A Call To Action
AlterNet
By Robert Scheer, AlterNet
Posted on January 25, 2005, Printed on January 30, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21081/
By now many commentators, including "realist" conservatives, seem to agree that President Bush's inaugural speech was radical, if not downright bizarre, in its insistence that the United States can and will deliver freedom to Earth's more than 6 billion human residents. "If Bush means it literally, then it means we have an extremist in the White House," said Dimitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center.
What critics here and abroad are glossing over, however, is that as a political marketing device, Bush's address was absolutely brilliant. It takes a true demagogue to remorselessly cheapen the lovely word "freedom" by deploying it 27 times in a 21-minute speech, while never admitting that its real-life creation is more complicated than cranking out a batch of Pepsi-Cola and selling it to the natives with a catchy "Feeling Free!" jingle.
In Bush's neocon lexicon, the fight for freedom has been transmogrified from a noble, but complex and often elusive, historical struggle for human emancipation into a simplistic slogan draped over the stark contradictions and tragic failures of this administration's foreign policy.
"America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one," Bush intoned. Perhaps if we had been in a coma the last four years we could take that as a serious expression of idealism in the vein of, say, Jimmy Carter.
But having seen in recent months how "America's vital interests" have sanctioned torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, war profiteering by Halliburton and lies to the American people about the Iraqi threat, it is hard not to cynically assume that "fighting for freedom" is just a new way to frame the same old hollow arguments.
It all sounds so simple coming out of Bush's mouth. In his feisty speech, two-thirds of which focused on spreading freedom abroad, there was not a single sentence that might actually tip us off as to when, where and by what criteria our support for the international struggle for freedom will be manifested.
At her confirmation hearings last week, Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice offered a little more information, naming six countries as "outposts of tyranny" that would get special attention from the U.S. in the next four years: Cuba, Myanmar, North Korea, Iran, Belarus and Zimbabwe. But how was this unsavory sextet chosen – with a dartboard? She could just as easily have snapped off the names of six of our allies – Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Russia, Kuwait, Uzbekistan and Egypt – equally undemocratic, but which have arguably done more to increase the threat of global terrorism than Rice's squad of baddies.
The fact is, however, that when totalitarian nations like China and Saudi Arabia play ball with U.S. business interests, we like them just fine. But when Venezuela's freely elected president threatens powerful corporate interests, the Bush administration treats him as an enemy.
A State Department spokesman has assured the world that the speech "doesn't mean we abandon our friends." But he added that "many of our friends realize it's time for them to change anyway." I guess that means we can expect Riyadh to allow women to drive any decade now.
Many questions remain. Because Bush said we would stand against all bullies, for example, it would follow that we should actively support the rebels in Chechnya against Bush's friend, autocrat Vladimir V. Putin. Before we do, however, we might want to recall the last time the United States overtly aided a rebellion in the Muslim world: the "freedom fighters" of Afghanistan, which included Osama bin Laden and other Islamic fanatics.
Speaking of which, what happened to the "war on terror"? Well, it appears that because he can't catch bin Laden or bring peace to Iraq or stability to Afghanistan, as repeatedly promised, the president has decided to turn his lemons into lemonade and parlay a difficult security issue into a moralistic crusade.
As the admen say, never confuse the thing being sold for the thing itself. Bush's passion for "freedom" extends only as far as it is useful as a political sales pitch.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21081/
Sunday, January 30, 2005
The Inquisition Strikes Back
A Call To Action
AlterNet
By Jules Siegel, AlterNet
Posted on January 29, 2005, Printed on January 30, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21105/
"And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee." – John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII, 1623
We have by now all seen much of this material before, but reading it all in one piece, told by human voices in this book-length interview, is not easy to take. "Guantánamo: What the World Should Know" (Chelsea Green) – by Michael Ratner and Ellen Ray – becomes a heart-stopper once you cross the line and realize that you could be any of these victims.
Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, is co-counsel in Rasul v. Bush, the historic case of Guantánamo detainees now before the U.S. Supreme Court. His interviewer, Ellen Ray, is President of the Institute for Media Analysis, and a widely published author and editor on U.S. intelligence and international politics.
It's hard to say which is more disgusting, the descriptions of the torture or the bone-chilling analyses of how the president of the United States gave himself the powers of an absolute military dictator. Under Military Order No. 1, which the president issued without congressional authority on November 13, 2001, George W. Bush has ordered people captured or detained from all over the world, flown to Guantánamo and tortured in a lawless zone where, the White House asserts, prisoners have no rights of any kind at all and can be kept forever at his pleasure. Despite the at-best marginal intervention of the American courts so far, there is no civilian judicial review, no due process of any kind.
While any military force will routinely violate the civil rights of anyone who gets in its way, Ratner's descriptions of how victims wound up in Guantánamo reveal wanton cruelty and callousness that will nauseate any sane human being.
Ratner writes: "A lot of the people picked up by warlords of the Northern Alliance were kept in metal shipping containers, so tightly packed that they had to ball themselves up, and the heat was unbearable. According to some detainees who were held in the containers and eventually released from Guantánamo, only a small number, thirty to fifty people in a container filled with three to four hundred people survived. And some of those released said that the Americans were in on this, that the Americans were shining lights on the containers. The people inside were suffocating, so the Northern Alliance soldiers shot holes into the containers, killing some of the prisoners inside."
Some prisoners were captured in battle; many others were picked up in random sweeps for no reason at all except being in the wrong place at the wrong time. As usual in these kinds of operations, some were turned in as a result of petty revenge or as an excuse to steal their property. When asked in court to explain the criteria for detention, the government had no answer. There were no criteria, it appears. "The government even made the ridiculous argument before the Supreme Court that the prisoners get to tell their side of the story, by being interrogated," Ratner reports.
Ratner notes that 134 of the 147 prisoners later released from Guantánamo were guilty of absolutely nothing. Only thirteen were sent on to jail. He believes it is possible that a substantial majority of the Guantánamo prisoners had nothing to do with any kind of terrorism. One prisoner released after a year claimed he was somewhere between ninety and one hundred years old, according to Ratner. Old, frail and incontinent, he wept constantly, shackled to a walker.
So what did the authorities get from those who survived? We will never know, but we can guess from at least one incident in this book. Ratner reports that the Guantánamo interrogators showed some of his clients' videotapes supposedly depicting them with Osama bin Laden. At first they denied being in the videos, but they confessed after prolonged interrogation under harsh conditions. Yet British intelligence proved to the American government that the men were actually in the United Kingdom when the tapes were made.
If many of these people who died in custody or were tortured had committed no crime, there is no doubt that they were all victims of crime, whether guilty or not. Despite White House arguments to the contrary, torture is a crime under international and United States law.
Under United Nations Convention Against Torture, an international treaty that almost every country in the world, including the United States, has ratified, torture is an international crime. The United States has made it a crime even if it occurs abroad.
"The Convention Against Torture also establishes what is called universal jurisdiction for cases of torture," Ratner explains. "So, for example, if an American citizen engaged in torture anywhere in the world and was later found in France, let's say, that person could be arrested in France and either tried for torture there or extradited to the place of the torture for trial. To the extent U.S. officials were or are involved in torture in Guantánamo or elsewhere, they should be careful about the countries in which they travel."
He continues, "In addition, torture committed by U.S. soldiers or private contractors acting under U.S. authority is a violation of federal law, punishable by the death penalty if the death of a prisoner results from the torture. Even if one argues that al Qaeda suspects are not governed by the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture and other human rights treaties ratified by the United States prohibit torture as well as other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
"The convention is crystal clear: under no circumstances can you torture people, whatever you call them, whether illegal combatants, enemy combatants, murderers, killers. You cannot torture anybody ever; it's an absolute prohibition."
While many well-meaning people on both left and right profess to be shocked by the stories that continue to pour out of Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and other detention centers, they usually fail to understand that these atrocities are
well-rooted in American culture.
"None of what is known to have happened in Guantánamo is alien to American prisoners." says Paul Wright, Editor, Prison Legal News. Sexual assault, long term sensory deprivation, abuse, beatings, shootings, pepper spraying and the like are all too familiar to American prisoners. Coupled with overcrowding, this is the daily reality of the American prison experience."
Perhaps the only real difference is that the White House argues more forcefully than usual that no court can forbid it to arbitrarily detain and torture anyone it designates an unlawful enemy combatant, a definition that it has applied not only to foreigners but also to American citizens. We have seen how the drug exception to the Constitution has nullified basic American rights such a freedom from illegal search and seizure. But the war on drugs was merely a test run. Some rights remained intact. Now comes the permananent war against terrorism in which all human rights are
annihilated.
Rasul v. Bush could be a legal turning point, but it remains to be seen whether or not the White House will respect any inconvenient court decision, no matter how high the bench. Michael Ratner and Ellen Ray could be merely eloquent early witnesses to the inevitable future. Thus ends democracy in the United States. The most hope that one can express is a question mark. Thus ends democracy in the United States?
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21105/
AlterNet
By Jules Siegel, AlterNet
Posted on January 29, 2005, Printed on January 30, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21105/
"And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee." – John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII, 1623
We have by now all seen much of this material before, but reading it all in one piece, told by human voices in this book-length interview, is not easy to take. "Guantánamo: What the World Should Know" (Chelsea Green) – by Michael Ratner and Ellen Ray – becomes a heart-stopper once you cross the line and realize that you could be any of these victims.
Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, is co-counsel in Rasul v. Bush, the historic case of Guantánamo detainees now before the U.S. Supreme Court. His interviewer, Ellen Ray, is President of the Institute for Media Analysis, and a widely published author and editor on U.S. intelligence and international politics.
It's hard to say which is more disgusting, the descriptions of the torture or the bone-chilling analyses of how the president of the United States gave himself the powers of an absolute military dictator. Under Military Order No. 1, which the president issued without congressional authority on November 13, 2001, George W. Bush has ordered people captured or detained from all over the world, flown to Guantánamo and tortured in a lawless zone where, the White House asserts, prisoners have no rights of any kind at all and can be kept forever at his pleasure. Despite the at-best marginal intervention of the American courts so far, there is no civilian judicial review, no due process of any kind.
While any military force will routinely violate the civil rights of anyone who gets in its way, Ratner's descriptions of how victims wound up in Guantánamo reveal wanton cruelty and callousness that will nauseate any sane human being.
Ratner writes: "A lot of the people picked up by warlords of the Northern Alliance were kept in metal shipping containers, so tightly packed that they had to ball themselves up, and the heat was unbearable. According to some detainees who were held in the containers and eventually released from Guantánamo, only a small number, thirty to fifty people in a container filled with three to four hundred people survived. And some of those released said that the Americans were in on this, that the Americans were shining lights on the containers. The people inside were suffocating, so the Northern Alliance soldiers shot holes into the containers, killing some of the prisoners inside."
Some prisoners were captured in battle; many others were picked up in random sweeps for no reason at all except being in the wrong place at the wrong time. As usual in these kinds of operations, some were turned in as a result of petty revenge or as an excuse to steal their property. When asked in court to explain the criteria for detention, the government had no answer. There were no criteria, it appears. "The government even made the ridiculous argument before the Supreme Court that the prisoners get to tell their side of the story, by being interrogated," Ratner reports.
Ratner notes that 134 of the 147 prisoners later released from Guantánamo were guilty of absolutely nothing. Only thirteen were sent on to jail. He believes it is possible that a substantial majority of the Guantánamo prisoners had nothing to do with any kind of terrorism. One prisoner released after a year claimed he was somewhere between ninety and one hundred years old, according to Ratner. Old, frail and incontinent, he wept constantly, shackled to a walker.
So what did the authorities get from those who survived? We will never know, but we can guess from at least one incident in this book. Ratner reports that the Guantánamo interrogators showed some of his clients' videotapes supposedly depicting them with Osama bin Laden. At first they denied being in the videos, but they confessed after prolonged interrogation under harsh conditions. Yet British intelligence proved to the American government that the men were actually in the United Kingdom when the tapes were made.
If many of these people who died in custody or were tortured had committed no crime, there is no doubt that they were all victims of crime, whether guilty or not. Despite White House arguments to the contrary, torture is a crime under international and United States law.
Under United Nations Convention Against Torture, an international treaty that almost every country in the world, including the United States, has ratified, torture is an international crime. The United States has made it a crime even if it occurs abroad.
"The Convention Against Torture also establishes what is called universal jurisdiction for cases of torture," Ratner explains. "So, for example, if an American citizen engaged in torture anywhere in the world and was later found in France, let's say, that person could be arrested in France and either tried for torture there or extradited to the place of the torture for trial. To the extent U.S. officials were or are involved in torture in Guantánamo or elsewhere, they should be careful about the countries in which they travel."
He continues, "In addition, torture committed by U.S. soldiers or private contractors acting under U.S. authority is a violation of federal law, punishable by the death penalty if the death of a prisoner results from the torture. Even if one argues that al Qaeda suspects are not governed by the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture and other human rights treaties ratified by the United States prohibit torture as well as other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
"The convention is crystal clear: under no circumstances can you torture people, whatever you call them, whether illegal combatants, enemy combatants, murderers, killers. You cannot torture anybody ever; it's an absolute prohibition."
While many well-meaning people on both left and right profess to be shocked by the stories that continue to pour out of Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and other detention centers, they usually fail to understand that these atrocities are
well-rooted in American culture.
"None of what is known to have happened in Guantánamo is alien to American prisoners." says Paul Wright, Editor, Prison Legal News. Sexual assault, long term sensory deprivation, abuse, beatings, shootings, pepper spraying and the like are all too familiar to American prisoners. Coupled with overcrowding, this is the daily reality of the American prison experience."
Perhaps the only real difference is that the White House argues more forcefully than usual that no court can forbid it to arbitrarily detain and torture anyone it designates an unlawful enemy combatant, a definition that it has applied not only to foreigners but also to American citizens. We have seen how the drug exception to the Constitution has nullified basic American rights such a freedom from illegal search and seizure. But the war on drugs was merely a test run. Some rights remained intact. Now comes the permananent war against terrorism in which all human rights are
annihilated.
Rasul v. Bush could be a legal turning point, but it remains to be seen whether or not the White House will respect any inconvenient court decision, no matter how high the bench. Michael Ratner and Ellen Ray could be merely eloquent early witnesses to the inevitable future. Thus ends democracy in the United States. The most hope that one can express is a question mark. Thus ends democracy in the United States?
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21105/
Friday, January 28, 2005
untitled
The Market Shall Set You Free
By ROBERT WRIGHT
Princeton, N.J.
LAST week President Bush again laid out a faith-based view of the world and
again took heat for it. Human history, the president said in his inaugural
address,
"has a visible direction, set by liberty and the author of liberty."
Accordingly, America will pursue "the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our
world"
- and Mr. Bush has "complete confidence" of success. Critics on the left and
right warned against grounding foreign policy in such naïve optimism (a
world
without tyrants?) and such unbounded faith.
But the problem with the speech is actually the opposite. Mr. Bush has too
little hope, and too little faith. He underestimates the impetus behind
freedom
and so doesn't see how powerfully it imparts a "visible direction" to
history. This lack of faith helps explain some of his biggest foreign policy
failures
and suggests that there are more to come.
Oddly, the underlying problem is that this Republican president doesn't
appreciate free markets. Mr. Bush doesn't see how capitalism helps drive
history
toward freedom via an algorithm that for all we know is divinely designed
and is in any event awesomely elegant. Namely: Capitalism's pre-eminence as
a
wealth generator means that every tyrant has to either embrace free markets
or fall slowly into economic oblivion; but for markets to work, citizens
need
access to information technology and the freedom to use it - and that means
having political power.
This link between economic and political liberty has been extolled by
conservative thinkers for centuries, but the microelectronic age has
strengthened
it. Even China's deftly capitalist-yet-authoritarian government - which
embraces technology while blocking Web sites and censoring chat groups - is
doomed
to fail in the long run. China is increasingly porous to news and ideas, and
its high-tech political ferment goes beyond online debates. Last year a
government
official treated a blue-collar worker high-handedly in a sidewalk encounter
and set off a riot - after news of the incident spread by cell phones and
text
messaging.
You won't hear much about such progress from neoconservatives, who prefer to
stress how desperately the global fight for freedom needs American power
behind
it (and who last week raved about an inaugural speech that vowed to furnish
this power). And, to be sure, neoconservatives can rightly point to lots of
oppression and brutality in China and elsewhere - as can liberal
human-rights activists. But anyone who talks as if Chinese freedom hasn't
grown since
China went capitalist is evincing a hazy historical memory and, however
obliquely, is abetting war. Right-wing hawks thrive on depicting tyranny as
a force
of nature, when in fact nature is working toward its demise.
The president said last week that military force isn't the principal lever
he would use to punish tyrants. But that mainly leaves economic levers, like
sanctions and exclusion from the World Trade Organization. Given that
involvement in the larger capitalist world is time-release poison for
tyranny, impeding
this involvement is an odd way to aid history's march toward freedom. Four
decades of economic isolation have transformed Fidel Castro from a young,
fiery
dictator into an old, fiery dictator.
Economic exclusion is especially perverse in cases where inclusion could
work as a carrot. Suppose, for example, that a malignant authoritarian
regime was
developing nuclear weapons and you might stop it by offering membership in
the W.T.O. It's a twofer - you draw tyrants into a web of commerce that will
ultimately spell their doom, and they pay for the privilege by disarming.
What president could resist that?
Correct! President Bush is sitting on the sidelines scowling as the European
Union tries to strike that very bargain with Iran.
