Monday, May 31, 2004

Lying Requires A Certain Competence

While I do believe that many in the Bush administration have outright lied to the American public (and the world), I don't know that Bush himself actually lies.

In a recent essay, "Bush Lying?", Noam Chomskey writes:


Lying requires a certain competence: at least, it requires an understanding of the difference between truth and falsehood. When a 3-year old tells you an obvious falsehood, it isn't really fair to call it a lie. The same was true of the huge whoppers that Reagan came out with when he got out of the control of his handlers. The poor soul probably had no idea. With Bush, I suspect it is more or less the same. There is a literature of "exposures" (Woodward, etc.), which is taken seriously, but I don't frankly understand why. Among the people he is interviewing, some have the competence to lie, and it only makes sense to suppose that they are doing so; why should they tell him the truth? As for the others, it doesn't really matter what they tell him. The same is true of people who are deeply immersed in some religious cult, like the Washington neocon intellectuals. It is hard to know whether they have the competence to lie, just as it's hard to know for someone who has a direct line to some divinity.

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"I never apologized to the Arab world"

In the weeks that the Abu Ghraib prison scandal had broken and became so prominent in the news, many news sources and talk shows referred to Bush's having apologized to Jordan's King Abdullah II for what had happened in the prison.

I claimed at that time that no, he hadn't apologized to anyone for anything. He stated in his press conference that (connect the bold words of the sentence) "I told him I was equally sorry that the people that have been seeing those pictures did not understand the true nature and the heart of America, and I assured him that Americans like me didn't appreciate what we saw and it made us sick to our stomachs," but this was not an unequivocal apology. It was widely reported, however, that he actually apologized.


Bush Calls for 'Culture Change'
In interview, President says new era of responsibility should replace 'feel-good.'
By Sheryl Henderson Blunt | posted 05/28/2004

President George W. Bush, in a rare on-the-record session with religion editors and writers on Wednesday, said his job as president is to "change cultures."

In wide-ranging comments inside the Roosevelt Room, Bush spoke passionately about his resolve to establish a free Iraq, his desire to promote cultural change in the United States through his faith-based initiative, and his belief in the power of prayer. Appearing relaxed and self-assured, the President also reaffirmed his support for a Federal Marriage Amendment, urging the American people to become more involved.

Taking a firm line on the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, Bush said that while he was sorry for those who had been humiliated, and has said so publicly, "I never apologized to the Arab world."

The on-the-record session included a period where the nine Christian editors and writers (including two who have served as Bush advisors) asked questions.

Writers and news executives included CT senior news writer Sheryl Henderson Blunt; James V. Heidinger II, president and publisher of Good News; Deal Hudson, editor of Crisis Magazine; James Kushiner, editor of Touchstone magazine; David L. Mahsman, Director of News and Information and Executive Editor for The Lutheran Witness and Reporter of The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod; Father Richard John Neuhaus, editor-in-chief, First Things; World Magazine editor Marvin Olasky; Catholic writer Russell Shaw; Stephen Strang, founder of Strang Communications.

Edited transcript of the May 26, 2004 session



Some thoughts on my father on Memorial Day...

My father died on Memorial Day, May 27, 1992 and was buried on the observed Memorial Day, the following Monday.

We weren't particularly close throughout the years we lived under the same roof on Utah Street in Toledo. My three brothers and I lived pretty much in fear for many of those years, actually. That's not to say that my fear was constant, of course, but it always seemed to be just below the surface for me. Once, however, he took a belt to my mother for reasons I have never understood — an incident that two of my brothers (who also witnessed it) don't recall. He came flailing at me one high school night when I arrived home after 11:30pm.

Fear.

Mind you, it wasn't twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year. We were not abused children. And while "getting the paddle" (a cribbage board, actually) was often threatened, his anger rarely took him beyond the point of yelling at us, but knowing what he was capable of was enough for me to know not to cross him.

We grew up in a household in which we were regularly chided with "Is that what you learned in church today?" by a man who didn't go to church. Ironically, at about the time I stopped going to church, he had become a fervent church goer, and was eventually baptized Catholic.

That I am probably the most sensitive of my brothers was a natural and, I suppose, mutually repelling factor in our relationship — despite our shared fondness for baseball, golf, drawing and a penchant (I later realized) for whistling. I grew up watching my President (John F. Kennedy), his brother Robert and Martin Luther King, Jr. get murdered; I watched as mounting numbers of American soldiers and Vietnamese people (soldiers or not) were killed. I developed a deeper and deeper distaste for authority thanks to the Presidency of Richard Nixon. My father, naturally, was the authority in our home, so there seemed little to attract me to him; and more and more (as I began to believe that I could think for myself) for him to get angry with me. I let my hair grow longer than my brothers would dare, an increasingly difficult thing to do considering that my dad cut our hair all those many years.

The stupidest thing (amongst the many!) I did while in that household was to sneak out our back door in the middle of the night to take snapshots of a local late-night radio talk show host (whose show kept me awake too many nights) for my art project, an oil painting. To do so, I had to "steal" my dad's Ford Falcon and drive about five miles to the station (WOHO). I was sixteen at best and didn't have a drivers license. Upon my return at about five or six in the morning, snow had begun to fall as I pulled up to the curb. Tire tracks were evidence that the car had been moved overnight... that nobody took the car's original parking spot while I was gone was a miracle, but I fully expected the tire tracks to give my hijinx away.

When I tried to open the back door, it was locked... I had to use the front door. Upon entering, he was in the kitchen (between me and my room). I'd been busted. I lied, though, about how I'd gotten to the radio station. "I hitchhiked," I told him. He went back to bed without further incident and I begged for more snow to fall by morning. I was lucky. Six inches of snow fell covering the car's tire tracks. You cannot imagine my sigh of relief that morning.


My dad, my son Zach and Taffy


On this Memorial Day, I recall how my father never expressed his views on the Vietnam War, which was not only a polarizing issue in the United States at that time, but a very palpable fear for those of us coming of draft age. Nor did I ask for his opinions. I wonder now, though, what might have gone through his head since he'd served in the Navy during World War II (on a minesweeper). I wonder what he thought of the possibility of his sons serving in that disaster.

In my parents' wedding photo, he wears his Navy Blues. I recall, now, that his ribbons were kept in a desk drawer (not a particularly hallowed place, actually) in the house but I didn't know much about what they meant. We knew more about his baseball and softball exploits as a young man than we knew about his experiences in the Navy. [My favorite softball story is about a game in which he fell as he rounded third base just as his brother Rob (who had singled) stumbled rounding first base. "I was the better ballplayer," Rob would pronounce at the funeral home's mini-memorial the night before the funeral.] All that remains of his Navy days are fading black-and-white photographs.

