When the matter is inconsequential, such as what the president is eating for dinner, the White House's determination not to answer the question is harmless, and often amusing. But it is indicative of something larger. In a study of communications in the Bush White House, to be published in the June issue of Presidential Studies Quarterly, academic Martha Joynt Kumar writes that the administration's intense control over information has the benefit of keeping the message simple and unified. But it also leaves presidential policies unexplained and White House responses inflexible.
"While previous administrations regularly explained policy proposals from the White House podium, it has not been a practice of the Bush administration to do so," she writes. Kumar also observes that "one of the byproducts of a communications operation geared toward action is the difficulty inherent in listening while selling."
Similar to the difficulty inherent in pronouncing the word "nuclear," walking and chewing gum, etc.
But answers to basic questions are indeed coming out of the White House — delivered in theocratic action, not secular words. From the same article:
Muslims were upset that Franklin Graham, who had condemned Islam as evil, preached at the Pentagon last week. Now comes word that the White House held a private briefing for 141 evangelical Christian leaders March 27 to discuss the Iraq war and other subjects.
Those invited included Jerry Falwell, who apologized last year for calling the prophet Muhammad a "terrorist," and broadcaster Marlin Maddoux, who has proclaimed an "irrefutable connection" between Islam and terror. Also invited were the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is sending food to Iraq labeled "grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ," and Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who said Iraqis are "desperately in need of the gospel." Invited, too, was D. James Kennedy, whose ministry published an article calling Islam "one of the greatest challenges to Christianity."
Meanwhile, Rumsfeld says (New York Times), "...we hope (for) a system that will be democratic and have free speech and free press and freedom of religion."
Of course, he meant in Iraq, at the same time his boss is calling America's most notorious theocratic wannabes to the Pentagon and the White House for a joint salivation session over all those appetizing, newly-conquered souls.
For his new Deputy of U. S. Trade, Bush has selected Josette Shiner, a longtime member of the Unification Church, whose members are sometimes derisively called "The Moonies." Shiner was also the managing editor for Moon's Washington Times newspaper.
In December, Bush gave another longtime Moon follower a plum appointment. He named David Caprara to head AmeriCorps at VISTA, leading some to question whether Bush is paying back the reverend for his generosity to the Bush family.
So what's it going to be for dinner in America? Democracy or theocracy?
"They're all with Saddam," said many in a group of workers who made an 80-kilometer journey in a crowded bus from Basrato to this dusty town, where oil pipelines snake across the desert scrub brush. The reference was to senior Iraqis working with Kellogg, Brown & Root, a unit of Halliburton Co. (HAL), which the U.S. has contracted to rehabilitate Iraq's oil infrastructure.
"They (Iraq oil managers) were all corrupt, making 1 million to 1.5 million dinars a month, while we took home 50,000 to 60,000 dinars a month," said one of the oil workers, mechanic Asad Jabar.
Iraqi oil managers made 20 to 25 times more than workers? That's undemocratic! Inhumane! How can bosses be treated so disproportionately?
"The average [US] chief executive's pay was 42 times that of the average hourly worker in 1980, according to Business Week. By 2000, the CEO compensation was 1,531 times as much as the hourly worker's" (Houston Chronicle). Regardless of how fast workers' wages rose in those twenty years, CEO compensation rose over 36 times faster.
It's an undeclared war, but American CEOs sure are winning it.
The cold winter is over, flowers are blooming and steel is going up at the unique Creation Museum, under construction in Northern Kentucky. Massive steel beams — some 50 feet high — now rise above the scenic skyline along Interstate 275.
Answers in Genesis, a nonprofit apologetics ministry based in the Cincinnati suburb of Florence, Kentucky, is building a 95,000 sq. ft. complex (which will include the new AiG headquarters) debt- free, as donations come in. Over $7 million has already been raised.
"Plans for the interior of the museum are taking shape, as well. As soon as guests walk through the front doors, realistic, life- size dioramas will provide a snapshot of an early world -- including Adam with dinosaurs -- that will challenge evolutionary worldviews," according to AiG's Mark Looy.
These "Answers in Genesis" geniuses have all the answers. Here's how they blithely explain the troublesome dinosaur problem:
The Bible tells us that God created all of the land animals on the sixth day of creation. As dinosaurs were land animals, they must have been made on this day, alongside Adam and Eve, who were also created on Day Six (Genesis 1:24-31). If God designed and created dinosaurs, they would have been fully functional, designed to do what they were created for, and would have been 100% dinosaur. This fits exactly with the evidence from the fossil record.
Wouldn't it be great if the world were explained as simply and as neatly as these cretins seem to think it can be? On second thought, maybe not.
Sad excuse for an educator, Dr. David Menton will be explaining all about dinosaurs this weekend to the 11-year-olds of Indiana.
How soon before these deranged people get science research grants from the US government?
Six members of Congress live in a $1.1 million Capitol Hill town house that is subsidized by a secretive religious organization, tax records show.
The lawmakers, all Christians, pay low rent to live in the stately red brick, three-story house on C Street, two blocks from the Capitol. It is maintained by a group alternately known as the "Fellowship" and the "Foundation" and brings together world leaders and elected officials through religion.
The Fellowship hosts receptions, luncheons and prayer meetings on the first two floors of the house, which is registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a church.
The six lawmakers — Reps. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn.; Bart Stupak, D-Mich.; Jim DeMint, R-S.C.; Mike Doyle, D-Pa.; and Sens. John Ensign, R-Nev. and Sam Brownback, R-Kan. — live in private rooms upstairs.
Rent is $600 a month, DeMint said.
[...]
It organizes the annual National Prayer Breakfast attended by the president, members of Congress and dignitaries from around the world. The group leaves its name off the program, even though it spent $924,373 to host the event in 2001, bringing in $606,292 in proceeds, according to the most recent available IRS records, and pays travel expenses for foreign officials to attend.
[...]
"We feel like it's nobody's business but our own," said former Rep. Steve Largent, R-Okla., who lived there before leaving Congress to run unsuccessfully for governor in his home state last year.
That secrecy is unsettling to the Rev. Barry Lynn, a United Church of Christ minister who heads watchdog group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.
"What concerns people is when you mix religion, political power, and secrecy," Lynn said. "Members of official Washington should always be open and direct about the groups they choose to join, just to dispel any concerns that there's an inappropriate or unconscious agenda in these groups."
Subsidized housing is so nice — too bad so few people beyond CEOs and Christian members of Congress are entitled to it.
Because the Capitol Hill townhouse is a "church," it's supposed to be "religious," and that means it's all "tax-free" too!
But ordinary American citizens don't have the benefit of their leaders' secretive benefactors, whose chief result was the claim to have helped not legislators but the poor.
Consider the spiritual symmetry of this arrangement: Congressional Christians get to make more money and pay less rent than their own interns and staffers:
Cameron McCree, a recent graduate of the University of Arkansas, was at the bottom of the scale when he interned on Capitol Hill in the summer of 2001. He earned $1,000 a month, but it cost him $800 a month to rent a room at George Washington University, not to mention the cost of food and sightseeing.
With even a little scrutiny, this scheme is looking less Christian and more routinely opportunist.
Once again, the most outwardly pious people turn out to be the sneakiest conniving bastards you'd ever want as your representatives in government.
UPDATE: Via The Agonist comes this long article on the benefactors' cult from Harper's.
The Bush administration, then, really is the political equivalent of Enron. Ken Lay and George W. Bush and Karl Rove and Andrew Fastow and Jeff Skilling and Dick Cheney are all cut from the same cloth.
And what stingy, threadbare, conformist crap that cloth turns out to be.
But walking in lockstep comes naturally to the right. The larger problem is organizing people who celebrate diversity and nonconformity in thought and styles of self-expression. That is, Democrats with a capital D.
After the debacle of the midterm congressional elections last November, I had plenty of similar thoughts. But how will we get where we need to go while we're immersed in Republican-compliant media? I agree with the commenter at Digby's Hullabaloo who said that if the Bush administration is the political equivalent of Enron, then the press is Arthur Andersen.
The absence of a critically thinking mainstream American press is the void that all this blogging energy is meant to fill.
...Bechtel is widely perceived as the front-runner for future [Iraqi reconstruction] business as the U.S. spends up to $100 billion in what is seen as the biggest reconstruction project since World War II's aftermath.
[...]
At least two current Bechtel executives have ties to the Bush administration.
A senior vice president, Jack Sheehan, sits on the Defense Policy Board formed to advise Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who himself once lobbied for a Bechtel project. Sheehan, a retired Marine Corps general, manages Bechtel's petroleum and chemical operations.
And President Bush appointed Bechtel's chairman, Riley Bechtel, in February to the Export Council, which advises the president on international trade matters.
[...]
Bechtel's critics don't doubt the company is up to the job. Instead, they say that by limiting the bidding to Bechtel and five other U.S. companies, the federal government might not have gotten the best free-market deal.
"We are concerned that the government seems to be handpicking their buddies for these contracts," said Seth Morris, research associate for the nonpartisan Washington-based Project on Government Oversight.
[...]
Riley Bechtel, 51, is the great-grandson I'm so rich!of company founder Warren Bechtel and has been chief executive for 13 years. He has emerged as one of the world's richest people with an estimated fortune of $3.2 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
The company has backed its personal contacts within Washington with sizable campaign contributions. Bechtel gave $1.3 million to political candidates from 1999 through 2002, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
That is a lot less than other influential businesses. The donations look like small change compared to the money Bechtel earns from the government.
In the fiscal year ended in September 2002, the Department of Defense paid Bechtel $1.03 billion, making it the 17th-largest military contractor in the country.
In retrospect, Bechtel makes even more sense than Cheney's Halliburton.
Why? Because it's a private, family-owned company, and therefore not bothered by such messy details as disclosure or accountability. It's logical for one dynasty — the Bushes — to honor the Bechtel dynasty.
Bechtel's past, too rich to go into detail here, is fascinating in its contrivances — first by wooing Saddam Hussein as a suitor (with one Donald Rumsfeld popping a breath mint and holding the bouquet), then by punishing him by killing him for his rejection of its affections:
After serving as treasury secretary in the Nixon administration, George Shultz was Bechtel's president for seven years before he left in 1981 to become secretary of state in the Reagan administration.
And Casper Weinberger was its general counsel and served on the company's board from 1975 to 1981 before becoming secretary of defense under Reagan.
While Shultz was U.S.'s top diplomat, the U.S. government tried unsuccessfully to persuade Saddam Hussein to let Bechtel build a pipeline to carry Iraqi crude oil through Jordan to the Red Sea port of Aqaba.
In 1983, Rumsfeld, while working as a special U.S. envoy in the Middle East, traveled to Baghdad to discuss the pipeline with Saddam and Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, according to memos in the National Archives.
Iraq rejected the pipeline idea in 1986. Shultz has since returned to Bechtel's board of directors.
