January 2004, Week 2

Monday  January 5, 2003

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.

André GIDE French author (1869-1951)

Christy and I got the kids going with such efficiency we had damn near 45 minutes to kill before we had to take them to school. Christy took the Lancaster kids and then came back up and took "B" to see his Drug Therapist...

I took Cindy to school and Autumn and I dined at McDonalds again, we sat behind some CHP who were having some coffee and trying to get warm after being out taking care of two bad traffic accidents. Listening to them talk it appears that nothing has changed, apparently the only sane, responsible, worthwhile people in the world are other Highway Patrolmen. Their job would be a snap if it wasn't for all those damn civilians mucking up the highways and making their lives miserable. I guess that mentality is universal. Phone people think that their customers and most of the people in other organizations are all idiots. Doctors think their patients are pathetic and are amazed that they have managed to attain whatever age they are, teachers think their jobs would be wonderful if it wasn't for the damn kids running around all over the place. Boss's think their employees are hopeless screw-ups and employees think their employers are hopeless screw-ups. Human Nature... why must folks think that they are the only rational people in the world... 

I am hoping the temperature gets up to at least 40 or so so I can take the bike for a short spin... Christy and I are planning to have a "Back to School Celebratory Lunch".

Lunch went well, Olive Garden... that's big time for us. We went to Sam's Club and made it out in time to get "B" and the rest of the Acton kids... Autumn had a very good day, Amy was said she really enjoyed being with her today.

(Autumn and Amy)

Mike came home and went to work in the shed fixing his bike, he came in the house with an attitude because he couldn't fix the bearings on the front axle... I went out and fixed it for him and he was still pissed. He didn't take any of his medicine for about 2 weeks, he has been at Mark's and Donnie's house except for Christmas eve and Christmas day. He gets exceptionally belligerent and confrontational when he doesn't get his meds. The problem is that he perceives himself as being perfectly reasonable. This morning he took Christian's headphones without asking, it mad Christian mad and he demanded them back when he got home... Mike called him some names and started to push him around, Mike is easily twice Christian's size. I got between them and tried to talk to Mike, he couldn't understand what was wrong with taking Christians headphones... he wanted them, that was all the justification he needed... he took them.

Tuesday  January 6, 2003

The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else. 

George Bernard Shaw 

Today I made my appointments for the Diabetic Seminar, apparently my blood-sugar was out of whack and my Dr. says I am borderline. He wants me to attend some classes and modify my diet.

I sent off $1146.00 to the IRS... it has taken since last July 7th to get that mess resolved, after all that aggravation if getting Washington Mutual Bank to figure out how I got Peter J. Daggett 1099-INT form I finally got the corrected form and called the IRS.... unfortunately, it only knocked down what I owe buy about $100... the bulk of my underpayment was due to me not realizing there was such a thing as "Self Employment Tax" I declared the income from Christy's teaching but didn't pay the stupid tax... damn.

Yesterday I noticed that the residue of an accident at the intersection of Soledad Canyon and Wisconsin St. (that's the intersection by Meadowlark School) I said to myself, "I hope it isn't someone I know"... well unfortunately, it was. It was Amy, Autumn's Aide, taking her kids to school, someone pulled out in front of her. They had a Stop Sign, she didn't. She got a broken wrist and some bruises, but she had her two boys with her. One got a broken back the other was uninjured. He was sent home with her so the break apparently wasn't debilitating.   

Wednesday  January 7, 2003

"At a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

George Orwell

"I think George Bush is going to win in a walk. I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord that it's going to be a blowout election in 2004," he told his television flock, citing several days of prayer at the end of 2003. "The Lord has just blessed him. I mean, he could make terrible mistakes and comes out of it. It doesn't make any difference what he does, good or bad; God picks him up because he's a man of prayer, and God's blessing him."

Pat Robertson

This sort of crap makes me sad for my country, and frightened. Pat Robertson is a hugely popular person in some circles, he is capable of inciting hundreds of thousands of people to enforce his will. He is a powerful man, he and Jerry Fallwell are both out for power and influence. They would send their worshipful minions out to support Bush because Bush supports them

Christy and I went to the Diabetic Overview today... Pretty good presentation, I have most of the symptoms (So does Christy) We got a "Blood Glucose Monitoring System... Christy and I got home from lunch and tested ourselves, I am the one who is probably Borderline (Pre-Diabetic) she is supposed to be fine, I tested at 115, she testes at 127...

Cindy had a minimum day today, I remembered I had to pick her up about 5 minutes after I ordered lunch at Don Cuco's... damn, I had to dash over and pick her up. This is the second time I have done that..

America has survived two world wars and other foreign engagements without anything more than a spent Japanese torpedo drifting onto a California beach. 60 years ago. Militarily, this is the best-armed nation on Earth. Given the odds of harm to any one citizen (which are infinitely less than the likelihood of dying from a car accident), Americans should be mostly undaunted by al-Qaeda.

Yet, going by "terror alerts" emitted by the Government and seized by the media, it would seem that terrorists have succeeded in frightening a nation. They may be aided by several decades of over-reaction to the social malaise that is endemic to the poorer and disenfranchised parts of America. It seems that at least one generation has already grown up in the grip of largely irrational fears. A loss of equanimity and that much-vaunted value - freedom - seems to have been the cost.

Olga Lorenzo is an Australian novelist.
 

Thursday  January 8, 2003

Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions; but those who kindly reprove thy faults.

Socrates, philosopher (469?-399 BCE)

Well, I have been using my Glucose test gizmo for a whole day and according to it, I have Diabetes... as much as I would like to, it's hard to deny. I am what is called a Type I Diabetic, with proper diet, exercise, a little stress relief and medication I should be able to keep it under control. I went to the Diabetes diet class today, very interesting. I need to get a handle on what she was trying to tell me, Christy understands but I am a little foggy. I have to sustain a certain level of Carbohydrates balanced with fat and protein. All very tedious, I won't count calories and I have the willpower of a 5 year old in a candy store.. This will be interesting. Does anyone reading this have Diabetes, send me some hints will ya?

I went to the ROF on the bike, it was nice in the Valley, cold up here but I was pretty comfortable. John, Jim, Jeff, Scilia and Lois showed up... Tony had a prior commitment on a quest to bash his head against the wall at City Hall.

BUSH ACTS TO REWARD COMPANIES WHO CUT OFF SENIORS' DRUG COVERAGE

Late last year, President Bush promised retirees that "if there's a Medicare reform bill signed by me, corporations have no intention to dump retirees [from their existing drug coverage]...What we're talking about is trust."
The White House and its congressional allies backed up Bush's assertion by claiming the bill included a special tax subsidy to "encourage employers' to retain prescription-drug coverage" for their retirees' and not to cut them off.

