September 26, 2004

OK, how many out there feel that the sitting U.S. president is an embarrassment?

Forget politics, for a minute, and be honest. Ever slink down in your seat when at the national convention your local chairman addressed the masses and got exposed as a doofus in over his head? Worst yet, your child gets his big moment before the packed house at the stage-play and his light goes completely out?

This shame may well be that nagging ache in the lower mesentery that Americans are beginning to feel - but not yet admit - about their 43rd president.

The latest exhibition occurred Tuesday when President George W. Bush addressed the United Nations. Bush's most devoted defenders are joining his parents, who've known all along, that his finger on the nuclear trigger endangers the very future of the republic. That sucking sound you heard last week was these earnest patriots collectively slinking down in their seats.

As the world witnessed the bloodiest days of his Iraq occupation, Bush rose before the General Assembly and walked, as only he can walk, straight through the looking glass. "Freedom is finding a way in Iraq," the president said, even as militants separated the second American hostage from his head in as many days. Preceding Bush at the UN rostrum, Secretary General Kofi Annan had warned the world body "the rule of law is at risk around the world."

No such risks concerned Bush on his stroll behind the looking glass. Still, it was not just the disconnect of this president from reality that exposes the republic. The fault-line runs much deeper and it is as structural as it is personal. The structural must await another visit, but the personal is unfolding apace.

As the secret to each of us lies in our childhood, so too is it with Bush. Far more important than what Bush did with his lost days in the Alabama National Guard is how little prep-school "Georgie" was conditioned to solve problems and deal with the real world. His parents, of course, are aware of their oldest child's manifest shortcomings and must be horrified at the prospects of the rest of us discovering them.

Despite the best efforts of the media, the public is gaining insight into their president as the facts leak out and as Kitty Kelley's "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty," tops the sales chart. Laying aside Bush's raucous drinking, the cocaine charges and his lifelong exploitation of his "legacy," his formative years are instructive indeed about the president who started a needless war to beat his chest as a "war president." His background explains as well the president who is unimaginably ignorant of the history, culture and aspirations of the 191 nations that he addressed the other day at the General Assembly.

The macho swagger we saw at the UN podium was not so much Texas cowboy as wannabe athlete. "Georgie" could dribble a basketball with but one hand, and, unlike his father, could hit a baseball not at all. So he settled for the Yale cheerleading squad with the reputation of a "jock sniffer."

Foreshadowing his flirtation with war, Bush opted for the trappings. "He wasn't the stud jock that everyone liked," recalled Ken White, a classmate at Yale, in Kelley's book. "But he did have a bad-boy swagger that's appealing to other guys," an attraction that continues at least among white guys. "He smoked unfiltered Lucky Strikes to be macho."

This pseudo-macho scion of a prominent political family took every advantage of class privilege that got him to third base under the delusion that he had hit a triple. At Andover, Yale and Harvard business school, this swaggering mediocrity nestled at the bottom of every class, perplexed by achievers not of his class, to say nothing of his race. At Andover, Bush reportedly sported on his wall a Confederate flag that might have repelled Andover's two blacks, and perhaps the one Puerto Rican, in its class of 290.

It was, however, Bush's towering lack of intellect that defined him. "That (Bush) coasted on his family name was understandable," said Yale frat brother Tom Wilner. "Lots of guys do that. But Georgie, as we called him then, has absolutely no intellectual curiosity about anything. He wasn't interested in ideas or books or causes. He didn't travel; he didn't read the newspapers; he didn't watch the news ... How he got out of Yale without developing some interest in the world besides booze and sports stuns me."

Chasing down bogus war records and irrelevant cocaine tips, the media have missed the boat on the background of the gloating "war president." It was Wilner who loosed the most salient line in Kelley's book: "Hell, it's not George's substance abuse that bothers me as much as his lack of substance."

Is this not cause for national embarrassment? Think about it.

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By ANNE GEARAN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The next president's most enduring legacy may be in an area little mentioned in the campaign so far: the federal courts, where rulings on such hot-button issues as abortion, gay marriage and the death penalty could have lasting impact.

With an aging Supreme Court, it's likely that over the next four years either President Bush (news - web sites) or Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites) will choose one or more new justices, along with scores or even hundreds of federal appeals court and trial judges.

Courts can have the crucial last word on important and contentious issues, as recent rulings on affirmative action and presidential war powers attest. But chances are most voters won't hear specifics about the kind of judges either candidate favors.

"As a campaign issue I think it's been almost invisible," said Supreme Court historian David Garrow.

That's a departure from the 2000 campaign, when both Bush and Democratic nominee Al Gore (news - web sites) pointed to particular Supreme Court justices they admired and partisans on both sides spoke with certainty about an expected Supreme Court retirement.

Four years later, not one Supreme Court justice has left the bench. That makes it even more likely there will be an opening sometime soon, law professors and activists said.

Next month the current court begins its 10th term without a vacancy. Only one justice, Clarence Thomas (news - web sites), is younger than 65. Speculation about retirements has focused on Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who will turn 80 in October, and Justices John Paul Stevens (news - web sites), 84, and Sandra Day O'Connor (news - web sites), 74.

"It's not that people were crying wolf last time, it's just that it didn't play out the way we expected," said Duke University constitutional law professor Erwin Chemerinsky.

The candidates may be wary of predicting any vacancies this time, and other more immediate issues are crowding out larger discussion of the court and judges, scholars said.

Bush did mention the issue in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, criticizing judges he contends have gone too far in rulings declaring gay marriage legal and a ban on certain abortions unconstitutional.

"I support the protection of marriage against activist judges," the president said, "and I will continue to appoint federal judges who know the difference between personal opinion and the strict interpretation of the law."

