said. "A number of the major issues have been resolved."
But an adviser to the Kurdish authorities said those "small issues" included some significant details. On Friday, the Kurdistan Regional Government posted an item on its Web site denying news reports that a deal was complete. The "important annexes to the law are still pending," it said.
Outstanding issues include how much oil revenue will go to the central government; a charter for the new national oil company; the role of the oil ministry; and the principles upon which the new commission could reject regionally negotiated contracts. Also unsettled is whether the commission will require a simple majority vote or a two-thirds vote to reject a contract's terms. Those provisions must all be part of one package with the petroleum law, Kurdish leaders said.
If the Shia-dominated Iraqi central government spends heavily on its own projects, it could deny the Kurds and other regional authorities significant shares of oil revenue.
Even if negotiators agree on a draft, it must win approval from Iraq's cabinet and fractious parliament, which hasn't met in weeks.
The United States has been pressing Iraq to complete the law. "As awful as the Saddam Hussein government was, it did have a record of dealing with foreign investors that wasn't that bad," said James A. Placke, an expert at Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "That's gone and hasn't been replaced."
Now, forging a petroleum law requires a balancing of sharply divided interest and ethnic groups, not just the word of a dictator.
"This is not a regular piece of Iraqi legislation being signed off on," said Jonathan Morrow, an adviser to the Kurdistan Regional Government. If successful, he said, "it . . . might show the way forward in Iraq."
Saleh suggested that a deal might discourage attacks on oil installations and reduce corruption. "Since we all agree on revenue sharing, all elements of Iraqi society will have an interest in maximizing revenues and best business practices," he said.
For now, however, the oil sector is a mess. Since the first attack on a pipeline on June 1, 2003, it has been a struggle to keep oil flowing. Basic production equipment has been looted or destroyed. Many wells still are not working properly. And last year, the U.S. special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction complained that Iraq's oil ministry was not reporting on its budget and had spent "only a fraction" of money set aside for capital costs.
While the Bush administration once thought that Iraqi oil revenue would cover occupation and reconstruction costs, the Iraq government still relies heavily on U.S. technical and financial aid. Placke estimated that Iraq produced 1.85 million barrels a day last year, less than the year before, less than the prewar output and well below the U.S. target of 3 million barrels a day.
Placke, who was part of the Iraq Study Group, estimated that 200,000 barrels a day is siphoned from the main export line through southern Iraq, put on barges, and loaded onto tankers waiting in the Persian Gulf. What's left after discounts and bribes goes to militias or insurgent groups, he said.
In the south, some local Shia militia, clan or clerical groups are trying to claim the rights to some Iraqi fields and a voice in negotiating access for foreign companies. A stake in a billion-barrel field could be more important than a stake in the parliament or cabinet. Some experts worry that, as in Sudan, oil could contribute more to tearing the country apart than to uniting it.
A senior Iraqi government official involved in the petroleum-law talks said that if militias and clans were to cut separate deals with foreign companies, it would be a "recipe for disaster and civil war." He warned foreign companies against signing such deals. "We are very interested in credible investment in the oil sector," he said. "We cannot afford to have these cowboys running around trying to manipulate the situation in Iraq."
The national petroleum law remains a touchy subject in part because of widespread suspicion that the U.S. invasion in 2003 was motivated by designs on Iraq's oil riches.
The Iraq Study Group report contained three pages of recommendations for the sector, including suggestions that international oil companies invest in the country and the government fight corruption on contracts.
"Before embarking on controversial measures such as this law favoring foreign oil firms, the Iraqi parliament and government must prove that they are capable of protecting the country's sovereignty," Kamil Mahdi, a senior lecturer in Middle East economics at the University of Exeter in England, wrote in the Guardian newspaper. "A government that is failing to protect the lives of its citizens must not embark on controversial legislation that ties the hands of future Iraqi leaders, and which threatens to squander the Iraqis' precious, exhaustible resource in an orgy of waste, corruption and theft."
In a telephone interview, Mahdi said, "My main worry is that if I were an official in the ministry of oil negotiating a contract and living under the kind of threats that people in Iraq are daily experiencing, I would probably be in a very weak negotiating position."
While the debate continues, the Kurdistan Regional Government is pushing ahead. In 2002, at the suggestion of Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leader who is now Iraq's president, the Turkish conglomerate Cukurova Group set up an oil unit called Genel Enerji to look for oil in Kurdistan. Genel signed a production-sharing agreement in July 2002 and took over the Taq Taq oil field in February 2003 on the eve of the U.S-led invasion. It signed another exploration contract in July 2005. A Norwegian firm, DNO, and a Canadian firm, Heritage Oil, also struck exploration and production deals in the Kurdish region.
