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| << December13, 2004 - The Week in Review, Issue 1 (reformatted) |
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This week: The Right's Assault on Kofi Annan The Nation by Ian Williams http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050110&s=williams Book Review: "Terrorism and Tyranny" by James Bovard (which I fully endorse) by Karen De Coster http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?control=1438 America Attacked: The Sequel (an imagined history) The Atlantic Monthly by Richard Clarke http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200501/clarke Social Security's Battle over Values Christian Science Monitor by Peter Grier http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0112/p01s03-uspo.html Abu Ghraib inmates recall torture BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4165627.stm Colin Powell Prepares to Exit State Department National Public Radio Interview by Juan Williams http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4280079 ------------------------- The Right's Assault on Kofi Annan by IAN WILLIAMS [from the January 10, 2005 issue] http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050110&s=williams Last June UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said of the media coverage of the so-called Oil for Food Scandal, "It's a bit like lynching, actually." By December the vigilantes were lining up, swinging their ropes. The neoconservative and paleoconservative assault on him and the UN has been like a slightly slower version of the Swift Boat veterans' campaign against Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry--right down to the halfhearted and belated disavowals by George W. Bush. Listening to the cable pundits, you would never suspect that there is no proof at this point that Annan, or indeed anyone else at the UN, did anything wrong. Charges of corruption against UN official Benon Sevan are suspect at best, given that they come via Ahmad Chalabi, who was also the source of the discredited information about Iraq's illusory weapons, as well as the assurances that Iraqis would greet US and British forces as liberators. Nor is there any evidence that Annan used his influence to give Cotecna, a company that employed his son, the job of monitoring contracts under the oil-for-food program, and no proof that Cotecna did anything illegal or corrupt. Although Annan's son certainly let his father down by not telling him of Cotecna's continuing "non-compete" payments to him, paternal resignations in response to the sins of prodigal sons have not been a great American tradition--certainly not under the Bush dynasty. There are real questions about Saddam Hussein's oil sales, both inside and outside the oil-for-food program, but all the serious investigations, such as that by the US Government Accountability Office, make it clear that most of the revenue he raised had nothing to do with the UN, and that the UN did nothing without the explicit or implicit support of the United States acting through the Security Council. The reality is that the current calls for Annan's head are provoked by his opposition to America's pre-emptive war in Iraq. On December 4 the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the hometown newspaper of Senator Norm Coleman, who has called for Annan's resignation, provided perhaps the most succinct explanation of what lies behind the attacks. Describing Coleman's call as a "sordid move," the editorial explained: "For months before the election, the right-wing constellation of blogs and talk radio was alive with incendiary rhetoric about Annan and the oil-for-food scandal.... This is really all about Annan's refusal to toe the Bush line on Iraq and the administration's generally unilateral approach to foreign affairs. The right-wingers hate Annan and saw in the food-for-oil program a possible chink in his armor. They went after it with a venomous fury." The genesis of the oil-for-food program was Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, which prompted the UN to impose sanctions to prevent Iraq from selling its oil. After the war the sanctions were retained, officially until Iraq complied with the cease-fire terms, particularly on disarmament, although US officials made no secret of the fact that they would veto the lifting of sanctions as long as Saddam remained in power. In 1996, with sanctions causing dire hardship for ordinary Iraqis, the Security Council authorized the oil-for-food program, under which Iraq could sell its oil on the world markets and use some of the proceeds to buy food and other supplies as long as the cash was deposited in UN-controlled escrow accounts (no less than 30 percent went to pay reparations). Each contract had to be approved by the Security Council's 661 Committee. Although UN staff told the committee that Saddam was skimming money from some of the contracts by selling the oil at a reduced price and then getting kickbacks, none of the members, including the United States and Britain, put a hold on any of them. Needless to say, there are not many US officials prepared to come forward and admit this. Nor are many in the present Administration highlighting the implicit conclusion of the Iraq Survey Group (the team charged by Bush with examining Saddam's arsenal): that the sanctions modified by the oil-for-food program actually succeeded in their aims of insuring that the Iraqi people were fed, while oil revenues did not rebuild Iraq's armory of prohibited weapons--which is why the invaders were not able to find them. The story