But just three months after Bush's pledge, the Wall Street Journal now reports that the White House quietly added "a little-noticed provision" to the bill that allows companies to severely reduce - or almost completely terminate - their retirees' drug coverage "without losing out on the new subsidy." In other words, the president did not just break his promise to sign a bill that prevents seniors from losing their existing drug coverage.

He actually acted to reward companies who cut off their retirees with a lavish new tax break.

The provision was no mere oversight by the president. The major backers of the provision were Lucent Technologies, General Motors, Dow Chemical and SBC Communications - all major campaign contributors to the president. According to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, executives from those companies have donated almost $140,000 in hard money and $2.5 million in soft money to Bush and his party since 2000.

Lucent hard money contributions to Bush since 2000: $14,415 Lucent soft money contributions to RNC since 2000: $27,000

Dow hard money contributions to Bush since 2000: $23,200 Dow soft money contributions to RNC since 2000: $631,354

GM hard money contributions to Bush since 2000: $92,050 GM soft money contributions to RNC since 2000: $95,260

SBC hard money contributions to Bush since 2000: $9,450 SBC soft money contributions to RNC since 2000: $1,762,206

Friday  January 9, 2003

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself into our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.

WAYNE, JOHN [Marion Michael Morrison] (1907-1979, Western movies star)

We need to go to High Desert Middle School to sign some papers for "B". He got in trouble today... doing jerky stuff... he is his own worst enemy.

I took the kids to see Lord of the Rings; Return of the King... it was pretty good, but it was 3 and 1/2 hours lonnnnnnnnng, I think they just didn't want to end it, many of the scenes just dragged on for an eternity... ... they could have cut out a lot of it.

I got another lie-mail... a silly one about all the troubles in the United States could be solved by shooting Illegal Aliens... or something like that. It was originally a piece of verbal bile sent to an OP-ED column in a little paper in Georgia, someone scratched that out and said it came from a "Big Paper in Tampa Bay, Florida... typical Uber-con screed, I deleted it (Though the tagline implied I would be a traitor if I didn't pass it on to everyone in my address book... Just after I deleted it a fella from a VFW Post in Kentucky asked if anyone knew where it came from... so I dug it out and found it in SNOPES http://www.snopes.com/rumors/american.htm (Excellent breakdown of the message) and wrote to him... I thanked him for trying to verify it prior to posting it... not many folks do

Saturday  January 10, 2003

"Never let your persistence and passion turn into stubbornness and ignorance."

Anthony J. D'Angelo
 

Two excellent Games today... I had no real favorites but I was rooting for McNabb against the Patriots and for the Panthers against the Rams... My allegiance shifted several times during the game... it finally swung toward the Panthers when Martz decided to kick a field goal to tie instead of going for the win...

Sunday  January 11, 2003

A baseball fan is a guy who can judge from his seat in the third deck that the umpire's call was bad, then head for the parking lot and not be able to find his own car.

Author Unknown

Two more good games today, unfortunately one of the two teams that lost was the Green Bay Packers, some how it is fitting that it was Favre, the guy who got them there, was the guy who threw the interception that cost them the game. It could be said that the Coach not going for it on fourth down near the end of regulation was a poor decision too.

One humble opinion, until they get all the "Bums" out of the hall of fame they need to put Pete Rose in. Baseball is not a religion and Cooperstown shouldn't be the Baseball equivalent to Disneyland, to deny that there have been bad guys and corruption is a distortion of reality and a disservice to the game and the people who struggled to make it great. Pet Rose was a fantastic player but a flawed human being but so were Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb and many others...Where are the corked bats, sharpened spikes, hospital records of intentional beaning, how many wife beaters, alcoholics, druggies are in there now... Hell, whole teams have sold out... Pete Rose isn't a saint but he is as much a part of baseball history as anyone and that's what the Baseball Hall of Fame should be all about. As a matter of fact I think his story far more interesting than most.

Some of the stuff I read this week

****************Satire****************

More flights cancelled as terror fears grow

 5 Jan 2004 by Flash Gorman

As George W Bush turns the dial on his paranoia amplifier to 11, yet more flights have been cancelled throughout the civilized world, and also in America.

Disappointed music lovers were last night turned away from a performance of the Flight of the Valkyrie in Covent Garden. The show's director was forced to cancel the performance after the FBI learnt that there might have been someone on the crowd who "had a moustache and looked a bit foreign".

There were also angry scenes at the Darts World Cup in Lakeside, when armed police stormed the building and confiscated all the flights from the darts players. An outbreak of violence was only narrowed averted when the super-fit athletes were unable to pursue the police for more than a dozen yards.

On a similar note, school children throughout America are facing a dull time after all flights of fancy were grounded until further notice. Once again the FBI were reacting to an unspecified threat of a non-specific nature. An FBI spokesman explained that they were unable to say what the threat was but hinted that it was "pretty threatening". He was also unable to specify when the threat might occur other than to say that it "was most likely to be at some point in the future as otherwise it'd already be on the news".

There was, however, some good news for the beleaguered security forces when it was discovered that the recent Egyptian plane crash was not due to terrorism. Whoops of delight could be plainly heard at the Pentagon as the news came in that it was most likely just good old-fashioned plane crash as a result of poor maintenance and/or general incompetence, something that must surely offer a crumb of comfort to the bereaved relatives.

CRITICISM DOES NOT EQUAL ANTI-AMERICANISM
Copyright: Eric S. Margolis, 2004
January 2, 2004

PALM BEACH - The year 2003 dramatically and dolefully illustrates Lord Acton's famous dictum that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

An almighty United States, unrestrained by any rival, international body, or world opinion, bestrode the globe, a belligerent colossus determined to monopolize global oil reserves and use its vast military power to crush lesser nations or malefactors that disturbed the Pax Americana.

For America's hard right — a curious farrago of anti-Semitic Armageddon-seeking southern Protestants; neo-conservative supporters of Israel's rightwing Likud Party; and the military-industrial-petroleum complex — the Bush Administration's aggressive foreign policy, self-proclaimed mission of world domination, and utter contempt for international laws and old allies marks a new era of national greatness. President Bush, who vowed his foreign policy would be `humble' and `compassionate,' has turned out to be the most radical president in modern US history.

But for those Americans whose primary loyalty was to their country, rather than to religious cultism, foreign nations, or financial profit, the rapid emergence of the United States as an imperial power waging two hugely expensive colonial wars in Asia was a disaster, both for America's democratic system and for the rest of the world.

Bush's vow to bring `democracy' to the Mideast rang as hollow as pious assurances by 19th century European colonialists they were gobbling up Africa and Asia to bring the blessings of Christianity and civilization to benighted savages. Pillaging resources, not enlightenment, were — and remain — the true colonial motivation.

