A little-known fact unites Democratic frontrunner John Kerry and President Bush: they are both members of Yale’s secret society Skull and Bones. We speak with the author of “Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power” that reveals details about the secret society and its members.
Skull & Bones: The Secret Society That Unites John Kerry and President Bush
Folks,
Krugman asks the question that has been plaguing me: where’s the apology? Where’s the remorse? How can this administration continue to lie so brazenly? Why, as they’ve been caught in their lies and deceptions time after time, do they continue to just skate on it? Whatever happened to the Congress that was willing to spend $80 million to investigate Clinton and come up empty-handed? There is hard evidence on this administration’s deceits!
As Krugman puts it, “Still, the big story isn’t about Mr. Bush; it’s about what’s happening to America. Other presidents would have liked to bully the C.I.A., stonewall investigations and give huge contracts to their friends without oversight. They knew, however, that they couldn’t. What has gone wrong with our country that allows this president to get away with such things?”
That’s what I want to know too.
–C
Friday 30 January 2004
George Bush promised to bring honor and integrity back to the White House. Instead, he got rid of accountability.
Surely even supporters of the Iraq war must be dismayed by the administration’s reaction to David Kay’s recent statements. Iraq, he now admits, didn’t have W.M.D., or even active programs to produce such weapons. Those much-ridiculed U.N. inspectors were right. (But Hans Blix appears to have gone down the memory hole. On Tuesday Mr. Bush declared that the war was justified — under U.N. Resolution 1441, no less — because Saddam “did not let us in.”)
So where are the apologies? Where are the resignations? Where is the investigation of this intelligence debacle? All we have is bluster from Dick Cheney, evasive W.M.D.-related-program-activity language from Mr. Bush — and a determined effort to prevent an independent inquiry.
True, Mr. Kay still claims that this was a pure intelligence failure. I don’t buy it: the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has issued a damning report on how the threat from Iraq was hyped, and former officials warned of politicized intelligence during the war buildup. (Yes, the Hutton report gave Tony Blair a clean bill of health, but many people — including a majority of the British public, according to polls — regard that report as a whitewash.)
In any case, the point is that a grave mistake was made, and America’s credibility has been badly damaged — and nobody is being held accountable. But that’s standard operating procedure. As far as I can tell, nobody in the Bush administration has ever paid a price for being wrong. Instead, people are severely punished for telling inconvenient truths. And administration officials have consistently sought to freeze out, undermine or intimidate anyone who might try to check up on their performance.
Let’s look at three examples. First is the Valerie Plame affair. When someone in the administration revealed that Ms. Plame was an undercover C.I.A. operative, one probable purpose was to intimidate intelligence professionals. And whatever becomes of the Justice Department investigation, the White House has been notably uninterested in finding the culprit. (“We have let the earthmovers roll in over this one,” a senior White House official told The Financial Times.)
Then there’s the stonewalling about 9/11. First the administration tried, in defiance of all historical precedents, to prevent any independent inquiry. Then it tried to appoint Henry Kissinger, of all people, to head the investigative panel. Then it obstructed the commission, denying it access to crucial documents and testimony. Now, thanks to all the delays and impediments, the panel’s head says it can’t deliver its report by the original May 11 deadline — and the administration is trying to prevent a time extension.
Finally, an important story that has largely evaded public attention: the effort to prevent oversight of Iraq spending. Government agencies normally have independent, strictly nonpartisan inspectors general, with broad powers to investigate questionable spending. But the new inspector general’s office in Iraq operates under unique rules that greatly limit both its powers and its independence.
And the independence of the Pentagon’s own inspector general’s office is also in question. Last September, in a move that should have caused shock waves, the administration appointed L. Jean Lewis as the office’s chief of staff. Ms. Lewis played a central role in the Whitewater witch hunt (seven years, $70 million, no evidence of Clinton wrongdoing); nobody could call her nonpartisan. So when Mr. Bush’s defenders demand hard proof of profiteering in Iraq — as opposed to extensive circumstantial evidence — bear in mind that the administration has systematically undermined the power and independence of institutions that might have provided that proof.
And there are many more examples. These people politicize everything, from military planning to scientific assessments. If you’re with them, you pay no penalty for being wrong. If you don’t tell them what they want to hear, you’re an enemy, and being right is no excuse.
Still, the big story isn’t about Mr. Bush; it’s about what’s happening to America. Other presidents would have liked to bully the C.I.A., stonewall investigations and give huge contracts to their friends without oversight. They knew, however, that they couldn’t. What has gone wrong with our country that allows this president to get away with such things?
——-
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Sorry. Shameless reminder of an old article in BWZ about A-21.
