NYT: Bush 'Draft Dodger'?

posted by admin on Tuesday February 03, @07:52PM

Military Service Becomes Weapon in a Kerry-Bush Race

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — The contrast could not be more striking.

In March 1969, John Kerry, a 25-year-old Navy lieutenant, reached down from the boat he was piloting in Vietnam's treacherous Bay Hap River and in a spray of enemy fire pulled a soldier out of the water to safety. For his valor, Mr. Kerry won the Bronze Star with a combat "V" and his third Purple Heart.

That very same month, George W. Bush was on far-safer ground in Valdosta, Ga., learning to fly fighter planes for the Texas National Guard, a coveted post that greatly reduced any risk that he would be sent to Vietnam — and one that he might not have obtained had his father not been a member of Congress.

...

Republicans roared back on Tuesday, accusing Mr. Kerry of "smear tactics" for saying the president should answer questions about his service record. Taking the rare step of angrily rebutting the charges directly from the White House, the Republicans are trying to turn the issue back on Mr. Kerry and question the character of a man who they say is running a vicious campaign. But they are concerned enough about the political impact of the charges to consider sending Mr. Bush out to begin his official campaigning early, rather than waiting until spring as previously planned.

"Obviously we're in a period where the Democrats have been center stage politically and they've said a lot of tough things about the president," said one Bush campaign official, who was reacting in part to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released on Tuesday showing Mr. Kerry leading Mr. Bush by 53 percent to 46 percent among likely voters. "But it won't be too long now before there are two candidates in the race."

...

Late Tuesday night, r. Kerry fired back. On Fox News, he subtly slashed at Mr. Bush by implying that joining the National Guard was just another way of dodging the draft.

"I've never made any judgments about any choice somebody made about avoiding the draft, about going to Canada, going to jail, being a conscientious objector, going into the National Guard," Mr. Kerry said. "Those are choices people make."

more…
http://www.nytimes.com

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(UK) Intelligence chief's bombshell: 'We *were* overruled on dossier'

posted by admin on Tuesday February 03, @03:29PM

The Independent, 3 February 2004

The intelligence official whose revelations stunned the Hutton inquiry into the death of government scientist David Kelly has suggested that not a single defence intelligence expert backed Tony Blair's most contentious claims on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

As Mr Blair yesterday set up an inquiry into intelligence failures before the war, Brian Jones, the former leading expert on WMD in the Ministry of Defence, declared that Downing Street's dossier, a key plank in convincing the public of the case for war, was "misleading" about Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological capability.

Writing in today's Independent, Dr Jones, who was head of the nuclear, chemical and biological branch of the Defence Intelligence Staff until he retired last year, reveals that the experts failed in their efforts to have their views reflected.

Dr Jones says: "In my view, the expert intelligence analysts of the DIS were overruled in the preparation of the dossier back in September 2002, resulting in a presentation that was misleading about Iraq's capabilities."

He calls on the Prime Minister to publish the intelligence behind the Government's claims that Iraq was actively producing chemical weapons and could launch an attack within 45 minutes of an order to do so. He is "extremely doubtful" that anyone with chemical and biological weapons expertise had seen the raw intelligence reports and if they were made public, it would prove just how right he and his colleagues were to be concerned about the claims.

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War: Cheney key to Iraq probe, critics say

posted by admin on Tuesday February 03, @03:03AM

An inquiry into intelligence failures must include his and the Pentagon's handling of spy data, officials said.

By Jonathan S. Landay, Warren P. Strobel and Joseph L. Galloway
Inquirer Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - What went wrong with intelligence on Iraq may never be known unless the inquiry proposed by President Bush examines secret intelligence efforts led by Vice President Cheney and Pentagon hawks, current and former U.S. officials said yesterday.

The critics said Bush may limit the inquiry's scope to the CIA and other agencies, and ignore the key role the officials said the administration's own internal intelligence efforts played in making the case for war.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, did not dispute that the CIA failed to accurately assess the state of Iraq's weapons programs. But they said intelligence efforts led by Cheney magnified the errors through exaggeration, oversights and mistaken deductions.

Those efforts bypassed normal channels, used Iraqi exiles and defectors of questionable reliability, and produced findings on former dictator Saddam Hussein's links to al-Qaeda and his illicit arms programs that were disputed by analysts at the CIA, the State Department and other agencies, the officials said.