It's possible that skepticism about the European initiative is justified -
that Iran, in the end, would rather have the bomb than a seat in the W.T.O.
But
there's one way for the Bush administration to find out: Outline a highly
intrusive arms inspection regime and say that the United States will support
W.T.O. membership if the inspectors find no weapons program (or if Iran
fesses up) and are allowed to set up long-term monitoring.
There are various explanations for Mr. Bush's position. Maybe some in the
administration fear losing a rationale for invading Iran. Maybe the
administration
is ideologically opposed to arms control agreements (a strange position,
post-9/11). But part of the problem seems to be that Mr. Bush doesn't grasp
the
liberating power of capitalism, the lethal effect of luring authoritarian
regimes into the modern world of free markets and free minds.
That would help explain the amazing four-year paralysis of America's North
Korea policy. Reluctant to invade, yet allergic to "rewarding" tyrants with
economic
incentives and international engagement, the president sat by while North
Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, apparently built up a nuclear arsenal. Now,
with
Iran no more than a few years from having the bomb, we're watching this
movie again. And it may be a double feature: the inertia we saw in North
Korea
followed by the war we've seen in Iraq. With Iraq and Iran in flames (live,
on Al Jazeera!) and Mr. Kim coolly stockpiling nukes, President Bush will
have
hit the axis-of-evil trifecta.
Pundits have mined Mr. Bush's inaugural address for literary antecedents -
Kennedy here, Lincoln there, a trace of Truman. But some of it was pure Bill
Clinton. Like Mr. Bush, Mr. Clinton said that history was on freedom's side
and stressed that freedom abroad serves America's interests. But he also saw
- and explicitly articulated - something absent from Mr. Bush's inaugural
vision: the tight link between economic and political liberty in the
information
age, the essentially redeeming effect of globalization. That's one reason
Mr. Clinton defied intraparty opposition to keep commerce with China and
other
nations strong.
In the wake of John Kerry's defeat, Democrats have been searching for a new
foreign policy vision. But Mr. Clinton laid down as solid a template for
post-9/11
policy as you could expect from a pre-9/11 president.
First, fight the spread of weapons of mass destruction, which means, among
other things, making arms inspections innovatively intrusive, as in the
landmark
Chemical Weapons Convention that President Clinton signed (and that Dick
Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, et. al., opposed). Second, pursue terrorist
networks
overtly and covertly (something Mr. Clinton did more aggressively than the
pre-9/11 Bush administration). Third, make America liked and respected
abroad
(as opposed to, say, loathed and reviled). Fourth, seek lasting peace in the
Middle East (something Mr. Bush keeps putting off until after the next war).
And finally, help the world mature into a comprehensive community of
nations - bound by economic interdependence and a commitment to liberty, and
cooperating
in the global struggle against terrorism and in law enforcement generally.
But in pursuing that last goal, respect and harness the forces in your
favor. Give history some guidance, but resist the flattering delusion that
you're
its pilot. Don't take military and economic weapons off the table, but
appreciate how sparingly you can use them when the architect of history is
on your
side. Have a little faith.
Robert Wright, a fellow at Princeton University's Center for Human Values
and at the New America Foundation, is the author of "Nonzero: The Logic of
Human
Destiny."
By ROBERT WRIGHT
Princeton, N.J.
LAST week President Bush again laid out a faith-based view of the world and
again took heat for it. Human history, the president said in his inaugural
address,
"has a visible direction, set by liberty and the author of liberty."
Accordingly, America will pursue "the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our
world"
- and Mr. Bush has "complete confidence" of success. Critics on the left and
right warned against grounding foreign policy in such naïve optimism (a
world
without tyrants?) and such unbounded faith.
But the problem with the speech is actually the opposite. Mr. Bush has too
little hope, and too little faith. He underestimates the impetus behind
freedom
and so doesn't see how powerfully it imparts a "visible direction" to
history. This lack of faith helps explain some of his biggest foreign policy
failures
and suggests that there are more to come.
Oddly, the underlying problem is that this Republican president doesn't
appreciate free markets. Mr. Bush doesn't see how capitalism helps drive
history
toward freedom via an algorithm that for all we know is divinely designed
and is in any event awesomely elegant. Namely: Capitalism's pre-eminence as
a
wealth generator means that every tyrant has to either embrace free markets
or fall slowly into economic oblivion; but for markets to work, citizens
need
access to information technology and the freedom to use it - and that means
having political power.
This link between economic and political liberty has been extolled by
conservative thinkers for centuries, but the microelectronic age has
strengthened
it. Even China's deftly capitalist-yet-authoritarian government - which
embraces technology while blocking Web sites and censoring chat groups - is
doomed
to fail in the long run. China is increasingly porous to news and ideas, and
its high-tech political ferment goes beyond online debates. Last year a
government
official treated a blue-collar worker high-handedly in a sidewalk encounter
and set off a riot - after news of the incident spread by cell phones and
text
messaging.
You won't hear much about such progress from neoconservatives, who prefer to
stress how desperately the global fight for freedom needs American power
behind
it (and who last week raved about an inaugural speech that vowed to furnish
this power). And, to be sure, neoconservatives can rightly point to lots of
oppression and brutality in China and elsewhere - as can liberal
human-rights activists. But anyone who talks as if Chinese freedom hasn't
grown since
China went capitalist is evincing a hazy historical memory and, however
obliquely, is abetting war. Right-wing hawks thrive on depicting tyranny as
a force
of nature, when in fact nature is working toward its demise.
The president said last week that military force isn't the principal lever
he would use to punish tyrants. But that mainly leaves economic levers, like
sanctions and exclusion from the World Trade Organization. Given that
involvement in the larger capitalist world is time-release poison for
tyranny, impeding
this involvement is an odd way to aid history's march toward freedom. Four
decades of economic isolation have transformed Fidel Castro from a young,
fiery
dictator into an old, fiery dictator.
Economic exclusion is especially perverse in cases where inclusion could
work as a carrot. Suppose, for example, that a malignant authoritarian
regime was
developing nuclear weapons and you might stop it by offering membership in
the W.T.O. It's a twofer - you draw tyrants into a web of commerce that will
ultimately spell their doom, and they pay for the privilege by disarming.
What president could resist that?
Correct! President Bush is sitting on the sidelines scowling as the European
Union tries to strike that very bargain with Iran.
It's possible that skepticism about the European initiative is justified -
that Iran, in the end, would rather have the bomb than a seat in the W.T.O.
But
there's one way for the Bush administration to find out: Outline a highly
intrusive arms inspection regime and say that the United States will support
W.T.O. membership if the inspectors find no weapons program (or if Iran
fesses up) and are allowed to set up long-term monitoring.
There are various explanations for Mr. Bush's position. Maybe some in the
administration fear losing a rationale for invading Iran. Maybe the
administration
is ideologically opposed to arms control agreements (a strange position,
post-9/11). But part of the problem seems to be that Mr. Bush doesn't grasp
the
liberating power of capitalism, the lethal effect of luring authoritarian
regimes into the modern world of free markets and free minds.
That would help explain the amazing four-year paralysis of America's North
Korea policy. Reluctant to invade, yet allergic to "rewarding" tyrants with
economic
incentives and international engagement, the president sat by while North
Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, apparently built up a nuclear arsenal. Now,
with
Iran no more than a few years from having the bomb, we're watching this
movie again. And it may be a double feature: the inertia we saw in North
Korea
followed by the war we've seen in Iraq. With Iraq and Iran in flames (live,
on Al Jazeera!) and Mr. Kim coolly stockpiling nukes, President Bush will
have
hit the axis-of-evil trifecta.
Pundits have mined Mr. Bush's inaugural address for literary antecedents -
Kennedy here, Lincoln there, a trace of Truman. But some of it was pure Bill
Clinton. Like Mr. Bush, Mr. Clinton said that history was on freedom's side
and stressed that freedom abroad serves America's interests. But he also saw
- and explicitly articulated - something absent from Mr. Bush's inaugural
vision: the tight link between economic and political liberty in the
information
age, the essentially redeeming effect of globalization. That's one reason
Mr. Clinton defied intraparty opposition to keep commerce with China and
other
nations strong.
In the wake of John Kerry's defeat, Democrats have been searching for a new
foreign policy vision. But Mr. Clinton laid down as solid a template for
post-9/11
policy as you could expect from a pre-9/11 president.
First, fight the spread of weapons of mass destruction, which means, among
other things, making arms inspections innovatively intrusive, as in the
landmark
Chemical Weapons Convention that President Clinton signed (and that Dick
Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, et. al., opposed). Second, pursue terrorist
networks
overtly and covertly (something Mr. Clinton did more aggressively than the
pre-9/11 Bush administration). Third, make America liked and respected
abroad
(as opposed to, say, loathed and reviled). Fourth, seek lasting peace in the
Middle East (something Mr. Bush keeps putting off until after the next war).
And finally, help the world mature into a comprehensive community of
nations - bound by economic interdependence and a commitment to liberty, and
cooperating
in the global struggle against terrorism and in law enforcement generally.
But in pursuing that last goal, respect and harness the forces in your
favor. Give history some guidance, but resist the flattering delusion that
you're
its pilot. Don't take military and economic weapons off the table, but
appreciate how sparingly you can use them when the architect of history is
on your
side. Have a little faith.
Robert Wright, a fellow at Princeton University's Center for Human Values
and at the New America Foundation, is the author of "Nonzero: The Logic of
Human
Destiny."
Toilet Paper? Ask the Jets
A Call To Action
The New York Times
January 28, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
By BOB HERBERT
In a lot of ways New York is a wonderful city. For my money, it's the greatest. But like most American cities, it's weathering fiscal hard times. Despite Mayor Michael Bloomberg's upbeat tone at yesterday's budget presentation, it's a city that can't afford its share of the basic upkeep for its schools, its libraries, its day care centers and so forth.
It's a city of some eight million people that dangerously shortchanges its Fire Department because money is hard to come by. It's a city that has been unable, due to budget constraints, to reach contract agreements with crucial city employees, including firefighters, police officers and teachers.
In short, it's tapped out. Over the past couple of years the city has relied more and more on corporations, wealthy individuals and foundations to pay for municipal services and functions that the city can no longer afford to provide.
The mayor proposed more than a half-billion dollars in budget cuts yesterday as part of an array of proposals (some of them fanciful) to close a budget gap of about $1.5 billion. This is an election-year budget. You can bet heavily that next year's budget will be worse.
New York State is in worse fiscal shape than the city. Much worse, actually. For one thing, Mayor Bloomberg has been far more responsible when it comes to fiscal matters than Gov. George Pataki, who seems to have studied at the George W. Bush School of Economics.
The state, for example, has the primary responsibility for financing local school systems. But the governor and other state officials, already faced with daunting deficits, are clueless about how to comply with a court order to come up with billions of dollars in additional state aid for New York City's chronically underfinanced schools.
Gambling has been one of the governor's favorite strategies for raising school funds. For the longest time he has promoted the idea of bolstering school aid through the use of video lottery terminals - a wretchedly destructive little system known to its detractors as video crack.
The point here is that neither the city nor the state has a dime to spare. Subway lines are falling apart because 19th-century signal systems have been neither upgraded nor protected. Plans for critically needed school construction are being deferred. After-school programs, which are literally lifelines for many youngsters, have to be shut down because they are not "affordable."
And yet. Ah, yes. If there's one thing in this unhappy fiscal environment that Mayor Bloomberg will absolutely go to the mat for (carrying along the governor and any other powerful figures he can muster), it's that football stadium for his fellow billionaire, Robert Wood Johnson IV, owner of the New York Jets.
At $1.4 billion, this playground for the richest among us would be the most expensive sports stadium in the history of the world. The city and the state, which can't afford toilet paper for the public schools, would put up a minimum of $600 million and undoubtedly much more. The smart money says the public will take at least a billion-dollar hit on this project so Woody Johnson can hold court amid a sea of luxury boxes hard by the Hudson on the Far West Side of Manhattan.
How foolish is this project? They're planning to build a 75,000-seat stadium without any parking facilities to go along with it. Can you imagine what the West Side will look like on a game day? (The mayor's people got into a snit last October when officials in New Jersey wouldn't let Hizzoner land his helicopter at the Jets' current home in the New Jersey Meadowlands. He wanted to arrive too close to game time, the officials said. They suggested he come by bus.)
If you're not rich and you don't already have season tickets to Jets games, you will have very little chance of ever seeing the team in its new digs. The waiting list for tickets is 10 years.
But if there's any justice at all, this stadium will never see the light of day. To take the public's money, which should be used for schoolkids, for subway riders, for hospital patients - for any number of projects that might truly serve the public's interest - and hand it over to a billionaire who will use it as seed money to further his already fabulous interests is obscene.
I presume there will be naming rights for Woody's wonderful new playground. I can see the sign now: Bloomberg's Boondoggle.
E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company |
The New York Times
January 28, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
By BOB HERBERT
In a lot of ways New York is a wonderful city. For my money, it's the greatest. But like most American cities, it's weathering fiscal hard times. Despite Mayor Michael Bloomberg's upbeat tone at yesterday's budget presentation, it's a city that can't afford its share of the basic upkeep for its schools, its libraries, its day care centers and so forth.
It's a city of some eight million people that dangerously shortchanges its Fire Department because money is hard to come by. It's a city that has been unable, due to budget constraints, to reach contract agreements with crucial city employees, including firefighters, police officers and teachers.
In short, it's tapped out. Over the past couple of years the city has relied more and more on corporations, wealthy individuals and foundations to pay for municipal services and functions that the city can no longer afford to provide.
The mayor proposed more than a half-billion dollars in budget cuts yesterday as part of an array of proposals (some of them fanciful) to close a budget gap of about $1.5 billion. This is an election-year budget. You can bet heavily that next year's budget will be worse.
New York State is in worse fiscal shape than the city. Much worse, actually. For one thing, Mayor Bloomberg has been far more responsible when it comes to fiscal matters than Gov. George Pataki, who seems to have studied at the George W. Bush School of Economics.
The state, for example, has the primary responsibility for financing local school systems. But the governor and other state officials, already faced with daunting deficits, are clueless about how to comply with a court order to come up with billions of dollars in additional state aid for New York City's chronically underfinanced schools.
Gambling has been one of the governor's favorite strategies for raising school funds. For the longest time he has promoted the idea of bolstering school aid through the use of video lottery terminals - a wretchedly destructive little system known to its detractors as video crack.
The point here is that neither the city nor the state has a dime to spare. Subway lines are falling apart because 19th-century signal systems have been neither upgraded nor protected. Plans for critically needed school construction are being deferred. After-school programs, which are literally lifelines for many youngsters, have to be shut down because they are not "affordable."
And yet. Ah, yes. If there's one thing in this unhappy fiscal environment that Mayor Bloomberg will absolutely go to the mat for (carrying along the governor and any other powerful figures he can muster), it's that football stadium for his fellow billionaire, Robert Wood Johnson IV, owner of the New York Jets.
At $1.4 billion, this playground for the richest among us would be the most expensive sports stadium in the history of the world. The city and the state, which can't afford toilet paper for the public schools, would put up a minimum of $600 million and undoubtedly much more. The smart money says the public will take at least a billion-dollar hit on this project so Woody Johnson can hold court amid a sea of luxury boxes hard by the Hudson on the Far West Side of Manhattan.
How foolish is this project? They're planning to build a 75,000-seat stadium without any parking facilities to go along with it. Can you imagine what the West Side will look like on a game day? (The mayor's people got into a snit last October when officials in New Jersey wouldn't let Hizzoner land his helicopter at the Jets' current home in the New Jersey Meadowlands. He wanted to arrive too close to game time, the officials said. They suggested he come by bus.)
If you're not rich and you don't already have season tickets to Jets games, you will have very little chance of ever seeing the team in its new digs. The waiting list for tickets is 10 years.
But if there's any justice at all, this stadium will never see the light of day. To take the public's money, which should be used for schoolkids, for subway riders, for hospital patients - for any number of projects that might truly serve the public's interest - and hand it over to a billionaire who will use it as seed money to further his already fabulous interests is obscene.
I presume there will be naming rights for Woody's wonderful new playground. I can see the sign now: Bloomberg's Boondoggle.
E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company |
Thursday, January 27, 2005
untitled
Love for Sale
By
MAUREEN DOWD
I'm herewith resigning as a member of the liberal media elite.
I'm joining up with the conservative media elite. They get paid better.
First comes news that Armstrong Williams got $240,000 from the Education
Department to plug the No Child Left Behind Act.
The families of soldiers killed in Iraq get a paltry $12,000. But good
publicity? Priceless.
Mr. Williams helped out the first President Bush and Clarence Thomas during
the Anita Hill scandal. Mr. Williams, who served as Mr. Thomas's personal
assistant
at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission when the future Supreme Court
justice was gutting policies that would help blacks, gleefully attacked
Professor
Hill, saying, "Sister has emotional problems," and telling The Wall Street
Journal "there is a thin line between her sanity and insanity."
Now we learn from the media reporter Howard Kurtz that the syndicated
columnist Maggie Gallagher had a $21,500 contract from the Health and Human
Services
Department to work on material promoting the agency's $300 million
initiative to encourage marriage. Ms. Gallagher earned her money, even
praising Mr.
Bush in print as a "genius" at playing "daddy" to the nation. "Mommies feel
your pain," she wrote in 2002. "Daddies give you confidence that you can
ignore
the pain and get on with life."
