United States News Digest
Wolfowitz Should Go ... Now, After Contract Debacles
In George Bush's home state, the San Antonio Express editorial of Dec. 11 said of neo-con kingpin Paul Wolfowitz's "poke them in the eye" memo banning Germany, France, and Russia from any U.S. reconstruction contracts in Iraq: "Few foreign policy goals are more crucial than increasing international involvement in the Iraq reconstruction.... [T]he ill-considered Wolfowitz directive has done significant damage.... [It] gives the United States an unnecessary self-inflicted wound."
Isn't it time for Wolfowitz to go? He is only there because of Dick Cheney's protection. It was their macho ranting in 2002 that promised the Iraq war would pay for itselfwith oil flows triple what was produced under Saddam Hussein. Instead, their war is costing hundreds of billions of dollars (some EIW sources say it will go up to $2 trillion). And, Cheney's Halliburton is now under investigation for overcharging the U.S. taxpayers, in its preferential, no-bid contracts. Halliburton is charging the U.S. $2.64 a gallon for gasoline from Kuwait. An Enron-type price-gouging scam is believed to be underway.
That is not the only contract investigation. Wolfowitz's "Siamese twin," Richard Perle, a fellow golem of fascist philosophy Prof. Leo Strauss (now deceased), of the University of Chicago, is being investigated for accepting payoffs to promote a hugely inflated $26-29 billion to deal to lease refueling tanker aircraft from Boeing Corporation. Officials of Wolfie's Pentagon were slipping classified info to Boeing, in order to sink the much cheaper rival bid from the European corporation Airbus. Pentagon officers who advocated a refurbishing of the tanker fleet through upgrades, at a cost of about $7-8 billion, were vilified inside the Defense Dept.
There is also political fallout from President Bush's attempt to get Russia, France, and Germany, which all had major contracts with Iraq's petroleum industry, to forgive $8 billion to $15 billion in Iraq's debts.
On Dec. 11, in a front page story, the New York Times reported the White House was "fuming" over the "tone" and timing of Wolfowitz releasing his memo. It came just before Bush phoned the leaders of Russia (President Vladimir Putin), France (President Jacques Chirac), and Germany (Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder) to ask them to meet his special envoy, James Baker III, the former Secretary of State to George Bush "41," to talk about forgiving Iraq's debts.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said it best, immediately rejecting the idea: "Iraq's debt to the Russian Federation is $8 billion," and there are no plans to forgive this. "Iraq is not a poor country."
Regretfully, Bush jumped to Wolfowitz's defense (anything less would be an admission of failure in the Iraq war, says a Washington intelligence source), saying, "Men and women from our country proudly wear a uniform, risk their life [sic] to free Iraq. Men and women from other countries ... risk their lives to free Iraq. And the expenditure of U.S. dollars will reflect ... that U.S. troops and other troops risk their life."
No mention, by Bush, of Germany's major military role in Afghanistan, where, indeed, German soldiers lost their lives protecting the U.S. from al-Qaeda terrorists.
The commentaries have just begun, including an interesting allegation that Wolfowitz's decision violates the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits any U.S. entity from using bribes or coercion in business.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote Dec. 12, that the Wolfowitz memo was intended to sink Baker's mission, and with it, reconciliation with the European allies. "These are tough times for the architects of the 'Bush doctrine' of unilateralism and preventive war.... Dick Cheney [and] Donald Rumsfeld," Krugman writes. "In the end the Bush doctrinebased on delusions of grandeur about America's ability to dominate the world through forcewill collapse. What we've just learned is how hard and dirty the doctrine's proponents will fight against the inevitable."
Byrd Blocks Omnibus Spending Bill
The House and Senate returned on Dec. 8-9 to consider the omnibus appropriations bill sprung on the Congress just before it recessed for Thanksgiving; and while the House passed it by a vote of 242-176, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) made good on his threat, and prevented the Senate from passing it without a roll-call vote. While the actual formality of objecting to consideration of the bill by unanimous consent was carried out by Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), Byrd castigated the numerous absent Senators who apparently did not have enough time to come back to Washington for the consideration of the bill. The Senate's responsibility, he said, "is to debate and vote on this conference report. We should not have postponed this matter until next year." He said Senators were being asked to "buy a pig in a poke, unknown, unseen."
In the House, Democrats complained of the load of 7,000 "earmarks" in the package. Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.) said that the appropriations bills "used to provide an opportunity for a debate on priorities." Now, members are being bought off by the large amount of pork in the bill, which, Obey said, "fundamentally corrupts the process."
The bill combines seven of the 13 annual spending bills, and totals about $820 billion, including $328 billion in discretionary spending. Besides the earmarks, Democrats complained that provisions were removed from the bill after both Houses had passed them in earlier votes. These included limiting media-ownership concentration, and blocking a proposed Labor Department rule on overtime eligibility, which Democrats said would take overtime pay away from 8 million workers currently eligible for it. Democrats also decried the lack of an extension of unemployment compensation benefits, in spite of the fact that unemployment has been growing for three years.
Ashcroft's Dragnets Yield Few Serious Terrorism Cases
In the two years since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, Federal investigators have recommended the prosecution of more than 6,400 people on charges related to terrorism. However, actual charges were filed against only 2,000, and of these, 879 were convicted. For those categorized as "international terrorists," the median prison sentence was 14 days! Only five were sentenced to 20 years or more.