Bush's claims to hold the mandate of heaven to wage global warfare against the nebulous forces of `terrorism' sounded as dangerous and nonsensical as old Chairman Leonid Brezhnev's drunken claims it was the Soviet Union's `sacred `internationalist duty' to launch military adventures anywhere on earth that socialism was threatened.

Columnist Georgie Anne Gayer put it perfectly when she recently wrote that whereas America used to lead the world as champion of democracy, personal freedom and human rights, today, under Bush, it instead seeks to dominate the world through raw military and monetary power.

In 2003, we saw an abject, cowardly Congress violate its duty as the republic's premier political organ by disgracefully handing the barely elected president carte blanche to wage an unprovoked war against Iraq that was justified by a torrent of ludicrous lies worthy of Dr Goebbels. Lies and propaganda packaged in the best tradition of Soviet agitprop as news, then force-fed my a servile media to an ill-informed public shockingly deficient in any sense of history, geography, or foreign affairs.

The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and sundry military adventures around the globe, were made possible by a steady drumbeat of warnings from the White House and its neo-con trumpets that the United States was in direst national peril from `terrorists' and `rogue states.' Paranoia again swept America during the holiday season as planes were grounded and orange alerts flashed at a populace that responded to these synthetic alarms with well-trained Pavlovian reflexes.

Though the mighty United States, with only 5% of world population, accounts for nearly 50% of total global military spending, the continuing Orwellian message from Washington was of fear and vulnerability. Vague threats of terrorist attack and menacing Muslims were used to curtail American civil liberties, and expand the government's powers of repression and intrusion. The public barely noticed this sinister, proto-totalitarian campaign.

The so-called `war on terrorism' was a hoax used to mask and justify the long-planned expansion of US military power around the globe. What were in reality a series of police actions waged against tiny anti-American groups was no more a war than the farcical `war on drugs.' But invoking war trumped criticism and dissent — and justified a real war of aggression against oil-rich Iraq.

The very term `terrorism' is a nonsense designed for propaganda effect; a damning label applied by the Administration to groups or states strongly opposing US policy. `War' on terrorism' makes no more sense than waging war on evil.

Those who opposed Washington's surging imperial and totalitarian impulses were branded `leftists' and `anti-Americans.' The French thinker Regis Debray, writing about past colonial powers, answers thus: "the free man is not anti-American, but anti-imperial". America (now) revisits the time of colonizers drunk on their superiority, convinced of their liberating mission, and counting on reimbursing themselves directly.'

Criticizing run-amok US foreign policy and George Bush does not equal anti-Americanism. It is the citizen's birthright, and the friend's duty.

This writer has witnessed nine colonial wars and saw how they corrupted the armies, and then the nations, that waged them, brutalizing conquered and conqueror alike. Iraq is the latest.

Mankind's three worst scourges are religious fanaticism, nationalism, and imperialism. Each of these three evils have been whipped up by the Bush Administration to justify domination abroad, repression of dissidence at home, and, of course, re-election..

Those who truly love and respect the United States, like this writer, a conservative and US Army veteran, see the very qualities that made America a beacon to the world — its very soul 151 now under heavy assault by a cabal of religious fanatics, foreign-leaning ideological extremists, and self-enriching Enron-Republicans. That is a danger considerably greater than al-Qaida.
 

Quarantining dissent: How the Secret Service protects Bush from free speech

Posted on Monday, January 05 @ 09:55:20 EST
By James Bovard, San Francisco Chronicle

When President Bush travels around the United States, the Secret Service visits the location ahead of time and orders local police to set up "free speech zones" or "protest zones," where people opposed to Bush policies (and sometimes sign-carrying supporters) are quarantined. These zones routinely succeed in keeping protesters out of presidential sight and outside the view of media covering the event.

When Bush went to the Pittsburgh area on Labor Day 2002, 65-year-old retired steel worker Bill Neel was there to greet him with a sign proclaiming, "The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us."

The local police, at the Secret Service's behest, set up a "designated free-speech zone" on a baseball field surrounded by a chain-link fence a third of a mile from the location of Bush's speech.

The police cleared the path of the motorcade of all critical signs, but folks with pro-Bush signs were permitted to line the president's path. Neel refused to go to the designated area and was arrested for disorderly conduct; the police also confiscated his sign.



Neel later commented, "As far as I'm concerned, the whole country is a free-speech zone. If the Bush administration has its way, anyone who criticizes them will be out of sight and out of mind."

At Neel's trial, police Detective John Ianachione testified that the Secret Service told local police to confine "people that were there making a statement pretty much against the president and his views" in a so-called free- speech area.

Paul Wolf, one of the top officials in the Allegheny County Police Department, told Salon that the Secret Service "come in and do a site survey, and say, 'Here's a place where the people can be, and we'd like to have any protesters put in a place that is able to be secured.' "

Pennsylvania District Judge Shirley Rowe Trkula threw out the disorderly conduct charge against Neel, declaring, "I believe this is America. Whatever happened to 'I don't agree with you, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it'?"

Similar suppressions have occurred during Bush visits to Florida. A recent St. Petersburg Times editorial noted, "At a Bush rally at Legends Field in 2001, three demonstrators -- two of whom were grandmothers -- were arrested for holding up small handwritten protest signs outside the designated zone. And last year, seven protesters were arrested when Bush came to a rally at the USF Sun Dome. They had refused to be cordoned off into a protest zone hundreds of yards from the entrance to the Dome."

One of the arrested protesters was a 62-year-old man holding up a sign, "War is good business. Invest your sons." The seven were charged with trespassing, "obstructing without violence and disorderly conduct."

Police have repressed protesters during several Bush visits to the St. Louis area as well. When Bush visited on Jan. 22, 150 people carrying signs were shunted far away from the main action and effectively quarantined.

Denise Lieberman of the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri commented, "No one could see them from the street. In addition, the media were not allowed to talk to them. The police would not allow any media inside the protest area and wouldn't allow any of the protesters out of the protest zone to talk to the media."

When Bush stopped by a Boeing plant to talk to workers, Christine Mains and her 5-year-old daughter disobeyed orders to move to a small protest area far from the action. Police arrested Mains and took her and her crying daughter away in separate squad cars.

The Justice Department is now prosecuting Brett Bursey, who was arrested for holding a "No War for Oil" sign at a Bush visit to Columbia, S.C. Local police, acting under Secret Service orders, established a "free-speech zone" half a mile from where Bush would speak. Bursey was standing amid hundreds of people carrying signs praising the president. Police told Bursey to remove himself to the "free-speech zone."

Bursey refused and was arrested. Bursey said that he asked the police officer if "it was the content of my sign, and he said, 'Yes, sir, it's the content of your sign that's the problem.' " Bursey stated that he had already moved
200 yards from where Bush was supposed to speak. Bursey later complained, "The problem was, the restricted area kept moving. It was wherever I happened to be standing."

