Whistle Ass / George Bush 2004

Heads-Up! Bush's "ownership society" sound byte is just another "bait & switch"

ROBERT KUTTNER
Bush's 'ownership' scam
By Robert Kuttner, 12/24/2003

IN PRESIDENT Bush's upcoming State of the Union address, we will hear a lot about something called an "ownership society." The idea is that American workers aspire to be owners -- of stock for their retirement, homes, businesses, good health insurance, and skills they need to navigate multiple changes of jobs and careers. It sounds just great.

Take a closer look, however, and you will recognize the trademarked Bush combination of inspiring themes coupled with an absence of useful tools. In other words, bait and switch.

Recent examples include No Child Left Behind (millions were); the Medicare drug bill (covers less than half the costs and mainly subsidizes drug companies), and, of course, three tax breaks that went mostly to the wealthy. But I digress.

How does Bush propose to create this "ownership society?" Mainly through more tax credits. If people lack reliable health care, there are tax-favored savings accounts to buy health insurance. If corporations are abandoning good pensions, there are new tax incentives to set aside retirement savings. If jobs are precarious, there are tax credits to purchase retraining when your job moves to China.

What's wrong with the entire approach? For starters, the very people who lack the decent health insurance, the money for retraining, and the secure nest eggs are short of adequate earnings from which to take out savings. So most of the tax breaks, like the rest of the Bush tax program, will go to people who don't really need them, while those who rely on genuine help will come up short.

The hallmark of the Bush era has been rising incomes at the top and stagnant wages for the rest. The increased national income in the current economic recovery has gone mostly to corporate profits with a record low proportion to wages. If we want an ownership society based heavily on increased individual savings, we need to start with decent incomes so ordinary people can afford to save.

But individual savings alone aren't enough. Look at how America actually became a society of broad middle-class ownership in the years after World War II. Wages went up (thanks in part to unions), so it became possible for working people to imagine buying cars, homes, and the other material trappings of the good life.

Corporations started paying decent pensions and health insurance benefits. Radical conservatives think that government help undermines individual initiative. But government programs like the GI Bill, FHA loans, Pell grants, community colleges, and federal aid to public schools allowed a lot of individual hard work to pay off. Social Security institutionalized the custom of retirement, which stimulated supplemental retirement plans. Guess who opposes all this?

Decent wages and benefits and real government help are what Bush's ownership society leaves out. To Bush, ownership means that the lone individual is made the sole owner of the problem. Lost your job? Better get yourself some new skills. Corporation cancelled your pension? Better sock away more savings. Company health insurance plan raising premiums and copays? Congratulations! You're an owner! This ownership society walks away from the social investments of the past six decades that actually made the United States a society in which most people could reasonably aspire to be owners. It leaves people on their own with a fistful of tax credits that most people can't afford to use.

Interestingly, there is a very different version of an ownership society that actually works. It is called asset development. Tony Blair in Britain has already made a start on this approach, by giving every child a subsidized savings account at birth that grows and compounds and can be used in adulthood to subsidize everything from education to first-time homeownership and ultimately to supplement retirement.

In the United States, Al Gore proposed a variant of this. I've been working with Larry Brown, one of the pioneers of this approach at the Asset Development Institute at Brandeis University, on an even bolder version.

The difference is that genuine asset development gives people genuine opportunities using real public outlays, the way the GI Bill did. Bush's approach relies mainly on the funny money of tax credits, which are often useless to the very people who need them most.

An ownership society is a wonderful idea. Liberals have been expanding it ever since the New Deal. When you hear about Bush's ownership society, read the fine print and keep your hand on your wallet.

Robert Kuttner's is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/12/24/bushs_ownership_scam/

Bush Administration Is Exempting Alaska Forest From Protection

By JENNIFER 8. LEE

Published: December 24, 2003

ASHINGTON, Dec. 23 — The Bush administration announced on Tuesday that the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, the largest in the country, would be exempted from a Clinton-era rule, potentially opening up more than half of the 17 million-acre forest for more development and as many as 50 logging projects.
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The decision stems from the settlement of a lawsuit between Alaska and the federal government over the so-called roadless rule, which prohibited the building of roads in 58.5 million acres of undeveloped national forest across the country.

