Folks,

The Army is getting some heat for just extending Halliburton’s exclusive contract to rebuild in Iraq, despite the will of the Senate to open the contract up for competitive bidding. Cheney’s buddies must be laughing till their sides ache by now.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6731-2003Jun17.html

–C

Folks,

The Washington Post has completed an investigation of what really happened to Pvt. Jessica Lynch, and here’s what they’ve got. The military is still being very closed-mouth about what they know, and one must assume it’s because they don’t want to expose their propoganda machine. But we do know that what happened to her was very different from the stories we were fed by the Bush administration and military. It’s a pretty good story, not only for the actual details of her travails, but also for what it tells us about media spin and military propoganda. Give it a read.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2760-2003Jun16.html

–C

June 17, 2003

Dereliction of Duty

By PAUL KRUGMAN

 

Last Thursday a House

subcommittee met to finalize next year’s
homeland security appropriation.

The ranking Democrat announced that he would
introduce an amendment adding

roughly $1 billion for areas like port security
and border security that,

according to just about every expert, have been
severely neglected since

Sept. 11. He proposed to pay for the additions
by slightly scaling back

tax cuts for people making more than $1 million
per year.

 

 

The subcommittee’s chairman promptly closed the
meeting to the public,

citing national security — though no classified material was under

discussion. And the bill that emerged from the
closed meeting did not

contain the extra funding.

 

It was a perfect symbol of the reality of the
Bush administration’s “war

on terror.” Behind the rhetoric — and behind
the veil of secrecy, invoked

in the name of national security but actually
used to prevent public

scrutiny — lies a pattern of neglect, of
refusal to take crucial actions

to protect us from terrorists. Actual
counterterrorism, it seems, doesn’t

fit the administration’s agenda.

 

 

Yesterday The Washington Post printed an
interview with Rand Beers, a top

White House counterterrorism adviser who
resigned in March. “They’re

making us less secure, not more secure,” he
said of the Bush

administration. “As an insider, I saw the
things that weren’t being done.”

Among the problem areas he cited were homeland
security, where he says the

administration has “only a rhetorical policy”;
failure to press Saudi

Arabia (the home of most of the Sept. 11
terrorists) to take action; and,

of course, the way we allowed Afghanistan to
relapse into chaos.

 

 

Some of this pattern of neglect involves
penny-pinching. Back in February,

even George W. Bush in effect admitted that not
enough money had been

allocated to domestic security — though (to the
fury of Republican

legislators) he blamed Congress. Yet according
to Fred Kaplan in Slate,

the administration’s latest budget proposal for
homeland security actually

contains less money than was spent last year.
Meanwhile, urgent priorities

remain unmet. For example, port security,
identified as a top concern from

the very beginning, has so far received only
one-tenth as much money as

the Coast Guard says is needed.

 

 

But it’s not just a matter of money. For one
thing, it’s hard to claim now

that the Bush administration is trying to hold
down domestic spending to

make room for tax cuts. With the budget deficit
projected at more than

$400 billion this year, a few billion more for
homeland security wouldn’t

make much difference to the tax-cutting agenda.
Moreover, Congress isn’t

pinching pennies across the board: last week
the Senate voted to provide

$15 billion in loan guarantees for the
construction of nuclear power

plants.

 

 

Furthermore, even on the military front the
administration has been

weirdly reluctant to come to grips with
terrorism. It refused to provide

Afghanistan’s new government with an adequate
security umbrella, with the

predictable result that warlords are running
rampant and the Taliban are

making a comeback. The squandered victory in
Afghanistan was one reason

people like myself had a bad feeling about the
invasion of Iraq — and sure

enough, the administration was bizarrely
lackadaisical about providing

postwar security. Even nuclear waste dumps were
left unguarded for weeks.

 

 

So what’s the explanation? The answer, one
suspects, is that key figures —

above all, Donald Rumsfeld — just didn’t feel
like dealing with the real

problem. Real counterterrorism mainly involves
police work and

precautionary measures; it doesn’t look
impressive on TV, and it doesn’t

provide many occasions for victory
celebrations.

 

 

A conventional war, on the other hand, is a lot
more fun: you get stirring

pictures of tanks rolling across the desert,
and you get to do a victory

landing on an aircraft carrier. And more and
more it seems that that was

what the war was all about. After all, the
supposed reasons for fighting

that war have turned out to be false — there
were no links to Al Qaeda,

there wasn’t a big arsenal of W.M.D.’s.

 

 

But never mind — we won, didn’t we? Maybe not.
About half of the U.S.

Army’s combat strength is now tied down in
Iraq, facing what looks

increasingly like a guerrilla war — and like a
perfect recruiting device

for Al Qaeda. Meanwhile, the real war on terror
has been neglected, and

we’ve antagonized the allies we need to fight
that war. One of these days

we’ll end up paying the price.