As much as the rest of you, I’ve found myself alternately fascinated and disapointed by the progress of sources of renewable resources. But I found this article particularly interesting, as much because of its content as by the fact that this local Seattle company is now being funded “not from America’s Department of Defense or Energy, but from the Shanghai Science and Technology Committee.
“That’s right. From the People’s Republic of China.”
So how did Mr. Clark get from there to here? This article from the Washington Post was reprinted on MSNBC today.
The jury’s still out on Mr. Clark as a viable presidential candidate, but I found this article to be a reasonable analysis on what he’s been up to since he left the military — some say, under pressure.
An excerpt (but by no means read just this sound byte — read the article in its entirety):
Clark’s lobbying was one of many business activities that, by his account, boosted his income almost 20-fold in the 42 months between his resignation from the Army and the start of his presidential campaign last September. An examination of those activities, including interviews with business associates and a review of public and private documents, shows that although Clark spent only 5-1/2 years of his adult life in Washington, he made some of the money in a time-honored way in the capital — by trading on his name.
–Lee
That article correctly identifies a split in the renewable energy community about whether it’s best to support this bill, warts and all, in order to move ahead with the provisions in the bill for clean, renewable energy, or whether it’s best to oppose it because it’s just too corrupt, and try again, perhaps by moving the clean energy provisions into a separate bill.
Naturally, Energy Chairman Sen. Pete Domenici has vowed to oppose any effort to split up the bill. There’s little chance that the pork that weighs the bill down would stand a chance without being rolled up along with the good provisions in the bill.
Having given some considered study to the bill, I don’t believe it’s in our nation’s best interest. It’s too much of going down the wrong roads and too little of exploring the right roads.
Now, I’m a part of the solar energy business. I design and sell solar PV systems and try to make a difference in getting our nation on the right track with energy policy. I know how much the renewable energy industry needs the support that is promised in the current bill. But I think the price is too high. The renewable energy industry is being promised some crumbs while an assembly line of whole cakes is dished out to coal, nuclear, oil, and gas. Not to mention all the environmental costs that will result from its passage.
Now, I’m no legislative expert. But I do believe that the right ideas will eventually triumph. We don’t need to put up with this bill, with its lavish subsidies for dirty energy industry, its breaks for polluters, and its
environmental costs. We should fight for the right solutions, and for legislation that at least puts renewable energy on an even footing with other energy sources.
The Natural Resources Defense Council is one of the organizations that opposes the bill.
Their BioGems site has a facility for you to email your senators this letter from
Robert Redford.
Now, have I convinced you that the Energy Bill is a bad thing? Cast your vote in this poll.
–C
Folks,
In a stunning display of arrogance, our infallible administration has finally abandoned all pretensions of telling the truth. Check out these excerpts from today’s Progress Report:
…instead of explaining why it ignored repeated warnings from the intelligence community that the White House’s WMD case was weak, newswires report the Administration responded by “denying it ever warned that Saddam Hussein posed an ‘imminent’ threat to the United States.” But a closer look at the record shows the Administration not only used exact phrase “imminent threat,” but also buttressed it with claims that Iraq was a “mortal threat,” “urgent threat,” “immediate threat,” “serious and mounting threat,” “unique threat,” and a threat that was actively seeking to “strike the United States with weapons of mass destruction” – all just months after Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted that Iraq was “contained” and “threatens not the United States.” See a long list of the Administration’s “threat” rhetoric in this new American Progress backgrounder.
NOW
“I think some in the media have chosen to use the word ‘imminent.’ Those were not words we used.”
- White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 1/27/04
THEN
“This is about imminent threat.”
- White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 2/10/03
I have to plug them again: the Progress Report is one of the best sources for the truth that you might hope to find on the Web. Sign up for their daily newsletter, it’s free!
Sign up for e-mail delivery of The Progress Report
Folks,
Here’s a new article from the Christian Science Monitor about Peak Oil & Gas. If you’re new to the issue, definitely give it a read. Even those of you who are regular readers about this issue will find a few new tidbits of information. For example, this is the first time I’ve seen anything from critic Michael Lynch, who, even for being a critic of the theory, only puts the peak another 20-30 years off.
Has global oil production peaked?
By David R. Francis | Staff writer of The
Christian Science Monitor
from the January 29, 2004 edition
–C
Folks,
George Soros is not a perfect human, by any means, but his contributions to the political dialogue lately are right in line with my perspective. I think he’s right on every point here. The US, blessed as it is with a position of global domination, must change its attitudes or risk losing everything.
–CThe US is now in the hands of a group of extremists
By George Soros
The Guardian
Monday 26 January 2004
Fundamentalism has spawned an ideology of American supremacy.
The invasion of Iraq was the first practical application of the pernicious Bush doctrine of pre-emptive military action, and it elicited an allergic reaction worldwide – not because anyone had a good word to say about Saddam Hussein, but because we insisted on invading Iraq unilaterally without any clear evidence that he had anything to do with September 11 or that he possessed weapons of mass destruction.