Environmental groups attacked the administration for the settlement in July, saying it was an underhanded strategy for circumventing the regulation. Conservation groups said the administration had failed to defend the roadless designation adequately.

But Ray Massey, a spokesman for the Forest Service in Alaska, said that agency officials felt there were already enough protections for the Tongass. "We didn't really need roadless to protect the Tongass," he said in a telephone interview. "We already have a forest plan in place to protect the Tongass."

Before putting the roadless designation into effect, the Forest Service had drawn up plans for the immediate development of 300,000 acres in the Tongass. Environmental groups say that about 9.6 million acres of the Tongass could be affected by the dropping of the ban.

The roadless rule was put in place after a two-year process that included 600 scientific studies and two rounds of public comments that generated almost two million responses, most of them in favor of the rule.

Since its inception, the rule has been challenged through a host of legal, legislative and administrative efforts. The conflicts have highlighted the tensions between environmental protection and economic development, and between state autonomy and federal oversight.

Environmental groups supported the roadless rule as a way to curb the development and logging that had already affected half of national forest land. But Western states and the timber industry said the rule was unjustified in its sweeping scope — touching about 30 percent of national forest acreage in the country.

Industry groups and states have made a concerted effort to attack the rule through lawsuits around the country. In July, a federal district court judge in Wyoming suspended the rule nationwide. Environmental groups are appealing the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver.

Before that, a federal court in Idaho originally threw out the roadless rule, but that decision was overturned last December by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco.

The Tongass National Forest, with 16.8 million acres, has been particularly contentious because of its environmental symbolism as the only temperate rain forest on the continent.

"This is the rarest forest type on earth and it needs to be protected," said Jeremy Paster, a forest campaign organizer for Greenpeace.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/24/politics/24ENVI.html

Documents Reveal: When Saddam used chemical weapons in 1980's, US sent Rumsfeld to make sure IRAQ knew that US wouldn't let ghastly events effect US/IRAQI bussiness relationships

Rumsfeld Made Iraq Overture in '84 Despite Chemical Raids
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS

Published: December 23, 2003

WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 — As a special envoy for the Reagan administration in 1984, Donald H. Rumsfeld, now the defense secretary, traveled to Iraq to persuade officials there that the United States was eager to improve ties with President Saddam Hussein despite his use of chemical weapons, newly declassified documents show.

Mr. Rumsfeld, who ran a pharmaceutical company at the time, was tapped by Secretary of State George P. Shultz to reinforce a message that a recent move to condemn Iraq's use of chemical weapons was strictly in principle and that America's priority was to prevent an Iranian victory in the Iran-Iraq war and to improve bilateral ties.

During that war, the United States secretly provided Iraq with combat planning assistance, even after Mr. Hussein's use of chemical weapons was widely known. The highly classified program involved more than 60 officers of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who shared intelligence on Iranian deployments, bomb-damage assessments and other crucial information with Iraq.

The disclosures round out a picture of American outreach to the Iraqi government, even as the United States professed to be neutral in the eight-year war, and suggests a private nonchalance toward Mr. Hussein's use of chemicals in warfare. Mr. Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials have cited Iraq's use of poisonous gas as a main reason for ousting Mr. Hussein.

The documents, which were released as part of a declassification project by the National Security Archive, and are available on the Web at www.nsarchive.org, provide details of the instructions given to Mr. Rumsfeld on his second trip to Iraq in four months. The notes of Mr. Rumsfeld's encounter with Tariq Aziz, the foreign minister, remain classified, but officials acknowledged that it would be unusual if Mr. Rumsfeld did not carry out the instructions.

Since the release of the documents, he has told members of his inner circle at the Pentagon that he does not recall whether he had read, or even had received, the State Department memo, Defense Department officials said.

One official noted that the documents reflected the State Department's thinking on Iraq, but did not indicate Mr. Rumsfeld's planning for his meeting with Mr. Hussein nor his comments on the meeting after its conclusion.