Bechtel exemplifies "the revolving door between government and business that Washington has helped perpetuate for years," said Jim Vallette, a research director at the Institute for Policy Studies, a nonpartisan Washington-based think tank. "We should have a separation between the state and corporations. Instead, they're acting more like partners."
Bechtel reminds us that the war wasn't totally about political hypocrites craving Iraqi oil.
It was also hypocritical hyper-opportunists moving American taxpayer money from the US Treasury directly into the hands of the Bush dynasty's supporters. And cynical geopolitical strategies designed to pilfer international assets. And the new Faustian alliance between corporate financial power and American military power.
Who would have thought that a choice other than Halliburton could stink quite as detestably?
The Book of Sharon. Michael Moore's publisher is ponying up the advance to get Neil Bush's jilted wife Sharon Bush's backstory on the Bush dynasty (Cragg Hines in the Houston Chronicle):
...Los Angeles publisher Michael Viner confirmed "a deal in principle" to handle Sharon's book. The Bushes viewed this as an especially bad sign: Viner also saw into print Stupid White Men, the work of Bush/Republican scourge Michael Moore.
Sharon's working title: Family First. Sharon's advance: "six figures," which covers a lot of territory and is apparently not close to "seven figures." Sharon's outlook: "It will be positive, not negative," said Suzanne Wickham, a publicist for Viner's New Millennium Entertainment.
Now that Sharon has been voted off the island, former first lady Barbara Bush is already practicing at the firing range for the 2004 Battle to Defend Her Family's Values:
The former first lady will view Sharon's book as another assault on her carefully cultivated image as the nation's grandmother, when, in fact she has the longest, most exacting political memory of any member of the family*. Runner-up in that category is the current president**.
It's not made any easier for Barbara Bush knowing that Neil's family-busting affair was with a former volunteer at the former first lady's good-works foundation. Or that the volunteer's own recent divorce case featured several letters from Neil to the "other woman" -- reportedly with lots of syntactical problems.
Syntactical problems are evidently a large part of the Bush legacy.
The current administration was supposed to be the alternative to adultery, but Sharon's book will put an end to that ludicrous notion — given that her syntactically-challenged banking criminal husband repeatedly porked one of Mom's assistants before the Republican slattern's most recent child even turned two years old.
Instead of the alternative to adultery, the Bushes have given us many other alternatives... to international peace, jobs, homeland security, civil liberties, environmental protection, the separation of church and state, ethics in business, viable stock markets, and fair elections within our borders.
Christians have been present in the Middle East since the first century, living harmoniously with Muslims for long periods. Some claim the problems are with a more assertive Western Christianity that uses its wealth in manipulative ways.
"There are very sincere missionaries whom Muslims like," says Dr. Nasr. "But what makes them angry is that US proselytizing is combined with worldly advantages: Poor people are wooed with medicine for their children, syringes for their cows, and then are expected to attend services."
Broadly speaking, a more assertive Western Christianity "using its wealth in manipulative ways" could include things like bombing and invasion. Especially since the purported rationale for the war — WMD and terrorism — has so far turned out to be an utter fraud.
Now the conquered people can suffer further indignities, bartering their spiritual lives for medicine and food. Aren't we nice for helping the armless orphan boy, whose family we killed and whose arms we blew off? I wonder if he has yet accepted Jesus as his true savior.
The way all these people act in the name of God — George W. Bush, Osama bin Laden, Franklin Graham, millions of others — only supports the idea that if a deity exists at all, it is nowhere in the vicinity of any of them.
The head of a U.S. presidential panel on cultural property has resigned in protest at the failure of U.S. forces to prevent the wholesale looting of priceless treasures from Baghdad's antiquities museum.
"It didn't have to happen," Martin Sullivan said of the objects that were destroyed or stolen from the Iraqi National Museum in a wave of looting that erupted as U.S.-led forces ended President Saddam Hussein rule last week.
Sullivan, who chaired the President's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property for eight years, said he wrote a letter of resignation to the White House this week in part to make a statement but also because "you can't speak freely" as a special government-appointed employee.
The president appoints the 11-member advisory committee. Another panel member, Gary Vikan, also plans to resign because of the looting of the museum.
The President's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property has its own website stating that the United States Department of State is responsible for implementing the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act.
Even though he was lone dove of the Bush bunch, former military leader Colin Powell is going to get the Chaos of the Chickenhawks pinned on him.
Some looters emptying Iraq's museums of centuries-old treasures were possibly professional thieves who used keys to enter locked safes and vaults, experts said today. [...]
A gathering of 30 art experts and cultural historians in Paris said that while much of the looting in Iraq was haphazard, some of the thieves clearly knew what they wanted and where to find it -- suggesting they were prepared professionals.
"It looks as if part of the looting was a deliberate planned action," said McGuire Gibson, a University of Chicago professor and president of the American Association for Research in Baghdad. "They were able to take keys for vaults and were able to take out important Mesopotamian materials put in safes."
McGuire Gibson is coincidentally the same expert who repeatedly conferred with the Pentagon (Washington Post) in advance of the war.
We wrote about the deviousness behind this "looting" previously.
In January 2003, we imported only 600,000 barrels of Iraqi crude a day. In anticipation of our invasion, we upped our order to 909,000 barrels per day in February.
Hopefully we put the purchase on a credit card so we can skirt the bill and also get a half-billion frequent flyer miles for Colin Powell.
Accounts of the U.S. military's dramatic rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch from Saddam Hospital here two weeks ago read like the stuff of a Hollywood script. For Iraqi doctors working in the hospital that night, it was exactly that -- Hollywood dazzle, with little need for real action.
"They made a big show," said Haitham Gizzy, a physician at the public hospital here who treated Lynch for her injuries. "It was just a drama," he said. "A big, dramatic show."
This may come as a surprise to average Iraqi civilians and other recent amputees (see the same article above), but the American style of leadership is now 100% show business. The scripts, editing, camera angles, costuming, sets and props are much more carefully planned than any other aspect of government actions. The Jessica Lynch Show, like the The Fall of the Statue Show, is a fraud.
The war between surface and substance is over. Surface won. Why else put an empty suit in front of a painted warehouse backdrop — inside a real warehouse?
...I had found myself wondering, too, if the situations were reversed and Lori Piestewa, the Hopi woman who was killed in Iraq, had been rescued, and Jessica Lynch had died, if we would not now be seeing the tragic death as more important than the rescue. If we wouldn't be thinking, yes, thank God that one woman was rescued, but we must not forget the brave, blonde girl who died at the hands of evil men, and fight all the harder in her memory. The word "wondering" is the key there. I'm aware of how often the issues and concerns of anyone who isn't white, male or middle class (preferably all three) get shoved to the margins, and when something like this happens, it's pretty hard not to notice that the media is obsessed with one particular woman, and that her pigmentation is different from that of the majority of women in the military.
Lori's story is told in "What about Private Lori?" in The Guardian.
What Enron hoped would be a world-class collection of contemporary art promoting its cutting-edge image will go on the block next month.
The first round of the auction, approved by a U.S. bankruptcy judge on Tuesday, is scheduled for May 15-16 in New York. Up for sale will be the most valuable pieces, including Claes Oldenburg's Soft Light Switches and nine other artworks.
About 50 other pieces will be auctioned by Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg in the fall.
Much of the collection was bought by an in-house art committee, chaired by Lea Fastow, wife of indicted former Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow. Given a $20 million budget, she traveled to New York; Venice, Italy; and elsewhere in search of pieces.
The spree continued from late 2000 to the following fall, when Enron went into the tank and shopping was stopped, having spent about $4 million.
"It's like The Beverly Hillbillies," said Hiram Butler, co-director of the Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery in the Heights. "What's not fun -- flying around, buying art?"
Examining a partial list of the artists and pieces represented in the collection, Butler, who specializes in contemporary art, "I'm wondering, 'Who are these guys?' "
Five pieces that will be auctioned May 15 are the highlights "are all 'A' quality" representative pieces of contemporary genres, including pop, op (for optical) and minimalism, said Amalia Dayan, a contemporary art specialist at Phillips de Pury.
The majority of the collection, to be auctioned this fall, is "lower value work," Dayan said. "It was a corporate collection. You have huge spaces you have to fill with art. When you have to fill huge spaces, you buy less valuable art. You combine that with a few quality examples."
Oldenburg's Soft Light Switches, a vinyl pop sculpture of what appears to be a melted light switch, is by far the most valuable piece in the collection. Enron bought it from Phillips de Pury three years ago for about $590,000, including commission.
Light switches, energy company — get it?
Effortlessly mixing the sublime with the banal, Enron's hamburger-helper art collection will be auctioned instead of looted, as if that makes any difference at all to the acquirers of such fabulously expensive objects.
I picture Lea Fastow in a Venetian gallery, haggling over price in louder and louder English with an Italian dealer. Ugly art for ugly Americans.
The Enron quote of the day for these "Beverly Hillbillies" is "What's not fun -- flying around, buying art?" For a contemporary art expert with a sense of humor, I give a lot of credit to the immediately likeable Hiram Butler.
Image credit: Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg, who receives luscious commissions on both the original purchase and the subsequent auction of many of these artworks.
May 1, 2003 UPDATE: Photos at this post: Lea Fastow is charged and surrenders to federal authorities.
...Neil infamously served as a director of Silverado Banking, Savings & Loan. The S&L failed in the late '80s, costing taxpayers more than $1 billion. Neil received federal sanctions and, with 11 other defendants, agreed to pay $49.5 million to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The family moved to Houston in 1991.
Maybe that $49.5 million is why Neil's final settlement offer to Sharon was $1,000 a month, which she refused. The case goes to jury trial this month.
According to gossip columnist Cindy Adams, Neil is involved with Maria Andrews, mother of three (the youngest 18 months), who divorced her husband in October. Neil met Andrews when she worked for a Barbara Bush foundation. Dozens of letters from Neil to her have been admitted as exhibits. Ouch. Houston insiders expect Neil and Andrews to marry once his divorce is settled.
Adultery among parents! It's always refreshing to see Republican family values as they're actually lived.
Neil's offer of $12,000 a year precludes any more fancy Egyptian vacations for Sharon Bush. What a contrast from Neil's remarks about their March 2001 family getaway to a painfully obvious destination — the Mideast:
First of all, this is our first visit to Egypt as a family. My wife Sharon and my daughters have been to Luxor and Cairo, but never to the Red Sea. We’ve heard so much about the snorkeling and diving here, so we decided to spend a portion of our trip in this part of Egypt. I dive, but I’m not a master. My wife has been diving many times, but this is actually the first time for us to dive together as family.
Perhaps it also turned out to be the last time they would dive together as a family.
Sharon's refusal of the thousand-a-month offer was understandable, given the lifestyle to which she's become accustomed as part of the Bush dynasty.