 

 

A NOTE FROM THE MOVEON TEAM Last week we asked if we should consider early endorsement of a Presidential candidate, and the results were overwhelming. 96.3% out of 186,000 who responded said YES to an early “MoveOn Primary.” So we’re moving forward. If one of the nine candidates receives more than 50% of the vote next Tuesday and Wednesday, we will officially endorse that candidate. Today’s message is one of three we’ll be sending by email from the candidates favored in our first straw poll on May 29th. To make sure you have the information you need, letters to the MoveOn membership and responses to the MoveOn interview questions from all the Presidential candidates are online now at http://www.moveon.org/pac/cands/. Invite your friends to register to vote in the MoveOn primary by going to http://www.moveon.org/pac/reg/. The more of us that join in this process, the better the chances that ordinary voters, not pundits or big donors, will determine the Democratic nominee. Thanks, –Carrie, Eli, Joan, Peter, Wes, and Zack Read letters from all the candidates here

Leading up to the MoveOn Primary next
Tuesday, we’ve offered to forward emails from the three candidates who polled
highest with our members. You can also view letters from all nine candidates
here. Here’s the first
email, from Governor Dean:

____________

Dear MoveOn member,

Our country is at stake. The Bush Doctrine of preemptive war is wrong for
America. The Bush tax cuts are not about cutting taxes; they are about starving
and destroying Social Security, Medicare, and our public schools. They call
polluting our air “The Clear Skies Act,” destroying old growth “The Healthy
Forest Act,” and taking away our civil liberties “The Patriot Act.”

If you are as tired and angered as I am by the manipulation and lies, then
please join my campaign by signing the Pledge to Take Back America. Let’s show
that millions of us are not ashamed to stand up for our values:

http://www.deanforamerica.com/moveon

Too many in my party have failed to stand up to this administration’s assault
on our country’s ideals. Let’s show them that the era of conservative
intimidation is over. People in Washington worry about “electability” but they
forget why they were elected in the first place. Silence equals defeat. Victory
requires educating, organizing, and convincing.

Defeating George Bush will take nothing short of a massive grassroots
movement. That’s why we’ve taken a page from MoveOn’s book and provided tools on
our website to help you build the movement in your community. Click below to see
what’s happening near you and to join in. And please forward this email to your
friends — I want everyone to know that there is a way to get involved, no
matter where they live, or how much time they have:

http://action.deanforamerica.com

Candidates who continue to say whatever it takes to be elected will lose.
What Americans want is a leader who believes in and will fight for sensible and
principled positions, including balanced budgets, health care for every
American, and a defense policy consistent with American values. The only way we
can beat George W. Bush is to stand for a clear alternative.

I stood up against this President’s attack on Iraq. I did not support his
huge tax cuts. I did not support the misnamed “No Child Left Behind Act,” which
is raising property taxes all over America and bankrupting our public school
system. Unlike all but one of my opponents, I have balanced a budget and I have
appointed judges — and I am the only candidate who has made health care
available to 99% of the children and 90% of the adults in my state.

On my first day in office, I will tear up the Bush Doctrine of preemptive
war. I will end this President’s policy of domestic division. I will repeal
those parts of the Patriot Act that betray the Bill of Rights. And I will roll
back this President’s tax cuts, because we will never achieve social justice in
this country unless we balance the budget.

I believe that we can protect ourselves from terrorism and protect the civil
liberties that make our nation strong. I believe that we can grow and prosper
while also protecting our environment. I believe that a free and brave nation
will always be stronger than a fearful nation, and I refuse to submit to fear
any longer.

Abraham Lincoln said that a government of the people, by the people and for
the people would not perish from this earth. Only you — we — have the power to
ensure that the ideals of America are not destroyed by this President’s radical
agenda. If you share my beliefs, then join me in pledging to take back America
in 2004:

http://www.deanforamerica.com/moveon

To plan or to join campaign events near you — including a nationwide day of
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We can undo the damage this President has done only by coming together as
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Sincerely,

Governor Howard Dean, M.D.

—

Paid for by MOVEON.ORG PAC, P.O. Box 9218, Berkeley, CA 94709. Website:
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Folks,

Though it isn’t the usual fare for my list, I thought I’d send along this
Barron’s interview with Ned Davis, a stock market researcher. I thought it
helpful in understanding the bigger economic picture, esp. as regards our
recent tax and interest rate cuts and other measures intended to devalue our
currency. Wall Street columnist Aaron Task of TheStreet.com alerted me to
this article, and commented that in general, we are involved in a global
competition right now to devalue our currency, as are most other major
economic powers. Japan’s interest rate is already 0, has been for a few
years now, and it doesn’t seem to be helping them.

Sobering thoughts about our administration’s fiscal policy. It all seems
designed to prop up a fundamental bear market with short term gains, just in
time for the election…and just before the wind gets knocked out of it
again.

–C

—–Original Message—–

MONDAY, JUNE 16, 2003

Bear’s Pause
The rally is just a phase of a long-term down
market, researcher says.

By SANDRA WARD

AN INTERVIEW WITH NED DAVIS — Armed with rich
databases of economic and market information,
along with any number of proprietary
indicators, Davis and his team at Ned Davis
Research in Venice, Fla., are able to pinpoint
trends and patterns that are scarily reliable
in assessing where the market is headed. The
penetrating analysis and prescient
prognostications are the reasons that Ned
Davis Research, founded in 1980, counts 851
paid-up subscribers in 32 countries and has
4,962 people on its mailing list. He
graciously took our call recently and offered
his thoughts on why this rally is for real,
and why the continuing bear market is also.