Bursey was charged with trespassing. Five months later, the charge was dropped because South Carolina law prohibits arresting people for trespassing on public property. But the Justice Department -- in the person of U.S. Attorney Strom Thurmond Jr. -- quickly jumped in, charging Bursey with violating a rarely enforced federal law regarding "entering a restricted area around the president of the United States."

If convicted, Bursey faces a six-month trip up the river and a $5,000 fine. Federal Magistrate Bristow Marchant denied Bursey's request for a jury trial because his violation is categorized as a petty offense. Some observers believe that the feds are seeking to set a precedent in a conservative state such as South Carolina that could then be used against protesters nationwide.

Bursey's trial took place on Nov. 12 and 13. His lawyers sought the Secret Service documents they believed would lay out the official policies on restricting critical speech at presidential visits. The Bush administration sought to block all access to the documents, but Marchant ruled that the lawyers could have limited access.

Bursey sought to subpoena Attorney General John Ashcroft and presidential adviser Karl Rove to testify. Bursey lawyer Lewis Pitts declared, "We intend to find out from Mr. Ashcroft why and how the decision to prosecute Mr. Bursey was reached." The magistrate refused, however, to enforce the subpoenas. Secret Service agent Holly Abel testified at the trial that Bursey was told to move to the "free-speech zone" but refused to cooperate.

The feds have offered some bizarre rationales for hog-tying protesters. Secret Service agent Brian Marr explained to National Public Radio, "These individuals may be so involved with trying to shout their support or nonsupport that inadvertently they may walk out into the motorcade route and be injured. And that is really the reason why we set these places up, so we can make sure that they have the right of free speech, but, two, we want to be sure that they are able to go home at the end of the evening and not be injured in any way." Except for having their constitutional rights shredded.

The ACLU, along with several other organizations, is suing the Secret Service for what it charges is a pattern and practice of suppressing protesters at Bush events in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, Texas and elsewhere. The ACLU's Witold Walczak said of the protesters, "The individuals we are talking about didn't pose a security threat; they posed a political threat."

The Secret Service is duty-bound to protect the president. But it is ludicrous to presume that would-be terrorists are lunkheaded enough to carry anti-Bush signs when carrying pro-Bush signs would give them much closer access. And even a policy of removing all people carrying signs -- as has happened in some demonstrations -- is pointless because potential attackers would simply avoid carrying signs. Assuming that terrorists are as unimaginative and predictable as the average federal bureaucrat is not a recipe for presidential longevity.

The Bush administration's anti-protester bias proved embarrassing for two American allies with long traditions of raucous free speech, resulting in some of the most repressive restrictions in memory in free countries.

When Bush visited Australia in October, Sydney Morning Herald columnist Mark Riley observed, "The basic right of freedom of speech will adopt a new interpretation during the Canberra visits this week by George Bush and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao. Protesters will be free to speak as much as they like just as long as they can't be heard."

Demonstrators were shunted to an area away from the Federal Parliament building and prohibited from using any public address system in the area.

For Bush's recent visit to London, the White House demanded that British police ban all protest marches, close down the center of the city and impose a "virtual three-day shutdown of central London in a bid to foil disruption of the visit by anti-war protesters," according to Britain's Evening Standard. But instead of a "free-speech zone," the Bush administration demanded an "exclusion zone" to protect Bush from protesters' messages.

Such unprecedented restrictions did not inhibit Bush from portraying himself as a champion of freedom during his visit. In a speech at Whitehall on Nov. 19, Bush hyped the "forward strategy of freedom" and declared, "We seek the advance of freedom and the peace that freedom brings."

Attempts to suppress protesters become more disturbing in light of the Homeland Security Department's recommendation that local police departments view critics of the war on terrorism as potential terrorists. In a May terrorist advisory, the Homeland Security Department warned local law enforcement agencies to keep an eye on anyone who "expressed dislike of attitudes and decisions of the U.S. government." If police vigorously followed this advice, millions of Americans could be added to the official lists of suspected terrorists.

Protesters have claimed that police have assaulted them during demonstrations in New York, Washington and elsewhere.

One of the most violent government responses to an antiwar protest occurred when local police and the federally funded California Anti-Terrorism Task Force fired rubber bullets and tear gas at peaceful protesters and innocent bystanders at the Port of Oakland, injuring a number of people.

When the police attack sparked a geyser of media criticism, Mike van Winkle, the spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center told the Oakland Tribune, "You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest. You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act."

Van Winkle justified classifying protesters as terrorists: "I've heard terrorism described as anything that is violent or has an economic impact, and shutting down a port certainly would have some economic impact. Terrorism isn't just bombs going off and killing people."

Such aggressive tactics become more ominous in the light of the Bush administration's advocacy, in its Patriot II draft legislation, of nullifying all judicial consent decrees restricting state and local police from spying on those groups who may oppose government policies.

On May 30, 2002, Ashcroft effectively abolished restrictions on FBI surveillance of Americans' everyday lives first imposed in 1976. One FBI internal newsletter encouraged FBI agents to conduct more interviews with antiwar activists "for plenty of reasons, chief of which it will enhance the paranoia endemic in such circles and will further service to get the point across that there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox."

The FBI took a shotgun approach toward protesters partly because of the FBI's "belief that dissident speech and association should be prevented because they were incipient steps toward the possible ultimate commission of act which might be criminal," according to a Senate report.

On Nov. 23 news broke that the FBI is actively conducting surveillance of antiwar demonstrators, supposedly to "blunt potential violence by extremist elements," according to a Reuters interview with a federal law enforcement official.

Given the FBI's expansive definition of "potential violence" in the past, this is a net that could catch almost any group or individual who falls into official disfavor.

James Bovard is the author of "Terrorism & Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil." This article is adapted from one that appeared in the Dec. 15 issue of the American Conservative.

Reprinted from The San Francisco Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? file=/chronicle/archive/2004/01/04/INGPQ40MB81.DTL

'How will Bush deal with deficit? Connecting the dots to Iraq'

Posted on Tuesday, January 06 @ 09:45:58 EST

By Robert Freeman, Common Dreams

Republican hearts are all aflutter over one quarter of strong GDP numbers. But the 8.2% third quarter growth was purchased on credit-the $374 billion budget deficit that was the largest in the country's history. All indications are that next year's deficit will be even larger, exceeding half a trillion dollars.

There is simply no magic to "growth" under these conditions. Any idiot with a hand full of credit cards charged to the next generation's children can gin up the short term illusion of prosperity. Until, that is, the bills come due.

