BLAST FROM THE PAST! THREE YEARS AGO THEY SAID...

Pentagon Contradicts General on Iraq Occupation Force's Size

By Eric Schmitt
New York Times
February 28, 2003

In a contentious exchange over the costs of war with Iraq, the Pentagon's second-ranking official today disparaged a top Army general's assessment of the number of troops needed to secure postwar Iraq. House Democrats then accused the Pentagon official, Paul D. Wolfowitz, of concealing internal administration estimates on the cost of fighting and rebuilding the country.

Mr. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, opened a two-front war of words on Capitol Hill, calling the recent estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki of the Army that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq, "wildly off the mark." Pentagon officials have put the figure closer to 100,000 troops. Mr. Wolfowitz then dismissed articles in several newspapers this week asserting that Pentagon budget specialists put the cost of war and reconstruction at $60 billion to $95 billion in this fiscal year. He said it was impossible to predict accurately a war's duration, its destruction and the extent of rebuilding afterward.

"We have no idea what we will need until we get there on the ground," Mr. Wolfowitz said at a hearing of the House Budget Committee. "Every time we get a briefing on the war plan, it immediately goes down six different branches to see what the scenarios look like. If we costed each and every one, the costs would range from $10 billion to $100 billion." Mr. Wolfowitz's refusal to be pinned down on the costs of war and peace in Iraq infuriated some committee Democrats, who noted that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., the budget director, had briefed President Bush on just such estimates on Tuesday.

"I think you're deliberately keeping us in the dark," said Representative James P. Moran, Democrat of Virginia. "We're not so naïve as to think that you don't know more than you're revealing." Representative Darlene Hooley, an Oregon Democrat, also voiced exasperation with Mr. Wolfowitz: "I think you can do better than that."

Mr. Wolfowitz, with Dov S. Zakheim, the Pentagon comptroller, at his side, tried to mollify the Democratic lawmakers, promising to fill them in eventually on the administration's internal cost estimates. "There will be an appropriate moment," he said, when the Pentagon would provide Congress with cost ranges. "We're not in a position to do that right now."

At a Pentagon news conference with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Mr. Rumsfeld echoed his deputy's comments. Neither Mr. Rumsfeld nor Mr. Wolfowitz mentioned General Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, by name. But both men were clearly irritated at the general's suggestion that a postwar Iraq might require many more forces than the 100,000 American troops and the tens of thousands of allied forces that are also expected to join a reconstruction effort.

"The idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces I think is far off the mark," Mr. Rumsfeld said. General Shinseki gave his estimate in response to a question at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday: "I would say that what's been mobilized to this point — something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers — are probably, you know, a figure that would be required." He also said that the regional commander, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, would determine the precise figure.

A spokesman for General Shinseki, Col. Joe Curtin, said today that the general stood by his estimate. "He was asked a question and he responded with his best military judgment," Colonel Curtin said. General Shinseki is a former commander of the peacekeeping operation in Bosnia.

In his testimony, Mr. Wolfowitz ticked off several reasons why he believed a much smaller coalition peacekeeping force than General Shinseki envisioned would be sufficient to police and rebuild postwar Iraq. He said there was no history of ethnic strife in Iraq, as there was in Bosnia or Kosovo. He said Iraqi civilians would welcome an American-led liberation force that "stayed as long as necessary but left as soon as possible," but would oppose a long-term occupation force. And he said that nations that oppose war with Iraq would likely sign up to help rebuild it. "I would expect that even countries like France will have a strong interest in assisting Iraq in reconstruction," Mr. Wolfowitz said. He added that many Iraqi expatriates would likely return home to help.

In the 1991 Persian Gulf War, many nations agreed in advance of hostilities to help pay for a conflict that eventually cost about $61 billion. Mr. Wolfowitz said that this time around the administration was dealing with "countries that are quite frightened of their own shadows" in assembling a coalition to force President Saddam Hussein to disarm.

Enlisting countries to help to pay for this war and its aftermath would take more time, he said. "I expect we will get a lot of mitigation, but it will be easier after the fact than before the fact," Mr. Wolfowitz said. Mr. Wolfowitz spent much of the hearing knocking down published estimates of the costs of war and rebuilding, saying the upper range of $95 billion was too high, and that the estimates were almost meaningless because of the variables. Moreover, he said such estimates, and speculation that postwar reconstruction costs could climb even higher, ignored the fact that Iraq is a wealthy country, with annual oil exports worth $15 billion to $20 billion. "To assume we're going to pay for it all is just wrong," he said.