Barron’s: I hear you’ve become more positive
about the market.

Davis: Well, I feel much the way I did when we
had the interview last year. This is a
cyclical bull market within a secular bear
market. There have been some distinct
improvements since we last spoke, but
basically the message is the same.

Q: What’s improved?
A: Since October of last year, corporate bonds
have been up nearly every day. They’ve been
really strong, and that is an added stimulus
on top of what the Fed has been doing. The tax
cuts certainly have had more of an investment
tinge this time around. Not only did we get a
dividend cut and the capital-gains cut, but
people in the top bracket will see their rate
cut from 38.6% to 35%. That’s a tremendous
drop in taxes. So that’s a tax cut on top of a
tax cut that was already out there. The
dollar, which had been drifting down for
almost two years now, really started tumbling
earlier this year, and that’s another
stimulus. It is a risky stimulus, but another
one all the same. There have been so many
added kicks that the market took off after
mid-March.

(Embedded image moved to file: pic03902.jpg)
[Davis]
Ned Davis says "cyclical bulls" like the
current market can last for a year. He’s been
buying tech stocks.

Q: But how stimulative are these tax cuts?
Don’t they just benefit the rich?
A: There is some truth to that. But the rich
are the ones that own the stocks. So, it won’t
mean much for the whole economy or for the 1.8
million people who have lost jobs in the past
three years, but it is very bullish for the
stock market and stock investors.

Q: What’s been the impact of long rates coming
down?
A: Long rates were providing huge competition
for stocks. Also, a lot of companies had
gotten themselves into very heavy debt and
were not able to tap the commercial-paper
markets and had to raise money in the
corporate bond markets at higher rates, which
was a drag on earnings. There were a lot of
bankruptcies and to help them service the
debt, long-term rates needed to come down. The
yield on Baa, the main corporate investment
grade, has dropped 21% in the past year.
That’s about as low as they’ve ever dropped.
This was a tremendous stimulus. We find a 1%
drop on a 12-month basis tends to be bullish
for the market.

Q: What else points to a cyclical bull?
A: We went back and classified the market as
secular periods of three to four cycles of 16
to 20 years and then broke those down into
secular bull periods and secular bear
periods.Very, very long supercycles. We
studied cyclical bulls within secular bear
markets and found that they didn’t last as
long as other cyclical bulls and they didn’t
go quite as high, but in the 17 we looked at,
the S&P 500 went up an average of 50.6% and
lasted 371 days on average.

Q: More than a year?
A: Some of these were in the 1966 and 1982
period when the market went up for two years,
but we are using averages here. Still, they
were quite substantial. Then, while there are
a lot of dissimilarities between Japan and the
U.S., I think there are a lot of similarities,
too. We looked at the secular bear that
started in 1989 in Japan and found four
rallies of 48%, 34%, 56%, 62% that also lasted
many, many months. That gives you an average
of 50%. And it confirmed what we found in
cyclical bulls during secular bears here. On
top of this cycle, the U.S. also has a
presidential-election cycle and from the
mid-term election year lows, which are usually
reached in the fall, to the high of the next
year, we’ve typically had rallies measuring
51.2% on average. Those are three different
measures that suggest we could have a pretty
substantial cyclical bull, even amid this
long-term bear market.

Q: How much of this have we already
experienced? The market is up quite a bit.
A: The S&P is up about 28% from the lows. The
NDX 100 [Nasdaq 100] is up 53% from its low
and has already gained as much as the S&P
usually does in a cyclical rally. But we
looked at all the rallies in this secular bear
since the 2000 high and we also looked at the
rallies in Japan, and we found, in almost
every case, speculative growth stocks tend to
lead these rallies. We saw this after the 9/11
lows. The S&P went up 21% and the NDX went up
53%. For whatever reason, whether it’s the
level of short interest or beta or the nature
of bear-market rallies, the leadership is very
speculative, so even if the S&P goes up by 50%
or so, the Nasdaq could double. Already,
biotechs and Internet stocks have doubled. If
the S&P goes up by another 100 points or
whatever, surely they would participate, but
maybe not to the extent that they have so far.

(Embedded image moved to file: pic00153.gif)
[chart]

Q: What’s your model asset allocation?
A: We are 65% stocks, which is 10% overweight
the benchmark, 30% bonds and 5% cash, both of
which are 5% underweight the benchmark. I
wouldn’t call that a negative position on
bonds, but clearly we are favoring stocks
right here.

Q: Where are you putting your money?
A: Last year, our work pointed us toward
large-cap growth stocks. In the past month or
two, we shifted to small-cap growth. We are
still very heavy in the financials. But they
are slowly coming off our list, and tech and
growth stocks are picking up. There is a
general feeling that the financials are
overdone, and overweighted in the S&P. I’m not
convinced yet. They still act pretty good. In
every cycle where there is excess, the banks
finance it, so they typically end up getting
in trouble. In this case, they all have been
financing mortgages and housing prices have
risen. Actually, the mortgage foreclosure rate
is at a record high, but it is still only
1.1%. That is not the kind of thing where you
really get into trouble. I thought the REITs
would be the first place we’d see problems,
with the downturn in commercial real estate
and the fact that their dividends weren’t
going to be favored in this tax law. They did
have a pretty big correction, but they are
back up at their highs right now. It seems as
if they should be getting hurt here.