George W. Bush inherited a $127 billion fiscal surplus but ran through all of that and more in his first year. He has turned a $5.6 trillion 10 year forecast surplus into a $3+ trillion forecast loss-an almost unimaginable reversal of $9 trillion in only three years. And this, in an economy that has grown for ten of the last twelve quarters.

The result of this psychotic profligacy, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will be a national debt of $14 trillion in 10 years. Interest payments alone will approach a trillion dollars a year and will exceed spending for all discretionary federal programs combined. Even more surreal, a study commissioned by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil indicated that the 50 year forecast U.S. deficit would reach $44 trillion. The study was suppressed and O'Neil was fired.

How, then, does a nation deal with debts that so greatly outrun its ability to pay? There are basically only five strategies. All are unappealing. Most are calamitous.

The most difficult strategy is, not surprisingly, the honest one: raise taxes and pay your bills. This is what King George III did following the Seven Years War with France in 1763. England had quadrupled its national debt in fighting the War and needed money to pay it off. It turned to the richest people in the realm, the Colonists, and began taxing paper, glass, paint, lead, and, of course, tea. The result, as we know, was the American Revolution.

It was the same strategy-raising taxes on the rich-that Louis XVI attempted in 1789. The French national debt had grown 10 fold under the pharoic opulence of Louis's grandfather, Louis XIV. Louis called the nobility and the clergy together and told them they would have to ante up. They, after all, had been exempted from taxes by Louis XIV in order to buy their complicity in his autocratic reign. Indignant, they refused to pay, precipitating the French Revolution, the most explosive upheaval to established government in the last thousand years.

A second strategy to deal with excessive debts is simply to print money. This is what Weimar Germany did to address the crushing debt imposed by the vengeful Treaty of Versailles. Before it was over the government had inflated the money supply by over a trillion times, leading some to comment that it was a waste of ink to put it onto paper worth so much less than the ink itself. The German middle class, whose assets were held at fixed amounts in government pensions, was destroyed. The collapse gave direct rise to Adolph Hitler.

A third strategy for dealing with onerous national debt is to sell off national assets. This is one of the first strategies the IMF imposes on third world countries that have gotten behind in their payments to western banks. Government-run industries, from telecommunications to water systems, are "privatized" and the country's natural resources are sold off to the highest foreign bidder. This is what Great Britain was forced to do in the aftermath or World War II.

Two world wars in only 30 years had ravaged the British economy and the pound sterling. Facing collapse at home (and revolution abroad), the government surrendered almost all of its colonies, from India and Pakistan to Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. These had been among the greatest wealth-producing properties of modern times, the ones that had made the British Empire what it was. Their loss left Britain a second-rate power with only misty memories of its once imperial greatness.

A fourth strategy for dealing with excessive debt is to repudiate it. This was used for centuries in the early days of the modern world and was revived two years ago by Argentina which brazenly refused to pay some $110 billion in debts it had accumulated over prior decades. More ominously, it was this strategy that was used by the Bolsheviks after they took power in the Russian Revolution.

The new communist government refused to be bound by the debts of the overthrown Romanovs. But the French had loaned heavily to the Russian government for decades before World War I and now were left in a lurch. A cascading series of defaults from one bank to another caused a liquidity crisis on the continent, ultimately setting off the Great Depression.

Finally, there is plunder. When a nation's debt load becomes so huge it cannot plausibly reassure creditors regarding repayment, it must seek some source of wealth, any source, to keep the borrowed money flowing. This, naked predation, is what kept the Roman Empire alive for the last two hundred years of its existence. It is the strategy adopted by the Spanish Empire-silver and gold from America-and which eventually destroyed the vitality of its own merchant and civil servant classes.

Which, then, of the five above strategies will the U.S. adopt to deal with its exploding debt problem?

Clearly, the Bush administration will not adopt the first strategy, raising taxes. In fact, as a result of Bush's mammoth tax giveaways, federal receipts as a percentage of GDP are at 16%, their lowest level since the 1950s. Raising taxes, or even simply reversing prior tax cuts, would betray the very purpose for which the rich installed Bush in the first place. And just as clearly, Bush cannot cut back on his prodigious spending-at least not yet-for that is the basis on which he has bought the short-term illusion of prosperity mentioned above.

Nor will the government resort to inflation, the second strategy. As we know from the German experience, inflation erodes the value of fixed income payments. The current U.S. debt, now in excess of $7 trillion, is held primarily by the very wealthiest of the world's citizens. They clip some $200 billion a year in coupons on this debt. If they were to see the U.S. government beginning to inflate, they would quickly sell off these instruments, precipitating a massive collapse. Alan Greenspan's quasi-religious stand against inflation can be understood first as his defense of the pecuniary prerogatives of this global investor class and second as the requisite fix to keep the fiscal funding flowing.

What about selling off assets, the third strategy? Now the story starts to get more interesting. As the dollar declines in value relative to foreign currencies, U.S. assets, denominated in dollars, become relatively cheaper. It costs foreigners less and less to buy more and more of the U.S. economy at fire sale prices. Some purchases will go into U.S. treasuries. Some will find their way into the stock market. Some will go into passive assets such as real estate. And some will go to buy active ownership and management of U.S. companies.

This is the dynamic that led the Japanese during the Supply Side-inspired dollar collapse of the 1980s to buy up Rockefeller Center, Firestone Tire, Pebble Beach, 7-Eleven, and countless other icons of America's commercial and cultural patrimony. It has the virtue (or vice, depending on your perspective) of appearing to be the result of "market forces". Government profligacy is settled by foreigners redeeming dollar-based IOUs in U.S. markets, denuding the private sphere of its productive assets and putting them into foreign hands. This is the reason Toyota is the biggest employer in Alabama and Honda is the second biggest employer in Indiana.

The fourth strategy, repudiation of debts, is more immediate than most American citizens realize. A significant portion of those $44 trillion future shortfalls come from under-funding of Medicare and Social Security. The recent Medicare bill is the first step toward official privatization. This will be accomplished by turning the program and its recipients over to the worthy stewardship of the insurance, health care and pharmaceutical industries and getting the liabilities off the government's books. Similarly, if Bush is elected in 2004, one of his first priorities will be a comparable privatization of Social Security. Not only will it prove an incalculable boon to the securities industry, it will substantially decrease the government's obligations to the Baby Boomers.

In terms of how a nation deals with excessive debt, the logic of these repudiation schemes is impeccable: it is far wiser for a country to repudiate the debts it holds to its own people-especially if they are not politically powerful-than it is to alienate its wealthy domestic and international underwriters. As is the case with selling of assets, then, repudiation is a central pillar in the U.S.'s plan for dealing with its intractable and exploding national debt.

