Bush has always had a trick memory, apparently. I just hope this is true...


What Bush's Harvard Business School Prof Has To Say
Originally Posted by salon.com

By Mary Jacoby
Sept. 16, 2004

For 25 years, Yoshi Tsurumi, one of George W. Bush's
professors at Harvard Business School, was content
with his green-card status as a permanent legal
resident of the United States. But Bush's ascension to
the presidency in 2001 prompted the Japanese native to
secure his American citizenship. The reason: to be
able to speak out with the full authority of
citizenship about why he believes Bush lacks the
character and intellect to lead the world's oldest and
most powerful democracy.

"I don't remember all the students in detail unless
I'm prompted by something," Tsurumi said in a
telephone interview Wednesday. "But I always remember
two types of students. One is the very excellent
student, the type as a professor you feel honored to
be working with. Someone with strong social values,
compassion and intellect -- the very rare person you
never forget. And then you remember students like
George Bush, those who are totally the opposite."

Tsurumi said. "He showed pathological lying habits and
was in denial when challenged on his prejudices and
biases. He would even deny saying something he just
said 30 seconds ago. He was famous for that. Students
jumped on him; I challenged him." When asked to
explain a particular comment, said Tsurumi, Bush would
respond, "Oh, I never said that."

Bush, he recalled, "made this ridiculous statement and
when I asked him to explain, he said, 'The government
doesn't have to help poor people -- because they are
lazy.' I said, 'Well, could you explain that
assumption?' Not only could he not explain it, he
started backtracking on it, saying, 'No, I didn't say
that.'"

Bush once sneered at Tsurumi for showing the film "The
Grapes of Wrath," based on John Steinbeck's novel of
the Depression. "We were in a discussion of the New
Deal, and he called Franklin Roosevelt's policies
'socialism.' He denounced labor unions, the Securities
and Exchange Commission, Medicare, Social Security,
you name it. He denounced the civil rights movement as socialism. To
him, socialism and communism were the same thing. And when challenged to
explain his prejudice, he could not defend his argument, either
ideologically, polemically or academically."

Students who challenged and embarrassed Bush in class
would then become the subject of a whispering campaign
by him, Tsurumi said. "In class, he couldn't challenge
them. But after class, he sometimes came up to me in
the hallway and started bad-mouthing those students
who had challenged him. He would complain that someone
was drinking too much. It was innuendo and lies. So
that's how I knew, behind his smile and his smirk,
that he was a very insecure, cunning and vengeful
guy."

Bush sometimes came late to class and often sat in the
back row of the theater-like classroom, wearing a
bomber jacket from the Texas Air National Guard and
spitting chewing tobacco into a cup.

"At first, I wondered, 'Who is this George Bush?' It's
a very common name and I didn't know his background.
And he was such a bad student that I asked him once
how he got in. He said, 'My dad has good friends.'"
Bush scored in the lowest 10 percent of the class.

"I used to chat up a number of students when we were
walking back to class," Tsurumi said. "Here was Bush,
wearing a Texas Guard bomber jacket, and the draft was
the No. 1 topic in those days. And I said, 'George,
what did you do with the draft?' He said, 'Well, I got
into the Texas Air National Guard.' And I said, 'Lucky
you. I understand there is a long waiting list for it.
How'd you get in?' When he told me, he didn't seem
ashamed or embarrassed. He thought he was entitled to
all kinds of privileges and special deals. He was not
the only one trying to twist all their connections to
avoid Vietnam. But then, he was fanatically for the
war."

Tsurumi told Bush that someone who avoided a draft
while supporting a war in which others were dying was
a hypocrite. "He realized he was caught, showed his
famous smirk and huffed off."

Tsurumi's conclusion: Bush is not as dumb as his
detractors allege. "He was just badly brought up, with
no discipline, and no compassion," he said.

He said other professors and students at the business
school from that time share his recollections but are
afraid to come forward, fearing ostracism or
retribution. And why is Tsurumi speaking up now?
Because with the ongoing bloodshed in Iraq and Osama
bin Laden still on the loose -- not to mention a
federal deficit ballooning out of control -- the
stakes are too high to remain silent. "Obviously, I
don't think he is the best person" to be running the
country, he said. "I wanted to explain why."

"Let me FINISH!"

"a technical expert who designs and makes such devices for the U.S. military tells Salon that he believes the bulge is indeed a transceiver designed to receive electronic signals and transmit them to a hidden earpiece lodged in Bush's ear canal. "
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/13/transmitter/index_np.html

... all we need now is Marty Feldman's "What hump?"

5 Nails in our Economic Coffin

Self-inflicted wounds will do what Osama can't ...

"5 big questions for the last debate


Promises to grow jobs or protect retirees don't mean much without specifics. Here's what I need to hear from Bush and Kerry on the financial issues they haven't yet touched.

By Jim Jubak

I give up. After months of campaigning and one vice presidential and two presidential debates, it’s clear that no candidate for national office is going to talk about the economic issues that I want to hear about.

Why? Not because these issues are unimportant or peripheral to the lives of most Americans. On the contrary, they’re even more important than how to stimulate job growth or the future of Social Security. Unless we address the five problems I outline below, we don’t stand a chance of coming up with effective policies on the economic issues the candidates are talking about.

U.S. voters deserve the whole economic truth and nothing but the truth from President Bush and Sen. Kerry, especially since we’re about to vote on who will lead this country for the next four years. Complex issues should be discussed on the stump and in debates, not filed away as position papers that no one ever reads.

So here are the economic issues that I think are most critical to our future -- and that no one is talking about in this election.Check out your options.
Find the best rate
before you borrow.



Unchecked pork-barrel spending
On Oct. 6, House and Senate negotiators approved $145 billion in tax cuts to fix what they claimed was a $50 billion tax problem. The original goal was to compensate U.S. exporters for the loss of tax breaks that the World Trade Organization had declared illegal and that had led the European Union to impose retaliatory tariffs.

Once again, Congress demonstrated that once it starts spending money -- and a tax cut is an expenditure -- it can’t stop handing out the goodies, like $20 billion in tax cuts on foreign earnings, $500 million in tax breaks for railroads and $26 billion in tax breaks for “exporters” like oil and gas producers who don’t export anything.

Reining in Congress isn’t impossible. A first step is to get the candidates to pledge to veto pork-barrel spending bills. Without fiscal restraint from Congress and the president, Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve wind up with all the economic power that counts. When is the last time you voted for Greenspan or any other Federal Reserve member?

Outsourcing and offshoring of jobs
The demographic logic isn’t hard to follow: A 28-year-old worker and a 55-year-old worker who lose their paychecks because their jobs have been sent abroad face very different problems. The younger worker isn’t likely to have as many financial obligations as the older employee, and he has a much longer time horizon to make up lost financial ground after retraining, which can take up to two years to complete.

Neither candidate has even broached a plan on how to fill that gap for demographically challenged workers. And that seems a terrible oversight given the rapidly aging U.S. workforce.

The failure of private pensions and health benefits
Fixing Social Security is relatively simple (raise the taxable income ceiling, raise the retirement age, raise the tax rate or lower benefits). It’s the government health-care trust funds that are in the really deep red ink.

That’s an especially big problem for the older population, because it’s those workers who are most likely to have a private, defined-benefit plan. (Younger workers probably never had a defined-benefit plan to begin with and commonly rely on plans such as 401(k)s.) If their private pension plan falters and their payments are reduced or wiped out, the U.S. Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. (PBGC) will pay a maximum benefit of only $44,386 (in 2004) to workers who retire at 65. It does not, however, pay or guarantee any health-care benefits to retirees.

The PBGC has already been overextended by the steel and airline industries’ consolidation and bankruptcies, and it was never intended to meet the needs of an entire generation as the country made the tough transition from one type of retirement coverage to another.

The decline of the U.S. dollar
The financial crisis that gets all the attention is the government’s $415 billion deficit. That’s a startling figure in absolute terms but, as 3.6% of the Gross Domestic Product, we’re not in the historical danger zone yet. (The trend is certainly troubling since the government has gone from a surplus of 2.4% of GDP in 2000 to a deficit of 3.6% in just four years. And, mind you, all these figures use government accounting which is, shall we say, creative.)

At 3.6% of GDP, the government deficit is much smaller than the U.S. trade deficit (or the current account deficit, to be precise), which now stands at 5% of GDP. To keep accounts in balance, the United States ships money overseas in exchange for goods, and since the U.S. household savings rate is now a paltry 1.5% of disposable income (down from a high of 11% in 1984), the money that we ship abroad is usually borrowed.

That works as long as foreigners are willing to sell us their things for dollars, but over time, it’s a good bet that the constant flow of dollars overseas will lead to a cheaper dollar. Some part of the current run-up in oil, which is priced in dollars, may indeed be related to oil producers’ desire to get more dollars for their oil. A falling dollar makes U.S. goods cheaper for overseas customers to buy, which is how trade deficits eventually get resolved.

But a cheaper dollar also means that U.S. consumers wind up paying more for everything they buy from abroad, whether it’s oil or computer chips or flip flops. The question isn’t whether the dollar will decline, but how fast and by how much. Estimates by economists range from 10% to 30%. At the high end of the range, a dollar decline would produce massive cost increases for some American consumers. The burden is likely to fall hardest on low-income households and fixed-income retirees who stretch the buying power of their retirement checks by buying cheaper imported goods.

The need for national economic security.
No one is talking about the threat to the extraordinary era of domestic economic peace that the Unites States has enjoyed for the last 60 or 70 years.

