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
August 2004: Week Three
Page Three
- August 20: An upcoming CIA projection of the WMDs Iraq might have possessed by the year 2008, had the US not intervened in March 2003, is widely believed to be little more than a smokescreen attempting to justify the invasion of Iraq and help bolster Bush's chances at retaining the presidency. The report obscures or ignores the fact that no WMDs, or active weapons programs, have been found in Iraq, and indulges in rank speculation about what might have occurred had Bush not invaded. Many intelligence officials are outraged at the report, and Democratic House member Jane Harman, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, protested the decision in a sharply worded letter to acting CIA director John McLaughlin last week. Trying to forecast Iraq's weapons capabilities four years into the future would be, "by definition, highly speculative" and "inconsistent with the original mission of the Iraq Survey Group," Harman wrote. David Kay, who led the group before resigning in January, said that speculating on Iraq's future capabilities was never part of the team's mission. "Absolutely not," Kay says. "We were to search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. No one ever suggested to me in any of the discussions before I took the job, afterward, or even when I left, that [assessing Iraq's future capabilities] was a thing that should have been done." Kay and others also question how such an assessment would be possible given the disarray that characterized Saddam Hussein's government in recent years and external events that had altered the flow of illicit weapons technologies around the world. Kay's replacement, Charles Duelfer, is supervising the final draft of the report. "The case made by the Bush White House was that [Iraq] was an imminent threat that must be dealt with today," says a senior congressional official. "Coming out later and saying [Hussein] would have had the weapons in 2006 or 2008...is basically a way to justify preemption." (Los Angeles Times/Truthout)
Abu Ghraib doctors complict in torture
- August 20: A British medical journal reports that US doctors in Abu Ghraib prison knew about the abuse and torture being inflicted on prisoners, participated in it, and helped try to cover it up. The Lancet reports that Army doctors falsified medical records to cover up torture and human rights abuses perpetrated on Iraqi detainees. The article calls for a full inquiry into reform of the military health system to address the failure of army medical staff to live up to their code of ethics and a professional obligation to care for their patients. The article, by Steven Miles, a professor of bioethics at the University of Minnesota, writes that American army doctors and nurses had been fully aware of torture and degrading treatment at Abu Ghraib, but did not blow the whistle before the official inquiry began in January. He says their neglect of the commonly accepted standards of human rights includes the failure to maintain medical records, conduct routine medical examinations and provide proper care of disabled or injured detainees, and the use of medical personnel and medical information to design and implement psychologically and physically coercive interrogations. Death certificates and medical records were falsified. An example of the ethical failings of medical personnel came in November 2003 after the Iraqi Major General Mowhoush's head was pushed into a sleeping bag while interrogators sat on his chest. Miles writes, "He died; medics could not resuscitate him, and a surgeon stated he died of natural causes. Months later, the Pentagon released a death certificate calling the death a homicide by asphyxia."
- In an editorial comment, the Lancet calls on health care workers who saw ill-treatment to break their silence. Miles adds: "The US military medical services, human rights groups, legal and medical academics, and health professional associations should jointly and comprehensively review this material in light of US and international law, medical ethics, the military code of justice, military training, the system for handling reports of human rights abuses, and standards for treatment of detainees. Reforms stemming from such an inquiry could yet create a valuable legacy from the ruins of Abu Ghraib." In an interview with the Washington Post, Miles says, "Docs are different from soldiers.... Our sole obligation is to the well-being of the patient." He says this is especially important for physicians who have contact with prisoners: "The health personnel will, in fact, be the first and last barrier between them [prisoners] and human rights abuses. When the health professionals are either silent or actively complicit in these abuses, it sends a message to the detainees how utterly beyond human protection they are." (Guardian/Salon, Washington Post)
- August 20: The stain of Abu Ghraib is spreading: at least 20 low-ranking soldiers are likely to be charged with a variety of crimes in actions relating to the incarceration of Iraqi civilians in the prison, but more importantly, the cause of the systematic abuse and torture of prisoners is due to a failure of the senior leadership of the US command in Iraq. This comes from the Fay Report, an investigation headed by General George Fay slated to be released soon by the Army, a 9000-page document that concludes a combination of leadership failings, confounding policies, lack of discipline and absolute confusion at the prison led to the abuse. The report implicates five civilian contractors in the abuse, and that Army officials plan to recommend that their cases be sent to the Justice Department for possible prosecution in civilian courts. Fay's investigation did not impinge on the civilian leadership of the military, such as Donald Rumsfeld or officials of the Defense Department, nor did it touch on the military leadership in the US itself. Many observers call Fay's report, as damning as it is, a whitewash because of its unwillingness to target anyone outside the chain of command in Iraq, as well as its refusal to pin blame on anyone in specific outside of the lowest levels of enlisted men. Still, while the Pentagon and the White House have consistently blamed the abuse on what they have called a rogue band of MPs acting on their own, the report spreads the blame and points to widespread problems at the prison. The findings appear to support contentions by defense attorneys for the charged MPs that the problems at the prison were pervasive and were exacerbated by a lack of leadership. Their lawyers have asserted that their clients were acting on orders when they stripped detainees and kept them awake using stress positions and humiliating poses. The report will stop short of saying that soldiers were ordered to abuse detainees. The top command "shares responsibility for not ensuring proper leadership, proper discipline and proper resources," one defense official says. "Command should have paid more attention to the issue. Signals, symptoms of abuse weren't fully vetted to the top." (Washington Post)
- August 20: Former CIA agent and analyst Michael Scheuer, author of Imperial Hubris, says in one of the last interviews he can give, to the British newspaper The Guardian, that not only has the US invaded Iraq for reasons based on nothing more than politics and money, but that had it wanted to, could have caught Osama bin Laden years ago. Scheuer describes the invasion of Iraq as "an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantage." Scheur even calls on America's generals to resign rather than execute orders that "they know...will produce more, not less, danger to their nation." Bin Laden, he believes, is not a lonely maverick, but draws support from much of the Islamic world, which resents the US not for what it is, but for what it does -- supporting Israel almost uncritically, propping up corrupt regimes in the Arab world, garrisoning troops on the Saudi peninsula near Islam's most holy sites to safeguard access to cheap oil. "America ought to do what's in America's interests, and those interests are not served by being dependent on oil in the Middle East and by giving an open hand to the Israelis," he says. "If we're less open-handed to Israel over time we can cut down bin Laden's ability to grow. Right now he has unlimited potential for growing." Scheuer, it should be noted, is a conservative and a Republican.
- Scheuer says that most of his former bosses are still laboring under the same illusions that hampered their abilities to predict or counter the 9/11 attacks. "I don't think they get it yet," he says. "I still think there's a large group in the American intelligence community who talk about the next big attack but really believe 9/11 was a one-off. I think they believe their own rhetoric that they've killed two-thirds of the al-Qaeda leadership, when they killed two-thirds of what they knew of." Scheuer says that nearly three years after the attacks, the US intelligence team dedicated to tracking down bin Laden is still less than 30 strong -- the size it was when he left in 1999. The CIA claims that the bin Laden team is hundreds strong, but Scheuer is insistent that the apparent expansion is skin-deep: "The numbers are big, but it's a shell game. It's people they move in for four or five months at a time and then bring in a new bunch. But the hard core of expertise, of experience, of savvy really hasn't expanded at all since 9/11."
