November 2006: Week One: This Far and No Further

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"Make no mistake: President Bush will need to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities before leaving office. [Neoconservatives] need to pave the way intellectually now and be prepared to defend the action when it comes." -- neoconservative Joshua Muravchik, quoted by Seymour Hersh

November 1: Investigative reporter Robert Parry discusses the ramifications of the recently issued Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into how Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress deliberately duped an all-too-willing Bush administration into going to war in Iraq. The normal checks and balances, from both Congress and the national news media, did not function, as dissenting voices were bullied and intimidated into silence, or ignored and mocked, both by administration officials and right-wing, hardline opinion leaders. Parry writes, "Amid this enforced 'group think,' a self-interested band of Iraqi exiles found itself with extraordinary freedom to inject pro-war disinformation into the US decision-making process. Despite many reasons to challenge the truthfulness of Iraqi 'defectors' handled by the Iraqi National Congress, few in Washington did." The committee report is damning, not only because of its examples of how Iraqi defectors were coached to lie to intelligence analysts, but because of the failure of the US political and media systems to challenge the lies.
Most of the stories of coached and lying defectors have already been covered in this site, and are familiar to those of us who have made the effort to keep up. In one case, US intelligence analysts correctly concluded that an INC-supplied defector was a "fabricator/provocateur," but his claims about Iraq's supposed mobile weapons labs were never withdrawn and were cited by Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations Security Council in February 2003. Another INC source, a supposed nuclear engineer who made claims about Iraq's alleged nuclear program, couldn't answer relevant physics questions and kept excusing himself to run to the bathroom where he apparently reviewed notes given to him so he could deceive his American debriefers. Before interviewing that source, US analysts had received a warning from another Iraqi that an INC representative had instructed the source to "deliver the act of a lifetime." But with both the Bush administration and what Parry calls the "powerful right-wing political/media machine" both pressing for war, Parry writes that "the intimidated US intelligence process often worked like a reverse filter, screening out the gems of truth and letting through the dross of disinformation. Congress and the mainstream Washington press corps proved equally flawed, applying almost no quality controls and serving more as a conveyor belt to carry the polluted information down the line to the broader American public." As of yet, virtually no one in the process has been held accountable.
Parry gives us a detailed overview of the entire process, which is more than worth reading in its entirety. This item will hit the highlights. As many of us know, the Bush administration, to justify its unprovoked invasion of Iraq, needed to do two things: one, the American people had to be convinced that Saddam Hussein had a store of biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, and was well on his way to developing a nuclear weapon; and secondly, Hussein was secretly supporting Islamic terrorists, who in turn were likely planning to bring Hussein's weapons to the US. Only with these two aims achieved would the American people support the invasion of a country that presented no plausible threat to the US. In selling the war to a still-frightened and still-angry American public, the US's institutional capacity to separate fact from fiction, both in government and the news media, suffered a near-total breakdown. Newspaper editors and television news executives joined with administration officials as, in Parry's words, "enablers and collaborators in disinforming America." In September 2006, the Senate Intelligence Committee released two reports, one evaluating the false intelligence that buttressed the claims of cooperation between Saddam Hussein's government and al-Qaeda terrorists, and the other on the Iraqi National Congress, an influential group of exiles who worked with American neoconservatives to sell the case for war with Iraq. Taken in tandem, the two reports, with all of their caveats, omissions, and obfuscation, are damning.
The CIA first approached Chalabi in May 1991, when then-President Bush wanted to help Iraqi dissidents in their efforts to undermine the Hussein regime. Chalabi, a secular Shi'ite who had not lived in Iraq since 1956, was not an ideal opposition candidate by any means. Chalabi was known as a slick financial operator and a fugitive from bank fraud and embezzling charges in Jordan. But, in a meeting in Vienna in June 1992, a group of Iraqi exiles, calling themselves the "Iraqi National Congress" and facilitated by the CIA, elected Chalabi their chairman and spokesman. However, it did not take long for CIA agents to learn that Chalabi was unreliable. They objected to the dubious quality of his information, the excessive size of his security detail, his lobbying of Congress, and his resistance to working as a team player. Chalabi himself did not see himself as an intelligence asset, but as an independent political leader. No matter that Chalabi's entire career as a political leader had been fomented and funded by the CIA from the get-go, Chalabi still insisted that he was an equal and independent player in the operation to overthrow and supplant Hussein. Chalabi and the INC, using CIA money for operational expenses, trundled, in the words of the committee report, "a steady stream of low-ranking walk-ins" to provide intelligence about the Iraqi military. Since the INC was openly creating propaganda to further its aims, the CIA was leery of its information; the fact that Chalabi was so cozy with the Shi'ite government of Iran caused even more worry.
Then the CIA found that Chalabi was double-dealing both sides when he falsely informed Iran that the United States wanted Iran's help in conducting anti-Hussein operations. "Chalabi passed a fabricated message from the White House to" an Iranian intelligence officer in northern Iraq, the CIA reported. According to one CIA representative, Chalabi used National Security Council stationery for the fabricated letter, a charge that Chalabi denied. What little faith in Chalabi was breached. The CIA, in December 1996, decided to terminate its relationship with Chalabi and the INC. "There was a breakdown in trust and we never wanted to have anything to do with him anymore," CIA Director George Tenet told the committee. However, in 1998, with the congressional passage of the Iraq Liberation Act, rammed through by the Republican majority in Congress, the INC was again one of the exile organizations that qualified for US funding. Starting in March 2000, the State Department agreed to grant an INC foundation almost $33 million for several programs, including more propaganda operations and collection of information about alleged war crimes committed by Hussein's regime. By March 2001, with George W. Bush in office and already focusing on Iraq, the INC was given greater leeway to pursue its projects, including an Information Collection Program.
The State Department raised fresh concerns about the INC's blurry responsibilities of both intelligence gathering and propaganda dissemination, but the National Security Council blocked the State Department's attempts to halt funding for the INC. Instead, the NSC shifted the INC operation to the control of the Defense Department, where neoconservatives wielded more influence. CIA officials warned their counterparts at the Defense Intelligence Agency about suspicions that "the INC was penetrated by Iranian and possibly other intelligence services, and that the INC had its own agenda." They were ignored. "You've got a real bucket full of worms with the INC and we hope you're taking the appropriate steps," the CIA told the DIA. The message fell on deaf ears, largely because the neocons and hardliners in the Pentagon were eager to buy what Chalabi was selling.
Meanwhile, Chalabi's disinformation and propaganda was flowing steadily into America's political discourse and into the news media. Parry writes, "Besides irrigating the US intelligence community with fresh propaganda, the INC funneled a steady stream of 'defectors' to US news outlets eager for anti-Hussein scoops. The 'defectors' also made the rounds of Congress where members saw a political advantage in citing the INC's propaganda as a way to talk tough about the Middle East. In turn, conservative and neoconservative think tanks honed their reputations in Washington by staying at the cutting edge of the negative news about Hussein, with human rights groups ready to pile on, too, against the brutal Iraqi dictator. The Bush administration found all this anti-Hussein propaganda fitting perfectly with its international agenda. So the INC's information program served the institutional needs and biases of Official Washington. Saddam Hussein was a despised figure anyway, with no influential constituency that would challenge even the most outrageous accusations against him. When Iraqi officials were allowed onto American news programs, it was an opportunity for the interviewers to show their tough side, pounding the Iraqis with hostile questions. The occasional journalist who tried to be evenhanded would have his or her professionalism questioned. An intelligence analyst who challenged the consensus view could expect to suffer career repercussions. A war fever was sweeping the United States and the INC was doing all it could to spread the infection. INC's 'defectors' supplied primary or secondary intelligence on two key points in particular, Iraq's supposed rebuilding of its unconventional weapons and its alleged training of non-Iraqi terrorists."
Ironically, Bill Clinton's attempt to appease the neoconservatives helped facilitate the flow of INC disinformation into US intelligence. In early 1993, the novice president gave James Woolsey the job of CIA director as an attempt to reach out to neoconservatives, feeling, as foreign policy advisor Sandy Berger once explained to a Democratic official, that his administration owed a favor to the neocons at the New Republic, who had given him some support among Washington's insiders. Operating from a more relaxed, post-Cold War position, Clinton's people almost viewed the CIA directorship as a political patronage plum. Woolsey, a foreign policy hawk who was one of Ronald Reagan's favorite Democrats, referred several INC sources to the DIA with his blessing. Woolsey, an ineffectual director unsuited to handling the challenges of his office, was replaced within two years, and, feeling abandoned by his former patrons, grew ever closer to Washington's extremist neocons, who were openly hostile to Clinton and what they perceived as his "softness" on using the US military to quash upstart regimes that dared to oppose the US, particularly in the Middle East. On January 26, 1998, the neocon Project for the New American Century sent a letter to Clinton urging the ouster of Saddam Hussein by force if necessary. Woolsey was one of the 18 signers. By early 2001, he also had grown close to the INC, having been hired as co-counsel to represent eight Iraqis, including INC members, who had been detained on immigration charges.
DIA officials told the committee that the first INC "defectors" they saw came on Woolsey's referral, and told them all about Iraq's WMD programs and Hussein's cozy relationship with Islamic terrorists. (Woolsey says he can't remember making these referrals.) Parry writes, "The debriefings of 'Source One' -- as he was called in the Senate Intelligence Committee report -- generated more than 250 intelligence reports. Two of the reports described alleged terrorist training sites in Iraq, where Afghan, Pakistani and Palestinian nationals were allegedly taught military skills at the Salman Pak base, 20 miles south of Baghdad. 'Many Iraqis believe that Saddam Hussein had made an agreement with Usama bin Ladin in order to support his terrorist movement against the US,' Source One claimed, according to the Senate report.
After the 9/11 attacks, information from Source One and other INC-connected 'defectors' began surfacing in US press accounts, not only in the right-wing news media, but many mainstream publications." An influential column in the Washington Post a month after 9/11 used two Iraqi defectors as sources for its claim of "accumulating evidence of Iraq's role in sponsoring the development on its soil of weapons and techniques for international terrorism," including training at Salman Pak. Chief foreign correspondant Jim Hoagland was critical of the administration for not exploring a link between Iraq and the bombings. Shortly thereafter, the New York Times used one of the same Iraqi defectors (later identified as a former Iraqi intelligence official) and another member of Iraq's intelligence agency, the Mukhabarat, to source its description of Islamic militants training to hijack jetliners at Salman Pak, and of a German scientist working on biological weapons for Hussein. The article appeared in conjunction with a PBS Frontline documentary entitled "Gunning for Saddam." Times correspondant Chris Hedges recalls, "We tried to vet the defectors and we didn't get anything out of Washington that said, 'these guys are full of sh*t.'" PBS's Lowell Bergman says more judiciously, "The people involved appeared credible and we had no way of getting into Iraq ourselves."
By now, the US news media was beginning to compete in breaking anti-Hussein scoops, and the INC "defectors" were proving an invaluable source of disinformation. Hedges says of Chalabi, "I thought he was unreliable and corrupt, but just because someone is a sleazebag doesn't mean he might not know something or that everything he says is wrong." He says that Chalabi had an "endless stable" of ready sources who could fill in American reporters on any number of Iraq-related topics.
Of course, the entire Salman Pak story turned out to be a complete fabrication from what Parry calls "the INC's propaganda mill that would prove influential in the run-up to the Iraq War but would be knocked down later by US intelligence agencies." DIA investigators concluded in June 2006 that the training base at Salman Pak, used by Hussein's troops to train to actually repel and counter hijackers, had attention brought to it during Desert Storm, so "fabricators and unestablished sources who reported hearsay or third-hand information created a large volume of human intelligence reporting. This type of reporting surged after September 2001."
Unfortunately, many US intelligence analysts and officials, presented with the choice of endangering their careers by questioning the INC sources or going with the flow, choose to save their necks, and by doing so helped plunge the country into an unjustified war by approving and disseminating false intelligence. A July 2002 memo from an intelligence analyst calls Source One's information "highly credible and includes reports on a wide range of subjects including conventional weapons facilities, denial and deception; communications security; suspected terrorist training locations; illicit trade and smuggling; Saddam's palaces; the Iraqi prison system; and Iraqi petrochemical plants." State Department analysts who doubted Source One's information, particularly on Hussein's nuclear capabilities, were ignored and reviled. After US forces were free to move throughout Iraq, US intelligence officials began to realize how faulty Source One's information actually was. The report notes, "In early February 2004, in order to resolve...credibility issues with Source One, Intelligence Community elements brought Source One to Iraq. When taken to the location Source One had described as the suspect [nuclear] facility, he was unable to identify it. According to one intelligence assessment, the 'subject appeared stunned upon hearing that he was standing on the spot that he reported as the location of the facility, insisted that he had never been to that spot, and wanted to check a map.' Intelligence Community officers confirmed that they were standing on the location he was identifying. ...During questioning, Source One acknowledged contact with the INC's Washington Director [name redacted], but denied that the Washington Director directed Source One to provide any false information."
Other sources were caught out as well. After "Source Two"'s information about mobile biological laboratories was proven to be false and contradictory, the CIA issued a "fabrication notice" in May 2002, deeming him "a fabricator/provocateur" and asserting that he had "been coached by the Iraqi National Congress prior to his meeting with western intelligence services." However, the neocon-laden DIA refused to repudiate intelligence reports based on Source Two's information, so he continued to be cited in numerous intelligence assessments, and particularly in the pivotal National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, "as corroborating other source reporting about a mobile biological weapons program," according to the report. Source Two was one of the primary sources quoted by Secretary of State Colin Powell in his February 2003 speech to the UN. One of Powell's analysts later gave an extraordinary explanation for why they were so dependent on the testimony of a fabricator: "[W]e lost the thread of concern...as time progressed I don't think we remembered." In other words, either we forgot that the source was unreliable, or we didn't care enough to bother to remember. A CIA supervisor added, "Clearly we had it at one point, we understood, we had concerns about the source, but over time it started getting used again and there really was a loss of corporate awareness that we had a problem with the source."
Another problem was caused by the sheer volume of INC "defectors" flooding the US intelligence agencies. Their sheer numbers tended to overwhelm internal contradictions and inconsistencies. "Source Five," for instance, claimed that Osama bin Laden had traveled to Baghdad for direct meetings with Saddam Hussein. "Source Six" claimed that the Iraqi population was "excited" about the prospects of a US invasion to topple Hussein. The source also said Iraqis recognized the need for post-invasion US control. By early February 2003, as the final invasion plans were underway, US intelligence agencies had progressed up to "Source Eighteen," who, as Parry writes, "came to epitomize what some analysts still suspected -- that the INC was coaching the sources." Source Eighteen is the one who another Iraqi exile told CIA analysts had been ordered to "deliver the act of a lifetime." CIA analysts weren't sure what to make of that piece of news, since Iraqi exiles frequently badmouthed each other, but the value of the warning soon became clear. US intelligence officers debriefed Source Eighteen the next day and discovered that "Source Eighteen was supposed to have a nuclear engineering background, but was unable to discuss advanced mathematics or physics and described types of 'nuclear' reactors that do not exist," according to the report. "Source Eighteen used the bathroom frequently, particularly when he appeared to be flustered by a line of questioning, suddenly remembering a new piece of information upon his return. During one such incident, Source Eighteen appeared to be reviewing notes," the report continued. While this particular source was discredited, dozens of his fellows were treated as reliable and honest. Why? Part of the answer is because the CIA, DIA, and other intelligence agencies were under tremendous pressure from senior White House officials to give them information about Hussein's WMDs and Hussein's links to al-Qaeda; it didn't matter whether the information was valid or not. All that mattered was that it could be made to sound valid.
The story of the INC "defector" codenamed "Curveball" has, like much of the other information in this item, been documented elsewhere in this site. Curveball supplied key information about Iraq's mobile biological warfare labs -- information that turned out to be dead wrong. Tyler Drumheller, former chief of the CIA's European Division, said his office had issued repeated warnings about Curveball's accounts. "Everyone in the chain of command knew exactly what was happening," Drumheller said in April 2005. Nevertheless, Curveball was given ratings of "reliable" and "very reliable," and his information became a core element of the Bush administration's case for invading Iraq. Drawings of Curveball's imaginary bio-weapons labs were a central feature of Powell's presentation to the UN. Even after the invasion, US officials continued to promote Curveball's claims, portraying the discovery of a couple of trailers used for inflating artillery balloons as "the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program." Finally, on May 26, 2004, a CIA assessment of Curveball said "investigations since the war in Iraq and debriefings of the key source indicate he lied about his access to a mobile BW production product." The US intelligence community also learned that Curveball "had a close relative who had worked for the INC since 1992," but the CIA could never resolve the question of whether the INC was involved in coaching Curveball.
The Senate Intelligence Committee overrode the objections of the panel's senior Republicans and issued a report on the INC's contributions to the US intelligence failures in Iraq in September 2006. The report concluded that the INC fed false information to the intelligence community to convince Washington that Iraq was flouting prohibitions on WMD production. The panel also found that the falsehoods had been "widely distributed in intelligence products prior to the war" and did influence some American perceptions of the WMD threat in Iraq. But, as Parry notes, it is not solely the fault of the INC that its disinformation and lies became the foundation for the rationale that drove the US into Iraq. The usual checks and balances of the Congress and the news media had completely broken down. Parry writes, "By 2002, that self-correcting mechanism -- a skeptical press, congressional oversight, and tough-minded analysts -- had collapsed. With very few exceptions, prominent journalists refused to put their careers at risk; intelligence professionals played along with the powers that be; Democratic leaders succumbed to the political pressure to toe the President's line; and Republicans marched in lockstep with Bush on his way to war.
Because of this systematic failure, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded four years later that nearly every key assessment of the US intelligence community as expressed in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq's WMD was wrong: 'Postwar findings do not support the [NIE] judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program; ...do not support the [NIE] assessment that Iraq's acquisition of high-strength aluminum tubes was intended for an Iraqi nuclear program; ...do not support the [NIE] assessment that Iraq was "vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake" from Africa; ...do not support the [NIE] assessment that "Iraq has biological weapons" and that "all key aspects of Iraq's offensive biological weapons program are larger and more advanced than before the Gulf war"; ...do not support the [NIE] assessment that Iraq possessed, or ever developed, mobile facilities for producing biological warfare agents; ...do not support the [NIE] assessments that Iraq "has chemical weapons" or "is expanding its chemical industry to support chemical weapons production"; ...do not support the [NIE] assessments that Iraq had a developmental program for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle "probably intended to deliver biological agents' or that an effort to procure US mapping software "strongly suggests that Iraq is investigating the use of these UAVs for missions targeting the United States."'" Parry says that only the electoral process can begin to "exact some measure of accountability on individuals and institutions that sent more than 2,800 American soldiers to their death on false pretenses." (Consortium News)

