NY Times op-ed: "At a press conference Mr. Ashcroft promised that the new rules [allowing FBI domestic surveillance] would be put in place with 'scrupulous respect for civil rights and personal freedom.' The sentiment is welcome, but unconvincing. Mr. Ashcroft and his colleagues have missed no opportunity since Sept. 11 to expand the investigative powers of the federal government and to stampede Congress into supporting the changes by suggesting that opposition is disloyal."

We're losing our civil liberties for nothing -- David Morris debunks Ashcroft's claims of needing Draconian powers. Referring to the now-notorious Phoenix Memo and the Moussaoui case, he notes: "The problem wasn't a lack of surveillance and detention powers. The problem, as the Washington Post reports that FBI Director Robert Mueller has acknowledged 'is the FBI's limited ability to gather and analyze intelligence.'"

Wayne Madsen: "As the U.S. Congress continues its investigation of the Enron affair, human rights advocates are calling for a probe of the Bush administration's possible role in another energy and influence-peddling scandal. According to a recent report by the British-based non-governmental organization Global Witness, Bush and U.S. oil interests have ties to some of the key figures in the arms-for-oil scandal which has devastated Angola."

NY Times: State Dept. advises 60,000 Americans to leave India

AP: Majority of new drugs have little impact -- "The vast majority [of new drugs approved in the last ten years] . . . were similar to existing medicines. Yet during the same time, consumer spending on prescription drugs more than doubled to $132 billion - and most of the increase was spent not on the most innovative drugs, but on the less important or copycats." New isn't necessarily better.

An alarming new threat more terrifying than al-Qaeda. [Via Cursor]

While the media obsesses over a recently found deceased intern, nuclear war is not a distant threat but a real possibility.

FBI Director Robert Mueller announced today that the FBI will place terror prevention above all else. (NY Times, free registration required)

Maureen Dowd: W.'s spaghetti western -- "The French actually seemed pleased when Mr. Bush played up his own political caricature, acting like a rodeo rider in King Louis's court, because it allowed them to indulge in their own favorite stereotypical behavior: looking down their Gallic noses at Americans." (NY Times, free registration required)

Texas, which must be trying to set the world's record for capital punishment, has executed a young man who was 17 at the time of his crime.

Posts have been, and may still be, a little erratic this week -- we're scrambling to buy a year's worth of hay, due to the drought and the impending shut-off of irrigation water.

USA Today: Some airport guardsmen carried unloaded weapons -- "National Guard troops patrolling Pennsylvania airports for more than seven months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were carrying unloaded weapons, a newspaper reported Sunday."

Reuters: Pakistan tests second missle; India impatient

BBC: Ice reservoirs found on Mars -- "It solves one of its deepest mysteries, points the way for manned exploration and reignites the question of whether life may exist on the planet."

Maureen Dowd -- "...Now we need the old Evil Empire to help us with the new Axis of Evil and the Evildoers. (Even though the ex-Evil Empire is helping the country that dubbed us the Great Satan gain nuclear capability.) So now Russia is the Good Empire. (NY Times, free registration required)

NY Times op-ed: "President Bush and Congress should move immediately to establish an independent investigative commission with the authority, expertise and financial support necessary to determine why Washington failed to recognize that Osama bin Laden was on the hunt in America last summer."

Peter Ferenbach: The arms control shell game - Bush's nuke policy treats the public as a pawn -- "Sadly, this latest agreement is a cynical shell game designed to cover the perilous and aggressive new nuclear posture of the Bush administration. . . . The Bush administration is pursuing a nuclear strategy detailed in the 'Nuclear Posture Review' that was leaked to the media in April. In essence, the strategy targets nations perceived as capable of developing weapons of mass destruction. The idea is that the threat of a pre-emptive first strike from the United States will deter other nations from seeking a nuclear capability."