Also interesting in the Egyptian article is the dyslexia angle, trumpeted as Neil's triumph of entrepreneurial insight:
Neil Bush has recently initiated a revolutionary interactive learning tool in the United States, which he calls the Ignite! Learning System. Ignite! is a computer program designed to replace classroom textbooks and help teachers teach and students learn more effectively. In his youth, Neil Bush suffered from dyslexia, and his 7th grade teachers told his mother, Barbara Bush, that he would not graduate from high school. Bush triumphed in his challenge to live with dyslexia, and was inspired to promote ways of learning such as Ignite! to enable children to be better educated by methods that help them develop their full learning potential. Ignite! will be launched in the United States this summer, actively promoted by members of Neil Bush’s family, including two of his children, Ashley and Pierce.
Readers in Texas and especially Houston — you know who you are (wink!) — are invited to email me as many local stories as possible as the divorce trial proceeds.
UPDATE:The Daily Kos reports on a New York Observer story about Sharon's pitch for a tell-all book. Sharon is supposedly willing to break Bush family silence about its overt dynasty-building, since they collectively refused to budge on the $1,000 a month offer.
Bush's chief campaign financiers included Enron, one of the masterminds behind the California energy crisis that wiped $45 billion from the state economy.
The new Homeland Security Department's budget is about $38 billion, but as little as $3 billion to $4 billion in new money is going to state and local coffers, according to state officials. That isn't even enough to cover new federal security mandates, according to the complaints of some governors and mayors, who have had to increase taxes and lay off municipal workers, such as firefighters and police officers.
For defense contractors, the new government money is helping stem a decade-long decline in military orders. But the companies are still hurting from a recent collapse in their civilian business and are saddled with facilities that have been half-empty for years. Productivity gains in manufacturing also have helped the companies add work without having to add workers.
Adding work without adding workers is every capitalist's dream. But We the People have to account for some of this spending by the pluto-bureaucrats.
How did only $3 or $4 billion get allocated to state and local governments? Who was responsible for making the numbers line up with the new mandates? Talk about fuzzy math.
September 11 was supposed to have shown us how important firefighters and police officers are (especially to Peggy Noonan). But the irrationality of Bush spending is forcing them to be laid off.
So if only $4 billion goes to states and municipalities, $34 billion is staying right in Washington for... what?
In metropolitan Washington, the unemployment rate was only 3.5% in January, the lowest of any metro region with more than one million workers. The region contains tracts of suburban Maryland and Virginia and is home to many companies that have landed homeland-security contracts, often for computer services. It gained more than 42,000 jobs in 2002, far more than any other metropolitan area.
$34 billion for a handful of computer consultants in industrial parks in Chevy Chase and Fairfax County? Sounds a bit steep.
While computer services companies outside the Beltway thrive on federal generosity, public health labs — the ones who would be called upon in a real terrorist event involving, say, a bioweapons or toxic chemical attack — are calling the homeland security effort and its funding "missing in action."
It is a cultural catastrophe. Yesterday the [Iraq National Museum]'s exhibition halls and security vaults were a barren mess - display cases smashed, offices ransacked and floors littered with hand-written index cards recording the timeless detail of more than 170,000 rare items that were pilfered.
Worse, in their search for gold and gems, the looters got into the museum's underground vaults, where they smashed the contents of the thousands of tin trunks.
It was here that staff had painstakingly packed priceless ceramics that tell the story of life from one civilisation to the next through 9000 fabled years in Mesopotamia.
In tears of anger and frustration, archaeologist Moysen Hassan, 56, itemised the pieces he was certain were stolen: a solid-gold harp from the Sumerian era, which began about 3360BC; a sculptured head of a woman from Uruk, one of the great Sumerian cities; gold necklaces, bracelets and earrings more than 4000 years old, and a rare collection of gold-trimmed ivory sculptures.
Too distraught to talk about the collection, he gave me a copy of the catalogue for The Grand Exhibition of Silk Road Civilisations, which toured the world in the late 1980s and for which the museum set aside its traditional reluctance to allow any of its treasure abroad.
All the items that made it safely around the world and back to Baghdad have been looted.
They include centuries-old carvings of stone bulls, kings and princesses, shoes made of copper and cuneiform tablets, pieces of tapestries and ivory figurines of goddesses, women and Nubian porters, friezes of fighting soldiers and ancient seals and tablets on geometry, and ceramic jars and urns and bowls, all dating back at least 2000 years, some more than 5000 years.
[...]
The sacking of the museum took two days, interrupted only for 30 minutes when pleading staff convinced members of a Marines tank unit to go to the museum and scare off the looters with a few warning shots over their heads.
Abdul Rakhman, the museum's live-in guard, 57, was a gibbering wreck as he told of the arrival of a shouting crowd armed with axes and iron bars to smash the doors and cases.
The history of civilization is a small price to pay for the continued fuel inefficiency of American automobiles and SUVs. Meanwhile, consider how the Halliburton logo would look rendered in cuneiform.
Bush's earnings were outpaced by Vice President Richard Cheney's $1.166 million in adjustable gross income and $945,051 in taxable income [in 2002]. But the vice president's earnings were down from more the than $4 million in taxable income for 2001, which included bonuses and stock options from his previous employer, Halliburton Co.
Cheney, who took $221,684 in deductions, had a tax bill of $341,114 for 2002. This entitled the vice president to a refund of nearly $95,858, but he chose to apply $20,000 to his 2003 tax bill.
Cheney reported $162,392 in deferred compensation from Halliburton, which he served as chief executive before becoming vice president. His office said the pay is unaffected by the financial performance of Halliburton.
A subsidiary of Halliburton has been awarded U.S. contract reportedly worth up to $7 billion to put out oil fires in Iraq stemming from the war launched by the Bush administration. Democratic lawmakers have requested an investigation into whether Halliburton received special favors, but the White House has denied this.
The earnings of Cheney and his wife, Lynne, also included $490,999 in dividends and $129,000 in business income. Mrs. Cheney in 2002 earned money from service on corporate boards and work for the American Enterprise Institute think tank. The Cheneys donated $121,983 to charity, primarily from book royalties earned by Mrs. Cheney.
Where should we begin with this analysis? Let's start with the $4 million in income "which included bonuses and stock options from his previous employer, Halliburton Co." for the year 2001 — a year which was notable for Cheney's eleven-plus months of service as vice president while receiving corporate benefits, his six secret and sealed energy policy meetings with Enron, the al Qaeda attacks on the US, and Cheney's initial planning of the war against Saddam Hussein, which coincidentally rewarded Halliburton with a no-bid $7 billion contract announced only days ago.
Even in 2002, Cheney was still on the take from the Halliburton till, to the tune of $162,392 in deferred compensation. "His office said the pay is unaffected by the financial performance of Halliburton." But they got it the wrong way around — the financial performance of Halliburton is inextricably affected by Cheney's office.
But here's the part that is perhaps the sickest of all: $490,999 in dividends and $129,000 in "business income," whatever that might mean, since no one is bothering to define or question it. A half-million dollars in dividends that he wants tax-free so you can pick up the tab for his war. Don't you hate guys in bars who think that because they told you a joke and clapped you on the back, you ought to buy them a drink? Except Cheney never told you a joke or clapped you on the back.
Note also that more than half of Cheney's income was in dividends — he didn't work for it. Everything about the Bush dividend-promoting "stimulus package" is a big juicy kiss on the asses of the wealthy and a slap in the face of anyone who works for a living. Those who own will get ahead. Those who work will fall behind. Talk about simplifying the tax code!
Then add in Lynne's earnings — at corporate boards where she is working so hard to destroy shareholder value, and at the American Enterprise Institute which toils ceaselessly to destroy our nation's judiciary. (And just who is buying those Lynne Cheney books that earn almost $121,983 in royalties?* You can almost see the dagger in the New York Times bestseller lists: "This book reports having bulk orders — from the American Enterprise Institute.")
I can't decide which is more stunning — the speed, or the scale, of their immoral perversions of American justice. The obscenity of their abusive policies, pathological secrecy, class warfare, and military war profiteering are all the more pointed now that the insult of Tax Day is upon us.
Whatever happened to centrist Republicans? As We the Little People send the wages from our little "jobs" to the US Treasury, somewhere a Republican cell is quietly metastasizing into yet another plutocratic malignancy.
*An Amazon reader's word-for-word review of Lynne Cheney's Sisters: "If you want to read about the USA and how it works, from the perspective of a rich, dillusional white lady, run right out and by this book. Lynne Cheney has a warped perspective on everthing (unless you're rich and white, then maybe you can relate). I'd say wait till it shows up in a trash can near you. That's when the price would be right." I guess that's another way of saying that if our markets were truly free, Lynne Cheney wouldn't receive $121,983 in royalties.
Here's another maniac nominee from the people who lost the election but won the Supreme Court. James Leon Holmes, former president of Arkansas Right to Life, seeks a seat on the Federal District Court in Little Rock, his hometown.
When it comes to file-keeping, the Baathists of Iraq were often referred to as the "Prussians of the Middle East". Saddam Hussein's officials kept impeccable and detailed records on virtually all realms of government and society. But as looting grips Baghdad and throngs of civilians rush government buildings to exact retribution in whatever small way they can, the fate of these records is an open question. In post-war Iraq, these documents will prove to be of inestimable value for determining guilt and meting out justice. But it will all depend on whether the prized materials have already been destroyed or disappeared.
Discreet discussion about the status of Iraqi files began long before the start of the war. The United Nations was still in the throes of heated debate back in August of last year when some in the US intelligence community anonymously leaked information about Saddam's so-called "black files". Allegedly, these files contain indications of covert payments to various African countries to procure pro-Iraq votes at the UN. The same sources reported that Morocco in particular was getting nervous.
Others have said that it is US indiscretions that are at root in Washington's concern over the files. These sources point to the incident late last year when the US representative to the UN had several thousand pages removed from Iraq's weapons disclosure report before it was released for general review. These pages were reportedly removed because they contained unflattering disclosures about US corporations and US government agencies that had cooperated with Baghdad over the years.
Why did we send 300,000 people at great expense to central Asia — to find questionable weapons of mass destruction, or irrefutable memos of mass collusion?
The next time you hear that an insurance company pays millions of dollars and frivolous claims, remember this case. State Farm refused to pay $50,000 to settle both a wrongful death case and a permanent disability case when its own investigators determined its insured [driver Curtis Campbell] to be at fault.
[...]
Tort reformers tell us that insurance companies routinely pay millions of dollars on frivolous claims. That contention is hard to square with the actions of insurers like State Farm.
State Farm was willing to lie, cheat, defraud, harm its customer, create false documents, destroy evidence, intimidate the weak and slander the dead in order to avoid paying a total of $50,000 on a wrongful death claim and a permanent disability claim when State Farm knew that liability was clear.
Does that sound like a company that would pay millions of dollars on a frivolous claim?
State Farm ordered its attorneys to use "mad dog litigation tactics" including "using the company's large resources to "wear out" opposing attorneys by prolonging litigation, making meritless objections, claiming false privileges, destroying documents, and abusing the law and motion process." Tort reformers would have more credibility if they proposed any reform to address those sort of abuses.
