By: James Ridgeway  

Ever since the United Nations was founded in 1945, conservatives have dreamed of ditching it. They hated the League of Nations, and they yearn for the day the U.N. is drummed out of New York. For them, the U.N. and the New Deal are peas in the pod - two liberal welfare-state institutions that need to be eliminated.

That is one powerful subliminal force in the so-called Iraq debate at the Security Council, and it was the unspoken message in Bush's lazy-day press conference last night. The President's performance - drifting sentences, long pauses, and quizzical looks - evoked the spaced-out feel of a blissful dopester. (Actually, you also got the feeling that senior members of the White House press corps had been doing a little weed before the ridiculous event began. They were really spaced!)

If only that were the case. What Bush is doing is to methodically widen and deepen his support among his conservative base...

Oil and Gas Industry Exempt From New Clean Water Rules

By: Jennifer B. Lee  

The agency said that when it proposed the original rule in 1999, it assumed that "few, if any" oil and gas production and treatment sites would be affected. Instead, the agency said, it has discovered that 30,000 oil and gas sites a year could be affected. "New information came to light that necessitated re-evaluation of oil and gas construction activities", said Mr. Millet, the agency's spokesman.

But in a letter to agency's administrator, Christie Whitman, the six Senators say there is "voluminous evidence" of an oil and gas industry review before the rule was created in 1999. They also dispute the 30,000 number, saying that industry number is inflated because it includes offshore and onshore construction sites alike. The data also does not break down the construction sites by size, so it is unclear how many of those 30,000 sites would actually be affected, they said.

In addition, they noted that the data that the agency said had come to light had been collected by the federal government since 1973 and available since 1978.

"One power, with a president who has no foresight and cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust."

- Nelson Mandela

"This nation... has no right to expect that it always will have wise and humane rulers, sincerely attached to the principles of the Constitution... [If] the calamities of war again befall us, the dangers to human liberty are frightful to contemplate."

- USSC, Ex Parte Milligan, 1866, declaring Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus and other abuses of the Bill of Rights unconstitutional

By: William Neikirk  

Analysts said there is a danger that the U.S. economy could stall unless the uncertainties of war are resolved and lagging business investment picks up. "The economy is not well", said Sung Won Sohn, chief economist at Wells Fargo Bank.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office added to this dismal picture by reporting that Bush's new tax cuts, his military spending, Medicare reforms, and other programs could produce deficits of $1.82 trillion over the next 10 years.

That total does not include the cost of a possible war with Iraq and its aftermath, estimated from $50 billion to as high as $200 billion.

By contrast, the Bush administration had projected that the budget would show an $891 billion surplus over the next decade...

By: Maureen Dowd  

As he rolls up to America's first pre-emptive invasion, bouncing from motive to motive, Mr. Bush is trying to sound rational, not rash. Determined not to be petulant, he seemed tranquilized.

But the Xanax cowboy made it clear that Saddam is going to pay for 9/11. Even if the fiendish Iraqi dictator was not involved with Al Qaeda, he has supported "Al Qaeda-type organizations", as the President fudged, or "Al Qaeda types" or "a terrorist network like Al Qaeda".

It still confuses many Americans that, in a world full of vicious slimeballs, we're about to bomb one that didn't attack us on 9/11 (like Osama); that isn't intercepting our planes (like North Korea); that isn't financing Al Qaeda (like Saudi Arabia); that isn't home to Osama and his lieutenants (like Pakistan); that isn't a host body for terrorists (like Iran, Lebanon, and Syria).

Editorial from:  

President Bush's prime time news conference Thursday night was overdue. Despite the swirl of events at home and abroad, Mr. Bush had not held a solo news conference since Nov. 7, two days after the midterm election, and this was only the eighth of his presidency. President Clinton had held 30 such events at this point in his term, and the first President Bush had held 58. That's a startling difference, and White House communications director Dan Bartlett was straightforward about the reason. "If you have a message you're trying to deliver, a news conference can go in a different direction", he told the Post's Mike Allen. Which is precisely the point. News conferences, especially if held with some regularity, offer an opportunity for reporters to pose questions on an array of topics, not all of which the President may be eager to address, particularly before a live national audience. This may not be the most pleasurable activity for Presidents, but it's an important part of a well-functioning democracy.

