It appears that Shrub and his chicken hawk/puppeteers' lies about WMDs in Iraq have been forgotten by the mainstream (a.k.a. "liberal"- HA!) media.   A pundit recently quipped that "WMD" actually stands for "weapons of mass deception".    Maybe the daily body count of our dead soldiers has trumped the WMD story.  Nay, except for large large losses like  the relatively recent downing of a copter, the daily body count is a page 3 item in our local paper.

I often wonder why the pupeteers / liar-in-chief of the USA haven't yet had WMDs planted in Iraq.  It's not like we have a shortage of them right here in the good old USA.  About 100 miles from here in Anniston AL, the Army is actually burning tons of nerve gas from stored WMDs at a very worrisome plant.  (Actually, it goes a bit beyond worrisome- the Army provided "protective hoods" for local residents!)   Hell, plant 'em in Iraq instead.  The liars would of course have to paint over any "property of USA" signage with "property of Saddam".    Better still, add the planting operation to the Cheney/Haliburton's multi-billion dollar, no-bid contract.   What a sweet win-win deal.  Then, someone's gotta secure and dispose of the planted WMDs.   Surely Cheney/Haliburton can do that for a nominal price!   Make that a win-win-win deal!

A SWAG- WMDs will be planted in Iraq if/when Shrub's puppeteers decide his re-election is in doubt.  Like his macho struting aboard an aircraft carrier and the phony Thanksgiving turkey PR stunts, they may even have Shrub discovering the WMDs!

Bush Lies
www.misleader.org provides a daily posting of the Bush Regime's lies.  It's sponsored by another of my favorites- MoveOn.   What's really fantastic is that the lies themselves and the facts which demonstrate them as such are provided.  Even better, the lies and facts are footnoted- usually with handy links to press articles!   Best on the web IMHO!   If you're not hooked already, check out the sample sample below.   Be sure to check their archives for prior Daily Mislead posts and, while you are at it, send 'em some money to help with regime change!

To me their lists of lies should be compiled and printed with the header  "Articles of Impeachment" and acted on by congress.  Nay- they are mostly a of bunch of contemptible hypocrites- i.e. impeaching Clinton for lying about sex while now aiding if not abetting and encouraging the lies from the regime in the White House.   To me, any one of Bush's lies is more of a "high crime and misdemeanor" than Clinton lying about blow jobs.   A MoveOn pin I saw recently and a Bill Maher quote sum it up quite well:  "HE LIED - THEY DIED"  and "NO ONE DIED FROM BILL'S LIE ABOUT SEX".   It's utterly and completely disgusting....

Way too many citizens deny Bush has lied about the reasons for his Iraq war.   "He's been mislead" and "faulty intelligence" are usually the general thrust of the feeble excuses offered.   I must admit, the later excuse has one element of truth-  Bush does have "faulty intelligence"- his  IQ is likely below 100!

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The Regime's PR
Not only was the turkey "served" by Shrub to some roops in Iraq phony- the US media's coverage was also.  For real journalism, one must go abroad as indicated in a piece by John Nichols, a columnist at the Nation.

Barcelona's Vanguardia: "George W. Bush does not attend the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq, but has dinner in Baghdad with those who dream of coming home alive."

Beirut's Al-Mustaqbal: "Bush's secret visit to Baghdad opens the presidential election season."

Paris' Liberation: an "electoral raid on Baghdad" arranged because "Bush knows that Iraq could become the Achilles heel of his (reelection) campaign."

Italy's La Republica:  "obviously an electoral blitz, a Hollywood style stunt of the kind we will see again and again throughout the (2004) campaign."

London's Independent: a "lightning public relations strike on Baghdad" designed to provide the president "with powerful television imagery with which to launch his reelection campaign next year."  In a report headlined, "The Turkey Has Landed," the Independent explained to British readers that the trip was organized "to secure valuable prime-time television coverage on Thanksgiving Day, featuring pictures of a determined president rallying his troops after a grim month in which 70 lives have been lost."

Our man George W. is not a liar like Nixon. Or a liar like Clinton. Or a liar like LBJ.  Our George W. is a quack, a fraud, a fake, a charlatan, a counterfeit and a gammon,  yes. If it could be said without too much giddiness, he even beats about the bush.

But he would not, could not lie, not in a train, not in the rain, not in a box, not with a fox.  Our imperial cowboy George W. is not, nor has he ever been - not in the Texas Funeral Home case, not about who gets what in his tax cuts, not about the "nation's top economists" forecasting "substantial economic growth," not about 9-11 (from whether he saw the first plane hit the towers to what Tenet told him in the months before), not about farmers and estate tax, not about a single solitary thing never, ever, ever has honest and true George W. been a liar. Nor have his pants been on fire.

------------
Why Peace Won't Come is a great article by James Carroll from the Boston Globe which correctly pegs one reason for America's warrior mentality- MONEY!  A snippet is below.  The full text is at Common Dreams.  The concluding paragraph:

Why is it so difficult to make peace? In places like Northern Ireland and the Middle East, the answer is all about the passions of grief, unforgiven wounds, fears that won't yield. But in the United States, the answer is far more coarse. Not grief, hurt, or fear. Alas, the answer is money. War remains the turbine that drives America's economy -- therefore, its politics, its shallow pride.

Those looking for ideology in the White House should consider this: For the men who rule our world, rules are for other people. The truly powerful feed ideology to the masses like .fast food while they dine on the most rarified delicacy of all: impunity.

Then there's Asscroft decision less than 2 months before 9/11 to quit flying commercial airlines as reported on 7/26/01 CBS News article.   It reports that he did this because the FBI told him to based on a "threat assessment".   Must have been a real serious threat since he flew on a $1,600 per HOUR Gulfstream jet - to go on a fishing trip!   Of course he didn't pay for it- you and I did.

The CBS news link is from the excellent misleader.org web page White House Admits Pre-9/11 Warnings; Bush Still Denies It

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The Regime is an International Criminal Syndicate
Regime Member Richard Perle admits their Iraq invasion violated international law:.

"In this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing.  It would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone, and this would have been morally unacceptable."  (Guardian/UK, 11/20/03)

Reckon the ICC has a RICO law?

