SERVE Analysis

Pentagon's Online Voting Program Deemed Too Risky (TechNews.com): "A Pentagon program for Internet voting in this year's presidential election is so insecure that it could undercut the integrity of American democracy and should be stopped immediately, according to computer-security specialists who were asked to review the $22 million pilot plan intended for about 100,000 overseas voters. "
History has shown that when people have the opportunity to tamper with an election they do

Army Reserve Chief Fears Retention Crisis (washingtonpost.com): "a 'major order culture change' is taking place in the reserve so that reservists know, upon joining, that they will be called up to active duty for between nine and 12 months every four to five years."

Well, one war every four to five years is twice as good as we're doing now.

WorkingForChange-The George W Bush State of the Union drinking game

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Why the US is running scared of elections in Iraq: "Washington is trying to argue that if there are to be direct elections, the transfer of power will have to be delayed. Sistani rejects that. His supporters say the oil-for-food ration-card lists which covered the whole Iraqi population can easily be used in place of the poll cards which Washington says would take at least a year to prepare."

washingtonpost.com: Unconfirmed Claims

Yahoo! News - Libya Never Got Nuclear Plans Off Ground-Diplomats: "It would be an exaggeration to call it a program,' one Western diplomat said. "

Yahoo! News - Arms Issue Seen as Hurting U.S. Credibility Abroad: "But a range of foreign policy experts, including supporters of the war, said the long-term consequences of the administration's rhetoric could be severe overseas -- especially because the war was waged without the backing of the United Nations and was opposed by large majorities, even in countries run by leaders that supported the invasion.
'The foreign policy blow-back is pretty serious,' said Kenneth Adelman, a member of the Pentagon's Defense Advisory Board and a supporter of the war. He said the gaps between the administration's rhetoric and the postwar findings threaten Bush's doctrine of 'preemption,' which envisions attacking a nation because it is an imminent threat."

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Artist slams Israel envoy attack: "We wanted to show that the cycle of violence and bloodshed would only stop when we understand what mechanism in a society of conflict can alter a person and reduce him to a desperate and crazed individual"

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | US opens new front in war on terror by beefing up border controls in Sahara: "A small vanguard force arrived this week in Mauritania to pave the way for a $100m plan to bolster the security forces and border controls of Mauritania, Mali, Chad and Niger....West Africa is not known as a hotbed of support for Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network but Washington is taking no chances in a region with strong Arab and Muslim ties."

Observer | US stars hail Iraq war whistleblower

Only 19 of 80 From Herd of Infected Cow Found

Damage in Appalachia Trickles From Top : " 'We find legitimate ways to fight this destructive type of mining, we present our case to the courts, and in the meantime the Bush administration goes behind our backs and changes these laws.'"

The Demonized Seed : "Among the world's major industrial democracies, only the United States still forbids hemp farming. If an American farmer were to fill a field with this drugless crop, the government would consider him a felon. For selling his harvest he would be guilty of trafficking and would face a fine of as much as $4 million and a prison sentence of 10 years to life. Provided, of course, it is his first offense.
This for a crop as harmless as rutabaga....
The DEA sometimes seems bent on fomenting confusion. Two years ago, during his brief tenure as head of the agency, Asa Hutchinson stated that "many Americans do not know that hemp and marijuana are both parts of the same plant and that hemp cannot be produced without producing marijuana." One reason many Americans do not know this is because it's not true. That's like saying beagles and collies are both parts of the same dog and that beagles cannot be produced without producing collies."

News: "American commanders are seeking to reach out to [Iraqi] tribal leaders by relying on a report devised in 1918 by Britain, the country's then ruler."

Martin Luther King, Jr. Speaks Out on War and Peace

Critics Say the Park Service Is Letting Religion and Politics Affect Its Policies: "The Park Service also approved selling a book at the Grand Canyon that suggests the canyon was created in six days several thousand years ago. And here at the Lincoln Memorial, an eight-minute film that shows historical events at the memorial, including demonstrations for civil rights, abortion rights and gay rights, is being revised by the Park Service to add four minutes of more politically neutral events."

