"Hotbed of Resistance: An Iraqi Discusses Fallujah Violence." There are plenty of reasons to be appalled by the March 31 murder and mutilation of four U.S. contractors in Fallujah. One is the U.S. military's previous fighter plane-aided attempts to rout out the resistance there, including mass detentions and the bombing of villages. Amy Goodman of Democracry Now! (April 1) interviews retired engineer Ghazwan Al-Mukhtar, an outspoken critic of the U.S. occupation recently returned from Fallujah." (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/01/1621223) The TV version of Democracy Now! screens locally 8-10 a.m. Monday through Friday on PCTV21. On radio, hear it on 88.3 WRCT from 8-9 a.m. Mondays through Friday, and 9-10 a.m. Mon., Tue., Thu. and Fri.
"White House Not Biting on Security Recipe." When the big craniums at the Rand think-tank recommended that the Homeland Security Council be folded into the National Security Council, in order to better integrate foreign and domestic information and policy planning on terrorism, they weren't alone. Apparently, reports Siobhan Gorman in National Journal (March 27), some within the administration agreed -- just not the people at the top. Gorman explores whether, on crucial security issues, turf battles are hindering information sharing. (www.nationaljournal.com)
"Oppo Research." " ... [D]emocracy is the only legitimate form of government in this hemisphere and ... the peoples of the Americas have an obligation to promote and defend it," President Bush said at January's Summit of the Americas. Guess the White House gets a pass, though: As Janine Zacharia reports in The New Republic (March 22), Washington has busily funneled money to opponents of democratically elected regimes in Haiti and Latin America, meanwhile blocking any direct aid to Haiti's government prior to the overthrow of President Aristide. Zacharia also details prospects for more Bushie intervention in Venezuela, where opposition groups with White House ties succeeded in briefly overthrowing leftist President Hugo Chavez. (www.tnr.com)
"Bush's War Against Wonks." "The Bush White House," writes Bruce Reed in The Washington Monthly (March), "is so obsessed with the politics of its agenda that it never even asks whether it will work." Reed -- President Clinton's domestic policy adviser, and now president of the Democratic Leadership Council -- notes that the hacks (hard-core politicos like Karl Rove) have Bush's ear to the exclusion of the wonks, the people who create policies that actually solve problems. Hence the "reconstruction" of Iraq, the soaring price of the new Medicare law, and (remember this one?) the manned mission to Mars. (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0403.reed.html)