I came to recognize as I stepped further into adulthood that there was much more to him than he often let on. He had always claimed to be a good artist while we were kids, occasionally scribbling or sketching out caricatures of my mother (or such), but it didn't otherwise take up much of his time. Thankfully, once he retired from Coca-Cola (he was a refrigeration mechanic) in the late 1980s, he spent a great deal of his waking hours painting landscapes. My then-wife (Penny, herself an amazing artist) encouraged him and freely gave him studio tips, suggestions and materials.

He loved nature; he loved to feed the birds in our backyard; he made birdfeeders and would etch "Crude Productions: Not Made in Korea" (I can still hear his snicker) on their backsides. He regularly went deerhunting in Canada with my uncle Dick (his sister Mary Belle's husband) but never came home with a killing of his own. My mother always posited that he couldn't bring himself to shoot something he thought so beautiful. Perhaps he was just a bad shot, but I prefer to believe my mother's explanation.

I spent the better part of a day with him a year or so before he died, driving along the Maumee River from Toledo to Grand Rapids, taking photographs. He with his 35mm Pentax K1000; I with a borrowed Fuji 6cm x 17cm panoramic camera. He would use his photographs for reference material for his paintings. It was one of the very few days that we'd spent that kind of time together. Ever.



I was working when I got the call that he'd been taken to the hospital. For the next several days, his condition went from good to bad to good and back. I slept most nights in the hospital waiting room, where I watched Johnny Carson step down from his Tonight Show set for the last time. My dad didn't particularly care for Johnny's "dirty jokes" and despised the cackling Ed McMahon, so my announcement about the event to my dad was probably one of the more enjoyable moments of his time spent at the hospital.

Because his condition continued to fluctuate, and because the doctors told us that he could stay like this indefinitely, my family and I returned home. We decided not to continue the vigil. Sometime mid-week he died and we returned to Ohio for the funeral. We were at the church's rectory talking to the priest when I learned from my mother that my father had received a medal for saving several lives, pulling men up from a burning oil fire after the explosion aboard the USS YF-415.

For all the faults I was able to find with him while I was a kid, I came to appreciate him much more as we both grew older. I suppose that's typical. What I have come to appreciate most about him, though, was his charity towards others. He regularly shoveled snow for Mrs. Raitz, a very elderly woman across the street; he was always willing to help out friends with their cars or refrigeration (ice-makers, air conditioners, refrigerators, freezers) problems. He genuinely liked helping people, I think. He was a good friend to many. I don't know that I could pay him any higher compliment.

So, with all this going through my head this weekend, it was difficult watching the news Saturday night, listening to the veterans of World War II pining on behalf of their brethren who had survived the war but who had died too soon to see the new memorial in D.C. My dad belonged there, if only to share the pride for taking part in something that about which he never would have publicly boasted.

Edited and revised 30 May 2011
You would think that a President who feels so strongly that he is the better leader than Kerry would have so much more to say about his own record than his opponent's.

As noted at the dailykos:

Surely the president wants to avoid talking about Iraq in his ads or on his campaign website. And as Bob Novak also points out in his column today, Bush dare not mention Afghanistan either, where his support among the military there is fading as that war descends into a neglected failure.


From Bush, Unprecedented Negativity
By Dana Milbank and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, May 31, 2004

It was a typical week in the life of the Bush reelection machine.

Last Monday in Little Rock, Vice President Cheney said Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry "has questioned whether the war on terror is really a war at all" and said the senator from Massachusetts "promised to repeal most of the Bush tax cuts within his first 100 days in office."

On Tuesday, President Bush's campaign began airing an ad saying Kerry would scrap wiretaps that are needed to hunt terrorists.

The same day, the Bush campaign charged in a memo sent to reporters and through surrogates that Kerry wants to raise the gasoline tax by 50 cents.

On Wednesday and Thursday, as Kerry campaigned in Seattle, he was greeted by another Bush ad alleging that Kerry now opposes education changes that he supported in 2001.

The charges were all tough, serious -- and wrong, or at least highly misleading. Kerry did not question the war on terrorism, has proposed repealing tax cuts only for those earning more than $200,000, supports wiretaps, has not endorsed a 50-cent gasoline tax increase in 10 years, and continues to support the education changes, albeit with modifications.

Scholars and political strategists say the ferocious Bush assault on Kerry this spring has been extraordinary, both for the volume of attacks and for the liberties the president and his campaign have taken with the facts. Though stretching the truth is hardly new in a political campaign, they say the volume of negative charges is unprecedented -- both in speeches and in advertising.

Three-quarters of the ads aired by Bush's campaign have been attacks on Kerry. Bush so far has aired 49,050 negative ads in the top 100 markets, or 75 percent of his advertising. Kerry has run 13,336 negative ads -- or 27 percent of his total. The figures were compiled by The Washington Post using data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group of the top 100 U.S. markets. Both campaigns said the figures are accurate.

The assault on Kerry is multi-tiered: It involves television ads, news releases, Web sites and e-mail, and statements by Bush spokesmen and surrogates -- all coordinated to drive home the message that Kerry has equivocated and "flip-flopped" on Iraq, support for the military, taxes, education and other matters.

"There is more attack now on the Bush side against Kerry than you've historically had in the general-election period against either candidate," said University of Pennsylvania professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson, an authority on political communication. "This is a very high level of attack, particularly for an incumbent.


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Sunday, May 30, 2004

Russ Kick of TheMemoryHole.org, who was responsible for obtaining the widely publicized photos of returning caskets from Iraq, has posted on his blog that his website has been blocked to military personnel.


The Memory Hole Banned in Iraq

I've received email from a person with an [army.mil] address. This person is stationed in Iraq, and he/she tells me that The Memory Hole is blocked on military computers. Trying to get to the site results in the following message:

Access Denied (content_filter_denied)

Your request was denied because of its content categorization: "Extreme;Politics/Religion"

For assistance, contact your network support team.


How interesting. I post raw documents created by the government, military, and corporations. These days, that apparently amounts to "political extremism."

Naturally, I've filed a FOIA request about this blocking.



Surprise, surprise...


Oil Companies Exceed Federal Land Limit
By David Pace
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - A single New Mexico family and a dozen big oil companies, including one once headed by Commerce Secretary Don Evans, now control one-quarter of all federal lands leased for oil and gas development in the continental United States despite a law intended to prevent such concentration, federal records show.

Since 1997, mainly as a result of mergers and acquisitions, six companies have exceeded the legal limit of 246,080 acres in lease holdings on public lands in states other than Alaska. But the Bureau of Land Management (news - web sites), in charge of enforcing the 1920 law, has chosen to extend compliance deadlines for years.

In fact, an Associated Press computer analysis found the Interior Department agency permitted companies it knew were in violation of the law in Wyoming to continue to acquire thousands of acres of new oil and gas leases in that state. The bureau has given the companies additional years to comply.