Peace, and Kucinich, Gets a Chance: "'I've never been interested in politics, not since I was 16 years old with Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy,' said Ms. Kaplan, who is in her 50's. Then she saw Mr. Kucinich speak at the Best Western last winter. 'I couldn't leave. The guy moved me deeply. I knew at that moment that hope was reborn in my heart,' she said."

Portsmouth Herald Local News: Poll shows Bush in solid position: "By a whopping ratio of 60 percent to 21 percent, Americans say they would prefer to reduce the deficit by 'canceling some recent tax cuts' - the course advocated to some degree by all the Democratic presidential contenders - rather than by spending less on programs like health and education."

Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | Changes in Budget During the Bush Years

Dave Lindorff: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich

Reporters sans fronti�res - Iraq - United States Two murders and a lie
An investigation of the US Army's firing at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on 8 April 2003

Newsday.com - O'Neill Has Done His Country a Favor

More Firms to End Health Benefits for Retirees (washingtonpost.com): "Twenty percent of large, private-sector U.S. employers will probably terminate health insurance benefits within the next three years for workers when they retire as medical costs continue to increase, a new study reported yesterday. Over the past year, 10 percent of companies with 1,000 or more workers eliminated health benefits for retiring workers."

U.S. Says It Will Contest WHO Plan to Fight Obesity (washingtonpost.com): "The WHO plan, which outlines strategies that nations can use to fight obesity, has been widely applauded by public health advocates but bitterly opposed by some food manufacturers and the sugar industry..."This document is fantastically important," said Philip James, chairman of the International Obesity Task Force, an independent London-based public health think tank. "It should have a big impact, unless it's sabotaged. And we know it's being sabotaged." "

Naples Daily News: Columnists: "We learn that there are no weapons of mass destruction, and the Bushes reply, 'So what?' We learn there never was a connection between Sadism Hussein and Al Qaeda, and the Bushes say, 'So what?' It matters because we need to understand how we got into the mess we're in, so we won't get ourselves into another one. "

AlterNet: The Ultimate Insider: "Now, of course, they're painting him out to be a cross between Jerry Garcia, Karl Marx and the disgruntled former employee who just shot up your local post office. Yeah, what an anti-establishment wackjob: former CEO of Alcoa, and a friend of Don Rumsfeld's since the sixties."

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | The Guardian profile: Paul O'Neill: "The archive promises to provide one of the most devastating insiders' accounts of US governmental dysfunction since the Nixon administration "

Bush Plan to Honor Dr. King Stirs Criticism: "'His administration has never supported anything to help the poor, education, or children,' said the Rev. Raphael Allen, vice president of programs at Concerned Black Clergy. 'It's all about isolationism and greed for the upper class. That's not promoting the legacy of Dr. King.'"

The Village Voice: Features: The Essay: The Dennis Kucinich Polka by Stephen Elliott: "What's so funny about peace, love, and the Dems' Great Ignored Candidate?"

Center for American Progress - Progress Through Action - Page: "In all these ways, we are reaping the poison fruit of our misguided and arrogant foreign policy. The Administration capitalized on the fear created by 9/11 and put a spin on the intelligence and a spin on the truth to justify a war that could well become one of the worst blunders in more than two centuries of American foreign policy. We did not have to go to war. Alternatives were working. War must be a last resort. And this war never should have happened. "

ABCNEWS.com : Official Confirms O'Neill's Iraq Claim

Surreal moments serving a mythological president - www.smh.com.au: "Across the room, the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was singing hymns, accompanied on the piano by the Christian fundamentalist Attorney-General, John Ashcroft.
Leafing through the CIA documents, Mr O'Neill was astonished to read plans for covert assassinations around the globe designed to remove opponents of the US Government."