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Afghanistan
A great Sarah Chayes piece.  Listeners to NPR during the Afgan "war" will recognize her name and perhaps realize they haven't heard her excellent reporting in quite awhile.  As she writes in the piece, she's given up reporting and is now helping to rebuild Afghanistan.  Also described is the media's (even NPR) slanted coverage of the Chickenhawks Afghan war::

And yet it proved a difficult juncture to be an American journalist. "The worst period in my entire career," a dear friend confided as we were comparing notes afterwards. He sent me a list of story ideas his editors had turned down. "They simply didn't want any reporting," he explained. "They told us the story lines, and asked us to substantiate them." CNN correspondents received written instructions on how to frame stories of Afghan suffering.

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The Israel problem
A thought experiment:  Instead of "merely" invading Iraq and rebuilding the Iraq oil industry "for the Iraqis", what if the Bush regime evicted Iraqis and conficated their homes, farms, and lands and relocated them to ghettos, built settlements for US citizens on conficated land, implemented measures to physically divide families as well as fragment the Iraq people and erected a "security barrier" to secure the stolen land.   Would any of the above be considered "wrong"?

Chickenhearts at Notre Dame -  an excellent article by two former CIA folks on the alignment of the warmongering  US and Israeli regimes offers a view on the matter.  The lead paragraph

It is wide open now. Israelis are training Americans at Fort Bragg on their well tested techniques for carrying out targeted--and of course extrajudicial--assassinations. Americans in Iraq are copying this and all the other wretchedly cruel, unjust (and failed) Israeli occupation tactics in the West Bank and Gaza, tactics that the U.S. through its massive aid enables and encourages Israel to pursue. It is impossible to exaggerate the stupidity and just plain evil of the Bush administration in transferring such copycat policies to Iraq, at a time when hatred of U.S. policies is already rising daily around the world. The training of assassination teams is only one of many manifestations of the United States' "Israeli connection."

The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent
The New Intifada: Resisting Israel's Apartheid

A snippet from the suit.
                     Defendant GWB is invoking a long standard operating procedure of invoking
                      national security and executive privilege claims to suppress the basis of this
                      lawsuit that Defendant GWB, et al., failed to act and prevent the "911" attacks.
                      This Court must see through this and Plaintiff argues from the onset, the
                      reasons why "911" occurred are no longer a national security risk, but a
                      national security disgrace and tragedy. Plaintiff asserts, contrary to Defendant
                      GWB's assertion that OBL is responsible for "911," the compelling evidence
                      that will be presented in this case through discovery, subpoena power by this
                      Court and testimony at trial will lead to one undisputed fact, Defendant GWB
                      failed to act and prevent "911" knowing the attacks would lead to our nation
                      having to engage in an "International War on Terror (IWOT)" which would
                      benefit Defendants both financially and for political reasons.  Plaintiff asserts,
                      her husband was murdered on "911" and Defendant GWB and many of his
                      cabinet members are now profiting from the IWOT.  Plaintiff will prove, the
                      "Bush family" has had long ties to power in the federal government and with
                      the OBL family which raises serious public trust questions yet to be
                      answered, to include, but not limited to, the fact that Defendant Cheney is
                      profiting immensely from his former company's exclusive contracts to rebuild
                      Iraq

3,000 copies of the press release were sent out, but the filing of the suit was ignored by the "liberal" media.  (note the .nz in the URL for the press release link...).  Try a google search on "Ellen Mariani suit"....  I guess fifth estate was too busy with with Kobe story to cover a RICO suit against the regime.  Which leads to the following....

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Press consolidation  and dumming-down
The above ties in well with a snippet from an email making the rounds:

A few years back Harold Evans of the London Sunday Times, observed that the challenge facing American newspapers "is not to stay in business -- it is to stay in journalism.'' As corporations' authoritarian, profit-driven consciousness comes to dominate both media and governance, you can expect a lot more serial celebrity scandals and even less news on the way things work or anything that really counts.

There is a clear method and message in this obscurantist madness. All this media consolidation and tightening control is strategically aligned with deregulation, privatization, social program-gutting deficits and free trade regimes. They are all convergent tactics to enforce corporations' full spectrum dominance over democratic humankind.

George W. Bush is not a liar.
by Brian Wimer
Please, let's be reasonable. We can't say Bush lied. No we simply mustn't. For the sake of the nation, and the nation's children, and the nation's children's children, it shouldn't be said.

He did not lie when he told the nation in October of 2002 that Saddam Hussein had a "massive stockpile of biological weapons" and "thousands of tons of chemical agents."

No, he prevaricated. George W. is a benevolent prevaricator, yes, a global prevaricator, even a hegemonic prevaricator, perhaps. But not a liar. Never. A fibber. Not a liar.

In March, he told America: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." There was no doubt he said. And he does not lie.

It doesn't matter that in 2002 Mohamed el-Baradei, chief of the UN nuclear weapons inspection agency, found: "No evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq."

It doesn't matter that in 1995 Saddam's son-in-law, Lieut. Gen. Hussein Kamel, formerly in charge of Iraq nuclear/chemical/biological programs, defected and said that Iraq had "destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver them."

It doesn't matter that after George W. cited a report from The International Atomic Energy Agency saying that that Iraq in 1998 was "six months away" from developing a nuclear weapon- the IAEA's chief spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said: "There's never been a report like that issued from this agency."

Or, that when White House Deputy Press Secretary Scott McClellan clarified that George W. was referring to an earlier IAEA report: "In '91, there was a report saying that after the war they found out they were about six months away"-  Mr. Gwozdecky reiterated that no such report was issued by the IAEA in 1991, either.

And it doesn't matter, either, that a forum of veteran CIA intelligence analysts issued George W. a letter in March of 2003, titled: " Forgery, Hyperbole, Half-Truth: A Problem," complaining of his, "transparent abuse of intelligence reporting and the dubious conclusions drawn from that reporting" further alleging that the Bush administration was "shaping intelligence for political purposes."

That's all just "revisionist history."

OK, George W. is deceptive to be sure. Dissembling, too. And let's not forget deceitful.  He is lacking veracity and frankness, and void of sooth, though seemingly sincere in his proclivity for pretense. But he did not lie.

"(Iraq) possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons," he said. "The threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place," he said. "If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today -- and we do -- does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons," he said. He knew. But, he did not lie.

