Bush plotted Iraq war from the start

Compiled by Eamon Martin

Jan. 13 (AGR)— The Bush administration started making detailed plans for the invasion of Iraq within days of coming to office, with the President himself anxious to find a pretext to overthrow Saddam Hussein, a high-ranking former cabinet member announced this week.

The revelation is the latest in a string of potential embarrassments for the White House offered by the former US Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, who has gone on the record with a new book looking at his bumpy two years at the center of US power, called “The Price of Loyalty”. His remarks represent the most sustained and damaging criticism of the Bush administration from a former insider since the President came to power.

O’Neill said invading Iraq was “topic A” at the very first meeting of President George W. Bush’s National Security Council (NSC), 10 days after his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2001, and continued to be an abiding theme in follow-up meetings. O’Neill said Bush was looking for an excuse to oust Hussein.

“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq,” said O’Neill, who was a participant in all the meetings and provided voluminous minutes and other documents to the book’s author, Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal columnist Ron Suskind. “It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The President saying ‘Go find me a way to do this’.”

Further, as a member of the president’s National Security team he said he never saw any evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

O’Neill’s account of his two years as US Treasury Secretary is a startling tale of an administration nominally led by a disengaged figurehead president but driven by a “praetorian guard” of hard-line right-wingers led by Vice President Dick Cheney, ready to bend circumstances and facts to fit their political agenda.

According to the former aluminum mogul and longstanding Republican moderate who was fired from the US Treasury in December 2002, the administration came to office determined to oust Saddam Hussein and used the Sept. 11 attacks as a convenient justification.

O’Neill is the first cabinet member to implicate Bush directly in planning a war against Iraq so early in his presidency. One of the documents passed to Suskind was a secret dossier from the first few weeks of the administration entitled “Plan for post-Saddam Iraq”.

In an interview that aired Jan. 10 on CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” O’Neill said he was surprised nobody at the NSC meetings asked questions such as “Why Saddam?” or “Why now?” “For me,” he added, “the notion of preemption, that the US has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is really a huge leap.”

The former Treasury Secretary gives an unflattering portrait of the President in the book and in follow-up interviews, describing him as disengaged from the issues and apparently uninterested in dialogue with advisers. In cabinet meetings, O’Neill said, the President was “like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people” — having nothing to say and allowing others to fix the agenda.

Along with Iraq, the Bush administration, as described by O’Neill, was equally fixated on granting unprecedented tax cuts to the nation’s richest people who had bankrolled its election campaign. It was not prepared to listen to an anxious Treasury Secretary warning of dangerously ballooning deficits.

A year ago, O’Neill was forced from his post because he opposed another round of tax cuts. Vice President Dick Cheney — who helped bring O’Neill into the administration — called the Treasury Secretary weeks after Bush had assured him that rumored staff changes in the economic team did not mean his job was in peril.

“Paul, the President has decided to make some changes in the economic team. And you’re part of the change,” Cheney told O’Neill.

The bloodless way he was cut loose by his old friend shocked O’Neill, Suskind writes, but what came after was even more shocking. Cheney asked him to announce that it was O’Neill’s decision to leave Washington to return to private life. O’Neill refused, saying, “I’m too old to begin telling lies now.”

In the book, O’Neill suggests a very dark understanding of what happens to those who don’t show loyalty. “These people are nasty and they have a long memory,” he tells Suskind.

But he also believes that by speaking out even in the face of inevitable White House wrath, he can demonstrate loyalty to something he prizes: the truth. “Loyalty to a person and whatever they say or do, that’s the opposite of real loyalty, which is loyalty based on inquiry, and telling someone what you really think and feel — your best estimation of the truth instead of what they want to hear.” That goal is worth the price of retribution, O’Neill says, adding that he is going public because he thinks the Bush administration has been too secretive about how decisions have been made. Plus, as he told Suskind: “I’m an old guy, and I’m rich. And there’s nothing they can do to hurt me.”

O’Neill said that he’s taking no money for his part in the book.

Suskind says he interviewed hundreds of people for the book — including several cabinet members.

