We here at MediaWhoresUSA.blogspot, who have been following the often awful tendencies of the "Major Media" for years now, do not necessarily believe that "the media" crossed the line into what singer and Eagles songwriter Don Henley once described in his song "Dirty Laundry" as the media's often ghoulish fascination with mass death - "the bubble headed bleach blond [news anchor]comes on at 5... she will tell yo about the plane crash - with a gleam in her eye."
On the other hand, even within the story of the mass shooting at the Virginia Tech campus, you could tell that the corporate media was sticking to their script: that guns are an American right to self-defense, and that the troubled gunman had fallen through the cracks of the school's and state's public health establishments - but otherwise it is back to BUSINESS AS USUAL, with Virginia remaining a national center for what has been called modern American "gun running."
Without further analyzing the shootings, we will simply let the Student Government speak for the students: they would like to get on with their lives, and if the media networks have IMAGES and STORIES to SELL - let it be of something other than the grieving students on campus. No matter how many couch-potato Americans would bolster TV ratings by getting an endless dose of the emotional/macabre story - please just leave them alone.
__________________________________________________
Pastor Urges Va. Tech Back to Campus
Adam Geller and Chris Kahn, AP
April 22, 2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070422/virginia-tech-shooting
BLACKSBURG, Va. — As pastor of Blacksburg Baptist Church, Tommy McDearis was called on to tell more than 20 families a loved one had fallen victim to Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho.
On Sunday, he urged his congregation and the university to put the pain of the rampage behind them by returning to classes Monday.
"If we give up in the face of this situation, if we quit doing all of the things that really matter in life because this darkness has visited us, then we are going to surrender to the darkness," McDearis said.
McDearis delivered his sermon Sunday as students who had left school following the massacre returned to campus. He told the story of a professor devastated by the deaths of several of his students at Norris Hall, where Cho killed 30 students and faculty members before turning the gun on himself.
The professor said he didn't know if he could come back. But failing to doing so, he said, would be a betrayal of the memories, hopes and dreams of the victims.
"There is no way that any of them would ever look at us and want us to give up," McDearis said. "We owe them more than to just throw in the towel."
In getting ready for the resumption of classes, the university's student government asked hundreds of reporters to leave campus by Monday morning.
Student government spokeswoman Liz Hart said the campus appreciates the reporting on the Virginia Tech story, but students are ready to move forward.
"The best way to know how to do that is get the campus back to normal," she said. "That includes being able to go back to class, to get back into our normal routine as much as a possible without being held back by anything external, reminding us that it will be a difficult road. We already know it."
Yellow crime-scene tape still surrounded the perimeter of Norris Hall, which will be closed for the rest of the semester. Some people snapped photos of the building; others gazed at it solemnly, with bowed heads.
Elsewhere on campus, students toted laundry and suitcases as they headed for their dorms. On the Drillfield at the center of campus, sophomore Ashleigh Shifflett sat with her sister Regan, a 2005 graduate.
Shifflett left campus Tuesday for her home in Maryland and returned to campus Saturday.
"When we ... could see the campus, we both started crying," Shifflett said. "I was happy to see my family, but I felt like I needed to be here, and when I came back here, it was like I'm home."
Meanwhile, state medical examiners completed autopsies on all 32 victims and Cho. Dr. William Massello, the assistant medical examiner based in Roanoke, said he was not sure whether all the bodies had been released to families, but all were ready.
Cho was not especially accurate with his shots, Massello said, but hit many of the victims several times. His shots caused more than 100 wounds.
The investigation into Cho continues, with computer forensics appearing to play a key role. The gunman, a sullen loner who appeared to have few if any friends, bought ammunition clips on eBay designed for one of two handguns used to kill 32 people and himself.
The eBay account and other Internet activities provide insight into how Cho may have plotted for the rampage, including the purchase of several empty ammo clips about three weeks before the attack.
Hani Durzy, an eBay spokesman, said the purchase of the clips from a Web vendor based in Idaho was legal and that the company has cooperated with authorities. Attempts to reach the Idaho dealer were unsuccessful.
Authorities are also examining the personal computers found in Cho's dorm room and seeking his cell-phone records.
Cho, 23, also used the eBay account to sell items ranging from Hokies football tickets to horror-themed books, some of which were assigned in one of his classes.
A search warrant affidavit filed Friday stated that investigators wanted to search Cho's e-mail accounts, including the address Blazers5505@hotmail.com. Durzy confirmed Cho used the same blazers5505 handle on eBay.
One question investigators hope to answer is whether Cho had any e-mail contact with Emily Hilscher, one of the first two victims. Investigators plan to search her Virginia Tech e-mail account.
On March 22, Cho bought at least two 10-round magazines for the Walther P22. A day later, he made a purchase from a vendor named "oneclickshooting," which sells gun accessories and other items. It appears that he bought three Walther P22 clips in that purchase, but the seller could not be reached for comment.
Cho sold tickets to Virginia Tech sporting events, including last year's Peach Bowl. He sold a Texas Instruments graphics calculator that contained several games, most of them with mild themes.
"The calculator was used for less than one semester then I dropped the class," Cho wrote on the site.
He also sold many books about violence, death and mayhem. Several of those books were used in his English classes, meaning Cho simply could have been selling used books at the end of the semester.
Andy Koch, Cho's roommate from 2005-06, said he never saw Cho receive or send a package, although he didn't have much interaction with the shooter. Students can sign up for a free lottery on a game-by-game basis, and the tickets are free.
"We took him to one football game," he said. "We told him to sign up for the lottery, and he went and he left like in the third quarter, and that was it. He never went again. He never went to another game."
Associated Press writers Kristen Gelineau and Allen G. Breed contributed to this report.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Friday, April 20, 2007
Washington Post soft-sells for Gonzales, Bush, with "chastise" headline for Gonzales' disgraceful testimony...
Under oath in front of a Senate committee today, the nation's top enforcement officer - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales - perjured himself by telling the nation a string of lies, pleading "I DON'T REMEMBER" over 100 times onissues, policies, discussions, and in particular the mass firings ("purging") of US Attorneys that has been the signature "leadership" initiative of the Department of Justice since Mr. Gonzales took the helm of that department.
As can be expected, THE WHORES at the Washington Post SOFT-SELL this betrayal of America's justice system, by giving an innocuous headline to their coverage of Gonzales' disgraceful testimony - "Senators CHASTIZE Gonzales at Hearing." Contrast this anemic headline with what the headlines the WHORE Post used when trying to turn the Clinton's overnight guest list into a scandal (the - gasp! - "LINCOLN BEDROOM SCANDAL!") or the Webster Hubell conviction for - overbilling clients?! - into a major scandal - WHILE THE WHORE POST TURNS A BLIND EYE to the current Vice President's ONGOING FINANCIAL REWARD for his extensive efforts to hand billion-dollar government contracts to- HALLIBURTON corporation, the company Mr. Cheney was once Chairman and CEO of!
The WASHINGTON POST is the most despicable organization in the entire American "news" industry - and they are HAPPY to cover for a perjurous Attorney General.
----------------------------------------
Senators Chastise Gonzales at Hearing
Members of His Own Party Pile On as Attorney General Defends Firings
By Dan Eggen and Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 20, 2007; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/19/AR2007041902935.html?hpid=topnews
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales came under withering attack from members of his own party yesterday over the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys, facing the first resignation demand from a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and doubts from others about his candor and his ability to lead the Justice Department.
As can be expected, THE WHORES at the Washington Post SOFT-SELL this betrayal of America's justice system, by giving an innocuous headline to their coverage of Gonzales' disgraceful testimony - "Senators CHASTIZE Gonzales at Hearing." Contrast this anemic headline with what the headlines the WHORE Post used when trying to turn the Clinton's overnight guest list into a scandal (the - gasp! - "LINCOLN BEDROOM SCANDAL!") or the Webster Hubell conviction for - overbilling clients?! - into a major scandal - WHILE THE WHORE POST TURNS A BLIND EYE to the current Vice President's ONGOING FINANCIAL REWARD for his extensive efforts to hand billion-dollar government contracts to- HALLIBURTON corporation, the company Mr. Cheney was once Chairman and CEO of!
The WASHINGTON POST is the most despicable organization in the entire American "news" industry - and they are HAPPY to cover for a perjurous Attorney General.
----------------------------------------
Senators Chastise Gonzales at Hearing
Members of His Own Party Pile On as Attorney General Defends Firings
By Dan Eggen and Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 20, 2007; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/19/AR2007041902935.html?hpid=topnews
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales came under withering attack from members of his own party yesterday over the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys, facing the first resignation demand from a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and doubts from others about his candor and his ability to lead the Justice Department.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Washington Post is Cheney's megaphone for SMEAR ATTACKS on Nancy Pelosi...
(click our headline-link for ThinkProgress' original story, complete with a full set of hot-links documenting the article we highlight below.)
- -IF the cowardly, craven, lying, and corrupt editors and publishers of the WASHINGTON POST stuck to reporting the facts - honestly and with a minimum of "spin" or bias - George W. Bush would never have "won" the election of 2000, the New York World Trade Center towers would probably still be standing, and the US Army and Marines would not be bogged down in Iraq, making new enemies in the Muslim world by the score every time a US Air Force bombing attack wipes out an entire family in its bomb runs on "suspected insurgent positions."
Indeed, were the situation reversed: would a President Al Gore's SECRETARY OF DEFENSE and VICE PRESIDENT (both of them former Secretaries of Defense from a decade earlier) done EXACTLY NOTHING when warned, IN PERSON, by BOTH the CIA Director (George Tenet) and 'Counter Terror Czar' (Richard Clarke), in JULY of 2001 that "AL QAIDA WAS DETERMINED TO ATTACK IN AMERICA," probably by hijacking or attacking US airliners, then the WASHINGTON POST would have long ago been LEADING the nation-wide calls for a President Gore's impeachment.
Instead, because the Post is so horribly corrupted, all of America gives Vice President Dick Cheney, and former Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, a FREE PASS for DOING EXACTLY NOTHING when Clarke and Tenet made those urgent, in-person, "system is blinking red" warnings to the sitting Vice President and sitting Secretary of Defense!
And, in typical SMEAR-MOB fashion, the craven, cowardly, corrupt Washington Post is LEADING the Right-Wing assault on Speaker Pelosi, for trying to provide America with SOME kind of leadership alternative to the treacherous, arguably traitorous, 'leadership' of Bush, Cheney, and former Secretary of War Rumsfeld.
--------------------------------
Sources for our comments:
#1. Rumsfeld did EXACTLY NOTHING when warned, in person, by CIA Director George Tenet that Al Qaida was likely planning to attack IN AMERICA:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/29/washington/29account.html
<< Mr. Woodward writes that in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Tenet believed that Mr. Rumsfeld WAS IMPEDING THE EFFORT to develop a coherent strategy to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. Mr. Rumsfeld questioned the electronic signals from terrorism suspects that the National Security Agency had been intercepting, wondering whether they might be part of an elaborate deception plan by Al Qaeda. >>
#2. From the same source (NYT review of WP writer Bob Woodward's book, "State of Denial," written with many first-person accounts from within the Bush-Cheney White House)
<< On July 10, 2001, the book says, Mr. Tenet and his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, met with Ms. Rice at the White House to impress upon her the seriousness of the intelligence the agency was collecting about an impending attack. But both men came away from the meeting feeling that Ms. Rice had not taken the warnings seriously. >>
#3. There are legions of sources that document that the warnings National Security Advisor Rice recived were also shared between Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and Attorney General Ashcroft. Indeed, in his biographical account of the weeks leading up to the 9-11 attack, 'Counter Terror Czar' Richard Clarke complained that he had communicated his desires to hold a "PRINCIPLES MEETING" to discuss the Al Qaida threat (Al Qaida had attacked the USS Cole with a suicide bomb in Yemen just 8 months earlier) BUT WAS REPEATEDLY REBUFFED by Vice President Cheney.
<< The response in the Bush administration was that it was inappropriate for me to be asking for a principles meeting. >>
We also have this CNN article,
this official Democratic Senate outline "Vice President Cheney's task force on terrorism never met"; this CBS news article "Ashcroft given 'THREAT ASSESMENT' and stopped flying on public airliners in JULY of 2001"; and this Truthout.org article which ties all the above together: that Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, and Cheney WERE WARNED that "Al Qaida was DETERMINED TO ATTACK IN AMERICA," yet these three leaders of America's law enforcement, defense, and national security establishments DID EXACTLY NOTHING - besides get the Attorney General out of the line of fire, while allowing American airline passengers and aircrews to remain exposed, like sitting ducks.
(Bonus citation: Also in July of 2001, the Italian police and secret service established batteries of SURFACE-to-AIR MISSILES around the port city of Genoa, Italy, specifically to protect the assembled presidents attending the G-8 economic summit from BEING ATTACKED BY AIRLINERS HIJACKED by Al Qaida terrorists to be used as flying bombs - a threat which Al Qaida (or someone posing as Al Qaida) actually called in to security forces there!
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/07/17/genoa.security/
<< The Italian authorities' security measures also include the positioning of surface-to-air missiles at Genoa's Christopher Columbus airport. Dubbed the SPADA, the land-based system consists of missiles capable of a range of 15 kilometres (9.3 miles).
The ministry said the decision to install the missiles is not excessive.
"There's no excessive precaution," military spokesman Colonel Alberto Battaglini told Reuters. "The measure, which was planned by the previous government, may seem open to criticism, but in reality it is merely to act as a deterrent against any aerial incursion during the summit." >>
==============================
Evidence Emerging Of Cheney-Led Smear Campaign Against Pelosi Over Syria Trip
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/14/evidence-pelosi-white-house/
Before Nancy Pelosi left Israel to travel to Syria earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s spokeswoman Miri Eisin said “Pelosi is conveying that Israel is willing to talk if they (Syria) would openly take steps to stop supporting terrorism.” Pelosi delivered as requested, and this week received a thank you call from Olmert. So why then did the Israeli Prime Minister originally issue a statement of “clarification” about Pelosi’s message which became the basis for right-wing attacks against her?
The evidence of White House involvement behind the Israeli Prime Minister’s statement has been growing this past week. Middle East analysts have suggested Bush deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams — a close ally of Dick Cheney — may have been coordinating the attempts to undermine Pelosi’s trip. “‘It’s obvious the White House is desperate to find some phony criticism of the speaker’s trip, even though it was a bipartisan trip,’ said Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), a Holocaust survivor who is considered the Democrat closest to the pro-Israel lobby. ‘I have nothing but contempt and disdain for the attempt to undermine this trip.’”
Rep. Henry Waxman suggested that the White House’s coordinated attempts to smear Pelosi were part of an effort to undermine her on Iraq:
Waxman said the administration is focused on building a case against the Democrats in preparation for a showdown over the Iraq War funding bill. The more they can paint Democrats as weak and irresponsible, the more likely the Democrats will knuckle under and let the president continue the war unchecked. It’s been known to happen.
So Cheney trashes the reputation of men like Lantos and Waxman (who, by the way, has doggedly pursued waste and mismanagement in Iraq by Halliburton, the company that made Cheney rich), and it’s politics as usual.
This is not unchartered territory for Cheney. He has become famous for kneecapping people with whom he disagrees, even individuals within the administration. Middle East experts recalled Cheney’s involvement in a similar situation last year:
Last year, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talked Olmert into a 48-hour cease-fire during the war with Hezbollah to allow humanitarian relief, but within hours Israeli planes were bombing again, to Rice’s surprise and anger. Olmert had received a call, apparently from Cheney’s office, telling him to ignore Rice.
The Cheney campaign against Pelosi hasn’t let up. This week, the Washington Post editorial board — which has helped drive the Pelosi smear campaign from the beginning — published an attack piece from Liz Cheney, the daughter of the Vice President.
- -IF the cowardly, craven, lying, and corrupt editors and publishers of the WASHINGTON POST stuck to reporting the facts - honestly and with a minimum of "spin" or bias - George W. Bush would never have "won" the election of 2000, the New York World Trade Center towers would probably still be standing, and the US Army and Marines would not be bogged down in Iraq, making new enemies in the Muslim world by the score every time a US Air Force bombing attack wipes out an entire family in its bomb runs on "suspected insurgent positions."
Indeed, were the situation reversed: would a President Al Gore's SECRETARY OF DEFENSE and VICE PRESIDENT (both of them former Secretaries of Defense from a decade earlier) done EXACTLY NOTHING when warned, IN PERSON, by BOTH the CIA Director (George Tenet) and 'Counter Terror Czar' (Richard Clarke), in JULY of 2001 that "AL QAIDA WAS DETERMINED TO ATTACK IN AMERICA," probably by hijacking or attacking US airliners, then the WASHINGTON POST would have long ago been LEADING the nation-wide calls for a President Gore's impeachment.
Instead, because the Post is so horribly corrupted, all of America gives Vice President Dick Cheney, and former Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, a FREE PASS for DOING EXACTLY NOTHING when Clarke and Tenet made those urgent, in-person, "system is blinking red" warnings to the sitting Vice President and sitting Secretary of Defense!