Finally, we come to the most sensitive and incendiary debt management strategy of all. Plunder. The purported rationale for the U.S. invasion of Iraq-that it possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction-is now known to have been a wholesale fiction. Not a single one of the administration's dozens of claims of WMD possession or imminent threat have borne the scrutiny of the most massive inspection regime in history. Of all the world's people, only the thuggishly propagandized American people ever believed (or still believe) this to have been the real purpose for the War. Not even Bush himself pretends otherwise anymore.

And the ex post facto rationale-that we are bringing Democracy to Iraq-is equally fictive given Paul Bremmer's guarantee that the U.S. will not allow a Shi'ite government to take control there. Shi'ites, as Bremmer well knows, make up 60% of Iraq's population. A simple thought experiment demonstrates the real truth about the U.S. invasion: would the U.S. have carried it out if, instead of sitting on the world's second largest supply of oil, Iraq was the world's second largest producer of, say, pomegranates? Or figs? Only the most pathologically Republican of cynics can even pretend to give this question a thought.

Control of oil gives the U.S. control of the industrial world and effective control of its own strategic competitors, Europe and China. This explains why Europe and China were so vociferous in their denunciation of the War. This is the same strategy that made Alexander the Great so Great. As he entered new territories in pursuit of conquest, the first thing Alexander always did was capture and fortify the local water well. Within a day, two at the most, resistance collapsed. Oil is the water of today. It is the most widely traded commodity in the world. It is the one commodity without which modern civilization cannot function.

Control of oil allows the U.S. to extract all of the surplus wealth created by its rivals, ensuring that they remain forever subservient. It also ensures that the U.S. has a universally desired, fungible, liquid commodity to collateralize its massive debts. Iraqi oil is a magical two-fer: it solves the U.S.'s primary strategic and economic challenges in a single felled swoop. But its capture can only be justified by deceit and accomplished by plunder.

The problem for most of Bush's Democratic challengers is that they know the above situation to be true. That is why-Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich excepted-they went so sheepishly along with Bush's pathetically transparent casus belli in Iraq. They are left with petty quibbling about the adequacy of post-invasion planning. It is why they raised hardly a peep of protest over the ramming through of the Medicare package. It is why they bleat only procedural protests about the incivility of discourse as the three-quarters-of-a-century legacy of the New Deal is being peremptorily dismantled.

There was a time in the late 1990s when it looked as if the U.S. might be able to regain control of its fiscal destiny. Bill Clinton reversed the suicidal predations of Reagan's Supply Side Economics and produced the longest sustained economic expansion in U.S. history. One of the byproducts was a series of budgetary surpluses that allowed the government to begin paying down the crippling debts run up under Reagan and Bush I.

But that halcyon era is already just a memory. Bush's massive debts are the nation's new fiscal master. And they have been run up solely to further engorge the already grotesquely glutted at the expense of the still desperately needy. The staggering costs of servicing these debts will drive interest rates into the stratosphere and destroy all possibilities of rebuilding a competitive economic infrastructure. The conservative British business magazine, The Economist, said it most presciently: "Long after Dubya is back on his ranch, Americans will be trying to recover from the mess he created."

It is breathtaking to imagine it could have happened so quickly but all federal policy, indeed, decisions concerning war and the very character of the nation itself, will now be defined by the stark new fact of our collective indenture.

Flip Side Barbara Ehrenreich

The Phony President

In the tradition of the Emperor Who Had No Clothes, there is now the President Who Doesn't Have Quite Enough Votes. The Miami Herald is estimating that Bush will come out 20,000 votes short in Florida when the press recount is finished, making him the first President in American history to win neither the popular vote nor the bizarro, archaic, Electoral College vote.

So you have a choice: You can be rude. You can put on one of those "Reelect Gore in '04" bumper stickers. You can start sniggering about how the band ought to play "Hail to the Thief."

Or you can try to make a courteous adjustment. We may not have a President, but we certainly have a "president," so let's try to make the most of it.

True, it takes a little getting used to.

All through the long, dismal campaign, everyone remarked on how "real" W. seemed compared to the congenitally phony Gore, a man who cannot say "pass the salt" without evincing the painful facial exertions of a liar at work. W., with his jaunty stride and trademark Alfred E. Neumann smile, won praise for looking "warm" and "genuine," while Al looked like a fellow whose doctors never could get the lithium dose quite right. Yet the outcome of the election--or should we say "selection"?--is that the "phony" Gore is now a "real" loser, and the "real" W. is only a phony President.

Odd, too, that one of the purposes of the unseemly rush to declare someone--anyone--President, regardless of the actual vote count, was precisely to preserve the "legitimacy of our democratic process." Very early on in the sporadic Florida recount process, the chin-strokers on CNN started to fret that if the recounting dragged on too long, Americans might begin to doubt the infallibility of our institutions and even our system.

In much the same spirit, a state will often execute some poor fellow, despite the discovery of exculpatory evidence, because--hey--the electric chair's already plugged in and any appearance of hesitation might call into question the infallibility of our criminal justice system.

No dithering! That's the American way. Fry 'em, bomb 'em, beam 'em into the Oval Office--and let God sort out the evidence.

I should mention parenthetically that there is at least one tragic difference between an overly hasty execution and a circumvented election: The executed person is no longer with us and is all too quickly forgotten, while the not-actually-elected person can be expected to live for four years or even longer. In the one case, a life of "crime" is abruptly ended; in the other, it's given an enabling boost.

But enough whining! Let's get constructive here and try to figure out, among other things, the etiquette of the situation.

For example, when addressing George W., will it be necessary to raise both hands and make quote marks with one's index and middle fingers while uttering the words "Mr. President"?

Should anchorpersons refer to him as the "so-called President," or is the "quote-President" marginally more respectful? One thing seems clear already: Other nations will not have to send their actual heads-of-state to meet with him. Any third-generation ex-pat czarina will do.

Here's a weightier question: Do the quote marks now extend to the federal government itself? Can a "president" preside over an actual government, or should his jurisdiction be considered only a "government"?

Here we turn to no less an expert than W. himself, who has sent numerous signals that the government he will be running should not be taken too seriously. How else to interpret his assertion that Social Security is not a federal program, or his recent playful reference to HUD as the "Department of Housing and Human Development"?

Then there's that tax cut. By renouncing the power of taxation--in fact, persisting in his proposal for a $1.6 trillion tax cut--W. is clearly signaling that ours is just a "government."

Other, far deeper questions come into play: Can a population headed by a "president" be considered a bona fide nation, or is it only a "nation," as in the magazine or the Nation of Islam?

During the recount process, the phrase "banana republic" was batted around, suggesting that the USA had become something less than an actual nation--perhaps an overpriced clothing chain.

Once you start chipping away at the "legitimacy of our system," you are well along the way to the kind of looking-glass world occupied by Nicholas Cage in The Family Man. Who are you, really? What are you doing here, and why are you doing it?