Mr. Rumsfeld's trip was his second visit to Iraq. On his first visit, in late December 1983, he had a cordial meeting with Mr. Hussein, and photographs and a report of that encounter have been widely published.

In a follow-up memo, the chief of the American interests section reported that Mr. Aziz had conveyed Mr. Hussein's satisfaction with the meeting. "The Iraqi leadership was extremely pleased with Amb. Rumsfeld's visit," the memo said. "Tariq Aziz had gone out of his way to praise Rumsfeld as a person."

When news emerged last year of the December trip, Mr. Rumsfeld told CNN that he had "cautioned" Mr. Hussein to forgo chemical weapons. But when presented with declassified notes of their meeting that made no mention of that, a spokesman for Mr. Rumsfeld said he had raised the issue in a meeting with Mr. Aziz.

Lawrence Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said on Friday that there was no inconsistency between Mr. Rumsfeld's previous comments on his missions to Iraq and the State Department documents.

By early 1984, events threatened to upset the American-Iraqi relationship. After pleading for a year for international action against the chemical warfare, Iran had finally persuaded the United Nations to criticize the use of chemical weapons, albeit in vague terms.

Pressure mounted on the Reagan administration, which had already verified Iraq's "almost daily" use of the weapons against Iran and against Kurdish rebels, documents show. In February, Iraq warned Iranian "invaders" that "for every harmful insect there is an insecticide capable of annihilating it." Within weeks, the American authorities intercepted precursor chemicals that were bound for Iraq. Finally, on March 5, the United States issued a public condemnation of Iraq.

But days later, Mr. Shultz and his deputy met with an Iraqi diplomat, Ismet Kittani, to soften the blow. The American relationship with Iraq was too important — involving business interests, Middle East diplomacy and a shared determination to thwart Iran — to sacrifice. Mr. Kittani left the meeting "unpersuaded," documents show.

Mr. Shultz then turned to Mr. Rumsfeld. In a March 24 briefing document, Mr. Rumsfeld was asked to present America's bottom line. At first, the memo recapitulated Mr. Shultz's message to Mr. Kittani, saying it "clarified that our CW [chemical weapons] condemnation was made strictly out of our strong opposition to the use of lethal and incapacitating CW, wherever it occurs." The American officials had "emphasized that our interests in 1) preventing an Iranian victory and 2) continuing to improve bilateral relations with Iraq, at a pace of Iraq's choosing, remain undiminished," it said.

Then came the instructions for Mr. Rumsfeld: "This message bears reinforcing during your discussions."

The American relationship with Iraq during its crippling war with Iran was rife with such ambiguities. Though the United States was outwardly neutral, it tilted toward Iraq and even monitored talks toward the sale of military equipment by private American contractors.

Tom Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive, said: "Saddam had chemical weapons in the 1980's, and it didn't make any difference to U.S. policy."

Mr. Blanton suggested that the United States was now paying the price for earlier indulgence. "The embrace of Saddam in the 1980's and what it emboldened him to do should caution us as Americans that we have to look closely at all our murky alliances," he said. "Shaking hands with dictators today can turn them into Saddams tomorrow."

Thom Shanker contributed reporting for this article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/23/international/middleeast/23RUMS.html

The Poverty Quagmire

By Timothy M. Smeeding
Sunday, December 21, 2003; Page B07

"We have in 1964 a unique opportunity and obligation -- to prove the success of our system; to disprove those cynics and critics at home and abroad who question our purpose and our competence."
- President Lyndon B. Johnson in his 1964 State of the Union Address

As the 40th anniversary of the War on Poverty approaches, Johnson's words are a cutting reminder of a war that we have not won. Indeed, it is a war we have not even fought. Still, it has its casualties: They are the children and grandchildren of the same people LBJ spoke of 40 years ago.

According to data in the Luxembourg Income Study, child poverty is significantly higher in the United States than in wealthy European nations and in Canada and Australia. In 1997 -- in the midst of a robust economy -- one in five American children lived in poverty. This is about double the rate in other wealthy industrialized nations, such as France, Germany and the Nordic countries.

