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Michael Parker's Journal
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Wednesday, March 31, 2004 |
The Onion magazine today posted one of the funniest news sketches to date, in my opinion, about Bush explaining his plan for decreasing the unemployment rate. Hilarious and right on. Bravo, Onion! (Now please don't hurt me for posting the entire column.)
WASHINGTON, DC—Responding to the nation's worst unemployment rate since the Hoover Administration, President Bush addressed the nation's 8.2 million unemployed workers in a televised speech Monday.
"The economy has been on the rebound for months, but 5.6 percent of you are still out of work," Bush said. "Come on, people: Get a job! Don't just sit there hoping that you'll win the lottery. Turn off that boob tube, get off that couch, and start pounding the pavement."
When the number of people taking part-time jobs because they can't get full-time work is factored in, the unemployment figure approaches 15.1 million, a number Bush called "unacceptable."
"My fellow Americans, don't come crying to me," Bush said. "I've got a job. I go to work every day, whether I feel like it or not. I don't take handouts, and I don't give them. That's a belief my daddy taught me. Now, let's get this show on the road!"
The unemployment rate remains high, in spite of the many tax-cut initiatives the Bush Administration has introduced over the past several years.
"The government can only do so much," Bush said. "How hard can it possibly be to find a job? A friend of mine lost his job when his company went belly-up. Did he bitch and moan about it? Absolutely not. He picked up the phone and started making cold calls, he landed back on his feet, and now he's the chief financial officer of a major petrochemical concern."
According to the president, the nation's unemployed need to make looking for work a full-time job.
"How many applications have you filled out today?" Bush said. "You should spend eight hours a day looking through the want ads, mailing résumés, and pounding the pavement. You won't find a job moping around the house and feeling sorry for yourself. If you're down-and-out, you have to pull yourself up by the bootstraps. Life's hard, my friends. Get used to it."
Bush addressed a complaint often made by unemployed workers: They are unable to find jobs commensurate to their skill set due to lulls in the technical and manufacturing sectors and the outsourcing of jobs to other countries.
"If you wanted work as bad as you say you do, you'd take what you could find," Bush said. "You gotta work your way up, instead of waiting around for your dream job to fall into your lap. Walk before you run. Climb your way up the ladder."
Continued Bush: "I heard McDonald's is hiring. What's wrong with that? Does your fancy degree say you can't work at a Mickey D's? You may not be doing exactly what you want, but at least you'll have the pride of knowing that you're earning your living."
A reporter asked for comment on a statistic which shows that only 21,000 new jobs were created in February, in spite of the Bush administration's promise to create 320,000.
"I've got a statistic for you," Bush said. "You've got to look out for No. 1. Take charge. I've got a job plan for the nation. It's called 'Get off your duff.'"
Bush said the country is experiencing its longest average-unemployment duration in 20 years, and he wants to see it end immediately.
"If you get an interview, walk in there like you're the only person for the job," Bush said. "Show them you're willing to work. Show up early and bring a broom. Sweep up the place while you're waiting for the interview to start. That'll let them know you're a go-getter."
The president concluded his speech by encouraging the jobless to start their search immediately.
"What are you doing listening to this speech when you should be out there looking for work?" Bush asked. "Get a move on! Even my brother has a job. He's no one special, and he's the governor of Florida! If he can do that, you should be able to line up something at your local Wal-Mart."
With that statement, Bush left Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao to present some of the finer points of his administration's new position.
"Get a haircut," Chao said. "Clean yourself up a little and put on a nice shirt, or even a suit. Maybe employers would take you more seriously if you didn't look like you just rolled out of bed. The way you look now, I wouldn't hire you to throw me a rope if I was falling off a cliff."
9:09:56 PM  | |
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If you have ever wondered which philosophers think like you do, here is your chance. You can take an online test through SelectSmart.com that will generate a list of those world-renown philosophers most compatible with your personal belief structure based on the answers you supply. It's easy and it's painless. SelectSmart also supplies you with a link for each philosopher so you can view information about them.
(I discovered this today over at Marijo's ever-thoughtful and insightful blogsite What Happens When You Tell A Lie.)
Here are the philosophers who are most compatible with me:
1. Ayn Rand (100%) Click here for info
2. Aquinas (86%) Click here for info
3. Kant (85%) Click here for info
4. John Stuart Mill (79%) Click here for info
5. Jean-Paul Sartre (77%) Click here for info
6. Aristotle (75%) Click here for info
7. Stoics (69%) Click here for info
8. Spinoza (65%) Click here for info
9. Epicureans (63%) Click here for info
10. Jeremy Bentham (63%) Click here for info
11. St. Augustine (63%) Click here for info
12. Ockham (56%) Click here for info
13. Nietzsche (56%) Click here for info
14. Prescriptivism (53%) Click here for info
15. Cynics (49%) Click here for info
16. Plato (47%) Click here for info
17. David Hume (44%) Click here for info
18. Thomas Hobbes (40%) Click here for info
19. Nel Noddings (13%) Click here for info
8:38:54 PM | |
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Tuesday, March 30, 2004 |
Last week an opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz about the killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin said, "This isn't America; the government did not invent intelligence material nor exaggerate the description of the threat to justify their attack."
So even in Israel, George Bush's America has become a byword for deception and abuse of power. And the administration's reaction to Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies" provides more evidence of something rotten in the state of our government.
So begins Krugman's New York Times poignant article, "This Isn't America." Like Daschle on the Senate floor today, Krugman criticized the Administration's smear tactics and mainstream media's role as accomplices by not searching out the facts. Consider these remarks about their "readiness to abuse power:"
This administration's reliance on smear tactics is unprecedented in modern U.S. politics - even compared with Nixon's. Even more disturbing is its readiness to abuse power - to use its control of the government to intimidate potential critics.
To be fair, Senator Bill Frist's suggestion that Mr. Clarke might be charged with perjury may have been his own idea. But his move reminded everyone of the White House's reaction to revelations by the former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill: an immediate investigation into whether he had revealed classified information. The alacrity with which this investigation was opened was, of course, in sharp contrast with the administration's evident lack of interest in finding out who leaked the identity of the C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame to Bob Novak.
And there are many other cases of apparent abuse of power by the administration and its Congressional allies. A few examples: according to The Hill, Republican lawmakers threatened to cut off funds for the General Accounting Office unless it dropped its lawsuit against Dick Cheney. The Washington Post says Representative Michael Oxley told lobbyists that "a Congressional probe might ease if it replaced its Democratic lobbyist with a Republican." Tom DeLay used the Homeland Security Department to track down Democrats trying to prevent redistricting in Texas. And Medicare is spending millions of dollars on misleading ads for the new drug benefit - ads that look like news reports and also serve as commercials for the Bush campaign.
In closing, Krugman echoes Daschle's remarks, saying "Where will it end?" His answer to this reveals that the future simply does not look pretty.
In his new book, "Worse Than Watergate," John Dean, of Watergate fame, says, "I've been watching all the elements fall into place for two possible political catastrophes, one that will take the air out of the Bush-Cheney balloon and the other, far more disquieting, that will take the air out of democracy."
9:44:33 PM | |
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Senator Tom Daschle spoke in front of the Senate today about the abuse of power occurring in this Administration. Interestingly enough, he wasn't standing up for Kerry or his Democrats as mush as he was going to fight for Bush's fellow Republicans. Here are a few of his comments I found of worth:
Mr. President, last week I spoke about the White House's reaction to Richard Clarke's testimony before the 9-11 Commission. I am compelled to rise again today, because the people around the President are systematically abusing the powers and prerogatives of government.
We all need to reflect seriously on what's going on. Not in anger and not in partisanship, but in keeping with our responsibilities as Senators and with an abiding respect for the fundamental values of our democracy....
The retaliation from those around the President has been fierce. Mr. Clarke's personal motives have been questioned and his honesty challenged. He has even been accused, right here on the Senate floor, of perjury. Not one shred of proof was given, but that wasn't the point. The point was to have the perjury accusation on television and in the newspapers. The point was to damage Mr. Clarke in any way possible.
This is wrong-and it's not the first time it's happened.
When Senator McCain ran for President, the Bush campaign smeared him and his family with vicious, false attacks. When Max Cleland ran for reelection to this Senate, his patriotism was attacked. He was accused of not caring about protecting our nation -- a man who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, accused of being indifferent to America's national security. That was such an ugly lie, it's still hard to fathom almost two years later.
There are some things that simply ought not be done - even in politics. Too many people around the President seem not to understand that, and that line has been crossed. When Ambassador Joe Wilson told the truth about the Administration's misleading claims about Iraq, Niger, and uranium, the people around the President didn't respond with facts. Instead, they publicly disclosed that Ambassador Wilson's wife was a deep-cover CIA agent. In doing so, they undermined America's national security and put politics first. They also may well have put the lives of Ambassador Wilson's wife, and her sources, in danger.
When former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill revealed that the White House was thinking about an Iraq War in its first weeks in office, his former colleagues in the Bush Administration ridiculed him from morning to night, and even subjected him to a fruitless federal investigation.
When Larry Lindsay, one of President Bush's former top economic advisors, and General Eric Shinseki, the former Army Chief of Staff, spoke honestly about the amount of money and the number of troops the war would demand, they learned the hard way that the White House doesn't tolerate candor....
The all-out assault on Richard Clarke has gone on for more than a week now. Mr. Clarke has been accused of "profiteering" and possible perjury. It is time for this to stop.
The Commission should declassify Mr. Clarke's earlier testimony. All of it. Not just the parts the White House wants. And Dr. Rice should testify before the 9-11 Commission, and she should be under oath and in public.
The American people deserve to know the truth -- the full truth -- about what happened in the years and months leading up to September 11.
Senator McCain, Senator Cleland, Secretary O'Neill, Ambassador Wilson, General Shinseki, Richard Foster, Richard Clarke, Larry Lindsay ... when will the character assassination, retribution, and intimidation end?
When will we say enough is enough?
The September 11 families - and our entire country - deserve better. Our democracy depends on it. And our nation's future security depends on it.
Daschle is up for re-election this year. This speech was impressive. Hopefully it gets recognition among America because I doubt it will change much in the way this Administration does things. They are fighting a war, after all.