Finally, the question that Al Gore and his lawyers are probably pondering right now: Can a "president" be impeached? In this case, probably not, since he will always be able to fall back on the argument that he was not actually elected, and hence that the only legitimate impeach-ee is Al Gore himself. Should W. commit any high crimes or misdemeanors, you can expect to see Al go to jail for him, with the Supreme Court's hearty approval. After all, W. is just impersonating a president, which is no crime at all--look at all those Reagan masks.

And speaking of masks, there was serious discussion about having the inauguration blast be, for the first time in history, a masked ball. The Secret Service nixed the plan, but why not? Be what you want to be--"Pope," "Napoleon," "Hillary," "President."

Reality is for losers (or winners, depending on how many of the votes you bother to count).

So get into the spirit of it! Don't pay taxes in April; just send the IRS a bill. All that time you wasted watching campaign coverage and following the recount process should now be considered billable hours. You took the election seriously--earnest soul that you are--and deserve to be paid for playing the role of "citizen" in the drama that led to our first American "president."

One Nation, Under Secularism

By SUSAN JACOBY

Published: January 8, 2004

In Campaign 2004, secularism has become a dirty word. Democrats, particularly Howard Dean, are being warned that they do not have a chance of winning the presidential election unless they adopt a posture of religious "me-tooism" in an effort to convince voters that their politics are grounded in values just as sacred as those proclaimed by President Bush.

On one level, the impulse to capitalize on the religiosity of Americans can be seen as transparently, and at times comically, opportunistic. Late last year, Ed Kilgore, policy director of the Democratic Leadership Council, earnestly advised his party's candidates to invoke "God's green earth" in supporting stronger environmental laws. Mr. Dean, the candidate stuck with the label (or libel) of being the most secularist Democratic aspirant, seems to be heeding the advice to get religion. He recently informed an Iowa audience that he prays daily, and in New Hampshire last week, he demonstrated his ecumenism by using the Muslim expression "inshallah," which means God willing.

On a deeper level, the notion that elected officials should employ a religious rationale for policy decisions is rooted in the misconception, promulgated by the Christian right, that the American government was founded on divine authority rather than human reason. When I lecture on college campuses, students frequently express surprise at being told that the framers of the Constitution deliberately omitted any mention of God in order to assign supreme governmental power to "We the People."

Dismissing this inconvenient fact, some on the religious right have suggested that divine omnipotence was considered a given in the 1780's — that the framers had no need to acknowledge God in the Constitution because his dominion was as self-evident as the rising and setting of the sun. Yet isn't it absurd to suppose that men as precise in their use of language as Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison would absentmindedly have failed to insert God into the nation's founding document? In fact, they represented a majority of citizens who wished not only to free religion from government interference but government from religious interference.

This deep sentiment was expressed in letters to newspapers during the debate over ratification of the Constitution. One Massachusetts correspondent, signing himself "Elihu," summed up the secular case by praising the authors of the Constitution as men who "come to us in the plain language of common sense, and propose to our understanding a system of government, as the invention of mere human wisdom; no deity comes down to dictate it, nor even a God in a dream to propose any part of it."

The 18th-century public's understanding of the Constitution as a secular document can perhaps best be gauged by the reaction of religious conservatives at the time. For example, the Rev. John M. Mason, a fire-breathing New York City minister, denounced the absence of God in the preamble as "an omission which no pretext whatever can palliate." He warned that "we will have every reason to tremble, lest the governor of the universe, who will not be treated with indignity by a people more than individuals, overturn from its foundations the fabric we have been rearing and crush us to atoms in the wreck." But unlike many conservatives today, Mason acknowledged — even as he deplored — the Constitution's uncompromising secularism.

Americans tend to minimize not only the secular convictions of the founders, but also the secularist contribution to later social reform movements. One of the most common misconceptions is that organized religion deserves nearly all of the credit for 19th-century abolitionism and the 20th-century civil rights movement. While religion certainly played a role in both, many people fail to distinguish between personal faith and religious institutions.

Abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, editor of The Liberator, and the Quaker Lucretia Mott, also a women's rights crusader, denounced the many mainstream Northern religious leaders who, in the 1830's and 40's, refused to condemn slavery.
In return, Garrison and Mott were castigated as infidels and sometimes as atheists — a common tactic used by those who do not recognize any form of faith but their own. Garrison, strongly influenced by his freethinking predecessor Thomas Paine, observed that one need only be a decent human being — not a believer in the Bible or any creed — to discern the evil of slavery.

During the 20th-century civil rights struggle, the movement's strongest moral leaders emerged from Southern black churches. But the moral message of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. obviously ran counter to the religious rationales for segregation preached in many white churches in the south.

In addition, Dr. King welcomed the help of nonreligious allies like Stanley Levison, his friend and lawyer, and the outspoken labor leader A. Philip Randolph. Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, murdered in Mississippi in the summer of 1964, were nonobservant Jews who died not in the name of religion but because of their secular humanist commitment to racial justice.

Many politicians today, including President Bush, use the civil rights leadership of African-American ministers as an argument in favor of "faith-based" government financing. But those ministers were free to pursue their moral vision within American society precisely because they were independent of both government money and government control. Government officials, by contrast, have a very different constitutionally mandated obligation — to devise public policies based not on religious interests but on a secular concept of public good.

When President Lyndon B. Johnson proposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and declared, in his memorable Texas twang, "We shall overcome," he was articulating a moral position that could and did command the respect of citizens of any or no religion.

That is real leadership. Not a scintilla of bravery is required for a candidate, whether Democratic or Republican, to take refuge in religion. But it would take genuine courage to stand up and tell voters that elected officials cannot and should not depend on divine instructions to reconcile the competing interests and passions of human beings.

Abraham Lincoln, whose spiritual beliefs were so elusive that both atheists and the devoutly religious have tried to claim him as their own, spoke eloquently on this point during his long period of deliberation before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation.

"I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men, who are equally certain that they represent the divine will," he told a group of ministers in September 1862. "I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal his will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed that he would reveal it directly to me. . . . These are not, however, the days of miracles. . . . I must study the plain, physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible, and learn what appears to be wise and right."

Today, many voters, of many religious beliefs, might well be receptive to a candidate who forthrightly declares that his vision of social justice will be determined by the "plain, physical facts of the case" on humanity's green and fragile earth. But that would take an inspirational leader who glories in the nation's secular heritage and is not afraid to say so.


Susan Jacoby, author of the forthcoming "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism," is director of the Center for Inquiry-Metro New York.
 

Bush planned Iraqi invasion pre-Sept. 11

- report Reuters, 01.10.04, 12:56 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill charges in a new book that President Bush entered office in January 2001 intent on invading Iraq and was in search of a way to go about it.