And, in typical SMEAR-MOB fashion, the craven, cowardly, corrupt Washington Post is LEADING the Right-Wing assault on Speaker Pelosi, for trying to provide America with SOME kind of leadership alternative to the treacherous, arguably traitorous, 'leadership' of Bush, Cheney, and former Secretary of War Rumsfeld.
--------------------------------
Sources for our comments:
#1. Rumsfeld did EXACTLY NOTHING when warned, in person, by CIA Director George Tenet that Al Qaida was likely planning to attack IN AMERICA:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/29/washington/29account.html
<< Mr. Woodward writes that in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Tenet believed that Mr. Rumsfeld WAS IMPEDING THE EFFORT to develop a coherent strategy to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. Mr. Rumsfeld questioned the electronic signals from terrorism suspects that the National Security Agency had been intercepting, wondering whether they might be part of an elaborate deception plan by Al Qaeda. >>
#2. From the same source (NYT review of WP writer Bob Woodward's book, "State of Denial," written with many first-person accounts from within the Bush-Cheney White House)
<< On July 10, 2001, the book says, Mr. Tenet and his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, met with Ms. Rice at the White House to impress upon her the seriousness of the intelligence the agency was collecting about an impending attack. But both men came away from the meeting feeling that Ms. Rice had not taken the warnings seriously. >>
#3. There are legions of sources that document that the warnings National Security Advisor Rice recived were also shared between Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and Attorney General Ashcroft. Indeed, in his biographical account of the weeks leading up to the 9-11 attack, 'Counter Terror Czar' Richard Clarke complained that he had communicated his desires to hold a "PRINCIPLES MEETING" to discuss the Al Qaida threat (Al Qaida had attacked the USS Cole with a suicide bomb in Yemen just 8 months earlier) BUT WAS REPEATEDLY REBUFFED by Vice President Cheney.
<< The response in the Bush administration was that it was inappropriate for me to be asking for a principles meeting. >>
We also have this CNN article,
this official Democratic Senate outline "Vice President Cheney's task force on terrorism never met"; this CBS news article "Ashcroft given 'THREAT ASSESMENT' and stopped flying on public airliners in JULY of 2001"; and this Truthout.org article which ties all the above together: that Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, and Cheney WERE WARNED that "Al Qaida was DETERMINED TO ATTACK IN AMERICA," yet these three leaders of America's law enforcement, defense, and national security establishments DID EXACTLY NOTHING - besides get the Attorney General out of the line of fire, while allowing American airline passengers and aircrews to remain exposed, like sitting ducks.
(Bonus citation: Also in July of 2001, the Italian police and secret service established batteries of SURFACE-to-AIR MISSILES around the port city of Genoa, Italy, specifically to protect the assembled presidents attending the G-8 economic summit from BEING ATTACKED BY AIRLINERS HIJACKED by Al Qaida terrorists to be used as flying bombs - a threat which Al Qaida (or someone posing as Al Qaida) actually called in to security forces there!
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/07/17/genoa.security/
<< The Italian authorities' security measures also include the positioning of surface-to-air missiles at Genoa's Christopher Columbus airport. Dubbed the SPADA, the land-based system consists of missiles capable of a range of 15 kilometres (9.3 miles).
The ministry said the decision to install the missiles is not excessive.
"There's no excessive precaution," military spokesman Colonel Alberto Battaglini told Reuters. "The measure, which was planned by the previous government, may seem open to criticism, but in reality it is merely to act as a deterrent against any aerial incursion during the summit." >>
==============================
Evidence Emerging Of Cheney-Led Smear Campaign Against Pelosi Over Syria Trip
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/14/evidence-pelosi-white-house/
Before Nancy Pelosi left Israel to travel to Syria earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s spokeswoman Miri Eisin said “Pelosi is conveying that Israel is willing to talk if they (Syria) would openly take steps to stop supporting terrorism.” Pelosi delivered as requested, and this week received a thank you call from Olmert. So why then did the Israeli Prime Minister originally issue a statement of “clarification” about Pelosi’s message which became the basis for right-wing attacks against her?
The evidence of White House involvement behind the Israeli Prime Minister’s statement has been growing this past week. Middle East analysts have suggested Bush deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams — a close ally of Dick Cheney — may have been coordinating the attempts to undermine Pelosi’s trip. “‘It’s obvious the White House is desperate to find some phony criticism of the speaker’s trip, even though it was a bipartisan trip,’ said Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), a Holocaust survivor who is considered the Democrat closest to the pro-Israel lobby. ‘I have nothing but contempt and disdain for the attempt to undermine this trip.’”
Rep. Henry Waxman suggested that the White House’s coordinated attempts to smear Pelosi were part of an effort to undermine her on Iraq:
Waxman said the administration is focused on building a case against the Democrats in preparation for a showdown over the Iraq War funding bill. The more they can paint Democrats as weak and irresponsible, the more likely the Democrats will knuckle under and let the president continue the war unchecked. It’s been known to happen.
So Cheney trashes the reputation of men like Lantos and Waxman (who, by the way, has doggedly pursued waste and mismanagement in Iraq by Halliburton, the company that made Cheney rich), and it’s politics as usual.
This is not unchartered territory for Cheney. He has become famous for kneecapping people with whom he disagrees, even individuals within the administration. Middle East experts recalled Cheney’s involvement in a similar situation last year:
Last year, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talked Olmert into a 48-hour cease-fire during the war with Hezbollah to allow humanitarian relief, but within hours Israeli planes were bombing again, to Rice’s surprise and anger. Olmert had received a call, apparently from Cheney’s office, telling him to ignore Rice.
The Cheney campaign against Pelosi hasn’t let up. This week, the Washington Post editorial board — which has helped drive the Pelosi smear campaign from the beginning — published an attack piece from Liz Cheney, the daughter of the Vice President.
Friday, April 13, 2007
ABC 'news' knowingly whored the "Saddam Anthrax!" story based on abject lies....
File this one under "media majors complicit in innuendo, false assertions, and outright LIES-to-War: Glen Grenwald, in a long, thoroughly referenced article, documents the LIES that ABC told its viewers in October and December of 2001 that SADDAM HUSSEIN was behind the ANTHRAX TERROR ATTACKS - deadly letters placed in the US mail, just shortly after the terror of the 9-11 hijack/airliner bombings in New York and Washington. And what this excellent Greenwald article fails to mention is that the major media players HAD A RESPONSIBILITY to notice the TARGETS of those anthrax attacks - a National Enquirer subsidiary photo-editor killed in Florida, and the Senate offices of Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy in their DC government offices - and employ a minimum amount of skeptisism that they were indeed the targets of "Arab extremist" terrorists. For the simple fact is that no self-respecting Al Qaida terrorist would target TOM DASCHLE and PATRICK LEAHY for deadly anthrax letters, when they could sow confusion and despair in other, more prominent targets, such as the White House and Pentagon. Even more preposterous, that someone with the skill and patience to put such deadly letters together (without killing themselves or their neighbors) would use clumsy, almost childish WARNINGS to broadcast the threat to the intended targets, allowing those potential victims time to take Cipro immunization shots.
But, clearly, ABC 'news' and the major media fell for the "Anthrax attacks from Saddam's Iraq!" notion hook, line, and sinker. In reality, Senator Tom Daschle was most famous as the Democratic OPPOSITION leader to the Bush White House; and Patrick Leahy was the Chairman of the Senator Judiciary Committee, WHICH WAS PUTTING THE BRAKES on the "P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act" that the White House and Republican Congress were hurriedly pushing by the Democratic controlled Senate - trying to avoid ANY oversight or notice of some of the draconian provisions of the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act altogether. The American press/media HAD A RESPONSIBILITY to juse some objective, professional skepticism in this tragic chain of events, but utterly FAILED to do so. Greenwald says it better than we have:
<< The attempt to link Saddam to the anthrax attacks was just as fraudulent -- and just as significant -- as the attempt to link Saddam to 9/11, Al Qaeda and nuclear weapons. Brian Ross and ABC played a key role in that part of the fraud, yet have never accounted for their conduct. >>
===========================================
The unresolved story of ABC News' FALSE Saddam-anthrax reports
by Glen Greenwald, Salon.com
Monday April 9, 2007
(updated below - updated again)
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/04/09/abc_anthrax/index.html
At the end of the post I wrote last week about ABC News and Brian Ross' new report that Iran could have nuclear weapons by 2009, I noted that ABC and Ross -- back in October and November 2001 -- were the driving force, really the exclusive force, behind news reports strongly suggesting that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were responsible for the anthrax attacks on the U.S. There are several very important issues arising from those events which I strongly believe merit real attention. This post is somewhat lengthy because it is vital to set forth the facts clearly.
Last week, I excerpted several of the Saddam-anthrax reports from ABC and Ross -- here and here -- but there are others. ABC aggressively promoted as its top story for days on end during that highly provocative period of time that -- and these are all quotes:
(a) "the anthrax in the tainted letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was laced with bentonite";
(b) bentonite is "a troubling chemical additive that authorities consider their first significant clue yet";
(c) "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons";
(d) bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program"; and,
(e) "the anthrax found in a letter to Senator Daschle is nearly identical to samples they recovered in Iraq in 1994" and "the anthrax spores found in the letter to Senator Daschle are almost identical in appearance to those they recovered in Iraq in 1994 when viewed under an electron microscope."
At different times, Ross attributed these claims to "three well-placed but separate sources" and, alternatively, to "at least four well-placed sources."
All of those factual claims -- each and every one of them, separately -- were completely false, demonstrably and unquestionably so. There is now no question about that. Yet neither ABC nor Ross have ever retracted, corrected, clarified, or explained these fraudulent reports -- reports which, as documented below, had an extremely serious impact on the views formed by Americans in those early, critical days about the relationship between the 9/11 attacks, the anthrax attacks and Iraq. There are two vital questions that ABC News should answer:
(1) How can ABC News just let these Saddam-anthrax reports -- as false as they were consequential -- remain uncorrected and unexplained, even through today?
(2) More importantly, Ross claimed at the time, and there is no reason to doubt it, that these false reports -- clearly designed to blame Iraq for the anthrax attacks in the eyes of Americans -- were fed to him by "at least four well-placed sources." Who were the well-placed, multiple sources feeding ABC News completely fictitious claims linking Saddam Hussein to the anthrax attacks, including false claims about the results of government tests? What possible justification is there for concealing the identity of those who manipulated ABC to disseminate these fictitious claims?
But, clearly, ABC 'news' and the major media fell for the "Anthrax attacks from Saddam's Iraq!" notion hook, line, and sinker. In reality, Senator Tom Daschle was most famous as the Democratic OPPOSITION leader to the Bush White House; and Patrick Leahy was the Chairman of the Senator Judiciary Committee, WHICH WAS PUTTING THE BRAKES on the "P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act" that the White House and Republican Congress were hurriedly pushing by the Democratic controlled Senate - trying to avoid ANY oversight or notice of some of the draconian provisions of the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act altogether. The American press/media HAD A RESPONSIBILITY to juse some objective, professional skepticism in this tragic chain of events, but utterly FAILED to do so. Greenwald says it better than we have:
<< The attempt to link Saddam to the anthrax attacks was just as fraudulent -- and just as significant -- as the attempt to link Saddam to 9/11, Al Qaeda and nuclear weapons. Brian Ross and ABC played a key role in that part of the fraud, yet have never accounted for their conduct. >>
===========================================
The unresolved story of ABC News' FALSE Saddam-anthrax reports
by Glen Greenwald, Salon.com
Monday April 9, 2007
(updated below - updated again)
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/04/09/abc_anthrax/index.html
At the end of the post I wrote last week about ABC News and Brian Ross' new report that Iran could have nuclear weapons by 2009, I noted that ABC and Ross -- back in October and November 2001 -- were the driving force, really the exclusive force, behind news reports strongly suggesting that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were responsible for the anthrax attacks on the U.S. There are several very important issues arising from those events which I strongly believe merit real attention. This post is somewhat lengthy because it is vital to set forth the facts clearly.
Last week, I excerpted several of the Saddam-anthrax reports from ABC and Ross -- here and here -- but there are others. ABC aggressively promoted as its top story for days on end during that highly provocative period of time that -- and these are all quotes:
(a) "the anthrax in the tainted letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was laced with bentonite";
(b) bentonite is "a troubling chemical additive that authorities consider their first significant clue yet";
(c) "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons";
(d) bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program"; and,
(e) "the anthrax found in a letter to Senator Daschle is nearly identical to samples they recovered in Iraq in 1994" and "the anthrax spores found in the letter to Senator Daschle are almost identical in appearance to those they recovered in Iraq in 1994 when viewed under an electron microscope."
At different times, Ross attributed these claims to "three well-placed but separate sources" and, alternatively, to "at least four well-placed sources."
All of those factual claims -- each and every one of them, separately -- were completely false, demonstrably and unquestionably so. There is now no question about that. Yet neither ABC nor Ross have ever retracted, corrected, clarified, or explained these fraudulent reports -- reports which, as documented below, had an extremely serious impact on the views formed by Americans in those early, critical days about the relationship between the 9/11 attacks, the anthrax attacks and Iraq. There are two vital questions that ABC News should answer:
(1) How can ABC News just let these Saddam-anthrax reports -- as false as they were consequential -- remain uncorrected and unexplained, even through today?
(2) More importantly, Ross claimed at the time, and there is no reason to doubt it, that these false reports -- clearly designed to blame Iraq for the anthrax attacks in the eyes of Americans -- were fed to him by "at least four well-placed sources." Who were the well-placed, multiple sources feeding ABC News completely fictitious claims linking Saddam Hussein to the anthrax attacks, including false claims about the results of government tests? What possible justification is there for concealing the identity of those who manipulated ABC to disseminate these fictitious claims?
Thursday, April 12, 2007
IMUS fired from MSNBC TV for his racist slur of Rutgers women's basketball team...
(click our headline-link for the full story from the New York Times:)
NBC News dropped Don Imus yesterday, canceling his talk show on its MSNBC cable news channel a week after he made a racially disparaging remark about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team.
The move came after several days of widening calls for Mr. Imus to lose his show both on MSNBC, which simulcasts the “Imus in the Morning” show, and CBS Radio, which originates the show.
-----------------------------------------
Below is a great op-ed we caught by Clarence Page - an African-American reporter who has been on Imus' show - highlighting the ups-and-downs of Imus' career. Imus' major "up" was mastering the talk-radio shtick of skirting close to the edge of controversy over the 3 decades of his career, without crossing it so badly that he got fired. As a talk-radio survivor with an edgy show, he gradually amassed a listening audience, which commanded him a fortune in America's mega-media infotainment industry.
But there was nothing exceptional about Imus' show.
He did interview top candidates, news-makers, and 'news personalities' - the talking heads who now dominate the nation's news and political discourse. (Aside: WILLIAM SAFIRE, of the NEW YORK TIMES, was demonstratively WRONG about almost EVERYTHING he ever wrote about the Clintons - "indictments will be handed down to the Clintons later this week!" was only the most fervid of Safire's "journalistic" excesses given unrestrained syndication from the whore Times - but in part because of Safire's relentless haranguing, the Republicans were able to create a $70 million Ken Starr "independent" Whitewater investigation- into a routine real-estate flop in which the Clintons lost $250,000! The "Whitewater" financial witch hunt of course morphed into the "Monica- did she, or didn't she?" scandal, which led to the Republcian lame-duck impeachment of President Clinton.)
In interviewing top candidates and news personalities, Imus has been far less deferential to his guests (much less reverential) than on most typical news interviews, so he has been able to ask more pressing questions, for example asking Kerry directly about his "wimp" or "flip-flopper" images re the Iraq war. (Unlike Katie Couric's interview of the Edwards, where Couric thought that harping on one question - Elizabeth Edward's cancer diagnosis - was an in-depth interview.)
But Imus' caustic brand of biting interview left our political discourse only slightly better informed than before we heard candidates grovel at his microphone, and in the end Imus is a big part of the CYNICISM that, until recently, led the American people to feel that they were HELPLESS in the face of STOLEN VOTES, rigged voting machines, FEMA incompetence after Katrina, lies-to-war, etc., etc., etc.
Oh - and is now a good time to remind that TIMMOTHY McVEIGH blew up the Oklahoma City Government building - only after listening to years worth of RIGHT-WING HATE RADIO?? Including such "MORAL VALUES" stalwarts as convicted Watergate burglar G. GORDON LIDDY telling his hate-radio listeners that, when shooting at "jack-booted federal law enforcement officers" one should "aim at the head to avid hitting body armor."
--------------------------------------------------
Don Imus' trail of woe
2-week suspension is dust-up's only surprise
by Clarence Page
April 11, 2007
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0704100426apr11,1,6159157.column?coll=chi-news-hed
WASHINGTON -- As she faced the world's television cameras to respond to a gross insult by radio and television showman Don Imus, a member of the Rutgers University women's basketball team spoke volumes with one sentence:
"I'm not a ho," she said Tuesday at the team's first news conference after the incident that history may well remember as the Don Imus "nappy-headed hos" eruption. "I'm a woman and . . . I'm somebody's child," she added.