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/front/7859646.htm

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BBC: Blair confirms Iraq WMD inquiry

posted by admin on Tuesday February 03, @02:53AM

There will be an independent inquiry into the intelligence which led Britain to war over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, Tony Blair has told MPs.

Mr Blair said there were issues over how intelligence was gathered and used by government. He said details would be given later by the foreign secretary.

But he stressed the government had been cleared of "sexing up" its dossier about Iraq's weapons.

"The issue of good faith was determined by the Hutton inquiry," he said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3453305.stm

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War: A Democracy Worth Reclaiming

posted by admin on Tuesday February 03, @01:31AM

An interview with former Ambassador to Iraq Joseph Wilson. He's down on our foreign policy but upbeat about America.

by Geov Parrish

Former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson was a diplomat for 25 years, but it took the Bush administration to bring him into the public eye. At government request, Wilson traveled to Africa in 2001 to investigate claims that Iraq had been buying yellow-cake uranium. He reported back that the reports were false—months before the purported sale was cited, in the State of the Union address in 2003 and elsewhere, to justify a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Last July, Wilson went public with the information from his trip and the subsequent apparent distortion by the Bush camp. Coincidentally, a short time later, someone in the White House leaked to the press that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent. A federal grand jury is now investigating the leak. Wilson served in the U.S. Foreign Service from 1976 to 1998. Among his posts: deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad from 1988–91; acting ambassador to Iraq during Operation Desert Shield; ambassador to Gabon; and director for African affairs at the National Security Council in 1997–98. As an experienced hand in the heart of the U.S. diplomatic community, Wilson was ideally suited for the uranium mission. His outspokenness in its wake, against all his training, underscores the radical nature of the Bush administration. Diplomats don’t usually sound off like this.

We interviewed Wilson recently in anticipation of his appearance at McCaw Hall on Friday, Feb. 6, as part of the “American Voices” series sponsored by Foolproof Performing Arts and co-sponsored by Seattle Weekly.

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Newsweek: Patriot Games (Bush was AWOL)

posted by admin on Sunday February 01, @08:56PM

UPDATE: ELDER STATESMEN OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY CALL ON AMERICANS TO VOTE BUSH OUT OF OFFICE IN NOVEMBER

Bush strategists may feel tempted to attack John Kerry’s opposition to Vietnam. Why it’s a battle they can’t win

The voters don't want to refight the Vietnam war, but with John Kerry looking like the likely nominee, Vietnam returns to the front pages. Kerry is accompanied on the campaign trail by the men he served with in the Mekong Delta. "I know a little something about aircraft carriers for real," he says, in an allusion to President George W. Bush's premature "Mission Accomplished" landing last spring on the USS Abraham Lincoln.

...

Retired general Wesley Clark was widely criticized for not objecting when left-wing activist Michael Moore called Bush a "deserter" in his presence. As a military man, Clark knows that deserting is a capital offense, reserved for those who have been court-martialed and found guilty. The charge against Bush is that he was AWOL for a year of his service in the National Guard. Once the pundits finished critiquing the impact on Clark of the presumed gaffe, the next logical question is to ask where Bush was during that year, how he got away with his absenteeism, and does it matter?

...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4114162

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FTW: IN YOUR FACE (Peak-Oil)

posted by admin on Sunday February 01, @08:18PM

- Connections between Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force, 9/11 and Peak Oil “On the Table”

- July '04 Supreme Court Ruling on Secrecy, Task Force Documents Obtained through FOIA Suit on Collision Course as Cheney “Duck Hunts” with Scalia

- The Reason Why Activists of All Stripes are Ineffective

by

Michael C. Ruppert

“The Cheney report is very guarded about the amount of foreign oil that will be required. The only clue provided by the [public] report is a chart of net US oil consumption and production over time. According to this illustration, domestic oil field production will decline from about 8.5 million barrels per day (mbd) in 2002 to 7.0 mbd in 2020, while consumption will jump from 19.5 mbd to 25.5 mbd. That suggests imports or other sources of petroleum… will have to rise from 11 mbd to 18.5 mbd. Most of the recommendations of the NEP [National Energy Policy, May 2001] are aimed at procuring this 7.5 mbd increment, equivalent to the total oil consumed by China and India .

  -- Professor Michael Klare
“Bush-Cheney Energy Strategy: Procuring the Rest of the World's Oil”
Foreign Policy in Focus, January 2004

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