United States News Digest
Generals Wanted To Use Iraqi Army To Rebuild Country
The decision to disband the Iraqi Army is the subject of the third and final installment Oct. 21 of a New York Times intervention to defeat President Bush, using his Administration's failure in Iraq. The Oct. 21 article makes clear that the uniformed U.S. military was counting on using the Iraqi Army to help rebuild the country and control its borders. And the plan was understood in Washington when, in March 2003, Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith briefed the National Security Council, with President Bush attending. The plan, developed by Gen. Jay Garner, involved removing top Ba'athists, and using the rest as a kind of FDR-era Civilian Conservation Corps. "Top commanders were meeting secretly with former Iraqi officers to discuss the best way to rebuild the force ... when Mr. [Paul] Bremer arrived in Baghdad with his plan" to dissolve the force, throwing 350,000 soldiers into unemployment, thereby stoking the insurgency.
Bremer, while still in Washington, justified his plan as the way to assure Iraqis that the U.S. would take de-Ba'athification all the way. Only after the order to abolish the army was issued, did the occupation authority discover that important Ba'athists did not appear in large numbers below the rank of major general. "Even then, only 50% of those officers were affected." That was what a former Iraqi officer, Faris Naima, had told the U.S. military, with which he had been working to put the Iraqi Army to good use, before Bremer came along.
The order to dissolve the army was issued May 23. Bremer had arrived in Iraq only days before, on May 12.
EIR has been advised that the decision to disband the Iraqi Army was made in a meeting attended by Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Stephen Cambone, William Luti, and Walter Slocombe.
Bush Administration Stalls on Gitmo Lawyers
In the nearly four months since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba must have access to lawyers and to the Federal courts, the Justice Department and the Pentagon have blocked implementation of the ruling at every step, and has acted as if the Supreme Court had never said anything at all. "The government is coming up with more and more excuses, and changing the rules on a daily basis," said one defense lawyer.
In one of the cases pending in Federal court involving 12 Kuwaiti prisoners, attorney Tom Wilner complained to the court that the government has stonewalled, violated the court's orders, and is now in contempt of court.
On Oct. 20, the judge hearing the case, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, issued what is called a "scolding" opinion, ordering the government to give the prisoners speedy access to their attorneys, and barring the government from monitoring the discussions between prisoners and their lawyers. The judge said that the Supreme Court's ruling means that all Guantanamo prisoners must have access to U.S. lawyers, and the right to challenge their imprisonment in U.S. Federal courtsa position which the DOJ and DOD have fought, even after the Supreme Court's June ruling.
Sinclair's Kerry-Basher Is a Moonie Hack
Carlton Sherwood, who produced the anti-Kerry video that aired, in part, on Sinclair Broadcast Group network television stations before the election, is the author of a book-length apology for the sexual pervert the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Sherwood's 1980s book, Inquisition: The Prosecution and Persecution of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, was an apologia for Moon's 13-month prison sentence on a 1982 conviction for tax-law violation.
Sherwood's current piece of propaganda, a 45-minute documentary film targetting KerryStolen Honor: Wounds That Never Healis widely recognized as the standard format for Congress for Cultural Freedom propagandistic "documentary" films.
An equal-time complaint filed by the Kerry campaign with the Federal Election Commission, and a revolt among a group of shareholders, forced Sinclair Group to announce on Oct. 19 a change of its plans to show the 42-minute propaganda piece in full. Instead, the company announced it would use excerpts from the film as part of an hour-long "news" program examining how politically charged documentaries seek to influence voters.
The shareholder protest included New York State Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi, the trustee of the state's retirement fund, which owns more than 250,000 shares of Sinclair stock. Burger King also announced it would pull all its commercials from Sinclair stations on the date of the broadcast, as part of a policy of election neutrality.
Army Recruitment Misses Goal
U.S. Army recruitment was 30% short of its goal of signing up 7,274 new recruits for the first 30-day period of the new recruitment year. In the same period last year, the Army came up 25% short. Recruitment for the Army Reserve, which the Pentagon has relied upon heavily in Iraq and Afghanistan, fell 45% below the target. The Army recently bumped up the amount it will pay toward enlistees' college tuition by 50%, to $75,000, and increased cash bonuses to $15,000 or more for those with certain skills.
Michigan Republican Endorses Kerry
Former Republican Michigan Governor William Milliken formally endorsed Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry Oct. 18, saying that "it wasn't a difficult decision to make," according to the Traverse City Record-Eagle.
"My Republican Party," Milliken said repeatedly, stands for fiscal responsibility, bipartisan foreign policy, conservation of natural resources, civil liberties, protection from the dangers of the military-industrial complex, protection of the law-enforcement community, support of basic research, unity of the American people, and the separation of church and state. "The truth is that President George W. Bush does not speak for me or for many other moderate Republicans on a very broad cross-section of issues."