Tariq Shafiq, a former executive of Iraq National Oil and director of the consulting firm Petrolog & Associates, has drawn up three contracts -- service, buyback and production-sharing -- that the government will use in its new petroleum law. He said the Kurdish production-sharing contracts give away too much to the foreign companies; he said that after paying for capital and operations costs, as much as 55 percent of the oil goes to the foreign firms. "These, in the eye of many, are illegal and would have to undergo review to bring them in line with this law," he said.
But Kurdish authorities said they have no intention of submitting existing contracts for review. Duran said Genel's contract was renegotiated last November and falls within the 20 percent share production that would be the ceiling under the new law. "The commercial terms of the PSA are in conformity with internationally acceptable PSA terms," Duran said in an e-mail response to questions. "Therefore, our PSA is not generous at all."
Major U.S. oil companies haven't signed any contracts in Kurdistan yet. Some of them have tried to build goodwill with the central government. Chevron, for example, helped clear mines from the coastline. Others have collected seismic data or trained Iraqi oil company technicians in Dubai.
Some major companies from other nations -- Russia's Lukoil, a Chinese state company, France's Total -- are hoping to get their big Hussein-era concessions back. Their prospects remain uncertain.
Having helped the Rethuglican Party IMPEACH the Democratic President (Bill Clinton) by tag-teaming the above scandals; having helped the Rethuglican Party STEAL the election of 2000 by joining in with the Rethuglicans in saying "minority voters in Florida should have no more influence on America's elections than Jews had in Nazi Germany;" having helped the Rethuglican Party NEUTER the Democratic Opposition in early 2001 by publishing the FABRICATED "White House Trashing Scandal", which effectively SMEARED Al Gore and the Democrats, and drove the popular-vote winner of the November 2000 election (Gore won the popular vote in November 2000 by over 500,000 votes) clean out of Washington DC; and of course having BUILT UP GEORGE BUSH as a HERO after 9-11, and helped the Bush-Rethuglican Party PUSH THEIR LIES-to-WAR AGENDA at FULL TILT, as fast as the whore Post's presses could print the latest garbage "Saddam is going to fly radio control airplanes into your homes tomorrow morning!" lies....
WELL, NOW THE WASHINGTON POST WANTS TO DIVY UP IRAQ's OIL, WHILE THAT NATION IS UNDER OCCUPATION BY THE US MILITARY.
Well, at least the ghoulish SOBs at the Whore Post are consistent - consistently predatory, parasitic, democracy gutting LIARS.
=================================================
Iraq Struggles to Finish Oil Law
Forging an Agreement Requires Balancing Sharply Divided Interests, Ethnic Groups
By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 24, 2007; D01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/23/AR2007012301534.html
Four months ago, about 80 oil company executives and consultants packed an office on St. James's Square in London for a briefing on exploration prospects in Iraq's Kurdish region and a Kurdish draft of an Iraqi national petroleum law.
Despite the immense risks of working in Iraq -- pipeline explosions, kidnappings, insurgency, political infighting -- the oil company executives were lured by the potential rewards, which are immense, too. Outside Saudi Arabia, no country has proven oil reserves as big as Iraq's. And the oil there is high quality, easy and cheap to produce, and bottled up in reservoirs that many major oil companies were familiar with three decades ago before wars and sanctions drove them out.
"Exxon Mobil has more seismic data on Iraq than on Houston real estate," says Fadel Gheit, an oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. who used to work for Mobil. "If Exxon had security on the ground, the following day it would have crews there," Gheit said. "And money would be no object."
Gheit estimated that Iraq could easily produce 6 million barrels a day, more than three times its current output and enough to help keep a lid on world prices.
Four months after the London meeting, however, security remains elusive and so does the national petroleum law. Barham Saleh, Iraq's deputy prime minister, said in a recent telephone interview that a compromise was "very, very close."
The proposed law has taken on significance beyond oil. While Iraq and foreign oil companies are eager to tap new revenue, the Bush administration and many Iraqis also hope that the law can be a model for resolving disputes and can bind Iraq's warring factions together.
Agreement has been reached on sharing oil revenue on a per-capita basis, a benefit for Sunnis who live mostly in areas with less production. A deal also has been struck that recognizes the power of regional authorities, such as the Kurdish Regional Government, to award oil contracts, but establishes a national petroleum commission with the power to review contracts within 60 days. A "revamped" national oil company would continue to manage existing production while new regional affiliates would participate in new exploration and production.