George W. is, like the great minds of the modern era, an inventor. A fabricator. A mason of flim-flam. A builder of bunkum. He varnishes the truth. He colors the candor.  He mints misstatements, Machiavellian misrepresentations and mystifying mis-citations.  But, he does not lie.

He told the nation, with nary a wink, "Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more ... We could wait and hope ... but I'm convinced that is a hope against all evidence." Indeed, all evidence. He did not once lie. Ever.

He is just an embroiderer, you see. A weaver of deceit. A knitter of cajolery. He simply dresses things up, our George W.. Sure, the Emperor has no clothes, but he does not lie.

"Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles," he said, although Iraq's "illegal" Al Samoud missiles fell to earth at 108. "Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas," he said, although inspectors found only one such model, marginally fitting the description, barely fastened together with tape.

George W. glosses. He, in fact, is glossy, like a USS Abraham Lincoln photo shoot. Mendacious, subrepticious and false. Fraudulent, indeed. But not a liar.

His Vice President Dick Cheney told us in August, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." Yet there was doubt. His  Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said of Iraq's alleged WMD, "We know where they are." Yet he found none. His Secretary of State Colin Powell said last December to the UN, "We know that in the late 1990s, Iraq built mobile biological weapons production units." Yet, all we found were mobile food labs and two trailers, now assumed to be used for weather balloons. But there is no lie.

George W. stews the evidence. He cooks the books. He is a master chef of disingenuity. A concocter. A mealy-mouthed man of lip-service who cleans the outside of the platter. But not a liar.

Citing forged documents, George W. told America in January, "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Yet, the CIA knew in March of the previous year that this documentation was fake. Yet, George W's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the White House was unaware of the CIA's doubts just last week on national television. But, it's not a lie. No, never.

On the world's stage, George W. trumps-up and dumbs-down. He is a sham artist. A master of dramatic fiction. A Tartuffe. He plays the hypocrite, puts on the mask and cries "Wolf...owitz!" But he does not lie.

George sent Powell to the UN with a photograph captioned: "Terrorist Poison and Explosives Factory, Khurmal," allegedly linking Iraq to Al Queda. On the  round, two days later, journalists found what turned out to be an empty tent. But there's no lie here.  Heavens no.

Double-tongued, double-dealing and double-faced, indeed. Insidiously perfidious and curiously spurious. Yes. Yes. Yes. But, our boy George W. is no liar to be  sure.

George W. insisted, "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group." On any given day, by golly. He does not lie. He belies, at worst.

He perverted the truth. Distorted and misreported. Shuffled, fenced and played it fast and loose, our athletic Commander in Chief. But he did not lie.

George W. told us all, "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof." And though the evidence was far from clear, he did not lie.

Our man George W. is not a liar like Nixon. Or a liar like Clinton. Or a liar like LBJ.  Our George W. is a quack, a fraud, a fake, a charlatan, a counterfeit and a gammon,  yes. If it could be said without too much giddiness, he even beats about the bush.

But he would not, could not lie, not in a train, not in the rain, not in a box, not with a fox.  Our imperial cowboy George W. is not, nor has he ever been - not in the Texas Funeral Home case, not about who gets what in his tax cuts, not about the "nation's top economists" forecasting "substantial economic growth," not about 9-11 (from whether he saw the first plane hit the towers to what Tenet told him in the months before), not about farmers and estate tax, not about a single solitary thing never, ever, ever has honest and true George W. been a liar. Nor have his pants been on fire.

"More Cash in People's Pockets" Not Extended to Unemployed

President Bush has promoted and defended his tax cuts by saying that "when Americans have more money in their pocket to spend, to save or invest, the whole country benefits and someone is more likely to find a job."¹ But the president has apparently not applied this thinking to unemployment benefits, which are likely to be spent quickly as emergency funding for families without other income. The Republican Congress is allowing unemployment benefits to expire over the holidays, even as the percentage of chronically unemployed is its highest in more than 10 years.

The president argued as a candidate and through his first year in office that, "it is compassionate to actively help our fellow citizens in need."² But the president's unwillingness, for the second time in two years, to promote the extension seems to undermine that rhetoric.

Ultimately, the responsibility for passing the extension lies with the Republican Congress, whose leaders have argued that extension of benefits is unnecessary because of the improving economy. But new jobless claims unexpectedly went up last week, the highest level in six weeks.³

The president has asked Congress in the past, sometimes forcefully, to take action on bills he considers a priority, most recently when he asked Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to reconvene the Senate to vote on the omnibus appropriations bill.⁴ (Frist declined.) In fact, when running in 2000, Bush chastised the Republican House for proposing to eliminate tax credits for working families in order to save money, saying, "I don't think [Congress] ought to balance their budget on the backs of the poor."⁵ But in this instance, the White House has simply reiterated its line on jobs, saying yesterday, "as long as there are people looking for work who cannot find a job, there is more that we need to do," and that, "we'll continue working with Congress on that issue."⁶

The number of chronically unemployed is at an 11-year high, with over 2 million active job seekers out of work for 27 weeks or more⁷ -- more than 50 percent greater in October 2003 than in March 2002.⁸ The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that between 80,000 and 90,000 workers per week will lose access to benefits.⁹

Sources:

1. Presidential Remarks at Bush-Cheney '04 Luncheon, 6/30/03.
2. "White House Fact Sheet: Compassionate Conservatism," 4/30/02.
3. Jobless Claims Up Unexpectedly Last Week," Reuters, 12/12/03,
4. "After Democrats Object, Senate Delays Vote on Spending Bill," Washington Post, 12/10/03.
5. "Bush Criticism Of GOP Proposal Surprised House," Washington Post, 10/2/99.
6. Press Briefing, 12/11/03,
7. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
8. "Congressional Leadership Pushes for Extending Expiring Tax Breaks, but Ignores Expiring Unemployment Benefits," Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 11/25/03.
9. Ibid.

 
BAKER TAKES THE LOAF
The President's Business Partner Slices Up Iraq
by Greg Palast
TomPaine.com  Monday, December 8, 2003

Well, ho ho ho!  It's an early Christmas for James Baker III.

All year the elves at his law firm, Baker Botts of Texas, have been working day and night to prevent the families of the victims of the September 11 attack from  seeking information from Saudi Arabia on the Kingdom's funding of Al Qaeda fronts.

It's tough work, but this week came the payoff when President Bush appointed Baker, the firm's senior partner, to "restructure" the debts of the nation of Iraq.

