Bush Administration

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http://www.startribune.com/stories/484/5132435.html

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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- White House officials on Saturday blamed Bernard Kerik for repeatedly failing to disclose potential legal problems to administration lawyers vetting his nomination to be homeland security secretary.

Kerik, who withdrew his nomination Friday and apologized Saturday for embarrassing President Bush, was asked numerous times by White House lawyers whether he had employed an illegal immigrant or failed to pay taxes on domestic help, the sources said.

Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, was told that he would humiliate his family, himself and the president if he lied on either account, the officials said. He responded with firm denials.

After digging deeper, however, Kerik said he discovered last week that he might have a problem on both accounts.

"This is my responsibility, this is my mistake," Kerik said. "I didn't want this to be a distraction going forward."

Bush plans to move quickly to name a replacement, although the few White House officials with knowledge of the short list would not speculate or respond to calls.

A full FBI field check of a nominee is sometimes completed in advance of Cabinet picks. Often, as in Kerik's case, it is not. A former administration official familiar with the appointments process said that Bush's system has produced remarkably few problems but that "perceived or actual political pressure to get appointments done quickly" often makes it impossible to do as much vetting as White House lawyers would like.

Front 2

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/111104_arctic_meltdown.shtml

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Washington, DC. Speaking off the record, scientists studying the current warming of the Arctic region intimated that some officials in the Bush administration saw the loss of Arctic ice and the resultant opening of sea channels such as the Northwest Passage of Canada as a good thing for the exploration and retrieval of oil and natural gas from the endangered region.

Over 300 international scientists have just completed an extensive 1200-page report documenting their exhaustive 4-year Arctic Climate Impact Assessment study on the rapid warming of the Arctic. The study was commissioned by the Arctic Council and the International Arctic Science Committee at a ministerial meeting of the Arctic Council in Point Barrow, Alaska in 2000. On November 8, the scientists released a 144-page summary of their findings at a press conference in Washington, DC.

As if out of a scene from the Roland Emmerich's climate disaster movie, "The Day After Tomorrow," the U.S. State Department is criticizing the international panel's call to slow down Arctic warming by curbing greenhouse emissions into the atmosphere. The State Department, according to some scientists, is echoing the positions of oil companies and anti-environmentalist pressure groups like the Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation, in dismissing the recent report on Arctic warming. In fact, President Bush has repeatedly referred to previous scientific studies pointing to the effects of global warming as "silly science" based on "fuzzy math." The chief State Department focal point on the Arctic warming issue is Paula Dobriansky, the Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs, who is seen as a virtual mouthpiece for Vice President Dick Cheney, the oil companies, and the anti-environmental groups. She will be trying to minimize the impact of the Arctic warming report before she attends the November 24 meeting of the Arctic Council in Reykjavik, Iceland where the report will be officially released. Before her current stint at the State Department, Dobriansky was an international affairs adviser with the law firm Hunton & Williams, whose clients include a number of large energy companies, including Exxon Mobil.

Front 3

http://www.voanews.com/english/2004-12-09-voa72.cfm

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The United States' top U.N. diplomat says the Bush administration has confidence in Secretary-General Kofi Annan and intends to continue working with him. Ambassador John Danforth's comments came in response to calls from some conservative congressmen for the U.N. leader's resignation in the wake of the U.N. oil-for-food scandal.

Many world leaders have come out in defense of Mr. Annan since the calls for his resignation, which some diplomats believe has more to do with Mr. Annan's opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq than with the U.N. administration of the oil-for-food program.

Ambassador Danforth said the United States' desire for a thorough and objective investigation of the scandal has been mistakenly viewed as an effort to undermine Mr. Annan and force his resignation. "We have worked with him very well in the past. We anticipate working with him very well in the future for the time to come. There are some very important issues with which he is involved, which are significant. For example, the election in Iraq, the Palestinian election. He has been very personally engaged in the Sudan issue. We look forward to working with the Secretary General. No one to my knowledge has cast doubt on the personal integrity of the Secretary General. No one. And we certainly do not," he said.

Mr. Danforth, who is retiring as U.S. ambassador, said his comments reflect the consensus of the Bush administration.

Asked about Mr. Annan's son, Kojo, who is being investigated for his role working with a contractor for the oil-for-food program, Mr. Danforth said there are differences between parents and adult children.