"We need to close the deal on one or two small issues," Saleh said. "A number of the major issues have been resolved."
But an adviser to the Kurdish authorities said those "small issues" included some significant details. On Friday, the Kurdistan Regional Government posted an item on its Web site denying news reports that a deal was complete. The "important annexes to the law are still pending," it said.
Outstanding issues include how much oil revenue will go to the central government; a charter for the new national oil company; the role of the oil ministry; and the principles upon which the new commission could reject regionally negotiated contracts. Also unsettled is whether the commission will require a simple majority vote or a two-thirds vote to reject a contract's terms. Those provisions must all be part of one package with the petroleum law, Kurdish leaders said.
If the Shia-dominated Iraqi central government spends heavily on its own projects, it could deny the Kurds and other regional authorities significant shares of oil revenue.
Even if negotiators agree on a draft, it must win approval from Iraq's cabinet and fractious parliament, which hasn't met in weeks.
The United States has been pressing Iraq to complete the law. "As awful as the Saddam Hussein government was, it did have a record of dealing with foreign investors that wasn't that bad," said James A. Placke, an expert at Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "That's gone and hasn't been replaced."
Now, forging a petroleum law requires a balancing of sharply divided interest and ethnic groups, not just the word of a dictator.
"This is not a regular piece of Iraqi legislation being signed off on," said Jonathan Morrow, an adviser to the Kurdistan Regional Government. If successful, he said, "it . . . might show the way forward in Iraq."
Saleh suggested that a deal might discourage attacks on oil installations and reduce corruption. "Since we all agree on revenue sharing, all elements of Iraqi society will have an interest in maximizing revenues and best business practices," he said.
For now, however, the oil sector is a mess. Since the first attack on a pipeline on June 1, 2003, it has been a struggle to keep oil flowing. Basic production equipment has been looted or destroyed. Many wells still are not working properly. And last year, the U.S. special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction complained that Iraq's oil ministry was not reporting on its budget and had spent "only a fraction" of money set aside for capital costs.
While the Bush administration once thought that Iraqi oil revenue would cover occupation and reconstruction costs, the Iraq government still relies heavily on U.S. technical and financial aid. Placke estimated that Iraq produced 1.85 million barrels a day last year, less than the year before, less than the prewar output and well below the U.S. target of 3 million barrels a day.
Placke, who was part of the Iraq Study Group, estimated that 200,000 barrels a day is siphoned from the main export line through southern Iraq, put on barges, and loaded onto tankers waiting in the Persian Gulf. What's left after discounts and bribes goes to militias or insurgent groups, he said.
In the south, some local Shia militia, clan or clerical groups are trying to claim the rights to some Iraqi fields and a voice in negotiating access for foreign companies. A stake in a billion-barrel field could be more important than a stake in the parliament or cabinet. Some experts worry that, as in Sudan, oil could contribute more to tearing the country apart than to uniting it.
A senior Iraqi government official involved in the petroleum-law talks said that if militias and clans were to cut separate deals with foreign companies, it would be a "recipe for disaster and civil war." He warned foreign companies against signing such deals. "We are very interested in credible investment in the oil sector," he said. "We cannot afford to have these cowboys running around trying to manipulate the situation in Iraq."
The national petroleum law remains a touchy subject in part because of widespread suspicion that the U.S. invasion in 2003 was motivated by designs on Iraq's oil riches.
The Iraq Study Group report contained three pages of recommendations for the sector, including suggestions that international oil companies invest in the country and the government fight corruption on contracts.
"Before embarking on controversial measures such as this law favoring foreign oil firms, the Iraqi parliament and government must prove that they are capable of protecting the country's sovereignty," Kamil Mahdi, a senior lecturer in Middle East economics at the University of Exeter in England, wrote in the Guardian newspaper. "A government that is failing to protect the lives of its citizens must not embark on controversial legislation that ties the hands of future Iraqi leaders, and which threatens to squander the Iraqis' precious, exhaustible resource in an orgy of waste, corruption and theft."
In a telephone interview, Mahdi said, "My main worry is that if I were an official in the ministry of oil negotiating a contract and living under the kind of threats that people in Iraq are daily experiencing, I would probably be in a very weak negotiating position."
