Bush: 'We Found' Banned Weapons

This is why we went to war, according to Bush.

Sad, really, that this is the best thing they can come up with. All of this is so patently absurd that I don't know whether to laugh or cry...

Bush and the Jews

Atrios has posted some interesting stuff on the ironies of Bush's visit to Auschwitz. The one thing he fails to mention is Grandpappy Bush's dealings with the Nazis.

Intel Deliberately Skewed by DIA

"A growing number of U.S. national security professionals are accusing the Bush administration of slanting the facts and hijacking the $30 billion intelligence apparatus to justify its rush to war in Iraq," Reuters reports.

In particular, members of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the infamous "Cabal" recently profiled by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker, are coming under heavy criticism for the way they processed some dubious intelligence on Iraq.

Reassessing Miller

Jack Shafer of Slate revisits the Judith Miller situation.

Fiore's take on TIA2

Big brother is back. But this time it's 'cuddly.'

Now they tell us...

According to David Usborne of the Independent, Paul Wolfowitz is starting to come clean about the rationales for the Iraq war.

The Bush administration focused on alleged weapons of mass destruction as the primary justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force because it was politically convenient, a top-level official at the Pentagon has acknowledged.

The extraordinary admission comes in an interview with Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defence Secretary, in the July issue of the magazine Vanity Fair.

Mr Wolfowitz also discloses that there was one justification that was "almost unnoticed but huge". That was the prospect of the United States being able to withdraw all of its forces from Saudi Arabia once the threat of Saddam had been removed. Since the taking of Baghdad, Washington has said that it is taking its troops out of the kingdom. "Just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to the door" towards making progress elsewhere in achieving Middle East peace, Mr Wolfowitz said. The presence of the US military in Saudi Arabia has been one of the main grievances of al-Qa'ida and other terrorist groups.

"For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on," Mr Wolfowitz tells the magazine.

The comments suggest that, even for the US administration, the logic that was presented for going to war may have been an empty shell. They come to light, moreover, just two days after Mr Wolfowitz's immediate boss, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, conceded for the first time that the arms might never be found...

Impeachment proceedings, anyone?

What a Tangled Web We Weave...

Question: Was the case for invasion built on deception?

Answer: Without a doubt.

A huge deficit to come

"This country has many challenges," President George W. Bush declared in this year's State of the Union address. "We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents, and other generations. We will confront them with focus and clarity and courage."

It turns out, not to my surprise, that Bush is an absolute liar about the above. Eviscerating the government's spending base with tax cuts for the rich will only worsen a deficit which, we now learn, promises to reach higher than $44 trillion in the coming years. Not only that, but Bush and his cronies have been trying to hide this fact. According to the Financial Times,

The Bush administration has shelved a report commissioned by the Treasury that shows the U.S. currently faces a future of chronic federal budget deficits totaling at least $44 trillion in current U.S. dollars.

The study, the most comprehensive assessment of how the U.S. government is at risk of being overwhelmed by the “baby boom” generation’s future healthcare and retirement costs, was commissioned by then-Treasury secretary Paul O’Neill.

But the Bush administration chose to keep the findings out of the annual budget report for fiscal year 2004, published in February, as the White House campaigned for a tax-cut package that critics claim will expand future deficits.

The study asserts that sharp tax increases, massive spending cuts or a painful mix of both are unavoidable if the U.S. is to meet benefit promises to future generations. It estimates that closing the gap would require the equivalent of an immediate and permanent 66 percent across-the-board income tax increase.

In other words, kiss Medicare and Social Security good-bye.

Rhetoric vs. facts

To the surprise of many, Ariel Sharon recently spoke out against the occupation. He doesn't have any plans on pulling back to the Green Line, however.

What he really meant, by his own admission, was that it was "undesirable" to continue "to rule over a Palestinian population." Well, duh. It's hard work crushing people into the ground with a military occupation. That's why Sharon wants to "transfer" the Palestinians out of Israel and into Jordan; he wants to lighten Israel's burden.

Rhetoric like this might be seen by some as a step forward, but, as Amira Hass notes, it doesn't do much to counter or rectify the "facts on the ground."