The foundation of that peace has been the promise that each generation of Americans would be better off than the preceding generation. That made possible the intergenerational transfer of wealth from young to old that is at the heart of our existing Social Security system and the rising national debt. It was OK to pay the oldsters more out of the pockets of younger workers, for example, because those younger workers knew their future was going to be more comfortable than that older generation's present.

But that implicit economic contract is in danger. Looking at my own two young children I feel that there is a real possibility that their generation won't do as well as mine did. It's hard to overestimate the dangers of breaking this implicit contract with younger workers just when an aging society and growing twin deficits makes the international transfer of wealth much more critical -- and much more burdensome.

While we're all worrying about how to pay those bills, we also need to be debating a plan that would give the bill-paying younger generation hope for their own future.

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P95342.asp

The Economist (Leftist, pinko rag) blasts Bush.

"Despite their diverse assessments of today's economy, the professors are overwhelmingly critical of the central plank of Mr Bush's economic policy—tax cuts. More than seven out of ten respondents say the Bush administration's tax cuts were either a bad or a very bad idea, and a similar proportion disapproves of Mr Bush's plans to make his tax cuts permanent. By contrast, Mr Kerry's plan to roll back the tax cuts for people with incomes over $200,000 wins the support of seven in ten of them."

www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3262965

The dollar will do what Osama couldn't

or, "It's the Economy AND the Deficits, Stupid! "

"While both candidates have talked almost exclusively about the next four years, the nation's long-term fiscal problems have loomed ever larger.

It may sound like a tired refrain by now, but the real action is in Social Security and Medicare. Yes, pity the nation's biggest entitlement programs. No one seems to want to cure what ails them.

In testimony before Congress last month, Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, said the budget's longer-term prospects remained troubling. "With the baby boomers starting to retire in a few years and health spending continuing to soar," he said, "our budget position will almost surely deteriorate substantially in coming years if current policies remain in place."

JUST how substantially the budget position will deteriorate or, in plain English, how much the government will dip into the red, has been a popular subject among economists of late. Laurence J. Kotlikoff, a professor at Boston University, has offered figures in the tens of trillions of dollars.

The government would not have to borrow those trillions all at once. The debts would climb over decades. It would, however, have to make sure it was in a position to borrow at least some of the money.

That means it would need a plan. Just as investors will not lend to a struggling airline with no strategy to control its debts, investors will not lend to a government whose ability to repay looks as if it can only worsen.

www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/business/yourmoney/10view.html?oref=login&8ym

...sure, making the Bush tax cuts permanent is only gonna make it a few trillion or so worse over 10 years, and the rise in health care costs will suck another 1.5 trillion annually, but I plan to retire and put my money in foreign bonds and commodities before it reaches critical mass.

Jobs Report Lays Yet Another Egg for W

He's already got the makings of one helluvan omelette ...

"Nonfarm payrolls increased just 96,000 last month while the unemployment rate held steady at 5.4%, as 221,000 people dropped out of the labor force. The consensus among economists was for 150,000 job gains, although estimates ranged from 10,000 jobs lost to 250,000 jobs added.

The details of the report were equally lackluster. Some 18,000 manufacturing jobs were shed last month, and the manufacturing workweek declined. Meanwhile, average hourly earnings rose just 0.2%, below the 0.3% estimate. The household survey showed that employment fell by 201,000.
.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said bad weather "appears to have held down employment growth" during the month but noted that it was "not enough to change materially the Bureau's assessment of the employment situation in September."

...

Meanwhile, the government released a preliminary revision of employment growth for the period of March 2003 through March 2004.

The BLS said 236,000 more jobs were created during that period than originally thought, but it noted that this is below the 10-year average.

President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers had predicted that payrolls could be revised up by 288,000, and possibly as much as 384,000, although economists said those assumptions were aggressive. Benchmark revisions are based on more complete data from unemployment insurance tax records.

George W. Bush School Test Finally Graded

bush_results

... How's that working for ya?

facts still don't matter, but let's run 'em down fwiw:

1) Bush and Cheney advocated invading Iraq on intelligence that Iraq was developing WMDs.

2) The intel was irrefutably proven to be wrong. Bush and Cheney stood fast behind their position on the war anyway.

3) The recent US weapons inspector's report (published this week) proves conclusively there was only the tattered remnants of a WMD program in Iraq; the report concludes that their WMD program was stronger in 1991 than it was when we invaded the country in 2002.

4) In light of this overwhelming evidence (which they haven't refuted to date) against their claims, Cheney said today - that's October 7, 2004 - in a town hall meeting in Miami the this report justifies (!!!!) rather than undermines Bush's decision to invade Iraq.

Why? Well, here's Cheney's logic: although Iraq clearly was no threat to the world, they were focused on getting export sanctions lifted, and as soon as they were, he'd've resumed his WMD program.
And therefore (I'm not making this up -- this IS Cheney's logic), we needed to invade Iraq because even though they didn't have a WMD program, they would've started one as soon as the UN inspectors determined he didn't have one, because once they determined Iraq didn't have a WMD program e-e-everyone would be feel safe and they could therefore start a WMD program again.

hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CHENEY?SITE=NWCN&SECTION=HOME

NOW let's put that in perspective: it was necessary to spend $200B, lose 1100 American Special Forces' lives (and continue to lose 30 or more per month with increasing, not decreasing casualties), kill/maim 10,000 or more Iraqi civilians, separate military members families from their families, and for America to lose favor in the world for this pseudologic. In so doing, a president who mathematically lost his election and who faced significant opposition at home and abroad to this action went ahead anyway and sacrificed those precious resources on his personal whim.



... How's that working for ya?

Diebold expands collection of black eyes

"Diebold, the much-criticized electronic voting machine company, got another black eye last week. A federal court in California ruled that it had violated federal law when it falsely charged two students with violating its copyrights by posting critical information about its voting machines on the Internet. The case raises more questions about Diebold's honesty and its commitment to transparency.

The story began early last year when someone - it is unclear who - posted internal Diebold e-mail messages on the Internet that discussed flaws in the company's electronic voting machines. Two students from Swarthmore College then posted those messages on various Web sites. Diebold sent out a flurry of cease-and-desist letters claiming that the postings violated its copyrights. The students sued, charging that Diebold knowingly misrepresented its rights under copyright law.

The United States District Court for the Northern District of California agreed. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it is illegal to send a cease-and-desist letter while knowing that the claim of copyright infringement is false. The court held that Diebold knew that its e-mail messages "discussing possible technical problems" with its voting machines were not copyrighted, but went ahead anyway.

This is the second recent setback to Diebold's already troubled reputation. Last month, California's attorney general, Bill Lockyer, joined a false-claims suit against Diebold charging it with lying to the state about the security of its voting systems. Now, a federal court has ruled that Diebold made knowing misrepresentations to get damaging information about its machines' security off the Internet.

Diebold has a great deal to do to make its work transparent and its company trustworthy if it wants to remain in the elections business.


Making Votes Count: Editorials in this series remain online at nytimes.com/makingvotescount


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/04/opinion/04mon3.html?ex=1097553600&en=89b97ef416c602a8&ei=5065

Town wants its idiot back

(Crawford, Texas-NBC) Sept. 29, 2004 - The newspaper in President Bush's adopted Texas hometown is throwing its support to his opponent, Senator John Kerry.

The Weekly Lone Star Iconoclast in Crawford, Texas, criticized the president's handling of the war in Iraq and for turning tight budget surpluses into record deficits.

The editorial also criticized Bush's proposals on Social Security and Medicare. Its publishers backed Bush four years ago, but now say he didn't come through on campaign promises.

The editorial urged Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country.

There's Lies and Then There's Lies That Get People Killed

On the one hand we have Dan Rather's forged documents with response: "...we have been misled."

Consequences:

* Hit to Rather's reputation
* Hit to CBS's reputation
* Hit to the media's (already questionable) reputation

Conservative response:

* Unmitigated, eye-popping outrage
* Calls for Rather's resignation
* Calls for an investigation by the House of Representatives

... And then there's the White House's forged documents with response: "We fell for it."

Consequences:

* American public misled and frightened into an invasion of a sovereign nation that posed no threat to the U.S.
* Hit to America's reputation
* Over 1,000 Americans dead
* Over 7,000 Americans injured
* Tens of thousands of Iraqis dead
* Iraq turned center for terrorist recruitment
* Hundreds of billions of U.S. taxpayers' dollars gone
* Anti American sentiment at record highs
* Iraq on the verge of civil war

Conservative response:

* (Crickets chirping)
... How's that working for ya?

Blair Does Some Splainin

BRIGHTON, England (Reuters) - Tony Blair offered his Labour party on Tuesday a partial apology for waging war in Iraq, striving to pull angry supporters behind him ahead of an election next year.

But as two more British soldiers died in Iraq and a hostage remained under threat of death, the prime minister's hopes of drawing a line under two years that have wrecked his public trust ratings are far from secure.

"The evidence about Saddam having actual biological and chemical weapons ... has turned out to be wrong," Blair told Labour's annual conference, his nearest yet to a "mea culpa."

"The problem is I can apologize for the information that turned out to be wrong but I can't, sincerely at least, apologize for removing Saddam," he said. "The world is a better place with Saddam in prison not in power."

Blair's speech was interrupted twice by protesters, one yelling that the prime minister "had blood on his hands," others opposing a planned ban on fox-hunting. They were bundled out of the hall.

...