Frank Rich: Thanks for the heads-up -- "A far more revealing indication of the administration's mañana mindset about terrorism [came] on Sept. 9, when Donald Rumsfeld threatened a presidential veto if Congress moved $600 million out of the White House's prized ballistic missile defense system and into counterterrorism. On Sept. 10, John Ashcroft submitted a final Justice Department budget request calling for increases in 68 programs, none of them directly related to combating terrorism." (NY Times, free registration required)

Christian Science Monitor -- "Jordan, beyond a doubt, and Morocco, with some certainty, advised US and allied intelligence that Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorists were preparing airborne terrorist operations in the continental United States."

AP: "An FBI whistle-blower alleges FBI headquarters rewrote Minnesota agents' pre-Sept. 11 request for surveillance and search warrants for terrorism defendant Zacarias Moussaoui and removed important information before rejecting them, government officials said Friday."

Reuters: US warns against travel to India, Pakistan. Duh! And what's with the lastest ''scuba alert?''

Las Vegas Sun: -- "Vice President Dick Cheney denied Wednesday that a flurry of public terror warnings was prompted by criticism over how the Bush administration handled pre-Sept. 11 warnings of an attack."

Washington Times: -- "The latest alerts were issued 'as a result of all the controversy that took place last week, said Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer...."

The administration needs to get its story straight.

LA Times: Terrorist ties cited in memo -- "...The details also appear at odds with authorities' contention that Williams was only pursuing 'a hunch'--not actual evidence--in warning about the risk of flight schools.

Boston Globe: US seeks settlements in Fla. on 2000 vote -- "The US Justice Department has been negotiating with three Florida counties in an attempt to settle expected lawsuits alleging voting rights violations during the 2000 election that brought President Bush to power, the head of the department's civil rights division told the Senate yesterday."

Guardian: The way we will live in 2032 -- "The destruction of 70% of the natural world in 30 years, mass extinction of species, and the collapse of human society in many countries is forecast in a bleak report by 1,100 scientists published yesterday. . . . The report paints four possible futures for the world, including the current pattern of free trade and short term profit at the expense of the environment, which leads to disaster."

AP: Bush opposes Sept. 11 commission, preferring that it be handled by congressional intelligence committees.

Vice President Cheney labels criticism over 9/11 'despicable'. Translation: Sit down and shut up! Cheney also denies criticism prompted wave of new warnings.

A historic ballot is underway, in which the San Fernando Valley may secede from Los Angeles.

CBS: US to sue over 2000 election -- "The government will file three lawsuits against Florida counties alleging voting rights violations resulting from the bitterly disputed 2000 presidential election, a Justice Department official said Tuesday."

Guardian: Riddle of the spores - Why has the FBI investigation into the anthrax attacks stalled? The evidence points one way

Newsweek: What went wrong - The inside story of the missed signals and intelligence failures that raise a chilling question: did September 11 have to happen?

Businesweek Daily: Five questions Bush must answer

It is a bit heartening to see the domestic ''mainstream media'' ask some serious questions. However, the bulk of today's headlines seem to be devoted to scarring the bejesus out of every man, woman and child in the US. Officials insist they are not trying to deflect criticism of the administration over last summer's limited briefing of President Bush. Yes, we continue to be at risk; but the timing of these dire and vague warnings is entirely too convenient.

Scare the critics into silence?

Reuters: "Sen. Bob Graham, speaking amid new warnings of attacks on the United States, confirmed reports that about two dozen 'extremists' had recently entered America hidden in container ships and were now on the loose."

AP: "It is inevitable that suicide bombers like those who have attacked Israeli restaurants and buses will strike the United States, FBI Director Robert Mueller said Monday as the White House answered criticism with fresh terrorism warnings."

President Bush was apparently very rattled and unfocused as he addressed a small group of Republican senators last week, just as the news was breaking over his August 2001 briefing on al-Qaeda. "Stunned senators didnít know quite what to make of [Bush's] performance. 'It was like in church, when the sermon goes on too long and youíre not sure what the point is,' one told NEWSWEEK. 'Nobody dared look at anybody else.'" [MSNBC]

"On the fourth day of the longest presidential vacation in three decades, George W. Bush addressed the press from a golf cart outside his Texas ranch. `I'm working on a lot of issues, national security matters,' Bush said. This was Aug. 7 of last year, one day after Bush was presented with a memo titled `Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.' The document suggested that Al Qaeda might well be planning to hijack airliners." [NY Daily News]

Washington Post: Famed Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould dies, aged 60, of cancer.

