Stand Naked

dailyKos

I've been doing a lot of entries in my diary at dailyKos the past few weeks, but have been neglecting my own little slice of the blogosphere. So, in honor of the coming of September, I've vowed to post more here in the coming weeks.

So, look for more frequent entries and for more features on the way.

In case you haven't noticed, the Emperoar has no Clothes. We need to help everyone see that.

Will Feith Burn in Pentagon Spy Probe?

The FBI has leaked that Larry Franklin, a fairly low level Pentagon analyst working for Douglas Feith, is suspected of having passed confidential documents regarding Iran policy to the Israeli government, using representatives of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee as intermediaries.  As noted earlier this morning by kos, Knight-Ridder is reporting that the charges against Franklin grow out of a much wider FBI investigation of Pentagon leaks. A story today by Richard Sale at UPI also reports that the investigation is probably looking at Harold Rhode and William Luti, both of whom are also part of Feith's Office of Special Plans,

From this, a question must emerge - Is it likely that Franklin, Rhode or Luti acted without direction from Feith?

A look back in history shows the strong liklihood that Feith had a major role.

"In 1978, in a Washington, D.C. restaurant, I overheard Stephen D. Bryen, then a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer and now a deputy assistant secretary of Defense, offering "Pentagon documents on the bases" to officials of the Israeli government. After I reported this incident to the Justice Department, FBI and Justice Department investigators gathered sufficient evidence on Dr. Bryen's activities to recommend he be brought before an investigative grand jury for espionage. The case was quietly closed, however, by Philip Heymann, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, a close personal friend and associate of Dr. Bryen's attorney. Bryen was never formally charged or made to account for his actions under oath."

These are the words of Michael Saba, author of the Armageddon Network.  The conversation he described took place between Stephen Bryen and Zvi Rafiah, the Mossad station chief in Washington. Present with him was the executive director of AIPAC. Bryen resigned in 1979, before the investigation into his dealings with the Mossad concluded and went to work as executive director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), where he provided consulting services to AIPAC.  

This background on Bryen's activities forms part of a lengthy article by Stephen Green, Serving Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Administration, which appeared in Counterpunch in February of this year. Green provides a chilling insight into the history of the hawks behind the invasion of Iraq. It also shows why it's highly unlikely that Larry Franklin acted alone.

In 1981, Stephen Bryen re-entered the spotlight when Richard Perle, Reagan's nominee to be Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, selected Bryen as his Deputy.  Perle no doubt sympathized with Bryen over the unfortunate circumstances that had led to his dismissal. Seymour Hersh has written about how Perle himself, while serving as an aide to Senator Henry Jackson in 1970, was overheard in an FBI wiretap of the Israeli Embassy discussing classified information that had been supplied to him by someone on the National Security Council staff.  That someone was determined to be Helmut Sonnenfeldt, who in 1967, while he was a staff member of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, once before had been investigated for transmission of a classified document concerning the commencement of the 1967 war in the Middle East to an Israeli Government official.

Perle escaped censure from the incident and by 1973 he had become a senior staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.  In that role he exerted his, and Scoop Jackson's, influence to help Paul Wolfowitz obtain a job with the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.  Perle and Wolfowitz had worked together as protégés of Albert Wohlstetter summoned to help him gather the information he needed to wage the Safeguard campaign from the offices of Sen. Jackson.

Wolfowitz must have learned well from Perle and Bryan.  In 1977, Wolfowitz moved from ACDA to become Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Regional Programs.  While there, in 1978, he was investigated for providing a classified document on the proposed sale of U.S. weapons to an Arab government, to an Israel Government official, through an AIPAC intermediary.

During Perle's tenure as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy (ISP), he brought on another staffer with a background similar to Bryen - Douglas Feith.  Feith had been a Middle East analyst in the Near East and South Asian Affairs section of the National Security Council.  In 1982, when William Clark replaced Richard Allen as National Security Advisor, Feith, who had only been with the NSC for a year was fired.  The reason -- he had become the subject of an FBI inquiry into whether he'd provided classified material to an official of the Israeli Embassy in Washington.  With this background, Feith was quickly snatched up by Perle to serve as his Special Counsel, and then his Deputy.

