Take a look around, everyday we are losing more of our freedom. Our rights are being tossed out the window. As a person of color, I am waiting for the reality of the American dream - the struggle to make that dream a dream for all Americans. I want all of us to truly be able to live our lives to the fullest. I want all of us to be able to try, to fail, and to pick ourselves up and to try once more. I want all of us to have a true opportunity, a real chance to succeed. This is how it was meant to be; however, this is not what is practiced. In truth, the America of today is a result of the lies and injustices bestowed upon the masses by an elite group of society. It is actually no better than a caste system because the country was built on the backs of those whom will never enjoy the true fruits of their labor as it was meant to be. There will always be a handful of the less fortunate whom will be able to "rise above their station" and will be upheld as examples for the masses. But in reality, there is not an even playing field for social and economic advancement.
I served my country proudly because of my belief in the values and ideas on which this country was founded. I realize that I am not the only one with the patriotic sense of duty and the desire to give back to my country. For these reasons, I am alarmed at the prospect of losing the rights that I (and those that fought before me and after me) vowed to uphold and protect. I also realize that the people who seem to have so much to say about my rights are less likely to have served in a war zone or to have an immediate family member in uniform on active duty in a war zone. These people want to portray themselves as patriotic, but it is very easy to be patriotic when you have nothing on the line. This is why the recruitment commercials for the military are targeting the people whom are looking for a way to improve their lives through education. It is a chance many of our poverty stricken citizens are willing to take in order to better their lives. I believe we should concentrate on taking care of our problems at home so that we may begin to balance the gaps between the poor and "Bush's base", otherwise known as "the elite".
Bush Launches New Flack Attack
U.S. public shelled today from Iraq by weapon of mass distraction
George W. Bush what a newsmaker. In the true sense of the word. This morning, he made it up.
The videoconference his handlers set up with U.S. soldiers in Iraq was staged, as the AP's Deb Reichmann just pointed out.
But here's another part of the flack attack you may not know: The soldier on the left side of the front row was actually a flack herself, though she didn't reveal it during the regime's 24-minute infomercial.
Her name is Corine Lombardo, and I hope she stays safe in Iraq. It's a dangerous place even for flacks. But the fact is, as my sharp-eyed colleague David Axe tipped me, Lombardo probably sees more action watching CNN than action. (For a sample of her work, click here.)
I'm glad Lombardo is safe, and I mean her no harm, and it's nothing personal, but I don't believe a fucking word she says, because her job is to make the Bush regime look good. So what great insights did she have? Here's a portion of her conversation with the POTUS who moronically stepped on her lines and couldn't even get her rank straight. Bush started by asking her this:
Is it possible to give us a sense, kind of a calibration of what life was like when you first got there, and what it's like today?
Here's what ensued in this "conversation":
SERGEANT LOMBARDO: I can tell you over the past 10 months we've seen a tremendous increase in the capabilities and the confidences of our Iraqi security force partners. We've been working side-by-side, training and equipping 18 Iraqi army battalions. Since we began our partnership, they have improved greatly, and they continue to develop and grow into sustainable forces. Over the next month, we anticipate seeing at least one-third of those Iraqi forces conducting independent operations.
THE PRESIDENT: That's important. The American people have got to know and I appreciate you bringing that up, Sergeant Major, about how what the progress is like. In other words, we've got a measurement system
SERGEANT LOMBARDO: Well, together
THE PRESIDENT: I'm sorry, go ahead.
Gee, Sergeant, tell me more! Sorry, I couldn't resist. Anyway, the phony bullshit continued:
SERGEANT LOMBARDO: I'm sorry, just, together with our coalition forces, we've captured over 50 terrorists, as well as detained thousands of others that have ties to the insurgency. And I believe it is these accomplishments and the numerous accomplishments from our task force that will provide a safe and secure environment for the referendum vote.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I appreciate that. There's no question that we need to stay on the offense, and we need to stay on the offense with well-trained Iraqi forces, side-by-side the finest military ever ever to exist, and that's the United States military.
