Down but Not Out, Kucinich
Keeps Fighting

ACLU Was Forced To Revise Release On Patriot Act Suit (washingtonpost.com): "The second paragraph read: 'The provision under challenge allows an FBI agent to write a letter demanding the disclosure of the name, screen names, addresses, e-mail header information, and other sensitive information held by 'electronic communication service providers.' '
Justice lawyers said that both paragraphs violated a secrecy order."

Yahoo! News - FT says Bush should fire Rumsfeld over Iraqi prisoner scandal: "The world is too complex and dangerous for the pious simplicities and arrogant unilateralism of George W. Bush"

Yahoo! News - Congress Toughens War Oversight Role: "Since declaring a war on terror after Sept. 11, the Bush administration has enjoyed an almost complete absence of oversight hearings on White House conduct of the war."

Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds Calls Current 9/11 Investigation Inadequate | BaltimoreChronicle.com "The most significant information that we were receiving did not come from counter-terrorism investigations, and I want to emphasize this. It came from counter-intelligence, and certain criminal investigations, and issues that have to do with money laundering operations."

Army Times - News - More News "This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top. Accountability here is essential — even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war."

Media Beat: This War and Racism -- Media Denial in Overdrive

Dissension Grows In Senior Ranks On War Strategy (washingtonpost.com): "senior officers beginning to say that the United States faces the prospect of casualties for years without achieving its goal of establishing a free and democratic Iraq. "

Fair Use Press

IPA News Release: The Anti-War Origins of Mother's Day

People For the American Way | FDA Ruling Means More Abortions, Less Safety For American Women

The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Editorials: "Here's the result of the latest compassionate rule change from the Bush administration"

Guardian Unlimited | Cartoons

RollingStone.com: "election officials all over the country are erecting illegal barriers to keep young voters from casting ballots"

FAA Managers Destroyed 9/11 Tapes (washingtonpost.com)

The bad barrels that corrupt any good apples they touch: "Philip Zimbardo, a leader of the Stanford prison study, said that while the rest of the world was shocked by the images from Iraq, he was not surprised. 'I have exact, parallel pictures of prisoners with bags over their heads [from the 1971 study],' he said....At Stanford and in Iraq, he added, 'It's not that we put bad apples in a good barrel. We put good apples in a bad barrel. The barrel corrupts anything that it touches.' "

Yahoo! News - Bush Asks Congress for $25B for Iraq War: "Bush 'has not been told that there is a resource problem,' said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity."

Contractors Implicated in Prison Abuse Remain on the Job: "More than two months after a classified Army report found that two contract workers were implicated in the abuse of Iraqis at a prison outside Baghdad, the companies that employ them say that they have heard nothing from the Pentagon, and that they have not removed any employees from Iraq."

Letter to President Bush from Former U.S. Diplomats - Independent Media TV

The Village Voice: Cartoons: Sutton Impact: Widdle Baby Pwesident by Ward Sutton

Cheney Praises Fox News Channel (washingtonpost.com) "It is unusual for a president or vice president to single out a commercial enterprise for public praise."

Forbes, September 2003 Now Hear This
"Marketers have always dreamed of whispering into the ears of individual shoppers as they mill around the aisles and inch along checkout lanes.
"An HSS emitter can put a message to a single person standing in a crowd 200 feet away, without anyone on either side able to hear it. Motion-sensitive HSS emitters can flog Doritos on one end of the snack aisle and hawk Cracker Jack on the other."