Indeed, she is. So are the rest of Rutgers' Scarlet Knights. And anybody who would make them out to be anything else should be ashamed. Unfortunately, shame is in short supply in the field of shock radio.
Just before the Easter weekend, Imus apparently thought he could get away with a brief apology at the beginning of his program for his racially charged remarks. But by Monday the controversy had percolated to the boiling point. Civil rights activists called for him to be fired. He was apologizing all day long, including on Rev. Al Sharpton's syndicated radio program.
By day's end, his employers, CBS Radio and MSNBC, had suspended Imus for two weeks.
The Imus controversy was not a big surprise to me, although the punishment was. Back in 2001, I led Imus in an on-air pledge in which he promised to avoid humor that relied on inflammatory racial or gender stereotypes, including "simian references to black athletes" and other abuses of which he had been accused.
I had been part of his stable of journalists and commentators who appeared on his show for more than five years. We were invited to the show to offer political views. He took the pledge and we continued with our usual interview, although interestingly I have not been invited back since.
That's probably not surprising. For more than three decades Imus has been one of America's most popular radio personalities, combining some of the shock-jock elements of a Howard Stern, for example, with the irreverent political sense of, say, a Bill O'Reilly.
But when you dance along the edge, you run the risk of slipping. What made the backlash from the Rutgers statement more serious than his previous dust-ups? For one, it was such an obvious cheap shot. The rich and famous, such as Paris Hilton or Whitney Houston, might be fair game, but why pick on a group of college women basketball players?
Second, it was a slow holiday news weekend, which only brought additional attention, spurred by insatiable 24-hour news cycles.
And third, I have a theory, based on the impact of bloggers, YouTube and other Internet-era phenomena, that mass anger of all types has new ways to grow farther, faster and hotter than ever before. After years of surviving controversies that have cost other shock jocks their jobs or at least a month's pay or more, Imus and those who profit from his talents finally found themselves feeling a pinch in their pocketbooks and their reputations.
Now in full damage-control mode, Imus' cleverest move may have been to go immediately to the national confessional that Sharpton's radio show has become for racial transgressors. What could make Imus look more sympathetic than to be berated for an hour or more by a man widely despised by Imus' core audience of mostly white males.
And the ironies don't end there. After all, if Imus offended black folks with his use of words such as "ho" and "nappy head," it was today's black culture that gave him the vocabulary. I understand those who ask whether it is fair to condemn Imus for using language that gets a pass when black rappers use it. Actually I have condemned the demeaning language of rap. So have Sharpton, Rev. Jesse Jackson and innumerable other black commentators.
Still, it is not enough. We must passionately condemn the language of hate, not only when others direct it against us, but also when we direct it against ourselves.
If anything good came out of this episode it is the opportunity it gave us to see the women of Rutgers' basketball team. In contrast to the negative images of raunchy radio, they showed the world grace, intelligence, determination and dignity. They had given the world their best. They deserve better than what Don Imus sent back to them.
----------
Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune's editorial board. E-mail: cptime@aol.com
NBC News dropped Don Imus yesterday, canceling his talk show on its MSNBC cable news channel a week after he made a racially disparaging remark about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team.
The move came after several days of widening calls for Mr. Imus to lose his show both on MSNBC, which simulcasts the “Imus in the Morning” show, and CBS Radio, which originates the show.
-----------------------------------------
Below is a great op-ed we caught by Clarence Page - an African-American reporter who has been on Imus' show - highlighting the ups-and-downs of Imus' career. Imus' major "up" was mastering the talk-radio shtick of skirting close to the edge of controversy over the 3 decades of his career, without crossing it so badly that he got fired. As a talk-radio survivor with an edgy show, he gradually amassed a listening audience, which commanded him a fortune in America's mega-media infotainment industry.
But there was nothing exceptional about Imus' show.
He did interview top candidates, news-makers, and 'news personalities' - the talking heads who now dominate the nation's news and political discourse. (Aside: WILLIAM SAFIRE, of the NEW YORK TIMES, was demonstratively WRONG about almost EVERYTHING he ever wrote about the Clintons - "indictments will be handed down to the Clintons later this week!" was only the most fervid of Safire's "journalistic" excesses given unrestrained syndication from the whore Times - but in part because of Safire's relentless haranguing, the Republicans were able to create a $70 million Ken Starr "independent" Whitewater investigation- into a routine real-estate flop in which the Clintons lost $250,000! The "Whitewater" financial witch hunt of course morphed into the "Monica- did she, or didn't she?" scandal, which led to the Republcian lame-duck impeachment of President Clinton.)
In interviewing top candidates and news personalities, Imus has been far less deferential to his guests (much less reverential) than on most typical news interviews, so he has been able to ask more pressing questions, for example asking Kerry directly about his "wimp" or "flip-flopper" images re the Iraq war. (Unlike Katie Couric's interview of the Edwards, where Couric thought that harping on one question - Elizabeth Edward's cancer diagnosis - was an in-depth interview.)
But Imus' caustic brand of biting interview left our political discourse only slightly better informed than before we heard candidates grovel at his microphone, and in the end Imus is a big part of the CYNICISM that, until recently, led the American people to feel that they were HELPLESS in the face of STOLEN VOTES, rigged voting machines, FEMA incompetence after Katrina, lies-to-war, etc., etc., etc.
Oh - and is now a good time to remind that TIMMOTHY McVEIGH blew up the Oklahoma City Government building - only after listening to years worth of RIGHT-WING HATE RADIO?? Including such "MORAL VALUES" stalwarts as convicted Watergate burglar G. GORDON LIDDY telling his hate-radio listeners that, when shooting at "jack-booted federal law enforcement officers" one should "aim at the head to avid hitting body armor."
--------------------------------------------------
Don Imus' trail of woe
2-week suspension is dust-up's only surprise
by Clarence Page
April 11, 2007
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0704100426apr11,1,6159157.column?coll=chi-news-hed
WASHINGTON -- As she faced the world's television cameras to respond to a gross insult by radio and television showman Don Imus, a member of the Rutgers University women's basketball team spoke volumes with one sentence:
"I'm not a ho," she said Tuesday at the team's first news conference after the incident that history may well remember as the Don Imus "nappy-headed hos" eruption. "I'm a woman and . . . I'm somebody's child," she added.
Indeed, she is. So are the rest of Rutgers' Scarlet Knights. And anybody who would make them out to be anything else should be ashamed. Unfortunately, shame is in short supply in the field of shock radio.
Just before the Easter weekend, Imus apparently thought he could get away with a brief apology at the beginning of his program for his racially charged remarks. But by Monday the controversy had percolated to the boiling point. Civil rights activists called for him to be fired. He was apologizing all day long, including on Rev. Al Sharpton's syndicated radio program.
By day's end, his employers, CBS Radio and MSNBC, had suspended Imus for two weeks.
The Imus controversy was not a big surprise to me, although the punishment was. Back in 2001, I led Imus in an on-air pledge in which he promised to avoid humor that relied on inflammatory racial or gender stereotypes, including "simian references to black athletes" and other abuses of which he had been accused.
I had been part of his stable of journalists and commentators who appeared on his show for more than five years. We were invited to the show to offer political views. He took the pledge and we continued with our usual interview, although interestingly I have not been invited back since.
That's probably not surprising. For more than three decades Imus has been one of America's most popular radio personalities, combining some of the shock-jock elements of a Howard Stern, for example, with the irreverent political sense of, say, a Bill O'Reilly.
But when you dance along the edge, you run the risk of slipping. What made the backlash from the Rutgers statement more serious than his previous dust-ups? For one, it was such an obvious cheap shot. The rich and famous, such as Paris Hilton or Whitney Houston, might be fair game, but why pick on a group of college women basketball players?
Second, it was a slow holiday news weekend, which only brought additional attention, spurred by insatiable 24-hour news cycles.
And third, I have a theory, based on the impact of bloggers, YouTube and other Internet-era phenomena, that mass anger of all types has new ways to grow farther, faster and hotter than ever before. After years of surviving controversies that have cost other shock jocks their jobs or at least a month's pay or more, Imus and those who profit from his talents finally found themselves feeling a pinch in their pocketbooks and their reputations.
Now in full damage-control mode, Imus' cleverest move may have been to go immediately to the national confessional that Sharpton's radio show has become for racial transgressors. What could make Imus look more sympathetic than to be berated for an hour or more by a man widely despised by Imus' core audience of mostly white males.
And the ironies don't end there. After all, if Imus offended black folks with his use of words such as "ho" and "nappy head," it was today's black culture that gave him the vocabulary. I understand those who ask whether it is fair to condemn Imus for using language that gets a pass when black rappers use it. Actually I have condemned the demeaning language of rap. So have Sharpton, Rev. Jesse Jackson and innumerable other black commentators.
Still, it is not enough. We must passionately condemn the language of hate, not only when others direct it against us, but also when we direct it against ourselves.
If anything good came out of this episode it is the opportunity it gave us to see the women of Rutgers' basketball team. In contrast to the negative images of raunchy radio, they showed the world grace, intelligence, determination and dignity. They had given the world their best. They deserve better than what Don Imus sent back to them.
----------
Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune's editorial board. E-mail: cptime@aol.com
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Citigroup Bank to slash 17,000 jobs. Media FAILS to ask "How many will be OUTSOURCED" - replaced overseas with cheaper labor?
This AP article by Eileen Alt Powell illustrates how conversational and superficial US 'news' reporting has become over the years - and how "OUTSOURCING" of US jobs can be presented as "GOOD NEWS!" by the US whore media.
Yes, there are limitations in how much hard financial data can be included in a 'mainstream' news reports; readers will turn the page if the story goes into too much detail of profit margines, return-on-equity (ROE), and other measures of financial performance. (Which, at any rate, can be manipulated by executives, analysts, and investors alike, i.e. "pump-and-dump" stock news, inflated profit reports, & other "sell Enron stock as executives bail out" schemes, etc.)
And Ms. Powell's report DOES give us the interesting tidbit, "Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is Citigroup's biggest individual shareholder."
WELL BRAVO! America's great Wall St./corporate front is now a subsidiary of foreign oil sheiks, at least in the case of one of America's biggest investment banks. Who knew?
BUT Ms. Powell doesn't even mention the possibility that SOME OF THOSE CITIGROUP JOBS being slashed... JUST MIGHT BE "outsourced" to overseas workers. Especially in the areas of computer programming, data oversight, and customer service.
It may not be Ms. Powell's responsibility to cover all these issues in depth, but on the other hand, it is pretty clear that she could have written this AP story after devoting no more than an hour or two to glancing at Citi corp's official downsizing statements, and doing a quick web-search for the financial figures of similar industry group companies. Maybe, someday in the not-too-far-off future, Ms. Powell's job will also be "OUTSOURCED" to someone sitting behind a computer in India, as well. We certainly wouldn't notice a difference in quality of reporting.
============================================
Citigroup to cut 17,000 jobs
by Eileen Alt Powell, AP Business Writer
April 11, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070411/ap_on_bi_ge/citigroup_restructure;_ylt=AmCEnnrp4qYb850EVFpjEKXMWM0F
NEW YORK - Under pressure from investors to contain burgeoning costs, Citigroup Inc., the nation's largest financial institution, announced that it will eliminate about 17,000 jobs, shift 9,500 positions to "lower cost locations" and consolidate some corporate operations.
The steps — which are expected to shave more than $2 billion from the bank's operating costs this year alone — also should result in faster service for consumers and businesses, Citi's chief operating officer, Robert Druskin, said Wednesday.
"A lot of the initiatives undertaken in the name of expense reduction also are designed to unclog our corporate system," he told The Associated Press. "We want to make Citigroup a more nimble, entrepreneurial place. We want decision-making to be quicker. We want things to move through the pipelines faster."
The 17,000 job cuts amount to about 5 percent of the bank's 327,000-strong work force.
Druskin led the structural expense review, which was aimed at reducing costs at the New York-headquartered bank and improving profit.
Citigroup executives have been under pressure from analysts and a number of investors, including Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Citigroup's biggest individual shareholder, to improve performance. The bank's stock has not done as well as its peers, including Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase & Co., which have been more profitable.
The elimination of the jobs won't reduce the bank's work force, but merely slow its growth, Citi executives said.
Druskin told a conference call with Wall Street analysts they should expect Citi's headcount to grow this year because of acquisitions and plans to open new branches, especially overseas.
"But that rate of growth will be at a significantly diminished rate," Druskin said.
Goldman Sachs analysts William F. Tanona and Daniel Harris predicted "a tepid reaction" by investors they said had expected deeper cuts.
In afternoon trading, the bank's shares dropped 89 cents, or 1.7 percent, to $51.51 on the New York Stock Exchange.
Carter Burgess, managing director of the Directorship Search Group, a recruiting firm based in Greenwich, Conn., said that "the question is, if all these areas for cutting expenses exist, why wasn't it done sooner?"
He noted that Citigroup, like many of the giant money center banks, was built through a series of mergers and acquisitions and that "it's not totally clear you can make all of this work efficiently together."
Charles Prince, the bank's chairman and chief executive officer, said that implementation of Druskin's recommendations "will improve business integration as well as our ability to move quickly and seize new growth opportunities."
Prince also emphasized that more expense cutbacks were possible, saying that Citi was adopting "a continuous approach to improving our efficiency — this is not a one-time effort."
The changes announced Wednesday include eliminating unnecessary layers of management, reducing staff at corporate headquarters and other locations, expanding centralized procurement and consolidating some back-office and middle-office functions to eliminate duplication.
The bank said that including previously announced information technology savings, the overhaul will save the New York-based bank about $2.1 billion in 2007, $3.7 billion in 2008 and $4.6 billion in 2009.
Citigroup said it will record a pretax charge of $1.38 billion in the first quarter of 2007, and additional charges totaling approximately $200 million pretax over the subsequent quarters of 2007. The bank reports its first-quarter earnings next week.
"More than 9,500 jobs will be moved to lower-cost locations, both domestically and internationally, with about two-thirds through attrition," the announcement said.
Druskin noted that Citigroup operates in more than 100 countries and that the majority of its workers already are overseas. But he emphasized that the move to reduce costs won't mean wholesale transfers abroad.
"We already have lots of jobs in India — but also in Shanghai, Manila and Buffalo, N.Y.," he said. "We're looking for the right location."
Druskin also confirmed that more than 40 Smith Barney units will be consolidated or closed. Smith Barney is the bank's brokerage arm.
The 2007 cost savings were broken down as $650 million in the global consumer division, $400 million in markets and banking, $175 million in wealth management, $375 million in corporate operations and technology and $100 million in "other." That's in addition to $400 million previously announced information technology savings, Citigroup said.
Citigroup, one of the world' largest financial institutions, had assets of more than $1.8 trillion at year's end.
Yes, there are limitations in how much hard financial data can be included in a 'mainstream' news reports; readers will turn the page if the story goes into too much detail of profit margines, return-on-equity (ROE), and other measures of financial performance. (Which, at any rate, can be manipulated by executives, analysts, and investors alike, i.e. "pump-and-dump" stock news, inflated profit reports, & other "sell Enron stock as executives bail out" schemes, etc.)
And Ms. Powell's report DOES give us the interesting tidbit, "Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is Citigroup's biggest individual shareholder."
WELL BRAVO! America's great Wall St./corporate front is now a subsidiary of foreign oil sheiks, at least in the case of one of America's biggest investment banks. Who knew?
BUT Ms. Powell doesn't even mention the possibility that SOME OF THOSE CITIGROUP JOBS being slashed... JUST MIGHT BE "outsourced" to overseas workers. Especially in the areas of computer programming, data oversight, and customer service.
It may not be Ms. Powell's responsibility to cover all these issues in depth, but on the other hand, it is pretty clear that she could have written this AP story after devoting no more than an hour or two to glancing at Citi corp's official downsizing statements, and doing a quick web-search for the financial figures of similar industry group companies. Maybe, someday in the not-too-far-off future, Ms. Powell's job will also be "OUTSOURCED" to someone sitting behind a computer in India, as well. We certainly wouldn't notice a difference in quality of reporting.
============================================
Citigroup to cut 17,000 jobs
by Eileen Alt Powell, AP Business Writer
April 11, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070411/ap_on_bi_ge/citigroup_restructure;_ylt=AmCEnnrp4qYb850EVFpjEKXMWM0F
NEW YORK - Under pressure from investors to contain burgeoning costs, Citigroup Inc., the nation's largest financial institution, announced that it will eliminate about 17,000 jobs, shift 9,500 positions to "lower cost locations" and consolidate some corporate operations.
The steps — which are expected to shave more than $2 billion from the bank's operating costs this year alone — also should result in faster service for consumers and businesses, Citi's chief operating officer, Robert Druskin, said Wednesday.
"A lot of the initiatives undertaken in the name of expense reduction also are designed to unclog our corporate system," he told The Associated Press. "We want to make Citigroup a more nimble, entrepreneurial place. We want decision-making to be quicker. We want things to move through the pipelines faster."
