New Developments II

[Greg]

WASHINGTON - An influential House Democrat who voted for the Iraq war called Thursday for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, another sign of growing unease in Congress about the conflict.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051117/ap_on_go_co/congress_iraq

[Sonic Youth]

The UK Independent is reporting that chemical weapons were used in Iraq, and has been confirmed by the army (white phosphorus in particular). I don't know if this has been widely reported.

Okri, I haven't mentioned this because it is all so disgusting for me to deal with. But the government finally admitted to using napalm - sorry, "white phosphorous" - in battle. AFTER DENYING IT FOR A WEEK! Never mind that they're burning innocent women and children down to their very bones. They LIED about it. Just like they lied about the lion cages in the torture chambers. Just like they lied about the heads of Big Oil having secret meetings with Dick Cheney. Just like they lied about this entire war. And Dick Cheney has the ####ing gall to call those who oppose the war LIARS! But I'll get to that in a bit...

Okri, you're Canadian, right? I hope everyone in Canada can see that Bush is quickly falling out of favor down here.

[Sonic Youth]

Nine soldiers were killed in the last 2 days, which brings us to

<span style='font-size:17pt;line-height:100%'>2,079</span>

[Damien]

A good Republican . . .


Hagel Defends Criticisms of Iraq Policy
Administration Calls Statements by Democrats Harmful to War Effort, Troops

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 16, 2005; Page A06

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) strongly criticized yesterday the White House's new line of attack against critics of its Iraq policy, saying that "the Bush administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and should not be demonized for disagreeing with them."

With President Bush leading the charge, administration officials have lashed out at Democrats who have accused the administration of manipulating intelligence to justify the war in Iraq. Bush has suggested that critics are hurting the war effort, telling U.S. troops in Alaska on Monday that critics "are sending mixed signals to our troops and the enemy. And that's irresponsible."


Hagel, a Vietnam War veteran and a potential presidential candidate in 2008, countered in a speech to the Council of Foreign Relations that the Vietnam War "was a national tragedy partly because members of Congress failed their country, remained silent and lacked the courage to challenge the administrations in power until it was too late."

"To question your government is not unpatriotic -- to not question your government is unpatriotic," Hagel said, arguing that 58,000 troops died in Vietnam because of silence by political leaders. "America owes its men and women in uniform a policy worthy of their sacrifices."

Hagel said Democrats have an obligation to be constructive in their criticism, but he accused the administration of "dividing the country" with its rhetorical tactics.

Hagel supported the 2002 resolution to authorize military action in Iraq, but he has emerged as a strong skeptic of the Bush administration's handling of the war. In his speech, he called for a regional security conference to help invest Iraq's neighbors in the effort to stabilize the country.

At one point, while answering a question from the audience about Syria, Hagel suggested that the Middle East is worse off after the invasion because the administration failed to anticipate the consequences of removing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "You could probably argue it is worse in many ways in the Middle East because of consequences and ripple effects," he said.

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld joined other administration officials yesterday in attacking critics of the Iraq war for attempting to "rewrite" history, warning that setting an arbitrary deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops could "give terrorists the false hope that if they can simply hold on long enough, that they can outlast us."

At the same time, Rumsfeld acknowledged what he called honest mistakes in the Bush administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq. "There's no doubt in my mind that people made honest mistakes in . . . the pieces of that intelligence that were presented at the United Nations," he said at a news briefing.

Rumsfeld described an evolution of U.S. policy toward Iraq embraced by Democrats and Republicans. He read several quotes from 1998 from then-President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger. They predicted that Hussein, if unchecked, would again use weapons of mass destruction.

However, many of the comments cited by Rumsfeld were used to justify continued sanctions on Iraq, not to invade it. Moreover, the Clinton administration officials did not cite the problematic intelligence that formed the core of the Bush administration's case for an invasion, such as allegations that Iraq sought uranium in Africa and tried to obtain aluminum tubes as part of a resurgent nuclear program.

Rumsfeld also pointed to congressional actions in 1998 and 2002 calling for Hussein's removal. But the 1998 law, signed by Clinton, said "nothing in this act shall be construed to authorize or otherwise speak to use of United States Armed Forces" to implement it.

Staff writer Ann Scott Tyson contributed to this report.

[Sonic Youth]

Our president is acting more adolescent than ever:

From the right-wing (and Bush-friendly) Washington Times:

Sources said Mr. Bush maintains daily contact with only four people: first lady Laura Bush, his mother, Barbara Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes.

Well this is fascinating (if it's true). The only ones he remains in contact with are all women. He's so emasculated that he can no longer be a man among men.

The sources also say that Mr. Bush has stopped talking with his father, except on family occasions.
. . . .

Thanksgiving should be verrrrrrry interesting!

[Damien]

Our president is acting more adolescent than ever:

From the right-wing (and Bush-friendly) Washington Times:

Sources said Mr. Bush maintains daily contact with only four people: first lady Laura Bush, his mother, Barbara Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes. The sources also say that Mr. Bush has stopped talking with his father, except on family occasions.
. . . .