AI's 2003 Report

Echoing what they said last year, Amnesty International claims in their annual report this year that the American-lead "war on terror" has "made the world a more dangerous place and created divisions which make conflict more likely." Check out AI's 2003 report, here.

Planting 'news'?

Gabriel Demombynes wonders if NY Times reporter Judith Miller work for U.S. intelligence. Considering the CIA's history, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch.

Toppling Time

"The Pentagon is advocating a massive covert action program to overthrow Iran's ruling ayatollahs as the only way to stop the country's nuclear weapons ambitions," reports ABC News. As Jason Leopold says, here we go again...

The Perils of Michael Moore

Kevin Mattson has an interesting take on Michael Moore in the recent edition of Dissent. Mattson is "worried about what happens to the vision of the left when it plays on the grounds of the sound-bite society."

Messing with Tehran

Neoconservatives, especially those affiliated with the PNAC, are moving quickly on Iran, reports Jim Lobe.

In a related story, Bernard Weiner explains how PNAC got us into this imperial pickle.

The Clock Ticks Away

Ten weeks on and still no WMDs in Iraq. Those crafty devils sure are good at hiding that stuff.

Catastrophe Brewing

Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says that Iraq is going to be “an incubator for terrorist cells and activity” unless the US ramps up its reconstruction efforts.

We don't, after all, want Iraq to turn into Afghanistan, which has been left to fend for itself while the Taliban regroups in its southern provinces.

Slanted sourcing from the 'newspaper of record'

Howard Kurtz is reporting that NY Times reporter Judith Miller's main source for her articles on WMDs in Iraq is none other than Washington puppet and INC leader Ahmed Chalabi.

Thus David Walsh of the WSWS notes, with the appropriate amount of incredulity, that the individual "with the greatest possible motive for having Iraqi weapons found" is the one providing the details for the Times' scoops.

Pipes the Peacemaker?

If Bush wants peace in the Middle East, why has he appointed a warmonger and general loon to run the government's leading peace think-tank?

Al Qaeda active in Iran

Lining up those dominoes...

This one is courtesy of -- who else? -- Fox News:

The United States has intercepts that show senior Al Qaeda operatives in Iran probably played a big role in the recent bombings in Saudi Arabia, a senior U.S. official confirmed to Fox News.

The official said the U.S. had intercepts for months prior to the bombings, which showed that senior Al Qaeda operatives in Iran were communicating with Al Qaeda operatives in Saudi Arabia about an upcoming attack, with cryptic language suggesting the attack was going to happen in Saudi Arabia.

The operatives had been in Iran for at least months, and came there after they fled Afghanistan during the U.S. military's attack aimed at toppling the Taliban government...

A cynical prediction: the US will begin inserting "peacekeeping forces" into Iran by Labor Day...

Karzai to meet with Taliban

The Qatari satellite channel Al-Jazaara is reporting that Afghan President Hamid Karzai will begin holding talks with members of the ousted Taliban government.

“A delegation of Taliban, led by former Health Minister Mullah Abbas, secretly arrived in the Afghan capital for the expected talks, the first since the Taliban regime crumbled one year and a half ago,” the Qatar-based channel’s correspondent told his channel.

“The step is meant to improve relations between the two sides and as part of the Afghan government’s efforts to woo some Taliban members,” he said.

The Afghan leader hailed some Taliban members in a meeting with Afghan scholars, saying the movement did a great service to the war-torn country and that it has some “good” elements.

...the talks are widely expected to be okayed by Washington which had earlier failed to approach members of Taliban.

Didn't the US allegedly go to war to get rid of the Taliban?

US plans death camp?!

According to a report in a UK tabloid, The Mail on Sunday, the "US has floated plans to turn Guantanamo Bay into a death camp, with its own death row and execution chamber." Prisoners could therefore be "tried, convicted and executed without leaving its boundaries, without a jury and without right of appeal."

Keeping the Peace...Illegally

According to the Observer, the US is "illegally holding thousands of Iraqi prisoners of war and other captives without access to human rights officials at compounds close to Baghdad airport."