For his part, Kerry promises on his campaign Web site that as president he would try to "reverse damage done to civil rights laws by right-wing judges" and would "only appoint judges with a record of enforcing the nation's civil rights and anti-discrimination laws."

If Bush wins a second term, he could be on his way to naming more federal trial and appeals judges than either of the last two-term presidents. Bill Clinton (news - web sites) appointed 367 judges, including two Supreme Court justices, and Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) chose 357 judges, including three Supreme Court justices. Reagan also elevated Rehnquist from associate to chief justice.

With 201 judges appointed so far, Bush is already ahead of the 187 his father chose during his one-term presidency — though many of the current president's nominees have had to weather a rocky confirmation process in the highly partisan Senate.

Picking a Supreme Court justice would be a bigger prize.

Supreme Court justices, like other federal judges, can remain on the job decades after the president who chose them. They serve for life or until they choose to retire.

Rehnquist is the longest-serving member of the high court, chosen 32 years ago by Richard Nixon. Stevens is still there 29 years after he was Gerald Ford's lone Supreme Court pick.

The nine-member high court is divided basically into three camps — conservative, middle-of-the-road and moderately liberal — and frequently lines up 5-4 on the most difficult cases. Depending on who is counting, the court is one vote or two away from overturning Roe v. Wade (news - web sites), the 3-decade-old ruling that affirmed the legality of abortion.

In an AP-Ipsos poll taken last week, 56 percent of those surveyed said they wanted the president to nominate a Supreme Court justice with conservative political views if a vacancy occurs; 37 percent said they preferred a justice with liberal views.

Both sides in the presidential campaign have raised the ideological issue among their own strongest supporters. A recent Democratic fund-raising letter on behalf of Democrats, for example, warned of the dangers of re-electing Bush.

"Are you ready for Chief Justice Antonin Scalia (news - web sites)?" the letter said. Scalia and fellow conservative Thomas are the justices Bush cited in 2000 as models for future picks.

Voters should be aware of the importance of Supreme Court vacancies, said Elliot Mincberg, legal director of People for the American Way, a liberal group that has opposed several of Bush's lower-court picks.

"It's not the next four years that is the issue," Mincberg said. "It's the next 20, 30 or 40 and what people's rights and liberties are going to look like."

 

 

 

Bush: a Study in Failure

Ghanaian Chronicle (Accra)
COLUMN
September 23, 2004
Posted to the web September 23, 2004

By I. K. Gyasi

When a new history of the United States of America comes to be written, the narrative will show that the biggest disaster that ever happened to that country was President George W. Bush Jnr., and not the calamity of September 11, 2001.

And if George Bush should write his memoirs after being voted out of the White House, he should title the work, "Failure" with the sub-title, "How the Son Never Rose."

George Bush is the clearest example of how, in spite of all the privileges and advantages at one's disposal, one can easily fail to succeed in life.

George Bush will never be in the same league as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Frank Delano Roosevelt, J. F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Bill Clinton, for example.

While George W. Bush Snr., (the father) was carving a niche for himself in American society as ambassador, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and later as president of the United States, what was his son doing?

He was leading the life of the typical wastrel: dissipation and total aimlessness in life. In fact, as everyone knows, he had to be rescued from that life and rehabilitated by a group of Wesleyan priests.

One wonders whether the rehabilitation was one hundred percent successful.

This is the man who became the President of the United States of America under extremely dubious circumstances. In deed, if the way Bush was " elected" had happened in a so-called Third World or developing country, the "civilized and democratic" people of the Western world, would have cried "Foul."

The Florida vote was crucial. And Florida was where the elder brother of Bush was the Governor. Some ballot boxes disappeared for a time. Barriers were erected to stop some Black Americans from going to exercise their right to vote. They are known to vote for the Democratic Party.

A faulty voting machine was used that resulted in the votes of several Black Americans being rendered invalid.

The Democratic candidate for the Presidency, Al Gore, insisted on manual recounting of the votes. As the recounts threatened to turn the vote in Al Gore's favour, the matter ended up at the United States Federal Supreme Court.

There, with seven out of the nine Justices of the court being Republicans put on the Court mainly by previous Republican Presidents, the verdict unsurprisingly went in favour of Bush. Al Gore accepted the verdict with grace.

At the inauguration of a President of the United States, a number played is titled, "Hail To The Chief."

Having "won" the election under such unconvincing and highly questionable circumstances, it is no wonder that some of the spectators shouted, 'Hail To The Thief." Sure, he had stolen the Presidency, no doubt about that, Probably realizing his debilitating shortcomings as a person and as "a cut-purse president" George W. Bush set out to terrorize the rest of the world.

With a deadpan face, eyes almost shut out by his eyelids, snake-like lips, hectoring speeches and a bellicose posture, Bush sought to create the impression that he was the modern-day equivalent of the Old Wild West Sheriff who, alone or in the company of a posse, rides out of town to catch the bad guy and bring him to Justice.

On the contrary, Bush has proved himself rather the bad guy who, with his sidekicks, rides into town, pulls out his Smith & Wesson or Colt 45 pistols, heads for the nearest saloon, and starts to cower everyone by indiscriminating firing into the ceiling.

Came September 11 and Bush must have thought that a wonderful opportunity had been presented to him to embark on a crusade to rid the world of all the bad guys whom he describes as terrorists.

Buoyed up by his invasion of Afghanistan and the driving away of the Taliban regime, Bush must have convinced himself that he was invincible.

He must have been convinced further by the people he had assembled around him: Dick Cheney, his Vice President; Collin Powell, his Secretary of State; Donald Rumsfeld, his Secretary for Defense; Ms Condoleesa Rice, his national security Advisor, and John Ashcroft, his Attorney-General.

These people, as shown by the Guinness Book of Records, are all billionaires. The god they worship is an insatiable appetite for wealth, power and world domination.