Q: Any other areas that you’re positive on or
more concerned about?
A: All across the energy spectrum — in
particular natural gas — we are seeing demand
higher than we would have expected and supply
a lot weaker than we expected. We really see a
lot of problems in the supply-demand situation
for energy, and the selloff that occurred
after the war was a buying opportunity.

Q: What about the hiding places for the bear
market you liked last year?
A: I thought you could hide in bonds and
utility stocks. The utilities didn’t do too
well for a while, but they have certainly come
on like gangbusters lately and that could be
because of the dividend tax cut. I still like
that group. Bonds have done well, too. A lot
of people have been saying for a couple of
years now that bonds were overvalued. But only
since the end of May has our bond valuation
index shown them to be overvalued. Bonds –
corporate and government — are not a good
hiding place right now. My guess is they are
going to have a pretty big correction in the
third quarter, and that may end up being a
good time to buy them again.

Q: Why the correction?
A: They’ve had a tremendous run here. My
suspicion is that the economy is really going
to surprise people in the third quarter and if
that comes about, after people have grown
accustomed to sluggish and muddling growth, we
could see a very strong third quarter and, if
so, the bonds would sell off. The pickup in
the economy won’t be sustainable and therefore
bonds would be a good buy if they have a good
shakeout. But I wouldn’t own them now.

Q: Why won’t the pickup in the economy be
sustainable?
A: All the stimulus will make a difference.
But the first round of stimulus only lasted a
quarter, and I am worried that may happen
again. Unemployment is still a weak spot. If
we do get a booming quarter as I expect,
there’s the risk that rates might go up. Or
the dollar will continue to collapse. In
either case, the boom won’t last.

Q: And the boom is driven by consumers
continuing to spend?
A: They’ve been selectively doing that. Mostly
in autos and certainly in housing. Mortgage
refis and mortgage applications have been at
new all-time highs. That’s the Fed’s position,
really: make cash trash. People don’t know
what to do about it. A year or so ago, there
were some things to do because bond yields
were high and housing was booming. Now the
bond yields have gone away. Short-term rates
are certainly going to go away. They may cut
them another half-percentage point. After fees
and all, you are getting zero on money-market
funds. So where does that money go? Auto sales
really have stalled out, but the incentives
are dramatic. When people get the reduction in
their withholding and a check in the mail,
that may be just enough to kick auto sales up
again. Housing is still booming.

Q: What’s your take on the housing market?
A: There are pockets of bubble. But it’s not
like the stock-market bubble. It’s not even
close. If there’s another run here, and we put
another whole layer of housing boom on top of
the mountain we have, that might be very
risky. I do think there is a mortgage-debt
bubble now. People say it’s not a problem
because rates are low and housing prices are
going up. That is all true. But still the debt
has got to be paid. If housing stalls or
interest rates go up, the mortgage-debt bubble
becomes a really big problem.

That is the Catch-22 the economy is in. We’ve
got this $32 trillion debt bubble out there,
and it is as risky as can be. And, yet, rates
are plunging, so everything looks manageable.
It is true we’ve had 2.4 million bankruptcies
filed since the economy started up in the
fourth quarter of 2001. But, with rates down
at these levels, we are managing. If somehow
the Fed succeeds this time and things heat up
again, interest rates will start up. The debt
service will be enormous and that will put us
right back to where we are now. That is the
problem. If the Fed doesn’t pull this off, and
they don’t trash cash and they don’t force
people to go out and spend their last dollar,
or borrow their last dollar, then you are
looking at deflation. And that is terrible.

Q: Somehow then, they have to manage in this
little sweet spot for quite a while.
A: Right. If they heat things up, it is bad
and if they don’t heat things up, it is worse.
They have clearly chosen to try to heat things
up. You’ve got an election next year and they
have a good shot at it. My guess is we’ll have
a great quarter, maybe a little longer than a
quarter, then rates go up and it will end
almost immediately. There is not a lot of
pent-up demand. All the pent-up demand is
coming from driving rates lower and lower and
lower.

The other side of that, the other big secular
risk I see — and it all ties together — is
that our exports are exactly what they were
back in 1997. This either means our goods are
not competitive or the dollar is way
overvalued. It is probably a little bit of
both. We had a productivity jump, though I am
not convinced it is as good as the numbers
show. Given that productivity jump, our goods
should be competitive, and they are not. We
definitely needed to see the dollar come down,
but it needs to come down carefully and
slowly. If foreigners understood our policy is
what I think it is, that is, making cash
trash, why would they keep their $3 trillion
in this country? At the point they realize
this, this nice decline in the dollar all of a
sudden becomes tremendously bad.