While the debate continues, the Kurdistan Regional Government is pushing ahead. In 2002, at the suggestion of Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leader who is now Iraq's president, the Turkish conglomerate Cukurova Group set up an oil unit called Genel Enerji to look for oil in Kurdistan. Genel signed a production-sharing agreement in July 2002 and took over the Taq Taq oil field in February 2003 on the eve of the U.S-led invasion. It signed another exploration contract in July 2005. A Norwegian firm, DNO, and a Canadian firm, Heritage Oil, also struck exploration and production deals in the Kurdish region.
Tariq Shafiq, a former executive of Iraq National Oil and director of the consulting firm Petrolog & Associates, has drawn up three contracts -- service, buyback and production-sharing -- that the government will use in its new petroleum law. He said the Kurdish production-sharing contracts give away too much to the foreign companies; he said that after paying for capital and operations costs, as much as 55 percent of the oil goes to the foreign firms. "These, in the eye of many, are illegal and would have to undergo review to bring them in line with this law," he said.
But Kurdish authorities said they have no intention of submitting existing contracts for review. Duran said Genel's contract was renegotiated last November and falls within the 20 percent share production that would be the ceiling under the new law. "The commercial terms of the PSA are in conformity with internationally acceptable PSA terms," Duran said in an e-mail response to questions. "Therefore, our PSA is not generous at all."
Major U.S. oil companies haven't signed any contracts in Kurdistan yet. Some of them have tried to build goodwill with the central government. Chevron, for example, helped clear mines from the coastline. Others have collected seismic data or trained Iraqi oil company technicians in Dubai.
Some major companies from other nations -- Russia's Lukoil, a Chinese state company, France's Total -- are hoping to get their big Hussein-era concessions back. Their prospects remain uncertain.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Right on time, as George W. Bush MIRES America in his war of LIES, corruption, and incompetence, the Wash Post WHORES "Knee Jerk Opposition" op-ed.
Ms. Marcus, thanks for the TEXT-BOOK example of a Washington WHORE Post WHORE-IFFIC response to demean and belittle the Democratic opposition to the THUGGERY and GROSS CORRUPTION of the Bush White House.
If there were a "just" God, he would make you serve in a front line Iraq combat unit, helpless to prevent the stress and blood trauma as that occupied nation responds to an occupation of corruption that would make the North and South Vietnamese black-marketeers at the height of the Vietnam war blush. Or he would put you down in New Orleans, as your family is forced to abandon its home, while still liable for the mortgage, as Mr. Bush fails to provide a long-term environmental plan for the traumatized city.
Instead, you are just another sycophantic, parasitic Washingtonian, "earning your paycheck as millions of American families live in abject dread of a crippling illness.
------------------------------------------------
The Knee-Jerk Opposition
By Ruth Marcus
Wednesday, January 24, 2007; A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/23/AR2007012301564_pf.html
If George W. Bush proposes something, it must be bad. Such is the knee-jerk state of partisan suspiciousness that when the president actually endorses a tax increase -- a tax increase that would primarily hit the well-off, no less -- Democrats still howl.
Such is the level of distrust that when the president finally disavows the free lunch and comes up with a program not financed with deficit spending -- indeed, one that would actually bring in extra revenue as the years go on -- Democrats still howl.
Listening to Democratic reaction to Bush's new health insurance proposal, you get the sense that if Bush picked a plank right out of the Democratic platform -- if he introduced Hillarycare itself -- and stuck it in his State of the Union address, Democrats would churn out press releases denouncing it.
This sad situation is largely of Bush's own making. He is reaping the poisonous state of affairs that he helped sow for six years. So many of the president's policies have been dishonest and wrongheaded, so much of his politics has been slashingly partisan, Democrats would be crazy if their instinctive reaction to a Bush plan for fill-in-the-blank wasn't intense distrust.
It's too bad, because the president's proposal to cap the deductibility of employer-sponsored health insurance deserves more of a chance than Democrats, from their initial reactions, seem inclined to give.
Instead of the irrational current system, in which all employer-sponsored health-care costs are deductible, Bush would create a standard deduction that would replace existing deductions for health insurance, both employer-sponsored and privately purchased, and other medical costs.
The deduction would be $15,000 for a family policy, leaving 80 percent of those with employer-sponsored coverage unaffected.
Yes, the plan should be more progressive, structured with refundable tax credits rather than a deduction, so that all can share equally in the benefit.
Yes, there are big risks involved, primarily that the already-teetering employer-based system will collapse as healthy individuals use their tax deduction to buy cheaper, private insurance, leaving employers with the older and the sicker.
And, yes, it's fair to argue that a more comprehensive approach -- Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has proposed one -- is needed.