"They should not be purchasing leases," said Tom Lonnie, the bureau's assistant director for minerals, realty and resource protection. Before acquiring a lease, a company must certify that its holdings do not exceed the legal limit.

The government can cancel leases held by companies that exceed the cap. Agency officials acknowledge they have never done that nor denied a company's request for more time to comply.

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From Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo...


The most salient point to emerge from the president's recent speech on Iraq was the new rationale he put forward for continuing to support him and his policies: effective management of his own failures.

[snip-snip]

The president's actions, if not his words, concede that Iraq has become the geopolitical equivalent of a botched surgery -- botched through some mix of the misdiagnosis of the original malady and the incompetence of the surgeon. Achieving the original goal of the surgery is now close to an afterthought. The effort is confined to closing up as quickly as possible and preventing the patient from dying on the table. And now the 'doctor', pressed for time and desperate for insight, stands over the patient with a scalpal in one hand and the other hurriedly leafing through a first year anatomy text book.

The national media, which for so long (read: since September 11) has given Bush the benefit too many doubts, appears to be finding its ability to ask questions again.


To Tell the Truth
By Paul Krugman
New York Times
May 28, 2004

Some news organizations, including The New York Times, are currently engaged in self-criticism over the run-up to the Iraq war. They are asking, as they should, why poorly documented claims of a dire threat received prominent, uncritical coverage, while contrary evidence was either ignored or played down.

But it's not just Iraq, and it's not just The Times. Many journalists seem to be having regrets about the broader context in which Iraq coverage was embedded: a climate in which the press wasn't willing to report negative information about George Bush.

People who get their news by skimming the front page, or by watching TV, must be feeling confused by the sudden change in Mr. Bush's character. For more than two years after 9/11, he was a straight shooter, all moral clarity and righteousness.

But now those people hear about a president who won't tell a straight story about why he took us to war in Iraq or how that war is going, who can't admit to and learn from mistakes, and who won't hold himself or anyone else accountable. What happened?

The answer, of course, is that the straight shooter never existed. He was a fictitious character that the press, for various reasons, presented as reality.

The truth is that the character flaws that currently have even conservative pundits fuming have been visible all along. Mr. Bush's problems with the truth have long been apparent to anyone willing to check his budget arithmetic. His inability to admit mistakes has also been obvious for a long time. I first wrote about Mr. Bush's "infallibility complex" more than two years ago, and I wasn't being original.

So why did the press credit Mr. Bush with virtues that reporters knew he didn't possess? One answer is misplaced patriotism. After 9/11 much of the press seemed to reach a collective decision that it was necessary, in the interests of national unity, to suppress criticism of the commander in chief.

Another answer is the tyranny of evenhandedness. Moderate and liberal journalists, both reporters and commentators, often bend over backward to say nice things about conservatives. Not long ago, many commentators who are now caustic Bush critics seemed desperate to differentiate themselves from "irrational Bush haters" who were neither haters nor irrational — and whose critiques look pretty mild in the light of recent revelations.

And some journalists just couldn't bring themselves to believe that the president of the United States was being dishonest about such grave matters.

Finally, let's not overlook the role of intimidation. After 9/11, if you were thinking of saying anything negative about the president, you had to be prepared for an avalanche of hate mail. You had to expect right-wing pundits and publications to do all they could to ruin your reputation, and you had to worry about being denied access to the sort of insider information that is the basis of many journalistic careers.

The Bush administration, knowing all this, played the press like a fiddle. But has that era come to an end?

A new Pew survey finds 55 percent of journalists in the national media believing that the press has not been critical enough of Mr. Bush, compared with only 8 percent who believe that it has been too critical. More important, journalists seem to be acting on that belief.

Amazing things have been happening lately. The usual suspects have tried to silence reporting about prison abuses by accusing critics of undermining the troops — but the reports keep coming. The attorney general has called yet another terror alert — but the press raised questions about why. (At a White House morning briefing, Terry Moran of ABC News actually said what many thought during other conveniently timed alerts: "There is a disturbing possibility that you are manipulating the American public in order to get a message out.")

It may not last. In July 2002, according to Dana Milbank of The Washington Post — who has tried, at great risk to his career, to offer a realistic picture of the Bush presidency — "the White House press corps showed its teeth" for the first time since 9/11. It didn't last: the administration beat the drums of war, and most of the press relapsed into docility.

But this time may be different. And if it is, Mr. Bush — who has always depended on that docility — may be in even more trouble than the latest polls suggest.


Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly writes on how the Bush presidency might very well be headed down a path similar to the one Jimmy Carter's took.


PREEMPTION

A couple of months ago a conservative acquaintance suggested to me that the best thing that ever happened to America was Watergate. After all, he said, Watergate led to the election of Jimmy Carter, and it was only Carter's uniquely horrible presidency that allowed Ronald Reagan to be elected in 1980. Without Watergate and Carter, there would have been no Reagan.

Likewise, I wonder if George Bush will end up being the best thing ever to happen to American liberalism. Bushian excess has energized liberals, of course, but more important may be that in the same way that liberals dejectedly gave up on Carter toward the end of his presidency, conservatives seem to be losing heart over Bush in his final year too. Increasingly, even the most hawkish conservatives are unwilling to drain their credibility further by dredging up pretzel twisting defenses for Bush's obvious incompetence and cluelessness.

We've already heard moaning and groaning from such conservative stalwarts as George Will, Bill Kristol, David Brooks, Robert Kagan, and many others (helpfully collected here by Matt Yglesias — just search for "Disgruntlement Watch"), and the latest example comes from Gary Schmitt, executive director of PNAC, ground zero for hawkish neoconism. What makes his piece remarkable is that it's billed as a defense of George Bush's policy of preemption but still says the following:

For the foreseeable future, the Iraq war and its aftermath cannot help but put a hitch in the step of any president contemplating similar action....When the director of the Central Intelligence Agency next tells a president that the case regarding a country's suspected weapons programs is a "slam-dunk," one can assume that that assessment will be greeted with far more skepticism....The reality is that continuing troubles in Iraq will have an effect on presidential decision-making for years, especially when it comes to preemption and wars of prevention.

This is followed by a halfhearted explanation that preemption was never really a linchpin of Bush's policies anyway and that plenty of other presidents have considered preemptive wars even if they didn't actually follow through. So, you know, it's not as big a deal as people think it is, and preemption is still part of the big picture.

It's a far cry from the hawkish exhuberance of only a couple of years ago, especially for the head a group like PNAC, but it's either the best he could do or else the best he was willing to do. When even guys like Schmitt are too embarrassed to provide a full-throated defense of preemption, it gives you hope. Maybe in a few months we'll be back to having a sane foreign policy after all.



In South Dakota, Democrat Stephanie Herseth is running against Larry Diedrich in a special election for a Congressional seat. Voting will take place on Tuesday, but Diedrich is behind in the polls and has begun to step up the negative ads against Herseth.

