April 11, 2006 Okay, So Let's Get This Straight: On Monday, Bush Admitted That he Lied About Leaking a Lie to Smear Someone Who Revealed the Truth About His Lying A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS Okay, so let's get this straight. Bush admits he selectively leaked classified information that wasn't declassified until days after he and Cheney had Scooter Libby leak it to Judith Miller, the pro-war megaphone for the New York Times publication of Bush lies. Bush "authorizes" this leak at a time that he is claiming that if he ever finds the leaker, he will basically fire him, meaning himself. Then he continues a public and Department of Justice vendetta against leakers, but not himself: the leaker-in-chief. Okay, now Libby is sent out with the leak in order to debunk Joe Wilson's accounting of the truth about the non-existent Iraq-Niger uranium deal. Libby actually makes language up that doesn't exist in the document to further the lie that Wilson exposed. In short, Libby selectively used classified information to try to smear the truth with more lies. Okay, it gets better (or actually, worse). When Bush is exposed through Libby's revealing to Patrick Fitzgerald that Bush gave the green light to leak a lie to cover up a lie and prevent more lies from being exposed, Bush admits to leaking, but tells the American people that it was to get the "truth out." Are you following this? (And we haven't even gotten into the actual Valerie Plame outing to Novak yet. We are still in the sideshow.) If this sounds like some farce, remember that thousands upon thousands of Americans and Iraqis have died in this farce -- and the nation is nearly bankrupt. No nation can long endure when such bird brains, criminals, liars, cheats, and incompetents are running the nation. What is this man still doing in the White House? Please someone tell us. This is beyond comprehension. Okay, you know what the worst thing is; Bush doesn't even know what a fatally flawed and dangerous fool he is. He thinks that denouncing leaks while leaking, obstructing justice, lying in order to prevent the truth from coming out, and starting a war based on lies is fine by him. Because he, de facto, admitted to all of the above on Monday in a rambling explanation of why he had to leak, then lie about his leaking, and then leak a lie to hide the truth. Meanwhile -- while all this was transpiring over the past couple of years -- others were being pursued by the federal prosecutor for leaking, when it all started with Bush. This is whacko, psychotic stuff. The mainstream press keeps saying that Bush didn't technically break the law. Oh come on, as Greg Palast has pointed out, at a minimum we have a prima facie case of obstruction of justice. We also have the RICO Act as a distinct possiblity here. Not to mention that he didn't actually declassify the information he authorized leaking until days later. There is a process for this sort of thing, you know. The bottom line: He's a lunatic in the guise of an "everyman," and it would be hard to think of a person who could have done this nation more harm. Afternote: Please forward this news analysis to a friend and ask them to spread the word about BuzzFlash.com. And don't forget to stop in our BuzzFlash progressive marketplace and support BuzzFlash.com with a purchase: http://www.buzzflash.com/premiums. All premiums are shipped directly from our BuzzFlash offices in Chicago, America's heartland, where serial liars like Bush get tossed out of bars on their ears. ***** Rollingstone.com Hyping Zarqawi Tim Dickinson "The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date." -- Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, in an internal 2004 memo praising the propaganda campaign to hype the threat of Iraq's "terrorist mastermind" Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. I'm frankly amazed this Washington Post story from Monday hasn't gotten more play. What it exposes is that Bush administration never stopped lying to the American people about the threats faced in Iraq. Just as it did with WMD before the war, the administration hyped the threat posed by Zarqawi during the occupation -- this time to make it seem as though Iraq were a vital part of the battle with Al Qaeda. Today, we know Zarqawi as the mastermind of the insurgency, Al Qaeda's main man in Iraq, the diabolical plotter behind all of those suicide and roadside bombs. The administration spun this line, and the American media, myself included, swallowed hook, line and sinker. But it turns out that Zarqawi's role in Iraq has been shamelessly hyped in a "psychological operations" propaganda effort -- aimed both at Iraqis and, in apparent contravention of Pentagon policy, at the American public. Last summer, Col. Derek Harvey -- a top military intelligence officer in Iraq and who handled Iraq intel for the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- told a gathering of Army brass that Zarqawi's violence represented "a very small part of the actual numbers . . . The long-term threat is not Zarqawi or religious extremists, but these former regime types and their friends." Harvey continued, "Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will -- made him more important than he really is." As outlined in documents obtained by the Post, the propaganda effort to hype Zarqawi had two intended effects: To unify Iraqis, who would blame this meddling outsider for the violence in their country, and to make Zarqawi an enduring symbol stateside -- one that justified continued U.S. presence in Iraq. These Power Point slides prepared for top U.S. commander in Iraq, General Casey, are startling, in that they show just how naked and calculating this deception of the American people was, listing the "home audience" as a major target of the propaganda effort. This text describes the "results" of operation "Villainize Zarqawi." Through aggressive Strategic Communications Abu Musab al-Zarqawi now represents: -- Terrorism in Iraq -- Foreign Fighters in Iraq -- Suffering of Iraqi People (Infrastructure Attacks) -- Denial of Aspirations (Disrupting Transfer of Sovereignty) Posted Apr 11, 2006 ***** Blood, Debt And Taxes - The Real Death Tax By Stan Cox Counterpunch.org 4-15-6 Now that the rush to file our income tax returns has come and gone for another year, it's only natural to wonder what all that money's paying for. These days, the money we're sending to Washington is buying a lot more war and a lot less economic security. In the current White House budget request, Pentagon spending would rocket upward, with a $29 billion increase. If you include military portions of the budgets of Homeland Security, Energy, and other departments, US taxpayers would fork over $563 billion for military spending in the coming fiscal year. But wait! (as they say on infomercials) There's more! That $563 billion doesn't even include the cost of the war in Iraq! President Bush has submitted a supplemental budget request for $74 billion, of which $61 billion will fund that continuing military occupation. The Iraq war has cost $273 billion so far. But to account for the total cost of the war, according to Nobel-prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, we should project the future costs of fighting and withdrawal, added veterans' costs, the cost of lifetime care for brain-injured troops, the added interest on the national debt, and other expenses. Do that, says Stiglitz, and the price tag of the Iraq war will be between $750 billion and $1.3 trillion. That's trillion with a 't', and even that figure, says Stiglitz, is "highly conservative". To pay off an extra $1.3 trillion would require every dollar of federal individual income taxes paid by every working American for a period of one year and seven months! That's impossible, so much of it will be borrowed money. Then there are the costs of the war that can't be counted in dollars. There are the lost lives of 2364 US troops, 208 other foreign troops, 314 private contractors, 4435 US-backed Iraqi police and military, and 86 journalists. And of course, there are the 34,000 to 38,000 Iraqi civilians who have died as the direct result of military violence. Respected estimates put indirect civilian deaths--caused by war-related environmental hazards, declining sanitation, child nutrition, etc.--in the hundreds of thousands. The number of Iraqi civilians wounded during initial US invasion in March-April 2003 has been estimated at 20,000. The number wounded by fighting in the three years since is unknown but huge. The Pentagon reports that about 17,500 US troops have been wounded in Iraq. However, that counts only those wounded in combat, not the many thousands injured by war-related accidents or other causes. By any reckoning, the numbers of American wounded are not declining. In the February-March period of 2004, there were 473 troops officially wounded in combat. In 2005, it was 785 for the same period. This year, 829. An estimated 6000 US troops have suffered serious physical brain injuries so far. Psychological trauma is even more widespread. Of the 500,000-plus men and women who have served in Iraq to date, the Pentagon estimates that 175,000 have required psychological treatment. Largely because of the hunger for more military spending, the President's budget request for fiscal year 2007 would eliminate or slash 141 domestic programs, many of them crucial to the economic survival of many Americans. Non-military domestic programs (not including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) stand to lose $15 billion. That's a 4.4% cut in real dollars. War spending has hurt us. But has it helped the citizens of Iraq? Hardly. For a second year running, Baghdad has been named the worst city in the world to live in, doing only about half as well as the next worse city, Brazzaville of the Congo Republic. Almost 5 million fewer Iraqis than before the invasion have access to clean drinking water, and 1.3 million no longer have working sewer connections. The US Embassy rates only 3 of Iraq's 18 provinces as militarily "stable", with 7 in "serious" or "critical" condition. Largely as a result, Bush's latest Iraq war funding request cuts almost all construction money for rebuilding in the war-ravaged nation, leaving only $100 million, and that's for building more prisons. Paying taxes has never been anyone's idea of an enjoyable