OECD Observer: Climate change: The challenge continues: "Worldwide economic losses due to natural disasters increased from about US$40 billion per year in the 1990s to US$60 billion in 2003"

EditorandPublisher.com - Information Authority for the Newspaper Industry: "Hiding the death and destruction of this war does not make it easier on anyone except those who want to keep the truth away from the people"

The Unofficial Paul Krugman Web Page: "a doctrine that makes the United States a sort of elected dictatorship: a system in which the president, once in office, can do whatever he likes, and isn't obliged to consult or inform either Congress or the public"

News: "Lawyers try to gag FBI worker over 9/11"

American attitudes: Program on International Policy Attitudes Americans Continue to Believe Iraq Supported Al Qaeda, Had WMD

Kucinich Campaign A decision yesterday by the eight-member California Voting Systems and Procedures Panel that 15,000 electronic voting machines in four counties be banned in the November election because of “glitches” in the March primary election “is more than enough evidence that these systems could undermine the integrity and affect the results of November’s general election,” Kucinich said.

WorkingForChange-This Modern World: Actionable Intelligence ...and the rest is history.

Paychecks Spur Workers to Take Iraqi Jobs (washingtonpost.com): "Iraq, with its six-figure, tax-free salaries, was too good to pass up. Each of the dead men, court records show, had previously filed for bankruptcy." And some of them were just truck drivers.

From the White House, With Silence (washingtonpost.com): "It may come as a surprise to some that the Kremlin, symbol of secrecy and repression, has become more transparent than the White House, symbol of freedom and democracy."

Yahoo! News - Report: Thousands Dead or Injured in N.Korea Rail Blast: "There were rumors the fuel was a gift from China to Kim and his energy-starved country, Yonhap said.
Ryongchon is transliterated as Yongchon in South Korea and appears that way on most maps in the West.
Yonhap also quoted a senior Defense Ministry official as saying the South's military -- which eavesdrops on North Korea -- had heard about the blast through 'intelligence channels directed against the North.'
There was no immediate suggestion the blast was anything other than an accident.
But the explosion came after Kim met China's new leadership during a rare foreign visit to discuss the North's nuclear weapons plans, tentative economic reforms and aid that has in the past included fuel. "
Smells like Cheney spirit.

President Owes America Answers on Iraq: "If the President ... made the decision to wage war against Iraq and secretly spent appropriated funds to prepare for that war without prior consultation with Congress, then the letter of the law, the intent of the law, and the Constitutional power of the purse, have been subverted."

IDIOT SON OF AN A**HOLE-AND HE'S OUR PRESIDENT!!!

Take Back The Media! Flash Animation "Condoliesa"

Pentagon Deleted Rumsfeld Comment (washingtonpost.com)

With God on His Side...By Invoking a Higher Power, Bush Sidesteps Pesky Constitutional Issues No wonder George W. Bush could lie to Congress and the American public with such impunity while keeping the key members of his Cabinet in the dark.

Guardian Unlimited Travel | News | Chek-in times to US may hit five hours: "Information being obtained includes details about which passengers have requested kosher or halal meals."

News Release, Bush-Cheney 2000 To Pay $90,000 Civil Penalty for Failing To Disclose Recount Activity What will their fine be this time?

Bush Began to Plan War Three Months After 9/11 (washingtonpost.com): "Powell felt Cheney and his allies -- his chief aide, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby; Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz; and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and what Powell called Feith's 'Gestapo' office -- had established what amounted to a separate government."

The Daytona Beach News-Journal: "A 2001 report from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that, statewide, blacks were 10 times as likely to have their votes rejected at the polls and that black voters' ballots were disproportionately rejected in Florida's 2000 presidential elections. Some of those rejections, they suggested, violated the Voting Rights Act."

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Military -- General assails U.S. policy on Iraq: "Known as the 'Warrior Diplomat,' Zinni is not a peace activist by nature "

Newsday.com - Opinion: "Many Palestinians saw Sheik Yassin's murder as a deliberate attempt by the Israeli government to stimulate terrorist attacks that would distract international attention from Sharon's land grab in the West Bank."