She, on the other hand, is running this spot -- a delightful departure from what has become all too typical in the nasty world of campaign advertising.

Thanks to kos for this catch.


In the last twenty-four hours, we've lost a couple of key figures in the Watergate investigation who stood up to the President of the United States in a time of Constitutional crisis; a time that had a great deal to do with the shaping of my views.


Cox, Prosecutor Fired by Nixon, Dies at 92

By Sara Leitch, Associated Press Writer

PORTLAND, Maine - Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor fired by President Nixon for refusing to curtail his Watergate investigation, died Saturday at his home, his daughter said. He was 92.

Cox's daughter, Phyllis Cox, said her father died peacefully at the home in Brooksville, Maine, and said the cause was old age.

Cox, a longtime Harvard law professor, had also been an adviser to President John F. Kennedy and served him as U.S. solicitor general.

In May 1973, he was asked to head the special prosecution force investigating charges Republican party operatives had broken into the Democratic campaign headquarters at the Watergate Hotel prior to the 1972 presidential election.

Nixon ordered Cox fired in October 1973 for his continued efforts to obtain tape recordings made at the White House, important evidence in the investigation of the Watergate break-in and coverup.

The day before, Nixon had refused to comply with a federal appeals court order to surrender the tapes, declined to appeal to the Supreme Court and ordered Cox to drop the case. But Cox vowed to continue, saying pulling back would violate his promise to the Senate and would be bowing to "exaggerated claims of executive privilege."

The firing shook the nation and became known as "The Saturday Night Massacre."

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Sam Dash, counsel in Watergate hearings, dies

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney Sam Dash, whose probing questions during televised Senate hearings into the Watergate scandal made him a household name in the 1970s, died Saturday after a lengthy illness.

Dash, who had been hospitalized since January, died at the Washington Hospital Center at the age of 79, according to family members.

The former chief counsel of the Senate Select Committee on Watergate became known across the nation for his televised, penetrating interrogations into President Nixon's secret taping system.

Although a lifelong Democrat, Dash over the years cultivated a reputation for independence and as an ardent advocate for ethics in the legal profession.

For nearly four decades, Dash specialized in constitutional law and legal ethics at Georgetown University Law Center where he taught and directed its Institute for Criminal Law and Procedures. He taught his last class in January shortly before being hospitalized.

As the lead attorney on Sen. Sam Ervin's Watergate committee, Dash directed some of the most intense questioning of White House officials during televised hearings into the scandal that led to President Nixon's resignation in August, 1974.

During a pivotal moment in the 1973 hearings, Dash pressed White House aide Alexander Butterfield on who knew about a secret taping system in the Oval Office.

"The president ...," Butterfield replied. The tapes exposed the fact that Nixon had been closely involved in trying to cover up the scandal.

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Friday, May 28, 2004

Catching up with Betsy DeVos again...

Her recent blogpost reads:


It seems to me that the leadership of the AFL-CIO has lost its focus. They have become so intent on being good little Democrats that they are abandoning the very workers they claim to represent. Everyone, industry leaders, Democrat US Senators, even Michigan AFL-CIO President Mark Gaffney, recognizes that John Kerry will decimate the automotive industry if he is elected. Conservative estimates announce that half of the UAW members in Michigan will be out of a job. Half! I can’t imagine a more dire threat to union members. And yet the AFL-CIO has begun endorsing the plan in a sin by omission. Until they come out against Kerry for his blind desire to raise CAFE standards, nothing they say can be taken seriously.



It's interesting that just last month, DeVos claimed that Michigan workers were being paid too much, but with this post, she implies that she's actually concerned about union members.

I have found that indeed Levin has come out publicly against the concept of raising Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards, taking the side of the powerful auto industry, but according to fact sheets from both the Alliance to Save Energy and the Sierra Club, higher CAFE standards will, if anything, have positive effects on the economy, as well as improving air quality standards, as well as reducing our reliance on imported oil.

From Environmental Media Services:


The Benefits of CAFE Standards

The Economy and Energy Security: Current CAFE standards save more than 3 million barrels of oil per day. Without these savings, the U.S. would be importing at least 1.5 million barrels a day more oil than we currently do.

Today, 40 percent of the oil we use goes to run our cars and light trucks. Nearly half of the 19 million barrels a day of oil we use is imported from overseas. This contributes more than $50 billion to our merchandise trade deficit. By early in this century, the Energy Information Agency projects we will be importing nearly two-thirds of our oil.

OPEC has been reminding us that it controls oil supplies and prices. The U.S. uses 25 percent of the world's oil yet has only 3 percent of the world's oil reserves. We cannot drill our way to independence.

Creating Jobs: Importantly, raising CAFE standards will create jobs. An analysis by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy concludes that the consumer savings at the pump would translate into a net increase of 244,000 jobs nationwide, with 47,000 of these in the auto industry.

Consumer Savings: Because fuel economy for cars doubled between 1975 and the late 1980s, a new car purchaser saves an average of more than $3,000 at the gas pump over the lifetime of the car, at today's prices. Annually, CAFE delivers more than $40 billion in consumer savings. And, raising light truck fuel economy to 27.5 miles per gallon, for example, would save new light trucks owners dollars at the pump. According the Union of Concerned Scientists, the most popular SUV sold in the U.S., the Ford Explorer, could go from a 19 mpg gas- guzzler to a 34 mpg vehicle, using $935 in technology. Consumers would save several times this amount at the gas pump over the lifetime of the vehicle.

The Environment: CAFE standards slash urban smog by reducing carcinogenic hydrocarbon emissions, a key ozone smog precursor. Since less gas is used by cars and light trucks, less oil has to be refined, transported and pumped into gas tanks. Increasing CAFE standards will be much better for the environment than the diesel SUVs being developed by the auto companies. While switching to diesel improves fuel economy somewhat, doing so would sharply increase the pollution that causes soot and smog that triggers asthma attacks and causes cancer -- a lousy trade-off for public health.

The second way the environment is helped is through lower carbon emissions, reducing the atmospheric buildup of greenhouse gases. Over its lifetime, a typical SUV emits more almost 100 tons of CO2 and today's average new car emits 70 tons over the same lifetime and driving assumptions. Ford's "Valdez" Excursion will emit 134 tons of CO2 overt its lifetime. The more efficient the truck or car, the lower the CO2 emissions. Implementing improved CAFE standards is the biggest single step we can take to curb global warming and saving oil.



I'll be following up on this more extensively soon.

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

It simply must be that the conservative media wake up in the morning thinking, "What can I do today to attack liberals?"

Catherine Sepps, who writes a column called From The Left Coast for National Online Review, and maintains a blog at Cathy's World, wrote a piece about a new A&E docudrama Ike, Countdown to D-Day, which is due to air on Monday, Memorial Day.