"I don't think this speech changed anything on Iraq," former minister Clare Short, who resigned over the war, told Reuters. "Iraq will go on being a mess but the party wants to win the election and will pull together for that."

Blair acknowledged terrorism would never be defeated unless Israelis and Palestinians were reconciled -- expressing frustration at a lack of progress ahead of U.S. elections.

"After November, I will make its revival a personal priority. Two states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in an enduring peace would do more to defeat this terrorism than bullets alone can ever do," he said.

... but Jolly Old England may never be the same with all those foxes overrunning the heath.

The Wadical White Wing, Bush's Best Buds

Sitting at the right hand of the Air Texas Chowder and Marching Society's Fearless Leader, the Wadical Whites are stalwart defenders of the the One True Faith, making them standard bearers for the Coalition of the Conniving and the Clueless ...

Grand Old Party Values for the New Millenium


God Gave U.S. 'What We Deserve,' Falwell Says (Wash Post, Sep14 '01)

"God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve," said Falwell, appearing yesterday on the Christian Broadcasting Network's "700 Club," hosted by Robertson.

"Jerry, that's my feeling," Robertson responded. "I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population."

Falwell said the American Civil Liberties Union has "got to take a lot of blame for this," again winning Robertson's agreement: "Well, yes."

Then Falwell broadened his blast to include the federal courts and others who he said were "throwing God out of the public square." He added:

"The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.' "

People for the American Way transcribed the broadcast and denounced the comments as running directly counter to President Bush's call for national unity. Ralph G. Neas, the liberal group's president, called the remarks "absolutely inappropriate and irresponsible."

Robertson and others on the religious right gave critical backing to Bush last year when he was battling for the GOP presidential nomination. A White House official called the remarks "inappropriate" and added, "The president does not share those views."

Falwell was unrepentant, saying in an interview that he was "making a theological statement, not a legal statement."

"I put all the blame legally and morally on the actions of the terrorist," he said. But he said America's "secular and anti-Christian environment left us open to our Lord's [decision] not to protect. When a nation deserts God and expels God from the culture . . . the result is not good."

Robertson was not available for comment, a spokeswoman said. But she released a statement echoing the remarks he made on his show. An ACLU spokeswoman said the group "will not dignify the Falwell-Robertson remarks with a comment."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A28620-2001Sep14¬Found=true

... but that ain't all. Not by a long shot mister!



On May 4, 2004 Alan Keyes said:

Now, you think it's a coincidence that on Sept. 11th, 2001, we were struck by terrorists an evil that has at its heart the disregard of innocent human life? We who have for several decades killed not thousands but scores of millions of our own children, in disregard of the principle of innocent human life — I don't think that's a coincidence, I think that's a warning. I don't think that's a coincidence, I think that's a shot across the bow.

I think that's a way of Providence telling us, "I love you all; I'd like to give you a chance. Wake up! Would you please wake up?

And on Aug 17, he elaborated:

As I often point out to folks, the evil is the same. And that means, quite frankly, in fighting the war against terror, as I have often put it to audiences, the evil that we fight is but the shadow of the evil that we do.

This kind of slimy rhetoric is typical in the Republican Party. Right now they are feverishly preparing to remake themselves for their prime-time show in New York — and their decision to put pro-choice Republicans like Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Pataki, and Rudy Giuliani on the main stage during TV hour is nothing more than a pathetic attempt to cover up the real agenda of their party — an agenda set by Keyes's ideological partners and leaders in the party, like John Ashcroft, Tom DeLay, and Karl Rove.

And Keyes isn't the first Republican to link mainstream support of a woman's right to choose with terrorism.

[Here's the topper:]

On April 25, as more than a million women were marching on Washington in support of women's rights, influential Bush advisor Karen Hughes said:

I think that after September 11, the American people are valuing life more and we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life. President Bush has worked to say, "let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions." And I think those are the kinds of policies the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy and, really, the fundamental issue between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life.

Bush-Cheney Ignored Numerous 9/11 Warnings

1/15/01 President Clinton and Nat'l Security Advisor Sandy Berger each tell Bush and Cheney al Qaeda planning "tremendous" and "imminent" attack, gives them plan of action (e.g., identify terrorists already in US, seize terrorist funding, bomb Taliban sites, etc.)

1/20/01 Bush & Cheney inaugurated.

1/25/01 Richard Clarke, Counterterrorism Security Group (CSG), gives Bush a similar plan, but is told the Energy Task Force is the priority. Bush pulls submarines, gunships from 6-hour alert in Arabian Sea. Clarke meets with Rice to emphasize threat. She asks him to prepare a policy paper and he does, but it "languished", Rice later admits, on her desk.

1/31/01 Bipartisan US Commission on National Security, issues report predicting terrorist attack in US, calls for urgent action. Co-chairs Gary Hart and Warren Rudman meet with Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell to emphasize the need for action. The report and their pleas are ignored. Bush says Cheney to "study the problem" and FEMA to handle domestic security but, instead, Cheney dissolves the Commission and reduces FEMA budget $200M.

4/30/01 Ahmed Ressam, foiled Y2K terrorist, tells investigators al Qaeda plans to attack the US using airplanes.

5/01 Cofer Black, CIA Counterterrorism Center, tells Bush administration about increased terrorist chatter about significant attack being planned.

5/01 Bush abandons Financial Action Task Force, which identifies sources of terrorist funding.

7/01 Egypt warns Bush that al Qaeda may try to "Kamikazee" a plane into any site where Bush might be. Bush sleeps on an aircraft carrier during the G-8 conference instead of on land with the other leaders.

7/01 CSG issues report entitled "Threat of Impending al-Qaeda Attack".

7/01 CIA Counterterrorism Center (CTC) announces al Qaeda is "planning something spectacular".

7/01 Senator Dianne Feinstein gives Dick Cheney draft legislation on counterrorism and urges swift action. (On 9/10/01, Cheney told her he needed more time to study it, to which Feinstein replies that there isn't time to spare.)

8/01 Bush goes on monthlong vacation.

8/6/01 Bush receives PDB "Bin Laden Determined To Strke in U.S."

8/15/01 Cofer Black tells the DOD's annual Convention on Counterterrorism "we are going to be struck soon, many Americans are going to die, and it could be in the U.S.".

Cheney was right

-- given this administration's success as the recruiting impetus for terrorism, a bad choice on Nov 2 could mean a bigger threat to us.

... How's that working for ya, Dick?

There are two kinds of walls: < RoughJustice > 09/10 05:47:36

Walls that keep people out, and those that keep people in. One kind is inherently bad, the other is just sensible...

(Reuters) - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon agreed Wednesday to changes in the route of Israel's West Bank barrier but insisted on keeping key Jewish settlement blocks inside, political sources said.

Israel's Defense Ministry had proposed changes after the Jewish state's highest court judged that the planned route of the barrier should take up less Palestinian land. The International Court of Justice ruled the barrier was illegal.

Israel says completed sections of the barrier, a network of razor-tipped fences and concrete walls, have already helped to prevent dozens of suicide bombings nearly four years into a Palestinian uprising.

Palestinians call it a grab for land they want for an independent state."


... well, yes, I suppose it is a de facto land grab. I'd be a bit more blunt about it if I were Ariel: "Kill a Jew, Lose a Mile -- It's the Law."

Inquiry Proposes Penalties for Hiding Medicare Data

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 - The Bush administration illegally withheld data from Congress on the cost of the new Medicare law, and as a penalty, the former head of the Medicare agency, Thomas A. Scully, should repay seven months of his salary to the government, federal investigators said Tuesday.


The investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said Mr. Scully had threatened to fire the chief Medicare actuary, in violation of an explicit provision of federal appropriations law.

Accordingly, they said, federal money could not be used to pay Mr. Scully's salary after he began making the threats to the actuary in May 2003.

The conclusion came in a formal legal opinion by the accountability office, an investigative arm of Congress formerly known as the General Accounting Office. The agency applied its interpretation of the law to factual findings previously made by the inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Bush administration did not quarrel with those facts, but said on Tuesday that it was unconstitutional for Congress to compel the disclosure of data over objections from the executive branch.

Mr. Scully's salary in 2003 was $145,600, the department said. He would owe the government $84,933 under the legal opinion issued on Tuesday.

Asked in an interview if he would repay the money, Mr. Scully said: "No. I'm not required to. It's a matter of principle. I never did anything wrong, and I am proud of every minute of my three years at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.''

Mr. Scully, who now works for a law firm and a private investment firm, has registered as a lobbyist for Abbott Laboratories, Aventis Pharmaceuticals, Caremark Rx and other health care companies, but says his actions in government were motivated solely by a desire to help Medicare beneficiaries and taxpayers.

The White House had no immediate comment. William A. Pierce, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the department would not try to recover the money because Mr. Scully had "acted within his legal authority.''

But Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, cited the report as evidence that "the Bush administration broke the law by covering up the true cost of their phony Medicare bill.''

Senator Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey, one of 18 Democratic senators who requested the legal opinion, said the administration had purposely hidden information about "its flawed Medicare plan,'' and he asserted, "This was a corruption of the process at the highest levels.''

President Bush signed the Medicare law, widely seen as one of his major domestic achievements, on Dec. 8. Less than two months later, the White House said the law would cost much more than Congress had assumed - $534 billion over 10 years, as against $400 billion.

Lawmakers of both parties said the law would not have passed in its current form if Congress had known of the higher cost estimates, prepared by the chief actuary, Richard S. Foster, a career civil servant who has worked for the government since 1973 and received an award for outstanding service in 2001.