of how the neocon echo chamber made oil for food into a UN scandal begins with Claudia Rosett, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who is now "journalist in residence" at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD). In a 2002 Journal op-ed, just after Bush broke with his own hard-liners by going to the UN to ask for backing for an Iraq invasion, she called the program "an unholy union between Saddam and the U.N.," in which "Saddam has been getting around the sanctions via surcharge-kickback deals and smuggling." In an April 2003 New York Times piece she said "lifting the sanctions would take away the United Nations' remaining leverage in Iraq. If the oil-for-food operation is extended, however, it will have a tremendous influence on shaping the new Iraq. Before that is allowed to happen, let's see the books." Denying that the foundation, or for that matter Chalabi, set her on her quest, Rosett says she began looking at the program as part of a broader look at the Iraq economy, and that as soon as its structure was explained to her, "it was obvious that there was enormous opportunity there for graft." The idea that the UN has "failed" by not backing the US invasion of Iraq and that everything Saddam did could be laid at its door was very much part of the house philosophy of FDD, whose masthead is a comprehensive list of those who pushed for the invasion of Iraq. The organization itself, as one observer commented, is the Project for the New American Century--the major cheerleader for the Iraq war--in another form. Its board includes Steve Forbes, Jack Kemp, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Frank Lautenberg, Newt Gingrich and James Woolsey, not to mention Richard Perle and Charles Krauthammer. Tom Barry, policy director of the International Relations Center and historian of the neocon network, says FDD "has suddenly become a major player on the right and among neocon policy institutes, one reason being that it is so richly endowed." As its own website boasts, it is closely connected with the Iraqis around the Iraqi National Congress and Chalabi. Clifford May, FDD president and former RNC spokesman, is eager to admit that "oil for food is something we have been working hard on" but denies "that either Claudia or I have called for [Annan's] resignation." That's not because May admires the UN; he calls it "an institution badly in need of reform, whether it's for the sex scandals in the Congo or for the pretense some people in it have to become a super government for the world, or a world Supreme Court." Asked her opinion about the use others have made of her work, Rosett says, "I have focused on reporting the story, and where I have so far called for changes at the UN, have urged much greater transparency and accountability." There is indeed a lack of transparency at the UN, but all those contracts were examined by the sanctions committee and the US State Department. Rosett denies "going after" the UN and says that "whatever was done wrong should be brought to light." But she is adamant that the UN is most at fault and she has neglected to give similar attention to US diplomats and other actors. In subsequent articles Rosett maintained the pressure, but the issue really only exploded into the wider media world in 2004, after her revelations last March in National Review that Annan's son had been employed by Cotecna (followed several months later with the news that he had continued to get "noncompete" payments after he left). From January onward, the claims by Washington's then-favorite Iraqi, Chalabi, that retiring oil-for-food chief Sevan was on a list of 267 people for whom Saddam had authorized commissions on oil trades led to a rash of stories by Rosett and others focusing, as Chalabi had, on the one alleged UN connection. When asked about Sevan in the Senate, Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, admitted that his only evidence against Sevan was "what was indicated in Iraqi documents"--i.e., Chalabi's list--which has still not been authenticated. Indeed, another person named on the list was George Galloway, a British MP who has just won a $290,000 libel claim against the Daily Telegraph for its unwarranted inferences from that fact. Rosett and her colleagues ran hot with the story, not least on MSNBC and Fox, which retained her as a paid "oil-for-food" contributor. Soon the scandal was "the biggest in the history of the Universe," according to her FDD colleague and Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer. William Safire picked up on Rosett's work and fulminated in the New York Times, drawing in House International Relations Committee chair Henry Hyde, who's since been on the case with all the assiduity one would expect of someone who'd said the United States should leave the UN. Monica Crowley, hosting Scarborough Country on MSNBC in November, inadvertently substantiated the Star Tribune's claim of a "right-wing constellation." She complained that the "elite" press was ignoring the oil-for-food story, "with the exception of an intrepid reporter like our friend Claudia Rosett.... Bill Safire over at the New York Times, sort of the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal and the New York Sun, they have been covering it. But why haven't we seen more extensive coverage? This is the world's biggest swindle?" She modestly omitted MSNBC, Fox and the conservative radio circuit from the list. Like the Swift Boat story, even though the fuss was essentially confined to these outlets, the conservatives made so much of the affair that the rest of the media seem