- He believes that the creation of a new Director of National Intelligence, with overarching power over all of the US's intelligence agencies, is nothing more than a bureaucratic hotfix. "I've never known a dysfunctional bureaucracy made better by being made bigger," he says.
- The CIA had at least a dozen opportunities to kill or capture bin Laden during both the Clinton and Bush administrations, he says. The CIA only tried once during his tenure to kill bin Laden, a Predator strike that missed its target. He remembers a May 1998 operation that, he believes, was a golden opportunity to take out the terrorist leader near Kandahar, Afghanistan, but was scrubbed due to concerns over civilian casualties; a similar operation, for December 1998, was scrubbed due to the same concerns. Others are more sympathetic to the reluctance to strike. "Mike's is the viewpoint of the soldier versus the viewpoint of a general," argues Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of operations at the CIA's Counter-Terrorist Center. "There are political judgments made at a higher pay grade. I've been at both sides of that equation and they are difficult judgments to make." One reason why Scheuer was relieved of his duties on the bin Laden tracking force in 1999 was his insistence that the CIA take out bin Laden regardless of the "collateral damage." He does not have specific knowledge of any opportunities during later years, after his departure, but feels that while the Bush administration talks a tough line about "getting" bin Laden, they, too, have been unwilling to actually move against the leader of al-Qaeda. "The question is always what happens if we do this and we fail," he says. "The question is never what happens to Americans if we don't try this. When I took my oath of office, it was to preserve and protect and defend the constitution of the US. It wasn't 'to preserve and protect and defend as long as you don't kill an Arab prince, as long as you don't offend the Europeans, as long as you don't hit a mosque with shrapnel.'" (Guardian/Truthout)
- August 20: Efforts by Republican election officials to curtail or restrict voter turnout among minority voters are going on in state after state. In Minnesota, evangelical conservative Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer has decided that in November, any Minnesotan wishing to vote must provide a photo ID with a name matching exactly that on the voter registration roll -- a prescription to ensure that thousands of low-income voters either will not or will not be allowed to vote, and a direct challenge to the Constitution. Writer and activist Hans Johnson notes, "A nationwide review reveals a disturbing pattern in closely contested states of Republican office-holders with close ties to the Bush-Cheney campaign: Remove eligible voters from official rolls and erect barriers to new or young voters and minorities who vote overwhelmingly Democratic." An administrative law judge halted Kiffmeyer's required ID matching in a July 22 ruling, but did not dismantle a second barrier she erected. Many county officials say her cumbersome voter-registration form deters would-be applicants. In St. Paul's Ramsey County alone, more than a third of 6,500 completed forms submitted earlier this year contained errors and were rejected. Instead of allowing a clearer, easier form after learning of such problems, Kiffmeyer decided that the application form is just fine: "We are in midstream in an election cycle," she told the press. "We have an application out there...and we'll continue to use that."
- In Missouri, Republicans have been trying to cut out minority voters ever since November 2000, when a high turnout of African-American voters cost Senator John Ashcroft his seat in Congress. Since then, Ashcroft's fellow senator Kit Bond has pushed for and won provisions in the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) that stiffen ID requirements involving new registrants and voters in all fifty states. He has been joined in these efforts by Missouri's GOP secretary of state Matt Blunt. Missouri has also conducted voter purges of its election rolls; ironically, Bond himself was struck from the rolls for the August 3 primaries in his hometown of Mexico, where he has voted for 40 years; unlike many minority voters who find themselves in the same position, Bond was allowed to vote after producing ID. Others' experiences seem likely to prompt lawsuits. One black voter who had changed apartments faced rejection at her polling place even though she was registered at the address; she sought help from NAACP volunteers. She is not alone.
- The game in New Hampshire is for Republicans to challenge young, presumably liberal voters in college towns. Students going to vote in Durham in 2002 received handouts from election proctors laced with scare tactics, including the warning that they could jeopardize their financial aid by voting at an address other than their permanent home. Turnout dropped, and the GOP took full control of the state government, where they promptly passed a sweeping bill to limit access to the voting booth. "It is simply not right to allow college students to have any say in our elections in New Hampshire," said House speaker Gene Chandler. "We need to control that."
- Michigan shows every sign of going down the same road as Florida in 2000. Michigan's secretary of state, Terri Lynn, is also the state chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign, and continues to enforce a 2000 law that bars thousands of college students from voting. The Detroit Free Press reported in 2002 that in its first two years, the law dissuaded thousands of student voters from registering near campus, cutting voter rolls by 10% in East Lansing and 8% in Ann Arbor. Democrat Dianne Bynum lost her seat in Congress by 88 votes in her district, which includes East Lansing; her successor, Mike Rogers, was, as a state legislator, both the bill's sponsor and its primary beneficiary. Recently Michigan Republican state Representative John Pappageorge said, "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election."
- South Dakota's Secretary of State Chris Nelson is facing lawsuits from Lakota tribes for posting erroneous warning signs at polling places during the June 1 special election for Congress. The signs read, "No ID, no vote;" as a result, many Lakota voters went home instead of voting, intimidated and angered by the sign. Election monitors refused to inform them that they could complete an affidavit and vote even if they had no ID. Johnson notes that HAVA allows for provisional ballots for voters who don't provide ID or fill out an affidavit, though these are much more likely to be disqualified than regular ballots. The attempt at voter intimidation is apparently revenge for 2002, when high Lakota turnout saw to it that incumbent Democratic senator Tim Johnson would narrowly defeat John Thune, hand-picked by the White House to challenge Johnson.
- The Kentucky GOP plans on having "vote challengers" in precincts across the state to challenge African-American voters' registrations.
- In 2003's mayoral election in Philadelphia, many African-American voters described being harassed by men in suits with clipboards bearing officia- looking insignia, and voters reported being asked to provide proof of identification to these unofficial "observers." This well-organized ruse went so far as to include a fleet of 300 cars featuring decals resembling those of law enforcement agencies such as the DEA and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
- Ohio, of course, is both a battleground state and a nightmare for open and inclusive voting. GOP Secretary of State Ken Blackwell has gone outside the bounds of his office to push for a federal Constitutional to ban marriage for same-sex couples, even leaving the state to fly to Washington to harangue the Senate about the need for the amendment, even though his duties required him to impartially oversee the validation of signatures on petitions submitted to place a question before voters this fall about amending the state constitution to ban gay marriage.
- And it wouldn't be voter fraud without Florida. Katherine Harris's successor Glenda Hood is still embroiled in fallout from her and Governor Jeb Bush's attempts to purge 47,000 voters (as in 2000, supposed "ex-felons" who by state law are barred from voting unless they obtain restoration from the governor's office; as in 2000, most everyone on the lists has been wrongly identified) from the state voter lists. The list was disproportionately heavy on African-American "felons," who tend to vote Democratic, and completely excluded Hispanic felons, who in Florida tend to vote Republican. The list includes hundreds, if not thousands, of misidentified African-Americans. Bush retracted the list, but unbeknownst to Johnson, the author of this article, will reintroduce voter purge lists just before the election, in the form of "caging lists." Many voters, like St. Petersburg Times columnist Howard Troxler, found their amazement commingled with anger. "They do not get to stand there week after week, all self-righteous, declaring that anybody who questions their list is a fool," Troxler wrote in July. And law enforcement officials have attempted to bully and intimidate elderly black voters in Orlando.