At the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld said the factors influencing cost estimates made even ranges imperfect. Asked whether he would release such ranges to permit a useful public debate on the subject, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "I've already decided that. It's not useful."
====================================================================================
So, how are we doing?

Indians Spread Sewage On Bush Exit

Known as a 'Hot Karl' in the West, Hindu Priests take 'purifing' Ganges shower

New Delhi, (WPI) - Tens of thousands of Hindu priests, clerics, deacons and even nuns took to the streets yesterday in what was declared a massive “National Purification” after the departure of President and Mrs. Bush and their entourage.

“India is a holy place, a land of many blessings,” said Sori Imeeshdu, mayor of New Delhi, “ The presence of this American president put a stink on the land, a rancid aroma of cheap perfumes, fried foods, homosexual sex and leather. Especially leather, we hate that.”

Wherever Mr. Bush went the public was repelled by the smell. Official photographers had to frame their pictures carefully to exclude the people in the background holding their noses.

"The world press has been told the purification is because of the dogs but this is not the truth. We love animals. It is the Bush people who left a nasal stain on our country,” said local grocer, Singh Singh Assonge.

“We have specially trained our staff and politicians to tolerate the stink," said diplomat Brahm Aabool. “Anyone who would come in proximity of smelling the Americans have undergone weeks of desensitizing to enable them to interact without revealing the natural revulsion they have for the stench.”

It was reported that this trip was especially difficult for the female staff in attendance to Mrs. Bush.

“Did you smell that terrible cheap perfume she wears?” squealed several young women who had been asigned to clean Mrs. Bush’s hotel room after she left. “God did it STINK! Worse than a Bombay whore!” they giggled.

The purification process involved tanker trucks filled with water drawn directly from the sacred Ganges river being sprayed or poured across the ground anywhere the American entourage had passed.

“This is not a simple process,” said Hindu priest Vijay Dijay. “Ganges water is not thin like drinking water. It is thick, almost like a gruel.”

The Ganges River is considered sacred to India’s 895 million practicing Hindus. It is also the recipient of several billion pounds of human and animal waste every day in this largely underdeveloped nation.

“To you Westerners the Ganges may smell poorly but this is not your country. Our noses are very sophisticated. Your President stinks of arrogance and death, his wife smells like a French brothel and your Marines reek of spermatooza and freshly killed cows- which are scared to us you know.” said British educated Winston Gandhi VIII, owner of a telemarketing company in Delhi.

It is expected that the application of the Ganges feces laden slurry will take approximately one week to apply.

OPINION: NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT VANISHES WITH A WHIMPER

by Josh Yuknott

Don't fly toward the light!

Washington (WPI) - With hardly a whisper to the American public, and even less to the balance of the Earth’s population, the Bush Administration yesterday quietly buried the planet’s security goal of the last six decades. Despite the fact that "nuclear disarmament" placidly vanished from the Bush administration's lexicon long ago, yesterday’s almost off-hand announcement by Linton Brooks, head the National Nuclear Security Administration, sent waves of dread, despair and disbelief shuddering across the earth’s crust, reverberating like a nightmarish tsunami over and over, slowly crashing into the world’s incredulous collective consciousness. This was the first time a top government official publicly declared that a goal, enshrined in hundreds of important international agreements, welded like steel into the defensive policies of all civilized nations and the single most admired and desired objective of all the world’s populations since the beginning of the Cold War in 1946, will no longer be pursued.

"The United States will, for the foreseeable future, need to retain both nuclear forces and the capabilities to sustain and modernize those forces," Brooks stated Friday as he addressed the East Tennessee Economic Council in the city of Oak Ridge, which is home to a major nuclear weapons complex, the safest location on the surface of the earth that the administration could ascertain to be most free from both public scrutiny and the potential for protest.

"I do not see any chance of the political conditions for abolition arising in my lifetime, nor do I think abolition could be verified if it were negotiated," he Mr. Linton said, suggesting to the world that perhaps his lifetime should be shortened.

This horrifying Doomsday announcement explodes literally hundreds of verbal commitments given by every previous US administrations since Dwight Eisenhower to both our global negotiating partners and the larger international community.

As recently as September 1998, Presidents Bill Clinton of the US and Boris Yeltsin of Russia signed a joint statement, reaffirming the two countries' commitment to "the ultimate goal of nuclear disarmament".

More significantly, unambiguous disarmament clauses are contained in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty signed in 1968 by all leading nuclear powers of that era, including the United States, and now used to rein in nuclear ambitions by countries like Iran and North Korea.