Upstarts Upset the Tobacco Cart (washingtonpost.com): "Numerous states are considering or have adopted legislation aimed at increasing the price of discount cigarettes and protecting the market share of the 'Big Four' tobacco companies -- Philip Morris, Lorillard, Brown & Williamson and R.J. Reynolds. The Big Four are vowing a push this year in the Virginia General Assembly....
[S]tates such as Virginia, which is struggling with a budget deficit, have a powerful reason to go along with the Big Four: money.
In a settlement reached six years ago, major tobacco companies agreed to make annual payments to the states estimated at more than $235 billion over 25 years. Those payments are tied to the sales of the participating companies; if they lose market share, the states lose money.
'We need to guarantee a continuing flow of revenue that we use to help balance Virginia's budget and pay for health care and economic development in the tobacco-dependent regions,' said Sen. Charles R. Hawkins (R-Pittsylvania), who plans to introduce legislation targeting the independents. "

MSNBC - O'Neill denies spilling secrets

The Barreling Bushes

STLtoday.com - Printer friendly - White House seeks control on health, safety: "It goes beyond just having the White House involved in picking industry favorites to evaluate government science.
Under this proposal, the carefully crafted process used by the government to notify the public of an imminent danger is going to first have to be signed off by someone weighing the political hazards."

County balks at voting screens: "But a recent state review of the top four touch-screen companies found security gaps in every system. Burke said he expects it to take at least three months for the companies to plug those holes and for the state to certify the fixes. "

Fairfax Voting Machines A 'Failure' (washingtonpost.com): "New touch-screen voting machines used in Fairfax County's local elections in November were a 'failure,' and county electoral officials were unprepared to deal with the equipment's problems, according to a county GOP committee report released yesterday. "

Open Door Policy: From that bastion of the liberal media, The American Conservative. "There were several shared prerequisites to get on the Neoconservative List of Major Despicable People, and in spite of the rhetoric hurled against these enemies of the state, most really weren't Rodents of Unusual Size. Most, in fact, were retired from a branch of the military with a star or two or four on their shoulders. All could and did rationally argue the many illogical points in the neoconservative strategy of offensive democracy--guys like Brent Scowcroft, Barry McCaffrey, Anthony Zinni, and Colin Powell."

Herald.com - Your Miami Everything Guide: "Speaking on behalf of your devoted radio listeners, most of us never suspected that you were ripped to the gills. You always made perfect sense to us."

Study Published by Army Criticizes War on Terror's Scope (washingtonpost.com): "A scathing new report published by the Army War College broadly criticizes the Bush administration's handling of the war on terrorism, accusing it of taking a detour into an 'unnecessary' war in Iraq and pursuing an 'unrealistic' quest against terrorism that may lead to U.S. wars with states that pose no serious threat."

American Journalism Review News Blackout - The FCC was getting ready to loosen the rules limiting media concentration. A grassroots movement had sprung up to derail the plan. But you wouldn’t have learned much about the controversy from many news outlets owned by the big conglomerates that were eager to cash in.

How to Lose Your Job in Talk Radio: "It seems to me that when there is reason to go to war, it should be self-evident. The Secretary of State should not need to convince a skeptical world with satellite photos of a couple of Toyota pickups and a dumpster."

TIME.com: Confessions of a White House Insider -- Jan. 19, 2004

Cost of War "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." President Dwight D. Eisenhower April 16, 1953

AlterNet: The Killer Among Us: "[T]housands of Americans may already be dying because of Mad Cow disease every year....At Yale, out of a series of 46 patients clinically diagnosed with Alzheimer's, six were proven to have CJD at autopsy. In another study of brain biopsies, out of a dozen patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's according to established criteria, three of them were actually dying from CJD. An informal survey of neuropathologists registered a suspicion that CJD accounts for 2-12% of all dementias in general. Two autopsy studies showed a CJD rate among dementia deaths of about 3%. A third study, at the University of Pennsylvania, showed that 5% of patients diagnosed with dementia had CJD. Although only a few hundred cases of sporadic CJD are officially reported in the U.S. annually, hundreds of thousands of Americans die with dementia every year. Thousands of these deaths may actually be from CJD caused by eating infected meat. "

Al-Ahram Weekly | Region | The 40-day prisoner: "'When I get home,' a sergeant [guarding the prison camp] told Mohamed, 'I will never again vote for George Bush.'"