The law under which Mr. Scully could be penalized says that no federal money can be used to pay the salary of any federal employee who "prohibits or prevents, or attempts or threatens to prohibit or prevent, any other officer or employee of the federal government'' from communicating with Congress.

Similar laws have been on the books since 1912, when Senator Robert M. La Follette, a progressive Republican from Wisconsin, inveighed against "gag rules'' imposed by Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.

Laura Kopelson, a spokeswoman for the Government Accountability Office, said lawyers there were "not aware of any similar case'' in which a federal official was found to have violated the law. "This is the first time we have been asked to rule on this point of law,'' she said.

The finding is the latest development raising questions about the new statute, which offers drug benefits to all 41 million Medicare recipients and gives private insurers a huge new role in the program. The changes represent the biggest expansion of Medicare since its creation in 1965.

The Government Accountability Office said the Department of Health and Human Services should try to recover the money, just as it would try to secure payment of any debt owed to the department.

The department itself found that Mr. Scully had threatened to dismiss the actuary if he provided information and estimates sought by Congress last year in the heat of debate over Medicare.

But lawyers at the health department and the Justice Department said the law requiring the disclosure of information to Congress violated "executive privilege,'' the constitutional separation of powers and the president's right to control communications with Congress.

The Government Accountability Office rejected that argument. No court has ever held the law unconstitutional, it said, and the cost estimates were neither classified nor privileged. Indeed, it said, Mr. Scully's threats to the actuary were "a prime example of what Congress was attempting to prohibit'' when it outlawed "gag rules."

"Midlevel employees provide much of the information Congress needs to evaluate programs'' and legislation, the Senate said when it adopted the language of the 1912 law as part of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. Similar language was included in spending bills for 2003 and 2004.

Anthony H. Gamboa, general counsel of the Government Accountability Office, said the administration was "prohibited from paying Mr. Scully's salary after he barred Mr. Foster from communicating with Congress.'' The money appropriated by Congress was simply "unavailable for the payment of his salary,'' Mr. Gamboa wrote.


...Bad executive! No biscuit!

Arab Street may finally be getting the picture

"Muslims worldwide are the main perpetrators of terrorism, a humiliating and painful truth that must be acknowledged, a prominent Arab writer said today, as Middle East media and officials registered their horror at the bloody rebel siege of a Russian school.

Unusually forthright self-criticism followed the end of the hostage crisis, along with warnings such actions inflict more damage to the image of Islam than all its enemies combined could hope to do.

Arab leaders and Muslim clerics denounced the school seizure as unjustifiable and expressed their sympathy.

“Our terrorist sons are an end-product of our corrupted culture,” Abdulrahman al-Rashed, general manager of Al-Arabiya television wrote in his daily column published in the pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper."

breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j=47847100&p=4784739x&n=47847482

... How's that working for ya?

I think Michael Kinsley nailed it with this one:

"In four years, this small man had two historic opportunities to reach for greatness, to lead this country to a new and better place, and he passed up both. The first was when the Democrats patriotically bowed to a Supreme Court decision they believed to be wrong, if not corrupt, so that the U.S. could avoid a further constitutional crisis. What a moment for bipartisanship! Maybe put more than a token Democrat in the Cabinet? Not a chance.

George W. Bush's second opportunity came on Sept. 11, 2001. Past grievances suddenly seemed petty, current disagreements seemed irrelevant, and, even among Bush's opponents, desperate hope replaced sullen doubts that our nation's leader would be up to the task. Bush got this gift from the opposition—the suspension of dislike and disbelief—without doing anything to deserve it. He could have asked for and got anything he wanted in the weeks and months after 9/11. And he decided to invade Iraq.

For once, George W. Bush was tested. And he flunked. "

http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101040906/nkinsley.html


It's been a dreadful performance, a train wreck of an administration, and nobody to blame but themselves. Oh, yes, and Clinton. Dubya hasn't forgotten his A-B-C's -- Always Blame Clinton.

The Politics of Anything Goes - Obama is behind the curve

"Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. "

... Wake up, Barack. They've already divided us. Now they're giving us the wedgie.

We're In Charge and We're Not Gonna Take It Anymore!

We've been in charge of Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court for 4 years and we're not gonna take it anymore!

The Bush speech sounds like he's running against himself...

"My plan begins with providing the security and opportunity of a growing economy. We now compete in a global market that provides new buyers for our goods, but new competition for our workers. To create more jobs in America, America must be the best place in the world to do business. To create jobs, my plan will encourage investment and expansion by restraining federal spending, reducing regulation, and making tax relief permanent. To create jobs, we will make our country less dependent on foreign sources of energy. [I love that bit!] To create jobs, we will expand trade and level the playing field to sell American goods and services across the globe. And we must protect small business owners and workers from the explosion of frivolous lawsuits that threaten jobs across America."


... what were these bozos doing for the last 4 years?

See Paul Krugman's column at

www.nytimes.com/2004/09/03/opinion/03krugman.html?hp

"...a third [delegate] said, Mr. Soros "is a self-admitted atheist; he was a Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust."
The suggestion that Mr. Soros, who has spent billions promoting democracy around the world, is in the pay of drug cartels came from Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, whom the Constitution puts two heartbeats from the presidency.

The claim that Mr. Soros's political spending is driven by his desire to legalize heroin came from Newt Gingrich. And the bit about the Holocaust came from Tony Blankley, editorial page editor of The [Moon-owned] Washington Times, which has become the administration's de facto house organ.

Why are the Republicans so angry? One reason is that they have nothing positive to run on (during the first three days, Mr. Bush was mentioned far less often than John Kerry).

The promised economic boom hasn't materialized, Iraq is a bloody quagmire, and Osama bin Laden has gone from "dead or alive" to he-who-must-not-be-named.

Another reason, I'm sure, is a guilty conscience. At some level the people at that convention know that their designated hero is a man who never in his life took a risk or made a sacrifice for his country, and that they are impugning the patriotism of men who have.

That's why Band-Aids with Purple Hearts on them, mocking Mr. Kerry's war wounds and medals, have been such a hit with conventioneers, and why senior politicians are attracted to wild conspiracy theories about Mr. Soros.

It's also why Mr. Hastert, who knows how little the Bush administration has done to protect New York and help it rebuild, has accused the city of an "unseemly scramble" for cash after 9/11. Nothing makes you hate people as much as knowing in your heart that you are in the wrong and they are in the right."

Bush's ruinous economic plans

By Robert Kuttner | September 1, 2004

WE WILL shortly hear from the president himself, but the outlines of his domestic program for a second term are already all too clear. Take five key areas of economic policy -- health, Social Security, energy, taxes, and the deficit.



All five have this in common: In each case the administration program doesn't really address the underlying problem. Rather, the purpose is either to help an industry ally, stir up the party base, or advance an ideological goal (or all three).

Health Coverage. Health insurance premiums have risen by more than one-third since Bush took office, leaving more and more people uninsured or underinsured. Families USA calculates from Census Bureau data that one nonelderly American in three was without health insurance at some point from 2002 to 2003. Meanwhile, employers and insurers are moderating their own costs by increasing copays and deductibles paid by consumers.

The president's proposed health program, a massive expansion of so-called health savings accounts, doesn't address the twin problem of dwindling coverage and rising costs. It simply accelerates the shift of those costs onto consumers and gives affluent people one more tax break. Health savings accounts are useful mainly for the healthy and the wealthy because they don't buy coverage that is both comprehensive and affordable.

Social Security. The Bush plan to privatize Social Security, in whole or in part, is back. But there is no way that privatizing the system will shore up its finances. Rather, it will do just the opposite by diverting payroll tax revenue needed for Social Security payouts into new private accounts. To keep the promise of Social Security intact, Bush would need either massive new borrowing or massive tax hikes. But the more likely result is reductions in benefits. Of course, these cuts, like the damage from his deficits, would hit long after Bush left office.

Energy. There's a growing consensus among experts that the most recent wave of oil price hikes is not mainly the result of market manipulation, refining bottlenecks, or the Iraq occupation but the harbinger of the long-predicted depletion of the world's extractable oil reserves. With the huge populations of China, India, and other emergent economies joining the global consumer society, demand is simply outstripping supply.

Bush's program is essentially deeper and wider drilling, lubricated by friendly tax and environmental policies. His support for conservation or alternative energy sources is token at best. Last week three Bush Cabinet secretaries, just in time for the Republican National Convention, belatedly conceded that science has proven the reality of global climate change caused by carbon emissions. Bush said he was unaware of the report.

Taxes. The tax program for a second Bush term will be more of the same. One goal will be to make the tax cuts of 2001 to 2004 permanent. A new twist will be a shift to consumption taxes -- either a value-added tax, a national sales tax, or new tax breaks for money saved rather than spent. The result will be an overall reduction of taxes paid by those wealthy enough to save substantially and a shift onto workaday voters who spend most of what they earn. This will be advertised as a program to create jobs and reward entrepreneurship, but it sure didn't work in Bush's first term -- the only presidency since Hoover with fewer payroll jobs at the end than the beginning.

The deficit. Hardly anyone, Republican or Democrat, truly believes that the Bush tax-and-spending program will do anything other than make the deficit problem worse. The Congressional Budget Office, whose director is appointed by congressional Republicans, projects endless deficits in excess of $400 billion a year. If Bush succeeds in making recent tax cuts permanent and adding new ones, the deficits will be even more serious. With military outlay rising, the administration's only game plan is to backload the effect of tax cuts until after this president leaves office and cut domestic spending even further.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/09/01/bushs_ruinous_economic_plans/

We’re Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore

Garrison Keillor is apparently in denial about the government we deserve...


