Free Peace, Love and Hip Hop/Rock and Roll/Dance/Country/Folk/Punk Rock Baby!
This collection of peace songs is growing larger every day.
Please spread the word by downloading these songs and sharing them with your friends.
Call your local radio stations and demand that they play these songs.
And when these artists come out with their next album for sale or come to play live in your town, show them your support!
Another needless fatality of war: Santa Rosa's Patrick O'Day. He and his wife had just married last year and were expecting their first child.
Patrick is believed to have been killed when his tank went off a bridge.
This was recorded on KTVU Channel 2 news on the morning of March 31, 2003, in San Francisco, CA.
Santa Rosa's Patrick O'Day (Small - 2 MB)
Santa Rosa's Patrick O'Day (Hi-res - 20 MB)
For the record:
Filibuster Holds!
How Senators Voted on the Estrada Filibuster
Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=8981
Filibuster Holds!
How Senators Voted on the Estrada Filibuster
Cloture* Votes on the Nomination of Miguel Estrada to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
See how your senators voted below. Click on a senator's name to phone, fax or e-mail your personal message about the votes to the senator. Thank those who voted NO (keep the filibuster going) and express your outrage to those who voted YES to the President's court-packing scheme.
First Cloture Vote - March 6, 2003
Vote Totals: 44 Nays - 55 Yeas - 1 Not Voting
Second Cloture Vote - March 13, 2003
Vote Totals: 42 Nays - 55 Yeas - 3 Not Voting
Third Cloture Vote - March 18, 2003
Vote Totals: 45 Nays - 55 Yeas
3/6/03 3/13/03 3/18/03
Alabama
Sen. Richard Shelby (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) Yes Yes Yes
Alaska
Sen. Ted Stevens (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) Yes Yes Yes
Arizona
Sen. John McCain (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. Jon Kyl (R) Yes Yes Yes
Arkansas
Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) No No No
Sen. Mark Pryor (D) No No No
California
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) No No No
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) No No No
Colorado
Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. Wayne Allard (R) Yes Yes Yes
Connecticut
Sen. Christopher Dodd (D) No No No
Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D) No No No
Delaware
Sen. Joseph Biden, Jr. (D) No Not Voting No
Sen. Thomas Carper (D) No No No
Florida
Sen. Bob Graham (D) Not Voting No No
Sen. Bill Nelson (D) Yes Yes Yes
Georgia
Sen. Zell Miller (D) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) Yes Yes Yes
Hawaii
Sen. Daniel Inouye (D) No No No
Sen. Daniel Akaka (D) No No No
Idaho
Sen. Larry Craig (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. Michael Crapo (R) Yes Yes Yes
Illinois
Sen. Richard Durbin (D) No No No
Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R) Yes Yes Yes
Indiana
Sen. Richard Lugar (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. Evan Bayh (D) No No No
Iowa
Sen. Charles Grassley (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. Tom Harkin (D) No No No
Kansas
Sen. Sam Brownback (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. Pat Roberts (R) Yes Yes Yes
Kentucky
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. Jim Bunning (R) Yes Yes Yes
Louisiana
Sen. John Breaux (D) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) No No No
Maine
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. Susan Collins (R) Yes Yes Yes
Maryland
Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D) No No No
Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D) No No No
Massachusetts
Sen. Edward Kennedy (D) No No No
Sen. John Kerry (D) No Not Voting No
Michigan
Sen. Carl Levin (D) No No No
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D) No No No
Minnesota
Sen. Mark Dayton (D) No No No
Sen. Norm Coleman (R) Yes Yes Yes
Mississippi
Sen.Thad Cochran (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. Trent Lott (R) Yes Yes Yes
Missouri
Sen. Christopher Bond (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. Jim Talent (R) Yes Yes Yes
Montana
Sen. Max Baucus (D) No No No
Sen. Conrad Burns (R) Yes Yes Yes
Nebraska
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. Ben Nelson (D) Yes Yes Yes
Nevada
Sen. Harry Reid (D) No No No
Sen. John Ensign (R) Yes Yes Yes
New Hampshire
Sen. Judd Gregg (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. John Sununu (R) Yes Yes Yes
New Jersey
Sen. Jon Corzine (D) No No No
Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D) No No No
New Mexico
Sen. Pete Domenici (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D) No No No
New York
Sen. Charles Schumer (D) No No No
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D) No No No
North Carolina
Sen. John Edwards (D) No Not Voting No
Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R) Yes Yes Yes
North Dakota
Sen. Kent Conrad (D) No No No
Sen. Byron Dorgan (D) No No No
Ohio
Sen. Mike DeWine (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. George Voinovich (R) Yes Yes Yes
Oklahoma
Sen. Don Nickles (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. James Inhofe (R) Yes Yes Yes
Oregon
Sen. Ron Wyden (D) No No No
Sen. Gordon Smith (R) Yes Yes Yes
Pennsylvania
Sen. Arlen Specter (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. Rick Santorum (R) Yes Yes Yes
Rhode Island
Sen. Jack Reed (D) No No No
Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R) Yes Yes Yes
South Carolina
Sen. Ernest Hollings (D) No No No
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) Yes Yes Yes
South Dakota
Sen. Thomas Daschle (D) No No No
Sen. Tim Johnson (D) No No No
Tennessee
Sen. Bill Frist (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R) Yes Yes Yes
Texas
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. John Cornyn (R) Yes Yes Yes
Utah
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. Robert Bennett (R) Yes Yes Yes
Vermont
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D) No No No
Sen. James Jeffords (I) No No No
Virginia
Sen. John Warner (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. George Allen (R) Yes Yes Yes
Washington
Sen. Patty Murray (D) No No No
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D) No No No
West Virginia
Sen. Robert Byrd (D) No No No
Sen. John Rockefeller IV (D) No No No
Wisconsin
Sen. Herbert Kohl (D) No No No
Sen. Russ Feingold (D) No No No
Wyoming
Sen. Craig Thomas (R) Yes Yes Yes
Sen. Michael Enzi (R) Yes Yes Yes
* In order to end a Senate filibuster on a bill or nomination, 60 senators must vote in favor of what's called cloture. Senators have the option of calling for multiple cloture votes, but the filibuster cannot be ended until one of these votes attracts the support of 60 senators.
This is a 'just a for the record' kind of posting:
People For the United Way -- Filibuster Holds!
Organizations Opposed to the Confirmation of Miguel Estrada
Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=8981
Filibuster Holds!
Organizations Opposed to the Confirmation of Miguel Estrada
All words (AND)
Any word (OR)
Exact phrase
Filibuster Holds!
Organizations Opposed to the Confirmation of Miguel Estrada
Forty-nine national, regional and state organizations have declared their opposition to Miguel Estrada's confirmation to the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
A number of individual Latino Labor leaders have also announced their opposition to Estrada's confirmation. Read their letter and names.
ADA Watch/National Coalition for Disability Rights
AFL-CIO
Alliance for Justice
American Association of University Women
Americans for Democratic Action
California branch of the League of United Latin American Citizens
Coalition of Immokalee Workers
Community Rights Counsel
Congressional Black Caucus
Congressional Hispanic Caucus
Earthjustice
Farm Labor Organizing Committee
Farmworker Association of Florida
Feminist Majority
Friends of the Earth
General Board of Church and Society, The United Methodist Church
Labor Council for Latin American Advancement
La Raza Lawyers Association of California
LaRed Latina
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
MoveOn.org
National Abortion Federation
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.
NARAL Pro-Choice America
National Council of Jewish Women
National Employment Lawyers Association
National Fair Housing Alliance
National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association
National Farm Worker Ministry
National Organization for Women
National Partnership for Women and Families
National Women's Law Center
Natural Resources Defense Council
People For the American Way
PCUN (Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste/Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers United)
Planned Parenthood Federation of America
Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice
Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund
Sierra Club
Society of American Law Teachers
Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project
United Auto Workers
United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries
United Farm Workers of America
United States Hispanic Leadership Institute
William C. Velasquez Intitute
Working Assets
Carolyn Kuhl: Blocking the Path to Justice
Owen's Second Hearing Confirms Clear and Compelling Case Against Confirmation
Your email address
Update Your Profile
News From The Right
Right Wing Organizations
Right Wing Watch Online 2003
Protecting a Woman's Right to Privacy and Reproductive Choice
Opposing Carolyn Kuhl's Confirmation
2nd Hearing Confirms Case Against Priscilla Owen
Privacy Policy | Employment | Copyright & Disclaimer
People For the American Way • 2000 M Street, NW, Suite 400 • Washington, DC 20036
Telephone: 202-467-4999 or 800-326-7329 • pfaw@pfaw.org
As in the foreign policy that's biting us in our own ass.
Here are a few kind words that were sent to me by the
Compassionate Conservatives.
(Lyrics)
Please don't be fooled by our name... we bear no resemblance to the frauds currently inhabiting the White House. Our mission is to uncover the deception, hypocrisy, and arrogance of the court-appointed Bush Administration through our music and wit. We release all songs in MP3 format for free download... no strings attached. We are not in this for the money...1. Another War
Set to the tune of the Beatles' "Drive My Car", Bush and Cheney are overjoyed at the prospect of -- you guessed it -- another war. Featuring a special excerpt from Bush's March 19th speech introducing the Iraqi war.
Dubya wants another war
Dubya's just a corporate whore
Dubya wants another war
'cause Dubya's a NaziAsk Dick Cheney what's he going to do
He starts a-sneering, you know you're screwed
He's been known to keep a secret or two
And now he's keeping them all from youCheney wants another war
Halliburton's gonna score
Cheney wants another war
'cause Cheney's a NaziJawohl Mein Fuehrer Ja!
2. Midnight Confessions (of Emperor G.W. Bush)This is a remake of the Grass Roots song on the same name, circa 1968. Featured commentator is, of course, George W. Bush, who comes off sounding every bit the buffoon that he is.
3. In The Garden of Eden (war crimes/DC rally mix)
This is a remake of Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", which we chose in light of Iraq's geographical location. We have added some commentary, including unintentional Bush irony from the State of the Union address, comments from Francis Boyle on how the Iraq war violates the Nuremberg Charter, and numerous commentators from the January 18th anti-war rally held in Washington DC.
Here's the Zinn/Fisk/Nader remix of the same "Garden of Eden" song.