If you believe that insurance companies pay out millions of dollars for frivolous cases and that litigation abuse occurs only on the plaintiff’s side, we expect that you would also believe that State Farm acts "like a good neighbor."
The full post is revealing in its detail — State Farm's tactical use of a concocted "pregnant girlfriend" and its Enron-style document destruction, to name just two examples. It's yet another PLA gem you should read.
WASHINGTON, April 10 — The Pentagon contract given without competition to a Halliburton subsidiary to fight oil well fires in Iraq is worth as much as $7 billion over two years, according to a letter from the Army Corps of Engineers that was released today.
The contract also allows Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary, to earn as much as 7 percent profit. That could amount to $490 million.
The corps released these new details in a letter to Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and one of the two senior lawmakers who asked the General Accounting Office to investigate how the Bush administration is awarding contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq.
The reconstruction effort could cost up to $100 billion and become one of the most lucrative building programs in decades.
And while the world now distracts itself with the spectacle of Iraq unraveling in chaos, the alleged Yemeni terrorists have quietly escaped (Wall Street Journal, sub. req'd.):
SAN'A, Yemen -- Yemeni authorities were hunting for 10 of the main suspects in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole after they escaped from prison Friday [April 11, 2003], officials said.
The fugitives, including chief suspect Jamal Al-Badawi, had been jailed in the port city of Aden since shortly after the destroyer was bombed, killing 17 American sailors.
[...]
Yemen, the ancestral home of Mr. bin Laden, has been a hotbed of terrorist activity. Supporters of al Qaeda have claimed responsibility for several bombings targeting security officials and government offices in the past few months. Yemen committed itself to joining the war on terrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in America and has allowed U.S. forces to enter the country and train its military.
So the real terrorists are running free while we chase down the framed ones in Iraq. Too bad Yemen doesn't have more oil — maybe then our craven leaders would see fit to do something effective against terror beyond color-coding it.
Meanwhile Barbara Bodine, who according to The Observer is "known for a mixture of her expertise in the region and fervent hostility to a politically organised Muslim world," is now on deck to become the viceroy of New Baghdad. She'll step into her new position over the corpses of 17 American sailors and thousands of civilians in southwestern Pennsylvania, Washington DC, and lower Manhattan.
Don't count on Sharon Bush to go quietly into the night once her ties to the Bush dynasty are severed by divorce. The ongoing legal action between Neil and Sharon Bush notwithstanding, she continues on her long-established path of community service.
On May 21 Sharon Bush will chair a garden benefit for the prestigious American Ireland Fund with Irish tenor Ronan Tynan as guest entertainer. The Boston-based organization, which works for peace in Ireland, honored former President George Bush here in 1995.
The upcoming benefit should be a slam dunk for Sharon. Paige and Tilman Fertitta will open the verdant gardens of their River Oaks home for the dinner evening, which is limited to 150 guests. Minimum ticket -- $1,000. Bush has already sold eight of the 15 tables.
Typically one step ahead of the game, Tilman Fertitta, owner of Post Oak Motorcars and chief of Landry's Restaurants, has landed the first Rolls-Royce Phantom to be seen in Texas. The astronomically pricey new generation Rolls debuted in the Post Oak showroom last week and will be on display this week during the River Oaks International Tennis Tournament.
Fertitta beat out Dallas in securing the Lone Star premiere of the car that is custom-crafted to the owner's specifications. Price tag: $350,000. And, yes, Post Oak Motorcars is receiving orders. Who said economic downturn?
But then economic downturns don't matter much to your family — intact or divorced — if you can wage war using a phony morality and a facade of Christian piety to cover up corporate fraud, media manipulation, and gated communities of the affluent dedicated to "peace."
The fuel tank of the Rolls-Royce Phantom has the capacity to hold 26.4 gallons of liberated Iraqi petroleum products. Gas mileage has not yet been determined.
Emboldened by the U.S. military's apparent quick rout of Iraqi forces, conservative hawks in America are setting their sights on regime change in Iran and Syria.
"It's time to bring down the other terror masters," Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute* wrote on Monday -- two days before U.S. troops swept into the heart of Baghdad -- in a piece entitled "Syria and Iran Must Get Their Turn."
"Iran, at least, offers Americans the possibility of a memorable victory, because the Iranian people openly loath the regime, and will enthusiastically combat it, if only the United States supports them in their just struggle," he added. "Syria cannot stand alone against a successful democratic revolution that topples tyrannical regimes in Kabul, Tehran and Iraq."
[...]
Frank Gaffney, a senior Pentagon official under former President Ronald Reagan, said he believed that regime change should be the U.S. policy toward Iran and Syria and said the United States could not rule out the use of force.
"If the threat metastasizes in such a way that we consider it to leave us no choice but to use military force then that would have to be an option," he said.
Gaffney, head of the Center for Security Policy* think tank, said many Iranians would like to see their government change and the United States should help them through information flows, economic assistance and possibly covert activity.
"The use of military force is probably genuinely the last resort here, but I certainly think it's like that we're going to see efforts made to bring about change in Iran as well as Syria ... and perhaps elsewhere in the region as a matter of the natural progression of this war on terror," he added.
*These institutes and think tanks are endowed by the likes of Richard Mellon Scaife and the Bradley Foundation in what amounts to an attempt at a plutocratic global coup under the twin Trojan horses of "democracy" and a "war on terror."
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Iraq's oil production could rise as much as 50 percent from 2002 levels by the end of the year if the country is given outside help in restoring its fields' capacity to pump crude, Vice President Dick Cheney said on Wednesday.
Cheney, speaking to a meeting of U.S. newspaper editors, made his remarks in response to a question about Iraq's oil capability. He said production could hit 2.5 million to 3 million barrels per day by the end of this year.
Last year, Iraq was producing about 2 million barrels of oil per day, down from a high of about 3 million barrels in 1988, according to the U.S. Energy Department.
Even though the country will need outside help, Cheney said Iraqis will have to "make decisions on how much they want to reinvest" in their oil sector.
The country controls more than 112 billion barrels of oil, second only to Saudi Arabia in proven reserves.
Sketching out a postwar scenario now that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein appears to have lost power, Cheney, a former oil company executive, spoke of "an organization to oversee the functioning of their oil ministry."
That body, he said, "will be composed primarily of Iraqis*. It may have international advisers from outside."
Revenues from the oil sales, Cheney said, "will then flow to the Iraqi government," which he said will provide a "resource base" to rebuild the country.
But he added that the United States was prepared to provide help.
*Oversight of the oil ministry will be led by Iraqis named Ahmed Chalabi, if his carefully-stoked post-9/11 relationship with Dick Cheney bears any fruit.
"International advisers from outside" could include, oh, I don't know, Halliburton maybe. What do you think?
U.S. government officials, experts from key international agencies, and experts in the post-conflict reconstruction field will discuss the likely political situation and legal environment businesses will face.
Speakers with specific private sector expertise in structural issues faced in post-conflict environments will address priority questions, such as risk mitigation for contractors, insurance, sanctions, Iraq’s existing contracts and financial obligations.
Particular sectoral opportunities in post-war Iraq will be analysed through the prism of the security and political challenges that will exist. How will the security environment affect the delivery of key goods and services? How will businesses interact with the security presence on the ground?
Best part of all? IT'S SECRET!
Participate in a not-for-attribution session that will permit a dynamic, frank exchange of views on the opportunities and challenges businesses will face in post-conflict Iraq.
Who should attend? The usual suspects: "Senior executives who will be involved in the strategy and execution of supporting the reconstruction of Iraq," and "Service firms (law firms, financial institutions, accounting and consulting companies) who will be supporting the prime contractors in Iraq." Dick Cheney's Rolodex is working 24/7.
The registration form doesn't mention if there will be goodie bags with badges and T-shirts that say, "I killed the US surplus to kill Saddam — and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."
Private [Diego Fernando] Rincon, whose family moved to the United States from Colombia when he was 5, mailed a letter to his mother at the end of February. His unit was preparing to roll off in its Bradley fighting vehicles, he told her, and he might not be able to write soon. He told his mother he loved her. He also told her of his fears, the jarring flashes he had of what might come next.
What came next was that he died on March 29, 2003. He was nineteen years old. For his first full year of service he would have earned what every private earns, a little over $15,000.
Elsewhere in the Times we notice a special report on executive compensation. There we learn that Edward D. Breen, the new CEO of disgraced Tyco International, was very well compensated in 2002 — to the tune of $65,034,965. (Ironically enough, Tyco is suing its former officers for "looting" the company.)
What's a CEO worth? That's easy — Tyco CEO Edward D. Breen is worth 4,335 Private Rincons.
It takes over four thousand American war casualties to match the dollar value of a single CEO.
Wendy Hall, a Halliburton spokeswoman, declined to comment specifically on the demonstration [against Halliburton war profiteering], but said the decision to go to war wasn't made by Halliburton, adding that, "We live in a country where people have fought so that others may peacefully demonstrate."
Wendy Hall, you are so very wrong.
The decision to go to war was indeed made by Halliburton, in the form of a certain famously hawkish Dick Cheney who served as Halliburton's CEO in 2000, the same year he campaigned to become the vice president.
It is precisely this confluence that makes every word, every action, and every policy out of the White House suspect whenever the scent of oil or energy services or Iraqi reconstruction is in the air.
If you want to, here's how you can reach Wendy Hall to set her straight with the facts.
Matthew Yglesias says, "James Woolsey would, if given the chance, intentionally provoke a war with Syria and Iran and powerful actors within the US government want to give him that chance."
Now in its 17th month of bankruptcy, Enron has hired 48 law firms, accounting firms and other specialized professionals nursing it through the process. Some of the law firms are helping the creditors committee and an examiner studying causes of the company's collapse.
Legal and other expenditures billed to the company now exceed $318 million, far more than it cost to build the ballpark formerly known as Enron Field.
By some estimates, the total legal bill for Enron's bankruptcy could exceed half a billion dollars. It is already the most expensive bankruptcy ever.
On Thursday, Enron bankruptcy lawyer Brian Rosen sought to retain Venable, Baetjer and Howard to help resolve complicated energy trading contracts Enron negotiated before its bankruptcy.
Rosen's firm, Weil, Gotshal & Manges, Enron's primary bankruptcy law firm, has billed the company $60 million for its work so far, not including as-yet unsubmitted invoices for recent work.
As Enron filed for bankruptcy on Dec. 2, 2001, Weil sought a law firm specializing in complicated energy matters and brought in Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft to handle the contract negotiations. Through Jan. 31 Cadwalader has billed $7.8 million.
But in some instances, the law firms Enron hired could have conflicts of interest, such as representing a counterparty. So the day after Enron filed for bankruptcy it hired Togut, Segal & Segal to handle such situations. Togut has billed $4.9 million through last December.