HoustonChronicle.com - Europe wary of U.S. policy shift

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States From pdf file "Staff Statement No. 10": In April and May 2001 the drumbeat of reporting increased. Articles presented to top officials contained headlines such as: "Bin Ladin planning multiple operations." "Bin Ladin public profile may presage attack." "Bin Ladin network's plans advancing."
...
The threat reports surged again in June and July, reaching an even higher peak of urgency. A Terrorist Threat Advisory in late June indicated that there was a high probability of near-term "spectacular" terrorist attacks resulting in numerous casualties. Headlines from intelligence reports were stark: "Bin Ladin threats are real." "Bin Ladin planning high profile attacks." The intelligence reporting consistently described the upcoming attacks as occurring on a catastrophic level, indicating that they would cause the world to be in turmoil, consisting of possible multiple--but not necessarily simultaneous--attacks. A late June report stated that Bin Ladin operatives expect near-term attacks to have dramatic consequences of catastrophic proportion.

WorkingForChange-This Modern World: Talking Points

Newsday.com - National News: "Revelations and contradictions"

Claim vs. Fact: Rice's Q&A Testimony Before the 9/11 Commission - Center for American Progress

Account of Broad Shiite Revolt Contradicts White House Stand

Wayne Madsen: Bush Knew, But Failed to Act: the August 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief (PDB), which the White House had steadfastly refused to release to either the Commission of the public, was titled 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.'

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Bush and Blair made secret pact for Iraq war: "President George Bush first asked Tony Blair to support the removal of Saddam Hussein from power at a private White House dinner nine days after the terror attacks of 11 September, 2001[, a]ccording to Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British Ambassador to Washington, who was at the dinner"

Uranium Medical Research Centre[repost] UMRC reported in February that their own staff was contaminated with DU, and that the Coalition's so-called "clean-up" efforts were seeding the desert winds with radiation.

New York Daily News - Home - Daily News Special Investigation: Poisoned? The Army and Air Force fired at least 127 tons of depleted uranium shells in Iraq last year. Now US soldiers are coming home poisoned.

DON'T BE FOOLED: "Greenwash: (n) Disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image "

The Daytona Beach News-Journal: "Race & Punishment
Black students suspended from school twice as often as white students "

Observer | Bush attacks environment 'scare stories'

Framework of Clarke's Book Is Bolstered (washingtonpost.com): "The joint committee's declassified report, released last July, contains dozens of quotations and references to Clarke's testimony, and none appears to contradict the former White House counterterrorism chief's testimony last month."

Take Back The Media!

Yahoo! News - Panel Presses for Rice's Public Testimony: Commissioner John Lehman, another Republican, said Rice 'has nothing to hide, and yet this is creating the impression for honest Americans all over the country and people all over the world that the White House has something to hide, that Condi Rice has something to hide.'
'And if they do, we sure haven't found it. There are no smoking guns. That's what makes this so absurd. It's a political blunder of the first order,' Lehman told ABC's 'This Week.'

-AND HE'S OUR PRESIDENT!!!

White House Whitewash - [Sunday Herald]

join the party party

Neither Silent Nor a Public Witness (washingtonpost.com): "Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage contradicted Rice's claim that the White House had a strategy before 9/11 for military operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban; the CIA contradicted Rice's earlier assertion that Bush had requested a CIA briefing in the summer of 2001 because of elevated terrorist threats; and Rice's assertion this week that Bush told her on Sept. 16, 2001, that 'Iraq is to the side' appeared to be contradicted by an order signed by Bush on Sept. 17 directing the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq.
Rice, in turn, has contradicted Vice President Cheney's assertion that Clarke was 'out of the loop' and his intimation that Clarke had been demoted. Rice has also given various conflicting accounts. She criticized Clarke for being the architect of failed Clinton administration policies, but also said she retained Clarke so the Bush administration could continue to pursue Clinton's terrorism policies. "

Guardian Unlimited Film | Features | Christ, you know it ain't easy: "the director has concocted a film so festive in its lurid, graphic, semi-pornographic, homoerotic violence that not even the most bloodthirsty film-goer could complain about failing to get his money's worth"