Front 4

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200412/s1262277.htm

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The Bush administration has expressed confidence in UN secretary-general Kofi Annan and said he should stay in office, in a belated rebuff to demands from Republicans in Congress for his resignation.

US ambassador John Danforth called reporters together to deliver the comments, saying that he had to clarify the US position after his colleagues and the media believed the United States Government was not supporting Mr Annan.

"We are expressing confidence in the secretary-general and his continuing in office," Mr Danforth said, adding that he was speaking for the White House and State Department.

"No one to my knowledge has cast doubt on the personal integrity of the secretary-general. No one," he said.

US Senator Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican, who was later joined by five congressmen, last week called for the resignation of Mr Annan, who has two more years in office before completing his second five-year term.

They accused him of presiding over corruption in the UN oil-for-food program for Iraq, administered by the United Nations but supervised by the 15-nation Security Council.

After Senator Coleman's statement, President George W Bush pointedly refused to defend Mr Annan, saying he wanted a "full and open accounting" of the now-defunct oil-for-food program.

Front 5

http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=961512&tw=wn_wire_story

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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The Bush administration expressed confidence in U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday and said he should stay in office, in a belated rebuff to demands from Republicans in Congress for his resignation.
U.S. Ambassador John Danforth called reporters together to deliver the comments, saying that he had to clarify the U.S. position after his colleagues and the media believed the United States government was not supporting Annan.

"We are expressing confidence in the secretary-general and his continuing in office," Danforth said, adding that he was speaking for the White House and State Department.

"No one to my knowledge has cast doubt on the personal integrity of the secretary-general. No one," he said.

U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican, who was later joined by five congressmen, last week called for the resignation of Annan, who has two more years in office before completing his second five-year term.

They accused him of presiding over corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program for Iraq, administered by the United Nations but supervised by the 15-nation Security Council.

After Coleman's statement, President Bush pointedly refused to defend Annan, saying he wanted a "full and open accounting" of the now-defunct oil-for-food program.

In reaction, the 191-member U.N. General Assembly gave Annan a standing ovation on Wednesday and the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Russia and Australia telephoned the secretary-general to voice support.

In an open letter on Thursday, a group of South African Nobel Laureates -- former president Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and writer Nadine Gordimer -- condemned attempts to have Annan resign. They said the real reason for the attack was "the admonishment by the secretary-general in respect of certain actions of the United States government in Iraq."

Front 6

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/041210/w121098.html

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - The U.S. government exaggerated the threat from North Korea's nuclear programs, just as it manipulated intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a U.S. foreign policy expert said.

Selig Harrison said in an article published Friday that President George W. Bush's administration claimed North Korea was on its way to producing weapons-grade uranium to scare allies into a tougher stance.

But by failing to distinguish between civilian and military uranium-enrichment capabilities, Washington greatly complicated the already complex efforts to eliminate North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions, Harrison wrote in the Dec. 17 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine.

"Relying on sketchy data, the Bush administration presented a worst-case scenario as an incontrovertible truth and distorted its intelligence on North Korea (much as it did on Iraq), seriously exaggerating the danger that Pyongyang is secretly making uranium-based nuclear weapons," he said.

In Washington, Adam Ereli, a U.S. State Department spokesman, dismissed the article's claims Friday.

"We think there is a wealth of clear and compelling evidence about North Korea's uranium-enrichment program," he said.

"We have known since the late 1990s that North Korea was interested in enrichment technology."

He said the United States obtained evidence more than 2½ years ago that North Korea was pursuing a covert program to enrich uranium and assessed it was aimed at making nuclear weapons.

Ereli said the United States informed the North Koreans about its knowledge of the program in October 2002 and it was at that time North Korea acknowledged to senior U.S. officials it was pursuing a convert program.

Front 7

http://www.investors.com/breakingnews.asp?journalid=24360188&brk=1

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WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) -- President Bush on Friday named Sam Bodman, who has held senior posts in the administration's first term, as his choice to take the reins at the Energy Department.

Bush and several lawmakers pointed to the management experience that Bodman, now the No. 2 official in the Treasury Department, would provide in a department with an annual budget of $23 billion and 114,500 federal and contract employees.