The 17,000 job cuts amount to about 5 percent of the bank's 327,000-strong work force.
Druskin led the structural expense review, which was aimed at reducing costs at the New York-headquartered bank and improving profit.
Citigroup executives have been under pressure from analysts and a number of investors, including Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Citigroup's biggest individual shareholder, to improve performance. The bank's stock has not done as well as its peers, including Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase & Co., which have been more profitable.
The elimination of the jobs won't reduce the bank's work force, but merely slow its growth, Citi executives said.
Druskin told a conference call with Wall Street analysts they should expect Citi's headcount to grow this year because of acquisitions and plans to open new branches, especially overseas.
"But that rate of growth will be at a significantly diminished rate," Druskin said.
Goldman Sachs analysts William F. Tanona and Daniel Harris predicted "a tepid reaction" by investors they said had expected deeper cuts.
In afternoon trading, the bank's shares dropped 89 cents, or 1.7 percent, to $51.51 on the New York Stock Exchange.
Carter Burgess, managing director of the Directorship Search Group, a recruiting firm based in Greenwich, Conn., said that "the question is, if all these areas for cutting expenses exist, why wasn't it done sooner?"
He noted that Citigroup, like many of the giant money center banks, was built through a series of mergers and acquisitions and that "it's not totally clear you can make all of this work efficiently together."
Charles Prince, the bank's chairman and chief executive officer, said that implementation of Druskin's recommendations "will improve business integration as well as our ability to move quickly and seize new growth opportunities."
Prince also emphasized that more expense cutbacks were possible, saying that Citi was adopting "a continuous approach to improving our efficiency — this is not a one-time effort."
The changes announced Wednesday include eliminating unnecessary layers of management, reducing staff at corporate headquarters and other locations, expanding centralized procurement and consolidating some back-office and middle-office functions to eliminate duplication.
The bank said that including previously announced information technology savings, the overhaul will save the New York-based bank about $2.1 billion in 2007, $3.7 billion in 2008 and $4.6 billion in 2009.
Citigroup said it will record a pretax charge of $1.38 billion in the first quarter of 2007, and additional charges totaling approximately $200 million pretax over the subsequent quarters of 2007. The bank reports its first-quarter earnings next week.
"More than 9,500 jobs will be moved to lower-cost locations, both domestically and internationally, with about two-thirds through attrition," the announcement said.
Druskin noted that Citigroup operates in more than 100 countries and that the majority of its workers already are overseas. But he emphasized that the move to reduce costs won't mean wholesale transfers abroad.
"We already have lots of jobs in India — but also in Shanghai, Manila and Buffalo, N.Y.," he said. "We're looking for the right location."
Druskin also confirmed that more than 40 Smith Barney units will be consolidated or closed. Smith Barney is the bank's brokerage arm.
The 2007 cost savings were broken down as $650 million in the global consumer division, $400 million in markets and banking, $175 million in wealth management, $375 million in corporate operations and technology and $100 million in "other." That's in addition to $400 million previously announced information technology savings, Citigroup said.
Citigroup, one of the world' largest financial institutions, had assets of more than $1.8 trillion at year's end.
Monday, April 09, 2007
Media Whores tout "MACABRE FANTASY" to justify their sordid history of slavish devotion to BushCo....
The great Robert Parry hits another home-run (Go Fish!), this time mentioning "the MACABRE FANTASY" of the sordid media whores... the George Wills and David Broders and William Safires and Arthur Sulzbergers and William Kristols and Charles Krauthammers and Howard Kurtzs - all of whom are SO HEAVILY INVESTED in the lying, atrociously incompetent and corrupt Bush administration.
Make no mistake: the Bush administration has GIVEN AWAY America's MORAL HIGH GROUND, for the sleazy rewards of a few (hundred) billions of dollars of oil money and American taxpayer war funds $$ LOOTED by administration cronies such as HALLIBURTON and BECHTEL and BLACKWATER corporations from the vast US war in Iraq.
WHAT more do we need to document? That the craven, cowardly and corrupt Bush administration DID NOTHING to prevent 9-11... EVEN THOUGH THE COWARDLY ATTORNEY GENERAL, John Ashcroft, STOPPED FLYING PUBLIC AIRLINERS after being warned, in person, by CIA Director George Tenet, that "AL QAIDA WAS DETERMINED TO ATTACK IN AMERICA." (After al Qaida SUCCESSSFULLY attacked the USS Cole via a SUICIDE BOMBER in October of 2000.. when former Secretaries of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were busy campaigning for Texas Gov. George W. Bush's presidential campaign.)
That, as bad and murderous as Saddam's prisons were, FROM HERE TO ETERNITY the words "Abu Ghraib" WILL forever BE LINKED TO AMERICAN SEXUAL SADISM, TORTURE, and MURDER?
That, having supplied and encouraged SADDAM HUSSEIN's Iraq military through the entire 1980s (insert photo, "Don Rumsfeld SHAKES HANDS WITH SADDAM HUSSEIN in 1987" here), the amazingly arrogant and incompetent Bushies not only SENT THE ENTIRE IRAQ ARMY HOME, WITHOUT PAY or PENSIONS.. but ALLOWED the insurgents to WHOLESALE LOOT Iraqi ammunition complexes, as American spy satellites gazed stupidly at the parade of trucks departing, fully loaded, from those bunkers???
--------------------------------------------------------
'Surging' Toward Failure in Iraq
By Robert Parry
April 10, 2007
http://consortiumnews.com/2007/040907.html
The Washington pundits and the press are all atwitter wondering how successful George W. Bush’s Iraq “surge” strategy will be and how fast the Democrats will crumble in a showdown with the steely-eyed President over his demand for $100 billion more for the war with no strings attached.
But the underlying military reality is that the United States has long since “lost” the war in Iraq. As many military and intelligence analysts recognize, it is not winnable in any normal sense of the word. The “surge” of sending tens of thousands more U.S. troops into Iraq only guarantees that the final body count will be higher and the piles of IOUs bigger.
To get a sense of the inevitable disaster ahead, just envision the conditions for U.S. troops stuck in police stations around Baghdad when the summer temperatures rise to over 100 degrees and tempers turn just as hot. By then, too, Iraqi insurgents will have adjusted their tactics to take advantage of isolated American soldiers.
The U.S. death toll in and around Baghdad is already increasing though the “surge” is only partially complete. In the months ahead, as more U.S. troops are exposed in less protected positions, the likelihood is that the casualty rates will grow only worse.
As The New York Times reported on April 9, “For American troops, Baghdad has become a deadlier battleground as they have poured into the capital to confront Sunni and Shiite militias on their home streets. The rate of American deaths in the city over the first seven weeks of the security plan has nearly doubled from the previous period.”
But the basic reason that Bush’s “surge” plan is doomed to failure is that it never was a distinctly new military strategy. It was a repackaged version of “stay the course” slapped together in December and January when Bush was under pressure from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and the newly elected Democratic congressional majorities.
The Iraq Study Group, headed by longtime Bush family counselor James Baker, called the situation in Iraq as “grave and deteriorating” and proposed a phased withdrawal of U.S. combat forces combined with more training of Iraqi troops and a diplomatic offensive to reduce tensions in the region.
Bush correctly read between the lines, interpreting the report as a repudiation of his open-ended war and a recommendation for a gradual disengagement. “This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever,” Bush fumed, vowing that U.S. forces would “stay in Iraq to get the job done.”
Accepting the Iraq Study Group’s findings also would have meant admitting his failure as the “war president,” which Bush would not do. So, he adopted a plan, favored by his neoconservative advisers, that was less a military strategy than a political device.
‘False Hope’
The “surge” was a way to buy time for Bush’s legacy – to palm off inevitable defeat on his successor – even at the cost of many more American and Iraqi lives. It was like the riff by Comedy Central’s Lewis Black about “keeping false hope alive.” That has been Bush’s pattern for the past four years.
At every key juncture of the Iraq War, Bush has pointed to a new mirage of expected success as the United States staggers deeper and deeper into the desert. First, there was the expectation of victory after Saddam Hussein’s sons were killed and the dictator was captured. Later, there was the writing of a constitution and return of “sovereignty.”
In fall 2004, as Bush needed to get past the U.S. elections, there was the promise of upcoming Iraqi elections that would mark another corner turned. If anything, the heralded elections only deepened the violent divisions between Shiites and Sunnis.
Turning-point after turning-point, conditions only got worse. Even Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reached the conclusion that the Iraq War was pretty much a lost cause, sending Bush a menu of options on Nov. 6, 2006, that focused on disengagement similar to ideas promoted by Democratic Rep. John Murtha.
Rumsfeld’s options included “an accelerated drawdown of U.S. bases” from 55 to five by July 2007 with remaining U.S. forces only committed to Iraqi areas that requested them. “Unless they [local Iraqi governments] cooperate fully, U.S. forces would leave their province,” Rumsfeld wrote.
The Defense Secretary suggested that the commanders “withdraw U.S. forces from vulnerable positions – cities, patrolling, etc. – and move U.S. forces to a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) status, operating from within Iraq and Kuwait, to be available when Iraqi security forces need assistance.”
And in what could be read as an implicit criticism of Bush’s lofty rhetoric about transforming Iraq and the Middle East, Rumsfeld said the administration should “recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) – go minimalist.”
Bush’s reaction was to fire Rumsfeld two days after receiving this “going wobbly” memo. Bush replaced the headstrong Rumsfeld with the accommodating Robert Gates.
As the New Year dawned, however, Bush understood that he needed to give the American people some reason to expect improvement in Iraq, even if the generals who had the most direct experience – John Abizaid and George Casey – were against the “surge,” as were the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Bush needed to “keep false hope alive” if he was to fend off anti-war legislation. So was born the “surge,” less a new military strategy than a political tactic. The American people were pointed toward another mirage.
Macabre Fantasy
What is now underway in Washington is the playing out of a macabre fantasy.
The Republicans seek to sustain the fiction of progress. See, for instance, Sen. John McCain’s “stroll” through a Baghdad market surrounded by 100 soldiers and protected by helicopter gun ships.
When the happy talk brings derision – as occurred with McCain’s “stroll” – Bush’s backers turn to a reverse of “keeping false hope alive.” They predict an apocalyptic future – al-Qaeda governing a “caliphate” from Spain to Indonesia – if U.S. troops leave Iraq. Yet the fear is no more realistic than the hope.
Democrats have their own fictions, other plans for success, albeit by setting benchmarks for the Iraqi government and gradually withdrawing U.S. combat forces, a kind of de facto recognition of the grim reality.
It remains easier for Washington politicians – and pundits – to maintain the pretense of future success in Iraq than to risk accusations that they are “defeatists” or that they have lost faith in “the troops.”
Almost no one wants to tell the American people the hard truth: that the Iraq War has been one of the worst national security debacles in U.S. history; it is now beyond salvaging; probably the best that Washington can hope to do is to limit the damage by withdrawing its forces as expeditiously as possible and by starting to rebuild its diplomatic relations with nations in the region.
Yet, in the marble halls and the dinner parties of Washington, it makes more sense, career-wise, to “keep an open mind” about Bush’s new strategy and to handicap the chances for the President prevailing over the Democrats in getting another Iraq War “blank check.”
But Bush’s “surge” and Washington's political calculations make far less sense on the bloody streets of Baghdad or in the tear-filled homes of Gold Star mothers.
[For some of Robert Parry’s earlier writings about the Iraq War, see “Bay of Pigs Meets Black Hawk Down” in March 2003; “Sinking in Deeper” in February 2005; and “Bush/Cheney Still Lie with Abandon” in April 2007.]
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
Make no mistake: the Bush administration has GIVEN AWAY America's MORAL HIGH GROUND, for the sleazy rewards of a few (hundred) billions of dollars of oil money and American taxpayer war funds $$ LOOTED by administration cronies such as HALLIBURTON and BECHTEL and BLACKWATER corporations from the vast US war in Iraq.
WHAT more do we need to document? That the craven, cowardly and corrupt Bush administration DID NOTHING to prevent 9-11... EVEN THOUGH THE COWARDLY ATTORNEY GENERAL, John Ashcroft, STOPPED FLYING PUBLIC AIRLINERS after being warned, in person, by CIA Director George Tenet, that "AL QAIDA WAS DETERMINED TO ATTACK IN AMERICA." (After al Qaida SUCCESSSFULLY attacked the USS Cole via a SUICIDE BOMBER in October of 2000.. when former Secretaries of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were busy campaigning for Texas Gov. George W. Bush's presidential campaign.)
That, as bad and murderous as Saddam's prisons were, FROM HERE TO ETERNITY the words "Abu Ghraib" WILL forever BE LINKED TO AMERICAN SEXUAL SADISM, TORTURE, and MURDER?
That, having supplied and encouraged SADDAM HUSSEIN's Iraq military through the entire 1980s (insert photo, "Don Rumsfeld SHAKES HANDS WITH SADDAM HUSSEIN in 1987" here), the amazingly arrogant and incompetent Bushies not only SENT THE ENTIRE IRAQ ARMY HOME, WITHOUT PAY or PENSIONS.. but ALLOWED the insurgents to WHOLESALE LOOT Iraqi ammunition complexes, as American spy satellites gazed stupidly at the parade of trucks departing, fully loaded, from those bunkers???
--------------------------------------------------------
'Surging' Toward Failure in Iraq
By Robert Parry
April 10, 2007
http://consortiumnews.com/2007/040907.html
The Washington pundits and the press are all atwitter wondering how successful George W. Bush’s Iraq “surge” strategy will be and how fast the Democrats will crumble in a showdown with the steely-eyed President over his demand for $100 billion more for the war with no strings attached.
But the underlying military reality is that the United States has long since “lost” the war in Iraq. As many military and intelligence analysts recognize, it is not winnable in any normal sense of the word. The “surge” of sending tens of thousands more U.S. troops into Iraq only guarantees that the final body count will be higher and the piles of IOUs bigger.
To get a sense of the inevitable disaster ahead, just envision the conditions for U.S. troops stuck in police stations around Baghdad when the summer temperatures rise to over 100 degrees and tempers turn just as hot. By then, too, Iraqi insurgents will have adjusted their tactics to take advantage of isolated American soldiers.
The U.S. death toll in and around Baghdad is already increasing though the “surge” is only partially complete. In the months ahead, as more U.S. troops are exposed in less protected positions, the likelihood is that the casualty rates will grow only worse.
As The New York Times reported on April 9, “For American troops, Baghdad has become a deadlier battleground as they have poured into the capital to confront Sunni and Shiite militias on their home streets. The rate of American deaths in the city over the first seven weeks of the security plan has nearly doubled from the previous period.”
But the basic reason that Bush’s “surge” plan is doomed to failure is that it never was a distinctly new military strategy. It was a repackaged version of “stay the course” slapped together in December and January when Bush was under pressure from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and the newly elected Democratic congressional majorities.
The Iraq Study Group, headed by longtime Bush family counselor James Baker, called the situation in Iraq as “grave and deteriorating” and proposed a phased withdrawal of U.S. combat forces combined with more training of Iraqi troops and a diplomatic offensive to reduce tensions in the region.
Bush correctly read between the lines, interpreting the report as a repudiation of his open-ended war and a recommendation for a gradual disengagement. “This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever,” Bush fumed, vowing that U.S. forces would “stay in Iraq to get the job done.”
Accepting the Iraq Study Group’s findings also would have meant admitting his failure as the “war president,” which Bush would not do. So, he adopted a plan, favored by his neoconservative advisers, that was less a military strategy than a political device.
‘False Hope’
The “surge” was a way to buy time for Bush’s legacy – to palm off inevitable defeat on his successor – even at the cost of many more American and Iraqi lives. It was like the riff by Comedy Central’s Lewis Black about “keeping false hope alive.” That has been Bush’s pattern for the past four years.
At every key juncture of the Iraq War, Bush has pointed to a new mirage of expected success as the United States staggers deeper and deeper into the desert. First, there was the expectation of victory after Saddam Hussein’s sons were killed and the dictator was captured. Later, there was the writing of a constitution and return of “sovereignty.”
In fall 2004, as Bush needed to get past the U.S. elections, there was the promise of upcoming Iraqi elections that would mark another corner turned. If anything, the heralded elections only deepened the violent divisions between Shiites and Sunnis.
Turning-point after turning-point, conditions only got worse. Even Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reached the conclusion that the Iraq War was pretty much a lost cause, sending Bush a menu of options on Nov. 6, 2006, that focused on disengagement similar to ideas promoted by Democratic Rep. John Murtha.
Rumsfeld’s options included “an accelerated drawdown of U.S. bases” from 55 to five by July 2007 with remaining U.S. forces only committed to Iraqi areas that requested them. “Unless they [local Iraqi governments] cooperate fully, U.S. forces would leave their province,” Rumsfeld wrote.
The Defense Secretary suggested that the commanders “withdraw U.S. forces from vulnerable positions – cities, patrolling, etc. – and move U.S. forces to a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) status, operating from within Iraq and Kuwait, to be available when Iraqi security forces need assistance.”