- The AFL-CIO says it will watch for any attempt to reprise voting rights violations that marred the 2000 election. "We're particularly concerned about treatment of African-Americans, Latino, Asian-American and Native American voters, who were disproportionately disenfranchised in the 2000 federal elections," says the AFL-CIO's Cecelie Counts. The AFL-CIO, which represents some 13 million workers in 60 labor unions, plans to work in 12 states where the 2004 presidential election is expected to be close, calling attention to changes in election procedures, voter education and possible technical problems. The labor federation will focus on communities in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington state and Wisconsin.
- For far more information on this topic, and results from November 2004, visit my 2004 election page, Stolen! (In These Times, Reuters/Left Coaster, Working for Change/Left Coaster)
- August 20: The Sierra Club accuses the Bush administration of lying about the severe health risks caused by toxins released during the 9/11 attacks. In a report titled, "Air Pollution and Deception at Ground Zero: How the Bush Administration's Reckless Disregard of 9/11 Toxic Hazards Poses Long-Term Threats for New York City and the Nation," the group says the Bush administration's mistakes are now in danger of becoming policy for handling future disasters. "The Bush administration has learned nothing from the illnesses and hardships suffered by the Ground Zero community. Rather, it plans to perpetuate them in any future national disaster anywhere else in the United States," says the report's author, Suzanne Mattei. The destruction of the twin towers shot pulverized asbestos, lead, concrete, glass and other debris into the air throughout lower Manhattan. The EPA dismisses the report as "scare tactics" and says it is committed to protecting the health of New Yorkers and improving its emergency procedures. Among the charges made in the report are that the administration failed to warn the public immediately of long-standing evidence that such a collapse would release toxins and make the air unsafe to breathe; the EPA failed on at least a dozen occasions to change its safety assurances even after it became clear people were getting sick; the Bush administration failed to enforce safety requirements among workers on the Ground Zero clean-up effort. Last year the EPA, in an internal report by its Inspector General Nikki Tinsley, said the White House pressured the agency to make premature statements that the air was safe to breathe. The EPA issued an air quality statement on September 18, 2001, even though it "did not have sufficient data and analyzes to make the statement," the EPA report said, adding that the White House "convinced the EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones." Among the information withheld was the potential health hazards of breathing asbestos, lead, concrete and pulverized glass. The Sierra Club report says hundreds of people were seriously ill as a result of breathing contaminated air after the buildings fell. It says much of the dust was as caustic as ammonia and had an effect akin to drinking drain cleaner. (Reuters/Planet Ark)
- August 20: John Kerry accuses the Bush campaign of letting outside groups do its "dirty work" by slandering Kerry with false charges, while the Bush campaign itself stands above the fray, reaping the benefits while pretending not to be involved. "Well, if he wants to have a debate about our service in Vietnam, here is my answer: Bring it on," he says. Privately, Kerry campaign advisors acknowledge that they have been slow to answer the Swift Boat Veterans charges about Kerry's alleged fraud and dereliction of duty in Vietnam. Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt says the charge that Bush was in league with the group criticizing Kerry's war record "is absolutely and completely false. The Bush campaign has never and will never question John Kerry's service in Vietnam." Yet the White House continues to refuse to condemn the ads questioning Kerry's war record. Kerry advisers say they have heard from several Democratic politicians that voters were starting to ask questions about the candidate's war record. The politicians urged him to fight back. Internally, there was an initial reluctance from senior advisers for Kerry to respond, because they believed that Bush would condemn the critical ad, or that the allegations would blow over. As for Kerry, this was personal, aides said. He had heard the group was raising money for more ads, and was tired of his integrity being assaulted. "Thirty years ago, official Navy reports documented my service in Vietnam and awarded me the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts," Kerry says. "Thirty years ago, this was the plain truth. It still is. And I still carry the shrapnel in my leg from a wound in Vietnam." (AP/China Daily, Democratic Underground [includes photos of flyers advertising both Swift Boat Vet and Bush-Cheney campaign officials appearing at the same rally)
- August 20: Jim Russell, a Vietnam veteran who was on the March 13, 1969 mission where Kerry won a Bronze Star for bravery and his third and final Purple Heart confirms the facts of the mission as recalled by Kerry and US military documents. He saw Kerry's boat, and other boats, taking (and giving) tremendous fire, and he saw Kerry rescue Jim Rassman from the river: "Anyone who doesn't think that we were being fired upon must have been on a different river," he snaps, in a letter to the editor of the Telluride Daily Planet in Colorado. Russell writes, "The picture I have in my mind of Kerry bending over from his boat picking some hapless guy out of the river while all hell was breaking loose around us, is a picture based on fact and it cannot be disputed or changed. It's a piece of history drawn in my mind that cannot be redrawn. Sorry, 'Swift Boats Veterans for the Truth' -- that is the truth. To say that John Kerry or any of us were on that river to intentionally collect Purple Hearts really does every soldier and sailor, past and present, a disservice. We were going up those rivers (with an ongoing casualty rate of 86 percent at the time) on the orders of the same people who approved of Kerry's medals and who are now joining in the attacks against Kerry. Unbelievable." He concludes, "I would hope that the American public sees these evil extreme right wing attacks for what they really are and also pray that the veterans being used by these unpatriotic right wing extremist political operatives will divorce themselves immediately from them and speak to the real issues as to why they oppose John Kerry. I just don't understand how anyone can align themselves with those who intentionally and gleefully painted a decorated triple amputee (Max Cleland) from Vietnam as unpatriotic. I think that this is the most disastrous, un-American thing that can be done to our servicemen and women, especially now with another unending war going on. Your ends cannot possibly justify these means." (Telluride Daily Planet)
- August 20: Another slander from the Bush campaign iinvolves its insistence that MoveOn.org, the liberal 527 group, has accused Bush of "trying to poison pregnant women" as part of its attack on Bush. Bush campaign spokesmen, including chairman Marc Racicot, have made a lot of hay on CNN and other networks with the accusation. Apparently the accusation comes from a MoveOn ad that points out how the Bush administration has allowed toxic levels of mercury into the environment, which poses a particular danger to pregnant women and their unborn children. Pundit Josh Marshall writes, "I'll let you be the judge of what this amounts to. But it seems pretty clear to me that the Bush camp is lying almost as much about the Democratic independent expenditure ads as they're lying in the smears they're running about John Kerry's military service. ...And, again, was it that Republicans seem to have such a hard time distinguishing between ads with a factual basis and ones that include malicious falsehoods. It's such a mystery. I have to assume it's another example of the GOP's embrace of epistemological relativism -- all truths are equal, there is no truth, only opinion masquerading as truth, etc." (CNN/Talking Points Memo)