O’Neill is the only one who spoke on the record, but Suskind says that US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned O’Neill not to do this book.

Was it a warning, or a threat?

“I don’t think so. I think it was the White House concerned,” says Suskind. “Understandably, because O’Neill has spent extraordinary amounts of time with the president. They said, ‘This could really be the one moment where things are revealed.’”

Not only did O’Neill give Suskind his time, he gave him 19,000 internal documents.

“Everything’s there: Memoranda to the President, handwritten “thank you” notes, 100-page documents — stuff that’s sensitive,” says Suskind, adding that in some cases, it included transcripts of private, high-level National Security Council meetings. “You don’t get higher than that.”

He obtained one Pentagon document, dated Mar. 5, 2001, and entitled “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield contracts,” which includes a map of potential areas for exploration.

“It talks about contractors around the world from, you know, 30-40 countries. And which ones have what intentions,” says Suskind, “on oil in Iraq.”

During his campaign for the presidency, candidate Bush had criticized the Clinton-Gore administration for being too interventionist: “If we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we’re going to have a serious problem coming down the road. And I’m going to prevent that.”

“The thing that’s most surprising, I think, is how emphatically, from the very first, the administration had said ‘X’ during the campaign, but from the first day was often doing ‘Y,’” says Suskind. “Not just saying ‘Y,’ but actively moving toward the opposite of what they had said during the election.”

Sources: BBC, Boston Globe, CBS News, Guardian (UK), Independent (UK), Time Magazine

Global warming to kill off one million
species by 2050

By Paul Brown

Jan. 8— Climate change over the next 50 years is expected to drive a quarter of land animals and plants into extinction, according to the first comprehensive study into the effect of higher temperatures on the natural world.

The sheer scale of the disaster facing the planet shocked those involved in the research. They estimate that more than 1 million species will be lost by 2050.

The results are described as “terrifying” by Chris Thomas, professor of conservation biology at Leeds University, who is lead author of the research from four continents published today in the magazine Nature.

Much of that loss — more than one in 10 of all plants and animals — is already irreversible because of the extra global warming gases already discharged into the atmosphere. But the scientists say that action to curb greenhouse gases now could save many more from the same fate.

It took two years for the largest global collaboration of experts to make the first major assessment of the effect of climate change on six biologically rich regions of the world taking in 20 percent of the land surface.

The research in Europe, Australia, Central and South America, and South Africa, showed that species living in mountainous areas had a greater chance of survival because they could simply move uphill to get cooler.

Those in flatter areas such as Brazil, Mexico, and Australia, were more vulnerable, faced with the impossible task of moving thousands of miles to find suitable conditions.

Birds, which had the greatest chance of escape, could in theory move to a more suitable climate, but the trees and other habitat they needed for survival could not keep pace and all would die.

Professor Thomas said: “When scientists set about research they hope to come up with definite results, but what we found we wish we had not. It was far, far worse than we thought, and what we have discovered may even be an underestimate.”

Among the more startling findings of the scientists was that of 24 species of butterfly studied in Australia, all but three would disappear in much of their current range, and half would become extinct.

In South Africa, major conservation areas such as Kruger national park risked losing up to 60 percent of the species under their protection.

In the Cerrado region of Brazil — also known as the Brazilian Savannah — which covers one fifth of the country, a study of 163 tree species showed that up to 70 would become extinct. Many of the plants and trees that exist in this savannah occur nowhere else in the world. The scientists concluded that 1,700 to 2,100 of these species — between 39 percent and 48 percent of the total — would disappear.

In Europe, the continent least affected by climate change, survival rates were better, but even here under the higher estimates of climate change, a quarter of the birds could become extinct, and between 11 percent and 17 percent of plant species.

One British example is the Scottish crossbill, which is found nowhere else. The future climate in Scotland will be different and the birds will be unable to survive, especially with rivals from warmer climates moving in.

The crossbill would need to move to Iceland, but currently there are virtually no trees or suitable food. The scientists conclude: “It seems unlikely that the species will manage to move to Iceland.”