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "it is becoming harder for the Pentagon to rely on an all-volunteer military force to handle White House foreign policy initiatives. Many soldiers in the military originally enlisted during times of relative peace and did not expect to be deployed for months at a time in the Middle East, let alone being placed in a country that is sending home body bags and stretchers on a consistent basis."

Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | Guantanamo Bay: a global experiment in inhumanity: "Worldwide, the experiment is becoming the norm. It has been estimated that at least 15,000 people are being held without trial under the justification of the 'war on terrorism'. They include more than 3,000 detained in Iraq after the war, of whom at least 1,000 are still in detention; an estimated further 1,000 to 3,000 detained at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan; and an unknown number being held on the British territory of Diego Garcia....It is of grave concern that the example being set by the US and the UK is being used to legitimise repression internationally on an ever-increasing scale. From China, which has imprisoned up to 100 Chinese Muslims without trial, to Uzbekistan (up to 1,000), Yemen (200), Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, India and Indonesia, this alarming lead is being eagerly followed. In Israel and Chechnya, there would be far more people in prison without trial had not the authorities there taken matters one step further and authorised extra-judicial killings. They were safe in the knowledge that the US government boasted last year of killing alleged al-Qaida members in Yemen."

Bias Issue Faces Judge in Monsanto Case: "A federal judge now presiding over a price-fixing case involving the Monsanto Company did not disclose to the parties in the case that in 1997 and 1998 he was listed as a lawyer representing Monsanto in a case that covered some of the same issues, according to lawyers and court documents."

Cover story: Top Secret: "In what may be one of Washington’s best-kept secrets, the volume of federal government information deemed confidential is three times larger today than just five years ago....Aftergood is suing the CIA, seeking information on the amount of government spending on intelligence. He doesn't want the details, just the overall budget figure. His request for information on the agency's 1947 budget was denied. The CIA argues that release of even half-century-old information will lead to a "slippery slope," said Aftergood, "and the next thing you know the names of our agents in Baghdad will be in the newspaper."

The Miami Herald | 12/03/2000 | IF THE VOTE WERE FLAWLESS... Gore would have had the edge in glitch-free Florida balloting, based on a Herald analysis

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Muddying the world's conscience: "In June, USAid, the body that coordinates funding for US overseas aid, ordered US NGOs to identify themselves more clearly as part of the US operation or lose their funding. A USAid coordinator, Andrew Natosis, said US NGOs should consider themselves 'an arm of the US government'....The choices are beginning to look stark for NGOs providing humanitarian relief in 'war on terror' conflicts - either act as sub-contractors for the superpower or pull out. "

PINR - Current U.S. Troop Levels in Iraq Are Unsustainable: "A report released by the Congressional Budget Office recognized...that the active Army would be unable to maintain current troop levels in Iraq 'beyond about March 2004 if it chose not to keep individual units deployed to Iraq for longer than one year without relief.' Indeed, the Pentagon will now be relying on reserve soldiers for combat missions rather than for their traditional combat support roles."

Farm-Raised Salmon Linked to Pollutants : "The study illustrates the different approaches to health advisories by the different agencies. While the EPA only considers human health risks, the FDA is required by law to consider a range of factors, including the economic impacts of its standards on the food production system."