- August 20: An internal probe concludes that General William Boykin, the deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, violated military regulations by not clearly stating that he was not speaking in an official or military capacity when he made wildly controversial remarks to a variety of audiences that cast the war on terror in overtly religious terms. In most instances, Boykin wore his uniform during his speeches. The report, by the Defense Department's deputy inspector general, also finds that Boykin violated regulations by failing to have his remarks cleared before making them. In one appearance, Boykin told a religious group in Oregon that Islamic extremists hate the United States "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christians. ...And the enemy is a guy named Satan." Discussing a US Army battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia in 1993, Boykin told another audience, "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol." Boykins's comments have angered many Americans, including many Christians who do not appreciate his apocalyptic commentary, and inflamed Christians and non-Christians around the globe. The report has not been acted upon yet by acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee. The probe determined that Boykin discussed his involvement in the war on terrorism at 23 religious-oriented events since January 2002 and that he wore his uniform while speaking at all but two. He spoke mostly at Baptist or Pentecostal churches. The investigation concluded that Boykin violated a regulation by failing to report reimbursement of travel costs from one of the sponsoring religious groups. After the controversy erupted, Boykin later issued a written statement apologizing to those who were offended and saying he did not mean to insult Islam, although it is hard to fathom how he could have made the remarks he made without an intent to demean. He has remained at his intelligence post during the investigation." (AP/CommonDreams)
- August 20: A key Bush religious advisor, Deal Hudson, resigns his post with the Bush campaign after the press reveals he sexually molested a student while a professor at Fordham University in 1994. Hudson, publisher of the conservative Catholic magazine Crisis, blames "a liberal Catholic newspaper" for preparing to reveal his actions, though he does not deny molesting the student. "No one regrets my past mistakes more than I do," Hudson writes, but the incident is "now being dug up, I believe, for political reasons." The victim, Carastona Poppas, was then an 18-year-old Fordham freshman who had been in and out of foster homes since age seven. Hudson was her philosophy teacher, a tenured associate professor who had been a Baptist minister before converting to Catholicism. "He knew I was a ward of the court, without parents, severely depressed, and even suicidal," Poppas says. "He was extremely attentive and genuinely concerned." After an alcohol-fueled night on the town, where Poppas says Hudson kissed and fondled two other girls and drank "body shots" from one of the girls' cleavage, Hudson had sex with Poppas, who was so inebriated that she barely knew where she was, in his car and in his office. "He told me...not to tell anyone, which I promised to," Poppas recalls. "In my eyes, I was the one who had done wrong. I was the one who had acted disgustingly." She filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Hudson, who eventually settled with her for $30,000 after begging her to remain silent and then creating what she calls an "extraordinarily hostile" classroom environment that "emotionally devastated" her. Fordham either fired Hudson or asked for his resignation; Hudson moved to Washington, where he revitalized the moribund Crisis magazine and drew the attention of Bush advisor Karl Rove by devising a strategy to reach out to Catholics during the 2000 election. Hudson has taken part in the Bush campaign attempts to attack Kerry, a practicing Catholic, on the grounds that he is not a "good Catholic" because he supports the right to an abortion.
- Hudson has explicitly targeted Kerry's support among Catholics for months, largely on the issue of abortion. While publicly moralizing and touting his own religious practices, behind the scenes, Hudson is as ruthless a political operative as anyone in the Bush circle. He recently helped oust Ono Ekeh, a low-level employee of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for African American Catholics, because Ekeh hosted a "Catholics for Kerry" Web site. "Look," wrote Hudson in his widely circulated e-mail column, "it's one thing for a Catholic to be a pro-life Democrat -- that in itself is a perfectly legitimate position and consistent with our Catholic faith. However, it's completely unacceptable to follow Ekeh and trade away our pro-life responsibilities." After Ekeh was forced to resign, Hudson was asked if he had any personal regrets that Ekeh, a father of three young children, had lost his job. Not in the least, he answered. "If you're going to play in the sandbox," Hudson said, "then you have to take the consequences of your public utterances and your public actions." Hudson also became a scourge of Catholic bishops who supported abortion rights, to the point where one Republican Catholic layman said that the bishops "are scared of him, afraid that he's going to attack them."
- Hudson came to the notice of the Bush campaign through the auspices of RNC chairman Ed Gillespie, who lauded Hudson's leadership of the RNC's "Catholic Outreach" effort. Hudson was one of nine conservative religious writers invited to meet with Bush and Pope John Paul II at the White House. He routinely uses his position as editor of Crisis and an advisor to the Bush campaign to get ideologically errant Catholics fired from their jobs with Catholic organizations, and to get ideologically acceptable Catholics in positions of power. He has also wielded influence in a number of political appointments within the Bush administration. In 1994, he became the editor of the almost-moribund Crisis, and used financial contributions from the Bradley and Scaife Foundations to transform the magazine into a powerful voice of Catholic-based radical conservatism. In 1998, he spoke out on the Clinton-Lewinsky affair: "Over and over again, we hear on the talk shows that we shouldn't hold the president to a 'higher standard.' I would argue quite the opposite.... Those who are not willing to bear the burden of these higher standards should not seek office.... After we have stripped away all idealism from offices that bind our culture together -- president, father, husband -- what will be left for us to aspire to? Who will want to sacrifice personal desires for public responsibilities?" The statement is as hypocritical as it is high-minded. There is no word as yet of Hudson's future plans, either as a magazine editor -- he still retains the position at Crisis -- or within the Republican hierarchy. (Washington Post, National Catholic Reporter)
- August 20: In an unusually incisive article, the New York Times examines the birth and development of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The group's members, with deep if murky ties to both the Bush campaign and the Republican Party in general, and with a long and complex history of aiding previous campaigns (including the production of the devastating 1988 ad showing Michael Dukakis's helmeted head poking out of a tank), came together in the winter of 2003-04, when it was becoming clear that John Kerry would be the Democratic nominee for president. Retired admiral Roy Hoffman, Kerry's former commanding officer in Vietnam who had previously praised the senator for his courage under fire, called another of his former subordinates, Kerry colleague Adrian Lonsdale. Lonsdale in 1996 supported Kerry with a statement about the "bravado and courage of the young officers that ran the swift boats.... Senator Kerry was no exception. He was among the finest of those swift boat drivers."
- Hoffman has long been embittered by his censure by the Navy for his reckless, almost bloodthirsty behavior as a commanding officer, and angry at Kerry for publicly criticizing his decision to mount "search-and-destroy" missions against the Viet Cong, often with reckless disregard for the lives of his men. (Some who served under Hoffman compare him to Kurtz, the obsessively deranged character in the film Apocalypse Now.) "It was the admiral who started it and got the rest of us into it," says Lonsdale. Lonsdale contacted John O'Neill, who had taken command of Kerry's swift boat after Kerry rotated stateside, and has long been a bitter foe of Kerry's, dating back to 1971, when O'Neill, working through Nixon aide Charles Colson, confronted Kerry over Kerry's antiwar activities on the Dick Cavett Show. O'Neill's Houston law firm has close ties with the Texas Republican Party; his firm represents, among other Republicans, Texas lieutenant governor David Dewhurst, who recently won a seat in Congress as a result of the Republican gerrymandering of that state. The two biggest financiers of the SBVT, Harlan Crow and Robert Perry, are longtime associates of O'Neill, and clients of his firm. Perry is a crony of Bush political advisor Karl Rove. And the SBVT's public relations officer, Merrie Spaeth, is the widow of financier Tex Lezar, who served as Bush's lieutenant governor in Texas. Spaeth worked closely with the first Bush, and has been a key part of GOP senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson's campaigns. She has also worked closely with Bush officials such as chief economic adviser Stephen Friedman. Another participant is the political advertising agency that made the SBVT's television commercial, Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm. The agency worked for John McCain in 2000 and for the senior Bush father in 1988, when it created the "tank" advertisement mocking Dukakis.