And who will net the big bucks under Jim Baker's plan?  Answer:  his client, Saudi Arabia, which claims $30.7 billion due from Iraq plus $12 billion in reparations from the First Gulf war.

PUPPET STRINGS

Let's ponder what's going on here.

We are talking about something called "sovereign debt."  And unless George Bush has finally 'fessed up and named himself Pasha of Iraq, he is not their sovereign.  Mr. Bush has no authority to seize control of that nation's assets nor its debts.

But our President is not going to let something as trivial as international law stand in the way of a quick buck for Mr. Baker.  To get around the wee issue that Bush has no legal authority to mess with Iraq's debt, the White House has crafted a neat little subterfuge.  The official press release says the President has not appointed Mr. Baker.   Rather Mr. Bush is "responding to a request from the Iraqi Governing Council."   That is, Bush is acting on the authority of the puppet government he imposed on Iraqis at gunpoint.

I will grant the Iraqi 'government' has some knowledge of international finance; its key member, Ahmed Chalabi, is a convicted bank swindler.

The Bush team must see the other advantage in having the rump rulers of Iraq pretend to choose Mr. Baker; the US Senate will not have to review or confirm the appointment. If you remember, Henry Kissinger ran away from the September 11 commission with his consulting firm tucked between his legs after the Senate demanded he reveal his client list.   In the case of Jim Baker, who will be acting as a de facto US Treasury secretary for international affairs, our elected Congress will have no chance to ask him who is paying his firm.… nor even require him to get off conflicting payrolls.

This takes the Bush administration' Conflicts-R-Us appointments process to a new low.

Or maybe there's no conflict at all.   If you see Jim Baker's new job as working not to protect a new Iraqi democracy but to protect the loot of the old theocracy of Saudi Arabia, the conflict disappears.

Iraq's debt totals something on the order of $120 billion to $150 billion, depending on who's counting.  And who's counting is VERY important.

Much of the so-called debt to Saudi Arabia was given to Saddam Hussein to fight a proxy war for the Saudis against their hated foe, the Shi'ia of Iran.  And as disclosed by a former Saudi diplomat, the kingdom's sheiks handed about $7 billion to Saddam under the table in the 1980's to build an "Islamic bomb."

Should Iraqis today and those not yet born have to be put in a debtor's prison to pay off the secret payouts to Saddam?

James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, says 'No!'  Wolfensohn has never been on my Christmas card list, but in this case he's got it right:  Iraq should simply cancel $120 billion in debt.

Normally, the World Bank is in charge of post-war debt restructuring.   That's why the official name of the World Bank is "International Bank for Reconstruction and Development."   This is the Bank's expertise.  Bush has rushed Baker in to pre-empt the debt write-off the World Bank would certainly promote.

"I FIXED FLORIDA"

Why is our President so concerned with the wishes of Mr. Baker's clientele?  What does Bush owe Baker?  Let me count the ways, beginning with the 2000 election.

Just last week Baker said, "I fixed the election in Florida for George Bush."  That was the substance of his remarks last week to an audience of Russian big wigs as reported to me by my somewhat astonished colleagues at BBC television.

It was Baker, as consiglieri to the Bush family, who came up with the strategy of maneuvering the 2000 Florida vote count into a Supreme Court packed with politicos.

Baker's claim to have fixed the election was not a confession; it was a boast.  He meant to dazzle current and potential clients about his Big In with the Big Boy in the White House.   Baker's firm is already a top player in the Great Game of seizing Caspian Sea oil. (An executive of Exxon-Mobil, one of Baker Botts's clients, has been charged with evading taxes on bribes paid in Kazakhstan.)

ALL IN THE FAMILY

Over the years, Jim Baker has taken responsibility for putting bread on the Bush family table.  As Senior Counsel to Carlyle, the arms-dealing investment group, Baker arranged for the firm to hire both President Bush 41 after he was booted from the White House and President Bush 43 while his daddy was still in office.

Come to think of it, maybe I'm being a bit too dismissive of the Iraqi make-believe government.  After all, it's not as if George Bush were elected by voters either.  It would be more accurate to say that TWO puppet governments have agreed to let the man who has always pulled the strings come out from behind the curtain, take a bow, take charge -- then take the money and run.
 

A curtain was lifted last week on the fundamental cause of this quagmire. Clearly exposed, if only briefly, were the real reason why the Pentagon clung to Cold War thinking even after the Soviet threat was gone, as well as the root source of George W. Bush's own hair-trigger war policy. A week ago yesterday, Philip M. Condit shamefully resigned as CEO of Boeing, the giant aircraft manufacturer. In the days preceding that disgrace, Boeing had acknowledged that other senior executives had committed ethical, if not legal, violations in pursuit of a $20 billion contract with the Air Force for the construction of a new fleet of tanker aircraft. The chief financial officer and a vice president were fired, causing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to begin his own inquiry.

But the scandal was not just Boeing's. The hugely expensive tanker project had been nursed along by, among others, Richard N. Perle, an intimate of Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush -- and a beneficiary last year, as The New York Times reported, of a $20 million Boeing investment in the financial company he heads. Furthermore, the aircraft project had advanced with Capitol Hill support that had been secured by Boeing lobbyists and campaign contributions. In 2002, Boeing received almost $20 billion in federal contracts, while spending almost $4 million on lobbyists and almost $2 million to help friendly legislators win elections.

Critics, like Senator John McCain of Arizona, had argued that the Air Force did not need the new planes at all, but hard-pressed Boeing needed the business, and the Air Force depends on such endless rounds of gross expenditure. If there is a brand new fleet of tanker aircraft, can a brand new fleet of the bombers they service be far behind? Whether there is an actual, real-world need for any of this is simply not the question. America's global military posture is defined not by requirements of national security but by the profit-driven collusion -- capitalism's real "hidden hand" -- of contractors, Pentagon officials, politicians and pundits. The obvious waste is one outrage, but the more grievous problem is what this corruption leads to in the world. What it has led to in the broken cities of Iraq.

Why is it so difficult to make peace? In places like Northern Ireland and the Middle East, the answer is all about the passions of grief, unforgiven wounds, fears that won't yield. But in the United States, the answer is far more coarse. Not grief, hurt, or fear. Alas, the answer is money. War remains the turbine that drives America's economy -- therefore, its politics, its shallow pride.