"He will bring to the Department of Energy a great talent for management and the precise thinking of an engineer," Bush said with Bodman at his side in a brief White House appearance.

Spencer Abraham announced on Nov. 15 his intention to step down after four years running the Energy Department.

A former executive in the private sector for more than three decades and an engineer by training, Bodman entered the Bush administration in 2001 as a deputy secretary at the Commerce Department. He served in that agency about two years before jumping to Treasury for the past year.

Front 8

http://www.volunteertv.com/Global/story.asp?S=2674492

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WASHINGTON The Bush administration is urging the Supreme Court to allow Ten Commandments displays on government property.

The move adds a federal view on a major church-state case that justices will deal with early next year.

The government has weighed in before in religion cases at the high court, including one earlier this year that challenged the words "under God" in the classroom recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.

The government supported a California school district in that case. In a brief filed yesterday, it is backing two Kentucky counties that had framed copies of the Ten Commandments in their courthouses.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued McCreary and Pulaski counties, claiming the displays were an unconstitutional promotion of religion. The A-C-L-U won.

Such displays have also been an issue in Tennessee.

Front 9

http://olympics.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=7044256

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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The Bush administration has confidence in U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and is not calling for his resignation, U.S. Ambassador John Danforth said on Thursday.
Several Republican congressmen have called for Annan's resignation, accusing him of presiding over corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program for Iraq, administered by the United Nations but supervised by the 15-nation Security Council.

But Danforth said he was representing the opinion of the White House and the State Department in supporting Annan.

"We are expressing confidence in the secretary-general and his continuing in office," Danforth told reporters.

"No one to my knowledge has cast doubt on the personal integrity of the secretary-general. No one," Danforth said. "We have worked well with the secretary general. We anticipate working with him in the future."

But he said the administration still advocated investigations into the scandal.

"The only way to dispel the cloud is to let the sunlight in," he said.

Front 10

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/10370572.htm?1c

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Bush administration urges baseball to take `strong steps' on steroids

BY JIM PUZZANGHERA

Knight Ridder Newspapers


WASHINGTON - (KRT) - The Bush administration increased the pressure on Major League Baseball on Wednesday to stop steroid use, calling on players and owners to take "strong steps to address the problem."

"Professional baseball players are people our children look up to," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "Players who use drugs undermine the efforts of parents and coaches to send the right message to our children."

His comments on behalf of President Bush, a passionate baseball fan and former team owner who called for an end to steroid use in his 2004 State of the Union address, came after Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, threatened federal legislation imposing steroid testing.

Their voices add to the public pressure on baseball, although it's unclear if Congress would pass legislation to force testing and if so, how it would be enforced. McCain, who discussed the issue with Bush during Saturday's Army-Navy football game, said he believes Bush would sign the legislation.

McCain first threatened such legislative action last spring after he held hearings on steroids in sports, but Congress hasn't acted. Congress did pass the Anabolic Steroid Control Act, which added new substances such as steroid precursors and the designer steroid THG to the list of controlled substances. Bush signed that into law in October.

McClellan didn't address potential legislation on Wednesday, but he said Bush wants baseball to act.

Front 11

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/politics/10361797.htm?1c

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WASHINGTON - (KRT) - As 150,000 U.S. troops battle to stabilize Iraq, some officials in the Bush administration are already planning to turn up the heat on another member of the president's axis of evil.

Officials in the White House and the Defense Department are developing plans to increase public criticism of Iran's human rights record, offer stronger backing to exiles and other opponents of Tehran's repressive theocratic government and collect better intelligence on Iran, according to U.S. officials, congressional aides and others.

Iran has embarked on a nuclear program that some specialists fear cannot be prevented from producing an atom bomb; is trying to extend its influence in Iraq and remains a prime sponsor of Hezbollah and other international terrorist groups. U.S. intelligence officials also believe some top lieutenants of Osama bin Laden have sought refuge in Iran.

However, with the U.S. military now stretched thin by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the new campaign may be intended not to build support for military action against Iran, but to pressure Iran to change its behavior so military action isn't necessary.

It's far from clear, however, whether a more aggressive U.S. campaign to condemn the Iranian regime and court pro-Western forces would have any effect. The major Iranian opposition group, the Iraq-based Mujahedeen Khalq (MEK), remains on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist groups, but it's provided much of the intelligence about Iran's weapons programs.

