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2004-03-16 - 9:39 p.m.

Smearing the messenger

The Bush machine aims its poison darts at another military hero -- Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski.

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Here's an article By David Talbot from Salon, about the typical Republican response to someone who tells the truth about this corrupt and underhanded administration.

I've written about Karen Kwiatkowski before and her articles which exposed the neo-cons in the Pentagon who hijacked US foreign policy and hyped the intelligence to get us into the Iraq War. They should all face charges for the damage they've done to our country.

But Lt. Col. Kwiatowski is an American hero for exposing the truth.

Here's the article in Salon:

March 15, 2004 | There they go again. Whenever the Bush machine is put on the defensive, it immediately goes on the offensive, and character assassination is one of its favorite weapons. I'm not talking about the attacks on John Kerry's patriotism. I'm talking about the poison-tipped assault on another military veteran, retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, whose damning eyewitness account of how neoconservative zealots in the Defense Department bulldozed the facts and drove the country to war was published in Salon last week ("The New Pentagon Papers").

Kwiatkowski's right-wing critics could not challenge her facts, not a single one, so they immediately reached for the tar brush. The Wall Street Journal smeared her as "something of a right-wing crank." Max Boot, a conservative columnist for the Los Angeles Times, trashed her as "flaky." Then Clifford May, a hit man for the Republican National Committee, was given free reign by John Gibson, host of Fox News' "The Big Show," to drag the 20-year Air Force veteran through the mud after Fox turned off her microphone -- one more bold display of the network's commitment to fairness and balance. Once she was silenced, Gibson and May smeared Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski as an "anarchist" with "radical associations" to political weirdoes like Lyndon LaRouche.

The truth -- never an interest of these right-wing hatchet men -- is that the former Air Force intelligence officer comes from a politically conservative family and subscribes to a libertarian philosophy. She once gave an interview to a LaRouche publication -- the full extent of her "association" with this political fringe. By the RNC man's strained logic, the fact that she also spoke to Fox News should make her a Rupert Murdoch acolyte.

If I were part of the Bush reelection team, I would want to cloud reality too. The disturbing reality that Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski presented was of an administration driven by ideologues so determined to rush into an Iraq war that they would not let intelligence or expertise or facts get in their way. We are all now paying for the folly of these men, none more than Kwiatkowski's former colleagues in the military, who are fighting and dying in Iraq. The fact that many of Kwiatkowski's neoconservative opponents have never served their country in uniform makes the Bush machine's personal attacks against her all the more repellent.

Unlike Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski's character assassins, she served her country honorably for 20 years -- and she is serving America again by bravely telling the truth about the policies of deceit that led us to war.

The tens of thousands of readers who have clicked on Kwiatkowski's revealing exposé know this and you have flooded Salon with e-mails in praise of her courage and integrity. We want you to know that Salon will continue to stand by her and will continue to publish eye-opening reports on the Bush administration and its extremist policies.

2004-03-15 - 1:26 p.m.

Bush's war is a financial disaster

The U.S. won an inevitable military triumph, but political victory remains elusive

By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor

This article from the Toronto Sun sums up the tragic situation in Iraq, tragic not only for the Iraqis, but for the US as well.

Here are some excerpts:

But as the great modern military thinker, Maj.-Gen J.F.C. Fuller, observed 40 years ago, the proper objective of war is not military victory but a politically advantageous peace. While the U.S. won an inevitable military victory against a nearly helpless Iraq, political victory so far remains elusive.

...

But for the United States, Iraq was at best a pyrrhic victory. Invading and occupying Iraq has proven to be a financial disaster. The invasion cost $105 billion US in direct expenses - the price of five complete carrier battle groups, or one million low-cost apartments.

Occupying Iraq costs $9 billion monthly.

Pre-war neo-con plans to finance the occupation by plundering Iraq's oil have been frustrated by sabotage. Congress estimates the overall cost of "pacifying" and "rebuilding" Iraq for fiscal 2003 and 2004 at a staggering $200 billion.

This money will have to be borrowed by the empty treasury, which, thanks to Bush's reckless "war" spending, is running huge deficits heading toward $400 billion, risking an explosion of inflation that threatens to undermine the long-term bond market and further weaken the dollar.

The human cost of the war continues to rise. As of this writing, U.S. losses amount to 555 dead, and about 9,000 casualties from combat, accidents and serious illnesses.

...

The brazen arrogance and profound ignorance shown by the Bush administration in its crusade against Iraq has turned the world against the United States. Occupied Iraq is acting as a terrorism generator. For the next generation of young Muslims, Iraq is becoming what Afghanistan was in the 1980s, a rallying point to fight foreign occupation, battle imperialism and defend the tattered honour of the Muslim world. Bush and his men have created millions of new enemies.

Half of all U.S. ground combat forces are tied down in and around Iraq. Reserves are being mobilized for long tours. Wear and tear on overstretched U.S. forces and their heavy equipment is a grave, though little discussed, problem.

Neo-con promises of "liberation" of Iraq, of joyous, flower-tossing crowds and of rapid "democratization" have turned to dust. Iraq remains a dangerous, volatile mess seething with violence and implacable Shia political demands. Twenty resistance groups now battle U.S. and allied occupation troops. Militant Islamic jihadis are heading for Iraq to fight "Great Satan" America. Yet Bush still claims invading Iraq made America safer.

However, because of Iraq, much of the world now regards America itself as a menacing, unstable threat.

President Bush has stuck his head into a hornet's nest. The U.S. will bleed men, money and reputation for a long time before it figures out how to get out of the first colonial misadventure of the 21st century.

Read the rest of this thoughtful article here.

2004-03-11 - 9:24 a.m.

Conason: 'Bush had friends, but Martha had none'

Ace reporter Joe Conason compares the recent insider trading scandal that will send Martha Stewart to prison, with George W Bush's much more blatant insider trading when he was a director of Harken Corporation.

The difference is that George W's father was president, so the SEC looked the other way.

In addition, Harken had just done some Enron type accounting to hide big losses, so the stock was temporarily puffed up. Bush made $800,000 on his deal, which gave him the stake to get in on the Texas Rangers deal, which eventually made him $14 million.

Here are some excerpts:

Mr. Bush was well aware of his company's approaching financial doom. He knew that the Harken management had created a phony profit of $10 million by unloading assets, at an inflated price, to a front company owned by company insiders. That scam artificially puffed Harken's stock by concealing huge losses.

Ms. Stewart sold 3,928 ImClone shares, possibly saving herself about $45,000. Mr. Bush sold 212,140 Harken shares, which grossed $848,560, saving himself well over half of that amount. Ms. Stewart had no warning that her trade might be unlawful. Mr. Bush and the other Harken directors were warned against insider trading by the firm's lawyers just before he dumped his holdings.

Ms. Stewart partially erased a telephone message from her broker, allegedly for conspiratorial reasons, and then restored it. Mr. Bush failed to report his inside trades of Harken stock to the Securities and Exchange Commission, as required by law, for eight months, then blamed the delay on the S.E.C., and finally said it was the fault of Harken's lawyers. He and his attorneys neglected to mention that memo warning him and the other directors about insider trading until after the S.E.C. closed its investigation of him.

...

The greatest difference between them is that Ms. Stewart, a self-made success, will spend months -- if not years -- in prison, losing hundreds of millions of dollars and her reputation. Mr. Bush, whose business achievements were owed largely to others, suffered not even a paltry fine.

Now George W. Bush is President, promising a new era of corporate responsibility symbolized by Martha Stewart's ruin. Such is justice in the age of irony.

Go here to read the whole informative article.

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