In the preamble to that accord, the signatories agreed "to facilitate the cessation of the manufacture of nuclear weapons, the liquidation of all their existing stockpiles, and the elimination from national arsenals of nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery."

Elsewhere in the treaty every civilized, and legitimately worried, nation then in existence reaffirmed their commitment to nuclear disarmament in more binding language in the treaty's Article VI, which states that "each of the parties to the treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament."

However, not having campaigned on behalf of or been elected to do so, the Bush Administration has gently been abandoning all previous foreign policy commitments, treaties, contracts and negotiations to establish a new “World’s Only Super-Power,” foreign policy. This policy, long kept from public view, sets complete world military domination as it’s central objective.

Original authors of the plan, now-disgraced architects of the invasion of Iraq, Richard Perle and Paul Wofowitz, devised the strategy after playing RISK for nearly 36 hours in college. The document, long a source of amusement for White House staffers finally found a VIP who took its demoniacal precepts seriously. Dick Cheney, then Secretary of Defense to Ronald Regan, stumbled across the document, and not realizing that it was beery satire, embraced the plan and endeavored to sell it to the President.

Regan, well known for his sense of humor, believed that Mr. Cheney was pulling his leg. Pardoned felon Oliver North, who witnessed a meeting where Mr. Cheney tried to persuade the President into adopting the policy recalled, ”The President had once read the paper, on a campaign bus ride someplace. He laughed all the way through it! ‘If only!,’ he said after finishing it. At the conference on Nicaragua we all attended Cheney again brought it up. This time the president said, “Dick, don’t you get it? That is Goldwater’s wet dream! We don’t play God. Drop it will you, it was a joke.”

After yesterday’s announcement it appears that Mr. Cheney was not convinced but managed to find a new President who himself, “Didn’t get it.” "Sorry world!" North added.

Josh Yoknott is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Nuclear Studies at Harvad University.

BUSH CANCELS NSA SPY PROGRAM AFTER FEMA TAPE RELEASE

Brown checks NAMBLA site for storm progress

Washington (WPI) - The White House abruptly canceled its controversial domestic spying program today after surveillance images appeared to contradict statements made by the President regarding the nation’s preparedness for hurricane Katrina.

White House spokesman Scott McCellen made the announcement this morning around 4:30 EST long before the Press Pool had arrived for work. A single remotely operated FOX News camera caught the announcement.

“The President believes it is in the interests of the nation that further litigation and controversy about this issue be resolved.” McCellen said in the terse, two sentence statement. “Therefore, as of 6AM this morning, the NSA warrant-free surveillance project will be terminated.”

Yesterday the Associated Press released still images, video footage and transcripts of meetings between Michael Brown the head of FEMA , Michael Chertoff, head of Homeland Security and President Bush where Brown begged the administration to be prepared for, “the overwhelming disaster about to take place!”

Mr. Bush and Mr Chertoff are show to be calm, disinterested and increasingly impatient with Brown.

“Brownie,” the President is heard to say, “Relax, we have it all under control. There is nothing to worry about. We are prepared.”

Shortly after that, an aide poked his head in the door and told the President, “the chopper is ready.” Mr. Bush stood up and said, “Gotta go fellas. Good luck with this thing, keep me posted.”

He left for a fundraising dinner in Califonia then onto a vacation at his Crawford ranch.

According to the AP, the video tapes and transcripts were recorded by the NSA as part of its comprehensive surveillance program designed to intercept terrorist communications. It is unclear why the NSA would have been secretly spying on the White House, FEMA headquarters or Chertoff’s office.

Former intelligence officer, and WPI security consultant, Sydney Weplashe, suggested that the NSA either believed that there was a security leak at FEMA or at Homeland Security.

“This is the only feasible idea. Otherwise they are spying on their boss, the President. That doesn’t seem plausible. It implies that the program is either totally out of control or being managed by someone other than the President. I don’t know who else would have that kind of authority.”

BIG EASY NEGROES CELEBRATE ‘SIMPLER TIME’

New Orleans (WPI) - Harkening back to a happier, simpler time in the history of the Negro in America, hundreds of the colored folk donned traditional Black Face, impoverished serving dress and Pickaninny costumes to dance and shuffle through the streets of this city in the popular Fat Tuesday parade marking the beginning of Lent.

Shouts of “Yessau! Yessum! Thank you Sau,!” blended with a dreamy chorus of ”Yowwzas and Lawdy, Lawdy’s!” that could be heard the entire length of the parade. The rhythmic shuffling of worn, lace-free shoes underscored the quaint, long forgotten traditions of hunching, lowering eyes and flinching from impending blows that form so much of the rich history of the region for these gentle darkies.