Uncharitable Care: How Hospitals Are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured

Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Candidate for the Democratic Presidential Nomination - A BuzzFlash Interview

Local briefs - newarkadvocate.com: "Orange alert costing Ohio taxpayers COLUMBUS (AP) -- The state has spent more than $210,000 over the past three weeks on security costs related to the nation's orange terror alert. "

Yahoo! News - Boondocks

Greg Weiher: the Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem: "People of this suspicious bent suggest that the administration's grip on power depends on the perpetuation of fear of terrorism. No terrorist threat, no 'George Bush, Warrior Bureaucrat!'
Remember jet-pilot George, posing on the deck of a nearly-beached aircraft carrier in front of that 'Mission Accomplished' banner? Remember Thanksgiving-surprise George, parading through a Baghdad mess hall with a fake turkey? Is it possible that we're now being presented with orange-alert George, guardian of the skyways?"

KR Washington Bureau | 01/06/2004 | Underdog Kucinich campaigns philosophy: `anything is possible'

News: "How the war machine is driving the US economy
Military Keynsianism might get Bush re-elected, but it is starting to worry economists"

Prosecutors Say Bills Were Inflated For Anti-Drug Ads (washingtonpost.com): "'Parents: The Anti-Drug' says [one of the high-profile ads]. The American taxpayers footed the multimillion-dollar tab for the entire campaign, and now federal prosecutors in Manhattan are alleging that two top executives at the ad agency deliberately padded bills for some of the earliest ads. "

Bush in 30 Seconds

Yahoo! News - Iraq's Arsenal of Ambitions: "But investigators have found no support for the two main fears expressed in London and Washington before the war: that Iraq had a hidden arsenal of old weapons and built advanced programs for new ones. In public statements and unauthorized interviews, investigators said they have discovered no work on former germ-warfare agents such as anthrax, and no work on a new designer pathogen -- combining pox virus and snake venom -- that led U.S. scientists on a highly classified hunt for several months. The investigators assess that Iraq did not, as charged in London and Washington, resume production of its most lethal nerve agent, VX, or learn to make it last longer in storage. And they have found the former nuclear weapons program, described as a 'grave and gathering danger' by President Bush (news - web sites) and a 'mortal threat' by Vice President Cheney, in much the same shattered state left by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s."

Iraq's Arsenal of Ambitions (washingtonpost.com): "'91 Gulf War Crippled Baghdad's Ability to Build Nonconventional Weapons " Dog bites man.

washingtonpost.com: The Relatively Charmed Life Of Neil Bush

The Unofficial Paul Krugman Web Page: "If we've learned anything in this past decade, it's that the right-wing scandal machine will find a way to smear anyone, and that a lot of the media will play along."

The Sunday Herald - Scotland's award-winning independent newspaper: "For a story that three weeks ago gripped the world's imagination, it has now all but dropped off the radar. "

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Terror suspect turned out to be a Welsh insurance agent

Justice Could Decide Leak Was Not a Crime (washingtonpost.com)

Le Monde.fr : Emoi en Israël après le tir essuyé par un pacifisteNot reported in English: along with the Israeli veteran who was seriously wounded when Israeli troops used live fire against protestors on the other side of the Wall, an American woman was also shot.

Willie Nelson, Taking Bush to Task (washingtonpost.com)

Garfield Heights factory explodes : "Michael Harris, who worked at the plant for two months earlier this year, said small fires were 'pretty regular things' at the facility.... The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which monitors safety conditions at the nation's workplaces, has fined Garfield Alloys thousands of dollars since 1980 for nearly 30 violations of safety rules. "

The Unofficial Paul Krugman Web Page Our So-Called Boom

Environmental Working Group || BodyBurden: "In a study led by Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, in collaboration with the Environmental Working Group and Commonweal, researchers at two major laboratories found an average of 91 industrial compounds, pollutants, and other chemicals in the blood and urine of nine volunteers, with a total of 167 chemicals found in the group. Like most of us, the people tested do not work with chemicals on the job and do not live near an industrial facility."