9:22:12 PM | |
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Monday, March 29, 2004 |
The past couple of weeks have not been good for the Administration. Richard Clarke, with his testimony in front of the 9/11 Commission and the release of his book, sent the White House and the GOP into attack mode. This past Friday, Bill Frist thought that he would set things straight by reprimanding Clarke for apologizing to the victim's families of 9/11, saying that it was not his right or privilege or responsibility to offer that.
What does Frist know that we don't? Is or was there an apology forthcoming from Bush? Maybe that is what riled them about that genuine act of forgivness--that Clarke stole the fire away from a possible address at the GOP convention in New York City (Ground Zero)?
Clarke's response yesterday on Meet the Press was that he felt guilty after the tragedy that day and this was that prime opportunity and venue to accomplish that. As I wrote before, that apology will become the hallmark of this investigation because the families who have been waiting for someone in authority to apologize for this happening while on their watch have not heard anything that closely resembles an apology.
Bill Frist also attempted to intimidate Clarke by stating that he was going to declassify his congressional testimony from 2002. But Clarke has been unfazed from Frist's and others attacks. In fact, yesterday, Clarke on the Sunday talk show Meet the Press agreed that Frist should declassify those documents, suggesting that they should declassify numerous others as well--
I would welcome [my ’02 congressional testimony] being declassified, but not just a little line here or there. Let's declassify all six hours of my testimony…
…I want more declassified. I want Dr. Rice's testimony before the 9-11 Commission declassified…
…Let's declassify that memo I sent on January 25th and let's declassify the national security directive that Dr. Rice's committee approved nine months later on September 4th, and let's see if there's any difference between those two, because there isn't…
… let's go further. The White House is selectively now finding my e-mails, which I would have assumed were covered by some privacy regulations, and selectively leaking them to the press.
Let's take all of my e-mails and all of the memos that I've sent to the national security adviser and her deputy from January 20 to September 11 and let's declassify all of it…as well as her responses.
Karen Hughes is releasing her book this week and she is plugging its release in an interview with Barbara Walters. In the promo for it, I hear her telling the president that she loved him. Sounds like Bush and Company are bringing friends and friends of friends out of the woodwork to give sweet-sound bites about Bush, his character, his leadership, <fill in the blank>. This way, they can continue selling Bush as this package Presidential Ken doll with no faults, just with convenient accessories for any event-- Air Force flight suit for landing on a carrier ship; a black tux for performing at the annual news and journalism dinner; a cowboy outfit complete with a Ford truck to drive around his ranch; and a gray suit with red power-tie with matching gray missiles for playing war in his Oval Office.
Right now, however, Clarke is making life hard especially for Condi Rice. As of today, she is still trying to explain to America that she is unfortunately exempt from appearing before the 9/11 commission. The White House is trying to make a deal that she can meet with them in private and then summarize her comments to the public after the fact. Unfortunately, the media nor the commission is accepting this. I sense the longer she lets this ride, with the support of the White House, the more damaging this will be for all of them. In the words of commission member John Lehman (GOP), as quoted by the AP today, a refusal to testify is "a politcal blunder of the first order."
The Center of American Progress today posted Rice's claims from her interview with 60 Minutes last evening. They also posted the facts that discredit what she said. I'm including those below for your convenience:
RICE CLAIM: "The administration took seriously the threat" of terrorism before 9/11.
FACTS: President Bush himself acknowledges that, despite repeated warnings of an imminent Al Qaeda attack, before 9/11 "I didn't feel the sense of urgency" about terrorism. Similarly, Newsweek reports that his attitude was reflected throughout an Administration that was trying to "de-emphasize terrorism" as an overall priority. As proof, just two of the hundred national security meetings the Administration held during this period addressed the terrorist threat, and the White House refused to hold even one meeting of its highly-touted counterterrorism task force. Meanwhile, the Administration was actively trying to cut funding for counterterrorism, and "vetoed a request to divert $800 million from missile defense into counterterrorism" despite a serious increase in terrorist chatter in the summer of 2001.
Source: "Bush At War" by Bob Woodward
Source: Newsweek & vetoed request - http://foi.missouri.edu/terrorismfoi/whatwentwrong.html
Source: Refusal to hold task force meeting - http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8734-2002Jan19?language=printer
Source: Only two meetings out of 100 - http://www.detnews.com/2002/politics/0207/01/politics-526326.htm
RICE CLAIM: "I don't know what a sense of urgency any greater than the one we had would have caused us to do anything differently. I don't know how...we could have done more. I would like very much to know what more could have been done?"
FACTS: There are many things that could have been done: first and foremost, the Administration could have desisted from de-emphasizing and cutting funding for counterterrorism in the months before 9/11. It could have held more meetings of top principals to get the directors of the CIA and FBI to share information, especially considering the major intelligence spike occurring in the summer of 2001. As 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick said on ABC this morning, the lack of focus and meetings meant agencies were not talking to each other, and key evidence was overlooked. For instance, with better focus and more urgency, the FBI's discovery of Islamic radicals training at flight schools might have raised red flags. Similarly, the fact that "months before Sept. 11, the CIA knew two of the al-Qaeda hijackers were in the United States" could have spurred a nationwide manhunt. But because there was no focus or urgency, "No nationwide manhunt was undertaken," said Gorelick. "The State Department watch list was not given to the FAA. If you brought people together, perhaps key connections could have been made."
Source: Slash counterterrorism funding - http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/transcrime/articles/How%20Sept_%2011%20Changed%20Goals%20of%20Justice%20Dept.htm
Source: CIA knew 2 hijackers in the U.S. - http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/6/2/111044.shtml
RICE CLAIM:"Nothing would be better from my point of view than to be able to testify, but there is an important principle involved here it is a longstanding principle that sitting national security advisors do not testify before the Congress."
FACTS: Republican Commission John F. Lehman, who served as Navy Secretary under President Reagan said on ABC this morning that "This is not testimony before a tribunal of the Congress…There are plenty of precedents for appearing in public and answering questions…There are plenty of precedents the White House could use if they wanted to do this." 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick agreed, saying "Our commission is sui generis…the Chairman has been appointed by the President. We are distinguishable from Congress." Rice's remarks on 60 Minutes that the principle is limited to "sitting national security advisers" is also a departure from her statements earlier this week, when she said the principle applied to all presidential advisers. She was forced to change this claim for 60 Minutes after 9/11 Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste "cited examples of non-Cabinet presidential advisers who have testified publicly to Congress." Finally, the White House is reportedly moving to declassify congressional testimony then-White House adviser Richard Clarke gave in 2002. By declassifying this testimony, the White House is breaking the very same "principle" of barring White House adviser's testimony from being public that Rice is using to avoid appearing publicly before the 9/11 commission.
Source: Quote from Tony Snow Show - http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-03-23-911-rice-usat_x.htm
RICE CLAIM: "Iraq was put aside" immediately after 9/11.
FACTS: According to the Washington Post, "six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 2-and-a-half-page document" that "directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq." This is corroborated by a CBS News, which reported on 9/4/02 that five hours after the 9/11 attacks, "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq." The President therefore did not put Iraq aside -- he merely deferred it to a second phase, after Afghanistan. To the question of Iraq or Afghanistan, Bush replied: let's do both, starting with Afghanistan. In terms of resources, the Iraq decision had far-reaching effects on the efforts to hunt down Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. As the Boston Globe reported, "the Bush administration is continuing to shift highly specialized intelligence officers from the hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to the Iraq crisis."
Source: September 17th directive
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43909-2003Jan11?language=printer
Source: Rumsfeld orders Iraq plan - http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/04/september11/main520830.shtml
Source: Shifting special forces - http://www.iht.com/articles/106783.html
9:10:38 PM | |
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Sunday, March 28, 2004 |
I own the collection compiled by the eminent Dickinson scholar, Thomas H. Johnson. It is titled Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson’s Poems. Of the 1,775 poems she wrote, Johnson chose a mere 576 to include in this volume. Emily Dickinson’s poetry is a treasure once you become accustomed to her style.
I wonder how many people neglect to read Dickinson, thinking that she is or her writings are nothing but niceties, preciousness, and womanly stuff. Sure she wrote about nature, like her peers of her time. But Dickinson had an edge; she was an existentialist in an era of transcendentalism. She tackles concepts of humanity’s injustices and broken relationships, be them with men, the church, and/or with God. In a true sense, she was a feminist before its time.
What I sense most in her poetry is a yearning to find her place in society. It’s a yearning that is so strong it nearly explodes from her short, syncopated phrases and lines. In the poems, "Myself was formed a Carpenter;" "A loss something ever felt I;" and "Bind me I can still sing," I see Dickinson creating a matriarchal voice that fellow women can hear, understand and appreciate. If writers look back to great figurehead that represents the wellspring of lyrical genealogy, Dickinson would be that figurehead of women writers.
In the poem "A loss something ever felt I," Dickinson seems to realize that she has no place of origin and that, possibly, because she is a woman and a poet, she is cast out from society. This is why she explained herself "As one bemoaning a Dominion / Itself the only Prince cast out;" and admitted "I find myself still softly searching/For my Delinquent Palaces."
In her search for her own place of acceptance, Dickinson writes: "And a Suspicion, like a Finger/Touches my Forehead now and then/That I am looking oppositely/For the site of the Kingdom of Heaven." She seems to suggest that her conscience is pricking her, telling her that she is going contrary to society (whether that be masculine or religious establishments) and its set role for women.
In her short poem "Bind me I can still sing," I sense a strong will to not only find a physical place, but to keep hold of her inner-place (her heart and soul). The strength of her inner will is rivaled only by the strength of the poem’s alliteration and it’s content.
Bind me – I still can sing
Banish – my mandolin
Strikes true within –
Slay – and my
Soul shall rise
Chanting to Paradise –
Still thine.
Her message seems to be pointed towards the male society and their tactics of oppression. Consider the violent images present in the words bind, banish, strike, and slay. The power of her message lies in the meaning that whoever or whatever tries to bind her, banish her, strike her, or even slay her, she will have the final victory because she owns her voice and heart–that can never be taken from her. The caged bird has often been an image representing women in an oppressive situation. This poem seems to have that image in mind. But moreover, Dickinson focuses on freedom despite being compelled to be silent, hurt, or slain. Consider the lines "I still can sing," "my mandolin strikes true within," and "my soul shall rise."