Q: So how do you respond to a cyclical bull
market within a secular bear market? Are you
bearish or bullish?
A: As a trader, I’m long and I’m bullish. We
might get another 10%, maybe more. The
question becomes how do you know when the
falling dollar turns from a positive to a
negative? It becomes negative when it starts
impacting the bond market. Given the dollar
situation, given the $32 trillion in debt, I
don’t think the bond market needs to go up
anymore. But it needs to behave. It can’t
start tanking. What will end this rally is
either the tape deteriorating or the bond
market starting to really go down.

Q: And you’re trading in and out of small-cap
growth stocks?
A: Yes, mostly tech and biotech stocks. Every
week since we became pro-Nasdaq we read –
often in Barron’s — that tech is back in a
bubble. It is unnerving, it seems like there
is a tech stock every day that has a problem,
including IBM recently. It is very hard to sit
here but that’s where the leadership is.

Q: But you still think this is a
"Humpty-Dumpty" economy.
A: It is not going to feel that way next
quarter. I will be very surprised if we don’t
have a big jump in activity. But when you have
this kind of debt — we’ve had two rounds of
tax cuts and 12 cuts in interest rates and
only one good quarter of economic activity –
that tells me there is a tremendous drag,
whatever they want to say about debt being
manageable and debt service being low. There
is another drag in that the stock market’s
valuation, if you look at actual earnings,
clearly is not cheap. You can get a cyclical
bull but you can’t push it too far because the
turnaround stocks are already overvalued. If
you go buy that we are in a secular bear, this
is not just a little animated correction.

When you look at past secular market bottoms,
the P/E on stocks was 10 and the dividend
yield was 5%. You can talk about stocks at 15
times earnings being good value, but if you go
back to 1942, 1949, 1974, 1980, 1982 and 10
P/Es and 5% dividend yields, we are not even
close to that. It becomes clear that with all
the talk about the debt bubble, it still isn’t
being discounted by the stock market.

Q: A lot of people don’t seem to think it’s a
problem.
A: The Fed is trying to keep the economy
afloat while we are working ourselves out of
debt. The problem with what they’ve done to
get the economy going is they’ve tried to cure
the problem of too much debt by adding more
debt. It all looks good as long as rates stay
down here. I think whatever the Fed is doing
is wrong, but I don’t really know what else
they can do. If our problem is we save too
little and borrow too much, what are we doing
now? We are making savings worth zero and we
are telling people to borrow. We are doing
just the opposite of what we need to do. The
reason they are doing it because they are
scared to death of deflation. They are scared
to death of a depression. So they are fighting
it tooth and nail, and I think short-term it
is going to look pretty good. But I am very
dubious about the long term.

Q: What are mutual-fund flows telling you?
A: It is minor really, but we’re seeing
inflows again to funds after months of
outflows. They are not big but they are
decent. It started in March and April. What
was interesting was that fund managers didn’t
spend the money or spent very little of it. It
showed a fair amount of pessimism. It is not
like they’ve got much cash to speak of. If you
want to make a bullish case based on fund
flows, you have to base it on the fact that
for the past three years, a lot of
institutions have been putting a whole lot
more money in bonds rather than stocks. So
portfolios may be out of line with too much
exposure to bonds. They don’t have a lot of
cash, so in order to rebalance and buy stocks,
they are going to have to sell bonds. The
question is: When they start to sell bonds,
will that send interest rates up or is the
inflation picture so positive that it won’t
hurt bonds?

Q: Thank you very much, Ned.

Folks,

As I predicted, these mobile labs have turned out to be another red herring in the hunt for Iraq’s WMD. Any guesses what the administration will whip up next to support their story? And while the utter lack of substantive justification for our imperialist warmongering over there doesn’t seem to have caused our “What, Me Worry?” president much consternation, it’s really putting Tony Blair on the hot seat. Ah, for the days when American presidents confronted their issues directly and personally, without a team of handlers and interpreters and spinmasters in between.

http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,977853,00.html

–C

Folks,

An AP report is below; you can find many variants of it on the Web (such as

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/125886_iraqside10.html).

While the administration is "flooding the zone" [thank you, Jon Stewart]
with assurances that the WMD will be found and that they intended no
deception, a couple of odd things are happening:
- Apparently the U.S. weapon-hunting units are running out of places to
look, so now they’re catching up on their letter-writing and target
practice.

- At the same time, Condi Rice claims that we’ve only inspected a fraction
of the sites

- Though finding the WMD seems to be a real and serious priority, the Bush
administration is keeping the UN inspectors out of the hunt. Got that? They
really want to find the WMD, and they don’t want the most experienced and
knowledgeable weapons hunters in the game to be involved. How do you suppose
that rationale goes?

Of course, none of this bothers our "What, Me Worry?" president, who is
taking this opportunity to spin a new definition of "credibility":

Still, the president said, U.S. credibility rests on more than the issue of
weapons in Iraq. "The credibility of this country is based upon our strong
desire to make the world more peaceful," Bush said. "And the world is now
more peaceful, after our decision."

Riiiight. Because we’ve got this new policy of pre-emptive strikes, we’ve
got terrorists springing up like spring daisies all over the world, but
we’re to believe that we’re all more ‘peaceful’ and ‘credible’ now. 42 US
soldiers dead since the ‘end’ of the war, and counting…

I would love to see some hard questions put to the adminstration about its
claims of WMD in Iraq. Maybe then Bush will treat us to a new discussion of
the meaning of the word "is."