In Mexico, studies in the Chihuahuan desert confirmed that on flatter land extinction was more likely because a small change in climate would require migrations over vast distances for survival. One third of 1,870 species examined would be in trouble and three small rodents, the smokey pocket gopher, Alcorn’s pocket gopher, and the jico deer mouse would go the way of the dodo.

In South Africa, where many popular garden plants originate, 300 plant species were studied and more than one third were expected to die out, including South Africa’s national flower, the king protea.

Commenting on the findings in Nature, two other scientists, J Alan Pounds and Robert Puschendorf, who has studied the extinction of frogs in the mountains of Costa Rica since the 1980s as a result of climate change, say their colleagues have been “optimistic.”

When other factors as well as increased temperatures were taken into account the extinctions would probably be greater.

“The risk of extinction increases as global warming interacts with other factors — such as landscape modification, species invasions, and build-up of carbon dioxide — to disrupt communities and ecological interactions.”

So many species are already destined for extinction because it takes at least 25 years for the greenhouse effect — or the trapping of the sun’s rays by the carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide already added to the air — to have its full effect on the planet. Deserts, grasslands, and forests are already changing to make survival impossible.

The continuous discharging of more greenhouse gases, particularly by the US, is making matters considerably worse. The research says if mankind continues to burn oil, coal and gas at the current rate, up to one third of all life forms will be doomed by 2050.

Professor Thomas said it was urgent to switch from fossil fuels to a non-carbon economy as quickly as possible. “It is possible to drastically reduce the output of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and this research makes it imperative we do it as soon as possible. If we can stabilize the climate and even reverse the warming we could save these species, but we must start to act now.”

If conservation groups wanted to save species they should devote at least half their energies to political campaigning to reduce global warming, because that was the greatest single threat to survival of the species, Thomas agrues.

John Lanchbery, climate change campaigner for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, agreed: “This is a deeply depressing paper. President Bush risks having the biggest impact on wildlife since the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs.

“At best, in 50 years, a host of wildlife will be committed to extinction because of human-induced climate change. At worst, the outcome does not bear thinking about. Drastic action to cut emissions is clearly needed by everyone, but especially the US.”

Source: Guardian (UK)

Iraq blotted out rest of the world in 2003 TV news

By Jim Lobe

Washington, DC, Jan. 7, (IPS)— AIDS killed three million people around the world last year, more than two million of them in Africa. The three major US television networks’ evening news programs devoted a combined total of 39 minutes to the issue.

The American Geophysical Union and the US National Academy of Sciences both concluded last year that greenhouse gas emissions almost certainly contribute to global warming, which is altering the Earth’s weather and climate in potentially catastrophic ways. The three evening network news shows devoted 15 minutes to global warming in 2003.

Over the same year, the United States invaded and occupied Iraq, an operation in which some 8,000 people might have been killed, the same toll as AIDS takes in a single day. The three major networks’ evening news shows devoted 4,047 minutes to coverage of Iraq.

It is statistics like these, compiled annually by ADT Research of New York, that make this observation by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan sound understated. “All of us — leaders, politicians, diplomats and journalists — have been very focused on Iraq this year,” he told reporters at his year-end press conference in December.

“We simply haven’t paid enough attention to the many other pressing challenges facing us.”

Indeed, the 2003 statistics — compiled by ADT President Andrew Tyndall — who has been monitoring the half-hour evening news shows daily for more than a decade, suggest that Iraq shined so brightly in the television “foreign news” universe of 2003 that it blotted out almost everything else.

“It shows that the news agenda is being set in Washington, when it comes to foreign news in particular,” said William Dorman, who teaches political science and journalism at California State University in Sacramento.

“It focuses our attention on something — Iraq — that many people never really considered a major threat in the first place, and distracts us from very real dangers in the world.”

Recent surveys have shown that about 80 percent of the US public say they get most of their news from television, rather than other media sources like newspapers.

While cable news television, such as CNN and Fox News, has become more widely watched in recent years, the three networks normally attract about 30 million consistent viewers each evening, surveys add.

For many North Americans, the nightly news is the only contact with the world outside US borders.

