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UPDATES: May 26, 2004
Dear Friends,
Bush's speech. The military budget. Arming the militias of Fallujah.
Amid all this bad news, we have to report a piece of very sad news. David Dellinger passed away yesterday. He was almost 90.
In the mainstream, Dave is probably best known for his stunning autobiography From Yale to Jail, but the scope of his activism and his impact on all of us can hardly be contained in a book.
For more than sixty years, Dave Dellinger was at the forefront of movements for peace and social justice. He was a conscientious objector to World War II, serving a prison sentence as a result. He was an early activist against the nuclear arms race. During the 1950s and 1960s, Dellinger joined freedom marches in the South and led many hunger strikes in jail. His leadership in the anti-war protests at the 1968 Democratic convention led to his indictment as one of the Chicago Eight in the famous "conspiracy" trial. He was a student of nonviolence, and sought to apply Gandhian principles to work in the United States.
Through all this resistance to war and injustice, Dave and his wife Elizabeth Peterson raised a family and built community with friends and fellow travelers to try and create the new society in the shell of the old.
Dave's passing is a loss to us all. It is also a moment that demands action, as we seek to continue the work to which he dedicated his life.
To offer condolences, write to Elizabeth Peterson c/o Toward Freedom, PO Box 468, Burlington, VT 05402.
In this update:
PROLOGUE: Bush's Speech
I. Lobbyists Bankrolling Politics
II. High Crimes and Boondoggles
III. Year of the Troops
IV. Colombia Update
V. Depleted Morality
PROLOGUE:
Bush Needs a Twelve Step Program, Not a Five-Step Plan
By William D. Hartung
President Bush's May 24th speech on his administration's five-step plan for a transition to sovereignty and democracy in Iraq was highly persuasive, if you happened to have spent the past year in a soundproof room, sealed off from even the faintest whiff of reality. But for those of us who have been paying even intermittent attention, it was far too little, far too late.
The central issue at hand is the president's credibility. After two years of spin, dissembling, and outright lies about Iraq's great and gathering arsenal of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and Saddam Hussein's ties to Al Qaeda, the Bush crowd abruptly changed their rationale for going to war there. No longer had we risked lives and treasure to displace an imminent threat to national security. Instead, it ends up, we had cast Saddam Hussein into the dust bin of history in service of a breathtaking mission to spread democracy in the Middle East and beyond. This was supposed to have collateral security benefits, as the flowering of democracy eventually undermined support for Al Qaeda and other global terror groups, at some indeterminate date in the future.
The photos of torture at Abu Ghraib prison- and it was torture, no matter what verbal gymnastics Donald Rumsfeld chooses to perform- have cast serious doubt on the latest rationale for the war. In Iraq, throughout the Arab world, and even among America's closest allies elsewhere, the torture photos send a message of disrespect for Iraqi life that seems incompatible with treating Iraqis as democratic citizens worthy of the fundamental rights and responsibilities of self-governance. Recent polls indicate that 90% of Iraqis view American troops as occupiers, not liberators, while a majority of Americans are finally starting to wonder what on earth the Bush administration thinks it is doing there.
As we now know, the cavalier disregard for international law and basic human decency suggested by the torture photos starts at the top, with President Bush, his top legal advisors, and Donald Rumsfeld and his merry band of yes men at the Pentagon. If this scandal is a about a "few bad apples," as the Bush PR machine would have us believe, those apples are at the top of the tree, not the bottom, and their names are Bush, Cheney, Gonzalez, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith and Cambone.
The Abu Ghraib scandal draws together all that is wrong with the Bush Doctrine in one deadly but concise package: 1) arrogance bordering on megalomania: 2) failure to take into account the history, culture, or dynamics of the society being acted upon; 3) poor coordination and confused lines of authority; and 4) a congenital inability to acknowledge or learn from past mistakes.
This was the context for the President's speech, whose only genuine applause line was a promise to build a new prison and tear down Abu Ghraib, if the new Iraqi government was amenable to the plan. Talk about diminished expectations- "Operation Iraqi Freedom: Better Prisons, Thanks To American Intervention!" - not exactly a slogan designed to launch armies, or staunch the President's sliding approval ratings.
It will take a lot more than five steps and six speeches to restore George W. Bush's credibility on Iraq in particular and foreign policy in general. What he really needs is a twelve-step program, to roll back his administration's parallel addictions to aggressive unilateralism and excessive secrecy.