For the president, what triggered the break with his father was the interview given to the New Yorker magazine in October by Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security advisor in the first Bush presidency. In the interview, Mr. Scowcroft criticized the administration's handling of Iraq. The sources said the president is convinced that Mr. Scowcroft consulted with Mr. Bush's father prior to delivering the devastating critique of the president's Iraq policy. . . .

Relations between Mr. Bush and his chief political adviser, Karl Rove, had also become tense in the build-up to the indictment of Mr. Libby. This is due to the fact the president believed his chief aide when Mr. Rove said that he had nothing to do with the leak of Mrs. Plame's identity. The prospect that Mr. Libby will turn state evidence in the Plame case is even more alarming for the White House.

[Sonic Youth]

Senate pushes Bush on Iraq
By LIZ SIDOTI
Associated Press Writer

The GOP-controlled Senate rejected a Democratic call Tuesday for a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq but urged President Bush to outline his plan for "the successful completion of the mission" in a bill reflecting a growing bipartisan unease with his Iraq policies.

The overall measure, adopted 98-0, shows a willingness to defy the president in several ways despite a threatened veto. It would restrict the techniques used to interrogate terror detainees, ban their inhuman treatment and call for the administration to provide lawmakers with quarterly reports on the status of operations in Iraq.

The bill was not without victories for the president, including support for the military tribunals Bush wants to use to try detainees at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Yet even that was tempered, with language letting the inmates appeal to a federal court their designation as enemy combatants and their sentences.

The Senate's votes on Iraq showed a willingness even by Republicans to question the White House on a war that's growing increasingly unpopular with Americans.

Polls show Bush's popularity has tumbled in part because of public frustration over Iraq, a war that has claimed the lives of more than 2,000 American troops.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the outcome was "a vote of no confidence on the president's policies in Iraq." Republicans "acknowledged that there need to be changes made," he said.

But Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., trumpeted the chamber's rejection of the Democratic call for a withdrawal timetable.

"It is an absolute repudiation of the cut-and-run strategy put forward by the Democrats," Frist said.

The fate of the legislation is uncertain. The House version of the bill, which sets Pentagon policy and authorizes spending, doesn't include the Iraq language or any of the provisions on the detention, interrogation or prosecution of terrorism suspects.

The measure faces a veto threat from the administration over a provision that imposes a blanket prohibition on the use of "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of terrorism suspects in U.S. custody.

Even so, the Senate's political statement was clear _ and made even more stinging when the vote was held with Bush abroad, in Asia, an embarrassing step Congress often tries to avoid. With Democrats pressing their amendment calling for a calendar for withdrawal, Republicans worked to fend off a frontal attack by Democrats by calling on the White House to do more.

On a 58-40 vote, Senate Republicans killed the measure Democratic leaders had offered to force GOP lawmakers to take a stand on the war.

The Senate then voted 79-19 in favor of a Republican alternative stating that 2006 "should be a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty," with Iraqi forces taking the lead in providing security to create the conditions for the phased redeployment of U.S. forces.

Like the Democratic proposal, the GOP measure is purely advisory, a statement of the Senate's thinking. It does not require the administration to do anything.

Rather, it simply calls for the Bush administration to "explain to Congress and the American people its strategy for the successful completion of the mission in Iraq" and to provide reports on U.S. foreign policy and military operations in Iraq every three months until all U.S. combat brigades have been withdrawn....

[Damien]

From The Nation, a nice summation:

Bush Rewrites History To Criticize His Anti-war Critics
David Corn
Mon Nov 14

In a Veterans Day speech on Friday, delivered to troops and others at the Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania, George W. Bush veered from the usual commemoration of sacrifice to strike at critics who have questioned whether he steered the country into war by using false information. This has become a tough and troubling issue for his presidency. A poll taken before his speech found that 57 percent of the respondents now believe that Bush "deliberately misled" the nation into war. That is astounding and, I assume, without precedent in history. Has there been another wartime period during which a majority of Americans believed the president had purposefully bamboozled them about the reasons for that war? Addressing this charge is tough for Bush because it calls more attention to it, and the on-ground-realities in Iraq only cause more popular unease with the war. But Bush and his aides calculated that it was better to punch back than ignore the criticism, and that's a sign that they're worried that Bush is coming to be defined as a president who conned the nation into an ugly war. So Bush tried. Let's break down his effort:

Our debate at home must also be fair-minded. One of the hallmarks of a free society and what makes our country strong is that our political leaders can discuss their differences openly, even in times of war.

Conservative who claim raising questions about the war does a disservice to the troops and is anti-American might want to keep these words in mind.

When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support.

Actually, Congress did not approve Bush's decision to remove Saddam. In October 2002, the House and Senate approved a resolution that gave Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq if he deemed that appropriate. At the time, Bush and his aides were claiming it was their goal to force Saddam Hussein to give up his weapons of mass destruction and his WMD programs (which, we know now, did not exist). When the resolution passed---and in the weeks after---the White House insisted that Bush was not bent on "regime change" and that he was willing to work within the UN to force Saddam to accept UN inspectors (which Saddam did) in pursuit of the goal of disarming Iraq. Is Bush now saying that he had already resolved to invade Iraq at this point and all his talk about achieving disarmament through the UN process was bunk? Is he rewriting history--or telling us the real truth? In any event, when Bush did order the invasion of Iraq months later in March 2003, he did not ask Congress to vote on his decision to remove Saddam.

