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URL: https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,druck-327575,00.html
13.Nov.2004 Joschka Fischer wie lästiger Demonstrant behandelt
So wurde Außenminister Joschka Fischer noch nie im Ausland empfangen: Erst musste er wie zahlreiche andere Ehrengäste im Flugzeug Warteschleifen drehen. Dann wurde gedrängelt und geschubst. Am Ende verpassten die Europäer die Trauerfeier für Jassir Arafat.

Kairo - Nach Angaben westlicher Diplomaten konnte kein einziger europäischer Gast an der zentralen Trauerfeier auf dem Flughafen in Kairo teilnehmen, weil offenbar Gäste aus islamischen Ländern von den Organisatoren bevorzugt eingelassen wurden.
Zunächst konnten viele Flugzeuge, darunter auch das des deutschen Außenministers, nicht landen, weil der Andrang auf dem Flughafen zu groß war. Nach vielen Warteschleifen mussten Fischer und seine Delegation noch eine weitere Dreiviertelstunde in der Maschine ausharren.
Als sie schließlich am Ort der Zeremonie eintrafen, schlossen die Sicherheitskräfte gerade das Tor. "Es ist vorbei", riefen sie den Deutschen zu. In der Delegation befanden sich auch der SPD-Generalsekretär Klaus Uwe Benneter und der 82-jährige, frühere Nahost-Beauftragte Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski.
Vor dem Tor des Militärflughafens herrschte zeitweise völliges Chaos. Die angereisten Ehrengäste wurden von den ägyptischen Sicherheitskräften herumgeschoben wie lästige Demonstranten. Die Leibwächter der verschiedenen europäischen Delegationen lieferten sich Rangeleien mit den Sicherheitskräften und untereinander, um ihre jeweiligen Schützlinge heil durch das Chaos zu steuern.
Dabei wurde der französische Außenminister Michel Barnier heftig gegen Journalisten geschubst. Wischnewski, der im Rollstuhl sitzt, wurde massiv von Sicherheitsbeamten abgeschirmt, um keinen Schaden zu nehmen. Auch der außenpolitische Beauftrage der Europäischen Union, Javier Solana, steckte im Gedränge fest.
Nachdem zum vorgesehenen Beginn der Zeremonie noch viele Gäste fehlten, wurde eilig eine zweite Zeremonie organisiert, ebenfalls in der Nähe des Flughafens Kairo. Wie viele andere kam Fischer auch in diese Veranstaltung nicht hinein.
Fischer blieb dennoch gelassen. "Das ist eine große Herausforderung, vor der die Ägypter standen und hier ist niemandem ein Vorwurf zu machen", sagte er. Nach zwei Stunden auf ägyptischem Boden flog er zurück nach Berlin. Sein Besuch sei nicht vergeblich gewesen: "Ich denke, die Geste war ganz entscheidend."
Immerhin gelang es Fischer noch, in einem nahegelegenen Hotel ein kurzes Gespräch mit Solana, einem Arafat-Bruder und dem Uno-Beauftragten für den Nahost-Friedensprozess, Terje Roed-Larsen, zu führen.
13.Nov.2004 Vote notes First, grateful as I am for the kind words some of you have sent me, I admonish one and all not to castigate the more "mainstream" Dems (Franken, Kos, Atrios, you-know-the-rest) for their discomfort with vote fraud allegations. The circular firing squad never did any cause any good.
The Green recount in Ohio. Keith Olbermann is still doing the nation's best reporting on the vote. Today he discusses the Green party candidate, David Cobb, who seeks a recount in Ohio, a welcome task that requires some $110,000. I've never been crazy about the Greens (although I did once have a crush on Petra Kelly), but Cobb's is a worthy effort. If you want to know more, check out his site: www.votecobb.org.
UPDATE: The Libertarians have now joined the effort!
Petitions. If you want to express support for efforts to investigate this mess, try here and here. There's also this one from MoveOn.org + still another one from People for the American Way.
Terror in Ohio: Olbermann gives us startling news on the "terror" alert that supposedly kept onlookers distant from whatever was going on in the election administration halls of Warren county. Turns out the "alert" came as news to the FBI! This whole business is fishier than Aquaman...
Olbermann also has some choice words regarding a classic Ann Coulter mis-quote.
A list of unlikely events : Yesterday, we quoted a list of all the hard-to-believe events that one must accept in order to accept the results of this vote. That list comes to us via actor Peter Coyote + an expanded version of his missive can be found here. Pass it along!
Brad Friedman , a California writer, claims that his site has been under a DOS attack since he devoted his attentions to this story.
A $100,000 reward has been offered to anyone willing to rat out a vote fraud conspiracy. I've felt for a long time that the issue might explode the moment one person on the inside "turns" -- but will money fetch us some honesty? Perhaps. I hope so. Better still, though, would be a confession prompted by conscience.
North Carolina. As you know, this troubled state may have to conduct a revote. An interesting discussion of NC election laws (which require a paper ballot, apparently) can be found here.
Speaking of North Carolina -- it seems another one of those computer "accidents" put 22,000 votes into the Bush column. Although this error seems to have a reasonable explanation, I can't help but note that nearly every problem that has come to our attention has inflated Bush's numbers.