Instead of keeping her comments to the film (and comparison to Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, which she seems to not like), she just had to make swipes at liberals. Speaking of a scene in which Eisenhower (Tom Selleck) "pays a cheerful, morale-boosting visit to the 101st Airborne just before the invasion," she casts aspersions on "the Left" and their willingness to do what it takes to protect democracy.

I decided to write to her...


In "Hollywood@War", you wrote:

"The Allies were expecting paratrooper losses of up to 70 percent, a sacrifice considered necessary in giving ground forces every advantage to make the world safe for democracy. (You can imagine the yelps of protest from the Left today, were an American leader to use that phrase in planning a D-Day-scale battle against Islamofascists.)"

First of all, I believe that a great deal of the country -- regardless of political leaning -- was supportive of the attacks against the terrorist camps in Afghanistan as they were a logical step from the events that occurred on September 11 to making "the world safe for democracy."

In Iraq, the United States has been the aggressor. If protecting the United States from terrorist attacks was indeed Bush's goal in attacking that country -- oh, no... wait, there were "weapons of mass destruction" there that he was going to eliminate! -- he would have poured the hundreds of billions of dollars (and thousands fewer lives) into the protection of this country's airports, train stations and other points of ingress WITHIN our country. Bush's reasons have nothing to do with ridding the world of evil dictators, spreading freedom and democracy or finding "weapons of mass destruction." I know it and *you* know it. Just like your President, however, you'll never admit it... you'll continue to mutate your reasons using one jingoistic phrase to another.

In your indiscriminate slam at "the Left", you failed to consider -- and make note of -- the fact that Germany was an uncontained aggressor; countries in Europe (and eventually the United States) were in real danger of being attacked by the Nazi war machine. Saddam Hussein, evil though he may be, knew the fate he faced had he considered attacking his neighbors -- particularly once no-fly zones were established after the first Gulf War.

His aggression against Kuwait, the springboard for that war, was entirely preventable but as you are probably well aware, the first Bush administration essentially gave Saddam the green light to attack Kuwait. In her meeting with Saddam onJuly 25, 1990, Baghdad/U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie's told him: "We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960's, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America."

To compare Mr. Chetwynd's filmmaking techniques with "Saving Private Ryan" is one thing, but to compare the conditions of World War II with the conditions of the war in Iraq are ludicrous at best. Then, the United States defended itself and the countries of Europe because it was the right thing to do. Now, the war in Iraq has been -- and continues to be -- merely the Right thing to do.

You did make one good observation, however, in referring to another writer as your "fellow hack"!


Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Because I like to know what's going on with Michigan Republicans, I regularly check in at Betsy DeVos' blog to see if she has anything to say which might be worth further research.

DeVos is the Chair of the Michigan Republican State Committee and is a member of the family which owns the massive Ida, Michigan sales/distribution company, Amway. Her husband, Richard DeVos, former President of Amway (now a subsidiary of Alticor, Inc., which he founded), is the son of Richard and Helen DeVos, whose foundation is a major funder of Religious Right organizations, such as the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and Coral Ridge Ministries. The foundation also supports parts of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation network, such as the State Policy Network. Richard DeVos, Sr. once contributed $150,000 to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's Republican Majority Issues Committee (for which the inaugural fundraising event was held aboard the DeVos family yacht).

She posted on May 7, for example:

George Weeks yesterday wrote a column about Governor Granholm "cleaning up state boards, commissions and task forces." He references 25 that she has removed. What he fails to mention is the 19 new boards that she has created to take their place. Net savings to the people...nothing.


I emailed her asking her to name the nineteen boards she referred to (that she took Mr. Weeks to task for for not mentioning!) and I received no reply. So, I've begun to wonder if all she really does is snipe anti-intellectually at our current Governor (Democrat Jennifer Granholm), or to cheerlead her hero Bush's very controlled visits to the state.

This morning, as I took a look at what she might be up to (and finding she hadn't posted anything since May 20), I decided to take a look at her archives. I found a reference to a wet blanket article "shed[ding] new light on" Governor Granholm's Cool Cities initiative.

The article is by Thomas Bray of The Detroit News, who writes:

I rushed to Google and got the answer. "Cool cities" is the phrase used by Carnegie Mellon Professor Richard Florida, who argued in The Rise of the Creative Class a few years ago that cities that attract gays, bohemians, ethnic minorities, as well as writers, actors and artists, tend to attract robust economic development and new-economy jobs. Cool.

Since this is an article that deals with economics, it is interesting, to say the least, that the first three groups he associates with the program are gays, bohemians and ethnic minorities, which, of course are social types. The occupations (writers, actors and artists) that would (likely) be at the heart of such a program, then, seem to be merely afterthoughts to Bray.

Hmmm... "Bray"... There was something familiar about that word, so I looked up the definition:

The harsh cry of an ass; also, any harsh, grating, or discordant sound.


What DeVos and Bray are missing with the concept of the "Cool Cities" program, is that its purpose is to create thriving, permanent communities within the economically foundering cities in Michigan.

Robert Faires, in the Austin Chronicle wrote:

In the Florida model, as outlined in his book The Rise of the Creative Class, that's laid out in economic terms: Artists enhance their cities' quality of life and add to the development of innovations, which attracts entrepreneurs and stimulates growth in the marketplace. The thing is, artists are drawn to places where freedom, tolerance, and creativity are encouraged. When those qualities dry up, like a waterhole during a drought, the artists leave for more hospitable environs. And there's nothing like a downturn in the economy to start sucking away support for diversity and originality.

Even if you view that model with skepticism, consider what economist Ray Perryman noted in a landmark study two years ago: The arts in Texas are responsible for more than $5.8 billion in economic activity per annum. That's 12.2% of total state fiscal resources, 12.3% of total expenditures, 13.6% of gross product, 14.6% of personal income, and 15.7% of the state's permanent jobs. No comparable studies specify the impact of the arts on the Austin economy, although a recent white paper by economist Jon Hockenyos claims that "the broadly defined creative sector" -- which would include high tech, entertainment and media, education, and professional services -- "accounts for more than half of the local economy." That makes for a sector worth worrying about when the chips are down.


Along the way, while researching DeVos, I also found that she is also directly related to the privatization of the war effort, as she is the sister of Erik D. Prince, founder of Blackwater USA. The four American "contractors" whose dead bodies were set afire and dragged through the streets of Fallujah last March were Blackwater employees.

Prince's (and DeVos') father made his fortune with Prince Corporation, a die-cast shop in Holland, Michigan, and was Holland's largest employer at one time. After the elder Prince's death, Prince Corporation was sold for $1.6 billion dollars, and in 1996 Prince formed Blackwater. So, it seems, Prince gave up die-casting in Michigan for casting others out to die in Iraq.