At this point, the protest had pretty much deteriorated into a game of cat and mouse with imaginary rules that changed whenever the cops wanted them to. Let's face it, they had the clubs. And they could take us to jail. Those were the important rules, as far as I was concerned.
That said. I stuck around to see what would happen. I mean I really wanted to leave. So did Kevin. Neither of us wanted to get arrested. And we were getting bitchy with each other and arguing about what we should do, until we realized it and took a couple deep breaths and decided what to do.
I decided that I felt like, if we left, I'd be letting you guys down or something. Kevin felt the same way. So we decided to stick around for a little longer.
At first, it seemed that the only behavior that the police had a problem with was people blocking the intersections when cars were trying to drive by. However, soon it wasn't okay to stand on certain sidewalks either. The cops obviously wanted us to just go home, which, of course, didn't make any sense to us, since many of us had just gotten there.
But soon, the sidewalks weren't OK either. Then, depending on your timing, some sidewalks were OK, but only until they weren't, and the cops started systematically crowding us off of them.
(I'll include a complete instance of this later on video for those of you who are interested and link to it from here.)
In the first shot, Kevin climbs up on the outside of the BART entrance and grabs a long shot and some close ups for me (I was afraid of falling). It was pretty incredible the number of people there at that time. Wow.
Next is a shot of some graffiti: "The Best Vacation Is Revolution." You can see me and Kevin in the reflection.
Followed by a clip of a tap dancer tapping for peace.
Then the cops start building up again. The crowd starts chanting "Whose streets? Our streets!" and acting a bit defiant.
The cops form a line across a third or so of the intersection at 4th and Market, so that cars can go by. Which is fine by the crowd. And that goes on for a while.
Then someone starts playing an awesome beat-driven soundtrack. And the horses arrive...
Day After/Day Of Adventure - Part 7 of ? (Small - 11 MB)
Day After/Day Of Adventure - Part 7 of ? (Hi-res - 94 MB)
Oh goody. I'm not the only technologist that has been thinking long and hard about the voting machine problem. In fact, it looks like I'm coming in pretty late in the game!
It's cutting it pretty close, but perhaps there could be enough time between now and November 2004 to enable a fair and verifiable election.
Here's some thoughtful background and analysis on electronic voting from Stanford Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Professor David Dill.
This statement is intended be a message from technologists to the rest of the public, the gist of which is: Do not be seduced by the apparent convenience of "touch-screen voting" machines, or the "gee whiz" factor that accompanies flashy new technology. Using these machines is tantamount to handing complete control of vote counting to a private company, with no independent checks or audits. These machines represent a serious threat to democracy. Much better alternatives are available for upgrading voting equipment...Compared with most technical issues, the basic problems with most "touch screen voting machines" are forehead-slappingly obvious to almost anyone who knows a little bit about computer security. There is strong agreement among those who have studied the problem in-depth, and I believe that almost anyone who looks into the problem a little (or a lot) will come to the same conclusions.
We realize that election equipment must satisfy many requirements, so we are neutral about the nature of the voter-verifiable audit trail, so long as it allows meaningful audits. Anything from fully manual paper ballots to optical scan ballots to touch screen machines that print paper ballots would do, so long as the voter can check the ballot and the (anonymous) ballot goes into a secure ballot box of some kind to be available for manual counting. In the future, there may be other kinds of physical ballots or even cryptographically based audit trails that satisfy the requirements.
Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://verify.stanford.edu/evote.html
Introduction
I (David Dill) am organizing opposition to paperless electronic voting machines by technologists, especially computer science researchers. I have written a resolution, for which I would like to recruit endorsements.
The Resolution on Electronic Voting
This statement is intended be a message from technologists to the rest of the public, the gist of which is: Do not be seduced by the apparent convenience of "touch-screen voting" machines, or the "gee whiz" factor that accompanies flashy new technology. Using these machines is tantamount to handing complete control of vote counting to a private company, with no independent checks or audits. These machines represent a serious threat to democracy. Much better alternatives are available for upgrading voting equipment.
I'm seeking endorsements for the statement by individuals and organizations. Of course, potential endorsers may feel that they don't know enough about the problem, so I have provided some links to further information below. Having devoted a modest amount of study to the problem, I have to concede that it's a little more complex that I thought at first. However, it's not that subtle. Compared with most technical issues, the basic problems with most "touch screen voting machines" are forehead-slappingly obvious to almost anyone who knows a little bit about computer security. There is strong agreement among those who have studied the problem in-depth, and I believe that almost anyone who looks into the problem a little (or a lot) will come to the same conclusions.
We realize that election equipment must satisfy many requirements, so we are neutral about the nature of the voter-verifiable audit trail, so long as it allows meaningful audits. Anything from fully manual paper ballots to optical scan ballots to touch screen machines that print paper ballots would do, so long as the voter can check the ballot and the (anonymous) ballot goes into a secure ballot box of some kind to be available for manual counting. In the future, there may be other kinds of physical ballots or even cryptographically based audit trails that satisfy the requirements.
What you can do to help.
Our biggest problem at this time is making people aware of this problem. Most people haven't a clue that there is even a controversy. They assume that election officials, manufacturers, politicians, or somebody must have made sure that the voting machines are secure. So you can help with this problem:
* Mention it to friends.
* Link to this web site
* Write letters to your local newspaper, talk to the reporters and columnists about the issue.
* Bring it up on mailing lists and web sites where readers may be interested (but please don't spam people!).
* Communicate (by email, phone, fax, or US Mail) with your elected officials at the local, state and federal level to let them know you are concerned about the issue.
* Find out what is going on in your community and/or state. Are they planning to buy new machines? To find out more, see our web pages about what's happening around the U.S.
Questions or comments can be addressed in email to "elections@chicory.stanford.edu"
Important Announcements
A letter from U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (pdf), expressing concern about the lack of a voter-verified audit trail in many electronic voting machines.
A letter to the Secretary of State of California from Prof. Doug Jones, a computer scientist and election machine examiner in Iowa.
Legislation pending in Washington State!
The state of Ohio has appointed a task force to set requirements for implementing HAVA. It would be great if they required a voter-verifiable audit trail. But there don't seem to be any computer technologists on the task force. I would like to hear from Ohio residents who would can help with this issue.
News about the debate in Santa Clara County.
#
She doesn't mince too many words, either.
I always thought a lot about Lisa Marie when I was a little girl growing up because she had (partly) the same name as me and was born the same year as me and I was told we looked a little alike (at the time).
(At least my relatives thought so :-)
I remember when Elvis died. I was like 5 or 6 years old, but I remember.
I remember that the first thing I thought of was Lisa Marie. I hoped she was going to be okay. Not just right at that moment, but in general.
I've pretty much been worried about her ever since. Some crazy emotional attachments you never outgrow, perhaps.
Anyway, I found this interview pretty interesting. Maybe you will too.
‘Love Makes Me Go Haywire’
Lisa Marie Presley talks frankly about music, marriage—and suspicious minds
By Lorraine Ali for Newsweek.
I was so astounded by the hundreds of thousands of people who were clearly in mourning. They were having these violent reactions in front of me. Thousands of people were coming through my house to look at his body. I remember watching them all and being so confused. I couldn’t really have my own grieving time. It wasn’t until a month later at camp—where my mom sent me to get away from it all—that I lost it...No, it wasn’t mutual. He (Michael Jackson) was in the hospital, and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. I started asking questions, and it was always a different story. He said I was “causing trouble” and “stirring up problems.” He told me, “You’re making my heart rate go up,” and asked me to go home, and I said, “Good. I want out.” This person is one of the biggest entertainers out there. He is not stupid. He’s very charming when he wants to be, and when you go into his world you step into this whole other realm. I could tell you all about the craziness—all these things that were odd, different, evil or not cool—but it still took me two and a half years to get my head out of it.
Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/891807.asp?cp1=1
IMG: Lisa Marie Presley
Four lives in one: Lisa Marie Presley
‘Love Makes Me Go Haywire’
Lisa Marie Presley talks frankly about music, marriage—and suspicious minds
By Lorraine Ali
NEWSWEEK
April 7 issue — Lisa Marie Presley has been a de facto celebrity since she was born to Elvis and Priscilla 35 years ago. But the L.A.-based mom—she had a son and daughter with her first husband, musician Danny Keough—has avoided the spotlight, marriages to Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage notwithstanding.
NOW THE RELUCTANT pop heiress is set to release a debut CD of bluesy rock, “To Whom It May Concern.” The album is hard-hitting in spots, middle-of-the-road in others, but her lyrics are honest and revealing, and Presley has an appealingly deep, smoky voice. In one of her first solo interviews ever, she talked candidly about life with Michael and living in the shadow of the true king of pop—her father.
Your parents divorced when you were 4, and your father died when you were only 9.
I feel like I’ve lived four lives in one. I dealt with death early on. It wasn’t just my father, it was my grandma, my grandpa, my great-grandfather, my aunts—all in a two-year period. I didn’t have much of a runway into life. I was, like, a deep, dark kid who was always melancholy.
Regardless of what your dad meant to the world, he was still your dad.
I was so astounded by the hundreds of thousands of people who were clearly in mourning. They were having these violent reactions in front of me. Thousands of people were coming through my house to look at his body. I remember watching them all and being so confused. I couldn’t really have my own grieving time. It wasn’t until a month later at camp—where my mom sent me to get away from it all—that I lost it.
Were you there the night that your father died?
I was, but I won’t go into it. I just won’t go there.
You grew up singing at the kitchen table at Graceland. Why did you wait to make an album?
I always avoided singing in public. I just felt I would get crucified. I thought of acting—maybe playing some whacked-out psychopath to shock and scare people, but that lasted, like, two weeks. I got over that and started singing again. There are those who will say, “She’s actually got some of her own talent, or some credibility as an artist,” versus those who will say, “She’s not her father, she never will be—and who the hell does she think she is?” That’s why I named it “To Whom It May Concern.” It’s kind of a sarcastic thing.
It’s an awful lot of pressure for your first album.
It’s intimidating. I hate it. But there must be people who are interested in getting beyond the superficial tabloid bulls—t. Because of no direct communication from me, there is this funnel of b.s. that travels straight to the public. It has a life of its own. When I meet people, I know they’re trying to sift what they’ve heard. But if they listen [to my album], I hope they will hear somebody who’s being pretty damn honest and not throwing up smoke screens.
