The violent uprising in Iraq comes as no surprise, the sequence of disaster having being exactly predicted in these pages, among others. Even Big Media seems to have finally glimpsed the script. The confluence of a determined administration whose arrogance, dishonesty, and ineptitude know no bounds, with an intractable trap of it's own making, in the heart of the middle east, will provide the daily horrors of a West Bank style occupation on a grand scale. (NB: Moqtadr Al-Sadr has aligned his movement with Hamas and Hezbollah.) In fact, we've made our own West Bank, impossible to occupy, impossible to leave without provoking violent disclocation in the middle east. Light at the end of the tunnel? That seems entirely up to the "bad guys". That's not good. And here the mind-set of this administration, chicken-hawks instructing a man who never travelled and whose ignorance of the world and history is matched only by his lack of curiosity, really causes a problem. They think they can eliminate the 'bad guys'... by being tough, and determined; "smoke 'em out of their holes", "one by one". They don't seem to understand the nature of the problem. The American occupation, replete with deadly roadblocks and midnight house to house searches, cannot fail to enrage Iraqis, cannot fail to attract jihadists from all over the region, and cannot fail to stimulate all kinds of armed factions to prove themselves against The Occupier. Indeed it seems likely that, whatever the good intentions of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the next rulers of Iraq will be the ones seen to have expelled the American led Coalition. In the meantime, we peer into an abyss of protracted, heartbreaking violence and chaos. Meanwhile, Al Qaeda, heretofore kept out of Iraq by the Baathist regime, can now contemplate a rich field for new recruits in the Iraqi chaos. Whom can Rumsfeld turn Iraq over to? Iraq is now, for the first time in a generation, seething; the lid is off. Who could subdue this wasp's nest? (Actually, there is one guy.... and we've got him, maybe we could ah, offer him a deal.... you know who I'm talking about...let's just give it back to... Saddam Hussein!)
Al Qaeda itself is just a militarized fringe of a much larger phenomenon, a millenial movement, a pan-Arab, pan-muslim generational calling for rejection of westernization, globalisation, Americanisation. For many 'disaffected' young men of these countries, it is The Cause. And America has now clearly joined Israel as occupiers; militarised America and Israel are seen as the teeth of the monster as it bites into Muslim lands. (For the jihadists, no surprise that the British are our biggest ally in this venture.. the Brits were the last colonial power to rule the Arabs. Spain? a crusader ally, which expelled the Moors in 1492.) Iraq cannot be pacified by getting tougher. As on the West Bank, every helicopter missile strike which kills an enemy will make three more. This was such a bad idea. But for the ideologues of Al Qaeda, a double success... the hesitators now see clearly 'the true' American face which Al Qaeda has all along claimed lay hidden- the face of deception and manipulation, invasion and military occupation, looting of resources, and brutal solutions to 'security problems'. Ultimately, the ill-advised invasion of Iraq has given a marginal extremism the dimensions of a grand historic struggle, offering glory and martyrdom to a lost generation of Muslim men.

Our previous pieces re Iraq Occupation are still very pertinent:
March 1: Truth or Consequences ... June 18: Quicksand ... May 18: Bait Taken ... April 22: Hot Potato

Good day to day depth reporting on Iraq: Chris Albritton's Back-to-Iraq.com... Juan Cole's analysis is excellent: JuanCole.com, and Rahul Mahajan's "Empire Notes" is excellent reporting from on the ground in Iraq, notably from Fallujah.

PBS Frontline has done a good documentary on the Iraq mess: "Truth, War, and Consequences" - ( watch online here)

As Iraq twists and turns in the inevitable debacle, the 911 commission hearings remind us of what started this all, of the events that became the ticket for the neocons to launch a not so secret campaign to remake the world according to their chicken-hawk fantasies of dominion. The administration's stonewalling and obstruction of the 911 Commission's investigation has been relentless and scandalous, raising even more doubts and questions about the 'official' version of the events of 911. The latest twist, that the President will only appear before the commission if accompanied by Dick Cheney, is a new level of surreal. Visit 911 Citizen's Watch and the Family Steering Committee site to stay informed on what should be asked- and may not be- of the witnesses. There are a lot- A LOT- of unanswered questions re 911. We'll be doing a piece soon on them, so watch this space.

