HEAR(ING) THIS
IRAN ELECTION
JACKO’S BACK OR WANTS TO BE

Today’s the day — the Downing Street hearings will be discussed in one room on the hill (with CSPAN 3, not l, covering it) and the House Appropriations Committee discusses funding cuts for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Many groups are lobbying that committee to reinstate the funds. MoveOn.org is among them and plans to submit a petition signed by 400,000 people:

http://www.moveon.org/publicbroadcasting/?id=5665-1684837-

“FINDING UTTERANCE?”

The Downing Street Memo hearing has been ignored by the GOP and pooh-poohed as “old news” by some in the lame-stream media such as Michael Kinsley of the Los Angeles Times who sees its promotion as, get this, a leftwing conspiracy:

“Developing a paranoid theory and promoting it to the very edge of national respectability takes ideological self-confidence. It takes a critical mass of citizens with extreme views and the time and energy to obsess about them. It takes a promotional infrastructure and the discipline to settle on a story line, disseminate it and stick to it.”

At the same time, it has been imbued with enormous significance by some on the left. William Rivers Pitt writes on TruthOut:

“Jawaharlal Nehru, who with Mahatma Gandhi successfully freed India from British colonial rule, once said, ‘A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the sound of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.’

“Thursday, June 16th, may see such a moment come to pass. It has been a long time coming, and so much remains to be done if the terrible damage of these last years is to be repaired. But a moment is before us. Let us see where this moment takes us.”

WHITE HOUSE REELING

The Washington Post reports today:

“White House officials acknowledged yesterday that the public’s gloomy mood about the Iraq war is forcing President Bush to take a more assertive and public role to reassure nervous Americans and Republican lawmakers about the White House plan for victory.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/15/AR2005061502184.html?referrer=email&referrer=email

Note the world “victory.” There was anything but a sense of victory yesterday because Mighty Casey appears to have struck out on another front. Here’s the WashPost again: “House Votes to Curb Patriot Act.”

The measure “curbed ” permits the FBI to get your bookstore and library records. Vermont’s Bernie Sanders led the fight:

“Conservative Republicans, worried about government intrusion, join with liberal Democrats in handing President Bush the first defeat in his effort to preserve the legislation.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/15/AR2005061501953.html?referrer=email&referrer=email

MEMO TO THE MEDIA

The Associated Press now acknowledges that they “dropped the ball” on reporting on the D-Street memo. WilliamBowles.info notes: “A Google search using the phrase ‘Downing Street Memo’ yielded 154,000 ‘hits’ yet only the tiniest fraction are stories in the corporate media.” Eric Boehlert reports on Salon.com, “newspapers blame the AP’s blackout on news of the Downing Street memo for their own lack of coverage, but is that an acceptable excuse?”
http://www.freepress.net/news/8555

It has been the blogosphere that has kept this story alive, writes blogger Juan Cole:
www.juancole.com/2005/06/downing-street-memos-and-revenge-of.html

And There’s More:

New Memos Detail Early Plans for Invading Iraq: British officials believed the U.S. favored military force a year before the war, documents show… Pentagon whistleblower Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski and Daniel Ellsberg on the deceptions of the Bush administration:
Real Video — 4 minutes
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9131.htm

The Scotsman reports that “the father of a British soldier killed in Iraq will today fly to Washington where he will give evidence to a Congressional hearing into the conflict.
Reg Keys, whose son Tom was one of six Red Caps killed by a mob, will also address a rally outside the White House.”

THE INVASION PLANS PREDATE 9/11

When did Bush first decide to invade Iraq? Russ Baker reports:

“Houston, Tex. — Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.

“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 199 said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. ‘It was on his mind. He said to me: One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.‚ He said, ‘If I have a chance to invade, …if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.’”

http://www.gnn.tv/articles/article.php?id=761

REVIEW OIL HEARINGS IN 2001, ASKS PALAST

In an on-line column today, Greg Palast suggests that the investigation of the scenario to war go back to 2001:

“February 2001 — Only one month after the first Bush-Cheney inauguration, the State Department’s Pam Quanrud organizes a secret confab in California to make plans for the invasion of Iraq and removal of Saddam. U.S. oil industry advisor Falah Aljibury and others are asked to interview would-be replacements for a new US-installed dictator.

