E-Vote Software Leaked Online

Wired News
By Kim Zetter
Oct. 29, 2003 PT

Software used by an electronic voting system manufactured by Sequoia Voting Systems has been left unprotected on a publicly available server, raising concerns about the possibility of vote tampering in future elections.

The software, made available at ftp.jaguar.net, is stored on an FTP server owned by Jaguar Computer Systems, a firm that provides election support to a California county. The software is used for placing ballots on voting kiosks and for storing and tabulating results for the Sequoia AVC Edge touch-screen system.

The security breach means that anyone with a minimal amount of technical knowledge could see how the code works and potentially exploit it. According to a computer programmer who discovered the unprotected server, the files also contain Visual Basic script and code for voting system databases that could allow someone to learn how to rig voting results. The programmer spoke on condition of anonymity.

Jaguar blocked public access to the FTP site late Wednesday. Representatives from Jaguar did not return calls for comment.

Sequoia said it was disturbed that the proprietary code had been accessed in an "inappropriate manner," and went on to blast Jaguar in an e-mail to Wired News about the security gaffe.

"While this breach of security is grossly negligent on the part of the county's contractor, the code that was retrieved is used to accumulate unofficial results on election night and does not compromise the integrity of the official electronic ballots themselves," wrote Sequoia spokesman Alfie Charles.

Peter Neumann, lead computer scientist at the Stanford Research Institute, said the exposed code could allow someone to plant a Trojan Horse in the system's compiler -- the program that translates the code for use by the computer -- that would be undetectable to anyone reading the code.

The files on the server also revealed that the Sequoia system relies heavily on Microsoft software components, a fact the company often has been coy about discussing since Microsoft software is a frequent target of hackers.

Jaguar, based in Riverside, California, left the data unencrypted and unprotected. The FTP server allowed anyone to access it anonymously.

Once a visitor gained access to the server, a small note stated that the server was meant for employees and clients of Jaguar. However, the company's own website directed visitors to the FTP server and noted that "our '/PUB' directory is stuffed with many of the files that we use." The website has since been changed by Jaguar.

Sequoia's AVC Edge voting machines were used in California's Riverside County for the 2000 presidential election and for last month's California gubernatorial recall election. The system also has been used in counties in Florida and Washington state.

It's the second time this year that voting machine code has been leaked on the Internet.

In January, source code for the AccuVote-TS system made by Diebold Election Systems was found on an unprotected FTP server belonging to the company.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins and Rice universities who read the Diebold code found numerous security flaws in the system and published a report (PDF) that prompted the state of Maryland to conduct its own audit of the software.

A key difference between the Diebold and Sequoia leaks has to do with the type of code used. The Diebold code was source code, a raw form of code that contains programmer notes and comments and allows anyone to quickly see how a system works.

The Sequoia code is binary code, which is already compiled with the comments and other information stripped away. It's working code, which means that the program must be reverse-engineered, or taken apart, in order to understand how it works. This is not hard to do, but it takes more time than working with source code. The Johns Hopkins researchers were able to write their report on the Diebold code in two weeks. The Sequoia code would take at least two months, the researchers said.

But even binary code reveals a lot of information about a program, said Avi Rubin, one of the Johns Hopkins researchers who wrote the report on the Diebold system.

"With binary code you can create most of the program and analyze it," he said. "All the information about what the program does is there. Maybe 60 percent of what you can get from the source code you can also get from the binary."

On its website, Sequoia makes a point of stating that its system is much more secure than the Diebold system, since it doesn't rely on Microsoft software. The website reads: "While Diebold relies on a Microsoft operating system that is well known and understood by computer hackers, Sequoia's AVC Edge runs on a proprietary operating system that is designed solely for the conduct of elections."

In fact, the system uses WinEDS, or Election Database System for Windows. WinEDS runs on top of the Microsoft Windows operating system. According to Sequoia, "WinEDS is used to administer all phases of the election cycle, create electronic ballots for the AVC Edge, and tally early voting, as well as official election and absentee votes."

The system also appears to use MDAC 2.1, or Microsoft Data Access Components, which was found in the WinEDS folder on the server. MDAC is code used to send information between a database and a program. According to the computer programmer who discovered the FTP server containing the Sequoia code, version 2.1 was found to be insecure. He said Microsoft currently distributes an upgraded version 2.8, which has been available since August, but the version on the Jaguar site doesn't include a patch to fix the security problems.

Also, because MDAC is off-the-shelf software, it's not subject to the same certification processes and audit that is standard for proprietary voting software.

Neumann, the security expert, said, "This means that anyone could install a Trojan Horse in the MDAC that won't show up in the source code." Jaguar employees, Sequoia employees or state election officials could insert code that wouldn't be detectable in a certification review of the code or in security testing of the system, he said.

Neumann said this points to the necessity for using only voting machines that provide a voter-verifiable paper trail.

"The idea of looking at source code to find problems is inherently unsatisfactory," he said. "You need to use a machine with accountability and an audit trail."

The source who discovered the unprotected server containing the Sequoia system code said the files include Visual Basic script, which is uncompiled script that can be changed very quickly and easily.

"You can swap out a file and plant a Trojan Horse in this," he said. "There's also SQL code in there that sets up a database. The SQL gives you details about the database that you can use to alter the contents of the database."

The companies making electronic voting systems long have said that their systems are proprietary and their code needs to remain
secret in order for the systems to be secure.

Cindy Cohn, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said information gained from the discovery of the Diebold and Sequoia codes indicates the exact opposite.

"Our society and our democracy is better served by open voting systems," she said. "The way to create a more secure system is to open the source code and to have as many people as possible try to break into the system and figure out all the holes. The clearest way to have an insecure system is to lock it up and show it to only a few people."

Cohn said her organization is trying to convince election officials and companies to make their systems more secure. "That doesn't seem to be happening," she added. "So I have a lot of admiration for these people who are taking it upon themselves to try to figure out whether these machines are secure. I think we are all better off because of researchers who are taking the time to say the emperor doesn't have any clothes."

Rubin said the focus shouldn't be on keeping systems secret but on creating systems that are more secure so they can't be easily exploited or rigged for fraud.

"This argument that everything needs to be kept secret is not viable because the stuff does get out whether companies intend it or not," he said. "Now two out of the three top companies have leaked their system.

"Scientists are being made to feel afraid to look at these things, which in the end will be bad for our society. Why shouldn't everyone want scientists to look? If there's any feeling that there may actually be danger to our elections, how can we not be encouraging researchers to look at our systems?" Rubin said.

Source:
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,61014,00.html

Take Back the Media Flash on eVoting
http://www.takebackthemedia.com/voterevolution.html

Cheney's hawks ' hijacking policy'

Information Clearinghouse
(Sydney Morning Herald)
By Ritt Goldstein
October 30, 2003

A former Pentagon officer turned whistleblower says a group of hawks in the Bush Administration, including the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, is running a shadow foreign policy, contravening Washington's official line.

"What these people are doing now makes Iran-Contra [a Reagan administration national security scandal] look like amateur hour. . . it's worse than Iran-Contra, worse than what happened in Vietnam," said Karen Kwiatkowski, a former air force lieutenant-colonel.

"[President] George Bush isn't in control . . . the country's been hijacked," she said, describing how "key [governmental] areas of neoconservative concern were politically staffed".

Ms Kwiatkowski, who retired this year after 20 years service, was a Middle East specialist in the office of the Undersecretary of Defence for Policy, headed by Douglas Feith.

She described "a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-optation through deceit of a large segment of the Congress", adding that "in order to take that first step - Iraq - lies had to be told to Congress to bring them on board".

Ms Kwiatkowski said the pursuit of national security decisions often bypassed "civil service and active-duty military professionals", and was handled instead by political appointees who shared common ideological ties.

There was speculation earlier this year that such an ideologue group had emerged, and that it was behind the US attack on an Iraqi convoy in Syria in June.

The New York Times quoted Patrick Lang, a former senior Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) official, as saying that many in the Government believed the incursion was an effort by ideologues to disrupt co-operation between the US and Syria. http://www.clw.org/iraqintelligence/nytopeds.html

Ms Kwiatkowski said there was an extra-governmental network operating outside normal structures and practices, "a network of political appointees in key positions who felt they needed to take some action, to make things happen in a foreign affairs, national security way". She said Pentagon personnel and the DIA were pressured to favourably alter assessments and reports.

In a separate interview, Chalmers Johnson, an authority on US policy, said that the Administration's neo-conservatives had in effect "seized power from Mr Bush."
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/johnson1.html

Dr Johnson said the neo-conservatives had pursued an agenda outlined in the controversial 1992 Defence Planning Guidance. That document, drawn up at the direction of Mr Cheney when he was defence secretary, said the world's only superpower should not be cautious about asserting its power.

Copyright: Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/

Information Clearinghouse
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5102.htm

US Post Office Publishes Draft Regulation to Require ID to Send Mail

Mon, 27 Oct 2003
Declan McCullagh
CNN.com

In apparent disregard for US traditions and the Constitutional protections of anonymous free speech as upheld in The Tattered Cover Bookstore v. The City of Thornton, Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation, McIntyre v. Ohio, Talley v. California, and Buckley v. Valeo, the US Post Office is moving forward with a "first step" regulation to eventually require the identification and tracking of senders of all mail. Public comments are being accepted through 20 NOV 2003. I'm sure glad that those Federalist Papers already got mailed out before this regulation takes effect, whew!