We in America have high child poverty rates because we choose to, not because we cannot do anything about it. Other nations make different choices and get different results. For example, Tony Blair lifted Britain's spending on poor families with children by 0.9 percent of GDP. The result? Britain's high child poverty rate is ebbing as ours continues to climb. The United States could commit half the effort of Tony Blair's government and see a seismic shift in the well-being of millions of children.

The truth is that America tolerates -- even accepts -- persistent child poverty. Our education system reflects it, as do our tax policy, child care policy and child support policy.

We say that we will leave no child behind, but in fact we continue to drag millions of children behind each year. And the reality is that they may never catch up and become fully participating members of society. Poor children in France, Germany and the Nordic countries are six times more likely to escape poverty than their American counterparts.

Fully one-third of children of single mothers in the United States today are not just poor but extremely poor. As the study data indicate, low-income single mothers in the United States work more hours than do single mothers in any other wealthy nation, yet have higher poverty rates.

Decades of economic growth have not lifted the worst-off Americans to a higher standard of living. Ten percent of America's children are so impoverished that their normal health and growth are seriously at risk.

Every policy decision has its consequences. We spend billions caring for our elderly through successful and cherished federal programs. We spend money here and shed blood abroad to fight against terrorism. These are difficult and complex decisions, but policymakers do find the will to make them. That has not been the case when it comes to child poverty. Efforts that simply attempt to change the behavior of people living in poverty, and put the blame entirely on them, will fail. Working hard is simply not enough. The government needs to support people, not merely threaten them. Or else, 40 years from now, a future government will be threatening their children.

Preventing future generations of children from growing up poor, undereducated and malnourished has been perpetually on America's "to do" list. Nearly seventy years ago we made a commitment to deal with old-age poverty, and we have been fairly successful in doing so. Nothing on that scale is being seriously considered in Washington to deal with our children.

Johnson's 1964 State of the Union address sounds ominous now: "If we fail, if we fritter and fumble away our opportunity in needless, senseless quarrels . . . then history will rightfully judge us harshly. But if we succeed, if we can achieve these goals by forging in this country a greater sense of union, then, and only then, can we take full satisfaction in the State of the Union."

President Bush cannot truthfully declare the state of the Union strong in the face of the harsh facts of life for America's poor children. In this holiday season he should truly dedicate America to fighting the War on Poverty that was proclaimed nearly 40 Christmases ago but never fought. There are millions of ground troops in our schools, on our streets, in our places of worship and in our government to support such an effort, if policymakers would stop dragging their heels and dragging our children behind them.

Timothy M. Smeeding is co-author, with Lee Rainwater, of "Poor Kids in a Rich Country: America's Children in Comparative Perspective," published by the Russell Sage Foundation. He is also director of the Luxembourg Income Study, a project that assembles income data from a number of countries.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16659-2003Dec19.html

This is where some of the $87 Billilon approved for Iraq went: Policing for FTAA in Miami

Posted on Sat, Dec. 20, 2003
Judge: I saw police commit felonies
A judge who said he witnessed some of the anti-free trade protests complains in open court about how police handled the demonstrations.
By AMY DRISCOLL
adriscoll@herald.com

A judge presiding over the cases of free trade protesters said in court that he saw ''no less than 20 felonies committed by police officers'' during the November demonstrations, adding to a chorus of complaints about police conduct.

Judge Richard Margolius, 60, made the remarks in open court last week, saying he was taken aback by what he witnessed while attending the protests.

''Pretty disgraceful what I saw with my own eyes. And I have always supported the police during my entire career,'' he said, according to a court transcript. ``This was a real eye-opener. A disgrace for the community.''

In the transcript, he also said he may have to remove himself from any additional cases involving arrests made during the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit.

''I probably would have been arrested myself if it had not been for a police officer who recognized me,'' said the judge, who wears his hair in a graying ponytail.

CIRCUIT JUDGE

Margolius, appointed to the bench in 1982, retired as a circuit judge in 2001 but said he still hears cases 15 to 20 weeks a year when courts are overburdened.

On Friday, he chose not to elaborate on the remarks he made from the bench Dec. 11.