Front 12

http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showfast.html?article=48188

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UH-OH, they’re on to us! The secret electrical frenzy we set off in our brains when we lie — in “the anterior cingulated, limbic lobe and inferior frontal regions,” as if we didn’t know — may now be visible to the shamelessly peeping eye of science. Is nothing sacred?

I experienced a flare-up of intense ambivalence, even fleeting common cause with religious fundamentalists, when I read the other day that some Temple University neuroscientists were in the process of building not just a better but a foolproof lie detector, using functional magnetic resonance imaging technology. Maybe they can do it, but I don’t think I want them to, and not just because I dread the vision of a future that includes routine brain scans at the airport.

You can’t utter a falsehood, it turns out, without activating the regions of the brain that govern emotion, thought and memory. Truth-telling arises from a different area of the brain and apparently sets off less electrical activity. Therefore, fMRI technology has the potential to distinguish one activity from the other with more precision than a polygraph, the researchers say.

“These results are promising in that they suggest a consistency in brain patterns that might be beyond conscious control,” according to Medical News Today. A good liar can fool a polygraph machine, which measures changes in breathing, blood pressure and sweating, but fMRI can scrutinize us at the electrical level. Try faking your neuron activity, punk.

Front 13

http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20041207-040648-5581r.htm

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Has President Bush lost his grip on reality?
In his Dec. 1 speech in Halifax, Nova Scotia, President Bush again declared his intention to pre-emptively attack "enemies who plot in secret and set out to murder the innocent and the unsuspecting." Freedom from terrorism, Bush declared, will come only through pre-emptive war against enemies of democracy.
How does Bush know who and where these secret enemies are? How many more times will his guesses be wrong, like he was about Iraq?







What world does Bush live in? The United States cannot control Iraq, much less battle the rest of the Muslim world and beyond. While Bush threatened the world with U.S. aggression, headlines revealed the futility of pre-emptively invading countries: "Pentagon to Boost Iraq Force by 12,000," "U.S. Death Toll in Iraq at Highest Monthly Level," "Wounded Disabled Soldiers Kept on Active Duty."
We are getting out butts kicked in Iraq, and Bush wants to invade more countries? It is clear as day that we do not have enough troops to deal with Iraq. The 12,000 additional troops "to improve security" are being acquired by extending the combat tours of troops already on duty in Iraq. More U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq in November than in any previous month. The United States is so hard up for troops that the Pentagon is deploying soldiers who have lost arms and legs in combat. On Dec. 1, The Washington Post reported: "U.S. armed forces have recently announced new efforts to keep seriously wounded or disabled soldiers on active duty."
Redeploying the disabled is presented as a heroic demonstration of our gung-ho warriors' fighting spirit. But what it really means is we have no more troops to throw at the few thousand lightly armed Iraqi insurgents who have tied down eight U.S. divisions.

Front 14

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/439/1/32/

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From Morning Star Online

"WE hope that the upcoming election will be free, fair, open, well-supervised," US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in Washington at the weekend.

Needless to say, he was referring to the situation in Ukraine rather than the homeland of his "honorary democrat" guest President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan.
General Musharraf is the man who led a coup against his country's elected government and refuses to countenance free elections but whose "democratic" credentials were redeemed by turning his back on the Pakistani military's Taliban proteges and backing the US invasion of Afghanistan.

And the outgoing apologist for the Bush administration's many crimes was certainly not talking about Ohio, where his Republican Party presided over similar electoral fraud to that masterminded by the president's brother in Florida in 2000.

No, General Powell was as oblivious to electoral malpractice in Ohio as he had been to the fact that the evidence that he presented to the UN of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify last year's invasion was entirely fabricated.

If the duplicitous general had been able to avert his eyes from Ukraine to Ohio, he might have spotted hundreds of protesters outside the State House in Columbus urging an investigation into polling day irregularities.

George W Bush declared himself the winner of Ohio's 20 electoral college votes, but attempts to challenge this poll result have been denied on the grounds that there will not be an official declaration of the result until December 13.

As with Katherine Harris in Florida in 2000, the secretary of state responsible for ensuring a free and fair election in Ohio and the co-chairman of Mr Bush's campaign were one and the same person - Ken Blackwell.