"There is circumstantial evidence that prisoners are being gagged and hooded, in the manner of the Afghans and other captives held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba - treatment in itself questionable under international law," reports Ed Vulliamy.

Welcome to the Club

Former British trade and industry secretary Stephen Byers has come to the conclusion that "free trade" hurts the poor.

The Fictional War on Terror

"So when are Americans going to demand a real war on terrorism?" asks Ted Rall.

Recent suicide bombings in Riyadh and Casablanca proved with bloody eloquence that Al Qaeda and similar extremist groups are anything but "on the run," as George W. Bush puts it. Bush's tactics are a 100 percent failure, yet his band of clueless Christian soldiers continues to go after mosquitoes with shotguns. "So far," Bush furiously spun after the latest round of attacks, "nearly one-half of Al Qaeda's senior operatives have been captured or killed," promising to "remain on the hunt until they are all brought to justice."

Can Bush really be this stupid? All underground organizations, including Al Qaeda, employ a loose hierarchical structure. No individual member is indispensable, so the capture of even a high-ranking official cannot compromise the group. Each lost member is instantly replaced by the next man down in his cell. It doesn't matter whether we catch half, three-quarters or all of Al Qaeda's leadership--hunting down individual terrorists is an expensive and pointless game of whack-a-mole. Only Allah knows how many eager recruits have sprung up, hydra-like, to fill Khalid Sheikh Mohammad's flip-flops.

Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bob Graham caught heat for calling the war on Iraq "a distraction" from the war on terrorism, but he was far too kind. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have replaced a real war on terrorism, and they've vastly increased the likelihood of future September 11's. Bombing Afghanistan scattered bin Laden, his lieutenants and their foot soldiers everywhere from Chechnya to Sudan to China's Xinjiang province; fleeing Talibs spread new anti-American seed cells while the Taliban and other radical groups retain their pre-9/11 Pakistani headquarters. With radical Shiite clerics like the Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim poised to fill the post-Saddam power vacuum, Iraq could become a Shia version of Taliban-era Afghanistan: an anarchic collection of fiefdoms run by extremist warlords happy to host training camps for terrorist organizations.

"We're much safer," Tom Ridge claims. If this is safety, give me danger.

Iraq War Casualties

"Evidence is mounting to suggest that between 5,000 and 10,000 Iraqi civilians may have died during the recent war," reports Peter Ford of the CSM. Melissa Murphy and Carl Conetta of the Project on Defense Alternatives break down the findings of several of the casualty surveys.

GOP looks to continue dominance

While the Republicans are riding high and looking to extend their dominance, Democrats are hoping to regain their focus.

2,500 per day

That's the death toll in the DRC. Translating that into terms Americans can hopefully grasp: imagine if 9/11 happened everyday.

Washington has no clear plan for Iraq

Afghanistan has descended into chaos following the American war of 2001. Unless there are drastic changes, Patrick Cockburn warns that the same thing could happen in Iraq.

More 9/11 Lies

Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta has just lied to the 9/11 Commission.

"I don't think we ever thought of an airplane being used as a missile," Mineta declared.

Oh really?

Why it's the terror, stupid

George W. Bush has the worst economic record of any president since Herbert Hoover. Karl Rove knows this. That's why Bush's 2004 campaign will be all about the terror.

No WMDs?

"Does it matter if we don't discover stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq, which seems increasingly likely?" asks Jay Bookman. "Yes. Of course it matters..."

DU fears

Concerns about the effects of depleted uranium are coming out of Afghanistan and Iraq. Thank you, US military.

The Republican Matrix

See how Tom Tomorrow and Ward Sutton see it.

Open for Business

"The United Nations' decision on Thursday to lift sanctions on Iraq should remove a big legal impediment to foreign companies that have been pushing to do business in the country," reports the Financial Times.

...and I thought the lifting of the sanctions was motivated by humanitarian concerns. Silly me.

Fighting Dirty

Ed Blanche of Lebanon's Daily Star alleges that the US and Israel are going to start relying more on preemptive strikes and extrajudicial assassinations to "fight terrorism."