Firing Donald Rumsfeld at this late date is probably besides the point, but heads should roll among the neo-con implementers of Rumsfeld's Iraq policy, including Paul Wolfowitz, his chief deputy, who was apparently so busy thinking big thoughts that he couldn't even tell a Congressional committee how many U.S. military personnel had lost their lives in the Iraq war he helped to start; Douglas Feith, the raving ideologue who has been the Pentagon's point man for overseeing the unbelievably inept Iraq rebuilding process; and Stephen Cambone, who may well have "set the conditions" for orders to be sent down the chain that led to the Abu Ghraib abuses.
The State Department should be given a much more robust role in running U.S. policy towards the rebuilding of Iraq, in conjunction with the United Nations and key U.S. allies.
The Bush administration should invite United Nations inspectors back into Iraq to find out what they can about the state of Iraq's weapons programs. They should also press for an international tribunal to deal with war crimes committed by Saddam Hussein's regime rather than the current partisan body run by Ahmed Chalabi's nephew, Salem Chalabi.
The administration should openly renounce any designs on long-term U.S. bases in Iraq, and announce a date certain for a U.S. troop pullout. That date should be measured in months and years, not years and decades. The absurd investment law that was rammed through by Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority, which allows 100% of any Iraqi industry other than oil to be owned by foreign interests, should be repealed to make room for arrangements that will allow room for the flowering of indigenous Iraqi businesses. Future rebuilding contracts should be open to genuine competition, with preferences for Iraqi-owned concerns.
The administration should re-think its plan to embed U.S. advisors in each and every ministry of the transitional Iraqi government with veto power over major decisions.
In short, instead of the narrow, aggressive, "with us or against us" approach that got the U.S. into Iraq, the United States should pursue a genuine change of course that suggests that "we're all in this together." That would mean giving up its role as "occupier-in-chief" in Iraq and sharing political, economic, and military power with allies, the United Nations, and indigenous Iraqis who suffered under Saddam Hussein's rule.
Obviously, this kind of "about face" in U.S. policy would be more likely to occur if there were to be a "regime change" in Washington in November 2004 that sent the neo-cons and their imperial dreams packing. There would still be plenty of work to do to get John "Stay the Course" Kerry to disengage from Iraq rather than burrow in deeper, but at least advocates Iraqi independence for U.S. occupation wouldn't have to contend with the ideological rigidity of the Cheney/Feith/Wolfowitz "axis of arrogance."
Would it be too much to ask Bush and Cheney to make one of the six speeches on Iraq a joint appearance, akin to their meeting with the Congressional 9/11 commission, at which they take a page from Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam era address and announce that "we shall not seek, nor will we accept, the nominations of our party to be the President and Vice President of the United States of America?" Just wishful thinking - but no more wishful than Bush's claim that he has a workable five step plan for bringing sovereignty, security, and democracy to Iraq.
I. Lobbyists Bankrolling Politics
Bush gets nearly four times as much as Kerry
The Center for Public Integrity, a hugely important organization in a time when integrity is a sort of anachronism in Washington, has issued a new analysis of lobbying.
They find that more than 1,300 registered lobbyists have given slightly more than $1.8 million to President George W. Bush over the last six years. The Center compared the donations of all registered lobbyists from 1998 through March 2004. Sen. John Kerry received $520,000 from 442 lobbyists during the same period.
Several of the lobbyists donating to Bush also raise funds for the president. The campaign Web site's directory of volunteer fundraisers lists more than 550 so-called bundlers: Mavericks, who raise $50,000, Pioneers, who raise $100,000 and Rangers, who raise $200,000.
Of these, the Center found, 52 lobbyists - who have together raised more than $6 million for Bush's reelection - represent more than 800 organizations and companies. Since Bush's election as president, their firms have reported billing these clients $146 million for lobbying.
Read their whole study online at www.PublicIntegrity.org
II. High Crimes and Boondoggles
Amid all the other corporate crimes, Boeing's controversial (and very costly) plan to lease tankers to the Air Force for billions more than it would cost the Service to buy them outright, stinks to high heaven. The proposal is worth $23.5 billion to the company.
It is even stinkier because the Air Force does not need the planes, as a new study from the Defense Science Board makes incontrovertibly clear.
"There is no compelling material or financial reason to initiate a replacement program" before studying alternatives and how the military will use the planes in the future. A summary of the Defense Science Board report, which was made available to Congress in mid May, is online at www.POGO.org
The Arms Trade Resource Center has tracked this issue carefully. Read our earlier commentaries:
The Nation
Making Money on Terrorism
William D. Hartung, February 23, 2004.