O'Neill, fired in December 2002 as part of a shake-up of Bush's economic team, has become the first major insider of the Bush administration to launch an attack on the president.

He likened Bush at Cabinet meetings to "a blind man in a room full of deaf people," according to excerpts from a CBS interview to promote a book by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind, "The Price of Loyalty."

To go to war, Bush used the argument that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and had to be stopped in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, world. The weapons have never been found.

"From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," O'Neill said in the "60 Minutes" interview scheduled to air Sunday. "For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap."

CBS released excerpts from the interview Friday and Saturday.

The former treasury secretary and other White House insiders gave Suskind documents that in the first three months of 2001 revealed the Bush administration was examining military options for removing Saddam Hussein, CBS said.

"There are memos," Suskind told CBS. "One of them marked 'secret' says 'Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq."'

Another Pentagon document entitled "Foreign suitors for Iraqi Oil Field Contracts" talks about contractors from 40 countries and which ones have interest in Iraq, Suskind said.


BENT ON WAR

O'Neill was also quoted in the book as saying the president was determined to find a reason to go to war and he was surprised nobody on the National Security Council questioned why Iraq should be invaded.

"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it," said O'Neill. "The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this."'

White House spokesman Scott McClellan rejected O'Neill's remarks.

"We appreciate his service. While we're not in the business of doing book reviews, it appears that the world according to Mr. O'Neill is more about trying to justify his own opinions than looking at the reality of the results we are achieving on behalf of the American people," he said Saturday.

O'Neill also said the president did not ask him a single question during their first one-on-one meeting, which lasted an hour. The president's lack of engagement left his advisers with "little more than hunches about what the president might think," O'Neil told "60 Minutes."

Suskind's book, whose full title is "The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill", uses interviews with O'Neill, dozens of White House insiders and 19,000 documents provided by O'Neill.

O'Neill, who was fired due to disagreements over tax cuts, spent a difficult two years in Washington, joining the Bush administration with a background as a no-nonsense corporate executive.

Copyright 2004, Reuters News Service

January 11, 2004

Bush and Blair behind Khadaffy's WMD sham

By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor

MIAMI -- Just before New Year, President George Bush and Britain's PM Tony Blair staged what French call a "coup de theatre."

That's Gallic for pulling a political rabbit from one's hat.

The rabbit in question was none other than Libya's Col. Moammar Khadaffy, once reviled as the world's most dangerous man and America's Enemy Number One.

After eight months of secret negotiations with Washington and London, the eccentric Libyan strongman grandly proclaimed his nation was abandoning its weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Bush, his neo-conservative supporters, and the U.S. media crowed that Khadaffy's surrender confirmed the wisdom of invading Afghanistan and Iraq. The evil Khadaffy had been cowed into giving up his arsenal of deadly WMD.

Other "rogue" states would hasten to follow Libya's lead.

But on closer inspection, there was much less to this drama than met the eye. Khadaffy, in fact, had no viable WMD, contrary to fevered claims by neo-con propagandists.

According to UN inspectors and European intelligence sources, Libya had only small amounts of World War I technology mustard gas, a primitive battlefield weapon.

It had no biological or nuclear weapons. Libya had no means of delivering WMD beyond some rusting Scud-B missiles with only a 180-mile range.

Libya possessed an assortment of nuclear junk: a small research reactor, some lab equipment, and a few inoperative, third-hand centrifuges bought from Pakistan or Malaysia.

There is no sign, at least so far, of any capability to make or deliver WMD.

When I was in Libya interviewing Col. Khadaffy, I found there was not a single elevator repairman in the country.

Bakers had to be imported from Egypt to make bread. Seventy percent of Libya's military equipment was broken down. In short, tiny, backward Libya, with a population of only five million, had no military capability.

However, in the 1980s, Libya certainly did fund all sorts of violent revolutionary groups and was implicated in the bombings of French and U.S. airliners.

After 17 years of punishing sanctions against Libya, Khadaffy sought to improve relations with the West by paying reparations for the airliners, and handing over for trial two agents involved in the 1988 Pan Am bombing.

Now, by pretending to eliminate WMD he does not possess, the colonel has given a huge political bonus to Bush and Blair, a way for them to evade censure for shamelessly lying their nations into the Iraq war. They will reward Khadaffy by halting efforts to overthrow him, slowly lifting sanctions, and allowing U.S. and British oil firms to resume exploiting Libya's high-grade oil. That's politics.

The CIA helped Khadaffy into power in 1969. In the 1980s, the U.S., Britain and France each tried to assassinate him.

Now, it seems the flamboyant colonel with nine lives is slated to be reborn as a good Arab and U.S. ally.

Right after the Libyan charade, Washington opened a major new campaign to deprive Pakistan of its nuclear arsenal. The U.S. media trumpeted leaked government reports alleging Pakistan had secretly supplied Iran, North Korea, and Libya with nuclear technology. These reports blurred the lines between exports of civilian and military nuclear technology.

Washington accused Pakistan of being a major nuclear proliferator. Pakistan nervously admitted some of its nuclear scientists may have privately aided neighbor Iran, which has sought nuclear weapons for the past 28 years.

So far, accusations that past or current Pakistani governments were involved with covert nuclear weapons exports remain unproven. A director general of Pakistan's intelligence agency, ISI, once told me Iran had offered to pay Pakistan's entire defense budget for 10 years in exchange for nuclear technology, but Islamabad refused.

Whatever the case, this whole business is worthy of Alice in Wonderland. Who came down from the mountain to ordain that only the U.S., Russia, Britain, France, China, North Korea, India and Israel are allowed to possess nuclear weapons or sell nuclear technology?

The U.S. is about to build a new generation of earth-penetrating nuclear weapons. China and Russia are working on new nuclear systems.

India is building a very powerful nuclear arsenal and developing intercontinental missiles.

Israel has sold India advanced nuclear warhead and missile technology.

Muslim nations, it appears, are the only ones not allowed to possess WMD.

India used to rightly call this "nuclear apartheid" until President Bush allowed Delhi into the nuclear club.

Now that Iraq has been crushed, the White House's next targets are clearly Iran and Pakistan.

Neither pose any threat to the U.S.

Political and economic pressure on Pakistan will intensify.

President Pervez Musharraf, who has been unfailingly responsive to U.S. demands, may soon be asked to place Pakistan's nuclear weapons under joint U.S.-Pakistani control, a prelude to the total elimination of its nuclear arsenal, scientists, and weapons manufacturing capability.

If Bush were really serious about reducing nuclear weapons, as he claims, instead of building more nukes, he should slash America's still huge, quite useless arsenal of thousands of nuclear warheads.

That would be called leading by example.