to have concluded that there must be a flicker under all the smoke. Certainly the serious papers seem not to have thought they had a dog in this fight or that it was their job to exonerate the UN. And the UN's own response was, as usual, tepid. Understandably, Annan had assumed that his appointment in April of former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker to head an inquiry, backed by the Security Council, would see a return to sanity. However, the same people who'd demanded the inquiry then began to accuse Annan of underfunding it. When he found $30 million for it from residual oil-for-food funds set aside for administration purposes, Rosett, Safire and the rest accused him of taking bread from Iraqi children's mouths. The New York Post denounced the investigation as a cover-up, while Safire referred insultingly to Annan's "manipulative abuse of Paul Volcker," whose reputation for integrity, he said, "is being shredded by a web of sticky-fingered officials and see-no-evil bureaucrats desperate to protect the man on top who hired him to substitute for--and thereby to abort--prompt and truly independent investigation." The witch hunters kept the caldron bubbling along until, at the end of October, Annan wrote a private letter to Iraqi Interim President Iyad Allawi, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush, suggesting that a frontal assault on Falluja was not the way to win Iraqi hearts and minds. After all, at the request of Washington, the UN is supposed to be overseeing elections there. Then the pot bubbled over. Within days, Fox's Bill O'Reilly was pontificating that "it's becoming increasingly clear that UN chief Kofi Annan is hurting the USA." On November 18 former New York Mayor Edward Koch followed with a column in the New York Sun claiming that Annan's "ability to lead the UN is seriously impaired. He no longer has the confidence of America because of his failure to create a consensus on Iraq among the permanent members." On November 24 National Review declared that "Annan should either resign, if he is honorable, or be removed, if he is not." This was echoed on November 29 by Safire, who ended a New York Times column with the comment that the "scandal" would not end "until Kofi Annan, even if personally innocent, resigns--having, through initial ineptitude and final obstructionism, brought dishonor on the Secretariat of the United Nations." Finally, on December 1 in the Wall Street Journal, Norm Coleman, the chair of the Senate investigations committee, called for Annan's resignation. Inspired by his example, Representative Scott Garrett raved a few days later, "To me the question should not be whether Kofi Annan should be in charge. To me, the larger question is whether he should be in jail." When asked, President Bush pointedly did not repudiate Coleman's call with any expression of confidence in Annan but simply called for the investigation to take its course. A week later, after Blair had joined the rest of the world in expressing warm support for Annan and delegates in the General Assembly had given him a standing ovation, even the White House realized the damage Coleman & Co. had done to American diplomacy. The best that Bush could manage was to have his lame-duck UN ambassador, John Danforth, give a halfhearted expression of support on his behalf. An unabashed Coleman read between the lines and held his ground: "I simply do not share the Administration's position on this matter," he said. "It is my personal and steadfast belief that Mr. Annan should step down in order to protect the long-term integrity and credibility of the United Nations." The attacks on Annan and the UN are not likely to abate soon. Bashing the UN is an issue that allows the unilateral interventionists to ring the till, gathering support from paleocon isolationists across the country. As one GOP staffer embarrassed by Coleman's Joe McCarthy imitations gloomily predicted, the right wing is not going to drop the subject, because "they raise too much money out of bashing the UN, from the big foundations and from those small-town Rush Limbaughs." Former Gore 2000 campaign head Donna Brazile, who says she is reconsidering her affiliation with the FDD, denounced the calls for Annan's resignation before the investigation is finished. "I worked on Capitol Hill before Kofi Annan, and the UN has always been a dirty word there," Brazile noted. "It just goes back to the neocons and their entire approach to multilateral institutions and their role in the world. They've got the airwaves to themselves. I just hope the Democrats stand up against them on this issue." If the Democrats want to do that, they should begin by distancing themselves from the Democratic Leadership Council's shameful call for Annan's resignation and join those who signed Representative Dennis Kucinich's letter deploring the attacks. And they should join Representative Henry Waxman in demanding that the Governmental Reform Committee investigate the real oil-for-food scandal: what happened to the more than $8 billion unspent from the oil-for-food program that the United States insisted be handed over to the "Iraq Development Fund," overseen by US occupation authority head Paul Bremer. The rest of the Security Council reluctantly agreed to this payment, but only on condition that the fund be monitored by international auditors. The auditors were never allowed to do their work, and it is now suspected that most of that money went to Halliburton on no-bid contracts. Now there are grounds for some resignations. But you know who won't be calling for them. ------------- License for Tyranny by: Karen De Coster [February 4, 2004] http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?control=1438 [editor's note: I have read this book for my class, Homeland Security and Civil Liberties, and fully endorse this review] Jim Bovard, in the words of the Orange County Register, is "Washington??