"Senator John Kerry, on the other hand, has put forth a coherent, responsible platform of progressive initiatives that I believe would serve this country well."
Medical Workers Draft Mooted
A confidential report regarding plans for a draft of medical workers was leaked to the Oct. 19 New York Times, and is the subject of Bush campaign attacks on Kerry.
The Selective Service was required by law in 1987 to develop a plan for a draft of health-care professionals needed in the armed forces. This past summer, a private company was hired by the agency to characterize how such a draft might work, and how to get the public and the professional communities to comply. According to Richard S. Flahavan, spokesman for the Selective Service System, "We have been routinely updating the entire plan for a health care draft. The plan is on the shelf and will remain there unless Congress and the President decide it's needed and direct us to carry it out."
Intelligence Reorganization Bill Unlikely Before Election
The Senate and House of Representatives are unlikely to be able to work out a compromise intelligence reorganization bill which could be passed and signed before the Nov. 2 election, according to a reading that EIR has gotten from a number of sources. Some have indicated that the White House and the House Republican leadership are both prepared to have the bill stalled for the time being, and will then blame Democrats and other opponents of the House's police-state tactics for the failure to get a bill passed.
According to various press accounts, the final versions of both the House and the Senate bills (which differ in significant respects) were only completed and printed up over the Oct. 16-17 weekend. The conference committee (of negotiators appointed by both houses) was to meet on Oct. 21 for the first time, following what were reportedly some informal staff meetings the previous week. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn) said on CNN on Oct. 17, that the differences between the House and Senate versions will be resolved "over the next several weeks"which means after the elections.
For the reasons Lyndon LaRouche has identifiedthat any reorganization bill of the type being now being considered will only make things worsethe failure of efforts to ram the bills through before the elections, is something to be welcomed.
Houston Chronicle Endorses DeLay Opponent
The Houston Chronicle endorsed Democrat Richard Morrison for Congress Oct. 17, describing him as one "who promises to place the district's interests above grasping partisan power," an obvious, and truthful reference to the incumbent representative in District 22, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. At the heart of its argument for booting DeLay is the pattern of citations and admonishments against him, for such charges as "indifference to the rules," and "giving the appearance of wrongdoing" in his role as Republican Leader of the House. While the editorial's language is neither particularly sharp nor forceful, it represents a shift for the Chronicle, as its editors have endorsed DeLay in past campaigns.
Appeals Court: 9/11 Didn't Suspend Civil Liberties
The generally conservative 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta said that forcing demonstrators to pass through a metal detector violates the U.S. Constitution, and cannot be justified by a generalized fear of terrorism after the 9/11 attacks, absent some reason to believe that international terrorists would target or infiltrate the protest, the Baltimore Sun reported Oct. 17.
"We cannot simply suspend or restrict civil liberties until the War on Terror is over, because the War on Terror is unlikely ever to be truly over," the opinion said. "Sept. 11, 2001, already a day of immeasurable tragedy, cannot be the day liberty perished in this country."
Michael Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland, said the appeals court ruling could have broader implications, if it is used to challenge aspects of the Patriot Act. He said that it is surprising, coming from the conservative-leaning 11th Circuit, but he said the opinion was "very well reasoned" and reflected "conventional application of constitutional principles."
Levin Blasts Cheney, Feith on Phony al-Qaeda Reports
In a 46-page report issued in his name as "Ranking Member of Senate Armed Services Committee," and released on Oct. 21, Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan called for "corrective legislation" that would strengthen Congressional oversight, and prevent the creation of an "alternative" intelligence agency, such as the one that was created by neo-conservative Assistant Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, a radical Likudnik.
Levin's report says, "Life-and-death decisions are based on the accuracy of intelligence. When intelligence is distorted or exaggerated to support the policies of an administration, it jeopardizes our nation's security and the lives of the men and women of our armed forces. This report ... demonstrates how intelligence relating to the Iraq/al-Qaeda relationship was manipulated by high-ranking officials in the DOD to support the administration's decision to invade Iraq when the intelligence assessments of the professional analysts of the Intelligence Community did not provide the desired compelling case."
But, the impact of the report is aimed less at legislation, and more at exposing the truth about the Bush Administration's secret intelligence operations that led the U.S. into war with Iraq, and inserted fabricated, unsubstantiated, and untraceable raw reports into the intelligence product of the U.S., and into the major speeches delivered by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney leading up to the Iraq war.
On Cheney, the report accuses the Vice President of following the information about Iraq/al-Qaeda provided by Feith, more than the professional assessments of the intelligence community. It also finds him culpable for both "implicitly" condoning the leak of the "highly classified" Feith report on al-Qaeda to the neo-con Weekly Standard, and for "explicitly" praising this Feith pack of lies as "the best possible source of information" on al-Qaeda.
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