activity. But does it have to be so deadly and destructive? ***** Desert Rats Leave The Sinking Ship Why Rumsfeld Should Not Resign The Guardian - Comment Friday, April 14, 2006 By Greg Palast Well, here they come: the wannabe Rommels, the gaggle of generals, safely retired, to lay siege to Donald Rumsfeld. This week, six of them have called for the Secretary of Defense's resignation. Well, according to my watch, they're about four years too late -- and they still don't get it. I know that most of my readers will be tickled pink that the bemedalled boys in crew cuts are finally ready to kick Rummy in the rump, in public. But to me, it just shows me that these boys still can't shoot straight. It wasn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who stood up in front of the UN and identified two mobile latrines as biological weapons labs, was it, General Powell? It wasn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who told us our next warning from Saddam could be a mushroom cloud, was it Condoleezza? It wasn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who declared that Al Qaeda and Saddam were going steady, was it, Mr. Cheney? Yes, Rumsfeld is a swaggering bag of mendacious arrogance, a duplicitous chicken-hawk, yellow-bellied bully-boy and Tinker-Toy Napoleon -- but he didn't appoint himself Secretary of Defense. Let me tell you a story about the Secretary of Defense you didn't read in the New York Times, related to me by General Jay Garner, the man our president placed in Baghdad as the US' first post-invasion viceroy. Garner arrived in Kuwait City in March 2003 working under the mistaken notion that when George Bush called for democracy in Iraq, the President meant the Iraqis could choose their own government. Misunderstanding the President's true mission, General Garner called for Iraqis to hold elections within 90 days and for the U.S. to quickly pull troops out of the cities to a desert base. "It's their country," the General told me of the Iraqis. "And," he added, most ominously, "their oil." Let's not forget: it's all about the oil. I showed Garner a 101-page plan for Iraq's economy drafted secretly by neo-cons at the State Department, Treasury and the Pentagon, calling for "privatization" (i.e. the sale) of "all state assets ... especially in the oil and oil-supporting industries." The General knew of the plans and he intended to shove it where the Iraqi sun don't shine. Garner planned what he called a "Big Tent" meeting of Iraqi tribal leaders to plan elections. By helping Iraqis establish their own multi-ethnic government -- and this was back when Sunnis, Shias and Kurds were on talking terms -- knew he could get the nation on its feet peacefully before a welcomed "liberation" turned into a hated "occupation." But, Garner knew, a freely chosen coalition government would mean the death-knell for the neo-con oil-and-assets privatization grab. On April 21, 2003, three years ago this month, the very night General Garner arrived in Baghdad, he got a call from Washington. It was Rumsfeld on the line. He told Garner, in so many words, "Don't unpack, Jack, you're fired." Rummy replaced Garner, a man with years of on-the-ground experience in Iraq, with green-boots Paul Bremer, the Managing Director of Kissinger Associates. Bremer cancelled the Big Tent meeting of Iraqis and postponed elections for a year; then he issued 100 orders, like some tin-pot pasha, selling off Iraq's economy to U.S. and foreign operators, just as Rumsfeld's neo-con clique had desired. Reading this, it sounds like I should applaud the six generals' call for Rumfeld's ouster. Forget it. For a bunch of military hotshots, they sure can't shoot straight. They're wasting all their bullets on the decoy. They've gunned down the puppet instead of the puppeteers. There's no way that Rumsfeld could have yanked General Garner from Baghdad without the word from The Bunker. Nothing moves or breathes or spits in the Bush Administration without Darth Cheney's growl of approval. And ultimately, it's the Commander-in-Chief who's chiefly in command. Even the generals' complaint -- that Rumsfeld didn't give them enough troops -- was ultimately a decision of the cowboy from Crawford. (And by the way, the problem was not that we lacked troops -- the problem was that we lacked moral authority to occupy this nation. A million troops would not be enough -- the insurgents would just have more targets.) President Bush is one lucky fella. I can imagine him today on the intercom with Cheney: "Well, pardner, looks like the game's up." And Cheney replies, "Hey, just hang the Rumsfeld dummy out the window until he's taken all their ammo." When Bush and Cheney read about the call for Rumsfeld's resignation today, I can just hear George saying to Dick, "Mission Accomplished." Generals, let me give you a bit of advice about choosing a target: It's the President, stupid. ********** Read more about the untold story of General Garner and the secret war plans in ARMED MADHOUSE, by Greg Palast, to be released June 6 (US) and July 6 (UK). View Palast's interview with Garner for BBC Television at www.GregPalast.com ***** Oprah Tackles Minimum Wage Crisis