–C

—–Original Message—–

BAGHDAD, Iraq (June 9) – U.S. military units assigned to track down Iraqi
weapons of mass destruction have run out of places to look and are getting
time
off or being assigned to other duties, even as pressure mounts on President
Bush to explain why no banned arms have been found.

After nearly three months of fruitless searches, weapons hunters say they
are
now waiting for a large team of Pentagon intelligence experts to take over
the effort, relying more on leads from interviews and documents.

”It doesn’t appear there are any more targets at this time,” said Lt. Col.
Keith Harrington, whose team has been cut by more than 30 percent. ”We’re
hanging around with no missions in the foreseeable future.”

Over the past week, his and several other teams have been taken off
assignment completely. Rather than visit suspected weapons sites, they are
brushing up
on target practice and catching up on letters home.

Of the seven Site Survey Teams charged with carrying out the search, only
two
have assignments for the coming week – but not at suspected weapons sites.

Lt. Col. Ronald Haan, who runs team 6, is using the time to run his troops
through a training exercise.

”At least it’s keeping the guys busy,” he said.

The slowdown comes after checks of more than 230 sites – drawn from a master
intelligence list compiled before the war – turned up none of the chemical
or
biological weapons the Bush administration said it went after Saddam Hussein
to destroy.

Still, President Bush insisted Monday that Baghdad had a program to make
weapons of mass destruction. ”Intelligence throughout the decade shows they
had a
weapons program. I am absolutely convinced that with time, we’ll find out
they did have a weapons program,” he said.

The Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency said work will resume at a brisk
pace once its 1,300-person Iraq Survey Group takes over.

Ahead of the war, planners were so certain of the intelligence that the
weapons teams were designed simply to secure chemical and biological weapons
rather
than investigate their whereabouts, as U.N. inspectors had done.

But without evidence of weapons, the CIA and other intelligence agencies
have
begun reviewing the accuracy of information they supplied to the
administration before the March invasion of Iraq. Government inquiries are
being set up in
Washington, London and other coalition countries to examine how possibly
flawed intelligence might have influenced the decision for war.

”The smoking guns just weren’t lying out in the open,” said David Gai,
spokesman for the Iraq Survey Group. ”There’s a lot more detective work
that
needs to be done.”

The group will work more along the model of U.N. weapons inspectors.

Future sites in the search will be compiled from intelligence gathered in
the
field, and the teams will be reconfigured to include more civilian
scientists
and engineers, Gai said.

Several former U.N. inspectors from the United States, Britain and
Australia,
who know many of Iraq’s top weapons experts, will also be brought in.

Led by Keith Dayton, a two-star general from Defense intelligence, the Iraq
Survey Group is settling into headquarters in Qatar rather than Iraq.
However,
it will maintain a large presence of analysts and experts on the same palace
grounds outside Baghdad where the weapons hunters are based.

Several dozen staffers have moved to the palace and into other buildings,
now
being turned into classified document centers, living quarters and office
space for the Iraq Survey Group.

With prewar intelligence exhausted and senior figures from the former regime
insisting Iraq hasn’t had chemical or biological weapons in years, Dayton’s
staff will be starting from scratch.

”We’ve interviewed a fraction of the people who were involved. We’ve gone
to
a fraction of the sites. We’ve gone through a fraction of thousands and
thousands and thousands of documents about this program,” National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Sunday.

Intelligence agents and weapons hunters have been speaking with scientists
and experts for the past month, but those interviews have not led the teams
to
any illegal weapons and none of the tips provided by Iraqis have panned out.

U.N. inspectors spent years learning the names and faces of the Iraqi
weapons
programs. But in postwar Iraq, the Bush administration cut the organization
out of the hunt because of recent assessments that conflicted with
Washington’s
portrayal of Saddam’s weapons.

Relations soured further amid reports that U.S. troops failed to secure
Iraq’s largest nuclear facility from looters.

This week, a U.N. nuclear team returned to Iraq to survey the damage at
Tuwaitha – where 2 tons of uranium had been stored for more than a decade.
They
began scanning the facility and its equipment for leaking radiation and
signs of
missing uranium.

One weapons team, specializing in nuclear materials, has been tasked to
accompany the U.N. experts until they leave on June 25.

AP-NY-06-09-03 1747EDT

Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP
news
report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed
without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active
hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

Perhaps we’re not so different after all.
On Looting

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How Badly Do You Want to
Win?

By U.S. Rep. Jan
Schakowsky
June 6, 2003

Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois) made the
following speech at the Campaign for America’s Future conference in Washington
DC on June 4, 2003.

Do you want a different President in 2004? I’m asking
this as a serious question, not a rhetorical one. Do you want it badly enough to
actually do what is necessary to win the election that will take place just 17
months from now?

Everywhere I go, everywhere every Democrat goes, we hear,
“Where are the Democrats?” And I take that challenge seriously, and many of us
are working day and night to make ourselves heard, putting together an
inside/outside strategy with members who are willing to use tougher language and
“creative” tactics in coordination with outside organizations.

