Surprise: U.S. Intel on Iran Wrong

    This shouldn't surprise anyone but it's sad that this story in today's Los Angeles Times isn't banner news in every paper:

U.N. calls U.S. data on Iran's nuclear aims unreliable

Tips about supposed secret weapons sites and documents with missile designs haven't panned out, diplomats say.

By Bob Drogin and Kim Murphy, Times Staff Writers

Although international concern is growing about Iran's nuclear program and its regional ambitions, diplomats here say most U.S. intelligence shared with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency has proved inaccurate and none has led to significant discoveries inside Iran.

The officials said the CIA and other Western spy services had provided sensitive information to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency at least since 2002, when Iran's long-secret nuclear program was exposed. But none of the tips about supposed secret weapons sites provided clear evidence that the Islamic Republic was developing illicit weapons.

"Since 2002, pretty much all the intelligence that's come to us has proved to be wrong," a senior diplomat at the IAEA said. Another official here described the agency's intelligence stream as "very cold now" because "so little panned out."

The reliability of U.S. information and assessments on Iran is increasingly at issue as the Bush administration confronts the emerging regional power on several fronts: its expanding nuclear effort, its alleged support for insurgents in Iraq and its backing of Middle East militant groups.

    This story will, of course, piss of the Administration because it will undercut its saber-rattling.

 

Just Use The Word "Liar"

    This is worth a chuckle. Today's article in The New York Times on the clear threat of global warming as two paragraphs that are quite amusing and jarring. First...:

At the same time, Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman rejected the idea of unilateral limits on emissions. “We are a small contributor to the overall, when you look at the rest of the world, so it’s really got to be a global solution,” he said.

    Followed closely by:

The United States, with about 5 percent of the world’s population, contributes about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, more than any other country.

    Another way the second graf could have read would be: Bodman, you liar. I'm not sure that was the intention of the reporters but it sure read that way to me. And it's the truth.

Molly Leaves Us

    Molly Ivins died yesterday. I'm not sure I can say anything original about what a terrible loss this is (here's the AP story). Her loss is so big, in large part, because she exposed, with her regular writing, how weak and subservient the mainstream media is. Ivins told the truth, and with humor. Here's a snippet from a great column, in which she tore into the Democratic Party:

“The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes. The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?”

    We lost a great voice.

Dobbs v. Reich: I'll Take Dobbs

    If you ever wondered what will happen if there is a change in political power in Washington D.C., there was no better reason to fear the future after watching last night’s “debate” on Larry King Live between Lou Dobbs, former Republican-turned-crusader for the middle class, and Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary in the Clinton Administration. Dobbs was the populist rebelling against abusive corporate power and the off-shoring of jobs, while Reich was the elitist defending the ruling class’ so-called “free trade” ideas and minimizing outsourcing of jobs. I kid you not.

    I had tuned in to hear a bit about Dobbs’ new jeremiad about the assault against the middle class, outlined in his new book, “War on the Middle Class, How the Government, Big Business and Special Interest Groups are Waging war on the American Dream and How to Fight Back.” I am uneasy about some of Dobbs’ views on immigration. But, his main thesis is that—duh—abusive corporate power is at the heart of the attack on the middle class. In particular, he rails against outsourcing, as he has for a long time on his daily program, arguing that corporations have no allegiance to its workers and are simply searching for the biggest profits. Duh.

    Check this out: “Now, there are Democrats and Republicans out there saying, ‘What in the world are you talking about?’ The fact is that both parties are owned lock, stock, and barrel by corporate America and U.S. multinationals. And, if you examine their funding or where they stand with their platforms, where in the United States Congress do you find representation for the middle class today? There is $2.4 billion being spent by corporate America and special interests and social special interests in this country to persuade your lawmakers and mine to vote in whatever way is most amenable to them but not you and me.” And later: “Corporate America and special interests own, as I said, absolutely without equivocation the legislative process and the electoral process and we've got to come to terms with that reality.”

    This is a pure and simple fact. Can you point to any Democrat who is speaking this truth in any political race, a truth that so many voters are articulating in their obvious disgust with a political system that is not coping with the grave diplomatic, economic and environmental crisis gripping our country?