Your dad’s stardom wreaked such havoc on your family. How did your mom feel about you getting into music?
The one time we talked about it she said, “Those are some serious shoes you are going to have to fill.” I think she was afraid of what I was gonna run into, crucifixion-wise.
Lisa Marie Presley on:
• Jitters about performing live
• Why she chose to become a recording artist
• Her revealing lyrics
You’ve been in plenty of surreal situations by now, like being married to Michael Jackson. You must have known that it was going to be a circus.
I was naive on that front. I was in this constant struggle that went something like this: a man who’s with me who has nothing is gonna be stomped on and have no identity left by the time [the press] get done with him. He’ll be Mr. F—kin’ Presley. I thought, I need to be with someone bigger than I am—or at least comparable—so they don’t get trampled. Michael wanted to meet me earlier in my life, and I said, “No way.” I thought he was a freak, and I had no interest in meeting him. But when I finally did, he immediately dashed any preconceived idea I had about him. We had a perfectly normal conversation, and I completely forgot who he was within 20 minutes. I actually did fall in love with him, but I don’t know what was on his menu.
You married Michael at 26. You seemed miffed that people didn’t believe the marriage was real. Now can you understand why everyone thought it was weird?
Absolutely! But at the time I was like, “What the f—k is the problem? Why am I getting all this bad press? They think I married him because I want to be a singer or I want publicity? All I ever did prior to the marriage was stay the hell away from that!” It took me a while to realize that maybe he manipulated stories or did things for public reasons, and that I was getting dragged into it. I can see that now.
Do you think he was truly invested in the marriage? [Jackson married Presley only months after he was accused of child molestation.]
I can’t say what his intentions were with me, but I can say it was the most real thing I think he’s had. My mother was like, “Timing—hello! Wakey, wakey!” But I rebelled against my mom, of course, and tried really hard not to think like that, not to believe that.
Was it a mutual decision to break it off?
IMG: Weekend
No, it wasn’t mutual. He was in the hospital, and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. I started asking questions, and it was always a different story. He said I was “causing trouble” and “stirring up problems.” He told me, “You’re making my heart rate go up,” and asked me to go home, and I said, “Good. I want out.” This person is one of the biggest entertainers out there. He is not stupid. He’s very charming when he wants to be, and when you go into his world you step into this whole other realm. I could tell you all about the craziness—all these things that were odd, different, evil or not cool—but it still took me two and a half years to get my head out of it.
You say you were naive, but you seem tough and savvy in person.
Well, when it comes to love I’m naive. I’m a noodle. I go haywire. I’m getting better at it, though. I’m getting faster at coming to the conclusion that something’s not right.
What went wrong with you and Nicolas Cage?
With people like me and Nic, it’s difficult because there’s the camps. You’ve got 15 people around. That’s something that contributed—same with Michael. They may be claiming to love you or seemingly happy you’re together, but any minute they can throw a wrench in, they do. They’re so dependent on that person that you may be raining on their parade.
You and Nicolas were only married two months.
We dated for two years before that, but Nic and I were just two pirates, and pirates can’t marry each other. They need to marry someone in another profession—a nice little quiet mermaid. Otherwise they sink the ship. Which is what we did.
Is it difficult doing interviews after avoiding the press so long?
I’ve been so candid, I hope I don’t end up getting grossly misquoted and decide I’m not gonna talk anymore. I don’t want to be one of those people that’s willing to be cool, then gets slammed and has to have the publicist in the room yelling, “No comment!”
This is going on in Minnesota right now, courtesy of Governer Tim Pawlenty (R).
Hey, I get it. This is great. If legislation like this becomes the norm, only rich people will be able to afford to assemble in public places and/or perform acts of civil disobedience.
Pawlenty wants antiwar protesters to pay arrest costs
By Patricia Lopez and Sarah T. Williams for the Star Tribune.
With protests against the war continuing and arrests of demonstrators mounting, Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Thursday that he wants those arrested to pay the law-enforcement costs they incur or face prosecution.Press secretary Leslie Kupchella said that "effective immediately," Pawlenty wants judges to begin ordering restitution for the costs of arrest. While he does not have the authority to require judges to do so, he is considering proposing legislation that would require such restitution.
Kupchella said Pawlenty recognizes that charges against protesters typically are dismissed. "He would like that dismissal contingent on restitution," she said. "And he would like to see it happen effective immediately."
Kupchella said the administration has not determined the extent to which protesters should be charged -- whether, for instance, fees would cover the officer's time and the cost of booking and possible prosecution. However, she said, Pawlenty would like to keep the costs "nominal," perhaps $200.
"He thinks that is perfectly reasonable," Kupchella said. "The governor recognizes the rights of people to protest lawfully and have their own opinions. But when they go beyond that and break the law, they should pay the cost."
Kupchella said Pawlenty has found the diversion of law enforcers to protests "very frustrating."
Some members of the legal community expressed skepticism about the proposal's constitutionality, and one recent protester called it an infringement on free speech.
Karen Redleaf, a St. Paul war protester who was arrested twice this week at antiwar demonstrations, called Pawlenty's proposal "really shocking and distressing."
Redleaf, 39, a former stock analyst, said such a move would limit constitutionally protected free speech to those who could afford the price of arrest and prosecution.
"We do this to get news coverage for our views," she said. "They're not charging rapists for the costs of arresting and prosecuting them. We're not hurting anyone. We're just trying to make statements that need to be made."
Retired Hennepin County District Judge J. Bruce Hartigan was dubious about the idea.
"Lots of luck," he said. "It's never going to stand the test of appeal. . . . You're talking about the delicate balance between the First Amendment and governmental power. Chances are [such a fine] would be looked at as an improper infringement on the right to free speech and the right to assemble."
Hartigan, who retired last year after 14 years on the bench and who said he has represented and sentenced dozens of protesters, said the plan also could backfire.
"Let's say I'm a protester. I get together with a bunch of protesters and we go out and get arrested. We get in front of a judge. The judge orders restitution. We say no. We don't pay it. We'll all just go to jail and spend more of the governor's money."
Charles Samuelson, executive director of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union, also had constitutional concerns.
Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/3787447.html
Pawlenty wants antiwar protesters to pay arrest costs
Patricia Lopez and Sarah T. Williams, Star Tribune
Published March 28, 2003
PAWL28
With protests against the war continuing and arrests of demonstrators mounting, Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Thursday that he wants those arrested to pay the law-enforcement costs they incur or face prosecution.
Press secretary Leslie Kupchella said that "effective immediately," Pawlenty wants judges to begin ordering restitution for the costs of arrest. While he does not have the authority to require judges to do so, he is considering proposing legislation that would require such restitution.
Kupchella said Pawlenty recognizes that charges against protesters typically are dismissed. "He would like that dismissal contingent on restitution," she said. "And he would like to see it happen effective immediately."
Kupchella said the administration has not determined the extent to which protesters should be charged -- whether, for instance, fees would cover the officer's time and the cost of booking and possible prosecution. However, she said, Pawlenty would like to keep the costs "nominal," perhaps $200.
"He thinks that is perfectly reasonable," Kupchella said. "The governor recognizes the rights of people to protest lawfully and have their own opinions. But when they go beyond that and break the law, they should pay the cost."
Kupchella said Pawlenty has found the diversion of law enforcers to protests "very frustrating."
Some members of the legal community expressed skepticism about the proposal's constitutionality, and one recent protester called it an infringement on free speech.
Karen Redleaf, a St. Paul war protester who was arrested twice this week at antiwar demonstrations, called Pawlenty's proposal "really shocking and distressing."
Redleaf, 39, a former stock analyst, said such a move would limit constitutionally protected free speech to those who could afford the price of arrest and prosecution.
"We do this to get news coverage for our views," she said. "They're not charging rapists for the costs of arresting and prosecuting them. We're not hurting anyone. We're just trying to make statements that need to be made."
Retired Hennepin County District Judge J. Bruce Hartigan was dubious about the idea.
"Lots of luck," he said. "It's never going to stand the test of appeal. . . . You're talking about the delicate balance between the First Amendment and governmental power. Chances are [such a fine] would be looked at as an improper infringement on the right to free speech and the right to assemble."
Hartigan, who retired last year after 14 years on the bench and who said he has represented and sentenced dozens of protesters, said the plan also could backfire.
"Let's say I'm a protester. I get together with a bunch of protesters and we go out and get arrested. We get in front of a judge. The judge orders restitution. We say no. We don't pay it. We'll all just go to jail and spend more of the governor's money."
Charles Samuelson, executive director of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union, also had constitutional concerns.
"The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that law enforcement in regard to First Amendment activities must be content neutral," he said. "If he [Pawlenty] wants to arrest protesters and charge them, he must also be prepared to be equally aggressive with people marching in support of the government's actions -- whatever the cause."
Pawlenty Communications Director Dan Wolter said Pawlenty "absolutely" would want restitution applied to any protester, no matter what the cause.
The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq has sparked worldwide protests that occasionally have turned violent. Local protests have remained peaceful, although arrests are on the rise.
Twenty-eight protesters were arrested Monday for refusing to leave U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman's St. Paul office.
On Tuesday, 68 were arrested for blocking entrances to the U.S. Courthouse in downtown Minneapolis. About a third of those demonstrators resorted to standard civil disobedience tactics, going limp when approached by police. Police then had to drag the protesters from the courthouse entrances. The protesters were handcuffed, taken to the Hennepin County jail and charged with trespassing, a misdemeanor.
Redleaf was arrested both times and said she already faces fines of as much as several hundred dollars.
Other states also are turning up the heat. In Washington, Republican Sen. Bill Finkbeiner has proposed legislation that would boost fines from $1,000 to $5,000 for intentional "disruption of traffic by pedestrians." And in California, a district attorney announced that he would prosecute as many as possible of the nearly 2,300 protesters arrested in San Francisco in the past week.
When this thing is over, the state better owe ZERO dollars and charges better be filed against the companies involved.
We can not allow this kind of behavior to just become business as usual. We need to set an example for the rest of the country. If Energy companies want to play these kinds of games, fine. Arguably, we can't stop them.
We can, however, try to make sure that they will have to pay the consequences when they get caught. At the very least we shouldn't have to pay for energy that we didn't really need to buy in the first place.
Energy Market Manipulated, Regulators Say
By Jonathan Peterson and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar for the LA Times.