Time to repeat our mantra: Errors are not important. The pattern of error is important. Ian Fleming once said: "Twice is coincidence; three times is enemy action." We're way past three here, folks.
Cuyahoga county: Yesterday, in the spirit of generosity, we gave you not one but two "logical" explanations for the weird more-votes-than-voters situation. Some now would debunk the debunkers; see here. Bottom line: In a heavily Democratic County, those precincts with the most impressive turnout registered the fewest Kerry votes. Do we have any readers in Cleveland who could explain this oddity?
You can read much more on the Cuyahoga mystery at Democratic Underground.
Kerry's attorneys are heading toward Ohio. The initial reports are low-key:
Attorneys say they are not trying to challenge the election but are only carrying out Kerry's promise to make sure that all the votes in Ohio are counted. They describe this effort, which began this week, as a "fact-finding mission." Hmm...lawyers cost money, as perhaps you have heard. Would the Dems have sent expensive talent on a "fact-finding mission" unless they too noted the distinct odor of fish in the air?
Sociology: A new Boston Globe story discusses vote fraud allegations in the usual condescending "internet-driven conspiracy theory" terms, but the overall tone of the piece seems more sympathetic than one might at first expect. I was struck by this paragraph:
"The kind of thing that has to happen is a full-scale investigation," said Troy Duster, a New York University professor who is president of the American Sociological Association. "It sounds like a paranoid fantasy, but I think the data suggest that even if Bush won, he didn't win by the kind of margins that are out there. We have a crisis here of potential legitimacy with all the stuff going on the Web + the way to deal with this is to do the research. Florida, again: Let us return to the "blue dog" counties that voted for W even though the vast majority of voters in those areas are registered as Democrats. I had conceded to the conventional wisdom that party disloyalty represents a longstanding "Dixiecrat" shift, although I still have niggling doubts -- the "blue dogs" seem bluer than usual this time. In this light, Daily Kos readers have offered some interesting comments. There are still 24 counties outside the Dixiecrat panhandle area with substantial cross-party voting, always favoring Bush.
One reader argues that the Dixiecrats have been dying off + that the new generation either votes Democratic or registers Republican. If that is true, then we would expect to see fewer blue dogs -- yet they seem to have registered an increase.
Why were the exit polls wrong? The Seattle Times opines: "Many voting experts say the theory that the exit polls were correct is deeply flawed because the polls oversampled women." Who the hell are these "voting experts," and what data makes them offer such a questionable pronouncement? Why would women be oversampled in battleground states but not in, say, Illinois or California? Why would women be oversampled in this election, but not in 1984 or 1988? Why wouldn't pollsters weight their results accordingly?
The same article includes this arrogant paragraph:
A high-ranking Democrat, mindful of balancing respect for the complainers and a desire to move on, summed up the conspiracy theorists with a line from Alexander Pope: "Hope springs eternal in the human breast." Call me a conspiracy theorist if you must. Make those tired old jokes about black helicopters if you must. But how dare anyone accuse me , the Pessimist King, of being hopeful ? In an earlier age, such an insult might prompt a duel...
The Senate, too? This fine piece by Kyle Jordan argues the Senate vote might well have been hacked as well. I must confess that I was particularly struck by the results in South Dakota, where Thune beat Senate Majority leader Daschle by the tiniest margin of any senate race.
When I finally hit the hay on election night, that race was still too close to call -- but since the outstanding precincts were primarily located on Indian reservations, a Daschle win seemed a fair prediction. Now we learn that not only did Thune receive a final surge, but that the senate race attracted more voters than did the presidential contest !
Gee -- why do you think Indians liked Thune so much more than they liked either Daschle or Kerry? Curious...
Wikipedia has put together an incredibly good piece on the strange election of 2004. Of particular importance is the discrepancies map:
Voting locations that used electronic or other types of voting machines that did not issue a paper receipt or offer auditability correlate geographically with areas that had discrepancies in Bush's favor between exit poll numbers and actual results. Exit polling data in these areas show significantly higher support for Kerry than actual results (potentially outside the margin of error). From a statistical perspective, this may be indicative of vote rigging, because the likelihood of this happening by chance is extremely low. A study of 16 states by a former MIT mathematics professor places the likelihood at 1 in 50,000. Now that's the kind of analysis you should throw in the face of anyone who tries to insult you by calling you a conspiracy theorist. The professor in question, incidentally, is Dr. David Anick.