    But, the most interesting part of last night’s debate, I believe, is that the show’s producers dug up Reich to be the counterpoint to Dobbs. Since the economic facts are indisputable, Reich agreed with Dobbs that the middle class was being shafted and the rich are making out like bandits but he minimized the effect of outsourcing. Instead, Reich continued to promote his drivel that the solution to our problem is education. Reich’s mantra for many years effectively blames the victim (no wonder he served in the Clinton Administration): you’re too dumb to compete in today’s global economy.

    The most revealing moment of the debate happened when Reich, a supporter of so-called “free trade” (let us not forget that he helped push NAFTA through) tried to pull a fast one: “We are losing manufacturing jobs, but it’s not just globalization that’s causing it. We’re losing them because of technology. Even, Lou, if we were so rash as to put a -- and we could put a big iron curtain around the United States and not trade with anybody, we would still be losing manufacturing jobs because of technology.”

    To his credit, Dobbs would not let Reich use that sleazy smear. “Robert Reich, don’t you do one of those Bush administration things and set polar extremes in an argument, and suggest that those Hobson’s choices are our only policies.”

    Actually, the point is that Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to tar opponents of so-called “free trade” as “protectionists” who simply don’t want to accept the “reality” of the global economy. The bi-partisan embrace of education or skills competition is simply a way of deflecting attention from the threat of corporate power. Dobbs has the guts to say so. Reich does not.

    As I’ve written before, no one is saying that education is a bad thing in the abstract. And certainly it will help some workers get a better job. But a degree in software engineering is the wrong answer to the global economy because it addresses the wrong question—how do workers compete when skills are a sideshow to the relentless hammering down of wages? In the real world, the global economy is about one thing: labor costs. If a company can move to China to employ workers making 35 cents an hour—whoosh, they are gone from America. High-tech jobs have been moving offshore for years, first to places like Ireland, and now to India.

    The world is awash in highly skilled, highly educated and cheap workers. The hard fact is that in virtually every industry, foreign workers across the globe are increasingly as skilled and productive as American workers. India, for example, has a highly trained, highly skilled workforce capable of pumping out new software, industrial design and other new technological innovations. In India, the starting salary of a software engineer is about $5,000, and senior engineers make $15,000; the country has at least half a million information technology professionals eager to work for wages that are a fraction of the going rate here.

    I’ve always argued that education is a good thing and it may even help some workers get a better job. But a degree in software engineering is the wrong answer to the global economy because it addresses the wrong question—how do workers compete when skills are a sideshow to the relentless hammering down of wages? And neither Dobbs nor Reich ever uttered the word “unions” when it came to talking about the most obvious point: the labor movement built the middle class and the labor movement’s  obliteration is the chief reason for the shredding of a decent standard of living.

    If you asked me who I’d rather have figuring out the Democrats’ future policies, I’d choose Dobbs in a heartbeat. He has some big weaknesses—but he can be helped. Reich, though, is, and has always been, an elitist. And that should be worrisome to all average Americans who are searching for political leadership to lead us out of the economic morass we face.

We Need A Ceasefire Now

    Did anyone see the picture in The New York Times of the dead baby with the hand of her mother, with her wedding band on, sticking out from the rubble in Lebanon? It made me weep.

The Bloodshed Continues

    There is enough blame to spread around if you want to find a villian in the most recent bloodletting in the Middle East. Part of the problem is that there is almost no debate in the U.S. about a more even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestine conflict. Here's a voice from Israel that shows that, inside Israel, many people are questioning the country's response to the recent developments, including Yossi Sarid, a respected legislator from Meretz, a left-of-center party:

Until American enlightenment brings the world its redemption, it is destroying it and "innocent people" continue to be blown up in Mumbai, in London, in Madrid and everywhere else. Never was there a World Cup of blood such as the one that began with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, where 50 people are murdered each day in the capital alone.

From overuse, Israel, too, lost its regional deterrent capability. A pistol that is aimed and in a safe mode is in most cases more threatening and deterring than a pistol that fires all the time and only rarely hits the target. For example, people continue to suggest that we deliver a crushing blow to Beirut. But we were in Beirut not so long ago and conquered it lock, stock and barrel, and very quickly it sent us packing. What will the aerial bombardments do now that the ground occupation did not do before? The noise of the tanks, preparing for a renewed incursion, sends shivers up my spine and makes me break out in a cold sweat.