Genius? Not so much. Spendthrift? Definitely. W.'s administration was
running up his astounding deficit paying "journalists" to do what they would
be happy
to do for free - just to be friends with benefits, getting access that
tougher scribes are denied. Consider Charles Krauthammer, who went to the
White
House on Jan. 10 for what The Washington Post termed a "consultation" on the
inaugural speech and then praised the Jan. 20th address on Fox News as
"revolutionary,"
says Media Matters, a liberal watchdog group.
I still have many Christmas bills to pay. So I'd like to send a message to
the administration: THIS SPACE AVAILABLE.
I could write about the strong dollar and the shrinking deficit. Or defend
Torture Boy, I mean, the esteemed and sage Alberto Gonzales. Or remind
readers
of the terrific job Condi Rice did coordinating national security before
9/11 - who could have interpreted a memo titled "Bin Laden Determined to
Attack
Inside the United States" as a credible threat? - not to mention her
indefatigable energy obscuring information that undercut the vice
president's dementia
on Iraq.
My preference is to get a contract with Rummy. It would be cost effective,
compared with the $80 billion he needs to train more Iraqi security forces
to
be blown up. For half a mil, I could write a doozy of a column promoting
Rummy's phantasmagoric policies.
What is all this hand-wringing about the 31 marines who died in a helicopter
crash in Iraq yesterday? It's only slightly more than the number of people
who died in traffic accidents in California last Memorial Day. The president
set the right tone, avoiding pathos when asked about the crash. "Obviously,"
he said, "any time we lose life it is a sad moment."
Who can blame Rummy for carrying out torture policies? We're in an
information age. Information is power. If people are not giving you the
intelligence
you want, you must customize to get the intelligence you want to hear.
That's why Rummy also had to twist U.S. laws to secretly form his own C.I.A.
A Pentagon memo said Rummy's recruited agents could include "notorious
figures,"
whose ties to the U.S. would be embarrassing if revealed, according to The
Washington Post. Why shouldn't a notorious figure like Rummy recruit
notorious
figures?
I could write a column denouncing John McCain for trying to call hearings
into Rummy's new spy unit, suggesting the senator is just jealous because
Rummy's
sexy enough to play James Bond.
The president might need my help as well. He looked out of it yesterday when
asked why his foreign policy is so drastically different from the one laid
out in Foreign Affairs magazine in 2000 by Ms. Rice - a preview that did not
emphasize promoting democracy and liberty around the world. "I didn't read
the article," Mr. Bush said.
And why should he? Robert McNamara never read the Pentagon Papers. Why
should W. have to bone up on his own foreign policy?
Freedom means the freedom to be free from reading what you promise voters
and other stuff. I could make that case, if the price were right.
E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com
By
MAUREEN DOWD
I'm herewith resigning as a member of the liberal media elite.
I'm joining up with the conservative media elite. They get paid better.
First comes news that Armstrong Williams got $240,000 from the Education
Department to plug the No Child Left Behind Act.
The families of soldiers killed in Iraq get a paltry $12,000. But good
publicity? Priceless.
Mr. Williams helped out the first President Bush and Clarence Thomas during
the Anita Hill scandal. Mr. Williams, who served as Mr. Thomas's personal
assistant
at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission when the future Supreme Court
justice was gutting policies that would help blacks, gleefully attacked
Professor
Hill, saying, "Sister has emotional problems," and telling The Wall Street
Journal "there is a thin line between her sanity and insanity."
Now we learn from the media reporter Howard Kurtz that the syndicated
columnist Maggie Gallagher had a $21,500 contract from the Health and Human
Services
Department to work on material promoting the agency's $300 million
initiative to encourage marriage. Ms. Gallagher earned her money, even
praising Mr.
Bush in print as a "genius" at playing "daddy" to the nation. "Mommies feel
your pain," she wrote in 2002. "Daddies give you confidence that you can
ignore
the pain and get on with life."
Genius? Not so much. Spendthrift? Definitely. W.'s administration was
running up his astounding deficit paying "journalists" to do what they would
be happy
to do for free - just to be friends with benefits, getting access that
tougher scribes are denied. Consider Charles Krauthammer, who went to the
White
House on Jan. 10 for what The Washington Post termed a "consultation" on the
inaugural speech and then praised the Jan. 20th address on Fox News as
"revolutionary,"
says Media Matters, a liberal watchdog group.
I still have many Christmas bills to pay. So I'd like to send a message to
the administration: THIS SPACE AVAILABLE.
I could write about the strong dollar and the shrinking deficit. Or defend
Torture Boy, I mean, the esteemed and sage Alberto Gonzales. Or remind
readers
of the terrific job Condi Rice did coordinating national security before
9/11 - who could have interpreted a memo titled "Bin Laden Determined to
Attack
Inside the United States" as a credible threat? - not to mention her
indefatigable energy obscuring information that undercut the vice
president's dementia
on Iraq.
My preference is to get a contract with Rummy. It would be cost effective,
compared with the $80 billion he needs to train more Iraqi security forces
to
be blown up. For half a mil, I could write a doozy of a column promoting
Rummy's phantasmagoric policies.
What is all this hand-wringing about the 31 marines who died in a helicopter
crash in Iraq yesterday? It's only slightly more than the number of people
who died in traffic accidents in California last Memorial Day. The president
set the right tone, avoiding pathos when asked about the crash. "Obviously,"
he said, "any time we lose life it is a sad moment."
Who can blame Rummy for carrying out torture policies? We're in an
information age. Information is power. If people are not giving you the
intelligence
you want, you must customize to get the intelligence you want to hear.
That's why Rummy also had to twist U.S. laws to secretly form his own C.I.A.
A Pentagon memo said Rummy's recruited agents could include "notorious
figures,"
whose ties to the U.S. would be embarrassing if revealed, according to The
Washington Post. Why shouldn't a notorious figure like Rummy recruit
notorious
figures?
I could write a column denouncing John McCain for trying to call hearings
into Rummy's new spy unit, suggesting the senator is just jealous because
Rummy's
sexy enough to play James Bond.
The president might need my help as well. He looked out of it yesterday when
asked why his foreign policy is so drastically different from the one laid
out in Foreign Affairs magazine in 2000 by Ms. Rice - a preview that did not
emphasize promoting democracy and liberty around the world. "I didn't read
the article," Mr. Bush said.
And why should he? Robert McNamara never read the Pentagon Papers. Why
should W. have to bone up on his own foreign policy?
Freedom means the freedom to be free from reading what you promise voters
and other stuff. I could make that case, if the price were right.
E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com
Playing by White House rules, Bush is bankrupting the government
A Call To Action
Posted 01:30 PM
In the context of the Social Security debate, the record-high budget deficits are discouraging in large part because Bush would like to add an additional $2 trillion to the debt to pay for privatization. But I think the deficit should be considered in this debate in a slightly different way.
We learned yesterday, for example, that last year's record deficit is about to get worse.
Additional war spending this year will push the federal deficit to a record $427 billion for fiscal 2005, effectively thwarting President Bush's pledge to begin stanching the flow of government red ink, according to new administration budget forecasts unveiled yesterday.
Administration officials rolled out an $80 billion emergency spending request, mainly for Iraq and Afghanistan, conceding that the extra money would probably send the federal deficit above the record $412 billion recorded in fiscal 2004, which ended Sept. 30. Bush has pledged to cut the budget deficit in half by 2009, a promise the administration says it can keep. But at least for now, the government's fiscal health is worsening.
For that matter, it's on track to keep getting worse, as our long-term fiscal health continues to deteriorate.
On the other hand, there's the Social Security system, which Bush believes is in "crisis" because it's poised to "bankrupt."
"As a matter of fact, by the time today's workers who are in their mid-20s begin to retire, the system will be bankrupt. So if you're 20 years old, in your mid-20s, and you're beginning to work, I want you to think about a Social Security system that will be flat bust, bankrupt, unless the United States Congress has got the willingness to act now. And that's what we're here to talk about, a system that will be bankrupt."
What, in Bush's mind, constitutes Social Security "bankruptcy"? It's always been a ridiculous claim, but using White House definitions, the system will be "bankrupt" when liabilities outnumber assets. Social Security, in other words, will be bankrupt -- in Bush's mind -- because it may be unable to meet all of its obligations at some point down the road.
I think you see where I'm going with this.
read more »
If Social Security is on track for bankruptcy, under the White House's defintion, then Bush has already bankrupted the federal government because in each of the last several years, his budgets have spent far more than they've received.
As my friend Liam recently asked me, "Since [Bush's] definition of bankrupt seems to be running a deficit, why not confront him with the current accounts deficit in the federal budget? If he is unable to get a grip of that, why should the American people believe he could be reasonably expected to deal with Social Security?"
Indeed, as luck would have it, Social Security is in far better shape than the federal budget. We've known about minor, long-term shortfalls in Social Security and have acted accordingly. The system is stronger now than it has been in years and is on track to be in good health for several future decades without any effort at all.
The federal budget, meanwhile, is not only deep into the red, it's a mess that's getting much worse.
...CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin said tax cuts and spending enacted by Congress last year will contribute $504 billion to the government's overall forecast debt between 2005 and 2014. Additional debt over that decade should total $1.36 trillion, well above the $861 billion figure the CBO projected in September.
"We're doing a little bit worse over the long term," Holtz-Eakin said, "and it's largely due to policy" changes.
A senior administration official told reporters that Bush's budget -- to be announced Feb. 7 -- will show the government on track to cut the deficit in half from the White House's initial deficit projection for 2004.
But the CBO projections cast significant doubt on that claim. In total, the CBO projected that the government will amass an additional $855 billion in debt between 2006 and 2015, but Holtz-Eakin cautioned that the figure almost certainly understates the problem. The total assumes no additional money will be spent in Iraq or Afghanistan over the next decade. Perhaps more important, the CBO, by law, must assume Bush's first-term tax cuts will expire after 2010, sending the government's balance sheet from a $189 billion deficit that year to a $71 billion surplus in 2012.
So, here's what I'd like someone to ask Bush: If you believe Social Security should be described as "in crisis" and poised to go "flat bust" and "bankrupt," how would you describe what you've done to the federal budget?
Posted 01:30 PM
In the context of the Social Security debate, the record-high budget deficits are discouraging in large part because Bush would like to add an additional $2 trillion to the debt to pay for privatization. But I think the deficit should be considered in this debate in a slightly different way.
We learned yesterday, for example, that last year's record deficit is about to get worse.
Additional war spending this year will push the federal deficit to a record $427 billion for fiscal 2005, effectively thwarting President Bush's pledge to begin stanching the flow of government red ink, according to new administration budget forecasts unveiled yesterday.
Administration officials rolled out an $80 billion emergency spending request, mainly for Iraq and Afghanistan, conceding that the extra money would probably send the federal deficit above the record $412 billion recorded in fiscal 2004, which ended Sept. 30. Bush has pledged to cut the budget deficit in half by 2009, a promise the administration says it can keep. But at least for now, the government's fiscal health is worsening.
For that matter, it's on track to keep getting worse, as our long-term fiscal health continues to deteriorate.
On the other hand, there's the Social Security system, which Bush believes is in "crisis" because it's poised to "bankrupt."
"As a matter of fact, by the time today's workers who are in their mid-20s begin to retire, the system will be bankrupt. So if you're 20 years old, in your mid-20s, and you're beginning to work, I want you to think about a Social Security system that will be flat bust, bankrupt, unless the United States Congress has got the willingness to act now. And that's what we're here to talk about, a system that will be bankrupt."
What, in Bush's mind, constitutes Social Security "bankruptcy"? It's always been a ridiculous claim, but using White House definitions, the system will be "bankrupt" when liabilities outnumber assets. Social Security, in other words, will be bankrupt -- in Bush's mind -- because it may be unable to meet all of its obligations at some point down the road.
I think you see where I'm going with this.
read more »
If Social Security is on track for bankruptcy, under the White House's defintion, then Bush has already bankrupted the federal government because in each of the last several years, his budgets have spent far more than they've received.
As my friend Liam recently asked me, "Since [Bush's] definition of bankrupt seems to be running a deficit, why not confront him with the current accounts deficit in the federal budget? If he is unable to get a grip of that, why should the American people believe he could be reasonably expected to deal with Social Security?"
Indeed, as luck would have it, Social Security is in far better shape than the federal budget. We've known about minor, long-term shortfalls in Social Security and have acted accordingly. The system is stronger now than it has been in years and is on track to be in good health for several future decades without any effort at all.
The federal budget, meanwhile, is not only deep into the red, it's a mess that's getting much worse.
...CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin said tax cuts and spending enacted by Congress last year will contribute $504 billion to the government's overall forecast debt between 2005 and 2014. Additional debt over that decade should total $1.36 trillion, well above the $861 billion figure the CBO projected in September.
"We're doing a little bit worse over the long term," Holtz-Eakin said, "and it's largely due to policy" changes.
A senior administration official told reporters that Bush's budget -- to be announced Feb. 7 -- will show the government on track to cut the deficit in half from the White House's initial deficit projection for 2004.
But the CBO projections cast significant doubt on that claim. In total, the CBO projected that the government will amass an additional $855 billion in debt between 2006 and 2015, but Holtz-Eakin cautioned that the figure almost certainly understates the problem. The total assumes no additional money will be spent in Iraq or Afghanistan over the next decade. Perhaps more important, the CBO, by law, must assume Bush's first-term tax cuts will expire after 2010, sending the government's balance sheet from a $189 billion deficit that year to a $71 billion surplus in 2012.
So, here's what I'd like someone to ask Bush: If you believe Social Security should be described as "in crisis" and poised to go "flat bust" and "bankrupt," how would you describe what you've done to the federal budget?
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Winning Cases, Losing Voters
By PAUL STARR
Princeton, N.J.
AS Republicans revel in President Bush's inauguration and prepare for his
agenda-setting State of the Union address next week, many Democrats would
like
to consider almost anything but the substance of politics as the reason for
their defeat last November. If only John Kerry had been a stronger
candidate.
If only the message had been framed differently. If only the party's
strategists were as tough as the guys on the other side.
The limits of candidates and campaigns, however, can't explain the
Democrats' long-term decline. And while the institutional decay at the
party's base -
the decline of labor unions and ethnically based party organizations - has
played a role, the people who point to "moral values" may not be far off.
Democrats
have paid a historic price for their role in the great moral revolutions
that during the past half-century have transformed relations between whites
and
blacks, men and women, gays and straights. And liberal Democrats, in
particular, have been inviting political oblivion - not by advocating the
wrong causes,
but by letting their political instincts atrophy and relying on the legal
system.
To be sure, Democrats were right to challenge segregation and racism,
support the revolution in women's roles in society, to protect rights to
abortion
and to back the civil rights of gays. But a party can make only so many
enemies before it loses the ability to do anything for the people who depend
on
it. For decades, many liberals thought they could ignore the elementary
demand of politics - winning elections - because they could go to court to
achieve
these goals on constitutional grounds. The great thing about legal victories
like Roe v. Wade is that you don't have to compromise with your opponents,
or even win over majority opinion. But that is also the trouble. An
unreconciled losing side and unconvinced public may eventually change the
judges.
And now we have reached that point. The Republicans, with their party in
control of both elected branches - and looking to create a conservative
majority
on the Supreme Court that will stand for a generation - see the opportunity
to overthrow policies and constitutional precedents reaching back to the New
Deal.
That prospect ought to concentrate the liberal mind. Social Security,
progressive taxation, affordable health care, the constitutional basis for
environmental
and labor regulation, separation of church and state - these issues and more
hang in the balance.
Under these circumstances, liberal Democrats ought to ask themselves a big
question: are they better off as the dominant force in an ideologically pure
minority party, or as one of several influences in an ideologically varied
party that can win at the polls? The latter, it seems clear, is the better
choice.
Rebuilding a national political majority will mean distinguishing between
positions that contribute to a majority and those that detract from it. As
last
year's disastrous crusade for gay marriage illustrated, Democrats cannot
allow their constituencies to draw them into political terrain that can't be
defended
at election time. Dissatisfied with compromise legislation on civil unions
and partner benefits, gay organizations thought they could get from judges,
beginning with those on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, what the
electorate was not yet ready to give. The result: bans on same-sex marriage
passing in 11 states and an energized conservative voting base.
Public support for abortion rights is far greater than for gay marriage, but
compromise may be equally imperative - especially if a reshaped Supreme
Court
reverses Roe v. Wade by finding that there is no constitutional right to
abortion and throws the issue back to the states. Some savvy Democrats are
already
thinking along these lines, as Hillary Clinton showed this week when she
urged liberals to find "common ground" with those who have misgivings about
abortion.
And if a new Supreme Court overturns affirmative-action laws, Democrats will
need to pursue equality in ways that avoid treating whites and blacks
differently.
Some liberals have long been calling for an emphasis on "race neutral"
economic policies to recover support among working-class and middle-income
white
voters. Legal and political necessity may now drive all Democrats in that
direction.
Republicans are leaving themselves open to this kind of strategy. Their
party is far more ideologically driven and more beholden to the Christian
right
than it was even during the Ronald Reagan era. This is the source of the
party's energy, but also its vulnerability. The Democrats' opportunity lies
in
becoming a broader, more open and flexible coalition that can occupy the
center.
In the long run, Democrats will benefit from their strength among younger
voters and the growing Hispanic population. But the last thing the Democrats
need
is a revived interest group or identity politics. As the response to Senator
Barack Obama's convention speech showed, the party's own members are looking
for an expansive statement of American character and national purpose.