''I can't comment on pending cases,'' he said. ``It was inappropriate for me to make the comments I made. A reasonable person could question my neutrality because of statements I made in open court.''

The judge did not single out a police department. More than three dozen agencies were part of the FTAA security effort. The Miami Police Department coordinated most police operations.

Angel Calzadilla, executive assistant to Miami Police Chief John Timoney, said: ``The chief's not going to comment on something this vague. If the judge would like to file a complaint with the CIP [Citizens Investigative Panel] he can do that like any other citizen.''

Nelda Fonticiella, a spokeswoman for the Miami-Dade Police Department, which had a large presence during the protests, also said the judge can file a complaint. ''It would be our hope and expectation that if this is how he feels, that he would recuse himself from those cases,'' she said.

Margolius had been hearing the cases of Joseph Diamond and Danielle Kilroy, both arrested during the FTAA protests. Diamond had been charged with aggravated assault on a police officer, a felony; the charges were dropped by the state at the Dec. 11 hearing.

RESISTING ARREST

Kilroy also faced felony charges -- battery on a police officer and resisting arrest with violence. Her charges were reduced to a single misdemeanor, resisting arrest without violence, according to members of the Miami Activist Defense, a legal group monitoring the court hearings.

During the Dec. 11 hearings, the judge asked an assistant state attorney, ``How many police officers have been charged by the State Attorney so far for what happened out there during the FTAA?''

None, the prosecutor replied.

''None?'' asked the judge. ``Pretty sad commentary. At least from what I saw.''

The judge also wondered aloud how much the ''whole episode'' had cost taxpayers.

''I know one thing. There were police officers from every agency -- I couldn't believe the sheer numbers,'' he said.

Laurel Ripple, a protester who was arrested and is working with MAD, said she was in the courtroom during Margolius' remarks.

''I'm really glad he saw for himself what was happening . . . I'm really glad he was out there,'' she said. ``As a lifelong Miami resident and victim of the police during the FTAA, it was really supportive to hear that kind of affirmation from Judge Margolius.''

The FTAA summit, Nov. 20 and 21, sparked marches and protests in downtown Miami and resulted in 231 arrests. Since then, at least 27 misdemeanors have been dropped, according to prosecutors' records last updated Dec. 2. Additional cases have been dropped or the charges reduced, according to MAD members.

Two citizens' panels plan to hold a joint meeting Jan. 15 to hear comments and complaints about police conduct during the FTAA, and both Miami-Dade and Miami police are conducting internal reviews. Amnesty International, the AFL-CIO and the United Steelworkers of America all have called for independent probes.

A Miami police spokeswoman said officers were instructed to make arrests only as necessary.

MIAMI POLICE

''We were told to deal with situations that were serious but we were always told to be very patient with people,'' said Herminia ''Amy'' Salas-Jacobson, a Miami police spokeswoman.

``In the training sessions we were told to be professional, be patient and to do everything right. There was one thing that was stressed at every meeting: Always be professional.''

During Margolius' informal speech, he noted that he couldn't recognize officers because ``everybody had riot gear on.''

''I hope the state has the good, common sense to deal with these cases in an appropriate manner, with an eye on justice,'' he added.

Herald staff writer Charles Rabin contributed to this report.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/7538538.htm

2003 Holiday Sees WalMart Stocks Down Again (ed: there's not enough poor people buying their worthless 3rd-world-country-made crappola)

http://www.nyse.com/listed/p1020656067970.html?displayPage=%2Flisted%2F1020656067970.html

Padilla ruling: Bush is overruled by courts and "does not have power to detain American citizen"

Bush Overruled on 'Dirty Bomb' Suspect
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Dec 18, 2:46 PM (ET)
By LARRY NEUMEISTER

NEW YORK (AP) - President Bush does not have power to detain American citizen Jose Padilla, the former gang member seized on U.S. soil, as an enemy combatant, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The decision, which ordered that Padilla be released from military custody within 30 days, could force the government to try the "dirty bomb" plot suspect in civilian courts. The White House said the government would seek a stay.

