THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
2001
August 2001
- August: Bush backs the US out of the 1995 draft accord of the Biological Weapons Convention,
Bush's foreign policies
insisting that the US has the right to develop and deploy biological weapons if it so chooses. Bush's refusal to support the accords makes it far more difficult to ensure that other countries observe restrictions on biological weapons, and makes it easier for rogue organizations and terrorist groups to obtain such weapons. Bush says that the spot checks on medical research facilities advocated by the accords would expose American companies to "industrial espionage." Within the same week, Bush moves to weaken the Small Arms Control Treaty, designed to stem the flow of small arms to rogue organizations; he objects to regulations restricting the ownership of military weaponry on US citizens and to restrictions on US supplies of small arms to rebel groups it supports. Shortly thereafter, the Bush administration rejects the global ban on land mines. (Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose) - August: East Timor elects an 88-member Constituent Assembly to write a constitution for the fledgling independent country; 55 of the members belong to the Freitlin party, which represents the independence movement. (BBC/East Timor Timeline )
- August: J. Steven Griles is confirmed as Deputy Secretary of the Interior.
Partisan Bush appointees
Griles, a longtime friend of the energy interest with a record of hostility towards environmental interests, formerly worked for the coal-bed methane industry as well as the lobbying firm National Environmental Services, working for the interests of over 40 oil, gas, coal, and electric companies (NES was founded by, among others, Haley Barbour, who went on to head the Republican National Committee). He also consulted for several companies vying to drill in Wyoming's Powder River Basin. As part of his agreement to work for the Interior Department, Griles signed a recusal agreement which forbids him to become involved in any issues he or the firms he represented for five years. Griles will repeatedly break that agreement, intervening in cases involving a number of his former clients and holding scores of meetings with former clients and colleagues, including trying to block an EPA report that criticizes the environmental effects of coal-bed methane development in the Powder River Basin. Griles continues to draw a salary of $284,000 a year from NES even though he is putatively serving as Deputy Secretary of the Interior, a clear and flagrant violation of the law. (Clear Project -- Griles Profile, Fire Griles, Eric Alterman and Mark Green) - August 2: Efforts to convince the Taliban, to let US companies build a pipeline across Afghanistan continue as late as August.
Oil profiteering and the "oiligarchy"
Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca is sent to Pakistan to reopen negotiations with the Taliban over the Caspian Sea pipeline. Rocca is a career CIA officer with deep connections to the region. (Truthout, From the Wilderness) - August 2: House Republicans, with several dozen Democrats, pass a gigantic energy bill that mirrors most of the recommendations from the secretive Cheney energy task force.
Bush's energy policies
It opens the Alaskan wilderness to extensive oil drilling, and provides oil and energy companies with $33.5 billion in tax credits and other breaks. The Democratic-controlled Senate kills the bill, but the White House and its Republican allies vow to revive the bill in the next session. (David Corn) - August 3: As his final act before leaving for vacation,
Russian nuclear program
Bush signs into law a plan to slash funding for programs securing unguarded and "loose" nuclear weapons and nuclear materials within the former Soviet Union. The former USSR is considered the best place for terrorists seeking nuclear weapons to find them. The 2001 budget also guts federal spending to help Russia secure and clean up its aging, leaky, unsecured nuclear facilities. (Al Franken, Mark Crispin Miller) - August 4-30: Bush takes a nearly month-long vacation at his "ranch" in Crawford, Texas.
George W. Bush
While it is billed a "working vacation," ABC reports Bush is doing "nothing much" aside from his regular daily intelligence briefings besides playing golf, fishing, lounging, and the occasional photo-op of Bush cutting brush. One such unusually long briefing at the start of his trip is a warning that bin Laden is planning to attack in the US within the next few weeks, but Bush spends the rest of that day fishing. By the end of his trip, Bush has spent 42 percent of his presidency at vacation spots or en route. (CCR) - August 6: Bush receives classified intelligence briefings at his Crawford, Texas ranch indicating that bin Laden might be planning to hijack commercial airliners. The memo read to him is titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US," and the entire memo focuses on the possibility of terrorist attacks inside the US.
9/11 attacks
National Security Advisor Rice later claims the memo was "fuzzy and thin" and only 1 and a half pages long (his normal daily security briefings run two or three pages) but other accounts state it was 11 pages long. The contents have never been made public. However, a Congressional report later describes what is likely this memo: it mentions "that members of al-Qaeda, including some US citizens, had resided in or traveled to the US for years and that the group apparently maintained a support structure here. The report cited uncorroborated information obtained in 1998 that Osama bin Laden wanted to hijack airplanes to gain the release of US-held extremists; FBI judgments about patterns of activity consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks and the number of bin Laden-related investigations underway; as well as information acquired in May 2001 that indicated a group of bin Laden supporters was planning attacks in the US with explosives." After such an explosive memo, Bush decides to break early and go fishing. The existence of this memo is kept secret until May 2002. See the 9/11 page of this site for more information. (CCR) - August 6: Richard Perle, head of the Defense Policy Board and foreign policy advisor to Bush, is asked about new challenges now that the Cold War is over.