13.Nov.2004 Red state, blue state: Slave state, free state If you came here looking for my usual round-up of info regarding vote theft, scroll down or go here.
Before you scurry thither, consider once more the "red/blue" dichotomy which currently confounds us. I've suggested that we replace the color-coding with the terms "Leech state" and "Producer state." (The Daily Howler offers data supportive of this idea.) But now we have another view of the split -- slave and free. This map gives us a disturbing comparison. Did the civil war ever truly end?
13.Nov.2004 According to Freeman, the odds against the statistical anomalies in just three states -- Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania -- occurring within the same election are 250 million to one .
11.Nov.2004 "250 million to one": More vote notes The evidence in favor of vote fraud allegations grows stronger by the hour. If you scroll down, you will find many links and comments about today's events. I have two important additions.
MSNBC has emerged as the one major media outlet giving this story consistently respectful treatment. Now David Shuster has posted a good piece on the Green/Libertarian recount effort in Ohio; the article concludes on this intriguing note:
On Friday night, "Hardball with Chris Matthews" (7 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET) will be jumping into the fray. You won't want to miss that. Plus, this weekend here on Hardblogger, I'll be posting some amazing national election numbers and demographic trends that may shock you. I've run some of the numbers past a few MSNBC political analysts, and everybody is calling it "a big deal." That may have some relationship to this :
Science steps in. Buzzflash directs our attention to an important new document by Dr. Steven F. Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania on the exit poll/final tally anomalies that have commanded so much of our attention.
13.Nov.2004 And if you thought everyone at MSNBC would function well on this issue, prepare for the shock of cold water on your face. NBC's latest, by Chip Reid, follows the NYT down the deception trail.
Voting irregularities are reduced, once more, to the blue dog counties in Florida and the infamous 4000-vote discrepancy in that one Ohio precinct. Reid refuses to note any number of other oddities in Ohio, Florida, Indiana, Pennsylvania, North Carolina (which may have to offer a revote) and elsewhere. Needless to say, this piece makes no reference to the 50,000 "accidentally lost" absentee ballots in Broward county, Florida.
Reid refuses to see the importance of pattern .