Friday, May 21, 2004

Back in March, Glenn Reynolds (aka Instapundit) took issue with John Kerry's claim about keeping anonymous foreign leaders who were in support of his campaign:


I don't think that John Kerry's confrontation with Pennsylvanian Cedric Brown will do the same, but it certainly sounds similar, and underscores issues of temperament that I've mentioned before. The Philadelphia NBC station describes the scene:

The town meeting was contentious at times, with 52-year-old Cedric Brown repeatedly pressing the candidate to name the foreign leaders whom Kerry has said are backing his campaign.
"I'm not going to betray a private conversation with anybody," Kerry said. As the crowd of several hundred people began to mutter and boo, Kerry said, "That's none of your business."

If it's none of our business, why did Kerry bring it up in the first place?


Yet in his May 19 blog-post he writes:


A JOURNALIST I KNOW emails that the loss of credibility his profession is suffering is "seismic," and that he's considering quitting. What's more, he's hearing depressed comments from quite a few colleagues.

Another reader -- who probably doesn't want his name used because he works for a major newspaper -- emails: "I've tuned out the MSM and rely on the 'Net -- bloggers, Lucianne.com, etc. -- to keep me informed, which it does quite well. That way I get all the info but don't have to endure Dan, Tom and Peter, Wolf, etc. I miss nothing that's happening but I gain all the stories that the mainstream media simply ignore." If you saw his address line, you'd know how striking a statement this is.


Why, I ask, should Insty's citing an unnamed source be any more believable (or less suspicious) than Kerry's.
This pretty much speaks for itself...


George Bush Never Looked Into Nick's Eyes
Michael Berg
Friday May 21, 2004

My son, Nick, was my teacher and my hero. He was the kindest, gentlest man I know; no, the kindest, gentlest human being I have ever known. He quit the Boy Scouts of America because they wanted to teach him to fire a handgun. Nick, too, poured into me the strength I needed, and still need, to tell the world about him.

People ask me why I focus on putting the blame for my son's tragic and atrocious end on the Bush administration. They ask: "Don't you blame the five men who killed him?" I have answered that I blame them no more or less than the Bush administration, but I am wrong: I am sure, knowing my son, that somewhere during their association with him these men became aware of what an extraordinary man my son was. I take comfort that when they did the awful thing they did, they weren't quite as in to it as they might have been. I am sure that they came to admire him.

I am sure that the one who wielded the knife felt Nick's breath on his hand and knew that he had a real human being there. I am sure that the others looked into my son's eyes and got at least a glimmer of what the rest of the world sees. And I am sure that these murderers, for just a brief moment, did not like what they were doing.

George Bush never looked into my son's eyes. George Bush doesn't know my son, and he is the worse for it. George Bush, though a father himself, cannot feel my pain, or that of my family, or of the world that grieves for Nick, because he is a policymaker, and he doesn't have to bear the consequences of his acts. George Bush can see neither the heart of Nick nor that of the American people, let alone that of the Iraqi people his policies are killing daily.

Donald Rumsfeld said that he took responsibility for the sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners. How could he take that responsibility when there was no consequence? Nick took the consequences.

Even more than those murderers who took my son's life, I can't stand those who sit and make policies to end lives and break the lives of the still living.

Nick was not in the military, but he had the discipline and dedication of a soldier. Nick Berg was in Iraq to help the people without any expectation of personal gain. He was only one man, but through his death he has become many. The truly unselfish spirit of giving your all to do what you know in your own heart is right even when you know it may be dangerous; this spirit has spread among the people who knew Nick, and that group has spread and is spreading all over the world.

So what were we to do when we in America were attacked on September 11, that infamous day? I say we should have done then what we never did before: stop speaking to the people we labelled our enemies and start listening to them. Stop giving preconditions to our peaceful coexistence on this small planet, and start honouring and respecting every human's need to live free and autonomously, to truly respect the sovereignty of every state. To stop making up rules by which others must live and then separate rules for ourselves.

George Bush's ineffective leadership is a weapon of mass destruction, and it has allowed a chain reaction of events that led to the unlawful detention of my son which immersed him in a world of escalated violence. Were it not for Nick's detention, I would have had him in my arms again. That detention held him in Iraq not only until the atrocities that led to the siege of Fallujah, but also the revelation of the atrocities committed in the jails in Iraq, in retaliation for which my son's wonderful life was put to an end.

My son's work still goes on. Where there was one peacemaker before, I now see and have heard from thousands of peacemakers. Nick was a man who acted on his beliefs. We, the people of this world, now need to act on our beliefs. We need to let the evildoers on both sides of the Atlantic know that we are fed up with war. We are fed up with the killing and bombing and maiming of innocent people. We are fed up with the lies. Yes, we are fed up with the suicide bombers, and with the failure of the Israelis and Palestinians to find a way to stop killing each other. We are fed up with negotiations and peace conferences that are entered into on both sides with preset conditions that preclude the outcome of peace. We want world peace now.

Many have offered to pray for Nick and my family. I appreciate their thoughts, but I ask them to include in their prayers a prayer for peace. And I ask them to do more than pray. I ask them to demand peace now.

Michael Berg is the father of Nick Berg, the US contractor beheaded on video in Iraq this month by a group believed to be linked to al-Qaida. This is an extract from his message of support for the Stop The War Coalition's demonstration, End the Torture - Bring the Troops Home Now, which will be held at 11am tomorrow at the Embankment in London.

stopwar.org.uk

Thursday, May 20, 2004

I haven't posted in a few days, so there's lots to make note of...


In the wee hours of last night, Ahmed Chalabi, our new Manuel Noriega, was rousted out of his home/Iraqi National Congress headquarters by Baghdad police under the supervision of the U.S. military.

Chalabi has been a key figure in the Bush administration's regime change war, of course, having provided "intelligence" with regard to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. [Are you as sick of hearing that phrase as I am?!?] The raid, which took place in a well-to-do section of Baghdad, gives the appearance that Chalabi has lost face with the Bushies. That he has been speaking out against the U.S. presence in Iraq of late has supposedly set up this raid and, perhaps, the Bush administration's decision to stop the monthly $335,000 payments (or $27 million over the last four years).

I say "supposedly" because of what I read in an article at TomPaine.com:


Neocon Lets Cat Out of Bag
Robert Dreyfuss
May 19, 2004

Michael Rubin — a young staffer at the American Enterprise Institute who's just left the Pentagon, where he played a small role as a neocon cog in the Office of Special Plans war machine — let a herd of cats out of the bag about his favorite Iraqi phony, Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress.

Chalabi, of course, is the roly-poly perpetrator of intelligence fraud and the convicted bank embezzler who still hopes to be leader of Iraq. Lately, Chalabi has scuttled into a would-be alliance with Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the scowly fatwa man. In doing so, he's had the temerity to criticize the United States, leading some fuzzy thinkers to believe that Chalabi, whose puppet strings are made of steel, might be trying to show some independence from Washington. Well, says Rubin, who served as one the Pentagon’s liaisons to Chalabi, that's exactly what they want you to think:

"Much of the information he collected was to roll up the insurgency and Ba'athist cells. It caught people red-handed," said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser who is now at a conservative think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute.