Less than a year and a half of bankruptcy, and they've burned through over $300 million with a half-billion dollars clearly in sight. Too bad Enron employees had to lose their life savings and 401(k) retirement money, so that what little was left of the company's fortunes could be funneled to 48 hand-picked firms.
Forget medical malpractice reform. We should look into Republican campaign contributor reform instead. It's apparently a very deep trough, circled by the squeals and oinks of America's most venerable legal professionals.
Aside to Ken Lay: How are your bankruptcy-immune annuities holding up in this bear market? All investors, even small ones with under a hundred million dollars, are facing the same twin problems — the corporate governance crisis you created, and your candidate's oil war — both of which are holding down the Dow and S&P indexes. Those caches of Weapons of Mass Campaign Contributions you made from your insider trades might be safer in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands — but you already knew that.
Anyway, if the media ever jogs itself from its war-induced amnesia and notices that you and Jeff Skilling are still running free, there are two words that you must repeat as often as necessary because they are guaranteed to get those pesky but easily distractable journalists off your back: Martha Stewart.
Congress should approve the Bush administration's full $726 billion tax cut to provide economic security in the same way that troops in Iraq are fighting for national security, Treasury Secretary John Snow said on Thursday.
Snow coupled the call for recognition of the practical benefit with a suggestion that it could be seen as a patriotic act.
"We cannot afford to fail the American people, especially our troops overseas," he said in a speech to the Orlando Chamber of Commerce.
Snow, at the start of a two-day swing, through Florida urged voters to tell Congress they want tax cuts. Snow claimed more jobs will be lost if lawmakers decline to approve the tax reductions and implied it was a test of patriotism.
"I believe that these are the two pillars supporting our nation's greatness and the well-being of our people: national security and economic security," Snow said in prepared remarks.
"As a matter of principle, this administration believes we have an obligation to the American people to rebuild our economy, even as we protect our national security," Snow said.
"Choosing one over the other is a false choice."
[...]
The tenuous nature of the U.S. economy's pace was underlined on Thursday by new government statistics showing a sharp uptick in new applications for jobless pay last week -- a 38,000-person increase to 445,000.
Snow said there was urgency in applying a tonic to the economy, saying the White House was doing all it could on the national and economic security fronts and suggesting Congress was dragging its feet.
"We cannot wait until the war is over to focus on economic growth. We must act now," Snow said. "Those here in Florida who are looking for work cannot wait for a job, and should not have to wait for a job."
Florida is considered ripe territory for an appeal for reduced taxes. Its sunny, palm-lined streets and beaches are home to a large community of wealthy and patriotic retirees who are among prime recipients of dividend income.
The dividend tax exclusion "would provide tax relief for 7 million senior taxpayers by an average of $1,252, and 4.5 million taxpayers, mostly seniors, will have a smaller portion of their Social Security benefit payments taxed if the president's plan is enacted," Snow said.
It boggles the mind that Snow can say all of this with a straight face while Bush's record deficits pile up, not even including a $75 billion down payment on Bush's fraudulent war. No expected him to be anything but a lapdog for the administration, but these lies are truly offensive.
The blood of American soldiers is NOT equal to tax-free dividends for the rich. Repeat, NOT. Comparing patriotic support for our troops with a $104,823 cut in Dick Cheney's personal tax bill is not just disingenuous — it's a profound corruption of our government's ability to establish or communicate our national values and policies.
Along a promenade of beachside villas, several hundred American government officials — from well-worn former generals to fresh young aid workers — are working at their laptops, inventing flow charts and examining maps of Iraq in what has become Potomac on the Persian Gulf.
This is the nucleus of the Bush administration's new Iraqi government. One of the faraway masters, in the minds of many here, is someone known fondly, or not so fondly — depending on one's political orientation — as Wolfowitz of Arabia.
[...]
The overall boss of this Iraqi government-in-waiting, an operation that has been endowed with the Washington-speak title "Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance," is retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner. When he gets to Baghdad, he will be in charge of everything the American military is not: feeding the country, fixing the infrastructure and creating what the Bush administration has said will be a democratic government.
A stocky 64-year-old, on leave from a top post at the defense contractor L-3 Communications, General Garner was responsible for protecting Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq after the first gulf war, a smaller task than the one at hand but one that gave him a taste for the country, a colleague said.
[...]
Mr. Carney is preparing to run the Baghdad Ministry of Industry. Another person the Pentagon is resisting, at least temporarily, is the former ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine. But she has also arrived, established an office in one of the villas, and is informally known on the campus as the mayor of Baghdad.
[...]
Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, has made it clear that he would not be satisfied with just an advisory position. The State Department has made clear it would prefer a diminished role for Mr. Chalabi. In recent days Mr. Chalabi has said through spokesmen that he wants the formation of a provisional government in which he would be a leading figure. In this he has backing in the Pentagon.
"The decision on the new political class in Iraq is very hot. It has yet to be made in Washington," said one member of the Garner team here.
L-3 Communications makes secure and specialized systems for satellite, avionics, and marine communications. The US government (primarily the military) accounts for nearly 70% of the company's business, but L-3 is using acquisitions to expand its commercial offerings. Commercial products include flight recorders (black boxes), display systems, and wireless telecom gear. L-3 has added aircraft repair and overhaul services to its offerings with the purchase of Spar Aerospace and what is now L-3 Communications Integrated Systems.
"Star Wars" defense system guru Jay Garner has also been accused of double-dipping (scroll down):
Biff Baker, of Colorado Springs, is running for Congress against Joel Hefley on the strength of his reputation as the whistleblower who recently shed light on Department of Defense contractual double-dipping and corporate favoritism.
Baker, who received the Libertarian nomination for the Sixth Congressional District in May, has publicly accused two Army buddies-U.S. Army General John W. Holly, a former vice chief of staff with the Army, and retired three-star General Jay Garner-of arranging duplicate contracts with Boeing and SY Technology, a division of L-3 Communications which employs Garner as president. The redundant contracts were for computer training of Army personnel.
Baker, a West Point graduate, retired Army Space Command lieutenant colonel and a former Airborne Ranger, believes he was fired without cause from his job as a contract auditor for DOD sub-contractor COLSA's Independent Assessment Team. By doing his job correctly, Baker discovered that SY Technology had been awarded a $48-million, five-year contract which duplicated work already assigned to Boeing on a sole-source, $1.6-billion contract.
While Garner is widely admired for his work with the Kurds, he has his critics. Michael Young, a leading columnist in Lebanon who writes often about Islamic issues, says Muslims are suspicious of Garner because of his strong ties to Israel. It's easy to see why. In 2000, Garner signed a statement by the conservative Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, praising Israel for its handling of the Palestinian intifada. And as president of SY Technology, a unit of L-3 Communications Holdings Inc., Garner worked closely with Israeli security to develop its Arrow missile-defense system. "There is the problem of credibility if you have someone who can be tagged as [Zionist]," says Young.
Here is a view of Garner from Lebanon's Daily Star, pointing out that "Franks should feel at ease with three former generals working alongside him."
Garner, Bodine, Chalabi — these choices of postwar administrators are as uninspired as Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Perle were as war architects.
4/17/03 UPDATE: CBS News provides a Jay Garner biography, for all you Googlers who come here looking for that.
4/28/03 UPDATE: And here's an interesting "About Jay Garner" page for the curious at heart. Note also that, to usher in the new era of Iraqi democracy, Jay Garner has chosen as his headquarters one of Saddam Hussein's palace compounds. Yet another culturally sensitive exercise in nation-building from the George W. Bush administration.
USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development] began approaching preselected bidders for postwar Iraq work as early as late January, when the possibility of going to war with Iraq was still being hotly debated at the United Nations. Requests for proposals went out for four contracts in mid-February, with two more early last month. Altogether, the work -- including rebuilding highways and bridges and rehabilitating Iraq's school system -- is expected to cost at least $1.7 billion.
[...]
The uncertainty over how to proceed also reflects mounting unease over the U.S.-led military campaign, which has so far offered scant evidence that average Iraqis are ready to embrace American control of their country.
Reconstruction officials within the administration had planned to use the southern city of Basra as a test case for the U.S. rebuilding effort. Iraq's second-largest city has a dominant Shiite population that has long been at odds with Saddam Hussein. But continued fighting there, and signs that the local population might be less receptive than some predicted, have put those plans on hold.
Competition for the big infrastructure-rebuilding contract, valued at $600 million, was limited to seven large U.S. engineering companies, several of which have now either been dropped from the running or formed teams with other bidders. People involved in the bidding say the lead competitors are Bechtel Corp. and Parsons Corp, which has taken on Halliburton Co.'s Kellogg Brown & Root as a subcontractor. Halliburton announced Monday that its KBR division won't seek to be the prime contractor for rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, but "remains a potential subcontractor for this important work."
Silence is golden, and secrecy is wealth.
Next up, a different angle on Halliburton's multifaceted activities — domestic natural gas (sub. req'd):
Halliburton has significant leverage to the global natural gas market, through both its energy services business and KBR division, [Chief Operating Officer Doug] Foshee said.
It is poised to benefit from any future natural gas drilling in the U.S. by virtue of having had a stake in the drilling of three-quarters of the known gas reserves in the combined territories of the western U.S., Texas and the Gulf of Mexico, he said.
Jenna goes off to war... as do the children of Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld, and Jeb Bush. Here's Dubya:
"That's why my daughters have volunteered to join the Army. They’re going to put their money where my mouth is by defending this great land of ours. I'm so proud that they’re following in my footsteps by joining the military at their country’s time of need. But they won’t be defending the skies of Texas from the Viet Cong, like I did for a little while before skipping my last year of service. They're actually going to be in Iraq, flying troop-transport helicopters behind enemy lines. Me and Laura call them 'our little bullet-stoppers.'"
If the 2004 election were held today, 51% of registered voters would vote for Bush, compared with 36% for a Democratic nominee, the poll found. On the eve of war two weeks ago, Bush led the Democrat 45%-42%, which amounts to a tie, given the poll's 4 percentage-point error margin.
Such numbers can be fleeting, as Bush's father learned after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. During the fighting, the senior Bush was preferred over an unnamed Democrat 54%-33%. But he lost his bid for re-election 21 months later to Bill Clinton, largely because he was seen as inattentive to the nation's economic problems. [USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll taken Saturday and Sunday, March 29-30]
One-term Daddy vs. unnamed Democrat: 54-33.
Junior vs. unnamed Democrat: 51-36.
Even with a bump-up in the polls thanks to active fighting, Daddy, the re-election loser, is marginally beating his own son, who is therefore well poised to become an even bigger loser. Junior is not shaping up to be the "inevitable" creation that Dr. Karl Rove stitched together in his laboratory. Barring another election decided by Antonin Scalia, Junior may well lose his bid for a second shot at cynically Christianized demagoguery.
Maybe then we civilized Americans can stop feeling so apologetic every time we talk to any citizen of the rest of the civilized world.