Casting their eyes around, they saw what Bush came to describe as countries that terrorized the rest of the world through state-sponsored destabilization of other countries.

To Bush, these countries, namely Iraq, Iran and North Korea, formed an "axis of evil" that had to be destroyed. Attacked them one after the other and such so-called "rogue states" like Libya and Syria would quickly mend their ways.

The conquest of Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein would open up that country for economic rape. Most of the people around him had made their fortunes in oil, especially Dick Cheney and Condoleesa Rice. The oil fields of Iraq were there for the picking.

Why not attack Saddam Hussein on the false pretext that, contrary to the resolutions of the United States, he had acquired, or was seriously acquiring, weapons of mass destruction, namely chemical, biological and nuclear weapons (WMDs)?

Without the sanction of a resolution by the United Nations, George Bush, the World's Number One Policeman or Sheriff, wore his ten-gallon hat and his cow boy boots, buckled his belt with two holsters for his fighting guns, swung into the saddle, and headed straight for Iraq. Dear readers, you know the rest of the story of the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath.

In Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, fingered as the villain who masterminded the September 11 catastrophe, reportedly remains at large.

So are the leaders of the Taliban regime.

Thanks to the power and the lure of money, Saddam Hussein has been betrayed to Bush. Far from Saddam's capture and the disbanding of his army ending hostilities in Iraq, Bush continues to sink in the Iraqi quicksand.

Far from being the Liberator bringing peace, development and prosperity, Bush has only succeeded in introducing chaos, needless bloodshed and disintegration to that country.

When he allegedly visited American soldiers in Iraq, he could only do so "Nicodemously," instead of riding in an open vehicle to acknowledge the cheers of a grateful people.

It is said that he wore a military uniform, ostensibly to empathize with the troops but more likely to hide his real identity so that he did not become a target. The man "highlighted it" out of town as fast as he had entered it.

On June 30, 2004, Bush will hand over the house of cards he has built in Iraq to a group. He knows very well that that house will collapse but it is anything to get out of that hellhole.

American jingoism, the policy of "my country right or wrong" and her hypocrisy and double standards pre-date the Bush Presidency.

Still, there can be no doubt that Bush in his almost four years in office has adopted the crudest type of foreign policy that has raised this American character to record heights.

The shocking record of the treatment of prisoners in Iraq and at the Guantanamo Base in Cuba has shown the ugliest face of George Bush and his America.

Today, the worst type of a so-called Third World dictator is an angel compared to George Bush. No wonder that 50 (fifty) former American diplomats have written to warn him about the effect of his policies. According to them, such policies are losing friends for America.

Today, George Bush encourages Israel to disregard international law, respect for human rights and to carry out acts of genocide. At least other American Presidents tried to bring about peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Today, George Bush says that the prisoners at the Guantanamo base are not regular prisoners of war but "illegal combatants." They are also said not to be on United States soil so the laws of the United States do not apply to them. Consequently, Bush has the right to hold them forever at the Base and under constant torture.

Far from winning his so-called war on terror, George Bush rather continues to stoke up the fires that forge terrorists around the world.

George W. Bush, this "king of shreds and patches" (apologies to Shakespeare's Hamlet), has become the biggest terrorist of all time.

He has succeeded in reducing America to the lowest point or nadir of her history while he himself has sunk lower than a snake's belly.

This is the man who wants another stay in the White House.

 

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Mon Sep 27,12:00 AM ET

 