Saudi study says Iraq a "lost battle"

November 1: An advisor to the Saudi government is calling the US-led war in Iraq a "lost battle," and says the country's "dire" plight seems certain to see it shatter along ethnic lines. The damning analysis, unveiled in a presentation at a two-day conference on US-Arab relations in Washington, sees violence in Iraq getting worse and alleges large-scale Iranian "interference" there set to grow. "It is already a lost battle," says Nawaf Obaid, Managing Director of the Saudi National Security Assessment project, at the annual policymakers conference of the National Council on US-Arab Relations. The question in Iraq is not "if the US succeeds -- it has failed by every single measure that you can think of," says Obaid, who is a private security and energy advisor to the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Turki al-Faisal. "The failure is only compounded by the fact that we just don't know what the endgame is." The presentation was released as debate on Iraq reached fever pitch on the US campaign trail ahead of crucial mid-term elections next week, and as foreign policy analysts here predict a possible change of US direction. The study concludes that a Kurdish drive for quasi-independence within Iraq would gather speed, as would the insurgency, and Iranian influence in the country could be expected to increase as American influence waned. Vice President Dick Cheney continues to echo the rosy characterizations of his administration, saying yesterday that violence would go on "for some considerable period of time in Iraq," but that progress had been made. (Press Trust of India/Hindustan Times)

Conservative columnist says Bush "delusional, unhinged," has "lost his mind"