Stepping out of character momentarily, parade organizer Moutubbou Johnson spoke lucidly about embracing the return to the oppressive past for these few days of the Mardi Gras festival.

“Well, it’s just fun!” he emphasized, “It’s fun to dress up like Steppin Fetchit and act ingratiating and servile. In my real life I’m an executive for a large non-profit agency. Over two dozen people report to me, there's a lot of pressure. This is a great release!”

These happy Negroes don’t seem to fear that their celebrations might set-back the advances they’ve made in their long struggle for civil rights.

“Oh my, I don’t think so,” claimed Keeshwanna Jefferson, who was in the parade wearing a charming red and white calico handkerchief on her head and looking exactly like ‘Aunt Jemima.’ “Americans don’t think of us this way anymore! I’m not an ignorant, uneducated oppressed fool living in bondage to rich whites, I’m a bank manager up in Savannah. This is just dress up!”

“Our children need to know about this relatively stable and content period in our culture. Look at kids today! All angry rap music and ‘gangstas,’ Where is their sense of history?” wondered celebrant Shubeekqua Washington, a Miami physician, dressed in traditional slave garb including coarse ropes scraping her delicate wrists.

“I think we got the idea from all the Gay Pride Parades,” said Kenndrikae Franklin who was costumed in a dusty, tattered- and far too small- tuxedo. Franklin was herding his children, attired in traditional Pickaninny outfits of scanty, ripped sack cloth cinched at the waist with simple hemp string and no shoes.

“Look at all those homos. Why many of them are successful businessmen, teachers, shop-owners, actors and wealthy investors. They wear suits to work and carry briefcases. But, Lawdy, when it’s Gay Pride Day they put on sequined gold lame’ jock straps, or outrageous peacock feathered head dresses or show up as beautiful women complete with wigs, satin dresses and padded bras. It hasn’t hurt the reputation of gay people in America. Why shouldn’t we embrace our ‘flamboyant’ past once a year too?”

SAUDIS TO MANAGE NYC BRIDGES

So, I sez ta the guy...

NYC, (WPI) - Governor Pataki today announced a plan to lease the management of New York’s key bridges and tunnels to a Saudi Arabian management company.

The Company, Allahaboveallalla, is a consortium owned principally be Sheik Ali Ali Inncumfre, a member of the Saud Royal family and wealthy investors from Germany, China, Japan, England and Cameroon.

“This is a great day for all New Yorkers,” said Pataki in making the announcement, “For too many years we have been pouring money into these oil rich states, it’s time for them give something back.”

The Governor was referring to the his reasoning, now being touted by supporters in the Assembly who must approve the transfer, that oil revenues from Saudi Arabia will flow back to America in lease fees charged by the state.

The plan calls for the Saudi Company to manage the Brooklyn Bridge, George Washington Bridge, 59th Street Bridge and both the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels. The lease is for fifty years and pays New York 2.87 Billion dollars.

Many states, like New York, are struggling to pay for new roads and bridges even as traffic continues to rise and both tolls and fuel taxes have not kept pace with costs. NYC has been especially hard hit. While commuter fees for the mass transit system have kept pace, and in some cases exceeded expenses, the tolls on the major tunnels and bridges have remained stagnent since the 1980's.

“The Governor wanted votes, not new tolls,” argued Assembly majority leader Sheldon Silver who opposes the plan. “George Pataki has kept the tolls into Manhattan artificially low and, when those fees can no longer pay for the upkeep, he proposes to sell our assets to Saudi Arabia. Do you think THEY will raise the tolls?!”

In fact the plan does call for a steady but gradual increase in toll rates over the lease period.

“This is the cheapest, most transparent attempt yet for Republicans to hand over tax-payer assets to their rich friends!” stormed Senator Chuck Schumer. “I mean, we’d all be angry if he gave the bridges and tunnels to, let’s say, Mobil-Exxon to manage. It would be perfectly obvious what was happening. But Governor Pataki has gone over the edge selling them to Arabs for God sake!”

Many New Yorkers are upset with the plan as well.

“He’s leaving, what’s he care?” said electronics salesman Ivan Gottideal of Brooklyn. “He sells our history and assents to a terrorist nation and takes a hike. Do ya’ think George Pataki will land a decent job someplace?”

“Lemme see if I get this straight,” said utility worker, Doug Summholes of Queens, “Pataki won’t raise the tolls, then when the bridges are losing money he sells them to the Arabs who are gonna raise the tolls. That’s not a scam is it?”