Contrary to all predictions, the heavy doors of Old Europe weren't slammed in James .Baker's face as he asked forgiveness for Iraq's foreign debt. France and Germany .appear to have signed on, and Russia is softening its line.

Just last week, there was virtual consensus that Mr. Baker's Drop the Debt Tour had .been maliciously sabotaged by deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, whose move to .shut out non-coalition partners from $18.6-billion (U.S.) in Iraq reconstruction contracts .seemed designed to make Mr. Baker look like a hypocrite.

Only now it turns out that Mr. Wolfowitz may not have been undermining Mr. Baker at all, .but rather acting as his enforcer. He showed up with a big stick -- the threat of economic .exclusion from Iraq's potential $500-billion reconstruction -- just when Mr. Baker was .about to speak softly.

Mr. Baker hardly needed Mr. Wolfowitz to make his mission look hypocritical; one can .scarcely imagine an act more rife with historical ironies than James Baker impersonating .Bono on Iraq's debt. The Iraqi people "should not be saddled with the debt of a brutal .regime that was more interested in using funds to build palaces and build torture .chambers and brutalize the Iraqi people," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

No argument here. But when I heard about Mr. Baker's "noble mission," as George W. .Bush described it, I couldn't help thinking about an underreported story from earlier this .month. On Dec. 4, The Miami Herald published excerpts from a declassified State .Department document. It is the transcript of a meeting held on Oct. 7, 1976, between .Henry Kissinger, then-secretary of state under president Gerald Ford, and Argentina's .foreign minister under the military dictatorship, navy admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti.

It was the height of Argentina's dirty war, a campaign to destroy the so-called Marxist .threat in Argentina by systematically torturing and killing not only armed guerrillas, but .also union organizers, student activists and their families and sympathizers. By the end of .the dictatorship, about 30,000 people had been "disappeared."

At the time of the Kissinger-Guzzetti meeting at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, much of .Argentina's left had been erased, and news of bodies washing up on the banks of the Rio .de la Plata was drawing urgent calls for economic sanctions against the junta. The .Kissinger-Guzzetti transcript reveals that Washington not only knew about the .disappearances, it approved of them.

Mr. Guzzetti reports to Mr. Kissinger on "the very good results in the last four months. .The terrorist organizations have been dismantled." After discussing the international .outcry, Mr. Kissinger states, "Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to .succeed. I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be supported. What is not .understood in the United States is that you have a civil war. We read about human-rights .problems but not the context. The quicker you succeed, the better."

Here is where Mr. Baker's present-day mission becomes relevant.

Mr. Kissinger quickly moves on to the topic of loans, encouraging Mr. Guzzetti to apply for .as much foreign assistance as possible -- and fast, before Argentina's "human-rights .problem" ties the hands of the U.S. administration. Mr. Kissinger instructs the minister, ."Proceed with your Export-Import Bank requests. We would like your economic program .to succeed and will do our best to help you."

The World Bank estimates that roughly $10-billion of the money borrowed by the .generals went to military purchases, used to build the prison camps from which .thousands never re-emerged, and to buy hardware for the Falklands War. It also went .into numbered Swiss bank accounts, a sum impossible to track because the generals .destroyed all records relating to the loans on their way out the door.

We do know this: Under the dictatorship, Argentina's external debt ballooned from .$7.7-billion in 1975 to $46-billion in 1982. Ever since, the country has been caught in an .escalating crisis, borrowing billions to pay interest on that original, illegitimate debt, which .today is only slightly higher than that held by Iraq's foreign creditors: $141-billion.

The Kissinger transcript proves that the U.S. knowingly gave both money and high-level .political encouragement to the generals' murderous campaign. Yet despite its irrefutable .complicity in Argentina's tragedy, the United States has consistently opposed all attempts .to cancel the country's debt.

Argentina's case is not exceptional. For decades, the U.S. government has used its .power in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to block campaigns to .cancel debts accumulated under apartheid in South Africa, the Ferdinand Marcos .kleptocracy in the Philippines, the brutally corrupt Duvalier regime in Haiti, the long .military dictatorship that sent Brazil's debt spiraling from $5.7-billion in 1964 to .$104-billion in 1985. The list goes on.

The U.S. position has been that wiping out the debts would lead to dangerous .precedents (and, of course, would rob Washington of the leverage it needs to push for .investor-friendly economic reforms). So why now is Mr. Bush so concerned that "The .future of the Iraqi people should not be mortgaged to the enormous burden of debt?" .Because it is taking money away from "reconstruction," money that could be going to .Halliburton, Bechtel, Exxon and Boeing.

It has become popular to claim that the White House has been hijacked by .neo-conservatives, men so in love with free-market dogma that they cannot see reason .or pragmatism. I'm not convinced. If there's one thing last week's diplomatic dustups .make clear, it's that the underlying ideology of the Bush White House isn't .neo-conservatism, it's old-fashioned greed.

While neo-cons worship abstract free-market rules, there is really only one rule that .appears to matter to the Bush clan: If it helps our friends get even richer, do it.

Seen through this lens, the seemingly erratic behavior coming out of Washington makes .a lot more sense. Sure, Mr. Wolfowitz's contract-hogging openly flouts the free-market .principles of competition and government non-intervention. But like Mr. Baker's jubilee, it .does have a direct benefit for the firms closest to the Bush administration. Not only are .they buying a debt-free Iraq, but they won't have to compete for the deals with European .corporate rivals.

The entire reconstruction project defies neo-con tenets. It has sent this year's U.S. deficit .to a cartoonish $500-billion, much of it handed out in no-bid contracts, creating the kind .of monopoly in which Halliburton may have been able to overcharge an estimated .$61-million for imported gasoline in Iraq.

Those looking for ideology in the White House should consider this: For the men who rule .our world, rules are for other people. The truly powerful feed ideology to the masses like .fast food while they dine on the most rarified delicacy of all: impunity.

Mr. Bush,

This ''open letter'' is coming from my heart. I want you to know that I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat and that this is not an attempt to ''bash the Government''.

You Mr. Bush should be held responsible and liable for any and all acts that were committed to aid in any "cover up" of the tragic events of September 11, 2001. As President you have a duty to protect the American people. On September 11th you did not instruct your staff to issue a nationwide emergency warning/alert to advise us of the attack on America. We had to receive the news of the attacks via the news networks.