November 1: Bush tells reporters that both Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld "are doing fantastic jobs and I strongly support them." Bush says he fully intends to keep both of them on board throughout the end of his second and final term, and says that the situation in Iraq is going well and the generals in theater have "got what they can live with. ...I'm pleased with the progress we're making." Conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan, once a staunch supporter of the Iraq war, is thoroughly dismayed at Bush's remarks. On CNN, he says that Bush is so delusional, "This is not an election anymore, it's an intervention." Sullivan says the president is "so in denial," comparing the Rumsfeld endorsement to applauding the job FEMA's Michael Brown did on Katrina: "It's unhinged. It suggests this man has lost his mind. No one objectively could look at the way this war has been conducted, whether you were for it, as I was, or against it, and say that it has been done well. It's a disaster. For him to say it's a fantastic job suggests the president has lost it, I'm sorry, there's no other way to say it.... These people must be held accountable." He then notes that Richard Perle, a leading neocon and Iraq war backer, has today called the administration "dysfunctional." (CNN, Editor and Publisher)
November 1: Bush tells conservative radio maven Rush Limbaugh, during Limbaugh's broadcast, that he is deeply concerned about the ramifications of the US pulling its troops out of the Middle East -- particularly for the Middle East's oil fields. Bush says, "Give me a second here, Rush, because I want to share something with you. I am deeply concerned about a country, the United States, leaving the Middle East." He says he worries that "rival forms of extremists will battle for power, obviously creating incredible damage if they do so; that they will topple modern governments, that they will be in a position to use oil as a tool to blackmail the West. People say, 'What do you mean by that?' I say, 'If they control oil resources, then they pull oil off the market in order to run the price up, and they will do so unless we abandon Israel, for example, or unless we abandon allies.' You couple that with a country that doesn't like us with a nuclear weapon, and people will look back at this moment and say, 'What happened to those people in 2006?' and those are the stakes in this war we face. ...On the one hand we've got a plan to make sure we protect you from immediate attack, and on the other hand we've got a long-term strategy to deal with these threats, and part of that strategy is to stay on the offense. Part of the strategy is to help young democracies like Lebanon and Iraq be able to survive against the terrorists and the extremists who are trying to crush their hopes, and part of the democracy is for a freedom movement, which will help create the conditions so that the extremists become marginalized and unable to recruit." Limbaugh calls Bush's remarks "extremely visionary."
As he campaigns across the country, Bush is telling audiences that to leave Iraq would mean leaving Iraq's huge oil reserves in the hands of terrorists, who would use their control of the Iraqi oil fields to damage other countries. At one rally in Colorado, he says, "You can imagine a world in which these extremists and radicals got control of energy resources. And then you can imagine them saying, 'We're going to pull a bunch of oil off the market to run your price of oil up unless you do the following. And the following would be along the lines of, well, 'Retreat and let us continue to expand our dark vision.'" He says extremists controlling Iraq "would use energy as economic blackmail" and try to pressure the United States to abandon its alliance with Israel. At a stop in Missouri on Friday, he suggested that such radicals would be "able to pull millions of barrels of oil off the market, driving the price up to $300 or $400 a barrel."
Before the invasion, Bush officials systematically denied that the invasion and occupation had anything to do with Iraq's oil. In November 2002, Donald Rumsfeld told CBS's Steve Kroft, "There are certain things like that, myths, that are floating around. It has nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil." "This is not about that," then-press secretary Ari Fleischer snapped at reporters. Now, the White House is taking a somewhat different tack. Spokesman Tony Fratto says that Bush's latest argument does not reflect a real shift. "We're still not saying we went into Iraq for oil. That's not true," he says. "But there is the realistic strategic concern that if a country with such enormous oil reserves and the corresponding revenues you can derive from that is controlled by essentially a terrorist organization, it could be destabilizing for the region."
Many oil industry analysts believe that Bush is wildly exaggerating the impact of of Iraq's oil production on world markets, and just how much damage on the oil markets extremists could inflict. Iraq has more than 112 billion barrels of oil, the second-largest proven reserves in the world, but it currently pumps just 2.3 million barrels per day and exports 1.6 million of that, according to the State Department's tracking report on the country, still well short of what it produced before the invasion. That represents a fraction of the 85 million barrels produced around the world each day and less than the surplus capacity of Saudi Arabia and other Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, meaning in a crisis they could ramp up their wells to make up for the shortfall. The United States also has 688 million barrels of oil in its Strategic Petroleum Reserve, enough to counter a disruption of Iraqi oil for 14 months. Even if Iraq did not sell oil to the United States, it would not matter as long as it sold it to someone because the international market is fungible and what counts is the overall supply and overall demand, according to analysts. If Iraq cut off exports altogether, it still would not have the dire effect on the world market that Bush predicts, the experts say. The price of oil began rising dramatically in 2002 as the confrontation with Iraq loomed, but many factors contributed, including increasing demand by China and problems in Nigeria, Venezuela and elsewhere.
The world, in fact, has already seen what would happen if Iraqi oil were cut off entirely, as Bush suggests radicals might do. Iraq effectively stopped pumping oil altogether in the months immediately after the invasion. And yet the price of oil has never topped $80, much less come anywhere near the $300 or $400 a barrel Bush cited as a possible consequence of a radical Iraqi regime withholding the country's oil. "They're a minor exporter," says Edward Morse, managing director and chief energy economist at Lehman Brothers. "They have potential to be a greater exporter. But it's ludicrous to suggest someone could hold the world hostage by withholding oil from the market, especially a regime that needs money." Disruptions of oil supplies certainly affect the markets, but not as drastically as Bush suggested, Morse says, noting that Venezuela's capacity has fallen by 1 million barrels a day since President Hugo Chavez came to power there and yet it has not given him any geopolitical leverage over the United States even though he is an avowed Bush foe. Fratto, the White House spokesman, counters by arguing that even if radicals could not move the markets dramatically with Iraqi oil, they would use the country as a base to topple other governments in the Middle East such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which would give them "a lot more oil to blackmail with" -- sort of an oil-based "domino theory" for the 21st century. (Raw Story, Washington Post)
November 1: Congressional incumbent Jim Gibbons, a Nevada Republican battling allegations that he assaulted a casino waitress and hid ab illegal kitchen worker in his basement, now faces allegations from a Wall Street Journal investigative piece that shows Gibbons granted exceptional favors to a campaign backer and "friend" from whom he received gifts and campaign donations. From Nevada software entrepreneur Warren Trepp, Gibbons received generous gifts, including a week-long family cruise valued at $10,000 (which he failed to report) and $100,000 in campaign contributions. Trepp also gave Gibbons gambling chips worth money, as well as cash, according to Trepp's old business partner. Gibbons then gave Trepp at least one multi-million dollar Congressional earmark, and a "plus-up" -- adding more money onto an existing contract than was originally agreed to. He also set up numerous meetings between Trepp and defense officials, worked to get Trepp paid when the government checks weren't coming on time, and personally flacked for Trepp's products. Both Gibbons and Trepp deny any wrongdoing. According to Senate records, Trepp's company hired scandal-prone lobbyist Letitia White to work on its behalf. White, a former top staffer to House appropriations chairman Jerry Lewis, is facing a federal investigation for her unsavory entanglements that may have involved corrupting the federal spending process. Though Trepp denies ever paying for a Washington lobbyist, financial records show White indeed lobbied on behalf of Trepp's firm, eTreppid. And e-mails from "a lobbyist acting for eTreppid in Washington" laud the favors Gibbons granted Trepp.
Meanwhile, the assault allegations against Gibbons continues to simmer. TPM Muckraker points out that except for the victim, waitress Chrissy Mazzeo, everyone connected with the case is also connected with Gibbons, ensuring that Gibbons receives as much favorable treatment as possible: "Through himself, his counsel and advisers, the accused is closely tied to the local sheriff whose force is investigating the assault charges against him; at least one of the two local newspapers covering the scandal; a key judge; the owners of the surveillance tape; and nearly everyone else in his drinking party that fateful night (i.e., witnesses). For starters." The videotapes from cameras in the parking garage where the assault allegedly took place have mysteriously gone missing, and may not be able to be authenticated even if "found." On the other hand, police finally admitted that there was a fourth 911 call from that night, from Mazzio's sister. Since the incident over two weeks ago, the police have denied they had any record of that call. (Wall Street Journal/TPM Muckraker, Las Vegas Sun/TPM Muckraker)
November 1: John Kerry apologizes for his botched joke of two days before when, meaning to jab George W. Bush, instead said that students who fail to get an education "end up stuck in Iraq." Republicans have hammered Kerry for two days about his supposed "insult to the troops;" Kerry, after an initial refusal to back down and a demand for apologies from Bush, Cheney, and other Republicans for sending troops to Iraq without a plan for victory and under false premises, decides that enough is enough. The media, of course, has leapt on Kerry with both feet; it is more than likely that Kerry decided that the entire flap was a distraction to Democrats' attempts to win votes for November 7. "Of course I'm sorry about a botched joke. You think I love botched jokes?" he says during a call to Don Imus' nationally syndicated morning radio program. "I mean, you know, it's pretty stupid." He says he meant no offense to troops when he made his remark. He also says that the White House was purposely twisting his words and continues to assert that it is Bush who owes troops an apology for a misguided war in Iraq. "I'm sorry that that's happened," he says, "but I'm not going to stand back from the reality here, which is, they're trying to change the subject. It's their campaign of smear and fear." After the lackluster apology, press secretary Tony Snow recommends that Kerry just say "I'm sorry." He says it 16 times, either to ensure that Kerry gets the point, or more likely, to push Kerry into an even more recalcitrant position to attempt to keep the issue alive. Some Democrats have asked Kerry to just apologize and make the issue go away, including Montana Senate candidate Jon Tester and Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford. "Whatever the intent, Senator Kerry was wrong to say what he said. He needs to apologize to our troops. However, Senator Kerry's words don't alter the fact that the stay-the-course strategy pursued by President Bush and supported by [Ford opponent] Bob Corker isn't working," says Ford. Kerry has canceled several campaign rally appearances, saying that he does not want to be a "distraction." But some Democrats have refused to back down. Sherrod Brown, a Senate candidate from Ohio, says that Republicans are merely trying to use the gaffe to distract voters: "The people who should apologize are George Bush and [his opponent] Mike DeWine for sending our troops into battle without body armor and without examining the cooked intelligence," he says. Brown is joined by DNC chairman Howard Dean, who says simply, "Bloopers happen,"