But Democrats -- if they care more about addressing health-care needs than scoring political points -- ought to be finding ways to improve and build on the Bush proposal, not condemning and mischaracterizing it. Given that nothing's going to pass without Democratic approval, what's the risk in engaging in the discussion?
The Bush plan starts with an assessment that has long been clear to sensible people across the political spectrum: The way the tax code now treats health insurance is unfair, regressive and counterproductive.
The fact that employers can deduct the full cost of health insurance premiums means that the richer you are, the bigger tax benefit you reap. That built-in advantage is exacerbated by the fact that the better-paid tend to have pricier insurance.
This unlimited subsidy increases wasteful spending, encouraging employers to purchase gold-plated plans and employees to use them. This drives up the cost of health care and, ultimately, insurance in a vicious cycle that ends up increasing the ranks of the uninsured.
Meanwhile, those who don't have employer-sponsored coverage get no tax break; the Bush plan would not only help those who already buy insurance on the private market, it would also encourage those currently uninsured to purchase coverage.
As Jason Furman, a leading Democratic economist, wrote last summer in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, "[R]educing subsidies for pricey plans would likely lead to a health insurance system that includes more cost sharing, promotes more consumer consciousness, and plays a modest, but potentially meaningful, role in restraining health spending."
And so what do Democrats say when a Republican president suggests doing something along these lines? "It's a bad policy," House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (N.Y.) told the New York Times. "We are trying to bring tax relief to the middle class. The president is trying to increase their tax liability." Likewise, the Senate Democrats complained: "President Bush's Health Insurance Proposal Amounts to a Tax Hike for the Middle Class."
This is flat wrong: According to the administration's analysis, on average, the top fifth of taxpayers would face a tax increase; the rest would save money.
If you doubt that some variation on Bush's plan is at least worth considering, try this thought experiment: What if the current system had the standard deduction that Bush wants and he was proposing, instead, to remove the cap and allow unlimited tax breaks, a benefit for the better-off and those with the priciest insurance?
Wouldn't Democrats be denouncing that, and demanding my imaginary status quo?
marcusr@washpost.com
If there were a "just" God, he would make you serve in a front line Iraq combat unit, helpless to prevent the stress and blood trauma as that occupied nation responds to an occupation of corruption that would make the North and South Vietnamese black-marketeers at the height of the Vietnam war blush. Or he would put you down in New Orleans, as your family is forced to abandon its home, while still liable for the mortgage, as Mr. Bush fails to provide a long-term environmental plan for the traumatized city.
Instead, you are just another sycophantic, parasitic Washingtonian, "earning your paycheck as millions of American families live in abject dread of a crippling illness.
------------------------------------------------
The Knee-Jerk Opposition
By Ruth Marcus
Wednesday, January 24, 2007; A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/23/AR2007012301564_pf.html
If George W. Bush proposes something, it must be bad. Such is the knee-jerk state of partisan suspiciousness that when the president actually endorses a tax increase -- a tax increase that would primarily hit the well-off, no less -- Democrats still howl.
Such is the level of distrust that when the president finally disavows the free lunch and comes up with a program not financed with deficit spending -- indeed, one that would actually bring in extra revenue as the years go on -- Democrats still howl.
Listening to Democratic reaction to Bush's new health insurance proposal, you get the sense that if Bush picked a plank right out of the Democratic platform -- if he introduced Hillarycare itself -- and stuck it in his State of the Union address, Democrats would churn out press releases denouncing it.
This sad situation is largely of Bush's own making. He is reaping the poisonous state of affairs that he helped sow for six years. So many of the president's policies have been dishonest and wrongheaded, so much of his politics has been slashingly partisan, Democrats would be crazy if their instinctive reaction to a Bush plan for fill-in-the-blank wasn't intense distrust.
It's too bad, because the president's proposal to cap the deductibility of employer-sponsored health insurance deserves more of a chance than Democrats, from their initial reactions, seem inclined to give.
Instead of the irrational current system, in which all employer-sponsored health-care costs are deductible, Bush would create a standard deduction that would replace existing deductions for health insurance, both employer-sponsored and privately purchased, and other medical costs.
The deduction would be $15,000 for a family policy, leaving 80 percent of those with employer-sponsored coverage unaffected.
Yes, the plan should be more progressive, structured with refundable tax credits rather than a deduction, so that all can share equally in the benefit.
Yes, there are big risks involved, primarily that the already-teetering employer-based system will collapse as healthy individuals use their tax deduction to buy cheaper, private insurance, leaving employers with the older and the sicker.
And, yes, it's fair to argue that a more comprehensive approach -- Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has proposed one -- is needed.
