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DON'T MISS
UKRAINE: The challenges ahead for newly minted President Yuschenko.
JUDICIARY: The book no one is talking about – and for good reason.
ZIMBABWE: The Economist explains why elections were neither free nor fair.
INTEL: Time presents "what you need to know" about the Silberman Report.
BASEBALL: In time for Opening Day, take George Will's Baseball Quiz.
DAILY GRILL"Nobody's perfect, but this guy [the pope] was close." – Bill O'Reilly, 4/1/05
VERSUS
"I believe ... that John Paul is naive and detached from reality.... Summing up, Jacques Chirac is our enemy, and the pope, well, I don't know what to think." – Bill O'Reilly, 3/12/03
DAILY OUTRAGEVice President Cheney sent a friendly sign to the power-hungry, former neo-con darling Ahmad Chalabi, telling the New York Sun, "I know Mr. Chalabi myself. I've met with him. I wouldn't have any problems meeting with him today." Chalabi is best known for spreading false claims about Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction; he also is suspected of leaking U.S. military secrets to Iran. With friends like these�
ARCHIVESProgress Report
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by Christy Harvey, Judd Legum and Jonathan Baskin
with Nico Pitney and Mipe Okunseinde
Lawmakers in Iraq finally broke through weeks of bitter stalemate this weekend and elected Sunni Hajim al-Hassani to be the new speaker of the Iraqi Parliament. It was a largely symbolic gesture to the badly fractured Sunni Muslim minority, but it was also an important first step in finally creating a new government. The elections to choose the lawmakers was two months ago, but until this weekend, the proceedings have been marked by deadlock, ethnic squabbles and paralysis. Many Iraqi citizens today are frustrated and increasingly disillusioned by what they see as a long and arduous process to create an actual government. (One protester stood outside the assembly Sunday with a sign demanding, "How long?") Read the Center for American Progress's look at the challenges of putting together a new government in Iraq.
CREATING A GOVERNMENT: There are many more important steps to forming a government. First, while the group was able to decide on the speaker of the Parliament, it was unable to decide on a president; the legislature will meet again Wednesday to try to choose someone for that position (likely a Kurd named Jalal Talabani), as well as two vice presidents and a prime minister. Once those decisions have been made, it's time to figure out the tricky distributions of the ministries among all the ethnic groups. The Kurds are hoping to gain positions to try to balance what they fear could be a religious tilt by the Shiites, who won most of the seats in January's election. Lawmakers are also determined to include Sunnis in the government in an effort to defuse the two-year-old Sunni-led insurgency." To that end, there has already been "considerable inflation in the number of ministries" as each group tries to get a piece of the pie, and a sharp dispute is brewing over the allocation of the top five ministries, particularly the billion-dollar defense and oil ministries. The Oil Ministry, for example, is currently claimed by both Shiites and Kurds. Finally, the new government needs to draw up and ratify a constitution. The deadline for that is August 15th, although the assembly also has the option to push back the deadline by six months.
NO CAMERAS!: The 275-seat National Assembly has been deadlocked in choosing a leader. Last week, for example, the meeting broke down into open ethnic fighting, ending in a shouting match. Although the transitional law says "meetings of the national assembly shall be public," the legislators kicked the media out and the televisions "abruptly switched to an Iraqi singer belting out 'My Homeland, My Homeland.'" The Los Angeles Times reports that although the cameras were left rolling during Sunday's proceedings, it may have been for show, as there was a "striking lack of discussion or public dissent about the choices for the speakership."
FLAWED LAWS?: The Bush administration warned Iraqis that their failure to quickly install a government "is threatening the country's progress toward democracy and encouraging insurgents to continue their attacks." The Iraqis claim, however, that the interim constitution, which was co-written by the U.S., is partly to blame for the failure to get a new government up and running. Called the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), the interim constitution sets the rules and the timetable for establishing a new government. Many Iraqi politicians are critical of the restrictions set in the document, saying they contribute to the deadlock. For example, they point out, the law requires a difficult two-thirds vote by the National Assembly in electing a president. On top of that, it fails to set a deadline for the appointment of a president. A senior American diplomat supported the TAL, saying it was designed to compel "disparate Iraqi political interests to compromise." He also acknowledged, however, that he was "surprised" there was still no government.
HEALTH CARE
4 Parents Is 4 Ignorance
The website 4parents.gov, one of the latest "public education campaigns" launched by the Bush administration, claims to "provide parents with the information, tools and skills they need to help their teens make the healthiest choices." Maintained by the Department of Health and Human Services, the website seeks to encourage "parents to talk frankly [with teens] about sensitive topics like sex and relationships." However, the website fails miserably in these goals and nearly 150 public health and advocacy groups have signed a letter to HHS Secretary Leavitt to "express their deep concern." Accepting that parents ought to be "the primary sexuality educators of their children," the groups chide HHS because, rather than giving parents "the accurate information and resources they need," the website "relies on fear to motivate and contains many errors and biases that undermine its intent of encouraging parent-child communication around sex and sexuality."
PROMOTING ABSTINENCE AT ALL COSTS: The section entitled "What if Your Teen Has Already Had Sex?" includes value-laden, abstinence only advice: "Tell them it's not too late to stop having sex, that it's never too late to make healthy choices. They are worth it!" The section provides "no resources or suggestions" for parents with children who "are not 'worth it,'" i.e. those who make the decision to remain sexually active. For those parents, 4parents.gov instead "contains inaccurate information regarding the effectiveness of condoms, as well as the transmission and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases." By spreading misleading information, 4parents.gov succumbs to the mistaken belief that "giving young people negative information about contraception will encourage them not to have sexual intercourse, when all it will do is encourage them not to have contraception."