Taking a tough new stance, federal energy regulators said Wednesday that more than 30 private firms manipulated natural gas and electricity prices during the California energy crisis... the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission threatened to revoke the trading authority of eight subsidiaries of troubled Enron Corp. for allegedly gaming the natural gas market. The commission also said it's prepared to strip the trading authority of Reliant Energy Services Inc., now known as Reliant Resources Inc., and BP Energy Co. for allegedly engaging in "coordinated efforts" to manipulate electricity prices at Palo Verde, a key Arizona trading hub. Both companies denied the charges...The commission also stopped short of approving the state's request to renegotiate $20 billion in long-term energy contracts that were signed during the period of feverish prices in 2001.
"Show me the money," Gov. Gray Davis declared. "Where's the $9 billion that we've been asking for, for two years? That is when I'll finally feel vindicated, when we get the money back that these energy companies stole from this state."
Davis said the state is prepared to keep pressing its case in court if California's refund isn't boosted when the matter goes back to a federal administrative law judge, the next step in the process.
Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.latimes.com/la-fi-ferc27mar27,1,3575138.story?coll=la%2Dhome%2Dleftrail
Los Angeles Times - latimes.com Get The Times delivered to your door everyday. Just as you get latimes.com delivered to your PC throughout the day. A subcription is a great compliment to latimes.com. Stay connected!
KTLA
La Opinion
March 27, 2003
E-mail story Print
Energy Market Manipulated, Regulators Say
* FERC moves to increase California's refund to $3.3 billion, still far less than the state seeks.
By Jonathan Peterson and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON -- Taking a tough new stance, federal energy regulators said Wednesday that more than 30 private firms manipulated natural gas and electricity prices during the California energy crisis, and moved to increase the state's refund to about $3.3 billion.
In addition, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission threatened to revoke the trading authority of eight subsidiaries of troubled Enron Corp. for allegedly gaming the natural gas market. The commission also said it's prepared to strip the trading authority of Reliant Energy Services Inc., now known as Reliant Resources Inc., and BP Energy Co. for allegedly engaging in "coordinated efforts" to manipulate electricity prices at Palo Verde, a key Arizona trading hub. Both companies denied the charges.
California officials expressed some satisfaction with the FERC decision, but emphasized that the remedy fell far short of the $8.9 billion in refunds sought by a coalition of state agencies and its major utilities, including Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison.
The commission also stopped short of approving the state's request to renegotiate $20 billion in long-term energy contracts that were signed during the period of feverish prices in 2001.
"Show me the money," Gov. Gray Davis declared. "Where's the $9 billion that we've been asking for, for two years? That is when I'll finally feel vindicated, when we get the money back that these energy companies stole from this state."
Davis said the state is prepared to keep pressing its case in court if California's refund isn't boosted when the matter goes back to a federal administrative law judge, the next step in the process.
FERC officials, long criticized for an easygoing approach toward the corporations they regulate, insisted that their 13-month investigation into the causes of California's energy crisis proves the agency is taking its oversight role seriously.
"This is all part of our role as the cop on the beat," said FERC Chairman Pat Wood III. "We have said from the beginning that a belief in the free enterprise system goes hand in hand with a responsibility to see that the playing field is level and that everyone plays fair. If there was ever any doubt that this was part of our core philosophy, that doubt should now be dispelled."
As part of its action Wednesday, FERC asked more than 30 companies and utilities to justify actions that may have violated anti-gaming provisions. These companies and utilities included some of the out-of-state actors that were branded during the energy crisis as preying on California, including Reliant, a Williams Cos.-AES Corp. venture and Mirant Corp.
But FERC also singled out a number of in-state companies and utilities for possible wrongdoing. Among them: Southern California Edison; the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power; and Sempra Energy, the parent of San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Gas Co.
In fact, Southern California Edison is one of the major players in the state's quest for refunds, thrusting it in the awkward position of being both accuser and accused.
"We will certainly file a response," to the market manipulation allegation, said John Bryson, chief executive of the utility's parent, Rosemead-based Edison International. He added that the FERC allegation related to no more than about $7,000 of power charges.
"The most important thing today," Bryson said, "is that the staff report shows pervasive unlawful and unethical manipulation of the power market, causing California consumers billions of dollars of direct damages."
Edison officials believe their utility would qualify for up to 25% of the refund money, which they expect would ultimately be returned to customers through lower rates in the future.
Other companies and utilities reached for comment Wednesday roundly denied FERC's allegations. Brad Church, a spokesman for Tulsa, Okla.-based Williams said "a fact-based analysis" of its alleged role in gaming the state's electricity market would find no wrongdoing.
Steven Prince, chief executive of Sempra's wholesale-trading unit, said he is "confident the FERC will conclude that our activities in the California energy market were proper."
Los Angeles Mayor Jim Hahn on Wednesday ridiculed the FERC decision to include the city's DWP among the possible price gougers.
"In its shotgun approach, FERC is seeking to hold all energy producers liable when all evidence points to the fact that the LADWP was a major part of the solution," Hahn said.
Energy companies named prominently in the report -- many already battered on the stock market -- saw further declines Wednesday. Reliant shares fell 95 cents, or nearly 24%, to close at $3.05 on the New York Stock Exchange.
The flurry of developments came as FERC released its definitive findings on the turbulent episode of rolling blackouts and soaring prices that rattled the California economy in 2000 and 2001.
Some applauded the agency's announcements Wednesday. "FERC took an important step today in recognizing that the Western energy market was manipulated during the energy crisis," said Rep. Doug Ose (R-Sacramento), who chairs a House subcommittee on natural resources.
Still, despite a FERC staff conclusion that prices for long-term power were influenced by market manipulation, two of three board members said they would be reluctant to approve Gov. Davis' demand to renegotiate the long-term power contracts.
The contracts were based, in part, on short-term prices that FERC now concedes were the result of broken markets and abusive practices by sellers. In a report to the commissioners, Donald Gelinas, a senior FERC staffer, found that "market dysfunction" in California affected the long-term contracts.
But Commissioner Nora Mead Brownell said FERC should be extremely reluctant to void contracts that were willingly entered into by competent parties. "Investors will not participate in a market in which disgruntled buyers are allowed to break contracts," she said.
FERC commissioners did accept a staff recommendation that could lead to more money for California through another avenue. The staff called for scrutinizing the actions of dozens of companies to see if the firms had violated fair-market principles they had agreed to abide by as a condition of doing business in California's deregulated market.
If abusive behavior is shown to have taken place, FERC can order the firms to return ill-gotten profits for the period of Jan. 1, 2000, to June 21, 2001. Otherwise, the companies are now only liable for refunds for the period of Oct. 2, 2000, to June 21, 2001 -- a timetable set by a quirk in federal law.
In any case, a gulf would still remain between the $9 billion demanded by California officials and the amount being considered by FERC.
On Wednesday, FERC said it would change the method of calculating natural gas overcharges that led to higher electricity prices. Staffers said that would add an estimated $1.5 billion to the $1.8 billion previously set by an administrative law judge, for a new total of about $3.3 billion. But because of debts that the utilities owe their power suppliers, even the higher figure of $3.3 billion would leave a net refund of only $300 million.
"If we don't get $9 billion out of refunds, we will go to federal court," said Richard Katz, a senior advisor to Davis, deriding FERC decisions Wednesday as "better wrapping on the same old package."
During the crisis and its aftermath, FERC officials often focused on the imperfections in California's energy deregulation plan and other problems, while state officials focused on alleged wrongdoing by energy firms. That tension continued on Wednesday, even as federal regulators moved further than ever toward blaming companies for misconduct.
An "underlying supply-demand imbalance and flawed market design combined to make a fertile environment for market manipulation," FERC said in a statement.
For example, FERC said Wednesday that phone conversations and transcripts suggest Reliant and BP Energy Co. worked together to manipulate energy prices at Palo Verde, which sets prices for electricity trading throughout the Southwest.
Both Houston-based firms denied the charges and said they would cooperate with the continuing investigation. In response to accusations that Reliant and BP Energy worked together to boost energy prices, Reliant spokesman Richard Wheatley said a "small number" of suspect transactions with BP were made three years ago. The company discovered the transactions through its internal review and bought them to the attention of FERC, Wheatley said.
"The transactions were not authorized by Reliant, and they violated the company's own trading practices and procedures," Wheatley said. "However, there is no evidence that the trades impacted the market."
FERC also said that two Enron subsidiaries, Enron Power Marketing Inc. and Enron Energy Services Inc., could lose their authority to set market-based rates. In addition, FERC said it would explore whether Enron and a handful of firms and municipalities with which it traded -- including the cities of Glendale, Redding and the Modesto Irrigation District of Northern California -- engaged in gaming of energy markets and might be ordered to give up profits or face other sanctions.
A spokeswoman for Enron Corp., whose subsidiaries were accused of manipulating natural gas and electricity prices in California, said the company was reviewing the FERC orders.
According to FERC, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power may have engaged in a market gaming strategy known as "ricochet" or "megawatt laundering," which involved buying energy from the now-defunct California Power Exchange, shipping it to another entity and then selling it back into California as imported power not subject to the state's price caps.
To carry out the strategy "Enron needed others to move power into and out of the [California] system," the report said. The DWP was among those that allegedly collaborated, according to the report. The FERC staff called the ricochet strategy an "exercise of market power" and a violation of California market rules.
It recommended that the DWP and eight other companies or partnerships be required to return any ill-gotten profits. In one week during December 2000, the nine may have made as much as $10 million from megawatt laundering. The DWP was fourth from the top in a list ranking the Enron trading partners in order of potential profits.
A DWP spokesman said it filed evidence last week with FERC disproving the allegations. The FERC report "indicates to me they didn't read our response," spokesman Randy Howard said.
Times staff writers Nancy Vogel, Nancy Rivera Brooks, James F. Peltz, Jerry Hirsch, Hanah Cho, Debora Vrana, Scott Reckard and Doug Smith contributed to this report.
It's very important to keep our eye on the prize guys: a new democratically-elected President in 2004.
That may mean the end of computer voting in some areas -- NOT its introduction into new jurisdictions.
Unless these machines are required to be open source, so that third parties could verify their numbers. I believe open source voting machines are the only way that computer voting can move forward towards producing any kind of reliable results. What do you guys think?