There are numerous investigations ongoing into administration malfeasance; to keep up with the progress on all fronts I can recommend a few websites which are updated daily: The Center for American Progress, the site of the new progressive think-tank managed by John Podesta. CAP's very complete "Progress Report" can be emailed to you daily.
Salon's War Room, daily briefings from the new Salon Washington Bureau, run by Sidney Blumenthal, are wide and deep. (If you are not a Salon subscriber, just go in using the day pass, it's no big deal.)
Also, Josh Marshall's masterful column, Talking Points Memo, updated several times a day, digs deep and misses little of capitol shenanigans.
The Judicial Watch website keeps up to date on the progress of the many court cases against figures in the administration.
These sites are all linked from the side columns, along with many other important sources. Stay informed, see through the lies, and talk to other voters!

I've recommended many excellent books in the side columns which can be purchased through Amazon. Some must-reads: "Plan of Attack" by Bob Woodward, "Against all Enemies" by Richard Clarke, "Worse Than Watergate" by John Dean, "House of Bush, House of Saud" by Craig Unger, "The Price of Loyalty" by Ron Susskind, "The New Pearl Harbor" by David Ray Griffin, "American Dynasty" by Kevin Phillips, and "Ghost Wars" by Steve Coll.
  - SM/Dvmx

UN Bugging Scandal
It appears the US and UK bugged phone lines at the UN last spring... Blair government drops case against UN spy scandal whisteleblower Katherine Gun (... story). Ex-minister Claire Short says US and UK bugged UN's Koffi Annan in run-up to war (... story) ... Annan reacts... Hans Blix, Richard Butler, and Boutros Boutros Ghali said they think the US bugged their phones too (...story)

Now They Tell Us
"In the period before the war, US journalists were far too reliant on sources sympathetic to the administration. Those with dissenting views- and there were more than a few- were shut out. Reflecting this, the coverage was highly deferential to the White House. This was especially apparent on the issue of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction- the heart of the President's case for war. Despite abundant evidence of the administration's brazen misuse of intelligence in this matter, the press repeatedly let officials get away with it. As journalists rush to chronicle the administration's failings on Iraq, they should pay some attention to their own."
By Michael Massing February 26, 2004 NYRB: read article

Disappearing the Dead
Project on Defense Alternatives Report:
"Among those endeavors that a state or a people may undertake, none is more terrible than war. None has repercussions more far-reaching or profound. Thus, a grave responsibility to one's own nation and to the global community attends any decision to go to war. And part of this responsibility is to estimate and gauge the effects of war, including the collateral damage and civilian casualties that it incurs. ..
Distortion of the civilian casualty issue can only serve to impede the sober assessment of US policy, policy options, and their consequences," states a draft copy of the report, provided to the Globe. "It is antithetical both to well-informed public debate and to sensible policy making...Until US political and opinion leaders disabuse themselves of the `new war' ideology, the nation will be brought to war easily, but left unprepared for and perplexed by the consequences that follow." (... Boston Globe story) (...Report Text)

A powerful film for the Kucinich campaign shows the war's seldom-seen in America effect on innocent Iraqi civilians. (...view flash)

Terror Prosecutor Sues Ashcroft
A federal prosecutor in a major terrorism case in Detroit has taken the rare step of suing Attorney General John Ashcroft, alleging the Justice Department interfered with the case, compromised a confidential informant, and exaggerated results in the war on terrorism. Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino of Detroit accused the Justice Department of "gross mismanagement" of the war on terrorism in a lawsuit filed late Friday in federal court in Washington. Convertino also accused Justice officials of intentionally divulging the name of one of his confidential terrorism informants (CI) to retaliate against him. The leak put the informant at grave risk, forced him to flee the United States and "interfered with the ability of the United States to obtain information from the CI about current and future terrorist activities,"(...story)

Halliburton Follies:
French prosecutors are considering naming former CEO Dick Cheney in a bribery scandal (ref); Nigeria, where the bribery allegedly took place, is opening it's own investigation. Halliburton hired James Doty of the law firm Baker Botts to conduct an internal investigation into allegedly corrupt payments the company made in Nigeria in the late 1990s when Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO. (Baker-Botts is also representing the Saudis in the suit brought by the families of victims of 9/11.) Halliburton is being investigated for overcharging the US for meals to soldiers and for gasoline in Iraq; 2 employees have been fired for taking lucrative kickbacks from Kuwaiti sub-contractors.