The Convoy of Death

Check out some excerpts (Part I; Part II) from the documentary Afghan Massacre: Convoy of Death. Jamie Doran's film alleges that US troops were complicit in war crimes following a November 2001 uprising at the Qala-i-Jhangi fortress in Afghanistan.

The film received its first American airing on Democracy Now!, and is available for viewing via its website.

Spinning the "Peace Process"

Akiva Eldar of Ha'aretz details the plan by Israel's supporters to spin the "road map" to peace in the Middle East. The memo from political strategist Frank Luntz discussed in the story is available here (as a PDF file).

In a related essay, Adam Hanieh and Catherine Cook argue that the road map "offers no new path forward, but simply repackages many of the flaws that led to the failure of the Oslo 'peace process' of the 1990s."

Media Democracy?

Have you heard much about the FCC's plan to relax the remaining limitations on media ownership?

If not, then perhaps that's the absolute proof the media ain't liberal.

On to Tehran

Bill Kristol's getting his wish granted. The Guardian reports that the Bush administration is starting to think about initiating regime change in Iran.

Update: The Pentagon has begun "pressing hard for public and private actions that they believe could lead to the toppling of the [Iranian] government through a popular uprising," reports the Washington Post.

Acts of Hope

If recent events have got you down, Rebecca Solnit has some words of encouragement.

She thinks the possibility for positive change may be born from the ashes of the present calamity.

"The reckless Bush Administration seems to be generating what US administrations have so long held back: a world in which the old order is shattered and anything is possible," Solnit writes.

Checkbook Diplomacy

The UN resolution which legitimized the US invasion and occupation of Iraq was garnered via bribes and threats, according to Thalif Deen of IPS.

Terrorism Information Awareness

TIA is getting a makeover and a new name. Apparently, the Pentagon hopes that by throwing in the word "terrorism" the public will roll over on this one.

In related news, DARPA has plans for another program, Lifelog, which is "designed to gather every conceivable bit of information about a person's life, index all the information and make it searchable." The use of such data gathering systems has risen exponentially since 9/11.

Hawks in doves' clothing

Bush couldn't have pulled off the Iraq war if he didn't have so many liberals lining up behind him, says John MacArthur.

BushCo Reamed Us Good

Mark Morford sure has a cynical take on things. Damn if he ain't right, though.

Housekeeping

I should be on a more regular blog schedule now. Also, I've added some links to the right and have relocated the Iraq links section to the bottom of the sidebar.

The 'War on Terror' that fails to reduce the threat of terror...

The LA Times reports that US intelligence officials fear that Al Qaeda has "regrouped" and "fanned out."

Sounds an awful lot like this pronouncement from last year, no?

Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy

"Democracy, the modern world’s holy cow, is in crisis," declared Arundhati Roy in a speech delivered at the Riverside Church in Harlem, New York, on May 13.

"And the crisis is a profound one. Every kind of outrage is being committed in the name of democracy. It has become little more than a hollow word, a pretty shell, emptied of all content or meaning. It can be whatever you want it to be. Democracy is the Free World’s whore, willing to dress up, dress down, willing to satisfy a whole range of taste, available to be used and abused at will."

Ho hum...

Bad: Bush lied.

Worse: Nobody seems to care.

For the sake of the plutocracy, please take off your tie!

Before...

After...


I'm still trying to get over this story from late last week. They really think we're stupid, don't they?

Liberation? Eh, not yet

Democracy and self-rule ain't comin' to Iraq any time soon. American lackeys are going to remain in charge "for an indefinite period," according to the NY Times.

Presidential scorecard on job growth

...check out where Dubya ranks.

Goebbels would be proud

According to the NY Times, Bush's handlers are really good at promoting the President.

"We pay particular attention to not only what the president says but what the American people see," says Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. "Americans are leading busy lives, and sometimes they don't have the opportunity to read a story or listen to an entire broadcast. But if they can have an instant understanding of what the president is talking about by seeing 60 seconds of television, you accomplish your goals as communicators. So we take it seriously."

Media Reform

MIA

The Bush machine pushes forward, seemingly enacting its agenda with little resistance. Ernest Partridge is asking the relevant question: where the hell is the Democratic Party?

