Britain has angered John Bolton, America's combative ambassador to the United Nations, by breaking ranks with him over the need for reform.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112705B.shtml

When Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales announced last week that Jose Padilla would be transferred to the federal justice system from military detention, he said almost nothing about the standards the administration used in deciding whether to handle a terror suspect as an enemy combatant or as a common criminal, to hold him indefinitely without charges in a military facility or to charge him in court.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112705A.shtml

We put a call out to all candidates who want to win, and Steve Young, fighting for the people in normally conservative Orange County, CA, in a special house election coming up Dec. 6, took us up on our offer to create action pages for him on his own campaign site. Steve is demonstrating his leadership right NOW by working to rally support for serious consideration of the real Murtha resolution. Please submit the action form below to help bring this issue and his campaign the national attention and focus it deserves

ACTION PAGE:
http://www.steveyoungforcongress.com/murtha_resolution.php

We are told that people from all over the country can help with the campaign, as they will be doing virtual phone banks. But especially if you are in Southern California, you can make a real impact by helping to get out the vote in this last test election before 2006. If Steve wins or makes a strong showing in this red district, it will have great influence on other congresspeople who are not yet listening to the voice of the people.

STATEMENT OF THE STEVE YOUNG CAMPAIGN

Dear Members and Friends:

This week saw the first major step towards the beginning of the end of the Iraq War. A decorated Marine Corps veteran with 37 years of service, a Bronze Star, and two Purple Hearts, Representative John Murtha stood before the world and called for the immediate commencement of American military withdrawal from Iraq. It was a watershed moment.

"Because we in Congress are charged with sending our sons and daughters into battle, it is our responsibility, our obligation, to speak out for them. That's why I am speaking out."

We write to you today on behalf of Steve Young, a man of principle, currently fighting incredible odds to bring this same message to the public and the Congress in the upcoming special election for Congress in Orange County, California's Congressional District 48.

In a radio interview last week, Steve suggested that we look to the successful solution to the Lebanese civil war for precedent and work with the Arab League to find a long-term solution in Iraq and sure enough, Arab League leader Amre Moussa this week called for America's withdrawal. Steve looks for forward seeking solutions yet with the education of historical precedent. How many of our present problems could have been avoided if we had a Congress made up of people like Steve Young who actually studied a situation before taking action?

As we look towards the midterm elections as the opportunity to change things in Washington and return our sons and daughters from a "discredited" war, please do not overlook this important race. We have a chance to take back the Crown Jewel of Republican seats in California in 2005 and not wait until 2006. A loss for Steve is a loss for the cause as the Republican challenger is committed to "stay the course" with President Bush. That man is purely just another rubber stamp for the Administration.

Steve Young needs your financial support for his final media push against the Republican Machine that has attracted the RNCC, Vice President Cheney and others. This media push at the very end of this Special Election, called because Chris Cox was appointed to the SEC, will make the difference. This is the Democratic Party's one chance in this district. They expect a very low turnout and that means every Democratic vote will count as if it were two in a normal election. Send a message to the Republicans that NO seat is safe that their time on center-stage is over!

We'd like to first give you the courageous words of Rep. Murtha in his already landmark speech.

"The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public is way ahead of us. The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq, but it is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering."

The future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region. The main reason for going to war has been discredited.

We cannot allow promises we have made to our military families in terms of service benefits, in terms of their health care, to be negotiated away. Deaths and injuries are growing, with over 2,079 confirmed American deaths. Over 15,500 have been seriously injured and it is estimated that over 50,000 will suffer from battle fatigue.

And we'd like to leave you with the words of Steve Young spoken months ago, even before the nomination papers were filed for this election, at every appearance.

"The day the President landed on that aircraft carrier under that banner that read, ‘Mission Accomplished, our men and women should have been on their way home the next day."

Let's help get another man into Congress to stand beside Rep. Murtha. Let's send another man to Congress this December that will help end this tragic war. Please contribute generously to Steve's campaign for one final push before the December 6th election. He is only 10 days away from that moment of confrontation! Let's pitch in one more time.

Please choose the method you feel you can best help bring home a victory:

Please contribute whatever you can to Steve Young's campaign to build up a last minute media blitz. Same web address, http://steveyoungforcongress.com

If you live outside the District, forward this email to at least 10 of your friends.

Thank you,

The Steve Young Campaign Team

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this message to everyone else you know.

