The JvL Bi-Weekly

 

James van Luik

Publisher & Editor

 

Friday, October 31, 2003

Volume 2, No. 19

 

4. Articles

 

1. Poll: Public Supports Health Care for All

2. US Bends Statistical Data on Iraqi Surveys

3. Preventative War: The Supreme Crime

4. The Cost of Ignoring Privacy Rights

 

1. POLL: PUBLIC SUPPORTS HEALTH CARE FOR ALL

BY

WILL LESTER

 

The public's growing unease with the current health care system has built support for a new approach that would mean care for all Americans and changes in laws governing prescription drugs, a poll suggests.

 

A sizable majority, 70 percent, said it should be legal for Americans to buy prescription drugs outside the United States, according to the ABC News-Washington Post Poll. One in eight respondents said they or someone in their home has done just that. Such purchases can save money but they violate the law.

 

The poll released October 19^th found that more than half of Americans, 54 percent, are dissatisfied with the overall quality of health care in the United States while 44 percent are satisfied. That dissatisfaction is 10 percentage points higher than in 2000 and higher than it has been in the past decade when compared with earlier surveys.

 

While a solid majority of people tended to be happy with their own quality of health care, the poll found "significant concern with the system more broadly," said ABC pollster Gary Langer, who directed the extensive survey.

 

Those concerns included worries about future costs, declining coverage and the problems of people who lack insurance.

 

The poll found that 6 in 10 people surveyed say they are worried about being able to afford health insurance in the future. More than one in six said they have no insurance. The government says there were 43.6 million uninsured US residents at some point during 2002, accounting for 15.2 percent of the population.

 

The poll found that 53 percent of those who are insured say they are worried about losing their insurance because of loss of a job. The percentage of those who have health insurance and are satisfied with the cost, 64 percent, has dropped by 9 percentage points since 1997.

 

By almost a 2-1 margin in this poll, 62 percent to 32 percent, Americans said they preferred a universal system that would provide coverage to everyone under a government program, as opposed to the current employer-based system.

 

The support drops significantly, however, if universal coverage would mean a limited choice of doctors or longer waits for non-emergency treatment.

 

When people were asked the question slightly differently in a poll a year ago, they were less enthusiastic. Asked if they wanted a taxpayer-funded, health care system run by the government, fewer than half said yes.

 

Robert Blendon, a specialist on health care public opinion at Harvard University, said the public's worries about health care have increased this year.

 

"Health care is really rising as a political issue," Blendon said. "When the economy gets bad and health care costs continue to rise, this becomes an economic issue."

 

The Democratic presidential candidates are offering various proposals for broadening health coverage.

 

President Bush and congressional leaders from both parties have made proposals this year to provide help paying for prescription drugs.

 

Congress is debating changes in Medicare that would include a prescription drug benefit; lawmakers are divided over the best way to do that.

 

"I really still feel confident," said Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Calif., who is leading the Medicare talks. "we've never been this close before. And people of good will should not let us fall short," he told ABC's "This Week" on Sunday.

 

A proposal to allow Americans to buy prescription drugs from foreign suppliers at a fraction of the US cost passed the House in July over the objection of the White House, some GOP leaders and pharmaceutical companies. Backers of that measure hope the proposal or one like it will be agreed to in current congressional negotiations over changes in Medicare.

 

"The high cost of prescription drugs ends up being just as harmful as the diseases people are fighting," said Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., a co-sponsor of the prescription drug re-importation measure.

 

Among the poll's other findings:

 

*Eight in 10 in the poll said it is more important to provide health care coverage for all Americans even if it means higher taxes, than to hold down taxes but leave some people uncovered.

 

*Almost two-thirds said they think the country is headed toward rationing of health cares so that some medical procedures are no longer covered by insurance.

 

*Almost one-third of those who make less that $20,000 a year were uninsured, compared with 8 percent of those who make more than $50,000 a year.

 

The poll of 1,000 adults was taken Oct. 9-13 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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2. US BENDS STATISTICAL DATA ON IRAQI SURVEYS

BY

JAMES J. ZOGBY

 

Early in President Bush's recent public relations campaign to rebuild support for the US war effort in Iraq, Vice-President Cheney appeared on "Meet the Press." Attempting to make the case that the US was winning in Iraq, Cheney made the following observation:

 

 

But the AEI's "spin" and the Vice President's use of their "spin" created a faulty impression of the poll's results and, therefore, of the attitudes of the Iraqi people.

 

For example, while Cheney noted that when asked what kind of government they would like, Iraqis chose "the US … hands down," in fact, the results of the poll are actually quite different.