I also recognize that some of our fellow citizens and elected officials didn't support the liberation of Iraq. And that is their right, and I respect it. As President and Commander-in-Chief, I accept the responsibilities, and the criticisms, and the consequences that come with such a solemn decision.

Bush might accept "the responsibilities and criticisms," but has yet to acknowledge the mistakes he and his aides made before and after the invasion about planning for a post-invasion Iraq. He also has not insisted on any accountability for these mistakes. For instance, he gave a spiffy medal to former CIA chief George Tenet, who was responsible for the prewar intelligence failure.

While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began.

When was the last time Bush talked about how the war began--that is, when did he mention that his primary reason for war (protecting the American public from the supposed WMD threat posed by Saddam Hussein) was discredited by reality? Is ignoring history the same as rewriting it?

Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs.

This is not the full and accurate explanation of the controversy at hand. The issue of whether the Bush administration misled the nation in the run-up to the war has two components. The first is the production of the intelligence related to WMDs and the supposed al Qaeda-Sadam connection. The second is how the Bush crowd represented the intelligence to the public when trying to make the case for war. As for the first, the Senate intelligence committee report did say the committee had found no evidence of political pressure. But Democratic members of the committee and others challenged this finding. Several committee Democrats pointed to a CIA independent review on the prewar intelligence, conducted by a panel led by Richard Kerr, former deputy director of the CIA, which said,

Requests for reporting and analysis of [Iraq's links to al Qaeda] were steady and heavy in the period leading up to the war, creating significant pressure on the Intelligence Community to find evidence that supported a connection.

More to the point, Kerr told Vanity Fair that intelligence analysts did feel pressured by the go-to-war gang. The magazine in May 2004 reported,

"There was a lot of pressure, no question," says Kerr. "The White House, State, Defense were raising questions, heavily on W.M.D. and the issue of terrorism. Why did you select this information rather than that? Why have you downplayed this particular thing?...Sure, I heard that some of the analysts felt pressure. We heard about it from friends. There are always some people in the agency who will say, 'We've been pushed to hard.' Analysts will say, 'You're trying to politicize it.' There were people who felt there was too much pressure. Not that they were being asked to change their judgments, but there were being asked again and again to restate their judgments--do another paper on this, repetitive pressures. Do it again."

Was it a case, then, of officials repeatedly asking for another paper until they got the answer they wanted? "There may have been some of that," Kerr concedes. The requests came from "primarily people outside asking for the same paper again and again. There was a lot of repetitive tasking. Some of the analysts felt this was unnecessary pressure. The repetitive requests, Kerr made clear, came from the C.I.A.'s "senior customers," including "the White House, the vice president, State, Defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

Despite Bush's assertion, the question remains whether undue pressure was applied by the White House. And in his Veterans Day speech, Bush ducked the second issue: how he and his aides depicted the intelligence. This is the source of the dispute over the so-called Phase II investigation of the Senate intelligence committee. The allegation is that Bush and administration officials overstated and hyped the flawed intelligence and claimed it was definitive when they had reason to know it was not.

For example, in his final speech to the nation before launching the war, Bush claimed that US intelligence left "no doubt" about Iraq's supposed WMDs. But there was plenty of doubt on critical issues. Intelligence analysts at the Energy Department and State Department disagreed with those at the CIA about the evidence that purportedly showed Iraq had revived its nuclear weapons program: its importation of aluminum tubes and the allegation that Iraq had been uranium-shopping in Niger. (In 2002, Dick Cheney said the tubes were "irrefutable evidence," and Condoleezza Rice said they were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs." But a year earlier, as The New York Times reported in 2004, "Rice's staff had been told that the government's foremost nuclear expert seriously doubted that the tubes were for nuclear weapons.") The CIA believed Iraq had chemical weapons. But the Defense Intelligence Agency reported that there was no evidence such stockpiles existed. Some intelligence analysts concluded that Iraq was developing unmanned aerial vehicles that could deliver chemical or biological weapons. The experts on UAVs at the Air Force thought this was not so. Was Bush speaking accurately when he told the public--and the world--there was "no doubt"?

Also, did Bush make specific claims unsupported by the intelligence? The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, produced in October 2002, maintained that Iraq had an active biological research and development program. Bush publicly said Iraq had "stockpiles" of biological weapons. There is a difference between an R&D program (which Iraq did not have) and warehouses loaded with ready-to-go weapons (which Bush implied existed). How did an R&D program become stockpiles? This is as intriguing a question as how those sixteen words about Iraq's alleged pursuit of uranium in Africa became embedded in the State of the Union speech Bush delivered in early 2003.