Yemen Arrests 11 for Links to al-Qaida. Too bad it's two years later than FBI al-Qaida expert John O'Neill might have done it, way back in 2001, the culmination of the American Age of Innocence, the year leading up to horrors no one else saw coming.
And it's too bad Barbara Bodine had him banished from Yemen the same year he was killed in the World Trade Center. But at least she's all lined up for her next gig in postwar Iraq.
Cheney counsel David S. Addington warned Wooden's Chickenhead Productions Inc. that Lynne V. Cheney's name and pictures - altered to show her with a red clown's nose and a missing tooth - could not be used to make money without her consent, and asked Wooden to delete the photos and "fictitious biographical statement about her."
Critics of the mayor contend that he is behaving autocratically, because it is common knowledge that his not-so-secret agenda is to replace the small airport in the heart of downtown Chicago with an 80-acre lakefront park.
Now that we are living in a era of autocratic American leaders, it is interesting to compare Mayor Daley's unilateralism with that of George W Bush. When Republican Bush acts dictatorially, he creates enormous deficits, undermines civil liberties, accelerates crony capitalism, and starts an ill-conceived war with hundreds of civilian casualties within the first two weeks. When Democrat Daley acts dictatorially, he bulldozes a tiny airport, used only by Cessna-flying cardiologists and Illinois governors, to protect downtown airspace from terrorism, and proposes a lakefront park for all citizens.
Bush is acting arrogantly to slake the greed and bloodlust of his insane constituents: neoconservative fanatics, Cheney's sugar daddy Halliburton, the murderous Christian right, the gun lobbyists, and the energy and defense industries.
Daley's critics are correct in that he acted arrogantly — but he did so for the safety and benefit of the people of Chicago. Although I am not pleased by the process, I, for one, am grateful for the result.
What's fascinating is the difference between what motivates a Democratic dictator and a Republican one. The Democrats favor promoting public good. The Republicans favor enriching private interests.
Same means, wildly different ends. There's nothing new here, but the essential difference between the parties is heightened and thrown into greater relief by the extremism of contemporary American life since the White House's misfired response to 9/11/01.
We Want the Airwaves is an important new blog — a co-production between Avedon Carol of The Sideshow and Lisa English of RuminateThis — dedicated to covering the degradation of media. It's not just about reportage, it also focuses on the quality of ownership of the media or the lack thereof. If you're concerned about bias in the media, or if you think too few companies own too many news outlets, go to We Want the Airwaves.
This is a subject near and dear to our hearts that we've written about a number of times. Here's a sample of home-grown posts on the subject of media consolidation and degradation.
...the obvious question is whether cutting taxes makes sense just two years after Bush's [first] $1.35-trillion tax cut took effect in 2001. Three big arguments loom against further tax cuts.
First, Washington is already facing mammoth deficits. Private congressional estimates project that, excluding the money raised for Social Security, the federal government could run a deficit of as much as $530 billion this year, by far the largest ever. Under Bush's plan, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects huge deficits every year through the next decade.
Second, those deficits are undermining Washington's last opportunity to improve its fiscal position before the baby boom's retirement explodes the cost of Social Security and Medicare.
[...]
Third, cutting taxes during a war -- not only the conflict in Iraq but also the broader struggle against terrorism -- is unprecedented in American history. It amounts to asking the next generation to fund the national defense through a higher national debt.
Funding Cheney's war will indeed "leave no child behind."
As the military operation enters its second week and as the Iraqi resistance continues, a question has arisen in regards to whether some sections of the Iraqi opposition in exile have painted an unrealistic picture of Iraq for their US patrons. Prior to the launch of the military strikes, it was repeatedly suggested in some western media outlets that the Iraqi Shi'ite population in the south and the Kurdish groups in northern Iraq could be helpful to US efforts to topple the Iraqi regime. But one week later, the south did not rise against Saddam, the population remains defiant and the regime is still standing its ground.
Kubba laid the brunt of the blame for these assumptions on some sections of the Iraqi opposition, particularly those associated with the Iraq National Congress (INC) which, he says, have "misled their US contacts". His views were shared by Kamil Al-Mahdi, a professor of Middle East Economics at Exeter University and a member of the liberal Iraqi opposition in exile. Al-Mahdi believes that the resistance to the Iraqis inside the country will embarrass those groups of the opposition who allied themselves with the Bush administration. These groups, says Al-Mahdi, created assumptions about a regime on the verge of imploding once the US forces enter Iraq. "There were those within the ranks of the Iraqi opposition who portrayed this war to be a walk in the park for the allied troops. Hence, Americans were led to believe that the Republican Guard units would soon switch sides and this would be coupled with a Shi'ite uprising in the south against Saddam. But to their surprise, this did not materialise, at least until now."
Al-Mahdi said that the fact that the opposition in exile miscalculated the strength of the Iraqi resistance is strong proof of how they have lost touch with reality in Iraq. "They can no longer claim to say they represent either the interests or the will of the Iraqi people. It will be very difficult to impose them as the new rulers of Iraq after Saddam is gone," Al-Mahdi said. There were no comments made by any of the main Iraqi opposition factions in exile about the duration of the battle. But on wednesday the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper reported that representatives of various factions of the Iraqi opposition held secret rounds of talks to discuss the role of the Iraqi opposition in the aftermath of the war and the US exclusion of the Iraqi opposition from any talks on the post-war order. The meetings were attended by representatives from the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), Patriotic Unionist party (PUK), the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress (INC).
We previously noted Chalabi in this 3/17/03 article from the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.d):
But with little public notice, [after September 11] Mr. Cheney began working on the Iraq issue with a new dedication. He quietly sought out experts on the politics and culture of the country. He reached out to Iraqi exiles such as Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi exile whose family led the country decades ago and who seeks to lead a post-Hussein Iraq. And he began hosting a series of small dinner parties -- some at his elegant official residence in Washington and others at the "undisclosed locations" where he'd been secluded for security reasons -- to share ideas with anti-Hussein intellectuals such as Princeton University scholar Bernard Lewis, Johns Hopkins University professor Fouad Ajami and conservative author Victor David Hanson.
State Department and CIA officials mistrust the wealthy, American-educated Mr. Chalabi, who was convicted in a Jordanian banking scandal more than a decade ago. But Mr. Cheney and his senior staff have remained stubborn advocates of Mr. Chalabi, a man they first got to know in the mid-1990s at the barbecues and golf games held at private seminars hosted by groups such as the Aspen Institute. [Emphasis added.]
The strategic advice that guided American military planning came not from the CIA or the State Department, but from "barbecues... golf games... a series of small dinner parties." Nobody at any of these events can "claim to say they represent either the interests or the will" of citizens anywhere — particularly in Iraq or in the USA. Representative democracy now exists in America only for the plump asses that fill the chairs of corporate boardrooms.
It's a country club war, directed from the fairway by the unencumbered upper class, paid for with taxes on the wages of the middle class, and paid for in blood by the lower class.
"Think of the media as an offensive weapon," says Jerry Broeckert, a retired Marine public affairs officer. He calls Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "a master of information control and media manipulation." Interesting insights from a military PR insider in Rake Magazine.
This just in: Halliburton's out. "After taking some political heat, Halliburton is stepping out of the kitchen. The giant energy and construction firm once managed by Vice President Dick Cheney is no longer in the running for a $600 million rebuilding contract in postwar Iraq, NEWSWEEK has learned."
UPDATE: I was corrected on the Agonist comments board for confusing this contract with the Halliburton firefighting and other deals which are not affected. A related post is here.
Warren Langley, a former president of the Pacific Exchange in San Francisco, was arrested March 14 while blocking the entrance to the exchange during an antiwar protest. The 60-year-old Air Force veteran talked to us about why the conflict in Iraq prompted him to protest war for the first time, and what he is doing to get others in the business community involved.
What's different about this war that led you to get involved opposing it?
I was in my 20s and 30s [during the Vietnam War] and my view of the world was different. I was in the Air Force and was trying to do my job as best I could. … I didn't question whether the war was right or wrong or any of those things at that point in time. [Mr. Langley served as a U.S.-based engineer and professor for the Air Force during the Vietnam War.]
Now, I turned 60 in January so I have a different perspective of the world. … I watched things unfold after Sept. 11 and it seemed to be that we jumped from protecting against terrorism to focusing on Iraq, and that never made sense to me. As we kind of marched through the fall there was this huge disconnect between what are we doing and why are we doing this. … It started to feel like a political war to me.
Fundamentally, I think war is the last resort. War is when you can't find other ways to accomplish your means, and it appeared to me there were lots of ways to disarm Saddam Hussein without invading him. That just didn't make sense to me and I always rebel against things that just seem totally out of whack. I have to say that that feeling got stronger on my 60th birthday in January. My wife said, "Well, what do you want to do for your birthday?" And I said, "Well, I'd like to march in this march they're having here in San Francisco." And so on my 60th birthday I went down and marched.
What was your role up until then in the antiwar movement?
I had been writing to [my senators] and asking them why they haven't been speaking out more strongly against the war because they're my elected representatives. I've always followed the rules and that's what you're supposed to do.
[...]
How did it feel to get arrested?
It's one of those things where you're nervous because you've never done it before and it is certainly something that you've been taught all your life is wrong, so there's this overhanging guilt. The police acted very appropriately and it wasn't confrontational. There was a group of us sitting around in a circle at the intersection and the police went around with a last warning, and then you got up and they handcuffed you. It was a bit strange to suddenly have this helmeted guy with a face mask, a plastic face shield, putting handcuffs around my arms and putting me into a prison bus with metal barriers all around it. That felt really strange. The next day I was actually riding in a taxi someplace and I saw a police car and my stomach flip-flopped. … I do look at the world slightly differently because I went through that process.
How would you characterize the protesters?
There are a lot of different groups. There was a very strong veterans' group and I kind of identified with those guys. There were more traditional protesters, if you will, and then there were some odds and ends like me. A trader I used to know very well from the floor came and sat with me on the street until the police warned us for the last time and then he got up and left. People were mostly in their 20s and 30s and my gray hair stood out.
[...]
Is the goal now still to stop the war?
You don't want to take on things that are totally impossible. You need to take on things that are achievable.
What do you think the protestors will achieve?
I hope it makes politicians who are in office right now more accountable and gives those who need it more courage to stand up because they realize there are people out there, more than they thought, who think a certain way. I hope in the next year or two it affects choices we have to make about supporting peace in Israel, about reorganizing Iraq, about not going into North Korea and about not going into Iran.
What have you found the reaction to the war to be in the business community?
I think people who are in the middle of their careers, I found a number of them who agree with me. But they are reluctant to speak out because they see it as a risk. If I'm running a business, what if half my customers don't like what I say?
[...]
What's going to happen when you go to court?