Stay the Course Join us in the world of George W. Bush, where you never have to change your mind -- or the oil in your car. By Charles P. Pierce Web Exclusive: 09.23.04 Just recently, I decided to be a little more flexible about being obstinate. When I was growing up, we were taught that it was not such a good thing to be obstinate. In fact, I first heard the word “obstinate” from a nun who was telling me that I was obstinate, and for a while I thought it was something like being a Methodist. I gradually came to learn that what Sister was talking about was that I wasn't being flexible enough in my thinking to accept unreservedly every word of rigid dogma that was being spooned into me. This made me even more confused than the doctrine of transubstantiation did -- and I spent a lot of years as completely baffled, which I might have been anyway, but surely the nun didn't help matters at all. Anyway, I was in college before I realized that being a bit less inflexible on certain important personal issues not only made me more relaxed but also guaranteed I’d never have to stay in on Saturday night. At that point, I decided that I was going to be stubborn about being flexible. Now certain important Christian thinkers, beloved in the motels that dot that lovely New Orleans neighborhood known as Out By The Airport, might term me a “moral relativist” for having lived my life this way. I might even well be called a “pagan,” though I'm not, largely because I look stupid in antlers. To hell -- you should pardon the _expression -- with the hot-sheet parsons, I figured. I was happy. Then George W. Bush changed my life. He showed me at last that the nun had been wrong, that being obstinate was all that really matters in this life. No more sifting of endless options. No more of that exhausting reflection. Decide what you're going to do and, evidence and common sense be damned, just go do it. Who are you going to believe, yourself or your own lying eyes? It was not a good thing to be stubborn about being flexible. Far better to loosen up and get really obstinate. (I took the president quite seriously as a role model because, well into adulthood, he apparently was quite stubborn in his flexibility toward the healing properties of strong drink and toward the relative necessity of actually working for a living. Of course, he was most stubborn in his flexibility toward the state of Alabama in 1972 -- which he evidently regarded as a noncorporeal state, much like the state of grace in that you didn't have to be there to actually be there.) Now, I do not have a large military and a compliant Congress, so I am unable to start a war and then obstinately insist that the country I have invaded is rapidly turning into Rhode Island when all the available evidence indicates that it actually is turning into the Land of Mordor. However, it’s an approach easily adapted to the small but surmountable problems of daily living. Like the oil light, for example. For a week or so, the oil light on my dashboard was blinking red. Then it went red and stayed that way. Many of my friends pointed out that this could not be a good thing. I kept driving the car until, one afternoon, there was a loud pinging sound and a rod came flying through the hood and killed a pigeon about 10 feet above my car. We towed it into the shop (the car, not the pigeon, which had fallen on the hood and stayed there), where the mechanic clucked at me. “How long had the light been on?” he asked. “Well,” I told him, “the light isn’t the important thing. The thrown rod isn’t the important thing. Not even the pigeon is the important thing. The important thing is that I had gotten where I was going all those days. Until I couldn't, of course.” He was dubious. He pointed to the hole in the hood. He pointed to the corpse of the pigeon. “Your car,” he said, “cannot move any more.” “Nonsense,” I told him. “My car is on the march and it isn't going back.” “It isn't going anywhere,” he carped. This went on for about half an hour. Ordinarily I’d have been concerned about not having a car, and about how much the repairs would cost, and I might've even spared a moment to regret the loss of the pigeon, which really was a mess. But this was much better. I simply insisted that there was no problem here, over and over again, and then I walked home. A neighbor greeted me on my front lawn. “Thank God you're back,” he said. “There is a huge snapping turtle in your backyard.” I looked over the fence, and he was right. The thing was big and lumpy and unsightly enough to be governor of California. I came back around the front. “It's OK,” I told my neighbor. “It's gone.” There was a loud champing sound behind me. “My lord,” said my neighbor, “it's eating the picnic table.” “No, it isn't,” I told him. “The picnic table is on the march and it isn’t going back.” “It's a pile of splinters,” said my neighbor, “and now the thing is after the fence.” “It’s doing no such thing,” I told him. “Look, there's a new section of fence right there.” My neighbor had started backing away at this point. “No,” I told him, “look: It's a great new section of fence, fresh paint and everything.” The champing sound got louder. I think my neighbor was running now. I went in the house and luxuriated in my newfound peace. It is liberating only to make one decision a day, and to stick to it, no matter what evidence arises to the contrary, no matter how many pigeons die or how many turtles attack. I felt great moral clarity about myself. I felt at one with the American people -- at least those American people who don’t fix my car or live on either side of me. A couple of more days and this just might be a foreign policy or something. Then I can find someone to deal with the turtle, which is starting up on the gazebo out back. Colin Powell's number is around here someplace. Charles P. Pierce is a Boston Globe Magazine staff writer and a contributing writer for Esquire. He also appears regularly on National Public Radio.

Copyright © 2004 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Charles P. Pierce, "Stay the Course", The American Prospect Online, Sep 23, 2004. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org.

TRIUMPH OF THE STULTOCRACY  

By Ted Rall

NEW YORK--"Kerry doesn't know what the working-class people do; he hasn't done any physical labor all his life," Sharon Alfman, a 51-year-old cook in New Lexington, Ohio, told a New York Times reporter. It's true. Kerry is a rich boy. But then she added: "Bush's values are middle-class family values." 

George W. Bush earned $727,000 last year. Estimates of his net worth range between $9 and $26 million. Middle class he most assuredly is not. Working class he never has been. Like fellow Skull and Bones member John Kerry (news - web sites), man of the people he never will be. But it matters that Sharon Altman thinks he is. Unless you too are a voter living in a swing state like Ohio, her vote counts more than yours.

Demonstrating that stupefying ignorance can be bipartisan, another Ohioan interviewed for the same article said she is against the war in Iraq (news - web sites) because, like 42 percent of her fellow Americans, she thinks Iraq was behind 9/11: "We shouldn't be over there building them back up because they didn't build our towers back up." She is wrong on so many levels that it makes my brain hurt.

Both women are entitled to their unawareness. We can't pass a law to force them to read the paper. But neither of these people ought to force their fellow citizens to suffer the consequences of their being so uninformed. Voting should be a privilege earned by an intellectually engaged citizen, not a right given to any adult with a pulse.

All men are created equal, declared the Founders. But as Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in "Democracy in America," universal suffrage counts upon the existence of a responsible, well-educated citizenry in order to result in political equality. If you give the vote to morons, you get the "tyranny of the masses"--a lumpen proletariat prone to manipulation by demagogues and fools--such as that which created chaos and bloodshed in post-revolutionary France. We're all equal at birth, but what we do later determines whether or not our opinions are worthwhile.

At this writing, the world's greatest nation flails under the rule of buffoons and madmen, bogged down in two optional wars we're actually losing. The world's richest economy is shedding jobs, running up debts and building nothing for the future. Voters, offered an election year alternative to the subliterate idiot who single-handedly created this mess, spurn him for a leader even dumber than they are. America has become a stultocracy: government by morons, for morons.

A 2002 poll found that 64 percent of Americans--people whose votes help determine how much you pay in taxes--could not name a single Supreme Court justice. In 2003, 58 percent--people whose votes could elect someone who starts a nuclear war--couldn't identify a single department of the president's cabinet. Voters aged 18 to 24, whose recent schooling ought to inspire confidence in their knowledge of basic facts, are especially ignorant. National Geographic (news - web sites) says that 85 percent of young American adults can't find Afghanistan (news - web sites), Iraq or Israel on a map.

The fact that these yahoos are allowed to vote is an abomination. Their ill-considered ballots cancel or dilute those cast by those who do the heavy lifting that makes them good citizens: keeping abreast of current events, researching issues, studying candidates' positions.