Secure in their own lives at home, Americans can be a great force for good
in the world. That is the liberalism this country once heard from Woodrow
Wilson,
Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy - and it is the only form of
liberalism that will give the Democratic Party back its majority.
Paul Starr is the co-editor of The American Prospect and the author, most
recently, of "The Creation of the Media."
Copyright 2005
The New York Times Company |
By PAUL STARR
Princeton, N.J.
AS Republicans revel in President Bush's inauguration and prepare for his
agenda-setting State of the Union address next week, many Democrats would
like
to consider almost anything but the substance of politics as the reason for
their defeat last November. If only John Kerry had been a stronger
candidate.
If only the message had been framed differently. If only the party's
strategists were as tough as the guys on the other side.
The limits of candidates and campaigns, however, can't explain the
Democrats' long-term decline. And while the institutional decay at the
party's base -
the decline of labor unions and ethnically based party organizations - has
played a role, the people who point to "moral values" may not be far off.
Democrats
have paid a historic price for their role in the great moral revolutions
that during the past half-century have transformed relations between whites
and
blacks, men and women, gays and straights. And liberal Democrats, in
particular, have been inviting political oblivion - not by advocating the
wrong causes,
but by letting their political instincts atrophy and relying on the legal
system.
To be sure, Democrats were right to challenge segregation and racism,
support the revolution in women's roles in society, to protect rights to
abortion
and to back the civil rights of gays. But a party can make only so many
enemies before it loses the ability to do anything for the people who depend
on
it. For decades, many liberals thought they could ignore the elementary
demand of politics - winning elections - because they could go to court to
achieve
these goals on constitutional grounds. The great thing about legal victories
like Roe v. Wade is that you don't have to compromise with your opponents,
or even win over majority opinion. But that is also the trouble. An
unreconciled losing side and unconvinced public may eventually change the
judges.
And now we have reached that point. The Republicans, with their party in
control of both elected branches - and looking to create a conservative
majority
on the Supreme Court that will stand for a generation - see the opportunity
to overthrow policies and constitutional precedents reaching back to the New
Deal.
That prospect ought to concentrate the liberal mind. Social Security,
progressive taxation, affordable health care, the constitutional basis for
environmental
and labor regulation, separation of church and state - these issues and more
hang in the balance.
Under these circumstances, liberal Democrats ought to ask themselves a big
question: are they better off as the dominant force in an ideologically pure
minority party, or as one of several influences in an ideologically varied
party that can win at the polls? The latter, it seems clear, is the better
choice.
Rebuilding a national political majority will mean distinguishing between
positions that contribute to a majority and those that detract from it. As
last
year's disastrous crusade for gay marriage illustrated, Democrats cannot
allow their constituencies to draw them into political terrain that can't be
defended
at election time. Dissatisfied with compromise legislation on civil unions
and partner benefits, gay organizations thought they could get from judges,
beginning with those on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, what the
electorate was not yet ready to give. The result: bans on same-sex marriage
passing in 11 states and an energized conservative voting base.
Public support for abortion rights is far greater than for gay marriage, but
compromise may be equally imperative - especially if a reshaped Supreme
Court
reverses Roe v. Wade by finding that there is no constitutional right to
abortion and throws the issue back to the states. Some savvy Democrats are
already
thinking along these lines, as Hillary Clinton showed this week when she
urged liberals to find "common ground" with those who have misgivings about
abortion.
And if a new Supreme Court overturns affirmative-action laws, Democrats will
need to pursue equality in ways that avoid treating whites and blacks
differently.
Some liberals have long been calling for an emphasis on "race neutral"
economic policies to recover support among working-class and middle-income
white
voters. Legal and political necessity may now drive all Democrats in that
direction.
Republicans are leaving themselves open to this kind of strategy. Their
party is far more ideologically driven and more beholden to the Christian
right
than it was even during the Ronald Reagan era. This is the source of the
party's energy, but also its vulnerability. The Democrats' opportunity lies
in
becoming a broader, more open and flexible coalition that can occupy the
center.
In the long run, Democrats will benefit from their strength among younger
voters and the growing Hispanic population. But the last thing the Democrats
need
is a revived interest group or identity politics. As the response to Senator
Barack Obama's convention speech showed, the party's own members are looking
for an expansive statement of American character and national purpose.
Secure in their own lives at home, Americans can be a great force for good
in the world. That is the liberalism this country once heard from Woodrow
Wilson,
Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy - and it is the only form of
liberalism that will give the Democratic Party back its majority.
Paul Starr is the co-editor of The American Prospect and the author, most
recently, of "The Creation of the Media."
Copyright 2005
The New York Times Company |
After the Brothel
By
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
POIPET, Cambodia - When I describe sex trafficking as, at its worst, a
21st-century version of slavery, I'm sure plenty of readers roll their eyes
and assume
that's hyperbole.
It's true that many of the girls who are trafficked around the world go
voluntarily or under coercion too modest to be fairly called slavery. But
then there
are girls like Srey Rath.
A couple of years ago, at age 15 or 16 (she's unsure of her birth date),
Srey Rath decided to go work in Thailand for two months, so that she could
give
her mother a present for the Cambodian new year.
But the traffickers who were supposed to get her and four female friends
jobs as dishwashers smuggled them instead to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of
Malaysia.
There, three of the girls, including Srey Rath, were locked up in a karaoke
lounge that operated as a brothel and ordered to have sex with customers.
Srey
Rath indignantly resisted.
"So the boss got angry and hit me in the face, first with one hand and then
with the other," she remembers. "The mark stayed on my face for two weeks."
That was the beginning of a hell. The girls were forced to work in the
brothel 15 hours a day, seven days a week, and they were never paid or
allowed outside.
Nor were they allowed to insist that customers use condoms.
"They just gave us food to eat, but they didn't give us much because the
customers didn't like fat girls," Srey Rath said.
The girls had been warned that if they tried to escape they could be
murdered. But they were so desperate that late one night, after they had
been locked
up in the 10th-floor apartment where they were housed, they pried a strong
board off a rack used for drying clothes. Then they balanced the board,
which
was just five inches wide, from their window to a ledge in the next
building, a dozen feet away.
Srey Rath and four other girls inched across, 10 floors above the pavement.
"We thought that even if we died, it would be better than staying behind,"
Srey Rath said. "If we stayed, we would die as well." (I talked to another
of
the Cambodians, Srey Hay, and she confirmed the entire account.)
Once on the other side, they took the elevator down and fled to a police
station. But the police weren't interested and tried to shoo them away at
first
- and then arrested them for illegal immigration. Srey Rath spent a year in
a Malaysian prison, and when she was released, a Malaysian policeman drove
her away - and sold her to a taxi driver, who sold her to a Thai policeman,
who sold her to a Thai brothel.
Finally, after two more months, Srey Rath fled again and made it home this
time to the embraces of her joyful family. An aid group, American Assistance
for Cambodia, stepped in to help Srey Rath, outfitting her with a street
cart and an assortment of belts and keychains to sell. That cost only $400,
and
now she's thrilled to be earning money for her family.
Over the last five years, the U.S. has begun to combat sex trafficking, with
President Bush's State Department taking the lead. But there's so much more
that could be done, particularly if the White House became involved. More
scolding and shaming of countries with major sex trafficking problems, like
Cambodia
and Malaysia, would go a long way to get them to clean up their act.
It's mostly a question of priorities. No politician defends sex trafficking,
but until recently no one really opposed it much either. It just wasn't on
the agenda. If, say, 100 people in each Congressional district demanded that
their representatives push this issue, sex trafficking would end up much
higher
on our foreign policy agenda - and the resulting ripple of concern around
the globe would emancipate tens of thousands of girls.
You'll understand the stakes if you ever cross the border from Thailand to
Cambodia at Poipet: look for a cart with a load of belts. You'll see a
beaming
teenage girl who will try to sell you a souvenir, and you'll realize that
talk about sex "slavery" is not hyperbole - and that the shame lies not with
the girls but with our own failure to respond as firmly to slavery today as
our ancestors did in the 1860's.
Copyright 2005
The New York Times Company |
By
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
POIPET, Cambodia - When I describe sex trafficking as, at its worst, a
21st-century version of slavery, I'm sure plenty of readers roll their eyes
and assume
that's hyperbole.
It's true that many of the girls who are trafficked around the world go
voluntarily or under coercion too modest to be fairly called slavery. But
then there
are girls like Srey Rath.
A couple of years ago, at age 15 or 16 (she's unsure of her birth date),
Srey Rath decided to go work in Thailand for two months, so that she could
give
her mother a present for the Cambodian new year.
But the traffickers who were supposed to get her and four female friends
jobs as dishwashers smuggled them instead to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of
Malaysia.
There, three of the girls, including Srey Rath, were locked up in a karaoke
lounge that operated as a brothel and ordered to have sex with customers.
Srey
Rath indignantly resisted.
"So the boss got angry and hit me in the face, first with one hand and then
with the other," she remembers. "The mark stayed on my face for two weeks."
That was the beginning of a hell. The girls were forced to work in the
brothel 15 hours a day, seven days a week, and they were never paid or
allowed outside.
Nor were they allowed to insist that customers use condoms.
"They just gave us food to eat, but they didn't give us much because the
customers didn't like fat girls," Srey Rath said.
The girls had been warned that if they tried to escape they could be
murdered. But they were so desperate that late one night, after they had
been locked
up in the 10th-floor apartment where they were housed, they pried a strong
board off a rack used for drying clothes. Then they balanced the board,
which
was just five inches wide, from their window to a ledge in the next
building, a dozen feet away.
Srey Rath and four other girls inched across, 10 floors above the pavement.
"We thought that even if we died, it would be better than staying behind,"
Srey Rath said. "If we stayed, we would die as well." (I talked to another
of
the Cambodians, Srey Hay, and she confirmed the entire account.)
Once on the other side, they took the elevator down and fled to a police
station. But the police weren't interested and tried to shoo them away at
first
- and then arrested them for illegal immigration. Srey Rath spent a year in
a Malaysian prison, and when she was released, a Malaysian policeman drove
her away - and sold her to a taxi driver, who sold her to a Thai policeman,
who sold her to a Thai brothel.
Finally, after two more months, Srey Rath fled again and made it home this
time to the embraces of her joyful family. An aid group, American Assistance
for Cambodia, stepped in to help Srey Rath, outfitting her with a street
cart and an assortment of belts and keychains to sell. That cost only $400,
and
now she's thrilled to be earning money for her family.
Over the last five years, the U.S. has begun to combat sex trafficking, with
President Bush's State Department taking the lead. But there's so much more
that could be done, particularly if the White House became involved. More
scolding and shaming of countries with major sex trafficking problems, like
Cambodia
and Malaysia, would go a long way to get them to clean up their act.
It's mostly a question of priorities. No politician defends sex trafficking,
but until recently no one really opposed it much either. It just wasn't on
the agenda. If, say, 100 people in each Congressional district demanded that
their representatives push this issue, sex trafficking would end up much
higher
on our foreign policy agenda - and the resulting ripple of concern around
the globe would emancipate tens of thousands of girls.
You'll understand the stakes if you ever cross the border from Thailand to
Cambodia at Poipet: look for a cart with a load of belts. You'll see a
beaming
teenage girl who will try to sell you a souvenir, and you'll realize that
talk about sex "slavery" is not hyperbole - and that the shame lies not with
the girls but with our own failure to respond as firmly to slavery today as
our ancestors did in the 1860's.
Copyright 2005
The New York Times Company |
All the Talk of Davos: the Weak Dollar and the U.S. Deficits
A Call To Action
The New York Times
January 26, 2005
By MARK LANDLER
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 26 - As the world's most rarified talk-shop opened for business here today, two things were as clear as the Alpine air: the sinking dollar and soaring deficits in the United States are Topic A at this year's conference of the World Economic Forum.
And anyone hoping for an answer to when either will stabilize is likely to come away disappointed.
Economists, politicians and business executives voiced deep unease about the imbalances in the global financial system, which are reflected in the dollar's steep fall against the euro and other currencies.
But most expressed skepticism that the Bush administration would reduce the trade and budget deficits, which have fed those imbalances. Some said they doubted that China, which is financing much of the American debt, would bow to pressure to allow its currency to rise against the dollar this year.
"The U.S. current-account deficit is a problem for the whole world," said Jacob A. Frenkel, an economist and former governor of the Bank of Israel. "I don't see the budget deficit being taken seriously."
The Bush administration, which had dispatched Vice President Dick Cheney and then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to past Davos meetings to defend the Iraq war and other foreign-policy initiatives, has not sent a senior economic policy maker to this gathering. That absence has lent the proceedings themselves an imbalanced tone.
"In fairness, it's a transition period in Washington," said Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, who supplied the American voice on a panel about American leadership. But he added, "The administration doesn't really have anyone they trust enough to send here."
Mr. Frank, the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, said he worried that the United States was not paying enough attention to the risks of its growing indebtedness. The repercussions of a weak dollar, he said, had barely registered with the White House.
Other critics were blunter. "There's nobody home on economic policy in America right now," said Stephen S. Roach, the chief economist at Morgan Stanley and a reliable doomsayer at these gatherings.
The twin burdens of household and public debt in the United States, he said, are unsustainable. Describing American consumers as "an accident waiting to happen," he asked, "when does the music stop?"
With the dollar weak and the euro already trading above $1.30 - near its economically tenable limit for Europe - Mr. Roach said the United States could not rely on currency markets to right the trade imbalance between it and the Asian countries who finance American deficits by buying Treasury bills.
The answer, he said, lies with the Federal Reserve, which he said would have to raise interest rates aggressively to curb the spending binge. Whether the Fed could do that without setting off a recession is an open question, especially given the impending retirement of its chairman, Alan Greenspan.
Few here held out much hope for international coordination of the kind that stabilized the dollar in the 1980's, when the Reagan administration helped negotiate the Louvre and Plaza Accords.
"The Bush administration doesn't listen to people," said Laura D. Tyson, a former chairman of the council of economic advisors in the Clinton White House. "There's no hope of changing U.S. fiscal policy."
Professor Tyson, who is dean of the London Business School, said European leaders needed to stop worrying about the actions of other countries and set about streamlining their own economies. She pointed to recent wage negotiations in Germany, in which the unions agreed to longer hours and more flexible work rules, as a hopeful sign of change.
Certainly, Europe cannot rely on Asia to take the pressure off the euro. While people here said they were guardedly optimistic that China would eventually allow its currency, the yuan, to rise against the dollar, few were willing to hazard a guess as to when - or to what extent.
"That will need a political commitment and a political will, and I don't see that happening this year," said Takatoshi Ito, an expert in international economics at the University of Tokyo.
Some economists warned that the burgeoning trade deficit and weak dollar could cast a shadow over negotiations to liberalize world trade, which have been dragging for various reasons in the last year.
China's record trade surplus with the United States could fuel protectionist forces in the United States, said C. Fred Bergsten, the director of the Institute for International Economics in Washington. He said he could foresee moves to slap import barriers on Chinese wood and shrimp.
"This is a poisonous environment for trade policy and for domestic politics in the United States," Mr. Bergsten said.
In the last couple of years, with the White House's march to war in Iraq, Davos itself has been a rather poisonous environment for Americans. Those tensions have ebbed this year, although some non-Americans here were talking about the emergence of new alliances - like one between China and the European Union - that leave the United States on the sidelines.
"In recent years, our leaders have felt more comfortable talking to European leaders," said Yuan Ming, the director of the Institute for American Studies at Peking University. "The United States could be our biggest partner, but it could also be our biggest troublemaker."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
January 26, 2005
By MARK LANDLER
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 26 - As the world's most rarified talk-shop opened for business here today, two things were as clear as the Alpine air: the sinking dollar and soaring deficits in the United States are Topic A at this year's conference of the World Economic Forum.
And anyone hoping for an answer to when either will stabilize is likely to come away disappointed.
Economists, politicians and business executives voiced deep unease about the imbalances in the global financial system, which are reflected in the dollar's steep fall against the euro and other currencies.
But most expressed skepticism that the Bush administration would reduce the trade and budget deficits, which have fed those imbalances. Some said they doubted that China, which is financing much of the American debt, would bow to pressure to allow its currency to rise against the dollar this year.
"The U.S. current-account deficit is a problem for the whole world," said Jacob A. Frenkel, an economist and former governor of the Bank of Israel. "I don't see the budget deficit being taken seriously."
The Bush administration, which had dispatched Vice President Dick Cheney and then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to past Davos meetings to defend the Iraq war and other foreign-policy initiatives, has not sent a senior economic policy maker to this gathering. That absence has lent the proceedings themselves an imbalanced tone.
"In fairness, it's a transition period in Washington," said Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, who supplied the American voice on a panel about American leadership. But he added, "The administration doesn't really have anyone they trust enough to send here."
Mr. Frank, the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, said he worried that the United States was not paying enough attention to the risks of its growing indebtedness. The repercussions of a weak dollar, he said, had barely registered with the White House.
Other critics were blunter. "There's nobody home on economic policy in America right now," said Stephen S. Roach, the chief economist at Morgan Stanley and a reliable doomsayer at these gatherings.
The twin burdens of household and public debt in the United States, he said, are unsustainable. Describing American consumers as "an accident waiting to happen," he asked, "when does the music stop?"
With the dollar weak and the euro already trading above $1.30 - near its economically tenable limit for Europe - Mr. Roach said the United States could not rely on currency markets to right the trade imbalance between it and the Asian countries who finance American deficits by buying Treasury bills.