Bush's foreign policies
He cites three: "We're concerned about Saddam Hussein, we're concerned about the North Koreans, about some future Iranian government that may have the weapon they're now trying so hard to acquire..." Note that these three nations are the same three named in Bush's famous January 2002 "axis of evil" speech. High US officials are later talking about attacking all three, even though there are almost no connections between any of them and al-Qaeda. (CCR) - August 9: In his first nationally televised prime-time speech, Bush reveals his decision on stem cell research.
Medical research and funding
In the 2000 campaign, he had come out staunchly against such research, echoing the position of his right-wing religious backers that such research was immoral because it "involves destroying living human embryos," an assertion that is inaccurate. He spends months weathering criticism for his failure to address the issue, and listens to dozens of anti-abortion Republican lawmakers plead for his approval of federal funding for stem cell research. Dick Cheney and chief of staff Andrew Card support such research, as do many of the GOP's biggest donors. Most prominent is the wife of ex-president Nancy Reagan, whose husband has fallen victim to Alzheimer's disease, one of the afflictions that stem cell research could address. Numerous patient advocacy groups are also pushing for stem cell research funding. For months, the White House had announced that Bush and his aides were considering the issue, consulting with scientists, ethicists, and religious leaders. "He did something I had never seen him do," recalls Bush biographer David Frum. "He brooded." - In his speech, an uncomfortable-seeming Bush decides to walk a razor-thin line between approval and condemnation. He also decides to lie. He announces that "over 60 genetically diverse stem cell lines already exist. They were created from embryos that have already been destroyed, and they have the ability to regenerate themselves indefinitely, creating ongoing opportunities for research. I have concluded that we should allow federal funds to be used for research on these existing stem cell lines, where the life and death decision has already been made." All other research is banned. Some commentators hail Bush's decision as a "solomonic" compromise, others call it a copout. But his decision rests on the assertion that 60 viable stem cell lines, for which the moral decision of whether or not to destroy an embryo has already been made, exists. This is not true. The National Institute of Health had informed Bush that less than 30 extant stem cell lines are available, a figure that is later proven to either be wrong or a wildly optimistic estimate. (One prominent expert had informed Bush that, for proper research to be conducted, at least 100 viable lines must exist.) After Bush ordered NIH officials to keep looking, he was informed that around 60 lines were either in existence or in development, and he fastens on the figure.
- The problem is, nowhere near 60 lines of stem cells actually exist. The chairman of Harvard's cellular and molecular biology department, Douglas Melton, says he believes the number is closer to 10 -- and some of those are virtually worthless for research. Worse, as Stanford's Irving Weisberg points out, all of them have "the genetics of people who go to in vitro fertility clinics -- the white, the rich, and the infertile." And all of the cell lines grown before August 9, 2001 were grown on irradiated mouse tissue, which makes them unsafe to use. Johns Hopkins' John Gearhart says he is "absolutely puzzled" as to the source of Bush's claim of 60 viable lines. And a researcher at Harvard Medical School, Evan Snyder, says that most of the existing cell lines had been generated with obsolete technology and could prove worthless. "What if next week we find a new gene or growth factor that creates stem cells that are safer and more effective?" he asks. "The president has banned them." Because of the problem with using cell lines grown in unsafe cultures, bioethicist Art Caplan says that while the Bush proposal seems to be a compromise, in reality the decision "is nothing more than a ban."
- Regardless of what the scientific community is asking, Bush will continue pushing the "fact" that 60 perfectly viable, indefinitely perpetuating cell lines exist, with the assistance of officials like HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson. The Washington Post researches the issue, and finds that of the 60 potential cell lines, a third are so young and fragile that they may never be of use. Of the single largest cluster of cell lines, 19 at Goteborg University in Sweden, only 3 of those are viable, and those three are young and may not even develop into full stem cells. Other labs cited by NIH say their lines are immature and will be useless for research for years to come. Biotech firm Cythera, reported to have the largest collection of stem cell lines in the US, says it is several months away from being able to provide a single colony of stem cells to researchers. Bush also fails to note that most of the stem cell lines in existence are in private hands and may or may not be provided to researchers. In testimony before Congress, Thompson is forced to admit that only about two dozen cell lines are ready for research (a gross exaggeration in itself), but insists that other stem cell lines are sure to mature and be ready for research within months (an even larger exaggeration). Within months, the number of viable stem cells actually decreases, not increases, as Thompson predicted. In August 2002, only five stem cell lines of the entire 60-64 estimate provided by the NIH are available to researchers. 12 others are available within limitations.
- The others either never existed, or will likely never be available to researchers due to medical instability and legal wrangles. And the five stem cell colonies available to researchers lack the genetic diversity needed for complete research. Towards the end of 2002, when the issue has faded from the press, NIH will quietly slash its estimate from 78 (the number given in September 2002) to 9. Nobel laureate Peter Berg, of Stanford University, will accuse Bush of deliberately impeding stem cell research. "I think it is scandalous," he tells the press, "how little has actually been promoted by the NIH. It's very hard to escape the conclusion that this has been put on a very slow track to please the White House." Genetic researcher George Daley says that the Bush policy "threatens to starve the field at a time when greater nourishment is critical." (David Corn, Peter Singer)
- August 9: Vice President Dick Cheney sends a letter to Congress demanding that it remove the GAO from investigating his Energy Task Force.