In the Old South, literacy tests were used to disenfranchise blacks. Alternatively, a basic political literacy test should be used to ensure that anyone who picks ESPN over CNN--regardless of race or creed--stays home on Election Day. Prospective voters should be required to answer at least three of the following questions correctly; to give people a fair shot, the test should be published in newspapers a week before an election:

1. Who is the vice president?

2. What is your state capital?

3. Name one of the following: your governor, congressman or one senator.

4. What is the capital of the United States?

5. Name one federal cabinet-level department.

Of course, such a political literacy test would drastically reduce voter turnout. On the other hand, those who pass could take comfort in knowing that they're not competing against the 60 percent of Americans who think we've found Iraq's imaginary WMDs, or the 22 percent who "believe" that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) used such weapons against U.S. troops during the 2003 invasion.

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Wed Sep 22,11:37 AM ET

By Alan Elsner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Millions of U.S. citizens, including a disproportionate number of black voters, will be blocked from voting in the Nov. 2 presidential election because of legal barriers, faulty procedures or dirty tricks, according to civil rights and legal experts.

The largest category of those legally disenfranchised consists of almost 5 million former felons who have served prison sentences and been deprived of the right to vote under laws that have roots in the post-Civil War 19th century and were aimed at preventing black Americans from voting.

But millions of other votes in the 2000 presidential election were lost due to clerical and administrative errors while civil rights organizations have cataloged numerous tactics aimed at suppressing black voter turnout. Polls consistently find that black Americans overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.

"There are individuals and officials who are actively trying to stop people from voting who they think will vote against their party and that nearly always means stopping black people from voting Democratic," said Mary Frances Berry, head of the U.S. Commission on Human Rights.

Vicky Beasley, a field officer for People for the American Way, listed some of the ways voters have been "discouraged" from voting.

"In elections in Baltimore in 2002 and in Georgia last year, black voters were sent fliers saying anyone who hadn't paid utility bills or had outstanding parking tickets or were behind on their rent would be arrested at polling stations. It happens in every election cycle," she said.

In a mayoral election in Philadelphia last year, people pretending to be plainclothes police officers stood outside some polling stations asking people to identify themselves. There have also been reports of mysterious people videotaping people waiting in line to vote in black neighborhoods.

Minority voters may be deterred from voting simply by election officials demanding to see drivers' licenses before handing them a ballot, according to Spencer Overton, who teaches law at George Washington University. The federal government does not require people to produce a photo identification unless they are first-time voters who registered by mail.

"African Americans are four to five times less likely than whites to have a photo ID," Overton said at a recent briefing on minority disenfranchisement.

Courtenay Strickland of the Americans Civil Liberties Union testified to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights last week that at a primary election in Florida last month, many people were wrongly turned away when they could not produce identification.

BLACKS' BALLOTS REJECTED

The commission, in a report earlier this year, said that in Florida, where President Bush (news - web sites) won a bitterly disputed election in 2000 by 537 votes, black voters had been 10 times more likely than non-black voters to have their ballots rejected and were often prevented from voting because their names were erroneously purged from registration lists.

Additionally, Florida is one of 14 states that prohibit ex-felons from voting. Seven percent of the electorate but 16 percent of black voters in that state are disenfranchised.

In other swing states, 4.6 percent of voters in Iowa, but 25 percent of blacks, were disenfranchised in 2000 as ex-felons. In Nevada, it was 4.8 percent of all voters but 17 percent of blacks; in New Mexico, 6.2 percent of all voters but 25 percent of blacks.

In total, 13 percent of all black men are disenfranchised due to a felony conviction, according to the Commission on Civil Rights.

"This has a huge effect on elections but also on black communities which see their political clout diluted. No one has yet explained to me how letting ex-felons who have served their sentences into polling booths hurts anyone," said Jessie Allen of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Penda Hair, co-director of the Advancement Project, which seeks to ensure fair multiracial elections, recently reported that registrars across the country often claimed not to have received voter registration forms or rejected them for technical reasons that could have been corrected easily before voting day if the applicant had known there was a problem.

Beasley said that many voters who had registered recently in swing states were likely to find their names would not be on the rolls when they showed up on Election Day.

"There is very widespread delay in the swing states because there have been massive registration drives among minorities and those applications are not being processed quickly enough," she said.

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Seymour Hersh

Seymour Hersh's alternative history of Bush's war
The crack investigative reporter tells Salon about a disastrous battle the U.S. brass hushed up, the frightening True Believers in the White House, and how Iran, not Israel, may have manipulated us into war.

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By Mary Jacoby

Sept. 18, 2004  |  Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Seymour Hersh has written more than two dozen stories for the New Yorker magazine on the secret machinations of the Bush administration in what the White House calls the "war on terrorism." His revelations, including an investigation of a group of neoconservatives at the Pentagon who set up their own special intelligence unit to press the case for invading Iraq, have consistently broken news.

Arguably his most important scoop came last spring, when the legendary investigative reporter received the now infamous photos of prisoner abuse by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, Iraq, as well as the explosive report on the abuse by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba. The story Hersh published in the New Yorker, followed by a report by CBS's "60 Minutes," created an international scandal for the Bush administration and led to congressional hearings.

In a new book, "Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib," Hersh expands upon his work in the New Yorker to contribute new insights and revelations. He discloses how a CIA analyst's report on abuses against captured Taliban prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, made its way to the White House in 2002, putting National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on notice two years before the Abu Ghraib scandal that human rights violations were taking place in U.S.-run prisons abroad.

In March 2002, Hersh writes, a military action against al-Qaida, known as Operation Anaconda, was botched in Afghanistan's mountainous border with Pakistan. Billed at the time as a success story by the Pentagon, it was in fact a debacle, plagued by squabbling between the services, bad military planning and avoidable deaths of American soldiers, as well as the escape of key al-Qaida leaders, likely including Osama bin Laden.