The gap in perceptions between America and the rest of the world has never been wider. Abroad, America is seen as abusing the dominant position it occupies; opinion at home has been led to believe that Saddam posed a clear and present danger to national security. Only in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion are people becoming aware they have been misled.
Even today, many people believe that September 11 justifies behaviour that would be unacceptable in normal times. The ideologues of American supremacy and President Bush personally never cease to remind us that September 11 changed the world. It is only as the untoward consequences of the invasion of Iraq become apparent that people are beginning to realise something has gone woefully wrong.
We have fallen into a trap. The suicide bombers’ motivation seemed incomprehensible at the time of the attack; now a light begins to dawn: they wanted us to react the way we did. Perhaps they understood us better than we understand ourselves.
And we have been deceived. When he stood for election in 2000, President Bush promised a humble foreign policy. I contend that the Bush administration has deliberately exploited September 11 to pursue policies that the American public would not have otherwise tolerated. The US can lose its dominance only as a result of its own mistakes. At present the country is in the process of committing such mistakes because it is in the hands of a group of extremists whose strong sense of mission is matched only by their false sense of certitude.
This distorted view postulates that because we are stronger than others, we must know better and we must have right on our side. That is where religious fundamentalism comes together with market fundamentalism to form the ideology of American supremacy.
We may have more difficulty in perceiving the absurdity of pursuing supremacy by military means, because we have learned to rely on military power and we particularly feel the need for it when our very existence is threatened. But the most powerful country on earth cannot afford to be consumed by fear. To make the war on terrorism the centrepiece of our national strategy is an abdication of our responsibility as the leading nation in the world. The US is the only country that can take the lead in addressing problems that require collective action: preserving peace and economic progress, protecting the environment and so on.
Whatever the justification for removing Saddam, there can be no doubt that we invaded Iraq on false pretenses. Wittingly or unwittingly, President Bush deceived the American public and Congress and rode roughshod over our allies’ opinions.
The gap between the administration’s expectations and the actual state of affairs could not be wider. We have put at risk not only our soldiers’ lives but the combat readiness of our armed forces. We are overstretched and our ability to project our power has been compromised. Yet there are more places where we need to project our power than ever. North Korea is openly building nuclear weapons; Iran is doing so clandestinely. The Taliban is regrouping in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan. The costs of occupation and the prospect of permanent war weigh on our economy, and we are failing to address festering problems both at home and globally. If we ever needed proof that the neo-cons’ dream of American supremacy is misconceived, Iraq has provided it.
It is hard to imagine how the plans of the defence department could have gone more awry. We find ourselves in a quagmire that is in some ways reminiscent of Vietnam. Having invaded Iraq, we cannot extricate ourselves. Domestic pressure to withdraw is likely to build, as in the Vietnam war, but withdrawing would inflict irreparable damage on our standing in the world. In this respect, Iraq is worse than Vietnam because of our dependence on Middle East oil.
Nobody forced us into it; on the contrary, everyone warned us against it. Admittedly, Saddam was a heinous tyrant and it was a good thing to get rid of him. But at what cost? The occupying powers serve as a focal point for attracting terrorists and radicalising Islam. Our soldiers have to do police work in full combat gear.
And the cost of occupation is estimated at a staggering $160bn for the the fiscal years 2003-2004 – $73bn for 2003 and $87bn in a supplemental request for 2004 submitted at the last minute in September 2003. Of the $87bn, only $20bn is for reconstruction, but the total cost of reconstruction is estimated at $60bn. For comparison, our foreign aid budget for 2002 was $10bn.
There is no easy way out. The Bush administration is eager to get the United Nations more involved but is unwilling to make the necessary concessions. We have no alternative to sticking it out and paying the price for our mistake. Eventually a different president with a different attitude to international cooperation may be more successful in extricating us.
The US is not the only country at the centre of the global capitalist system, but it is the most powerful and it is the main driving force behind globalisation. The European Union may equal the US in population and gross national product, but it is far less united and far less comfortable with globalisation. In military terms, the EU does not even qualify as a power, because members make their own decisions.
Insofar as any nation is in charge of the world order, it is the US. That is not to suggest that other countries are exempt from having to concern themselves with the wellbeing of the world. Their attitudes are not without consequence, but it is the US that matters most.
If Bush is rejected in 2004, his policies can be written off as an aberration and America resume its rightful place in the world. But if he is re-elected, the electorate will have endorsed his policies and we will have to live with the consequences. But it isn’t enough to defeat Bush at the polls. The US must examine its global role and adopt a more constructive vision. We cannot merely pursue narrow, national self-interest. Our dominant position imposes a unique responsibility.
——-