Saving Jessica

John Kampfner of the Guardian has discovered the real story behind the myth of Private Jessica's rescue.

FYI

Once again, blogging will be sporadic for the next week +. I'll hopefully be on a more regular schedule after that, and will try to keep these recent spasms of interruption to a minimum.

War and intelligence, or the lack thereof

If it is true that this Administration deliberately, from the very beginning, understood that the best way to mobilize the American people was to present Saddam as a direct national-security threat to us, without having the evidence beforehand that he was, that's, well, frankly, lying. That's the worst kind of deceit a President can practice. We don't elect our President to not tell us the real situation of the world, particularly when he sends kids to kill and be killed.

Read more of what Seymour Hersh has to say.

The Liberal Media at work, once again

What's the big deal about Jayson Blair? asks Alex Cockburn. Why is the NY Times running ridiculously long articles on this one reporter's "transgressions"? Why isn't Judith Miller being held to the same degree of scrutiny?

Bob Graham wants to get killed

...now he's accusing the Bush administration of "engaging in a 'coverup' of intelligence failures before and after the Sept. 11 attacks to shield it from embarrassment," according to the LA Times. He's also alleging that "the war with Iraq has allowed Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups to become a greater threat to Americans than ever before."

Indeed. Thank the President for dealing with those evil-doers properly, as well as for bringing Mr. Bin Laden to justice. Keep up the good work, George!

Galloway Docs Likely Fake

About the same time that the UK's Telegraph published an article on the links between Saddam and Osama, it also published an article that implicated George Galloway as a dupe of Saddam. Well, surprise, surprise...the Galloway documents are probably fake.

Wanna make a bet that the Saddam-Osama documents are, too?

WMD Search Team Gives Up

"The group directing all known U.S. search efforts for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is winding down operations without finding proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of outlawed arms," reports the Washington Post.

Voter Purges

"Jim Crow has moved into cyberspace -- harder to detect, craftier in operation, shifting shape into the electronic guardian of a new electoral segregation," write Greg Palast and Martin Luther King III.

For background, make sure you're familiar with Palast's blockbuster investigative report on the election debacle of 2000, "Florida's flawed 'voter-cleansing' program." For many, it was the election story never told -- or heard.

"You're not against Democracy are you?"

There's a good post over at Interesting Times on the "missionary zeal" of the PNAC plan.

2004 Flip Flop?

Will the Christian Right bolt the GOP? Will Jewish voters flee the Democratic party?

On to Tehran!

Jim Lobe warns that the intellectual leader of the neocons, Bill Kristol, is setting his sights on Iran.

Kristol writes in this week's edition of the Weekly Standard that the "liberation of Iraq was the first great battle for the future of the Middle East...But the next great battle--not, we hope, a military battle--will be for Iran."

He continues, "Iran is the tipping point in the war on proliferation, the war on terror, and the effort to reshape the Middle East. If Iran goes pro-Western and anti-terror, positive changes in Syria and Saudi Arabia will follow much more easily. And the chances for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement will greatly improve."

If past patterns are any indication, where Kristol goes...Bush is sure to follow.

When the Army owns the weather...

"Who’ll stop the rain?" asks Bob Fitrakis. "Apparently our government and a few of their closest friends in the military industrial-complex."

Party Down

A little late posting this, mostly 'cause I don't consider it particularly newsworthy. But I do think it's pretty damn funny.

Crazy, sexy, cool actor ASHTON KUTCHER sat down with Rolling Stone magazine to talk JENNIFER ANISTON, getting "punk'd" and partying with the BUSH twins -- JENNA and BARBARA! ET has the juicy rundown of Ashton's tales -- don't miss tonight's show for the story!

In the May 29th issue of the mag, on stands Friday, May 9th, Ashton shares tidbits from his sometimes loco life -- including an unforgettable party with the Bush gals. He tells Rolling Stone: "So we're hanging out ... The Bushes were underage drinking at my house. When I checked outside, one of the Secret Service guys asked me if they'd be spending the night. I said no. And then I go upstairs to see another friend and I can smell the green wafting out under his door. I open the door, and there he is smoking out the Bush twins on his hookah."