On the key issue of Saddam Hussein's alleged connection to al Qaeda, Bush also made statements that went beyond the intelligence. This link was crucial to the case for war, for Bush and other hawks were arguing that Saddam Hussein could slip his WMDs to his pal Osama bin Laden. Bush claimed that Saddam Hussein was "dealing with" al Qaeda. But his intelligence agencies had not reached that conclusion. (And the 9/11 Commission later said there was no evidence of collusion between al Qaeda and Saddam.) So how did Bush come to make such a statement? Recently, Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat, released formerly classified material showing that before the war when Bush, Cheney, Colin Powell and other administration officials cited evidence that Iraq had been training al Qaeda operatives in the use of bombs and other weapons, Bush and these officials were relying on the statements of a captured al Qaeda member whose claims had been discounted by the Defense Intelligence Agency. Once more, how had Bush and his senior aides come to disseminate specific and provocative information deemed unreliable by the intelligence community?

Bush's Veterans Days comments addressed none of this.

They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein.

The people with the most hands-on information regarding WMDs in Iraq did not. The International Atomic Energy Agency, led by recent Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei, concluded weeks before the war (after their inspectors had returned to Iraq) that Saddam Hussein had not revived the nuclear weapons program that the IAEA had dismantled in the mid-1990s. And Hans Blix, head of the UN inspectors in Iraq, repeatedly said that his team was not finding evidence of chemical or biological weapons stockpiles.

...And many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in the Congress this way: "When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security." That's why more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate--who had access to the same intelligence--voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.

As noted above, the Democrats voted to give Bush the authority to use force when he thought he should--but only after Bush had promised to go to the United Nations in an effort to disarm Saddam Hussein, who, it turned out, was telling the truth when he denied his government possessed WMDs. Even the John Kerry quote that Bush cites contains the to-disarm condition. And several Democratic members of Congress have claimed that they did not see all the intelligence that was available to the White House.

The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw out false charges.

It's hard to argue with that.

These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will. As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them. Our troops deserve to know that this support will remain firm when the going gets tough.

Who said that "it's perfectly legitimate to criticize" the "decision [to go to war in Iraq] or the conduct of the war"? That was Bush, moments earlier, in the same speech. So which is it? Is it okay to criticize the conduct of the war or not?

By the way, while accusing his critics of falsifying history, Bush never conceded that he launched the war on a false premise--that Saddam Hussein was up to his neck in WMDs--and, thus, as he paid tribute to veterans of this war and others, he did not accept responsibility for sending American troops into battle for a cause that did not exist.

[Sonic Youth]

Published on Monday, November 14, 2005 by the Los Angeles Times

This Isn't The Real America
by Jimmy Carter

In recent years, I have become increasingly concerned by a host of radical government policies that now threaten many basic principles espoused by all previous administrations, Democratic and Republican.

These include the rudimentary American commitment to peace, economic and social justice, civil liberties, our environment and human rights.

Also endangered are our historic commitments to providing citizens with truthful information, treating dissenting voices and beliefs with respect, state and local autonomy and fiscal responsibility.

At the same time, our political leaders have declared independence from the restraints of international organizations and have disavowed long-standing global agreements — including agreements on nuclear arms, control of biological weapons and the international system of justice.

Instead of our tradition of espousing peace as a national priority unless our security is directly threatened, we have proclaimed a policy of "preemptive war," an unabridged right to attack other nations unilaterally to change an unsavory regime or for other purposes. When there are serious differences with other nations, we brand them as international pariahs and refuse to permit direct discussions to resolve disputes.

Regardless of the costs, there are determined efforts by top U.S. leaders to exert American imperial dominance throughout the world.

These revolutionary policies have been orchestrated by those who believe that our nation's tremendous power and influence should not be internationally constrained. Even with our troops involved in combat and America facing the threat of additional terrorist attacks, our declaration of "You are either with us or against us!" has replaced the forming of alliances based on a clear comprehension of mutual interests, including the threat of terrorism.

Another disturbing realization is that, unlike during other times of national crisis, the burden of conflict is now concentrated exclusively on the few heroic men and women sent back repeatedly to fight in the quagmire of Iraq. The rest of our nation has not been asked to make any sacrifice, and every effort has been made to conceal or minimize public awareness of casualties.

Instead of cherishing our role as the great champion of human rights, we now find civil liberties and personal privacy grossly violated under some extreme provisions of the Patriot Act.

Of even greater concern is that the U.S. has repudiated the Geneva accords and espoused the use of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, and secretly through proxy regimes elsewhere with the so-called extraordinary rendition program. It is embarrassing to see the president and vice president insisting that the CIA should be free to perpetrate "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment" on people in U.S. custody.

Instead of reducing America's reliance on nuclear weapons and their further proliferation, we have insisted on our right (and that of others) to retain our arsenals, expand them, and therefore abrogate or derogate almost all nuclear arms control agreements negotiated during the last 50 years. We have now become a prime culprit in global nuclear proliferation. America also has abandoned the prohibition of "first use" of nuclear weapons against nonnuclear nations, and is contemplating the previously condemned deployment of weapons in space.