SERGEANT LOMBARDO: That it is, Mr. President. Thank you.
There's no reason to believe what she says. Axe, who has talked with hundreds and hundreds of U.S. and British soldiers, not to mention Iraqis, tells me:
There are tens of thousands of training officers and NCOs in Iraq who work with Iraqi forces on a daily basis; Lombardo is not one of them.
Bush could have told the American people that he had at least one public-affairs person flacking them this morning. I mean, a public-relations person spouting the regime's line back at us? Instead, he pretended that they were all combat soldiers, not spokespeople.
It's bad enough that the videoconference itself was shamelessly an infomercial. The AP's Reichmann writes:
It was billed as a conversation with U.S. troops, but the questions President Bush asked on a teleconference call Thursday were choreographed to match his goals for the war in Iraq and Saturday's vote on a new Iraqi constitution. "This is an important time," Allison Barber, deputy assistant defense secretary, said, coaching the soldiers before Bush arrived. "The president is looking forward to having just a conversation with you."
Reichmann covered all the bases by asking Bush's officially recognized flack about today's subterfuge:
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Thursday's event was coordinated with the Defense Department but that the troops were expressing their own thoughts. With satellite feeds, coordination often is needed to overcome technological challenges, such as delays, he said. "I think all they were doing was talking to the troops and letting them know what to expect," he said, adding that the president wanted to talk with troops on the ground who have firsthand knowledge about the situation. The soldiers all gave Bush an upbeat view of the situation.
What a shock that they were upbeat. David Axe, who's made several forays into Iraq for the Voice read his latest, "Powerless," a dispatch from southern Iraq knows Corine Lombardo from having spent time in Tikrit. He tells me:
Her job when I was with the 42nd Infantry Division included taking reporters to lunch. She lives in a fortified compound in Tikrit and rarely leaves. Many public-affairs types in Iraq never leave their bases, and they're speaking for those who do the fighting and dying.
As long as Bush was going to talk with soldiers from the 42nd, I wish he would have focused on the fragging, not the flacking.
If you recall, Staff Sergeant Alberto Martinez killed two of his commanding officers in the 42nd at the base in Tikrit (Saddam Hussein's hometown), according to military prosecutors. Check out the New York Times story about this from June 19 (posted here by the excellent Australian paper The Age). The piece, co-authored by Kareem Fahim (an ex-colleague of mine), notes that the alleged fragging on June 7 is the second such case known to have happened.
Meanwhile, the flacking by the Bush regime continues, even after they should have been shamed by the Armstrong Williams embarrassment. For more on that sorry-ass waste of our tax money just so the Bush regime could lie to us, see the GAO's latest report, from September 30. And take a look at Timothy Karr's fresh piece on that, "Our Snake Oil President."
That Bush. What an oozemaker.
Posted by Harkavy at 08:30 PM, October 13, 2005
Cheap headline pun can't mask coming fracture
True grit: A soldier from the 42nd Infantry Division, doing real work instead of the flacking that his unit's PR person did yesterday for Bush, tries to conduct a reconnaissance sweep at Balad Air Base in Iraq during a sandstorm
Before we find out the results of tomorrow's voting in Iraq, keep in mind that the fix is in. But not the kind that assured George W. Bush of victory through shady dealings in Florida and Ohio.
Yes, it's the same kind of propaganda manufactured by Sinclair and other Bush allies during the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign. But the result is likely to be slightly different.
Yesterday's videoconference infomercial starring Bush and some soldiers merely followed more phony baloney passed off to Iraqis the day before. As the Washington Post reports, Iraqi TV showed footage of old dancing in the street but called it new dancing in the street after the latest of many trumpeted "last-minute accords" between Shiites and Sunnis. From today's story by Ellen Knickmeyer and Omar Fekeiki:
State television, controlled by loyalists of the Shiite religious party that leads Iraq's transitional government, aired what it described as live footage of crowds dancing in the streets of the Shiite holy city of Najaf to celebrate the accord. The scenes were actually filmed earlier in the week before the agreement was reached as shopkeepers and a reporter watched. No such celebrations were seen in the streets of Najaf on Wednesday.