And in what could be read as an implicit criticism of Bush’s lofty rhetoric about transforming Iraq and the Middle East, Rumsfeld said the administration should “recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) – go minimalist.”
Bush’s reaction was to fire Rumsfeld two days after receiving this “going wobbly” memo. Bush replaced the headstrong Rumsfeld with the accommodating Robert Gates.
As the New Year dawned, however, Bush understood that he needed to give the American people some reason to expect improvement in Iraq, even if the generals who had the most direct experience – John Abizaid and George Casey – were against the “surge,” as were the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Bush needed to “keep false hope alive” if he was to fend off anti-war legislation. So was born the “surge,” less a new military strategy than a political tactic. The American people were pointed toward another mirage.
Macabre Fantasy
What is now underway in Washington is the playing out of a macabre fantasy.
The Republicans seek to sustain the fiction of progress. See, for instance, Sen. John McCain’s “stroll” through a Baghdad market surrounded by 100 soldiers and protected by helicopter gun ships.
When the happy talk brings derision – as occurred with McCain’s “stroll” – Bush’s backers turn to a reverse of “keeping false hope alive.” They predict an apocalyptic future – al-Qaeda governing a “caliphate” from Spain to Indonesia – if U.S. troops leave Iraq. Yet the fear is no more realistic than the hope.
Democrats have their own fictions, other plans for success, albeit by setting benchmarks for the Iraqi government and gradually withdrawing U.S. combat forces, a kind of de facto recognition of the grim reality.
It remains easier for Washington politicians – and pundits – to maintain the pretense of future success in Iraq than to risk accusations that they are “defeatists” or that they have lost faith in “the troops.”
Almost no one wants to tell the American people the hard truth: that the Iraq War has been one of the worst national security debacles in U.S. history; it is now beyond salvaging; probably the best that Washington can hope to do is to limit the damage by withdrawing its forces as expeditiously as possible and by starting to rebuild its diplomatic relations with nations in the region.
Yet, in the marble halls and the dinner parties of Washington, it makes more sense, career-wise, to “keep an open mind” about Bush’s new strategy and to handicap the chances for the President prevailing over the Democrats in getting another Iraq War “blank check.”
But Bush’s “surge” and Washington's political calculations make far less sense on the bloody streets of Baghdad or in the tear-filled homes of Gold Star mothers.
[For some of Robert Parry’s earlier writings about the Iraq War, see “Bay of Pigs Meets Black Hawk Down” in March 2003; “Sinking in Deeper” in February 2005; and “Bush/Cheney Still Lie with Abandon” in April 2007.]
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
Fox 'News' whore BILL KRISTOL pimps "BOMB IRAN for holding British naval prisoners"...
Jewish Nazi William "Bill" Kristol is up to his old tricks - urging a GREATER, WIDER, EXPANDED WAR in the MidEast, this time Kristol lusting over US bombing raids over Iran.
TIME magazine, FOX 'news', and entire swaths of the American media take Kristol's insane "bombs are the first solution" logic as the compelling rational of the current media narrative... just as Adolf Hitler once insisted that Poland and Western Europe had to be bombed, conquered, and occupied to "Save Germany from aggression."
-------------------------------------------------
Kristol: Proper Response To Iran’s Kidnapping Of Soldiers Would Have Been Military Strikes
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/08/kristol-williams-iran-crisis/
Fox News pundit Bill Kristol has been an unceasing proponent of war with Iran. In the past year, Kristol has repeatedly beat the war drums, stating for example that Bush “could easily build support” for an Iran attack “at the beginning of 2008.” He has also said: “I think we could be in a military confrontation with Iran much sooner than people expect.”
This morning, Kristol again promoted the concept of war with Iran. He said Iran’s kidnapping of the 15 British soldiers has brought the world closer to another war. “We came closer to war with Iran this week,” Kristol said, complaining that the U.S. was “very passive.”
Juan Williams then questioned, “Well, what was the alternative? To go in and strike them while the hostages were there?” Kristol said “yes.”
Watch it:
TIME magazine, FOX 'news', and entire swaths of the American media take Kristol's insane "bombs are the first solution" logic as the compelling rational of the current media narrative... just as Adolf Hitler once insisted that Poland and Western Europe had to be bombed, conquered, and occupied to "Save Germany from aggression."
-------------------------------------------------
Kristol: Proper Response To Iran’s Kidnapping Of Soldiers Would Have Been Military Strikes
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/08/kristol-williams-iran-crisis/
Fox News pundit Bill Kristol has been an unceasing proponent of war with Iran. In the past year, Kristol has repeatedly beat the war drums, stating for example that Bush “could easily build support” for an Iran attack “at the beginning of 2008.” He has also said: “I think we could be in a military confrontation with Iran much sooner than people expect.”
This morning, Kristol again promoted the concept of war with Iran. He said Iran’s kidnapping of the 15 British soldiers has brought the world closer to another war. “We came closer to war with Iran this week,” Kristol said, complaining that the U.S. was “very passive.”
Juan Williams then questioned, “Well, what was the alternative? To go in and strike them while the hostages were there?” Kristol said “yes.”
Watch it:
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Mainstream News Media Smears Pelosi for Her Peace Mission, While the Bush-Cheney Regime Collaborates with Elements of Al Qaeda and Taliban
Having encouraged the IMPEACHMENT of President Bill Clinton over matters as trifling as the Clinton's overnight guest list ("LINCOLN BEDROOM 'SCANDAL'!" the media whores hyperventilated breathlessly, preparing America for the impeachment brought about by Republican prosecutor with axe-to-grind Ken Starr's perjury-suborning perjury trap) America's media whores are now exposing themselves - to an American public awakening from their propaganda hypnotized stupor - as the crass, craven, and mercilessly undemocratic whores that they are.
In this case, the media whores can't shout -
"PELOSI TREASON for talking to Syria!" fast enough... even as they give the tryanical and obscenely corrupt Bush-Cheney administration a "FREE PASS!" for a rogue's list of incompetence, corruption, and outright crimes. (Including Vice President Cheney's ongoing financial ties to HALLIBURTON - and the president's former close ties to disgraced and convicted ENRON CEO Jeff Skilling - even as Halliburton seeks to ship its corporate headquarters to DUBAI, UAE, theoretically taking all their American military secrets with them to the land ruled by dictator sheiks with a long history of funding smugglers, insurgents, Al Qaida guerrillas in Afghanistan, and even the 9-11 terrorists who were based inside America before the hijackings were executed on 9-11-2001.)
(See also David Sirota's "Washington media elite DESPISES democracy in America" - Sirota names names, and presents those democracy-scorning soundbites in their author's own original comments.
http://davidsirota.com/index.php/2006/08/11/finally-the-dc-media-admits-the-truth-about-itself/
-----------------------------------------------
Hard Rain Journal 4-6-07: US Mainstream News Media Smears Pelosi for Her Peace Mission, While the Bush-Cheney Regime Collaborates with Elements of Al Qaeda and Taliban
By Richard Power
April 7, 2007
http://words-of-power.blogspot.com/2007/04/hard-rain-journal-4-6-07-mainstream.html
The US mainstream news media, e.g., NBC (Think Progress, 4-6-07), CNN (Media Matters, 4-5-07) and the Washington Post (Think Progress, 4-5-07), are busily sliming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for her diplomatic mission to Israel, Syria and Saudia Arabia.
Talking to the Syrians (and the Iranians) is not only one of the recommendations of James Baker's Iraq Study Group; according to a World Opinion poll taken in December 2006, it is a notion supported by 75% of the people of the USA.
But the Bush-Cheney regime isn't really looking for solutions, is it?
Here is some context and continuity that the US mainstream news media won't provide you concerning the so-called "war on terror":
Despite the warnings from Clinton-Gore national security team, the Bush-Cheney regime looked the other way and did nothing to thwart the 9/11 attacks. Then, instead of focusing on Afghanistan, Bush-Cheney lied the country into the invasion and occupation of Iraq (a sworn enemy of those that attacked the USA on 9/11).
Now, instead of extracting the US military from that strategic blunder, they seek to compound it with an attack on Iran (another sworn enemy of those that attacked the USA on 9/11).
Meanwhile, the remains of the innocents slaughtered on 9/11 have been used to fill potholes, (Reuters, 3-24-07), the uniform and personal affects of US Army ranger Pat Tillman have been burned, (BBC, 5-5-05), and Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Mullah Omar are all still alive and at large.
But even worse, in recent weeks, there have been revelations concerning covert Bush-Cheney regime collaboration with elements of Al Qaeda and the Taliban:
They dipped into "black pools of money," possibly stolen from the billions of Iraqi oil dollars that have never been accounted for since the American occupation began. Some of these funds, as well as Saudi ones, were evidently funneled through the embattled, Sunni-dominated Lebanese government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to the sort of Sunni jihadi groups ("some sympathetic to al-Qaeda") whose members might normally fear ending up in Guantanamo and to a group, or groups, associated with the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. (Tom Dispatch, 3-13-07)
A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News. The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran. . . . The leader, Regi, claims to have personally executed some of the Iranians. "He used to fight with the Taliban. He's part drug smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist," said Alexis Debat, a senior fellow on counterterrorism at the Nixon Center and an ABC News consultant who recently met with Pakistani officials and tribal members. (ABC News, 4-3-07)
In recent years, the Bush-Cheney regime has blown off a secret Iranian offer to negotiate a regional peace and squashed a secret Israeli effort to negotiate an agreement with the Syrians.
Bush-Cheney does not want peace or stability. It does not even want vengence. It wants empire, and it is willing to wage perennial war for it. Bush-Cheney is not running a "war on terror," it is running a war IN, OF, BY and FOR terror.
Indeed they have sided with those who attacked us on 9/11 against those who would have helped us destroy them.
When will the US mainstream news media back away from this treasonous cabal?
Probably never.
The corporatist stranglehold on the US government is in the media moguls' best interests, or so they think.
And Speaker Pelosi, who is third in the line of constitutional succession, is dangerous to them. She symbolizes the restoration of the Republic.
SOME RECENT RELATED POSTS
Hard Rain Journal 3-30-07: A Call to Conscience and Common Sense from Gen. Wes Clark, and an Update on the War OF, BY and FOR Terrorism
Words of Power #33: A Quarter-Century Ago, Jimmy Carter Warned of This Grim Period, His Prophetic Call was Not Heeded
Hard Rain Journal 2-22-07: Corporatist News Media Still Shields Bush-Cheney from the Savage Truth on Plame, Iraq, Iran, Al Qaeda and Walter Reed
Hard Rain Journal 2-21-07: This is Madness -- Bush-Cheney Target Saddam and then the Iranians -- Both Sworn Enemies of Al Qaeda, Meanwhile...
Hard Rain Journal 2-16-07: What Happens When a Whole Nation is Dragged into Room 101? Remember, 2+2=4
Hard Rain Journal 2-2-07: Forget about 2008, the Fate of the Republic could be Decided in the Next Six Months
Hard Rain Journal 1-19-07: The Hard Rain Falls Between PNAC and the PATRIOT Act, but the US News Media Sees, Hears, Speaks No Evil
GS(3) Thunderbolt 1-11-07: Do You Understand What He Really Said Last Night? These People Opened the Gates of Hell, Now They Want to Drag Everyone In
Words of Power #31: Ghosts of Christmas Past (Katrina) and Future (Iran)
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and Words of Power. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
In this case, the media whores can't shout -
"PELOSI TREASON for talking to Syria!" fast enough... even as they give the tryanical and obscenely corrupt Bush-Cheney administration a "FREE PASS!" for a rogue's list of incompetence, corruption, and outright crimes. (Including Vice President Cheney's ongoing financial ties to HALLIBURTON - and the president's former close ties to disgraced and convicted ENRON CEO Jeff Skilling - even as Halliburton seeks to ship its corporate headquarters to DUBAI, UAE, theoretically taking all their American military secrets with them to the land ruled by dictator sheiks with a long history of funding smugglers, insurgents, Al Qaida guerrillas in Afghanistan, and even the 9-11 terrorists who were based inside America before the hijackings were executed on 9-11-2001.)
(See also David Sirota's "Washington media elite DESPISES democracy in America" - Sirota names names, and presents those democracy-scorning soundbites in their author's own original comments.
http://davidsirota.com/index.php/2006/08/11/finally-the-dc-media-admits-the-truth-about-itself/
-----------------------------------------------
Hard Rain Journal 4-6-07: US Mainstream News Media Smears Pelosi for Her Peace Mission, While the Bush-Cheney Regime Collaborates with Elements of Al Qaeda and Taliban
By Richard Power
April 7, 2007
http://words-of-power.blogspot.com/2007/04/hard-rain-journal-4-6-07-mainstream.html
The US mainstream news media, e.g., NBC (Think Progress, 4-6-07), CNN (Media Matters, 4-5-07) and the Washington Post (Think Progress, 4-5-07), are busily sliming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for her diplomatic mission to Israel, Syria and Saudia Arabia.
Talking to the Syrians (and the Iranians) is not only one of the recommendations of James Baker's Iraq Study Group; according to a World Opinion poll taken in December 2006, it is a notion supported by 75% of the people of the USA.
But the Bush-Cheney regime isn't really looking for solutions, is it?
Here is some context and continuity that the US mainstream news media won't provide you concerning the so-called "war on terror":
Despite the warnings from Clinton-Gore national security team, the Bush-Cheney regime looked the other way and did nothing to thwart the 9/11 attacks. Then, instead of focusing on Afghanistan, Bush-Cheney lied the country into the invasion and occupation of Iraq (a sworn enemy of those that attacked the USA on 9/11).
Now, instead of extracting the US military from that strategic blunder, they seek to compound it with an attack on Iran (another sworn enemy of those that attacked the USA on 9/11).
Meanwhile, the remains of the innocents slaughtered on 9/11 have been used to fill potholes, (Reuters, 3-24-07), the uniform and personal affects of US Army ranger Pat Tillman have been burned, (BBC, 5-5-05), and Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Mullah Omar are all still alive and at large.
But even worse, in recent weeks, there have been revelations concerning covert Bush-Cheney regime collaboration with elements of Al Qaeda and the Taliban:
They dipped into "black pools of money," possibly stolen from the billions of Iraqi oil dollars that have never been accounted for since the American occupation began. Some of these funds, as well as Saudi ones, were evidently funneled through the embattled, Sunni-dominated Lebanese government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to the sort of Sunni jihadi groups ("some sympathetic to al-Qaeda") whose members might normally fear ending up in Guantanamo and to a group, or groups, associated with the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. (Tom Dispatch, 3-13-07)
A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News. The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran. . . . The leader, Regi, claims to have personally executed some of the Iranians. "He used to fight with the Taliban. He's part drug smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist," said Alexis Debat, a senior fellow on counterterrorism at the Nixon Center and an ABC News consultant who recently met with Pakistani officials and tribal members. (ABC News, 4-3-07)
In recent years, the Bush-Cheney regime has blown off a secret Iranian offer to negotiate a regional peace and squashed a secret Israeli effort to negotiate an agreement with the Syrians.
Bush-Cheney does not want peace or stability. It does not even want vengence. It wants empire, and it is willing to wage perennial war for it. Bush-Cheney is not running a "war on terror," it is running a war IN, OF, BY and FOR terror.
Indeed they have sided with those who attacked us on 9/11 against those who would have helped us destroy them.
When will the US mainstream news media back away from this treasonous cabal?
Probably never.
The corporatist stranglehold on the US government is in the media moguls' best interests, or so they think.
And Speaker Pelosi, who is third in the line of constitutional succession, is dangerous to them. She symbolizes the restoration of the Republic.
SOME RECENT RELATED POSTS
Hard Rain Journal 3-30-07: A Call to Conscience and Common Sense from Gen. Wes Clark, and an Update on the War OF, BY and FOR Terrorism
Words of Power #33: A Quarter-Century Ago, Jimmy Carter Warned of This Grim Period, His Prophetic Call was Not Heeded
Hard Rain Journal 2-22-07: Corporatist News Media Still Shields Bush-Cheney from the Savage Truth on Plame, Iraq, Iran, Al Qaeda and Walter Reed
Hard Rain Journal 2-21-07: This is Madness -- Bush-Cheney Target Saddam and then the Iranians -- Both Sworn Enemies of Al Qaeda, Meanwhile...
Hard Rain Journal 2-16-07: What Happens When a Whole Nation is Dragged into Room 101? Remember, 2+2=4
Hard Rain Journal 2-2-07: Forget about 2008, the Fate of the Republic could be Decided in the Next Six Months
Hard Rain Journal 1-19-07: The Hard Rain Falls Between PNAC and the PATRIOT Act, but the US News Media Sees, Hears, Speaks No Evil
GS(3) Thunderbolt 1-11-07: Do You Understand What He Really Said Last Night? These People Opened the Gates of Hell, Now They Want to Drag Everyone In
Words of Power #31: Ghosts of Christmas Past (Katrina) and Future (Iran)
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and Words of Power. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Friday, April 06, 2007
Cable news media whores "SKULL NUMBING LINT" as 'news'... Terrific op-ed on the rot sold by Chris Mathews, Tim Russert, CNN, et al...
