This is from the July 29, 2003 program.
Daily Show Mess O’ Potamia Update (Small – 5 MB)
Of interest was the “Organization of Women’s Freedom In Iraq,” banner (below).
The Daily Show (The best news on television.)
Today is a sad day. It’s the day I felt compelled to start a “Revisionist History” category to keep track of articles in major news publications whose words have ben modified from their original printing to alter the meaning substantially — and without any word about the alterations.
The first time I took note of this was when MSNBC changed their story several times over a five day period regarding the attack on protesters at the West Oakland Docks in April.
Today’s posting is from the Washington Post. I’m totally bummed out about this one, because I like the Post and would like to be able to consider it a noteworthy “newspaper of record,” as they say. I do respect this newspaper, and I hope that someone over there will step up to the plate to explain to us how this could have happened, and hopefully assure us that it will not happen again.
Here’s the “before” story: White House Wants Baker to Head Iraq Reconstruction.
Here’s the completely overhauled “after” story: Bush Considers New Overhaul of Postwar Iraq Administration.
Notice that “Staff writer Vernon Loeb contributed to this report” in the original, yet “Staff writers Vernon Loeb and Rajiv Chandrasekaran contributed to this report” of the current version. Perhaps Chandrasekaran did the rewrite?
Here’s where the two versions have been compared side by side. (There’s a lot of other goodies on that page too.)
So there you have it. I’ve got a ton of other stuff going up today I’ve been working on all weekend…but this seemed pretty important.
(Thanks, Kevin)
Group: Cheney Task Force Eyed on Iraq Oil
By H. Josef Hebert for the Associated Press.
Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force appeared to have some interest in early 2001 in Iraq’s oil industry, including which foreign companies were pursuing business there, according to documents released Friday by a private watchdog group.
Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group, obtained a batch of task force-related Commerce Department papers that included a detailed map of Iraq’s oil fields, terminals and pipelines as well as a list entitled “Foreign Suitors of Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.”
The papers also included a detailed map of oil fields and pipelines in Saudi Arabia and in the United Arab Emirates and a list of oil and gas development projects in those two countries.
The papers were dated early March 2001, about two months before the Cheney energy task force completed and announced its report on the administration’s energy needs and future energy agenda.
Judicial Watch obtained the papers as part of a lawsuit by it and the Sierra Club to open to the public information used by the task force in developing President Bush’s energy plan.
David Miller has piped up again over on his blog, and it’s pretty interesting:
In Washington, The Recession Is Over
DC is booming because this year the federal government is pumping 9% more money into the local economy than it did last year. Welcome to wartime. I suspect most of the money is in the form of consulting contracts for homeland defense and DOD (what exactly does the Department of Defense defend now that we have a separate homeland defense agency?). As a result of this money Washington-area housing prices are up by 20% in a year, making all the middle-aged types euphoric and rich; a townhouse in Arlington worth $200,000 at the beginning of the Bush administration is worth $350-$400,000 now. Traffic is reaching LA levels but the place is, considering how the rest of the country is doing, almost indecently prosperous.
The strange part is that no one in DC seems to know that the national economy is stagnant; they assume the recession is ending because it is over in DC. My professional economist friends assumed, until we checked the bls.gov website, that the U.S. and DC unemployment rates were roughly the same. The local paper, the Washington Post, has almost no coverage on the national economy that would change their minds; all the coverage is about local real estate, housing prices, and new defense contracts.
And that leads to a curious disconnect between the capitol and the hinterland. Everyone in DC assumes Bush will win the 2004 election in a walk because the economy is better.
Create a new category:
Our nation’s capitol is undergoing a boom while the rest of the economy languishes. That fills the city with a strangely distorted view of the nation’s economy, the nation’s mood, and the prospects for the next election (more).
I lived in the Washington area for 19 years and still visit often. Today I’m just back from a week there. Almost everyone in Washington, including two professional economists I know, thinks the economy is “picking up”, and that the unemployment rate in DC is roughly at the national average. That was true 18 months ago, but is emphatically not true now.
Today the Washington-area unemployment rate is 3.4 %, roughly full employment, while the rest of the country struggles by with a 6% unemployment rate which stubbornly refuses to fall. Of the more than 300 metropolitan areas in the U.S., DC has the 32nd lowest unemployment rate, and all the places doing better are small towns. The next best showing by a big city is Atlanta, which has an unemployment rate almost 50% higher than DC.