I don't think I'll contest it. I did it. I'm used to consequences. When you make choices, you have consequences. [Protesting] is one of things I'm most proud of in my life. I feel like my taking a little bit of risk myself has had an effect. I certainly didn't stop the war, but certainly maybe will add one stick to the pile of stopping the next war.
Kudos to the Journal for this interview, which presents a point of view quite different from its opinion pages. In the online version there was a picture and biographical highlights, a nice tribute to an ordinary hero.
Gary Hart is now a blogger too. We applaud the move and wish him much success in his effort "to engage people on critical policy matters and the future of our country."
We also hope that the blog doesn't ever devolve into pleasantries written by staff. Oh, and good luck keeping the comments tidy.
U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon indicated today she will make public the bulk of 19 million pages of Enron documents the company provided to the government and has also produced in two massive would-be class action lawsuits.
[…]
John Strasburger, the Houston-based lawyer representing Enron, said the company wants to protect private employee information and information on on-going contracts, asset sales and lawsuits that could lessen the value of assets if revealed. He said the company has already reviewed 10 million pages and found 4,000 documents that it wants kept private.
Strasburger said Enron has already produced to the depository most of what it has given to federal authorities. "For more than a year the federal government has been waging a campaign of shock and awe against Enron," he said. He said the public has been well served by the mass of information the company has provided the government agencies, and now the depository in the civil case.
Paul Howes, lawyer for lead shareholder plaintiff the University of California Board of Regents, agreed some personnel information should be kept private but not personnel performance reviews. He said Enron's request for categories of confidentiality like ongoing lawsuits or contracts are too broad and could be used to hide important information from the public.
"This is not an ordinary case. What we are talking about is a case of historic proportions, " Howes said. "The public interest has to be balanced."
Harmon indicated she will ask Enron to provide a list of the documents it wants kept confidential and that it may take another few months to finish compiling the full list if it provides some intermediate lists in the mean time.
The list will also be provided to the news media, the judge indicated. A lawyer representing several news interests including the Houston Chronicle asked that all the information be made available to the public as soon as possible.
I think it's a little early in the game to use "shock and awe" as an all-purpose cliché and metaphor, considering that the Siege of Baghdad hasn't even happened yet, and, besides, this particular metaphor is being used in defense of Enron, fraudulent financier to Bush's cabal and their Husseinomania.
I hope the Chronicle stays on top of this story. They've been doing a very good job so far, and I have to admit I'm looking forward to reading Andrew Fastow's performance reviews.
We also urge all plaintiffs and their attorneys to release as much information as possible online, where it can be searched and dissected and analyzed among the Volunteer Brigade for Justice — namely, us bloggers.
The oil industry has gone to great lengths to distance itself from any planning related to the potential post-war opening of Iraq's massive fields, now partly in U.S. and British hands. But it is becoming clear that a number of companies played significant advisory roles in military operations taking place on those fields, underscoring an unusual partnership between the military and private companies in the Iraq campaign.
BP PLC employees in Kuwait showed the Royal Engineers and other combat troops how oil fields operate before their assault on South Rumeila, along the Kuwaiti border. Houston fire-fighting firm Boots & Coots International Well Control Inc. helped draw up emergency and contingency plans for securing the field, and private-sector U.S. oil executives, serving as U.S. reserve officers, ran soldiers and combat engineers through fields in West Texas in preparation for the attack.
[...]
Army engineers have been working with Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root for months, drafting a plan of action for rebuilding Iraq's oil infrastructure. The Army Corps of Engineers plans to dole out other contracts to oil-field service companies in the days and weeks ahead.
But it is now apparent that oil companies have played a greater behind-the-scenes role in military planning than previously known. For centuries, private companies and citizens have volunteered to help their governments in time of war. But Iraqi oil -- a primary focus of the Pentagon's military campaign -- has been a thorny political issue for the Bush administration, which has strong ties to the oil industry. Vice President Dick Cheney ran Halliburton until 2000, for instance, when he resigned to run for office. He has since divested his stock in the company.
Cheney divested his stock, but is even today still on the Halliburton payroll.
With the Bush administration eager to avoid accusations that it is going to war for oil -- and executives sensitive to appearing opportunistic as soldiers fight and die in Iraq -- companies have shied away from talking about their discussions with U.S. or British officials concerning Iraqi oil.
Of course Texas oil executives are sensitive about appearing opportunistic — because they are opportunistic, exchanging human lives for illegitimate claims to foreign oil. And while US soldiers fight and die in Iraq to protect oil fields while US civilians sit mesmerized by CENTCOM and FoxNews, guess who's making off with all the money — in the form of tax cuts for the wealthy, war profiteering, no-bid government contracts, and a whole raft of corporate fraud schemes that will never stop surfacing as long as we all live on this faith-based, god-forsaken planet.
Federal regulators condemned energy companies for past market manipulation Wednesday and started pursuing sanctions against several of them for their roles in the 2000-2001 California power crisis.
[...]
All of the Enron-related companies that are mentioned in the report are in bankruptcy, so any effort by the state of California to get refunds from the companies will need to go through a U.S. bankruptcy court in New York.
The commission also signaled that it probably will not force energy companies to renegotiate more than $20 billion in long-term power contracts California agreed to when natural gas and electricity prices soared to record levels in 2000 and 2001.
[...]
The report also says that Enron could not have done the transactions that allowed it to manipulate the markets without the help of other parties, such as municipal utilities that would buy or sell power at Enron's request to create certain conditions.
The report also refers to a handbook that Enron had for employees. The handbook had directions on which counterparties to call in certain market situations so that the counterparties could take advantage of the conditions.
Did I understand that right? Enron couldn't have pulled the manipulations off without the help of municipal utilities — "counterparties" — that were in on the scheme.
This vast right-wing conspiracy even had a market manipulation handbook of phone numbers to call to move the market in this or that direction. The laissez-faire "unseen hand of the marketplace" was rooting around in California's pockets — and removing $45 billion in one fell swoop.
Meanwhile, the beneficiary of all that Texas energy industry largesse was a certain George W. Bush, who had this to say about the California energy crisis during a White House press conference on March 29, 2001 (shortly after Cheney's six secret energy meetings with Enron): "We need a full affront on an energy crisis that is real in California and looms for other parts of our country if we don't move quickly."
Language mash-up aside, there are several things wrong with this statement. One, the energy crisis in California was not real. Two, the energy crisis was engineered by his campaign contributors and personal friends. Three, it is a bad idea to extrapolate from a phony situation concocted by cronies to create scenarios of looming crisis for the rest of the country.
The energy crisis wasn't real, but the "full affront" is quite real — and it's on us.
Enron, although one of the most egregious, wasn't the only company identified by the FERC. The others include Reliant, BP, Dynegy, El Paso, Williams, Duke, Mirant, CMS and Coral.
UPDATE:bad things once again comes through with the telling detail. None other than the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and several smaller municipal utilities were involved in "Death Star," a ploy of scheduling nonexistent energy transmissions to create the appearance of congestion so that utilities and power generators could collect payments to relieve it. Go read the whole post. Bonus points if you catch the phrase "bad thing" in the cited text.
The specially called Enron grand jury Wednesday indicted two former midlevel executives on charges of conspiracy and fraud in scheming to generate $111 million in false earnings through a failed Enron online movie service.
Kevin Howard, former chief financial officer of Enron Broadband Services, and Michael Krautz, former EBS senior accounting director, were both indicted on 15 counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and one count each of making false statements to federal investigators.
The two men were arrested on these charges March 12.
The indictment issued Wednesday clearly shows the government thinks lies were told about EBS and appears to indicate more EBS-related charges could surface.
"However, many of the representations made about Enron's network and software at the Jan. 20, 2000, analyst conference were false, in that Enron did not possess the network software or capabilities that it claimed. Subsequently, EBS failed to generate any significant recurring revenue from its telecommmunications business," the indictment stated under a section headed "the scheme to defraud."
Belated apologies to mmw of bad things who correctly pointed out to me in a 3/12/03 email that Howard and Krautz are "not Ken Lay, but not exactly nobodies either" after one of my extended rants about Enron CEOs not being in captivity. He provided news of their arrest from that bastion of liberalism, Forbes.
Police arrested two Nobel Peace prize winners along with more than 60 other people protesting on Wednesday near the White House against the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
Police handcuffed Mairead Corrigan Maguire, who won the prize in 1976 for peace activism in the Northern Ireland conflict, and Jody Williams, a 1997 winner for her work to ban land mines, after they refused to leave Lafayette Park opposite the home of the U.S. president.
The Nobel laureates were detained along with religious leaders and Vietnam-era protester Daniel Ellsberg as they sat in a circle in the park and chanted "Peace, shalom." They held roses as well as gruesome posters showing civilian casualties from the war.
Internationally recognized peace activists arrested for protesting war. Only in Bush country.
Another shameful day for America. Go read the whole thing.
The Memory Hole will show you photographs of the civilian and military casualties that embedded reporters are somehow managing not to file. [Warning: graphic, unsettling and tragic images]
Pat Wood, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said that as a result of the manipulation California would receive more than the $1.8 billion in refunds recommended by a FERC judge in December. The exact amount is to be determined in the coming months.
The FERC singled out seven subsidiaries of bankrupt Enron Corp. and five other companies for taking advantage of a dysfunctional market and reaping millions of dollars in unjust profits.
"The price gouging abounded," Commissioner William Massey said. He said he regretted that FERC did not intervene earlier to police the newly deregulated power market in California.
[...]
"Enron manipulated thinly traded physical markets to profit in financial markets," FERC said, estimating that Enron made more than $500 million in online trading in 2000 and 2001.
FERC investigators recommended that the companies be forced to give up unfairly earned profits.
The energy crisis cost the state as much as $45 billion over two years in higher electricity costs, lost business due to blackouts and a slowdown in economic growth, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
How mad are Californians that they were so publicly and humiliatingly gouged by the bankrupt company that was instrumental in making George W. Bush Governor of Texas and then Occupant of the White House?
Mad enough to vote for someone else in 2004?
UPDATE: Zed of MemeMachineGo politely refreshes my faulty memory with the following email: "Well, we already voted against him in 2000 (Gore had 5.6 million to Bush's 4.4 million.) I expect the Democrats to take CA again in 2004 (but it's easy to get tunnel vision living in one of the most liberal areas in the country, and I'm not taking this for granted as something that's going to happen without people working for it.)"
I would hope that the missing $45 billion would be reason enough for many of those 4.4 million Californians to use the power of their vote NOT to enable corporate criminals who put the state into financial crisis next time around. Orange County, are you listening?
Today [2/24/03], the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, under the leadership of Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson and Associate Deputy Attorney General Karen Tandy, has taken three decisive steps to dismantle the illegal drug paraphernalia industry by attacking their physical, financial and Internet infrastructures.
Karen Tandy was in charge of stealing the websites of bong dealers. Wow. So much for effective drug policy.
The rest of the world has already figured this out, and is beginning to refer to the bombing as a breach of the Geneva Conventions.