So, Bryen, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith - all connected, all serving in various DOD positions, all accused of having been involved in the unauthorized transfer of classified documents to Israel.  Quite a ring.  In fact, when Jonathan Pollard was busted as an Israeli spy in 1985, Perle and Wolfowitz are said to have beenon the DOD General Counsel's short list of suspects as Pollard's handlers.

And now we have Larry Franklin - a former colonel in the Air Force Reserve who served two short tours at the United States Embassy in Tel Aviv.

According to the New York Times, Franklin was a Soviet analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency who transferred to the Middle East division in the early 1990's. He learned Farsi and became an Iran analyst, developing extensive contacts among Iranians who opposed the Tehran government.

Three years ago he was transferred from DIA to work under William Lutti in Feith's Office of Special Plans.  Last year it was disclosed that in Starting in December, 2001, Feith dispatched Franklin and Harold Rhode, another anti-Iran hardliner in the OSP and Feith's top specialist on the middle east, to hold secret meetings in Rome and Paris with Iran-Contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar. Josh Marshall and Laura Rozen now have the details of those meetings laid out in detail.

And what can we conclude about Franklin's and Rhode's boss, Douglas Feith - Douglas Feith who in 1982 was investigated for passing confidential information to Israel.

At the time of Feith's appointment to DOD in 2001, James Zogby wrote a probing article in which he detailed Feith's long pro-Israeli history.  In a 1992 article, Feith wrote:

It is in the interest of U.S. and Israel to remove needless impediments to technological cooperation between them. Technologies in the hands of responsible, friendly countries facing military threats, countries like Israel, serve to deter aggression, enhance regional stability and promote peace thereby.

In 1996, Feith, along with Richard Perle, wrote "A Clean Break: a New Strategy for Securing the Realm," an advisory paper for the newly elected Likud Prime Minister, in which they advised Netanyahu to:

"make a clean break from the peace process;" reassert Israel's claim to its land by rejecting "land for peace" as the basis of peace; strengthen Israel's defenses to better confront Syria and Iraq; and forge a new and stronger relationship with the United States based on self-reliance and mutual interest.

Is it really conceivable if Franklin, as alleged, was involved in handing over confidential documents to Israel, that he did it without either the direction or knowledge of his boss, Douglas Feith?

Winners in War on Poverty -- Super-Rich

There's a lot of chatter today about some news  from the U.S. Census Bureau:

The official poverty rate rose, from 12.1 percent in 2002 to 12.5 percent in 2003. The number in poverty increased also, by 1.3 million people, to 35.9 million in 2003.

People seem to think this shows a failure on the part of the BushCo Administration in its pursuit of the War on Poverty.

Au contraire!!

These naysayers fail to understand the goals for BushCo in this war (just as many of the same naysayers fail to understand BushCo's goals in the great "War on Terror" or its bastard child, the "War on Iraq").  Closer examination of the Census Bureau figures proves that BushCo is in fact winning its fight against the poverty of the super-rich -- by making them richer.

True, the economy has struggled for the past 3 years, and the real household income for households at the 20th income percentile is down 1.9% since last year and 6% for the three year period.  But for households in the 95th percentile, BushCo has indeed turned the corner.  They managed a .4% gain since last year, eliminating part of the 1% decline these upper income households had endured in the prior 2 years. Happy Days indeed are Here Again -- for the super-rich.

The Economic Policy Institute analysis cited above also noted that:

Reflecting the unbalanced growth in incomes shown above, the income gap between high (the 95th percentile) and low (20th percentile) household incomes grew in 2003, as it has in every year since the end of the 1990s recovery in 2000.   The ratio of high to low incomes, for instance, rose from 8.37 in 2002 to 8.57 in 2003. In contrast, in 2000, high- income households at the 95th percentile received 8.1 times the incomes of low-income households.