In the poem "Myself was formed a Carpenter, I see Dickinson as the Carpenter who is building that place for women. When the builder comes, she writes that she toils "against the man." She states at the beginning of stanza three that "My tools took Human Faces." If toiling "against the man" represents fighting against male domination, her tools may represent women– the tools are her words; and they are toiling to build a place for themselves in society.
"We Temples Build" she writes in the last line reveals her purpose. Dickinson suggests that she, along with her tools, are building their own place, a safe place, a sacred place, all from the confinements of male society. Words such as Temples and Carpenter and Builder give the poem a sacred, even religious element. If the Builder is God, the Carpenter Christ, and Temples the Houses of God, then maybe Dickinson is trying to create a Mother-land. And she, because of this intent, being the Carpenter, establishes her as the Matriarch of feminine poetry.
Some personal favorites from Emily Dickinson's collection:
Page 3: The Gentian weaves her fringes....
Page 12: Bring me the sunset in a cup....
Page 12: To fight aloud is very brave...
Page 13: These are the days when birds come back....
Page 20: "Faith" is a fine invention.....
Page 26: Savior I’ve no one else to tell.....
Page 34: "Hope" is the thing with feathers....
Page 297: The bible is an antique volume....
Page 307: A word made flesh is seldom....
Page 314: My life closed twice before its close.....
Page 427: Tell the truth but tell it slant/The truth must dazzle gradually/or every man be blind
10:33:23 PM | |
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Friday, March 26, 2004 |
P.J. Crowley, a senior fellow and director of national defense and homeland security, and Robert O. Boorstin, a senior vice president of national security at the Center for American Progress came up with a comprehensive list of the changing rationale Bush and his administration used to persuade us to invade Iraq. The list was published by TomPaine.com under the title of War Rationale:Version 10.
Crowley and Boorstin have a clever analogy--they feel that "the administration's war in Iraq resembles a software program that, at first, works brilliantly, but then catches the user in a cycle of 'fatal error' messages."
Here is a sampling of a few of the lists:
Saddam Hussein poses an 'imminent threat' to the American people
Version 1.0 - Saddam Hussein is an imminent threat
Version 1.01 - Saddam Hussein is a gathering threat
Version 1.02 - Saddam Hussein poses a real and dangerous threat
Version 1.1 - The smoking gun will be a mushroom cloud
Version 1.2 - We can't afford to wait
Version 1.3 - We never said imminent
Version 1.3.1 - OK, maybe we did say it once or twice
Version 1.4 - We should have been more precise
Saddam Hussein is ready to use weapons of mass destruction
Version 2.1 - Saddam has weapons of mass destruction
Version 2.2 - Saddam has nuclear weapons
Version 2.3 - Saddam has biological agents he's never accounted for
Version 2.3.1 - The trailers are mobile labs for producing chemical weapons
Version 2.3.2 - Unmanned aircraft are ready to spread Saddam's biological weapons
Version 2.4 - Saddam's going to make more of all these weapons
Version 2.5 - We all know where the weapons are
Version 2.5.1 - Well, Saddam has used weapons of mass destruction
Version 2.5.2 - Iraq is a big country. We'll find the weapons eventually.
Version 2.5.3 - Saddam had weapons of mass destruction programs
Version 2.5.4 - Saddam had "weapons of mass destruction program-related activities"
Version 2.5.5 - David Kay? Who's David Kay?
Version 2.6 - It's not about misleading the American people-Saddam Hussein is gone and that's the most important thing
The intelligence is clear
Version 3.0 - We based our statements on our available intelligence
Version 3.1 - Saddam tried to buy uranium ore in Niger
Version 3.1.2 - Well, that was what the British told us
Version 3.1.3 - Did we tell you about Joe Wilson's wife?
Version 3.1.4 - Do you know a good lawyer?
Version 3.2 - The intelligence is absolutely clear
Version 3.2.1 - Intelligence is never 100 percent certain
Version 3.2.2 - We didn't manipulate the intelligence
Version 3.3 - There was no consensus within the intelligence community
Version 3.3.1 - We saw the same intelligence the last administration did
Saddam Hussein has deep ties to Al Qaeda
Version 4.0 - Saddam has long-standing ties to Al Qaeda
Version 4.0.1 - You can't distinguish between Saddam and Al Qaeda
Version 4.0.2 - There is an Al Qaeda terrorist network in Iraq
Version 4.0.3 - Saddam has provided Al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training.
Version 4.0.4 - Saddam will give his weapons to Al Qaeda
Version 4.0.5 - Colin Powell: I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection [between Al Qaeda and Iraq]
Version 4.0.6 - Vice President Cheney: I still believe there's a connection.
Version 4.0.7 - CIA Director George Tenet: I told Dick not to say that.
5:37:41 PM | |
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Thursday, March 25, 2004 |
There has been some incredible commentary regarding Richard Clarke’s interrogation before the 9/11 Commission. Personally, I was impressed with Clarke for these things:
- He started off his comments by apologizing to the victim’s families.
- His remarks did not come across as political–he did not solely place blame on Bush or his administration.
- His answers seemed complete, meaningful–in other words, coherent, unlike the manner of obfuscation we usually here from Rumsfield, Rice, McClellan, etc. when they are interviewed.
- He kept his ground even when two of the interrogators excoriated him regarding his integrity.
Though the White House has tried to spin Clarke as an angry, disloyal government official eager to win interest for his upcoming book, Against All Enemies, Clarke’s testimony has already become the hallmark of this investigation. He won the hearts of the victim’s families and that feat alone is the talk of America.
And the Bushies, by having painted Clarke the way they did, have come up way short in the eyes many. Combined with Clarke’s speech today and the contents of his book, they are appearing more and more like delusional wingnuts who have no practical know-how or skill running a country. The evidence for this is fast becoming obvious.
Here are some excellent reads from today’s reading list regarding Clarke. I am including some noteworthy paragraphs from each one for your review. I insist, however, that you go out and read them all.
Richard Clarke Kos the Bushies – Fred Kaplan’s masterfully written commentary of Clarke’s interrogation.
Richard Clarke made his much-anticipated appearance before the 9/11 commission this afternoon and, right out of the box, delivered a stunning blow to the Bush administration-the political equivalent of a first-round knockout.
The blow was so stunning, it took a while to realize that it was a blow. Clarke thanked the members for holding the hearings, saying they finally provided him "a forum where I can apologize" to the victims of 9/11 and their loved ones. He continued, addressing those relatives, many of whom were sitting in the hearing room:
Your government failed you … and I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask … for your understanding and for your forgiveness.
End of statement. Applause. KO.
A New Folk Hero – Robert Dreyfuss, printed at TomPaine.com
John F. Lehman, the former secretary of the Navy, probably wishes he hadn't asked Richard Clarke about Iraq today. By doing so, he helped Clarke emerge as a new folk hero. Lehman also increased the chances that historians will view Clarke's devastating critique of Bush's terrorism and Iraq agenda as the beginning of the end of the Bush administration.
The forum for all this was Richard Clarke's testimony in front of the bipartisan commission investigating terrorism and September 11. Clarke, of course, is the giant-killer and tell-all author whose recent release, Against All Enemies, blew the roof off of President Bush's claim to be a war president.
Bush’s Best Punch Falls Short – LiberalOasis
So the Bushies may have dinged Clarke (and note that some media assessments say they didn’t).
But by going after the messenger far more than the message, and running up against a deft messenger, the substance of Clarke’s charges remain standing, if not amplified.
And by repeatedly going below the belt and chronically engaging in cheap spin, the negative image of a White House that plays nasty has been furthered as well.
When that’s the result of your best move of the week, it’s not a good week.
Assessing the Blame for 9/11 – The New York Times Feature Editorial
The seminal moment of this week's hearings on 9/11 surely came yesterday when Richard Clarke, the former antiterrorism chief in the Bush and Clinton administrations, opened his testimony by apologizing to the families whose loved ones died in the terror attacks. The government, Mr. Clarke said, had failed them, "and I failed you." He added, "We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed." It suddenly seemed that after the billions of words uttered about that terrible day, Mr. Clarke had found the ones that still needed saying.
The two days of hearings by the commission investigating the attacks have been invaluable in helping the American people better understand the chain of miscommunications, wrong guesses and misplaced priorities that left the nation so poorly defended against the terrorists. Mr. Clarke, by accepting responsibility, offered the American people the freedom to hold their leaders accountable for an event most had come to see as an unstoppable bolt from the blue.
Bush’s War Against Richard Clarke – Sidney Blumenthal’s article printed by Salon
Bush's information was more than enough for him to have put the government on high alert, as was done around the planned al_Qaida millennium bombings, which were thwarted by the commitment of President Clinton and his team to giving terrorism the very highest priority through daily presidential meetings with the most senior national security officials. That process was dissolved by Bush and Rice and pointedly not reconstituted even during the rising level of chatter indicating an imminent attack in the weeks before 9/11.
The administration's furious response to Clarke only underscores his book. Rice is vague, forgetful and dissembling. Cheney is belligerent, certain and bluffing. In Clarke's book, as in the memoirs of other Bush administration officials, former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill and former domestic policy aide John DiIulio, Bush is disengaged, incurious, manipulated by those in the closed circle around him, and he adopts ill_conceived strategies that he has played little or no part in preparing. Bush is the Oz behind the curtain, but unlike the wizard the special effects are performed by others. Especially on terrorism and 9/11, his White House is at "battle stations" to prevent the curtain from being pulled open .
Condoleezza Rice’s Bad Week – Martin Sieff’s article printed by Salon.com
Rice had neither academic background nor serious policy experience in dealing with the Middle East, terror groups or extreme Islam. She was the top national security official on watch for eight months before 9/11. As Clarke has made clear, that should have been ample time for her to ratchet up the national government's level of alert and efficiency against the well_documented threat about which she had been exhaustively and presciently warned. She did no such thing. Instead, she has used her first_rate forensic and diplomatic skills only to obfuscate, excuse and sidestep to protect Bush and maintain her own perfect record. In the year and a half since 9/11 Rice has compliantly served the personal obsession of the president and the neocon clique running the Pentagon to rush to war in Iraq.