The answer, he said, lies with the Federal Reserve, which he said would have to raise interest rates aggressively to curb the spending binge. Whether the Fed could do that without setting off a recession is an open question, especially given the impending retirement of its chairman, Alan Greenspan.
Few here held out much hope for international coordination of the kind that stabilized the dollar in the 1980's, when the Reagan administration helped negotiate the Louvre and Plaza Accords.
"The Bush administration doesn't listen to people," said Laura D. Tyson, a former chairman of the council of economic advisors in the Clinton White House. "There's no hope of changing U.S. fiscal policy."
Professor Tyson, who is dean of the London Business School, said European leaders needed to stop worrying about the actions of other countries and set about streamlining their own economies. She pointed to recent wage negotiations in Germany, in which the unions agreed to longer hours and more flexible work rules, as a hopeful sign of change.
Certainly, Europe cannot rely on Asia to take the pressure off the euro. While people here said they were guardedly optimistic that China would eventually allow its currency, the yuan, to rise against the dollar, few were willing to hazard a guess as to when - or to what extent.
"That will need a political commitment and a political will, and I don't see that happening this year," said Takatoshi Ito, an expert in international economics at the University of Tokyo.
Some economists warned that the burgeoning trade deficit and weak dollar could cast a shadow over negotiations to liberalize world trade, which have been dragging for various reasons in the last year.
China's record trade surplus with the United States could fuel protectionist forces in the United States, said C. Fred Bergsten, the director of the Institute for International Economics in Washington. He said he could foresee moves to slap import barriers on Chinese wood and shrimp.
"This is a poisonous environment for trade policy and for domestic politics in the United States," Mr. Bergsten said.
In the last couple of years, with the White House's march to war in Iraq, Davos itself has been a rather poisonous environment for Americans. Those tensions have ebbed this year, although some non-Americans here were talking about the emergence of new alliances - like one between China and the European Union - that leave the United States on the sidelines.
"In recent years, our leaders have felt more comfortable talking to European leaders," said Yuan Ming, the director of the Institute for American Studies at Peking University. "The United States could be our biggest partner, but it could also be our biggest troublemaker."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
White House Predicts $427 Billion Deficit, Including New War Costs
A Call To Action
The New York Times
January 25, 2005
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
and JOHN O'NEIL
WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 - White House officials predicted this afternoon that the budget deficit would hit a record $427 billion this year, including an additional $80 billion that President Bush will ask for mostly to cover the costs of the war in Iraq.
White House officials said today that they were still on track to fulfill Mr. Bush's campaign promise of cutting the budget deficit in half by 2009.
But the administration is already well behind on its goal. The White House predicted last summer that the budget deficit would decline in 2005 and continue to sink after that.
The officials said Mr. Bush would ask Congress next month for the extra $80 billion when he submits his budget next month for fiscal 2006. The new request would bring total costs of the war to more than $200 billion by the end of this year, with spending likely to continue at near current levels through at least 2006.
The new estimate calls for the budget to climb slightly, and a new report earlier today by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office shows that deficits will remain above $350 billion through 2009 and climb sharply after that.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that continued costs of the war in Iraq and other aspects of the war on terrorism could add $285 billion over the next five years.
The congressional agency also noted deficits would climb much more sharply in the subsequent five years. Extending Mr. Bush's tax cuts would cost $1.8 trillion over the next 10 years. Preventing an expansion of the alternative minimum tax, a parallel tax that was designed to prevent wealthy people from taking advantage of loopholes, would cost about $500 billion.
Even without the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and despite expectations of strong economic growth over the next two years, the Congressional Budget Office said the federal budget outlook worsened since last year.
Congressional analysts predicted that interest costs on the federal debt will double over the next decade to more than $300 billion a year.
Democrats quickly seized on both the administration's announcement and the new congressional report, accusing Mr. Bush of making things worse by pushing for big tax cuts at a time of war.
"The administration remains in denial about these fiscal results," said Representative John W. Spratt, Democrat of South Carolina and the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee.
The White House defended its fiscal record, and the presidential spokesman, Scott McClellan, said at a news briefing today that the president's deficit-reduction plan was "based on strong economic growth and spending restraint."
"By taking the steps that we have to get our economy growing stronger and creating jobs, we're also seeing increased revenues coming in," he said. "And by working with Congress to exercise responsible spending restraint, we've got a plan to cut the deficit in half over five years."
The Congressional Budget Office predicted that excluding the White House's request for $80 billion in additional money, the federal government would run a deficit of $368 billion this year.
The deficit for the 2004 budget year was $412 billion, representing 3.6 percent of the nation's economy. The deficit projection for this year, excluding growth in military spending and other budget changes, would represent 3 percent of the American gross domestic product, the budget office said.
Last year's deficit was the largest ever in terms of dollars, although the deficits run under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980's were larger as a percentage of the economy. President Bush pledged during last year's campaign to cut the deficit, and aides have said that his new budget will include a number of spending cuts.
But spending on military operations seems likely to continue to grow.
The request for $80 billion would bring projected spending on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan to $105 billion for the 2005 fiscal year - a figure that far exceeds the administration's prewar estimates of overall costs.
The Congressional Budget Office also projected the 2006 budget deficit at $296 billion, and released a 10-year fiscal projection that estimated budget shortfalls over the next decade at $855 billion, down from its projection last year of $2.3 trillion. But the new report noted that the 10-year figure, like the projection for the coming year, would predict larger shortfalls if the full amount actually being spent on the conflicts were included.
Long-term budget estimates are notoriously unreliable, being based on assumptions both about economic activity and policy decisions yet to come. The budget agency stressed that the figures were not meant as a hard and fast prediction, but as a benchmark that policy makers could use to inform decisions about new proposals.
The estimates also exclude the cost of measures the president plans to introduce when he submits his budget to Congress next month. Those include the partial privatization of Social Security, which would require up to $2 trillion over the next decade to make up for money being diverted into personal accounts; the extension of tax cuts passed in Mr. Bush's first term, which would cut revenues by an estimated $1.8 trillion over 10 years; and the $350 million pledged by President Bush for tsunami relief efforts.
The budget agency said that its figures were based on a prediction of strong economic growth in the next two years, based on an assumption that the economy has been performing under its capacity in recent years. But for later in the decade it predicts a slowing of growth as more members of the Baby Boom generation leave the work force and health care costs rise with the aging population.
And as in other years, the figures exclude the effect of the surplus being run by Social Security, which uses the excess to buy government bonds that it plans to use to pay benefits later in the century. The actual difference between non-Social Security revenues and spending projected for 2005 is $541 billion, not including the expected costs for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The actual spending gap in 2004 was $567 billion.
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, indicated that her party would likely support the White House's request for more money for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Democrats "have pledged to give our armed forces the support the need," she said. But she promised that the Bush administration would face tough questions about its policies in Iraq, in particular over the failure to train and equip more Iraqi troops.
Ms. Pelosi said the new deficit figures "confirm that President Bush and Congressional Republicans have completely abandoned fiscal responsibility."
The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, called the deficit "too high" and said the Congressional Budget Office's report showed that it was time to "get serious about putting our financial house in order, beginning with short-term deficit reduction and then long-term control of entitlement spending."
"If we do nothing, our kids and grandkids will be overwhelmed by the costs of our inaction," Senator Gregg said.
Brian Riedl, a budget analyst with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the figures showed strong growth in tax revenues, but even sharper growth in the government's spending on health care. Starting in 2006, when the new Medicare prescription drug benefit goes into effect, the cost of Medicare and Medicaid will for the first time exceed the cost of Social Security, Mr. Riedl said.
The Congressional Budget Office's report projected that spending for Medicare will rise at a rate of 9 percent a year through 2015, and for Medicaid at 7.8 percent a year.
As mandatory costs for the health programs and Social Security go up, along with interest payments to finance the rising national debt, the percentage of the budget going to discretionary programs - that is, everything else - will shrink over the next decade, according to the new forecast.
Edmund L. Andrews reported from Washington for this article, and John O'Neil from New York. David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
January 25, 2005
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
and JOHN O'NEIL
WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 - White House officials predicted this afternoon that the budget deficit would hit a record $427 billion this year, including an additional $80 billion that President Bush will ask for mostly to cover the costs of the war in Iraq.
White House officials said today that they were still on track to fulfill Mr. Bush's campaign promise of cutting the budget deficit in half by 2009.
But the administration is already well behind on its goal. The White House predicted last summer that the budget deficit would decline in 2005 and continue to sink after that.
The officials said Mr. Bush would ask Congress next month for the extra $80 billion when he submits his budget next month for fiscal 2006. The new request would bring total costs of the war to more than $200 billion by the end of this year, with spending likely to continue at near current levels through at least 2006.
The new estimate calls for the budget to climb slightly, and a new report earlier today by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office shows that deficits will remain above $350 billion through 2009 and climb sharply after that.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that continued costs of the war in Iraq and other aspects of the war on terrorism could add $285 billion over the next five years.
The congressional agency also noted deficits would climb much more sharply in the subsequent five years. Extending Mr. Bush's tax cuts would cost $1.8 trillion over the next 10 years. Preventing an expansion of the alternative minimum tax, a parallel tax that was designed to prevent wealthy people from taking advantage of loopholes, would cost about $500 billion.
Even without the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and despite expectations of strong economic growth over the next two years, the Congressional Budget Office said the federal budget outlook worsened since last year.
Congressional analysts predicted that interest costs on the federal debt will double over the next decade to more than $300 billion a year.
Democrats quickly seized on both the administration's announcement and the new congressional report, accusing Mr. Bush of making things worse by pushing for big tax cuts at a time of war.
"The administration remains in denial about these fiscal results," said Representative John W. Spratt, Democrat of South Carolina and the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee.
The White House defended its fiscal record, and the presidential spokesman, Scott McClellan, said at a news briefing today that the president's deficit-reduction plan was "based on strong economic growth and spending restraint."
"By taking the steps that we have to get our economy growing stronger and creating jobs, we're also seeing increased revenues coming in," he said. "And by working with Congress to exercise responsible spending restraint, we've got a plan to cut the deficit in half over five years."
The Congressional Budget Office predicted that excluding the White House's request for $80 billion in additional money, the federal government would run a deficit of $368 billion this year.
The deficit for the 2004 budget year was $412 billion, representing 3.6 percent of the nation's economy. The deficit projection for this year, excluding growth in military spending and other budget changes, would represent 3 percent of the American gross domestic product, the budget office said.
Last year's deficit was the largest ever in terms of dollars, although the deficits run under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980's were larger as a percentage of the economy. President Bush pledged during last year's campaign to cut the deficit, and aides have said that his new budget will include a number of spending cuts.
But spending on military operations seems likely to continue to grow.
The request for $80 billion would bring projected spending on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan to $105 billion for the 2005 fiscal year - a figure that far exceeds the administration's prewar estimates of overall costs.
The Congressional Budget Office also projected the 2006 budget deficit at $296 billion, and released a 10-year fiscal projection that estimated budget shortfalls over the next decade at $855 billion, down from its projection last year of $2.3 trillion. But the new report noted that the 10-year figure, like the projection for the coming year, would predict larger shortfalls if the full amount actually being spent on the conflicts were included.
Long-term budget estimates are notoriously unreliable, being based on assumptions both about economic activity and policy decisions yet to come. The budget agency stressed that the figures were not meant as a hard and fast prediction, but as a benchmark that policy makers could use to inform decisions about new proposals.
The estimates also exclude the cost of measures the president plans to introduce when he submits his budget to Congress next month. Those include the partial privatization of Social Security, which would require up to $2 trillion over the next decade to make up for money being diverted into personal accounts; the extension of tax cuts passed in Mr. Bush's first term, which would cut revenues by an estimated $1.8 trillion over 10 years; and the $350 million pledged by President Bush for tsunami relief efforts.
The budget agency said that its figures were based on a prediction of strong economic growth in the next two years, based on an assumption that the economy has been performing under its capacity in recent years. But for later in the decade it predicts a slowing of growth as more members of the Baby Boom generation leave the work force and health care costs rise with the aging population.
And as in other years, the figures exclude the effect of the surplus being run by Social Security, which uses the excess to buy government bonds that it plans to use to pay benefits later in the century. The actual difference between non-Social Security revenues and spending projected for 2005 is $541 billion, not including the expected costs for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The actual spending gap in 2004 was $567 billion.
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, indicated that her party would likely support the White House's request for more money for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Democrats "have pledged to give our armed forces the support the need," she said. But she promised that the Bush administration would face tough questions about its policies in Iraq, in particular over the failure to train and equip more Iraqi troops.
Ms. Pelosi said the new deficit figures "confirm that President Bush and Congressional Republicans have completely abandoned fiscal responsibility."
The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, called the deficit "too high" and said the Congressional Budget Office's report showed that it was time to "get serious about putting our financial house in order, beginning with short-term deficit reduction and then long-term control of entitlement spending."
"If we do nothing, our kids and grandkids will be overwhelmed by the costs of our inaction," Senator Gregg said.
Brian Riedl, a budget analyst with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the figures showed strong growth in tax revenues, but even sharper growth in the government's spending on health care. Starting in 2006, when the new Medicare prescription drug benefit goes into effect, the cost of Medicare and Medicaid will for the first time exceed the cost of Social Security, Mr. Riedl said.
The Congressional Budget Office's report projected that spending for Medicare will rise at a rate of 9 percent a year through 2015, and for Medicaid at 7.8 percent a year.
As mandatory costs for the health programs and Social Security go up, along with interest payments to finance the rising national debt, the percentage of the budget going to discretionary programs - that is, everything else - will shrink over the next decade, according to the new forecast.
Edmund L. Andrews reported from Washington for this article, and John O'Neil from New York. David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
'Never Retire'
A Call To Action
The New York Times
January 24, 2005
OP-ED QUARTET: A COLUMNIST'S FAREWELL
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
The Nobel laureate James Watson, who started a revolution in science as co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, put it to me straight a couple of years ago: "Never retire. Your brain needs exercise or it will atrophy."
Why, then, am I bidding Op-Ed readers farewell today after more than 3,000 columns? Nobody pushed me; at 75, I'm in good shape, not afflicted with political ennui; and my recent column about tsunami injustice and the Book of Job drew the biggest mail response in 32 years of pounding out punditry.
Here's why I'm outta here: In an interview 50 years before, the aging adman Bruce Barton told me something like Watson's advice about the need to keep trying something new, which I punched up into "When you're through changing, you're through." He gladly adopted the aphorism, which I've been attributing to him ever since.
Combine those two bits of counsel - never retire, but plan to change your career to keep your synapses snapping - and you can see the path I'm now taking. Readers, too, may want to think about a longevity strategy.
We're all living longer. In the past century, life expectancy for Americans has risen from 47 to 77. With cures for cancer, heart disease and stroke on the way, with genetic engineering, stem cell regeneration and organ transplants a certainty, the boomer generation will be averting illness, patching itself up and pushing well past the biblical limits of "threescore and ten."
But to what purpose? If the body sticks around while the brain wanders off, a longer lifetime becomes a burden on self and society. Extending the life of the body gains most meaning when we preserve the life of the mind.
That idea led a lifetime friend, David Mahoney, who headed the Dana Foundation until his death in 2000, to join with Jim Watson in forming the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives. They roped me in, a dozen years ago, to help enliven a moribund "decade of the brain." By encouraging many of the most prestigious neuroscientists to get out of the ivory tower and explain in plain words the potential of brain science, they enlisted the growing public and private support for research.
That became the program running quietly in the background of my on-screen life as language maven, talking head, novelist and twice-weekly vituperative right-wing scandalmonger.
I had no pretensions about becoming a scientist (having been graduated near the bottom of my class at the Bronx High School of Science) but did launch a few publications and a Web site - www.Dana.org - that opened some channels among scientists, journalists and people seeking reliable information about the exciting field.
Experience as a Times polemicist made it easier to wade into the public controversies of science. Dana philanthropy provides forums to debate neuroethics: Is it right to push beyond treatment for mental illness to enhance the normal brain? Should we level human height with growth hormones? Is cloning ever morally sound? Does a drug-induced sense of well-being undermine "real" happiness? Such food for thought is now becoming my meat.
And what about what the cognition crowd calls "executive transfer" in learning? Does an early grasp of the arts - music, dance, drama, drawing - affect a child's ability to apply that cognitive process to facility in math, architecture, history? New imaging techniques and much-needed longitudinal studies may provide answers rather than anecdotes and affect arts budgets in schools.
So I told The Times's publisher two years ago that the 2004 presidential campaign would be my last hurrah as political pundit, and that I would then take on the full-time chairmanship of Dana. He expressed appropriate dismay at losing the Op-Ed conservative but said it would be a terrible idea to abandon the Sunday language column. That's my scholarly recreation, so I agreed to continue. (Don't use so as a conjunction!)
Starting next week, working in an operating and grant-making foundation, I will have to retrain parts of my brain. That may not make me a big man on hippocampus, but it means less of the horizon-gazing that required me to take positions on everything going on in the world; instead, a welcome verticalism will drive me to dig more deeply into specific areas of interest. Fewer lone-wolf assertions; more collegial dealing. I hear that's tough.
But retraining and fresh stimulation are what all of us should require in "the last of life, for which the first was made." Athletes and dancers deal with the need to retrain in their 30's, workers in their 40's, managers in their 50's, politicians in their 60's, academics and media biggies in their 70's. The trick is to start early in our careers the stress-relieving avocation that we will need later as a mind-exercising final vocation. We can quit a job, but we quit fresh involvement at our mental peril.