"Post office proposes requiring ID on mail: Regulation offered in response to anthrax scare"


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. Postal Service is taking a first step toward requiring all senders of mail to identify themselves, a move prompted by the anthrax scare two years ago this month. Five people died of anthrax infection and 13 others became sick when an unknown person or persons sent several U.S. senators and media organizations envelopes containing the deadly toxin.

As a first step, the Postal Service has proposed a regulation that would require sender identification of discount-rate mail.
That includes first-class mail, periodicals, standard mail or package-services mailing eligible for any discounted postage rate. Printed in the Federal Register on October 21, the revision of the Domestic Mail Manual is open for public comment until November 20.

"Sender identification of all discount mailings would serve as a tool in identifying the senders of a large portion of the mailstream. It could also facilitate investigations into the origin of suspicious mail," the proposal said. The Postal Service said two congressional committees urged it to "explore the concept of sender identification, including the feasibility of using unique, traceable identifiers" -- something likely to draw criticism from privacy advocates.

The President's Commission on the U.S. Postal Service also recommended the use of sender identification recently "for every piece of mail."

Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/10/26/postal.addresses

Just one little step at a time, some so small they go unnoticed, then one day it's all over.

Free Speech Kept Off US Streets

Officials deny plot to herd dissenters into protest pens.
But sign-carriers testify to being hustled out of sight.

by David Lindorff

10/26/03: (Toronto Star) When retired Pittsburgh steelworker Bill Neel learned that President George W. Bush was coming to town last year, he decided he would be on hand to protest the president's economic policies. Neel and his sister made a hand-lettered sign — The Bush family must surely love the poor! They have made so many of us! — and headed for a road where the motorcade would pass.

But he never got to display his sign for Bush to see.

As he stood among milling groups of Bush supporters, he was approached by a local police detective and told that he and his sister had to move to a "free-speech area" for protesters, on orders of the U.S. Secret Service. "He pointed out a relatively remote baseball diamond that was enclosed in a chain-link fence," Neel recalls. "I could see these people behind the fence, with their faces up against it, and their hands on the wire." "It looked more like a concentration camp than a free-speech area to me, so I said, `I'm not going in there. I thought the whole country was a free-speech area.'"

After refusing several times to go to the area, he was handcuffed and arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct.

When his sister argued against the arrest, she was cuffed and hauled off as well. The two spent the president's visit in a firehouse that was serving as Secret Service headquarters for the event. The Neels' experience is not unique.

On Sept. 23, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in a federal court in Philadelphia against the Secret Service, alleging that the agency, a unit of the new Homeland Security Department charged with protecting the president and other key officials, instituted a policy in the months even before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks of instructing local police to cordon
off protesters from the president and Vice-President Dick Cheney.

The ACLU has identified 17 separate incidents in which protesters were segregated or removed during presidential or vice-presidential events.

"I wouldn't be surprised if this is just the tip of the iceberg," says Pittsburgh ACLU legal director Witold Walczak. "We don't have the resources to follow Bush and Cheney everywhere they go."

The suit comes at a time of mounting charges by civil libertarians on both left and right that the Bush administration and Attorney-General John Ashcroft's justice department are trampling on civil liberties.

In its complaint, the ACLU cites nine cases since March, 2001, in which protesters were quarantined. And it alleges that the Secret Service, with the assistance of state and local police, is systematically violating protesters' First Amendment rights via two methods.

"Under the first form," the suit says, " the protesters are moved further away from the location of the official and/or the event, allowing people whoexpress views that support the government to remain closer."

"Under the second form, everyone expressing a view — either critical or supportive of the government — is moved further away, leaving people who merely observe, but publicly express no view, to remain closer."

In either case, the complaint adds, "protesters are typically segregated into what are commonly referred to as `protest zones.'"

Besides violating a fundamental right of free speech and assembly, the ACLU says, the strategy is damaging in two ways: "It insulates the government officials from seeing or hearing the protesters and vice-versa, and it gives to the media and the American public the appearance that there exists less dissent than there really is."

Certainly, as television cameras follow a presidential motorcade lined with cheering supporters, the image on the tube will be distorted if protesters have been spirited away around a corner somewhere fenced in for the duration.

Secret Service official deny discriminating against protesters.

"The Secret Service is message-neutral," said John Gill. "We make no distinction on the basis of the purposes or intent of any group or the content of signs." Further, Gill insisted the establishment and oversight of local viewing areas "is the responsibility of state and local law enforcement." In practice, it's apparently not that simple, though. Nor is the Secret Service's carefully worded denial of responsibility as definitive as it might appear.

The "establishment of viewing areas" is indeed a local responsibility, but local officials say the Secret Service has in some cases all but ordered them to pen in protesters.

And it appears the Secret Service is making recommendations about how that should be done.

Paul Wolf, an Allegheny County police assistant supervisor involved in planning the presidential visit to Pittsburgh, says the decision to pen Bush critics originated with the Secret Service.

"What the Secret Service does," Wolf explains, "is they come in and do a site survey, and say: `Here's a place where the people can be, and we'd like to have any protesters be put in a place that is able to be secured.'" Wolf's statement was supported up by the sworn testimony of the detective who arrested Neel. Det. John Ianachione testified in county court that the Secret Service had instructed local police to herd into the enclosed area "people that were there making a statement pretty much against the president and his views."

"If they were exhibiting themselves as a protester, they were to go in that area."

Asked to respond to the accounts of Wolf and Ianachione about the Secret Service's role in handling of protesters, spokesman Gill said: "No comment." Asked pointedly whether Wolf's account was incorrect, Gill again said: "No comment."
The White House declined to comment on what role its staff plays in deciding how protesters at presidential events should be handled, referring all calls to the Secret Service. Asked specifically whether White House officials have been behind requests to have protesters segregated and removed from the vicinity of presidential events, White House spokesman Allen Abney said: "No comment."

A number of individual plaintiffs in the ACLU suit say they were told local police were acting "on orders from the Secret Service" when directing them to remote areas or arresting them for refusing to go to such sites. That's the story Bill Ramsey got when he was arrested last Nov. 4 by police in St. Charles, Mo., while attempting to unfurl an anti-war banner amid a group of pro-Bush people during a presidential visit to a local airport.

"The police told us if we wanted to show the banner, we'd have to go to a parking lot four-tenths of a mile away and out of sight of the president's motorcade," says Ramsey. "When we attempted to put it up anyway, they arrested us and said they'd been ordered to by the Secret Service."

But Ramsey says that when members of his organization, the Instead of War Coalition, seek to obtain permission to hold emonstrations during presidential visits, the Secret Service tells them such matters are the responsibility of local police. "When we go to the local police, though, they say it's up to the Secret Service." Efforts to obtain a comment from the St. Charles police department were unsuccessful. Andrew Wimmer, also a member of the Instead of War Coalition, says he was offered a similar explanation last January in St. Louis when he attempted to hoist a sign — Instead of war, invest in people — on a street full of Bush supporters.

Wimmer says St. Louis police told him he'd have to go to a protest area two blocks from the presidential motorcade route because of his sign. "Local police were pulling out people carrying protest signs and directing them to the protest area," the 48-year-old IT worker says. "When they got to me, I said, `No, I'd just as soon stand with the people here.'But they said the Secret Service wanted protesters in the protest area."

In the end, Wimmer, like others who've refused to be caged during protests, was arrested.

Stefan Presser, head of the Philadelphia ACLU chapter, traces the tactic to the last Republican National Convention, which nominated Bush for the presidency in August, 2000. "The GOP tried to reserve every possible space where a protest group might rally," Presser recalls. "Part of the party's contract with the city of Philadelphia for the convention was that they were given an omnibus permit to use `all available space' for the two weeks of the convention."

"They basically privatized the city to block all legal protest."

Since then, Presser charges, the Bush administration has continued the strategy of using the Secret Service and co-operative local police departments to keep protesters at bay — and not incidentally, out of easy range of the media. Presser and the ACLU don't question the Secret Service's responsibility to protect the president and other key government officials. Even plaintiffs in the case agree that the president must be protected. But, notes Neel in Pittsburgh, "putting protesters behind a fence isn't going to help.

"I mean, somebody who was going to attempt an assassination wouldn't be carrying a protest sign. He'd be carrying a sign saying: `I love George!'" Presser agrees: "It seems these `security zones' for protesters have very little to do with the president's physical security and a whole lot to do with his political security."

"Just as the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center were careful to blend in and stayed away from mosques," he says, "anyone who had ill will toward the president could just put on a pro-Bush T-shirt and, under this policy, he'd be allowed to move closer to the president by the Secret Service."

Source: (Thanks to Barbara T. for the article)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5084.htm

Who says we don't live in a police state?