- About 10 veterans met in Spaeth's Dallas office in April to begin planning their onslaught against Kerry. Lonsdale did not attend, but characterizes the meeting as "an indoctrination session." Spaeth says of the meeting, "That was an awakening experience. Not just for me, but for many of them who had not heard each other's stories." The group hired a private investigator to investigate author Douglas Brinkley's critical account of the war, and, in O'Neill's words, to find "some neutral way of actually questioning people involved in these incidents." Instead, the group misrepresented itself and its intentions from the outset. Patrick Runyon, who served with Kerry, thought the call he received was from a pro-Kerry group, and gave the caller a statement about the mission where Kerry won his first Purple Heart. The group sent an e-mail to Runyon for his signature. Runyon says the group edited and twisted his statement to read as if Runyon was denying anything happened that night. "It made it sound like I didn't believe we got any returned fire," he recalls. "He made it sound like it was a normal operation. It was the scariest night of my life." By May, money was rolling in, and the group was expanding. Veterans gathered in Washington to record their stories for a televion commercial. But many of their stories, too, were twisted. George Elliott, who recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, had signed one affidavit saying Kerry "was not forthright" in the statements that had led to the award. Two weeks ago, the Boston Globe quoted him as saying that he felt he should not have signed the affidavit. He then signed a second affidavit that reaffirmed his first, which the Swift Boat Veterans gave to reporters.
- The SBVT has produced a book, Unfit for Command, written by O'Neill and Jerome Corsi, and published by consevative outfit Regnery, who prints a number of tomes critical of Democrats. The book identifies Corsi as a Harvard Ph.D and a veteran author, but fails to note that Corsi has a long and ugly history of making racial, ethnic, and religious slurs against Catholics, Muslims, Jews, and Democrats on the Web site Free Republic. (Corsi's slurs are documented in an item above.)
- Other statements made by the group have been discredited. In the television commercial, Dr. Louis Letson says, "I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury." Letson, a corpsman in Vietnam does not dispute the wound -- a piece of shrapnel above Kerry's left elbow -- but he and others in the group argue that it was minor and self-inflicted. Yet Letson's name does not appear on any of the medical records for Kerry. Under "person administering treatment" for the injury, the form is signed by a medic, J. C. Carreon, who died several years ago. Letson says it was common for medics to treat sailors with the kind of injury that Kerry had and to fill out paperwork when doctors did the treatment. Asked if there was any way to confirm he had treated Kerry, Letson says, "I guess you'll have to take my word for it." And retired rear admiral William Schachte claims to have been on the swift boat on the night in question, and asserts that Kerry injured himself while throwing a grenade. But the two other men who acknowledged that they had been with Kerry, Bill Zaladonis and Mr. Runyon, say they cannot recall a third crew member. "Me and Bill aren't the smartest, but we can count to three," Runyon says. Even Letson says he had not recalled Schachte until he had a conversation with another veteran earlier this year and received a subsequent phone call from Schachte himself.
- Kerry won his Silver Star during an intense firefight between his boat and snipers on the shore of the river Kerry and his crew were patrolling. According to Navy records, Kerry turned the boat to charge the Viet Cong position. An enemy solider sprang from the shore about 10 feet in front of the boat. Kerry leaped onto the shore, chased the soldier behind a small hut and killed him, seizing a B-40 rocket launcher with a round in the chamber. SBVT describes the man Kerry killed as a solitary wounded teenager "in a loincloth," who may or may not have been armed. They say the charge to the beach was planned the night before and, citing a report from one crew member on a different boat, maintain that the sailors even schemed about who would win which medals. The group says Kerry himself wrote the reports that led to the medal. But Elliott and Lonsdale, who handled reports going up the line for recognition, have previously said that a medal would be awarded only if there was corroboration from others and that they had thoroughly corroborated the accounts. "Witness reports were reviewed; battle reports were reviewed," Lonsdale said at the 1996 news conference, adding, "It was a very complete and carefully orchestrated procedure." In his statements, Elliott described the action that day as "intense" and "unusual." (See the August 19 item about Vietnam veteran August Kelso describing the unlikelihood of soldiers writing their own citation reports.) According to a citation for Kerry's Bronze Star, a group of swift boats was leaving the Bay Hap river when several mines detonated, disabling one boat and knocking a soldier named Jim Rassmann overboard. In a hail of enemy fire, Kerry turned the boat around to pull Rassmann from the water. Rassmann, angered by the SBVT attacks on Kerry, has come forward to tell his story and support Kerry. But the group says that there was no enemy fire, and that while Kerry did rescue Rassmann, the action was what anyone would have expected of a sailor, and hardly heroic. Asked why Rassmann recalled that he was dodging enemy bullets, a member of the group, Jack Chenoweth, said, "He's lying." Chenowith adds, "If that's what we have to say, that's how it was."
- Several veterans insist, improbably, that Kerry wrote his own reports, pointing to the initials K. J. W. on one of the reports and saying they are Kerry's. "What's the W for, I cannot answer," says Larry Thurlow, who says his boat was 50 to 60 yards from Kerry's. Kerry's middle initial is F, and a Navy official said the initials refer to the person who had received the report at headquarters, not the author. A damage report to Thurlow's boat shows that it received three bullet holes, suggesting enemy fire, and later intelligence reports indicate that one Viet Cong was killed in action and five others wounded, reaffirming the presence of an enemy. Thurlow said the boat was hit the day before. Thurlow also received a Bronze Star for the same day, a fact left out of Unfit for Command. Asked about the award, Thurlow says he doesn't recall what the citation said, but that he believed it had commended him for saving the lives of sailors on a boat hit by a mine. If it did mention enemy fire, he said, that was based on Kerry's false reports. The actual citation, Thurlow insists, is with his ex-wife with whom he no longer has contact, but Thurlow refuses to ask the Navy to release a copy. However, a copy obtained by the Times indicates "enemy small arms," "automatic weapons fire" and "enemy bullets flying about him."