Protection of the environment has fallen by the wayside because of government subservience to political pressure from the oil industry and other powerful lobbying groups. The last five years have brought continued lowering of pollution standards at home and almost universal condemnation of our nation's global environmental policies.

Our government has abandoned fiscal responsibility by unprecedented favors to the rich, while neglecting America's working families. Members of Congress have increased their own pay by $30,000 per year since freezing the minimum wage at $5.15 per hour (the lowest among industrialized nations).

I am extremely concerned by a fundamentalist shift in many houses of worship and in government, as church and state have become increasingly intertwined in ways previously thought unimaginable.

As the world's only superpower, America should be seen as the unswerving champion of peace, freedom and human rights. Our country should be the focal point around which other nations can gather to combat threats to international security and to enhance the quality of our common environment. We should be in the forefront of providing human assistance to people in need. It is time for the deep and disturbing political divisions within our country to be substantially healed, with Americans united in a common commitment to revive and nourish the historic political and moral values that we have espoused during the last 230 years.

[Sonic Youth]

And another "snapshot"...

Poll: Bush approval mark at all-time low

(CNN) -- Beset with an unpopular war and an American public increasingly less trusting, President Bush faces the lowest approval rating of his presidency, according to a national poll released Monday.

Bush also received his all-time worst marks in three other categories in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. The categories were terrorism, Bush's trustworthiness and whether the Iraq war was worthwhile.

Bush's 37 percent overall approval rating was two percentage points below his ranking in an October survey. Both polls had a sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Sixty percent of the 1,006 adult Americans interviewed by telephone Friday through Sunday said they disapprove of how Bush is handling his job as president.

The White House has said it doesn't pay attention to poll numbers and the figures do not affect policy.

"We have a proud record of accomplishment and a positive agenda for the future," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters Wednesday. "We look forward to continuing to talk about it. I mean, you can get caught up in polls; we don't. Polls are snapshots in time."

Bush, who received high marks after the terrorist attacks of 2001, also rated poorly in the new poll for his policy on terrorism. For the first time, less than half -- 48 percent -- of those surveyed said they approved of how the president was handling the war on terror. Forty-nine percent said they disapprove.

In November 2001, Bush had an 87 percent overall approval mark and an 86 percent rating on terrorism.

Sixty percent said it was not worth going to war in Iraq, while 38 percent said it was worthwhile. The question was asked of about half of those surveyed and had a margin of error of five percentage points. The results marked a decline in support of seven percentage points from two months earlier.

The country appears to be split on whether Bush is a strong president and whether or not Americans personally like him.

When asked about his abilities, 49 percent of those surveyed said he was a strong president and 49 percent said he was a weak leader.

About 50 percent of people polled said they disliked Bush, with 6 percent claiming to hate the president.

Bush's overall approval mark matched the 37 percent rating of newly elected President Clinton in June 1993.

When asked in the new poll if they trust Bush more than they had Clinton, 48 percent of respondents said they trusted Bush less, while 36 percent said they trusted him more and 15 percent said they trusted Bush the same as Clinton.

For the first time, more than half of the public thinks Bush is not honest and trustworthy -- 52 percent to 46 percent.

A week ago, President Bush campaigned for Virginia gubernatorial candidate Jerry Kilgore, who lost the election a day later to Democratic Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine.

In the poll, 56 percent of registered voters said they would be likely to vote against a local candidate supported by Bush, while 34 percent said the opposite.

Only 9 percent said their first choice in next year's elections would be a Republican who supports Bush on almost every major issue.

Forty-six percent said the country would be better off if Congress were controlled by Democrats, while 34 percent backed a GOP majority.

[Sonic Youth]

"We do not torture." Liar.

White House refuses to totally rule out torture
AFP


In an important clarification of President George W. Bush's earlier statement, a top White House official refused to unequivocally rule out the use of torture, arguing the US administration was duty-bound to protect Americans from terrorist attack.

The comment, by US national security adviser Stephen Hadley, came amid heated national debate about whether the CIA and other US intelligence agencies should be authorized to use what is being referred to as "enhanced interrogation techniques" to extract from terror suspects information that may help prevent future assaults.

The US Senate voted 90-9 early last month to attach an amendment authored by Republican Senator John McCain to a defense spending bill that would prohibit "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of detainees in US custody. But the White House has threatened to veto the measure and has lobbied senators to have the language removed or modified to allow an exemption for the Central Intelligence Agency.

During a trip to Panama earlier this month, Bush said that Americans "do not torture."

However, appearing on CNN's "Late Edition" program, Hadley elaborated on the policy, making clear the White House could envisage circumstances, in which the broad pledge not to torture might not apply.

"The president has said that we are going to do whatever we do in accordance with the law," the national security adviser said. "But... you see the dilemma. What happens if on September 7th of 2001, we had gotten one of the hijackers and based on information associated with that arrest, believed that within four days, there's going to be a devastating attack on the United States?"

He insisted that it was "a difficult dilemma to know what to do in that circumstance to both discharge our responsibility to protect the American people from terrorist attack and follow the president's guidance of staying within the confines of law."