In the months leading up to the attacks you were repeatedly advised of a possible attack on American soil. During your daily intelligence briefings you were given information that had been uncovered that the very real possibility existed that certain undesirable elements would use commercial aircraft to destroy certain "target" buildings. You never warned the American people of this possible threat. Who were you protecting?

When you took no responsibility towards protecting the general public from the possibility of attack, you were certainly not upholding the oath you spoke when you took office. In that oath you pledged to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America.

On the morning of the attack, you and members of your staff were fully aware of the unfolding events yet you chose to continue on to the Emma E. Booker Elementary School to proceed with a scheduled event and "photo op". While our nation was under attack you did not appear to blink an eye or shed a tear. You continued on as if everything was "business as usual".

In the days following the attacks all air traffic was grounded and Americans, including myself, were stranded wherever they had been when the flight ban was imposed. I was stranded at Midway Airport in Chicago, unable to continue on to California for my daughter's wedding. Imagine my surprise when I later found out that during this "no fly" period a number of people were flown out of the country on a 747 with Arabic lettering on the fuselage. None of these people were interviewed or questioned by any local, State or Federal agencies. Why were they allowed to leave and who exactly was on that flight. We know for a fact that some of the people on the flight were members of (or related to) the royal family of Saudi Arabia and members of the Bin Laden family. Were these people allowed to leave because of the long-standing relationships that your family has with both families?

It is my belief that you intentionally allowed 9/11 to happen to gather public support for a "war on terrorism". These wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, have not accomplished what you stated were your goals. Why have you not captured Osama Bin Laden? Where are Saddam's weapons of mass destruction? All that has happened is a bill that is passed before Congress for 87 billion dollars to rebuild what you ordered blown to bits. As an American who lost a loved one in the "war on terror" I do pray and support our troops who were sent to Afghanistan and Iraq by you. These troops have and will continue to die for your lies. As an American I can make this statement as it appears that associates of your family may stand to prosper from the rebuilding of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Mr. Bush the time has come for you to stop your control over us. Stop blocking the release of certain evidence and documents that were discovered by the 9/11 Investigation Commission if you have nothing to hide proving you did not fail to act and prevent the attacks of 9/11. Your reason for not releasing this material is that it is a matter of "national security". When in fact I believe that it is your personal credibility/security that you are concerned with. You do not want the public to know the full extent of your responsibility and involvement.

After 9/11 the Patriot Act and Homeland Security Act were passed. Both of these allow the government to tap your telephone, search your home, and seize whatever they feel they need to do on a whim. They can do this without a judge's review or a warrant. I feel that this is in direct conflict with our rights as stated in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

We the families of 9/11 victims need to have answers to the following questions:

1. Why were 29 pages of the 9/11committee report personally censored at your request?

2. Where are the "black boxes" from Flight 11 and Flight 175?

3. Where are the "voice recorders" from Flight 11 and Flight 175?

4. Why can't we gain access to the complete air traffic control records for Flight 11 and Flight 175?

5. Where are the airport surveillance tapes that show the passengers boarding the doomed flights?

6. When will complete passenger lists for all of the flights be released?

7. Why did your brother Jeb (the Governor of Florida) go to the offices of the Hoffman Aviation School and order that flight records and files be removed? These files were then put on a C130 government cargo plane and flown out of the country. Where were they taken and who ordered it done?

It has been over two years since hundreds of our lost loved ones "remains" have still yet to be identified and their remains placed in a landfill at Fresh Kill. We want our heroes brought back and given a public and proud resting place where we all can pay our respects and honor them. These innocent people never had a chance as they were taken from us on that sad September Day.

In the court of public opinion Mr. Bush, your lies are being uncovered each day. My husband, all of the other victims and their families and our nation as a whole, has been victimized by your failed leadership prior to and after 9/11!

I will prove this in a court of law!

 Ellen M. Mariani

Bill Clinton rebuilt the Democratic Party in crucial ways. But Howard Dean is rebuilding it in a way Clinton missed. Party insiders would do well to make their peace with it.

By Michael Tomasky
Issue Date: 1.1.04

As Democrats in Iowa and beyond prepare to start voting, we can look back and identify four distinct phases of this nascent presidential campaign: the early, we-get-to-know-them phase; the preliminary nuts-and-bolts phase, concerned with which candidate hired which professionals; the money-chase phase; and, most recently, the first winnowing phase, when observers felt they finally knew enough about the play of things to start making predictions.
These phases have had their distinct characteristics, but they have one thing in common: In each of them, Howard Dean was prematurely and mistakenly written off. In phase one he was too abrasive; in phase two he'd hired second-raters; in phase three he couldn't possibly raise big money; and in the last phase he'd peaked too early. The reality, instead, is that he and campaign manager Joe Trippi have run a dazzlingly brilliant and innovative campaign. Al Gore's imprimatur or no, he could still be "stopped"-other candidates in the field have positive attributes, and voters haven't cast a ballot yet. But Dean just seems to get stronger every week, challenging not only the laws of politics but of Isaac Newton himself. Why?

Let's rewind the tape to December1988. the Democratic Party had hit rock bottom. It had just lost its third presidential election in a row, and this time with a candidate who'd been 17 points ahead in the polls as late as August. The party was riven by ideological divisions. And it was losing the memory of itself as a vibrant organism-no Democrat under 35 or so in 1988 had a living memory of a truly successful Democratic president. Finally, there was no clear "comer" who could save it, certainly not that gabby governor from Arkansas who jabbered on and on at the 1988 convention podium to such an extent that he became a national curiosity, invited on The Tonight Show to explain himself (yes, yes: publicity was the point).

It turned out that Bill Clinton was the comer the party needed. He rebuilt it; indeed, he saved it. But for the purposes of thinking clearly about the Dean phenomenon, it's crucial to think about the particular ways in which Clinton rebuilt the party, and one way in which he did not.

Clinton rebuilt the party ideologically. He shed it of some of its more hidebound ways. Whether one agrees with, say, his support for welfare reform or NAFTA, it must be said that those moves took some political courage insofar as there wasn't much of a natural constituency within the Democratic Party for his positions. Moving something as large as a political party off a marker on which it has stood for a generation or two is no easy thing.