 

Twenty-three per cent of Iraqis say that they would like to model their new government after the US; 17.5 per cent would like their model to be Saudi Arabia; 12 per cent say Syria, 7 per cent say Egypt and 37 per cent say "none of the above." That,s hardly "winning hands down."

 

When given the choice as to whether they " would like to see the American and British forces leave Iraq in six months, one year, or two years," 31.5 per cent of Iraqis say these forces should leave in six months; 34 per cent say a year, and only 25 per cent say two or more years.

 

So while technically Cheney might say that "over 60 per cent (actually it's 59 per cent) … want the US to stay at least another year," an equally correct observation would be that 65.5 per cent want the US and Britain to leave in one year or less.

 

Other numbers found in the poll go further to dampen the vice-president's and the "AEI's rosy interpretation. For example, when asked if "democracy can work in well in Iraq," 51 per cent said "no; it is a Western way of doing things and will not work here."

 

And attitudes toward the US were not positive. When asked whether over the next five years, they felt that the "US would help or hurt Iraq," 50 per cent said that the US would hurt Iraq, while only 35.5 per cent felt the US would help the country. On the other hand, 61 per cent of Iraqis felt that Saudi Arabia would help Iraq in the next five years, as opposed to only 7.5 per cent, who felt Saudi Arabia would hurt their country.

 

50.5 per cent felt that the UN would help Iraq, while 18.5 per cent felt it would hurt. Iran's rating was very close to the US's, with 53.5 per cent of Iraqis saying Iran would hurt them in the next five years, while only 21.5 per cent felt that Iran might help them.

 

It is disturbing that the AEI and the vice-president could get it so wrong. Their misuse of the polling numbers to make the point that they wanted to make, resembles the way critics have noted that the Administration used "intelligence data" to make their case to justify the war.

 

The danger, of course, is that painting a rosy picture that doesn't exist is a recipe for a failed policy. Wishing something to be can't make it so.

 

At some point, reality intervenes. It's a hard lesson to learn, but it is dangerous to ignore its importance.

 

For the Administration to continue to tell itself and the American people that "all is well," only means that needed change in policy will not be made.

 

Consider some of the other poll findings:

 

Over 55 per cent give a negative rating to how the US military is dealing with Iraqi civilians. Only 20 per cent gave the US military a positive rating.

 

By a margin of 57 per cent to 38.5 per cent, Iraqis indicate that they would support "Arab forces" providing security in their country.

 

Ba'ath loyalists

 

When asked how they would describe the attacks on the US military, 49 per cent described them as "resistance operations." Only 29 per cent saw them as attacks by "Ba'ath loyalists."

 

When asked whom they preferred to "provide security and restore order in their country, only 6.5 per cent said the US, 27 per cent said the US and the UN together. While 14.5 per cent preferred only the UN and the largest group, 45 per cent, said they would prefer the "Iraqi military" to do the job alone.

 

There are important lessons in all of this. Lessons policy makers ought to heed if they are to help Iraq move forward. What the Iraqi people appear to be telling us is that they have hope for the future, but they want the help of their neighbors more than that of the US. That may not be what Washington wants to hear, but it ought to listen nevertheless.

 

Because if policy makers continue to bend the data to meet their desired policy, then this hole they are digging will only get deeper.

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3. PREVENTIVE WAR: THE SUPREME CRIME

BY

NOAM CHOMSKY

 

081103: September 2002 was marked by three events of considerable importance, closely related. The United States, the most powerful state in history, announced a new national security strategy asserting that it will maintain global hegemony permanently. Any challenge will be blocked by force, the dimension in which the US reigns supreme. At the same time, the war drums began to beat to mobilize the population for an invasion of Iraq. And the campaign opened for the mid-term congressional elections, which would determine whether the administration would be able to carry forward its radical international and domestic agenda.

 

The new "imperial grand strategy", as it was termed at once by John Ikenberry writing in the leading establishment journal, presents the US as "a revisionist state seeking to parlay its momentary advantages into a world order in which it runs the show",  a unipolar world in which "no state or coalition could ever challenge it as global leader, protector, and enforcer". These policies are fraught with danger even for the US itself, Ikenberry warned, joining many others in the foreign policy elite.

 

What is to be protected is US power and the interests it represents, not the world, which vigorously opposed the concept. Within a few months studies revealed that fear of the US had reached remarkable heights, along with distrust of the political leadership. An international Gallup poll in December, which was barely noticed in the US, found almost no support for Washington's announced plans for a war in Iraq carried out unilaterally by America and its allies – in effect, the US-United Kingdom coalition.