Powered by The People's Email Network
Copyright 2005, Patent pending, All rights reserved

Continuing his two-year-old investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's identity as a covert CIA agent, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will present evidence to a second grand jury this week that could lead to a criminal indictment being handed up against Karl Rove.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112805Z.shtml

This newsletter is intended to be a combined effort of CASE OHIO, J30 COALITION, AND OHIO VIGILANCE, and any citizen activists involved in Election reform. This newsletter will include applicable news and events, it is not intended to promote any specific agenda but instead be inclusive of current newsworthy events.

GAO Report: The General Accounting Office has issued a 107 page report. For the first time, an official government agency has acknowledged in vivid detail the insecurities inherent in voting on electronic machines provided by partisan, privately controlled corporations.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/102105Q.shtml

In October 2005, the Government Accountability Office released a comprehensive analysis of the concerns raised by the increasing use of electronic voting machines.

Overall, GAO found that "significant concerns about the security and reliability of electronic voting systems" have been raised (p. 22).

GAO indicated that "some of these concerns have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes" (p. 23).

According to GAO, "election officials, computer security experts, citizen advocacy groups, and others have raised significant concerns about the security and reliability of electronic voting systems, citing instances of weak security controls, system design flaws, inadequate system version control, inadequate security testing, incorrect system configuration, poor security management, and vague or incomplete standards, among other issues". The security and reliability concerns raised in recent reports merit the focused attention of federal, state, and local authorities responsible for election administration" (p. 22-23).

GAO further reported that "security experts and some election officials have expressed concern that tests currently performed by independent testing authorities and state and local election officials do not adequately assess electronic voting system security and reliability," and that "these concerns are amplified by what some perceive as a lack of transparency in the testing process" (p. 34)

John Hopkins Center Gazette: Here are the first three paragraphs of a longer article regarding a new effort to make election technology secure.

A federally funded center dedicated to improving the reliability and trustworthiness of voting technology, drawing on experts in computer science, public policy and human behavior, will be based at The Johns Hopkins University, the National Science Foundation announced Aug. 15. Researchers from five other institutions nationwide will participate in the project, which is aimed at addressing public concerns about the growing use of electronic voting machines in local, state and national elections.

The NSF said it would provide $7.5 million over five years to launch the new endeavor called ACCURATE, which is short for A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable, and Transparent Elections. Avi Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins and technical director of the university’s Information Security Institute, will direct the center.

Rubin has received international attention in recent years for identifying risks associated with computer-based voting technology that has been put into use with minimal scrutiny by independent security experts. He has testified before state and federal lawmakers and election supervisors regarding potential security flaws in these machines.

http://www.jhu.edu/~gazette/2005/22aug05/22evote.html

COLUMBUS COMMUNITY RADIO PROJECT UPDATE: (11/21/05)

The Columbus Community Radio Foundation has made significant progress in its efforts to launch a community radio station in Columbus, Ohio. Our fall fundraising event with speaker Amy Goodman raised nearly $3,000 which enabled us to purchase a used radio tower and to have a contractor disassemble it for us. Once the tower is erected at our transmitter site and a transmitter and antennae are connected we'll be ready to begin broadcasting a signal. We are currently applying for a local construction permit to erect the tower and are fundraising to cover that cost. In total we would like to raise $7,000 to cover all of our anticipated remaining construction expenses. CCRF's transmitter is only permitted to RE-broadcast ( "translate" or "repeat") another station's signal and we are working closely with a group of 4 organizations that are united under a single Low Power FM license which was recently awarded by the FCC. Those organizations (Simply Living, Columbus Refugee and Immigration Services, Bexley Public Radio Foundation and the Groveport-Madison School district) are in the process of organizing their station and negotiating a cooperative agreement between them regarding policies and programming guidelines, time sharing and governance. CCRF is advising them as we draw upon our experience and our connections with Pacifica Radio, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters and the Grass Roots Radio Coalition. Groveport Madison has allowed CCRF to have access to the 6-9 am time slot 7 days a week and we intend to produce a daily morning program that will include news, interviews, discussion, music, theater and short pre-produced segments from independent producers from 6-8 Monday through Friday with Democracy Now taking up the last hour from 8:00 - 9:00 except on weekends.

CCRF is developing programming criteria and submission guidelines in accordance with our mission statement and we are developing similar proposals for each of the LPFM partner groups. We are presently looking for volunteers for a number of tasks including; Morning Show co-hosts and production engineers Reporters, producers and announcers Program Committee volunteers finance committee volunteers ( fundraising) researchers for a Pacifica Archives program to be produced by CCRF Community Calendar Producers.