"We’re Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore [no shit, Toto.]

"How did the Party of Lincoln and Liberty transmogrify into the party of Newt Gingrich’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk?

Something has gone seriously haywire with the Republican Party. Once, it was the party of pragmatic Main Street businessmen in steel-rimmed spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their communities and supported the sort of prosperity that raises all ships. They were good-hearted people who vanquished the gnarlier elements of their party, the paranoid Roosevelt-haters, the flat Earthers and Prohibitionists, the antipapist antiforeigner element. The genial Eisenhower was their man, a genuine American hero of D-Day, who made it OK for reasonable people to vote Republican. He brought the Korean War to a stalemate, produced the Interstate Highway System, declined to rescue the French colonial army in Vietnam, and gave us a period of peace and prosperity, in which (oddly) American arts and letters flourished and higher education burgeoned—and there was a degree of plain decency in the country. Fifties Republicans were giants compared to today’s. Richard Nixon was the last Republican leader to feel a Christian obligation toward the poor.

In the years between Nixon and Newt Gingrich, the party migrated southward down the Twisting Trail of Rhetoric and sneered at the idea of public service and became the Scourge of Liberalism, the Great Crusade Against the Sixties, the Death Star of Government, a gang of pirates that diverted and fascinated the media by their sheer chutzpah, such as the misty-eyed flag-waving of Ronald Reagan who, while George McGovern flew bombers in World War II, took a pass and made training films in Long Beach. The Nixon moderate vanished like the passenger pigeon, purged by a legion of angry white men who rose to power on pure punk politics. “Bipartisanship is another term of date rape,” says Grover Norquist, the Sid Vicious of the GOP. “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” The boy has Oedipal problems and government is his daddy.

The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we’re deaf, dumb and dangerous.

Rich ironies abound! Lies pop up like toadstools in the forest! Wild swine crowd round the public trough! Outrageous gerrymandering! Pocket lining on a massive scale! Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and write legislation to alleviate the suffering of billionaires! Hypocrisies shine like cat turds in the moonlight! O Mark Twain, where art thou at this hour? Arise and behold the Gilded Age reincarnated gaudier than ever, upholding great wealth as the sure sign of Divine Grace.

Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedy—the single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the president’s personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully.

The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few is the death knell of democracy. No republic in the history of humanity has survived this. The election of 2004 will say something about what happens to ours. The omens are not good.

Our beloved land has been fogged with fear—fear, the greatest political strategy ever. An ominous silence, distant sirens, a drumbeat of whispered warnings and alarms to keep the public uneasy and silence the opposition. And in a time of vague fear, you can appoint bullet-brained judges, strip the bark off the Constitution, eviscerate federal regulatory agencies, bring public education to a standstill, stupefy the press, lavish gorgeous tax breaks on the rich.

There is a stink drifting through this election year. It isn’t the Florida recount or the Supreme Court decision. No, it’s 9/11 that we keep coming back to. It wasn’t the “end of innocence,” or a turning point in our history, or a cosmic occurrence, it was an event, a lapse of security. And patriotism shouldn’t prevent people from asking hard questions of the man who was purportedly in charge of national security at the time.

Whenever I think of those New Yorkers hurrying along Park Place or getting off the No.1 Broadway local, hustling toward their office on the 90th floor, the morning paper under their arms, I think of that non-reader George W. Bush and how he hopes to exploit those people with a little economic uptick, maybe the capture of Osama, cruise to victory in November and proceed to get some serious nation-changing done in his second term.

This year, as in the past, Republicans will portray us Democrats as embittered academics, desiccated Unitarians, whacked-out hippies and communards, people who talk to telephone poles, the party of the Deadheads. They will wave enormous flags and wow over and over the footage of firemen in the wreckage of the World Trade Center and bodies being carried out and they will lie about their economic policies with astonishing enthusiasm.

The Union is what needs defending this year. Government of Enron and by Halliburton and for the Southern Baptists is not the same as what Lincoln spoke of. This gang of Pithecanthropus Republicanii has humbugged us to death on terrorism and tax cuts for the comfy and school prayer and flag burning and claimed the right to know what books we read and to dump their sewage upstream from the town and clear-cut the forests and gut the IRS and mark up the constitution on behalf of intolerance and promote the corporate takeover of the public airwaves and to hell with anybody who opposes them.

This is a great country, and it wasn’t made so by angry people. We have a sacred duty to bequeath it to our grandchildren in better shape than however we found it. We have a long way to go and we’re not getting any younger.

Dante said that the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in time of crisis remain neutral, so I have spoken my piece, and thank you, dear reader. It’s a beautiful world, rain or shine, and there is more to life than winning."

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/979

The Nov 3 Post Mortem: "Kerry KO'd by self inflicted wound "

Mark my words -- Kerry was always just another self-destructing Massachussetts liberal.
'...--- as far as his vote to authorize Bush to go to war in Iraq--he said that he would vote the same way even with what he knew now --what he knows now is that Bush fabricated the intelligence for the war and deceived the American people --he had a perfect moment and reason to change his mind-he did not--this ME TOOISM on the war will probably cost him the election'


www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=Art%20Of%20War.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=47&rnd=164.0691503606646 "

... Nice try, guys. You'll get 'em next time.

I'm so sure.

How to Start a Bush War

Step 1: Establish a propaganda office cut-out in the middle of the intelligence community...

The Office of Special Plans

"According to former Bush officials, all defence and intelligence sources, senior administration figures created a shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defense Intelligence Agency.
The ideologically driven network functioned like a shadow government, much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail in a struggle with the State Department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war.
... The president's most trusted adviser, Mr Cheney, was at the shadow network's sharp end. He made several trips to the CIA in Langley, Virginia, to demand a more "forward-leaning" interpretation of the threat posed by Saddam. When he was not there to make his influence felt, his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was. Such hands-on involvement in the processing of intelligence data was unprecedented for a vice-president in recent times, and it put pressure on CIA officials to come up with the appropriate results.
Another frequent visitor was Newt Gingrich, the former Republican party leader who resurfaced after September 11 as a Pentagon "consultant" and a member of its unpaid defence advisory board, with influence far beyond his official title.

www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,999737,00.html

... How's that working for ya?

Why isnt the OSP in Kerry's ads?

The OSP was right at the heart of the rot that permeates this administration

rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2004/0402osp.php

"In the days after September 11 terrorist attacks, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith started cooking intelligence to meet the needs of the radically new foreign and military policy that included regime change in Iraq as its top priority.

One might have thought that the priority for a special intelligence would have been to determine the whereabouts of the terrorist network that had just attacked the homeland. But Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense Feith, working closely with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Richard Cheney, had other intelligence priorities.

To bolster the Iraq war party, they needed intelligence that would persuade the U.S. public and policymakers that Saddam Hussein's regime should be one of the first targets of the war on terrorism. Convinced that the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the State Department would not provide them with type of alarmist threat assessments necessary to justify a preventive war, they created their own tightly controlled intelligence operation at the top levels of the Pentagon bureaucracy.

The day after the September 11 attacks Wolfowitz authorized the creation of an informal team focused on ferreting out damaging intelligence about Iraq . This loosely organized team soon became the Office of Special Plans (OSP) ... The objective of this closet intelligence team, according to Rumsfeld, was to “search for information on Iraq's hostile intentions or links to terrorists.” OSP's mission was to create intelligence that the Pentagon and vice president could use to press their case for an Iraq invasion with the president and Congress. The OSP ... played a key role in providing Rumsfeld, Cheney, and the president himself with the intelligence frequently cited to justify the March 2003 invasion. "

A Short Walk Down Memory Lane

Remember the "remarkable escape of al-Qaeda forces from Kabul " or the "Northern Alliance fighters held back at the request of the US from sweeping into Kandahar... the conquest of Kandahar takes weeks without the Northern Alliance and bin Laden slips away" or when the "Of the 8,000 remaining al-Qaeda, Pakistani and Taliban, about 5,000 are airlifted out " of Konduz?

And how about when "many locals in Afghanistan witness a remarkable escape of al-Qaeda forces from Kabul around this time. One local businessman says: "We don't understand how they weren't all killed the night before because they came in a convoy of at least 1,000 cars and trucks. It was a very dark night, but it must have been easy for the American pilots to see the headlights. The main road was jammed from eight in the evening until three in the morning."

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/escapeafghanistan.html

... by golly, those WERE the good old days, eh?

Republican Congressman: Bush's war a costly mess

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) -- A top Republican congressman has broken from his party in the final days of his House career, saying he believes the U.S. military assault on Iraq was unjustified and the situation there has deteriorated into ``a dangerous, costly mess.'

``I've reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action,' Rep. Doug Bereuter wrote in a letter to his constituents.

``Left unresolved for now is whether intelligence was intentionally misconstrued to justify military action,' he said.

Bereuter is a senior member of the House International Relations Committee and vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He is stepping down after 13 terms to become the president of the Asia Foundation effective Sept. 1.

``From the beginning of the conflict, it was doubtful that we for long would be seen as liberators, but instead increasingly as an occupying force,' he said. ``Now we are immersed in a dangerous, costly mess, and there is no easy and quick way to end our responsibilities in Iraq without creating bigger future problems in the region and, in general, in the Muslim world.'

Bereuter said as a result of the war, ``our country's reputation around the world has never been lower and our alliances are weakened.'