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Thursday, April 05, 2007
Washington Post whoring Bush admin. lies again...
Fredd Hiatt, his publisher Donald Graham, and other editors and writers for the WASHINGTON POST are at it again: SUBVERTING AMERICAN DEMOCRACY for fun and profit, pushing Bush administration's LIES in order to bolster the "UNITARY EXECUTIVE" model of draconian, KGB/Getsapoesque ONE PARTY RULE and dictatorial, corporate political hegemony during an indefinite state of emergency - their beloved "war on terra."
MAYBE the Whore Post HASN'T NOTICED: that the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld administration has spent HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars, and American military blood - and have never caught the perpetrator of the 9-11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, or even unmasked his financial support network. (read: Saudi Arabia.)
And MAYBE the whore editors and publisher of the Post have FAILED TO NOTICE: that the Cheney-Bush administration is funding SUNNI TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS in Lebanon (vs. Hezbollah there) and now in Pakistan (to incite terror raids and assassinations in Iran).
Apparently, FUNDING AL QAIDA LINKED ORGANIZATIONS, and ALLOWING Osama bin Laden to roam free, is the treacherous WASHINGTON POST's vision of excellence for the "War on Terror"
======================================
Washington Post Misleads, Contradicts Own Reporting, To Attack Pelosi
Think Progress
5 April 2005
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/05/post-editorial-pelosi-syria/
The Washington Post editorial page today published a vicious editorial attacking Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), calling her “ludicrous” and describing her bipartisan trip to Syria as an “attempt to establish a shadow presidency.”
The editorial rests on two claims, both of which are baseless.
1) Pelosi passed an incorrect message from Israel to Syria. Pelosi said yesterday that she gave Syrian officials the message that Israel is “ready to engage in peace talks.” The Post falsely claims, “The Israeli prime minister entrusted Ms. Pelosi with no such message,” misinterpreting a statement from the Israeli Prime Minister’s office that simply reiterated its position that talks with Syria will not take place until Syria has taken steps to end its support for extremist elements. There is no evidence that Pelosi failed to communicate this message. In fact, Pelosi’s delegation specifically pressed the Syrian president “over Syria’s support for militant groups and insist[ed] that his government block militants seeking to cross into Iraq and join insurgents there.”
2) Pelosi is attempting to “establish a shadow presidency.” This claim is directly contradicted by the Post’s own reporting this morning, which states, “Foreign policy experts generally agree that Pelosi’s dealings with Middle East leaders have not strayed far, if at all, from those typical for a congressional trip.” Pelosi herself has “described the trip as little different than the visit paid to Syria the same week led by Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-VA),” and she went to great lengths to express her unity of purpose with President Bush on terrorism issues. The Post’s own reporting today also cites several instances of members of Congress meeting with foreign leaders during the past 30 years. As ThinkProgress noted yesterday, in contrast with Pelosi’s trip, previous congressional actions abroad attempted to directly undermine President Clinton.
Fred Hiatt and the Post editorial page get it wrong on Pelosi just like they got it wrong on the recent Iraq legislation, the U.S. Attorney scandal, the CIA leak investigation, the decision to invade Iraq, and on and on and on.
MAYBE the Whore Post HASN'T NOTICED: that the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld administration has spent HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars, and American military blood - and have never caught the perpetrator of the 9-11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, or even unmasked his financial support network. (read: Saudi Arabia.)
And MAYBE the whore editors and publisher of the Post have FAILED TO NOTICE: that the Cheney-Bush administration is funding SUNNI TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS in Lebanon (vs. Hezbollah there) and now in Pakistan (to incite terror raids and assassinations in Iran).
Apparently, FUNDING AL QAIDA LINKED ORGANIZATIONS, and ALLOWING Osama bin Laden to roam free, is the treacherous WASHINGTON POST's vision of excellence for the "War on Terror"
======================================
Washington Post Misleads, Contradicts Own Reporting, To Attack Pelosi
Think Progress
5 April 2005
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/05/post-editorial-pelosi-syria/
The Washington Post editorial page today published a vicious editorial attacking Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), calling her “ludicrous” and describing her bipartisan trip to Syria as an “attempt to establish a shadow presidency.”
The editorial rests on two claims, both of which are baseless.
1) Pelosi passed an incorrect message from Israel to Syria. Pelosi said yesterday that she gave Syrian officials the message that Israel is “ready to engage in peace talks.” The Post falsely claims, “The Israeli prime minister entrusted Ms. Pelosi with no such message,” misinterpreting a statement from the Israeli Prime Minister’s office that simply reiterated its position that talks with Syria will not take place until Syria has taken steps to end its support for extremist elements. There is no evidence that Pelosi failed to communicate this message. In fact, Pelosi’s delegation specifically pressed the Syrian president “over Syria’s support for militant groups and insist[ed] that his government block militants seeking to cross into Iraq and join insurgents there.”
2) Pelosi is attempting to “establish a shadow presidency.” This claim is directly contradicted by the Post’s own reporting this morning, which states, “Foreign policy experts generally agree that Pelosi’s dealings with Middle East leaders have not strayed far, if at all, from those typical for a congressional trip.” Pelosi herself has “described the trip as little different than the visit paid to Syria the same week led by Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-VA),” and she went to great lengths to express her unity of purpose with President Bush on terrorism issues. The Post’s own reporting today also cites several instances of members of Congress meeting with foreign leaders during the past 30 years. As ThinkProgress noted yesterday, in contrast with Pelosi’s trip, previous congressional actions abroad attempted to directly undermine President Clinton.
Fred Hiatt and the Post editorial page get it wrong on Pelosi just like they got it wrong on the recent Iraq legislation, the U.S. Attorney scandal, the CIA leak investigation, the decision to invade Iraq, and on and on and on.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Media Whores cry a tear "Iran VIOLATED INTERNATIONAL LAW"...
That sound you hear is either crickets, the "no one here!" echo from nary a single "major media" pundit pointing out the obvious: the incredible hypocrisy of the Bush administration crying "Iran has illegally siezed British sailors!" when in fact Iran has a lawless US invasion army on one of its borders (Iraq), and a barely competent US occupation force (Afghanistan) on the other, where the Sunni/Al Qaida led Taliban is making a resurgence, opium production is rising exponentially, and locals are beginning to hate NATO and US occupation forces (for not coming through with economic development as promised).
In this case, not only does the Bush administration and US military of course demand and insist on the right to arrest any foreign agents who trespass within our borders or territorial waters... but under the "P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act," the "MCA" military commissions act, and other war-on-terror legislation, the Bush administration claims not only the right to seize (kidnap), detain, in secret, anyone they deem necessary... but they also CLAIM THE RIGHT TO TORTURE ANY AND ALL SUSPECTS, TO DEATH if need be, and as well claim the right to summary execution of any prisoners deemed guilty by a military tribunal, with the prisoner(s) having NO RIGHT TO COUNSEL or even to inform the world of their incarceration!
The irony is simply astounding... it has taken Americans only 20 years to forget the lessons of Vietnam (when you run huge, massive, systematic death squads in the rural parts of foreign countries, the locals tend to get riled up, to the point that they will grab a gun and take pot-shots or plant land mines against your soldiers), and as well it has taken America's Jewish (neo-con) community only 50 years to start supporting the very draconian tactics and "enabling" laws of the German WWII Gestapo and SS themselves.
And of course, leave it to America's media whores to make Mr. Parry point out the obvious... that according to the US government, there is NO international law, except for what the Bush administration wants. The entire American nation is held hostage to the president who could not cleanly win either of his elections, and who has as much respect for the US Constitution as a slave owner had for the "rights" of his slaves.
<< Though these controversies about Bush’s disdain for international law are well known to the U.S. news media, the context disappeared again when press interest turned to the captured British sailors in late March 2007.
Suddenly, it was a new day with Bush and Blair fully committed to international law. Even a relatively minor Geneva transgression, such as filming captives eating, became a justification for unrestrained outrage.
Without any acknowledgement about their own abrogation of international law, the British and U.S. governments lifted these principles from the gutter, dusted them off and put them on a pedestal. The grand human rights defender, George W. Bush, lectured other countries about “inexcusable behavior” – and NO PROMINENT WESTERN JOURNALISTS CALLED HIM TO ACCOUNT for his contradictions. >>
===========================
Bush, Iran & Selective Outrage
By Robert Parry
April 2, 2007
http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2007/040107.html
One of the least endearing features of Washington’s political/media hierarchy is its propensity for selective outrage, like what is now coming from George W. Bush about the “inexcusable behavior” of the Iranian government in holding 15 British sailors whom Bush has labeled “hostages.”
This is the same President Bush who often mocks the very idea that international law should apply to him; he’s fond of the punch line: “International law? I better call my lawyer.” But Bush becomes a pious defender of international law when it suits his geopolitical interests.
The major U.S. news media predictably follows along, getting into an arms-crossed harrumph over foreigners trampling on the inviolate principles of international law, the same rules that should never constrain U.S. actions.
So, when British sailors were captured on March 23 after they may or may not have crossed over an ill-defined demarcation between Iraqi and Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf, the assumption in the U.S. media was that Iran must be wrong. After all, Bush has listed Iran as a charter member of the “axis of evil”; its leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a notorious hothead; and everyone knows the Brits always play by the rules.
Of course, left outside this narrow frame of reference was the gross violation of international law – the bloody invasion of Iraq in 2003 – that put the Brits there in the first place.
Back then, international law was deemed little more than a nuisance getting in the way of what President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair wanted to do, i.e. conquer Iraq, install a compliant government, "privatize" its resources, and threaten other countries in the region to get in line.
Bush regarded the United Nations Charter and its ban on aggressive war as some goofy experiment in multilateralism. Blair actually knew better. Though he recognized that the Iraq invasion would violate this fundamental tenet of international law, Blair went along anyway.
From a longer-range historical context, there were other facts that would need forgetting if one wanted to get worked up into a moral frenzy. These include British colonial domination of both Iraq and Iran, and the CIA’s role in overthrowing Iran’s elected government in 1953 and reinstalling the brutal Shah of Iran on the Peacock Throne.
The combined interventions by the United Kingdom and the United States may have cost the lives of hundreds of thousands – possibly millions – of Iraqis and Iranians over the past century, but somehow Blair and Bush have positioned themselves as the innocent victims – at least as far as the Western press corps is concerned.
Iranian Detentions
So, in December and January, when Bush ordered raids against Iranian government offices inside Iraq and had five Iranian military officials detained indefinitely, there was barely a peep in the Western news media about violations of international law. Though the Iranians weren’t formally charged, their plight elicited little sympathy.
There were expectations that the Iranians might be released on March 21, the start of the Iranian new year. After that date passed, some observers believe Iran may have opted for a tit-for-tat response in seizing the 15 British sailors.
If that is the case, the Iranians apparently don’t understand the rules of the game: that President Bush has the unilateral right to do whatever he wants in the world and any reaction is unjustified, if not an invitation to an American military retaliation.
Escalating the war of words with Iran during a press conference at Camp David on March 31, Bush dismissed out of hand any possible “quid pro quos,” such as a swap of the two sets of detainees.
“The Iranians must give back the hostages,” Bush declared. “It’s inexcusable behavior.”
Regarding the captured British sailors, Blair and other U.K. officials have taken particular umbrage over videos released by Iran showing the sailors eating or being interviewed. This complaint references the principle of the Geneva Conventions against subjecting captured soldiers to public humiliation.
This same Geneva provision also was an issue – and another example of Western double standards – in the early days of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
In the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriya, five American soldiers were captured and their images were broadcast on Iraqi TV. Bush administration officials immediately denounced the brief televised interviews as a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
"It's illegal to do things to POWs that are humiliating to those prisoners," declared Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Rumsfeld’s charge was repeated over and over by U.S. television networks as the American people were agitated to a fever pitch. But American TV reporters stayed silent about the obvious inconsistency between the outrage over the footage of the American soldiers and the earlier U.S. broadcasts of Iraqi prisoners of war.
The Iraqi POWs had been paraded before U.S. cameras as "proof" that Iraqi resistance was crumbling – and no U.S. journalist working for a major news outlet raised any question about a Geneva violation. Some Iraqi POWs were shown forced at gunpoint to kneel with their hands behind their heads as they were patted down by U.S. soldiers. Other Iraqis were bound by plastic handcuffs and shown with bags over their heads.
Beyond the hypocrisy implicit in the double standards, CNN and other U.S. cable networks apparently saw no irony in the fact that they presented these scenes of kneeling and bound Iraqis over the title, “Operation: Iraqi Freedom.”
Guantanamo Bay
In protesting alleged Geneva violations by Iraq in March 2003, the U.S. news media also was silent about the fact that Bush had drawn worldwide condemnation for his decision to strip many POWs captured in Afghanistan of their Geneva Convention rights.
Bush ordered hundreds of these captives to be put in tiny outdoor cages at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The prisoners were shaved bald and forced to kneel with their eyes, ears and mouths covered to deprive them of their senses.
The shackled prisoners were filmed shuffling about in leg irons or being carried on stretchers to interrogation sessions. Their humiliation was broadcast widely.
In early 2002, U.S. allies, including some British officials, objected to the treatment of these prisoners and to Bush's unilateral assertion that they were "unlawful combatants" outside the protection of international law.
Legal experts noted that "unlawful combatant" was not even a category recognized by international law. The Geneva Conventions also required that detainees whose status was in any doubt must be accorded all enumerated rights until a "competent tribunal" was established to determine each individual prisoner's legal status.
Instead, Bush insisted that he had the sole right to declare which prisoners were POWs (with protections under the Geneva Conventions) and which ones were to be considered "unlawful combatants" (with no protections under the Geneva Conventions). Even Bush-designated POWs only received the Geneva rights that Bush saw fit to grant.
Human rights groups charged, too, that the U.S. treatment of some prisoners crossed the line into torture, which also is forbidden by international law. According to a variety of public accounts, prisoners have been subjected to water-boarding, a practice that simulates drowning, and to painful stress positions for long periods of time.
For its part, however, the Bush administration has denied engaging in torture and insists that all prisoners have been treated humanely.
Though these controversies about Bush’s disdain for international law are well known to the U.S. news media, the context disappeared again when press interest turned to the captured British sailors in late March 2007.
Suddenly, it was a new day with Bush and Blair fully committed to international law. Even a relatively minor Geneva transgression, such as filming captives eating, became a justification for unrestrained outrage.
Without any acknowledgement about their own abrogation of international law, the British and U.S. governments lifted these principles from the gutter, dusted them off and put them on a pedestal. The grand human rights defender, George W. Bush, lectured other countries about “inexcusable behavior” – and no prominent Western journalist called him to account for his contradictions.
In this case, not only does the Bush administration and US military of course demand and insist on the right to arrest any foreign agents who trespass within our borders or territorial waters... but under the "P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act," the "MCA" military commissions act, and other war-on-terror legislation, the Bush administration claims not only the right to seize (kidnap), detain, in secret, anyone they deem necessary... but they also CLAIM THE RIGHT TO TORTURE ANY AND ALL SUSPECTS, TO DEATH if need be, and as well claim the right to summary execution of any prisoners deemed guilty by a military tribunal, with the prisoner(s) having NO RIGHT TO COUNSEL or even to inform the world of their incarceration!
The irony is simply astounding... it has taken Americans only 20 years to forget the lessons of Vietnam (when you run huge, massive, systematic death squads in the rural parts of foreign countries, the locals tend to get riled up, to the point that they will grab a gun and take pot-shots or plant land mines against your soldiers), and as well it has taken America's Jewish (neo-con) community only 50 years to start supporting the very draconian tactics and "enabling" laws of the German WWII Gestapo and SS themselves.
And of course, leave it to America's media whores to make Mr. Parry point out the obvious... that according to the US government, there is NO international law, except for what the Bush administration wants. The entire American nation is held hostage to the president who could not cleanly win either of his elections, and who has as much respect for the US Constitution as a slave owner had for the "rights" of his slaves.
<< Though these controversies about Bush’s disdain for international law are well known to the U.S. news media, the context disappeared again when press interest turned to the captured British sailors in late March 2007.
Suddenly, it was a new day with Bush and Blair fully committed to international law. Even a relatively minor Geneva transgression, such as filming captives eating, became a justification for unrestrained outrage.
Without any acknowledgement about their own abrogation of international law, the British and U.S. governments lifted these principles from the gutter, dusted them off and put them on a pedestal. The grand human rights defender, George W. Bush, lectured other countries about “inexcusable behavior” – and NO PROMINENT WESTERN JOURNALISTS CALLED HIM TO ACCOUNT for his contradictions. >>
===========================
Bush, Iran & Selective Outrage
By Robert Parry
April 2, 2007
http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2007/040107.html
One of the least endearing features of Washington’s political/media hierarchy is its propensity for selective outrage, like what is now coming from George W. Bush about the “inexcusable behavior” of the Iranian government in holding 15 British sailors whom Bush has labeled “hostages.”