 

Washington told the UN that it could be relevant by endorsing US plans, or it could be a debating society. The US had the "sovereign right to take military action", the administration's moderate Colin Powell told the World Economic Forum, which also vigorously opposed the war plans: "When we feel strongly about something we will lead, even if no one is following us".

 

President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair underscored their contempt for international law and institutions at their Azores summit meeting on the eve of the invasion. They issued an ultimatum, not to Iraq, but to the Security Council: capitulate, or we will invade without your meaningless seal of approval. And we will do so  whether or not Saddam Hussein and his family leave the country. The crucial principle is that the US must effectively rule Iraq.

 

President Bush declared that the US "has the sovereign authority to use force in assuring its own national security", threatened by Iraq with or without Saddam, according to the Bush doctrine. The US will be happy to establish an Arab façade, to borrow the term of the British during their days in the sun, while US power is firmly implanted at the heart of the world's major energy-producing region. Formal democracy will be fine, but only if it is of a submissive kind accepted in the US's backyard, at least if history and current practice are any guide.

 

The grand strategy authorizes the US to carry out preventive war: preventive, not pre-emptive. Whatever the justifications for pre-emptive war might be, they do not hold for preventive war, particularly as that concept is interpreted by its current enthusiasts: the use of military force to eliminate an invented or imagined threat, so that even the term "preventive" is too charitable. Preventive war is, very simply the supreme crime that was condemned at Nuremberg.

 

That was understood by those with some concern for their country. As the US invaded Iraq, the historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote that Bush's grand strategy was "alarmingly similar to the policy that imperial Japan employed at the time of Pearl Harbor, on a date which, as an earlier American president [Franklin D. Roosevelt] said it would "live in infamy". It was no surprise, added Schlesinger, that "the global wave of sympathy that engulfed the US after 9/11 has given way to a global wave of hatred of American arrogance and militarism" and the belief that Bush was "a greater threat to peace than Saddam Hussein".

 

For the  political leadership, mostly recycled from the more reactionary sectors of the Reagan-Bush Senior administrations, the global wave of hatred is not a particular problem. They want to be feared, not loved. It is natural for the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, to quote the words of Chicago gangster Al Capone: "You will get more with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone." They understand just as well as their establishment critics that their actions increase the risk of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and terror. But that too is not a major problem. Far higher in the scale of their priorities are the goals of establishing global hegemony and implementing their domestic agenda, which is to dismantle the progressive achievements that have been won by popular struggle over the past century, and to institutionalize their radical changes so that recovering the achievements will be no easy task.

 

It is not enough for a hegemonic power to declare an official policy. It must establish it as a new norm of international law by exemplary action. Distinguished commentators may then explain that the law is a flexible living instrument, so that the new norm is now available as a guide to action. It is understood that only those with the guns can establish norms and modify international law.

 

The selected target must meet several conditions. It must be defenseless, important enough to be worth the trouble, an imminent threat to our survival and an ultimate evil. Iraq qualified on all counts. The first two conditions are obvious. For the third, it suffices to repeat the orations of Bush, Blair, and their colleagues: the dictator "is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons [in order to] dominate, intimidate or attack"; and he "has already used them on whole villages leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind or transfigured. If this is not evil than evil has no meaning." Bush's eloquent denunciation surely rings true. And those who contributed to enhancing evil should certainly not enjoy impunity: among them, the speaker of these lofty words and his current associates, and all those who joined them in the years when they were supporting that man of ultimate evil, Saddam Hussein, long after he had committed these terrible crimes, and after the first war with Iraq. Supported him because of our duty to help US exporters, the Bush Senior administration explained.

 

It is impressive to see how easy it is for political leaders, while recounting Saddam the monster's worst crimes to suppress the crucial words "with our help, because we don't care about such matters". Support shifted to denunciation as soon as their friend Saddam committed his first authentic crime, which was disobeying (or perhaps misunderstanding) orders, by invading Kuwait. Punishment was severe – for his subjects. The tyrant escaped unscathed, and was further strengthened by the sanctions regime then imposed by his former allies.

 

Also easy to suppress are the reasons why the US returned to support Saddam immediately after the Gulf war, as he crushed rebellions that might have overthrown him. The chief diplomatic correspondent of the New York Times, Thomas Friedman, explained that the best of all worlds for the US would be "an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein", but since that goal seemed unattainable, we would have to be satisfied with second best. The rebels failed because the US and its allies held the "strikingly unanimous view [that] whatever the sins of the Iraqi leader, he offered the West and the region a better hope for his country's stability than did those who have suffered his repression".

 

All of this was suppressed in the commentary on the mass graves of the victims of the US-authorized paroxysm of terror of Saddam Hussein, which commentary was offered as a justification for the war on "moral grounds". It was all known in 1991, but ignored for reasons of state.