Her unimpeded rise is especially remarkable because Rice's actual record as national security advisor has been, to say the least, spotty and controversial.
Indeed, the record of her failures and coverups is deep and long. Arguably, one has to go back to McGeorge Bundy and the Vietnam War to find a national security advisor with one half as bad a record. Clarke's new book, "Against All Enemies," adds further documentation to the record that Rice was blasé and unconcerned about the al_Qaida terrorist threat before 9/11. She received serious warnings about it, as Clarke has documented, from the outgoing Clinton administration and from Clarke personally. But she did not take them seriously and took no action to maintain the level of priority, let alone upgrade it.
7:42:09 PM | |
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Wednesday, March 24, 2004 |
I've been enthralled with Josh Marshall's analysis of the White House personal attacks of Richard Clarke and his new book Against All Enemies. His grasp on Washington politics is impressive, to say the least. On the 21st, Josh listed the men and women who have come out against this administration and thus, have been verbally attacked by them. Josh lists how the adminstration has attacked them--
It's amazing how many partisan Democrats and disgruntled former employees working under cover as career civil servants, spies and military officers have betrayed this president. It just seems to happen again and again and again. I mean, just think of the list: Rand Beers, well-known partisan Democrat and hack, Richard Clarke, self-promoter, disgruntled former employee, and "self-regarding buffoon", Karen Kwiatkowski, conspiracy theorist and all-around freak, Valerie Plame, hack and nepotist, Joe Wilson, partisan hack, self-promoter and shameless green tea lover. When will the abuse end?
But my favorite comment, and this highlights Josh's incredible wit, is Josh describing Bush’s NSC spokesman Jim Wilkinson on the Wolf Blitzer show. As background, Wilkinson had smeared Clarke by masking him as some sort of "borderline personality or half-crazed crackpot" [Josh’s interpretation] whose rantings about Bush sound like "X-Files stuff" [Wilkinson’s phrase]. Josh responds
X-Files stuff ...
When you have a good case, you make it. When you don't, you just talk trash.
Or as the lawyers say, when you have the facts on your side, you bang the facts. When you've got the law on your side, you bang on the law. When you have neither, like Wilkinson, you just bang yourself.
9:46:59 PM | |
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Thursday, March 18, 2004 |
We have lost ourselves somewhere in between
What was first told us and what is in this current telling.
Many among us gouged out their eyes not willing to see.
Many pulled out their brains not willing to reason.
Many are and were too trustful of leaders who knew they had us
Wrapped around their secret information
Of weapons and intentions that only killers
Dream of conquering the world with.
They fed us lies
Knowingly---That’s the dark root of it.
And because of what has been fed us,
And because of what we have devoured,
Some among us sit in this void, numbed and dumb,
While some cower in corners like scared animals.
There are some, though, who have not lost vision or sense,
Who understand that consequences are divied out
For sins both of commission and omission.
It is they who see the blood on our hands and want---
Like nothing else---to wash them clean.
It is they who hear the curses that will haunt us, our children, and
Our children’s children, and want---
Like nothing else---to undo what’s been done.
It is they who see us lost on this road with no destination
And want---like nothing else---to regain command
Of that national and international dialogue
That has lead us truly nowhere
but to ruin.
8:37:35 PM | |
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Wednesday, March 17, 2004 |
Terrorist-like attacks are wrecking the infra-structure of Baghdad and the weak control the US and her allies have there. This morning, another explosion rocked Baghdad. And again, the explosion came from a car bomb parked outside of a five-story Mount Lebanon hotel in Baghdad that houses foreigners. Twenty-seven were killed, forty-one injured; and a 20 foot crater was all that was left. The AP reported this afternoon:
Army Col. Ralph Baker of the 1st Armored Division estimated that the bomb contained 1,000 pounds of explosives. He said the bomb was a mix of plastic explosives and artillery shells. That was the same mixture of explosives used in the Aug. 19 suicide attack on the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, which killed 22 people.
The first reports out of Baghdad stated that two US soldiers were there and were trying to pull bodies out of the wreckage but they had to stop because of angry crowds that came in. "The explosion occurred behind Firdaus Square, where a bronze statue of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was felled April 9 with the help of U.S. Marines who had just entered the center of the Iraqi capital."
The explosion is near the Palestine Hotel, which houses foreign contractors and journalists.
Baghdad seems a chaotic mess. The lack of control, the lack of a rebuilding strategy, the lack of international support (due to an arrogant, bullying, deceptive, and lying administration) has helped transform Baghdad into civil turmoil and a hotbed of terrorism.
This explosion will no doubt heighten pressure on the Administration, already consumed with keeping the Allies involved after Sunday's coup in Spain, which was sparked by 3/11 and the deception of their former leader. Bush and his administration, likewise, are under fire here.
On The Administration's Lies
The latest CBS/NYTimes poll says only four of ten believe Bush and company didn’t lie about the reasons to go to Iraq.
My favorite quote regarding this comes from Hans Blix, the former chief United Nations weapons inspector, in an interview on the 15: "[T]he Bush administration convinced itself of the existence of banned weapons based on dubious findings before invading Iraq and was not interested in hearing evidence to the contrary.....They wanted to come to the conclusion that there were weapons…Like the former days of the witch hunt, they are convinced that they exist, and if you see a black cat, well, that's evidence of the witch."
Iraq Investigation Committee Members Have Ties to Bush & Co
Is there anyone out there who thinks the president’s committee to investigate the claims legitmizing the war will be fair?
Other than informing us that this committee has not even met, after five weeks since being appointed, consider the latest news revealed by TIME Magazine about the committee members ties to the White House:
A TIME examination of the panel members' backgrounds reveals a web of sticky connections to the Bush team and, in one case, an alleged lack of investigative curiosity. The nine-member panel is co-chaired by a Democrat, former Senator Charles Robb, and includes at least one proven maverick, Senator John McCain, who was put there, according to an official, to provide "instant credibility." But retired U.S. appellate court Judge Laurence Silberman, the panel co-chair, is a Nixon-era friend of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's and Vice President Dick Cheney's. Panel member Henry Rowen, a Hoover Institution scholar and former Rand Corp. president, worked under Cheney at the Pentagon during the first Gulf War. In September 1990, with Cheney's backing, Rowen cooked up Operation Scorpion, a secret plan to invade Iraq from the west, go all the way to Baghdad and topple Saddam. (The plan went nowhere.) Another panel member, former CIA deputy director William Studeman, now with Northrop Grumman, contributed $250 to candidate Bush's campaign in 2000. His wife gave the Bush re-election committee $500 just a week before her husband was named to the panel last month.
Panel member Charles Vest, president of M.I.T., has been accused by a colleague of being slow to investigate allegations of fraud at a lab that does missile-defense work for the Pentagon. Ted Postol, an M.I.T. professor of technology and national security, says Vest was told in 2001 about allegations that officials at the school's Lincoln Laboratory misled federal investigators about the failure of a key test of the U.S. missile-defense system - a top Bush priority. Postol claims that Vest "did not take action," even though he "knew there were potential criminal violations and scientific fraud." A spokesman for M.I.T., which received $726 million in federal work in 2003, said any suggestion that Vest ignored the claims is "categorically untrue."
Former CIA Analyst Reveals Damning Facts
David MacMichael, a former CIA analyst, talks openly about the information gathering and cherry-picking scheme instigated from the get-go of this Administration, plus gives excellent commentary about the Iraq debacle in his TomPaine article titled "Untruth and Consequences." Consider these paragraphs:
[F]ormer Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill declares in his recent book that the decision to invade Iraq was presented as a given at the new administration's very first cabinet meeting.....
Bush and the ardent supporters for war, especially in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney and in the Defense Department of Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, recruited long-time proponents of use of American military power in the Middle East like Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Abraham Shulsky and Michael Malouf, to bypass the CIA, DIA and State Department's INR whose professional analysts were skeptical about Iraq's allegedly hostile capabilities and intentions.....
[T]his cabal of war seekers "cherry picked" the intelligence reporting and presented, without caveat, even the shakiest and most suspect evidence to make the argument for war. Importantly,...this group relied heavily on reports from an Iraqi exile group, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), headed by Ahmed Chalabi and heavily funded by the Department of Defense, despite the fact that the CIA had long since concluded that INC reporting was untrustworthy. Further, they insist that these so-called neocons were encouraged and abetted by Cheney, Rumsfeld and the White House itself.
A Paradigm of Neocon's Ethics
A final, and not unimportant, concern about the neocons is their adherence to the Machiavellian teachings of the late University of Chicago philosopher Lewis Strauss. Nicolo Machiavelli, mentor to the Renaissance Italian Borgias, taught that the successful prince must and should lie and mislead. This philosophy echoed that of Plato who taught that statesmen had to use "noble lies" to lead the ignorant masses for their own good.
********
At least one important figure in this controversy about crooks and liars is Ahmad Chalabi himself. By most standards, as a fugitive from Jordan where he was convicted of massive bank fraud, he is a crook. As for lying in the matter under consideration here, he is unabashed.
In an interview with London's Daily Telegraph on Feb.19, Chalabi triumphantly admitted that he had knowingly provided false information about Iraq's weapons and its ties to terrorists (not to mention his rosy predictions of U.S. troops being welcomed as liberators) to his gullible patrons in the Pentagon and, for that matter, in the mainstream U.S. press. "We are," he said, "heroes in error. As far as we are concerned, we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if he wants."
What We Know
MacMichael summarizes what we know about the buildup to war. I have placed them in an easy to read list:
- Exile Iraqis and other agenda-driven people told lies to ideologically driven individuals in the Bush administration all too eager to use them to press their case for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
- The White House dismissed the objections of professional intelligence officers in the CIA and elsewhere probably because it had already decided to invade Iraq.
- Key administration officials chose to use the suspect evidence to persuade most members of Congress to, let us say, suspend their critical faculties, and vote to authorize the president to use the armed forces of the United States to invade Iraq.
- Most of the United States media reported this false information as truth.