DC is booming because this year the federal government is pumping 9% more money into the local economy than it did last year. Welcome to wartime. I suspect most of the money is in the form of consulting contracts for homeland defense and DOD (what exactly does the Department of Defense defend now that we have a separate homeland defense agency?). As a result of this money Washington-area housing prices are up by 20% in a year, making all the middle-aged types euphoric and rich; a townhouse in Arlington worth $200,000 at the beginning of the Bush administration is worth $350-$400,000 now. Traffic is reaching LA levels but the place is, considering how the rest of the country is doing,almost indecently prosperous.
The strange part is that no one in DC seems to know that the national economy is stagnant; they assume the recession is ending because it is over in DC. My professional economist friends assumed, until we checked the bls.gov website, that the U.S. and DC unemployment rates were roughly the same. The local paper, the Washington Post, has almost no coverage on the national economy that would change their minds; all the coverage is about local real estate, housing prices, and new defense contracts.
And that leads to a curious disconnect between the capitol and the hinterland. Everyone in DC assumes Bush will win the 2004 election in a walk because the economy is better. The local Democrats are in a panic. Maybe that’s why Dean is doing so well; he lives in a place with no jobs and a recession.
Last week the government unveiled the national “do not call”list; just go to donotcall.gov, sign up, and most of those annoying dinner-time calls trying to sell you a condo will stop. More than 500,000 people tried to sign up the first day. Everyone in DC was shocked; this was more than four times what they had expected. The government hurriedly quadrupled the number of computers handling the requests. Why were they so surprised? Well, I have a hint for you. My friends in the rich inner suburbs of Washington don’t seem to get these calls. The cold-callers aren’t fools; annoy the rest of the country at dinner, but not the people who make the decisions. In Washington cold-calls at dinner simply weren’t much of a problem.
Come election time the press and the permanent, prosperous governing class in Washington might just be in for a big surprise if the economy doesn’t pick up in places where the voters live and begin to match the rosy world where the opinion-makers live.
Pentagon may punish GIs who spoke out on TV
By Robert Collier for SF Gate.
But going public isn’t always easy, as soldiers of the Army’s Second Brigade, Third Infantry Division found out after “Good Morning America” aired their complaints.
The brigade’s soldiers received word this week from the Pentagon that it was extending their stay, with a vague promise to send them home by September if the security situation allows. They’ve been away from home since September, and this week’s announcement was the third time their mission has been extended.
It was bad news for the division’s 12,000 homesick soldiers, who were at the forefront of the force that overthrew Saddam Hussein’s government and moved into Baghdad in early April.
On Wednesday morning, when the ABC news show reported from Fallujah, where the division is based, the troops gave the reporters an earful. One soldier said he felt like he’d been “kicked in the guts, slapped in the face.” Another demanded that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld quit.
The retaliation from Washington was swift.
CAREERS OVER FOR SOME
“It was the end of the world,” said one officer Thursday. “It went all the way up to President Bush and back down again on top of us. At least six of us here will lose our careers.”…
“Our morale is not high or even low,” the letter said. “Our morale is nonexistent. We have been told twice that we were going home, and twice we have received a ‘stop’ movement to stay in Iraq.”…
Yet several U.S. officers said privately that troop morale is indeed low. “The problem is not the heat,” said one high-ranking officer. “Soldiers get used to that. The problem is getting orders to go home, so your wife gets all psyched about it, then getting them reversed, and then having the same process two more times.”
In Baghdad, average soldiers from other Army brigades are eager to spill similar complaints.
“I’m not sure people in Washington really know what it’s like here,” said Corp. Todd Burchard as he stood on a street corner, sweating profusely and looking bored. “We’ll keep doing our jobs as best as anyone can, but we shouldn’t have to still be here in the first place.”
Nearby, Pfc. Jason Ring stood next to his Humvee. “We liberated Iraq. Now the people here don’t want us here, and guess what? We don’t want to be here either,” he said. “So why are we still here? Why don’t they bring us home?”
Squandering Capital
By Madeleine K. Albright for the Washington Post.
(Madeleine K. Albright was secretary of state from 1997 to 2001.)
Three years ago, America had vast diplomatic capital based on the goodwill we enjoyed around the world, and vast financial capital based on our international economic leadership and a record budget surplus. Now our capital of all kinds has been dissipated and we are left with more intractable dilemmas than resources or friends.
As someone who has served in positions of responsibility, I know it is much harder to devise practical solutions from the inside than to offer theoretical solutions from the outside. The nature of today’s world, not the Bush administration, is responsible for the majority of problems we face. I would be less concerned, however, if I thought the administration was learning as it went along — learning how to attract broader international support for its policies, make better use of neglected diplomatic tools, share responsibility, be more careful with the truth, finish what it starts and devise economic policies consonant with America’s global role.
The quickest way to a more effective national security policy is to acknowledge the need for improvement; until that happens, we will continue to slide backward toward ever more dangerous ground.