In this inaugural winter of 2005, the government in Washington is dividing with partisan zeal over the need or the way to protect today's 20-somethings' Social Security accounts in 2040. Sooner or later, we'll bite that bullet; personal economic security is freedom from fear.
But how many of us are planning now for our social activity accounts? Intellectual renewal is not a vast new government program, and to secure continuing social interaction deepens no deficit. By laying the basis for future activities in the midst of current careers, we reject stultifying retirement and seize the opportunity for an exhilarating second wind.
Medical and genetic science will surely stretch our life spans. Neuroscience will just as certainly make possible the mental agility of the aging. Nobody should fail to capitalize on the physical and mental gifts to come.
When you're through changing, learning, working to stay involved - only then are you through. "Never retire."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
January 24, 2005
OP-ED QUARTET: A COLUMNIST'S FAREWELL
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
The Nobel laureate James Watson, who started a revolution in science as co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, put it to me straight a couple of years ago: "Never retire. Your brain needs exercise or it will atrophy."
Why, then, am I bidding Op-Ed readers farewell today after more than 3,000 columns? Nobody pushed me; at 75, I'm in good shape, not afflicted with political ennui; and my recent column about tsunami injustice and the Book of Job drew the biggest mail response in 32 years of pounding out punditry.
Here's why I'm outta here: In an interview 50 years before, the aging adman Bruce Barton told me something like Watson's advice about the need to keep trying something new, which I punched up into "When you're through changing, you're through." He gladly adopted the aphorism, which I've been attributing to him ever since.
Combine those two bits of counsel - never retire, but plan to change your career to keep your synapses snapping - and you can see the path I'm now taking. Readers, too, may want to think about a longevity strategy.
We're all living longer. In the past century, life expectancy for Americans has risen from 47 to 77. With cures for cancer, heart disease and stroke on the way, with genetic engineering, stem cell regeneration and organ transplants a certainty, the boomer generation will be averting illness, patching itself up and pushing well past the biblical limits of "threescore and ten."
But to what purpose? If the body sticks around while the brain wanders off, a longer lifetime becomes a burden on self and society. Extending the life of the body gains most meaning when we preserve the life of the mind.
That idea led a lifetime friend, David Mahoney, who headed the Dana Foundation until his death in 2000, to join with Jim Watson in forming the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives. They roped me in, a dozen years ago, to help enliven a moribund "decade of the brain." By encouraging many of the most prestigious neuroscientists to get out of the ivory tower and explain in plain words the potential of brain science, they enlisted the growing public and private support for research.
That became the program running quietly in the background of my on-screen life as language maven, talking head, novelist and twice-weekly vituperative right-wing scandalmonger.
I had no pretensions about becoming a scientist (having been graduated near the bottom of my class at the Bronx High School of Science) but did launch a few publications and a Web site - www.Dana.org - that opened some channels among scientists, journalists and people seeking reliable information about the exciting field.
Experience as a Times polemicist made it easier to wade into the public controversies of science. Dana philanthropy provides forums to debate neuroethics: Is it right to push beyond treatment for mental illness to enhance the normal brain? Should we level human height with growth hormones? Is cloning ever morally sound? Does a drug-induced sense of well-being undermine "real" happiness? Such food for thought is now becoming my meat.
And what about what the cognition crowd calls "executive transfer" in learning? Does an early grasp of the arts - music, dance, drama, drawing - affect a child's ability to apply that cognitive process to facility in math, architecture, history? New imaging techniques and much-needed longitudinal studies may provide answers rather than anecdotes and affect arts budgets in schools.
So I told The Times's publisher two years ago that the 2004 presidential campaign would be my last hurrah as political pundit, and that I would then take on the full-time chairmanship of Dana. He expressed appropriate dismay at losing the Op-Ed conservative but said it would be a terrible idea to abandon the Sunday language column. That's my scholarly recreation, so I agreed to continue. (Don't use so as a conjunction!)
Starting next week, working in an operating and grant-making foundation, I will have to retrain parts of my brain. That may not make me a big man on hippocampus, but it means less of the horizon-gazing that required me to take positions on everything going on in the world; instead, a welcome verticalism will drive me to dig more deeply into specific areas of interest. Fewer lone-wolf assertions; more collegial dealing. I hear that's tough.
But retraining and fresh stimulation are what all of us should require in "the last of life, for which the first was made." Athletes and dancers deal with the need to retrain in their 30's, workers in their 40's, managers in their 50's, politicians in their 60's, academics and media biggies in their 70's. The trick is to start early in our careers the stress-relieving avocation that we will need later as a mind-exercising final vocation. We can quit a job, but we quit fresh involvement at our mental peril.
In this inaugural winter of 2005, the government in Washington is dividing with partisan zeal over the need or the way to protect today's 20-somethings' Social Security accounts in 2040. Sooner or later, we'll bite that bullet; personal economic security is freedom from fear.
But how many of us are planning now for our social activity accounts? Intellectual renewal is not a vast new government program, and to secure continuing social interaction deepens no deficit. By laying the basis for future activities in the midst of current careers, we reject stultifying retirement and seize the opportunity for an exhilarating second wind.
Medical and genetic science will surely stretch our life spans. Neuroscience will just as certainly make possible the mental agility of the aging. Nobody should fail to capitalize on the physical and mental gifts to come.
When you're through changing, learning, working to stay involved - only then are you through. "Never retire."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Monday, January 24, 2005
Take Action on Democrats.org
Miriam Vieni
Stop Republicans from Tying Social Security Benefits to Race and Gender
The administration's point man on Social Security in the House, Rep. Bill Thomas (R-CA), recently suggested in an interview that Republicans may try tying Social Security benefits to the race or gender of the recipients.
Sign our petition today and tell President Bush to disavow Chairman Thomas' suggestion that we put on the table the reprehensible idea of linking the size of someone's benefits to that person's race or gender.
Click here to take action today!
http://www.democrats.org/action/200501240001.html?psc=taf
Miriam Vieni
I thought people might be interested in signing this petition.
Miriam Vieni sends you No War in Iran Petition
Miriam Vieni, miriamvieni@optonline.net, sends you the enclosed page from PetitionOnline.com:
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/NWinIran/petition.html
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Personal comments from "miriamvieni@optonline.net":
<br />No War in Iran Petition<br />
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/NWinIran/petition.html
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untitled
A Bunch of Krabby Patties
By
MAUREEN DOWD
I should have known.
I can't believe I thought he was just an innocent little sponge wearing
tight shorts.
What in the name of Davy Jones's locker would a sponge be doing holding
hands with a starfish or donning purple and hot-pink flowered garb to
redecorate
the Krusty Krab if he weren't a perverted invertebrate?
Before this is over, we're going to find out that SpongeBob is the illicit
spawn of the Tampa shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge. Who knew SpongeBob
would
become as fraught as the cover of "Abbey Road"?
It took Dr. James Dobson, the conservative Christian leader and gay marriage
opponent, who claims the president's re-election was more a mandate for his
ideas than George Bush's, to point out the insidious underside of the
popular cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants. It takes a sponge to
brainwash a
child.
Holy Abe! Dr. Dobson outed SpongeBob at a black-tie inaugural fete last week
for members of Congress and political allies. He said that a "pro-homosexual
video" - starring SpongeBob, Barney, Jimmy Neutron, Winnie the Pooh, Kermit
the Frog and Miss Piggy - was set to go to elementary schools to promote a
"tolerance pledge," including tolerance for differences of "sexual
identity."
Hoppin' clams, as they say in Bikini Bottom, the den of epicene iniquity
where SpongeBob lives. Nothing good can come of tolerance.
Dan Martinsen, a spokesman for Nickelodeon, where SpongeBob beats the pants
off the competition, was flummoxed: "It's a sponge, for crying out loud. He
has no sexuality."
Dr. Dobson has done the country a service by reminding us to watch out for
the dark side of lovable but malleable sponges. He inspired me to fish
through
the president's Inaugural Address with a more skeptical eye.
Mr. Bush's epic pledge to support democratic movements and institutions in
every nation and to end "tyranny in our world" may seem wildly
pie-in-the-sky,
given that the Iraq vortex has drained our military.
Although his incendiary speech about "the untamed fire of freedom" has been
widely interpreted as a code-red warning to both foes and friends, I wonder
if the president knew he was literally promising to stamp out undemocratic
governments across the globe, which would include some of our top allies. He
probably thought it was a fancier way of repackaging the Iraq invasion, not
as a failed search for W.M.D., but as a blow for freedom (a word used 27
times)
and liberty (used 15 times).
I wonder if W. is surprised that people took it literally. The Bushes don't
always understand that they're being held to their rhetoric in major
speeches.
(Read my warships.) For such a brass-knuckled vision, the president's
delivery was curiously unemotional.
Some of the same advisers who filled Mr. Bush's brain with sugary visions of
a quick and painless Iraq makeover did mean the speech to be literal; they
are drawing up military options for the rest of the Middle East. Once again,
the lovable and malleable president seems to be soaking up the martial
mind-set
of those around him, almost like ... a sponge.
SpongeBush SquarePants!
We can only hope that Dr. Dobson doesn't pick up on the resemblance.
SpongeBob, as his song goes, "lives in a pineapple under the sea/absorbent
and yellow
and porous is he!" SpongeBush lives in a bubble in D.C./absorbent and
shallow and porous is he!
SpongeBush ensnared the country in a whale of a mess in Iraq because he
guilelessly absorbed the neocons' dire warnings about Saddam's weapons
capabilities
and their rosy assumptions about Ahmad Chalabi's leadership capabilities.
Dick Cheney is a gruff Mr. Krabs taskmaster to SpongeBush, but SpongeBush is
crazy about him anyhow. W. trustingly let his vice president make the
worst-case
scenario about Iraq a first-case scenario.
Mr. Bush might have thought he was just blowing pretty bubbles full of lofty
ideals about freedom and liberty in his speech, but Mr. Cheney and the
neocons
seem intent on filleting Iran and Syria. (Doesn't Richard Perle remind you
of the snarky and pretentious next-door neighbor to SpongeBob, Squidward
Tentacles?)
The vice president told Don Imus that Iran was "right at the top of the
list" of trouble spots, and that Israel "might well decide to act first"
with a
military strike.
Even if he's a little light in the flippers, SpongeBob has brought children
good, clean fun. SpongeBush has brought the world dark, endless fights.
Copyright 2005
By
MAUREEN DOWD
I should have known.
I can't believe I thought he was just an innocent little sponge wearing
tight shorts.
What in the name of Davy Jones's locker would a sponge be doing holding
hands with a starfish or donning purple and hot-pink flowered garb to
redecorate
the Krusty Krab if he weren't a perverted invertebrate?
Before this is over, we're going to find out that SpongeBob is the illicit
spawn of the Tampa shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge. Who knew SpongeBob
would
become as fraught as the cover of "Abbey Road"?
It took Dr. James Dobson, the conservative Christian leader and gay marriage
opponent, who claims the president's re-election was more a mandate for his
ideas than George Bush's, to point out the insidious underside of the
popular cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants. It takes a sponge to
brainwash a
child.
Holy Abe! Dr. Dobson outed SpongeBob at a black-tie inaugural fete last week
for members of Congress and political allies. He said that a "pro-homosexual
video" - starring SpongeBob, Barney, Jimmy Neutron, Winnie the Pooh, Kermit
the Frog and Miss Piggy - was set to go to elementary schools to promote a
"tolerance pledge," including tolerance for differences of "sexual
identity."
Hoppin' clams, as they say in Bikini Bottom, the den of epicene iniquity
where SpongeBob lives. Nothing good can come of tolerance.
Dan Martinsen, a spokesman for Nickelodeon, where SpongeBob beats the pants
off the competition, was flummoxed: "It's a sponge, for crying out loud. He
has no sexuality."
Dr. Dobson has done the country a service by reminding us to watch out for
the dark side of lovable but malleable sponges. He inspired me to fish
through
the president's Inaugural Address with a more skeptical eye.
Mr. Bush's epic pledge to support democratic movements and institutions in
every nation and to end "tyranny in our world" may seem wildly
pie-in-the-sky,
given that the Iraq vortex has drained our military.
Although his incendiary speech about "the untamed fire of freedom" has been
widely interpreted as a code-red warning to both foes and friends, I wonder
if the president knew he was literally promising to stamp out undemocratic
governments across the globe, which would include some of our top allies. He
probably thought it was a fancier way of repackaging the Iraq invasion, not
as a failed search for W.M.D., but as a blow for freedom (a word used 27
times)
and liberty (used 15 times).
I wonder if W. is surprised that people took it literally. The Bushes don't
always understand that they're being held to their rhetoric in major
speeches.
(Read my warships.) For such a brass-knuckled vision, the president's
delivery was curiously unemotional.
Some of the same advisers who filled Mr. Bush's brain with sugary visions of
a quick and painless Iraq makeover did mean the speech to be literal; they
are drawing up military options for the rest of the Middle East. Once again,
the lovable and malleable president seems to be soaking up the martial
mind-set
of those around him, almost like ... a sponge.
SpongeBush SquarePants!
We can only hope that Dr. Dobson doesn't pick up on the resemblance.
SpongeBob, as his song goes, "lives in a pineapple under the sea/absorbent
and yellow
and porous is he!" SpongeBush lives in a bubble in D.C./absorbent and
shallow and porous is he!
SpongeBush ensnared the country in a whale of a mess in Iraq because he
guilelessly absorbed the neocons' dire warnings about Saddam's weapons
capabilities
and their rosy assumptions about Ahmad Chalabi's leadership capabilities.
Dick Cheney is a gruff Mr. Krabs taskmaster to SpongeBush, but SpongeBush is
crazy about him anyhow. W. trustingly let his vice president make the
worst-case
scenario about Iraq a first-case scenario.
Mr. Bush might have thought he was just blowing pretty bubbles full of lofty
ideals about freedom and liberty in his speech, but Mr. Cheney and the
neocons
seem intent on filleting Iran and Syria. (Doesn't Richard Perle remind you
of the snarky and pretentious next-door neighbor to SpongeBob, Squidward
Tentacles?)
The vice president told Don Imus that Iran was "right at the top of the
list" of trouble spots, and that Israel "might well decide to act first"
with a
military strike.
Even if he's a little light in the flippers, SpongeBob has brought children
good, clean fun. SpongeBush has brought the world dark, endless fights.
Copyright 2005
untitled
Few but Organized, Iraq Veterans Turn War Critics
By NEELA BANERJEE
Sean Huze enlisted in the Marine Corps right after the Sept. 11 attacks and
was, in his own words, "red, white and blue all the way" when he deployed to
Iraq 16 months later. Unquestioning in his support of the invasion, he grew
irritated when his father, a former National Guardsman, expressed doubts
about
the war.
Today, all that has changed. Haunted by the civilian casualties he
witnessed, Corporal Huze has become one of a small but increasing number of
Iraq veterans
who have formed or joined groups to oppose the war or to criticize the way
it is being fought.
The two most visible organizations - Operation Truth, of which Corporal Huze
is a member, and Iraq Veterans Against the War - were founded only last
summer
but are growing in membership and sophistication. The Internet has helped
them spread their word and galvanize like-minded people in ways unimaginable
to activist veterans of previous generations, who are also lending help.
"There's strength in numbers," Corporal Huze said. "By ourselves, we're lone
voices, a whisper in a swarm of propaganda out there. Combined, we can
become
a roar and have an impact on the issues that we care about."
Those who turn to the groups are generally united in their disillusionment,
though their responses to the war vary: Iraq Veterans seeks a quick
withdrawal
from Iraq; Operation Truth focuses on the day-to-day issues affecting troops
and veterans.
Iraq Veterans Against the War, which started in July with 8 people, now has
more than 150 members, including some still serving in Iraq, said Michael
Hoffman,
a former lance corporal in the Marines and a co-founder of the group.
Operation Truth, based in New York, began with 5 members and now has 300,
with an e-mail list of more than 25,000 people. Its Web site is a compendium
of
soldiers and veterans' stories, a media digest on the war, and a rallying
point on issues affecting troops.
Iraq veterans are keenly aware of the need to argue for their interests,
given the struggles of veterans of Vietnam and the Persian Gulf war. The
older
veterans have offered a reservoir of knowledge and compassion to help Iraq
veterans avoid the mistakes they made.
It took Vietnam Veterans of America almost 15 years to have an effect on
government policy, said Steve Robinson, executive director of the National
Gulf
War Resource Center, an advocacy group for gulf war veterans. Mr. Robinson
said his group did not come into its own for about eight years, despite help
from Vietnam Veterans of America.
Mr. Robinson is working closely with Operation Truth, which he said had
already surpassed his operation in raising money.
For Corporal Huze, the transformation began when he returned home in fall
2003. Unable to forget the carnage he had seen in Iraq, he began to grapple
with
the justification for the war, he said.
"By sometime in December 2003, I came to the conclusion that W.M.D.'s
weren't there and that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, and now
I'm left
with all that I'd experienced in Iraq and nothing to balance it," Corporal
Huze said, emphasizing that he was speaking as a citizen, not as a marine.
"When
I came to that conclusion, I felt this sense of betrayal. I was full of rage
and depression."
That rage has since fueled Corporal Huze, a native of Baton Rouge, La., who
is awaiting a medical discharge for a head injury. With the consent of his
commanding
officers at Camp Lejeune, he speaks regularly to the media and others as a
representative for Operation Truth.