A 2004 study from Merrill Lynch entitled the World Wealth Report confirms that 2003 was a great year for the wealthy in the U.S. The reports tracks the ranks of the HNWI, i.e. High Net Worth Individuals, defined as persons with a net asset value, excluding home real estate, of over $1 million.  While the number of U.S. residents in poverty increased by 1.3 million people, to 35.9 million in 2003, the number of HNWI's in the U.S. increased by 270,000 to 2,270,000, a 14% increase.  The Report doesn't separately show the increase in actual wealth for these U.S. super-rich, but the wealth of the HNWI's for the North American region increased from $7.4 to $8.5 trillion.  Given that Canada only has 200,000 HNWI's, most of that wealth increase no doubt occurred in the U.S.  The 2003 percentage increase in both the number of HNWI's and in their cumulative wealth for North America was higher than the rate for Europe, Asia/Pacific, Mid-East, or Latin America, and was almost double the overall rate for the entire world.

The Report gives credit where credit is due for this good fortune:

HNWIs were the significant beneficiaries of the Bush Administration's decision early in the year to cut taxes.Under the Tax Relief Act of 2001, scheduled tax cuts were pulled forward

in 2003 with the top tax rate for 2003 cut to 35%3.Additionally, through President Bush's plan to phase out the inheritance tax, the estate tax qualifying threshold will rise to well above $1 million in financial assets from 2004.

Another recent study confirms the success of the gush up effect of BushCo policies.  Increased corporate earnings in 2003 enabled many companies to give a big bump up in compensation for their very valuable, and needy, CEO's.  A survey by The Corporate Library of 1400 companies, including 372 companies in the S&P 500 found that median pay for CEO's at the S&P 500 companies increased 22.18% from 2002 to 2003.  The increase for all the companies surveyed was 15%, a strong improvement over the paltry 9% increase that CEO's enjoyed in 2002.

So, for all those HNWI's out there for whom the price of a bottle of Krug is just pocket change, pour a glass of bubbly and drink a toast to George W.

How Sick is This?

WaPo reports on one of the findings in new Pentagon report on Abu Ghraib investigation to be released this week:

An Army investigation into the Abu Ghraib prison scandal has found that military police dogs were used to frighten detained Iraqi teenagers as part of a sadistic game, one of many details in the forthcoming report that were provoking expressions of concern and disgust among Army officers briefed on the findings.

Earlier reports and photographs from the prison have indicated that unmuzzled military police dogs were used to intimidate detainees at Abu Ghraib, something the dog handlers have told investigators was sanctioned by top military intelligence officers there. But the new report, according to Pentagon sources, will show that MPs were using their animals to make juveniles -- as young as 15 years old -- urinate on themselves as part of a competition.

Pissed off yet?  There's more.

other officials at the Pentagon said the investigation also acknowledges that military intelligence soldiers kept multiple detainees off the record books and hid them from international humanitarian organizations. The report also mentions substantiated claims that at least one male detainee was sodomized by one of his captors at Abu Ghraib, sources said.

Sick.  Someone finally has to answer for this, right?
Think again.

"The report will show that these actions were bad, illegal, unauthorized, and some of it was sadistic," said one Defense Department official. "But it will show that they were the actions of a few, actions that went unnoticed because of leadership failures."

So which leaders are going to be charged?  None.

Yes, none.  Beyond the 7 MP's already facing court martial, only "a dozen others -- low-ranking soldiers, civilian contractors and medics" will face charges.

That's right, while "the report also criticizes military leadership, from the prison and up through the highest levels of the U.S. chain of command in Iraq at the time," none of the commanders will have to answer for it.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, then the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is named in the report for leadership deficiencies and failing to deal with rising problems at the prison as he tried to manage 150,000 troops countering an unexpected insurgency. Sanchez, however, will not be recommended for any punitive action or even a letter of reprimand, the source said. About 300 pages of the 9,000-page report will be released publicly, according to Army officials.