The CIA is reported to be operating a network of covert prisons in eight countries around the world, including Afghanistan, Thailand and several former Soviet bloc nations in Eastern Europe, where terror suspects are questioned.

Republican Senator Kit Bond, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Newsweek magazine that "enhanced interrogation techniques" had worked with at least one captured high-level Al-Qaeda operative, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, to thwart an unspecified plot.

But officials have been mum about interrogation techniques used on other detainees, drawing sharp criticism from members of the Senate.

A compromise with senators was in the works, Hadley assured, saying the White House was holding consultations with them about the McCain amendment.

He offered no specifics about the administration's goals in these talks. But McCain, who appeared on CBS's "Face the Nation" program, said White House negotiators led by Vice President Richard Cheney were pushing to safeguard the option of using the enhanced interrogation techniques in order to get information from detainees in extraordinary circumstances.

The senator said he disagreed with that approach because he was worried about the damage to the image of the United States.

"I hold no brief for the terrorists," he said. "But it's not about them. It's about us. This battle we're in is about the things we stand for and believe in and practice. And that is an observance of human rights, no matter how terrible our adversaries may be."

Americans at large don't seem to have a clear-cut position on the use of torture. The latest Newsweek opinion poll found that 58 percent of the public would support torture to thwart a terrorist attack.

But the same survey showed that 51 percent of Americans believe it is rarely or never justified, while 44 percent said torture is often or sometimes justified to obtain important information.

[Sonic Youth]

<span style='font-size:17pt;line-height:100%'>2,065</span>

Three U.S. Troops Reported Dead in Iraq
Nov 13, 8:46 AM (ET)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Two U.S. Marines were killed in combat and an American soldier died in a vehicle accident in Iraq, the military said in a statement Sunday.

The Marines, who were assigned to Regimental Combat Team 8, 2nd Marine Division, died Saturday when their vehicle was bombed in Al-Amiriyah on the western edge of Baghdad, a statement said.

In a separate incident, the military said a soldier assigned to Regimental Combat Team 2, 2nd Marine Division died Saturday in a traffic accident near Rawah. A number of U.S. Army soldiers are assigned to assist Marine operations in western Iraq.

At least 2,065 members of the U.S. military have died since the war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

[Sonic Youth]

This thread isn't so much fun with no criddic around. I've been giving him the benefit of the doubt, because he does sometimes disappear for lengthy periods. But does anyone think he retreated from this board now that the political fire is getting too hot? I'm starting to think that.

Frank Rich finally lets loose with the 'L' word in the mainstream media.

'We Do Not Torture' and Other Funny Stories
By Frank Rich
The New York Times

Sunday 13 November 2005

If it weren't tragic it would be a New Yorker cartoon. The president of the United States, in the final stop of his forlorn Latin America tour last week, told the world, "We do not torture." Even as he spoke, the administration's flagrant embrace of torture was as hard to escape as publicity for Anderson Cooper.

The vice president, not satisfied that the C.I.A. had already been implicated in four detainee deaths, was busy lobbying Congress to give the agency a green light to commit torture in the future. Dana Priest of The Washington Post, having first uncovered secret C.I.A. prisons two years ago, was uncovering new "black sites" in Eastern Europe, where ghost detainees are subjected to unknown interrogation methods redolent of the region's Stalinist past. Before heading south, Mr. Bush had been doing his own bit for torture by threatening to cast the first veto of his presidency if Congress didn't scrap a spending bill amendment, written by John McCain and passed 90 to 9 by the Senate, banning the "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of prisoners.

So when you watch the president stand there with a straight face and say, "We do not torture" - a full year and a half after the first photos from Abu Ghraib - you have to wonder how we arrived at this ludicrous moment. The answer is not complicated. When people in power get away with telling bigger and bigger lies, they naturally think they can keep getting away with it. And for a long time, Mr. Bush and his cronies did. Not anymore.

The fallout from the Scooter Libby indictment reveals that the administration's credibility, having passed the tipping point with Katrina, is flat-lining. For two weeks, the White House's talking-point monkeys in the press and Congress had been dismissing Patrick Fitzgerald's leak investigation as much ado about nothing except politics and as an exoneration of everyone except Mr. Libby. Now the American people have rendered their verdict: they're not buying it. Last week two major polls came up with the identical finding, that roughly 8 in 10 Americans regard the leak case as a serious matter. One of the polls (The Wall Street Journal/NBC News) also found that 57 percent of Americans believe that Mr. Bush deliberately misled the country into war in Iraq and that only 33 percent now find him "honest and straightforward," down from 50 percent in January.

The Bush loyalists' push to discredit the Libby indictment failed because Americans don't see it as a stand-alone scandal but as the petri dish for a wider culture of lying that becomes more visible every day. The last-ditch argument rolled out by Mr. Bush on Veterans Day in his latest stay-the-course speech - that Democrats, too, endorsed dead-wrong W.M.D. intelligence - is more of the same. Sure, many Democrats (and others) did believe that Saddam had an arsenal before the war, but only the White House hyped selective evidence for nuclear weapons, the most ominous of all of Iraq's supposed W.M.D.'s, to whip up public fears of an imminent doomsday.