CBS News has created a nice little round up of news information about the various horrible situations going on in Iraq and abroad.
Makes me wonder what CBS news has been like on TV lately. Looks like I’ll have to start checking out “Face The Nation.”
More Death In Baghdad
By the staff of CBS News.
Documents from Vice President Dick Cheney’s 2001 energy task force include a map of Iraq’s oilfields and a list of international oil companies labeled “foreign suitors for Iraqi oilfield contracts.” The panel also had similar maps and lists for other oil-producing states. Their purpose to the task force was unclear. The documents were obtained by Judicial Watch, a nonprofit group suing to force the release of task force documents.
Saddam is believed to be alive and probably hiding in Iraq, but is not orchestrating the daily attacks on American troops, says L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. administrator in the occupied country.
Bremer said Americans should prepare for a long stay in Iraq.
“It’s clear that, given the size of the task, we’re going to be there for a while,” he said Sunday on NBC. “I don’t know how many years.”
A Pentagon advisory panel suggested last week that coalition troops will need to remain in Iraq for at least two to five years to back up fledgling, postwar Iraqi police and military organizations.
This is why I keep archives guys.
Here’s the original link: “Rescued POW put up fierce fight” — as blogged previously.
Jessica Lynch, rescued Tuesday from an Iraqi hospital, fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldiers after Iraqi forces ambushed the Army
“Bring ‘Em On?”
A Former Special Forces Soldier Responds to Bush’s Invitation for Iraqis to Attack US Troops
By By Stan Goff for Counterpunch.
Yesterday, when I read that US Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush, in a moment of blustering arm-chair machismo, sent a message to the ‘non-existent’ Iraqi guerrillas to “bring ’em on,” the first image in my mind was a 20-year-old soldier in an ever-more-fragile marriage, who’d been away from home for 8 months. He participated in the initial invasion, and was told he’d be home for the 4th of July. He has a newfound familiarity with corpses, and everything he thought he knew last year is now under revision. He is sent out into the streets of Fallujah (or some other city), where he has already been shot at once or twice with automatic weapons or an RPG, and his nerves are raw. He is wearing Kevlar and ceramic body armor, a Kevlar helmet, a load carrying harness with ammunition, grenades, flex-cuffs, first-aid gear, water, and assorted other paraphernalia. His weapon weighs seven pounds, ten with a double magazine. His boots are bloused, and his long-sleeve shirt is buttoned at the wrist. It is between 100-110 degrees Fahrenheit at midday. He’s been eating MRE’s three times a day, when he has an appetite in this heat, and even his urine is beginning to smell like preservatives. Mosquitoes and sand flies plague him in the evenings, and he probably pulls a guard shift every night, never sleeping straight through. He and his comrades are beginning to get on each others’ nerves. The rumors of ‘going-home, not-going-home’ are keeping him on an emotional roller coaster. Directives from on high are contradictory, confusing, and often stupid. The whole population seems hostile to him and he is developing a deep animosity for Iraq and all its people–as well as for official narratives.
Did the Shrub actually dare the Iraqi Militants “To Come And Get Our Troops?”
No, not quite. He only said “Bring them on.”
But it’s still pretty tasteless and inappropriate if you ask me. (Not that anyone did.)
It’s bad enough that we rushed over there without properly training our troops in how do deal with post-battle civil matters in urban areas.
It’s even worse that, two months after we tell them the hard part’s over and promise to send them home to their families, it turns out that we’re actually going to send even more of our boys and girls over there (and without telling us why it’s necessary exactly – or who we’re even fighting).
But that’s not all folks! On top of everything else, our “President” and Commander in Chief has pridefully encouraged this latest nameless, faceless enemy to give us the best they got.
Is this the new Rambo movie? Nope. This is reality, folks. This is the United States of American in the year 2003.
Let’s make this next year the last for the Shrub Regime. For GW, Jeb, or any other relatives of theirs we haven’t heard about yet that they might be saving for future elections.
Bush Taking Heat for ‘Bring Them On’ Remark
By Steve Holland for Reuters.
President Bush has used colorful language before to great effect, but he is taking some heat for his “Bring them on” challenge to Iraqi militants attacking U.S. forces, who he said were tough enough to take it.
Even some aides winced at Bush’s words, which Democrats pounced on as an invitation to Iraqi militants to fire on U.S. troops already the subject of hit-and-run attacks by Saddam Hussein loyalists and others.
“These men and women are risking their lives every day, and the president who sent them on this mission showed tremendous insensitivity to the dangers they face,” said Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean.
Another Democratic presidential candidate, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, said condemned the comment, saying, “The deteriorating situation in Iraq requires less swagger and more thoughtfulness and statesmanship.”