White House Stonewalling 911 Commission
says Nebraska's Senator Kerrey

"What we got was a summary that had been modified substantially with many things taken out," said Kerrey. "I have not seen everything I need. The summary was confusing and limited, and does not inform anyone reading it what was going on in the White House from February 1998 to September 11 2001." (...article)

"They don't have any excuse because the information was in their lap, and they didn't do anything to prevent it."
-Senator Richard Shelby, then ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee; member of the joint intelligence committee that investigated 9/11

"I don't believe any longer that it's a matter of connecting the dots. I think they had a veritable blueprint, and we want to know why they didn't act on it."
-Senator Arlen Specter, a Republican member of the joint intelligence committee that investigated 9/11

Plame Investigation
3/03: Air Force One phone records subpoenaed (...story)
Update WashPost Feb 10
Prospect on Plame Gate (...article Prospect)

Scalia on DuckHunting with Cheney:
"It's acceptable practice to socialize with executive branch officials when there are not personal claims against them. That's all I'm going to say for now. Quack, quack." (...ref)

House Republican CyberBurglary
2 House Republican Staffers resign in probe...( story) Criminal charges on the way? (... TPM story)

Dubious Appointments
Bush appointed William DeWitt to the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board; DeWitt is a Bush friend and fundraiser from Cincinnatti who has no relevant experience whatsoever. The board oversees a constellation of intelligence gathering agencies: the Central Intelligence Agency, the military branches' intelligence agencies, the National Reconnaissance Office, and others. The Bush administration would not say how often the board meets, the number of staff, or the board's budget.

Bush appointed Lawrence Silberman, a right-wing judge, to chair the Iraq WMD commission.
"The senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington has been near the febrile center of the largest political scandals of the past two decades, from the rumored "October surprise" of 1980 and the Iran-contra trials to the character assassination of Anita Hill and the impeachment of President Clinton. Whenever right-wing conspiracies swing into action, Silberman is there." (...story)

Also named to the commission was Sen. John McCain, seen by many as a guarantor of independence. McCain was in New Hampshire recently campaigning for Bush. "I have some disagreements with him, but that doesn't mean that I think his overall record doesn't deserve re-election. I think he does." McCain said. (...ref)

Bush named Army Lt. General William G. "Jerry" Boykin Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. The top Pentagon official assigned the task of capturing Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein is reported to have said of a Muslim warlord in Somalia, "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol." (...ref)

George Bush and the Treacherous Country
By Steve Erickson, LA Weekly, 2/13/04
"Nothing about Bush or his presidency makes sense without taking into account the theocratic psyche. Only once you consider the possibility that his administration means to "repeal the Enlightenment", in the words of Greil Marcus, do Bush's presidency and his conception of power, their ends and their means, become comprehensible. Doubt is personally abhorrent to Bush; otherwise he couldn't have assumed the presidency in the manner he did, with decisions and policies that from the first dismissed out of hand the controversy that surrounded his very election." (...article)

Arab View: The US public diplomacy hoax: Why do they keep insulting us? (...read editorial)

Two independent reports strongly criticize the Bush administration for a damaging politicization of science policy.
"Across a broad range of issues, the administration has undermined the quality of the scientific advisory system and the morale of the government's outstanding scientific personnel... this behavior has serious consequences for all Americans," said UCS Chairman Kurt Gottfried. Signatories include 12 Nobel laureates, 11 winners of the National Medal of Science, three recipients of the prestigious Crafoord Prize, the heads of some of the country's leading universities and biomedical research institutes, and two former presidential science advisers ... (...story) / (...story 2)

Bizarre?
A US Intell Agency Planned an Exercise With Plane Crashing Building on Morning of 9/11 Read this story, archived for the record..
And here's the segment from the Lone Gunmen pilot with a plane being commandeered remotely by a rogue government operation and driven straight for the World Trade Center (!) (quicktime 13.5 mb)

Pakistan- At The Edge of the Abyss
Two determined assassination attempts on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in as many weeks, involving sophisticated explosive devices and suicide bombers, make it clear that Al Quaeda has decide to kill him. Why now? Have they prepared something to follow? Pakistan, remember, as opposed to Iraq, is loaded with WMD. Nukes, in fact, lots of them; and fleets of American F-16s, French Mirage bombers, and various missiles to deliver them. And Pakistan, as opposed to pre-invasion Iraq, is rife with BinLadenism, particularly in the military and intelligence services. If an assassination succeeded, how long would the administration wait for the smoke to clear, before taking pre-emptive action against the country's nuclear arsenals?

Elections 2004: Democrats Unite to Unseat Bush

Kerry Emerges Victorious From a Field of Fine Candidates
On Super Tuesday, John Kerry emerged as the candidate who will take on Bush. Read his victory speech here...
Read John Edwards gracious concession speech here.
General Wesley Clark had earlier bowed out and endorsed Kerry: "Sir, request permission to come aboard." (...story)
Read supporters' letters to Clark on his endorsement of Kerry.
Dean gets enormous credit for leading the way. Here's his Super Tuesday Vermont-Victory/Concession Speech... (and his statement on Nader's candidacy.)
On the eve of Super Tuesday, Kerry and Edwards field dueling Op-Eds in the Times, describing pivotal moments in their lives, Kerry the soldier in Vietnam, and Edwards the trial lawyer, getting the common guy his due from a big corporation.