CCRF has been meeting every other Tuesday at the Council on American Islamic Relations offices ( 4700 Reed Rd.) at 8:00 pm ( but will be switching to 7:30 pm as of November 22). All are welcome.

Our next fundraising event is tentatively scheduled for January 13, 2006 when we will present Sonali Kolhatkar, host of the Pacifica program Uprising and head of the U.S. Afghan Women's Mission. Sonali is about to release a book on the current status of women in Afghanistan based on extensive interviews and her own eyewitness accounts. For updates visit our website at; www.ccrfonline.org

CALIFORNIA INVITED BLACK BOX VOTING TO TEST DIEBOLD

The California Secretary of State has invited Black Box Voting to test/"hack" a Diebold AccuVote-OS voting machine for security vulnerability likely in December 2005. The California Secretary of State’s consultant has already found the Diebold AccuVote-OS vulnerable to alteration of vote results.

VOTING PROBLEMS CONTINUE IN OHIO

Lucas County/Toledo Board of Elections (Ohio) took the longest time to complete the vote counting on in Ohio for the November 8, 2005 election. They took 11.5 hours after the close of the polls using Diebold DRE voting machines. They are in the same group as Clermont County Board of Elections, which took the longest for the Second Congressional District August 2, 2005 election

The Lucas County Board of Elections in the November 8, 2005 election, evicted TOLEDO BLADE reporters from the Board of Elections and blocked all reporters from going up the escalator to view the counting. They are in the same group as Warren County, which blocked reporters from viewing the counting in November 2004.

Lucas County also used "rovers" to pick up the memory cards (which contain all the votes) from the precincts instead of the customary procedure of having the precinct head bring them into the county. Some of these "rovers" were people who held elected or appointed positions for a particular political party such as a councilman and Board members of the Lucas County Board of Elections.

"ONE YEAR LATER - VOTING RIGHTS IN OHIO"

The Free Press of Columbus, Ohio sponsored "One Year Later - Voting Rights in Ohio" and a Tribute to Bill Moss at the New Faith Baptist Church in Columbus on November 5, 2005. The New Faith Baptist Church was where the public met to report the considerable problems in the November 2004 election in Columbus, Ohio a year ago. Bill Moss, now deceased, who was lead plaintiff in the resulting MOSS vs. OHIO lawsuit for voting rights, was honored for his civil rights and election work. Films of the Freedom Bus Ride and trip to Washington for the challenge to the Ohio electoral vote in January 2005 were shown. Approximately 70 people attended. There were many speakers including Bob Fitrakis, Susan Truitt, and Cliff Arnebeck, who are all well known in the election reform movement.SPEAKING TO LICKING COUNTY YOUNG DEMOCRATS

Marj Creech and Jo Anne Karasek went to Ohio State University - Newark to speak to the Young Democrats of Licking County (Ohio) on November 17, 2005 on the voting machine problems and the hand count paper ballot solution. A number of election reform advocates, including J30 Coalition members, also did a Voting Rights Forum for LICOPAC in Newark on July 6, 2005. Between the two events we have gained many activists from the Licking County area.LUCAS COUNTY BOARD OF ELECTIONS PUBLIC RECORDS REQUESTS

The Lucas County (Ohio) Board of Elections’ last reply to Jo Anne Karasek for a date to inspect public records referred to a date, which they refused, that was not requested. They keep the ballots requested for inspection in the same room as the ballots for the most recent election, refuse to move them, and claim that they cannot be examined there for security reasons. They refuse to consider allowing another inspection until about December 20. Only two inspections have been permitted since the first public records request on May 2005. Legal action may be necessary.CLERMONT COUNTY BOARD OF ELECTIONS PUBLIC RECORDS REQUESTS

The Clermont County (Ohio) Board of Elections response for a first request by Jo Anne Karasek to inspect public records (of the Hackett/Schmidt election on August 2, 2005) included a refusal in October to allow inspection for more than one hour, a demand of eight to ten cents a page for copying, when Office Depot only charges six cents a page including profits. The Clermont County Prosecutor threatened arrest and refused to allow videotaping of the inspection. Legal action may be necessary. RECOUNTS AND POSSIBLE AUDITS OF NOVEMBER 8, 2005 ELECTION

The election reform movement, especially in Ohio, is concerned about the outcome of the statewide issues, Issues #1 thru #5, in the November 8, 2005 election. The biggest concern is because a COLUMBUS DISPATCH poll reported on November 6, 2005, indicated that Issues #2 and #3 would be won with a substantial margin, but they both lost with a substantial margin. There are plans to do recounts and audits of the November 8 election in parts of Ohio.