- Even as its credibility shatters, the group insists that it is merely trying to tell the truth of Kerry's service. They have latched onto one acknowledged error in Kerry's description of his service, a Christmas mission into Cambodia. Kerry has admitted that the mission probably took place in January, not over the holiday season. The group says it has a new television ad in the works. What drives the veterans, they acknowledge, is less what Kerry did during his time in Vietnam than what he said after. Their affidavits and their television commercial focus mostly on those antiwar statements. Most members of the group object to his using the word "atrocities" to describe what happened in Vietnam when he returned and became an antiwar activist. And they are offended, they say, by the gall of his running for president as a hero of that war. "I went to university and was called a baby killer and a murderer because of guys like Kerry and what he was saying," says Van Odell, who appears in the first advertisement, accusing Kerry of lying to get his Bronze Star. "Not once did I participate in the atrocities he said were happening." (Kerry has never accused Odell or any other soldier personally of participating in Vietnam-era atrocities.) Lonsdale adds, "We won the battle. Kerry went home and lost the war for us. He called us rapers and killers and that's not true. If he expects our loyalty, we should expect loyalty from him." (New York Times/Neil Rogers)
- August 20: US Navy records prove that none of the 15 Swift Boat veterans who are quoted as saying, "I served with John Kerry" in Vietnam actually served with Kerry. Not one of them served on the same boat with him. Those who did, such as retired Chief Petty Officer Del Sandusky, praise Kerry for his leadership and credit him with keeping them alive to make it home. "We are really upset at this stuff," says Sandusky. "They are calling us all liars. They dishonor us and they dishonor all those who died over there. They are getting awfully desperate. Last year many of them were on board with us. Now they are telling outrageous lies." And many of the veterans who now criticize Kerry as part of the Swift Boat Veterans' attacks are on record as praising Kerry's courage and leadership during their own service. (Knight Ridder/Military.com)
- August 20: Political analysts believe that John Kerry may have severely wounded his candidacy by failing to respond to the Swift Boat Veterans' attacks on his military service in a reasonable amount of time. Polls show that the "bounce" in support garnered by Kerry after the Democratic convention has largely evaporated, in part because of the relentless attacks on his service and his character by the SBVT, and the Kerry campaign's failure to respond until now. One Democrat says that, even if the White House was not behind the attacks, stories questioning Kerry's account of this central moment in his biography had the effect of reinforcing a main line of Republican attack -- that Kerry is not trustworthy. "They made a strategic mistake," says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, of Kerry's campaign. "The ad has been largely effective because it wasn't rebutted." A senior Democrat political consultant who is close to the Kerry campaign adds, "I think the campaign was slow to respond to this. And with some justification. The rulebook says don't help somebody sell their book. But on this one, it just seemed to take on a life of its own." The choice for the Kerry campaign was to either respond immediately and aggressively, or to ignore the attacks and trust that they would sink under the weight of their own falsehoods. Each strategy has its pluses and minuses. The Kerry campaign was surprised that so many mainstream television news outlets focused so much attention on the attacks, and was lax in responding. (New York Times)
- August 20: Author Ian Williams, who recently published Deserter, a book detailing the lies and misstatements surrounding Bush's National Guard service, is interviewed for liberal news outlet Buzzflash. Williams says of the Swift Boat Veterans controversy, "Well, Senator Joe McCarthy's career was brought to a halt because someone asked him 'have you no shame?' The question would not work with Bush, Karl Rove and the rest of the team. They clearly have no shame whatsoever. My first reaction was that the 'Swift Boat Veterans for Recovered Memory Syndrome' were at least testifying that Kerry was in Vietnam. No one can produce a veteran who saw Bush there. Indeed no one can produce a veteran who saw Bush on a military base in Alabama during the year he was missing either! But they are getting away with it!" Williams addresses the media's coverage of Bush's service: "[T]he general obsequiousness of the media is part of the reason. Access in return for compliance is the rule.... But in fairness this story has been partially worked over in so many forms that editors probably think it's like archeology on a site that has been looted by tomb robbers. In fact, there is an amazing amount on the public record. What editors have been too polite to do is to assemble all the different angles. Then it becomes clear that there is a huge hole in the middle of his National Guard record. Bush never had a charitable deed on his preppy resume and suddenly, after being missing for most of a year, and while he is supposed to be doing his Guard service, here he is working with inner city kids in Houston. ...I have to say that [the Bush campaign] really do[es] run a smart media operation. Mean, unscrupulous, and effective. When you read the exchanges with the media, with the honorable exceptions like Helen Thomas, it is amazing how they can be fobbed off with evasions and half answers. There is very rarely any follow-up questioning, and even when a story falls apart, the press are, understandably, a bit reluctant to detail how they were played for suckers. ...The two guys on the ticket have no shame. No one would have a problem with them not serving if it weren't that they had actively supported the war they dodged, and if their campaign did not have a sleazy record of attacking the patriotism, not just of Bill Clinton for not going to war, but also for impugning the patriotism of McCain, Kerry, Cleland and others who did go. This is hypocrisy, and I think the prime duty of any journalist is to attack hypocrisy in public figures. It's what we're for." (Buzzflash)
- August 20: In an opinion piece slamming the Swift Boat attacks on Kerry, writer Gerald Rellick notes that the Democrats had their own opportunity to take a cheap shot at George H.W. Bush's own military service record in the 1988 and 1992 presidential campaigns, and did not do so. Bush flew for the Navy in World War II, and in 1944 was shot down over the Pacific. Bush bailed out and was rescued; his two crewmen died in the crash. A story promulgated by a fellow pilot flying the same mission as Bush speculated that Bush may have bailed out prematurely, opting to save his own skin instead of staying with the plane and perhaps saving his crew members. Rellick writes, "To their credit, the Democrats didn't exploit this story and the media gave it scant coverage; so the story died a natural death, as it should have. It was enough to know that the senior Bush distinguished himself by volunteering for Navy flight duty at age 18 and served with distinction in combat. For someone to second guess the fine details of a few terrifying and murky minutes in combat so many years after the fact would have been truly reprehensible, a cheap shot just as reprehensible as the swift boaters' attacks today on John Kerry."
- Rellick also notes the tremendous differences between the SBVT attacks on Kerry's service and the questions about George W. Bush's own Texas Air National Guard service. In Bush's case, he never flew a single moment of combat duty; he never left the confines of his home state. And serious questions have been raised about whether he legitimately earned his slot in the TANG, and whether or not he actually served his time in the Guard or ducked out prematurely. Parts of Bush's military records have been conveniently lost (shredded, some allege, with a strong basis in fact), and the Bush campaign has never released his complete military records, contrary to their assertions that they, indeed, have released everything. They have not. Rellick writes, "There was a time in America that no one disrespected military service. Veterans from World War II and Korea didn't challenge each other about whose service was the most dangerous, the toughest. Not everyone could serve in combat, and of those who did, not everyone was in the first wave of a beachhead assault or was in the lead plane in a bombing mission. Everyone in combat understood the fickle nature of war, that luck was everything. It was enough to leave it alone. But with the ascension in power of the long-denied Republican Party and the hideous Bushworld in a climate of fear and now of political desperation, the rules have changed. Anything goes. Bush and his Republican supporters are betting that the American people are gullible and stupid, that their fears can be exploited, and that John Kerry and the Democrats are to be so feared that the people will decide that it is better to stay with a confirmed, certified loser than make a change. The November election will be a true test of how well democracy works in America." (Intervention Magazine)
- August 20: George W. Bush will accept the nomination for president at the Republican National Convention from a newly constructed blast- and bullet-proof stage at Madison Square Garden. The stage will be different from the one used by other speakers and delegates. The stage, along with the rest of the convention, is designed for maximum security and dramatic effect, with a "theater-in-the-round" approach and a hole in the floor for dramatic entrances being likely, according to sources involved in the construction. (New York Daily News)
- August 20: Vietnam-era student protest organizer Tom Hayden tells those who are planning to protest in New York at the Republican National Convention not to be afraid of "playing into the hands" of the Bush campaign. "Protest, even more than property, is a sacred resource of American society," Hayden writes. "It begins with radical minorities at the margins, eventually marching into the mainstream, where their views become the majority sentiment. Prophetic minorities instigated the American Revolution, ended slavery, achieved the vote for women, made trade unions possible, and saved our rivers from becoming sewers. Protest by its nature challenges authority. It cannot be managed or commodified without losing its essence." Hayden reminds us that Founding Father saw dissenters as "rude and insolent rabble," even though it was their (and his own) dissent that created this democracy. He writes, "Frederick Douglass advised the timid liberals of his time that 'those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.'"