NB: New York's Corporate Crime Crusader Elliott 'Ness' Spitzer endorsed Kerry. (...story)
Peter Coyote writes a good overview on the Democratic race.

02/21:
The Anybody But Bush forces have reason to be encouraged...as the gap between the administration's pronouncements and the reality out there widens, Bush's approval numbers are in free-fall; the Democrats seem eager to unite behind a strong candidate, and have staged record turnouts in all the primaries, which bodes well for the democratic vote in November. But Bush has over a hundred million dollars yet to spend, and the Republicans can be counted on to let loose volleys of nasty rumour and caricaturisation. And, to some degree, the administration can orchestrate the events of state, such as, say, the capture of Osama BinLaden, possibly just in time for the election. So there's still a long way to go before November. Then there are those electronic voting machines... In Florida, the state Division of Elections said touch-screen votes would not be used in a recount. (In one recent local election decided by 12 votes, 134 ballots were inexplicably blank.) Democrats are organizing to vote by absentee ballot, to ensure a paper trail. (story...)
New group set up to monitor this: VerifiedVoting.org

NYTimes Ed on Flawed elections:
"There is a fast-growing list of elections in which electronic machines have demonstrably failed, or produced dubious but uncheckable results." (...NYT editorial)
From Adam Cohen's piece in The NY Times 3/01/04: "You can put in dynamic files that self-destruct after the election... there would be no evidence." (...article)

Related: NYTimes on threat to democracy in rampant republican redistricting. (..story)

Is America Ready for The Wild Kerry Family?
Dad may come off like a stiff, but Mom and the kids are a whole other story. By Rebecca Traister, Salon (... article)

A foretaste of the right wing's coming attacks on Kerry: "Kerry joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a motley group of pacifists and schoolboy Lenins declaring it's commitment to revolutionary change and funded by "Hanoi" Jane Fonda....Kerry also is being said to pander to the style and febrile hysteria of the sixties generation by leering suggestions that Attorney General John Ashcroft is a racist tool of a WASP elite..."(...read more)

You may have missed Al Gore's rousing speech in Tennessee during the primary there... Al is finding his voice! Here is an audio extract: (audio mp3)

Josh Marshall on Chandler's win ...."the bigger story here is about the Democrats and the Internet, and the way this technology seems to click, shall we say, for the Democratic demographic." (article...)

Richard Bidlack, a 78-year-old retiree from Boonton, N.J., who says he voted for Bush in 2000: "I'm so upset at Bush, I'll vote for a chimpanzee before I vote for him." (...ref)

Pradipto Bagchi, 30, a financial analyst from Manchester, NH told the New York Times: "It hurts to vote this way, but I think George Bush has been a disaster, and if my cat had the best change of beating Bush, I'd vote for my cat." (...ref)

"I would vote for anybody else. I would even vote for Donald Duck" said David Castillo, a businessman and Vietnam veteran living in Saudi Arabia, who said he "voted for Bush last time but never again." (...ref) Such remarks are becoming commonplace. Perhaps sensing an opening, Smeagle (aka Gollum) has apparently declared his candidacy for the presidency, recorded here (mp3 audio) as heard live on radiopower.org...

And then there's Arnold....
SM tells why he likes him...

Stay Informed! Progressive Web Radio

The following progressive news and talk shows are accessible online. Go to the websites for links to streaming shows.

Air America - Launched April 1 with Al Franken et al.
National Public Radio
Democracy Now

ieAmerica.com closing down; RadioPower.org will webstream the Thom Hartmann show and the Marianne Williamson show.

Thom Hartmann, author of "Unequal Protection" and "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight" does a terrific talk show; he knows alot, and is thoughtful and incisive. (...website)

Marianne Williamson, known for teaching "A Course in Miracles", does a talk show of her own- sort of post new age progressive. (...website)

Jim Hightower, our favorite populist pundit, always scores a bulls-eye. (...website) Jim also does the "Rolling Thunder - Down Home Democracy Tour"

Nancy Skinner, the smart and sassy liberal talk-show host, has taken time off to run for the Senate! (see her website)

Congressman Bernie Sanders sometimes phones in for a show; see his website for more media info; watch his flash movie on "what's really going on in America".

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