BushCo redefines torture and spits on the Geneva convention.  Rumsfield sends the Gitmo Grand Inquisitor to Iraq to pump up the program. We torture kids.  We rape detainees.  We hide prisoners from the Red Cross.  And who takes the rap?  The grunts do. The top brass gets away with not even a wristslap, and the public gets to see virtually nothing about why.

Piss on the cowardly whitewashers.  Piss on them.

MayDay! Another Major Hit on SWB Liars for Bush Boat

The WaPo reports that a Vietnam vet who was a POW with 2 of the Swift Boat Liars who appear in latest anti-Kerry ad are lying:

Phil Butler, who spent eight years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, took issue with suggestions by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that Kerry's antiwar protests caused the POWs to be treated badly. "I lived with two of the POWs who are now in that group -- Mr. [Ken] Courdier and Mr. [Paul] Gallanti -- and I am telling you, they are full of it. We never heard a blooming thing about John Kerry while we were there," said Butler, who contacted the campaign months ago to support Kerry and only recently heard back from Kerry's veterans coordinator, John Hurley.
Butler said that while he was tortured and mistreated until 1969, by the time Kerry was protesting the war and speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1971, the POWs were better treated.

How much more badly could this possibly blow up in their face.  The SBLiars and BushCo have been suckered into continuing their lies, and every day now they get hit with a new ambush.  Their boat is sinking fast.

Why Kerry's 1971 Sen Testimony is Important

Attention to Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony could help refocus some issues about what's going on in Iraq right now - if it is loooked at truthfully. The only piece of the testimony the Swift Boat Liars have brought up - and thus the only part the SCLM will focus on - involves the 2 or 3 paragraphs in which he reported on the testimony of 150 Vietnam vets at the Winter Soldier hearings. And the SBL's distort even this part of it. First, they make it look like Kerry was the sole source of any claims about atrocities.  That of course is untrue. As Kerry makes clear in his testimomy, he was simply summarizing what many others had reported. Kerry testified on April 22, 1971. The entire record of the Winter Soldier Hearings had alsready been submitted to Congress and made a part of the Congressional Record by Sen. Mark Hatfield on April 5th. Mark Hatfield - a Republican, a veteran who served at Iwo Jima and Okinawa - had this to say on the Senate floor when he presented the Winter Soldier transcripts:

There has recently been brought to my attention testimony relating to the policy and conduct of American forces in Indochina which has grave and very serious implications. The testimony is given by honorably discharged veterans who had served in Vietnam, and was conducted by Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Three days of testimony were conducted in Detroit, Mich. on January 31, February 1, and 2 of this year. This group, which represents 11,000 veterans, plans to send several thousand to Washington the week of April 19 to petition Congress for full congressional hearings. I, of course, have no way of ascertaining the veracity of all the testimony given, and I am not in agreement with certain of the statements and judgments made by those who testified. However, I believe that the allegations made by these Americans, who served their country in Vietnam, are so serious and so grave that they demand the full study by the appropriate committees of Congress as well as by the executive branch. The testimony and allegations raised by the experience of these veterans includes charges regarding: the torture and murder of suspects and prisoners of war captured by Americans and South Vietnamese forces; the wanton killing of innocent, unarmed civilians; the brutalization and rape of Vietnamese women in the villages; military policies which enabled indiscriminate bombing and the random firing of artillery into villages which resulted in the burning to death of women, children and old people; the widespread defoliation of lands of forests; the use of various types of gases; the mutilation of enemy bodies, and others. A recurrent theme running throughout the testimony is that of institutionalized racist attitudes of the military in their training of the men who are sent to Vietnam--training which has indoctrinated them to think of all Vietnamese as "gooks" and subhuman. Further, the thrust of the allegations made in the 3-day testimony is that such actions were the consequence of reasonable and known policy adopted by our military commanders and that the knowledge of incidents resulting from these policies was widely shared. Several of the allegations made in this testimony would place the United States in violation of the Geneva Convention and other international agreements relating to the conduct of war which have been ratified by our Government.

Was Hatfield giving aid and comfort to the enemy when he did this?  Someone should ask the SBL.