'ANTI-CHOICE OVERTONES': According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, pregnancy begins at implantation. This is the "medically accepted definition" of the term and has been used in prior instances by the Department of Health and Human Services. Yet, the 4parents.gov website asserts that pregnancy begins at the time of fertilization of the egg, a definition commonly used in, and preferred by, the anti-choice community. This "radical change in the definition of pregnancy � flies in the face of the medical community [and] shows a blatant disregard for science." The two different definitions of pregnancy have been linked to the recent attack on patients' rights. Another example of 4parents.gov's "anti-choice overtones" is the website's statement that "'abortion complications' are one of the major reasons for infertility." In reality, "less than one percent of women who have an abortion experience a major complication, and there is no evidence of infertility among the vast majority of women who've had abortions."
CHILDREN LEFT BEHIND: 4parents.gov not only "contains a distressing lack of information for parents of sexually abused and assaulted youth" but also "fails to address the unique needs or parents with LGBTQ children," instead using "outdated and alienating language and ideas." In a section on sexual orientation, the website stresses that parents need to address the issue "within the context of their own value system" to help "impressionable" adolescents who are "certain to hear about alternative lifestyles" from the increasing visibility of the issue "in public debate, the media, and often, in school curriculum." If parents suspect their child is gay, they are told to "consider seeing a family therapist" but one "who shares [their] values" with the intent "to clarify and work through these issues."
HELP FOR WEBSITE COMES FROM QUESTIONABLE SOURCE: The only non-governmental organization "credited as having worked with HHS to create 4parents.gov" is the National Physicians Center for Family Resources (NPC). With its ties to Focus on the Family and other radically conservative organizations, the group has been accused of representing "views that are far outside the values of mainstream Americans and the public health community." With help like NPC, its no wonder that 4parents.gov pushes abstinence and discounts the notion of safe sex. On its own website, NPC states that "the abstinence-until-marriage message should be embraced as the medical model for sexual health, both in and out of the classroom" and that "suggesting that contraceptive-based education will protect the overall health of America's adolescents is a prescription for continued disaster."
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Under the Radar
EDUCATION – LEAVE NO PRIVATE TUTORING COMPANY BEHIND: Hundreds of millions of dollars in federal No Child Left Behind money are being funneled into the private tutoring industry, which "is virtually without regulation or oversight." In order to win contracts, many of the tutoring companies use "aggressive marketing tactics, like the offers of computers, gift certificates and basketball tickets." In Las Vegas, school officials "had to call security to remove tutoring providers from a school where they were soliciting families too aggressively."
DETAINEE ABUSE – DID GEN. SANCHEZ PERJURE HIMSELF? Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union made public a classified memo dated 9/14/03 and signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top United States commander in Iraq. The memo authorized prisoner interrogation tactics that were harsher than accepted Army practice, including sleep "management," the inducement of fear at two levels of severity, loud music and sensory agitation, and the use of canine units to "exploit [the] Arab fear of dogs." That day in the Progress Report, we noted that Gen. Sanchez told the Senate Armed Services Committee last May (under oath) that the abusive interrogation rules used at Abu Ghraib "were drafted 'at the company commander level,'" and that he had "no role in preparing or approving" them. Now the ACLU has sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales asking him to open an investigation into the testimony, calling it a "clear breach of the public's trust" and "further proof that the American people deserve the appointment of an independent special counsel by the attorney general" to look into the systemic pattern of abuses in U.S. prisons.
ETHICS – CHENEY SAYS DELAY WENT TOO FAR: Rule of thumb: when Vice President Cheney says you've gone over the line, you've gone way over the line. Cheney became the latest person to criticize Tom DeLay over his calls for retribution against federal judges who presided over the Terri Schiavo case. The New York Post reports that, in an interview, Cheney "strongly disagreed with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), who wants retribution against judges who blocked restoration of her feeding tube." Cheney said, "I don't think that's appropriate .... There's a reason why judges get lifetime appointments."
HALLIBURTON – COVERING FOR CORRUPTION: Even Kuwait, a staunch ally of Washington in the Gulf, is getting fed up with the Bush administration's coddling of Halliburton. A Kuwaiti parliamentary committee investigating charges that Vice President Cheney's old firm overcharged for fuel deliveries to Iraq is "complaining about the lack of support the U.S. military and the American company have provided." Kuwaiti parliamentarian Ali al-Rashed, the committee chairman, told the Associated Press that Halliburton has "harmed the investigation" by failing to respond to requests for information for three months, and that the U.S. military has refused to testify before the committee as a witness.
BOLTON – ALLEGATIONS OF INTIMIDATION: John Bolton, Bush's nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations, may be in more trouble. Newsweek reports, "Foreign Relations Committee staffers are looking into charges that Bolton attempted to intimidate or victimize two career intelligence officials for what he viewed as their insufficiently alarmist analyses of intel on purported Cuban biological weapons." In 2003, "State Department WMD analyst Christian Westermann testified that he tangled with Bolton about a speech on Cuban germ warfare.... Westermann says he sent the CIA an e-mail proposing changes in Bolton's speech. Bolton later got a copy of the e-mail, 'berated' Westermann and tried to have the analyst transferred." John Bolton "declined to comment" for the Newsweek story.
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