13.Nov.2004 The Times piece castigates bloggers as poor investigators, yet ignores Dr. Freeman's work, which we must now consider the key piece of research. How deceptive is writer Tom Zeller jr.? Here's an example:
And the early Election Day polls, conducted for a consortium of television networks and The Associated Press, which proved largely inaccurate in showing Mr. Kerry leading in Florida and Ohio, continued to be offered as evidence that the Bush team somehow cheated. So much for the exit polls. We see no discussion of the historical reliability of exit polls (as opposed to predictive polls), both in our own past elections and in other countries. We see no mention of the fact that Georgia (the one Stalin came from, not the one Jimmy Carter came from) experienced the ouster of its president when the populace became furious over the disparity between exit polls and final results.
13.Nov.2004 Just when Professor Freeman's study gives new weight to the argument in favor of vote fraud, the New York Times and other major media outlets cover the story in a demeaning and unfair fashion.
13.Nov.2004 Is Kerry secretly on board? An addendum to the piece below on NYT and MSNBC disinformation: Mainstream writers repeatedly assure us that Democratic bigwigs see no evidence of vote fraud. But this piece from the Moderate Independent argues that Kerry takes the problem seriously, although he must now operate sub rosa for tactical reasons: "...he is like the DA who says, 'At this time we are not charging President Bush with anything.'"
Two points: 1. Democratic lawyers are crawling all over Ohio as you read these words; they would not do so if they trusted the results. 2. By allowing Nader, the Greens and the Libertarians to mount a challenge on behalf of Kerry, the Democrats demonstrate a strategic wisdom I thought they had lost.
13.Nov.2004 As if the exit poll conundrum (see below) wasn't enough -- we now have another mystery to solve. UPDATES: a clue and a map and a biased report. We will not get over it!
13.Nov.2004 Even more significantly, Dopp had first run the analysis while filtering out smaller (rural) counties, and still found that the only variable that accounted for a swing toward Republican voting was the use of optical-scan machines, whereas counties with touch-screen machines generally didn't swing - regardless of size.
Others offer similar insights, based on other data. A professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, noted that in Florida the vote to raise the minimum wage was approved by 72%, although Kerry got 48%. "The correlation between voting for the minimum wage increase and voting for Kerry isn't likely to be perfect," he noted, "but one would normally expect that the gap - of 1.5 million votes - to be far smaller than it was." An even more surprising figure: Bush earned 20,000 more votes statewide than the sum total of the state's registered Republicans.
13.Nov.2004 Friday, November 12, 2004 Random vote notes The whole world is watching. The Consortium offers a good overview of foreign reactions to our miserable election. This passage has particular impact:
On Oct. 21, the Permanent Representative of Belarus to the OSCE issued a harsh statement about the U.S. electoral system, asserting that it "does not meet present-day requirements, is archaic, unwieldy, frequently complicated and bureaucratic in nature and, in the final analysis, does not guarantee the holding of genuinely democratic elections."
The Belarus representative noted that the United States itself has criticized early voting and electronic voting in other countries because the lack of security could lead to "manipulating voters' votes." Getting dissed -- justifiably -- by a former Soviet republic! Only a Bush could bring us to such a pretty pass...
Another look at Coyote. Previously, we took a look at Peter Coyote's list of oddball circumstances that brought us to this strange electoral place. Now let us note something he says in his preamble:
On Friday I received a phone call from a good friend who works at CBS--I've known her for years and she is a Producer for some of the news programs, one well known one in particular. She tipped me off that the news media is in a "lock-down" and that there is to be no TV coverage of the real problems with voting on Nov. 2nd. She said similar "lock-down orders" had come down last year after the invasion of Iraq, but this is far worse--far scarier. She said the majority of their journalists at CBS and elsewhere in NYC are pretty horrified--every one is worried about their jobs and retribution Dan Rather style or worse. My source said they've also been forbidden to talk about it even on their own time... Bev Harris said much the same thing!
Olbermann. He has a great new video report, which you can see here. In it, we learn that the Green/Libertarian recount effort will wisely seek to have Blackwell recused, given his partisanship.
We also learn that the optical scanner results in New Hampshire (which Kerry narrowly won) may show some of the same anomalies (Dem counties switching parties) the Dopp report allegedly demonstrated in Florida. Boy, those "Dixiecrats" turn up in the damnedest places, don't they?
Professor John Cleese on the elections: Academics and experts such as Dr. Freeman have lent their names to the proposition that something funny happened on election night. You knew that the other side would have to find an academic or two to shore up their part in the debate. (Recall how big tobacco could always find a doctor willing to tout its party line?) This study from a Cal Tech/M.I.T. project attempts to demonstrate that the exit polls fell within the margin of error.
They're doing it again, people -- just as I predicted. The routine never stops.
They say: "Exit polls can have errors."
And we say: "The errors should skew in both directions."
And they reply: "Exit polls aren't accurate."
And we say: "Look, bub, you didn't hear me. No matter how tiny or large the margin of error is, the error should skew in both directions."
And they reply: "Well, we've prepared this chart showing that the poll results were within the margin of error..."
And our side ultimately has no choice but to scream:
"THE SIZE OF THE MARGIN OF ERROR DOES NOT COUNT! THE PATTERN IS WHAT COUNTS! IF ERRORS OCCUR, THEY SHOULD UNDERVALUE THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE AS OFTEN AS THEY UNDERVALUE THE REPUBLICAN VOTE! BUT ONLY THE REPUBLICAN VOTE IS EVER UNDERVALUED! IN STATE AFTER STATE! ELECTION AFTER ELECTION! THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN IN OTHER COUNTRIES! IT ONLY HAPPENS WHEN BUSH RUNS FOR OFFICE IN THIS COUNTRY! DO YOU UNDERSTAND -- FINALLY -- YOU THICK DOLT?!?!?!"
And they reply, "Well, you see, exit polls aren't always accurate..."
And we suddenly realize that we are trapped in a Monty Python routine. No matter what we say, they will repeat the same line over and over. Exit polls aren't accurate. And that parrot isn't dead. It's just pining for the fjords.
# posted by Joseph : 4:21 PM 2 comments Take another look at those Dixiecrats Salon may or may not publish my response to Farhad Manjoo's skeptical new piece on voter fraud. In that response, I decried the continued attention paid to Kathy Dopp's chart showing odd results in Florida's "Dixiecrat" counties. I argued that her figures divert us from the more important issue of the exceptionally vulnerable central tabulator.
However, on Air America today, Randi Rhodes -- who, unlike Manjoo or myself, lives in Florida -- discounted the oft-heard theory that "blue dog" Democrats in those small counties are so numerous as to justify the massive party-switching in favor of Bush. Thom Hartmann takes that argument further here.
13.Nov.2004 God’s Holy Warriors : Our President should consider the possibility that he should go shopping for a half decent international lawyer. President George W. Genocide is going to need one.