In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Padilla's detention was not authorized by Congress and that Bush could not designate him as an enemy combatant without the authorization.

The former Chicago gang member who converted to Islam was arrested in May 2002 Chicago's O'Hare airport as he returned from Pakistan. Within days, he was moved to a naval brig in Charleston, S.C.

(AP) This is a 1991 booking mug of Jose Padilla after an arrest in Sunrise, Fla. President Bush does...
Full ImageThe court directed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to release Padilla from military custody within 30 days, but said the government was free to transfer him to civilian authorities who can bring criminal charges.

If appropriate, Padilla also can be held as a material witness in connection with grand jury proceedings, the court said.

"As this court sits only a short distance from where the World Trade Center stood, we are as keenly aware as anyone of the threat al-Qaida poses to our country and of the responsibilities the president and law enforcement officials bear for protecting the nation," the court said.

"But presidential authority does not exist in a vacuum, and this case involves not whether those responsibilities should be aggressively pursued, but whether the president is obligated, in the circumstances presented here, to share them with Congress," it added.

In a dissenting opinion, District Judge Richard C. Wesley said the president as commander in chief "has the inherent authority to thwart acts of belligerency at home or abroad that would do harm to United States citizens."

The White House said the ruling was inconsistent with the president's constitutional authority as well as with other court rulings.

"The president's most solemn obligation is protecting the American people," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Thursday. "We believe the 2nd Circuit ruling is troubling and flawed. The president has directed the Justice Department to seek a stay, and further judicial review."

Padilla's lawyer, Donna Newman did not immediately return a telephone message for comment. Newman has battled in court to be able to meet with Padilla; she has not done so since he was designated an enemy combatant the month after he was arrested.

Chris Dunn, a staff attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union, called the ruling "historic."

"It's a repudiation of the Bush administration's attempt to close the federal courts to those accused of terrorism," he said. The group had submitted a legal brief supporting Padilla.

"It's right on the money," added Barbara Olshansky, deputy legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which argued in court papers that Bush lacked authority.

Padilla is accused of plotting to detonate a "dirty bomb," which uses conventional explosives to disperse radioactive materials. The government said he had proposed the bomb plot to Abu Zubaydah, then al-Qaida's top terrorism coordinator. Zubaydah was arrested in Pakistan in March 2002.

Only two other people have been designated enemy combatants since the 2001 terrorist attacks: Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar who has been accused of being an al-Qaida sleeper agent, and Esam Hamdi, a Louisiana native captured during the fighting in Afghanistan.

In its ruling, the court said it was not addressing the detention of any U.S. citizens seized within a zone of combat in Afghanistan.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20031218/D7VH08700.html

Post Saddam Bush hate: This SF Chronicle article is not for the Bush lover

Saddam, So Not Worth It Dubya, now that you've got your dime-store thug, can you stop the warmongering and death?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Wednesday, December 17, 2003
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well gosh golly it took only upward of 500 dead U.S. soldiers (and counting) and more than 2,500 U.S. wounded (and counting) and more than 10,000 dead innocent Iraqi citizens (and counting) and countless tens of thousands of hapless dead Iraqi soldiers (and counting).

And it'll only cost U.S. taxpayers at least a staggering $350 billion along with the complete gutting of our foreign policy and our national treasury and the appalling blood sacrifice of our national pride and our international status and global sense of self-respect.

Oh, and the truth is, it turns out Saddam actually did have some old stashes of weaponry, a bit of rusty, small-scale WMDs, after all -- because we sold them to him, 20 years ago. But they were never any sort of direct danger to America -- or anyone else, for that matter -- and regardless all evidence points to the fact that the stash was completely destroyed more than a decade ago.

Remember that time? Right about when the U.S. hushed up all those sales of biological weapons and computer technology to Iraq? Right about when all those American corporations, from Bechtel to Kodak to AT&T, from Dow Chemical to Hewlett-Packard to IBM and at least 100 more, decided it might be best to begin shredding their records detailing all their Iraq business deals? Hey, why is Donny Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam and smiling in this photo? Shhh.