The corruption that's finally floating to the surface over here Hey, Roto-Rooter man! masks the ineptness of the Bush regime's handling of its unjustified invasion of Iraq. We need to investigate Wampumgate, Kazakhgate, the oil-for-slush scandal, Plamegate, and all the rest we need to do it for the sake of our own democracy. But all that focus on the style of what the Bush handlers have done obscures the reality of the havoc they've wreaked.
Here's another aspect we can all relate to: You know how easy it is to lie about something but how difficult it is to keep that lie going. Life becomes much more of a headache as you spend more and more time justifying, explaining, and, yes, lying some more all to cover your ass. I'm not telling anybody anything new.
Well, as the Washington Post points out today, the Bush regime's so preoccupied with fighting off investigations, probes, proddings, and pokings that when it comes to making major decisions, it's paralyzed and even more inept than usual.
Even before the scandals oozed to the surface, Bush's handlers were in trouble. For crying out loud, these people can't even get imperialism right. It's bad enough that Bush's cluster of neocons and religious nuts and military industrialists schemed some dangerous ideas. What's even more destabilizing is that they couldn't pull off their absurd plan to seize Iraq's oil, guarantee security for Israel, and settle in for a millennium of peaceful rule over billions of Muslims.
What we have instead is civil war in Iraq and a more dangerous world in general.
The invasion was a stupid idea right from the start, and the Bush regime cynically used the 9-11 horror to birth this Damien:
Seize Iraq from Saddam Hussein, set up a puppet government, privatize the economy so U.S. firms could pillage petrol and other profits. Did we not know the history of Iraq's ugly sectarian battles? As I pointed out a while back, the neocons themselves had to have known. Yet, we ignored that by smashing all of Iraq's national institutions when we invaded. Now, of course, we want a "unified Iraq." Madness.
We knew all this even before we re-elected Bush. Can you believe it?
And a fractured Iraq will be even more dangerous for planetary stability. Basically, the Kurds will continue to run their own nation in the north, and the Shiites will solidify their control of the south. Central Iraq, from Baghdad west to Syria, will get more and more dangerous potentially a Little Big Horn for our poor soldiers. Abbas J. Ali, a professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, breaks down the breakdown in yesterday's Jordan Times. I'll let him blab for a while:
Paul Bremer, the head of the occupation authority, had been able to recruit communal and sectarian individuals, and ethnic warlords, to assume political positions. The primary aim was to obscure national and patriotic issues, while highlighting differences rather than integration. Bremer was successful in enacting a flawed interim constitution in defiance of the will and desire of the majority of the Iraqi people. The religious authority in Najaf denounced the interim constitution and warned of its illegitimacy and threat to the existence and integrity of the country. The framers of the interim constitution, the neoconservatives Noah Feldman and Larry Diamond, acting upon Paul Wolfowitz's instructions, had designed it in a way that ensures the dictatorship of an ethnic minority and the future disintegration of the country. In an interview on March 9, 2004, Feldman defended his design, stating that the interim constitution reflects the fact that the Kurds have been running their own show and have no desire to change that." What Feldman failed to mention is what Wolfowitz once proudly stated: that this situation in northern Iraq was created and protected by Washington. Like the interim constitution, the new draft constitution guarantees freedom of expression, religious and political affiliation, along with equal treatment of all Iraqis. Simultaneously, the new draft constitution maintains the serious flaws of the interim constitution. These flaws will eventually lead to the end of Iraq as a country and, at best, perpetuate strife and national unrest.
It's kinda funny, in a tragic way, that Feldman once likened the new Iraqi constitution to Canadian federalism, calling the Iraqi document "Quebec plus." Yeah, Feldman, as in ne plus ultra, eh? Right.