There was also an entire other set of lies in the administration's prewar propaganda blitzkrieg that had nothing to do with W.M.D.'s, African uranium or the Wilsons. To get the country to redirect its finite resources to wage war against Saddam Hussein rather than keep its focus on the war against radical Islamic terrorists, the White House had to cook up not only the fiction that Iraq was about to attack us, but also the fiction that Iraq had already attacked us, on 9/11. Thanks to the Michigan Democrat Carl Levin, who last weekend released a previously classified intelligence document, we now have conclusive evidence that the administration's disinformation campaign implying a link connecting Saddam to Al Qaeda and 9/11 was even more duplicitous and manipulative than its relentless flogging of nuclear Armageddon.

Senator Levin's smoking gun is a widely circulated Defense Intelligence Agency document from February 2002 that was probably seen by the National Security Council. It warned that a captured Qaeda terrorist in American custody was in all likelihood "intentionally misleading" interrogators when he claimed that Iraq had trained Qaeda members to use illicit weapons. The report also made the point that an Iraq-Qaeda collaboration was absurd on its face: "Saddam's regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements." But just like any other evidence that disputed the administration's fictional story lines, this intelligence was promptly disregarded.

So much so that eight months later - in October 2002, as the White House was officially rolling out its new war and Congress was on the eve of authorizing it - Mr. Bush gave a major address in Cincinnati intermingling the usual mushroom clouds with information from that discredited, "intentionally misleading" Qaeda informant. "We've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases," he said.t was the most important, if hardly the only, example of repeated semantic sleights of hand that the administration used to conflate 9/11 with Iraq. Dick Cheney was fond of brandishing a nonexistent April 2001 "meeting" between Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague long after Czech and American intelligence analysts had dismissed it.

The power of these lies was considerable. In a CBS News/New York Times poll released on Sept. 25, 2001, 60 percent of Americans thought Osama bin Laden had been the culprit in the attacks of two weeks earlier, either alone or in league with unnamed "others" or with the Taliban; only 6 percent thought bin Laden had collaborated with Saddam; and only 2 percent thought Saddam had been the sole instigator. By the time we invaded Iraq in 2003, however, CBS News found that 53 percent believed Saddam had been "personally involved" in 9/11; other polls showed that a similar percentage of Americans had even convinced themselves that the hijackers were Iraqis.

There is still much more to learn about our government's duplicity in the run-up to the war, just as there is much more to learn about what has gone on since, whether with torture or billions of Iraq reconstruction dollars. That is why the White House and its allies, having failed to discredit the Fitzgerald investigation, are now so desperate to slow or block every other inquiry. Exhibit A is the Senate Intelligence Committee, whose Republican chairman, Pat Roberts, is proving a major farceur with his efforts to sidestep any serious investigation of White House prewar subterfuge. Last Sunday, the same day that newspapers reported Carl Levin's revelation about the "intentionally misleading" Qaeda informant, Senator Roberts could be found on "Face the Nation" saying he had found no evidence of "political manipulation or pressure" in the use of prewar intelligence.

His brazenness is not anomalous. After more than two years of looking into the forged documents used by the White House to help support its bogus claims of Saddam's Niger uranium, the F.B.I. ended its investigation without resolving the identity of the forgers. Last week, Jane Mayer of The New Yorker reported that an investigation into the November 2003 death of an Abu Ghraib detainee, labeled a homicide by the U.S. government, has been, in the words of a lawyer familiar with the case, "lying kind of fallow." The Wall Street Journal similarly reported that 17 months after Condoleezza Rice promised a full investigation into Ahmad Chalabi's alleged leaking of American intelligence to Iran, F.B.I. investigators had yet to interview Mr. Chalabi - who was being welcomed in Washington last week as an honored guest by none other than Ms. Rice.

The Times, meanwhile, discovered that Mr. Libby had set up a legal defense fund to be underwritten by donors who don't have to be publicly disclosed but who may well have a vested interest in the direction of his defense. It's all too eerily reminiscent of the secret fund set up by Richard Nixon's personal lawyer, Herbert Kalmbach, to pay the legal fees of Watergate defendants.

There's so much to stonewall at the White House that last week Scott McClellan was reduced to beating up on the octogenarian Helen Thomas. "You don't want the American people to hear what the facts are, Helen," he said, "and I'm going to tell them the facts." Coming from the press secretary who vowed that neither Mr. Libby nor Karl Rove had any involvement in the C.I.A. leak, this scene was almost as funny as his boss's "We do not torture" charade.

Not that it matters now. The facts the American people are listening to at this point come not from an administration that they no longer find credible, but from the far more reality-based theater of war. The Qaeda suicide bombings of three hotels in Amman on 11/9, like the terrorist attacks in Madrid and London before them, speak louder than anything else of the price we are paying for the lies that diverted us from the war against the suicide bombers of 9/11 to the war in Iraq.