By April of 1971, the whole world knew about the My Lai massacre.  Sy Hersh's book cane out in November of 1969.  The Peers inquiry comissioned by the Army to investigate the atrocities issued its report in March 1970:

The Peers report told a comprehensive story of what had happened on March 16, 1968. The crimes had included murders by individuals and groups, rape, sodomy, maiming and assault of civilians.

The report concluded that both Col Henderson, the brigade commander, and Lt Col Frank Barker, the commanding officer of the task force, had substantial knowledge of the war crime, but did nothing about it.

The Peers inquiry recommended that charges should be brought against 28 officers and two non-commissioned officers involved in the concealment of the massacre.

The court martial of William Calley began in November of 1970 and involved weeks of horrific testimony and Calley's eventual conviction in March of 1971.
So did Kerry's three paragraphs about atrocities really air anything new or injurious to the war effort?  Not likely.

The SBL's ignore the real thrust of Kerry's Testimony.  He testified about the feelings of veterans who had been lied to about why they were being sent to fight:

I would like to talk to you a little bit about what the result is of the feelings these men carry with them after coming back from Vietnam. The country doesn't know it yet, but it has created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence, and who are given the chance to die for the biggest nothing in history; men who have returned with a sense of anger and a sense of betrayal which no one has yet grasped.
As a veteran and one who feels this anger, I would like to talk about it. We are angry because we feel we have been used in the worst fashion by the administration of this country.

He testified about the people of Vietnam:

We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Vietcong, North Vietnamese, or American.

He testified about the plight of returning veterans:

you think about a poster in this country with a picture of Uncle Sam and the picture says "I want you." And a young man comes out of high school and says, "That is fine. I am going to serve my country." And he goes to Vietnam and he shoots and he kills and he does his job or maybe he doesn't kill, maybe he just goes and he comes back, and when he gets back to this country he finds that he isn't really wanted, because the largest unemployment figure in the country- it varies depending on who you get it from, the VA Administration 15 percent, various other sources 22 percent. But the largest corps of unemployed in this country are veterans of this war, and of those veterans 33 percent of the unemployed are black. That means 1 out of every 10 of the Nation's unemployed is a veteran of Vietnam.

The hospitals across the country won't, or can't meet their demands. It is not a question of not trying. They don't have the appropriations. A man recently died after he had a tracheotomy in California, not because of the operation but because there weren't enough personnel to clean the mucous out of his tube and he suffocated to death.

And he asked: "Where is the Leadership?":

We are also 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 where are 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 reputation bleaching behind them in the sun in this country.

Finally, he begged Congress to find a way to end the war and heal the wounds:

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 barbarous war, to pacify our own hearts, to conquer the hate and the fear that have driven this country these last 10 years and more and so when, in 30 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 pace where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.

These are the very issues that need to be focused on about Iraq today.  And it is the Iraq veterans of today, who like John Kerry 33 years ago did, are speaking out and raising questions about the war who need to be encouraged to do so and who need to be listened to.
We need to be asking why Joseph Darby, the soldier who blew the whistle on Abu Ghraib, is now, along with his wife, under Army protective custody because of death threats made against him by so-called patriots.
The SBL attack on John Kerry is an attack on anyone who would dare speak out.  It sends a message, just like the outing of Valerie Plame sent a message - "If you rock the boat, you will pay.  Maybe now, maybe 30 years from now.  But you will pay.  So keep your mouth such and be a good lamb as we lead the country to slaughter."
That is what is at stake here.  That is why Kerry and the rest of us have to stand up to the SBL, to the Bushies who support them, and to the media who dutifuly pass along along their lies.

WaPo Finds another witness for Kerry

This should be the death knell for the Swift Boat Liars.  Their sole remaiming shred of argument about the validity of Kerry's Bronze Star is the factual dispute between Kerry's shipmates and the SBL about whether the 5 swiftboats were under fire during the incident when Kerry rescued Rassmann.  