This is the same President Bush who often mocks the very idea that international law should apply to him; he’s fond of the punch line: “International law? I better call my lawyer.” But Bush becomes a pious defender of international law when it suits his geopolitical interests.
The major U.S. news media predictably follows along, getting into an arms-crossed harrumph over foreigners trampling on the inviolate principles of international law, the same rules that should never constrain U.S. actions.
So, when British sailors were captured on March 23 after they may or may not have crossed over an ill-defined demarcation between Iraqi and Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf, the assumption in the U.S. media was that Iran must be wrong. After all, Bush has listed Iran as a charter member of the “axis of evil”; its leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a notorious hothead; and everyone knows the Brits always play by the rules.
Of course, left outside this narrow frame of reference was the gross violation of international law – the bloody invasion of Iraq in 2003 – that put the Brits there in the first place.
Back then, international law was deemed little more than a nuisance getting in the way of what President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair wanted to do, i.e. conquer Iraq, install a compliant government, "privatize" its resources, and threaten other countries in the region to get in line.
Bush regarded the United Nations Charter and its ban on aggressive war as some goofy experiment in multilateralism. Blair actually knew better. Though he recognized that the Iraq invasion would violate this fundamental tenet of international law, Blair went along anyway.
From a longer-range historical context, there were other facts that would need forgetting if one wanted to get worked up into a moral frenzy. These include British colonial domination of both Iraq and Iran, and the CIA’s role in overthrowing Iran’s elected government in 1953 and reinstalling the brutal Shah of Iran on the Peacock Throne.
The combined interventions by the United Kingdom and the United States may have cost the lives of hundreds of thousands – possibly millions – of Iraqis and Iranians over the past century, but somehow Blair and Bush have positioned themselves as the innocent victims – at least as far as the Western press corps is concerned.
Iranian Detentions
So, in December and January, when Bush ordered raids against Iranian government offices inside Iraq and had five Iranian military officials detained indefinitely, there was barely a peep in the Western news media about violations of international law. Though the Iranians weren’t formally charged, their plight elicited little sympathy.
There were expectations that the Iranians might be released on March 21, the start of the Iranian new year. After that date passed, some observers believe Iran may have opted for a tit-for-tat response in seizing the 15 British sailors.
If that is the case, the Iranians apparently don’t understand the rules of the game: that President Bush has the unilateral right to do whatever he wants in the world and any reaction is unjustified, if not an invitation to an American military retaliation.
Escalating the war of words with Iran during a press conference at Camp David on March 31, Bush dismissed out of hand any possible “quid pro quos,” such as a swap of the two sets of detainees.
“The Iranians must give back the hostages,” Bush declared. “It’s inexcusable behavior.”
Regarding the captured British sailors, Blair and other U.K. officials have taken particular umbrage over videos released by Iran showing the sailors eating or being interviewed. This complaint references the principle of the Geneva Conventions against subjecting captured soldiers to public humiliation.
This same Geneva provision also was an issue – and another example of Western double standards – in the early days of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
In the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriya, five American soldiers were captured and their images were broadcast on Iraqi TV. Bush administration officials immediately denounced the brief televised interviews as a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
"It's illegal to do things to POWs that are humiliating to those prisoners," declared Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Rumsfeld’s charge was repeated over and over by U.S. television networks as the American people were agitated to a fever pitch. But American TV reporters stayed silent about the obvious inconsistency between the outrage over the footage of the American soldiers and the earlier U.S. broadcasts of Iraqi prisoners of war.
The Iraqi POWs had been paraded before U.S. cameras as "proof" that Iraqi resistance was crumbling – and no U.S. journalist working for a major news outlet raised any question about a Geneva violation. Some Iraqi POWs were shown forced at gunpoint to kneel with their hands behind their heads as they were patted down by U.S. soldiers. Other Iraqis were bound by plastic handcuffs and shown with bags over their heads.
Beyond the hypocrisy implicit in the double standards, CNN and other U.S. cable networks apparently saw no irony in the fact that they presented these scenes of kneeling and bound Iraqis over the title, “Operation: Iraqi Freedom.”
Guantanamo Bay
In protesting alleged Geneva violations by Iraq in March 2003, the U.S. news media also was silent about the fact that Bush had drawn worldwide condemnation for his decision to strip many POWs captured in Afghanistan of their Geneva Convention rights.
Bush ordered hundreds of these captives to be put in tiny outdoor cages at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The prisoners were shaved bald and forced to kneel with their eyes, ears and mouths covered to deprive them of their senses.
The shackled prisoners were filmed shuffling about in leg irons or being carried on stretchers to interrogation sessions. Their humiliation was broadcast widely.
In early 2002, U.S. allies, including some British officials, objected to the treatment of these prisoners and to Bush's unilateral assertion that they were "unlawful combatants" outside the protection of international law.
Legal experts noted that "unlawful combatant" was not even a category recognized by international law. The Geneva Conventions also required that detainees whose status was in any doubt must be accorded all enumerated rights until a "competent tribunal" was established to determine each individual prisoner's legal status.
Instead, Bush insisted that he had the sole right to declare which prisoners were POWs (with protections under the Geneva Conventions) and which ones were to be considered "unlawful combatants" (with no protections under the Geneva Conventions). Even Bush-designated POWs only received the Geneva rights that Bush saw fit to grant.
Human rights groups charged, too, that the U.S. treatment of some prisoners crossed the line into torture, which also is forbidden by international law. According to a variety of public accounts, prisoners have been subjected to water-boarding, a practice that simulates drowning, and to painful stress positions for long periods of time.
For its part, however, the Bush administration has denied engaging in torture and insists that all prisoners have been treated humanely.
Though these controversies about Bush’s disdain for international law are well known to the U.S. news media, the context disappeared again when press interest turned to the captured British sailors in late March 2007.
Suddenly, it was a new day with Bush and Blair fully committed to international law. Even a relatively minor Geneva transgression, such as filming captives eating, became a justification for unrestrained outrage.
Without any acknowledgement about their own abrogation of international law, the British and U.S. governments lifted these principles from the gutter, dusted them off and put them on a pedestal. The grand human rights defender, George W. Bush, lectured other countries about “inexcusable behavior” – and no prominent Western journalist called him to account for his contradictions.
FIRED US Attorneys often replaced with Bush insiders.... Washington Post
"Moral Values" Republicans are often fond of telling America that they are outraged that some public schools are not allowed to use the Pledge of Allegiance because the term "ONE NATION UNDER GOD" in the pledge could be deemed as indicating a state or governmental preference for a religion or religious point of view.
But the "Moral Values" conservatives are far less concerned with another part of the Pledge of Allegiance - the rest of that last phrase "one nation, under god, with liberty AND JUSTICE FOR ALL."
By PACKING the US Attorney's office with partisan, sometimes UNQUALIFIED hacks, the Bush-Rove-Cheney administration has set out to DELIBERATELY UNDERMINE VOTING RIGHTS, in addition to their larger assault on CIVIL and CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS. (For example, the Bush adminsitration claims police-state/KGB/Gestapo powers to seize, torture, hold, and even murder prisoners in the 'War on Terror,' even if that victim has been misidentified by US allies based on grudges or warlord corruption, or even if US government officials themselves have premediatd reasons to seek out, arrest and destroy their critics or opponents.)
Clearly, the Bush-Rove-Cheney administration looks at all of America (and the world) as one big slave plantation, where the governent's prime responsibility is to keep the slaves of the planatation in line and suitably terrified (of the "justice" of a bull-whip, or worse); and just as clearly the PURGE of qualified, competent, and effective US Attorneys has been a step in that direction, to entirely subordinate our 21st century American conception of "justice" to the one-party rule or radical, reactionary Republican rule. Replacing qualified, effective US Attorneys with often unqualified administration insiders loyal NOT to the US Constitution but only to the goals and aims of the Bush White House, was an attempt to make a significant step in that direction, of enforcing inequality in America's voting process, economic system, and justice system.
<< About one-third of the nearly FOUR DOZEN U.S. attorney's jobs that HAVE CHANGED HANDS since President Bush began his second term have been filled by the White House and the Justice Department with trusted administration insiders.
[note: many of those fired US Attorneys were in the middle of serious and complex prosecutions.]
The people chosen as chief federal prosecutors on a temporary or permanent basis since early 2005 INCLUDE 10 SENIOR AIDES TO ATTORNEY GENERAL Alberto R. Gonzales, according to an analysis of government records. Several came from the White House or other government agencies. SOME LACKED EXPERIENCE AS PROSECUTORS or had no connection to the districts in which they were sent to work, the records and biographical information show. >>
==================================================
Prosecutor Posts Go To Bush Insiders
Less Preference Shown for Locals, Senators' Choices
By Amy Goldstein and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, April 1, 2007; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/31/AR2007033101158_pf.html
About one-third of the nearly four dozen U.S. attorney's jobs that have changed hands since President Bush began his second term have been filled by the White House and the Justice Department with trusted administration insiders.
The people chosen as chief federal prosecutors on a temporary or permanent basis since early 2005 include 10 senior aides to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, according to an analysis of government records. Several came from the White House or other government agencies. Some lacked experience as prosecutors or had no connection to the districts in which they were sent to work, the records and biographical information show.
The new U.S. attorneys filled vacancies created through natural turnover in addition to the firings of eight prosecutors last year that have prompted a political uproar and congressional investigations.
No other administration in contemporary times has had such a clear pattern of filling chief prosecutors' jobs with its own staff members, said experts on U.S. attorney's offices. Those experts said the emphasis in appointments traditionally has been on local roots and deference to home-state senators, whose support has been crucial to win confirmation of the nominees.
The pattern from Bush's second term suggests that the dismissals were half of a two-pronged approach: While getting rid of prosecutors who did not adhere closely to administration priorities, such as rigorous pursuit of immigration violations and GOP allegations of voter fraud, White House and Justice officials have seeded federal prosecutors' offices with people on whom they can depend to carry out the administration's agenda.
The interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo., Bradley J. Schlozman, for example, was a deputy in Justice's civil rights division who helped overrule career government lawyers in approving a Texas redistricting plan pushed by Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), then House majority leader. In January, the White House nominated a permanent replacement, John Wood, who is counselor to Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty. Neither Schlozman nor Wood has been a prosecutor before.
Justice officials defend their record of U.S. attorney selections, saying that among Bush's choices since the start of his first term, a larger share have had experience as federal prosecutors than those of President Bill Clinton. One Justice official acknowledged that a number of administration insiders have been chosen but said there was no concerted effort to do so.
As Congress pursues its investigation, some Democrats have indicated they want to explore who has been hired, in addition to the firings that have been the focal point of hearings on Capitol Hill -- and of calls from both parties for Gonzales to resign.
"If we have eight U.S. attorneys dismissed because they were not 'loyal Bushies,' then how many of the remaining U.S. attorneys are?" asked Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), borrowing a phrase that Gonzales's former chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, used in an internal e-mail to describe criteria by which prosecutors were chosen to be fired.
"A U.S. attorney's position is a strong line on your r?sum?. If the administration rewards you with that position and you come straight from Washington, it's hard not to be grateful," Durbin, the majority whip, said in an interview. "That gratitude can translate into loyalty to Washington rather than loyalty to the job."
Choosing insiders as U.S. attorneys is not improper, given the wide latitude the law provides presidents in selecting federal prosecutors, and all administrations tend to choose those who share their basic legal outlook and party affiliation.
Still, academics and other experts say, the appointments appear to alter a long-standing culture of autonomy for the nation's chief prosecutors. James Eisenstein, a Pennsylvania State University political scientist who has written a book on U.S. attorneys, said that historically, federal prosecutors have regarded operating "in a politically neutral, nonpartisan manner" as a cornerstone of their roles. Hiring people from Justice, Eisenstein said, "was very unusual."
Jamie S. Gorelick, deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, said it was uncommon during her tenure to dispatch aides from Justice to become U.S. attorneys, except in urgent circumstances, such as when Robert S. Mueller III, now the FBI director, was named U.S. attorney in San Francisco to shore up that troubled office. "These jobs are serious prosecutorial jobs that require judgment and an understanding of the laws that are to be enforced," she said. "They are not meant to be steppingstones, or to give people turns at political jobs."
Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said it is not surprising that the current administration frequently has sent Justice officials to run U.S. attorney's offices. "Like many organizations, it is common for Justice Department employees, appointees and even U.S. attorneys to accept new positions or assignments within the department," he said. It "can be tremendously beneficial for a U.S. attorney to have experience working elsewhere in the department," he added.
Roehrkasse pointed to respected examples, such as U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald of Chicago and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the GOP presidential candidate and former New York mayor who was once a federal prosecutor.
To be sure, the majority of the U.S. attorneys named since 2005 have been relatively traditional choices, such as career prosecutors who moved up to the top job in the district in which they worked.
But not all. Recent U.S. attorney appointees include an assistant attorney general for civil rights, a chief of staff to the deputy attorney general and a chief of staff to the head of the criminal division. One appointee, Scott Schools, was general counsel for the Justice office that oversees U.S. attorneys and led the internal probe of the office of the fired prosecutor he is replacing, Kevin V. Ryan in San Francisco.
Three of the closest advisers to former attorney general John D. Ashcroft also have become U.S. attorneys in the past two years.
A fourth adviser -- Sampson -- had an even more influential position. He was in charge of U.S. attorney selections in the White House counsel's office and later at Justice, where he eventually became Gonzales's chief of staff. Sampson also coordinated the firings, and last month he resigned as the controversy swelled.
Sampson sought to be a U.S. attorney, too, and he was the administration's preferred choice last year to be chief prosecutor in his native Utah. But he was nudged aside for another GOP lawyer, Brett L. Tolman, who was favored by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah). Tolman was counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee in late 2005 when, at Justice's request, he had language inserted into USA Patriot Act legislation that allowed Gonzales to circumvent Senate confirmation by appointing interim U.S. attorneys indefinitely. Congress is in the process of repealing the provision.
Of the nearly four dozen regional chief prosecutors named in Bush's second term, 20 have been interim appointments. The proportion who have bypassed the Senate has been roughly the same for administration insiders as for the others.
Some of the insiders who had no ties to their new communities have been well received.
When Gonzales was preparing to appoint Deborah Rhodes, counselor in the department's criminal division, she stopped by to visit with Alabama's two Republican senators. "I don't think I'd ever met her, or heard of her for that matter," recalled Sen. Jeff Sessions, a former U.S. attorney in the southern Alabama district in which Rhodes was to work. Sessions said he and Sen. Richard C. Shelby had intended to recommend someone local for the job permanently but ended up urging Bush to nominate Rhodes, because she appeared to be turning around an office beset by low morale and a probe of her predecessor.
Other insiders who have been made U.S. attorneys have drawn complaints that they are political or inexperienced.
Missouri had for years been a hub of GOP allegations of election fraud -- long disputed by Democrats -- when Schlozman arrived a year ago from Justice's civil rights division. Six days before the November elections, he announced indictments of four voter-registration recruiters for a left-leaning group, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, for allegedly submitting fraudulent registrations to the election board in Kansas City, Mo. Democrats have protested.
In Minnesota, Rachel K. Paulose was named interim U.S. attorney 13 months ago and nominated for the permanent job in December. As senior counsel to McNulty, she helped draft an initiative to crack down on child pornography through long prison sentences. Since arriving in Minneapolis, she has expanded investigations of such crimes, which have been a high priority for Gonzales, and pushed for sentences she has called "righteous."
Paulose replaced Thomas B. Heffelfinger, who spent nearly 20 years as a state and federal prosecutor and recently left for private practice to increase his income. Heffelfinger supervised Paulose when she was a young assistant prosecutor in the office. He would not comment on her qualifications. "I was 58 when I left. She was 32 when she started," he said. "I brought significantly different things to the job than she brings to the job -- without valuing them one way or the other."
Staff writer Peter Slevin in Chicago contributed to this report.
But the "Moral Values" conservatives are far less concerned with another part of the Pledge of Allegiance - the rest of that last phrase "one nation, under god, with liberty AND JUSTICE FOR ALL."
By PACKING the US Attorney's office with partisan, sometimes UNQUALIFIED hacks, the Bush-Rove-Cheney administration has set out to DELIBERATELY UNDERMINE VOTING RIGHTS, in addition to their larger assault on CIVIL and CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS. (For example, the Bush adminsitration claims police-state/KGB/Gestapo powers to seize, torture, hold, and even murder prisoners in the 'War on Terror,' even if that victim has been misidentified by US allies based on grudges or warlord corruption, or even if US government officials themselves have premediatd reasons to seek out, arrest and destroy their critics or opponents.)
Clearly, the Bush-Rove-Cheney administration looks at all of America (and the world) as one big slave plantation, where the governent's prime responsibility is to keep the slaves of the planatation in line and suitably terrified (of the "justice" of a bull-whip, or worse); and just as clearly the PURGE of qualified, competent, and effective US Attorneys has been a step in that direction, to entirely subordinate our 21st century American conception of "justice" to the one-party rule or radical, reactionary Republican rule. Replacing qualified, effective US Attorneys with often unqualified administration insiders loyal NOT to the US Constitution but only to the goals and aims of the Bush White House, was an attempt to make a significant step in that direction, of enforcing inequality in America's voting process, economic system, and justice system.