™s most hated truth-teller." In his latest book, Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil, he sustains that long-standing reputation with surefire dignity and aplomb. You get a feeling about a book and its author, when, in the book??™s very first sentence, he rivets you to your chair with jackhammer force by stating that "the war on terrorism is the first political growth industry of the new millennium." The rest of the book falls out from that thesis, as Bovard takes the reader on a journey through the war on terrorism, starting with the mostly forgotten Reagan crusade, and onward through to the Bush anti-terror campaign. Jim Bovard is, without a doubt, the best political researcher-writer in politics today. While most writers add a few footnotes to their writing, Bovard adds some first-rate writing to his immaculate set of footnotes. He doesn??™t make wild judgments or blanket allegations. Instead, he provides an encyclopedia??™s worth of timely quotes laid out in chronological fashion, to funnel the reader through an extensive framework of US government double-dealing, coercion, corruption, and propaganda milling. Occasionally, he provides us with a timely comment or two, enabling the reader to discern that this author clearly separates opinion from fact. For starters, perhaps the most unforeseen and brilliant facet of Bovard??™s chronology is his application of the war on terror??™s inauguration as being firmly planted in the Ronald Reagan camp. It??™s as if he expected the reader to forgive and forget, or at least not conjure up those deep-rooted memories in light of the Bush administration??™s present tyranny spree. Starting there, we note Bovard??™s overt reminder that Reagan??™s Secretary of State Alexander Haig "proclaimed that fighting terrorism would be one of the Reagan administration??™s highest priorities." The October 1983 attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon took place??”as the author points out??”in a combat zone, however, the surprise attack was immediately portrayed as an act of "terrorism." The media and political powers-that-be helped to legitimize that classification by leisurely deconstructing the definition of terrorism, and echoing similar sentiments over time. Portraying US combat troops as victims of a terrorist act instead of casualties of combat was the first step to assuaging the public??™s need for suitable explanation concerning our military presence in Lebanon. A bunch of young, American Marines bludgeoned in their safe haven spurred on a cry for justice from the folks at home. Following this calamity, the gyrations provided by the Reagan spinmeisters were forever representative of that which future administrations would offer up as supposedly chaste information. Under Ronald Reagan, terrorism had officially become an approved target for the U.S. government. Fast-forwarding to the Bush Era, the grab for federal power reached an all-time high. As Bovard calls it, "safety through servility." Immediately upon 9/11, the Senate passed the "Combating Terrorism Act," and as Bovard points out, "with no debate." In spite of the substantial provisions that it provided for wiretapping and email snooping with Carnivore, the Bush administration sought far greater powers than this act alone could provide. John Ashcroft and his Justice Department got to work convincing the public that more protection, and hence, a larger scope of federal powers was needed, and as swiftly as possible. The rhetoric rained down upon the American populace from the likes of Ashcroft, Orrin Hatch, Tom Daschle, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who suggested that the inclusion of some poignant, WMD rhetoric in a September 20th, 2001 Bush speech was advantageous because "it??™s an energizer for the American people." The Senate??™s bill, Ashcroft??™s own bill??”the Mobilization Against Terrorism Act??”and a house version eventually mated and spun off the Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001, or, the Patriot Act. The final version was entirely Bush-approved, as his administration protested and plundered its way to the passage of an end product that was free from any Senate or House obstructions of unbridled power. Says Bovard: "In their campaign for the new act, Bush, Ashcroft, and others implicitly threatened congressmen with political destruction if they did not quickly grant the Bush administration??™s demands. . . . Some of the Patriot Act??™s provisions are "sunset" provisions that will expire in 2005 unless Congress extends them. But it would be na??ve to expect future Congresses to show fortitude in the face of executive branch fear-mongering." The Patriot Act??™s increased active surveillance, increased database surveillance, forced DNA procurements, freedom to grope consumer credit reports, new citizen spy programs, and anti-encryption laws are all a part of our future, thanks to Ashcroft & Company. Arbitrary federal power finally came home to roost. Perhaps the most provocative argument is the author??™s reference to the notion that federal agencies' definitions of terrorism don??™t allow for government??”or "government??