- Hayden continues, "Certainly New York's Republican mayor and the police are doing what they can to provoke, anger and divide the groups planning to show that it's still a free country. The current permits crisis, now in the courts, will be sorted out, but lack of resolution will depress the numbers expected to participate in a vast march on Aug. 29. At the same time, the mayor's stonewalling stokes the militants of the movement while confusing or reducing their broader base of support. Adding to the preconvention tension is the floating rumor that Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's campaign strategist, is laying a trap for the protesters, counting on the very fact of disorder to bolster the president's image as a strongman. In this view, protesters are supposed to behave themselves lest they throw the election to Bush. I say Karl Rove is overrated. Despite untold campaign funds, he couldn't win a majority for Bush in 2000. His script for Iraq called for an easy 'mission accomplished.' His tax cuts were supposed to generate a jobs boom. Social issues like gay-lesbian marriage were to fuel a permanent Republican majority in Congress. Nominating Bush in September, uptown from Ground Zero, was to be as triumphal as entering the new Baghdad. Clearly, Rove's script is in tatters. Defending the GOP convention as if it is the Green Zone in Baghdad may not instill national confidence in the commander in chief. A confrontation in New York could be a sign that four more years of this president's policies will destabilize our country as needlessly as his Iraq adventure and trillion-dollar tax cuts for the wealthy. Many voters could conclude that Bush, if he wins in 2004, will plunge the country into strife not seen since the '60s."
- He concludes, "While some dissenters may think of New York as the apocalypse itself, many will be thinking of a strategic opportunity beyond the skirmish in New York: to turn the November election into a referendum on Iraq and democratically expel George W. Bush from power. That would truly be a shot heard 'round the world, restoring the legitimate respect for the American people which the current administration has squandered. It would be a mandate for John Kerry as well, to take us quickly in a different direction or face the opposition of an energized movement. On the other hand, if the president wins in November, by means either fair or foul, we will need the commitment and courage of a new generation of activists all the more." (Newsday/CommonDreams)
- August 20: In a powerful screed against Bush's re-election, Robert Abele, a professor of philosophy at Illinois Valley Community College, reminds us of just how systematic the Bush administration has attacked and undermined American democracy. The article is too long and involved to excerpt here, but he gives powerful legal reasons why the USA Patriot act is unconstitutional, the reasons why the administration's extraordinary actions to keep information secret are illegal, the extraconstitutional executive orders issued, largely in secret, by the White House, how Bush's attempts to wed religion and government violate the Constitution, and how Bush has broken the law by overturning environmental laws by executive fiat. His systematic waging of class warfare, pitting the rich against the middle class and the poor, works to undermine democracy and equality. His claims of moral rectitude, even of moral superiority, are demonstrably untrue. And, not least, his waging of war in Iraq, and the subsequent occupation, violates an entire raft of Constitutional guarantees and protections.
- Abele concludes, "It would seem clear that when a President and/or his administration engage in subterfuge and circumventions of democratic processes on a regular basis, the citizens are left with little choice but to replace that President. The possible response to these accusations on the part of supporters of Mr. Bush would be to attempt to change the subject by attacking John Kerry or 'liberals.' During discussions of this issue from now to the election, we cannot allow such failures to respond directly to the charge of Mr. Bush's undermining of democracy to be left unchallenged. Bush supporters owe the American people an explanation as to what it is that Mr. Bush has done for the general good, for the majority of people, that we should give him allowances for the acts he has performed so far? It is insufficient in reason to give simplistic or pietistic answers or to be a single-issue voter (e.g. 'He protects us from terrorism,' or 'he is a Christian,' or 'he opposes abortion and gay marriage'). Such simple answers only bypass the charge we should be making of Mr. Bush: that he has ignored the Constitution, undermined democracy, acted immorally, and lost the standing America has around the world as a moral leader. These issues far outweigh the stands Mr. Bush might have on any given issue, or any small series of issues. It is my position that unless America wakes up and gets this man out of office this time around, it may be too late to maintain democracy in the future." The entire article is available in the following link. (Yubanet/Truthout)
- August 21: Attorney General John Ashcroft defends the FBI's interviews with protesters planning to march in New York during the Republican convention, saying that the only ones interviewed were protesters the government believed were plotting to firebomb media vehicles at the Democratic National Convention in Boston last month or might have known about such plots. Protesters interviewed call Ashcroft a liar. "They see that activists are trying to send a message, and they don't want activists getting their message out," says Rachael Perrotta, 24, one of the protesters interviewed by the FBI. "They want to marginalize us. I think it's a smear campaign by the FBI and the federal government to discredit the protest movement. ...I am a media relations coordinator. The thought that I would be involved in anything like this is just so preposterous." Before the Democratic convention, US Secret Service and police officials had warned of an alleged plot by self-described anarchists to throw homemade explosives, known as Molotov cocktails, at vans of television crews covering the convention. The warning was based on claims of an informant who described such a plot, a senior US law enforcement official says. No such evidence of any plot has been unearthed.
- New York City law officers also have warned of potential violence for the Republican convention, which starts August 30. Authorities anticipate that hundreds of thousands of protesters will descend upon the city, and some groups have announced they are planning to "disrupt" the convention, although no groups have mentioned using bombs or any other weapons. Gary Bald, assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division, admits that the FBI has no evidence warranting any arrests or interventions regarding violent protests. FBI agents have infiltrated a number of organizations, and are monitoring Web sites that publish protest plans for updates about potential violence. No evidence of any violence has yet been revealed. Perrotta says the four FBI agents who interviewed her in Boston last month never asked her specific questions about firebombing television trucks during the Democratic convention. She says they asked general questions about violence during national political events. She has never heard any of her fellow political activists talk about using bombs. "This includes anarchist groups and liberal groups," she says, and says the FBI is "spreading a lie." Bill Dobbs, spokesman for United for Peace and Justice, says he, too has never heard of any plans to throw homemade bombs at the media. "This sounds like classic fear-mongering by law-enforcement on the eve of a major protest," he says. Other activists question Ashcroft's assertion that the FBI interviewed only a "handful" of protesters. Ann Beeson of the ACLU says she knows of dozens of interrogations in Colorado, a handful more in Missouri, and several in New York and Massachusetts. Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, says the government's treatment of political activists was reminiscent of the anti- Communist crackdowns of the Cold War era. "The Ashcroft Justice Department has taken...a perverse interest in peace demonstrators," Turley says. "Pretty soon federal prisons are gonna look a lot like the streets of San Francisco." (San Francisco Chronicle)
- August 21: From a booth at the Republican National Convention, a grinning Karl Rove gleefully assails John Kerry on CNN, calling him a "far left" candidate who is not "in sync" with American values. Rove then lies about the Bush campaign connections with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and their assault on Kerry's Vietnam record, deftly distancing the campaign from their association with the organization while reinforcing their message that Kerry had lied about his wartime experiences and repeating the untrue accusation that Kerry had called his fellow servicemen "war criminals."