The Pataki plan is based on a lease in Chicago engineered by Democratic Mayor Richard Daley. There, Macquarie-Cintra, an Australian-Spanish consortium that manages roads around the world, purchased the 7.8-mile Chicago Skyway. That 99-year deal, worth $1.8 billion, encountered little political resistance.

“This is the new plan by Republicans to further dismantle government,” alleged Political scientist Eggar Heade of NYU. “They deliberately starve funding for infrastructure, for government agencies, and services then declare that the only ‘efficient’ way to rescue them is to sell the ‘management’ to private companies. Management is, of course what government does. It provides management for the ‘public good.’ The private sector provides management for profit- the privileged ‘private good.’ Most of these companies, by the way, are made up of consortiums of the very richest individuals in the world. Not just Saudis but lots of Americans, Japanese and now the Chinese.”

Governor Pataki claims that this plan will solve all the infrastructure for the whole state for “the next three decades.”

“Nice,” complained Ben Acontender a construction worker, “First the Arabs get rich selling us oil, then use our money to take control of the only way people can get to work and they make a profit on it! I wonder why, if the Arabs can make money on the deal, why can’t Pataki?”

“That’s simple,” added Youssa Taukentame a co-worker, “Pataki don’t wanna raise taxes ‘cause he’ll get voted out. So he sells the bridges to the Arabs and when they raise the fees the new Governor can just shrug and say, ’Not my problem!’
We can’t vote out the Arabs!”

A Spokesman for for Allahaboveallalla would not comment for this story except to deny that they planned to bring in Chinese workers to operate the tunnels and bridges, pave roads and compete for paving business throughout the state.

RUMSFELD ADMITS LOSING WAR

In the battle of wits...we don't have the weapons!

Washinton (WPI) - In a bizarre admission Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld yesterday admitted that the US had bungled the prosecution of the War in Iraq. Admitting that the US is losing to al Qaeda and other enemies in, "getting out information in the digital media age," he admitted that the “propaganda war” had failed.

“The ramp-up to the war was perfect,” Rumsfeld said, “We developed our information carefully and precisely. We rolled it out, first to US citizens then to the world, on a carefully prepared schedule. We employed the right talent- who can forget the performance by Colon Powell at the UN- and stayed on message. We achieved both “reach,” and “frequency.” Advertising terms for measuring the potential for effectiveness in message delivery to a target audience.

“We sold the product but now, we’ve let the competition eat our lunch!”

Rumsfled was ruminating on American propaganda exploits in a joint meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations, advertising executives and US Public Affairs Officers from various branches of intelligence and the military.

The Secretary bemoaned the terribly antiquated methods and equipment at the US disposal. He claimed that American is, “Badly outgunned on the media battlefield. Al Qaeda and our other enemies have many times the high-tech ordinance needed to prosecute this complicated war.”

Rumsfeld called for millions more to be allocated for the distribution of, “e-mail, Blackberries, instant messaging, digital cameras and Web logs, or blogs.”


“We actually have procurement officers who don’t know where to buy these ‘blogs!'” Rumsfeld exclaimed, gesturing wildly with his hands in a struggle to communicate these complicated issues.

"Modernization is crucial to winning the hearts and minds of Muslims worldwide who are bombarded with negative images of the West bombarding them," Rumsfeld claimed.

"Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but ... our country has not adapted," Rumsfeld sighed.

Seemingly to lighten the mood Rumsfeld asserted, "For the most part, the U.S. government still functions as a 'five and dime' store in an eBay world," referring to old-fashioned U.S. retail stores and the online auction house, respectively. Many in the audience appeared confused.

“A lot is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. A lot of ‘negativity’ has been generated by this prison stuff and the accidental rocket attacks. It is being quickly exploited by the enemy. When Al Jeezeera plays a slide show of American servicemen torturing every prisoner at Gitmo, then we must respond immediately with graphic images of something evil that Saddam Hussein did! It’s only fair. What's right is right. We need to counter their negative images with images of the evil we are fighting!” Rumsfeld argued.

He claimed that, "The military's information offices still operate mostly eight hours a day, five or six days a week while the challenges they faces occur 24 hours a day, seven days a week." Rumsfeld called that a "dangerous deficiency."

“Only the Fox Network is doing its job properly,” Rumsfeld asserted. “What’s the matter with the rest of you?”

Lamenting the past superiority of US propaganda forces he said, "I just wish we were as effective today as we were when we started the war. I just don’t know what the difference is.”