But Democrats -- if they care more about addressing health-care needs than scoring political points -- ought to be finding ways to improve and build on the Bush proposal, not condemning and mischaracterizing it. Given that nothing's going to pass without Democratic approval, what's the risk in engaging in the discussion?
The Bush plan starts with an assessment that has long been clear to sensible people across the political spectrum: The way the tax code now treats health insurance is unfair, regressive and counterproductive.
The fact that employers can deduct the full cost of health insurance premiums means that the richer you are, the bigger tax benefit you reap. That built-in advantage is exacerbated by the fact that the better-paid tend to have pricier insurance.
This unlimited subsidy increases wasteful spending, encouraging employers to purchase gold-plated plans and employees to use them. This drives up the cost of health care and, ultimately, insurance in a vicious cycle that ends up increasing the ranks of the uninsured.
Meanwhile, those who don't have employer-sponsored coverage get no tax break; the Bush plan would not only help those who already buy insurance on the private market, it would also encourage those currently uninsured to purchase coverage.
As Jason Furman, a leading Democratic economist, wrote last summer in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, "[R]educing subsidies for pricey plans would likely lead to a health insurance system that includes more cost sharing, promotes more consumer consciousness, and plays a modest, but potentially meaningful, role in restraining health spending."
And so what do Democrats say when a Republican president suggests doing something along these lines? "It's a bad policy," House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (N.Y.) told the New York Times. "We are trying to bring tax relief to the middle class. The president is trying to increase their tax liability." Likewise, the Senate Democrats complained: "President Bush's Health Insurance Proposal Amounts to a Tax Hike for the Middle Class."
This is flat wrong: According to the administration's analysis, on average, the top fifth of taxpayers would face a tax increase; the rest would save money.
If you doubt that some variation on Bush's plan is at least worth considering, try this thought experiment: What if the current system had the standard deduction that Bush wants and he was proposing, instead, to remove the cap and allow unlimited tax breaks, a benefit for the better-off and those with the priciest insurance?
Wouldn't Democrats be denouncing that, and demanding my imaginary status quo?
marcusr@washpost.com
"SCANT EVIDENCE" of Iran smuggling weapons into Iraq -LAT. The Whore Media has SO DUMBED-DOWN America, that millions of Americans believe Iran does.
George W. Bush is so brazen and confident of his ability to MISINFORM, mislead, and LIE to the American public - via the captive, servile, dishonest, and corrupt corporate media - that he has actually tried to make a CAUSUS BELLI - an EXCUSE FOR WAR - of Iran's alleged "smuggling weapons to Iraqi insurgents."
The plain facts are that the CORE of the Iraq insurgency are SUNNIS who have been disenfranchised by the US invasion, and either support or tolerate
a.) secular former Baathist party insurgents; or
b.) radical, hard-line Sunni fundamentalists, "Jihadis" of a similar disposition to Saudi WAHABI fundamentalists... from whom Osama bin Laden and AL QAIDA developed.
IRAN simply has NO NEED to suppy insurgents in Iraq with weapons, because;
#1. Iranians are OPPOSED to the Sunni rebels; and
#2. The US MILITARY is SUPPLY THE SHIITE ARMIES with as many weapons as they can beg, borrow, steal... or sell!
President George W. Bush and former Secretary of Defense DONALD RUMSFELD are CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT for having allowed insurgents to LOOT TONS and TONS and TONS of munitions and high-explosives from Saddam's semi-destroyed ammo dumps and armories, WITH US SATELLITE PHOTOGRAPHS SHOWING TRUCKS ARRIVING AT and DEPARTING FROM the bunkers, but instead, in what can only be described as Nazi-esque fashion, the Bush administration and its neo-con enablers are trying to portray IRAN as GUILTY of the administration's own CRIMINAL CULPABILITY.
---------------------------------------------------
Scant evidence found of Iran-Iraq arms link
U.S. warnings of advanced weaponry crossing the border are overstated, critics say.
By Alexandra Zavis and Greg Miller, LA Times Staff Writers
January 23, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-iraniraq23jan23,1,5002907.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
BAQUBAH, IRAQ — If there is anywhere Iran could easily stir up trouble in Iraq, it would be in Diyala, a rugged province along the border between the two nations.
The combination of Sunni Arab militants believed to be affiliated with Al Qaeda and Shiite Muslim militiamen with ties to Iran has fueled waves of sectarian and political violence here. The province is bisected by long-traveled routes leading from Iran to Baghdad and Shiite holy cities farther south in Iraq.