Orwellian

Bush and Blair have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for waging war on Iraq.

Don't Lift the Sanctions

"For a dozen years," Rahul Mahajan writes, "every time we in the anti-sanctions movement talked about the suffering caused by the sanctions (well over 500,000 children under the age of five dead and a society in ruins), the constant refrain from the Bush administration, the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration -- was that the suffering was not caused by sanctions but by the regime. Once the regime is destroyed, miraculously, the Bush administration realizes overnight that sanctions were actually harmful and that it's necessary to remove that burden from the Iraqi people in order to provide humanitarian aid and reconstruction."

"Did this administration which tried to keep Iraqi infants from being vaccinated for diphtheria and limited imports of streptomycin into the country, see a blinding light on the road to Baghdad?"

Not quite.

Perhaps surprisingly, Mahajan is opposed to the American plan to lift the sanctions on Iraq. Find out why.

Update: Justin Raimondo takes Mahajan to task for his flip-flop on the sanctions issue.

WTC Never Fireproofed

This is an absolute scandal. Or should be.

Federal investigators studying the collapse of the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001, say they now believe that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the government agency that built the towers, never performed the fundamental tests needed to determine how their innovative structures would perform in a fire.

The preliminary finding, if it holds up, will undermine decades of public assurances by the Port Authority that the twin towers met or exceeded the requirements of New York City's building code, and therefore would be structurally safe in a large fire. The codes are based on tests of each building component in furnaces that subject the structures, and the fireproofing insulation that protects them, to the harsh conditions of a major fire.

"At this point, we don't know why the tests were not done," said Dr. S. Shyam Sunder, who is leading the eight-month-old investigation at the Building and Fire Research Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. But Dr. Sunder added, "To the best of our knowledge, they were not done."

The investigators took great care yesterday to say they were nowhere close to definitively determining how and why the towers collapsed after they were struck by hijacked airliners, and some experts have argued that the buildings were so badly wounded by the impact of the airliners that their ultimate demise was inevitable.

But investigators, speaking at a news conference near ground zero, said their findings about the fire tests were an important development in their examination of one theory for why the buildings collapsed when and how they did: that the huge fires set by burning jet fuel weakened the lightweight floors of the towers, and that the failure of at least several floors in each building set off a chain reaction culminating in the total collapse of the complex.

The investigators have said that it is unclear whether, even if the tests had been done and the buildings been found to have met standards, the lightweight floor structures, called trusses, and the fluffy fireproofing on them could have been expected to withstand the intense fires of Sept. 11.

But the absence of the central tests has robbed the investigators of the ability to even say whether the buildings performed as their designers had specified in their original plans and as the city's codes required of other buildings like them.

A Smoking Gun?

Justin Raimondo asks, "Does Senator Bob Graham have the goods on the Bushies and 9/11?"

Water: The New Oil

"As water fights threaten to become water wars," Raywat Deonandan writes, "the world’s got more to worry about from the fallout of the war with Iraq than we’re talking about."

Iraq war to revive al-Qaeda

US intelligence thinks Al-Qaeda is "nearly crippled." Thankfully, the war in Iraq may spawn a new army of recruits.

Update: Looks like we're being screwed with on the Al-Qaeda point. William Pfaff elaborates.

Selective Intel

Seymour Hersh writes in this week's New Yorker about "a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community."

Intelligence workers affiliated with the Defense Intelligence Agency are churning out propaganda and slanted intelligence to justify American military incursions, Hersh writes. They're doing this at the bequest of the Rummy-led Pentagon.

Weapons of Mass Delusion

"We're not supposed to compare Iraq to Vietnam," Katha Pollitt writes in this week's The Nation, "but how's this for a similarity? If Saddam's dangerousness was a pretext, a way to win popular support by spreading fear, those insistent charges of WMD possession start looking rather like the manufactured Gulf of Tonkin incident. Is it OK for the government to lie as long as things go well?"

War Profiteering

How do they get away with this stuff?