In fact, says the new special report from Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), the number of individuals sentenced to more than five years in prison on terrorism charges actually fell after 2001. What has risen, is the number of individuals convicted, but sentenced to little or no prison time; this is true even in the more serious category of "international terrorism." Which means that people picked up on "terrorism" charges are being prosecuted for minor infractions and violations.
"This punches a huge hole in the hype the Justice Department has been engaged in, a spokesman for the ACLU said. "They are calling people terrorists, on a massive scale, who aren't terrorists."
Oregon Congressman Calls for Wal-Mart Investigation
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), whose own state has been hit hard by the collapse of manufacturing jobs, fired a blast at Wal-Mart during a five-minute speech on the floor of the House on Dec. 9. He began by noting that Wal-Mart's cost-containment strategy drives down wages and costs jobs. The jobs that people do get after a Wal-Mart moves into a community, he said, are $2-10 less [per hour] than those destroyed." Then, there is the impact that a Wal-Mart has, operating on the outskirts of a community, "drawing away the vitality of the main street where business, slowly, is strangled."
Blumenauer noted that this cost-cutting strategy "appears to be a corrosive impact on Wal-Mart itself.... There is illegal coercion of their own employees who may be interested in unions, and illegal roadblocks to people who would organize." He then took on Wal-Mart's contractors who hire and abuse illegal immigrants, as well as its refusal to allow auditing of overseas suppliers.
Blumenauer called on Congress "to start now investigating the practices of America's largest retailer, particularly as it relates to labor and employment." He also suggested that consumers "should begin to consider whether the lowest price is worth any cost: to the poor of the world, to suppliers here at home, to the health of our main streets, and the abuse of Wal-Mart workers and Americans denied basic organizing rights."
Meanwhile, a Federal grand jury in Williamsburg, Penn. convened Dec. 11, to consider a case against Wal-Mart in the use of illegal immigrants to clean its stores. Assistant U.S. Attorney Wayne Samuelson, the prosecutor, said "it's going to take a long time" for the grand jury to decide on indictments, and declined to comment on what charges the government is seeking.
Janitorial companies hired by Wal-Mart, were the focus of a 21-state raid by Federal agents of 60 Wal-Mart stores on Oct. 23. About 250 workers were arrested, 10 employed by Wal-Mart itself.
Some of the workers have sued Wal-Mart, alleging it and the contractors carried out a criminal enterprise that violated the civil rights and wage protections of immigrantstreating them, in effect, as indentured servants. The lawsuit filed in Federal court in New Jersey, seeks class-action status for thousands of immigrants who were hired by Wal-Mart's contractors.
Vietnam Vets Compare Iraq War to Vietnam War
The quagmire nature of the U.S. occupation of Iraq was highlighted, on Dec. 10, by two Vietnam veterans, both of whom participated in a delegation that visited Iraq during the first week of December, sponsored by Military Families Speak Out, Veterans for Peace, and Global Exchange, a California-based environmentalist and human rights NGO.
John Grant, the Philadelphia chapter president of Veterans for Peace, and Billy James Kelly, also with Veterans for Peace, appeared, with other members of the delegation, at the National Press Club in Washington Dec. 11. Grant told reporters that he had gone to Vietnam as a volunteer, but found out that the war was not what he thought it was. He said that when the delegation visited the Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters in Baghdad, it "felt very much like MACV [Military Assistance Command-Vietnam] headquarters in Saigon. It was the same unreal bubble of American-Washington consciousness planted right in the middle of this country." He said that U.S. soldiers in Iraq are "very isolated from all the realities of Iraq that we encountered talking to Iraqis, which, to me, is a formula for disaster."
Kelly noted the great fear and stress experienced by U.S. soldiers, and said, like Vietnam, there are no front lines, anymore. He said he was against the war going in, because he feared it would be like Vietnam. "I think, now, it's worse," he said, warning that the real war, the war of national resistance against the U.S. occupation, is just beginning. "We have to find some way to extricate ourselves," from Iraq, he said.
Democrats Charge Abuse of House Rules
Within minutes of the final vote on passage of the omnibus appropriations bill, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) introduced a privileged resolution calling on the House to denounce the Republican leadership's holding open of the Nov. 22 vote on passage of the Medicare bill for three hours, "for the sole purpose of circumventing the will of the House." In remarks on the floor, Pelosi detailed how the House Republican leaders ram through crucial bills in the middle of the night, usually Friday nights between midnight and 4:00 a.m. This leadership also consistently excludes Democrats from the legislative process. "It is not for this," she said, "that our Founding Fathers sacrificed their lives, their liberty and their sacred honor, so that we could have government of the few, by the few, for the few, behind closed doors."
Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-Conn.), one of the authors of the Medicare bill, and House Rules Committee chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.) were brought out to defend the GOP's conduct. Dreier argued that the House rules at issue only specifies 15 minutes as a minimum, but no maximum.
But a serious reading of the rule shows that it exists to ensure sufficient time for all members to vote in roll-call votes, not to give time to influence the outcome of a vote. No Republican dared challenge the GOP leadership, and Pelosi's resolution was tabled by 207-182.
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