All the haggling over various parts of the constitution are secondary, says Ali:
Critics claim that these flaws render all constitutional articles pertaining to freedom and liberty useless. In its editorial on Oct. 6, the Washington Post argued that there are many flaws in the proposed constitution, but the most serious is its facilitation of a de facto partition of Iraq into several mini-states."
And not a mini-disaster for peace prospects in the Middle East, but a major one.
Posted by Harkavy at 08:17 AM, October 14, 2005
Full DisclosureTime for Miller to come clean
by Sydney H. SchanbergOctober 7th, 2005 3:37 PM
The press's role in the leak of a CIA operative's identity has made clear that if ever there was a time for transparency by the journalism community, this is it. The case is clouded in secrecy and murk, including the part about the press's involvement. At least two of the reporters involved, protecting sources, have failed to give anything resembling a complete account of their information-gathering.
I am not suggesting in any way that they name confidential sources who are not already known, but if they or their employers are to claim credibility, a full disclosure of their roles is crucial. The public needs to be given details of, among other things, how they conducted their reporting, what their conversations with their sources consisted of, what questions the special federal prosecutor investigating the case posed to them, and what their responses were. They should also bring forward any testimony they gave to the prosecutor's grand jury. Once a person testifies, he or she can make the testimony public.
The leak happened in July 2003. The prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, has been running his investigation for nearly two years and seems to be wrapping it up now. What began as a dirty political trick by the White House to silence criticism of the Iraq war has now swollen, because of the ensuing cover-up, into a threat to the Bush administration's legitimacy.
The journalist who first published CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson's name more than two years ago, columnist Robert Novak, cited as his sources two senior administration officials" unnamed. Novak, a partisan conservative who has regularly been a conduit for Republican leaks, has refused to explain his role but says he will do so as soon as the prosecutor's case is concluded. As I wrote in an earlier column: "Two years is a long time for a reporter to hide the truth."
Another controversial journalist, New York Times reporter Judith Miller, was found guilty of civil contempt by the federal judge in the case for refusing to identify her sources or testify before the grand jury. Finally, last week, after 85 days in a federal jail, she worked out a deal with the prosecutor and testified about one of her sources I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Richard Cheney. She also turned over some of her notes, which she was allowed to edit in advance. She has refused as yet to discuss the details of her involvement, but says this will all come out in the soon-to-appear New York Times account of the story. Oddly, though weapons of mass destruction are one of her key fields of interest and she seems to have done substantial reporting on the criticism by Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, of the Bush administration, she never published a story about it. So far, she has not explained why.
Since her release, Miller has gone on television to defend her actions, but has not cleared up any of the mysteries. In these appearances, she has said repeatedly that if sources' identities were not protected, many of them would not come forward and tell reporters what shenanigans the government and major corporations were really up to, and the public would suffer. "The public's right to know" is at stake, she says again and again. And she's right. That's why I believe, since she is a major part of the story, that she now has to take the uncommon step of telling us her whole story. She has to do it for the public she says she is responsible to, for her colleagues, and for the Times, whose reputation is also at stake here.
The American press has been under siege in recent years mostly from the right, which accuses journalists of being overwhelmingly liberal and determinedly hostile to the Bush administration. More and more court decisions have reversed journalists' traditional privileges such as protection, under the freedom-of-the-press language of the First Amendment, from having to testify or turn over notes, except in extraordinary cases.
Miller cited those privileges in her refusal to cooperate with the prosecutor. She says she did it to protect the confidentiality of her sources. Virtually everyone in the journalism world believes in the need for confidentiality to enable whistleblower sources to come forward anonymously and expose wrongdoing without fear of retaliation. But many have expressed doubts about Miller's reporting methods and her relationships with her sources.