But even here, evidence of Iranian involvement in Iraq's troubles is limited. U.S. troops have found mortars and antitank mines with Iranian markings dated 2006, said U.S. Army Col. David W. Sutherland, who oversees the province. But there has been little sign of more advanced weaponry crossing the border, and no Iranian agents have been found.
In his speech this month outlining the new U.S. strategy in Iraq, President Bush promised to "seek out and destroy" Iranian networks that he said were providing "advanced weaponry and training to our enemies." He is expected to strike a similar note in tonight's State of the Union speech.
For all the aggressive rhetoric, however, the Bush administration has provided scant evidence to support these claims. Nor have reporters traveling with U.S. troops seen extensive signs of Iranian involvement. During a recent sweep through a stronghold of Sunni insurgents here, a single Iranian machine gun turned up among dozens of arms caches U.S. troops uncovered. British officials have similarly accused Iran of meddling in Iraqi affairs, but say they have not found Iranian-made weapons in areas they patrol.
The lack of publicly disclosed evidence has led to questions about whether the administration is overstating its case. Some suggest Bush and his aides are pointing to Iran to deflect blame for U.S. setbacks in Iraq. Others suggest they are laying the foundation for a military strike against Iran.
Before invading Iraq, the administration warned repeatedly that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Those statements proved wrong. The administration's charges about Iran sound uncomfortably familiar to some. "To be quite honest, I'm a little concerned that it's Iraq again," Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said last week, referring to the administration's comments on Iran.
*
Lowered credibility
The accusations of Iranian meddling "illustrate what may be one of our greatest problems," said Anthony Cordesman, a former Defense Department official and military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
"We are still making arguments from authority without detail and explanation. We're making them in an America and in a world where we really don't have anything like the credibility we've had in the past."
Few doubt that Iran is seeking to extend its influence in Iraq. But the groups in Iraq that have received the most Iranian support are not those that have led attacks against U.S. forces. Instead, they are nominal U.S. allies.
The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the two largest parties in parliament, is believed to be the biggest beneficiary of Iranian help. The Shiite group was based in Iran during Hussein's reign, and Iran's Revolutionary Guard trained and equipped its Badr Brigade militia.
But the Supreme Council also has strong U.S. connections. Bush played host to the head of the party, Abdelaziz Hakim, at the White House in December, and administration officials have frequently cited Adel Abdul Mehdi, another party leader, as a person they would like to see as Iraq's prime minister.
The Islamic Dawa Party of Iraq's current prime minister, Nouri Maliki, also has strong ties to Iran.
Some U.S. officials have also suggested that Iran, a Shiite theocracy, has provided aid to the Sunni insurgents, who have led most of the attacks against U.S. forces. Private analysts and other U.S. officials doubt that. Evidence is stronger that the Iranians are supporting a Shiite group that has attacked U.S. forces, the Al Mahdi militia, which is loyal to radical cleric Muqtada Sadr.
Top U.S. intelligence officials have been making increasingly confident assertions about Iran.
"I've come to a much darker interpretation of Iranian actions in the past 12 to 18 months," CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in recent congressional testimony. Previously, Tehran's priority was to maneuver for a stable Iraq dominated by its Shiite majority, but that attitude has changed, he said.
"There is a clear line of evidence that points out the Iranians want to punish the United States, hurt the United States in Iraq, tie down the United States in Iraq," he said.
One high-ranking intelligence official in Washington acknowledged a lack of "fidelity" in the intelligence on Iran's activities, saying reports are sometimes unclear because it is difficult to track weapons and personnel that might be flowing across the long and porous border... (cont'd.)
The plain facts are that the CORE of the Iraq insurgency are SUNNIS who have been disenfranchised by the US invasion, and either support or tolerate
a.) secular former Baathist party insurgents; or
b.) radical, hard-line Sunni fundamentalists, "Jihadis" of a similar disposition to Saudi WAHABI fundamentalists... from whom Osama bin Laden and AL QAIDA developed.
IRAN simply has NO NEED to suppy insurgents in Iraq with weapons, because;
#1. Iranians are OPPOSED to the Sunni rebels; and
#2. The US MILITARY is SUPPLY THE SHIITE ARMIES with as many weapons as they can beg, borrow, steal... or sell!
President George W. Bush and former Secretary of Defense DONALD RUMSFELD are CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT for having allowed insurgents to LOOT TONS and TONS and TONS of munitions and high-explosives from Saddam's semi-destroyed ammo dumps and armories, WITH US SATELLITE PHOTOGRAPHS SHOWING TRUCKS ARRIVING AT and DEPARTING FROM the bunkers, but instead, in what can only be described as Nazi-esque fashion, the Bush administration and its neo-con enablers are trying to portray IRAN as GUILTY of the administration's own CRIMINAL CULPABILITY.
