Program Notes for Left Out (June 1, 2004)

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Speech by Al Gore

Former Vice President Al Gore gave a superb and impassioned speech at NYU on May 26, 2004. In the speech, Gore raised a number of important points about the situation in Iraq:

• Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
  
• The US handling of the war and aftermath has been astoundingly inept
• The Abu Ghraib prisioner abuse scandal is a direct consequence of US policy from the very top, such as the US decision to abandon the Geneva Convention and the Bill of Rights. It also stems from attitudes exuded from the top, such as Bush's State of the Union speech where, referring to terrorists, he said "let's just say they won't be a problem any more".
• Contrary to Bush's pronouncements, the war has made the US much LESS secure, and aided terrorist organizations.
• The reputation and stature of the US has been gravely damaged.
• Gore demands the resignations of key architects of the Iraq war and incompetent players in the whole tragedy, including Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Cambone, Rice, and Tenet.

Listen to the introductions and the speech (MP3 format)
Here's a transcript
Here's a video in realplayer format from CSPAN.

Judith Miller: NeoCon Mouthpiece at the Times?

At long last, the New York Times is beginning to face the reality of having been used by Judith Miller as a mouthpiece for the neo-con's in the Pentagon in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Last week Bill Keller, the editor of the New York Times, published (on page A10 of the print edition) an article summarizing the errors in their reporting, providing (in the online edition) links to the offending articles, but failing to isolate Judith Miller as the prime vector for the disinformation, and failing to investigate Miller's connections with the Pentagon neo-con's via Benador Associates and The Middle East Forum. This past weekend Daniel Okrent, the public editor for the New York Times, published a much more harsh review of the situation, calling for a systematic investigation into the failures. Unlike Keller, Okrent does name Miller as a prime offender, but stresses that she alone cannot be held responsible for the way her disinformation was played by the Times and for the complete failure to perform even the most rudimentary fact checking or presentation of alternative points of view. A recent exchange in the New York Review of Books discusses the Miller affair, as does this article. An article in New York Metro provides more background on Judith Miller's career.

The Outing of Valerie Plame: The Coverup Continues

It is now nearly one year since one or more high-level officials in the Bush administration committed a major felony by willfully disclosing that Valerie Plame, the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was a CIA operative working under cover (on, of all things, tracking and preventing proliferation of WMD's among terrorist organizations). The act was obviously intended as retribution for Wilson's disclosure of the Bush administration's lies about Iraq's purported acquisition of uranium ore from Niger. Chief suspects in the case include I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, and Karl Rove, Bush's political advisor (and H.R. Haldeman clone). The "investigation" by the Justice Department proceeds at a glacial pace, with the most recent move being a subpoena of reporters from Time Magazine and NBC News --- despite the fact that the disclosure was made by Robert Novak in the Washington Post! The Post-Gazette published an editorial about the obvious ruse being employed here.

Cheney's Involvement in the Iraq Contracts

Dick Cheney, whose disregard for the truth is by now well-established, has repeatedly categorically denied any connection with the contracts granted to Halliburton and its subsidiaries on a no-bid basis to take over oil production and reconstruction in Iraq in the wake of the U.S. invasion. Time Magazine has obtained a memorandum proving, once again, that Dick Cheney is a liar.

To Tell the Truth by Paul Krugman

Here's a May 28th column by Paul Krugman which points out the ridiculous way that the media has been covering Bush, and offers some explanations about why.

Sources

Truth Out
Common Dreams
Information Clearinghouse
Cursor
Tom Paine
The Independent
The Guardian