"[The Labour government's] continuing love affair with a right-wing Republican administration in the White House is the most depressing and demeaning spectacle... It is sickening to behold the British prime minister play Robin to Bush's Batman gallivanting throughout the world from one imperial crusade to the next."

- Tommy Sheppard, member of the Scottish Labour Party, in an article for the socialist magazine Scottish Left Review

By: Leo Sandon  

It is ironic that Osama bin Laden refers to the American crusaders when he attempts to stir up hatred toward us in the Arab world. When we, in turn, speak of good and evil in absolute terms and declare war on demon enemies with crusading fervor, we fan bin Laden's flames. As evangelical theologian and Fuller Theological Seminary President Richard Mouw (quoted by Marty) notes: "Those inflammatory statements stimulate further antagonism on the part of Muslim extremists."

Advocating a crusading invasion of Iraq today invokes ghosts from religiously motivated missions we thought were distant memories. Richard Lion-Heart (1157-99) led the Third Crusade, going it alone when German and French allies dropped out. Richard led the greatest force ever assembled during the Middle Ages, but on the cusp of invasion he decided that more blood wasn't worth it. He made a truce with Kurdish leader Saladin and went home.

So far President Bush's course has been analogous to Richard's. But don't look for any abrupt change of direction this time around.

"There's a sardonic two-liner making the rounds in Washington these days: 'How do we know that Saddam Hussein has biological and chemical weapons? We have the receipts.'"

- Ted Koppel, on ABC's Nightline Town Meeting, Mar. 4, 2003

By: Thomas L. Friedman  

I went to President Bush's White House news conference on Thursday to see how he was wrestling with the momentous issue of Iraq. One line he uttered captured all the things that are troubling me about his approach. It was when he said: "When it comes to our security, we really don't need anybody's permission."

The first thing that bothered me was the phrase, "When it comes to our security..." Fact: The invasion of Iraq today is not vital to American security. Saddam Hussein has neither the intention nor the capability to threaten America, and is easily deterrable if he did.

This is not a war of necessity. That was Afghanistan. Iraq is a war of choice - a legitimate choice to preserve the credibility of the U.N., which Saddam has defied for 12 years, and to destroy his tyranny and replace it with a decent regime that could drive reform in the Arab/Muslim world. That's the real case.

The problem that Mr. Bush is having with the legitimate critics of this war stems from his consistent exaggeration on this point...

"Religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God."

- Thomas Jefferson

Editorial from:  

Given the corner Mr. Bush has painted himself in, withdrawing troops - even if a considerable slice remains behind - would be an admission of failure. He obviously intends to go ahead, and bet on the very good chance that the Iraqi army will fall quickly. The fact that the United Nations might be irreparably weakened would not much bother his conservative political base at home, nor would the outcry abroad. But in the long run, this country needs a strong international body to keep the peace and defuse tension in a dozen different potential crisis points around the world. It needs the support of its allies, particularly embattled states like Pakistan, to fight the war on terror. And it needs to demonstrate by example that there are certain rules that everybody has to follow, one of the most important of which is that you do not invade another country for any but the most compelling of reasons. When the purpose is fuzzy, or based on questionable propositions, it's time to stop and look for other, less extreme means to achieve your goals.

"Back when Hussein was using chemical weapons on his own people there wasn't a great deal of outrage from the Reagan-Bush White House."

- Ted Koppel, on ABC's Nightline Town Meeting, Mar. 4, 2003

By: Richard Goldstein  

We haven't always been so attuned to the need for our leaders to be macho. It wasn't the measure of FDR's strength. But Roosevelt arose from a culture that regarded protecting the weak as an important manly virtue. The pop heroes of his day were loner lawmen, reluctant warriors, or world-weary survivors with a secret decent streak. There were bad boys, to be sure. The denizens of Depression-era crime films were as violent and vital in their narcissism as today's gangsta rappers. But something crucial has changed. The bad boy's primary target is no longer the system but strong women and weak men. Power is the ability to turn both into "my bitches", in the parlance of prison and pop. It may be wrong to rule others, but it's strong, and these days dominance is its own reward.