For questions or to volunteer for election reform activities, contact Jo Anne Karasek, jakarasek@cinci.rr.com , a member of J30 Coalition, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/J30/

Mark Crispen Miller on John Kerry:

This quote is from a Free Press article "In recent days Mark Crispin Miller has reported that he heard from Kerry personally that Kerry believes the election was stolen. The dialog has been widely reported on the internet. Kerry has since seemed to deny it." You are encouraged to read the entire article:

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1556

REFORM OHIO NOW: ELECTION RESULTS

Here is a snippet from an article in the Free Press on the RON results: "While debate still rages over Ohio's stolen presidential election of 2004, the impossible outcomes of key 2005 referendum issues may have put an electronic nail through American democracy. Once again, the Buckeye state has hosted an astonishing display of electronic manipulation that calls into question the sanctity of America's right to vote, and to have those votes counted in this crucial swing state." In addition, Bob Koehler (Chicago Tribune) has written about the RON results.

http://commonwonders.com/

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1559

Black Box Voting has information on the "next-generation technologies going up for sale by Diebold. At the same time as about a dozen states have put forward cookie-cutter legislation mandating mail-in ballot experiments (wonder who is really behind those), Diebold has, for two years, been behind the scenes developing an automated mail-in computerized processing system.

. . . . Legislation appears, then we find out that, behind the scenes, the vendor was developing a machine for the legislation that hadn't yet appeared. We wonder if unwitting legislators knew that their bill was going to be serviced by an as yet unmarketed Diebold computer system."

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/5710.html

[The Diebold Vote Remote] System allows election to set acceptance for the ballots high, low, or anywhere they want. This system is not certified. It interacts with the voter registration system, which also contains party affiliation of voters. It may never be tested or certified, since it slips through a loophole in the certification language. Financial documents obtained by BLACK BOX VOTING show completed billings for Vote Remote, indicating that it is already in use.

http://nov2truth.org/article.php?story=2005072518330798

DNC resolution in Support of Election Reform. The Democrats speak! The text of the resolution is a this link.
http://blog.pdamerica.org/?p=426

From ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION on Diebold

Diebold, Inc., manufacturer of electronic voting machines, has been sending out many cease-and-desist letters to Internet Service Providers (ISPs), after internal documents indicating flaws in their systems were published on the Internet. The company cited copyright violations under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and demanded that the documents be taken down.

http://www.eff.org/legal/ISP_liability/OPG_v_Diebold/

Speaking Engagement: On Tuesday, October 25, Marge Creech, Victoria Parks, Jo Anne Karasek and Pete Johnson traveled to Akron to discuss Vote Fraud with a peace group. About 30 people attended. It was difficult to deliver a focused presentation on the plethora of issues in only one hour, but valuable dialogue followed the presentation. Thanks to Paul and Louise Baker for the invitation.

Vote Trust USA: recommended newsletter.

http://www.votetrustusa.org/newsletters/VTnews1114.htm

Book of the month club: FOOLED AGAIN: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them) by Mark Crispin Miller. Although I have not completed it, so far it is excellent. The introduction should be a must read for every American.

Parallel Election news

Franklin County, Ohio November 8, 2005 General Election

Precinct 16D

Comparison of Parallel Election Results to Official Results

Final Report Nov. 14, 2005

http://tinyurl.com/c4rk6

Several reports over the past two years warn that voting electronically is not secure, yet Secretary of State Blackwell is forcing all of Ohio to adopt these expensive, hackable, privately-owned voting systems. He will then run for Governor in 2006, on systems he required, while conducting the administration of this, and his own, election.

Informed citizens cannot accept results that can't be hand-counted. Secret software belongs nowhere in the public voting process. Since our vote belongs to us – not to private for-profit corporations or public officials, citizens must run their own elections; become responsible for developing and implementing fair and honest elections in their own states, and check the accuracy of these machines. Parallel voters privately cast paper ballots and then deposit their own vote into a locked ballot box, which is later counted in a public place.