And now, long after his political usefulness to us has expired, we up and invade his unhappy nation and lay waste to the entire region for no justifiable reason, and we inflate his global stature into this massive inhuman Hitler-esque monster when in fact he was really just an old, tired, small-time thug, and now finally Saddam Hussein, the brutal pip-squeak dictator/former beloved U.S. ally who had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11, has been captured alive. Yay yay go team.

It was a proud moment in American history. Almost as proud as when Dubya secretly flew to Iraq a few weeks back to spend 2.5 hours pretending to serve a fake, inedible plastic turkey to that handful of carefully selected, prescreened soldiers for that Thanksgiving PR stunt that will forever embarrass anyone with any sense of decency and pride -- which is, according to Bush's instant surge in the polls after the photo op, fewer and fewer of us.

As if this changes a single thing. As if Saddam's capture suddenly means BushCo is some sort of nimble or subtly intelligent leader, and that nine months of brutal ongoing gut-busting war was all worth it.

As if we are safer from terrorism. As if we are safer from Karl Rove and John Ashcroft. As if the nation can now stand proud.

Think again. Even Bush himself is not quite so stupid as to go that far. Note how just after Saddam's capture, his army of handlers rushed in to make sure Americans don't expect any lessening of U.S. casualties in Iraq, no slowdown in the number of dead American soldiers or the killing of innocent Iraqis who just happen to be trying to get some clean water or a gallon of fuel when U.S. forces blow another building apart while they're looking for guerrilla insurgents.

Oh yes, Saddam needed to be captured. Oh yes, his capture is a swell thing for the world. Oh yes, Bush desperately needed the ratings boost. But we as a nation have been utterly pulverized with the lie that this war was the only way. We have been slammed for more than two years with relentless hammer of fear and inflated terrorist threats and bogus Orange Alerts, until we all just give in and our resistance crumbles and we say, fine.

Fine, just get it over with, Dubya, go slaughter yet another nearly defenseless nation and catch your impotent bad guy and eviscerate your own country's economy and embarrass us the world over and protect your oil cronies and your military portfolio. Get it over with.

By the way, from Bush Sr. forward (and, yes, that includes Clinton), the U.S. has to date killed far, far more Iraqi civilians than Saddam ever could. Along with the United Kingdom, we've been bombing Iraq almost nonstop for the past decade. Not to mention the more than half a million Iraqi children who've died from lack of medicine or decent health care since the brutal, U.S.-backed U.N. sanctions were imposed 12 years ago. Shhh.

The capture does not justify the savagery, nor the humiliation. Not by a long shot. The ends do not justify the means. Nor do they justify the staggering, steaming pile of BushCo lies about why we went to war in the first place.

Remember those? Remember how not one single motive BushCo gave for launching this insane war has actually been proven true? Does this even matter anymore, the string of falsehoods and treasonous fabrications? Apparently not. This is America's biggest wonder, and its ugliest flaw: a nasty short-term memory.

But whatever. Most lockstep Americans do not care that Saddam was never a threat. Most do not care about how many Iraqi children have died, or that in just the first days of the war, U.S. forces killed far more innocent civilians than were killed by those non-Iraqi terrorists in the WTC (4,300, to be more specific). Most do not care that the other 25 despotic heads of state out there right now who are far worse than Saddam are not, apparently, quaking in their dictatorial boots.

Most Americans do not care that somewhere, Osama is probably cheering (hey, he hated Saddam, too). They do not care that, what with our outward display of savagery, new America-loathing terrorists are being spawned faster than BushCo's war machine can possibly keep up with them.

They care only for waving the bloody flag. They care only for the jingoistic PR spin and the hollow sophomoric neocon punditry of Fox News and enough oil to fuel the Expedition for another year. This is what matters most. Kill 'em all, let Halliburton sort 'em out.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Saddam's capture really will mean an earlier end to this tragic and painful war. Maybe it will mean we can get our soldiers home sooner. Maybe it will mean we can get the U.N. and NATO and our international allies involved in setting up a reasonably stable, noncorrupt government in Iraq, one not so obviously in the back pocket of ExxonMobil and Shell. Whoops, too late.