13.Nov.2004 Cook: US assault on Fallujah will be strategic failure : Former British FM says US military operation in Fallujah will increase resistance, decrease support for coalition troops.

13.Nov.2004 Most Brits think war is wrong: Public distaste with the Iraq war in Britain has hit its worst-ever level, with fewer than a third of people thinking it is the right thing.

13.Nov.2004 Ramsey Clark: "Bush can run, but he cannot hide from the Constitution": Click here to join the over 466137 who have already voted in the referendum to Impeach Bush

13.Nov.2004 Riverbend: Iraqi Girl Blog: Rule of Iraq Assassins Must End... : How do people feel about the Iraqi troops? There's a certain rage. It's difficult to sympathize with a fellow-countryman while he's killing one of his own. People generally call them "Dogs of Occupation"

13.Nov.2004 Falluja's defiance of a new empire : It is Bush and Blair, not the Iraqi resistance, who fear free elections

13.Nov.2004 Satan hides in a hospital : The assault, dubbed Operation Phantom Fury, perversely started on Laylat e-Qadr, the most important and holy night of the year for the Islamic world.

13.Nov.2004 Scott Ritter : Squeezing jello in Iraq: Far from facing off in a decisive battle against the resistance fighters, it seems the more Americans squeeze Falluja, the more the violence explodes elsewhere. It is exercises in futility, akin to squeezing jello. The more you try to get a grasp on the problem, the more it slips through your fingers.

13.Nov.2004 Who Are The “Barbarians”? : Where is the moral “voice of America” that should cry against these atrocities? While Christian leaders moralise about gay marriage and lobbying for the “right to life”, and depriving women of their choice, mass graves of innocent Iraqi women and children are planned.

13.Nov.2004 Shame of Hue and Falluja : We nearly all now see Hue as the beginning of the end of US involvement in Vietnam. I expect to see Falluja as the beginning of the end of the involvement in Iraq of US and UK forces.

13.Nov.2004 Our Vanished Values: This is the election in which American Christianity destroyed itself. Today the church is no longer a religion but a tacky political lobby

13.Nov.2004 Sidney Blumenthal: The religious right is exerting its power.: The 2004 election marks the rise of a quasi-clerical party for the first time in the United States. Ecclesiastical organisation has become the sinew and muscle of the Republican party, essential in George Bush's re-election.

13.Nov.2004 Maureen Dowd: A Moveable Feast of Terrorism: The president is putting his own counsel, Alberto Gonzales, who wrote the famous memo defending torture, in charge of our civil liberties. Torture Guy, who blithely threw off 75 years of international law and set the stage for the grotesque abuses at Abu Ghraib and dubious detentions at Guantánamo

13.Nov.2004 Center for Constitutional Rights Opposes Nomination of Alberto Gonzales to Attorney General Post : Group Cites Gonzales Memo Calling Geneva Conventions “Quaint” and “Obsolete”

In case you missed it: Spotlight on Enron's law firm : Alberto Gonzales enjoys a reputation for covering George W. Bush's back. In 1996, for example, Gonzales, as Bush's general counsel, managed to get the then-Texas governor excused from jury duty, thus saving Bush from having to disclose a 1976 arrest for drunk driving.