http://thinkprogress.org 4-15-2006 On Friday, Oprah Winfrey dedicated her national talk show to the issue of minimum wage, focusing on the plight of workers and families who face great difficulties merely subsisting on such low pay. The federal minimum wage has been locked in at $5.15/hour for the past nine years. The show’s panel featured Morgan Spurlock, director of Super Size Me and the TV series 30 Days, Morgan’s fiancee Alex Jamieson, and Beth Shulman, the former vice president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. Among the highlights of the show was this exchange between the panelists. Watch it: WINFREY: It’s a real tragedy. I think you’re absolutely right. This is what people need to know. This is why New Orleans happened. This is why it happened, because you have people who were working — service people — minimum wage jobs. Working people who didn’t have the resources to go anywhere. That’s the point. That’s the point. SHULMAN: Absolutely. And Katrina can be — is every city in the United States. WINFREY: Yes, yes. SHULMAN: Every city. And we can make different choices that ensure that the American dream is a reality for all these millions of Americans. WINFREY: And so what should we be doing? SHULMAN: First, we need to raise the minimum wage. As you said, Oprah, the minimum wage is at $5.15 an hour. WINFREY: That’s so crazy. SHULMAN: You can’t go to the store and buy a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk for that, let alone take care of your family. This November, several states will get the chance to vote to raise their minimum wage, including Arizona, California, Montana, Nevada, and Ohio. More info at the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center. UPDATE: More from the Notion. A full transcript of the segment is below: WINFREY: Beth Shulman is the former Vice President of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. She is the author of the book “The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans.” We were just saying when you came to sit here it makes you cry. I was saying, yeah it makes me cry, but I think it should make us want to do something. We should stop crying about it and do something about it. SHULMAN: Absolutely. The real tragedy — [applause] WINFREY: It’s a real tragedy. I think you’re absolutely right. This is what people need to know. This is why New Orleans happened. This is why it happened, because you have people who were working — service people — minimum wage jobs. Working people who didn’t have the resources to go anywhere. That’s the point. That’s the point. SHULMAN: Absolutely. And Katrina can be — is every city in the United States. WINFREY: Yes, yes. SHULMAN: Every city. And we can make different choices that ensure that the American dream is a reality for all these millions of Americans. WINFREY: And so what should we be doing? SHULMAN: First, we need to raise the minimum wage. As you said, Oprah, the minimum wage is at $5.15 an hour. WINFREY: That’s so crazy. SHULMAN: You can’t go to the store and buy a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk for that, let alone take care of your family. So we need to raise it. In states even here in Illinois, they have raised it above the federal level. WINFREY: But this is amazing to me. I don’t know. Maybe y’all can speak to this, Morgan and Alex. You have 30 million people who are living on minimum wage. Why wouldn’t this be a priority? Why wouldn’t this be a priority in government if you’ve got 30 million potential voters who are living on minimum wage? SHULMAN: Well, Americans really support a raise in the minimum wage, and there are campaigns across America in states like Michigan and Ohio and Arizona. SPURLOCK: It’s the corporations that don’t support a raise in the minimum wage. WINFREY: Yeah. SHULMAN: But Americans do, and that’s who we should speak for is Americans. So everyone here can go out and support the minimum wage hike. WINFREY: How? SHULMAN: Write your congressman and senator and say it’s time to have a raise in the minimum wage. WINFREY: But even if you raise the minimum wage, as was so — as we saw in Morgan’s piece, even if you raise the minimum wage and so you’re making $7 an hour, that still is not enough. SHULMAN: Absolutely. WINFREY: There seems to me to be a lack of — so the positions that you value the most as we’re saying for paramedics and teachers’ aides, people who are with your children, people who are in the hospital with your family, that there is no value placed on them. That seems to be askew. SHULMAN: That is the disconnect because these are the jobs that are the most essential jobs to our lives, like teachers’ aides and emergency techs and nursing home workers and childcare workers. These are central to all of our lives. Yet they are the ones that can’t make it. One of the things we can do is ensure that every American has health insurance. We have seen in every one of these stories people not having health insurance and then ending up in huge debt. WINFREY: In your case, you can’t have anything go wrong. SHULMAN: Absolutely. SPURLOCK: And the number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States isn’t credit cards. It’s health care.