Yahoo! News - Saddam was held by Kurdish forces, drugged and left for US troops

Rumsfeld Visited Baghdad in 1984 to Reassure Iraqis, Documents Show (washingtonpost.com): "Page A42 "

Hussein Enters Post-9/11 Web of U.S. Prisons: "The C.I.A. has quietly established its own detention system to handle especially important prisoners. The most important Qaeda leaders are held in small groups in undisclosed locations in friendly countries in the developing world, where they face long interrogations with no promise of ever gaining release. For example, at least two of the top Qaeda figures captured since the Sept. 11 attacks-Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi bin al-Shibh-were held for a time in a secure location in Thailand. They were later moved to another country, officials said. "

The Unofficial Paul Krugman Web Page The story about Halliburton's strangely expensive gasoline imports into Iraq gets curiouser and curiouser. High-priced gasoline was purchased from a supplier whose name is unfamiliar to industry experts, but that appears to be run by a prominent Kuwaiti family (no doubt still grateful for the 1991 liberation). U.S. Army Corps of Engineers documents seen by The Wall Street Journal refer to "political pressures" from Kuwait's government and the U.S. embassy in Kuwait to deal only with that firm.

After Cheney's Private Hunt, Others Take Their Shots

ON THE STANDS Just in time: George W. Bush GI Joke action figure.

The Pentagon Invades Your Xbox : "Can the day be far off when the Department of Defense gets a producer credit for a Paramount film and Kuma Reality Games is granted office space in the Pentagon?"

U.S.: Hundreds of Civilian Deaths in Iraq Were Preventable
(Human Rights Watch Press release, December 12, 2003) : "Every death of a civilian in wartime is a terrible tragedy. But focusing on the exact number of deaths misses the point. The point is that the U.S. military should not have been using these methods of warfare."

The Observer | International | Army shells pose cancer risk in Iraq: "Readings taken from destroyed Iraqi tanks in Basra reveal radiation levels 2,500 times higher than normal. In the surrounding area researchers recorded radioactivity levels 20 times higher than normal....

Tedd Weymann, deputy director of UMRC, said: 'At one point the readings were so high that an alarm on one of my instruments went off telling me to get back. Yet despite these alarmingly high levels of radiation children play on the tanks or close by.'

The amount of DU used during the Iraq war has not been revealed, although some estimate it was more than a thousand tons."

Israel Cultivates a New Breed of Tourist (washingtonpost.com): "Benny Elon, Israel's tourism minister..., who leads the country's most hawkish political party, Moledet (Homeland), embarked on a campaign to cultivate a new breed of tourist....

Jeff Reed, 38, of Newport News, who described himself as a "full Gospel, born-again Christian" with an interest in "remaining proficient with handguns," said he heard about Operation Shiloh while listening to G. Gordon Liddy's radio show...."Had I not had training before, it would have been almost culture shock," Reed, a former police officer and paratrooper in the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division, said...."

Oakland Tribune Online - Local & Regional News: "They're saying, 'Go after it, guys. We're back in the fifties. Come up with all the crazy ideas you can -- if there are any crazy ideas left out there.' This is fossil Cold War mentality surfacing again"

Yahoo! News - Bush Seeks Help of Allies Barred From Iraq Deals: "President Bush found himself in the awkward position on Wednesday of calling the leaders of France, Germany and Russia to ask them to forgive Iraq's debts, just a day after the Pentagon excluded those countries and others from $18 billion in American-financed Iraqi reconstruction projects."

Diebold e-mail discusses price gouging Maryland: "An e-mail found in a collection of files stolen from Diebold Elections Systems' internal database recommends charging Maryland 'out the yin-yang,' if the state requires Diebold to add paper printouts to the $73 million voting system it purchased."

PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column Diebold makes a lot of ATM machines. They make machines that sell tickets for trains and subways. They make store checkout scanners, including self-service scanners. They make machines that allow access to buildings for people with magnetic cards. They make machines that use magnetic cards for payment in closed systems like university dining rooms. All of these are machines that involve data input that results in a transaction, just like a voting machine. But unlike a voting machine, every one of these other kinds of Diebold machines -- EVERY ONE -- creates a paper trail and can be audited. Would Citibank have it any other way? Would Home Depot? Would the CIA? Of course not. These machines affect the livelihood of their owners. If they can't be audited they can't be trusted. If they can't be trusted they won't be used.