HARPERS WEEKLY REVIEW

Iraqi guerrillas using a homemade launching pad fired eight to ten rockets at the Al Rasheed hotel in Baghdad, where American officials have been staying since April. Some of the Americans were seen fleeing the luxury hotel in their pajamas and shorts; one of the missiles struck a floor just below Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, but he escaped unhurt. The following day, a suicide bomber driving an ambulance struck the offices of the International Red Cross in Baghdad; the bomb left a six-foot-deep crater and broke windows a mile away. Within 45 minutes, bombers struck four police stations in other neighborhoods; at least 34 died and more than 200 were injured in the attacks. "The more successful we are on the ground," said President Bush, "the more these killers will react." The Pentagon was planning to spend $335 million on high-tech solutions to the guerrilla war; the measures include electronic jamming devices, tethered blimps with digital cameras, and other "rapid- reaction/new solution" technologies. Several soldiers home from Iraq on leave went AWOL.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld admitted in a leaked memo that the United States still doesn't have much of a plan for fighting the war on terrorism, and in a published interview he called for a new government bureaucracy to fight the "war of ideas" against international terrorism. There were grumblings among Republicans, none of whom spoke on the record, that Rumsfeld has become a political liability. The chairman of the independent commission investigating September 11 threatened to subpoena the White House for documents that it has been refusing to turn over. FBI agents at the Norfolk, Virginia, airport took anal swabs from a mechanical farting dog to make sure it did not contain explosives. The lawyer for Captain James Yee, the former American prison-camp chaplain who was arrested for being a Muslim spy, complained that his client was being mistreated in prison. President Bush was reportedly astonished to discover, during his recent trip to Asia, that Muslims around the world believe that the United States is hostile to them. In Arizona, a firefighter pleaded guilty to starting a wildfire so that he could get paid for putting it out.

Firestorms in southern California killed at least 13 people and drove tens of thousands from their homes. A large geomagnetic storm caused by explosions on the surface of the sun (called coronal mass ejections) hit the earth but caused few disruptions. Lightning struck the actor who plays Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson's current film project, "The Passion of Christ," during a shoot in Italy. The United States was granted broad exemptions for the use of methyl bromide, a pesticide that damages the ozone layer; the chemical was supposed to be banned under the Montreal Protocol, which the U.S. signed. Strawberry and tomato farmers, as well as the owners of golf courses, will benefit. New satellite observations revealed that Arctic warming is much more severe than was previously thought and that the amount of Arctic sea ice was at a record low. The U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board concluded that the government's plan to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, near Las Vegas, is dangerously flawed; the design, the board said, would lead to the corrosion and perforation of the containers, and thus to leaks. Autopsies of 11 people in Pennsylvania revealed high concentrations of cadmium, a toxic metal. Much of Zimbabwe's wildlife is being wiped out by poachers, naturalists said, and Human Rights Watch accused Zimbabwe of using famine as a weapon against political dissidents. Brewers in Colorado were offering a pint of beer in exchange for a pint of blood.

A former Navy lawyer revealed that President Lyndon S. Johnson and Robert McNamara, his secretary of defense, ordered those who were investigating the 1967 Israeli attack on the American ship Liberty to conclude that the incident, in which 34 American servicemen died, was an accident, even though the evidence pointed overwhelmingly to the contrary.

An Israeli helicopter fired a rocket at a car in the Gaza Strip; after a crowd gathered, another rocket was fired, killing at least eight people and injuring 70. Israeli officials initially disputed the claim that bystanders were injured in the second strike and released a videotape as evidence; upon closer examination, however, the tape confirmed the Palestinian version of the events. Colin Powell was trying to make peace in Sudan. The emirate of Dubai announced that it will build a $5 billion amusement park that will include an artificial rain forest and a ski slope. A letter containing ricin, a powerful poison, was discovered in an airport post office in South Carolina. Egremont, Massachusetts, a town in the Berkshire Mountains, voted to block its roads with sandbags to keep plague-ridden New Yorkers away in the event of a bioterror attack on the city. Charitable giving was down. New research estimated that British people collectively stand in line for 1.3 billion hours a year. Human Rights Watch reported that about 20 percent of America's prison inmates are crazy. The U.S. Senate banned "partial-birth abortions," a procedure known by doctors as "intact dilation and extraction." Six English schoolboys were hospitalized after it was learned they had taken Viagra during lunch; "by the the time the afternoon lessons began," said a source, "there was no hiding what they had done." Sales of industrial robots were up 26 percent. Creatures that are capable of changing their sex, it was discovered, typically do so when they have reached 72 percent of their maximum body size. German chemists discovered the secret ingredient in the preservation of Egyptian mummies. There were new reports of cannibalism in Congo, and in Croatia a one-year-old boy was attacked by a gang of babies and bitten 30 times. Facial tumors were killing off Tasmanian devils, and western Africa was suffering a plague of dusty locusts.

Copyright 2003 Harper's Magazine Foundation

SOURCES

The Weekly Review is drawn from major news sources such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, the Associated Press, and various news websites. It is not a weblog, and I'm sorry to say that it would be much too complicated to post links to particular items (I tend to read newspapers on paper, and I often take details from more than one source). If you would like to read more about a story, try searching Google's excellent news search first.

Harper's Magazine
http://www.harpers.org/weekly-review

As if BushCo hasn’t done enough already to kill the economy

Homeland Security Daily News
October 27,
Congressional Daily

New visa policies tie up State and trouble the travel industry. Lawmakers questioned government officials Thursday about new visa policies to prevent terrorists from entering the country and the economic impact on the U.S. travel industry. "We're deeply worried about our economy," Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Richard Lugar, R-IN, said during a hearing of the International Operations and Terrorism Subcommittee on visa reforms and new technology initiatives at various departments. It has translated into a loss of U.S. national revenues and scholarships for foreign students and has negatively affected foreign countries' perception of the United States, he said. Industry officials, who testified along With officials from the State and Homeland Security departments and the FBI, echoed Lugar's statements. In prepared remarks on behalf of the Travel Industry Association of America, Jose Estorino said since 2000, the loss of international travel to the United States has cost the nation $15.3 billion.

New visa policies, such as requirements for State Department officials to personally interview visa applicants and run their names through several databases, have resulted in increased costs, discouraged business with the United States and created the perception that the United States is becoming "Fortress America," said Estorino.

Source: [Homeland_security] Daily News
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1003/102403cdam2.htm

The Word from Beyond

This was an actual obituary published in
The Times-Picayune, New Orleans on 10/2/2003.

"Word has been received that Gertrude M. Jones, 81,
passed away on August 25, 2003, under the loving
care of the nursing aides of Heritage Manor of
Mandeville, Louisiana. She was a native of Lebanon,
KY. She was a retired Vice President of Georgia
International Life Insurance Company
of Atlanta, GA. Her husband, Warren K. Jones
predeceased her. Two daughters survive her: Dawn
Hunt and her live-in boyfriend, Roland, of
Mandeville,LA; and Melba Kovalak and her husband,
Drew Kovalak, of Woodbury, MN. Three sisters, four
grandchildren and three great grandchildren, also
survive her. Funeral services were held in
Louisville, KY. Memorial gifts may be made to any
organization that seeks the removal of President
George Bush from office."

Thanks to Dave M. in Ky.

The Ramadan Offensive

By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Tuesday 28 October 2003

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
- W.B. Yeats, 'The Second Coming'

History loves to repeat itself.

On January 31, 1968, soldiers from North Vietnam launched what has become known as the Tet Offensive. The attacks were breathtaking in scope: North Vietnamese soldiers stormed the highland towns of Banmethout, Kontum and Pleiku, invaded 13 of the 16 provincial capitols in the Mekong Delta, attacked the headquarters of both America's and South Vietnam's armies, stormed the U.S. embassy compound in Saigon, and took the city of Hue. The attacks came as a complete shock to American forces. A 1968 CIA report concluded, "The intensity, coordination and timing of the attacks were not fully anticipated." The report went on to state that, "another major unexpected point" was the ability of the North Vietnamese to strike so many targets at the same time.

In the technical jargon of war, the attacks were a failure, as the North Vietnamese soldiers were eventually beaten back. General Giap, commander of Vietnamese forces, had a different perspective. "For us, you know, there is no such thing as a single strategy," said Giap after the war.

"Ours is always a synthesis, simultaneously military, political and diplomatic - which is why quite clearly, the Tet offensive had multiple objectives."

The political aspect of the offensive worked. By March of 1968, President Lyndon Johnson's approval rating had fallen to 30%, and approval for his handling of the war had fallen to 26%. Walter Cronkite, the most trusted voice in American television journalism, stated publicly that the war was unwinnable. An explosion of dissent rocked the American homeland, culminating in Johnson's decision not to seek re-election, and in the police riot at the doorstep of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The two lessons from Tet:
1) Underestimating a guerilla enemy that is fighting on its own ground is deadly policy;
2) The American people will not long stand for a bloodbath in a faraway land that has no clear objective, spends the lives of American soldiers to no good end, and costs billions and billions of dollars better spent elsewhere. The Tet Offensive in January 1968 began a long, slow slide into ignominy and defeat for the United States that, to this day, still echoes long and loud along the hallways of power and the streets of everyday America.

It is happening again. In the last 72 hours in Iraq, a dizzying series of attacks have rocked Baghdad. It began with the downing of a Blackhawk helicopter. It did not end there.

Several missiles were fired at the Baghdad Hotel where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying during his tour of the war. Wolfowitz, one of the chief architects of the conflict, escaped unharmed but was visibly shaken after the attacks. An American officer was killed in that attack.

In separate attacks, three American soldiers were killed and four wounded. Two of the deaths came when a patrol from the 1st Armored Division was struck by a roadside bomb. The third death came in Abu Ghraib, on the western edge of Baghdad, when a Military Police unit was attacked. There have been 349 American soldiers killed in Iraq during this conflict, and thousands more wounded. Since George W. Bush strutted across an aircraft carrier in the garb of a combat pilot in May, after he said, "Bring 'em on" in June, there have been 211 American soldiers killed.