The Effects
MacMichael concurs with my theory that the effects of the lies and deceptiveness at many levels and on different continents have created a devastating crisis in Iraq and throughout the world. I leave with his concluding paragraph:
As a result of decisions based on these lies, to date more than 560 members of the United States armed forces have died in Iraq and several thousand others have been injured, many of them disabled for life. A hundred or more other non-U.S. members of the invading force have been killed, and many thousands of Iraqis, military and civilian, are also dead. And we know that Iraq, battered and impoverished, teeters on the brink of civil war.
9:00:20 PM | |
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Tuesday, March 16, 2004 |
You know, there are many good people in Hollywood who care about humanity and the welfare of people in need. Latest case in point: Ed Norton
Reported by the WP: "He has donated $1.1 million to the Enterprise Foundation in his home town: Columbia. His grandfather, the late real estate mogul James Rouse, founded the nonprofit community development organization." The nonprofit exists to rebuild "America's low-income communities by helping provide affordable housing, safer streets and access to jobs and child care."
Asked about his contribution, Norton replied: "I made this financial commitment [because] I think that the issue of low-income Americans has really been I think, abandoned in recent times. I think people like you and me are getting tax cuts, and hard working, not only low-income, but middle-income families are really struggling to achieve the basic necessities of life, even a home. And so I made that commitment because to me, it's one of the more pressing and least publicized issues."
Norton has donated the proceeds from the premieres of three of his films (Primal Fear, Red Dragon, and The Score) to this cause.
10:45:34 PM | |
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Analyzing what the most recent polls say right now is like watching a championship football game in the first half between two good teams with two high-powered offenses who can score fast. They really don't mean anything except tell us things we have already guessed. Team Bush is sucking it up on the economy side of things and boy-howdy do they need to come clean on that sick Iraq war stunt they pulled or that will come back to bite em in the butt in the end.
Anyway, here is the latest commentary on the polls from the Center for American Progress:
Two new polls out today show that Americans are increasingly uncomfortable with the Bush Administration's economic policy prescriptions, or lack thereof. A Gallup poll shows 60% of Americans say they are dissatisfied with "the way things are going in the United States at this time" while a CBS/NYT poll finds only 38% of Americans "say they approve of the White House's economic record" and 57% say "they are uneasy about President Bush's ability to make the right decision on the economy." The fundamental problem is clear: as an earlier NYT poll shows, most Americans have not felt any tax relief from the President's tax cuts, because the benefits go mostly to a small sliver of the population. Meanwhile, those tax cuts have created massive deficits, energy prices are rising, and the economy has shed more than 2 million jobs. As CNN reported, "Morgan Stanley now calculates private payrolls are running 8.2 million jobs [below] what would have occurred in a normal recovery - that's more than $400 billion in forgone growth and wages."
10:14:28 PM | |
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Saturday, March 13, 2004 |
While reading John Kerry’s speech to the Senate Committee on behalf of the Vietnam War Veterans back in April of 1971, I was reminded of a journalist character in the Leon Uris’ classic novel, Mila 18, the account of the Jewish-ghetto uprising against the Nazi regime in Warsaw, Poland. The journalist’s name is Christopher de Monti.
In light of the continuing war in Iraq, the subsequent and deadly bombings in Iraq and Spain, and the continuing investigations on why we were misled into war and the breakdown of intelligence in pre-9/11, I wanted to share a few conversations Chris has with his good friend Oscar. They seem applicable to these times.
As background to this conversation, Chris has lost his faith in the human race. He had witnessed the Italian troops kill women and children, torture soldiers and Moroccan men by putting their testicles in a vice, and witnessed them bragging about their deeds to other troops. Chris took up binge drinking and became irresponsible, two habits that were ruining his life and starting to get him in trouble. In fact, he was picked up and imprisoned by the Paris police for his behavior after a drinking binge that had lasted an entire month. His friend, Oscar Pecora, came to his rescue, bailing him out of prison and taking him to his villa on the lake at Lausanne.
The opening of the conversation takes place here, on the balcony overlooking the lake that is illuminated by a full moon. Chris has just questioned why no one seems to act upon the news he’s been sending of the atrocities.
"Christopher. Every report that you sneaked out of Spain was planted in newspapers and wire services. All we can do is give the facts to the people.We cannot force them to stage a rebellion in righteous wrath."
"You are so right, Oscar. The whole goddamned human race sat on its hands and watched them murder Spain. Lemme tell you something, brother. They’ll pay for not stopping Mussolini and Hitler in Spain. Pretty soon they’ll run out of hiding room and, Jesus Christ, will they get clobbered!"
Oscar Pecora’s sympathetic hand fell on Chris’s shoulder. "We journalists are like garbage cans, Chris. Everybody sends us their filth. Through us comes all that is rotten in man. Christopher, what you are going through now...You were a single small voice that cried out for justice in a dark and angry sea and no one heard you. Until a man is struck in his own face he does not want to believe the attack on his brother concerns him."
Chris stumbled from his chair, staggered to the rail, and hung onto it. "Shall I tell you why I became a journalist? Do you know Thomas Paine? ‘The world is my country, all mankind are my brethern...to do good is my religion.’"
* * * *
The next afternoon, after Chris awoke from a deep sixteen-hour slumber, he found his way to Oscar Pecora’s study....
* * * *
"It has all been a pretty startling lesson, Oscar. I can see why the men in our business turn crass and cynical. We sound the great trumpet and no one hears us. Free men with full bellies don’t want to believe that a black native in Ethiopia concerns them or that the bombing of an open city in Spain is the prelude to the bombing of London. . . .Can I go on being a journalist under these conditions? I have learned now that truth is not truth. Truth is only what people want to believe and nothing more."
"But you will continue to seek it as a journalist or as a streetcar driver in Geneva. You have lost sight of the fact that there is a world of decent human beings and a lot of them are listening. They depend on the Christopher de Montis to be their eyes. You are not a man to abandon the human race because you have lost a battle. Now, what do you say, Christopher?"
5:50:55 PM | |
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Coming on the eve of the first anniversary of the start of war, news out today (by Robert Burns of the AP) that this war's vets are going to be returning to Iraq can't be good for a president who is trying to convince America that he is a good leader who can keep things in control. We simply have too many aspects of America that are out of control--national deficit, lack of educational funds, lethargic economy, highly exclusive international relations, to name a few. More importantly, this news can't be good for the morale of our troops.
The Army is spread so thin around the globe that when it needs fresh combat troops for Iraq this fall it will have little choice but to call on the same soldiers who led the charge into Baghdad last spring.
The 3rd Infantry Division has already been given an official "warning order" to prepare to return to Iraq as soon as Thanksgiving. When those soldiers flew home from Iraq last summer to their bases in Georgia, few of them could have known they were, in effect, on a roundtrip ticket.
They are not alone in facing back-to-back deployments to Iraq. Some of the same Marines who teamed up with the 3rd Infantry to topple Baghdad are already assembling again in Kuwait, only a matter of months after returning home, and more Marines will go next year.
Other Army units that recently returned to the United States or are preparing to come home this spring, including the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., and the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Hood, Texas, are candidates for a quick turnaround.
The Army has not announced which units will join the 3rd Infantry in the next rotation, although it has notified three National Guard brigades and a National Guard division headquarters that they are likely to go in early 2005.
When the Saddam Hussein regime collapsed, U.S. troops in Iraq figured the war was over, except for some mopping up.
But as the acting secretary of the Army, Les Brownlee, acknowledged to Congress last week, "we simply were not prepared" for the insurgency that developed in early summer, prolonging the war and taking the lives of hundreds of American soldiers.
One 3rd Infantry soldier, Sgt. 1st Class Eric Wright, put it this way in Iraq last June: "What was told to us was that we would fight and win and go home."
Eric, we were all told that lie by everyone peddling this war.
9:47:10 AM | |
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Thursday, March 11, 2004 |
The Cost of War site calculates the cost of war real-time. Calculations are based on the cost of deployment and return and interest.
In regards to calculating the cost of deployment and return, this is how the figures are derived:
To keep the Cost of War counter accurate, we periodically readjust our estimate to keep up with the the announced costs of the invasion. The most recent adjustment occurred on August 5, 2003. Department of Defense Comptroller Dov Zakheim on April 16, 2003 briefed the press on the Pentagon's estimate that to date the war had cost between $10-$12 billion in military operations, including the cost of airlift and sealift of troops and equipment, plus another $9 billion in the first 3 1/2 weeks of conflict. He added that the cost of returning troops and equipment to base would be another $5-$7 billion, for a total of between $24-$28 billion. We have taken the middle figure, $26 billion, and used it as the cost of the war up until April 17.
The Fiscal 2003 Supplemental Appropriations Bill, (H.R. 1559) allocated some $8 billion to garner foreign support for the war (in further military and economic aid to several countries, including Jordan, Israel, and Egypt) and to help reconstruct Iraq (including over $400 million to ensure the proper functioning of Iraq's oil industry). The entire legislation is available through the Library of Congress legislative database; the Council for a Livable World published a useful summary. The Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Joshua Bolten, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on July 29 that by June 30 the US had already spent $2 billion in reconstruction funds, but Administration officials avoided saying how much would be spent on reconstruction in the coming months. We have included this $8 billion figure although it may be slightly high; if so, CostofWar.com will readjust it once the government provides more exact information.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on July 9 and in an interview on ABC's "This Week" on July 13 that the US military occupation is costing at least $3.9 billion a month.We began that rate on April 18.
In regards to calculating interest,
With the government projected to run one of the largest deficits in history, it is not enough to simply consider the cost of the war today; we must also consider how much money we will be spending on it for years to come. To this end, we include the cost of interest payments in our total cost of war. We have chosen to use 10-year Treasury Notes for this calculation, and we use an interest rate of 4%. These decisions are explained in greater detail below. The net result, however, is that the cost of the war is 40% higher than the stated cost, due to 4% simple interest for 10 years. Therefore, although the stated cost of the war on April 17 was $34 billion, the actual cost was closer to $47.6 billion, due to the $13.6 billion we will be spending in interest. In addition, the cost of occupation is more accurately stated as $5.46 billion monthly, of which $1.56 billion is interest.