“On BBC Television’s Newsnight, Aljibury himself explained,

“‘It is an invasion, but it will act like a coup. The original plan was to liberate Iraq from the Saddamists and from the regime.’

March 2001 — Vice-President Dick Cheney meets with oil company executives and reviews oil field maps of Iraq. Cheney refuses to release the names of those attending or their purpose.”

See GregPalast.com

ELECTIONS IN IRAN

This is election week in Iran. Is change possible there through the ballot box? Nobel Prize winner Sherin Ebadi and Muhammad Sahimi write in the Wall Street Journal:

“As Iranians go to the polls on Friday to elect a successor to Mohammad Khatami, the high hopes for reform that brought him to power in 1997 have given way to fear that the hardliners will use this election to consolidate their power and reach an accommodation with the West. Eight years ago, Iranians hoped the election of a reformist would lead to political change, respect for human rights, and the rule of law. President Khatami made peace with Iran’s oil-producing neighbors, expanded ties with the European Union, and allowed the development of a vocal opposition. Secret executions and assassinations have largely stopped, and jailing without trial of dissidents has subsided. Even the hardliners’ candidates speak of the need for reforms.

“But the pace of reforms has ground almost to a halt. The hardliners have shut down more than 90 reformist newspapers and other publications, and some of Iran’s best writers and journalists are either in prison or in exile. In many cases, trials are held behind closed doors and without a jury; and judges declare verdicts that seem to be purely political.”

HITCHENS ON THE MULLAH WATCH

Left, right & center Punditologist Christopher Hitchens has now popped up in Iran for Vanity Fair. He notes:

“Iran today exists in a state of dual power and split personality. The huge billboards and murals proclaim it an Islamic republic, under the eternal guidance of the immortal memory of Ayatollah Khomeini. A large force of Revolutionary Guards and a pervasive religious police stand ready to make good on this grim pledge. But directly underneath these forbidding posters and right under the noses of the morals enforcers, Iranians are buying and selling videos, making and consuming alcohol, tuning in to satellite TV stations, producing subversive films and plays and books, and defying the dress code. All women are supposed to cover all their hair at all times, and to wear a long jacket, or manteau, that covers them from neck to knee. But it’s amazing how enticing the compulsory scarf can be when worn practically on the back of the head and held in place only by hair spray.

“As for the obligatory manteau, any woman with any fashion sense can cut it to mold an enviable silhouette. I found a bootlegger on my arrival at Tehran’s airport and was offered alcohol on principle in every home I entered Khomeini’s excepted — even by people who did not drink. Almost every Iranian has a relative overseas and is in regular touch with foreign news and trends. The country is an ‘as if’ society. People live as if they were free, as if they were in the West, as if they had the right to an opinion, or a private life. And they don’t do too badly at it. I have now visited all three of the states that make up the so-called axis of evil. Rough as their regime can certainly be, the citizens of Iran live on a different planet from the wretched, frightened serfs of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il.

“Tehran is in fact more or less uncontrollable by anybody. It’s the Mexico City or Calcutta of the region: a vast, unplanned, overpopulated nightmare of all-day traffic jams and eye-wringing pollution, tissue-paper building codes, and an earthquake coming like Christmas. It’s also the original uptown-downtown city, built on the steep slopes of the snowy Elburz Mountains, which, on a good day, one can sometimes actually see. In the northern quarter, there are the discreet villas where the members of the upper crust keep their heads down and their wealth unostentatious.”