Put another way, we have lost more troops in the nine months of this war than we had lost in Vietnam by 1964. History tells us quite clearly that our Vietnam casualty rate skyrocketed in the years to come.

Four different Iraqi police stations were bombed in Baghdad on Monday, and a massive explosion tore into the offices of the International Red Cross. 34 people were killed, and 224 were wounded.

The attacks took place in rapidfire succession between 8:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. local time, strongly suggesting a high degree of coordination.

The similarities to Tet are chilling. In 1968, the attacks came at the onset of the Vietnamese New Year, a holiday that American command believed would herald a temporary quieting of the violence. In Iraq, these attacks come at the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The American command in Baghdad believed the holiday would bring a slacking of the attacks that have been plaguing American forces. This assumption ran so strong that the Baghdad curfew was partially lifted by American forces just before the brunt of the attacks hit.

One difference between Tet and Baghdad is that we knew, in Vietnam, who was attacking us. We have no idea who has been behind these attacks in Iraq. The inability to even identify the attackers beyond the catch-all "Evildoers who hate freedom" means we have little hope of thwarting future attacks.

The most pointed similarity is clear: These attacks are meant to cause a political reaction. The United States military, on the whole, will not be undermined by these attacks or by the loss of four more soldiers. The political ramifications, however, are a different story, and in the long run the political reaction will directly affect the military.

The Bush administration has been trying to sell a rosy perspective of this war to the American people, a perspective that was eviscerated by these attacks. Worse, the attacks will have a further chilling effect upon the administration's attempts to bring the international community into this fight, something even the most hard-core go-it-aloners in Washington have come to see as absolutely necessary. With every explosion at a non-American outpost, with every targeting of the United Nations and the Red Cross in Iraq, this war becomes more and more the sole property of the United States and the Bush administration. Each time this happens, it becomes less likely that an international coalition will be formed to bail America out in Iraq. The old sign above the cash register at your corner store says it all: "You break it, you buy it."

George W. Bush responded to these most recent attacks by saying the intricately coordinated and highly effective attacks were a sign that the unidentified insurgents were becoming "desperate." He described the attackers as people who "hate freedom" and "love terror." This is the reaction of a man residing comfortably in Bizarro World, a land where up is down, black is white, and reality has no place at the table. Basically, Bush is trying to tell us that these attacks are good news, that these "desperate" moves are a sign of looming American victory.

Ask the thousands of dead Iraqis if this is good news. Ask the Red Cross, which is strongly considering pulling out of Iraq, if this is good news. Ask the international community, which is being pressured into leaping aboard this sinking ship, if this is good news. Ask the families of the dead and wounded American soldiers if this is good news.

Ask al Qaeda, and they will tell you this is nothing but good news. This war on Iraq, built on a foundation of misinformation and lies, has led to the greatest recruiting drive in that group's bloody history. The opportunity to kill more Americans is good news for them. The ability to rock the American government is good news for them. Osama bin Laden smiles today, and it was George W. Bush who put the grin on his face.

Source:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/102803A.shtml

William Rivers Pitt is the Managing Editor of truthout.org. He is a New York Times and international best-selling author of three books -"War On Iraq," available from Context Books, "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," available from Pluto Press, and "Our Flag, Too: The Paradox of Patriotism," available in August from Context Books.

US MISSILES TARGETED AGAINST IRAN BY ISRAEL

Mon, 27 Oct 2003
GLOBE-INTEL
by Gordon Thomas

US Harpoon missiles armed with nuclear warheads are now aimed by Israeli’s fleet of Dolphin-class submarines against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Following September’s exclusive report in American Free Press about Israel’s submarine nuclear attack capability, over 100 Harpoon cruise missiles have been secretly flown to the remote island of Diego Garcia, a joint UK-US base in the Indian Ocean. The three Israeli submarines which arrived at the base early this month were each loaded with 24 Harpoon missiles. They then set sail for the Gulf of Oman – bringing Iran’s nuclear facilities all within range of their submarines’ multi-payloads.

The decision to launch them is entirely in the hands of Israel’s prime minister, Ariel Sharon. Just as he gave Washington only a short warning he was going to attack an alleged terrorist camp deep inside Syria, Sharon has made it clear to Washington that the same rule of engagement will apply if it comes to launching the Harpoon missiles.

Sharon made his position clear in a telephone call to President Bush the day after the attack on Syria. According to one Israeli source, Bush said he “just wanted to be kept informed”. Credible intelligence sources say the reality is that Sharon believes he would have the support of Bush if he did launch an attack.

But an indication of the deepening concern that some members of the Bush Administration now feel, is that national security advisor Condoleezza Rice last weekend allowed one of her senior aides to confirm our September report to the Los Angeles Times and London’s Guardian newspaper. Both drew heavily on the original American Free Press story. The senior Pentagon and State department sources for our first story, about Israel’s Dolphin class submarines, have told us exclusively that, in the words of one high-level Pentagon source, “matters have now advanced considerably and for the first time Rice is sounding alarm bells in the Oval Office”.

Rice’s decision to leak is also the first clear indication of her concerns over Israel – as well as her own direct challenge to the authority of Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld. She is now engaged in an internal power struggle with Rumsfeld – and has chosen to use what she sees as his failure in the Middle East to harness Sharon’s behaviour as her launch pad to have the Secretary of State ousted.

“Rice has a long-term strategy to become Secretary of State. While Rumsfeld is no supporter of Powell, he knows that having Rice in charge of State would give her more power than she even has now. And there is also the ultimate ambition for Condi, to be Bush’s running mate, if not in this election, then in the one afterwards. Her own inner circle say that she would relish a face-off with Hillary Clinton in 2008. If Condi became vice-President, then she is but a step away from becoming the first Black woman in the White House. That is what is driving her,” said a senior Washington analyst.

Meantime, Rice’s concerns have deepened following Sharon’s stark warning last Sunday that “states harbouring terrorists are legitimate targets”. Aides in Tel Aviv have confirmed to American Free Press that “Iran and Syria are top of that list – with Iran in the top spot”. The revelation comes at a time of rapidly escalating tensions in the region.

Israel’s senior Foreign Ministry spokesman, Gideon Meir, insisted “any country that harbours a threat to Israel is a legitimate target for us out of self-defence”. Today, American Free Press can reveal, again for the first time, that a team of US computer specialists flew to Diego Garcia to fit the latest version of the software known as “over the horizon”. This would allow a Harpoon missile to hit any of Iran’s nuclear establishments with pin-point accuracy.

Originally developed by Inslaw, the Washington based specialist computer software company, the “over the horizon” capability has been enhanced to handle the sophisticated electronics of the Harpoon missiles. In the meantime, Sharon has ordered Mossad to put together a specialist team to infiltrate Iran. Their mission is to snatch some of the scientists working in the country’s nuclear facilities at Natanz, Arak and Saghand.

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http://www.globe-intel.net

In D.C., a Diverse Mix Rouses War Protest

It's Vietnam all over again

By Manny Fernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 26, 2003

Tens of thousands of antiwar demonstrators marched in Washington yesterday to call for an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq, turning out in smaller numbers than for prewar protests but making plain their opposition during a noisy yet peaceful procession.

From a stage on the Mall and along a route that ringed the Washington Monument, the White House and the Justice Department, protesters lodged an array of grievances against the Bush administration's domestic and foreign policies, including the financial and human costs of the occupation and the effect of the Patriot Act on civil liberties. Organizers of the two coalitions that sponsored the demonstration, International ANSWER and United for Peace and Justice, said the morning rally at the Washington Monument and a march through downtown that grew throughout the afternoon signaled a revival of the antiwar movement, which had not staged a major street demonstration in Washington since the fall of Baghdad in April.

"The movement has gotten a very big gust of wind in its sails at the very moment that the Bush administration is slipping in the polls," said Brian Becker, an organizer with ANSWER, which stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism.

Yesterday's march coincided with protests in more than two dozen cities across the United States and around the world, including San Francisco, Anchorage and Paris. D.C. police and U.S. Park Police were out in force in vehicles, on motorcycles and bicycles and on horseback in the District. D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey and a Park Police spokesman said no arrests had been made as of late afternoon.

The demonstrators represented a diverse mix of dissent, from suburban high school students to gray-haired retirees, from fathers pushing their children in strollers to Muslim American college students shouting through bullhorns. There were people from D.C. Poets Against the War, the Louisville Peace Action Community, Northern Virginians for Peace and Central Ohioans for Peace, among many others. Banners in Spanish, Korean, Urdu, Hebrew, Arabic and Tagalog decried the war. Smaller marches began at various locations in the city and led to the main rally, including those organized by Muslim American and by African American activists.

Demonstrators criticized the administration's prewar assertions about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda and condemned the domestic war on terrorism as an attack on civil liberties, particularly the Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism legislation the president signed into law two years ago today. They also denounced the administration's request for $87 billion for reconstruction and military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan while money for schools and social services at home dwindles.

"Don't give him 87 cents!" declared Democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton. "Give our troops a ride home!" Sharpton was one of the day's many speakers. Their main target was out of town: President Bush left for Camp David on Friday.

The crowd did not appear to match International ANSWER's Jan. 18 demonstration, the largest antiwar rally in Washington since the Vietnam War. That protest, was put at 100,000 by police and 500,000 by organizers. Nonetheless, Becker and other organizers said yesterday's turnout exceeded their expectations, and they estimated the attendance at 100,000, with crowds on the march route spilling over what they described as 23 Washington blocks. Ramsey estimated that the event drew 40,000 to 50,000 people.