Hersh's story is well known. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1969 exposé of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, in which American soldiers killed more than 500 civilians. He is the author of eight books, including 1983's "The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House." And, since 1998, he's been a staff writer for the New Yorker

I visited with Hersh this week in his tiny, unadorned two-room office in downtown Washington, where he works amid a whirring fax machine, a constantly ringing phone and delivery men knocking on the door with packages. A map of the world, slightly off-kilter, is taped to the wall behind his desk, which is piled high with papers.

He speaks quickly, answering questions before the sentences can be completed, and hopscotches through conversational topics, as if everything's a race against time. "I have some Brazilians coming in. You know, just to talk about ... wait! Turn it off for a second," he says, gesturing at my recorder. He shares with me a lead he's working on. He flashes me a look at an intriguing document before stealing it away. "OK, let's talk about the book. I've gone over the top here. I'm not pimping anymore. I'm now a full-fledged whore, with red paint," he says, pretending to smear rouge on his cheeks. He loosens his tie. "Let's get on with it!"

What is new in the book, and what is based on your published work?

I'd say about 35 percent of the opening material on Abu Ghraib is new, maybe about 15,000 words, altogether about, I don't know what percentage. Maybe about a third, maybe a little less, is either new or revised or significantly changed. But the bulk of the book is the articles I did, put in a different form and combined in a different way by a very competent editor of mine. This book was edited by the New Yorker and fact-checked by the New Yorker. Everything that is new in the book was fact-checked by the New Yorker.

Who was the editor?

Her name is Amy Davidson. She's a senior editor, and she's great. A man named John Bennet, who is a wonderful editor, was my editor for the first couple of years, and then Amy came on because John's good that way. John is very avuncular, and he wants other people to start editing significant stuff, because among other things, he's always stuck with the big pieces. It was fact-checked by the same people, and the publisher paid for it. And Remnick, to his everlasting credit, David Remnick the editor, agreed that even though there's a very good story at the beginning -- the whole Condi Rice meeting issue -- he said publish it in your book and go make some money. It was sort of nice of them. It reflects well on the New Yorker. His point was, your being out there reflects well on the New Yorker. We all fight for making a living.

To talk about the new revelations ...

Let me tell you the one I like the most; aside from the obvious stuff about Abu Ghraib, there was a story I didn't write two years ago about Operation Anaconda. I didn't write it because, oh, a lot of complicated reasons. One, it was very hostile to our soldiers, and the military, and General [Tommy] Franks, and [Major Gen. Frank] Hagenbeck, a very nasty story. And then secondly, there was bad blood between the Marine Corps, and General Franks, and CentComm and the Air Force, and it just didn't, uh ... it's one of those stories. The real reason in a funny way is that even though my sources were angry in talking about it, it's one of the stories they really would have regretted, because you're talking about internecine warfare among the services. It's about boys ... anyway.

They would have regretted it?

They would have regretted talking to me about that. In there is an account of the Marines insisting that General Franks sign an MOU, a memorandum of understanding, of how the Marines would be used. We're talking about in combat, this kind of war going on between the services. And, you know, I probably guess it was the right decision, because I had to do obviously an alternate history of the war. And obviously there were certain people talking to me. People on the inside know what's going on. And so, I probably agree it was OK to do it. But I felt bad when I saw [former Gen. Wesley] Clark later. I had talked to Clark about the story at the time. Then two years later I ran into him when he was running for president, or right before, and he said, "Whatever happened to that story?" I said, "Well, I just decided not to write it." And he said, "Well, you should have. It's your job."

He's an amazingly straight guy. A difficult guy. "You should have." He basically told me, "Punk kid. You didn't know what you were doing." I also respect him because ...

Let's talk about some of these revelations.

Oh, so that was the one I liked the most.

But why didn't you write it at the time? You thought it would be too hostile?

No! There was, you know, it was a tough story about troops running from the battlefield, you know; it was just a tough story. [Hersh is referring to the lost battle of Anaconda.] I was writing a lot of other tough stories, and, uh ... it just didn't work. Let's put it that way.

Isn't that what a lot of the mainstream press get accused of -- certainly not you -- but holding back important information out of sensitivity for the feelings of the nation?

Ain't none of us perfect. It just seemed at the time, some of the people who were talking to me at the time, it would cause a big stink, and some of the Marines who were talking to me would not talk anymore. I also know, in order to do the story right, I would have had to go find some of the guys who were in the mission ... There was a lot of reporting to do, and I don't know, I just didn't do it.

But now you've gone back and revisited it in the book?

Oh yeah. Give me the book. I'll show you right where it is. So I'm not backing off. It was a story that should have been written. Of course I should have written it.

Let's talk about this anecdote about Vice President Cheney saying there would be no resignations [over the Abu Ghraib scandal]. Your publisher emphasized this in the press release, and I wanted to know ...

Now, wait a minute. Are you asking about a press release? Excuse me. That's like asking me about a headline.

Just tell me why you feel it's important.

What? Tell me why I feel it's important that Cheney called up?

What does it reveal?

It's more complicated than you think. For one thing, it reveals that they're all as one. The notion that they're going to fire [Donald] Rumsfeld, as people actually entertained, is comical. After 9/11 he gets in this swaggering mode and says we're going to smoke those terrorists out of their snake holes. And then it's clear there's prisoner abuse and torture going on. But does Cheney call up and say, "Oh, my God! What's going on over there, Don? What kind of craziness are you doing to those prisoners? This is devastating to our campaign. What's going on?" I don't hear that. What I hear is, "Let's all pull together and get past it." Very interesting.

You're an expert on Henry Kissinger. Is there someone who ...

I'm an expert on the side of Henry Kissinger that lied like most people breathed.

Is there someone who is the Henry Kissinger in this administration?