[Sonic Youth]

Newsweek poll: Just 36 percent of Americans support Bush
RAW STORY



From a release issued to RAW STORY.

PRESIDENT'S APPROVAL RATING FALLS TO RECORD LOW; SIXTY-EIGHT PERCENT OF AMERICANS DISSATISFIED WITH DIRECTION OF COUNTRY / FIFTY-TWO PERCENT BELIEVE VICE PRESIDENT PART OF CIA LEAK COVER-UP /MAJORITY BELIEVES BUSH 'WON'T BE ABLE TO GET MUCH DONE FOR THE REST OF HIS SECOND TERM'

New York-A majority of Americans polled disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president-an all time low in the Newsweek Poll. After recent events, such as the withdrawal of the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination and the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's former Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, 58 percent of Americans disapprove of the president's handling of his job-a five-point decrease in approval since the September 29-30 Newsweek Poll. On the topic of how Bush is handling certain aspects of his job, 60 percent of those polled disapprove of the way he is handling the economy, 32 percent approve. Seventy-three percent disapprove of Bush's handling of oil prices, 20 percent approve.

Sixty-eight percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time, a seven-point drop in satisfaction since the last Newsweek Poll. Only 26 percent are satisfied. Forty-two percent of those polled say that they disapprove of Bush's appointments to the Supreme Court; 42 percent approve. Forty percent say that Samuel Alito should be confirmed to the Supreme Court, 26 percent say he should not be confirmed, 34 percent don't know.

When asked if they think Bush can be an effective president during his last three years in office, a 56 percent-majority say the President 'won't be able to get much done.' The president and his administration are also suffering an emerging credibility gap: 42 percent of those polled think the phrase 'is honest and ethical' describes Bush, 50 percent disagree. When asked if the same phrase describes Dick Cheney, 55 percent said no, it does not, and 29 percent said it did. In the role that the vice president has played in this administration, 34 percent said he has been given too much power by the president, 45 percent say he has been given the right amount. When broken down by political party, 72 percent of Republicans say that Cheney has been given the right amount of power, 12 percent say he has been given too much; whereas 47 percent of Democrats say he has been given too much and 32 percent say it has been the right amount.

Fifty-two percent of Americans believe that Cheney was part of a cover up to try to prevent the special prosecutor from getting the truth about who leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame's name to the news media, 27 percent do not believe he was involved.


Newsweek Poll/Page Two

When asked if anyone in the Bush administration acted unethically in the CIA leak case, 54 percent said yes, they did. Of those polled, 71 percent of Democrats and 30 percent of Republicans say there was unethical action. Forty-five percent of those polled say that they believe that someone in the Bush administration broke the law and acted criminally in the case handling, 30 percent say no laws were broken. When that same question is examined by party breakdown, 60 percent of Democrats and 22 percent of Republicans say laws were broken; and 18 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of Republicans say no laws were broken.

When asked if the vice president deliberately misused or manipulated pre-war intelligence about Iraq's nuclear capabilities in order to build support for war with Iraq-52 percent say he misused intelligence, 33 percent say he did not. Overall, 65 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq, only 32 percent approve according to the latest Newsweek Poll.

For this Newsweek Poll, Princeton Survey Research Associates International interviewed 1,002 adults aged 18 and older on November 10-11, 2005. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points. This poll is part of the November 21 issue of Newsweek, on newsstands Monday, November 14. To interview Senior Editor Marcus Mabry on the poll, call Natalia Labenskyj at 212-445-4078 or Andrea Faville at 212-445-4859.

[Sonic Youth]

One more kick to Bush's ass before the weekend:

Newspapers Rate High in Public Trust Factor, But Public Broadcasting Tops All Media

By Miki Johnson

Published: November 10, 2005 1:40 PM ET

People trust newspapers like The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times more than commercial broadcast news but less than public broadcasting, according to a survey released Thursday and summarized by John Eggerton on the Broadcasting & Cable Web site.

A Harris telephone survey, commissioned by the Public Relations Society of America, found that 61% of the sample generally trusted news on PBS and NPR, 56% trusted major newspapers, and 53% trusted commercial broadcasts and cable news. These "trust" percentages were created by combining "trust completely," "trust," and "trust somewhat" responses. Newspapers received the highest "trust completely" response, with 13%, versus 10% for noncommercial news and 4% for commercial news.

Fifty-four percent of respondents also said they did not rely on blogs or Internet chat rooms for their news and information.

Another part of the survey, questioning 150 executives in Fortune 1000 companies and 150 senior Congressional staff members, found they trusted newspapers most, at 78%. Noncommercial news followed at 75% for executives and 70% for Hill staffers (although the 8% margin of error muddles these positions). Commercial broadcast trailed with 62% for staffers and 59% for execs.

Seventy-nine percent of the executives and 70% of the staffers surveyed said they did not get news and information from blogs or chat rooms.

The surveys were conducted between June 17 and August 17, 2005, and the general public findings, from a nationwide cross section of 1,015 U.S. adults, was weighted to align with actual proportions.