Organizers said a large number of veterans and military families with loved ones in Iraq participated. Around her neck, Nanci Mansfield of Burnsville, N.C., wore a heart-shaped sign with a picture of her son in military uniform and the words: "Love my soldier. Hate this war." Some of the biggest applause at the rally, which filled a corner of the monument grounds at 17th Street and Constitution Avenue NW, came when Fernando Suarez del Solar of Escondido, Calif., whose Marine son was killed March 27 in Iraq, addressed the crowd. "We need to make Mr. Bush understand: He's not the owner of the lives of our children," he said.

Bill Perry, 56, a construction worker from Levittown, Pa., who served in Vietnam, stood at the edge of the monument grounds in the morning, holding a homemade sign demanding that the United States get out of Iraq and the United Nations get in. "About six blocks up the street, there's a beautiful memorial for 58,000 of our brothers and sisters who died in Vietnam," said Perry, wearing a yellow sweat shirt emblazoned with an "Airborne" eagle insignia. "Already, we've lost about 350 of our own brothers and sisters in this war. One can't help but wonder how big the memorial for this war is going to have to be."

The demonstration, organizers said, signified a new phase in the life of the antiwar movement. It illustrated new cooperation among often-divergent factions, as for the first time, two of the biggest coalitions put their organizational muscle behind one event, sharing expenses and logistical duties. But it also seemed to reveal the movement's erratic momentum, peaking in number and visibility at the start of the year with prewar demonstrations in Washington, New York and around the world, going without large-scale street protests since April and now turning out thousands to rally.

Organizers have said that mobilizing large numbers during a protracted occupation as opposed to a dramatic, imminent threat of war has been a challenge and that street demonstrations are just one way the movement manifests itself. "No one demonstration changes U.S. policy," said Leslie Cagan, national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice. "But it's part of a process, and a demonstration like today's helps to get people recommitted."

In one of yesterday's smaller pre-march gatherings, about 75 self-described "anti-capitalist" demonstrators marched around the new Washington Convention Center under heavy police escort, linking claims that the Bush administration is exploiting the people of Iraq to accusations that domestic leaders are neglecting the needs of the poor. Demonstrators circled the convention center, where Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) was sponsoring an expo for new home buyers and developers in the city.

Not all groups out yesterday were against government policies. Rallies coordinated by the D.C. chapter of Free Republic, a national conservative group, served as a vocal counterpoint to the day, as did two small groups of counter-demonstrators who waved signs along Constitution Avenue denouncing the protesters. Tempers were heated, but there were no major incidents.

At a park a block west of the White House, about 50 people voiced support for the administration at a Free Republic rally and held signs saying, "We gave peace a chance, we got 9/11." The group drew jeers and cries of "Shame, shame" as antiwar marchers passed. One of the counter-protesters, Doug Landry of Baton Rouge, La., a 19-year-old junior at George Washington University, held a sign saying, "Go home you commies."

About 4 p.m., as the march ended and the crowd began to disperse, Mardi Crawford of Albany, N.Y., said that the day had been a success. "I think it's wonderful people are out in the streets saying the same thing a lot of people are saying inside their homes," she said. Crawford protested here in January and March. She said she would keep returning to Washington to protest, as long as she felt a need. Staff writers Spencer S. Hsu, Sylvia Moreno and Monte Reel contributed to this report.

View pictures from the antiwar protest in DC
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/photo/metro/G18135-2003Oct25.html

Source:
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/metro/specials/demonstrations/index.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17636-2003Oct25.html

Sick of war, violence, and BushCo reaming the planet every day?

Only one thing you can really do, Please Become More Selfish!

By Mark Morford
SF Gate Columnist
Friday, October 24, 2003

Everyone wants to know what they can do to counteract.

Everyone wants to know how they can join the revolt and punch a hole in the toxic BushCo bubble and deflect the bloated dumbed-down Wal-Mart-ization of the culture, and resist being soaked all the way through to the bone with the sad notion that this country really is jammed to the blindly patriotic gills with misguided terrified fools and simpletons and gun nuts, drunk on rabid GOP spin and Adam Sandler movies and generic Paxil.

This is what I get asked, all the time: What can I do? How can I fight this poisonous miasma of hate and violence and hollow BushCo smirks? Is this country really this blind? What has happened to us? Should I move to Canada? What the hell is wrong with Celine Dion?

After all (they say to me), I write my senator and I sign petitions and send thoughtful angry e-mails, I educate myself and pay attention and am loaded to the goddamn brim with all the proofs I can stomach of BushCo's appalling lies and environmental atrocities and disgusting abuses of this gorgeous nation.

And I participate in marches and I breathe deeply and hang my head in shame when I watch the news, what with its astounding pornographic cavalcade of deeply embarrassing macabre schlock infotainment bickering bloodletting violence violence violence with a cute story about puppies at the very end to make it all better.

And, indeed, it can seem relentless, the onslaught, the toxic stew, reducing you to bitterness and hopelessness, making you ask impossible questions of Fate and the universe, such as, Why George Plimpton and Edward Said and John Ritter and not, say, Karl Rove or John Ashcroft or that guy I read about who beats his dogs?

Is that too much to ask?

As, meanwhile, countless ultraconservative shock pundits spew hate and rage and misinfo on the Right and the whiny disconcerted politicos from the Left can only mewl and whimper, stunned by the success of the GOP's steamroller of homophobia and intolerance, essentially clueless as to what to do about it.

It is enough to make you weep. It is enough to drive you to savage depression and shirt-rending angst and Leonard Cohen on infinite repeat without knowing why. And so you ask, what the hell can I do?

I humbly submit, here is the first part of the answer: You sift. You filter. You refine your awareness and stay very attuned and educated, yet choose what you want to let in and what you want to reject and flush away as dangerous and scarring to your heart, and you work within your range of heat and breath and love. This is the only way. Take it all on and you will crumble and short circuit and implode.

What else? You pray your ass off. But not on your knees. You do not whimper and give yourself over to some angry bitter paternalistic God and get all meek and guilty and powerless.

Not this time, baby.

I have a friend writing a whole gorgeous book on women's spirituality, and her primary point is invaluable and I shall steal it now: Have a dialogue with the divine. One on one. Meet the divine as an equal and rise up to it and match it and get it on, hardcore, every day, via ritual and mindfulness and intimate connection, from the most prosaic winks to the most profound dream visions, and everything in between.

You do not think yourself rife with pathos and sin and irreparable flaws. You do not merely "have faith" that some higher power has a master plan, and therefore you get to take no responsibility for your life or your decisions because you're just a feeble apelike pawn grateful for even the tiniest scrap of a hint of a wisp of mercy.

You think the divine wants you submissive and passive and mushy and pathetic?

Bull.

You wanna know God?

Look in the mirror.

Maybe this is still too vague. Maybe this is not as good as wishing you were suddenly granted a super-cool "Bewitched"-like superpower to inflict, with a wink and a nod, screaming night sweats and instant burning death and/or sudden divine benign pagan awareness upon the war fanatics and the GOP monkeys and the ultra-Christian gay bashers and Lynne Cheney.

Is it? Too bad.

Because when all is said and done, there is only one thing you can really do to counter it all. There is only one approach that works almost every single time, in every case.

To avoid karmic meltdown and utter disgusted nausea and suicidal tendencies and the bashing of one's skull into the brick wall of cultural ignorance six hours a day: You work on you. This is the only thing you can really do.

What, too boring? Hardly.

You think it's easy to do everything in your power on a day-to-day basis to crank your divinity and suck the big toe of your own personal Jesus and discover that the god you seek is actually you, is your true Self, and beam that healthy sexy wet individual robustness out to your immediate world every day, minimize the refined sugar and the garbage food and the stomping of the planet and maximize the orgasmic sighs and the organic highs and the holistic everything?

Verily, 'tis not.

You kiss with everything you've got. You love deep, make love with full intent, feel the divine's hot breath on your skin at every possible moment, buy the best wine you can afford, read your ass off, cherish your body, get lots of sleep, hunker down, scream your joy.

There.

This is always an unsatisfactory answer. It always feels like some sort of cop-out, incomplete and ineffectual, like there must be something else, surely something beyond just the same ol' self-development crap you always hear and you're all, like, OK whatever fine, so I breathe deeply and I take yoga and I eat well and don't cut people off in traffic, have more intense orgasms and laugh more easily and listen to good music and turn off the TV and get outside and work in the garden and whatever.

Great.

But goddammit, look. Look around. I do all that, and nothing changes. Still the world is imploding. Still murders and animal abuse and BushCo reaming the planet and it doesn't seem to get any better, and in fact only seems to be getting worse, no matter what I do.

Right?

Wrong. The world changes with every intent. The world is affected by every single thing you do. They can't truly crush you, because working on yourself means your divine bullshit detector is cranked to 11 at all times and you laugh in the face of their debauchery and you do not eat at their trough of sameness and white noise and dread.

And this is the most powerful awareness of all.

Source:
http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/

Inside Bush's Diary:

"Things Are Spinning Out of Control!"