Oh, believe me, I pray for one [clasps his hands and looks beseechingly upward]. Wouldn't it be great if the reality was that they were lying about WMD, and they really didn't believe that democracy would come when they invaded Iraq, and you could go to war with 5,000 troops, a few special forces, a few bombs and a lot of American flags, and Iraq would fold, Saddam would be driven out, a new Baath Party would emerge that's moderate? Democracy would flow like water out of a fountain. These guys believe it. They believe WMD. There's no fallback with these guys. These guys are utopians. They're like Trotskyites. They believe in permanent revolution. They really believe. They believe that they could go in with few forces. They believed that once they went in it would happen quick. Iran would get the message. What they call occupied Lebanon would get the lesson. Even the Saudis would change.

They thought it would happen quickly?

Very quickly. I don't have any empirical basis for it, but if I had to bet, the plan was to go right into Syria. That's why the fourth division was hanging for so long in the desert out there right on the border with Syria. In the early days of the war, before this government figured out how much trouble they were in -- which took them a long time -- they would drive practice runs, somebody told me. Again, I'm just saying what was told to me; this is not something I reported, but I was told pretty reliably, they were doing practice runs that amounted to the distance from the border to Damascus. It's my belief always -- again this is not empirical, it's sort of my heuristic view -- that the real reason [Paul] Wolfowitz and others were mad at [Gen. Eric] Shinseki when he testified before the war about [the need for] 200 or 300 troops -- it wasn't about the numbers -- was, "Didn't he get it? What had he been listening to in the tank? Didn't we explain to him in the tank what we told the chiefs? This is the way it's going to be. Didn't he understand what it's all about?" He didn't get it. He hadn't understood what they meant. This was all going to fall down. It was all going to be peaches and cream. And Shinseki just didn't get it! It wasn't about the numbers. He wasn't a member of the clan. He didn't join the utopia crowd.

You've answered one of my questions. Let's elaborate on it. Clearly there's very little that's, well, in touch with reality in these policies.

Ha, ha, ha. It's so easy for you to say that!

But it's not so clear actually. Many Americans ...

I think I used actually ... I'll get you this word [grabs book from my lap and begins flipping through it] ... there was a "fantastical" quality to the White House's deliberations. Fantastical. That was the phrase I used.

Yes, I read that. And that was my next question. With Kissinger, there were lies, and he knew exactly what he was doing ...

Yes, one of his aides was assigned -- literally assigned on one of the secret flights they made to China -- to keep track of the lies, who knew what. I think they used to describe it as keeping track of what statements were made, but essentially it was who was being told what, because so many different people were being told different things. But these guys, do you realize how much better off we would be if they really were cynical, and they really were lying about it, because, yes, behind the invasion would be something real, like support for Israel or oil. But it's not! It's not about oil. It's about utopia. I guess you could call it idealism. But it's idealism that's dead wrong. It's like one of the far-right Christian credos. It's a faith-based policy. Only it wasn't a religious faith. It was the faith that democracy would flourish.

So you don't think that this is some Machiavellian, cynical, manipulative ...

I used to pray it was! We'd be in better shape. Is there anything worse than idealism that doesn't conform to reality? You have an unrealistic policy.

It seems that they are very selective not only about what kind of information they present to the public but even in what they decide to believe in themselves.

I think these guys in their naiveté and single-mindedness have been so completely manipulated by -- not the Israelis -- but the Iranians. The Iranians always wanted us in. I think there's a lot of evidence that Iran had much to do with [Ahmed] Chalabi's disinformation [about nonexistent Iraqi WMD]. I think there were people in the CIA who suspected this all along, but of course they couldn't get their view in. I think the Senate Intelligence Committee's report's a joke, the idea this CIA was misleading the president. They get some analysts in and say, "Were you pressured?" And they all say, "No, excuse me?" Is that how you do an investigation? The truth of the matter is, there was tremendous pressure put on the analysts [to produce reports that bolstered the case for war]. It's not as if anybody issued a diktat. But everybody understood what to do.

Talk about the ...

Wait. You're missing something now. The Iranian stuff. I think Iran probably had more to do with Chalabi's information than people know.

We know that Chalabi had Iranian agents on his payroll.

Yeah, but, well, he admits to that. He had a villa in Tehran. But basically I think Iran was very interested in getting us involved. We get knocked down a peg; they become the big boys on the block.

Are you working on this now?

Yeah, I'm thinking about it. I'm reporting on it. But I'm not working on it. I'm just -- it's too cosmic.

Was Chalabi the conduit?

I think Chalabi thought he could handle the Iranians. They were helping him all along with disinformation and documents he could give to the White House. Don't forget, once the neocons decided to go to Iraq in the face of all evidence, they were like a super-reverse suction machine, and anything in the world that furthered the argument that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction was hot. I call it stove-piping, because it's a technical work of art. But it was much more than that. It was anything -- vavoom! -- into the president's [office]. It was so amateurish, it was comical. How hard was it to get some crapola into the White House about WMD without the CIA looking at it?

Do you have any idea of the origin of the forged Niger documents that Bush cited in his January 2003 State of the Union address as proof that Iraq was seeking uranium to make nuclear weapons?

I don't really know. I know that they think it was an inside job. And my idea is that there were people in the government who knew that you could give these guys [the neoconservatives] anything, and within three days, if it said the right thing, there would be a principals meeting [of the senior foreign policy officials] at the White House on it. And one idea would be to get them in a position where they really walked on their dongs, in a way. Give them some bad stuff. They'd have a big meeting about it and [the neocons] would finally be exposed as ludicrous. Nobody anticipated that [the forged documents] would end up in the State of the Union address. I mean, it's beyond belief. I don't believe in these conspiracy theories, about [Michael] Ledeen [a neocon operative] and these things. He's too smart for that. Because it was designed to be caught.

Do you think the responsibility for Abu Ghraib goes directly up to Rumsfeld?