While all the records support the Kerry version, the SBL's argue that Kerry wrote the reports.  Now the Post has located an honest crewmemeber from one of the other boats:

Until now, eyewitness evidence supporting Kerry's version had come only from his own crewmen. But yesterday, The Post independently contacted a participant who has not spoken out so far in favor of either camp who remembers coming under enemy fire. "There was a lot of firing going on, and it came from both sides of the river," said Wayne D. Langhofer, who manned a machine gun aboard PCF-43, the boat that was directly behind Kerry's.
Langhofer said he distinctly remembered the "clack, clack, clack" of enemy AK-47s, as well as muzzle flashes from the riverbanks. Langhofer, who now works at a Kansas gunpowder plant, said he was approached several months ago by leaders of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth but declined their requests to speak out against Kerry.

The SBL's couldn't get this guy to lie.  Now their toast.  Couple this with William Rood from the Chicago Trib breaking silence today to support Kerry's accounts of his Siver Star action.  SBL, it's game, set, match

Get Your Free Swift Boat Lies

One of the reasons that John O'Neill and Jerry Corsi's Swift Boat Liars book "Unfit for Command" has such supposedly high sales numbers is that some Wingers have bought up copies so they can give them away. You can get your Free!! copy today at NewsMax:

Get the new bestselling book "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out against John Kerry" by John E. O'Neill, Jerome R. Corsi FREE with NewsMax Magazine. Just sign up to receive NewsMax Magazine or renew your subscription early PLUS we'll send you NewsMax Magazine's Special Report on John Kerry entitled "Opportunist." This is a value of almost $40 with shipping included!

Sign up for NewsMax Magazine at the discount price, and receive two great bonuses FREE:

"Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out against John Kerry" by John E. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi - a $28 value FREE
The Special Report: John Kerry 'Opportunist' - a $4 value FREE
- plus free shipping - an added value of $8!

Maybe this kind of giveaway deal caused the buy-up that has exhausted retail supplies. If you'd want to buy the slime from Amazon, you'll have to wait 5 to 7 weeks for delivery, according to the website, which, incidently, has an Amazon editorial review that at least raises the question of whether "the authors are spinning the interviews that they conducted for ulterior motives."

But why is that this trash has all the pundits talking and is number 1 in Amazon sales rank, while no-one seems to be even mentioning Ian Williams' book "Deserter : George Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans, and His Past", which came out last month and is number 5,986 in sales rank? Williams, the UN correspondent fot The Nation, should have a lot more media credibility than Chuck Colson's wind-up toy John O'Neill. Why isn't Deserter getting any media attention? No doubt it's the liberal media bias at work again!

Amazingly, "Deserter" has hardly any votes on Amazon as a recommended alternative to Swift Boat Liars. You can change that: Go to the Recommendation site for Unfit for Command and insert the ISBN number for Deserter - 1560256273 - in the Recommendation box. Do it once as a recommended "in addition to" and then again as an "instead of." Maybe some browser might at least notice it if we can build up its vote there.
J.H. Hatfield's book Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President is nuber one right now in both categories with 50 or so votes. Pushing Hatfield's book might be rather "unfortunate," given it's checkered history:

Democracy Now Special: A Never Before Played Interview With the Late J.H. Hatfield, Author of Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and The Making of An American President. Today we play an interview that we have held for over two years. It involves allegations of President Bush, drugs, obstruction of justice and corporate scandal. It raises questions about why Bush's driver license number was changed. And it involves a man who died of an alleged suicide. In the book Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President author J.H. Hatfield charges that President Bush was arrested in 1972 for cocaine possession and that Bush's father George Sr. used his political connections to have his son's record expunged. Soon after publication, Hatfield's credibility was challenged. He had been convicted in 1988 for hiring a hit-man in a failed attempt to kill his boss and had served five years in prison. J.H. Hatfield died of an alleged suicide in July 2001.

Maybe now that Kerry has directly challenged Bush on comparing their 'Nam records, someone will start taking the Bush-AWOL story seriously.