New Voting Systems Assailed -- Computer Experts Cite Fraud Potential
By Dan Keating for the Washington Post.
Critics of such systems say that they are vulnerable to tampering, to human error and to computer malfunctions -- and that they lack the most obvious protection, a separate, paper receipt that a voter can confirm after voting and that can be recounted if problems are suspected.Officials who have worked with touch-screen systems say these concerns are unfounded and, in certain cases, somewhat paranoid.
David Dill, the Stanford University professor of computer science who launched the petition drive, said, "What people have learned repeatedly, the hard way, is that the prudent practice -- if you want to escape with your data intact -- is what other people would perceive as paranoia."
Other computer scientists, including Rebecca Mercuri of Bryn Mawr College, say that problems are so likely that they are virtually guaranteed to occur -- and already have.
Mercuri, who has studied voting security for more than a decade, points to a November 2000 election in South Brunswick, N.J., in which touch-screen equipment manufactured by Sequoia Voting Systems was used.
In a race in which voters could pick two candidates from a pair of Republicans and a pair of Democrats, one machine recorded a vote pattern that was out of sync with the pattern recorded elsewhere -- no votes whatsoever for one Republican and one Democrat. Sequoia said at the time that no votes were lost -- they were just never registered. Local officials said it didn't matter whether the fault was the voters' or the machine's, the expected votes were gone.
In October, election officials in Raleigh, N.C., discovered that early voters had to try several times to record their votes on iVotronic touch screens from Election Systems and Software. Told of the problems, officials compared the number of voters to the number of votes counted and realized that 294 votes had apparently been lost.
When Georgia debuted 22,000 Diebold touch screens last fall, some people touched one candidate's name on the screen and saw another candidate's name appear as their choice. Voters who were paying attention had a chance to correct the error before finalizing their vote, but those who weren't did not.
Chris Rigall, spokesman for the secretary of state's office, said that the machines were quickly replaced, but that there was no way of knowing how many votes were incorrectly counted.
In September in Florida, Miami-Dade and Broward counties had a different kind of vote loss with ES&S touch-screen equipment: At the end of the day, precincts that reported hundreds of voters also listed virtually no votes counted. In that case, technicians were able to retrieve the votes from the machines.
"If the only way you know that it's working incorrectly is when there's four votes instead of 1,200 votes, then how do you know that if it's 1,100 votes instead of 1,200 votes? You'll never know," said Mercuri.
Because humans are imperfect and computers are complicated, said Ben Bederson, a professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, mistakes will always be made. With no backup to test, the scientists say, mistakes will go undetected.
"I'm not concerned about elections that are a mess," Dill said. "I'm concerned about elections that appear to go smoothly, and no one knows that it was all messed up inside the machine."
...if customers want receipts, he said, his company will supply them. And Williams said receipts may have a place in the system. "The advantage of a hard piece of paper -- one that a voter would hold in his hand and say, 'That is who I voted for' -- that is psychological, and there certainly is value to that. We need public confidence in our elections," he said.
Similarly, the official overseeing Maryland's program would accept paper if it were available.
"I've been doing voting systems for 15 years," Torre said. "I don't care if they give voters a piece of paper or not. If they come out with a receipt, that's fine. Maybe with the momentum out of California, we'll have receipts before too long."
Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39241-2003Mar27.html
New Voting Systems Assailed
Computer Experts Cite Fraud Potential
As election officials rush to spend billions to update the country's voting machines with electronic systems, computer scientists are mounting a challenge to the new devices, saying they are less reliable and less secure from fraud than the equipment they are replacing.
Prompted by the demands of state and federal election reforms, officials in Maryland, Georgia, Florida and Texas installed the high-tech voting systems last fall. Officials in those states, and other proponents of electronic voting, said the computer scientists' concerns are far-fetched.
"These systems, because of the level of testing they go through, are the most reliable systems available," said Michael Barnes, who oversaw Georgia's statewide upgrade. "People were happy with how they operated."
In Maryland, "the system performed flawlessly in the two statewide elections last year," said Joseph Torre, the official overseeing the purchase of the state's new systems. "The public has a lot of confidence in it, and they love it."
But the scientists' campaign, which began in California's Silicon Valley in January, has gathered signatures from more than 300 experts, and the pressure has induced the industry to begin changing course.
Electronic terminals eliminate hanging chads, pencil erasure marks and the chance that a voter might accidentally select too many candidates. Under the new systems, voters touch the screen or turn a dial to make their choices and see a confirmation of those choices before casting their votes, which are tallied right in the terminal. Recounts are just a matter of retrieving the data from the computer again. The only record of the vote is what is stored there.
Critics of such systems say that they are vulnerable to tampering, to human error and to computer malfunctions -- and that they lack the most obvious protection, a separate, paper receipt that a voter can confirm after voting and that can be recounted if problems are suspected.
Officials who have worked with touch-screen systems say these concerns are unfounded and, in certain cases, somewhat paranoid.
David Dill, the Stanford University professor of computer science who launched the petition drive, said, "What people have learned repeatedly, the hard way, is that the prudent practice -- if you want to escape with your data intact -- is what other people would perceive as paranoia."
Other computer scientists, including Rebecca Mercuri of Bryn Mawr College, say that problems are so likely that they are virtually guaranteed to occur -- and already have.
Lost and Found
Mercuri, who has studied voting security for more than a decade, points to a November 2000 election in South Brunswick, N.J., in which touch-screen equipment manufactured by Sequoia Voting Systems was used.
In a race in which voters could pick two candidates from a pair of Republicans and a pair of Democrats, one machine recorded a vote pattern that was out of sync with the pattern recorded elsewhere -- no votes whatsoever for one Republican and one Democrat. Sequoia said at the time that no votes were lost -- they were just never registered. Local officials said it didn't matter whether the fault was the voters' or the machine's, the expected votes were gone.
In October, election officials in Raleigh, N.C., discovered that early voters had to try several times to record their votes on iVotronic touch screens from Election Systems and Software. Told of the problems, officials compared the number of voters to the number of votes counted and realized that 294 votes had apparently been lost.
When Georgia debuted 22,000 Diebold touch screens last fall, some people touched one candidate's name on the screen and saw another candidate's name appear as their choice. Voters who were paying attention had a chance to correct the error before finalizing their vote, but those who weren't did not.
Chris Rigall, spokesman for the secretary of state's office, said that the machines were quickly replaced, but that there was no way of knowing how many votes were incorrectly counted.
In September in Florida, Miami-Dade and Broward counties had a different kind of vote loss with ES&S touch-screen equipment: At the end of the day, precincts that reported hundreds of voters also listed virtually no votes counted. In that case, technicians were able to retrieve the votes from the machines.
"If the only way you know that it's working incorrectly is when there's four votes instead of 1,200 votes, then how do you know that if it's 1,100 votes instead of 1,200 votes? You'll never know," said Mercuri.
Because humans are imperfect and computers are complicated, said Ben Bederson, a professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, mistakes will always be made. With no backup to test, the scientists say, mistakes will go undetected.
"I'm not concerned about elections that are a mess," Dill said. "I'm concerned about elections that appear to go smoothly, and no one knows that it was all messed up inside the machine."
"We're not paranoid," said Mercuri. "They're avoiding computational realities. That's the computer science part of it. We can't avoid it any more than physical scientists can avoid gravity."
The Miami-Dade and Georgia terminals were reprogrammed right up until the eve of the fall elections. The last-minute patches don't go through sufficient review, Mercuri said, and any computer that can be reprogrammed simply by inserting an update cartridge cannot be considered secure or reliable.
Dill said hackers constantly defeat sophisticated protections for electronic transactions, bank records, credit reports and software. "Someone sufficiently unscrupulous, with an investment of $50,000, could put together a team of people who could very easily subvert all of the security mechanisms that we've heard about on these [voting] machines," he said.
People who have sold or administered electronic voting systems, however, say the scenarios of fraud or widespread, election-changing error were not of the real world.
'We'd Detect It'
Howard Cramer, vice president for sales at Sequoia, one of the nation's largest suppliers of electronic voting systems, noted that his company has been supplying the systems for a decade and a half. "Our existing approach is verifiably accurate, 100 percent," he said. "Some of the things they're saying are flat-out wrong. Some are conceivable, but outside the likelihood of possibility."
The designer of Georgia's security system, for example, said nobody could insert a secret program to steal an election when the machines are created, because no one even knows at that time who the candidates will be, and the only people with access to the machines at the last minute are local officials.
"They're talking about what they could do if they had access to the [computer program] code, if we had no procedures in place and no physical security in place," said Brit Williams, a computer scientist at Kennesaw State University. "I'm not arguing with that. But they're not going to get access to that code. Even if they did, we'd detect it."
He also said that Georgia's patch was checked before it was installed and did not affect the tallying of votes. And no one, he said, could reprogram Georgia's terminals by inserting a cartridge.
"On our machine, the port is in a locked compartment. The only person in the precinct who has a key to that locked compartment is the precinct manager. [Critics are] looking at it from a purely computer science point of view, saying the system is vulnerable, and it would be vulnerable if we let anyone walk up and stick a card into it, but that doesn't happen."
After Dill launched his campaign, officials in the Silicon Valley county of Santa Clara delayed a purchase of 5,000 touch-screen voting machines. Despite insisting that their systems are reliable and secure, the nation's leading vendors all immediately agreed to provide paper receipts, and the California secretary of state announced a task force to review the security concerns. A month ago, Santa Clara went ahead with its $20 million purchase, insisting that receipts be provided once the state approves the new equipment.
Georgia and Maryland officials said that providing paper receipts may create more problems than it solves -- that paper would have to be transported and monitored with security, and printers could jam. Cramer of Sequoia said paper is unnecessary, costly and may pose a problem for blind voters.
But if customers want receipts, he said, his company will supply them. And Williams said receipts may have a place in the system. "The advantage of a hard piece of paper -- one that a voter would hold in his hand and say, 'That is who I voted for' -- that is psychological, and there certainly is value to that. We need public confidence in our elections," he said.
Similarly, the official overseeing Maryland's program would accept paper if it were available.
"I've been doing voting systems for 15 years," Torre said. "I don't care if they give voters a piece of paper or not. If they come out with a receipt, that's fine. Maybe with the momentum out of California, we'll have receipts before too long."