Later in the day, Kerry issues a more straightforward apology. He says, "I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform, and I personally apologize to any service member, family member or American who was offended. As a combat veteran, I want to make it clear to anyone in uniform and to their loved ones: My poorly stated joke at a rally was not about, and [was] never intended to refer to any troop." After the apology, he continues to state that the GOP is using his gaffe to distract voters from its own failures in Iraq. "It is clear the Republican Party would rather talk about anything but their failed security policy," he says. "I don't want my verbal slip to be a diversion from the real issues. I will continue to fight for a change of course to provide real security for our country, and a winning strategy for our troops." White House spokeswoman Dana Perino says Kerry's apology "came late, but it was the right thing to do." (AP/KVUE-TV, CNN)
November 1: MSNBC political pundit Keith Olbermann delivers what is perhaps his hardest-hitting "special commentary" yet, on the topic of how low the Bush administration, and the Republicans in general, will sink to keep their grasp on power. Olbermann's answer: we have not yet seen the bottom.
Olbermann uses as his "hook" the 1856 incident in which pro-slavery congressman Preston Brooks viciously attacked anti-slavery senator Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate, and beat Sumner almost to death with his cane. Olbermann says, "Others will cite John Brown's attack on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry as the exact point after which the Civil War became inevitable. In point of fact, it might have been the moment -- not when Brooks broke his cane over the prostrate body of Senator Sumner -- but when voters in Brooks's district started sending him new canes." He then segues into 2006, when Bush and his Republicans are using the same tactics on a verbal and marketing level as Brooks used against Sumner. "There is tonight no political division in this country that he and his party will not exploit, nor have not exploited; no anxiety that he and his party will not inflame," he says. "There is no line this President has not crossed -- nor will not cross -- to keep one political party, in power. He has spread any and every fear among us, in a desperate effort to avoid that which he most fears -- some check, some balance against what has become not an imperial, but a unilateral presidency. And now it is evident that it no longer matters to him, whether that effort to avoid the judgment of the people, is subtle and nuanced -- or laughably transparent."
Olbermann defends John Kerry's characterization of Bush as an uneducated liar, when Kerry, "in essence, called Mr. Bush stupid. The context was unmistakable: Texas;the state of denial;stuck in Iraq. No interpretation required. And Mr. Bush and his minions responded, by appearing to be too stupid to realize that they had been called stupid. They demanded Kerry apologize -- to the troops in Iraq. And so he now has. That phrase 'appearing to be too stupid' is used deliberately, Mr. Bush. Because there are only three possibilities here: One, sir, is that you are far more stupid than the worst of your critics have suggested; that you could not follow the construction of a simple sentence; that you could not recognize your own life story when it was deftly summarized; that you could not perceive it was the sad ledger of your presidency that was being recounted. This, of course, compliments you, Mr. Bush, because even those who do not 'make the most of it,' who do not 'study hard,' who do not 'do their homework,' and who do not 'make an effort to be smart' might still just be stupid -- but honest. No; the first option, sir, is, at best, improbable. You are not honest. The second option is that you and those who work for you deliberately twisted what Senator Kerry said to fit your political template. That you decided to take advantage of it, to once again pretend that the attacks, solely about your own incompetence, were in fact attacks on the troops -- or even on the nation itself. The third possibility is, obviously, the nightmare scenario; that the first two options are in some way conflated. That it is both politically convenient for you, and personally satisfying to you, to confuse yourself with the country for which, sir, you work."
Like the unwarranted attack on Kerry, Bush will use anything to make political hay, no matter how unfair or unseemly. Now that Kerry has issued his apology, Olbermann asks, will Bush now apologize to the troops "for having suggested, six weeks ago, that the chaos in Iraq, the death and the carnage, the slaughtered Iraqi civilians and the dead American service personnel, will, to history, quote 'look like just a comma'[?] This President must apologize to the troops -- because the intelligence he claims led us into Iraq proved to be undeniably and irredeemably wrong. This President must apologize to the troops -- for having laughed about the failure of that intelligence, at a banquet, while our troops were in harm's way. This President must apologize to the troops -- because the streets of Iraq were not strewn with flowers and its residents did not greet them as liberators. This President must apologize to the troops -- because his administration ran out of 'plan' after barely two months. This President must apologize to the troops -- for getting 2,815 of them killed. This President must apologize to the troops -- for getting this country into a war without a clue. And Mr. Bush owes us an apology for this destructive and omnivorous presidency. We will not receive them, of course. This President never apologizes. Not to the troops. Not to the people. Nor will those henchmen who have echoed him."
Olbermann then calls out Senator John McCain, who piled on to the Kerry gaffe with his own demand for a Kerry apology, saying that McCain "should be ashamed of himself tonight. He rolled over and pretended Kerry had said what he obviously had not. Only, the symbolic stick he broke over Kerry's head came in a context, even more disturbing: Mr. McCain demanded the apology, while electioneering for a Republican congressional candidate in Illinois. He was speaking of how often he had been to Walter Reed Hospital to see the wounded Iraq veterans, of how, quote 'many of the have lost limbs.' He said all this while demanding that the voters of Illinois reject a candidate who is not only a wounded Iraq veteran, but who lost two limbs there: Tammy Duckworth. Support some of the wounded veterans. But bad-mouth the Democratic one. And exploit all the veterans, and all the still-serving personnel, in a cheap and tawdry political trick, to try to bury the truth: that John Kerry said the President had been stupid. And to continue this slander as late as this morning -- as biased, or gullible, or lazy newscasters, nodded in sleep-walking assent. Senator McCain became a front man in a collective lie to break sticks over the heads of Democrats -- one of them his friend; another his fellow veteran, leg-less, for whom he should weep and applaud, or at minimum about whom, he should stay quiet. That was beneath the senator from Arizona. And it was all because of an imaginary insult to the troops that his party cynically manufactured -- out of a desperation, and a futility, as deep as that of Congressman Brooks, when he went hunting for Senator Sumner."
"This, is our beloved country now, as you have re-defined it, Mr. Bush. Get a tortured Vietnam veteran to attack a decorated Vietnam veteran, in defense of military personnel, whom that decorated veteran did not insult. Or, get your henchmen to take advantage of the evil lingering dregs of the fear of miscegenation in Tennessee, in your party's advertisements against Harold Ford. Or, get the satellites who orbit around you, like Rush Limbaugh, to exploit the illness -- and the bi-partisanship -- of Michael J. Fox -- yes, get someone to make fun of the cripple. Oh, and sir, don't forget to drag your own wife into it. 'It's always easy,' she said of Mr. Fox's commercials -- and she used this phrase twice -- 'to manipulate people's feelings.' Where on earth might the First Lady have gotten that idea, Mr. President? From your endless manipulation of people's feelings about terrorism? 'How ever they put it,' you said Monday of the Democrats, on the subject of Iraq , 'their approach comes down to this: the terrorists win and America loses.' No manipulation of feelings there. No manipulation of the charlatans of your administration into the only truth-tellers. No shocked outrage at the Kerry insult that wasn't; no subtle smile as the First Lady silently sticks the knife in Michael J. Fox's back; no attempt on the campaign trail to bury the reality that you have already assured that the terrorists are winning. Winning in Iraq, sir. Winning in America, sir."
The chaos in Iraq goes right over Bush's head. Instead, we are given "deliberate, systematic, institutionalized lying and smearing and terrorizing -- a code of deceit, that somehow permits a President to say, quote, 'If you listen carefully for a Democrat plan for success, they don't have one.' Permits him to say this while his plan in Iraq has amounted to a twisted version of the advice once offered to Lyndon Johnson about his Iraq, called Vietnam. Instead of 'declare victory -- and get out' -- we now have 'declare victory -- and stay, indefinitely.' And also here, we have institutionalized the terrorizing of the opposition. True domestic terror: Critics of your administration in the media receive letters filled with fake anthrax. Braying newspapers applaud, or laugh, or reveal details the FBI wished kept quiet, and thus impede or ruin the investigation. A series of reactionary columnists encourages treason charges against a newspaper that published 'national security information' -- that was openly available on the Internet. One radio critic receives a letter, threatening the revelation of as much personal information about her as can be obtained -- and expressing the hope that someone will then shoot her with an AK-47 machine gun. And finally, a critic of an incumbent Republican Senator, a critic armed with nothing but words, is attacked by the Senator's supporters, and thrown to the floor, in full view of television cameras, as if someone really did want to re-enact the intent and the rage of the day Preston Brooks found Senator Charles Sumner."
"Of course, Mr. President, you did none of these things. You instructed no one to mail the fake anthrax. Nor undermine the FBI's case. Nor call for the execution of the editors of the New York Times. Nor threaten to assassinate Stephanie Miller. Nor beat up a man yelling at Senator Allen. Nor have the first lady knife Michael J. Fox. Nor tell John McCain to lie about John Kerry. No, you did not. And the genius of the thing, is the same, as in King Henry's rhetorical question about Archbishop Thomas Becket: 'Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?' All you have to do, sir...is hand out enough new canes." (MSNBC/Crooks and Liars [link to video])
November 1: Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan comes out forcefully against the Republicans' election chances on November 7. In an entry regarding the systematic lies told by Bush and Cheney about Iraq, Sullivan writes, "One reason to vote Democrat or abstain next week is that we have a president prepared to lie through his teeth about the central issue of our time. He is dishonoring his office and shirking his responsibility. In peacetime, this is disgrace enough. In wartime, it is unforgivable." (Daily Dish/Time)
November 1: Conservative columnist Ann Coulter may be charged with felonious vote fraud after refusing to cooperate with an investigation over whether she deliberately voted in the wrong precinct. Coulter lives in Palm Beach, Florida. Because Coulter has refused to cooperate with Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson's office, the matter will be turned over to state prosecutors. Anderson's office received a complaint in February 2006 that Coulter allegedly voted in the wrong precinct during a February 7 Palm Beach town council election. Since then, Anderson says he has made repeated attempts to resolve the matter with Coulter and her attorney but has been rebuffed. Anderson says an initial letter was sent to Coulter on March 27 requesting that she clarify her address for the voting records "or face the possibility of her voter registration being rescinded." Three more letters were sent to Coulter and her attorney over the next several months, but she has yet to respond with the information requested. Knowingly voting in a wrong precinct is a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Mike Edmondson, a spokesman for the state attorney's office in West Palm Beach, says his office generally reviews such cases, then turns them over to local authorities for a full investigation that could result in an arrest if intent is proven. (Orlando Sun-Sentinel)