NY Times: Cheney rejects broader access to terror brief -- "The debate over how to investigate Sept. 11 is unique because it involves secret intelligence and a devastating loss of life, and comes against a backdrop of further terror threats. Yet in some ways it is part of a broader battle being waged day by day between a Congress eager for oversight and an administration that believes that presidential authority and prerogatives have been eroded since the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal." (Free registration required)

Washington Post: Strife, dissent beset hill's Sept. 11 panel -- "The panel, composed of members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, has hired 23 staff members and obtained 150,000 pages of CIA documents. But it has not agreed whether its central mission is to figure out if federal agencies failed to do their job, or the less politically-charged question of how the nation's intelligence system should be reorganized.

Madeleine Albright suggests the Bush administration suffers from bipolar disorder -- "They talk about the importance of the rule of law, but seem allergic to treaties designed to strengthen the rule of law in areas such as money-laundering, biological weapons, crimes against humanity, and the environment. . . . This split personality is also evident in Afghanistan, where one day they are ridiculing nation-building and the next proposing a new Marshall Plan. . . . And in the Middle East, where the signals have varied day by day." [CNN]

CNN: Rice opposes public panel to investigate 9/11 -- "The Bush administration does not support a public commission to investigate the intelligence failures leading up to the September 11 terrorist attacks, fearing that such disclosure of information could harm the war against terrorism, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Sunday."

Reuters: Cheney sees new attacks on U.S. as 'almost certain' -- The timing on this is a little odd. There have been reports for quite some time of increasing al-Qaeda "chatter," indicating a likely upsurge in strike planning. In light of last week's furor over the August 2001 CIA briefing to Pres. Bush, one might wonder if this is more damage-control.

AP: Airlines warned of terrorist attacks five months before last September, but in very vague terms.

MSNBC: Suicide scenario was nothing new -- "Before Sept. 11, the White House says, scant thought was given to the notion terrorists would use hijacked planes as missiles. But the possibility that al-Qaida might try such a strategy was raised numerous times after the first World Trade Center attack in 1993."

NY Times: FBI knew for years about terror pilot training -- "The F.B.I. knew by 1996 of a specific threat that terrorists in Al Qaeda, Mr. bin Laden's network, might use a plane in a suicide attack against the headquarters of the C.I.A. or another large federal building in the Washington area, the law enforcement officials acknowledged."

Don't ask!

Vice President Cheney "warned that any attempt by Congress to probe too deeply into intelligence reports should not interfere with attempts to prevent further attacks, saying there was 'a very real threat' that 'perhaps a more devastating attack still exists.'"

Jan. 29, 2002: "President Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle Tuesday to limit the congressional investigation into the events of September 11, congressional and White House. . . ." [CNN]

Dick Gephart: "If every time somebody asks a legitimate question it is seen as having a motive of political gamesmanship, we're never going to get to where we need to be." [Washington Post]

Still clueless...

Miami Herald: Airlines in Sept. 11 attack got no specific warnings: "American Airlines and United Airlines, which each lost two planes in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, said Thursday they were never warned of a specific hijacking threat, though the White House was told in August that Osama bin Laden's terrorists might hijack U.S. planes."

Washington Post: "'I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people . . . would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile,' Rice said Thursday. But a 1999 report prepared for the National Intelligence Council, an affiliate of the CIA, warned that terrorists associated with bin Laden might hijack an airplane and crash it into the Pentagon, White House or CIA headquarters."

"'The half-year-plus of national unity is officially over and the election season has begun in earnest,' said Larry J. Sabato, a University of Virginia political analyst." [LA Times]

We had no clue...

In light of the August 6, 2001, briefing of President Bush regarding possible airline hijackings, the following gives one pause. It is from Ari Fleischer's press briefing on Sept. 11, 2001:

Q: Had there been any warnings that the President knew of?

MR. FLEISCHER: No warnings.