"Who I was before the war, who I was in Iraq and who I am now are three very
different men," Corporal Huze said. "I don't think I can ever have the blind
trust in the government like I had before. I think that my being over in
Iraq as an active participant, I'm a bit more responsible than others for
things
there. And I think by speaking out now, it's my amends." He added, "I don't
know if it will ever balance."
Operation Truth does not address the necessity of the war. David Chasteen of
suburban Washington, a former Army captain in the Third Infantry Division
and
a member of the group's board, said Operation Truth hoped to stake out a
nonpartisan position on aspects of the war that could realistically be
changed,
as opposed to tackling the administration's Middle East policy.
"Our attitude was 'Want to do something? Here's what you can do: get body
armor to the guys on the ground, get interpreters to people on the ground,
get
people who know how to plan this stuff on the ground,' " said Mr. Chasteen,
who said his experience in Iraq as an expert on unconventional weapons left
him disillusioned about the war. "Maybe if we tell people what we saw, maybe
some of these things can get fixed. I definitely think we added momentum to
some issues."
Operation Truth points out that when Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
took questions from soldiers in Kuwait last month about equipment shortages,
the Web site's readers sent 3,400 e-mail messages in 24 hours to members of
Congress asking for hearings into the issue, which are to be held in the
next
few months.
Organizing those who have recently returned from Iraq is an uphill battle,
older veterans and Iraq veterans agreed. The first priority for many is
resuming
their lives. And unlike most Vietnam veterans, many Iraq veterans have
remained in the military after returning, limiting their ability to
participate
in groups critical of the government.
Despite their different focuses, Operation Truth and Iraq Veterans Against
the War overlap on some issues, most notably with lobbying the government to
address what is expected by many veterans of Iraq and previous wars to be a
high incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder among those who served in
Iraq.
Some who served in Vietnam, like Tim Origer of the Santa Fe, N.M., chapter
of Veterans for Peace, have said Iraq veterans face a more intense version
of
the stresses they experienced: constant threats inherent to guerrilla war,
inability to distinguish friend from foe, and profound despair that often
accompanies
taking a life, especially a civilian's.
In March 2003, reports of suicide-bombing attacks on American soldiers had
reached Sgt. Rob Sarra's Marine Corps unit in an Iraqi town called
al-Shatra.
A short time later, soldiers saw an older woman walking toward them with a
small bundle. The marines, fearing that she might be a bomber, called to her
to stop, but she kept walking.
"I was looking at her, and I thought 'I have to stop this woman,' " Mr.
Sarra said. "So I fired on her, and then the other marines fired on her."
"When we got to her, we saw that she was pulling out a white flag," he said.
"She had tea and bread in her bag. I kept thinking, 'Was she a grandmother?
Was she a mother?' "
Mr. Sarra, who has left the Marines after nine years, struggled with
post-traumatic stress disorder in Iraq and at home in Chicago before seeking
counseling
and help from other veterans. Now he is one of the leaders of Iraq Veterans
Against the War.
"When someone is wounded or goes through P.T.S.D., it brings what they went
through to the forefront," Mr. Sarra said. "I knew when I joined the Marines
that if I was going to be there for 20 years, I'd face combat. But the
question is, why did we go?"
A grenade tossed into Robert Acosta's Humvee in Baghdad in July 2003 left
him without his right hand and shattered his legs. Mr. Acosta, 21, spent
months
in hospitals surrounded by other young amputees, watching news about
government commissions concluding that Iraq had no unconventional weapons.
He began reading, watching the news and talking to people, especially
Vietnam veterans like Mr. Origer in Santa Fe. Last summer, his girlfriend
heard Paul
Rieckhoff, the founder of Operation Truth, speak on the radio. Mr. Acosta
contacted him. By the fall, Mr. Acosta had become the organization's public
face,
appearing in a provocative television advertisement.
Mr. Acosta, who is attending community college in Southern California, said
he hoped to bring friends from his old unit in the First Armored Division
into
Operation Truth as they leave the Army, because they might start to
experience some of the problems he faced. For instance, he said, he once
used duct
tape to hold his prosthesis together because he could not get it repaired
quickly at the local Veterans Affairs hospital. And people often asked about
his injury.
"People would just come up to me and say, 'How'd you lose your arm?' " Mr.
Acosta said. "And I'd say, 'In the war.' And they would be like, 'What war?'
"
Copyright 2005
By NEELA BANERJEE
Sean Huze enlisted in the Marine Corps right after the Sept. 11 attacks and
was, in his own words, "red, white and blue all the way" when he deployed to
Iraq 16 months later. Unquestioning in his support of the invasion, he grew
irritated when his father, a former National Guardsman, expressed doubts
about
the war.
Today, all that has changed. Haunted by the civilian casualties he
witnessed, Corporal Huze has become one of a small but increasing number of
Iraq veterans
who have formed or joined groups to oppose the war or to criticize the way
it is being fought.
The two most visible organizations - Operation Truth, of which Corporal Huze
is a member, and Iraq Veterans Against the War - were founded only last
summer
but are growing in membership and sophistication. The Internet has helped
them spread their word and galvanize like-minded people in ways unimaginable
to activist veterans of previous generations, who are also lending help.
"There's strength in numbers," Corporal Huze said. "By ourselves, we're lone
voices, a whisper in a swarm of propaganda out there. Combined, we can
become
a roar and have an impact on the issues that we care about."
Those who turn to the groups are generally united in their disillusionment,
though their responses to the war vary: Iraq Veterans seeks a quick
withdrawal
from Iraq; Operation Truth focuses on the day-to-day issues affecting troops
and veterans.
Iraq Veterans Against the War, which started in July with 8 people, now has
more than 150 members, including some still serving in Iraq, said Michael
Hoffman,
a former lance corporal in the Marines and a co-founder of the group.
Operation Truth, based in New York, began with 5 members and now has 300,
with an e-mail list of more than 25,000 people. Its Web site is a compendium
of
soldiers and veterans' stories, a media digest on the war, and a rallying
point on issues affecting troops.
Iraq veterans are keenly aware of the need to argue for their interests,
given the struggles of veterans of Vietnam and the Persian Gulf war. The
older
veterans have offered a reservoir of knowledge and compassion to help Iraq
veterans avoid the mistakes they made.
It took Vietnam Veterans of America almost 15 years to have an effect on
government policy, said Steve Robinson, executive director of the National
Gulf
War Resource Center, an advocacy group for gulf war veterans. Mr. Robinson
said his group did not come into its own for about eight years, despite help
from Vietnam Veterans of America.
Mr. Robinson is working closely with Operation Truth, which he said had
already surpassed his operation in raising money.
For Corporal Huze, the transformation began when he returned home in fall
2003. Unable to forget the carnage he had seen in Iraq, he began to grapple
with
the justification for the war, he said.
"By sometime in December 2003, I came to the conclusion that W.M.D.'s
weren't there and that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, and now
I'm left
with all that I'd experienced in Iraq and nothing to balance it," Corporal
Huze said, emphasizing that he was speaking as a citizen, not as a marine.
"When
I came to that conclusion, I felt this sense of betrayal. I was full of rage
and depression."
That rage has since fueled Corporal Huze, a native of Baton Rouge, La., who
is awaiting a medical discharge for a head injury. With the consent of his
commanding
officers at Camp Lejeune, he speaks regularly to the media and others as a
representative for Operation Truth.
"Who I was before the war, who I was in Iraq and who I am now are three very
different men," Corporal Huze said. "I don't think I can ever have the blind
trust in the government like I had before. I think that my being over in
Iraq as an active participant, I'm a bit more responsible than others for
things
there. And I think by speaking out now, it's my amends." He added, "I don't
know if it will ever balance."
Operation Truth does not address the necessity of the war. David Chasteen of
suburban Washington, a former Army captain in the Third Infantry Division
and
a member of the group's board, said Operation Truth hoped to stake out a
nonpartisan position on aspects of the war that could realistically be
changed,
as opposed to tackling the administration's Middle East policy.
"Our attitude was 'Want to do something? Here's what you can do: get body
armor to the guys on the ground, get interpreters to people on the ground,
get
people who know how to plan this stuff on the ground,' " said Mr. Chasteen,
who said his experience in Iraq as an expert on unconventional weapons left
him disillusioned about the war. "Maybe if we tell people what we saw, maybe
some of these things can get fixed. I definitely think we added momentum to
some issues."
Operation Truth points out that when Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
took questions from soldiers in Kuwait last month about equipment shortages,
the Web site's readers sent 3,400 e-mail messages in 24 hours to members of
Congress asking for hearings into the issue, which are to be held in the
next
few months.
Organizing those who have recently returned from Iraq is an uphill battle,
older veterans and Iraq veterans agreed. The first priority for many is
resuming
their lives. And unlike most Vietnam veterans, many Iraq veterans have
remained in the military after returning, limiting their ability to
participate
in groups critical of the government.
Despite their different focuses, Operation Truth and Iraq Veterans Against
the War overlap on some issues, most notably with lobbying the government to
address what is expected by many veterans of Iraq and previous wars to be a
high incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder among those who served in
Iraq.
Some who served in Vietnam, like Tim Origer of the Santa Fe, N.M., chapter
of Veterans for Peace, have said Iraq veterans face a more intense version
of
the stresses they experienced: constant threats inherent to guerrilla war,
inability to distinguish friend from foe, and profound despair that often
accompanies
taking a life, especially a civilian's.
In March 2003, reports of suicide-bombing attacks on American soldiers had
reached Sgt. Rob Sarra's Marine Corps unit in an Iraqi town called
al-Shatra.
A short time later, soldiers saw an older woman walking toward them with a
small bundle. The marines, fearing that she might be a bomber, called to her
to stop, but she kept walking.
"I was looking at her, and I thought 'I have to stop this woman,' " Mr.
Sarra said. "So I fired on her, and then the other marines fired on her."
"When we got to her, we saw that she was pulling out a white flag," he said.
"She had tea and bread in her bag. I kept thinking, 'Was she a grandmother?
Was she a mother?' "
Mr. Sarra, who has left the Marines after nine years, struggled with
post-traumatic stress disorder in Iraq and at home in Chicago before seeking
counseling
and help from other veterans. Now he is one of the leaders of Iraq Veterans
Against the War.
"When someone is wounded or goes through P.T.S.D., it brings what they went
through to the forefront," Mr. Sarra said. "I knew when I joined the Marines
that if I was going to be there for 20 years, I'd face combat. But the
question is, why did we go?"
A grenade tossed into Robert Acosta's Humvee in Baghdad in July 2003 left
him without his right hand and shattered his legs. Mr. Acosta, 21, spent
months
in hospitals surrounded by other young amputees, watching news about
government commissions concluding that Iraq had no unconventional weapons.
He began reading, watching the news and talking to people, especially
Vietnam veterans like Mr. Origer in Santa Fe. Last summer, his girlfriend
heard Paul
Rieckhoff, the founder of Operation Truth, speak on the radio. Mr. Acosta
contacted him. By the fall, Mr. Acosta had become the organization's public
face,
appearing in a provocative television advertisement.
Mr. Acosta, who is attending community college in Southern California, said
he hoped to bring friends from his old unit in the First Armored Division
into
Operation Truth as they leave the Army, because they might start to
experience some of the problems he faced. For instance, he said, he once
used duct
tape to hold his prosthesis together because he could not get it repaired
quickly at the local Veterans Affairs hospital. And people often asked about
his injury.
"People would just come up to me and say, 'How'd you lose your arm?' " Mr.
Acosta said. "And I'd say, 'In the war.' And they would be like, 'What war?'
"
Copyright 2005
Sunday, January 23, 2005
Bush's 2000 War Promises
A Call To Action
Sept. 1, 2004
CBS News is looking at campaign promises then-candidate Bush made four years ago. Tonight, Barry Petersen looks at Bush's statements about U.S. military involvement abroad.
"When America uses force in the world, the cause must be just, the goal must be clear, and the victory must be overwhelming,'' said George W. Bush in 2000, when accepting his party's nomination.
With 9/11 the cause was just … war on terrorism.
The response was to root out the Taliban and Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. But overwhelming victory remains elusive. The Taliban is still killing Americans, and Osama Bin Laden lives to plan another 9/11.
In Iraq, a new goal: eliminate weapons of mass destruction the administration insisted threatened America. But there were none.
Then the goals started shifting … get rid of Saddam. And then … something far harder, far fuzzier … bring democracy to Iraq.
"That looks highly uncertain, at best,'' said Jessica Tuchman Mathews, with the Carnegie Endowment For International Peace.
The price is being paid in blood - almost a thousand Americans dead, nearly 7,000 wounded.
Said Mr. Bush in 2000: "I would be very careful about using our troops as nation-builders."
But President Bush's first term in office will be remembered for just such an effort.
America promised to rebuild this country, but little has been done. That means Iraqis still live in the misery of destruction that awesome American firepower left behind. To the Iraqi people, it is a promise yet to be kept.
The one goal above all others -- winning the war against terrorism.
But Iraq may hinder, not help, winning that war. Once unified under an iron-fisted dictator, it is now a series of regions ruled by tribal or religious leaders – a breeding ground for terrorists from all across the Middle East.
Terrorists united by one cause, to strike Americans and America.
"You have to conclude that the war, so far, has made us substantially less safe,'' said Tuchman Mathews, with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Americans can be forgiven for doubting if the goals are still clear, and for worrying that overwhelming victory -- indeed, any victory -- is something we may never have.
(c)MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Sept. 1, 2004
CBS News is looking at campaign promises then-candidate Bush made four years ago. Tonight, Barry Petersen looks at Bush's statements about U.S. military involvement abroad.
"When America uses force in the world, the cause must be just, the goal must be clear, and the victory must be overwhelming,'' said George W. Bush in 2000, when accepting his party's nomination.
With 9/11 the cause was just … war on terrorism.
The response was to root out the Taliban and Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. But overwhelming victory remains elusive. The Taliban is still killing Americans, and Osama Bin Laden lives to plan another 9/11.
In Iraq, a new goal: eliminate weapons of mass destruction the administration insisted threatened America. But there were none.
Then the goals started shifting … get rid of Saddam. And then … something far harder, far fuzzier … bring democracy to Iraq.
"That looks highly uncertain, at best,'' said Jessica Tuchman Mathews, with the Carnegie Endowment For International Peace.
The price is being paid in blood - almost a thousand Americans dead, nearly 7,000 wounded.
Said Mr. Bush in 2000: "I would be very careful about using our troops as nation-builders."
But President Bush's first term in office will be remembered for just such an effort.
America promised to rebuild this country, but little has been done. That means Iraqis still live in the misery of destruction that awesome American firepower left behind. To the Iraqi people, it is a promise yet to be kept.
The one goal above all others -- winning the war against terrorism.
But Iraq may hinder, not help, winning that war. Once unified under an iron-fisted dictator, it is now a series of regions ruled by tribal or religious leaders – a breeding ground for terrorists from all across the Middle East.
Terrorists united by one cause, to strike Americans and America.
"You have to conclude that the war, so far, has made us substantially less safe,'' said Tuchman Mathews, with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Americans can be forgiven for doubting if the goals are still clear, and for worrying that overwhelming victory -- indeed, any victory -- is something we may never have.
(c)MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Secret Unit Expands Rumsfeld's Domain
A Call To Action
washingtonpost.com
New Espionage Branch Delving Into CIA Territory
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 23, 2005; Page A01
The Pentagon, expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by The Washington Post.
The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld's written order to end his "near total dependence on CIA" for what is known as human intelligence. Designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary's direct control, the Strategic Support Branch deploys small teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists alongside newly empowered special operations forces.
Military and civilian participants said in interviews that the new unit has been operating in secret for two years -- in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places they declined to name. According to an early planning memorandum to Rumsfeld from Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the focus of the intelligence initiative is on "emerging target countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia." Myers and his staff declined to be interviewed.
The Strategic Support Branch was created to provide Rumsfeld with independent tools for the "full spectrum of humint operations," according to an internal account of its origin and mission. Human intelligence operations, a term used in counterpoint to technical means such as satellite photography, range from interrogation of prisoners and scouting of targets in wartime to the peacetime recruitment of foreign spies. A recent Pentagon memo states that recruited agents may include "notorious figures" whose links to the U.S. government would be embarrassing if disclosed.
Perhaps the most significant shift is the Defense Department's bid to conduct surreptitious missions, in friendly and unfriendly states, when conventional war is a distant or unlikely prospect -- activities that have traditionally been the province of the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Senior Rumsfeld advisers said those missions are central to what they called the department's predominant role in combating terrorist threats.
The Pentagon has a vast bureaucracy devoted to gathering and analyzing intelligence, often in concert with the CIA, and news reports over more than a year have described Rumsfeld's drive for more and better human intelligence. But the creation of the espionage branch, the scope of its clandestine operations and the breadth of Rumsfeld's asserted legal authority have not been detailed publicly before. Two longtime members of the House Intelligence Committee, a Democrat and a Republican, said they knew no details before being interviewed for this article.
Pentagon officials said they established the Strategic Support Branch using "reprogrammed" funds, without explicit congressional authority or appropriation. Defense intelligence missions, they said, are subject to less stringent congressional oversight than comparable operations by the CIA. Rumsfeld's dissatisfaction with the CIA's operations directorate, and his determination to build what amounts in some respects to a rival service, follows struggles with then-CIA Director George J. Tenet over intelligence collection priorities in Afghanistan and Iraq. Pentagon officials said the CIA naturally has interests that differ from those of military commanders, but they also criticized its operations directorate as understaffed, slow-moving and risk-averse. A recurring phrase in internal Pentagon documents is the requirement for a human intelligence branch "directly responsive to tasking from SecDef," or Rumsfeld.