By Bernard Weiner
Co-Editor, "The Crisis Papers."
October 21, 2003

Dear Diary:

It's been one goddamn thing after another. Karl and Dick seem to have everything under control and then, blammo, everything goes haywire:

The Senate, despite my warnings not to do so, votes to consider half of the money going to Iraq as loans; the press is circling the Wilson/Plame story, and they know where to look; the 9/11 commission, damn it, is starting to subpoenas witnesses to get somebody under oath; the Malaysian prime minister, at an Islamic summit, decides to condemn all Jews just before my Asia trip, and that born-again evangelist General Boykin, our new Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, gets caught insulting all the Islams; my grandpa's Nazi scandal is all over the papers; the situation in Iraq is getting even worse, with more Americans killed daily and more pipelines getting blown up; the Taliban are massing more troops in Afghanistan; Wesley Clark, that turncoat, jumps into the race and already my numbers are lower than his; one of my most important supporters, Rush Limbaugh, admits he's hooked on prescription drugs but has no prescription; the CIA and State are leaking more damaging information about us; the mainstream media (not just those internet wackos) are now smelling something rotten in the computer-voting system being set up for 2004; etc. etc.

In short, it's been a bad several weeks. I feel like I've gone a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson, I'm so battered and bruised. And it doesn't look good for the elections next year, even with all Karl's advance planning and with our tricky electoral moves in Texas, California, Colorado, and elswhere. (Bad news: Max Cleland's Georgia loss in 2002 is being re-examined after Diebold was discovered to have placed patches into the computer-voting software just before the election; those idiots! Just like the Diebold exec promising to "deliver" Ohio to us. What are these guys thinking?)

Things are spinning out of control. The internal fights are getting even more vicious; I may have to call in the U.N. peacekeepers to separate State and Defense, and the CIA and White House. I issue an order commanding everyone in the administration to stop leaking to the press -- and the goddamn order is immediately leaked!

People used to be afraid of us and would do what we told them. Is this the handwriting on the wall? They know we're weaker now and could possibly be booted out, and so they can ignore our power? I don't want to think that way; they're just cowards and traitors, out for publicity and a book-contract.

We thought that the warning to Joe Wilson would do the trick and he and the others would get the message: cross us and pay the price. But he and the CIA have gone off half-crazy after we outed his wife as a CIA operative! Didn't they know politics is a hardball sport? Well, OK, maybe we blew that one -- similar to how we mishandled Jim Jeffords and caused him to defect from the GOP -- but there's no going back. We have to keep attacking, keep everyone on the defensive, flood the zone, let 'em try to keep up.

Besides, on this Wilson thing, we won't get caught, can't get caught. It's downright delicious: We're being protected by the same press that would love to bring us down -- because their rules won't let them reveal their sources. I love it! Anyway, even if they could prove Karl and Scooter or others did it, there's no evidence; this story broke last July, and all proof went bye-bye then. Just to make sure, though, we had everyone possibly connected to the events send their reports to us for "clearance" before we shipped them over to the FBI. Ain't no way we're going down on this one.

Or another bit of disobedience: I had Susan Collins in the Oval Office the other day and told her, point-blank, that I wanted the Senate to pass the bill authorizing the full $20 billion for Iraq, no thinking of any of that money as a loan. Three months ago, she'd have done what I told her to do. But she and the other traitorous "moderate" senators voted against me. We'll make her pay for that one.

(Besides, we can always forgive the Iraq "loan" later; similarly, if Kenny ever gets indicted for his Enron shennanigans, I can always pardon him, like my dad pardoned Weinberger in Iran-Contra before Cap ever went to trial. There's always that escape hatch if things get too hot; maybe I'd lose a few votes by doing something so obvious, but we can make up those votes in other ways.)

Damn my dad! He arranged an award to Teddy -- the same week that Kennedy gasbag attacked my Iraq war policies so openly, pointing out all the "lies" I made to the American people. I know Poppy doesn't like my Iraq policy and my neo-con friends who push it -- he made that clear before the war when he had his advisors urge me in public not to invade -- but rubbing my nose in it, by giving an award to that unpatriotic liberal balloon, is way out of line.

I've been a screw-up all my life, diary, which my parents never cease to remind me of, and I don't want to give them any more reason to see me that way. But, God help me, I can't seem to stop myself from going there again. It's just that the screwups these days are on such an enormous scale, for everybody to see. But, for the sake of the country, I can't admit I've made any mistakes on Iraq and our "pre-emptive" attack strategy. This may be the last chance for us patriotic conservatives to carry out these policies and, if I have to, I'll burn the goddam village to save it and take us all down. That'll show 'em.

And what's all the yelling about anyway? Our P.R. campaign is starting to work, getting out all the positive developments in Iraq and why it was absolutely necessary for us to go in there and whoop some Iraqi ass. We were able to use David Kay's report -- thank God he's one of us -- to back up our suspicions about Iraq's WMD, even if he had to concede that there are no such weapons, only hints that maybe they could start up weapons programs at some uncertain date in the future. But Kay put enough weasel words in there to give us some political cover. Good puppy!

So far, Blair has weathered the storm in England, all those namby-pambies lacing into him for lying about the imminence of the threat. What did all those anti-war pinkos want us to say, the truth? Yeah, sure, I'd go on TV and say: "My fellow Americans, our long-range goals for global control require that we knock off a weak country like Iraq, to serve as a demonstration-model for the other Arab countries over there, that unless they play ball with us and our energy demands and alter their regimes to make them more U.S.-friendly, they'll get what Iraq got, and more?" Yeah, sure, that would have gone over like a lead balloon.

As Karl and Dick keep telling me, all we have to do is to hunker down on the Iraq lies and 9/11 and Wilson coverups, go on the offensive attacking our opponents, and make our way through November 2004, and then all the wraps can come off. Ashcroft can fully unleash his police powers; all those New Deal/Great Society programs will be dead meat; Syria and Iran will be right on schedule -- and this time we'll do the run-up to the wars right, so that the American people won't want to ask any questions later about the rationale for attacking. "Iran is going to nuke their neighbors, and Syria is supporting the terrorists" -- that'll do it. Maybe we can get David Kay in there for some juicy reports.

But if Rummy and Wolfy and the PNAC crew blow another one, and if the 9/11 and Wilson/Plame coverups blow apart internally and Karl's strategy fails, then I'm in big trouble, diary.

Because the voters are starting to catch on; my re-elect numbers are falling like crazy, and the old tactics aren't working any more. Karl is preparing to use "national security" as our campaign touchstone -- along with such hot-button issues as gay marriage, late-term abortions, and the ever-popular "liberal media" -- but I worry that this may not be enough, and too much tweaking of the computer vote-tallies may be a bit obvious. I wonder if al-Qaida is preparing anything big for inside the U.S.?

Copyright 2003, by Bernard Weiner
http://www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/out-of-control.htm

$5 billion (£3bn) Iraq rebuilding cash 'goes missing'

Edinburgh News
Thu 23 Oct 2003
BILL JACOBS WESTMINSTER EDITOR

A NEW Iraq scandal erupted today as a report claimed billions of dollars earmarked for rebuilding the country have vanished after being handed to the United States-controlled governing body in Baghdad.

At least $5 billion (£3bn) has been passed to the ruling Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), a leading UK aid agency has calculated. But only a fifth of those development funds have been accounted for, figures unearthed by Christian Aid show.

And that missing four billion dollar "black hole" will double by the end of the year unless the CPA’s accounts are made public. The allegations emerged as British aid agencies claimed millions of pounds of government aid cash will have to be diverted from poor countries in South America, Eastern and Central Asia to rebuilding Iraq.

And they threaten to undermine a conference in Spain, where the United Nations and World Bank hopes to raise £20 billion to pay for the reconstruction of the country following the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Prime Minister Tony Blair was today challenged by the charities to account for the missing $5bn, mainly from oil revenue, as donors conference involving 60 countries got under way in Madrid.

A spokesman for the CPA denied that the money had been lost or misused and promised that all the cash would be fully accounted for. The Mr Blair and US President George Bush last week won a new UN resolution calling for international contributions of money and troops. The donations will go into a new fund overseen by the UN and the World Bank.

But failure to show where the existing cash has gone will fuel suspicion among Iraqis that large amounts are being creamed off by US firms given contracts to rebuild the country, Christian Aid said. One senior European diplomat told the charity: "We have absolutely no idea how the money has been spent.

"I wish I knew, but we just don’t know. We have absolutely no idea."

Roger Riddell, Christian Aid’s international director, called the situation "little short of scandalous". He said: "The British Government must use its position of second in command of the CPA to demand full disclosure of this money and its proper allocation in the future".

"This is Iraqi money. The people of Iraq must know where it is going and it should be used for the benefit of all the country’s people - particularly the poorest."

The UN transferred $1 billion from its old Oil for Food Programme to the new Development Fund For Iraq earlier this year. The same UN resolution was supposed to set up an International Advisory and Monitoring Board to oversee the accounts.

It has not materialised and the only funds accounted for so far are one billion dollars spent by the Programme Review Board. However, the CPA has received $2.5bn in assets seized from Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq and abroad, Christian Aid reveals.

And it calculates oil revenue has contributed at least another $1.5bn since the war.

Officials in Madrid admit that the latest allegations will make it even more difficult to raise the £20bn needed to rebuild Iraq and fuel potential donor countries’ suspicions that the main beneficiaries of the reconstruction programme are big US firms.

They expect little more that £3 billion to be raised.