"By telegraphing that he is not the favorite son of America, the administration will bolster him, showing he is his own man."


In other words, it's all a big con game. The still-neocon-dominated Pentagon—which this week stopped funding Chalabi's INC — is playing its last card, hoping that it can boost Chalabi's sagging fortunes by pretending to sever ties with him. That, the neocons hope, will allow Chalabi to strengthen his ties to Sistani, the king-making mullah who, they hope, holds Iraq’s fate in his wrinkled hands.


It's a shell game. With Bush's approval ratings tanking of late, his neo-con buddies have to do something to make it appear as if progress is happening with regard to turning the reins of government over to, um, somebody. Of course, this appears to be the only way it's going to happen -- make it look as if Chalabi has been wronged by the United States so that he can gain favor of the Iraqi people. That is what puppetry is all about, after all, isn't it?

In a related story, another key Iraqi informant upon whose "intelligence" Bush, Colin Powell and Dick Cheney made their assertions of Iraqi's "imminent danger", has been deemed as unreliable by the CIA and regrettable by Powell.


White House released claims of defector deemed unreliable by CIA
By Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration helped rally public and congressional support for a preemptive invasion of Iraq by publicizing the claims of an Iraqi defector months after he showed deception in a lie detector test and had been rejected as unreliable by U.S. intelligence agencies.

The defector, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al Haideri, claimed he'd worked at illegal chemical, biological and nuclear facilities around Baghdad. But when members of the Iraq Survey Group, the CIA-run effort to trace Saddam Hussein's illegal weapons, took Saeed back to Iraq earlier this year, he pointed out facilities known to be associated with the conventional Iraqi military. He couldn't identify a single site associated with illegal weapons, U.S. officials told Knight Ridder.

"The overall impression was that he was trying to pass information far beyond his area of expertise," said a senior U.S. official. He and another U.S. official spoke on condition of anonymity because some details of the defector's case remain classified.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday that other defectors fed him and the CIA misleading information about Iraqi mobile biological weapons facilities before the war.

"It turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and in some cases, deliberately misleading. And for that I am disappointed and I regret it," Powell said on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday.

more >>


Speaking of that Meet the Press, I was busy getting riled up with the roundtable discussion on Fox News Sunday so I missed Colin Powell getting trumped by his press assistant at the end of his interview with Tim Russert.


Powell scolds aide after interview interrupted
The Associated Press
Updated: 3:29 p.m. ET May 16, 2004

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin Powell chastised a press aide for trying to cut short the taping of a television interview Sunday.

Powell, speaking from a Dead Sea resort in Jordan, was listening to a final question from moderator Tim Russert, who was in the Washington studio of NBC’s Meet the Press.

In the broadcast, aired several hours after the interview was conducted, Powell abruptly disappears from view. Briefly seen are swaying palm trees and the water, backdrops for the interview.

Powell can be heard saying to the aide, "He's still asking a question." The secretary then told Russert, "Tim, I’m sorry I lost you."

NBC identified the aide as Emily Miller, a deputy press secretary.

Russert responded: "I don’t know who did that. I think that was one of your staff, Mr. Secretary." The host added: "I don’t think that’s appropriate."

With the cameras still on the water, Powell snapped, "Emily get out of the way." He then instructed the crew to "bring the camera back," and told Russert to go ahead with the last question.

After Powell answered, Russert thanked the secretary for his "willingness to overrule his press aide’s attempt to abruptly cut off our discussion."

Five interviews scheduled State Department spokeswoman Julie Reside said Powell had scheduled five interviews, one after another, and that NBC went over the agreed upon time limit. She said every effort was made to get NBC to finish up, but that other networks had booked satellite time for interviews with Powell.

The executive producer of Meet the Press, Betsy Fischer, said Powell was 45 minutes late for the interview and that "everyone's satellite schedules already had to be rescheduled" anyway.

She said the exchange was not edited out because most taped interviews are not altered before airing.

Fischer said Miller called right after the taping to "express her displeasure" that the interview ran long. Fischer also said Powell called Russert a few hours later to apologize.

The State Department would not confirm either call or that Miller was the aide addressed by Powell.

© 2004 The Associated Press.

Thursday, May 13, 2004

The latest on Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11


Miramax Chiefs to Buy Moore Documentary
Thu May 13, 2:17 PM ET
By ANTHONY BREZNICAN, AP Entertainment Writer

LOS ANGELES - Miramax Films chiefs Bob and Harvey Weinstein plan to buy back Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9-11 — which Walt Disney Co. blocked Miramax from releasing — and distribute it themselves.

Under the deal, the brothers, who have a thorny relationship with parent company Disney, would not be able to distribute the movie through Miramax. They would have to find a third-party company.

Moore's film criticizes President Bush's handling of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and connects the Bush family with Osama bin Laden's.

Disney chief executive Michael Eisner said last week that the company "did not want a film in the middle of the political process" because he believed that theme park and entertainment consumers "do not look for us to take sides."

Miramax co-founder Harvey Weinstein spent about $6 million on the film. He and his brother would have to repay Disney for the investment, and would likely insist on a deal that cuts Disney out of any future profits.

A similar deal was worked out in 1999 when Disney forced Miramax to give up filmmaker Kevin Smith's Dogma, which took an irreverent approach to Catholicism with modern prophets, angels and apostles in a bid to stop the end of the world. Lions Gate Films eventually picked up Dogma.

"We're very happy that Disney has agreed to sell `Fahrenheit 9-11' to Bob and Harvey," Miramax said in a statement. "Bob and Harvey look forward to promptly completing this transaction."

Eisner confirmed the planned deal Wednesday afternoon in a conference call with financial analysts. He also lamented the negative press he and Disney received by refusing the film. "There's not much that we can do with Miramax that's not carried in the press," he said.

In France, Fahrenheit 9-11 was making its world premiere Wednesday as one of 18 films in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, where many new movies find business partners for distribution.

Moore did not immediately return a call for comment.

The confrontational director won an Academy Award for his 2002 documentary Bowling for Columbine, about the Columbine High School shooting and U.S. gun control policy. The film earned $21.5 million at the box office, making it the highest-grossing documentary ever.


Also, from Michael's website:


Tuesday, May 11th, 2004
Wacko Attacko, Response #1

While my new film Fahrenheit 9/11 has not been seen yet, it seems to have already generated a wee bit of interest.

Here's the latest. This morning, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal Ð who has not seen the film - has decided, instead, to review a "synopsis" of the film. That's right, a "synopsis" from a fax of an early version of a press release someone gave him from the studio. Based on this, he accuses the film of being inaccurate. But guess what? Everything he says about the film in his column is completely false. I mean, seriously, NOTHING of what he describes is in the film!