"Why is it the war on terrorism seems to be fought between September and November every even-numbered year?" -- Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr, November 2

Leaked report proves Diebold machines designed to be hacked and manipulated

November 2: A leaked report produced for the Maryland Board of Elections in September 2003 shows that the Diebold electronic voting machines they studied have tremendous flaws that were not reported to either the entire board, the governor of Maryland, or the citizenry. The study was originally produced by the Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC), but much of the study was redacted, edited, omitted, or even rewritten to give a far more favorable impression of Diebold than the original study reported. Diebold provides voting machines for the entire state of Maryland; those same machines are in heavy use around the country as well. The full Board of Elections, the govenor's office, and the Maryland voters were only provided with a 38-page sanitized version. The actual report is over 200 pages long. Rebecca Abramson of BradBlog, which focuses on voting rights issues, has obtained a complete version of the report and now shares it with the world. In short, the security flaws discovered are thus:
- The machines can be hacked, by the implanting of malicious code, at the factory
- The machines can be hacked during transport from the factory
- The machines can be hacked while on "sleepovers" before the election
- The machines can be hacked (in one minute with a fifty-cent mini bar key) during the election
- These machines can be hacked, at the tabulator, after the election
The report also shows that there are virtually no security protocols in place for many Diebold machines -- the recommended security protocols were purposely removed from the publicly released version of the report. The analyzed Diebold machines were not functional nor secure for use in elections, and there is serious doubt that they are any more ready to tally votes on November 7. In addition, the report documents that Diebold officials have repeatedly and systematically lied about their machines and about their own partisan political agenda.
The complete study, dated September 17, 2003, was commissioned in response to computer science professor Avi Rubin's research that cited severe security flaws in the Diebold touch screen machines, including a stunning lack of security (encryption) on the memory cards. The Maryland BOE wanted to know if the machines were safe for voters to use or not; Maryland, along with Georgia, was one of the two original "showcase states" to implement Diebold's new proprietary touch-screen DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) voting machines. But Diebold, in return for allowing their super secret, proprietary machines to be examined by the independent laboratory, insisted on two huge concessions from the State of Maryland. First, SAIC would not be allowed to even look at the source code, the heart and guts of electronic voting machines. Second, Diebold officials would be allowed to go through the SAIC Report, line by line, and redact anything and everything that they felt was proprietary, had a potential for security breaches or could provide a roadmap for anyone who wanted to compromise the system. In other words, Diebold was given virtual carte blanche to rewrite the report to their satisfaction. And they did just that.
On November 7, 468 federal seats, and countless state and local seats, will be decided by the outcome of tallies made on machines manufactured by Diebold and three other companies. No one except officials from these four companies -- Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia, and Hart InterCivic -- is ever allowed to see or inspect the software, including the core source code, to ever know if the machines operated properly or if there was, or is, malicious software in place that could alter the vote. In essence, the voting machines are nothing more than computerized tabulators -- the source code should not be difficult to comprehend, overly complex, or secret from even elections officials.
Maryland's State Election Director, Linda Lamone, a Democrat, is a key player in this entire situation. The Maryland State Board of Elections, or SBE, was ordered by Governor Robert Ehrlich to hire another firm, Freeman Craft McGregor, to review the vulnerabilities reported in the SAIC study. FCM was supposed to be given the actual, unredacted report. Lamone has refused to release the results of the FCM study, made available in August 2006, and has even refused to discuss the report with Ehrlich or his staff, calling the FCM study "proprietory. Lamone consistently refused to allow the SBE chairman, Giles Berger, to see the original SAIC report, but has only provided Berger and his staff with the redacted Diebold version.
The BradBlog entry provides a number of comparisons between the original SAIC report and Diebold's corrections, which I will not reprint here, but which should be reviewed by the reader. The changes are astonishing. Experts who have seen the leaked original report say it is the "smoking gun" that proves not only Diebold machines to be irretrievably flawed, but that they were designed to be hacked and manipulated from their inception. Lamone's interest in protecting Diebold seems to be less motivated by political partisanship -- she is a Democrat, after all -- but because of her ties to Diebold and her interesting in helping sell Diebold systems to election directors around the country and even globally. Lamone, the former president of the National Association of State Election Directors, was chiefly responsible making recommendations to other states on which electronic voting machines they should use. She is acutely aware of the problems associated with Diebold voting machines, yet continues to defend them without question. When Abramson attempted to question her in an interview held in October, 2006, Lamone halted the interview, took off her microphone, and walked out of the studio when Abramson asked her about the source code and whether Lamone believed the software should remain secretly controlled by Diebold.
Like others, Abramson reminds us that, because of the Help America Vote Act of 2002, the US has effectively turned control of its elections over to Diebold and the three other private, for-profit corporations who manufacture and provide the bulk of the voting machines used in American elections. Not only do Diebold, Hart InterCivic, Sequoia, and ES&S run the machines and tabulate the votes, they make the Electronic Poll (E-Poll) books that now hold America's voter rolls.
Abramson recommends the following, in her own words:
- Prove that the many recommendations, contained in the un-redacted SAIC Report, have been complied with.
- In Maryland, release the Freeman, Craft, McGregor report showing what, if anything, has been fixed since the SAIC report.
- Make the electronic voting machines and tabulators available immediately before, during and after the November 7 election for identified, certified computer scientists from the state government, (an "Election Swat Team") to inspect for evidence of tampering, factory installed malicious code, malicious code that might have been added after leaving the factory, malicious code that might have been added during the election.
- Make emergency paper ballots available for all voters who are not comfortable trusting the electronic machines. If the counties across this country have to pay Rush Fees to printers in their jurisdiction, so be it. Democracy demands nothing less.
Bush's own appointee to the chair of the US Elections Assistance Commission, the Reverend DeForest Soares, recently quit his post, declaring that "There is no prototype. There are no standards. There is no scientific research that would guarantee any election district that there's a machine that can be used to answer these very serious questions. And so, my sense is that the politicians in Washington have concluded that the system can't be all that bad because, after all, it produced them. And as long as an elected official is an elected official, then whatever machine was used, whatever device was used to elect him or her, seems to be adequate. But there's an erosion of voting rights implicit in our inability to trust the technology that we use and if we were another country being analyzed by America, we would conclude that this country is ripe for stealing elections and for fraud." So far both the Bush administration and Congress, under its Republican leadership and lacking leadership from the Democratic minority, have done nothing to protect either the voters or the democratic process. Abramson writes, "Congress has refused to require that the four manufacturers make the software available for inspection (the Independent Testing Authories, or ITA's, only perform tests on the machine's functionality and they are chosen and paid for by the manufacturers.) They do not even look (and they're not required to look) for vote-flipping malicious code inside the software. Their reports are also kept secret. Congress refused to require even so-called 'voter verified paper audit trails' where the voter would look at a paper receipt inside the machine (not taken home with them), verify that it was correct and then allow for it, the hard copy, to be stored separately for use in the eventuality of a recount. And, further, Congress has refused to require mandatory random audits at polling stations or any other verification that the totals that are reported by the machines are, in fact, anything close to what the voters had intended."
In the Senate, the fight to keep any legislation requiring voter-verified paper ballots and machine transparency from even reaching the floor for a vote was led by Senator Mitch McConnell; in the House, Representative Bob Ney (later convicted of conspiracy and fraud). Abramson concludes, "In other words, despite the brilliant rallying cry of their hero, Ronald Reagan, 'Trust but verify,' the Republican Leadership has, in fact, created a democracy where we are asked to do one but with no effort at all to do the other. The leaked, un-redacted SAIC Report makes it clear that these machines are not ready for our midterm elections next week and that Diebold, and, perhaps the three other manufacturers, have been fraudulently hiding serious operational and security flaws from the states and the voters. Unless there is emergency action undertaken by our states, we could have 468 mini-Florida 2000s and the control and direction of our Congress debated for many months to come. Nonetheless, absent the ability to properly inspect the software on these machines, the best safeguard may, indeed, be for everyone to vote. The larger the turnout and, conceivably, the larger the margin of victory, one way or another, the less likely these far from proven machines will be able to alter the vote in defiance of whatever exit polling there is left. Until we can get Diebold and the other manufacturers who hold our democracy in their corporate hand to tell the truth about their hardware and software, our democracy may hinge on people doing what it is really all about anyway: Getting out and voting." (BradBlog)
November 2: A military policeman convicted of using his dog to threaten and intimidate Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib has been sent back to Iraq to train Iraqis in police and security work. Sergeant Santos Cardona, convicted of dereliction of duty and aggravated assault, has just completed his sentence of 90 days at hard labor. Cardona's friends and family describe him as depressed and unwilling to return to Iraq, fearful that he will be treated as a pariah. According to one friend, Cardona said he had told at least one of his superiors that he feared for his safety in Iraq, especially because of his presence in the al-Qaeda video, but was told by an officer, "We need bodies [in Iraq]" and that he shouldn't worry about it. Cardona appears in at least one al-Qaeda propaganda video, menacing a cowering Iraqi with his dog, a fearsome Belgian Malinois. His unit, the 23rd MP Company, is to train a unit of Iraqi police often targeted for assassination and believed to be heavily infiltrated by insurgents. Many former senior US officials say sending Cardona back to Iraq gives the wrong signal at a time when the US is trying to prop up the fast-collapsing government in Baghdad. "If news of this deployment is accurate, it represents appallingly bad judgment," says retired General Barry McCaffrey, who commanded a division in the first Gulf War. "The symbolic message perceived in Iraq will likely be that the US is simply insensitive to the abuse of their prisoners." Retired Major General John Batiste agrees, saying, "You just have to wonder how far up the chain of command this decision was made." Cardona was acquitted of seven other charges, including including alleged attempts to harass a second prisoner with his dog. Cardona's lawyers argued that their client's actions at Abu Ghraib were condoned, if not approved in each case, by officers in charge of the prison, as well as senior officials in the Army command. (Time)

GOP congressional aides admit to discussing Foley scandal "damage control" two days before Foley's resignation

November 2: Two senior aides to National Republican Campaign Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds participated in "damage control" conference calls concerning correspondence between Congressman Mark Foley and a former congressional page two days before the scandal became public, and earlier than previously reported. The aides, NRCC Communications Director Carl Forti and Reynolds then chief-of-staff Kirk Fordham, both took part in the first call the evening of Wednesday, September 27, and one call the next day, Forti and others have confirmed the conference call. Forti's involvement and the NRCC's role in the run-up to the Foley scandal add another link between the disgraced former congressman and Reynolds, who has said he knew only indirectly of questionable emails, and that he reported them to his House superiors. They also reflect another moment at which House GOP leadership was aware of concerns about Foley and pages. Foley resigned Friday, September 29, soon after ABCNews presented him with a sexually explicit instant message correspondence with a page. The conference call, described by a Hill staffer familiar with its contents as focused on "damage control," also included Foley's Florida-based political consultant, Richard Johnston, and his communications director, Jason Kello. The participants were apparently unaware of the explicit instant messages that would force Foley's resignation two days later. Foley's aides were "seeking [Forti's] advice and keeping him abreast of" the ABCNews inquiry. Foley consultant Richard Johnston and Foley communications director Jason Kello were also on the phone, according to two people familiar with the call. Fordham, then Reynolds' chief of staff, and formerly Foley's chief of staff, played a central role throughout the affair. "Kirk was involved before the resignation -- in the days before -- helping, advising Foley with respect to how this would be handled in the context of his reelection campaign," says Fordham's lawyer, Timothy Heaphy, referring to the earlier, less damning email. "There were NRCC people involved in that discussion." Reynolds himself wasn't asked about the Wednesday and Thursday discussions during the 40-minute press conference he gave on the subject October 2. He said then he'd been told of months earlier -- but hadn't seen -- the first emails, which he described as "overly friendly chit-chat." (New York Daily News)
November 2: Connecticut Democrat Ned Lamont, running for a Senate seat against independent Joe Lieberman, files a complaint against Lieberman with the Federal Election Commission over the $387,000 in petty cash Lieberman's campaign spent in the waning days before the August Democratic primary. Political committees may make expenditures of not more than $100 to any person or for a transaction out of the petty cash fund and are required to keep a written journal documenting the payments. While Lieberman, who is being heavily if quietly supported by the state and national GOP, claims no wrongdoing and is refusing to turn over any journals or documentation, interviews with some of the people brought in to help get out the vote in in the two weeks before the hotly contested August 8 primary describe situations that appear to be at odds with some campaign finance requirements. At least one man who was hired as a consultant, Tomas Reyes, says he has yet to be asked by the campaign to turn over material for the journal, which would justify expenditures of $8,250. The FEC requires the treasurer of the political committee to keep a written journal of all disbursements out of petty cash, including names, addresses, dates and purposes. Reyes and another man, Daryl Brooks, who ran a consultant service, say they each got one check from the campaign for their services, but they are listed in the third quarter campaign finance report as getting two checks, for a total of twice what the men said they received. The report lists Reyes as getting two checks for $8,250 apiece. Brooks received $12,200 twice. Several young men, who were paid $60 a day out of petty cash to canvass in Bridgeport, say they were paid in cash for aggregate earnings over $200. Michelle Ryan, a spokeswoman for the FEC, will not comment on specifics of the Lamont complaint, but says "in terms of itemization, it is required once the aggregate total to a recipient is in excess of $200." The size of the petty cash involved is raising eyebrows with the nonpartisan Public Campaign Action Fund, which asked the campaign to go beyond the legal requirements and disclose the particulars of the expenditures. "No other senatorial campaign that we know of has ever left undisclosed to the public a sum as large as this," says PCAF chairman Pete MacDowell, in a letter to the senator this week. MacDowell writes that the issue could impact future elections if the campaign found a new loophole and is setting a precedent "of opening up a serious breach in the campaign finance disclosure laws." (New Haven Register)
November 2: The political watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) file a complaint with the IRS about the conservative 527 group "Americans for Honesty on Issues." CREW alleges that AFHOI, an offshoot of the 2004 group "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," broke the law by failing to report expenditures and contributions. According to CREW, AFHOI failed to file financial reports with the IRS twice in October. Federal law requires 527s like AFHOI to disclose all contributions and expenditures to the IRS. Any 527 that fails to report its expenditures and contributions may be assessed a tax up to 35% of the unreported totals. CREW estimates that the IRS could fine AFHOI up to $1.68 million. "It appears that Americans for Honesty on Issues isn't being honest with the American people about its campaign activities," says Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director. "It is flagrantly breaking IRS law and should be investigated immediately." (CREW)
November 2: Republican congressman Don Sherwood, already forced to admit to having a mistress, Cynthia Ore, and battling charges that he physically abused her, has agreed to pay Ore $500,000 in a settlement. One interesting caveat: Ore doesn't get the money unless she stays quiet about Sherwood's alleged abuse of her until after Election Day. Sherwood agreed to settle Ore's $5.5 million lawsuit against him in November 2005; the terms of settlement have been, until now, kept confidential. Ore has been, and will continue, to be paid in installments; she will receive the bulk of the payments after the November 7 elections. The settlement information comes from a confidential source. A confidentiality clause requires Ore to forfeit much of the money if she talks publicly about the case, according to this source and two other people familiar with elements of the case. Sherwood admitted no wrongdoing, a standard provision in such agreements, says the source. Sherwood says in response to the story, "I can neither confirm nor deny because this was a private settlement. If I'd like to talk to you about it, I can't." According to a police report, Ore called 911 on her cell phone from the bathroom of Sherwood's Capitol Hill apartment in 2004 and reported that Sherwood had choked her while giving her a back rub. Eventually Sherwood admitted having an affair with Ore, but vehemently denied ever hurting her, and criminal charges were never filed. Ore, over 30 years younger than Sherwood, then sued for damages. (AP/Centre Daily Times)