 

A reluctant US population had to be whipped to a proper mood of war fever. From September grim warnings were issued about the dire threat that Saddam posed to the US and his links to al-Qaeda, with broad hints that he had been involved in the 9/11 attacks. Many of the charges that had been "dangled in front of [the media] failed the laugh test," commented the editor of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, "but the more ridiculous [they were,] the more the media strove to make whole-hearted swallowing of them a test of patriotism". The propaganda assault had its effects. Within weeks, a majority of Americans came to regard Saddam Hussein as an imminent threat to the US. Soon almost half believed that Iraq was behind the 9/11 terror. Support for the war correlated with these beliefs. The propaganda campaign was just enough to give the administration a bare majority in the mid-term elections, as voters put aside their immediate concerns and huddled under the umbrella of power; in fear of a demonic enemy.

 

The brilliant success of public diplomacy was revealed when Bush, in the words of one commentator "provided a powerful Reaganesque finale to a six-week war on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on 1 May". This reference is presumably to president Ronald Reagan's proud declaration that America was "standing tall" after conquering Grenada, the nutmeg capital of the world, in 1983, preventing the Russians from using it to bomb the US. Bush, as Reagan's mimic, was free to declare – without concern for skeptical comment at home – that he had won a "victory in a war on terror [by having] removed an ally of Al-Qaeda". It has been immaterial that no credible evidence was provided for the alleged link between Saddam Hussein and his bitter enemy Osama bin Laden and that the charge was dismissed by competent observers. Also immaterial was the only known connections between the victory and terror; the invasion appears to have been "a huge setback in the war on terror" by sharply increasing al-Qaeda recruitment, as US officials concede.

 

The Wall Street Journal recognized that Bush's carefully staged aircraft carrier extravaganza "marks the beginning of his 2004 re-election campaign" which the White House hopes "will be built as much as possible around national-security themes". The electoral campaign will focus on "the battle of Iraq, not the war", chief Republican political strategist Karl Rove explained "the war must continue, if only to control the population at home."

 

Before the 2002 elections Rove had instructed party activists to stress security issues, diverting  attention from unpopular Republican domestic policies. All of this is second-nature to the recycled Reaganites now in office. That is how they held on to political power during their first tenure in office. They regularly pushed the panic button to avoid public opposition to the policies that had left Reagan as the most disliked living president by 1992, by which time he may have ranked even lower than Richard Nixon.

 

Despite its narrow successes, the intensive propaganda campaign left the public unswayed in fundamental respects. Most continued to prefer UN rather than US leadership in international crises, and by two to one prefer that the UN, rather than the US, should direct reconstruction in Iraq.

 

When the occupying coalition army failed to discover WMD, the US administration's stance shifted from absolute certainty that Iraq possessed WMD to the position that the accusations were "justified by the discovery of equipment that potentially could  be used to produce weapons". Senior officials then suggested a refinement in the concept of preventive war, to entitle the US to attack a country that has "deadly weapons in mass quantities". The revision "suggests that the administration will act against a hostile regime that has nothing more than the intent and ability to develop WMD". Lowering the criteria for a resort to force is the most significant consequence of the collapse of the proclaimed argument for the invasion.

 

Perhaps the most spectacular propaganda achievement was the praising of Bush's vision to bring democracy to the Middle East in the midst of an extraordinary display of hatred and contempt for democracy. This was illustrated by the distinction that was made by Washington between Old and New Europe, the former being reviled and the latter hailed for its courage. The criterion was sharp: Old Europe consists of governments that took the same position over the war on Iraq as most of their populations; while the heroes of New Europe followed orders from Crawford, Texas, disregarding , in most cases, an even larger majority of citizens who were against the war. Political commentators ranted about disobedient Old Europe and its psychic maladies while Congress descended  to low comedy.

 

At the liberal end of the spectrum, the former US ambassador to the UN, Richard Holbrooke, stressed the "very important point: that the population of the eight original members of New Europe is larger than that of Old Europe, which proves that France and Germany are "isolated". So it does, unless we succumb to the radical-left heresy that the public might have some role in a democracy. Thomas Friedman then urged that France be removed from the permanent members of the Security Council, because it is "in kindergarten, and does not play well with the others". It follows that the population of New Europe must still be in nursery school, at least judging by the polls.

 

Turkey was a particularly instructive case. Its government resisted the heavy pressure from the US to prove its democratic credentials by following US orders and overruling 95% of its population. Turkey did not cooperate. US commentators were infuriated by this lesson in democracy, so much so that some even reported Turkey's crimes against the Kurds in the 1990s, previously a taboo topic because of the crucial US role in what happened, although that was still carefully concealed in the lamentations.