Precinct 16D, Franklin County (Columbus) was chosen to model civic engagement. Organizers vote in this precinct and were better able to involve neighbors in the Parallel Election.

Ohio has 13,600 precincts in 88 counties. A 1% sample would require 1360 Parallel Elections across the state. Organizers will continue to train teams for the 2006 elections. Since a minimum of six PE workers is needed, over 8,000 citizens are needed just to count 1% of an Ohio vote. Less than 100 concerned citizens, per county, could meet the staffing needs of a Parallel Election.

Final Results

There were 1,049 registered voters on Nov. 8, 2005 in 16D. 53 people voted in the Parallel Election and 99 people voted in the Official Election, as follows: 3 Absentee, 2 provisionals, and 94 in-person voters.

Editor note: I cannot format the table correctly, please click on the "tinyurl" link to see a correctly formatted table: http://tinyurl.com/c4rk6

No. of Votes % for the Issue No. of Votes % for the Issue Yes No Yes No

Parallel Election Official Reported

Results Results YES NO % for YES NO % for

Issue 1 - Public funds for private R&D; highways 33 19 62% 70 20 75%

Issue 2 - 35 Day absentee voting 42 9 79% 73 19 78%

Issue 3 - Lowers campaign contribution limits 44 8 83% 78 15 83%

Issue 4 - Independent Redistricting Commission 42 10 79% 74 20 79%

Issue 5 - Creates Elections Board of Supervisors 42 10 79% 75 19 80%

(nine people appointed by Ohio judges)

The results for the entire state were reported as Issue 1 passing, and Issues 2 thru 5 failing by a wide margin, contrary to the results of this precinct. Clearly, this precinct alone is not a large enough sample from which to draw conclusions. What can be ascertained is that official reported results of Precinct 16D matched the Parallel Election results.

Based on polling numbers, Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman have submitted a rejection of the official results at
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1559.

At least three states held Parallel Elections on November 8 th: Ohio, California and Texas. Information about these other states can be found at
http://www.guvwurld.org//Election%20Reform/KHUM%20Radio%20Interview%20-%20Humboldt%20County%20Parallel%20Election%20-%2011-3-05.mp3 for Humboldt County, CA and San Diego, CA
http://www.studycaliforniaballots.org

There was very light voting across Columbus, as reported by other voter protection workers. One team, including global human rights videographer Dorothy Fadiman, covered several precincts throughout the day. Until about 3:30, the weather was sunny and breezy, with temps reaching 70º. Temperatures fell slowly in the evening.

16-D is a heavily democratic, mostly young adult precinct, with a large block of student voters, just west of the Ohio State Fairgrounds. Racially mixed, the precinct also includes a good amount of families. This precinct was chosen to model citizen activism at the local level. "All you need are 6 to 8 voters in your precinct to run a Parallel Election. But be sure to bring enough food and hydration," an activist advised.

Police cruisers drove by several times in the morning, but probably related to other activities. One cruiser did park and face the parallel election table, for about 45 minutes, but it could have just been his lunch break. The pollworkers, precinct judge and voters who participated in the PE support PE efforts and have been very accommodating. Very few voters turned down the opportunity to vote in the parallel election and thanked PE workers for doing this. Team Ohio counted the parallel ballots in a local restaurant, later that night.

To learn How To Conduct a Parallel Election, see
http://tinyurl.com/exjqm, or http://tinyurl.com/bmmgz at http://www.GuvWurld.org; or see
http://www.studycaliforniaballots.org.

Team Ohio included: Rady Ananda, Marjorie Preston, Marj Creech, Madalena LaMarche, Troy Semen, Kal Palnicki, Dave Hickman, and Steave Scott. Much thanks goes to Steave Scott and Warren Stewart for assisting the videographic team of Dorothy Fadiman, to Marj Creech for capturing jpegs during the PE and during the ballot count, and to Victorian's Midnight Café for the ambiance.


Submitted by
Rady Ananda
J30 Research
Columbus OH

Suggestions and comments to pjohnso6@insight.rr.com


Informant: Pete Johnson

NY Times: Dishonest, Reprehensible, Corrupt ..., Bob Scheer Returns

Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 08:41:15 -0800

Dishonest, Reprehensible, Corrupt ...