Salon.com News | "We should have had orange or red-type of alert in June or July of 2001": "Referring to the Homeland Security Department's color-coded warnings instituted in the wake of 9/11, the former translator, Sibel Edmonds, told Salon, 'We should have had orange or red-type of alert in June or July of 2001. There was that much information available.' Edmonds is offended by the Bush White House claim that it lacked foreknowledge of the kind of attacks made by al-Qaida on 9/11. 'Especially after reading National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice [Washington Post Op-Ed on March 22] where she said, we had no specific information whatsoever of domestic threat or that they might use airplanes. That's an outrageous lie. And documents can prove it's a lie.' "

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Zawahiri tape taunts Pakistanis: "'We have plunged into a war which has no end,' said Qazi Hussain Ahmed, leader of an Islamist coalition that backs Mr Musharraf."

Whether or not the tape is authentic, can there be any doubt that when Colin Powell, two days ago, described Musharraf as a partner in a US "crusade," his purpose was to provoke terrorism or revolt within Pakistan, allowing an expanded US military presence there? 'Crusade' re-enters US lexicon on war Whatever might be said about Bush's use of the word two years ago, Powell is not known for spectacularly ill-considered use of language.

Arms-Control Group Says U.S. Inflated Libya's Nuclear Bid "The administration has distorted what was found in Libya"
You remember this story, we blogged it in January: Libya never got nuclear programme off the ground, say diplomats

Asteroid Scare Prompts NASA to Formalize Response: "For now, there is no established chain of command to the White House in relation to possible asteroid impacts, nor is there any plan for what government agencies should do regarding possible evacuations or emergency preparations."

City Pages: Karl Rove's Moment: "What no one expected was that the worst damage would be inflicted by the White House's own hand."

Government Executive Magazine - 3/24/04 Sept. 11 commission cites intelligence agency failures: "A former FBI translator said Wednesday that the bureau had 'real, specific' information relating to the Sept. 11 attacks before they happened. Sibel Edmonds worked for the agency working from Sept. 20, 2001 to March 2002.
Edmonds said she was hired to retranslate material that was collected prior to Sept. 11 to determine if anything was missed in the translations that related to the plot. In her review, Edmonds said the documents clearly showed that the Sept. 11 hijackers were in the country and plotting to use airplanes as missiles. The documents also included information relating to their financial activities."

The Ratings Mirage: "neither cable news stations nor Nielsen Media Research are primarily in the business of serving the public interest--both are in the business of delivering audiences to advertisers."

Kerry Gets Boost From Surprising Sources (washingtonpost.com): "Kerry's presidential campaign is getting an unexpected boost from an unlikely bunch: former Bush administration officials and congressional Republicans."

Kucinich for President 2004 - Press Release: "Disclosure That Administration Manufactured Crisis to Invade Iraq No Surprise"

Statement -- March 21, 2004

Democracy Now! | The Peace Candidate: Kucinich Vows to Stay in Race

Priorities! -- Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities

News "a war based on lies and misinterpretations from London and from Washington"

State voting worries persist: "[A]ccording to a position paper prepared by the association [of Supervisors of Elections,] 'The issue of creating a paper trail for each voter is unnecessary except to eliminate the paranoia of the critics of these systems.'"

OrlandoSentinel.com: Elections: " 'We showed them our tickets and said we have the right of any other citizen to hear what our president has to say. And they said, 'If you don't leave, we're going to have to arrest you.' "

Mercury News | 03/20/2004 | Iraq invasion protested: "I bought into the whole rationale for the war, that there were weapons of mass destruction,'' Lyons said. "Now the whole thing disgusts me. I've come to believe that President Bush is the most dangerous man on the planet."

The Salt Lake Tribune -- Department memo told park heads to spin cuts

Op-Ed Columnist: Taken for a Ride: "So if the Bush administration were really concerned about maintaining a united front against terrorism, all it would have to do is drop its my-way-or-the-highway approach. But it won't."

TAP: Web Feature: Allies Axed. by Tara McKelvey. March 17, 2004.: "The message is: If you want to get re-elected, don't go to Crawford. Bush is a political liability -- in Europe, in particular. His foreign policy has trampled on the European views and it's now resulting in the election of governments that do not support his approach."