One of the warts on this case and therefore on Novak's and Miller's silence is the fact that the sources this time, as is frequently the case with high-placed Washington leakers, were not civic-minded whistleblowers. They were major administration wheeler-dealers trying to smear Wilson, a former U.S. diplomat with service in Africa, who had challenged the Bush claim that the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq had gone to Africa seeking to purchase uranium yellowcake, needed for nuclear weapons. This was a key part of the weapons-of-mass-destruction rationale that Bush employed to lead the country into war against Iraq in 2003. Nearly all the Bush arguments for war turned out to be false, hyped, or hollow. The claim about the yellowcake, for instance, was based on forged documents.
The purpose of the leak of Plame's name and occupation she was a covert agent working in the area of anti-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction was to paint her as an anti-Bush co-conspirator with her husband, so as to discredit his information on the Bush uranium claim.
Also working against Times reporter Miller is her past reporting on weapons of mass destruction, which generally hewed to the White House line that Iraq was actively engaged in producing and building up stockpiles of these arms and thus presented a "grave and gathering danger" to America's security. When that story fell apart the president's own weapons investigator reported after the invasion of Iraq that no such weapons could be found Miller refused to acknowledge any error on her part, saying in essence that she had merely reported what officials were talking about in high places and had told her. She said then that this was what her job as a reporter was supposed to be. Later she softened some of these responses but never gave a clear accounting of her work nor fully acknowledged that she, wittingly or unwittingly, had misled the public. Anti-war critics have accused her of assisting the administration's push toward war.
In the days since her release from jail, she has, in my opinion, not helped herself or her paper. She has given interviews only to TV personalities who will gush over her. At this writing, there have been two such appearances, with Lou Dobbs on CNN and with ABC's Barbara Walters on Good Morning America.
Both hosts melted on camera. Walters introduced her guest thusly: "I've known Judith as a friend and a journalist for years. I visited her in jail." Later, Walters, in an awe-filled voice, said: "You were in jail longer than any other journalist." Miller quickly corrected her, "Twice as long as any other journalist." (Watch the video.)
Miller keeps saying that she is not seeking to be a hero or a martyr. Unfortunately, her demeanor the little we have seen of it belies this claim. This perception on my part may be a generational thing, but I was taught that a reporter does not go forth patting himself on the back for doing his job.
Also, I have always thought that keeping a professional distance between you and your sources was an important part of the journalist's code. At times, Miller's distance seems miniscule. It was reported that, while in jail, she was visited twice by John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton, a hawk on the Iraq war, also made weapons of mass destruction one of his special issues. This issue seems to link many of the people in this convoluted story. All the connections lead back to the Iraq war.
Miller also received a letter in jail from Libby, the Cheney source she was protecting until he gave her personal permission to give testimony about their conversations. Dated September 15, Libby's release frees her from her grant of confidentiality and urges her to go before the grand jury, saying that he "would be better off if you testified."
Two things about the letter struck me as strange.
One is the tone that of personal friend or buddy, not professional contact. The other off-key note is that much of the letter is devoted to laying out a kind of blueprint of the case Libby has made to the prosecutor namely that he "did not discuss Ms. Plame's name or identity" with any reporter. Could this have been a map to guide Miller's own testimony-to-come?
Novak has never disguised the fact that he is a "player" in the nation's capital. Is Judith Miller also a "player" in Washington's games, or is she a reporter? Miller needs to address these questions.
Even her supporters are asking for answers. On September 30, one of her most stalwart admirers, Lucy Dalglish, director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, was asked during an online chat hosted by The Washington Post: "So what are the three biggest mysteries/questions that YOU would like Judy Miller to explain?" At the top of her list, Dalglish put this question: "Was Scooter Libby your source for information about Valerie Plame, or were you HIS source?"
About the tone of the Libby letter to Miller, here is how it ends:
"You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work and life. Until then, you will remain in my thoughts and prayers. With admiration, Scooter Libby."
We reporters are always insisting on full disclosure and transparency from the people and institutions we write about. Now, with the press under scrutiny and in some quarters under attack, it has become necessary for reporters to do their own disclosing.
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