All long-leading regional indexes have turned down

It’s tempting to look at certain improving fundamental yardsticks and say that stocks are probably cheap enough to spur buying. After all, interest rates are still pretty low, and companies generally are getting more productivity out of fewer workers -- making them stronger financially. Economists at ISI Group estimate that the S&P 500 stocks on average are selling for 15 times next year’s earnings, which is fairly reasonable. And corporate cash hoards are near record highs.

But all of these metrics are “coincidental,” in the parlance of economists -- meaning that they tell you something about what’s happening now, but not much about the future. To peer beyond the horizon, you need non-linear measurements that bend around the corner and don’t just extrapolate the present forward. That’s where the work of Lakshman Achuthan at the Economic Cycle Research Institute comes in handy. As I’ve reported all year, his weekly leading index -- which compacts a variety of predictive economic indicators into a single number... has continued to point down in an increasingly persistent, profound and pervasive way despite rosy reports out of Washington. Achuthan’s analysis suggests that U.S. economic growth is distinctly slowing from the above-average pace of last year.

Late last week, he reported that although all of his global coincident economic-activity indexes remain in cyclical up-trends, all long-leading regional indexes have turned down.

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/p89220.asp

Khan was burned by Pak, not Bush admin

if you believe this ...

http://www.slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2104926&

"Take a closer look at the sourcing in the original New York Times piece disclosing Khan's name, which was written by Douglas Jehl and David Rohde. They cite a "senior United States official" for details on the documentary evidence found after the capture of a suspect, but this "United States official" is pointedly not cited as having given the name of the suspect. Instead, a few paragraphs further down, the Times reporters tell us:

The American officials would say only that the Qaeda figure whose capture had led to the discovery of the documentary evidence had been captured with the help of the C.I.A. Though Pakistan announced the arrest last week of a Qaeda member, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian wanted in connection with the bombings of American embassies in East Africa in 1998, the American officials suggested that he had not been the source of the new threat information.

An account provided by a Pakistani intelligence official made clear that the crucial capture in recent weeks had been that of Mr. Khan, who is also known as Abu Talha. The intelligence official provided information describing Mr. Khan as having assisted in evaluating potential American and Western targets for terrorist attacks, and as being representative of a ''new Al Qaeda.''

Bushisms

"I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain-I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."
- G.W. Bush

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we"
- President Bush, delievering a speech at the signing ceromony for a $417 billion defense spending bill, Aug 04



But his defenders say actions speak louder than words, right? In 1990 George W. Bush sells two-thirds of his Harken Energy stock at the top of the market for $850,000, a 200% profit, but makes no report to the SEC until March 1991. Bush Jr. says later the SEC misplaced the report. An SEC representative responds: "nobody ever found the 'lost' filing." One week after Bush's sale, Harken reports an earnings plunge. Harken stock falls more than 60%.


... How is this guy still polling in double digits?

Jobs numbers are bad unless you twirl 'em pretty hard

When Friday's dismal job report was released, traders in the Chicago pit began chanting, "Kerry, Kerry." But apologists for President Bush's economic policies are frantically spinning the bad news. Here's a guide to their techniques.

First, they talk about recent increases in the number of jobs, not the fact that payroll employment is still far below its previous peak, and even further below anything one could call full employment. Because job growth has finally turned positive, some economists (who probably know better) claim that prosperity has returned - and some partisans have even claimed that we have the best economy in 20 years.

But job growth, by itself, says nothing about prosperity: growth can be higher in a bad year than a good year, if the bad year follows a terrible year while the good year follows another good year. I've drawn a chart of job growth for the 1930's; there was rapid nonfarm job growth (8.1 percent) in 1934, a year of mass unemployment and widespread misery - but that year was slightly less terrible than 1933.

So have we returned to prosperity? No: jobs are harder to find, by any measure, than they were at any point during Bill Clinton's second term. The job situation might have improved somewhat in the past year, but it's still not good.

Second, the apologists give numbers without context. President Bush boasts about 1.5 million new jobs over the past 11 months. Yet this was barely enough to keep up with population growth, and it's worse than any 11-month stretch during the Clinton years.

Third, they cherry-pick any good numbers they can find.

The shocking news that the economy added only 32,000 jobs in July comes from payroll data. Experts say what Alan Greenspan said in February: "Everything we've looked at suggests that it's the payroll data which are the series which you have to follow." Another measure of employment, from the household survey, fluctuates erratically; for example, it fell by 265,000 in February, a result nobody believes. Yet because July's household number was good, suddenly administration officials were telling reporters to look at that number, not the more reliable payroll data.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/10/opinion/10krugman.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists

... Paulie, you forgot the best part -- remember all their job creation predictions? Every single one ridiculously overoptimistic and flattened under the wheels of cruel reality like yesterday's roadkill.

Our Long National Nightmare Was Over (That Was Then, This Is Now Dept)

It had been an especially bruising few months for Richard Nixon. In the 2-year war that became known as "Watergate," Nixon had lost the final real battle just weeks earlier.

In an 8-to-0 decision, the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to relinquish Oval Office tapes he'd made in hopes of preserving history. No one could know those very tapes would doom his presidency.

Nixon's grip on power and the faith of those he served had weakened steadily over the prior year, then precipitously in those final weeks...

Think how different history would have been if this Magnificent Nine had been on the bench in '74. Can anybody think SCOTUS of today would vote 8-0 to force a president to turn over the tapes? (Yes, I meant "a Republican president." Sorry.) Even 5-4 is a long shot. And Bush will probably get 3 more Scalia clones appointed to the bench in his next term. Speak the unspeakable: "Chief Justice Clarence Thomas."

And be afraid. Be very afraid.

If you intentionally blow a mole's cover

to score political points, does that qualify as "high crimes and misdemeanors" or just a Class 1 felony?

This is flat out inexcusable...
"As part of the ramping up of its Orange Alert, the administration announced that an al-Qaeda computer expert and techno-whiz had just been arrested with terrifying material on his computer, and then, when the New York Times learned his name, evidently confirmed it to the paper. The catch was, as Reuters recently revealed, when Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan was arrested, he agreed to turn double agent – and so became that rarest of all creatures, a potential mole inside al-Qaeda. Soon thereafter, his cover was blown. "'The whole thing smacks of either incompetence or worse," said Tim Ripley, a security expert who writes for Jane's Defence publications."You have to ask: what are they doing compromising a deep mole within al Qaeda, when it's so difficult to get these guys in there in the first place?... Running agents within a terrorist organisation is the Holy Grail of intelligence agencies. And to have it blown is a major setback which negates months and years of work, which may be difficult to recover."

www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=561079%a7ion=news

Racist Wins GOP Primary

"MEMPHIS, Tenn. - An unabashed racist will represent the Republican party in the November election for a congressional seat after a write-in candidate failed to derail his effort.

With 86 percent of the primary vote counted Thursday, write-in candidate Dennis Bertrand had just 1,554 votes compared to 7,671, or 83 percent, for James L. Hart, a believer in the discredited, phony science of eugenics.

In November, the GOP candidate will oppose Rep. John Tanner, a Democrat who has represented the northwest Tennessee district for 15 years.

Hart, 60, vows if elected to work toward keeping "less favored races" from reproducing or immigrating to the United States. In campaign literature, Hart contends that "poverty genes" threaten to turn the United States into "one big Detroit."

Enron Trader Admits To Manipulating Mkt

SAN FRANCISCO, AUG 6: John Forney, 42, a former Enron Corp trading executive pleaded guilty to charges that he manipulated energy markets during California’s power crisis.

He is the third official to plead guilty to manipulating electricity prices from Enron’s trading office in Portland, Oregon. The crisis played a role in Pacific Gas & Electric Co’s bankruptcy and will leave California consumers paying very high electricity prices for years. He faces a maximum of five years. A sentencing date has not been set. "With the guilty plea of John Forney, we have now obtained convictions of the top three Enron executives most directly responsible for manipulating the energy markets in California at a time unique in our history, when the lights were going off and the grid was in danger of shutting down," US Attorney Kevin Ryan said.

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=65314

... all little fish -- when is Ahnold's connection going to hit the fan?

Money does not a school make

We spend 20% less per student here in my neighborhood than the national average but the dropout rate is less than a third the national average and the college graduation rate is almost triple.

hmmmmmmm .... Wonder why?

http://houseandhome.msn.com/pickaplace/nf_details.aspx?search=1&zip=94087

... oh yeah, now I remember -- it's the parenting, stupid!

From an Informed Source

They are going to do it again and again

"I spoke with Sy Hersh recently after delivering some documents to him (you'll read more on this in mid-September), and found him bubbling as ever, with a focus on the terror alert announced on Saturday. He says he has some information about this from a tipster at the Department of Homeland Security and also some information from a White House source close to Rove.

In sum, he says that Gov. Dean's charge that this is all political manipulation is 100% correct. The data that was the basis of the alert has in fact been in US hands for two years plus and was previously rejected as a basis for an alert due to its staleness. A decision to go to alert status came from within the WhiteHouse and was driven by a strategy that Rove has been fine tuning for twoyears on fear manipulation as an election tool.



Also, as The New Republic previously reported, the arrests in Pakistan that provided the "context" for these alerts was also scripted and agreed in advance between Musharraf and GOP officials. Rove has very detailed research which purports to show that terror alerts can be manipulated to drive support for Bush. Rove is looking for a series of such alerts with growing intensity up to the election date. The
alerts will all be timed to divert attention away from Kerry whenever he scores an important success or has a positive appearance. Rove originally planned to announce this alert on Friday, but others in the White House felt this timing would be too obvious, so it was put back a day. Brian Ross at ABC News has been working on a story on this.