Deterrent capability consists not only of military might, but also of moral might. After all, Bush himself, and not the defeatist bleeding hearts, often talks in the name of the Moral Majority and world morality and cites it as the culmination of his vision. The trouble is that you cannot set rules of behavior and serve as an example to others when your own soldiers are daily attacking people who have done no wrong, torturing prisoners, sending suspects to "black holes" that are as far as East from West, and holding detainees indefinitely without judicial review. The president himself is violating human and civil rights by ordering mass wiretapping, by the wholesale penetration of private bank accounts and by unrestrained assaults on journalists who are faithfully doing their job. Most of these phenomena are of course not foreign to Israel, which encountered difficulties when, in the biblical metaphor, it did the deed of Zimri and demanded the reward of Pinhas.

This is not deterrence; this is joining the evildoers and strengthening them and their arguments. I am not ideologically opposed to the use of force when needed, and woe to us if our force fails us. I do not represent pacifists, not even individuals who refuse to do army service, and I have never represented them. I am still trying to represent acquired skepticism and to speak in favor of perplexity and in condemnation of whitewash. We have too many whitewashers in the government and in the General Staff.

Amid all the militant machismo, the voice of moderation must also be raised and heard, and it says now that force alone will simply not cut it. It is better for the ministers and officers to remember what Gaza did to us in the past 40 years and what Beirut did to us, and what Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan and Somalia did and are doing to powerful America - and to calm down. It is best to arrive at the crucial meetings calm and sober-eyed....

Iraq is destroyed, Afghanistan is destroyed, the Gaza Strip is destroyed and soon Beirut will be destroyed for the umpteenth time, and hundreds of billions of dollars are being invested solely in the vain war against the side that always loses and therefore has nothing more to lose. And hundreds of billions more go down the tubes of corruption.

Maybe the time has come to put the pistol into safety mode for a moment, back into the holster, and at high noon declare a worldwide Marshall Plan, so that the eternal losers will finally have something to lose. Only then will it be possible to isolate the viruses of violence and terrorism, for which quiet is quagmire and which in our eyes are themselves quagmire. And once isolated, it will be possible to eradicate them one day.

    Read the entire piece here.

 

Memorial Day Chicken Hawks

    I published this last year and I think I'll make it a habit:

Recognizing who served:

Democrats * Richard Gephardt: Air National Guard, 1965-71.
Tom Daschle: 1st Lt., Air Force SAC 1969-72.
Al Gore: enlisted Aug. 1969; sent to Vietnam Jan. 1971 as an army journalist in 20th Engineer Brigade.
Daniel Inouye: Army 1943-'47; Medal of Honor, WWII.
John Kerry: Lt., Navy 1966-70; Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V Purple Hearts.
Charles Rangel: Staff Sgt., Army 1948-52; Bronze Star, Korea.
Max Cleland: Captain, Army 1965-68; Silver Star & Bronze Star, Vietnam.
Ted Kennedy: Army, 1951-1953.
Tom Harkin: Lt., Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74.
Jack Reed: Army Ranger, 1971-1979; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91.
George McGovern: Silver Star & DFC during WWII.
Bill Clinton: Did not serve. Student deferments. Entered draft but received 311.
Jimmy Carter: Seven years in the Navy.
Walter Mondale: Army 1951-1953
John Glenn: WWII and Korea; six DFCs and Air Medal with 18 Clusters.
Wesley Clark: U.S. Army, 1966-2000, West Point, Vietnam, Purple Heart, Silver Star. Retired 4-star general.
John Conyers: Army 1950-57, Korea

Republicans
Dennis Hastert: did not serve.
Tom Delay: did not serve.
House Whip Roy Blunt: did not serve.
Bill Frist: did not serve.
Rudy Giuliani: did not serve.
George Pataki: did not serve.
Mitch McConnell: did not serve.
Rick Santorum: did not serve.
Trent Lott: did not serve.
Dick Cheney: did not serve. Several deferments, the last by marriage.
John Ashcroft: did not serve. Seven deferments to teach business.
Jeb Bush: did not serve.
Karl Rove: did not serve.
Saxby Chambliss: did not serve. "Bad knee." The man who attacked Max Cleland's patriotism.
Paul Wolfowitz: did not serve.
Richard Perle: did not serve.
Douglas Feith: did not serve.
Eliot Abrams: did not serve.
Richard Shelby: did not serve.
Jon Kyl: did not serve.
Newt Gingrich: did not serve.
Don Rumsfeld: served in Navy (1954-57) as aviator and flight instructor.
George W. Bush: six-year Nat'l Guard commitment (in four).
Ronald Reagan: due to poor eyesight, served in a non-combat role making movies.
Gerald Ford: Navy, WWII
John McCain: Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross.
Chuck Hagel: two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star, Vietnam.