The new unit's performance in the field -- and its latest commander, reserve Army Col. George Waldroup -- are controversial among those involved in the closely held program. Pentagon officials acknowledged that Waldroup and many of those brought quickly into his service lack the experience and training typical of intelligence officers and special operators. In his civilian career as a federal manager, according to a Justice Department inspector general's report, Waldroup was at the center of a 1996 probe into alleged deception of Congress concerning staffing problems at Miami International Airport. Navy Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, expressed "utmost confidence in Colonel Waldroup's capabilities" and said in an interview that Waldroup's unit has scored "a whole series of successes" that he could not reveal in public. He acknowledged the risks, however, of trying to expand human intelligence too fast: "It's not something you quickly constitute as a capability. It's going to take years to do."
Rumsfeld's ambitious plans rely principally on the Tampa-based U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, and on its clandestine component, the Joint Special Operations Command. Rumsfeld has designated SOCOM's leader, Army Gen. Bryan D. Brown, as the military commander in chief in the war on terrorism. He has also given Brown's subordinates new authority to pay foreign agents. The Strategic Support Branch is intended to add missing capabilities -- such as the skill to establish local spy networks and the technology for direct access to national intelligence databases -- to the military's much larger special operations squadrons. Some Pentagon officials refer to the combined units as the "secret army of Northern Virginia."
Known as "special mission units," Brown's elite forces are not acknowledged publicly. They include two squadrons of an Army unit popularly known as Delta Force, another Army squadron -- formerly code-named Gray Fox -- that specializes in close-in electronic surveillance, an Air Force human intelligence unit and the Navy unit popularly known as SEAL Team Six.
The Defense Department is planning for further growth. Among the proposals circulating are the establishment of a Pentagon-controlled espionage school, largely duplicating the CIA's Field Tradecraft Course at Camp Perry, Va., and of intelligence operations commands for every region overseas.
Rumsfeld's efforts, launched in October 2001, address two widely shared goals. One is to give combat forces, such as those fighting the insurgency in Iraq, more and better information about their immediate enemy. The other is to find new tools to penetrate and destroy the shadowy organizations, such as al Qaeda, that pose global threats to U.S. interests in conflicts with little resemblance to conventional war.
In pursuit of those aims, Rumsfeld is laying claim to greater independence of action as Congress seeks to subordinate the 15 U.S. intelligence departments and agencies -- most under Rumsfeld's control -- to the newly created and still unfilled position of national intelligence director. For months, Rumsfeld opposed the intelligence reorganization bill that created the position. He withdrew his objections late last year after House Republican leaders inserted language that he interprets as preserving much of the department's autonomy.
Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, deputy undersecretary for intelligence, acknowledged that Rumsfeld intends to direct some missions previously undertaken by the CIA. He added that it is wrong to make "an assumption that what the secretary is trying to say is, 'Get the CIA out of this business, and we'll take it.' I don't interpret it that way at all."
"The secretary actually has more responsibility to collect intelligence for the national foreign intelligence program . . . than does the CIA director," Boykin said. "That's why you hear all this information being published about the secretary having 80 percent of the [intelligence] budget. Well, yeah, but he has 80 percent of the responsibility for collection, as well."
CIA spokeswoman Anya Guilsher said the agency would grant no interviews for this article.
Pentagon officials emphasized their intention to remain accountable to Congress, but they also asserted that defense intelligence missions are subject to fewer legal constraints than Rumsfeld's predecessors believed. That assertion involves new interpretations of Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which governs the armed services, and Title 50, which governs, among other things, foreign intelligence.
Under Title 10, for example, the Defense Department must report to Congress all "deployment orders," or formal instructions from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to position U.S. forces for combat. But guidelines issued this month by Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone state that special operations forces may "conduct clandestine HUMINT operations . . . before publication" of a deployment order, rendering notification unnecessary. Pentagon lawyers also define the "war on terror" as ongoing, indefinite and global in scope. That analysis effectively discards the limitation of the defense secretary's war powers to times and places of imminent combat.
Under Title 50, all departments of the executive branch are obliged to keep Congress "fully and currently informed of all intelligence activities." The law exempts "traditional . . . military activities" and their "routine support." Advisers said Rumsfeld, after requesting a fresh legal review by the Pentagon's general counsel, interprets "traditional" and "routine" more expansively than his predecessors.
"Operations the CIA runs have one set of restrictions and oversight, and the military has another," said a Republican member of Congress with a substantial role in national security oversight, declining to speak publicly against political allies. "It sounds like there's an angle here of, 'Let's get around having any oversight by having the military do something that normally the [CIA] does, and not tell anybody.' That immediately raises all kinds of red flags for me. Why aren't they telling us?"
The enumeration by Myers of "emerging target countries" for clandestine intelligence work illustrates the breadth of the Pentagon's new concept. All those named, save Somalia, have allied themselves with the United States -- if unevenly -- against al Qaeda and its jihadist allies.
A high-ranking official with direct responsibility for the initiative, declining to speak on the record about espionage in friendly nations, said the Defense Department sometimes has to work undetected inside "a country that we're not at war with, if you will, a country that maybe has ungoverned spaces, or a country that is tacitly allowing some kind of threatening activity to go on."
Assistant Secretary of Defense Thomas O'Connell, who oversees special operations policy, said Rumsfeld has discarded the "hide-bound way of thinking" and "risk-averse mentalities" of previous Pentagon officials under every president since Gerald R. Ford.
"Many of the restrictions imposed on the Defense Department were imposed by tradition, by legislation, and by interpretations of various leaders and legal advisors," O'Connell said in a written reply to follow-up questions. "The interpretations take on the force of law and may preclude activities that are legal. In my view, many of the authorities inherent to [the Defense Department] . . . were winnowed away over the years."
After reversing the restrictions, Boykin said, Rumsfeld's next question "was, 'Okay, do I have the capability?' And the answer was, 'No you don't have the capability. . . . And then it became a matter of, 'I want to build a capability to be able to do this.' "
Known by several names since its inception as Project Icon on April 25, 2002, the Strategic Support Branch is an arm of the DIA's nine-year-old Defense Human Intelligence Service, which until now has concentrated on managing military attachés assigned openly to U.S. embassies around the world.
Rumsfeld's initiatives are not connected to previously reported negotiations between the Defense Department and the CIA over control of paramilitary operations, such as the capture of individuals or the destruction of facilities.
According to written guidelines made available to The Post, the Defense Department has decided that it will coordinate its human intelligence missions with the CIA but will not, as in the past, await consent. It also reserves the right to bypass the agency's Langley headquarters, consulting CIA officers in the field instead. The Pentagon will deem a mission "coordinated" after giving 72 hours' notice to the CIA.
Four people with firsthand knowledge said defense personnel have already begun operating under "non-official cover" overseas, using false names and nationalities. Those missions, and others contemplated in the Pentagon, skirt the line between clandestine and covert operations. Under U.S. law, "clandestine" refers to actions that are meant to be undetected, and "covert" refers to those for which the U.S. government denies its responsibility. Covert action is subject to stricter legal requirements, including a written "finding" of necessity by the president and prompt notification of senior leaders of both parties in the House and Senate.
O'Connell, asked whether the Pentagon foresees greater involvement in covert action, said "that remains to be determined." He added: "A better answer yet might be, depends upon the situation. But no one I know of is raising their hand and saying at DOD, 'We want control of covert operations.' "
One scenario in which Pentagon operatives might play a role, O'Connell said, is this: "A hostile country close to our borders suddenly changes leadership. . . . We would want to make sure the successor is not hostile."
Researcher Rob Thomason contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
washingtonpost.com
New Espionage Branch Delving Into CIA Territory
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 23, 2005; Page A01
The Pentagon, expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by The Washington Post.
The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld's written order to end his "near total dependence on CIA" for what is known as human intelligence. Designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary's direct control, the Strategic Support Branch deploys small teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists alongside newly empowered special operations forces.
Military and civilian participants said in interviews that the new unit has been operating in secret for two years -- in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places they declined to name. According to an early planning memorandum to Rumsfeld from Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the focus of the intelligence initiative is on "emerging target countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia." Myers and his staff declined to be interviewed.
The Strategic Support Branch was created to provide Rumsfeld with independent tools for the "full spectrum of humint operations," according to an internal account of its origin and mission. Human intelligence operations, a term used in counterpoint to technical means such as satellite photography, range from interrogation of prisoners and scouting of targets in wartime to the peacetime recruitment of foreign spies. A recent Pentagon memo states that recruited agents may include "notorious figures" whose links to the U.S. government would be embarrassing if disclosed.
Perhaps the most significant shift is the Defense Department's bid to conduct surreptitious missions, in friendly and unfriendly states, when conventional war is a distant or unlikely prospect -- activities that have traditionally been the province of the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Senior Rumsfeld advisers said those missions are central to what they called the department's predominant role in combating terrorist threats.
The Pentagon has a vast bureaucracy devoted to gathering and analyzing intelligence, often in concert with the CIA, and news reports over more than a year have described Rumsfeld's drive for more and better human intelligence. But the creation of the espionage branch, the scope of its clandestine operations and the breadth of Rumsfeld's asserted legal authority have not been detailed publicly before. Two longtime members of the House Intelligence Committee, a Democrat and a Republican, said they knew no details before being interviewed for this article.
Pentagon officials said they established the Strategic Support Branch using "reprogrammed" funds, without explicit congressional authority or appropriation. Defense intelligence missions, they said, are subject to less stringent congressional oversight than comparable operations by the CIA. Rumsfeld's dissatisfaction with the CIA's operations directorate, and his determination to build what amounts in some respects to a rival service, follows struggles with then-CIA Director George J. Tenet over intelligence collection priorities in Afghanistan and Iraq. Pentagon officials said the CIA naturally has interests that differ from those of military commanders, but they also criticized its operations directorate as understaffed, slow-moving and risk-averse. A recurring phrase in internal Pentagon documents is the requirement for a human intelligence branch "directly responsive to tasking from SecDef," or Rumsfeld.
The new unit's performance in the field -- and its latest commander, reserve Army Col. George Waldroup -- are controversial among those involved in the closely held program. Pentagon officials acknowledged that Waldroup and many of those brought quickly into his service lack the experience and training typical of intelligence officers and special operators. In his civilian career as a federal manager, according to a Justice Department inspector general's report, Waldroup was at the center of a 1996 probe into alleged deception of Congress concerning staffing problems at Miami International Airport. Navy Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, expressed "utmost confidence in Colonel Waldroup's capabilities" and said in an interview that Waldroup's unit has scored "a whole series of successes" that he could not reveal in public. He acknowledged the risks, however, of trying to expand human intelligence too fast: "It's not something you quickly constitute as a capability. It's going to take years to do."
Rumsfeld's ambitious plans rely principally on the Tampa-based U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, and on its clandestine component, the Joint Special Operations Command. Rumsfeld has designated SOCOM's leader, Army Gen. Bryan D. Brown, as the military commander in chief in the war on terrorism. He has also given Brown's subordinates new authority to pay foreign agents. The Strategic Support Branch is intended to add missing capabilities -- such as the skill to establish local spy networks and the technology for direct access to national intelligence databases -- to the military's much larger special operations squadrons. Some Pentagon officials refer to the combined units as the "secret army of Northern Virginia."
Known as "special mission units," Brown's elite forces are not acknowledged publicly. They include two squadrons of an Army unit popularly known as Delta Force, another Army squadron -- formerly code-named Gray Fox -- that specializes in close-in electronic surveillance, an Air Force human intelligence unit and the Navy unit popularly known as SEAL Team Six.
The Defense Department is planning for further growth. Among the proposals circulating are the establishment of a Pentagon-controlled espionage school, largely duplicating the CIA's Field Tradecraft Course at Camp Perry, Va., and of intelligence operations commands for every region overseas.
Rumsfeld's efforts, launched in October 2001, address two widely shared goals. One is to give combat forces, such as those fighting the insurgency in Iraq, more and better information about their immediate enemy. The other is to find new tools to penetrate and destroy the shadowy organizations, such as al Qaeda, that pose global threats to U.S. interests in conflicts with little resemblance to conventional war.
In pursuit of those aims, Rumsfeld is laying claim to greater independence of action as Congress seeks to subordinate the 15 U.S. intelligence departments and agencies -- most under Rumsfeld's control -- to the newly created and still unfilled position of national intelligence director. For months, Rumsfeld opposed the intelligence reorganization bill that created the position. He withdrew his objections late last year after House Republican leaders inserted language that he interprets as preserving much of the department's autonomy.
Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, deputy undersecretary for intelligence, acknowledged that Rumsfeld intends to direct some missions previously undertaken by the CIA. He added that it is wrong to make "an assumption that what the secretary is trying to say is, 'Get the CIA out of this business, and we'll take it.' I don't interpret it that way at all."
"The secretary actually has more responsibility to collect intelligence for the national foreign intelligence program . . . than does the CIA director," Boykin said. "That's why you hear all this information being published about the secretary having 80 percent of the [intelligence] budget. Well, yeah, but he has 80 percent of the responsibility for collection, as well."
CIA spokeswoman Anya Guilsher said the agency would grant no interviews for this article.
Pentagon officials emphasized their intention to remain accountable to Congress, but they also asserted that defense intelligence missions are subject to fewer legal constraints than Rumsfeld's predecessors believed. That assertion involves new interpretations of Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which governs the armed services, and Title 50, which governs, among other things, foreign intelligence.
Under Title 10, for example, the Defense Department must report to Congress all "deployment orders," or formal instructions from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to position U.S. forces for combat. But guidelines issued this month by Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone state that special operations forces may "conduct clandestine HUMINT operations . . . before publication" of a deployment order, rendering notification unnecessary. Pentagon lawyers also define the "war on terror" as ongoing, indefinite and global in scope. That analysis effectively discards the limitation of the defense secretary's war powers to times and places of imminent combat.
Under Title 50, all departments of the executive branch are obliged to keep Congress "fully and currently informed of all intelligence activities." The law exempts "traditional . . . military activities" and their "routine support." Advisers said Rumsfeld, after requesting a fresh legal review by the Pentagon's general counsel, interprets "traditional" and "routine" more expansively than his predecessors.
"Operations the CIA runs have one set of restrictions and oversight, and the military has another," said a Republican member of Congress with a substantial role in national security oversight, declining to speak publicly against political allies. "It sounds like there's an angle here of, 'Let's get around having any oversight by having the military do something that normally the [CIA] does, and not tell anybody.' That immediately raises all kinds of red flags for me. Why aren't they telling us?"
The enumeration by Myers of "emerging target countries" for clandestine intelligence work illustrates the breadth of the Pentagon's new concept. All those named, save Somalia, have allied themselves with the United States -- if unevenly -- against al Qaeda and its jihadist allies.
A high-ranking official with direct responsibility for the initiative, declining to speak on the record about espionage in friendly nations, said the Defense Department sometimes has to work undetected inside "a country that we're not at war with, if you will, a country that maybe has ungoverned spaces, or a country that is tacitly allowing some kind of threatening activity to go on."
Assistant Secretary of Defense Thomas O'Connell, who oversees special operations policy, said Rumsfeld has discarded the "hide-bound way of thinking" and "risk-averse mentalities" of previous Pentagon officials under every president since Gerald R. Ford.
"Many of the restrictions imposed on the Defense Department were imposed by tradition, by legislation, and by interpretations of various leaders and legal advisors," O'Connell said in a written reply to follow-up questions. "The interpretations take on the force of law and may preclude activities that are legal. In my view, many of the authorities inherent to [the Defense Department] . . . were winnowed away over the years."
After reversing the restrictions, Boykin said, Rumsfeld's next question "was, 'Okay, do I have the capability?' And the answer was, 'No you don't have the capability. . . . And then it became a matter of, 'I want to build a capability to be able to do this.' "
Known by several names since its inception as Project Icon on April 25, 2002, the Strategic Support Branch is an arm of the DIA's nine-year-old Defense Human Intelligence Service, which until now has concentrated on managing military attachés assigned openly to U.S. embassies around the world.
Rumsfeld's initiatives are not connected to previously reported negotiations between the Defense Department and the CIA over control of paramilitary operations, such as the capture of individuals or the destruction of facilities.
According to written guidelines made available to The Post, the Defense Department has decided that it will coordinate its human intelligence missions with the CIA but will not, as in the past, await consent. It also reserves the right to bypass the agency's Langley headquarters, consulting CIA officers in the field instead. The Pentagon will deem a mission "coordinated" after giving 72 hours' notice to the CIA.
Four people with firsthand knowledge said defense personnel have already begun operating under "non-official cover" overseas, using false names and nationalities. Those missions, and others contemplated in the Pentagon, skirt the line between clandestine and covert operations. Under U.S. law, "clandestine" refers to actions that are meant to be undetected, and "covert" refers to those for which the U.S. government denies its responsibility. Covert action is subject to stricter legal requirements, including a written "finding" of necessity by the president and prompt notification of senior leaders of both parties in the House and Senate.
O'Connell, asked whether the Pentagon foresees greater involvement in covert action, said "that remains to be determined." He added: "A better answer yet might be, depends upon the situation. But no one I know of is raising their hand and saying at DOD, 'We want control of covert operations.' "
One scenario in which Pentagon operatives might play a role, O'Connell said, is this: "A hostile country close to our borders suddenly changes leadership. . . . We would want to make sure the successor is not hostile."
Researcher Rob Thomason contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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