True Believers

Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a popular conservative radio host. Then it's an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.

The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq.

Government should relax regulation of Big Business and Big Money but crack down on individuals who use marijuana to relieve the pain of illness.

"Standing Tall for America" means firing your workers and moving their jobs overseas.

A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.

Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.

The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.

Group sex and drug use are degenerate sins unless you someday run for governor of California as a Republican.

If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.

A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our long-time allies, then demand their cooperation and money.

HMOs and insurance companies have the best interests of the public at heart.

Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is evil socialism.

Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.

Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" diversion.

A president lying about an extramarital affair is a impeachable offense. A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.

Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.

The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's driving record is none of our business.

You support states' rights, which means Attorney General John Ashcroft can tell states what local voter initiatives they have the right to adopt.

What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did from the 60's through the '80s is irrelevant.

Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

Krugman lays the lumber to cable news spinners

Paul didn't get the memo apparently...

"A message to my fellow journalists: check out media watch sites like campaigndesk.org, mediamatters.org and dailyhowler.com. It's good to see ourselves as others see us. I've been finding The Daily Howler's concept of a media "script," a story line that shapes coverage, often in the teeth of the evidence, particularly helpful in understanding cable news.

For example, last summer, when growth briefly broke into a gallop, cable news decided that the economy was booming. The gallop soon slowed to a trot, and then to a walk. But judging from the mail I recently got after writing about the slowing economy, the script never changed; many readers angrily insisted that my numbers disagreed with everything they had seen on TV.

If you really want to see cable news scripts in action, look at the coverage of the Democratic convention.

Commercial broadcast TV covered only one hour a night. We'll see whether the Republicans get equal treatment. C-Span, on the other hand, provided comprehensive, commentary-free coverage. But many people watched the convention on cable news channels - and what they saw was shaped by a script portraying Democrats as angry Bush-haters who disdain the military.

If that sounds like a script written by the Republicans, it is. As the movie "Outfoxed" makes clear, Fox News is for all practical purposes a G.O.P. propaganda agency. A now-famous poll showed that Fox viewers were more likely than those who get their news elsewhere to believe that evidence of Saddam-Qaeda links has been found, that W.M.D. had been located and that most of the world supported the Iraq war.

CNN used to be different, but Campaign Desk, which is run by The Columbia Journalism Review, concluded after reviewing convention coverage that CNN "has stooped to slavish imitation of Fox's most dubious ploys and policies." Seconds after John Kerry's speech, CNN gave Ed Gillespie, the Republican Party's chairman, the opportunity to bash the candidate. Will Terry McAuliffe be given the same opportunity right after President Bush speaks?

Commentators worked hard to spin scenes that didn't fit the script. Some simply saw what they wanted to see. On Fox, Michael Barone asserted that conventioneers cheered when Mr. Kerry criticized President Bush but were silent when he called for military strength. Check out the video clips at Media Matters; there was tumultuous cheering when Mr. Kerry talked about a strong America.

Another technique, pervasive on both Fox and CNN, was to echo Republican claims of an "extreme makeover" - the assertion that what viewers were seeing wasn't the true face of the party. (Apparently all those admirals, generals and decorated veterans were ringers.)

It will probably be easier to make a comparable case in New York, where the Republicans are expected to feature an array of moderate, pro-choice speakers and keep Rick Santorum and Tom DeLay under wraps. But in Boston, it took creativity to portray the delegates as being out of the mainstream. For example, Bill Schneider at CNN claimed that according to a New York Times/CBS News poll, 75 percent of the delegates favor "abortion on demand" - which exaggerated the poll's real finding, which is that 75 percent opposed stricter limits than we now have.

But the real power of a script is the way it can retroactively change the story about what happened.

On Thursday night, Mr. Kerry's speech was a palpable hit. A focus group organized by Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, found it impressive and persuasive. Even pro-Bush commentators conceded, at first, that it had gone over well.

But a terrorism alert is already blotting out memories of last week. Although there is now a long history of alerts with remarkably convenient political timing, and Tom Ridge politicized the announcement by using the occasion to praise "the president's leadership in the war against terror," this one may be based on real information. Regardless, it gives the usual suspects a breathing space; once calm returns, don't be surprised if some of those same commentators begin describing the ineffective speech they expected (and hoped) to see, not the one they actually saw.

Luckily, in this age of the Internet it's possible to bypass the filter. At c-span.org, you can find transcripts and videos of all the speeches. I'd urge everyone to watch Mr. Kerry and others for yourself, and make your own judgment. "

AARP questions, Shrub ducks

OK, students -- compare and contrast:

www.aarp.org/legislative/elections/presidential/Articles/a2004-06-30-bush.html

www.aarp.org/legislative/elections/presidential/Articles/a2004-06-30-kerry.html

...And this is the same AARP that supported Shrubya's medicare ripoff. Go fig.

Some call it Prevaricating

Juan Cole: "...the US should not get involved in places that it may get thrown out of, because that projects an image of weakness and vulnerability to the country's enemies. There was no way the United States could possibly have maintained a presence in Lebanon in the early 1980s, and Reagan was foolish to put those Marines in there, and even more foolish to put them in without pilons around them to stop truck bombs. The country was embroiled in a civil war, and it would have taken a massive commitment of troops to make a difference. In the wake of the Vietnam failure, the American public would not have countenanced such a huge troop build-up. Likewise, Bush senior was foolish to send those troops to Somalia in the way he did (which became a poison pill for his successor, Bill Clinton).

The question is whether the quagmire in Iraq makes the US look weak. The answer is yes. Therefore, by Cheney's own reasoning, it is a mistake that opens us to further attacks.

Reuters reports, "Cheney said Americans were safer and he stood by prewar characterizations of Iraq as a threat despite the failure to find weapons of mass destruction and new warnings by Cheney and other administration officials that another major terrorist attack may be coming."

Iraq was not a threat to the United States. Period. Let me repeat the statistics as of the late 1990s:

US population: 295 million
Iraq population: 24 million

US per capita annual income: $37,600
Iraq per capita annual income: $700

US nuclear warheads: 10,455
Iraq nuclear warheads: 0

US tons of lethal chemical weapons (1997): 31,496
Iraq tons of lethal chemical weapons (1997): 0

While a small terrorist organization could hit the US because it has no return address, a major state could not hope to avoid retribution and therefore would be deterred. Cheney knows that Baathist Iraq posed no threat to the US. He is simply lying. I was always careful not to accuse him of lying before the war because who knows what is in someone else's mind? Maybe he believed his own bullshit. But there is no longer any doubt that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, no active nuclear weapons program, no ability to deliver anything lethal to the US homeland, and no operational cooperation with al-Qaeda. These things are not matters of opinion. They are indisputable. Ipso facto, if an intelligent person continues to allege them, he is prevaricating."

... a 3-letter word would suffice.

Oh, yeah, this is SO encouraging ...

"(AP) Detailed electronic records from Miami-Dade County's first widespread use of touchscreen voting machines were lost in computer crashes last year, erasing information from the September 2002 gubernatorial primaries and deleting some records of other elections, elections officials said.

The crashes occurred in May and November of 2003. In December, officials began backing up the data daily, to help avoid similar data wipeouts in the future, said Seth Kaplan, spokesman for the county's elections supervisor, Constance Kaplan.

The malfunction was made public Tuesday after the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, a citizen's group, requested all data from the 2002 gubernatorial primary between Democratic candidates Janet Reno and Bill McBride. "

... How's that working for ya?

Housing Bubble About to Blow

Economic Doomsday Scenarios Dept -
Here's how it all comes apart:  The housing bubble doesn't burst, just starts to recede a bit. That hits consumers much harder than you might think, since equity withdrawals reached 6.3% of disposable income (far higher than the 2.5% of the late '80s boom), and nearly 2% of GDP. That river of cash is going to dry up like the LA river, and then watch out... www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/business/yourmoney/25watch.html?8ym

"Michael Buchanan, a senior global economist at Goldman Sachs, and Themistoklis Fiotakis, a research assistant there, reckon that at current interest rates, home prices are now overvalued by 10 percent, on average. Because this figure spans the entire nation, the hottest markets - California and New York - are obviously more overpriced.
The economists compute fair value in home prices by using a variety of measures, including interest rates, population and demographic data, and the overall health of the economy. If interest rates increased by one percentage point, the economists said, home prices in the United States would be overvalued by 15 percent.
None of this would be worrisome if homeowners had not turned the paper profits in their properties into cold, spendable cash. But withdrawals from home equities have recently totaled 6.3 percent of household disposable income, according to the Goldman study. In the late 1980's, equity withdrawals reached only 2.5 percent of disposable income.
Federal Reserve studies indicate that as much as half of the equity withdrawals went into personal consumption and home improvements. As a result, the Goldman economists estimate that equity cash-outs added 1.75 percent to the growth in the gross domestic product in 2003. That is a significant increase from the 1.25 percent kick that equity withdrawals added in 2002.
Consumption would slip 1 percent, Goldman estimated, if housing prices fell by 10 percent, to the fair value level. But if prices decline to well below that, as often happens when overheated markets go cold, consumption may fall by 2.4 percent, Goldman reckoned.
Such a housing crash took place in Britain in the early 1990's. At the market's low, home prices had fallen by 27 percent, 5 percent below Goldman's estimate of fair value at the time.
Such a decline is not expected here, said Dominic Wilson, a senior global economist at Goldman. That's because home prices in Britain had escalated much more than they have in this country, even now. And interest rates had soared into the high teens, which is unlikely here.
But even small declines in home prices could hurt the economy. "The precise degree of the vulnerability isn't going to be clear until we see house prices slow," Mr. Wilson said. "You've never seen consumers this stretched, operating at levels of leverage we've never experienced before. House prices are starting at a level that is pretty high relative to what we think fair value is going to be, and the economy as a whole has gotten a lot more sensitive" to housing-related spending.
Indeed, Goldman estimates that home equity lines of credit and the like have magnified the effect of housing wealth on consumption over the past decade, taking it to 10 percent from 4 percent.
Although rising home prices have been stopped dead in the past by sharply higher interest rates, the Goldman economists note that bear markets don't necessarily need major triggers to get started.
Small events can change the market's psychology, and asset bubbles sometimes just cave in on themselves.