By FRANK RICH
NY Times
Op-Ed: November 27, 2005

GEORGE W. BUSH is so desperate for allies that his hapless Asian tour took him to Ulan Bator, a first for an American president, so he could mingle with the yaks and give personal thanks for Mongolia's contribution of some 160 soldiers to "the coalition of the willing." Dick Cheney, whose honest-and-ethical poll number hit 29 percent in Newsweek's latest survey, is so radioactive that he vanished into his bunker for weeks at a time during the storms Katrina and Scootergate.

The whole world can see that both men are on the run. Just how much so became clear in the brace of nasty broadsides each delivered this month about Iraq. Neither man engaged the national debate ignited by John Murtha about how our troops might be best redeployed in a recalibrated battle against Islamic radicalism. Neither offered a plan for "victory." Instead, both impugned their critics' patriotism and retreated into the past to defend the origins of the war. In a seasonally appropriate impersonation of the misanthropic Mr. Potter from "It's a Wonderful Life," the vice president went so far as to label critics of the administration's prewar smoke screen both "dishonest and reprehensible" and "corrupt and shameless." He sounded but one epithet away from a defibrillator.

The Washington line has it that the motivation for the Bush-Cheney rage is the need to push back against opponents who have bloodied the White House in the polls. But, Mr. Murtha notwithstanding, the Democrats are too feeble to merit that strong a response. There is more going on here than politics.

Much more: each day brings slam-dunk evidence that the doomsday threats marshaled by the administration to sell the war weren't, in Cheney-speak, just dishonest and reprehensible but also corrupt and shameless. The more the president and vice president tell us that their mistakes were merely innocent byproducts of the same bad intelligence seen by everyone else in the world, the more we learn that this was not so. The web of half-truths and falsehoods used to sell the war did not happen by accident; it was woven by design and then foisted on the public by a P.R. operation built expressly for that purpose in the White House. The real point of the Bush-Cheney verbal fisticuffs this month, like the earlier campaign to take down Joseph Wilson, is less to smite Democrats than to cover up wrongdoing in the executive branch between 9/11 and shock and awe.

The cover-up is failing, however. No matter how much the president and vice president raise their decibel levels, the truth keeps roaring out. A nearly

7, 000-word investigation in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times found that Mr. Bush and his aides had "issued increasingly dire warnings" about Iraq's mobile biological weapons labs long after U.S. intelligence authorities were told by Germany's Federal Intelligence Service that the principal source for these warnings, an Iraqi defector in German custody code-named Curveball, "never claimed to produce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so." The five senior German intelligence officials who spoke to The Times said they were aghast that such long-discredited misinformation from a suspected fabricator turned up in Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations and in the president's 2003 State of the Union address (where it shared billing with the equally bogus 16 words about Saddam's fictitious African uranium).

Right after the L.A. Times scoop, Murray Waas filled in another piece of the prewar propaganda puzzle. He reported in the nonpartisan National Journal that 10 days after 9/11, "President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda."

The information was delivered in the President's Daily Brief, a C.I.A. assessment also given to the vice president and other top administration officials. Nonetheless Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney repeatedly pounded in an implicit (and at times specific) link between Saddam and Al Qaeda until Americans even started to believe that the 9/11 attacks had been carried out by Iraqis. More damning still, Mr. Waas finds that the "few credible reports" of Iraq-Al Qaeda contacts actually involved efforts by Saddam to monitor or infiltrate Islamic terrorist groups, which he regarded as adversaries of his secular regime. Thus Saddam's antipathy to Islamic radicals was the same in 2001 as it had been in 1983, when Donald Rumsfeld, then a Reagan administration emissary, embraced the dictator as a secular fascist ally in the American struggle against the theocratic fascist rulers in Iran.

What these revelations also tell us is that Mr. Bush was wrong when he said in his Veterans Day speech that more than 100 Congressional Democrats who voted for the Iraqi war resolution "had access to the same intelligence" he did. They didn't have access to the President's Daily Brief that Mr. Waas uncovered. They didn't have access to the information that German intelligence officials spoke about to The Los Angeles Times. Nor did they have access to material from a Defense Intelligence Agency report, released by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan this month, which as early as February 2002 demolished the reliability of another major source that the administration had persistently used for its false claims about Iraqi-Al Qaeda collaboration.