ADT’s ‘Tyndall Report’, a weekly summary of the national network news broadcasts that is considered authoritative within the industry, tabulated all of the 14,635 minutes of news coverage on the three networks’ evening shows from Monday through Friday throughout 2003.

Of the year’s top 20 stories — all those that claimed more than 107 minutes of coverage — Iraq-related stories ranked one through four.

Invasion and combat stories, which featured “embedded” reporters, were at the top with 1,602 minutes, followed by coverage of the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime (1,007 mins), the post-war reconstruction effort (658 mins) and the pre-war UN weapons inspections and controversy (575 mins).

All Iraq-related stories added up to 4,047 minutes, or about 30 percent of all news in 2003 and about 25 percent more than the networks’ combined coverage of the 2000 presidential elections.

Claiming the number five position was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which accounted for 284 minutes during the year, a dramatic drop from 2002, when it was the top news story with 999 minutes.

The California governor recall election and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s victory ranked number six (239 mins), followed by domestic terrorism preparedness (205 mins); the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster (198 mins); the SARS outbreak in Asia and Canada (178 mins); and the electricity blackout in the northeastern US and Canada (165 mins).

The most widely covered foreign story after SARS was the hunt for al-Qaeda members (132 mins), while North Korea’s nuclear program, which — unlike that of Iraq — is believed to have already produced weapons, ranked number 19.

Remarkably, Afghanistan, which ranked first in 2001 and third in 2002, fell below the top 20 in 2003, despite the resurgence of Taliban activity and the continued operations of some 11,000 US troops there.

In 2003, the three networks gave coverage of Afghanistan a total of only 80 minutes, or less than 20 percent of the attention it received the year before.

Following Afghanistan in coverage terms was the civil war in Liberia (72 mins), primarily due to the debate last summer over whether to send in US troops, who had been deployed just offshore, to help secure a cease-fire.

Liberia was the networks’ top story for Africa, followed by the AIDS crisis, and Bush’s trip to the continent (18 mins).

Terrorist attacks against tourist facilities in Kenya earned that country eight minutes of coverage, while the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which is believed to have claimed three million lives in the past five years, was covered for a total of ... five minutes.

“It seems that Africa receives attention only when Americans are there — either in the form of warships, Bush or tourists,” noted Salih Booker, director of Africa Action, a grassroots advocacy group. The paucity of Africa coverage, including the AIDS crisis, he added, “confirms Africa’s status as the invisible continent.”

If Africa was virtually invisible on network news, Latin America practically disappeared. The US response to violence in Colombia and repression in Cuba were the top-rated Latin American stories of the year, each having received 18 minutes on the three networks.

The total amount of foreign-related news that appeared on the network news in 2003 was about 25 percent more than the average year over the past 15, according to the Tyndall report, but much of it, particularly regarding Iraq, “was not really foreign coverage,” noted Daniel Hallin, a political science professor at University of California at San Diego and the author of an influential book on TV coverage of the Vietnam War.

“If you look at the coverage, you’ll find it’s mostly about Americans, not Iraqis,” he said, although he added that more attention is being paid to Iraqis than was paid to Vietnamese during the Vietnam War.

Dorman noted that, through its policy of “embedding” reporters with US troops, the Pentagon probably succeeded in claiming much more time in news broadcasts than if it had barred reporters from the action, as in the first Gulf War.

“It was ‘gun-slit journalism’,” he said. “It wasn’t surprising that television was overwhelmed by it; it was like reality TV writ large, although, like reality TV, it totally distorts our sense of global realities.”

Dorman said the US-centered agenda illustrated by the ADT report underscored the “narcissism of American news,” a point echoed by Hallin.

“This kind of coverage feeds American narcissism,” Hallin said. “Americans are given the sense they are some kind of unique victims and heroes of the world; everything revolves around them.”

Booker said the coverage has devastating results in the real world. “People ask: ‘how is it possible that so many people could perish in 2003, and the world failed to act?’ Well, the abject failure of the media to adequately cover the worst epidemic in recorded history is a big part of the answer.”