He also rebuilt the party as a fund-raising machine. This, as we know, has had both its good and its ill effects. But whatever the downsides, this rebuilding, too, was necessary. From the stock-market boom to the exorbitant price of gourmet mustards, the 1990s culture was about money. Politics was not immune. The Democrats, always cash-poor compared with the Republicans-and especially so after losing three presidential elections in a row-needed to join the financial big leagues to be able to compete.

But there is one way in which Clinton did not rebuild the Democratic Party: from the ground up. Beyond rhetoric, and the occasional action, he didn't really make it a party of the people. He and Al Gore did energize a youth vote in 1992, and he made millions of voters who'd been disaffected feel comfortable voting Democratic again, bringing important states like New Jersey back into the Democratic camp.

But he never situated the party as an entity that represented the aspirations of its people-its most committed members. Back to Newton: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. And the reaction to bringing the party to the center and allying it more closely with corporate donors was that the people at the bottom of the totem pole felt a little detached. (Remember: Fierce loyalty to Clinton within the party's base didn't really kick into fifth gear until the Monica Lewinsky scandal, when many progressives defended Clinton less because of the man himself than because of what they saw as a functional coup d'état.)

This is where Howard Dean comes in. If one thinks of the Democratic Party as rebuilding itself after its disastrous 1980s, then Dean-or more appropriately, "Deanism"-is a new and potentially more powerful stage of the rebuilding process. Clinton rebuilt (forgive the Marxist terminology, but it happens to fit) the superstructure. Dean is rebuilding the base. "If Clinton modernized the message," says Simon Rosenberg, the most prominent centrist Democrat who's enthusiastic about Dean, "then Dean is rebuilding the party. In the '90s party, it was, 'Write us a big check.' Regular people were left out of that equation. Now, through new technology, we're getting them back in."

There's a tricky thing about this rebuilding stage, though: It excludes party insiders. It has nothing to do with Washington. It's no wonder that Democratic insiders, so accustomed to having complete ownership of a process like a party primary campaign, should dislike Dean and even fear him: He has stolen the process right out of their hands. He is not "of" them in any way, shape or form. In fact, his accumulating successes merely serve to emphasize their irrelevance to this rebuilding stage. No wonder they should take a kind of emotional comfort in writing him off as the new George McGovern; it's much easier to dismiss a thorny thing than to come to terms with it.

It isn't clear-yet-that Dean can rebuild the potential Democratic electorate beyond the party base. But it isn't clear that he can't, either.

If Deanism was, and is, a natural and entirely logical part of a larger historical process-there's still a question: It's the right movement, sure, but is he the right candidate?

The voters, the process and the man himself will tell us that in time. Dick Gephardt, John Kerry and John Edwards would all be perfectly good candidates. Each has an argument. With regard to Wesley Clark, we can't quite say yet whether he'd be a good candidate, though he brings a few qualities to the table whose potential appeal in November is obvious. And goodness knows, if any of the above manages to overcome Dean and become the nominee, he sure will have earned the title.

Unless, that is, he benefited from an insider-driven process designed to block Dean at all costs. At this point, after he has amassed the armies of small donors and bloggers and volunteers, blocking Dean is not blocking one man. It's blocking the hopes of millions of Democrats who-understand the importance of this-would walk through fire for a candidate for the first time in their lives. That isn't something that should be done cavalierly; in the long term, blocking the active participation of these millions may do more damage to the Democratic Party than four more years of George W. Bush.

Besides, insurgents do win sometimes. Because the standard historical analogies to Dean (McGovern, Barry Goldwater) have now run their course, let me add two more to the mix. The first is Andrew Jackson-invoked, significantly, by Dean himself at the Dec. 9 endorsement event with Gore. Say all you want about 1828 being ancient history, but some things are eternal. Bringing new constituencies into the process and transforming politics through that infusion is one of them. Yesterday it was the pamphleteer, today it's the blogger; but the impulse and the ardor are the same. Another is Harold Washington. It was impossible, the experts said, for African Americans to elect a black mayor in Chicago. Couldn't be done. Well, it happened. He won the way Jackson did, which is the way Dean is hoping to.

But ultimately, forget historical analogies. What's important is not to ponder past Novembers but to focus hard on this coming one.

Insiders need to start thinking about making their peace with Deanism. The party-the (still) post-1988 party-needs a rebuilt base, and Dean is doing that in a way that has no precedent. And instead of fretting about all the ways Dean could lose, the insiders might do better to spend some time thinking about how he might win.

Because he might. It was interesting that, in the wake of Gore's endorsement of Dean, it was conservative commentator William Kristol who wrote the column that most emphatically enumerated Bush's vulnerabilities. Sure, Kristol may have had his own reasons for arguing that Dean is competitive, but the facts of Bush's weak points are real. He has the powers of incumbency, money and a feared (actually, overly feared) political operation. But his numbers are soft. Gore's 2000 states plus Ohio or Arizona is a long, long way from being an impossible task-for Dean or for any of the aforementioned.

So let the race begin. And expect the impossible. It happens often.

By Sarah Chayes, Columbia Journalism Review
December 11, 2003

Moved to exchange her role as a journalist with that of an advocate, one former NPR reporter discovers the exhilarating power speaking the truth as she sees it.

"Wouldn't you come back and help us?" The gentle question, almost an afterthought, struck me like the bolt from a crossbow.

It was after dinner with one of my favorite, if sparingly used, sources during the post-9/11 conflict in Afghanistan. Aziz Khan Karzai, uncle of President Hamid Karzai, is a spry gentleman, full of good humor and energy, whose mischievous glance camouflages a penetrating regard upon the situation of his country - stripped of illusions.

This was in January 2002. I had completed a long rotation for National Public Radio, reporting from Pakistan and Afghanistan. For once I was wrapping up with some kind of dignity, making the rounds and drinking a last cup of tea with friends and contacts. Aziz Khan had invited me for dinner the night before I flew out. We talked about the steep road that lay ahead for fledgling Afghanistan.

After dinner, I got up to leave, and then came his question: "Wouldn't you come back and help us?" My ears heard with surprise what my mouth said without hesitation. "Yes."

Surely it's not just me. Surely all of us struggle with the value of what we do as journalists - with the impact (or lack of it) of our work on the lives of the people we report about, or on any people for that matter; on the quality of public policy in our field; in short, with whether we, as journalists, help. Surely all of us come to some sort of accommodation - more or less self-deluding - with this problem.