- Rove takes a different tack when asked about the ongoing investigation into the Valerie Plame Wilson case. Rove, who leaked Plame's name to Time's Matthew Cooper and orchestrated the leak of her identity to other reporters, tells reporter John King, "I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name. This is at the Justice Department. I'm confident that the US attorney [Patrick Fitzgerald], the prosecutor who's involved in looking into this, is going to do a very thorough job of doing a very substantial and conclusive investigation." Unbeknownst to both King and Fitzgerald, Rove has already lied to the FBI about his role in leaking Plame's identity. Technically, he is correct -- he didn't leak Plame's name. Instead, he told reporters that the wife of Joseph Wilson -- Plame -- was a CIA agent. (Her name was readily available in, among other sources, Who's Who in America. The veteran reporter, King, picks up on Rove's dodging, and says after the interview that there is "some worry in the Bush campaign [that this] could be the October surprise" of the election. "If there are indictments or any progress in that investigation, that could be one of those events that tends to redirect the campaign." Rove would do his level best to see that such an "October surprise" didn't happen. And he would be successful. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
- August 21: Senator Ted Kennedy uses his personal experience to illustrate just how ineffective are the methods being used by the administration to protect the country against terrorism. The 72-year old Kennedy, one of the country's most prominent lawmakers, was recently barred from boarding an airplane from Washington to Boston, a flight he has made almost every week for decades. Initially, airport security personnel refused to tell Kennedy why he was being denied his seat, and was forced to go to a supervisor to be allowed to fly. It happened three more times, all without satisfactory explanations. Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge apologized to Kennedy and promised it would not happen again; it did. It turns out that Kennedy's name is on a "watch list" of suspected terrorists. "How in the world are average Americans going to be treated if they get on that list?" he asks. He has yet to receive an answer as to why his name was placed on the watch list. A more serious incident concerns American citizen Abdullah al Kidd, a doctoral student at the University of Idaho, who was handcuffed and arrested at Dulles International Airport in March 2003 on suspicion of knowing a suspected terrorist. Al Kidd sat naked in isolation for hours, jailed, and eventually forced to live in a small apartment with his in-laws instead of returning to school The legal justification for holding him was the federal material-witness law. A few weeks ago, having never been charged with a crime or called as a witness in any case, he was released. Meanwhile, he's lost his scholarship, his wife and his daughter, and his reputation. The co-chairman of the 9/11 commission, Lee Hamilton, says that these incidents illustrate the wrong-headedness of the Bush administration's domestic war on terrorism. Instead, he says, the US needs to convince Muslims around the world that the United States is on their side and is not their enemy. "stretching from North Africa to Indonesia, you have millions and billions of people who, if polls are correct, don't think very highly of us," Hamilton says. "They may be sympathetic to Osama bin Laden without endorsing his forms of violence. But there is nothing in the lives of millions of young Muslims to give them any hope. What does Osama bin Laden offer these people? Death. We have a lot to offer. For example, increased scholarships. There are a lot of things we can do that are symbolic but important. We're not going to solve this problem...in my lifetime. But we have to get started on it." (Cincinnati Post)
- August 21: Vice-presidential candidate John Edwards assails the Bush campaign for tacitly supporting the Swift Boat Veterans ad campaign against John Kerry, and demands that the campaign put an end to the ads. "This is a moment of truth for George W. Bush," he tells an audience at a Roanoke, Virginia school. "We're going to see what kind of man he is and what kind of leader he is.... We want to hear from the president of the United States. We don't want to hear rhetoric. We want to hear three words: 'Stop these ads!'" The Kerry campaign has responded with an online ad titled "Old Tricks," targeted primarily at veterans, which compares the SBVT ads to the slanderous tactics used by the Bush campaign against John McCain in the 2000 Republican primaries. In Roanoke, World War II veteran George Keller, chairman of the Alleghany County-Covington Democratic Committee, says, "I'm tickled to death that they're deciding to fight back. ...You can't fake medals. [Bush] should denounce those ads." Two days later, Bush responds by urging Kerry and Edwards to repudiate attack ads created by so-called 527 groups such as MoveOn.org, which denouce Bush's presidential record and challenge his claim to have honorably served in the Texas Air National Guard, but refuses to repudiate the SBVT ads. "I hope my opponent joins me in condemning these activities of the 527 -- I think they're bad for the system," Bush says. Edwards responds, "The moment of truth came and went, and the president still couldn't bring himself to do the right thing. We need a president with the strength and integrity to say when something is wrong. Instead of hiding behind a front group, he needs to take responsibility and demand that the ad come off the air. It's funded by his supporters and casts one of Bush's own campaign officials. President Bush, it's time to do the right thing." (Washington Post, CNN)
- August 21: CNN's conservative business analyst, Lou Dobbs, attacks corporate America for their lack of concern for the country with their focus on outsourcing jobs. In his book, Exporting America, he writes, "The power of big business over our national life has never been greater. Never have there been fewer business leaders willing to commit to the national interest over the selfish interest for the good of the company over that of the company's they head." Dobbs tells PBS's Bill Moyers, "I'm saying not that they're unpatriotic but they're absolutely indifferent to the national interest, that they have given other interests primacy over the national interest. They've done so because, in my opinion, of a cultural shift over the last three to four decades in this country. The absence of a countervailing political influence to the power of corporate America. Lobbyists, think tanks, across the board the power of corporate America is unparalleled in Washington, DC. ...[I]n each instance the enablers are corporate America. They are businesses whose business it is to kill American jobs and to ship those jobs overseas. This is insidious, it is spreading, it is absolutely dangerous in every respect." Dobbs asks rhetorically, "Are we to absolutely turn back the clock on every achievement that we've made to improve the lives of our citizens in order for a US multinational to get cheaper labor in Romania or the Philippines or India or China? I don't think so."
- Dobbs continues, "[The corporations are] not sending those jobs overseas because the labor force in this country is not capable of conducting a business operation of actually doing those jobs. Not because they have an inferior education. They're doing so because they, the financial institution, can pay cents on the dollar for labor in India, or the Philippines, or Romania and have to pay a living wage that provides a meaningful improvement in the quality of life for an American employee. And that's -– that's damnable to me. Do you remember through the 1980's and the 1990's when you heard corporate leaders and some of the best management consultants in the world talking about the empowerment of the employee. The importance of empowerment to provide the basis for innovation. The importance of having a happy, satisfied, educated, striving, aspirational employee in order to drive the successful corporation. That talk has disappeared. ...We need a countervailing influence to corporate America. One time it was organized labor. Labor has been so weakened in this country by both the force of corporate America and also by its own missteps and misjudgments and weaknesses. We need to find a role for institutions that can provide a countervailing influence. What concerns me deeply, though, is that academia, our universities, many of them who resisted funding by the CIA or the federal government in the '60s and '70s are more than quick to embrace those dollars from corporate America. Understandably they want the money. But the fact is we're beholden at all cross purposes to corporate America. The independence of thought in this country, a countervailing influence is just not there." (PBS/AlterNet)