13.Nov.2004 American Resistance: Let the peace movement be reborn, let peace and love once more supercede war and violence. Let brotherhood of humanity replace division of peoples. Let love of people triumph over love of profit. Let us retire greed and love for the Almighty Dollar, embracing instead the principles of humanity, equality and justice.

13.Nov.2004 It's the people stupid!: “Good Americans” are repulsed by a couple of gays holding hands in public, but not by the severed limbs and destruction of a poor and impoverished people in an illegal and immoral attack on a country that was never a threat to the fiercest military machine in the history of the planet Earth.

13.Nov.2004 A father's anger: 'I would kill Geoff Hoon' : The father of two Black Watch soldiers serving at Camp Dogwood in Iraq threatened to kill the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, yesterday because he was a "two-faced lying git".

13.Nov.2004 Hundreds of US soldiers in Iraq hit by parasite that causes chronic sores

13.Nov.2004 Israeli Nuclear Whistleblower Arrested

URL: https://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1112/p02s02-usfp.htm
13.Nov.2004 But the interviews in particular have rankled government officials. Scheuer was again permitted to talk "anonymously" with the media after his latest book. But he apparently went beyond what the CIA thought he would + agency officials squelched his speaking engagements.

The interviews he did before being reined in, however, have continued to appear, including in Vanity Fair (November) and The Atlantic Monthly (December). The Atlantic article excerpts a letter that Scheuer sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee in early September. In it, he enumerates 10 instances since 1996 in which "the decisions of senior intelligence community bureaucrats ... have been at the core of our failure against Bin Laden." Scheuer also decided, without agency approval, that he would grant interviews about the Atlantic Monthly article.

"I've presented this information to two Investigator General studies before 9/11 and to two IG [Inspector General] studies inside our building after 9/11," Scheuer said in a telephone interview. "I've testified before the 9/11 commission and the Shelby-Goss [congressional] commissions. So I've exhausted all the internal mechanisms available to an agency officer ... but I think to the average American, this is important."

It's unknown how the CIA will handle the criticisms. Some say it will likely try to work out an arrangement that would require him to curtail his critiques. Others say the agency may sue to set an example. For now, the agency refuses to comment.

"Some people will say he is crazy to publicly say these things," says Charles Battaglia, former staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee. "But others will say he's acting on the courage of his convictions."

URL: https://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1112/p02s02-usfp.htm
13.Nov.2004 Mr. Scheuer, who says he will leave his job today after holding "cordial" talks with his superiors on Wednesday, has been granting interviews to members of the media for days - and will appear Sunday night on CBS's "60 Minutes."

"I have concluded that there has not been adequate national debate over the nature of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and the forces he leads and inspires + the nature and dimensions of the intelligence reform needed to address that threat," Scheuer said yesterday. He hopes to produce "a more substantive debate."

In many respects, his mini-revolt is just the most visible sign of a tension that has existed between the White House and the CIA almost since 9/11. As the agency has been censured for its failures leading up to the Sept. 11 + for incorrect estimates about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, agency members have circulated information defending their intelligence reporting and criticizing the Bush administration for going to war in Iraq and diverting attention from Osama bin Laden. Most of the missives have been anonymous leaks.

Never before, say government officials and outside experts, have relations between the CIA and the administration been so contentious. And never, they say, has the agency so publicly crossed the line to involve itself in policy debate. A Wall Street Journal editorial went so far as to call the agency's leaks and criticisms an "insurgency."

The agency was already in tumult. In the wake of numerous investigations and fault-finding charges, former CIA director George Tenet resigned this past summer, as did James Pavitt, the man who ran the agency's day-to-day counterterrorism operations. Now, Congress is debating the recommendations of the 9/11 commission. It's not yet clear to what extent reforms - such as appointing an über director with supervisory and budgetary control over the entire intelligence community, or creating a national counterterrorism center - will be implemented. But the agency is likely to lose much of the power and prestige it has garnered over the past 50 years.