™s agents"??”to be included as terrorists. The Defense Department, FBI, and the State Department all conveniently define terrorism in a "common theme" that consistently reflects "that only private citizens and private groups can be guilty of terrorism," when indeed, governments can be and have been, throughout history, the most substantial executors of oppression and death the world over. In chilling likeness, Bovard transmits this bit of wisdom: "The notion that "states cannot be terrorists" is not a Bush innovation; it extends back at least to the early twentieth century. The League of Nations in 1937 defined terrorism as "criminal acts directed against a State and intended or calculated to create a state of terror in the minds of particular persons or the general public." The League??™s efforts to build an international consensus against private terrorists ended after Hitler??™s seizure of Czechoslovakia and invasion of Poland." The reader is left with the postulation that States will be States, and they are all capable of committing horrific evils if left unrestrained. A malevolent State grabs arbitrary powers and dispenses them to charlatan departments, to be used against the general public with the support of a kept media and its distinct powers of propaganda and misinformation. When the current administration in command and its media devotees can, with little impediment, clear a path for the complete annihilation of the Constitutional system of checks and balances, we are left with an invincible executive office unaccountable for a single transgression. Consequently, an otherwise trivial noun, terror, has become the executive power??™s best friend. The economic consequences of endless campaigns against terrorism are alarming. Over time, and especially since 9/11, the terrorism-fighting industry has been used successfully to help navigate transfers from the private sector to the public sector. Thus Jim Bovard??™s "political growth industry." Whereas technology growth in the security sphere could have occurred in the private sector, funds and resources are being siphoned off to grow the public sector. For instance, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, upon taking office in 2002, promised that her state would grow its economy through its own Homeland Security industry that would be partially financed by the feds. Accordingly, many states conferred upon their own taxpayers the same despotic burden. In his book, the unconventional Jim Bovard has mastered the art of uncovering deception and spin when and where it is buried beneath a stack of establishment posturing, legally binding decrees, and walls of near-impenetrable propaganda. Unlike Bill O??™Reilly??™s books, between these covers lies a genuine no-spin zone. --------------- America Attacked: The Sequel - Ten Years Later The Atlantic Monthly | January/February 2005 by Richard A. Clarke http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200501/clarke This is a transcript of the Tenth Anniversary 9/11 Lecture Sunday, September 11, 2011 John F. Kennedy School of Government Cambridge, Massachusetts Professor Roger McBride Dean, Honored Guests, It is a great honor to be chosen to give this tenth-anniversary lecture. This year, more than at any other time since the beginning of the war on terror, I think we can see clearly how that war has changed our country. Now that the terror seems finally to have receded somewhat, perhaps we can begin to consider the steps necessary to return the United States to what it was before 9/11. To do so, however, we must be clear about what has happened over the past ten years. Thus tonight I will dwell on the history of the war on terror. 2001-2004: The Response to 9/11 Having ignored al-Qaeda until September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush responded to the attack in three ways. First, he ordered an end to the terrorist sanctuary in Afghanistan. For five years thereafter a token U.S. military force assisted the Kabul government in its attempts to rule the warlords and suppress the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Second, he moved to strengthen U.S. domestic law enforcement with the first Patriot Act (a law that civil libertarians would find benign from today's perspective) and the Department of Homeland Security, which in those early years of the war on terror was largely ineffectual.1 Third, Bush ordered the ill-fated invasion and occupation of Iraq, which effectively turned his administration into an active recruiting office for al-Qaeda and other jihadi groups around the world. The move against Afghanistan did set al-Qaeda and the jihadi movement back. Although regional affiliates were able to stage spectacular attacks in Riyadh, Istanbul, Bali, Madrid, Baghdad, and elsewhere, and although there were twice as many attacks worldwide in the three years after 9/11 as there had been in the five years before that day, no al-Qaeda-related attacks took place in the United States in the years immediately following 9/11. The several years without an attack on U.S. soil lulled some Americans into thinking that the war on terror was taking place only overseas. Few corporations increased security spending. Americans increasingly questioned President Bush's security policies, the Patriot Act, and Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge's ridiculed color codes. In the 2004 presidential election George W. Bush won a second term in part by dismissing such issues as whether the mishandling of the Iraq War had made us less secure, whether we had paid enough attention to al-Qaeda, and whether we were adequately addressing our vulnerabilities at home. Then the second wave of al-Qaeda attacks hit America. Since then we have spiraled