Pundits & Preachers
Sean Hannity: did not serve.
Rush Limbaugh: did not serve (4-F with a 'pilonidal cyst.')
Bill O'Reilly: did not serve.
Michael Savage: did not serve.
George Will: did not serve.
Chris Matthews: did not serve.
Bill Bennett: did not serve.
Pat Buchanan: did not serve.
Bill Kristol: did not serve.

Who Gave The Order To Bar Bove?

    Here's an item that might escape peoples' notice because it was buried deep inside The New York Times and probably will not get covered by the rest of the MSM:

French Activist Denied Entry to United States, Cornell Says
By JENNIFER 8. LEE

A leading French antiglobalism activist, scheduled to speak at a conference co-sponsored by Cornell University, was denied entry into the United States at Kennedy International Airport yesterday, Cornell officials said.

José Bové, who has attracted worldwide attention for his protests against fast food and free trade, arrived on a flight from France but was put on a 10:55 p.m. flight back to France, officials of the United States Customs and Border Protection agency said.

The reason, one official said, was that Mr. Bové had a record of criminal convictions and therefore was not eligible for the visa-waiver program that allows visitors from many European countries to enter the United States using only their passports.

Mr. Bové, 52, had served time for several protest activities, including episodes where he smashed windows of a McDonald's near his home in 1999, damaged a field of genetically modified rice in 1999, and destroyed a field of gene-modified crops in 1998.

Mr. Bové had been scheduled to speak at the Global Unions Conference, which begins today in New York City, said Sean Sweeney, director of Cornell's Global Labor Institute and an organizer of the conference. The conference, with 300 participants from 55 countries, focused on how union organizers had to develop international strategies to combat the rising multinational corporations and the globalization of finance.

Mr. Bové had planned to meet with Joseph Stiglitz, the former chief economist of the World Bank who has been a critic of globalization.

Thomas W. Bruce, a spokesman for Cornell University, said, "When researchers and scholars are denied first-hand experience and world experiences about the issues at hand of this conference, then we all lose."

    The question is: how high up did the decision to deny Bove entrance go? His participation was publicly known. With so-called "free trade" under attack and Bove one of its most visible opponents, it's entirely likely that the decision to deny Bove entry was made by someone more senior than some customs officer at the airport.

 

The Cost of War

      Today, the Administration is still trying to spin the vote on the Iraqi constitution--but no matter how it comes out, this war remains an unmitigated disaster. In fact, we don't see, in the comfort of the U.S., the horrors of the war--and the language that obscures its devastation.    

    We read today about the U.S. airstrikes against "insurgents" that killed at least 70 people--and, yet, it appears likely that many, if not the majority of the killed, were civilians. Here's what the military says: "All the attacks were timed and executed in a manner to reduce the possibility of collateral damage," the military statement read, saying that there were no reports of civilian casualties.    

    The New York Times account tells us this: "But according to witness accounts at least 39 of those killed by the raids were civilians. The Associated Press, citing a local tribal leader and other village residents, reported that the people near the wreckage of the American vehicle destroyed by a roadside bomb on Saturday were not insurgents planting more explosives but civilian onlookers. Several of those killed in the raid on the safe house were also civilians, The A.P. reported."    

    Collateral damage: it's a euphemism for killing people who inconveniently got in the way. It's an inevitable outcome of sophisticated and overwhelming firepower being trained on cities and villages where people live. Young men and women are being ordered  to carry out these missions on behalf of a immoral policy that is scarring the region and our country.

    Which leads me to offer this report from the Institute for Policy Studies which catalogues the cost of the war.

The War

     Today, hundreds of thousands of people will march in protest against the war in Iraq. Someone I know has a son serving in Iraq. This pic of a bumper sticker on her car says it all.