 

The crucial point was expressed by the deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, who condemned the Turkish military because they "did not play the strong leadership role that we would have expected" – that is they did not intervene to prevent the Turkish government from honoring near-unanimous public opinion. Turkey had therefore to step up and say, "We made a mistake – let's figure out how we can be as helpful as possible to the Americans". Wolfowitz's stand was particularly informative because he had been portrayed as the leading figure in the administration's crusade to democratize the Middle East.

 

Anger at Old Europe has much deeper roots than just contempt for democracy. The US has always regarded European unification with some ambivalence. In his Year of Europe address 30 years ago, Henry Kissinger advised Europeans to keep to their regional responsibilities within the "overall framework of order managed by the US". Europe must not pursue its own independent course, based on its Franco-German industrial and financial heartland.

 

The US administration's concerns now extend as well to Northeast Asia, the world's most dynamic economic region, with ample resources and advanced industrial economies, a potentially integrated region that might also flirt with challenging the overall framework of world order, which is to be maintained permanently, by force if necessary, Washington has declared.

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4. THE COST OF IGNORING PRIVACY RIGHTS

BY

RALPH NADER

 

Anyone who believes that the right to privacy is some nice esoteric notion with little real economic impact should take the blinders off. Last year, more than 3 million US consumers were victims of identity thefts made possible by easy access to personal information. The thefts were used to open fraudulent bank, credit card or utility accounts and to commit other crimes.

 

This shocking fining comes from a report just released by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC estimates the cost of these identity thefts to be 3.8 billion to consumers plus more than 32.9 billion to businesses, many of them small merchants.

 

In addition to these "identity thefts," the FTC found that 6.6 million became victims of a closely related crime, "account thefts" which involved the use of stolen ATM cards, or financial records to steal victim's existing accounts.

 

These "account thefts" created $14 billion in business losses plus $1.1 billion in losses to consumers. The "account thefts" are outstripping the "identity thefts." FTC found a 71 percent increase in this type of theft last year.

 

In most cases, the thefts were used in purchases by the thieves. But about 15 percent of the thefts were used in other schemes, including the utilization of stolen information to obtain government records. The FTC cited cases where the thieves used the identifying information when stopped by law enforcement officers or were caught in the commission of a crime.

 

Privacy is now before Congress again, this time in the form of legislation to extend the override of state laws which in any way control how credit information is gathered, disseminated and used by credit reporting agencies, which maintain an estimated 600 million files on American consumers – a gold mine of data for the credit industry and a dangerous minefield for citizens wanting to protect their privacy. The preemption expires at the end of the year, unless Congress acts.

 

Congress has been slow to enact airtight protections for individual privacy. When there is a trade-off between the demands of corporations versus citizens' right to privacy, our national legislators almost always come down on the side of financial institutions and their affiliates. Congress putted around the edges of the privacy issues when it passed the Financial Modernization Act in 1999. But the privacy provisions have done little to halt the wholesale access to financial records and other personal data of consumers.

 

The preemption of state laws involving the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) has passed the House of Representatives, and is now under consideration in the Senate Banking committee. The financial industry had appeared likely to get what it wanted from the Senate without broader issues of privacy becoming a front burner item.

 

In the interim, California, led by a spunky privacy rights advocate, State Senator Jackie Speier, has succeeded in passing a stronger state privacy law which allows consumers to block sharing of their information with affiliates. That's changed the equation. Now the privacy proponents want the California law to become a national standard and they are pushing the issue with the senate committee.

 

Complicating the issue is the fact that financial institutions in California agreed to the Speier bill this summer to head off stronger privacy provisions which were about to go on the California referendum ballot. That has made it tougher for financial lobbyists in the Senate and has given consumer organizations at the national level new leverage to bring privacy – not just an extensions of FCRA – to the forefront. They want the affiliate sharing provisions in the FCRA bill brought up to California standards. California's two Senators – Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer – have written the committee urging that the FCRA provisions be comparable to the higher standards of the California law. Without that assurance, Feinstein and Boxer are expected to oppose the FCRA preemption.

 

Both Senate Banking Chairman Richard Shelby and the committee's ranking Democrat have long been advocates of greater financial privacy. Will Shelby and Sarbanes support the California initiative and put it in the FCRA legislation? The financial industry has spent a ton of advertising and campaign money on extending the FCRA. The stakes are large.

 

As the FTC report on Identity and account theft highlights, lax laws on privacy costs consumers and businessmen – small and large – billions of dollars. Looking the other way on privacy is not cost-free.

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