Catch Up

Here are some of the more important stories I've missed recently. As I mention below, posting will continue to be sporadic for the near future.

* In an interview which airs on CBS' 60 Minutes today, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill reveals that the Bush administration began planning for an invasion of Iraq in January 2001. O'Neill also refers to Bush as "a blind man in a room full of deaf people" in the exchange with correspondent Lesley Stahl.

* As David Kay and 400 members of the Iraq Study Group go home empty handed, David Corn is curious if Dubya will ever admit he was wrong. Now that the WMD issue has formally been revealed as a scam, Bill Berkowitz wonders if the media will begin paying attention, too.

* Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper. This story would be hilarious if it didn't have such serious implications. My eight year old niece could draw better than this.

* Jim Lobe reports on the findings of a massive, 107 page report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), "WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications," which contends that the Bush administration "systematically misrepresented" the Iraqi threat in the run-up to war. Tom Regan of the CSM provides additional context.

* Not surprisingly, Colin Powell "disagrees" with the CEIP report. Considering his track record, it's fair to say the "good soldier" has lost his credibility on this issue. If you can stomach it, take another glance at Powell's speech to the UN from last February.

* Kenneth Pollack, a strong proponent of war on Iraq under certain conditions, asks in the Atlantic Monthly, "How could we have been so far off in our estimates of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs?" Good question.

* "'Information dominance' came of age during the conflict in Iraq," writes David Miller in the Guardian. "It is a little discussed but highly significant part of the US government strategy of 'full spectrum dominance,' integrating propaganda and news media into the military command structure more fundamentally than ever before." In an article extracted from his book Tell Me Lies: Propaganda & Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq, Miller takes a closer look at the propaganda machine that drove the US and UK to war. For over 50 examples of this machine in action, re-read Sam Gardiner's research report, "Truth From These Podia." Also recall a pertinent question from FAIR: The Office of Strategic Influence Is Gone, But Are Its Programs In Place?

* A narrow lens: According to research conducted by ADT Research, producers of the Tyndall Report, the three major US broadcast networks devoted a combined total of 15 minutes to global warming, 39 minutes to AIDS, and 4,047 minutes to Iraq in evening news broadcasts during 2003.

* Ritt Goldstein and David Pratt question whether Saddam Hussein's capture was as straight-forward as the Pentagon claims.

* John Pilger elaborates on what the "normalizers of violence" -- Bush, Blair, et al. -- don't want you to know. He's referring to "the nature and scale of the 'coalition' crime in Iraq," of course.

* Brian Cloughley writes that "it is important to step back and look at the Iraq shambles, because what Bush administration officials have done historically is to have lied to the entire world. And now that their lies have been identified for what they are, they seek to justify their war by pious, outraged complaints about what Saddam did historically." He continues, "We are, alas, accustomed to being lied to, and we can handle that. But it is a different matter when history is rewritten, for the only defence we have is memory, which is exactly what the mind-benders in the White House and Downing Street are trying to defeat."

* Doug Giebel thinks the US "intends to stay in Iraq." Yep. That's all part of the plan.

* "Neocons are not 'out' yet," reports Leon Hadar of the Business Times, "although they are certainly starting to lose some of the political battles in the US capital. But the only figure who could strike a real and final blow to their influence in Washington is the occupant of the White House. And it's not clear yet whether he is ready to do that."

* Matthew B. Stannard of the SF Chronicle reports that between 7 and 12.5 million Iraqis are homeless -- "a staggering figure for a nation of 25 million."

* "Man, they can't pay me enough to stay here." So says a 23 year old soldier in response to the offer of a $10,000 re-enlistment bonus from the Pentagon, which might be an indication that the US military is stretched thin or, more ominously, that the return of the draft is on the horizon. The military has also formally issued a stop-loss order for those involved with operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

* Check out Part I and Part II of Manuel Valenzuela's take on what life as an American soldier is really like. He writes, "Hidden behind the illusory fantasy the corporate media portrays of noble fighting in tumultuous wars, lies a world of death, suffering and lifelong sacrifice, a world of psychological trauma and physical torture, a world of Veteran abandonment by the same government that has sent millions to kill and be killed, a world where America's finest, along with their families, are swept underneath the rug of indifference and a world in which ethnicity, class structure and society's deadly ills mix in a noxious concoction to form that most clandestine of military drafts that is based on poverty, lack of education and the caste one is born into."

* "Al-Qaida may have experienced some setbacks since 9/11 but we should expect the mood within its more senior ranks to be one of quiet confidence in its eventual success," writes Paul Rogers. "Whether such confidence is realistic will depend on whether there are radical changes in western approaches to the underlying dynamics from which al-Qaida draws its support. At present, there are few signs of that."