Maybe now that Saddam's captured, we can begin to focus on what's really important: the mandatory and deliberate ouster of another truly ruinous global threat, a shockingly disastrous political puppet.

After all, Saddam's not the only dreadful world leader who's abused his allies, ravaged his economy, launched two blood-drenched wars in as many years, authorized the bombing of tens of thousands, allowed hundreds of U.S. soldiers to die, cut the benefits of war veterans, poisoned the environment, invoked the name of God to justify it all and smirked away every notion of his obvious ineptitude. Can we send Special Forces to the Oval Office now?

http://sfgate.com/columnists/morford/

Senators were told Iraqi weapons could hit U.S.

Dec 15, 10:17 PM
Nelson said claim made during classified briefing
By John McCarthy
FLORIDA TODAY

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Monday the Bush administration last year told him and other senators that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction, but they had the means to deliver them to East Coast cities.

Nelson, D-Tallahassee, said about 75 senators got that news during a classified briefing before last October's congressional vote authorizing the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Nelson voted in favor of using military force.

Nelson said he couldn't reveal who in the administration gave the briefing.

The White House directed questions about the matter to the Department of Defense. Defense officials had no comment on Nelson's claim.

Nelson said the senators were told Iraq had both biological and chemical weapons, notably anthrax, and it could deliver them to cities along the Eastern seaboard via unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones.

"They have not found anything that resembles an UAV that has that capability," Nelson said.

Nelson delivered the news during a half-hour conference call with reporters Monday afternoon. The senator, who is on a seven-nation trade mission to South America, was calling from an airport in Santiago, Chile.

"That's news," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington, D.C.-area military and intelligence think tank. "I had not heard that that was the assessment of the intelligence community. I had not heard that the Congress had been briefed on this..."

http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/localstoryN1216NELSON.htm

Diebold: Voting machine maker dinged in CA

Posted on Wed, Dec. 17, 2003
AUDITOR SAYS SOFTWARE WASN'T APPROVED
By Elise Ackerman
Mercury News

SACRAMENTO - Secretary of State Kevin Shelley said Tuesday that Diebold Elections Systems could lose the right to sell electronic voting machines in California after state auditors found the company distributed software that had not been approved by election officials.

The auditors reported that voters in 17 California counties cast ballots in recent elections using software that had not been certified by the state. And voters in Los Angeles County and two smaller counties voted on machines installed with software that was not approved by the Federal Election Commission.

In an appearance before a state voting panel, Shelley said the report represented a ``deeply troubling'' violation of state election law.

The audit is likely to feed growing concerns about the security of electronic voting as states rush to update voting equipment before the 2004 presidential election. Besides California, 36 other states use Diebold voting machines.

Shelley had ordered an audit of all Diebold voting machines used in California after he received a report that uncertified software was used in the November election in Alameda County. Audits of the 41 counties that use non-Diebold election machines, including Santa Clara County, will be conducted next year.

California law requires that software and hardware included in electronic voting machines be approved by both federal and state authorities and meet certain technical standards.

Diebold President Bob Urosevich told the six members of the Voting Systems Panel, which advises Shelley, that his company had been negligent in notifying the state about changes in its software. He explained the lapse as a result of conflicting state and federal certification processes.

Karl Dolk, of the auditor R&G, said he and two other independent consultants spent two weeks examining the hardware and software used by the 17 California counties who are Diebold customers. None of the counties was using state-certified versions of the election management software to tally votes. In addition, software used in Los Angeles, Trinity and Lassen counties had not been federally certified.

In an interview, Urosevich said changes in the software had been ``cosmetic.'' He said Diebold began to make changes to its software in the fall of 2001 to conform to a new California requirement.

He said the independent testing authority that checks the code for the FEC certified a basic version of the software, as well as an updated version of the code. But he said several versions were released -- and installed by California counties -- that had not been approved.

Shelley said the auditors' report made clear that the state and counties also were to blame for not tracking voting software more closely.

The panel put off taking any action against Diebold until a consultant hired by the state evaluates the extent to which the uncertified software differed from the certified software.

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/7511145.htm