GOP "robocalls" plaguing Democratic voters in likely vote-suppression tactic

November 2: A new and ugly tactic is being used by the National Republican Congressional Committee in tight House races all over the country -- plaguing voters with "robocalls" purporting to be from their Democratic opponents. So far, the NRCC is targeting at least 53 races in a number of states. The idea seems to be to fool committed Democratic voters into thinking they are receiving a barrage of automated calls from their own candidates' campaigns -- over and over again, sometimes ten or twenty times in a single evening. If the tactic works, the voter will become disgusted with the candidate and not vote for him or her. So far, several campaigns and voters have filed complaints with the FCC, but there doesn't seem much likelihood of the calls being stopped by Election Day. Daily Kos blogger "G2geek," a PBX technician with 20 years of industry experience, describes the technique thusly: "Desperate Republicans across the country are using robo-calls (automated dialing systems that play recorded messages) to harass voters. Your phone rings, there's a brief recorded intro that makes it appear the call is from a Democratic campaign or related group, and then a pause, and then a recorded message. If you hang up it calls you back six or seven times or more. The goal is to make people think they are being harassed by the Democrats, and p*ss them off enough to change their votes. It works well enough to potentially flip some close races."
Both Democrats and Republicans use automated calling, considered a relatively inexpensive and effective tactic to inform voters and create interest in voting. "As much as people complain about getting automated calls and saying they don't work, every politician is doing them," says Jerry Dorchuck, whose Pennsylvania-based Political Marketing International will make about 200,000 such phone calls each hour for mostly Democratic candidates. "Targeted calls play a key in very close races." But the Republicans have gone in a different, ugly direction by bombarding Democrats with calls which initially purport to be from their own candidate. Only if listeners let the entire message play out do they find that the calls are actually in support of a GOP candidate, and authorized either by the individual Republican candidate or the NRCC. If voters hang up, the system begins hammering them with return calls. A Pennsylvania Democratic voter, software engineer Bruce Jacobson, recently filed a complaint with the FCC after receiving the same message three times in four hours. The messages all began, "Hello, I'm calling with information about Lois Murphy," the Democrat running against two-term incumbent Republican Jim Gerlach in the Philadelphia-area district. "Basically, they go on to slam Lois," says Jacobson, who has filed a complaint with the FCC because the source of the call isn't immediately known. FCC rules say all prerecorded messages must "at the beginning of the message, state clearly the identity of the business, individual, or other entity that is responsible for initiating the call." During or after the message, they must give the telephone number of the caller. Often the GOP and NRCC messages do neither., though NRCC spokesman Ed Patru says his organization's ads "are in compliance with the law."
"They are violating the regulations that were set up," says Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who says the DCCC has employed one robocall this cycle and paid $500 for it. "I think the real point here is that the Republicans are using a desperate campaign tactic that is misleading, at worst violating the law and at best is a page out of Karl Rove's playbook," Psaki says. "They clearly are attempting to mislead voters." A Murphy spokeswoman, Amy Bonitatibus, says, "Because [voters] are getting so many, they are only listening to the first part of the message. ...Some of our biggest supporters have said, 'If you call me again, I'm not voting for Lois.' ...They're hoping to turn off our base. ...These are pretty much dirty tricks by the Republican Party." As opposed to $500 by the DCCC for robocalls, the NRCC has spent $2.1 million on those automated calls. Three separate robocalls target Chicago-area Democrat Tammy Duckworth, locked in a tight House race with her Republican opponent Peter Roskas. "Illinois families will be footing the bill for illegal immigrants who get government benefits," the voice says in one. In Connecticut's hotly contested 4th Congressional District, incumbent Republican Christopher Shays and Democrat Diane Farrell both say they are victims of misleading and annoying robocall campaigns. Farrell spokeswoman Jan Ellen Spiegel says the campaign has been a victim of "constant pummeling," including robocalls that begin with a recorded voice saying, "I'd like to talk with you about Diane Farrell." It's the same tactic employed in Murphy's district and elsewhere. In North Carolina's 11th Congressional District, Republicans are going after challenger Heath Shuler, whose campaign said the calls are coming as late as 2:30 am. "Calling people up, making people think it's me when it's actually them -- it's acts of desperation," says Shuler. "I think it's part of the corruption in Washington."
In Florida's 13th District, Democrat Christine Jennings is being victimized by similar robocalls sponsored by her opponent, incumbent Republican Vern Buchanan. The calls purport to be from Jennings, and use someone impersonating Jennings to make several minutes' worth of what the Jennings campaign calls "nasty and misleading" statements; the calls hit some voters' phones as many as 10 times in a single night. Only when the robocall is listened through to the end does the call reveal that it is a campaign advertisement from either Buchanan or the National Republican Congressional Committee.
"G2geek," the blogger quoted above, has a wealth of information available about dealing with the GOP's brand of robocalls, which he says are definitely illegal under many statutes and regulations, and arguably illegal under others. "If we pursue this nationally, we could bankrupt the GOP," he says. The full article can be found in this November 5 Daily Kos diary; some of the highlights are included here. The biggest problem with the calls is that they tie up the victims' phone lines, making it impossible for the telephone owners to dial out, especially in emergency situations. "The goal is that you should always be able to get a new dialtone by hanging up your phone for 1.5 seconds, whether you are the caller or the called party," he writes. This is not happening with the majority of the automated GOP calls. However, another set of laws is indeed being violated -- statutes defining "obscene, indecent, or harassing phone calls" as the placement of repeated calls to a subscriber who does not wish to be called. "[T]ypically the violation is a misdemeanor with a penalty of up to 1 year in prison or a $1,000 fine," the blogger writes. "It can be argued that the penalty should apply per call or per called subscriber, in any case this adds up to a potentially very large number of counts of that misdemeanor, which could bankrupt the GOP. Think of hundreds of thousands of calls, at a $1,000 fine each." The calls may also violate the intent of the "release the line" regulations, discussed above, because if a victim has Call Waiting, the additional incoming calls will trigger call waiting signals, which interrupt conversation briefly each time the system "beeps" the line, thereby interfering with the life-or-death conversations of emergency calls. "This angle is at least worth pursuing, and if nothing else, the R's attorneys will have to respond to it if it's raised as part of a civil action."
Some of the calls are using what is called "PRI service" to reset or cloak their outgoing caller ID. With political calls, this may constitute fraud, misrepresentation, or both.
"Go2geek," the veteran PBX technician, writes, "What we need is someone who will testify that they changed their vote as a result of these calls, and then subsequently learned that they had been deceived and feel that they have been cheated of their vote. To my mind (I am not a lawyer), that constitutes fraud. The more such people, the stronger the case. If this is going on across the country, it could be raised as a Federal RICO case. At minimum it should become the subject of a Congressional investigation after [Democrats] take back the House."
He gives the following advice to handling aggressive robocalls: First, hang up, count to five, then pick up the phone and see if you have a dial tone. "If you cannot get a new dial tone, i.e. the robocaller is still there, make a note of it. Hanging up and then getting silence on the line is not sufficient: you have to get a new dial tone, and if you don't, that may help prosecute these cases. If you don't get a new dial tone in 5 seconds, hang up again and count off 10 seconds. If that doesn't work, hang up again and count 20 seconds. Everything after 5 or at most 7 seconds is illegal, period. Take careful notes." Take note of the caller ID; record the date, time, and caller number. You may get a notation that the phone number is unavailable, or private, or a string of gibberish digits. If it seems like a valid phone number, call it back and make a note of who answers and what they say. If the callback gives you an automated message, either make careful notes to what is said, or record the calls using home recorder-connectors (recording pre-recorded messages is not against the law). If you get a robocall on your voicemail or answering machine, save it. The blogger notes, "Voiceprints can be identified with extraordinary precision so a recording can be used to identify the person's voice, and thus prove the name of the entity for whom they were working, later in the event of legal action. Make a backup copy of the messages by recording it onto audio tape or your hard drive." If you contact a real person, ask immediately what organization they are with, and what their telephone number is, and write everything down. "It appears that in some cases, people who have responded to poll questions in certain ways have immediately been put into robocall lists and gotten a bunch of harassing calls in a row. If a live campaign person calls you and does not provide satisfactory information, that fact itself is of interest. Also if the number they give you does not match the caller ID you receive, make note of that. In some cases this is legit: home phone-banks, i.e. people calling from home for an organization. In other cases this may lead to discovering more fraud, i.e. Rs claiming to be from a D organization.
He also suggests subscribing to Call Trace and turning over the phone number(s) you capture to your telephone company. "How it works: You receive a harassing call. You hang up, and then before the phone rings again, you pick up, listen for dialtone, and dial a specific feature code that your telco will provide for you. This causes the telco central office to immediately trace the correct originating number for the call. Then you file a police report on harassing calls, and this enables Telco Security to provide the phone number to the police for further action." He even gives pointers on how to alert your neighbors with flyers and bullhorns.
Columnist Jill Porter of the Philadelphia Daily News gives some straightforward advice. You can call the FCC to complain at 202-418-1440 or fax them your complaint at 202-418-0232. Or, probably less effective but more fun, send the NRCC your own robocalls telling them to quit. Porter recommends Voiceshot, an automated calling system that costs you 12 cents per call with no minimum. The NRCC's number is 202-479-7000.
Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall notes, "We won't be able to get to the bottom of this operation until after Tuesday, which is the point. ...A lot of these races remain inside the MOE, the margin of error. And that means the MOT, the margin of theft. If Dems want to pick up seats on Tuesday they'll have to get a lot of these races out of the MOT. Because as long as they're inside, the Republicans can still grab them with a mix of voter suppression, dirty tricks and election fraud." "G2geek" concludes, more hopefully, " DON'T let the Republican dirty-trick machine scare you. The only thing to fear is fear itself, not the fear-mongers. DO resolve to win regardless! The Rs are clearly desperate. We have them on the run. We are going to take back Congress, and then let the investigations begin!" (Boston Globe, Philadelphia Daily News, Christine Jennings/Daily Kos, Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo)
November 2: George W. Bush's grades at Yale seem to be far lower than the ones published by the university, according to records of his grades stored at his former residence house. Yale houses its students at separate residential colleges: not dormitories, but smaller, more cohesive versions of the university. Bush's residence hall was Davenport, where his daughter Barbara also lived as a Yale student, graduating in 2004. Grades and other student records have traditionally been stored at the residence halls, a practice that stopped in the 1960s. Yet the older records still remain in storage. The residence hall records, which include disciplinary records, seem to be far less kind to Bush than his official records stored with the university registrar. According to several people who took the opportunity to dig through Davenport's original records, large disparities between Bush's residential hall records and the registrar's records exist, with some of the original grades physically altered and other, higher grades substituted. The alterations may have been made during Bush's first presidential term, or they may have been made during one or more visits to the campus by Bush's mother, former First Lady Barbara Bush. One recent Yale alumnus says there was a certain "sense of control" about Barbara Bush's visits: "The university was very uncomfortable," evidently from a sense of influence if not pressure for reasons not publicly clarified. Ties between the Bush family and the university donor base are deep and longstanding.
The disparities are widespread. One observer who has perused Bush's original records says, "We just honestly don't think he [Bush] went to history class." Bush has said he did attend, but the grade records indicate otherwise. "We don't think he was ever there," says the observer. The cached version of the official presidential biography, from the White House web site, says that Bush graduated from Yale with a BA in history. Davenport was renovated in 2004, and most of the records stored in the hall are no longer available and may have been destroyed.
Liberal blogger Margie Burns writes, "Issues here include the comparative lack of vetting Bush received as a candidate for the White House while other contenders were being put through the meat grinder. The Bush campaign in Texas and in DC adeptly presented its candidate as a homey Jimmy Stewart type, modest in his demeanor so that his modest accomplishments were a given, to be taken for granted. Thus the secrecy, drift and dishonesty in Bush's background were largely given a pass. The big question is why Bush or anyone connected to him would try altering grades, and the answer is Vietnam. John Kerry's clumsy witticism about being stuck in Iraq is a flashback to Vietnam, when any student who flunked out was genuinely liable to be shipped out if his name was not George W. Bush. Interestingly, the Ivy League, difficult as it was to get into, was notoriously gentle about flunking out a student once admitted, including legacy students like George Walker Bush who would be expected to get the gentleman's C in any case. At this stage, some question remains as to whether he attained even that. For family members to go so far as to pressure the institution to keep Bush inside the hedges to keep him stateside, if they did so, he must have been failing. Unfortunately, there is no inherent unlikelihood in this narrative, given the way Bush was leapfrogged over more than a hundred other applicants for the Texas Air National Guard."
Burns continues, "The deeper issue is character rather than grades. Assuming that these anecdotes are correct, and there is no reason to assume otherwise, they have frattitude written all over them. As any teacher knows, it is one thing to help your fellow students by filing professors' old tests and passing around copies from previous years; it is quite another to help by passing around answers to a test or copies of a test that students are not supposed to have seen. Studying from old tests rather than going to class may not be the ideal way to learn, but it is minimally legitimate, cramming rather than reading, something most of us have done at some point. The other is cheating. By the same token, it is one thing to oppose all grades, the grading system, on the basis of reasoned argument that grades do not well reinforce learning. It is quite another to game the existing grading system by dishonesty. Whatever one thinks of grade point averages, class standing, or the grading system in general, there can be no argument in favor of altering selected grades ex post facto." (Margie Burns)