The more we learn about the road to Iraq, the more we realize that it's a losing game to ask what lies the White House told along the way. A simpler question might be: What was not a lie? The situation recalls Mary McCarthy's explanation to Dick Cavett about why she thought Lillian Hellman was a dishonest writer: "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.' "

If Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney believe they were truthful in the run-up to the war, it's easy for them to make their case. Instead of falsely claiming that they've been exonerated by two commissions that looked into prewar intelligence - neither of which addressed possible White House misuse and mischaracterization of that intelligence - they should just release the rest of the President's Daily Briefs and other prewar documents that are now trickling out. Instead, incriminatingly enough, they are fighting the release of any such information, including unclassified documents found in post-invasion Iraq requested from the Pentagon by the pro-war, neocon Weekly Standard. As Scott Shane reported in The New York Times last month, Vietnam documents are now off limits, too: the National Security Agency won't make public a 2001 historical report on how American officials distorted intelligence in 1964 about the Gulf of Tonkin incident for fear it might "prompt uncomfortable comparisons" between the games White Houses played then and now to gin up wars.

SOONER or later - probably sooner, given the accelerating pace of recent revelations - this embarrassing information will leak out anyway. But the administration's deliberate efforts to suppress or ignore intelligence that contradicted its Iraq crusade are only part of the prewar story. There were other shadowy stations on the disinformation assembly line. Among them were the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, a two-man Pentagon operation specifically created to cherry-pick intelligence for Mr. Cheney's apocalyptic Iraqi scenarios, and the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), in which Karl Rove, Karen Hughes and the Cheney hands Lewis Libby and Mary Matalin, among others, plotted to mainline this propaganda into the veins of the press and public. These murky aspects of the narrative - like the role played by a private P.R. contractor, the Rendon Group, examined by James Bamford in the current Rolling Stone - have yet to be recounted in full.

No debate about the past, of course, can undo the mess that the administration made in Iraq. But the past remains important because it is a road map to both the present and the future. Leaders who dissembled then are still doing so. Indeed, they do so even in the same speeches in which they vehemently deny having misled us then - witness Mr. Bush's false claims about what prewar intelligence was seen by Congress and Mr. Cheney's effort last Monday to again conflate the terrorists of 9/11 with those "making a stand in Iraq." (Maj. Gen. Douglas Lute, director of operations for Centcom, says the Iraqi insurgency is 90 percent homegrown.) These days Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney routinely exaggerate the readiness of Iraqi troops, much as they once inflated Saddam's W.M.D.'s.

"We're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history," the vice president said of his critics. "We're going to continue throwing their own words back at them." But according to a Harris poll released by The Wall Street Journal last Wednesday, 64 percent of Americans now believe that the Bush administration "generally misleads the American public on current issues to achieve its own ends." That's why it's Mr. Cheney's and the president's own words that are being thrown back now - not to rewrite history but to reveal it for the first time to an angry country that has learned the hard way that it can no longer afford to be without the truth.


I got this yesterday, from Rscheer@truthdig.com
Presumably, that's the address for subscriptions. Do it! -Ed

On November 29th, Publisher Zuade Kaufman and Editor Robert Scheer will launch truthdig.com, a new Web magazine providing provocative content and in-depth coverage of current affairs.

The inaugural issue's FEATURED DIG: a.. China: Boom or Boomerang? "Perhaps no country has so many positive and negative trends as the home of a fifth of the world's people."

Amidst the backdrop of a major toxic chemical spill in one of its largest cities, China finds itself facing questions about its stature as a superpower. Read Asia expert Orville Schell as he digs into China and finds the current wisdom-of China as inevitable superpower and unstoppable economic force-is not the whole truth. Also in the first issue is: a.. UNCOVERED - Dossiers of ongoing news subjects-including the Alito Nomination and the Frist File.

b.. EAR TO THE GROUND - Robert Scheer's weekly column and his take on other issues in the news.

c.. REPORTS -Original articles and opinion pieces unique to truthdig.com. Features include Juan Cole on a behind the story look at Saddam Hussein's trial and Steve Wasserman on the cutbacks and other shakeups at the Los Angeles Times.

d.. A/V BOOTH - Audio interviews, video clips, photo essays and more. Features include Inside Chavez's Venezuela by Sharmini Peries, journalist turned foreign policy advisor to Venezuela President Hugo Chavez. Hope you had a great holiday! Join us for the dig on Tuesday, November 29!


OWEN E. DELL

P.O. Box 30433
Santa Barbara, CA
93130-0433
PHONE/FAX: 805 962-6603
E-MAIL: odell@silcom.com
WEBSITE: http://www.owendell.com/


"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience ... Therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring." The Nuremberg Tribunal 1945.


Informant: Hopedance