Results from a Pew Research Center Foreign Policy Attitudes poll released yesterday should be rubbed in the faces of the pundits and the Repugs snickering about John Kerry's use of the "S" word in connection with the "war on terror" - "I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side."

One of the questions asked what values should drive US foreign policy. The top 5 responses:

- Following moral principles - 72%
- Being cautious - 66%
- Being decisive - 62%
- Being practical - 58%
- Being compassionate - 54%

Only 37% think that US foreign policy should be based mostly on US interests, while 49% think our foreign policy should take allies' interests into account.

Most of the respondents, 59%, think that Bush is "too quick" to involve the military and only 33% think that he tries hard enough to reach diplomatic solutions. These numbers are a dramatic reversal from a survey in April of 2003 where 58% thought he tried hard enough with diplomacy and only 36% thought he was too quick to involve the military in Iraq.

The poll combines the results of three surveys involving over 4500 adults that were conducted between mid-July and Aug. 12 of this year. It measures opinions about issues facing the US and about the best way to deal with various foreign policy issues.

The survey of the most important problems facing the US today showed war/foreign policy/terrorism as the top priority, at 41%, followed by economic issues at 26% and the combined total of other domestic issues also at 26%. With respect to foreign policy issues, 67% of respondents believe that the US is less respected around the world today than before the Iraq invasion and 43% see that lack of respect as a major problem.

Bush's overall job approval was at 46%. Although he had a 58% approval rating for his handling of the war on terrorism, he scored only 43% approval for his handling of Iraq and 42% for his handling of foreign policy and the economy.

Of particular note are the top foreign policy priorities among what the survey determined were "swing voters." Their rankings:

- Protecting against terrorism - 90%
- Protecting American jobs - 88%
- Preventing weapons proliferation - 73%
- Reducing the spread of AIDS - 73%
- Insuring energy supplies - 70%
- Improving relations with allies - 55%
- Strengthening the UN - 53%

While the Kerry campaign has been working to build his anti-terrorism credibility and to attack Bush's record on protecting jobs, it seems that little has been said about the third ranked issue for swing voters - weapons proliferation.

Bush's record on weapons, particularly nuclear weapons is horrific. Early on, he abandoned the ABM treaty, he's done virtually nothing to secure the thousands of warheads floating around the former Soviet Union, and he recently announced his lack of support for any verification mechnanism in the Non-proliferation treaty currently being negotiated. Senators Levin Reed present a compehensive critique of Bush administration nuclear weapons record in a Jan. 2004 article in Arms Control Today.

The Center for Arms Control provides a chilling picture of Bush's willingness to use nuclear weapons.

The 2001 Nuclear Posture Review suggested possible first use of nuclear weapons against countries without nuclear weapons (Syria, Libya, Iraq, Iran) and in non-nuclear situations, such as a North Korean attack on South Korea or a confrontation with China over Taiwan.
The 2002 National Security Presidential Directive, known as NSPD-17, made explicit a previously ambiguous policy that the U.S. may use nuclear weapons in response to the use of weapons of mass destruction against our forces.

Bush has pushed for, and obtained, Congressional approval of the development of new nuclear weapons. In 2003 Bush achieved Congressional repeal of the ban on the development of low-yield nuclear weapons and Congress appropriated about $50 million for nuclear weapons development programs for 2004. Bush's 2005 budget requests over $100 million to spend on these programs for development of a nuclear "bunker buster," low-yield tactical weapons, weapons building facilities, and testing readiness.

These facts should terrify a public that is concerned about weapons proliferation and believes that Bush is too quick to resort to force in resolving foreign conflicts. The Kerry campaign should be doing more with this critical issue. Anyone who remembers the devastating impact on Goldwater's 1964 campaign created by the Daisy ad in 1964 knows its power

Bush = Divide and Denigratre

The Prez appeared yesterday at a Boeing plant to praise his blind pursuit of Ronald Reagan's Star Wars Program. Boeing is a prime contractor for the "missle defense system," being pushed by BushCo, so it provided a suitable bubble venue for him.