<< About one-third of the nearly FOUR DOZEN U.S. attorney's jobs that HAVE CHANGED HANDS since President Bush began his second term have been filled by the White House and the Justice Department with trusted administration insiders.
[note: many of those fired US Attorneys were in the middle of serious and complex prosecutions.]
The people chosen as chief federal prosecutors on a temporary or permanent basis since early 2005 INCLUDE 10 SENIOR AIDES TO ATTORNEY GENERAL Alberto R. Gonzales, according to an analysis of government records. Several came from the White House or other government agencies. SOME LACKED EXPERIENCE AS PROSECUTORS or had no connection to the districts in which they were sent to work, the records and biographical information show. >>
==================================================
Prosecutor Posts Go To Bush Insiders
Less Preference Shown for Locals, Senators' Choices
By Amy Goldstein and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, April 1, 2007; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/31/AR2007033101158_pf.html
About one-third of the nearly four dozen U.S. attorney's jobs that have changed hands since President Bush began his second term have been filled by the White House and the Justice Department with trusted administration insiders.
The people chosen as chief federal prosecutors on a temporary or permanent basis since early 2005 include 10 senior aides to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, according to an analysis of government records. Several came from the White House or other government agencies. Some lacked experience as prosecutors or had no connection to the districts in which they were sent to work, the records and biographical information show.
The new U.S. attorneys filled vacancies created through natural turnover in addition to the firings of eight prosecutors last year that have prompted a political uproar and congressional investigations.
No other administration in contemporary times has had such a clear pattern of filling chief prosecutors' jobs with its own staff members, said experts on U.S. attorney's offices. Those experts said the emphasis in appointments traditionally has been on local roots and deference to home-state senators, whose support has been crucial to win confirmation of the nominees.
The pattern from Bush's second term suggests that the dismissals were half of a two-pronged approach: While getting rid of prosecutors who did not adhere closely to administration priorities, such as rigorous pursuit of immigration violations and GOP allegations of voter fraud, White House and Justice officials have seeded federal prosecutors' offices with people on whom they can depend to carry out the administration's agenda.
The interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo., Bradley J. Schlozman, for example, was a deputy in Justice's civil rights division who helped overrule career government lawyers in approving a Texas redistricting plan pushed by Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), then House majority leader. In January, the White House nominated a permanent replacement, John Wood, who is counselor to Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty. Neither Schlozman nor Wood has been a prosecutor before.
Justice officials defend their record of U.S. attorney selections, saying that among Bush's choices since the start of his first term, a larger share have had experience as federal prosecutors than those of President Bill Clinton. One Justice official acknowledged that a number of administration insiders have been chosen but said there was no concerted effort to do so.
As Congress pursues its investigation, some Democrats have indicated they want to explore who has been hired, in addition to the firings that have been the focal point of hearings on Capitol Hill -- and of calls from both parties for Gonzales to resign.
"If we have eight U.S. attorneys dismissed because they were not 'loyal Bushies,' then how many of the remaining U.S. attorneys are?" asked Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), borrowing a phrase that Gonzales's former chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, used in an internal e-mail to describe criteria by which prosecutors were chosen to be fired.
"A U.S. attorney's position is a strong line on your r?sum?. If the administration rewards you with that position and you come straight from Washington, it's hard not to be grateful," Durbin, the majority whip, said in an interview. "That gratitude can translate into loyalty to Washington rather than loyalty to the job."
Choosing insiders as U.S. attorneys is not improper, given the wide latitude the law provides presidents in selecting federal prosecutors, and all administrations tend to choose those who share their basic legal outlook and party affiliation.
Still, academics and other experts say, the appointments appear to alter a long-standing culture of autonomy for the nation's chief prosecutors. James Eisenstein, a Pennsylvania State University political scientist who has written a book on U.S. attorneys, said that historically, federal prosecutors have regarded operating "in a politically neutral, nonpartisan manner" as a cornerstone of their roles. Hiring people from Justice, Eisenstein said, "was very unusual."
Jamie S. Gorelick, deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, said it was uncommon during her tenure to dispatch aides from Justice to become U.S. attorneys, except in urgent circumstances, such as when Robert S. Mueller III, now the FBI director, was named U.S. attorney in San Francisco to shore up that troubled office. "These jobs are serious prosecutorial jobs that require judgment and an understanding of the laws that are to be enforced," she said. "They are not meant to be steppingstones, or to give people turns at political jobs."
Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said it is not surprising that the current administration frequently has sent Justice officials to run U.S. attorney's offices. "Like many organizations, it is common for Justice Department employees, appointees and even U.S. attorneys to accept new positions or assignments within the department," he said. It "can be tremendously beneficial for a U.S. attorney to have experience working elsewhere in the department," he added.
Roehrkasse pointed to respected examples, such as U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald of Chicago and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the GOP presidential candidate and former New York mayor who was once a federal prosecutor.
To be sure, the majority of the U.S. attorneys named since 2005 have been relatively traditional choices, such as career prosecutors who moved up to the top job in the district in which they worked.
But not all. Recent U.S. attorney appointees include an assistant attorney general for civil rights, a chief of staff to the deputy attorney general and a chief of staff to the head of the criminal division. One appointee, Scott Schools, was general counsel for the Justice office that oversees U.S. attorneys and led the internal probe of the office of the fired prosecutor he is replacing, Kevin V. Ryan in San Francisco.
Three of the closest advisers to former attorney general John D. Ashcroft also have become U.S. attorneys in the past two years.
A fourth adviser -- Sampson -- had an even more influential position. He was in charge of U.S. attorney selections in the White House counsel's office and later at Justice, where he eventually became Gonzales's chief of staff. Sampson also coordinated the firings, and last month he resigned as the controversy swelled.
Sampson sought to be a U.S. attorney, too, and he was the administration's preferred choice last year to be chief prosecutor in his native Utah. But he was nudged aside for another GOP lawyer, Brett L. Tolman, who was favored by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah). Tolman was counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee in late 2005 when, at Justice's request, he had language inserted into USA Patriot Act legislation that allowed Gonzales to circumvent Senate confirmation by appointing interim U.S. attorneys indefinitely. Congress is in the process of repealing the provision.
Of the nearly four dozen regional chief prosecutors named in Bush's second term, 20 have been interim appointments. The proportion who have bypassed the Senate has been roughly the same for administration insiders as for the others.
Some of the insiders who had no ties to their new communities have been well received.
When Gonzales was preparing to appoint Deborah Rhodes, counselor in the department's criminal division, she stopped by to visit with Alabama's two Republican senators. "I don't think I'd ever met her, or heard of her for that matter," recalled Sen. Jeff Sessions, a former U.S. attorney in the southern Alabama district in which Rhodes was to work. Sessions said he and Sen. Richard C. Shelby had intended to recommend someone local for the job permanently but ended up urging Bush to nominate Rhodes, because she appeared to be turning around an office beset by low morale and a probe of her predecessor.
Other insiders who have been made U.S. attorneys have drawn complaints that they are political or inexperienced.
Missouri had for years been a hub of GOP allegations of election fraud -- long disputed by Democrats -- when Schlozman arrived a year ago from Justice's civil rights division. Six days before the November elections, he announced indictments of four voter-registration recruiters for a left-leaning group, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, for allegedly submitting fraudulent registrations to the election board in Kansas City, Mo. Democrats have protested.
In Minnesota, Rachel K. Paulose was named interim U.S. attorney 13 months ago and nominated for the permanent job in December. As senior counsel to McNulty, she helped draft an initiative to crack down on child pornography through long prison sentences. Since arriving in Minneapolis, she has expanded investigations of such crimes, which have been a high priority for Gonzales, and pushed for sentences she has called "righteous."
Paulose replaced Thomas B. Heffelfinger, who spent nearly 20 years as a state and federal prosecutor and recently left for private practice to increase his income. Heffelfinger supervised Paulose when she was a young assistant prosecutor in the office. He would not comment on her qualifications. "I was 58 when I left. She was 32 when she started," he said. "I brought significantly different things to the job than she brings to the job -- without valuing them one way or the other."
Staff writer Peter Slevin in Chicago contributed to this report.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
NY Times notices: ROVE at THE CENTER of EVERY SCANDAL in Bush administration....
OK... so the NEW YORK TIMES _FINALLY_ notices that KARL ROVE is at the CENTER of EVERY political scandal of the Bush-Cheney White House.
SO... WHAT are the NY Times editors GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
Are they going to give the same BLARING, SCREAMING, SHOUTING, above-fold headlines that they once used to bring public attention to... say, the "LINCOLN BEDROOM SCANDAL!" or (gasp!) "THE WHITE HOUSE TRASHING SCANDAL!"?
(For a glimpse into why the NY Times would use more dramatic headlines for the FAKE "Lincoln Bedroom Scandal!" than they will for the legitimate "purge of US Attorneys to OBSTRUCTS JUSTICE in criminal prosecutions of Republican leaders" scandal, see Matt Stoller's article, "Political and Business Elites are STEALING FROM EVERYONE.")
http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/3/31/11266/6982
(For confirmation that the NEW YORK TIMES realizes that the "Purge-gate" scandal is potentially about OBSTRUCTION of JUSTICE, here is the Time's own reporting, from the same editorial board, just 2 days previously:
<< The senators questioning Mr. Sampson pointed to a troubling pattern: MANY OF THE FIRED PROSECUTORS WERE INVESTIGATING HIGH RANKING REPUBLICANS. He was asked if he was aware that the fired United States attorney in Nevada was investigating a Republican governor, that the fired prosecutor in Arkansas was investigating the Republican governor of Missouri, or that the prosecutor in Arizona was investigating two Republican members of Congress. >>
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/opinion/30fri1.html
---------------------------
The Rovian Era
NYT unsigned (editorial board) editorial
April 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/opinion/01sun1.html
Turn over a scandal in Washington these days and the chances are you’ll find Karl Rove. His tracks are everywhere: whether it’s helping to purge United States attorneys, coaching bureaucrats on how to spend taxpayers’ money to promote Republican candidates, hijacking the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives for partisan politics, or helping to organize a hit on the character of one of the first people to publicly reveal the twisting of intelligence reports on Iraq.
Whatever the immediate objective, Mr. Rove seems focused on one overarching goal: creating a permanent Republican majority, even if that means politicizing every aspect of the White House and subverting the governmental functions of the executive branch. This is not the Clinton administration’s permanent campaign. The Clinton people had difficulty distinguishing between the spin cycle of a campaign and the tone of governing. That seems quaint compared with the Bush administration’s far more menacing failure to distinguish the Republican Party from the government, or the state itself.
This was, perhaps, the inevitable result of taking the chief operative of a presidential campaign, one famous for his scorched-earth style, and ensconcing him in the White House — not in a political role, but as a key player in the formation of policy. Mr. Rove never had to submit to Senate confirmation hearings. Yet, from the very start, photographs of cabinet meetings showed him in the background, keeping an enforcer’s eye on the proceedings. After his re-election in 2004, President Bush formally put Mr. Rove in charge of all domestic policy.
In that position, as David Kirkpatrick and Jim Rutenberg reported in The Times, Mr. Rove took a lead role in selecting federal judges and the hiring — and firing — of United States attorneys. Mr. Rove’s staff maneuvered to fire the prosecutor in Arkansas and replace him with a Rove protégé, and also seems to have been involved in the firing of a United States attorney in New Mexico who refused to file what he considered to be baseless charges of election fraud against Democrats.
Mr. Rove’s efforts to maintain one-party rule go deep into the government. Last week, we learned about a meeting set up by Mr. Rove’s staff with officials of the General Services Administration that was wildly inappropriate and perhaps illegal. The aim, as outlined by Mr. Rove’s deputy, Scott Jennings, seems to have been to take advantage of the billions of dollars in contracts put out by the agency every year to return Republicans to the majority in Congress in 2008. It included PowerPoint slides on vulnerable House and Senate seats.
This sort of behavior should not be all that surprising. It was not that long ago that the Bush White House embraced the priorities of the Republican governor of Mississippi and virtually ignored the far greater needs of Louisiana’s Democratic governor after Hurricane Katrina.
Mr. Rove retreated a bit from the public eye in the heat of the Lewis Libby trial, but after avoiding indictment, he seems to have regained his confidence. Take a look at YouTube to see his bizarre, humor-challenged gyrations as “MC Rove” at an annual media dinner in Washington the other night.
The investigation of the firings of the United States attorneys seems to be closing in on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who should have been fired weeks ago. But Congress should bring equal scrutiny to the more powerful Mr. Rove. If it does, especially by forcing him to testify in public, it will find that he has been at the vortex of many of the biggest issues they are now investigating.
SO... WHAT are the NY Times editors GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
Are they going to give the same BLARING, SCREAMING, SHOUTING, above-fold headlines that they once used to bring public attention to... say, the "LINCOLN BEDROOM SCANDAL!" or (gasp!) "THE WHITE HOUSE TRASHING SCANDAL!"?
(For a glimpse into why the NY Times would use more dramatic headlines for the FAKE "Lincoln Bedroom Scandal!" than they will for the legitimate "purge of US Attorneys to OBSTRUCTS JUSTICE in criminal prosecutions of Republican leaders" scandal, see Matt Stoller's article, "Political and Business Elites are STEALING FROM EVERYONE.")
http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/3/31/11266/6982
(For confirmation that the NEW YORK TIMES realizes that the "Purge-gate" scandal is potentially about OBSTRUCTION of JUSTICE, here is the Time's own reporting, from the same editorial board, just 2 days previously:
<< The senators questioning Mr. Sampson pointed to a troubling pattern: MANY OF THE FIRED PROSECUTORS WERE INVESTIGATING HIGH RANKING REPUBLICANS. He was asked if he was aware that the fired United States attorney in Nevada was investigating a Republican governor, that the fired prosecutor in Arkansas was investigating the Republican governor of Missouri, or that the prosecutor in Arizona was investigating two Republican members of Congress. >>
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/opinion/30fri1.html
---------------------------
The Rovian Era
NYT unsigned (editorial board) editorial
April 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/opinion/01sun1.html
Turn over a scandal in Washington these days and the chances are you’ll find Karl Rove. His tracks are everywhere: whether it’s helping to purge United States attorneys, coaching bureaucrats on how to spend taxpayers’ money to promote Republican candidates, hijacking the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives for partisan politics, or helping to organize a hit on the character of one of the first people to publicly reveal the twisting of intelligence reports on Iraq.
Whatever the immediate objective, Mr. Rove seems focused on one overarching goal: creating a permanent Republican majority, even if that means politicizing every aspect of the White House and subverting the governmental functions of the executive branch. This is not the Clinton administration’s permanent campaign. The Clinton people had difficulty distinguishing between the spin cycle of a campaign and the tone of governing. That seems quaint compared with the Bush administration’s far more menacing failure to distinguish the Republican Party from the government, or the state itself.
This was, perhaps, the inevitable result of taking the chief operative of a presidential campaign, one famous for his scorched-earth style, and ensconcing him in the White House — not in a political role, but as a key player in the formation of policy. Mr. Rove never had to submit to Senate confirmation hearings. Yet, from the very start, photographs of cabinet meetings showed him in the background, keeping an enforcer’s eye on the proceedings. After his re-election in 2004, President Bush formally put Mr. Rove in charge of all domestic policy.
In that position, as David Kirkpatrick and Jim Rutenberg reported in The Times, Mr. Rove took a lead role in selecting federal judges and the hiring — and firing — of United States attorneys. Mr. Rove’s staff maneuvered to fire the prosecutor in Arkansas and replace him with a Rove protégé, and also seems to have been involved in the firing of a United States attorney in New Mexico who refused to file what he considered to be baseless charges of election fraud against Democrats.
Mr. Rove’s efforts to maintain one-party rule go deep into the government. Last week, we learned about a meeting set up by Mr. Rove’s staff with officials of the General Services Administration that was wildly inappropriate and perhaps illegal. The aim, as outlined by Mr. Rove’s deputy, Scott Jennings, seems to have been to take advantage of the billions of dollars in contracts put out by the agency every year to return Republicans to the majority in Congress in 2008. It included PowerPoint slides on vulnerable House and Senate seats.
This sort of behavior should not be all that surprising. It was not that long ago that the Bush White House embraced the priorities of the Republican governor of Mississippi and virtually ignored the far greater needs of Louisiana’s Democratic governor after Hurricane Katrina.
Mr. Rove retreated a bit from the public eye in the heat of the Lewis Libby trial, but after avoiding indictment, he seems to have regained his confidence. Take a look at YouTube to see his bizarre, humor-challenged gyrations as “MC Rove” at an annual media dinner in Washington the other night.
The investigation of the firings of the United States attorneys seems to be closing in on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who should have been fired weeks ago. But Congress should bring equal scrutiny to the more powerful Mr. Rove. If it does, especially by forcing him to testify in public, it will find that he has been at the vortex of many of the biggest issues they are now investigating.
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