Op-Ed

AUSTIN, Texas -- The administration's competence problem is already at the yadda, yadda, yadda stage. They were supposed to protect us from terrorist attack, they said Iraq would be a cakewalk, that we only needed 50,000 troops. They failed to plan for the occupation or Hurricane Katrina or the prescription drug plan. Yadda.

But when you look at the details of what incompetence means, it becomes both chilling and really, really expensive. The Army announced this week it has decided to reimburse Halliburton for nearly all of the disputed costs in the more than $250 million in charges the Pentagon's own auditors had identified as excessive or unjustified.

According to the Pentagon's figures, it normally withholds an average of 66 percent of what the auditors recommend. In this case, the Pentagon wound up paying all but 3.8 percent of the disputed costs, a figure so far outside the norm it was noticed immediately. Rick Barton of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told the New York Times, "To think that it's that near zero is ridiculous when you're talking these kinds of numbers."

For almost a year now, King George and the royal order of servants in his monarchy have mercilessly vilified grieving mom and anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan as an unpatriotic left-wing crackpot who is not only out of touch with mainstream America but also someone who's dishonoring the soldiers who've been killed as well as those still fighting Bush's vanity project in Iraq. Well guess what? Sheehan apparently does speak for America, and for our troops as well.

Evidently the president’s trip to India created an option too perfect to pass up: The man who has led the world in violence during the first years of the 21st century could pay homage to the world’s leading practitioner of nonviolence during the first half of the 20th century. So the White House announced plans for George W. Bush to lay a wreath at the Mahatma Gandhi memorial in New Delhi.

While audacious in its shameless and extreme hypocrisy, this PR gambit is in character for the world’s only superpower. One of the main purposes of the Bush regime’s media spin is to depict reality as its opposite. And Karl Rove obviously figured that mainstream U.S. media outlets, with few exceptions, wouldn’t react with anywhere near the appropriate levels of derision or outrage.

AUSTIN, Texas -- With the Bush administration, it's important to have in mind the old carnival con game: Keep your eye on the shell with the pea under it.

Among the many curious aspects of the administration's approval of the Dubai Ports World takeover of operations at six major ports (and as many as 21) is this exemption from normally routine restrictions: The agreement does not require DP World to keep copies of its business records on U.S. soil, which would place them within the jurisdiction of American courts. Nor does it require the company to designate an American citizen to accommodate requests by the government. So what's that about?

It makes DP World harder to sue and less subject to American regulation. The lovely thing about the ports deal causing such a commotion is that it allows us to bring attention to this fairly obscure provision, which is, in fact, part of a wave of similar special exemptions that's starting to turn into a flood.

To the editor:

This regulation provides Army policy and guidance for establishing civilian inmate labor programs and civilian prison camps on Army installations.

http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r210_35.pdf

Thomas Potter
Olmsted Falls, Ohio

A march had been planned for February 28, the eve of the scheduled March 1 evictions of Hurricane Katrina victims.  FEMA moved the evictions to March 15, so activists have moved the march to March 14.  A press conference on Capitol Hill will be followed by a march through Washington, D.C., past FEMA, past the Department of Homeland Security, and to the White House, where a permit has been obtained to rally in Lafayette Square Park until midnight.  If Bush does not meet the marchers' demands, however, many plan not to leave.

The demands are for a serious housing plan for those already evicted and those still in hotels, and an end to evictions.  Another way of putting it is that the marchers will be demanding that the federal government cease violating the law by working to exclude people from a city on the basis of race and class. 

The NY Times Wednesday reported that under a 1993 amendment to existing foreign investment law, the U.S. government is required to conduct a mandatory 45-day investigation if the investing company is owned and/or controlled by a foreign government. The key word here is mandatory. During this period, Defense, State, Commerce and Transportation department officials, along with the National Security Council and others, would get to put the deal under a microscope, ultimately reporting its findings back to the president. And, Congress would also have the opportunity to more deeply vet the transaction. But the great Bushevik Monarchy once again skirted the law. King Bush once again declared that "I am not above the law, I am the law." The most secretive administration in United States history has once again just flexed its unitary powers, telling Americans and Congress to screw off. So much for mandatory.

Maybe we should be careful about making common cause with born-again free speech advocates who never showed any tolerance for it until it became a handy club for bashing Muslims.

Before the furor over the Danish cartoons caricaturing the prophet Muhammad cools into caricature itself - as in, "Remember when all those Muslims went nuts over a bunch of political cartoons?" - and becomes one more convenient example of the cultural superiority of the West, to be pulled out whenever the "clash of civilizations" needs stoking, I'd like to quote Ann Coulter.

I don't do this lightly, but, like Pat Robertson, she's helpful at making hidden agendas grotesquely explicit. I'd also like to note that I found the link to her column on the Web site of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which apparently believes the appropriate reaction to offensive material is to expose, not censor, it. The council also condemned violence and hosted a forum at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., titled "Religious and Political Perspectives on the Cartoon Controversy." Panel discussions on tolerance! How did that fail to make the headlines?

Death is always in the news. From local car crashes to catastrophes in faraway places, deadly events are grist for the media mill. The coverage is ongoing -- and almost always superficial.

It may be unfair to blame journalists for failing to meet standards that commonly elude artists. For centuries, on the subject of death, countless poets have strived to put the ineffable into words. It’s only easy when done badly.

Yet it’s hard to think of any other topic that is covered so frequently and abysmally in news outlets. The reporting on death is apt to be so flat that it might be mistaken for ball scores or a weather report.

Pallid coverage of the dying is especially routine in U.S. news media when a war is underway and the deaths are caused by the U.S. government.

When a news report breaks through cliches to evoke realities of carnage, the result can be memorable. Here’s a passage from an April 1999 story by Robert Fisk, reporting for the London-based daily Independent about a U.S.-led NATO bombing raid on a target in Yugoslavia:

AUSTIN, Texas -- So, aside from the fact that it's politically idiotic and at least theoretically presents a national security risk, just what is wrong with the Dubai Ports deal?

As President George W. Bush actually said, "I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British company. I'm trying to conduct foreign policy now by saying to the people of the world, we'll treat you fairly."

So, what's wrong with that? There's our only president standing up against discrimination and against tarring all Arabs with the same brush and all that good stuff. (The fact that it was Mr. Racial Profiling speaking, the man who has single-handedly created more Arab enemies for this country than anyone else ever dreamed of doing is just one of those ironies we regularly get whacked over the head with.)