At 8:31 AM today, the cost of the Iraqi war was:
$105,616,452,453
Consider what this money could have been used for--
- We could have paid for 10,666,026 children to attend a year of Head Start
- We could have insured 32,336,416 children for one year
- We could have hired 1,436,969 additional public school teachers for one year
- We could have provided 1,913,530 students four-year scholarships at public universities
- We could have built 1,077,728 additional public housing units
Someone should drop Kerry a line with these figures. They are great talking points, don't ya think?
10:09:39 PM | |
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Craig Under reports at the end of his article "The Great Escape," published at Salon today this interesting monetary figure that sheds light on the unique relationship between Saudi Arabia and President Bush.
$1,477,100,000 (at least)
The amount of money that has flowed from the House of Saud to individuals and entities closely tied to the House of Bush.
An explanation of this number is coming up at Salon.com tomorrow. Can’t wait.
9:58:45 PM | |
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In the comments for yesterday's post "Hiding War's Wounds and Casualties," my friend Rex Winn closed his comment with the question [and I'm paraphrasing] "Why should we care about the 10,000 Iraqi's that have died in the war?"
Rex was trying to state the mindset many Americans have toward the people we are sent to war against. In one breath, we are there to save them. In the next breath, we seem not to care how many of them die. If you recall, the government in November or December of last year decided to stop counting Iraqi casualties. What does that really tell us about the worth of life?
I'm going to attempt to come up with an answer to Rex's question. I can do better than this I'm sure but I recently read and was greatly impressed by Sen. John Kerry's remarks to a Senate Hearing back in April 22, 1971 in which he was representing the veterans of Vietnam, asking the committee to better recognize the wounded and dead from the Vietnam war and to get the government to recognize their lies about the reasons for the war. What is most amazing to me is that his comments could be uttered in the committee hearings today on the lies that lead us into the Iraq war and they would fit.
In this speech, I think Kerry explains the plight of the people we are sent to fight but, in the end, end up fighting against.
Here are a few excerpts from that amazing speech:
In our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam, nothing which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart....
...[H]ow do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? But we are trying to do that, and we are doing it with thousands of rationalizations, and if you read carefully the President's last speech to the people of this country, you can see that he says and says clearly: "But the issue, gentlemen, the issue, is Communism, and the question is whether or not we will leave that country to the Communists or whether or not we will try to give it hope to be a free people." But the point is they are not a free people now under us, they are not a free people and we cannot fight Communism all over the world, and I think we should have learned that lesson by now....
Change Communism to Terrorism and you have the makings of the administration’s current rhetoric.
We are here in Washington also to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human beings to communicate to people in this country: the question of racism, which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions; also, the use of weapons, the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage in the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war, when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions, in the use of free-fire zones, harassment, interdiction fire, search-and-destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, the killing of prisoners - accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam. That is what we are trying to say. It is part and parcel of everything.
An American Indian friend of mine who lives in the Indian nation of Alcatraz put it to me very succinctly. He told me how as a boy on an Indian reservation he had watched television and he used to cheer the cowboys when they came in and shot the Indians, and then suddenly one day he stopped in Vietnam and he said: "My God, I am doing to these people the very same thing that was done to my people," and he stopped. And that is what we are trying to say, that we think this thing has to end.
We are also here to ask, we are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently: Where are the leaders of our country, where is the leadership? We are here to ask McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatric and so many others, where are they now that we, the men whom they sent off to war, have returned? These are commanders who have deserted their troops, and there is no more serious crime in the law of war.
The Army says they never leave their wounded. The Marines say they never leave even their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They have left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching behind them in the sun of this country.
Finally, this administration has done us the ultimate dishonor. They have attempted to disown us and the sacrifices we made for this country. In their blindness and fear they have tried to deny that we are veterans or that we served in Nam. We do not need their testimony. Our own scars and stumps of limbs are witness enough for others and for ourselves.
We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped their memories of us. But all that they have done and all that they can do by this denial is to make more clear than ever our own determination to undertake one last mission, to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war, to pacify our own hearts, to conquer the hate and the fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more, and so when in thirty years from now our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead the place where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.
(Excerpts taken from the transcript of Navy Lieutenant John Kerry testimony for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971)
9:45:45 PM | |
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Wednesday, March 10, 2004 |
This upcoming Sunday and Monday, March 14 and 15, Military Families Speak Out, an organization of families opposed to the U.S. invasion and the occupation of Iraq (all of whom have loved ones in the military) have organized a march at the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, the site where dead and wounded soldiers are returned from Iraq.
The co-founder, Nancy Lessin, explains that the march on this first anniversary of the war is "a memorial procession for mourning and truth."
"We will pull back the veil, honor and mourn the dead and acknowledge the wounded-both U.S. military personnel and the tens of thousands of Iraqi casualties. The memory of these individuals will then be brought to the White House, along with the plea: start telling the truth, stop hiding the toll and bring an end to this war."
Lessin’s poignant article explaining the reasons for this memorial was first published at CommonDreams.org and then at TomPaine.com, where I discovered it. Here are some noteworthy excerpts from "Hiding War’s Toll:"
President Bush's rationale for taking us to war in Iraq has crumbled. The truth about supposed Iraqi weapons of mass destruction is being told. At the same time, another truth remains hidden by the Bush administration: the 550 troops who have returned from Iraq in caskets and the thousands returning with severe physical and psychological damage.
The military planes carrying human remains fly into Dover Air Force Base in Delaware under cover of darkness. Unlike Vietnam, when Americans could see the consequences of war, the media are now banned from Dover Air Force Base by military order, reinforced for the Iraq war by an edict from Mr. Bush.
One does not need to be a historian to know that the image of dead Americans, returning day after day in body bags, helped turn America against the war in Vietnam. This administration has gone to great lengths to prevent a repeat by keeping images of lifeless and broken bodies away from the cameras and the consciousness of the American people. Mr. Bush has not yet attended a single funeral for anyone killed in Iraq-not a single one. Spain and Italy held state funerals for their countrymen who died in Iraq, but the Bush administration's policy for our own war dead is to hide them.
The media blackout extends to the legions of wounded who have returned from Iraq as well. Media stories on wounded troops often use Pentagon figures for those officially wounded in combat, numbering around 3,000. These numbers ignore the well over 7,000 troops who have been injured or made ill as a result of the war. According to the Disabled American Veterans, an additional 6,891 troops were medically evacuated between March 19, 2003 and Oct. 30, 2003, for everything from vehicle accidents to attempted suicides .
The Bush administration is trying to hide the reality described by an Army Nurse Corps captain stationed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in a recent message to the Bring Them Home NOW! campaign: "[It is] so sad to see young wives cry over their honey who was in Iraq less than one month before losing both legs and having several abdominal surgeries leaving his belly crisscrossed with staples, and now he is fighting for his life from the infection that the injuries caused." As hard as it may be, these are images the American people need to see, to make informed decisions about this war and its costs.
In their effort to keep this reality from the public, the Bush administration has gone so far as to restrict access of professionally trained and accredited representatives of Disabled American Veterans from military hospitals-access that the DAV has had for more than six decades to counsel and work with service members. The few visits that have been allowed are with pre-selected patients and are closely monitored.
7:55:40 PM | |
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Tuesday, March 09, 2004 |
In some odd way, losing a dog is like losing a child, especially if you don't have children. J and I considered our first dog Tiananmen (a Chinese Sharpei) our child. He went everywhere with us, even on vacations to visit mom and dad. We lost him when we took him to see a doctor regarding his eyelid growing under and scratching his eyelid. The on-call doctor told us to leave him and he'd have the doctor look at him. The on-call doctor decided to operate on him without our consent. Tian died because he was given too much anesthetics. He was only two years of age.
Our good friends lost their dog, Butch, this past Sunday to old age. He was 14 years old, was nearly blind, and suffered from arthritis. Other than these things, he was a happy dog and every part a member of the family. His unique trait was an ability to pick up and carry large rocks around the yard. His decline started merely one week ago; he was suddenly unable to climb stairs or jump up onto the couch. Butch's passing has been hard for the kids--it's the dog they grew up with.
In light of Butch's passing, I'm sharing with you the epic poem my cousin C.M. Parker wrote in dedication to the memory of our dog Tian. I feel it is most fitting for any dog. (The narrator is my cousin's dog Natasha.)
Natasha's Lament
Tiananmen, you great Houdini!
How we all envied you that day,
Having escaped your cell,
You chased that haughty Persian
Ten miles around the neighborhood.
How we cheered as your mistress
Chased you the same ten miles.
But now our cheers are turned to howls,
Beseeching the moon for your return.
Shirkahn says it was the Man
With the white coat smelling of soap and death
Who sent you away; but I know you;
We are as siblings; we have
Chased my mistress' idiot cat
And, once caught, drooled until it begged for mercy.
The confines of life were too narrow for you;
Once the mask was on your face
You found a hole in its fence of sleep
So large, so gaping, you could not but
Venture through it, to explore the other side.
You saw Sirius and Procyn fighting the bull
And followed Orion's call; But soon
St. Antony strode by; You could not resist
Chasing his raven and wallowing with his pig
In the beautiful, heavenly muck.
That done, you encountered Cerberus,
Who, believing you his brother,
(In your mud-blackened state)
Had strayed from his Stygian home.
You chased him back (as any of us would),
Protecting your mistress from his black howls.
Now tired, you sought to return home,
But found Death guarding the way,
The hole sealed tight.
"Tian," said Death kindly,
"You are much too beautiful for the living,
And we need the wisdom of your wrinkled face.
Don't worry; your mistress will understand."
This said, Death kissed you softly, then departed;
No longer tired, you followed adventure's call.
Now Tian, as I howl at the moon,
I fancy I see a new star
Chasing the Great Bear throughout the night.
It twinkles at me, beckoning me to join in the chase.
My sorrowful howls are now joyful barks;
Soon we will chase that bear together, and perhaps
We will do more than drool when we catch him
9:52:11 PM | |
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Monday, March 08, 2004 |
Under a full moon, on a cloudless and slightly cool, spring evening in Salt Lake City, Sarah Brightman returned to the Delta Center after a three-year hiatus and unveiled yet another spectacular concert, Harem.
Before the show, the 7,500 crowd sat in anticipation amidst ornate Persian tapestries that hid the main stage and the more intimate Premium seats (if you were lucky enough to purchase them before they sold out). A large, golden urn sat in the middle of the auditorium on the star stage. One could smell the incense and see the smoke, like wispy apparitions, circle upwards and out from that golden core.