Pentagon adviser Richard Perle briefed an investment seminar on ways to profit from conflicts in Iraq and North Korea just weeks after he received a top-secret government briefing on the crises in the two countries, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

Perle, who until March was chairman of the Defense Policy Board, a group of outside advisers to the Pentagon, also serves on the board of several defense contractors. The revelation raises concerns about conflicts of interest.

The Times reported that Perle attended a Defense Intelligence Agency briefing in February and three weeks later participated in a Goldman Sachs conference call in which he advised investors in a talk titled "Implications of an Imminent War: Iraq Now. North Korea Next?"

In a related story, CNN reports that Halliburton's $7 billion contract to rebuild Iraq, "awarded without competition, to make emergency repairs to Iraq's oil infrastructure, also gives it the power to run all phases of Iraq's oil industry."

Needless to say, this contract promises to be extraordinarily lucrative.

Blocking the Truth about 9/11

"The Bush administration and the nation's intelligence agencies are blocking the release of sensitive information about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks," Frank Davies reports. Apparently, the "information must be kept secret for national security reasons."

So, do you think they're trying to hide something? Nah, of course not.

Double Talk

Bush the Governor debates Bush the President. Thank Jon Stewart for picking up the ball for the American media on this one.

Campaigning for 2004 a bit early...

Tom Spencer writes about Bush’s Bogus Top Gun Moment. It turns out that the carrier landing wasn't necessary after all. It was just good PR.

Gosh, I'm shocked. Senator Robert Byrd is just plain pissed.

Propaganda

That Saving Private Lynch story is getting more suspicious by the day...

Mitch Potter of the Toronto Star writes about the "grand myth" of her rescue.

See No Evil. Hear No Evil.

In an article for the American Prospect, Mary Lynn F. Jones explains how Bush gets a free ride from the media.

Damn Scary

Have you heard about Kyle Williams? William MacDougall has the goods on the 14-year old conservative "whiz-kid" who already has his own book and website.

Business Connections

It’s ironic (maybe you can think of a better word) that there are stronger links between Osama and the Bush administration than Osama and Saddam, even with the valiant efforts of the right wing press. Check out what's in this week’s New Yorker:

It turns out that a money trail runs—albeit rather circuitously—from the lucrative business of rebuilding Iraq to the fortune behind Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden’s estranged family, a sprawling, extraordinarily wealthy Saudi Arabian dynasty, is a substantial investor in a private equity firm founded by the Bechtel Group of San Francisco. Bechtel is also the global construction and engineering company to which the U.S. government recently awarded the first major multimillion-dollar contract to reconstruct war-ravaged Iraq. In a closed competitive bidding process, the United States Agency for International Development chose Bechtel to rebuild the major elements of Iraq’s infrastructure, including its roads, railroads, airports, hospitals, and schools, and its water and electrical systems. In the first phase of the contract, the U.S. government will pay Bechtel nearly thirty-five million dollars, but experts say that the cost is likely to reach six hundred and eighty million during the next year and a half.

When the contract was awarded, two weeks ago, the Administration did not mention that the bin Laden family has an ongoing relationship with Bechtel.

I wonder if this is going to be on this evening's news...

Who nixed the Syria war?

The White House is denying a UPI report that Karl Rove and Condi Rice shot down the plans for going after Syria immediately once hostilities in Iraq ceased.

The view from 35,000 feet

Tom Engelhardt examines what was up with AWOL Bush's highly-publicized stop off on the USS Abraham Lincoln and Rummy's "victory lap through the imperium." Be sure to check the links in Tom's post.

Jobs Picture

The Economic Policy Institute breaks down the state of the job market. It's not a pretty picture.

Loyalty Day

This smells an awful lot like fascism. Pledge allegiance to the Fatherland, little sheep...

Mike Hawash

Warblogging.com has the low down on Maher (Mike) Hawash's current predicament.

On the American expedition to Baghdad

Tariq Ali writes about the recolonization of Iraq in the New Left Review.

Afghanistan to be launching pad for new rounds of terror

"The new face of al-Qaeda...will emerge soon," reports the Asia Times. Terrorist cells are already "in place in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates and they will be responsible for carrying out attacks - including suicide attacks - against United States interests in a number of regions."