Are the US media so blind as not to realize that treating the media as a legitimate military target virtually guarantees that potential future terrorist attacks will occur against them?
The [U.S.] Energy Department, which regularly reviews oil-producing countries, estimates Iraq's foreign debt at between $100 billion and $200 billion. The U.S. is working on a broad plan to set up the economy of a post-Hussein government, and dealing with the debt is part of that plan.
Who are these creditors? Let's start naming names:
One company already seeking repayment from Baghdad, for about $1.1 billion in debt, is Hyundai. The company was one of nearly a dozen Korean contractors that made a push into Iraq in the late 1970s, seeking to reap big cash rewards from the petrodollars then washing over the Middle East. In all, Hyundai landed 34 infrastructure projects that were set to earn the company more than $4 billion in revenue. The company built power stations, housing complexes, a fertilizer plant and an expressway linking Baghdad to neighboring Jordan and Syria.
[...]
But following the initial imposition of U.N. sanctions on Iraq in 1990, Mr. Hussein's government placed a moratorium on all debt payments. Hyundai has kept a representative office in Baghdad and annually confirms the debts owed to it with Iraqi government officials. The company also filed lawsuits in London and New York to try to get back some of the cash it is owed. Today, Hyundai officials say the possible arrival of a new Iraqi government, backed by Washington and its allies, offers a real chance to settle its debts.
"We'll be in a much better position to get back the money, as they're sovereign debts owned to Hyundai," says Min Su Kwang, Hyundai's executive vice president in charge of foreign contracts. Mr. Min says the firm is expecting a creditors committee to be set up once the war is over. Hyundai officials say the company is looking at alternative ways for Iraq to pay back its debt, such as the transfer of even more crude oil or awarding the company reconstruction contracts.
So regime change will benefit Hyundai. I feel better as an American taxpayer already.
But, wait, there's more...
States such as Russia and France also are expected to get in line for debt repayments once the war is over. Moscow says Iraq owes it at least $9 billion, mostly for weapons supplied during the Soviet era. Government officials have said in recent days that they expect repayment, despite Russia's strong opposition to the U.S.-led war. "Our priority is to protect our lawful interests," Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said this week.
Russian companies, too, will have claims to press when the dust settles. Mr. Hussein has promised half a dozen Russian concerns the rights to develop big oil deposits, though only two of the deals have been solidified in contracts, according to Russian officials. The rest are described as handshake agreements.
Dumb move. Looks like Pootie-Poot misplaced his bet in opposing Junior's war. An oral agreement with Saddam Hussein isn't worth... oh, never mind.
Smartest of all? The French. They wrote the bad debt off.
French companies, historically among Iraq's biggest trading partners, have written off the money owed them by Mr. Hussein's regime, analysts say. Iraq's unpaid bills to France, for weapons and other purchases, come to between €2.13 billion and €2.44 billion ($2.26 billion and $2.59 billion), according to a report written for the French National Assembly's Defense Commission.
Meanwhile, with a $75 billion down payment on the war, US taxpayers will protect Hyundai from Saddam Hussein's bad credit history. And the world will be safer for American corporations. Or at least more creditworthy, thanks to the Bush-invoked generosity of the US Treasury.
Next expense for the American taxpayer: protecting South Korea and Japan from North Korea.
Refresh your memory about Halliburton's colorful history of $3.8 billion in corporate welfare, as well as its extensive lobbying efforts, manic corruption, alleged connections to Russian organized crime, and other cronyish behavior with this very readable August 2000 report from Center for Public Integrity. "If Halliburton has benefited from government generosity, it also has reciprocated with substantial political contributions, largely to Republicans." You don't say!
There's also a bunch of worthwhile Halliburton links (Guantanamo Bay! Nigerian dirty bomb americium!) in this post and here too.
In an effort to distance itself from its own reputation, The Straights have resurfaced under the name of DFAF (Drug Free America Foundation). These crusaders hide behind 501(c)(3) status and faith-based labelling to fund their zealotry of pro-workplace drug testing and irrelevant attacks on medical marijuana.
The evil of this sort of federally-funded righteousness should not go unpunished.
Google the cult leaders for links to their propaganda, and responses to it: Betty S. Sembler, one of ten founding members of Straight, Inc., and Calvina L. Fay, executive director of DFAF and Save Our Society From Drugs (SOS).
Forget principles, forget context, forget history, forget strategy. The media pecking order provides the map to the military pecking order. The mission of these particular Marines becomes more meaningful because CNN is there with them. So if your unit is assigned an embedded reporter from, say, Joliet or Trenton, you know you're toast.
The arrest of two relatively unknown Enron executives this month raises hopes that the investigation is moving forward but also raises questions of whether criminal charges will ever reach the top of the corporate ladder.
Of the 12 criminal charges filed in connection with Enron's demise, only seven have been against Enron insiders and only one of those against a big fish -- the 78-count indictment against former chief financial officer Andrew Fastow.
Sixteen months after the company revealed accounting problems that lead to its downfall, a year after a special grand jury was seated and indicted Enron's accounting firm, the question that's being asked in office chatter and at dinner tables throughout Houston is whether executives such as former Chairman Ken Lay, former CEO Jeff Skilling or others will be charged.
"This is like Chinese water torture," said a lawyer familiar with the investigation. "There are all these threats and muscle-flexing from the government, but then nothing much happens."
The miilitary invasion of the world's second-largest known oil reserves doesn't really cut it as "nothing happening."
Lay, Skilling, and their Enron fraud helped these madmen come to power. Now that Cheney has sealed off the minutes of his six secret Enron meetings, and now that American profiteering has moved on to Iraqi slaughter, the White House is furiously rewriting history in the ugly scrawl of Karl Rove's and Karen Hughes's partisan penmanship.
Oliver L. North -- Indicted March 16, 1988, on 16 felony counts. After standing trial on 12, North was convicted May 4, 1989 of three charges: accepting an illegal gratuity, aiding and abetting in the obstruction of a congressional inquiry, and destruction of documents. He was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell on July 5, 1989, to a three-year suspended prison term, two years probation, $150,000 in fines and 1,200 hours community service. A three-judge appeals panel on July 20, 1990, vacated North's conviction for further proceedings to determine whether his immunized testimony influenced witnesses in the trial. The Supreme Court declined to review the case. Judge Gesell dismissed the case September 16, 1991, after hearings on the immunity issue, on the motion of Independent Counsel.
John M. Poindexter -- Indicted March 16, 1988, on seven felony charges. After standing trial on five charges, Poindexter was found guilty April 7, 1990, on all counts: conspiracy (obstruction of inquiries and proceedings, false statements, falsification, destruction and removal of documents); two counts of obstruction of Congress and two counts of false statements. U.S. District Judge Harold H. Greene sentenced Poindexter June 11, 1990, to six months in prison on each count, to be served concurrently. A three-judge appeals panel on November 15, 1991, reversed the convictions on the ground that Poindexter's immunized testimony may have influenced the trial testimony of witnesses. The Supreme Court on December 7, 1992, declined to review the case. In 1993, the indictment was dismissed on the motion of Independent Counsel.
Richard V. Secord -- Indicted March 16, 1988 on six felony charges. On May 11, 1989, a second indictment was issued charging nine counts of impeding and obstructing the Select Iran/contra Committees. Secord was scheduled to stand trial on 12 charges. He pleaded guilty November 8, 1989, to one felony count of false statements to Congress. Secord was sentenced by U.S. District Chief Judge Aubrey E. Robinson, Jr., on January 24, 1990, to two years probation.
Albert Hakim -- Pleaded guilty November 21, 1989, to a misdemeanor of supplementing the salary of Oliver L. North. Lake Resources Inc., in which Hakim was the principal shareholder, pleaded guilty to a corporate felony of theft of government property in diverting Iran arms sales proceeds to the Nicaraguan contras and other activities. Hakim was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell on February 1, 1990, to two years probation and a $5,000 fine; Lake Resources was ordered dissolved.
Fifteen years have passed. Where are they now?
Oliver North was allegedly flying alongside the helicopter that went down, marking our first casualties in Operation Iraqi Freedom. According to Fox, he has the whole thing on tape and has handed it over to the Pentagon.
John Poindexter is still the Director of DARPA's Information Awareness Office, according to this February 2003 PDF file FAQ.
Richard V. Secord is heading up a penny stock company and may face an insider trading scandal, according to the New York Post:
Computerized Thermal Imaging, Inc. This Nevada penny stock has been headed since 1996 by Gen. Richard V. Secord, of Iran/Contra fame. During Iran/Contra, Secord worked closely with U.S. Marine Corps Col. Oliver North to sell arms to Iran, then funnel the profits to anti-Communist forces in Nicaragua.
With Secord as the company's face to the world, the firm's shares soared from $1 to nearly $14 in the tech bubble, then instantly collapsed when the bubble popped, and are today selling for 10 cents. In February, the company acknowledged that a federal grand jury in New York is probing possible insider trading in its shares last December. Early this month, the company issued a report saying its finances are so shaky it may not survive.
The cable networks, including AOL Time Warner Inc.'s CNN, News Corp.'s Fox News and MSNBC, which is jointly owned by General Electric Co.'s NBC and Microsoft Corp., on Saturday returned commercials to their screens amid continued heavy war coverage, although not as many ads as before the war began. Many advertisers still are hesitant about having commercials run alongside violent footage of bombs and tanks.
For NBC, Viacom Inc.'s CBS and Walt Disney Co.'s ABC, the pace of the war has been strangely beneficial to their own programming concerns. Before last week's initial attacks, the general consensus was that the broadcast networks likely would go days with uninterrupted, commercial-free coverage, as was the case after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But some networks returned to regular programming as early as Thursday night, and all had returned to entertainment and sports by the weekend.
A commercial in a war broadcast is morally equivalent to selling concessions at a gladiator forum. Just as in ancient Rome, such commerce and routine consumption are to be regarded as normal — from the point of view of the Empire that stages and broadcasts the spectacle of the killing.
The phrase "theater of war" has never had so much resonance.
The Bush doctrine is grounded in the belief that international relations are relations of power; legality and legitimacy are decorations. This belief is not entirely false but it exaggerates one aspect of reality -- military power -- at the exclusion of others.
I see a parallel between the Bush administration's pursuit of American supremacy and a boom-bust process or bubble in the stock market. Bubbles do not grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality but reality is distorted by misconception. In this case, the dominant position of the United States is the reality, the pursuit of supremacy the misconception. Reality can reinforce the misconception but eventually the gap between reality and its false interpretation becomes unsustainable. During the self-reinforcing phase, the misconception may be tested and reinforced. This widens the gap leading to an eventual reversal. The later it comes, the more devastating the consequences.
The stock market bubble of the 1990s was based on fundamental misconceptions, and so is the Bush doctrine now. The longer we wait to push him and his cabal out of office, the higher the price US citizens and the rest of the world will pay for the unintended consequences of his mania.
