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archived: 21 - 27 Dec, 2003 Back Next FABRICATING WAR Following up on TPJ’s Junkie Update this past Thursday, news reports indicate that David Kay, Bush’s “blood hound” searching for WMD in Iraq, may be leaving his post early. Kay’s pending departure signals: George Bush has in effect washed his hands of the hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, in whose name the United States and Britain went to war last March.
. . . The departure of Mr Kay, a strong believer in the case for toppling Saddam Hussein because of his alleged weapons, comes as a particular embarrassment to Tony Blair. This week he maintained that Mr Kay had uncovered "massive evidence" of a network of WMD laboratories.
For Mr Bush, the missing weapons are a politically charged issue. Pressed to explain why his administration had asserted Saddam possessed weapons, when at best fragmentary evidence of programmes had been found, Mr Bush replied: "So what's the difference? "If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger," he said in an interview with ABC News' Diane Sawyer.
Mr Bush's public dismissal of the weapons issue is the latest move by Washington and London to change the justification for war. Weapons of mass destruction, and even weapons programmes, are no longer being put forward as the reason for the invasion. – Independent (England) Hans Blix sums it up best. "It's probably time to call it quits," said Hans Blix, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector, whose teams were given one-third of the time the United States has already spent looking for weapons. "The U.S. and the U.K. are so wedded to the idea that the Iraqis were hiding things that they are not willing to explore the possibility that they're wrong," Blix said.” – Yahoo RELATED ARTICLE: Americans should not forget that Saddam was a tyrant the Republicans helped to create. “Donald H. Rumsfeld went to Baghdad in March 1984 with instructions to deliver a private message about weapons of mass destruction: that the United States' public criticism of Iraq for using chemical weapons would not derail Washington's attempts to forge a better relationship, according to newly declassified documents. Rumsfeld, then President Ronald Reagan's special Middle East envoy, was urged to tell Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz that the U.S. statement on chemical weapons, or CW, "was made strictly out of our strong opposition to the use of lethal and incapacitating CW, wherever it occurs," according to a cable to Rumsfeld from then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz. The statement, the cable said, was not intended to imply a shift in policy, and the U.S. desire "to improve bilateral relations, at a pace of Iraq's choosing," remained "undiminished." "This message bears reinforcing during your discussions." – Washington Post Bush’s administration is “scrubbing” government web site to remove material that will embarrass the administration. “It's not quite Soviet-style airbrushing, but the Bush administration has been using cyberspace to make some of its own cosmetic touch-ups to history. White House officials were steamed when Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said earlier this year that U.S. taxpayers would not have to pay more than $1.7 billion to reconstruct Iraq -- which turned out to be a gross understatement of the tens of billions of dollars the government now expects to spend. Recently, however, the government has purged the offending comments by Natsios from the agency's Web site. The transcript, and links to it, have vanished. USAID spokeswoman Lejaune Hall, asked about this curious situation, searched the Web site herself for the missing document. "That is strange," she said. After a brief investigation, she reported back: "They were taken down off the Web site. There was going to be a cost. That's why they're not there." But other government Web sites, including the State and Defense departments, routinely post interview transcripts, even from "Nightline." And, it turns out, there is no cost. "We would not charge for that," said ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider. "We would have no trouble with a government agency linking to one of our interviews, and we are unaware of anybody from [ABC] making any request that anything be removed." – Washington Post BUSH’S ECONOMIC RECOVERY Readers have assuredly read or heard the headlines that the economy is “recovering” under Bush. While the economy has stabilized, problems exist. “In a look at the government's long-term budget outlook, Congress' nonpartisan fiscal analyst offered possible combinations of tax and spending changes, all of which would leave lawmakers choosing among politically unpalatable options. Even so, some still would leave the government in fiscal peril. Yet, failing to act would drive the accumulated federal debt to unsustainable levels, said the study, released Friday. ‘Taken to the extreme, such a path could result in an economic crisis,'’ including the possibilities that foreign investors would pull out, the dollar's value plunge, interest rates and prices soar and stock markets collapse. ‘The longer that lawmakers delay acting to counter an unsustainable budgetary situation, the larger the spending cuts or tax increases will eventually have to be,'’ the 60-page study warned. The big problem facing the government is the impending retirement of the baby boom generation, whose 76 million members will start later this decade relying on Social Security and Medicare and increase their use of Medicaid. . . . ‘Substantial reductions in the