"You can't be a member of the CIA and read that as anything but the status and power of the agency is going to decline," says Jim Walsh, an expert on security at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "I think it's understandable that some people may be sick and tired of this or pretty darned mad."

That basically sums up Scheuer's take on events within the intelligence community and the administration's policies. He has published two books in the past 2-1/2 years, "Through Our Enemies Eyes," and "Imperial Hubris," under "Anonymous." The agency had to clear the books for classified information and potential mentions of sources and methods, but couldn't prevent him from exercising his First Amendment right, agency officials say. The agency also permitted Scheuer to grant media interviews about the subjects of his books.

The first book was an in-depth look at Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network + was very well received by experts on terrorism as well as policymakers . But his second, best-selling book released this past July, "Imperial Hubris," was nothing less than an indictment of the administration's war on terror. He criticized the administration for not immediately responding against bin Laden following the 9/11 attacks.

And he further wrote that the war in Iraq was "an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantages."

12.Nov.2004 Pageantry Planned for Bush ~~Inauguration~~ Coronation: The Homeland Security Department has designated the inauguration a national security special event, which makes the day's high-profile gatherings eligible for federal money and heightened security overseen by the Secret Service.

We Are All Dubya's Doormat : News flash for ordinary Repubs and born-agains: Bush doesn't care about you, either

Police use stun gun on 6-year-old: Police say a 6-year-old Florida boy wasn't hurt when they shocked him with a 50,000-volt taser to keep him from cutting himself with a piece of glass.

12.Nov.2004 Choice of Gonzales May Blaze a Trail for the High Court: Republicans close to the White House said on Thursday that the choice of Alberto R. Gonzales as attorney general was part of a political strategy to bolster Mr. Gonzales's credentials with conservatives and position him for a possible Supreme Court appointment.

12.Nov.2004 Troops Become U.S. Citizens on Veterans Day : 80 sailors and Marines from 25 countries - from Canada to Syria - became citizens in a Veterans Day ceremony aboard the USS Midway, a reward for putting their lives on the line for their adopted country.

13.Nov.2004 Jack Dalton: Another Veterans Day: A young man returns form Iraq missing both legs. After discharge from the Army he ends up having to live in his car—where is the “honor our veterans” for this young man?

13.Nov.2004 U.S. to defend use of Guantanamo war tribunals: U.S. District Judge James Robertson, a 1994 Clinton-appointee, found that the tribunal system was being conducted unlawfully, outside the guidelines of U.S. military law and the Geneva Conventions.

13.Nov.2004 John Walker Lindh : Trial By Fury : After the revelations about prisoner abuse and flimsy terrorism cases, is it time to reconsider the fate of John Walker Lindh?

13.Nov.2004 UK: The special relationship has become a national delusion : One perverse consequence is that the fate of the US economy is now in the hands of the central bank of the People's Republic of China, who could pull the plug any time by selling their massive reserves of US dollars.

12.Nov.2004 US Concedes Falluja Assault Won't Break Insurgency: The U.S. military said on Thursday this week's Falluja offensive would not shatter Iraq's insurgency, while analysts argued merely seizing real estate does little to stop rebels able to relocate and keep fighting.

13.Nov.2004 A thousand Fallujahs : "The bombs being dropped on Fallujah don't contain explosives, depleted uranium or anything harmful - they contain laughing gas - that would, of course, explain [Pentagon chief Donald] Rumsfeld's misplaced optimism about not killing civilians in Fallujah. Also, being a 'civilian' is a relative thing in a country occupied by Americans. You're only a civilian if you're on their side.

13.Nov.2004 Iraq seeks to curb press freedoms: Iraq's media regulator has warned news organisations to stick to the government line on the US-led attack in Falluja or face legal action.

13.Nov.2004 CIA agent publicly chides White House for terror war: Mike Scheuer, a 22-year veteran who works in the CIA's Counterterrorist Center and is a former head of its Osama bin Laden unit, is criticizing the Bush administration for going to war in Iraq and for the way it has conducted the war on terror in general. And he's doing it very publicly.

13.Nov.2004 “We’re committing genocide in Iraq”: Massey entered Iraq as part of the initial US invasion in March 2003. He witnessed—and in some cases participated in—the killing of innocent civilians. During a single 48-hour period, he says, he saw as many as 30 civilians killed by US gunfire at highway checkpoints.

