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February, 2006 |
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February 23, 2006 - With the bi-partisan firestorm raging around the decision to turn the operation of the 6 major US Atlantic ports over to UAE state owned Dubai Ports World the White House has tried to put distance between the President and the decision. Yesterday Scotty McClellan told the White House Press corps that the President was not involved in the decision to approve the deal and did not learn of it until after the decision was made. McClellan said the President only became aware of the deal in the “last few days”. Unless some one other than the President is handling presidential appointments these days, President Bush had heard of the DP World some time ago. On January 17th the White House issued a routine announcement of upcoming appointments. It included the following: “The President intends to nominate David C. Sanborn, of Virginia, to be Administrator of the Maritime Administration of the Department of Transportation. Mr. Sanborn currently serves as Director of Operations for Europe and Latin America at DP World.”...click here for entire article February 22, 2006 - Last week I wrote that the Cheney hunting incident was important in its own right in that provided insight into the judgment, integrity and competence of the man who is but a heartbeat away from the Presidency. With the publication of the Time and Newsweek articles on the event the spotlight seemed to have dimmed as the public’s attention moved on to more urgent matters – like the incipient outsourcing of port operations to an Arab owned concern. That was before Doug Thompson, the founder and editor of Capitol Hill Blue posted his copyrighted column for today. Capitol Hill Blue bill itself as the Capitol’s original Internet news site. Thompson writes that a written report by the Vice President’s Secret Service detail says that Cheney was “clearly inebriated” when he shot Mr. Wittington. According to Thompson’s column the delay in admitting law enforcement personnel to the ranch was to give the people in the hunting party time to sober up. Thompson wrote that administration officials to whom he had talked admitted that Cheney had drunk far more than the one beer that he claimed he had had at lunch some hours earlier. One White House aide is alleged to have said, “This was a South Texas hunt. Of course there was drinking. There is always drinking. Lots of it.”...click here for entire article February 21, 2006 - - When Homeland Defense Secretary Chertoff signed off on the deal to sell America’s primary Atlantic port facilities to the United Arab Emirates he must have had FDR’s Secretary of State Cordell Hull in mind. Chertoff said that his agreement to outsource National Security to the tiny country that furnished two of the 911 hijackers and whose banks have financed Al Qaeda’s operations was based on free trade considerations. It was at the depths of the Great Depression when Secretary Hull was pushing tariff reform that he said, “When goods freely cross borders armies don’t.” That was in an era that protecting our national security meant defending ourselves against aggressors’ armies militarily and diplomatically. In this Century the threat to our National Security does not come from enemy armies. Today the threat to the security of the United States and our allies comes from squads of terrorists infiltrated into our midst. It does not come from an identifiable rouge regime but rather a shadowy amalgam of religious fanatics dedicated to our cultural destruction. Now I am not a Nervous Nelly who sees an Arab terrorist behind every bush. Nor am I among those who believe that when the nest strike comes it will be in the form of a bootleg nuclear devise hidden in a shipping container landed at a New York port. Al Qaeda does not need that kind of investment or sophisticated plot to devastate a US port city. We have had object lessons in the destruction that can be caused by fertilizer bombs delivered in small trucks. All we need do is recall the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center; the attacks on our embassies in Africa; the Cole incident when the barrel of fertilizer was delivered in an inflatable boat; and Oklahoma City...click here for entire article February 17, 2006 - “They say I was drunk – but I only had two beers at supper.” I don’t know how many times I have heard that line out of the mouth of a DUI defendant in the last thirty years. When I remind them that the Breathalyzer registered 0.18, more than twice the legal limit, and ask how they explain that reading they always reply that there had to be something wrong with the machine. Prosecutors, defense lawyers and law enforcement personnel have a standing joke – we call it the “two beer defense.” Then there is the driver who leaves the scene only to report the accident in which he hit a parked car or ran off the road and hit a road sign on the following day. Those usually occur a little after closing time at the local bar. Consider the following: A man is shot with a shotgun. He is given emergency medical aid at the scene. He is transported by ambulance to a medical facility. The medical facility is mandated by state law to immediately report any gunshot wound injury to the appropriate law enforcement agency. The local sheriff’s office contacts the person who fired the shotgun. An arrangement is made to interview the shooter. 14 hours has elapsed since the shooting. When the deputy arrives to interview the shooter he is turned away by the shooter’s bodyguard...click here for entire article February 15, 2006 - Somewhere there is a line dividing those regimes with democratic governments and those regimes maintaining undemocratic governments. In our own hemisphere of course Cuba lies on the far side of the line joined by Venezuela and more recently Bolivia. Haiti just had an election. We don’t yet know who won so we don’t know whether to list it as a democracy or not. For years now we have listed Syria as beyond the line because their politics and elections have been wholly dominated by the Baathist party. When Fatah dominated elections in Gaza and the Palestinian West Bank we saw them as an emerging democracy. With the recent electoral victory notched by Hamas the Palestinian Authority stepped back over the line to undemocratic. Russia’s Vladimir Putin seems to be transformed from democrat to autocrat depending on whether he agrees with Washington this week. England is dependably democratic. Sometimes we have doubts about Germany. France is, well, France so what can you expect. Iran holds elections and lays a veneer of democracy over and essential theocracy but who among us would declare Iran a democracy? Especially as she insists upon a sovereign right to acquire the second Islamic a-bomb....click here for entire article February 10, 2006 - It has not been a good news day for the Bush Administration. First US Fitzgerald announced that Scooter Libby had testified before the Grand Jury that "his superiors" had authorized him to leak classified information to Judith Miller. Next Michael Brown testified before the Senate committee investigating the hurricane Katrina boondoggle that claims that no one in the White House or the Department of Homeland Security knew before Tuesday that the levees in New Orleans had failed was "just baloney". Then someone in Malaysia let the word out that the President's dramatic announcement of the foiled plot to bring down " Liberty Tower " in Los Angelis was also packaged by Oscar Mayer. Jack Abramov declares that President Bush did indeed "know the man", leaving Scotty McClellan to parse what is really meant by the word "know". I don't think there has been a day in which the credibility of the damaged as well - and perhaps beyond repair in the short term. It will take a dramatic turn around to restore it in the long term...click here for entire article February 9, 2006 - The Department of Homeland Security is prepared. It has contracted with Halliburton’s KBR subsidiary to build Detention Camps in the United States. If a national emergency looms the Department will be ready to round up and detain anyone who is deemed to be a threat to the country. According to a Halliburton press release dated January 25th the $385 Million contract is to “augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs … The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other U.S. Government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster.” Emphasis Supplied. The press release does not specify what is meant by “an emergency influx of immigrants” or the nature of a national emergency in which these augmented Detention and Removal Operations might be employed....click here for entire article February 4, 2006 - The President unveiled a bold new energy policy designed to achieve energy independence within 20 years. The policy combines conservation, alternative fuels, renewable energy sources as well as an increased reliance on solar energy to wean America away from its addiction to OPEC’s oil. “First, I have ordered the preparation and submission to Congress of a bill creating a federally chartered private corporation to develop alternative energy sources to imported oil, such as synthetic liquid fuels. This corporation can be just as successful as the corporation the United States established in World War II to produce synthetic rubber. It will be funded at a multi-billion dollar level. It will accelerate our ability to turn our plentiful domestic resources -- such as coal, crops and organic products -- into gasoline and alcohol....click here for entire article |
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