And further concerns have been voiced over the news that the UK is reducing overseas aid to South American, Eastern European and central Asian countries because of the cost of rebuilding Iraq. A group of UK overseas aid charities said at least £100 million would have to be diverted to help pay for Britain’s commitment to provide £267 million over the next two years to deal with the aftermath of the Gulf War.

International Development Secretary Hillary Benn admitted the shift in resources today but said that Iraq now qualified as a low income country.

Source:
http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1169292003

Hagel Says Bush Has Too Much Leeway

Associated Press
The Washington Post
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
Page A09

OMAHA, Oct. 21 -- Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) is strongly criticizing Congress, saying it gave President Bush too much latitude in conducting foreign policy after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Hagel voiced his disapproval Monday in a speech at the Gallup Organization World Conference in Omaha.

"When the security of this nation is threatened, Congress and the American people give the president great latitude," he said. "We probably have given this president more flexibility, more latitude, more range, unquestioned, than any president since Franklin Roosevelt -- probably too much. The Congress, in my opinion, really abrogated much of its responsibility."

Hagel, a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee, voted last year to give the president the authority to attack Iraq but has frequently criticized Bush's execution of the war. Hagel has been especially critical of the lack of allies and United Nations support.

Most people in other countries are too young to remember the good done by the United States in World War II and the Korean War, he said. "The great reservoir of pro-American good will that has existed in the world since World War II . . . that reservoir is now down very low."

Hagel, a Vietnam War veteran, compared the United States' lack of international support in the Iraq war with what happened in
Southeast Asia.

"The one great mistake that America made in those 58 years [since World War II] . . . was we tried to do something alone. That was Vietnam," Hagel said.

Source:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61308-2003Oct21.html

Cuba the 51st state?

The Asian Reporter
Asian-American Affairs
by Taro O'Sullivan
October 21-27, 2003

President Bush is asking for suggestions from aides on how Cuba ought to prepare for the "inevitable democratic transition in Cuba." This assumes that the current Cuban government will somehow dissolve. The President promised to take steps against Cuba to topple the Castro government. Bush also promised to crack down on treasonous Americans who insist on traveling to Cuba and said that the Department of Homeland Defense will enforce the trade and travel ban on the tiny Caribbean island nation.

Did the United States somehow annex Cuba? What gives the U.S. any right to determine what Cuba ought or ought not do as a sovereign nation? Perhaps the Cuban Foreign Ministry is at least partially correct when it says that Bush’s motive for this renewed push against Cuba is to appease the anti-Castro voters residing in Miami for the 2004 election, as well as for his brother Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida.

What I’ve always found funny about this whole situation is that Castro, the Harvard-educated revolutionary, fought for Cuban independence against an extremely oppressive regime. In the days prior to the revolution in Cuba, 90 cents of each dollar generated there left for the United States. Literacy rates were among the lowest of any country in the region and poverty was out of control. There were organized crime syndicates that controlled hotels and casinos as well as local pro-American crooks that stole from their own people. The corruption in pre-Castro Cuba is so well documented that no one would dispute the rightness of ending that oppression. I think what makes the Unites States angry is that Cuba, getting no help from the Unites States, went to the Soviet Socialist bloc for help and effectively ended American economic control. We couldn’t deal with the fact that such a small, insignificant country had the guts to spit in our face. Since that time, Cuba has managed to survive without U.S. help. Not well, to be sure, since the fall of the former Soviet Union, but survive just the same.

It seems that Bush has really lost his marbles if he thinks we need to take on yet another policy blunder in the name of Homeland Security and patriotism. We have an unsolvable situation going on in Iraq. We are losing our edge in Afghanistan and, if that isn’t enough, North Korea and Iran are constantly shoved in our face by the administration as the next menaces that we must conquer. Our policy in Israel and Syria seems to be totally ineffective in reaching peace. Let’s not forget one thing: our own domestic situation is getting worse. We have senior citizens living without medication. We have children going hungry and schools that are not prepared to teach those children. We have inner-city infrastructure in decay. What is George Bush thinking? Cuba? Are you for real?

There is another fundamental question I’d like to ask. Just who are these anti-Castro exiles living in Miami? To be sure, most are nice people who just want to return home one day and be reunited with their families. Still, I’ve heard that many of the anti-Castro guys were actually the problem people in Cuba. Friends of mine claim that many of these so-called leaders in exile were the ones that collaborated with American industries and padded their own pockets at tremendous cost to the Cuban people. Think of the people that Castro opposed and expelled from Cuba. Are they all good lawabiding friends of democracy, or are some of them self-serving entrepreneurs looking after their own interests? Lastly, if all the eligible anti-Castro Cubans voted, will it really swing the vote one way or another in Florida?

Mr. Bush, we have our hands full as it is. We cannot and should not worry about what Cuba does or doesn’t do with its government. It is a sovereign nation, not the 51st U.S. state. We cannot force everyone in the world to live like a clone of our country. Believe it or not, some people don’t like what we have here. Some even prefer a different form of government. Some people don’t want the cars and money. As hard as this may be for you to understand, Mr. Bush, a great many people don’t like what you stand for, and, unfortunately, too many people wrongly believe that the U.S. is a violent, brutal nation hell-bent for war.

If we go after Cuba on this one, it will further alienate our nation from the rest of the world. It will make us look like a bunch of thugs, or bullies at best. Cuba is a nation with full rights of self-determination. They have a government in place; we have no business sticking our big fat nose into their affairs. And really, before you go sticking your nose into their business, you have to finish what we the people unwillingly hired you to do. Take care of America! Take care of Americans that you have turned your back on. Take care of the domestic economy and quit using 9-11 as the end-all excuse for all of your failings. You are asking for another 86 BILLION DOLLARS for the war in Iraq. You need to take care of America first. If you don’t do your job and do it well, we’ll have to fire you — just like we did to your daddy.

Source:
http://www.asianreporter.com/stories/taro/2003/t-43-03.htm

WETLANDS POLLUTE, SAYS STUDY OKAYED BY EPA

EPA Biologist Resigns in Protest; Study Clears Way for SW Florida Developments

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
Press Release
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
Contact: Dennis McKinney (202) 265-7337


Washington, DC — A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency biologist has resigned in protest of his agency’s acceptance of a developer-financed study concluding that wetlands discharge more pollutants than they absorb, according to a statement released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). EPA’s approval of the study gives developers credit for improving water quality by replacing natural wetlands with golf courses and other developments.

A group comprised largely of local developers in Southwest Florida contracted Harvey Harper to write the report outlining how the developers could address worsening water quality problems in the region. The resultant Harper Report concludes that —

· Wetlands generate pollution, based upon sampling collected in wetlands next to highways and bridges; and

· Developers can escape federal wetlands restrictions by employing a tactic called “rent-a-cow,” whereby the land owner allows a few cattle to graze in the wetland so it can classified as “improved pasture.”

Often called “nature’s kidneys,” wetlands are protected by the Clean Water Act in part because of the role they play in purifying water. Despite these legal protections, America’s wetlands are shrinking as regulatory agencies find ways to approve more development.

Bruce Boler, a former state water quality specialist, resigned after three years with EPA. Boler, in his resignation statement, cited the stance taken by the EPA Regional Administrator Jimmie Palmer that “EPA would not oppose state positions, so if a state had no water quality problems with a project then neither would EPA.” The state of Florida has already signed off on the Harper Report.

“In the Bush Administration’s bizarre world of ‘sound science,’ wetlands cause pollution and there is no evidence of global warming,” commented PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. PEER is leading a coalition of environmental groups seeking to stop ten projects in the Western Everglades that would destroy more than 2,000 acres of wetlands. “EPA’s new position that wetlands pollute stands the Clean Water Act on its head and sends the all-clear signal to developers that no project is out of bounds.”

Read Bruce Boler’s statement of resignation from EPA
http://www.peer.org/EPA/Boler_Statement.html

Review PEER’s effort to stop the destruction of 2,000 acres of wetlands in the Western Everglades.
http://www.peer.org/press/398.html

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) is a national alliance of local, state and federal resource professionals, working to protect the environment.

PEER . 2001 S Street, NW . Suite 570 . Washington DC . 20009
Tel:(202) 265-7337 . Fax (202) 265-4192 . info@peer.org

Source:
http://www.peer.org/press/403.html

Antiwar Activists To Revisit District

By Manny Fernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday 19 October 2003

Protesters from more than 135 cities in 38 states are expected to converge on Washington on Saturday, as busloads of antiwar demonstrators return to the capital for the first time since the fall of Baghdad in April.

Organizers said the rally and march will draw tens of thousands from across the United States and Canada. It is the first event of its kind co-sponsored by two major antiwar coalitions, International ANSWER and United for Peace and Justice, both of which coordinated some of the country's biggest peace marches this year. The demonstration will coincide with a rally and march in downtown San Francisco.

"The antiwar movement is becoming ascendant again; it's rising once more," ANSWER organizer Brian Becker said. "Our demonstration against the occupation on April 12 drew 30,000 people. We will draw substantially more than that for this demonstration."

The gathering represents a resurgence of sorts of the antiwar movement, which had put its large-scale protests on hold in recent months as activists emphasized education over direct action. No major antiwar rally has been held in Washington since ANSWER's April protest.

ANSWER held a national conference in New York in May that drew more than 850 activists, and United for Peace and Justice sponsored a strategy session in suburban Chicago in June that attracted more than 550. The meetings were designed to focus the movement on charting its future, but the period of relative quiet also allowed some to find new strength to carry on.