CNN: "...The prospect of an attack involving planes crashing into buildings was raised in an 1999 interagency U.S. government study compiled by the Library of Congress and shared with various government agencies. In the executive summary of that 149-page report, available on the Library of Congress Internet site, the authors specifically cited al Qaeda involvement in a possible terror attack in which a jet would crash 'into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House.'"

Washington Post: Unshared Clues and Unshaped Policy -- "Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet had been 'nearly frantic' with concern since June 22, according to one frequent interlocutor, and a written intelligence summary for national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on June 28: 'It is highly likely that a significant al Qaeda attack is in the near future, within several weeks.' By late summer, one senior political appointee said, Tenet had 'repeated this so often that people got tired of hearing it.'"

MSNBC: U.S. planned for attack on al-Qaida -- "The document, a formal National Security Presidential Directive, amounted to a 'game plan to remove al-Qaida from the face of the Earth,' one of the sources told NBC Newsí Jim Miklaszewski."

David Corn:

Second-guessing is easy, but it is tragic that the Phoenix FBI report (suspects in a terrorist investigation linked to al Qaeda are attending flight school), the mysterious Moussaoui case (a suspicious fellow, enrolled in a flight school, is up to something, maybe crashing an airliner into the World Trade Towers), and the CIA warning (bin Laden is planning a terrorist action) were never placed side-by-side on the same desk. Had they been, that might not have spelled out what was coming. But it could have made other information seem more relevant or helped the CIA and FBI locate additional pieces of this secret puzzle. The inability of the intelligence community to coordinate its information streams--not even within the FBI was the Phoenix report passed to the office investigating Moussaoui--is troubling. Is there a point to spending $30 billion-plus dollars a year for a sweeping intelligence system--and Congress is in the process of approving a multibillion dollar boost--if that system cannot discern and efficiently handle the nuggets it does manage to obtain?. [The Nation, via Globalvision]

The media

Is truth a victim?

One of America's foremost newscasters, Dan Rather of CBS, says the US media has stopped asking tough questions of the Bush administration since 11 September. And he blames a climate of extraordinary patriotism. In an interview with Newsnight, the CBS anchorman says that fear of offending the politicians "keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions" and adds: "I do not except myself from this criticism." [BBC]

Howard Kurtz: As Reporters Seek Details, The Media Climate Shifts -- "In a single day, the capital's media climate has been transformed.." [Washington Post]

[Macro error: Can't locate an image object named "bush-oops".] "President Bush was told in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network might hijack U.S. passenger planes - information which prompted the administration to issue an alert to federal agencies - but not the American public." [CBS]

More on the above at the NY Times and The Guardian . . .

Guardian: Why Carter is smarter -- "Jimmy Carter, the former US president, has given the lie to Washington's claims that Cuba has developed biological weapons and is trading them with 'rogue states' such as Iran."

Andrew Murray: The axis of nonsense -- "Washington's war is going à la carte. Each passing week is placing both new targets and new justifications for attack on the menu for military action. There is now not the slightest pretence that the scope of the US's regime-change wishlist is in any way tethered to the attacks of September 11. Instead, the world is witnessing the rapid emergence of a plan to dispose of any government hateful to the sight of US ultra-conservatism."

James Petras: U.S. Offensive in Latin America: Coups, Retreats, and Radicalization [Monthly Review]

Counterpunch: US plans for martial law, telegovernance, and the suspension of elections -- Let's hope Stanton and Madsen are a little over the top on this one.

Joe Conason: Wrong about Enron but still in charge -- "If you remember that terrible 'energy crisis' in California a year or so ago, then you may also recall that everybody who is anybody had a strong opinion about its causes and cures. Actually, most members of the opinionated elite were promoting the same conservative certitudes: They exonerated the likes of Enron, blamed environmentalists and regulators, and mocked any hint of market manipulation by the energy industry."

Reuters: Buddhist monk starts fund to rebuild Afghan statues destroyed last year by the Taliban.

Dear readers: No, I haven't croaked or become a Luddite. What started out to be "a few days" off has suddenly turned into over a month's hiatus. With all the gloom on the political/international scene, I really, really needed a break. To V.L., thanks for the ping, and stay tuned! :-)