Brightman is a premier entertainer. Her exceptional voice, one of the best this world has ever known, of course took center stage. But the sub-elements of the show were nothing more than equally significant and complimentary, including the well-laid-out stage (complete with a state-of-the-art suspended walkway at the back of the stage); her elegant and alluring costumes; expansive translucent scrims and backdrops; the pyro-technics, light shows, digital video and image displays, and confetti works; her amazing backup and guest vocalists; her backup band (led by the industrial-synth band Killing Joke frontman Jaz Coleman) and the Harem Orchestra; the talented dancers; and her sound and light crew.
The stage for Harem was well-planned, most likely to create a more intimate setting for the audience. It worked. Many times, as Brightman made her way down the catwalk, she interacted with the fans and the fans returned their appreciation with waves and accolades. Brightman was always gracious and sincere in her appreciation for the warm reception she received throughout the show.
The main stage was shaped in a crescent-shaped moon. Out of the middle of that moon, a catwalk protruded out into the audience toward a secondary stage that was shaped like a star. The crescent moon stage had two floor elevators--for one song, a giant grand piano came up out of the floor; for another song, her backup vocalists and mandalin players came up from the floor. Both stages (moon and star) had hydraulic lifts that lifted Brightman above the crowd 15 or 20 feet. The metal works above the star shaped stage was also fashioned with a rope swing, in which Sarah swung on while singing "What a Wonderful World."
The crescent moon stage also had a suspended half- bridge (walkway) that curved around the back of the stage. One of my favorite moments in the show was when this suspended walkway rotated from the back of the stage to the front of the stage. Brightman, dressed in golden robes, walked to the end of the walkway so she was standing above the crowd and above clouds of mist that had blown onto the stage and covered it up. From atop this dramatic setting, Brightman gave a heart-rending rendition of Puccini's "Nessun Dorma" which won her a standing ovation and applause fit for a rock band. Absolutely breathtaking!
Harem was full of memorable moments such as this. Consider the song "There's No One Like You," from her CD "Time To Say Goodbye:" One of the guest vocalists started the song out on the star stage. (If you are familiar with the song, you'd know she was in the act of dying.) Back on the crescent moon stage, Brightman was fashioned with long wings and was lifted up on wires and flown around in front of a lighted backdrop that cast her shadow an expansive translucent scrim, giving the impression she was an angel. Indeed, the imagery in this concert was effective, if not poetic.
Brightman's costumes were more alluring in Harem but she kept a decorum about her that didn't make her display base or raunchy. One of my favorite costumes (and Sarah is becoming the master of this) occurred when Brightman was lifted high in the air and then her skirt grew until the material reached the stage's floor. The amount of material it takes to pull that off is beyond me but I joke that it's probably enough to cover half a football field. You see this and Princess Diana's wedding train is child's play!
As is often the case, fans were more eager to hear the songs that have made her famous—e.g. The Phantom of the Opera's "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again;" "Time to Say Goodbye," and her impressive repertoire of arias, including "Nessun Dorma." But the mix of trance, techno, with Middle Eastern rhythms, sounds, and voices were fresh, hypnotic, and very listenable. Especially impressive was the adapted Puccini song, "It's a Beautiful Day."
Highlights of the show (besides the songs already mentioned) included an impressive rendition of "Dust in the Wind," "Nella Fantasia;" "The Journey Home;" "Beautiful;" "Question of Honor;" and the hauntingly poignant song "The War is Over," which was co-written by Brightman and sung with the Iraqi vocalist Kadim Al Sahir.
Brightman's eclectic repertoire of songs for the concert came from her CD's Time to Say Goodbye, Eden, and La Luna. The majority of songs highlighted her latest CD Harem.
The best tribute I heard to Brightman and her show came from the Graves, who live a block and a half from me. My wife and I ran into them before the show. They had brought their teenage grand-daughter with them.
The day after the show, I talked with them. The husband explained that they have all of Sarah's CDs; and that when he saw the advert about the upcoming concert in the newspaper last October, he showed his wife immediately. She implored: "I don't care what our finances are. We are going to this concert."
"It was worth every penny," he exclaimed with a gleam in his eye and a smile as wide as his face. She concurred.
10:15:19 PM | |
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Friday, March 05, 2004 |
Debate has been raging the since the release of Pres. Bush's new campaign adverts on Wednesday in the 17 swing states. The controversy has raged because of angered families of 9/11 victims and the firemen's union who worked and died in the tragedy. Many feel that Pres. Bush has every right to use the 9/11 images for his campaign, including one of Bush's writers, Karen Hughes, whose comments have been utilized more than any I've seen.
This morning, conservatives have been striking back with the good ole reversed-role jab "Well if it were the Democrats, they would be capitolizing on it, too." I don't think so. In fact, I don't recall a president of either party using tragedy as an image for their campaign. Did President Clinton use the Oklahoma City bombing in his campaign adverts? How about the Watt's riots in Los Angeles? Did Reagon use the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in his campaign? Not to my knowledge on any of these accounts.
Bush's campaign staff (and I'm sure Rove is assisting in this) have taken campaigning to a new low. But don't take my word for it. Rather, consider the thoughts of A.R. Torres, who lost her husband, Luis Eduardo Torres, that tragic day. Salon published her letter to President Bush today. It is such a detailed and informative letter that I'm including it in its entirety:
Dear President Bush:
My husband, Luis Eduardo Torres, was at his second day of work at Cantor Fitzgerald when he was killed on Sept. 11. He jumped from the 105th floor of the North Tower. Most of his upper body was recovered, identifiable only through dental records. I was seven months pregnant at the time.
It is with him in mind that I'm writing to you, to question your disturbing reelection ad campaign. Yesterday I saw the three ads you're now running all over the country, specifically on cable stations in the "swing states," where you feel you need to come out fighting strong. It was the "Safer, Stronger" ad that shocked me the most. At the commercial's midpoint, the words, "Then ... a day of tragedy" dramatically appear on the somber black screen. And the centerpiece: an image of ground zero, the hulking remains of a tower, alongside a human corpse, carried out by several firefighters. Both the tower and the human are draped in American flags.
The flags were intended to honor ground zero and the remains of the dead, but here they are merely props, used to add a powerful patriotic punch to your message. The tower and the corpse are two hideously broken and disfigured things behind and under the flag, and your image -- with your red tie, white shirt, and blue suit, standing in front of thick strong white columns -- serves as another, symbolic, flag.
That image of ground zero, and the body shrouded with the flag, reminded me of the sulfur from the few pathetic remnants of my husband's last day: his Cantor ID, Debitchek Meal Card and subway Metrocard.
I thought I'd finished dealing with the gruesome aspects of his dead body, but it came back to me during your commercial. I had a thought I'd never had before: Was every corpse draped in an American flag as it emerged from ground zero, or was it just an honor bestowed upon the uniformed workers? What if that was my husband's body, now serving as a "spokesman" for your campaign?
I canceled my toddler's afternoon activities so I could do research. I could hear my voice quake as I called the medical examiner and the mayor's office. Initially, uniformed personnel were the only ones wrapped in the flag, I learned -- but it became standard practice to cover all the dead in that way.
In effect, then, Mr. Bush, you've paraded all our 9/11 dead out as the official mascots of your reelection campaign. You use them to show our nation that you can protect us against what we should all fear the most -- being an anonymous corpse in another attack.
But these sleights of image and crafty juxtapositions are the only true demonstrations of your leadership abilities. After all, on that tragic day you didn't actually lead the nation: according to the work of the "Jersey girls" -- the four 9/11 widows who fought to have an independent commission investigate the tragedy -- your first reaction to the plane hitting the North Tower was to blame the pilot. And you continued your activities -- reading stories to a group of young schoolchildren. And as you try to impress our nation with your role during and after 9/11 in these ads, you refuse to talk meaningfully to the independent commission about the specifics of your role prior to 9/11 and how much you knew about a potential large-scale al-Qaida plot.
I didn't think that co-opting 9/11 with such disregard for those of us who have been affected by this tragedy would anger me so much. I hope that John Kerry doesn't use 9/11 to strengthen his own candidacy . But so many 9/11 families are sick at your use of our sadness ... I can't imagine it being any worse than where you have already led us.
6:35:31 PM | |
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Thursday, March 04, 2004 |
We rarely care about what is going on unless we are directly touched by it, whether that be a car accident, a death, sending a loved one off to war, a life-threatening illness, civil liberties being taken away, the loss of certain health benefits, etc. The other night, one of my friends made the comment that we had only lost 500 or so soldiers in this war so there was no way one can compare it to Vietnam. Try to tell that to those 500 or so families who have lost their soldier(s) to a war we were misled into. Likewise, tell that to the families of over 10,000 Iraqis who lost their lives in the battle and in the months since the war has ended.
When the Twin Towers were felled that clear September morning, the whole world took notice and mourned with us. When the tragic explosions rocked the Khadamiya mosque in Baghdad this week, killing over 200 (the numbers have not been official yet), our news services have been more interested in the results of Super Tuesday, Bush's first re-election advert, the boxoffice results of 'The Passion,' and Martha Stewarts trial, among other trivial things. Earlier this week, Josh Micah Marshall put this into perspective for me when he calculated that this explosion for Iraqis was as significant to them as 9/11 was for us, in proportion to the size of their population and the number of deaths.
With this in mind, I was deeply moved by the New York Times article "Cleansing Iraqi Bomb Victims Takes Its Own Toll" by Neela Banerjee about the men and women who wash the dead in Iraq to prepare them for burial. Stories such as this help us understand the plight of the Iraqis during this transition period. It helps us step outside of our box.
Consider the opening paragraph's of this incredibly well-written piece:
In a large white room where the air was damp from open water faucets and the stunned grief of a few women, Khalila Sharif washed away the bitter past from the body of a 20-year-old schoolteacher from Baghdad.
The young woman's name was Aida Jabber. When suicide bombers detonated their explosives at the Khadamiya mosque in Baghdad on Tuesday, they took with them, among so many people, this woman who was described by her friends and relatives as gentle and devout.