downward in terms of economic strength, national security, and civil liberties. No one could stand here today, in 2011, and say that America has won the war on terror. To understand how we failed to win, and exactly what has been lost along the way, I want to look at the past seven years in some detail. The rest of this story is archived at: http://users.inet99.net/maxx/ezine/clarke.htm -------------- Social Security's battle over values President's plan to overhaul Social Security reflects bigger fight of free market vs. safety net. By Peter Grier | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor WASHINGTON - The coming Washington struggle over President Bush's plan to partially privatize Social Security promises to be particularly intense, because it revolves around a core issue of politics: the values the federal government should espouse. The economics of retirement security will be a major factor in the debate, of course, as will the usual Democratic-Republican partisan divide. The overall outlook for the federal budget (lots of red ink) could prove crucial in lawmakers' consideration. But opponents of private retirement accounts generally see them as a threat to the collective protection offered by a big government program. Proponents judge them as an encouragement to individualism, and a reduction in Washington's power. That's why full-page ads hitting the plan are already running in big newspapers, and why Mr. Bush is promoting the idea around the country before legislation hits the House or Senate floor. The debate is not just about the solvency of the Social Security trust fund half a century hence. It is also about what the largest and most popular US program is for. "For us, it's never been about solvency. We've always believed it was more important to give workers control [over their own money]," says Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank. This week will see a concerted push by the administration on Social Security partial privatization, with the White House orchestrating a series of speeches and official appearances arranged about the subject. Bush himself hosted a discussion of the idea on Tuesday. Vice President Dick Cheney and Treasury Secretary John Snow are scheduled to speak on Thursday. Budget director Josh Bolton will talk about the implications of borrowing $1 trillion or more to fund the overhaul before the US Chamber of Commerce on Friday. "Each of the speeches will focus on a critical aspect of Social Security and the need for strengthening it for future generations," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Tuesday. Current official estimates hold that Social Security will begin paying out more in benefits than it collects in revenue in 2018. As currently designed, the system will be able to pay full benefits until 2042, according to a middle-ground Social Security Administration estimate. Critics charge that the administration is exaggerating the extent of the program's problems in an effort to pass partial privatization. The administration, for its part, says that its opponents are simply trying to frighten seniors. Bush has said that current retirees and those nearing retirement will not be touched under his Social Security overhaul. "The issue really is about younger workers, and most younger workers believe they're not going to see a dime unless something is done," said Bush in an interview in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. The administration has not issued a detailed plan. In general, the White House wants younger workers to be allowed to divert some portion of their Social Security taxes into private accounts that they can invest in stocks, or bonds, or however they see fit. By itself, this change would not solve any long-term solvency problem. But White House officials have signaled that Bush is likely to couple it with a long-term reduction in benefits, most likely implemented by changing the formulas used to calculate growth in benefit eligibility over a worker's lifetime. Such a change would bring Social Security's obligations and its resources more into balance. The idea of private control of government retirement assets may have begun with the prominent University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman, who promoted them as early as the 1950s. In Latin America, where Chicago-trained free market economists had great influence on governments in the 1970s and '80s, they are already in use in a number of countries. Great Britain features private accounts in its pension system as well. "They're actually quite widespread," says Mr. Tanner. Cato, a think tank dedicated to generally libertarian ideas, has kept the flame of private retirement accounts burning since the '80s in the US. Among other things, Cato's president met with then-Gov. George Bush in 1998 to promote the subject. AS a rule of thumb, voters in the US have an opinion of them that is in inverse proportion to their opinion about the solidity of Washington's Social Security pledges. According to a new USA Today poll, private accounts have a 63 percent disapproval rating among voters over 50, many of whom see retirement looming in the near future. By contrast, under-30 workers, who are often cynical about whether they will ever get their Social Security taxes back, approve of them, by a 55 percent to 42 percent margin. To supporters, the advantages of private retirement accounts are obvious. The stock market generally outperforms government notes, meaning the returns on a given tax dollar will be higher. The accounts are inheritable. In short, they are tangible assets