Yes, we need more Democrats who believe, as Paul
Wellstone said, that “the politics of conviction is a winning politics,” but I
challenge you to do the same by asking, “Where are you?” I say that as an
activist and organizer myself and with a great deal of respect for the work that
all of you are doing. I acknowledge the magnificent visibility of the antiwar
activities, and the web-based organizing that has generated millions of emails
to Congress, the work of the Anti-Tax Cut Coalition and others. I say that with
enormous respect for the work of organized labor nationally and locally. I know
we are all grateful to President John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO and his incredibly
effective leadership.

Even so, there have been too few examples of viewpoints,
other than those consistent with the Administration’s, breaking through to the
public. If we are to win, it’s clear we need to do more, do it louder, do it
faster and do it better. And if we don’t, in 2008 we will live in a country and
a world far different from the one we have had and the one to which we aspire.

This President is seriously undermining the rule of law
and the Constitution of the United States, precious civil liberties and doing it
all in the name of patriotism. So where are the lawyers and judges? Why am I not
hearing your protests, your emails and phone calls, your letters to the editor,
your calls to talk radio, your high-profile law suits? This could be a
bipartisan effort, one that stretches from left to right. Privacy is a major
concern for average Americans and Big Brother is mining our most private
information as we sit here. I realized how serious this was when a woman asked
me how she could get another perspective on the Iraq war and I suggested a few
web sites. She asked me if she went there if she would find herself on a list.
In all honesty, I found that I couldn’t say with confidence, “Absolutely no;
this is still the United States of America and you can look at anything you
want.”

Lawyers, judges, where are you?

Seniors, where are you? I want to see sustained, loud,
angry activity. After all, the Republicans still want to privatize Social
Security and Medicare and cut Medicaid so they can give tax cuts to their rich
friends and destroy those basic programs to boot. It’s a twofer for them.

Even veterans are not immune. Many veterans have to wait
15 months just to get an appointment. The drug companies are conducting a $150
million campaign to prevent any move to lower drug prices, allocating $9.5
million to public relations, even $1 million to get rid of the national health
care system in Canada. When I was director of the Illinois State Council of
Senior Citizens, our group was chasing Dan Rostenkowski down the street.
Seniors, now is the time to get on your running shoes. You should be chasing
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Tom Delay all over the country.

Environmentalists: Alaska is melting; the journal Nature
reports that 90 percent of all large fish such as tuna, marlin, swordfish, cod
and halibut are gone from our oceans; fuel efficiency of our cars is at a
22-year low. It’s now considered patriotic, for crying out loud, to drive a
Hummer. So where the hell are you? I want to read about you or even join you
protesting at hearings in Washington or Big Oil shareholder meetings. We need
the activists and scientists to challenge this aggressively anti-science
administration. Some things we may be able to reverse when we wrest power over
the planet from their control. But extinct is extinct.

My sisters, where are the demonstrations against the war
on women that is being waged every day in every way. Today on the floor is the
bill to ban the mythical partial birth abortion, which is a thinly disguised
assault on fundamental reproductive rights. On his first day in office,
President Bush attacked the poorest most vulnerable women in the world when he
cut U.S. funds for family planning funds for organizations that have the gall to
counsel, refer or, God forbid, perform abortions in countries where it is legal
(which it happens to be in ours, by the way).

Our women in the military can’t, with their own funds,
have a safe and legal abortion at a military hospital, even if they are in Iraq
or Saudi Arabia. A rabidly anti-choice man who thinks that women’s health
concerns can be cured with prayer now heads up the Food and Drug
Administration’s Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs. They want to
eliminate Title IX, equal opportunities for women in education and sports;
they’ve done little to help victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.

We all need to join in the efforts of organized labor on
behalf of ALL working families in this country. This week we may be considering
a so-called “Comp Time” bill that shreds the basic concept of a day’s pay for a
day’s work, and makes the notion of time-and-a half for overtime an idea of the
past. Just picture another four years of a Bush Administration unfettered by
concerns of re-election. Unions are not in the 2008 picture. In 2008 there may
not be any public employees let alone public employee unions. Everything will be
privatized and contracted out. Private sector unions will be under siege,
constant well-financed referenda will happen in state after state, legal
assaults and investigations will take place at every level, and we’ll always be
the target of well financed media campaigns.

I salute the leadership that the religious leaders –
clergy and lay people – have shown on the war. Don’t stop now. “God is a
Republican” is a guiding principle for this Administration. As long as there are
Congressional resolutions and official days of prayer, the United States can
continue to preemptively attack any country it wants. As Senate Leader Bill
Frist said at a large gathering I attended, “All you need to know is the
difference between right and wrong, good and evil.”

Their God is homophobic and anti-choice. The Secretary of
Education Rod Paige said, “All things equal, I would prefer to have a child in a
school that has a strong appreciation for the values of the Christian community.
In a religious environment the value system is set. That’s not the case in a
public school where there are so many different kids with different kinds of
values.” The dangerous destruction of the wall between Church and State is well
underway. It is religious leaders and the faith community that needs to address
this.

Disability rights activists, immigrant advocates, housing
advocates, civil rights leaders, GLBT activists, all warriors for social and
economic justice, thank you for what you do. And now we need to do more, do it
louder, do it faster and do it better.