Ms. Sharif had to cope with what was left of her, scrubbing the remains of its map of blood, masking with cotton wadding and two shrouds the evidence of trauma, so that the body would be pure enough for a proper Muslim burial.
Ms. Sharif sang softly of mothers and daughters as she worked, verses that are recited when one loses the other. Protected by a shin-length apron of plastic sheeting, she dipped a red bucket into a large tank that overflowed with water, sprinkled camphor into it and splashed the body that lay before her on a concrete platform.
Ms. Jabber was the second woman brought on Wednesday from Baghdad, where some 70 people died. More would come, Ms. Sharif knew, not only from the capital but also Karbala, where at least 110 people had been killed, and she, like the other independent Muslim body washers here, would have to soothe and clean their remains.
"This is typical for me," Ms. Sharif said, squaring her shoulders and offering a pained smile as she explained what the years in this room had done to her, "because like the Arabic saying goes, I have a dead heart."
8:07:28 PM | |
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"I certainly am not going to comment [on The Passion of the Christ] based on circumstantial evidence from what I've been hearing and feeling in the last seven or eight days," Steven Spielberg said at a news conference today.
"I think it's much too important, and I'm really too smart to answer a question like that. When I do see the film, the first person who will hear from me will be Mel Gibson and no one else," he added.
Surrounded by LA youth, Holocaust survivors, and the stars from Schindler's List (Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, Embeth Davidtz and Caroline Goodall), Spielberg highlighted the DVD release of his Oscar-winning Holocaust epic and the 10th anniversary of the Shoah Foundation, which is dedicated to archiving the testimonies of Holocaust survivors.
[H]e hoped "Schindler's List" would prove to Holocaust deniers that the murder of 6 million Jews did occur and that it would help educate children to prevent history from repeating itself.
The DVD will include an 11-minute clip explaining the work of Spielberg's Shoah Foundation...and a 77-minute documentary, "Voices From the List," which presents never-before-seen commentaries from Schindler survivors.
"There are Holocaust deniers who are so stuck in their hatred for Jews that neither 'Schindler's List' nor the Shoah Foundation will be able to convince them that 6 million murders actually occurred, but still we must try to convince them," Spielberg said.
Spielberg said he delayed the release of the DVD in order to celebrate the 10th anniversary of both the film and the foundation, which has collected more than 52,000 Holocaust survivor testimonies in 56 countries. Half of that footage has been digitally indexed so that it can be accessed and seen worldwide.
Spielberg escorted several Holocaust survivors and some of the stars and filmmakers involved in the making of "Schindler's List" on a tour of the Shoah Foundation's offices. Among them was survivor Leon Leyson, who told Spielberg there was no doubt in his mind that the director revived the history of the Holocaust just as it was headed into "oblivion."
Survivor Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig told the director, "Schindler saved us, but you gave us our second life."
Spielberg said that in the decade since the release of "Schindler's List," the world has become a "very sad place again," which shows that people "don't really learn that much from history, and they need to."
6:27:12 PM | |
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Wednesday, March 03, 2004 |
Atrios posted a letter to the editor published in the LA Times. It speaks for itself:
I am a high school teacher and the daughter of Holocaust survivors. Monday morning, Period 1, a student, age 17, comes into my room. She asks me if I had seen the film "The Passion."
I answer, "No."
She continues, "It was so sad. I cried so much. I hate the Jews."
Very, very sadly, that tells the whole story, Mr. Gibson.
Anna Paikow, Los Angeles
8:06:00 PM | |
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Tuesday, March 02, 2004 |
It was confirmed today that Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion of the Christ has surpassed Jackson's biggest LOTR money-maker Return of the King at the boxoffice. In the opening five days, 'Passion' sold over $125 million dollars. It has also been confirmed that Gibson's unique marketing strategy--advertising to churches--and the controversy over the film's anti-Semitism helped amass the interest and ticket sales.
In other related news–On Monday, according to the London-based Telegraph, French distributers declined to release the film, stating that the current environment in France is already anti-semitic and showing this film would be like "throwing oil on fire."
The debate over the film is highly sensitive in France, where a spate of fire_bombings of synagogues and Jewish schools and attacks on rabbis over the past year has led Israel to denounce it as the most anti_Semitic country in Europe.
Anger with Israel among France's large and growing Muslim population, combined with the strength of Right_wing parties in some French districts, have contributed to an atmosphere which has alarmed political and Jewish leaders.
Last year Paris police were forced to set up a dedicated unit to deal with anti_Semitic crimes. Schoolteachers complain that they face a hostile reaction among Muslim students when trying to teach the history of the Holocaust, which some equate with Israel's actions against Palestinians in the occupied territories.
Today, Tarak Ben Ammar, a film distributor in France, will be the distributor for the film, releasing it in time for Easter in April. As reported by Stuff Co out of New Zealand, Ammar is "a major film broker with business ties to media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Bersluconi...[who] produced Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth and Roberto Rossellini's The Messiah in the 1970s, [and] has also been involved in the production of such popular films as the Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark series."
Of his interest in the film, Ammar had this to say:
"I thought it was my duty as a Muslim who believes in Jesus, who respects and was brought up in the three (monotheist) religions, to have this film shown to the French and let them judge it for themselves," he told TF1 television.
The debate about the anti-Semitism factor of the film will continue throughout its release around the world. I hope Europe sees the film as an artistic and dramatic work of entertainment about a tragic and violent event sacred to many. I hope, like American audiences (thus far), that the sacredness of the event stays on a sacred level--that it will be used to edify personal faith in the Christ rather than used as a fallacious justification for hatred and violence.
Time, however, might prove to be our historian on this.
8:34:49 PM | |
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A good friend sent me this post from Bob Dreyfus titled "Who's Terrorizing Who?" written on February 25, 2004. I liked it because it asked a few of the same questions I've been thinking about lately. And two events occurred today that also make Bob's post noteworthy. 1) Bill Nichols of USATODAY reported a UN report that there have not been WMD in Iraq after 1994. 2) An explosion today in Baghdad, that killed over 140 Iraqi's, was blamed on Al Qaeda.
The Bush administration told us that Iraq was a major threat to the United States, and they got it wrong: no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to Al Qaeda. Maybe they were just wrong, maybe they lied?but no threat. Could they be wrong about terrorism too? Could they be exaggerating the threat to the United States from terrorism? Is it possible that the Bush administration wants to scare American voters into staying with President Bush in 2004 by hyping the threat of terrorism?
Yesterday George Tenet, the director of the CIA, told Congress that the threat of
terrorism is never going to end, predicting that Islamic fundamentalists will continue to
attack us, even if Al Qaeda disappears.
The steady growth of Osama bin Laden's anti-U.S. sentiment through the wider Sunni
extremist movement and the broad dissemination of Al Qaeda's destructive expertise
ensure that a serious threat will remain for the foreseeable future?with or without Al
Qaeda in the picture.
They have autonomous leadership, they pick their own targets, they plan their own attacks. For the growing number of Jihadis interested in attacking the United States, a spectacular attack on the U.S. homeland is the 'brass ring' that many strive for-with or without encouragement by Al Qaeda's central leadership.
In other words, President Bush's Global War on Terrorism will go on forever. (At the
Pentagon, they use the acronym GWOT, pronounced "gee-what." Which sounds a lot like jihad.)
But the reality is that since 9/11, there has been no terrorism in the United States at all. None. Not a single American has even been punched in the face by an angry Islamic militant, as far as I know, since then. If there is this global enemy with vast powers out to get us, where is it? Why hasn't it attacked us? It's certainly not because our highly competent Department of Homeland Security is doing its job so efficiently.
Of course, by the hour we are creating the very threat Tenet warns us about. Iraq, which
formerly didn't harbor international terrorists, is reportedly creating them in batches now.
Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency told Congress
yesterday (without any seeming irony) that Iraq is now the spawning ground for terrorism:
Iraq is the latest jihad for Sunni [Muslim] extremists. Iraq has the potential to serve
as a training ground for the next generation of terrorists where novice recruits develop
their skills, junior operatives hone their organizational and planning capabilities, and
relations mature between individuals and groups.
Let me get this right. A year ago, we now know, Iraq didn't support terrorism. Today it could be their "training ground." Some anti-terrorism war that was!
6:07:08 PM | |
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Reuters reported yesterday that the cartoonist of the famous Doonesbury cartoon has offered a reward of $10,000 dollars for proof that Bush served in the Alabama National Guard. The offer has elicited over 1,300 responses but no credible proof has come from them. Here's more from the report:
With so much controversy surrounding Bush's National Guard service, a credible witness would have turned up by now if there was one, said Garry Trudeau.
"You can be sure some very motivated people have tried to find a witness who can establish
Bush's presence at Dannelly Base beyond a reasonable doubt," said the creator of the politically irreverent and satirical daily cartoon. "Anyone who could do so would almost certainly have surfaced by now."
"Doonesbury" first posted the award on Monday.
The White House has released documents from Bush's Vietnam War-era service record in the Texas Air National Guard they say show the president fulfilled his duties at the Dannelly Base. But Democrats accuse him of skipping duty.
The documents offered no new evidence to show that Bush actually turned up for duty in Alabama during the latter part of 1972 -- a period when Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe says he was absent without leave.
Earlier this week, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee denounced the contest as a "silly stunt." Trudeau agreed.
"She's right," he said. "But as a simple investigative cartoonist, I don't have a very big tool
kit."
Trudeau also said he doubted proof of Bush's service -- or lack thereof -- would affect his support in the November presidential election. "For me, stunt cartooning is mostly about keeping busy. If it tips a national election, well, that's just gravy," he said.
He said he planned to pay the $10,000 from his own money.
"What else am I going to do with a huge tax cut I didn't need? One of the unintended
consequences of Mr. Bush's generosity toward the Great Un-needy is that I'm now a fat cat," he joked.
He also said he realized it was "counterintuitive" for him to support Democrats because he
considered Bush to be "God's gift to cartoonists."
A doonesbury.com Web site features a Witness Registration Form for submitting online testimony.
The prize money will be paid by Trudeau in the form of a donation to the United Service Organization, or USO, which entertains U.S. troops.
A cutoff date is still in the works, he said.
Will Trudeau get a winner? Even if he doesn't, this was one clever campaign.
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