12.Nov.2004 New rebel tactics emerge in Fallujah: After three days of measurable progress, American forces trying to take full control of Fallujah are confronting an insurgent force that has renewed energy.

12.Nov.2004 'I think Arafat was poisoned': A leading Jordanian neurologist who regularly examined Yasser Arafat said on Friday that poisoning was the "highest" probable cause of the Palestinian leader's mysterious death and urged that an autopsy be performed.

13.Nov.2004 Our own Palestinian De Gaulle : Throughout his political career, Yasser Arafat was the object of relentless campaigns of character assasination - not because of what he was, but because of what he represented: the Palestinian people, whose mere existence was a monumental nuisance for those who coveted Palestine.

13.Nov.2004 Israel's death festival : Such unabashed glee is disrespectful and dangerous

12.Nov.2004 Norman Solomon: A Distant Mirror of Holy War: The Post quoted hospital physician Kamal Hadeethi: “The corpses of the mujaheddin which we received were burned + some corpses were melted.”

12.Nov.2004 Dutch Troops to Withdraw from Iraq: Dutch news agency ANP cited Defense Minister Henk Kamp on Friday as saying that the country's 1,350-contingent will leave the US-led multinational contingent.

12.Nov.2004 U.S. troops raid Baghdad mosque: U.S.-led troops have stormed a Sunni Muslim mosque in Baghdad and arrested its radical preacher who has urged Iraqi forces not to fight alongside Americans attacking the rebel city of Falluja.

12.Nov.2004 GIs Force Men Fleeing Fallujah to Return: Hundreds of men trying to flee the assault on Fallujah have been turned back by U.S. troops following orders to allow only women, children and the elderly to leave.

12.Nov.2004 Eyewitness: Smoke and corpses : I want them to know about conditions inside this city - there are dead women and children lying on the streets

13.Nov.2004 Falluja a 'Big Disaster,' Aid Needed - Red Crescent: Aid agencies called on U.S. forces and the Iraqi government to allow them to deliver food, medicine and water to Falluja on Friday and said four days of intense fighting had turned the city into a "big disaster."

13.Nov.2004 Pepe Escobar : Collective punishment, regrettable necessity : Whenever a neo-colonial power - or a puppet politician like interim Iraqi Premier Iyad Allawi - orders the widespread bombing of civilian areas, as in Fallujah, the rationale invoked is "regrettable necessity". What is never mentioned is the real objective: collective punishment.

13.Nov.2004 Fallujah’s empty promise: As battles go, Fallujah has been a big disappointment to the U.S. military, which had wanted to draw the Iraqi insurgents into a cataclysmic mistake

13.Nov.2004 In Iraq it's hard to tell who's ahead : A famous American statesman once wrote that a conventional army loses if it does not win whereas the guerrilla wins if he does not lose.

13.Nov.2004 Kurds come under attack as rebels rampage in city : US troops were drawn into a new offensive in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul yesterday to tackle a tide of insurgency unchecked by the military assault on Falluja.

12.Nov.2004 Iraq: the unthinkable becomes normal
John Pilger Mainstream media speak as if Fallujah were populated only by foreign "insurgents". In fact, women and children are being slaughtered in our name. Continued

12.Nov.2004 Wall-Street-Schluss: Börse schließt freundlich

12.Nov.2004 Irak: Truppen entgleitet Kontrolle über Großstädte

12.Nov.2004 Hilfsorganisationen: "Die Menschen essen Mehl"

12.Nov.2004 Arafats Beerdigung: Ein Abschied nach seinem Geschmack

12.Nov.2004 Nachruf: Michel Friedman nennt Arafat Mörder und Verbrecher

12.Nov.2004 Irak: USA wünschen längere niederländische Truppenpräsenz

13.Nov.2004 Bestechungsprozess: Acht Jahre Haft für Berlusconi gefordert

12.Nov.2004 Niederlande: Polizei entdeckt mutmaßliches PKK-Trainingscamp

13.Nov.2004 Nahost: Bush will palästinensischen Staat unterstützen

13.Nov.2004 Verrechnet: AKW Biblis setzt zu viel Radioaktivität frei

12.Nov.2004 Koalition: Bütikofer wirft SPD "strategische Blindheit" vor

13.Nov.2004 Korruption: Milliardenschäden im Gesundheitssystem