in a world where economic change seems to be accelerating. For private employers, the guaranteed benefit of a pension has been largely replaced by the matched contributions of a set-aside retirement account. Why shouldn't the government do the same thing? It should not, because tangibility is not the only virtue when it comes to retirement assets, say proponents. To lessen the government-provided benefit of Social Security would be to lessen the security it provides, with a small "s." Some workers might do better with private accounts, but others would do worse. The unpredictable nature of gains and losses means that you might see your account double when you're 25, and have little money invested. Then it might drop by half when you're 62 - and you'd lose lots of cash. "A lot of advocates of these accounts are underestimating the riskiness to individual workers of these plans," says Gary Burtless, a Brookings Institution economist who has studied them. -------------- Abu Ghraib inmates recall torture BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4165627.stm Two Muslim detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison have told a court martial that they were tortured and humiliated by a US soldier on trial for abuse. A Syrian witness described Specialist Charles Graner as Abu Ghraib's "primary torturer", and said he was force-fed pork and alcohol, against Islamic law. Another inmate, forced to masturbate in public, said US troops tortured Iraqis "like it was theatre for them". Spc Graner, who denies all charges, faces up to 17 years in jail. He is the first soldier to face court martial over the images of prisoner abuse at the Baghdad jail that caused worldwide outrage. Spc Graner denies charges of assault and conspiracy to mistreat prisoners. His court martial is being held at a military base in Fort Hood, Texas. 'Laughing and whistling' Hussein Mutar, an Iraqi sent to Abu Ghraib for stealing a car, was forced to masturbate in public and piled onto a pyramid of naked men. Mr Mutar, who struggled throughout his video testimony, compared his jailers to the deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. "This changed the perspective on all Americans. [Even] Saddam did not do this to us," he said. "I couldn't believe in the beginning that this could happen, but I wished I could kill myself because no one was there to stop it. "They were torturing us as though it was theatre for them." Syrian fighter Amin al-Sheikh, in a video deposition recorded last month in Iraq, admitted going to the country in 2003 to fight US-led forces, and being involved in a shootout with guards at Abu Ghraib after being given a gun by an Iraqi guard. After being injured in the gun fight, he said, he was taken back to his cell, where Spc Graner jumped on his wounded leg and hit his wounds with a metal baton. He said the military policeman made him eat pork and drink alcohol, violating his religion, and made him insult the Islamic faith. He said a Yemeni detainee had told him that Spc Graner made him "eat from the toilet". Asked if the defendant appeared to enjoy abusing prisoners, Mr Sheikh said: "He was laughing, he was whistling, he was singing." 'Face of the enemy' The soldier's defence argues that the abuse was sanctioned by his superiors, and defence lawyer Guy Womack said Mr Sheikh's testimony helped Spc Graner. "It was the face of the enemy. It's very clear that he hates America," he said. The defence is due to begin its case on Wednesday, when Spc Graner is scheduled to testify. Three guards from Spc Graner's 372nd Military Police Company have pleaded guilty to abuse charges. Three others, including Private Lynndie England, who also features in photos from Abu Ghraib and with whom Spc Graner has since had a child, are awaiting trial. --------- Colin Powell Prepares to Exit State Department by Juan Williams; National Public Radio Visit the link to hear the full interview with Powell: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4280079 Secretary of State Colin Powell ends his tenure at the State Department sometime next week. His replacement, Condoleezza Rice, awaits a confirmation process many see as a formality. NPR's Juan Williams spoke with Secretary Powell about U.S. foreign policy, as well as his own legacy from serving President Bush. While a large part of that legacy is the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Powell makes the case that sizeable increases in foreign aid, especially for economic development, have been a hallmark of his tenure. Recent U.S. contributions to help the 12 Indian Ocean nations hit by a tsunami are part of that legacy, he says, as are increases in AIDS money for developing nations. Judgment of Colin Powell's four years as secretary of state will likely be tied to his role in U.S. policy after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 -- especially the part he played in the months before war in Iraq. Known as a voice of caution within the administration, Powell argued in the United Nations that despite inspections, Saddam Hussein's Iraq still possessed weapons of mass destruction. Months later, the country was invaded. Besides his involvement in Iraq policy, Powell has traveled to several hotspots during his tenure, attempting to negotiate peace in regions from the Middle East to the Korean Peninsula. He has also paid visits to sites of humanitarian crisis, from Haiti to the Darfur region of Sudan. |
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| << December13, 2004 - The Week in Review, Issue 1 (reformatted) |
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