Bush administration posts information on building nuclear weapons on the Internet

November 3: A Web site set up by the federal government to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war may have exposed nuclear technology to anyone, including terrorists and anarchists. The Bush administration set up the site at the behest of congressional Republicans who wanted to find new evidence of the pre-invasion dangers posed by the regime of Saddam Hussein. But in recent weeks, the site has posted documents that came from Iraq's pre-1991 nuclear development program, documents that taken together constitute a primer to building a nuclear bomb. The Bush adminstration hastily shut down the site after the New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, says that access to the site has been suspended "pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing." Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, who have long feared that the information could help nations like Iran develop nuclear arms, had privately protested last week to the US ambassador to the agency. One diplomat said the agency's technical experts "were shocked" at the public disclosures. The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that the nuclear experts say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs. "For the US to toss a match into this flammable area is very irresponsible," says A. Bryan Siebert, a former director of classification at the federal Department of Energy, which runs the nation's nuclear arms program. "There's a lot of things about nuclear weapons that are secret and should remain so." Last spring, UN arms-control officials persuaded Bush officials to take down a report that told how to make the lethal nerve agents sarin and tabun.
Originally, the pressure to post the documents came from conservative publications and politicians, who argued the nation's spy agencies had failed to adequately analyze the 48,000 boxes of documents seized in Iraq since the 2003 invasion began. The chairs of both the House and Senate Intelligence Committee, Republicans Peter Hoekstra and Pat Roberts, told Bush officials that wide analysis and translation of the documents -- most of them in Arabic -- would reinvigorate the search for evidence that Hussein had resumed his unconventional arms programs in the years before the invasion. Of course, such weapons were never found. Negroponte had resisted posting the information on the Internet, but Bush overruled Negroponte's objections after congressional Republicans proposed legislation to force the documents' release. Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a private group at George Washington University that tracks federal secrecy decisions, says the impetus for the Web site's creation came from an array of sources -- private conservative groups, congressional Republicans and some figures in the Bush administration -- who clung to the belief that close examination of the captured documents would show that Hussein's government had clandestinely reconstituted an unconventional arms programs. "There were hundreds of people who said, 'There's got to be gold in them thar hills,'" Blanton says.
The Web site, "Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal," was a constantly expanding portrait of prewar Iraq. Its thousands of documents included everything from a collection of religious and nationalistic poetry to instructions for the repair and maintenance of parachutes to handwritten notes from Hussein's intelligence service. It became a popular source of information for bloggers and amateur historians. Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for UN inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. A few experts said at the time preceding the invasion that Hussein's scientists were on the verge of building an atomic bomb, possibly being as little as a year away; other experts disputed that. Some of the nuclear documents on the Web site were identical to the ones presented to the UN Security Council in late 2002, as the US prepared to invade Iraq, but unlike those on the Web site, the papers given to the Security Council had been extensively edited, to remove sensitive information on unconventional arms.
Diplomats and nuclear experts in Europe were horrified when the documents were posted on the Web. "It's a cookbook," says one diplomat. "If you had this, it would short-circuit a lot of things." Peter Zimmerman, a physicist and former US government arms scientist now at the war studies department of King's College, London, calls the posted material "very sensitive, much of it undoubtedly secret restricted data." Ray Kidder, a senior nuclear physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, says "some things in these documents would be helpful" to nations aspiring to develop nuclear weapons and should have remained secret. A senior US intelligence official who deals routinely with atomic issues says the documents show "where the Iraqis failed and how to get around the failures." He believes the documents would be less useful to terrorists and other private individuals who may want to make their own crude nuclear device, calling the documents "a road map that helps you get from point A to point B, but only if you already have a car."
The campaign to release the information on the Web was spearheaded by Hoekstra, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He and his Senate counterpart, Roberts, asked Negroponte to post the documents in November 2005. They said in their letter to Negroponte that the sheer volume of the documents had overwhelmed the intelligence community. Some intelligence officials feared that individual documents, translated and interpreted by amateurs, would be used out of context to second-guess the intelligence agencies' view that Hussein did not have unconventional weapons or substantive ties to al-Qaeda. Reviewing the documents for release would add an unnecessary burden on busy intelligence analysts, Hoekstra and Roberts argued. The documents were approved for release on March 16, 2006, with a terse disclaimer from Negroponte's office: "The US government has made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy of the information contained therein, or the quality of any translations, when available." Hoekstra issued a statement on April 18, acknowledging the "minimal risks" of presenting the documents to the world but saying the site "will enable us to better understand information such as Saddam's links to terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and violence against the Iraqi people. ...It will allow us to leverage the Internet to enable a mass examination as opposed to limiting it to a few exclusive elites." On November 2, after the site was shut down, Hoekstra's spokesman Jamal Ware said that the complaints about the site "didn't sound like a big deal," and added, "We were a little surprised when they pulled the plug."
Most of the documents were placed on the Web after little more than a quick once-over by Arabic linguists; some of the first posted documents were about Iraq's efforts to make biological and chemical weapons. At the UN, the chemical papers raised alarms at the Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which had been in charge of searching Iraq for all unconventional arms, save the nuclear ones. An objection from the commission's acting chief weapons inspector, Demetrius Perricos, resulted in the removal of documents discussing the manufacture of nerve agents such as tabun and sarin. In September, the Web site began posting the nuclear documents, and some soon raised concerns. On September 12, it posted a document it called "Progress of Iraqi nuclear program circa 1995." That description is, of course, misleading, since the research occurred years earlier. The Iraqi document is marked "Draft FFCD Version 3 (20.12.95)," meaning it was preparatory for the "Full, Final, Complete Disclosure" that Iraq made to United Nations inspectors in March 1996. The document carries three diagrams showing cross sections of bomb cores, and their diameters. On September 20, the site posted a much larger document, "Summary of technical achievements of Iraq's former nuclear program." It runs to 51 pages, 18 focusing on the development of Iraq's bomb design. Topics included physical theory, the atomic core and high-explosive experiments. By early October, diplomats and officials said, UN arms inspectors in New York and their counterparts in Vienna were alarmed and discussing what to do. (New York Times, New York Times/Chicago Tribune)
November 3: The New York Times reports that, in spite of how much the Iraqi and US governments need one another, their relationship is deteriorating into open rancor and mistrust. Since late October, Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki has rejected the notion of an American "timeline" for action on urgent Iraqi political issues; ordered American commanders to lift checkpoints they had set up around the Shiite district of Sadr City to hunt for a kidnapped American soldier and a fugitive Shiite death squad leader; blamed the Americans for the deteriorating security situation in Iraq; and demanded speeded-up Iraqi control of its own military. This is in spite of the fact that Maliki's government needs the US to protect it from its own people -- without US troops, the Maliki government would fall within hours -- and the Bush administration needs Maliki's government to be successful in order to keep its power base in the US and to allow for US troops to begin to successfully disengage from Iraq. None of this is happening.
Certainly Maliki has engaged in some political grandstanding, largely to rally support among divided and fractious Shi'ite political partners and to demonstrate that he is not Bush's lapdog. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the only beneficiaries of this growing rift will likely be the Sunni insurgents, their common enemy. Their aim has been to recapture the power the Sunnis lost with Hussein's overthrow, and hopefully to repeat the experience of the 1920s, when Shiites squandered their last opportunity to wrest power and handed the Sunnis an opening to another 80 years of domination.
The two sides -- Maliki and Bush -- have widely differing goals. The US wants Maliki to lead in forging a "national compact" that would begin to heal the deep and bitter rifts between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds over the division of political and economic power. The timeline that US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad set out last week, promptly rejected by Maliki, foresaw framework agreements over coming months. Central issues include disbanding the militias that have been responsible for a wave of sectarian killing, the future division of oil revenues, and a new approach to the Ba'athists, who were the bedrock of the Hussein government, that will strike a fairer balance between holding the worst accountable for their crimes and offering others rehabilitation. Maliki is showing increasing signs of reverting to his previous career as a Shi'ite religious stalwart and Sunni hater. A somber, reserved man, he lacks both the personality and the will to reach out to politicians and leaders from other communities, especially the hated Sunnis. Both Sunni and Shi'ite leaders are growing more recalcitrant and less willing to compromise with one another. For his part, Maliki has in recent weeks strayed from being a representative of all Iraq, and begun working strictly for the interests of his own Shi'a, leading to angry protests from Sunnis and Kurds alike.
The US seems most concerned about Maliki's refusal to crack down on the Mahdi Army, the Shi'ite militia that is apparently the source of most of the death squad attacks on Sunnis. Maliki has the backing of Moqtada al-Sadr, the cleric who leads the Mahdi militias; his support is critical for Maliki remaining in power. Maliki is also attempting to stave off any possible power play by his Shi'ite rival, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Badr organization, another powerful Shi'ite militia and a political rival of Maliki's. Making it harder on Maliki is the increasing feeling among the beleagured Shi'ite citizens of Baghdad that the Shi'ite militias are their only real protection against the Sunni insurgents, who have killed thousands of Shiites with their bombings of marketplaces, mosques, weddings, funerals and other public gatherings. Both US and Iraq troops and security forces have completely failed to prevent these bombings, causing tremendous despair and anger among Shi'ites, and leading to any number of conspiracy theories that have the Americans and the Sunnis in bed together. In particular, Khalilzad is a target for Shi'ite rancor, becoming a figure of contempt among some senior Shi'ites for his efforts to bring the Sunnis into the national government. Khalilzad is, by birth, a Sunni Muslim, born and raised in Pashtun Afghanistan. Maliki continues to resist any attempts to disband the militias, asking instead for drawn-out diplomatic solutions. While the Americans continue to publicly back Maliki, in private they say that Iraq the country cannot wait while sectarian killing rages unabated.