IRAN AT CENTER OF SCANDAL

MGLevey sent this along: “OSP-AIPAC SPY CASE REVEALS ISRAELI PLOT TO PLANT IRAN WMD DATA:

“Details revealed yesterday in the indictment against accused Pentagon spy Larry Franklin implicate Israel in a plot to illegally influence United States policy toward Iran. Counts in the indictment show that the Franklin prosecution is not a conventional spy case involving the passing of documents to a foreign agent. Instead, it appears that the OSP-AIPAC espionage conspiracy involved efforts by Israel to use American neocons to “cook the books” on Iranian WMDs, much as occurred earlier with false documents fed to the Bush Administration to justify the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

“Published details about the indictment unsealed yesterday against Franklin show that the FBI busted up a plot by an Israeli intelligence officer and two AIPAC lobbyists to advance the career of Franklin, get him ‘by the elbow of the President,’ and to plant information provided by Mossad in Pentagon documents about Iran.

“The following article in the New York Sun was linked in Laura Rozen’s blog, WarandPiececom. Rozen is a well-informed spectator on the emerging spy case. That case confirms that the FBI has been investigating long-suspected espionage activities in the United States of persons associated with Israel’s ruling Likud government. The indictment shows that Franklin, who was the Iran desk officer within Douglas Feith’s now disbanded Pentagon policy office, secretly conspired with a contact at the Israeli Embassy to influence U.S. policy concerning an alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program.”

Details of a Plot Unveiled in Case Against Franklin:

http://www.nysun.com/article/15374

WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED?

“Dr. Stephen Biddle, writing for the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, notes: the Administration has yet to arrive at a clear definition of the enemy or the aim in the War on Terrorism; to date, American policy has combined ambitious public statements with ambiguity on critical particulars. Heretofore, the costs of pursuing such ambitious but ill-defined goals have been high but tolerable. The ongoing insurgency in Iraq, however, is increasing the costs of grand strategic ambiguity to the point where fundamental choices can no longer be deferred…”
(Dr. Stephen D. Biddle, U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, April 2005)

http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/index.html#strategic

TO LYNCH OR NOT TO LYNCH — THE SENATE VOTES

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that “Senators were not required to go on record on issue:

“Washington — Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) refused repeated requests for a roll call vote that would have put senators on the record on a resolution apologizing for past failures to pass anti-lynching laws, officials involved in the negotiations said Tuesday…

“As dozens of descendants of lynching victims watched from the Senate gallery, the resolution was adopted Monday evening under a voice vote procedure that did not require any senator’s presence.

“Eighty senators, however, had signed as co-sponsors, putting themselves on record as supporting the resolution. By the time the Senate recessed Tuesday evening, five other senators had added their names as co-sponsors, leaving 15 Republicans who had not.
There are the 19 senators who refused to co-sponsor the anti-lynching resolution
passed on Monday.”

THE HALL OF SHAME

Senators who wouldn’t vote:

Lamar Alexander (R-TN)
Robert Bennett (R-UT)
Christopher Bond (R-MO)
Jim Bunning (R-KY)
Conrad Burns (R-MT)
Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
Thad Cochran (R-MS)
John Cornyn (R-TX)
Michael Crapo (R-ID)
Michael Enzi (R-WY)
Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
Judd Gregg (R-NH)
Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
Trent Lott (R-MS)
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
Richard Shelby (R-AL)
John Sununu (R-NH)
Craig Thomas (R-WY)
George Voinovich (R-OH)

BLINDED BY BS

Speaking of Frist, Judd Legum of the Center for American Progress notes:

“Terri Schiavo’s autopsy reveals that she was blind:

“Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner Jon Thogmartin concluded that ‘her brain was about half of normal size when she died.’

“Thogmartin says her brain was ‘profoundly atrophied’ and that the damage was ‘irreversible.’ He also says, ‘The vision centers of her brain were dead‘ — meaning she was blind.

“Which makes Dr. Frist’s ‘
expert diagnosis,‘ all the more outrageous.

“Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a renowned heart surgeon before becoming Senate majority leader, went to the floor late Thursday night for the second time in 12 hours to argue that Florida doctors had erred in saying Terri Schiavo is in a ‘persistent vegetative state.’

“I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office,” he said in a lengthy speech in which he quoted medical texts and standards. ‘She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli.’”

http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=1100