I think they [Rumsfeld and senior administration officials] had a chance in the fall of 2002 to set the limits, and they chose not to. I don't think the CIA analyst who did the report was very explicit in his written document about the abuses. That isn't the way to get ahead. But he certainly told his peers there was a real mess there, so they know it. All she [Rice] had to do was put the word out there. The chain of command is very responsive. If you put out the word that you're not going to tolerate this crap, it's not going to happen. But that's not the word they put out.

Nobody would have countenanced in his right mind Abu Ghraib. But then again, if you think a bunch of kids from West Virginia understood the way to the soul of an Arab man is to take off his clothes and photograph him ... they didn't know that. Somebody told it to them. And that's the thing about the military. In loco parentis. They have an obligation to take our children and protect them, not only from land mines but from doing stupid things that could land them in jail.

The book is filled with reporting that shows how newspapers either got it wrong, or simply accepted the official version of events. What do you think of the performance of the main newspapers people look to as sources of information?

Well, so here I am, I'm busy trying to peddle a book and you're asking me to commit self-immolation! (Laughs). Well, all I'll say is, it speaks for itself.

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About the writer Mary Jacoby is Salon's Washington correspondent.

 

A man hoists a flag of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi on a burning U.S. Bradley Fighting Vehicle in Baghdad, Iraq, on Sunday, Sept. 12.

The "war is lost"
Military experts say they see no exit from the Iraq debacle -- and that the war is helping al-Qaida.

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By Sidney Blumenthal

Sept. 16, 2004  |  "Bring them on!" President Bush challenged the early Iraqi insurgency in July of last year. Since then 812 American soldiers have been killed and 6,290 wounded, according to the Pentagon. Almost every day in campaign speeches, Bush speaks with bravado about how we are "winning" in Iraq. "Our strategy is succeeding," he boasted to the National Guard convention on Tuesday.

But according to the U.S. military's leading strategists and prominent retired generals, Bush's war is already lost.

Retired Gen. William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, told me: "Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse -- he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost." He added: "Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving [Osama] bin Laden's ends."

Retired Gen. Joseph Hoar, the former Marine commandant and head of the U.S. Central Command, told me: "The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."

"I see no ray of light on the horizon at all," said Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College. "The worst case has become true. There's no analogy whatsoever between the situation in Iraq and the advantages we had after World War II in Germany and Japan."

"I don't think that you can kill the insurgency," said W. Andrew Terrill, professor at the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute, the top expert on Iraq there. According to Terrill, the anti-U.S. insurgency, centered in the Sunni triangle, and holding several key cities and towns, including Fallujah, is expanding and becoming more capable as a direct consequence of U.S. policy. "We have a growing, maturing insurgency group," he told me. "We see larger and more coordinated military attacks. They are getting better and they can self-regenerate. The idea there are X number of insurgents and when they're all dead we can get out is wrong. The insurgency has shown an ability to regenerate itself because there are people willing to fill the ranks of those who are killed. The political culture is more hostile to the U.S. presence. The longer we stay, the more they are confirmed in that view."

After the killing of four U.S. contractors in Fallujah, the U.S. Marines besieged the city for three weeks in April -- the watershed event for the insurgency. "I think the president ordered the attack on Fallujah," said Gen. Hoar. "I asked a three-star Marine general who gave the order to go to Fallujah and he wouldn't tell me. I came to the conclusion that the order came directly from the White House." Then, just as suddenly, the order was rescinded, and Islamist radicals gained control, using the city as a base, al-Qaida ("base" in Arabic) indeed.

"If you are a Muslim and the community is under occupation by a non-Islamic power, it becomes a religious requirement to resist that occupation," Terrill explained. "Most Iraqis consider us occupiers, not liberators." He describes the religious imagery common now in Fallujah and the Sunni triangle: "There's talk of angels and the prophet Mohammed coming down from heaven to lead the fighting, talk of martyrs whose bodies are glowing and emanating wonderful scents."

"I see no exit," said Record. "We've been down that road before. It's called Vietnamization. The idea we're going to have an Iraqi force trained to defeat an enemy we can't defeat stretches the imagination. They will be tainted by their very association with the foreign occupier. In fact, we had more time and money in state building in Vietnam than in Iraq."

"This is far graver than Vietnam," said Gen. Odom. "There wasn't as much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went ahead with a war that was not constructive for U.S. aims. But now we're in a region far more volatile and we're in much worse shape with our allies."

Terrill believes that any sustained U.S. military offensive against the no-go areas of the Sunni triangle "could become so controversial that members of the Iraqi government would feel compelled to resign." Thus an attempted military solution would destroy the slightest remaining political legitimacy. "If we leave and there's no civil war, that's a victory."

Gen. Hoar believes from the information he has received that "a decision has been made" to attack Fallujah "after the first Tuesday in November. That's the cynical part of it -- after the election. The signs are all there." He compares any such planned attack with late Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad's razing of the rebel city of Hama. "You could flatten it," said Hoar. "U.S. military forces would prevail, casualties would be high, there would be inconclusive results with respect to the bad guys, their leadership would escape, and civilians would be caught in the middle. I hate that phrase 'collateral damage.' And they talked about dancing in the street, a beacon for democracy."

Gen. Odom remarked that the tension between the Bush administration and senior military officers over Iraq is worse than any he has ever seen with any previous U.S. government, including during Vietnam. "I've never seen it so bad between the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the military. There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster. The two parties whose interests have been advanced have been the Iranians and al-Qaida. Bin Laden could argue with some cogency that our going into Iraq was the equivalent of the Germans in Stalingrad. They defeated themselves by pouring more in there. Tragic."

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About the writer Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of "The Clinton Wars," is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London. Join Sid Blumethal along with Ann Richards, David Talbot and others on the Salon Cruise.