Most real journalists would be embarrassed to do such a thing. What's next - "I can't see the film, I can't see the synopsis - so I'm reviewing the poster!" I worry that Fahrenheit 9/11 is already driving otherwise sane people to lunacy.

What would you expect from the WSJ, the biggest pro-business, pro-war paper in the country. As they so aptly put in their paper today: "The bad news is that in today's freewheeling media environment, consumers seem increasingly unable to distinguish truth from fiction, news from polemic, reality from fantasy." This morning, they proved their own adage to be correct. They gave us fiction, not the truth.

Here's a radical idea: Why don't we wait for the film to come out before attacking it? I promise you the film is much better than the "synopsis."

- Michael Moore
An Associated Press story relates an interesting twist in the Nicholas Berg story. Berg, as you know was the 26-year-old who was decapitated in Iraq recently. There is speculation that Berg had been offered in a swap for captives being held at Abu Ghraib.


Diplomat's E-Mails Show Berg in Custody
By JASON STRAZIUSO
Associated Press Writer

WEST CHESTER, Pa. (AP) -- Family members provided e-mails Thursday that say Nicholas Berg was held by the U.S. military before he was kidnapped and beheaded, but the government contends the messages were based on erroneous information.

Berg's family has called on the U.S. government to tell all it knows about its contacts with the 26-year-old businessman in the weeks before his body was found last weekend in Baghdad and a gruesome video that showed his beheading was posted on the Internet.

To back its claims that Berg was in U.S. custody, the family on Thursday gave The Associated Press copies of e-mails from Beth A. Payne, the U.S. consular officer in Iraq.

"I have confirmed that your son, Nick, is being detained by the U.S. military in Mosul. He is safe. He was picked up approximately one week ago. We will try to obtain additional information regarding his detention and a contact person you can communicate with directly," Payne wrote to Berg's father, Michael, on April 1.

Payne repeated that Berg was "being detained by the U.S. military" in an e-mail the same day to Berg's mother, Suzanne. The next day, Payne wrote that she was still trying to find a local contact for the family, but added that "given the security situation in Iraq it is not easy."

U.S. officials say Berg was detained by Iraqi police March 24 and was never in the custody of American forces. Berg is believed to have been kidnapped days after Iraqi police or coalition forces released him April 6.

The government says the e-mail from Payne was false. State Department spokeswoman Kelly Shannon said Payne's information came from the Coalition Provisional Authority. The authority did not tell Payne until April 7 that Berg had been held by Iraqi police and not the U.S. military, she said.

"As Mr. Berg had been released, the consular officer did not convey this information to the family because he was released, thankfully," Shannon said. "And we thought he was on his way."

Berg's brother called on the government to come clean about its contacts with the slain American before he died. The family has blamed the government for keeping him in custody for too long while anti-American violence escalated in Iraq.

"They're trying to deflect attention to a couple weeks down the road when no one's paying attention," David Berg said. "I think President Bush needs to be a man about this and tell the truth. I think most, if not all, Americans can figure out who's telling the truth and who's lying."

Meanwhile, the family said Berg had been questioned by the FBI more than a year ago about a contact he had with a terrorism suspect in 1999, while he was a student at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.

A senior law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the terror suspect appears to have been acquainted with Zacarias Moussaoui, an al-Qaida adherent now in federal custody and awaiting trial on conspiracy charges stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks.

The official said an e-mail address traced to Berg had been used by the unidentified individual with purported terror connections, but a 2002 investigation showed Berg had never met the individual and had not given the e-mail address to that person.

Michael Berg told reporters Thursday that his son was cleared of any wrongdoing. He said Nicholas Berg met the suspect while riding the bus to classes, and had allowed the suspect to use his computer.

A private memorial for Berg was scheduled for Friday at a West Chester synagogue. Family members declined to discuss burial arrangements.

The Bergs said they want to know if the government had received an offer to trade Iraqi prisoners for Nicholas Berg. On the videotape of his death, Berg's killers made a reference to a trade offer, but U.S. officials have said they knew of no such offer.

Michael Berg said he wanted to hear President Bush address the issue.

"I would like to ask him if it is true that al-Qaida offered to trade my son's life for the life of another person," Michael Berg said. "And if that is true, well, I need that information. ... and I think the people of the United States of America need to know what the fate of their sons and daughters might be in the hands of the Bush administration."

---

Associated Press writers Curt Anderson and Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington contributed to this report.

Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
An editorial in The Dallas Morning News illustrates precisely why I believe Bush needs to be removed from office. Our country is in the middle of an extremely polarizing war we never should have started, in a country that posed no direct threat to us. He clearly is more concerned about his electoral prospects in Florida than with what is truly troubling this nation.


Swatting Flies: New sanctions on Cuba make no sense
Thursday, May 13, 2004

Before 9-11, President Bush told National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that he was tired of swatting flies when it came to counterterrorism.

So why is Mr. Bush swatting Cuba's Fidel Castro? There's no bigger fly in the world.

Last week, Mr. Bush announced a plan to hasten the dictator's demise. He would spend $59 million to foil Cuba's jamming of U.S. broadcasts, to help Mr. Castro's domestic opponents and to advertise the leader's abuses. Family visits to Cuba would be limited to one every three years instead of the present one every year. Cubans in the United States would be allowed to give much less money to their relatives in Cuba. "It's a strategy that says we're not waiting for the day of Cuban freedom, we are working for the day of freedom in Cuba," Mr. Bush declared.

Nonsense. The plan will strengthen Mr. Castro by providing a scapegoat for Cuba's penury and by allowing him to position himself as David to the U.S. Goliath. It will make the dissidents who take the U.S. money look like U.S. agents and give Mr. Castro an excuse to imprison them. Worse, it won't work. If such measures were effective, Mr. Castro already would be gone. But 45 years of U.S. embargo, ostracism and fist shaking have only added to his aura of invincibility.

Contrast Mr. Bush's policy toward Cuba with his policies toward two other dictatorships: China and Iran. With China, he has correctly determined that engagement is best and that U.S. businessmen and tourists spread U.S. values of democracy, free enterprise and human rights. With Iran, he has correctly determined that direct support for domestic opponents would make them look like puppets.

Mr. Bush treats Cuba differently because it's to his political advantage. He wants the support of Florida's Cuban-Americans, who are key to his re-election. So he panders to them. He can afford to do that because Cuba is a fly – a strategically unimportant country that poses no military threat to the United States.

But good politics don't always make good policy. Mr. Bush should stop swatting flies. He should go for the big game – Iraq and al-Qaeda. Doing otherwise is more than counterproductive. It's an unwise and ill-advised diversion from real threats to U.S. security.