Looks like the Shrub is trying to win this war on the cheap -- to the point where soldiers aren't even being rationed enough food to eat.
Luckily, the Iraqi citizens are taking pity on our troops, despite the fact that several hundred of them have already been accidently killed by them.
Iraqi civilians feed hungry US marines
Iraqi civilians fleeing heavy fighting have stunned and delighted hungry US marines in central Iraq (news - web sites) by giving them food, as guerrilla attacks continue to disrupt coalition supply lines to the rear.Sergeant Kenneth Wilson said Arabic-speaking US troops made contact with two busloads of Iraqis fleeing south along Route Seven towards Rafit, one of the first friendly meetings with local people for the marines around here.
"They had slaughtered lambs and chickens and boiled eggs and potatoes for their journey out of the frontlines," Wilson said.
..."They told me they wanted to go to America after the war. I said where. They said California. I said why? They said the song Hotel California and they left singing Hotel California."
Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=1503&e=5&u=/afp/20030329/ts_afp/iraq_war_civilians
Top Stories - AFP
Iraqi civilians feed hungry US marines
Sat Mar 29, 4:16 PM ET
CENTRAL IRAQ (AFP) - Iraqi civilians fleeing heavy fighting have stunned and delighted hungry US marines in central Iraq (news - web sites) by giving them food, as guerrilla attacks continue to disrupt coalition supply lines to the rear.
Sergeant Kenneth Wilson said Arabic-speaking US troops made contact with two busloads of Iraqis fleeing south along Route Seven towards Rafit, one of the first friendly meetings with local people for the marines around here.
"They had slaughtered lambs and chickens and boiled eggs and potatoes for their journey out of the frontlines," Wilson said.
At one camp, the buses stopped and women passed out food to the troops, who have had to ration their army-issue packets of ready-to-eat meals due to disruptions to supply lines by fierce fighting further south.
Civilians have remained largely out of sight since the invasion began 10 days ago. Towns and villages are virtually deserted, prompting speculation that most had shifted to safer ground before the fighting began.
Corpsman Tony Garcia said the food donation was an act of appreciation for the American effort to topple the brutal regime of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).
"They gave us eggs and potatoes to feed our marines and corpsmen. I feel the local population are grateful and they want to see an end to Saddam Hussein," he said.
"It was a lovely, beautiful gesture."
Khairi Ilrekibi, 35, a passenger on one of the buses, which broke down near the marine position, said he could speak for the 20 others on board.
In broken English he told a correspondent travelling with the marines: "We like Americans," adding that no one liked Saddam Hussein because "he was not kind."
He said Iraqi civilians living near him were opposed to Saddam Hussein and that most were hiding in their homes and were extremely tired.
Lance Corporal David Polikowsky stood guard over 70 POWS near the broken down bus, saying how grateful he was for food cooked and donated by locals, which included oranges.
Looking on warily at the POWS he was guarding, who included two Jordanians, as well as an Iraqi colonel, captain, major and second lieutenant from special forces and the regular army, he said he had been moved by comments from local civilians.
He said they told him: "We welcome you. What is your name? We will pray for you."
He said another group of POWS, largely conscripts, had been moved south.
"They told me they wanted to go to America after the war. I said where. They said California. I said why? They said the song Hotel California and they left singing Hotel California."
Soldiers with this marine division -- on the east of a two-pronged thrust toward Baghdad -- have seen some of the fiercest fighting of the war so far.
They battled their way through heavy fire at Nasiriyah, Sharat and Rafit before pausing to resupply within 250 kilometres (180 miles) of Baghdad on Thursday.
Prisoners have been taken and pockets of displaced people carrying white flags have been seen along the way. Some have waved, others have asked the marines for cigarettes and water.
But US troops have been keeping a wary distance from civilians, mindful of reports that some Iraqi forces were mingling with civilians in order to drift through American lines and launch surprise attacks.
Ambushes and harassing fire along the massive communications lines to Kuwait in the south have caused casualties and disrupted supplies of water, food and fuel to the frontline troops.
Garcia and Wilson are attached to a Shock Trauma Platoon with the Marine Expeditionary Force and have treated about 20 civilians for war-related wounds in the past five days.
As troops munched on their feast, one medic warned the food could have been deliberately contaminated.
He was quickly disregarded as the hungry marines forged ahead to make a fondue out of a donated tin of Australian processed cheese, but the potatoes were eaten before the cheese could melt.
"Man I never thought a boiled egg could taste so damn good," one burly marine observed.
First Stop, Iraq
How did the U.S. end up taking on Saddam? The inside story of how Iraq jumped to the top of Bush's agenda—and why the outcome there may foreshadow a different world order
By Michael Elliott and James Carney for Time.
With reporting by Timothy J. Burger, Massimo Calabresi, John F. Dickerson, Mark Thompson, Eric Roston and Douglas Waller/Washington, Mitch Frank/New York and James Graff/Paris
"Fuck Saddam. We're taking him out."Those were the words of President George W. Bush, who had poked his head into the office of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. It was March 2002, and Rice was meeting with three U.S. Senators, discussing how to deal with Iraq through the United Nations, or perhaps in a coalition with America's Middle East allies. Bush wasn't interested. He waved his hand dismissively, recalls a participant, and neatly summed up his Iraq policy in that short phrase...
A year later, Bush's outburst has been translated into action, as cruise missiles and smart bombs slam into Baghdad. But the apparent simplicity of his message belies the gravity at hand. Sure, the outcome is certain: America will win the war, and Saddam will be taken out. But what is unfolding in Iraq is far bigger than regime change or even the elimination of dangerous weapons. The U.S. has launched a war unlike any it has fought in the past. This one is being waged not to defend against an enemy that has attacked the U.S. or its interests but to pre-empt the possibility that one day it might do so. The war has turned much of the world against America. Even in countries that have joined the "coalition of the willing," big majorities view it as the impetuous action of a superpower led by a bully. This divide threatens to emasculate a United Nations that failed to channel a diplomatic settlement or brand the war as legitimate. The endgame will see the U.S. front and center, attempting to remake not merely Iraq but the entire region. The hope is that the Middle East, a cockpit of instability for decades, will eventually settle into habits of democracy, prosperity and peace. The risks are that Washington's rupture with some of its closest allies will deepen and that the war will become a cause for which a new generation of terrorists can be recruited.
Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030331/wroad.html
(pages 1-6)
First Stop, Iraq
How did the U.S. end up taking on Saddam? The inside story of how Iraq jumped to the top of Bush's agenda—and why the outcome there may foreshadow a different world order
By Michael Elliott and James Carney
Posted Sunday, March 23, 2003; 2:31 p.m. EST
"F___ Saddam. We're taking him out." Those were the words of President George W. Bush, who had poked his head into the office of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. It was March 2002, and Rice was meeting with three U.S. Senators, discussing how to deal with Iraq through the United Nations, or perhaps in a coalition with America's Middle East allies. Bush wasn't interested. He waved his hand dismissively, recalls a participant, and neatly summed up his Iraq policy in that short phrase. The Senators laughed uncomfortably; Rice flashed a knowing smile. The President left the room.
A year later, Bush's outburst has been translated into action, as cruise missiles and smart bombs slam into Baghdad. But the apparent simplicity of his message belies the gravity at hand. Sure, the outcome is certain: America will win the war, and Saddam will be taken out. But what is unfolding in Iraq is far bigger than regime change or even the elimination of dangerous weapons. The U.S. has launched a war unlike any it has fought in the past. This one is being waged not to defend against an enemy that has attacked the U.S. or its interests but to pre-empt the possibility that one day it might do so. The war has turned much of the world against America. Even in countries that have joined the "coalition of the willing," big majorities view it as the impetuous action of a superpower led by a bully. This divide threatens to emasculate a United Nations that failed to channel a diplomatic settlement or brand the war as legitimate. The endgame will see the U.S. front and center, attempting to remake not merely Iraq but the entire region. The hope is that the Middle East, a cockpit of instability for decades, will eventually settle into habits of democracy, prosperity and peace. The risks are that Washington's rupture with some of its closest allies will deepen and that the war will become a cause for which a new generation of terrorists can be recruited.
How did we get here? In one sense, this war is easy to explain. Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator who hates America and has shown a wicked fondness for acquiring and using weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Since Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. has been acutely aware of what can happen when powerful weapons fall into the hands of those with no compunction about their use and no sympathy for those they kill. Put those facts together, and you can argue that Saddam's days were numbered from the moment the attacks on New York City and Washington happened. But that suggests a fatalistic inevitability to the story and ignores the dramatic shifts in opinion and influence among Washington's key players. In truth, this war is just as much about an idea—that Iraq is but the first step in an American-led effort to make the world a safer place. For some in the Administration, the principles that have shaped policy on Iraq are generally applicable; they could be used with other nations, like Iran or North Korea, that have or threaten to acquire terrible weapons. The least understood story of the Iraq crisis is how the idea behind it took root and eventually brought America to the edge of Baghdad.
In this battle march of an idea, there are four central players: President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and—least known to the general public—Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. One by one, these men signed on to the imperative of taking on Iraq and its weapons, and sending a message to the world. This story does not start where one might suppose, on the day last year when Bush identified Iraq—with Iran and North Korea—as part of the "axis of evil." Nor does it start with the horrors of Sept. 11. The confrontation with Iraq can be traced to 1991 and the end of what some Administration officials have since last fall called "the first Gulf War"—the one waged and won by the President's father.
SOUNDING THE ALARM
When senior advisers of the first President Bush—including Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Cheney, then Secretary of Defense—gathered in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon, Feb. 27, 1991, they agreed that their military and political objectives in the Persian Gulf had been met. Saddam's forces, which had invaded Kuwait seven months before, had been routed. General Norman Schwarzkopf, commander in chief of Operation Desert Storm, concurred in the judgment. Bush had a clear goal for the war: it was not to topple Saddam, much less to march on Baghdad, but to drive the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. The President had assembled a grand coalition, including armies from many Arab states, behind that aim, and he was not inclined to deviate from it. "Bush was a firm believer in sticking with his word," says a former senior aide. "It was his word and his promises that got that coalition together. There was never any doubt in his mind that the war had to end and we couldn't go to Baghdad."