The Spokesman-Review.com - Bush's partial history The White House documents do show that Bush's military job description, called an Air Force Specialty Code, or AFSC, was listed as ‘‘1125D, pilot, fighter interceptor.”
Bush's pilot code was among those covered by Air Force Regulation 35-99, a previously undisclosed document recently obtained by The Spokesman-Review. Regulation 35-99 contains an extensive explanation of the Human Reliability Program.
Human reliability regulations were used to screen military personnel for their mental, physical and emotional fitness before granting them access to nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
Under the rules, pilots could be removed immediately from the cockpit for HRP issues, which happened in the 1974 Washington Air National Guard case. The two Washington airmen were suspended on suspicion of drug use, but eventually received honorable discharges.

"Unknown Soldier" Speaks Out To Bring Troops Home: "Q: Are the men and women in the U.S. military in Iraq sufficiently trained before going over there?
A: No. I am extremely concerned about the major shift that is taking place right now, between now and June, where there's going to be a much higher percentage of the troops being Reserves rather than full-time, active duty military. The difference is that the active duty go through far more training than Reserves."

St. Patrick, Rid Us Of These Snakes!: "No Republican gathering, from a fund-raiser to a Bush cabinet meeting to duck hunting with a Supreme Court justice, can be held without the blessing and imprimatur of the Almighty. "

Al-Ahram Weekly | OPINION | Clerical credentials: "When sects abound in a country lacking plural democracy, men of religion become communal spokesman, supplanting political plurality....Theirs become the final word for a factional identity that has nothing to do with the profound understanding of religious law....The stature is born of circumstance, stimulated by the collapse of civil society groups."

Iraq on the Record

Ballot mistake clouds election outcome - newarkadvocate.com

The Daytona Beach News-Journal: East Volusia: "So last week's election was the second Florida election this year that developed a kink despite low turnout."

Greenspan Shifts View on Deficits: "On Monday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office published new calculations showing that the budget deficit now stems almost entirely from tax cuts and spending increases rather than from lingering effects of the economic slowdown. "

Op-Ed Columnist: Weak on Terror: "Some of the administration's actions have been so strange that those who reported them were initially accused of being nutty conspiracy theorists."

KRT Wire | 03/15/2004 | Iraqi exile group fed news media false information: "Feeding the information to the news media, as well as to selected administration officials and members of Congress, helped foster an impression that there were multiple sources of intelligence on Iraq's illicit weapons programs and links to bin Laden.
In fact, many of the allegations came from the same half-dozen defectors, weren't confirmed by other intelligence and were hotly disputed by intelligence professionals at the CIA, the Defense Department and the State Department.
Nevertheless, U.S. officials and others who supported a pre-emptive invasion quoted the allegations in statements and interviews without running afoul of restrictions on classified information or doubts about the defectors' reliability."

The Miami Herald | 03/16/2004 | Miami soldier resists: 'This war is evil': 'I am not against the military. The military has been my family,'' said Mejia, 28. ``My commanders are not evil but this war is evil. I did not sign up for the military to go halfway around the world to be an instrument of oppression.''

Memo highlights Speaker's many new enemies - newarkadvocate.com: "We just kept looking around at each other like cows looking at a new gate."

Federal Times Online: Unpaid Halliburton subcontractor threatens to end hot meals for troops. "I just want to get paid," says this patriot.

MSNBC - Avoiding attacking suspected terrorist mastermind: "People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president's policy of preemption against terrorists."

OrlandoSentinel.com: Entertainment: "$1.4 billion flowed from the House of Saud to the Bush family and their interests.
So how much influence does this $1.4 billion buy?"

KR Washington Bureau | 03/14/2004 | Families of slain troops join antiwar protest outside Dover air base: "You will not end terrorism by invading a country"

Missteps on Economy Worry Bush Supporters (washingtonpost.com): "Clearly, the machinery's not working very well"