* Scott Gold of the LA Times reports on the domestic terrorist case which stretches from Texas to New Jersey. This story is getting relatively little attention in the media.

* The Toronto Sun's Eric Margolis sees another "danger from within" -- from America's hard right, "a curious farrago of Armageddon-seeking southern Protestants; neo-conservative supporters of Israel's right-wing Likud party; and the military-industrial-petroleum complex."

* A new constitution for Afghanistan was approved last week. Optimistically, the NY Times heralds that this may usher in "a new era of democracy after a quarter-century of war." Ahmed Rashid, on the other hand, cautions that the negotiations over the constitution at the loya jirga demonstrate that little has changed, "and that a bloc of neo-Taliban Islamic fundamentalists, who helped US forces defeat the Taliban in December 2001, can still exercise enormous influence" over Afghan politics.

* "Bush knew!" William Rivers Pitt revisits May 2002, when the press began puncturing the Bush administration's innocence about 9/11. Curiously, the stories unearthed back then have disappeared down the memory hole.

* "The White House has retreated from its doctrine of regime change and pre-emptive military action and is returning to traditional diplomacy in an effort to repackage George Bush as a president for peace," the Guardian reports.

* John Dean speculates as to why Ashcroft recused himself from the Plame leak investigation. In a related piece, Ray McGovern laments that this development means little, and that it is likely the scandal will not be resolved until after the 2004 election.

* Kim Zetter follows-up on Bush's expansion of the PATRIOT Act under the cover of Saddam Hussein's capture last month.

* Andrew Gumbel of the Independent reports on the return of military Keynsianism to Washington.

* Eric Alterman responds to James Traub's NY Times Magazine cover story from last Sunday, "The Things They Carry." Alterman is incredulous that journalists like Traub "insist that it is the Democrats, rather than Bush, who must demonstrate their 'credibility' on matters of national security."

* "It is not the increasingly likely prospect of Howard Dean's nomination that could lead to a Democratic defeat in November," argues Stephen Zunes, "it's his opponents' attacks against him."

* "The Labor Department is giving employers tips on how to avoid paying overtime to some of the 1.3 million low-income workers who would become eligible under new rules expected to be finalized early this year," the AP reports.

* Consumer debt has more than doubled in the past 10 years, with Americans now spending more than 18% of their after-tax income on debt repayments. Credit card delinquencies have also hit an all-time high.

* The most recent figures from the Labor Department aren't good. Forecasters expected between 130,000-200,000 jobs to be added this past month, but payrolls rose only by 1,000. Unemployment dipped down to 5.7%, its lowest level in over one year, primarily because more than 300,000 workers dropped out of the labor force.

* "While headlines continue to tell us how great the economy is doing," Bob Herbert writes in the NY Times, a new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities suggests that "states across the U.S. are pulling the plug on desperately needed health coverage for low-income Americans, including about a half-million children."

* In New York City, nearly half of the homeless are children.

* David Callahan questions the myth of the populist stock market in CSM. Apparently, the bursting of the bubble didn't kill off the "market populism" of the nineties.

* Bush's No Child Left Behind education bill is coming under criticism from both sides of the political spectrum, according to the LA Times. Dick Meyer thinks a better description for the program would be "No Slogan Left Behind." See also: "Why the Right Hates Public Education."

* The NewStandard's C.P. Pandya elaborates on some of the shortcomings of Bush's proposed immigration reforms.

* Rates of consumption typically confined to the United States are expanding worldwide, according to Worldwatch's "State of the World 2004" report. Jim Lobe explains that such a development, while boosting economies and creating jobs, also puts great strains on the Earth's natural resources.

* A seriously disturbing study published in the magazine Nature has found that global warming will drive approximately 1 million species of plants and animals into extinction by 2050. In a related article in the journal Science, David King, Britain's chief science advisor, says that "climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism."

* "The recent foot-and-mouth and mad cow scares should serve as a wake-up call to the challenges of a borderless world," write Hilary French and Brian Halweil in Orion Magazine.

* That Republicans are playing the "Hitler card" in order to marginalize MoveOn.org's "Bush in 30 Seconds" contest is an encouraging sign, says David Lindorff.

* Is America becoming fascist? Check out the collected articles over at the Crisis Papers website.

* David Graeber and Andrej Grubacic examine the appeal of anarchist ideas at the beginning of the 21st century.

* Witness the return of the Bush halo!