Not that the good guys have disappeared. The firefighters who gave their lives in the Twin Towers are heroes of 9/11, as they should be. But this benign image allows us to forget that the dark side of macho has also been unleashed. Male grievance has found a geopolitical target in Saddam. Sexual revenge has been sublimated into military payback. Underlying this process is a sense of the world as a jungle where friendship is transient, danger is everywhere and one can never have enough power. This is the classic rationale for macho. Feminism teaches us that it's a pretext for preserving the order. Liberalism tells us it's paranoid. But what once seemed like paranoia is regarded as reason, and what was piggy now feels natural.

By: Jonathan Weisman  

The deterioration of the government's fiscal position was underscored yesterday when the Congressional Budget Office released a new estimate of the cost of President Bush's budget plan. Without any of the President's spending or tax proposals or a war with Iraq, the government would run a 2003 deficit of $246 billion, a figure that is $47 billion - or 24% - higher than the deficit that the CBO projected just two months ago.

If Bush's proposals were enacted, the CBO said, the deficit would rise to $287 billion this year and $338 billion in 2004, and the government would remain in deficit through 2013, just as the vanguard of the baby boom generation begins to retire. Altogether, the CBO concluded, the President's policies would leave the government with $2.7 trillion in debt through 2013, which the government would not realize if Bush's proposals were rejected.

Those figures do not include the cost of a war with Iraq or its aftermath...

"My position is members of Legislative Branch who violated the Constitution of The United States by transferring its appointed responsibilities to the Executive Branch should immediately be charged with treason. No one can convince me that giving President Bush the power to do whatever he wants without checks and balances is not a violation of the oath of allegiance to the Constitution which every one of those suckers swore to as a mandatory requirement to becoming a member of Congress."

- Ray Vaughn, from an article in Black World Today

By: James P. Pinkerton  

The intellectual mission of the Iraq hawks today is to erase bad memories of past conflicts so as to wipe the slate clean for future conflicts. "Liberal views, forged in Vietnam and tempered in Central America and beyond, got the world wrong", Charen laments. War opponents, she alleges, were politically and ideologically misguided, although it is likely that most simply wanted to prevent more Americans from being killed in a futile quagmire. Fortunately for the pro-warriors, after 30 years the memories of the Vietnam debacle and its terrible toll have grown dim.

Yet even as the U.S. was losing the hot war in Vietnam, it was winning the Cold War against the Soviet Union. And that's a victory the hawks don't like to talk about anymore. Why not? Because the favored strategy of the ultrahawks - the forcible "rollback" of the Soviet Union - was not adopted. Instead, Presidents from Truman to the first Bush followed a tough-minded strategy of armed containment. Acting in conjunction with allies, in accordance with international law, the U.S. waited out the Soviet Union until it collapsed of its own dead weight.

By: Cynthia Tucker  

Around the country, anti-war dissenters have been threatened and harassed, even for the mildest protests. An Albany, NY, mall, for example, has apparently ejected some shoppers wearing peace slogans.

There is layer upon layer of sad irony here. Even as President Bush denounces Saddam's tyranny and vows to plant the seeds of democracy in Iraq, Americans are trying to suppress their neighbors' right to express dissenting views - one of the very pillars of American democracy. The citizens' right to criticize their leaders was so important to the Founding Fathers that they placed free speech in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

You would think that President Bush would use his bully pulpit to remind Americans that they ought to be modeling the democratic values that we are trying to export. But the White House has already proved a disappointment along those lines.

By Andrew Gumbel  

American military officials acknowledged yesterday that two prisoners captured in Afghanistan in December had been killed while under interrogation at Bagram air base north of Kabul - reviving concerns that the U.S. is resorting to torture in its treatment of Taliban fighters and suspected al-Qa'ida operatives.

A spokesman for the air base confirmed that the official cause of death of the two men was "homicide", contradicting earlier accounts that one had died of a heart attack and the other from a pulmonary embolism.

By: Paul Gilfeather  

George Bush pulled out of a speech to the European Parliament when MEP's wouldn't guarantee a standing ovation.

Senior White House officials said the President would only go to Strasbourg to talk about Iraq if he had a stage-managed welcome.

A source close to negotiations said last night: "President Bush agreed to a speech but insisted he get a standing ovation like at the State of the Union address. His people also insisted there were no protests, or heckling."