In These Times
Who They Know: Boeing's ties bloat government budgets
Frida Berrigan, September 19, 2003.
III. The Year of the Troops?
By Frida Berrigan
A version of this commentary can also be found online at CommonDreams.org
"This is the year of the troops," said Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA) as the House passed a $447 billion military budget yesterday.
He is right... in a sense. The budget includes a 3.5% pay increase for troops, a raise in the "hazard" rate for troops subject to hostile fire from $150 to $225 per month, and additional funds for body armor and other protective gear. The House also approved $25 billion more for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, putting war spending at more than $170 billion (and counting).
The $25 billion is just a down payment on war spending for the coming year. Testifying before Congress on May 13, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost more than $50 billion next year, saying "If you look at our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's a big bill." But Wolfowitz is still "low-balling" the cost. Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), the chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee, expects next year's cost to be $75 billion. Democrats on the House Budget Committee calculate the war price tag as ranging from $67 billion to $79 billion, based on current spending reports by the Defense Department.
Given the dangers in Iraq and the Bush administration's unwillingness to heed calls for rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops, these funds are certainly needed.
But, the cost of these troop measures just crumbs compared to the truckloads of bread being given to defense contractors. The House approved billions for Cold War era systems that appear to have no function but to buoy the profit margins of large weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and Boeing. The Senate is not likely to pass its version of the military budget until after the Memorial Day break- but the disparities will be similar.
The House approved $11 billion in funds for three separate and equally unnecessary fighter plane programs and another $10.2 billion for the useless and unworkable Ballistic Missile Defense program. A closer look at the military budget for 2005 might lead to the conclusion that this is not the year of the troops, but the year of Lockheed Martin.
Lockheed Martin saw its share of Pentagon contracts soar between 2002 and 2003, from $17 billion to almost $22 billion-- an increase of 28%. And the 2005 budget passed by the House just means more.
Lockheed Martin is present in most major lines of Pentagon business. It makes the Paveway GBU-12 and 16 laser-guided bomb kits used in Iraq and Afghanistan. The company is the lead contractor in two of the three of the major new fighter plane programs funded in the 2005 budget-- F-22 fighter funded at $3.6 billion and the Joint Strike Fighter funded at $4.6 billion. In addition, the company is involved in multiple aspects of the administration's missile defense program - which has consumed more than $200 billion in tax dollars in the last two decades without producing a single workable system.
Meanwhile, in the non-war part of the budget, the word is millions, not billions. The Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development was happy to tell Congress yesterday that he had found an extra $150 million to help poor Americans pay their rent.
The program- known as Section 8- was cut by about $270 million last month, endangering 1.9 million Americans who depend on the subsidy. The Bush administration calls the cut a "regulatory change," but the end result is the same—more people on the street.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities these cuts are just the beginning. President Bush's fiscal year 2005 budget calls for cutting the voucher program by more than $1.6 billion, with the cut rising to $4.6 billion (or 30 percent) by 2009.
Robert Greenstein, the executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, notes that if enacted, the cuts would be the deepest "in any low-income program since the early years of the Reagan Administration."
Many U.S. troops serving in Iraq come from low-income backgrounds. Even taking into account the $75 a month Congress has added to their hazard pay, it is likely that (if they return alive) they will return poor and seeking assistance from the Section 8 program now on the chopping block in Washington.
In light of this, it might be more accurate to say that this is the "year of the homeless troops."
IV. Colombia Update
In our last email update, we sent an action alert Colombia. The House was voting on whether to keep the troop and contractor cap in place. Because of our calls (and countless others) the House did just that.
In the Senate version of the bill, the Senate Armed Services Committee raised the cap to 800 troops and 600 contractors, nearly double the current level. The full Senate will vote on the bill when they return from the Memorial Day recess, probably the week of June 1st.
It's unlikely that anyone in the Senate will offer an amendment to lower the cap, but LAWG is asking people to contact senators, urging them to speak out against increased US military involvement in Colombia-- and ensure that the lower House version of the cap makes it into the final bill.
For more information on what is happening in Congress with regards to Colombia, visit LAWG's site at www.LAWG.org
V. In These Times
Depleted Morality: The first signs of uranium sickness surface in troops returning from Iraq by Frida Berrigan, May 31, 2004.
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