Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (21830)	5/12/2004 12:12:07 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 81568

Thread of Abuse Runs to the Oval Office _________________________________________ Phony justifications for war led to brutal intelligence-gathering. By Robert Scheer Columnist The Los Angeles Times May 11, 2004 Someone's lying — big-time — and neither Congress nor the media have begun to scratch the surface. Clearly we now know enough to stipulate that the several low-ranking alleged sadists charged in the Iraq torture scandal did not control the wing of the prison in which they openly and proudly did the devil's work. That power was in the hands of high-ranking U.S. military intelligence officers who established abusive conditions that were condemned by the Red Cross in a complaint to U.S. authorities well before the horrid incidents that recently shocked the nation. The Red Cross complaint — and a follow-up report that was made available to the administration in February and obtained by the Wall Street Journal this week — raises the sobering possibility that these low-level members of the military police in Iraq may be right in claiming that they were just following orders of their superiors. According to the report, the organization's delegates visited Abu Ghraib in October 2003 and witnessed "the practice of keeping persons deprived of their liberty completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness" for days. "Upon witnessing such cases, the [Red Cross] interrupted its visits and requested an explanation from the authorities. The military intelligence officer in charge of interrogation explained that this practice was 'part of the process.' " The report said that what Red Cross representatives saw "went beyond exceptional cases" and was "in some cases tantamount to torture." The Red Cross complained directly to the authorities at that time, two months before the now-infamous photographs were taken. The White House and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have for months stubbornly ignored and kept from the public the conclusions of both the Red Cross report and the even more damning internal report done by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba for the Pentagon in March. The Taguba report clearly stated that the MPs had been instructed to "set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses" and were using sexual humiliation, attack dogs and beatings to break prisoners. It would appear that the Pentagon still doesn't want to admit the seriousness of the problem, having now assigned Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller to run Abu Ghraib despite the fact that it was Miller who last summer officially reported on conditions in Abu Ghraib and seems to have enabled, if not authorized, the torture that ensued in the autumn. According to Taguba's report, Miller "stated that detention operations must act as an enabler for interrogation" and "it is essential that the guard force be actively engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees." That would seem to support the contention of the accused MPs that they were just doing their duty. The Washington Post quotes an e-mail from Spc. Sabrina Harman in which she wrote: "If the prisoner was cooperating, then the prisoner was allowed to keep his jumpsuit, mattress, and was allowed cigarettes on request or even hot food. But if the prisoner didn't give what they wanted, it was all taken away until [military intelligence] decided. The job of the MP was to keep them awake, make it hell so they would talk." On Monday, President Bush reiterated his unyielding support for Rumsfeld, even as the influential Army Times newspaper called for heads to roll "even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war." The abuses of Iraqi prisoners in Baghdad are "a failure that ran straight to the top," argued the newspaper. And all of this does flow from the top. With the occupation itself built on a web of lies — that invading Iraq was part of the war on terror, that Iraq had threatening weapons of mass destruction, that anybody who resisted the occupation was a "terrorist" or "thug" — it can only be assumed that those interrogators dealing with the nearly 50,000 Iraqi detainees in the last year were under enormous pressure to produce statements that fit these phony "facts." "I'd like to know who was the one that was giving instructions to the military intelligence personnel to turn up the heat," Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the nominal head of Abu Ghraib during the time in question, said in an interview on NBC. Unfortunately, that question needs to be addressed to the president of the United States. The big lie that the United States is merely a selfless battler against terrorists, with no other agendas, opens the door for brutality against any who dare resist. Bush has exercised an arrogance unmatched by any U.S. president in a century and brandished God's will as his carte blanche. His unilateral, preemptive "nation-building" — and the settling of old scores in the name of fighting terror — grants license to treat anybody, including U.S. citizens, in a barbaric manner that cavalierly sweeps aside all standards of due process. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert Scheer writes a weekly column for The Los Angeles Times and is coauthor of "The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq" (Seven Stories Press/Akashic Books, 2003). Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times latimes.com

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (21830)	5/12/2004 12:52:58 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 81568

Why the Polls Don't Add Up ____________________ By ANDREW KOHUT OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR THE NEW YORK TIMES May 12, 2004 WASHINGTON — You can hardly blame the Democrats if they seem a bit confused. After all, as the situation in Iraq has worsened over the past six weeks and national polls have shown a steep decline in President Bush's job-approval ratings (some, including the latest CBS/New York Times survey, have him registering well below the 50 percent mark), John Kerry can't seem to pull ahead of the president the national horse-race polls. Last week's Gallup, Fox News and NBC/Wall Street Journal surveys — all taken well after the revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib — continued to show registered voters split about evenly between the president and the senator. New surveys by CNN/USA Today/Gallup and by my colleagues at the Pew Center did show the senator gaining a small lead, but that edge disappeared in the Gallup poll when the sampling was narrowed from registered voters to "likely" voters, and in the Pew poll when respondents were asked to also consider the candidacy of Ralph Nader. Understandably, many Democrats have begun to despair — if Mr. Kerry can't gain ground when the president is in trouble, when can he? His defenders suggest that the evenly divided, highly polarized electorate is so dug in that neither candidate can break away. Others attribute Mr. Kerry's lack of progress to the multimillion-dollar Bush advertising blitz in swing states. These explanations may have some merit, but the data show there is still a sizable independent swing vote that could drive the election one way or the other. And the declines in the senator's favorable ratings have been modest — even in the swing states, where the Bush-Cheney advertising hit him hardest, polls show that most voters still hold positive or neutral views of him. The real reason that Mr. Kerry is making so little progress is that voters are now focused almost exclusively on the president. This is typical: as an election approaches, voters first decide whether the incumbent deserves re-election; only later do they think about whether it is worth taking a chance on the challenger. There is no reason to expect a one-to-one relationship between public disaffection with the incumbent and an immediate surge in public support for his challenger. We saw the same dynamic in the 1980 race. President Jimmy Carter's favorable rating in the Gallup surveys sank from 56 percent in January to 38 percent in June, yet he still led Ronald Reagan in Gallup's horse-race measures. For much of the rest of the campaign, voters who disapproved of Mr. Carter couldn't decide whether Mr. Reagan was an acceptable alternative. Through the summer and early fall, the lead changed back and forth, and CBS/New York Times and Gallup polls showed conflicting results — at one point in August, Gallup found Mr. Reagan ahead of President Carter by 16 percentage points, yet just two weeks later it registered a dead heat. It was not until the two men held a televised debate eight days before the election that Ronald Reagan gained legitimacy in the eyes of the electorate. Similarly, in May 1992 President George H. W. Bush had only a 37 percent approval rating according to a Times Mirror Center survey, but the same poll showed him with a modest lead, 46 percent to 43 percent, over Bill Clinton. Only the Democratic convention and the debates brought about an acceptance of Mr. Clinton (even though his negative ratings were higher than Mr. Kerry's are now). It took a long time for him to be seen as an acceptable alternative to Mr. Bush. Should the voters' disillusionment with the current President Bush continue, they will evaluate John Kerry and decide whether he is worth a chance. But, as in the past, the focus at this stage is on the man in the White House — and given the events in Iraq, it is unlikely to come off him any time soon. Mr. Kerry's lack of progress should not, for now, be cause for concern to Democrats. Public opinion about Mr. Bush is the far more important barometer — and if it remains low, Mr. Kerry will have a chance to make his case. _____________________ Andrew Kohut is director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. nytimes.com