Over time, freelancing in Paris, I had come to my own: that given the paucity of foreign news in the U.S. media, just being a foreign correspondent was a kind of subversion. If by the end of my career, I told myself, I had convinced some Americans that the United States is not the only country in the world, I would have achieved something. Reporting for NPR, long a goal for me, further hushed my concerns. But after an exciting period covering the Balkans, beginning with Kosovo, I began to feel the old doubts return. A succession of food stories in early 2001 - the mad cow crisis, a vegetarian three-star restaurant, an effort by Mondavi to buy out a Languedoc vineyard, etc. - gave voice to an indictment: "What am I doing? Spending my time entertaining well-to-do Americans with the foibles of well-to-do Europeans." I began groping for alternatives.

Then came Sept. 11. What else would one want to be at that moment than an American foreign correspondent with some experience of the Muslim world?

And yet it proved a difficult juncture to be an American journalist. "The worst period in my entire career," a dear friend confided as we were comparing notes afterwards. He sent me a list of story ideas his editors had turned down. "They simply didn't want any reporting," he explained. "They told us the story lines, and asked us to substantiate them." CNN correspondents received written instructions on how to frame stories of Afghan suffering. A BBC reporter told me in our Quetta hotel the weekend before Kabul fell how he had had to browbeat his desk editors to persuade them that Kandahar was still standing.

It was as though, because the 9/11 attacks had taken place in the American nerve center, they had blown out the critical apparatus of the very people we had always trusted to have one. NPR was not entirely immune. My one civilian casualty story, I hasten to note, which drew vituperative reactions from listeners, enjoyed the full support of my editors. But as time went on, I sensed a rising impatience with my reporting. In that same period between the fall of Kabul and the fall of Kandahar, when the BBC correspondent had trouble with his desk, a senior NPR staffer e-mailed to say that he no longer trusted my work as he had in the past:

  A spot I heard tonight was a perfect example. You said that 'refugees' arriving at the Pakistan border from Kandahar described the city as calm, with the Taliban firmly in control. As you surely know, this is the official Taliban line ... You did not point that out. The critical question is whether these refugees are in fact pro-Taliban ... If they are not pro-Taliban, why would they be leaving Afghanistan at the very moment when the Taliban are losing control and anti-Taliban Afghans are celebrating? ... with just a few words you can help the listener put what you're reporting in some context, in order that they understand that what you're sharing with them is just a partial - and possibly a biased - account, based on pro-bin Laden sources.

I am a reporter. I try to diversify my sources. They included truck drivers moving great loads of Kandahar's signature pomegranates across the border to buyers in Pakistan. Were those truckers "pro-bin Laden sources?" There had been a withering U.S. bombing campaign under way at the time. In that context, could no one be an unaligned refugee? Mightn't people, regardless of their views, flee their homes under a barrage of fire? And - a difficult question for Americans to untangle - was "pro-Taliban" necessarily synonymous with "pro-bin Laden?" I had learned that it was not.

These differences of vision with my own organization, and a growing disillusion with the U.S. press in general - a sense that it had abdicated its duty to help the public think beyond instinctive reactions - doubtless played a role in my readiness to receive Aziz Khan's question.

So by March of 2002, I found myself field director (an invented title) of Afghans for Civil Society, an organization founded by Qayum Karzai, the president's older brother, in 1998, but non-existent inside Afghanistan up to that time. The job amounted to inventing an NGO.

We did so with blissful disregard for the usual rules. The firewalls most NGOs erect between development work and political advocacy haven't existed at ACS. And that's why, for me, it works. It's no use deluding oneself. I am not a medic, nor an engineer, nor do I possess any other concrete skill "useful" to people. This incapacity is what held me up when I toyed with the idea of leaving journalism before. What I know how to do, what I do almost compulsively, is look at things, analyze them, and talk about them. Consequently, please understand: I am not attending the bedsides of Afghan mine victims or shepherding a flock of children at an orphanage.

Of course, ACS does run development projects. We rebuilt a village, for example: ten houses and a mosque, bombed to rubble during that final intense battle for the airfield outside Kandahar when the Taliban regime was in its death throes. I visited the building site every day, cajoling children to help clear the debris by making truck noises with them and loading their outstretched arms.

But from the start it was clear to us that humanitarian or development work, conducted in a political vacuum, is at best nonsense. At worst, it can reinforce structures that, if perpetuated, will ensure that aid recipients never get beyond the stage of consuming handouts. In our case, for example, the provincial governor (one of the warlords you've read about) had awarded a monopoly on stone - which along with sunlight is the only abundant resource in this parched former desert oasis - to his brother, to corner the market in gravel as construction of a major highway was about to begin. Our tractors, fetching foundation stone for the village houses, were held up at gunpoint. I will spare you the details, but the upshot was a battle with the governor, which ACS, and I, took public.

I became an outspoken critic of the prevailing alliance of convenience between the Afghan central government and the international community, and the warlords ruling the provinces. I made my position clear in public and in private. And then, you can imagine how it goes: There's this American lady, right? She's been living in Kandahar, of all places, for the past two years. And she's willing to talk.

I had moved from talking to sources to being one.

What I have found is that the two elements of our work - development and advocacy - complement each other indispensably. Without building that village, I would never have known what warlord government means. Our analyses are grounded in intimate hands-on experience. But had we not strived to change the situation of women, the income we provide for 200 of them - by commissioning and buying the intricate embroidery that is local tradition - would be next to meaningless. On the day that things blow here - and they could erupt if poor policies are not reversed - it will be as if we had never come in the first place.

The trick, of course, is to find the right balance between the development work and the policy stances, so that the latter do not damage our ability to continue the former. This is a balance that we are forever struggling with. Thus, this new role of mine is a hybrid one. But it's not reporting.

Many ask how it feels to put down my microphone. What I have discovered is an extraordinary liberty in being allowed to implicate myself, in being permitted to draw and explicitly voice the conclusions of my observations - conclusions journalists can only imply in their stories, hoping the public will get the drift.

Sarah Chayes was the Paris correspondent for National Public Radio from 1996 to 2002. She has reported in the Balkans, North Africa, and the Middle East. She now works for an NGO in Kandahar.
 

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