projected growth of spending or a sizable increase in taxes as a share of the economy - or both - will probably be necessary to provide a significant likelihood of fiscal stability in the coming decades,’ the report said.” – Guardian Unlimited __________ The US Conference of Mayors painted a dismal picture yesterday of growing homelessness and hunger among low-income, working families and reported a dramatic decrease in 2003 in the ability of most of the nation's 25 major cities to meet these basic needs. . . . The conference's annual survey found that in nearly all the cities, requests for emergency food assistance have increased by an average of 17 percent over last year, and the demand for emergency shelter rose by an average of 13 percent. More than half of the cities surveyed reported that emergency food assistance facilities had to either turn people away or limit the groceries families could receive on each visit. Of those requesting food help, 59 percent were families and 39 percent were employed, the report said. In 84 percent of the cities surveyed, shelters reported turning away homeless families because of too few beds and other resources. Officials estimated that 30 percent of requests for shelter by homeless people, and 33 percent of the requests by homeless families were unmet, according to the Conference of Mayors report.” – Boston Globe PUBLIC BUSH – PRIVATE TUMBLEWEED In public, Bush is touting that he is increasing support for low income child care. In actual budget measures, the story is far different. “In a recent series of letters to newspaper editors, Administration officials have asserted that pending reauthorization legislation provides $3.3 billion in new funding for child care and that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has determined that “at most” $1.5 billion in additional child care funding is “needed.” To the contrary, the bills commit the federal government to only $1 billion in additional child care funding over the next five years. And, as various estimates have shown, this level of additional funding falls well short of what is needed to ensure that states can meet the costs associated with new work requirements for welfare recipients and maintain current child care slots for low-income working families not receiving welfare. In short, the level of child care assistance in the pending TANF reauthorization bills is well below the levels needed simply to keep child care services for low-income working families from shrinking in coming years. The Administration may wish to argue that Congress should not provide sufficient funding to meet the combined cost of complying with the new TANF work requirements and maintaining current levels of child care assistance. That surely is its right. But the Administration should not misstate the level of child care funding that would be provided under the pending bills or the findings of CBO analyses to make its case.” – Center On Budget and Policy Priorities __________ In another example of public Bush – private Tumbleweed, consider Bush’s comments at a press conference this week: I think you've seen about our foreign policy is that I'm reluctant to use military power. It's the last choice, it's not our first choice. And in Iraq, there was a lot of diplomacy that took place before there was any military action. There was diplomacy prior to my arrival, diplomacy during my time here, and we tried all means and methodologies to achieve the objective, which was a more secure America, by using diplomatic means and persuasion. – White House In private, peace never had a chance. TPJ carried this article in March, 2003: TPJ, ““Tiberius or Caligula” "F—k Saddam. We’re taking him out," said President George W. Bush in March 2002, after poking his head into the office of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, TIME reports. TIME’s story focuses on Paul Wolfowitz, a senior advisor to President Bush, a neoconservative – someone who thinks that the world is a dangerous place where civilization and democracy hang by a thread. Neoconservatives, report Elliott and Carney, also believe that the U.S. is endowed by Providence with the power to make the world better if only it will take the risks of leadership to do so. In January 1998, Wolfowitz joined other neo-conservatives in signing a letter to President Clinton arguing that "containment" of Saddam had failed and asserting that "removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power…needs to become the aim of American foreign policy." -- Drudge Report RELATED ARTICLE: Of course, this makes little difference to Bush. “In the debate over the necessity for the war in Iraq, few issues have been more contentious than whether Saddam Hussein possessed arsenals of banned weapons, as the Bush administration repeatedly said, or instead was pursuing weapons programs that might one day constitute a threat. On Tuesday, with Mr. Hussein in American custody and polls showing support for the White House's Iraq policy rebounding, Mr. Bush suggested that he no longer saw much distinction between the possibilities. "So what's the difference?" he responded at one point as he was pressed on the topic during an interview by Diane Sawyer of ABC News.” – Washington Post AFGHANISTAN Bush continues to tout that America aims to bring “democracy” to Afghanistan. It appears that there is “democracy” for men, but perhaps not Afghan women as these vignettes attest:
MARIAM RAWI, [in Pakistan] 011-92-300-8551638,
rawa@rawa.org,
http://www.rawa.org Junkie: Each of these vignettes comes from The Institute For Public Accuracy
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