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None of the four men—Bush, Powell, Cheney and Schwarzkopf—most closely identified with the decision to cease hostilities at midnight, Feb. 27, has ever publicly disowned it. Indeed, of the broader top echelon of decision makers at the end of Gulf War I, only one has cast doubt on how it was concluded—and at the time, nobody asked his opinion. But his misgivings about the cease-fire 12 years ago have arguably had more of an effect on global politics than the certainties of those who are sure they were right. That man was Paul Wolfowitz, then Under Secretary for policy in the Pentagon, the third-ranking civilian under Cheney. He was 47 at the time and already a fixture in the Washington policy village, one of those men who spend their life flitting among government positions, foreign embassies and academia. Wolfowitz has served every President since Gerald Ford except Bill Clinton. A man of great personal charm, he has friends of all political persuasions. Of his many distinctions, the most unusual, perhaps, is this: he is the only Washington bureaucrat who has been fictionalized in a Saul Bellow novel.
That odd fact sheds light on Wolfowitz's membership in a much smaller subset of Washington officials. In Bellow's novel Ravelstein, the Wolfowitz character is a brilliant former student of the book's eponymous hero, who is based on Bellow's old friend and fellow professor at the University of Chicago, the culture critic Allan Bloom. It was at Chicago, the home of Bloom and the conservative political philosopher Leo Strauss, that Wolfowitz was first exposed to the set of ideas that is now often called "neoconservative." In their belief system, neoconservatives—or neo-Reaganites, as some prefer to be called—are at once pessimists and optimists. The world, they believe, is a dangerous, threatening place. Civilization and democracy hang by a thread; great beasts prowl the forest, ready to prey on those not tough enough to meet them in equal combat. At the same time—this is the optimistic bit—the U.S. is endowed by Providence with the power to make the world better if it will only take the risks of leadership to do so; if, in the current jargon, it is sufficiently "forward leaning." At crucial times, they argue, the U.S. has been just that—notably when Ronald Reagan used American technological prowess and cash to challenge the Soviet Union to a contest it could not win.
The U.S., neoconservatives believe, is unique in its power and its principles. It cannot allow its mission to be tied down by international agreements that diminish its freedom of action. At the same time, neoconservatives insist that theirs is a generous and internationalist vision; other nations, other peoples, will willingly support U.S. policies—which, by definition, are good for them as well as Americans—if only those policies are clearly articulated and implemented with determination.
These beliefs are not the work of thoughtless gunslingers. Wolfowitz, like many of his colleagues, couldn't be less of a cowboy. (Not many cattle in Chevy Chase, Md.) These are men whose shoes are more likely to be penny loafers than hand-tooled boots, who speak foreign languages (even French!) and are at home in rarefied academic environments. They know what they think. In a recent interview Wolfowitz told TIME, "I believe this country is what it stands for, more than anything else. If we're not true to our principles, we're not serving our national interest." He bridles at the way some lampoon him, as if he believes that, with U.S. intervention, Jeffersonian democracy will pop up in the Middle East like mushrooms after a storm. But he explicitly links the growth of democracy to America's interests. "The tendency toward successful representative self-government," he told TIME, "works for the benefit of the United States and the world."
If we're not true to our principles, we're not serving our national interest.
— PAUL WOLFOWITZ
When Wolfowitz heard that Gulf War I was over, he didn't share the inner circle's view of a job well done. Although he didn't suggest that Schwarzkopf should march on Baghdad—and has not done so since—he was disappointed that the war did not continue long enough to ensure Saddam's downfall. He was horrified when the U.S. stood by as Saddam's helicopter gunships mowed down the Shi'ites in southern Iraq whom the U.S. had encouraged to rise in rebellion. To Wolfowitz, Saddam's survival represented an opportunity missed. In a 1998 congressional hearing, he said, "Some might say—and I think I would sympathize with this view—that perhaps if we had delayed the cease-fire by a few more days, we might have got rid of him."
Regimes like Iraq's, dictatorial and willing to acquire and use terrifying weapons, have long been a preoccupation of the neoconservatives. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, they argue, it is these states that most threaten the U.S. and other democracies. They are today's beasts in the forest, and they need to be tamed. Shortly after Gulf War I ended in 1991, Wolfowitz got a chance to show how. Cheney asked him to overhaul the Pentagon's basic strategic-planning document, known as the Defense Planning Guidance. In March 1992, a draft was first leaked to the New York Times. Forward leaning wasn't the half of it; the document suggested that the U.S. should discourage other nations "from challenging our leadership." The U.S., the draft went on to say, "may be faced with the question of whether to take military steps to prevent the development or use of weapons of mass destruction." Those steps, Wolfowitz argued, might include pre-emptive action—and the Guidance made clear that both Iraq and North Korea were among those at whom the new policy would be aimed.
At a time when the Bush Administration was trying to coax a defeated Russia and a newly unified Germany into becoming full and respected partners in the international system, the draft's bellicose terms were tactless. Cheney and Wolfowitz were told to tone them down. But from his perch at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he waited out the Clinton years, Wolfowitz continued to talk and write about Iraq. Like a traveler struggling to keep his campfire burning amid chilly winds, he took every chance to stoke the fire, reminding all who would listen that there was unfinished business on the Tigris, that Saddam remained in power and still had his weapons. In 1997, as Clinton's policy on Iraq lurched from crisis to crisis—with U.N. weapons inspectors consistently thwarted by Iraq and support for a more aggressive approach to Saddam ebbing away under French and Russian pressure at the Security Council—Wolfowitz co-authored a Weekly Standard article in which he pondered whether Clinton's most important foreign-policy legacy would be "letting this tyrant get stronger." In January 1998, Wolfowitz joined other neoconservatives in signing a letter to Clinton arguing that "containment" of Saddam had failed and asserting that "removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power ... needs to become the aim of American foreign policy." In a prescient note, the letter said, "American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the U.N. Security Council."
Of the 18 signatories, eight now hold senior positions in the Bush Administration. But high office in itself was not enough. If they were to rid the world of Saddam and his weapons, they would have to bring on board one influential conservative whose name wasn't on the letter—who at the time was in thought and deed far removed from the Washington policy village. That person was Dick Cheney, who had good reasons to contest the view that the end of Gulf War I had been mishandled—because he was one of those who ended it.
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THE RELUCTANT IMPERIALIST
Of all those responsible for the cease-fire in February 1991, none seemed more comfortable with the decision than Cheney. In many interviews Cheney explained why he opposed marching to Baghdad. If U.S. forces got there, he argued, it would not be clear what they were meant to do. Nor was it evident how a new government would handle divisions among Iraq's Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds, how long the U.S. would have to stay in Iraq, or what would happen when it left.
Two considerations informed Cheney's view. The first, according to Dave Gribbin, Cheney's closest aide at the Pentagon, was practical. Just a few days after the invasion of Kuwait, Bush had assigned Cheney to win support from Saddam's Arab neighbors. "He was out there early telling the Arab world that the U.S. would come in and do just a couple of things," says Gribbin. "Get Saddam out of Kuwait and dismantle his ability to harm his neighbors. Since he promised that, he stuck with that. To occupy Iraq wasn't in the deal."
The second reason—the more interesting one—turned on Cheney's political philosophy. Cheney is from Wyoming, and in 1991 he was pretty much a straight-up-and-down Western conservative, the kind of man who is skeptical of big, expansive government projects—except irrigation for cattle ranges. He was prepared to go to war in the gulf because it was in America's national interest to do so, not for any starry-eyed vision (few men have ever had fewer stars in their eyes) that the U.S., as a kindly imperial power, would bring an era of peace, order and good government to the Middle East. "He's not much for waxing rhapsodic," says Gribbin of his old boss. In fact, when Cheney left government, he gave the impression that he wasn't thinking much about Iraq or Saddam. In 1995 he moved to Texas to serve as CEO of Halliburton, the giant oil-services company. A colleague of Cheney's in both Bush administrations recalled how he would drop by Cheney's office when he visited Texas. "His interest in policy almost disappeared," says the colleague. "He was enjoying being out of it and in the business world."
By the fall of 2000, however, Cheney was back in it—big time. As the vice-presidential running mate of the son of his old boss, he was beginning to focus on problems the Clinton Administration had been unable to solve. High among them was Iraq's continued defiance of U.N. resolutions requiring it to disarm. And when he broached the topic on the campaign trail, Cheney sounded ever more hawkish. He had been outraged by Saddam's attempt in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush in Kuwait, and he thought the short bombing campaign after Iraq kicked out the U.N. inspectors in 1998 was a joke. "We have swept that problem under the rug for too long," he told a campaign aide in 2000, speaking of Iraq. "We have a festering problem there."
When Cheney was tapped to create the second Bush Administration, he seeded it with men who had once worked for him. Wolfowitz became Deputy Secretary of Defense under Cheney's old friend and mentor Donald Rumsfeld (another signatory of the 1998 letter). But as is often the case, the new responsibilities of office meant that officials had to postpone trying to implement their most cherished to-do list. In the State Department, Powell was working on a plan for "smart sanctions" on Iraq—tightening the porous U.N. embargo while allowing more humanitarian support for innocent Iraqis. The neoconservatives weren't impressed, but in those initial months they were able to do little to develop their own strategies for ousting Saddam.
Then Cheney, probably the most influential Vice President in U.S. history, began to pay attention. His interest grew out of the Bush Administration's obsession with building a system to defend the U.S. against missile attacks. For the neoconservatives, missile defense and Iraq's possession of WMDs were both examples of a common concern, "asymmetric threats," or the idea that nations with far less conventional military strength than the U.S. would use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons to redress the balance. Cheney had been charged with developing a policy on homeland security in response to asymmetric threats, which meant that Iraq's continued possession of WMDs was a problem that landed on his desk. In morning intelligence briefings, says a former Administration official, the Vice President began to raise questions about Saddam's regime. Cheney and others, says the official, would say things like, "Tell me about Iraq, tell me about Iraq, tell me about Iraq. What's the status of their WMDs? What's their support of terrorism?" When senior members of the intelligence community answered that they had little new information on Iraq—no smoking guns on WMDs or terrorism—the message would come back: "Try harder. Need to know more."
We have swept [Iraq] under the rug for too long. We have a festering problem there.