By: Dana Milbank  

A senior Republican lawmaker, firing back at President Bush for recent statements blaming Congress for underfunding emergency workers, accused the White House of factual inaccuracy and inadequate communication.

In an extraordinary departure from the public unity that has characterized White House relations with congressional Republicans, House Appropriations Committee Chairman C.W. Bill Young (R-FL) wrote to urge White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. to "be responsible" and "move on from this pointless and harmful debate" over legislation passed last month that included money for "first responders" involved in homeland security.

From:  

Businesses unexpectedly slashed more than 300,000 jobs last month in the largest cuts since the terrorist attacks, pushing the unemployment rate higher as the nation moved closer to war.

Economists warned that February's widespread job losses signal a frail economy in danger of toppling back into recession.

The civilian jobless rate reached 5.8%, up a tenth of a percentage point from January, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Economists had predicted the modest rise, but they were blindsided by the hemorrhaging of jobs that wiped out large hiring gains in January.

"Such an attack, though, may have grave consequences for your ability to discharge your responsibility to protect Americans, and it is altogether likely that you will find yourself a helpless bystander to a rash of 9-11's. The bottom line is this: We should be deluding neither ourselves nor the American people that there is any way the FBI, despite the various improvements you are implementing, will be able to stem the flood of terrorism that will likely head our way in the wake of an attack on Iraq. What troubles me most is that I have no assurance that you have made that clear to the President."

- Special Agent Coleen Rowley, Minneapolis, MN, in a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller

"I believe this administration's fixation on Saddam is making the world more dangerous for Americans, not less. By discounting the real concerns of our allies, we are squandering the good will we received after September 11^th and shattering the coalition against terrorism... This bully in the schoolyard approach could inflame the Middle East, significantly contributing to anti-American sentiment and creating a breeding ground for more and more terrorists."

- Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA)

Pentagon's Bid to Roll Back Nonproliferation Policy Makes U.S. a Hypocrite, Tauscher Says

From:  

The Pentagon has asked Congress to lift its restriction on the development of smaller "low-yield" nuclear warheads, a move critics say would encourage other countries to develop their own stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

Such a device would be used to attack facilities holding chemical or biological weapons. In principle, the heat or radiation of the low-yield weapon - one below 5 kilotons - would destroy the toxicity of the agents before they were spread by the force of the blast. This week, the Pentagon sent language to Capitol Hill that would, if approved, drop the 8-year-old restriction.

By: Peter Lee  

George W. Bush once famously complained that the French "have no word for entrepreneur". But the French certainly have a word for the sorry state of the world a la Bush.

And so do the Mexicans, Russians, Chinese, English, Filipinos, Koreans, Turks, Kurds, and everybody else who has endured America's foot-up-the-ass approach to diplomacy.

There's probably a word for it in Jamaica, too. You can see it in Colin Powell's tired, beaten look as he morosely shills the U.N. on behalf of Bush's war program.

"War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children."

- Jimmy Carter, in his Nobel Peace Prize speech

By: Deborah Zabarenko  

The New York Civil Liberties Union has taken up the case and is waiting for a reply from the White House, since it considers this matter typical of an atmosphere of repression in the United States.

"It's clear that the Bush-Cheney administration has put the blocks in place for a repressive climate on even the most fundamental and obvious of issues, like the right to have a website that satirizes the Vice President's wife", said Donna Lieberman, the group's executive director.

Lieberman said another sign of the times was the arrest earlier this week of a lawyer at a public mall near Albany, New York. The lawyer was charged with trespassing after refusing to take off a "Give Peace A Chance" T-shirt he had just bought at the mall.

By: Joby Warrick  

A key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program appears to have been fabricated, the United Nations' chief nuclear inspector said yesterday in a report that called into question U.S. and British claims about Iraq's secret nuclear ambitions.

Documents that purportedly showed Iraqi officials shopping for uranium in Africa two years ago were deemed "not authentic" after careful scrutiny by U.N. and independent experts, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the U.N. Security Council.

ElBaradei also rejected a key Bush administration claim - made twice by the President in major speeches and repeated by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell yesterday - that Iraq had tried to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes to use in centrifuges for uranium enrichment...

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