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Scant evidence found of Iran-Iraq arms link
U.S. warnings of advanced weaponry crossing the border are overstated, critics say.
By Alexandra Zavis and Greg Miller, LA Times Staff Writers
January 23, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-iraniraq23jan23,1,5002907.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
BAQUBAH, IRAQ — If there is anywhere Iran could easily stir up trouble in Iraq, it would be in Diyala, a rugged province along the border between the two nations.
The combination of Sunni Arab militants believed to be affiliated with Al Qaeda and Shiite Muslim militiamen with ties to Iran has fueled waves of sectarian and political violence here. The province is bisected by long-traveled routes leading from Iran to Baghdad and Shiite holy cities farther south in Iraq.
But even here, evidence of Iranian involvement in Iraq's troubles is limited. U.S. troops have found mortars and antitank mines with Iranian markings dated 2006, said U.S. Army Col. David W. Sutherland, who oversees the province. But there has been little sign of more advanced weaponry crossing the border, and no Iranian agents have been found.
In his speech this month outlining the new U.S. strategy in Iraq, President Bush promised to "seek out and destroy" Iranian networks that he said were providing "advanced weaponry and training to our enemies." He is expected to strike a similar note in tonight's State of the Union speech.
For all the aggressive rhetoric, however, the Bush administration has provided scant evidence to support these claims. Nor have reporters traveling with U.S. troops seen extensive signs of Iranian involvement. During a recent sweep through a stronghold of Sunni insurgents here, a single Iranian machine gun turned up among dozens of arms caches U.S. troops uncovered. British officials have similarly accused Iran of meddling in Iraqi affairs, but say they have not found Iranian-made weapons in areas they patrol.
The lack of publicly disclosed evidence has led to questions about whether the administration is overstating its case. Some suggest Bush and his aides are pointing to Iran to deflect blame for U.S. setbacks in Iraq. Others suggest they are laying the foundation for a military strike against Iran.
Before invading Iraq, the administration warned repeatedly that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Those statements proved wrong. The administration's charges about Iran sound uncomfortably familiar to some. "To be quite honest, I'm a little concerned that it's Iraq again," Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said last week, referring to the administration's comments on Iran.
*
Lowered credibility
The accusations of Iranian meddling "illustrate what may be one of our greatest problems," said Anthony Cordesman, a former Defense Department official and military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
"We are still making arguments from authority without detail and explanation. We're making them in an America and in a world where we really don't have anything like the credibility we've had in the past."
Few doubt that Iran is seeking to extend its influence in Iraq. But the groups in Iraq that have received the most Iranian support are not those that have led attacks against U.S. forces. Instead, they are nominal U.S. allies.
The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the two largest parties in parliament, is believed to be the biggest beneficiary of Iranian help. The Shiite group was based in Iran during Hussein's reign, and Iran's Revolutionary Guard trained and equipped its Badr Brigade militia.
But the Supreme Council also has strong U.S. connections. Bush played host to the head of the party, Abdelaziz Hakim, at the White House in December, and administration officials have frequently cited Adel Abdul Mehdi, another party leader, as a person they would like to see as Iraq's prime minister.
The Islamic Dawa Party of Iraq's current prime minister, Nouri Maliki, also has strong ties to Iran.
Some U.S. officials have also suggested that Iran, a Shiite theocracy, has provided aid to the Sunni insurgents, who have led most of the attacks against U.S. forces. Private analysts and other U.S. officials doubt that. Evidence is stronger that the Iranians are supporting a Shiite group that has attacked U.S. forces, the Al Mahdi militia, which is loyal to radical cleric Muqtada Sadr.
Top U.S. intelligence officials have been making increasingly confident assertions about Iran.
"I've come to a much darker interpretation of Iranian actions in the past 12 to 18 months," CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in recent congressional testimony. Previously, Tehran's priority was to maneuver for a stable Iraq dominated by its Shiite majority, but that attitude has changed, he said.
"There is a clear line of evidence that points out the Iranians want to punish the United States, hurt the United States in Iraq, tie down the United States in Iraq," he said.
One high-ranking intelligence official in Washington acknowledged a lack of "fidelity" in the intelligence on Iran's activities, saying reports are sometimes unclear because it is difficult to track weapons and personnel that might be flowing across the long and porous border... (cont'd.)
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