Bush's energy policies
In the letter, he claims that his staff had already provided "documents responsive to the Comptroller General's inquiry concerning the costs associated with the [Energy task force's] work," a statement that later is proven to be a lie. (FindLaw) - August 22:
US involvement in Balkans
NATO sends troops to Macedonia to oversee the disarming of ethnic Albanian rebels and protect peace monitors. (NATO and UN History) - August 23:
George W. Bush
Asked what he thinks reporters eat, a vacationing Bush says, "Brie and cheese." (AllHatNoCattle) - August 24: On Fox's talk show Hannity and Colmes,
Conservative hate speech and intolerance
conservative pundit Ann Coulter displays her knowledge of American jurisprudence and the Constitutional guarantee of a presumption of innocence until proven guilty: "The presumption of innocence only means you don't go right to jail." This follows her statement on MSNBC from 1997: "If they have the one innocent person who has ever to be put to death this century out of over 7,000, you probably will get a good movie deal out of it." (Joe Maguire) - August 27: Bush family friend Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia meets with Bush at the White House to discuss the escalating violence between Israel and the Palestinians.
Middle East unrest
A video of an Israeli soldier pushing an elderly Palestinian woman to the ground and then trampling her has inflamed Arab opinion around the world, though the video receives little airplay in the US. Bandar is sent to the White House by Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Bandar, Bush's prime tutor on foreign affairs, opens by saying, "Mr. President, this is the most difficult message I have had to convey to you that I have ever conveyed between the two governments since I started working here in Washington in 1982." Bandar tells Bush, without blushing, that "leadership in Saudi Arabia always has to feel the pulse of the people and then reflect the feeling of its people in its policies." Even Bush knows that Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, with Abdullah and the elderly, infirm King Fahd doing as they please. Bandar launches into a tirade against the US policy of unquestioning support of Israel, invoking Bush's father, the former president, who had moved strongly against Israel when he felt the Israeli government had overstepped its bounds with the Palestinians. Now, the younger Bush was allowing Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon to "determine everything in the Middle East." What angers the Sauds, says Bandar, "is the continuation of American ignorance of Israel upholding policies as if a drop of Jewish blood is equal to thousands of Palestinians' lives." Then Bandar drops the bomb: "Therefore, the Crown Prince will not communicate in any form, type or shape with you, and Saudi Arabia will take all its political, economic, and security decisions based on how it sees its own interest in the region without taking into account American interests any more because it is obvious tha the United States has taken a strategic decision adopting Sharon's policy." Bush is shocked. "I want to assure you that the United States did not make any strategic decision," he retorts. - Secretary of State Colin Powell corners Bandar later. "What the f*ck are you doing?" he says. "You're putting the fear of God in everybody here. You scared the sh*t out of everybody." "I don't give a damn what you feel," Bandar retorts. "We are scared ourselves."
- Two days later, Bush sends a reassuring letter to Abdullah, which reads in part, "Let me make one thing clear up front: nothing should ever break the relationship between us. There has been no change in the strategic equation. I firmly believe the Palestinian people have a right to self-determination and to live peacefully and securely in their own state, in their own homeland, just as the Israelis have the right to live peacefully and safely in their own state." It is an astonishing step: even Clinton never came out squarely for a Palestinian state.
- On September 6, Abdullah replies, in part, "It was a great relief to me to find in your letter a clear commitment confirming the principle in which the peace process was established. I was particularly pleased with your commitment to the right of the Palestinians to self-determination as well as the right to peace without humiliation, within their independent state." Abdullah tells Bush it is essential that he come out publicly in favor of a Palestinian state, to "eliminate the common impression prevailing in the region of the US bias to Israel." Bush agrees to make the statement in public. A big rollout is planned...for the week of September 10. After the 9/11 attacks, Bush never makes the statement. (Bob Woodward)
- August 27:
George W. Bush
Bush on moral rectitude: "Well, I think if you say you're going to do something and don't do it, that's trustworthiness." (CNN/AllHatNoCattle)
"Two things made this country great: White men and Christianity. The degree these two have diminished is in direct proportion to the corruption and fall of the nation. Every problem that has arisen can be directly traced back to our departure from God's Law and the disenfranchisement of White men." -- Republican state representative Don Davis of North Carolina, emailed to every member of the North Carolina House and Senate, and reported by the Fayetteville Observer, 08-22-01, quoted by Brandi Mills
Fall
- Fall: The Bureau of Intelligence and Research begins a massive review of Iraq's progress in developing weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq war and occupation
In December, the BIR will present its findings to Secretary of State Colin Powell: "It basically said that there is no persuasive evidence that the Iraqi nuclear program is being reconstituted," later says State Department Greg Thielmann, one of the contributors to the study. The BIR's conclusion is not what the administration wants to hear, as Bush and his senior officials want presumptive evidence that Iraq is an imminent threat to stability in the Middle East and even the United States. (Seymour Hersh)