AlterNet: Baker Takes the Loaf: "In the case of Jim Baker, who will be acting as a de facto Treasury secretary for international affairs, our elected Congress will have no chance to ask him who is paying his firm nor even require him to get off conflicting payrolls."

Guardian | Israel trains US assassination squads in Iraq: "Israeli advisers are helping train US special forces in aggressive counter-insurgency operations in Iraq, including the use of assassination squads against guerrilla leaders"

Moving Targets: Will the counter-insurgency plan in Iraq repeat the mistakes of Vietnam?: "An American who has advised the civilian authority in Baghdad said, “The only way we can win is to go unconventional. We’re going to have to play their game. Guerrilla versus guerrilla. Terrorism versus terrorism. We’ve got to scare the Iraqis into submission.”...

Rumsfeld repeatedly criticized Air Force General Charles Holland, a four-star Special Forces commander who has just retired, for his reluctance to authorize commando raids without specific, or “actionable,” intelligence. Rumsfeld has also made a systematic effort to appoint Special Forces advocates to the top military jobs....The new civilian Assistant Secretary for Special Operations in the Pentagon is Thomas O’Connell, an Army veteran who served in the Phoenix program in Vietnam, and who, in the early eighties, ran Grey Fox, the Army’s secret commando unit....
The Special Forces in-country numbers are not generally included in troop totals. Bush and Rumsfeld have insisted that more American troops are not needed, but that position was challenged by many senior military officers in private conversations with me. "You need more people," the former adviser, a retired admiral, said. "But you can't add them, because Rummy's taken a position. So you invent a force that won't be counted.""

At present, there is no legislation that requires the President to notify Congress before authorizing an overseas Special Forces mission. The Special Forces have been expanded enormously in the Bush Administration. The 2004 Pentagon budget provides more than six and a half billion dollars for their activities--a thirty-four-per-cent increase over 2003."

Exclusive: Cheney and the 'Raw' Intelligence Cheney’s office has denied that the veep bypassed U.S. intelligence agencies to get intel reports from the INC. But a June 2002 memo written by INC lobbyist Entifadh Qunbar to a U.S. Senate committee lists John Hannah, a senior national-security aide on Cheney’s staff, as one of two “U.S. governmental recipients” for reports generated by an intelligence program being run by the INC and which was then being funded by the State Department. Under the program, “defectors, reports and raw intelligence are cultivated and analyzed”; the info was then reported to, among others, “appropriate governmental, non-governmental and international agencies.” The memo not only describes Cheney aide Hannah as a “principal point of contact” for the program, it even provides his direct White House telephone number. The only other U.S. official named as directly receiving the INC intel is William Luti, a former military adviser to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich

AlterNet: Good-bye, Mr. President: The Secret Resignation Letters: "letters written by disaffected members of the Bush administration who so disagreed with administration policies that they preferred the uncertainty of the unemployment line to toeing the party line"

Independent News: "Repeated visits to the scene, interviews with Iraqi civilians and US soldiers, and close inspection of the battle damage by scores of correspondents have failed to eliminate several troubling and crucial questions. Where are the bodies? Did they exist? Or was this death toll - as some suspect - a fabrication which was intended to generate positive headlines for the US, after a disastrous weekend in which guerrilla attacks killed 14 foreigners, including seven Spanish intelligence officers?"

A new era of nuclear weapons / Bush's buildup begins with little debate in Congress Congress, with only a limited debate, has given the Bush administration a green light for the biggest revitalization of the country's nuclear weapons program since the end of the Cold War

News: "Bush Baghdad trip distracts media from black sheep brother"

The Unofficial Paul Krugman Web Page Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey, who has introduced a bill requiring that digital voting machines leave a paper trail and that their software be available for public inspection, is occasionally told that systems lacking these safeguards haven't caused problems. "How do you know?" he asks.