— DICK CHENEY
In an interview with the New Yorker in May 2001, Cheney in two sentences linked North Korea, Iran and Iraq—the three countries that were later immortalized as the "axis of evil"—as threats to American security. Cheney still didn't buy into the whole neoconservative analysis. His concern was the national security of the U.S., not some grand design for remaking the Middle East. But after Sept. 11, 2001, it was harder to keep those two thoughts in separate boxes. The attacks on New York City and Washington gave the neoconservatives an opportunity. The logic seemed airtight: Saddam had WMDs; terrorists had attacked America; if al-Qaeda ever got hold of Saddam's weapons, the future didn't bear thinking about. The afternoon after the attacks, Wolfowitz, in conference calls with other officials, started voicing suspicions that Iraq might somehow have been involved. Within hours, he was lobbying Cheney on the topic, arguing—a central plank of the neoconservative analysis—that Iraq was also somehow behind the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Within days, James Woolsey, once Clinton's head of the CIA but who had joined the neoconservatives on Iraq, was dispatched by the Pentagon to find proof that Iraq was linked to al-Qaeda.
Cheney was skeptical of the claim. (U.S. intelligence has never been able to substantiate a link between Iraq and the 1993 World Trade Center attack—or the assault of 2001.) But Wolfowitz stayed on the case. On the weekend after Sept. 11, Bush convened his national-security team at Camp David. Wolfowitz argued that if military action was to be taken against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which was harboring the leadership of al-Qaeda, it should also be taken against Iraq. Saddam's regime had WMDs, had shown that it was willing to use them, and harbored a continuing hostility to the U.S. Powell was opposed to anything so ambitious, however, and Cheney didn't back up his old Pentagon colleague. Rice says the Vice President was a "proponent of doing one thing at a time—Afghanistan first."
But Cheney wasn't entirely in Powell's camp. In fact, in his taciturn, deliberate way, Cheney was starting to go through a shift in his intellectual bearings. "Dick Cheney," says Wolfowitz, "is someone whose view of the need to get rid of Saddam Hussein was transformed by Sept. 11—by the recognition of the danger posed by the connection between terrorists and WMDs and by the growing evidence of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda." After Sept. 11, Cheney began running a self-education seminar on Islam and the Middle East, meeting with experts, a Cheney aide says, "to discuss how might a postwar Iraq take shape and what are the prospects for democracy in the region." Cheney, friends say, has gradually abandoned his former skepticism about the potential for democracy in the Middle East. Among those who have influenced him: Bernard Lewis, a Princeton historian, and Fouad Ajami, a former colleague of Wolfowitz's at Johns Hopkins. Both men passionately believe that the lack of democracy and pluralism are central to the chronic instability of the Middle East and that any serious policy there must aspire to do more than leave existing autocracies in power.
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Republican Congressman Porter Goss recalls a telling moment a few months after Sept. 11, when he was among the guests at a "sort of off-night dinner" at the Vice President's residence. Lewis was there too, and Cheney, when he arrived, promptly asked the professor to conduct a seminar on Islam, the Koran and Muslim attitudes toward Americans. Cheney expressed his views most forcefully in a major speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Nashville in August 2002. "Regime change in Iraq would bring about a number of benefits to the region," he said, including "the chance to promote the values that can bring lasting peace." He quoted Ajami's conviction that after liberation, the streets of Baghdad and Basra would "erupt in joy in the same way as the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans." By last summer, to the surprise of many old critics, Cheney's intellectual journey was complete. William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, the Koran of neoconservative thought, was critical when Bush chose Cheney as a running mate precisely because of his defense of the way the Gulf War ended. Now, says Kristol, neoconservatives happily "consider him a fellow-traveler." But a couple of others still had to be persuaded to come along on the journey.
THE EUREKA MOMENT
At the time of Gulf War I, George W. Bush was spending a lot more time worrying about the Texas Rangers of the American League than about the Rangers in Army fatigues. During his father's presidency, Bush was an occasional and important political fixer, but he was never involved—never wanted to be involved, and was never invited to be involved—in foreign policy. When he ran for the presidency in 2000, his team of advisers spent little time on Iraq. To be sure, whenever he was asked about Saddam, Bush had the tough talk down. In an interview with TIME during the campaign, he was asked what he would do if Saddam tested him. "That would be good," said Bush. "I've learned one thing; I'd jump on him."
But despite the aggressive language, there was no sign that he had accepted the logic of a pre-emptive strike against Saddam. After Sept. 11, he initially resisted making Iraq an early target of American might. Wolfowitz, says a Republican lawmaker, "was like a parrot bringing [Iraq] up all the time. It was getting on the President's nerves." At one point in the Camp David meeting after Sept. 11, Wolfowitz tried to persuade Bush to back a scheme to lop off the southern part of Iraq, including Basra, its third largest city, and some important oil fields. That went nowhere. And no matter how hard the intelligence agencies looked, they couldn't come up with a link between Saddam and Sept. 11 that might persuade Bush of the virtues of an early strike.
Yet in January 2002, Bush identified Iraq as a member of an "axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world." The President told Congress that he "would not wait on events while dangers gather"—a clear sign that he was contemplating pre-emptive strikes against those with WMDs. By April 2002, on Bush's instruction, Cheney toured the Middle East trying to make the case for action against Saddam.
Iraq is part of an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.
— GEORGE W. BUSH
What had changed? What had brought Bush into the get-Iraq-now camp? The most important factor was also the simplest. By the fall of 2001, Bush and other senior policymakers in Washington were scared out of their wits. On Oct. 4 came the first anthrax attacks on New York City and Washington. Again, no evidence was found linking Saddam to the attacks. But Saddam had once admitted developing anthrax weapons to U.N. inspectors, and now anthrax was being used to kill Americans. Even if a link to Baghdad could not be proved, this was enough to stiffen the spines of those who thought Saddam's WMDs had been left alone too long.
Then, in November 2001, as alliance soldiers combed through al-Qaeda safe houses in Afghanistan, documents and computer records revealed that Osama bin Laden's network had been trying to acquire WMDs. Administration officials didn't have to work hard to identify a possible supplier. "Iraq," says a White House official, "was the easiest place they could get them from." Says a former senior Administration official: "The eureka moment was that realization by the President that were a WMD to fall into [terrorists'] hands, their willingness to use it would be unquestioned. So we must act pre-emptively to ensure that those who have that capability aren't allowed to proliferate it." Those seeking to convince Bush that Saddam should be a target now had important allies. Throughout the 1990s, the uniformed military had been unenthusiastic about intervention in Iraq. After Sept. 11, that changed. "It became clear that these terrorists would kill as many Americans as they could," says an Army general. "If they could get their hands on chemical, biological or nuclear weapons—from Saddam or from someone else—they would use them against us."
There was more. By 2002, say advisers to the President, Bush had become increasingly horrified by stories of Saddam's brutal regime—by the ways in which Iraq's security services raped and tortured his opponents, gassed Kurds rebelling against rule from Baghdad in 1988 and summarily executed those Saddam mistrusted. This fascination with Saddam's cruelty, says a source close to the White House, was neither ghoulish nor an expression of Bush's propensity to identify evil in the world. The point, says this adviser, is that Bush thinks Saddam is insane. "If there is one thing standing between those who want WMDs and those who have them," says this source, "it is this madman. Depending on the sanity of Saddam is not an option."
By this point, Bush was on board for action against Iraq. But in what form? It was easy to say Iraq should be disarmed and Saddam unseated from power if he would not abandon his WMDs. But by the spring of 2002, the Administration had no idea how to achieve such a goal. Would the U.S. do it alone? What would Washington tell its allies in the Middle East and Europe? In March, as he did 12 years earlier, Cheney set out on a trip to the Middle East to rally support for an aggressive American policy against Iraq. The trip didn't go well. Cheney's hosts wanted to talk about the rising tide of violence in Israel and the occupied territories, not about Iraq. If there was going to be an international effort to disarm Saddam or remove him from power, it would have to be led by the man who, up to now, had steadfastly resisted the neoconservative case—Colin Powell.
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NO LONGER A DOVE
When Powell took over at State in 2001, he had no illusions that Clinton's policy on Iraq was a success, because he had to cope with its failures. Every day news would arrive of another violation of the U.N. sanctions—civilian planes from Arab nations making direct flights to Baghdad, brazen exports of oil and imports of prohibited goods. Powell didn't want to ditch the sanctions, as he thought they had some value, but he wanted to make them more effective. "Though [the Iraqis] may be pursuing weapons of mass destruction of all kinds," he said in February 2001, "it is not clear how successful they have been. We ought to declare this a success. We have kept him contained, kept him in his box."
That analysis, of course, was precisely the one the neoconservatives had long rejected, and it was inevitably subject to revision after Sept. 11. At the Camp David meeting, Powell argued against targeting Iraq, but he too knew the game had changed. There would be no more talk, says a State official, of Saddam being kept "in his box." By the spring of 2002, the Administration had a new problem. Beyond that nifty phrase "the axis of evil," it didn't have a forward-leaning policy on Iraq. It didn't have anything. Cheney's trip to the Middle East, designed to start building a coalition for action to disarm Iraq, had fallen well short of his hopes. One of his aides admitted that the team had underestimated Arab anger at Israel's crackdown on the occupied territories. "We thought [the Arab governments] were exaggerating 'the street' for their own purposes," says the official. "They weren't."
After Cheney's return, the Administration's incoherence on Iraq began to spill out. Officials started free-lancing. Exiled Iraqi opposition leaders, convinced that war was imminent, began lobbying for favors. Campaigning for congressional Republicans, Cheney started to test the waters for a pre-emptive strike to "remove serious threats to our country before they materialize." (He never mentioned Iraq by name, but everyone knew what he meant.) Republican congressional leaders, facing an election, fretted that the disarray would hurt them politically. At one point that spring, a senior White House official said in exasperation, "The dirty little secret of Iraq is that there is no plan." Rice, responding to a request by Democratic Senator Joe Biden for Administration officials to appear before his Foreign Relations Committee, was refreshingly blunt. "We're not ready yet," she told Biden, who held the hearings anyway. They were covered widely as a preparation for war, to the consternation of Republican congressional leaders. Trent Lott, then Senate leader of the G.O.P., called Cheney to tell him the media were making the Administration's Iraq policy for it. "We've got to get this thing on track," Lott said.
This is a test that, in my judgment, the Security Council did not meet.
— COLIN POWELL
Powell was trying to do just that. On Aug. 5, he and Rice had dinner with B