"People marched and demonstrated a whole lot to try to stop the war, and we weren't able to," said Leslie Cagan, 56, national coordinator of the United coalition. "That had,I think, for some segments of the activist community, a little bit of a demoralizing effect."

But as the number of U.S. casualties increases and as support for Bush's Iraq policy slips in polls, antiwar activists say the time is right to return to the streets. "Where are those weapons of mass destruction?" Cagan asked. "It turned out to be lies. As strongly as we felt we were right a year ago, we're even stronger in that conviction now."

Activists say they expect several veterans and family members of U.S. soldiers in Iraq to participate. Last October, Wilson "Woody" Powell, a 71-year-old Korean War veteran, filled his scratched 1997 Dodge Caravan with three other veterans -- one each from the first Persian Gulf War, World War II and the Korean War -- for a 14-hour trip from St. Louis to Washington. They headed to a peace rally, stirred by what they felt would be an unjust war in Iraq and hopeful that they and scores of others could make enough noise to stop it
before it started.

One year later, with the war fought and declared over, Powell hasn't given up. He and more than 500 members of Veterans for Peace are expected to head to Washington next weekend to call for an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. "Is this how to cohabit on the globe, by just being bigger and badder than everybody else? Or are we much more comfortable being good neighbors?" asked Powell, executive director of the St. Louis-based group.

Nancy Lessin with Military Families Speak Out said spouses, parents and siblings of military personnel stationed in Iraq or recently returned home are planning to attend. She expects 40 or more families. "None of us want our loved ones to be misused in the way that this administration is misusing them, in a war for oil markets and empire building," said Lessin, a co-founder of the group that started with two military families in November and has grown to more than 1,000 members. Lessin's son is a Marine who returned recently from Iraq.

A listing of cities organizing bus and car caravans posted on ANSWER's Web site reads like a map of much of the United States: Wilmington, Del.; Harrisburg, Pa.; Savannah, Ga.; Asheville, N.C.; Kalamazoo, Mich.; Cedar Falls, Iowa; and Milwaukee.

New York's union representing 200,000 health and human services employees, 1199 SEIU, is providing free bus transportation to Washington for its members and their families. And ANSWER has reserved 65 buses for the New York area alone.

"I think that people want the occupation to end," said Mike Shaw, 35, a restaurant supervisor with the ANSWER chapter in Providence, R.I. "I think they feel the war was pursued under false pretenses."

D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said that his force, U.S. Park Police and U.S. Capitol Police will provide security. Ramsey said it was unclear how large the gathering will be.

"We don't expect it to be anything but peaceful," Ramsey said. The organizers' permit application estimates the crowd at 10,000, but activists have told National Park Service officials they expect as many as 30,000.

Organizers have characterized the war in Iraq as "Bush's Vietnam," describing the invasion and occupation as a bloody, costly political quagmire justified by White House lies and deception. But protesters say they hope to illuminate other issues stemming from the administration's policies, including deep cuts in social programs, increases in military spending and America's emergence as a global empire.

They also are using the event to mark the second anniversary of the 2001 USA Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism law that activists and some lawmakers have condemned as an infringement of civil liberties.

The protest is scheduled to begin with an 11 a.m. rally on the Washington Monument grounds at 17th Street and Constitution Avenue NW. A march starting at 2 p.m. will pass the White House and the Justice Department.

Organizers initially had intended to march to the Pentagon but decided against it for logistical reasons and to focus attention on the Bush administration. Separate feeder marches are planned in conjunction with the demonstration, including those organized by Muslim Americans and anti-capitalists.

Black Voices for Peace, a national network of antiwar and civil rights advocates, is holding a feeder march that will begin with a 9 a.m. rally at Meridian Hill Park in Columbia Heights. Damu Smith, 51, the group's founder, said hundreds of activists from the East Coast will take part. "We think it's important to make a very visible statement by blacks in this effort," he said.

The D.C. chapter of a grass-roots conservative group, Free Republic, is holding an 11 a.m. counter-demonstration at the West Front of the Capitol, near the reflecting pool on Third Street. About 1,000 people are expected.

Kristinn Taylor, 41, local co-leader of the group, said the rally will show support for troops overseas. "The biggest thing we want to do is give voice to the good things that have been happening over in Iraq, which we think are not getting out," Taylor said.

Among the many antiwar groups, ANSWER, which stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, is one of the most controversial, enraging critics such as Taylor, who say it is a bastion of communists and anti-Semites. Among hundreds of ANSWER's coalition co-signers, including historian Howard Zinn and city council members from Boston and Berkeley, Calif., are the socialist Workers World Party, the New Communist Party of the Netherlands and the German Communist Party.

ANSWER organizers say the group is made up of activists of all political and religious stripes, and they view attempts to paint the group as anti-American or anti-Semitic as groundless accusations aimed at dividing the movement. "We would never consider excluding organizations or individuals who share our opposition to this war," Becker said.

Source:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/102203C.shtml

Curtains Ordered for Media Coverage of Returning Coffins

By Dana Milbank
Tuesday, October 21, 2003; Page A23

Since the end of the Vietnam War, presidents have worried that their military actions would lose support once the public glimpsed the remains of U.S. soldiers arriving at air bases in flag-draped caskets.

To this problem, the Bush administration has found a simple solution: It has ended the public dissemination of such images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers' homecomings on all military bases.

In March, on the eve of the Iraq war, a directive arrived from the Pentagon at U.S. military bases. "There will be no arrival ceremonies for, or media coverage of, deceased military personnel returning to or departing from Ramstein [Germany] airbase or Dover [Del.] base, to include interim stops," the Defense Department said, referring to the major ports for the returning remains.

A Pentagon spokeswoman said the military-wide policy actually dates from about November 2000 the last days of the Clinton administration -- but it apparently went unheeded and un-enforced, as images of caskets returning from the Afghanistan war appeared on television broadcasts and in newspapers until early this year. Though Dover Air Force Base, which has the military's largest mortuary, has had restrictions for 12 years, others "may not have been familiar with the policy," the spokeswoman said. This year, "we've really tried to enforce it."

President Bush's opponents say he is trying to keep the spotlight off the fatalities in Iraq. "This administration manipulates information and takes great care to manage events, and sometimes that goes too far," said Joe Lockhart, who as White House press secretary joined President Bill Clinton at several ceremonies for returning remains. "For them to sit there and make a political decision because this hurts them politically -- I'm outraged."

Pentagon officials deny that. Speaking on condition of anonymity, they said the policy covering the entire military followed a victory over a civil liberties court challenge to the restrictions at Dover and relieves all bases of the difficult logistics of assembling family members and deciding which troops should get which types of ceremonies.

One official said only individual graveside services, open to cameras at the discretion of relatives, give "the full context" of a soldier's sacrifice. "To do it at several stops along the way doesn't tell the full story and isn't representative," the official said.

A White House spokesman said Bush has not attended any memorials or funerals for soldiers killed in action during his presidency as his predecessors had done, although he has met with families of fallen soldiers and has marked the loss of soldiers in Memorial Day and
Sept. 11, 2001, remembrances.

The Pentagon has previously acknowledged the effect on public opinion of the grim tableau of caskets being carried from transport planes to hangars or hearses. In 1999, the then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, said a decision to use military force is based in part on whether it will pass "the Dover test," as the public reacts to fatalities.

Ceremonies for arriving coffins, not routine during the Vietnam War, became increasingly common and elaborate later. After U.S. soldiers fell in Beirut, Grenada, Panama, the Balkans, Kenya, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the military often invited in cameras for elaborate ceremonies for the returning remains, at Andrews Air Force Base, Dover, Ramstein and elsewhere -- sometimes with the president attending.

President Jimmy Carter attended ceremonies for troops killed in Pakistan, Egypt and the failed hostage rescue mission in Iran. President Ronald Reagan participated in many memorable ceremonies, including a service at Camp Lejeune in 1983 for 241 Marines killed in Beirut. Among several events at military bases, he went to Andrews in 1985 to pin Purple Hearts to the caskets of marines killed in San Salvador, and, at Mayport Naval Station in Florida in 1987, he eulogized those killed aboard the USS Stark in the Persian Gulf.

During President George H.W. Bush's term, there were ceremonies at Dover and Andrews for Americans killed in Panama, Lebanon and aboard the USS Iowa.

But in early 1991, at the time of the Persian Gulf War, the Pentagon said there would be no more media coverage of coffins returning to Dover, the main arrival point; a year earlier, Bush was angered when television networks showed him giving a news briefing on a split screen with caskets arriving.

But the photos of coffins arriving at Andrews and elsewhere continued to appear through the Clinton administration. In 1996, Dover made an exception to allow filming of Clinton's visit to welcome the 33 caskets with remains from Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown's plane crash. In 1998, Clinton went to Andrews to see the coffins of Americans killed in the terrorist bombing in Nairobi. Dover also allowed public distribution of photos of the homecoming caskets after the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in 2000.

The photos of coffins continued for the first two years of the current Bush administration, from Ramstein and other bases. Then, on the eve of the Iraq invasion, word came from the Pentagon that other bases were to adopt Dover's policy of making the arrival ceremonies off limits.

"Whenever we go into a conflict, there's a certain amount of guidance that comes down the pike," said Lt. Olivia Nelson, a spokeswoman for Dover. "It's a consistent policy across the board. Where it used to apply only to Dover, they've now made it very clear it applies to everyone."

Source:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55816-2003Oct20.html