Many rational people question whether the MDS will ever provide any real security against a nuclear attack, either because of its potentials for failure or because the real nuclear threat, at least from terrorist groups, does not invlove delivery by missle.

The Union of Concerned Scientists, in an assesment of the MDS program this year, opined:

The ballistic missile defense system that the United States will deploy later this year will have no demonstrated defensive capability and will be ineffective against a real attack by long-range ballistic missiles. The administration's claims that the system will be reliable and highly effective are irresponsible exaggerations. There is no technical justification for deployment of the system, nor are there sound reasons to procure and deploy additional interceptors.

The Council for a Livable World has compiled a catalogue of the questions and criticisms raised about MDS by scientists, Congressmen, foreign leaders, and government agencies, including the GAO and the Pentagon. The Carnegie Endowmwnt for International Peace also has an extensive collection of critical reports, analyses, and testimony about the program.

Aside from significant issues about its ultimate feasibility, one continuing concern focuses on BushCo's rush to achieve deployment before the election this year. According to a GAO report issued last summer:

Missile Defense: Knowledge-Based Practices Are Being Adopted, but Risks Remain, [T]he President's directive to begin fielding a missile defense capability by 2004 places the [Pentagon] in danger of getting off track early and impairing the effort over the long term...While doing so may help MDA meet the President's deadline, it also increases the potential that some elements may not work as intended.

Others question BushCo's timetable because of its diversion of resources:

Another important consideration is balancing the high costs of missile defense with funding allocated to other national security programs. Since President Reagan's strategic defense initiative speech in March 1983, a conservative estimate of about $130 billion, not adjusted upward for inflation, has been spent on missile defense, much of it on GMD. Your Fiscal Year 2005 budget for missile defense is $10.2 billion, with $3.7 billion allocated to GMD. Some $53 billion is programmed for missile defense over the next five years, with much more to follow. Deploying a highly complex weapons system prior to testing it adequately can increase costs significantly. U.S. technology, already deployed, can pinpoint the source of a ballistic missile launch. It is, therefore, highly unlikely that any state would dare to attack the U.S. or allow a terrorist to do so from its territory with a missile armed with a weapon of mass destruction, thereby risking annihilation from a devastating U.S. retaliatory strike.

Who are the hotheads making this argument? A group of almost fifty retired senior military officials in a March 26, 2004 Open Letter to George W. Bush on behalf of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, that's who.

This diversion of resources to "defend" against a not very imminent danger is particularly troubling given that

U.S. territory is more likely to be attacked with [chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear] materials from nonmissile delivery means-most likely from terrorists-than by missiles, primarily because nonmissile delivery means are less costly, easier to acquire, and more reliable and accurate. They can also be used without attribution.

What is the source of this heretical opinion? The December 2001 National Intelligence Estimate, that's who. This NIE opinion and a host of other detailed analyses of the issue are cited and discussed in a comprehensive April, 2003 report on the The Declining Ballistic Missile Threat from the Carnegie Endowment.

But how does the Prez respond to these legitimate concerns in his Boeing pep rally? By attacking the people raising them, that's how:

"I think those who oppose this ballistic missile system don't understand the threats of the 21st century," the president told applauding workers at defense contractor Boeing in Pennsylvania, a crucial state in Bush's bid for re-election. snip

Bush said opponents of the system are "living in the past. We're living in the future. We're going to do what's necessary to protect this country."

This insistence on a Manichean polarization between the good guys who agree with BushCo and the defective or even evil guys who don't has poisoned the possibility of any real public debate on serious issues such as this one. Attempts at rational discourse are ridiculed as being to "sensitive" or "nuanced."

Unfortunately, the media, which thrives on feeding macho soundbites to the masses, perpetuates the problem. The lead paragraph of the CNN story about Bush's Boeing speech reinforces his good guy - bad guy rhetoric:

President Bush promoted his administration's plans to build an anti-missile system Tuesday, suggesting that the program's opponents are jeopardizing the country's safety.

If the American public continues to allow our political leaders and media to turn complex issues into campaigh slogans, we will continue to suffer under this regime.