American dissatisfaction with the Maliki government goes far beyond the ambivalence over the militias. When the government was sworn in on May 20, Khalilzad and General George Casey said it had six months to take a broad range of political actions that would build public support, and make the war winnable. When Bush made a six-hour visit to Baghdad in June, he said he had looked Maliki "in the eye" to determine if America had a reliable partner, and reported that he was convinced the new prime minister met the test. Apparently Bush's mind-reading techniques were unreliable. After a largely wasted year under Maliki's predecessor, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, both Iraq and the US called for a more effective Iraqi government. Instead, American officials have told reporters in background briefings that little has changed, with the budgets of many government departments, including the Health Ministry, controlled by officials loyal to Sadr, being used for what the Americans say amounts to wholesale looting.
Maliki's accusation that the poor security situation throughout Iraq is the US's fault has further spurred anger and recriminations from the Americans. Maliki is demanding more money from the US, in spite of the war's growing unpopularity among American citizens, for the buildup of Iraq's own forces and for reconstruction, on top of the $38 billion the Bush administration says it has already spent on civil and military aid to Iraq since the toppling of Hussein in 2003 and the nearly $400 billion for America's own deployments. Bush responded by dispatching his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, on an urgent trip to Baghdad on October 30, and agreeing to work on ways of accelerating the transfer of authority, especially in regard to the Maliki government's ability to control the deployment of Iraqi troops. Bush is not speaking about the deep frustration among American commanders at the continuing weakness of many Iraqi Army units, which have been plagued by high levels of indiscipline, absenteeism and desertion. Some American officers say that as many as half of the listed 137,000 Iraqi soldiers are effectively undeployable. The situation has its keenest effects in Baghdad, where American commanders say the war will ultimately be won or lost. In the stepped-up effort to clear the city of insurgents and death squads, begun in August and acknowledged by American commanders to be faltering, American troops have accounted for two-thirds of the 25,000 deployed, after Iraqi commanders delivered two of the six battalions they promised. The result, American officers involved in the operation have noted, is that what little security there is in the city -- and, ultimately, the survival of the Maliki government itself -- relies far more on American than Iraqi troops. (New York Times/US Labor Against the War)
November 3: The Bush administration is arguing that detainees held in secret CIA prisons shouldn't be allowed to describe in court how they were interrogated. The administration says that interrogation methods used by the CIA are among the nation's most sensitive national security secrets, and that their release "could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage," according to recent court filings. Terrorists could incorporate the information into their counter-interrogation training, the government tells Judge Reggie Walton. The government is trying to block access to 14 detainees transferred in September from the secret prisons to the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay. An attorney for the family of one of those detainees, Majid Khan, says in his own court filing that there is no evidence that he has top-secret information. "The executive is attempting to misuse its classification authority...to conceal illegal or embarrassing executive conduct." The government argues that detainees such as Khan have no right to speak to a lawyer under the new Military Commissions Act, which established separate military trials for terrorism suspects. Administration lawyers also argue that defense lawyers could pass information back and forth for detainees, a practice that is illegal and could result in disbarment and jail sentences. Detainee attorneys say they have followed the protocol to the letter, and none has been accused of releasing information without government clearance. Captives who have spent time in CIA prisons have said they were sometimes treated harshly with techniques like "waterboarding," which simulates drowning. Bush has declared that the administration will not tolerate the use of torture but has pressed to retain the use of unspecified "alternative" interrogation methods.
The federal case centers on Khan and 14 other Guantanamo detainees having the legal right to access to their attorneys. Khan's family says that they had not heard from him for three years while he was being held, without notice or representation, in a secret CIA prison. The administration is, in essence, asserting that because of US national security concerns, these prisoners should not be granted any legal rights, and the US public should never know what they do or do not know. One CIA official says that because Khan was detained by the CIA, he may have come into possession of top secret information, and that alone is enough to justify his indefinite detention without legal recourse or even criminal charges filed against him. Joseph Margulies, a Northwestern University law professor who has represented several detainees at Guantanamo, says the prisoners "can't even say what our government did to these guys to elicit the statements that are the basis for them being held. Kafka-esque doesn't do it justice. This is 'Alice in Wonderland.'"
Khan, a Pakistani national who has lived in the US for seven years, is accused of taking orders from 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Mohammed allegedly asked Khan to research poisoning US reservoirs and considered him for an operation to assassinate Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf. Khan has continually declared his innocence. Khan's attorneys have offered declarations from Khaled al-Masri, a released detainee who said he was held with Khan in a dingy CIA prison called "the salt pit" in Afghanistan. There, prisoners slept on the floor, wore diapers and were given tainted water that made them vomit, Masri said. American interrogators treated him roughly, he said, and told him he "was in a land where there were no laws." Khan's family did not learn of his whereabouts until Bush announced his transfer in September, more than three years after he was seized in Pakistan. The family said Khan was staying with a brother in Karachi, Pakistan, in March 2003 when men, who were not in uniform, burst into the apartment late one night and put hoods over the heads of Khan, his brother Mohammad and his brother's wife. The couple's 1-month-old son was also seized. Another brother, Mahmood Khan, who has lived in the United States since 1989, adds that the four were hustled into police vehicles and taken to an undisclosed location, where they were separated and held in windowless rooms. His sister-in-law and her baby remained together. According to Mahmood, Mohammad said they were questioned repeatedly by men who identified themselves as members of Pakistan's intelligence service and others who identified themselves as US officials. Mohammad's wife was released after seven days, and he was released after three months, without charge. He was dumped on a street corner without explanation, he says. Periodically, people who identified themselves as Pakistani officials contacted Mohammad and assured him that his brother would soon be released and that they ought not contact a lawyer or speak with the news media. "We had no way of knowing who had him or where he was," he says, and adds that they complied with the requests because they believed anything else could delay his brother's release.
In Maryland, Khan's family was under constant FBI surveillance from the moment of his arrest, his brother said. The FBI raided their house the day after the arrest, removing computer equipment, papers and videos. Each family member was questioned extensively and shown photographs of terrorism suspects that Mahmood Khan said none of them recognized. For much of the next year, he said, they were followed everywhere. "Pretty much we were scared," he says. "We live in this country. We have everything here." (Washington Post, Washington Post/Reuters)
November 3: Vice President Dick Cheney, oblivious to the political decision to abandon the "stay the course" rhetoric as well as to, apparently, the realities of the situation in Iraq, says the Bush administration is going "full speed ahead" with its policy. "We've got the basic strategy right," Cheney tells George Stephanopoulos in an interview to be broadcast October 5 on ABC's This Week. Cheney says that while the administration's policy may not be popular, "[t]his is the right thing for us to be doing." Cheney says that even with pollsters predicting that Democrats would likely make gains in both houses of Congress Tuesday, voter sentiment would not influence Bush's Iraq policy: "It may not be popular with the public -- it doesn't matter in the sense that we have to continue the mission and do what we think is right. And that's exactly what we're doing. We're not running for office. We're doing what we think is right." As for Democrats, Cheney continues the same rhetoric that has, until recently, served Republicans so well, saying, "They haven't offered up a plan, but they have several different positions -- withdraw, withdraw at some future date, cut off funding. The fact of the matter is, this is the right thing for us to be doing. We need to succeed here. It has a direct bearing on how we do around the world on the global war on terror." And, to round out the trifecta, Cheney blames the media for not giving the "good news" about the economy and Iraq: "Well, you guys don't help," he says of the media. "What's news is if there's bad news, and that gets coverage. But the good news that's out there, day after day after day, doesn't get as much attention." (ABC News)

Republican House leader surreptitiously terminates Iraqi oversight program

November 3: Republicans in Congress have engineered the firing of Stuart Bowen, a lawyer sent to Iraq to uncover corruption and mismanagement. Bowen, a Republican himself, has so far uncovered enough evidence to send several American occupation officials to jail on bribery charges, exposed disastrously poor construction work by companies like Halliburton and Parsons, and discovered that the military did not properly track hundreds of thousands of weapons it shipped to Iraqi security forces. Bowen's office has also inspected and audited Iraqi prisons. In return for his work, Bowen is being shown the door. The order was quietly inserted into the mammoth military authorization bill that Bush signed into law two weeks ago. His agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, is out of business as of Oct. 1, 2007. The clause was inserted by the Republican side of the House Armed Services Committee over the objections of Democratic counterparts during a closed-door conference, and it has generated surprise and some outrage among lawmakers who say they had no idea it was in the final legislation. Bowen's office, which began operation in January 2004 to examine reconstruction money spent in Iraq, was always envisioned as a temporary organization, permitted to continue its work only as long as Congress saw fit. Some advocates for the office, in fact, have regarded its lack of a permanent bureaucracy as the key to its aggressiveness and independence. But as the implications of the provision in the new bill have become clear, opposition has been building on both sides of the political aisle. One point of contention is exactly when the office would have naturally run its course without a hard end date. Moderate Senate Republican Susan Collins, who followed the bill closely as chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, says that she still does not know how the provision made its way into what is called th

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

November 2006

Week One

Saudi study says Iraq a "lost battle"

Conservative columnist says Bush "delusional, unhinged," has "lost his mind"

Leaked report proves Diebold machines designed to be hacked and manipulated

GOP congressional aides admit to discussing Foley scandal "damage control" two days before Foley's resignation

GOP "robocalls" plaguing Democratic voters in likely vote-suppression tactic

Bush administration posts information on building nuclear weapons on the Internet

Republican House leader surreptitiously terminates Iraqi oversight program