The 911 Report names the Islamist enemy

It took them nearly 400 pages to get to the point, but at least they got there ...

Chapter 12, "What To Do? A Global Strategy" (page 378 of pdf)  "...In this sense, 9/11 has taught us that terrorism against American interests “over there” should be regarded just as we regard terrorism against America “over here.” In this same sense, the American homeland is the planet. But the enemy is not just “terrorism,” some generic evil. This vagueness blurs the strategy. The catastrophic threat at this moment in history is more specific. It is the threat posed by Islamist terrorism —especially the al Qaeda network, its affiliates, and its ideology.
As we mentioned in chapter 2, Usama Bin Ladin and other Islamist terrorist leaders draw on a long tradition of extreme intolerance within one stream of Islam (a minority tradition), from at least Ibn Taimiyyah, through the founders of Wahhabism, through the Muslim Brotherhood, to Sayyid Qutb. That stream is motivated by religion and does not distinguish politics from religion, thus distorting both. It is further fed by grievances stressed by Bin Ladin and widely felt throughout the Muslim world—against the U.S. military presence in the Middle East, policies perceived as anti-Arab and anti-Muslim, and support of Israel. Bin Ladin and Islamist terrorists mean exactly what they say: to them America is the font of all evil, the “head of the snake,” and it must be converted or destroyed.
It is not a position with which Americans can bargain or negotiate. With it there is no common ground—not even respect for life—on which to begin a dialogue. It can only be destroyed or utterly isolated."

Following up on Flight 327

Lotta web chat about the Syrian band on Flight  327 but nothing on the WT article.  My take:

(1) This tidbit has been ignored:  "a man of Middle Eastern descent locked himself in [the lavatory] for a long period. The marshal found the mirror had been removed and the man was attempting to break through the wall. The cockpit was on the other side " -- !?!? EXCUSE ME?

Folks, that should set off some major alerts but I don't see a trace of follow up.   When?  Where is the miscreant now?  Why is the media completely ducking this -- are corroboration rules suddenly back in vogue?

(2) The Syrian band should be on extended vacation at taxpayer expense. I don't care if they passed the initial interview, visa or no visa -- they're Middle Eastern men who brought themselves to the attention of a flight crew with threatening, rule breaking behavior...  "Sit down, boys, we need to talk.  This could take a while."

We ARE at war with Islamofacism. We ARE being probed.  We SHOULD take prudent countermeasures.

See also http://michellemalkin.com

The WashTimes (a usually unreliable source) on Flight 327

WT is terrible but even a blind pig finds a truffle now and then...

"Scouting jetliners for new attacks
By Audrey Hudson  THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20040721-101403-1508r.htm

"Flight crews and air marshals say Middle Eastern men are staking out airports, probing security measures and conducting test runs aboard airplanes for a terrorist attack.     At least two midflight incidents have involved numerous men of Middle Eastern descent behaving in what one pilot called "stereotypical" behavior of an organized attempt to attack a plane. 

    "No doubt these are dry runs for a terrorist attack," an air marshal said.     Pilots and air marshals who asked to remain anonymous told The Washington Times that surveillance by terrorists is rampant, using different probing methods.     "It's happening, and it's a sad state of affairs," a pilot said.     A June 29 incident aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles is similar to a Feb. 15 incident on American Airlines Flight 1732 from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to New York's John F. Kennedy Airport.     The Northwest flight involved 14 Syrian men and the American Airlines flight involved six men of Middle Eastern descent.     "I've never been in a situation where I have felt that afraid," said Annie Jacobsen, a business and finance feature writer for the online magazine Women's Wall Street who was aboard the Northwest flight.     The men were seated throughout the plane pretending to be strangers. Once airborne, they began congregating in groups of two or three, stood nearly the entire flight, and consecutively filed in and out of bathrooms at different intervals, raising concern among passengers and flight attendants, Mrs. Jacobsen said.     One man took a McDonald's bag into the bathroom, then passed it off to another passenger upon returning to his seat. When the pilot announced the plane was cleared for landing and to fasten seat belts, seven men jumped up in unison and went to different bathrooms.     Her account was confirmed by David Adams, spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS), who said officers were on board and checked the bathrooms several times during the flight, but nothing was found.     "The FAMS never broke their cover, but monitored" the activity, Mr. Adams said. "Given the facts, they had no legal basis to take an enforcement action. But there was enough of a suspicious nature for the FAMS, passengers and crew to take notice."     A January FBI memo says suicide terrorists are plotting to hijack trans-Atlantic planes by smuggling "ready-to-build" bomb kits past airport security, and later assembling the explosives in aircraft bathrooms.     On many overseas flights, airlines have issued rules prohibiting loitering near the lavatory.     "After seeing 14 Middle Eastern men board separately (six together and eight individually) and then act as a group, watching their unusual glances, observing their bizarre bathroom activities, watching them congregate in small groups, knowing that the flight attendants and the pilots were seriously concerned and now knowing that federal air marshals were on board, I was officially terrified," Mrs. Jacobsen said.     "One by one, they went into the two lavatories, each spending about four minutes inside. Right in front of us, two men stood up against the emergency exit door, waiting for the lavatory to become available. The men spoke in Arabic among themselves ... one of the men took his camera into the lavatory. Another took his cell phone. Again, no one approached the men. Not one of the flight attendants asked them to sit down."     In an interview yesterday with The Washington Times, Mrs. Jacobsen said she was surprised to learn afterward that flight attendants are not trained to handle terrorist attacks or the situation that happened on her flight.     "I absolutely empathize with the flight attendants. They are acting with no clear protocol," she said.     Other passengers were distraught and one woman was even crying as the events unfolded.     The plane was met by officials from the FBI, Los Angeles Police Department, Federal Air Marshal Service and Transportation Security Administration. The Syrians, who were traveling on one-way tickets, were taken into custody.     The men, who were not on terrorist watch lists, were released, although their information and fingerprints were added to a database. The group had been hired as musicians to play at a casino, and the booking, hotel accommodations and return flight to New York from Long Beach, Calif., also checked out, Mr. Adams said.     "We don't know if it was a dry run, that's why we are working together with intelligence and investigative agencies to help protect the homeland," he said.     Mrs. Jacobsen, however, is skeptical the 14 passengers were innocent musicians.     "If 19 terrorists can learn to fly airplanes into buildings, couldn't 14 terrorists learn to play instruments?" she asked in the article.     The pilot confirmed Mrs. Jacobsen's experience was "terribly alike" what flight attendants reported on the San Juan flight.     He said there is "widespread knowledge" among crew members these probes are taking place.     A Middle Eastern passenger attempted to videotape out the window as the plane taxied on takeoff and, when told by a flight attendant it was not permitted, "gave her a mean look and stopped taping," said a written report of the San Juan incident by a flight attendant.     The group of six men sat near one another, pretended to be strangers, but after careful observation from flight attendants, it was apparent "all six knew each other," the report said.     "They were very careful when we were in their area to seem separate and pretended to be sleeping, but when we were out of the twilight area, they were watching and communicating," the report said.     The men made several trips to the bathroom and congregated in that area, and were told at least twice by a flight attendant to return to their seats. The suspicious behavior was relayed to airline officials in midflight and additional background checks were conducted.     A second pilot said that, on one of his recent flights, an air marshal forced his way into the lavatory at the front of his plane after a man of Middle Eastern descent locked himself in for a long period.     The marshal found the mirror had been removed and the man was attempting to break through the wall. The cockpit was on the other side.     The second pilot said terrorists are "absolutely" testing security.     "There is a great degree of concern in the airline industry that not only are these dry runs for a terrorist attack, but that there is absolutely no defense capabilities on a vast majority of airlines," the second pilot said.     Dawn Deeks, spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants, said there is no "central clearinghouse" for them to learn of suspicious incidents, and flight crews are not told how issues are resolved.     She said a flight attendant reported that a passenger was using a telephoto lens to take sequential photos of the cockpit door.     The passenger was stopped, and the incident, which happened two months ago, was reported to officials. But when the attendant checked back last week on the outcome, she was told her report had been lost.     Recent incidents at the Minneapolis-St. Paul international airport have also alarmed flight crews. Earlier this month, a passenger from Syria was taken into custody while carrying anti-American materials and a note suggesting he intended to commit a public suicide.     A third pilot reported watching a man of Middle Eastern descent at the same airport using binoculars to get airplane tail numbers and writing the numbers in a notebook to correspond with flight numbers.     "It's a probe. They are probing us," said a second air marshal, who confirmed that Middle Eastern men try to flush out marshals by rushing the cockpit and stopping suddenly.