Clearly they have a number of tools at their disposal
right now that we don’t have.

1. They control the White House and are placing
   ideologues at every level of the Administration, the Senate and House and much
   of the judiciary.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. They control much of the media and that creates a very
   effective echo chamber for all their initiatives and smear campaigns. The June
   2 ruling of the Federal Communications Commission lifting most restrictions on
   consolidation will allow the Foxification and Clear Channelization of even
   more.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. They have most of the money, and their corporate
   agenda and tax cuts for the rich ensure that fact will continue.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. They lie with impunity. Let’s fact it. They’re liars.
   They lied about the reason they took our sons and daughters to war. They spend
   millions of dollars in campaign ads saying they are for a prescription drug
   benefit under Medicare. They call their dirty air legislation “Clear Skies”
   and their plan to give the timber companies our trees, “Healthy Forests.” They
   call their job-killing economic program a “jobs program.” They say they are
   for peace when they are for war. Millions of children are left behind under
   their miserly “No Child Left Behind” education bill. They tout a child tax
   credit and then silently drop it in favor of more tax cuts for millionaires.
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. And perhaps most important, they are unafraid and
   unabashed and unapologetic about pushing their right-wing agenda, no matter
   what. They are always playing offense. I used to think, oh they can’t be
   serious about this or that – another huge tax cut, eliminating Title IX,
   continuing tax breaks for companies that move their offices to Bermuda,
   locking up immigrants indefinitely without due process, using Federal dollars
   to build churches – it’s just a trial balloon. Forget it. They mean what they
   say and they don’t give up until they get it. This is where we come
   in.

If we are serious about getting rid of George W. Bush in
17 months, then we have to make some decisions and some commitments. During the
war, a couple of nuns came to see me in my Chicago office. They were on their
way to jail to serve a three-month sentence for an aggravated misdemeanor for
protesting the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. They crossed a
line in the road and now they were going to prison. Think of it. Anyway, on
their way to jail, they had been arrested on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago in an
antiwar protest. The police got a bit carried away even though the City Council
had passed a strong antiwar resolution.

The nuns wanted to know what could be done to change the
state of affairs. I said I thought someone needed to take voter registration
forms to every meeting and demonstration and get people fired up to vote. They
said that would be hard. Why? Because people were fed up with the Democrats. I
said, then they are going to have to Get Over It, and you are going to
have to help them. Because like it or not, either George W. Bush or the
Democratic nominee, whoever he may be, will be our next President.

All of you know who I’m talking about; I may be talking
about you. We should, by all means, be working to promote a progressive agenda
with each and every candidate and to make the nominee as progressive as
possible.

But in the end, we are going to have to dedicate
ourselves to electing the Democrat. To do otherwise is a luxury we cannot
afford. I look forward to our campaign for a universal health care plan or a
real education bill or labor law reform. We cannot even have that conversation
now. We are trying to hang on by our fingernails to what we have now. And we are
losing.

The good news today is that we have them on the run on
several fronts. They were hoping that the conversation this week would be about
the flag burning amendment that passed the House yesterday and partial birth
abortion. Instead it’s about their decision to cut 6.5 million American families
with 12 million children, including families of service men and women, out of
their tax relief bill because they jeopardized tax cuts for the rich. Some
Senate Republicans realize this level of greed may have been a tad too much for
most Americans, but Tom Delay, God love him, is really steaming that Democrats
are demanding action on the issue. He says, “There are a lot of things that are
more important than that.” Like more tax cuts for the rich. He indicated that
he’d think about it if it were part of a package that permanently repealed the
estate tax.

The missing weapons of mass destruction are becoming a
real annoyance to them now, and the media is starting to pick it up. More and
more members of Congress, even some Republicans, are asking for investigations.
Editorial boards are beginning to write about it.

We need to take advantage of these opportunities. The
polls tell us that the President is in fact vulnerable. His re-elect numbers are
not that great. We have to do with fervor what we already know how to do. We
have to register base voters who have left us at least in part because they
think we don’t speak to them. And here you have another choice. You can *censored*
that the Democrats don’t speak to them, or you can speak to them, one on one,
door to door, worker to worker, meeting after meeting, neighbor to neighbor. Set
a goal for yourself, personally, perhaps, 100 new Democratic voters between now
and Election Day.

Become part of a progressive echo chamber. When the
Republicans go after Tom Daschle or Nancy Pelosi for being unpatriotic when they
criticize the President, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh begin spinning the same
line. We need to push back, writing letters to the editor, calling talk shows,
emailing Congress, emailing Sean Hannity and telling him he’s out of line,
calling them un-American for stifling dissent.

When Republicans launch a really bad proposal or
Democrats a good one, we need to have coordinated efforts throughout the
country. We need to use our think tanks and grassroots and web-based
organizations in increasingly creative ways and coordinate that with activities
of the Democrats that are becoming more and more vocal in the Congress.

You can tell the truth. We don’t need to lie. Democrats
are better for their health and well being, their kids’ education and
their family budget, and, Republican propaganda notwithstanding, our national
security, stopping terrorism, and peace on earth.

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