Backlog of Links

Here are some of the links I've accumulated over the past week or so. Also note that I've taken down the "Stop Bush. Stop the War." icon to the right (again, thanks to LAM).

The "war" is over, but I reserve the right to throw the icon back up if (when?) the administration gets ready to move on. I've also reorganized the "iraq war" links section. I was tempted to take it down, but will leave it up for the time being.

Here we go...

* Violence is as American as apple pie.

* The battle for the soul of the American republic has just begun. Robert Parry explains how the fight is taking shape.

* "America's key adviser on a new Iraqi constitution has said that the United States should accept the country becoming an Islamic democracy," reports the BBC.

* Neil Mackay of the Glasgow Sunday Herald reports on how Iraq is going to be cut up by US multinationals in a showcase for privatization.

* The NY Times reports that the "number of black Americans under 18 years old who live in extreme poverty has risen sharply since 2000 and is now at its highest level since the government began collecting such figures in 1980, according to a study by the Children's Defense Fund."

* The US is detaining minors on Guantanamo.

* The US is going to begin pulling troops out of Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden has been appeased.

* Hey, did you know the Bush administration deceived its way into the Iraq war? It turns out the road to Baghdad was paved with lies. Au contraire, say the Bushies. They weren't lying. The administration merely harped on Saddam's WMDs "to gain the legal justification for war from the United Nations and to stress the danger at home to Americans," ABC News reports.

* The pro-Israel lobby has plans on exploiting the war in Iraq to get across its message. A document commissioned by the Wexner Foundation "spells out the tactics that Israel and its US advocates should use to maintain support for Israel and its hardline policies," according to Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada.

* The evidence connecting Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden is bogus, according to Wayne Madsen. British intelligence is skeptical, too.

* Ashleigh Banfield speaks her mind about the US media's woeful war reporting and is chopped down by her handlers. Friggin hypocrites.

* Muslims eye the euro as the new oil currency? Maybe William Clark was right all along...

* Neocons don't like the "Road Map" to peace in the Mid East.

* The Bush administration has taken aim at the core civil rights values of the United States, according to a new report from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund.

* Many of the missing Iraqi antiquities "are speeding through the underground art market into the hands of foreign collectors," according to William Langley of the Telegraph.

* Phil Brennan details how the CIA defeated Saddam Hussein. In a related story, Pepe Escobar of the Asia Times chronicles the widespread belief in the Arab world that Hussein made a deal to turn over Baghdad to the invading forces.

* In an article for the Progressive, Robert Jensen writes that the Pentagon owned the American media during the Iraq war. Much of the reporting was merely stenography, a perfect example of the bankruptcy of contemporary journalism.

* So you didn't support the Iraqi invasion, eh? It's payback time!

* To imply that the neocons drove the US to war in Iraq makes you a conspiracy theorist and borderline anti-Semite, according to Robert J. Lieber, a professor of government and foreign service at Georgetown University.

* EPA agents "are being diverted from their normal investigative work to provide security and drivers for agency chief Christie Whitman," John Heilprin of the Associated Press reports.

* The Bush White House wants to keep the secrets of 9/11 hidden. Justin Raimondo elaborates.

* "According to journalists close to the Vatican," Wayne Madsen alleges, "the Pope and his closest advisers are...concerned that the ultimate acts of evil - the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon - were known in advance by senior Bush administration officials. By permitting the attacks to take their course, there is a perception within the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy that a coup d'etat was implemented, one that gave Bush and his leadership near-dictatorial powers to carry out their agenda."

* Republicans are looking to exploit the 9/11 tragedy in order to get Bush re-elected in 2004. Bush is cozying up to the military, too, hoping to refine his image for the campaign.

* William Greider argues that the Right's grand ambition is to rollback the 20th century.

* Saddam gassed his own people! So did the US government.

* "The Bush administration and leading Senate Republicans sought today to give the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon far-reaching new powers to demand personal and financial records on people in the United States as part of foreign intelligence and terrorism operations," the NY Times reports.

* Bill "Our Guide to Moral Clarity" Bennett is a hypocrite. Try to act surprised.