Sunday, September 21, 2003

Bush's tame U.S. media may yet have teeth

By Eric Margolis
Contributing Foreign Editor, Toronto Sun
September 21, 2003

I’ve long considered CNN’s Christiane Amanpour an outstanding journalist. Last week, my opinion of her rose further when she ignited a storm of controversy when asked by a TV interviewer about the U.S. media’s coverage of the Iraq war. 

Breaking a taboo of silence in the mainstream media, Amanpour courageously replied, “I think the press was muzzled and I think the press self-muzzled. Television ... was intimidated by the (Bush) administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News.”

Right on cue, faithful to Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering’s advice to attack all dissenting views as treason, Fox accused Amanpour of being a “spokeswoman for al-Qaida.” I felt for Amanpour, having myself been slandered by the U.S. neo-conservative media as “a friend of Saddam” for disputing White House claims about Iraq - whose secret police had threatened to hang me on my last visit to Baghdad. 

The warlike momma’s boys at the neo-con National Review actually had the chutzpah to call me “unpatriotic.” Columnists at my own paper pilloried me for opposing the Iraq misadventure. 

Now, as White House lies and distortions are being exposed daily, these critics are not man enough to admit that their parroting of administration war propaganda - Amanpour politely calls it “high level disinformation” - was foolish and unprofessional. 

Christiane Amanpour is absolutely right. The U.S. media was muzzled and censored itself. 

I experienced this firsthand on U.S. TV, radio and in print. Never in my 20 years in media have I seen such unconscionable pressure exerted on journalists to conform to the government’s party line. 

Criticism of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, photos of dead American soldiers or civilians killed by bombing, were forbidden or downplayed. 

The tone of reporting had to be strongly positive, filled with uplifting stories about liberation and women freed from repression. Criticism, sharp questions and doubt were verboten. 

The bloated corporations dominating the U.S. media feared antagonizing the White House, which was pushing for the bill - just rejected by the Senate - to allow them to grow even larger. 

Reporters who failed to toe the line were barred or had their access to military and government officials limited, virtually ending some careers. Many “embedded” reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan became little more than public relations auxiliaries. 

Critics of administration policies in Iraq and Afghanistan were systematically excluded from media commentary, particularly on national TV. 

Experts’ fabrications

Night after night, networks featured “experts” who droned on about Iraq’s fearsome weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat to the U.S., about Iraq’s links to al-Qaida, the urgency to invade Iraq before it could strike at America and a raft of other fabrications. 

Such “experts” echoed the White House party line and all were dead wrong. Yet, amazingly, many are still on the air, continuing to misinform the public, using convoluted arguments to explain why they were not really wrong even when they were. 

I do not exaggerate when I say that much of the U.S. media from 9/11 to the present closely resembled the old Soviet media I knew and disrespected during my stays in the USSR during the 1980s. 

The American media, notably the sycophantic White House press corps and flagwavers at Fox, treated President George Bush and his entourage with adulation and fawning servility similar to what the Soviet state media once lavished on Communist Party Chairman Leonid Brezhnev. 

When dimwitted Brezhnev made the calamitous blunder of invading Afghanistan, the Moscow media rapturously described the brazen aggression as “liberation” that recalled the glories of World War II. The U.S. media indulged in the same frenzied foot-kissing, and the same silly WW II comparisons over Bush’s foolhardy invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. 

President Bush and his neo-conservative handlers led America into these twin disasters precisely because two of the key organs of democracy - an independent, inquiring media, and assertive Congress - failed miserably to perform their duty. 

They allowed themselves to be cowed into subservience. They failed to expose and vigorously oppose the sinister, pro-totalitarian Patriot Act that so endangers America’s basic liberties. 

Or, like Fox, a reincarnation of William Randolph Hearst’s jingoistic yellow press, they served as White House mouthpieces, eagerly stoking war fever and national hysteria, retailing to the public all the administration’s wholesale disinformation about Iraq. 

In a shocking attempt to silence dissenting voices, U.S. forces bombed the news offices of al-Jazeera TV in Baghdad, Basra and Kabul, killing and wounding some of its staff. “The CNN of the Arab World” had been contradicting too many White House claims. 

Al-Jazeera’s senior correspondent, Tayseer Alouni, has been arrested in Spain and charged with aiding terrorism by interviewing Osama bin Laden. 

The U.S. previously accused Alouni of being pro-Iraqi; Iraq expelled him for being “anti-Iraqi.”

In my books, that makes him an honest, courageous journalist, just like Amanpour. 

So long as Bush was riding high in the polls, the media fawned on him. But now that many Americans are beginning to sense they were lied to or misled by the White House, Bush’s popularity is dropping, and the media’s mood is becoming edgy and more aggressive. The muzzles may soon be coming off.

homepage: http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_sep21.html

Friday, September 19, 2003

Kennedy Says Case for Iraq War Was Fraud

By STEVE LeBLANC
The Associated Press
Thursday, September 18, 2003; 3:09 PM

BOSTON - The case for going to war against Iraq was a fraud “made up in Texas” to give Republicans a political boost, Sen. Edward Kennedy said Thursday. 

In an interview with The Associated Press, Kennedy also said the Bush administration has failed to account for nearly half of the $4 billion the war is costing each month. He said he believes much of the unaccounted-for money is being used to bribe foreign leaders to send in troops.

He called the Bush administration’s current Iraq policy “adrift.”

The Massachusetts Democrat expressed doubts about how serious a threat Saddam Hussein posed to the United States in its battle against terrorism. He said administration officials relied on “distortion, misrepresentation, a selection of intelligence” to justify their case for war. 

“There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud,” Kennedy said. 

Kennedy said a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office showed that only about $2.5 billion of the $4 billion being spent monthly on the war can be accounted for by the Bush administration. 

“My belief is this money is being shuffled all around to these political leaders in all parts of the world, bribing them to send in troops,” he said. 

Of the $87 billion in new money requested by President Bush for the war, Kennedy said the administration should be required to report back to the Congress to account for the spending. 

“We want to support our troops because they didn’t make the decision to go there ... but I don’t think it should be open-ended. We ought to have a benchmark where the administration has to come back and give us a report,” he added. 

Kennedy said the focus on Iraq has drawn the nation’s attention away from more direct threats, including al-Qaida, instability in Afghanistan or the nuclear ambitions of North Korea. 

“I think all of those pose a threat to the security of the people of Massachusetts much more than the threat from Iraq,” Kennedy said. “Terror has been put on the sidelines for the last 12 months.”

Thursday, September 18, 2003

US Plan for Global Domination Tops Project Censored's Annual List

By Kari Lydersen, AlterNet
September 17, 2003

We know a lot more now about the dangers and disasters of U.S. empire building in Iraq — the ongoing bloodshed on the ground, expansion of terrorist activities, the huge budget busting costs of occupation, the stretching and undermining of the military, and the increased sense of fear and insecurity that many Americans feel as a result of the invasion and its potential for blowback.

We also now have a better handle on the immediate and flimsy reasons for the invasion. Bush told us we were going to war in Iraq because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that threatened us; he was reconstituting his nuclear weapons programs (the aluminum tubes, the uranium from Africa); he had huge stocks of chemical and biological weapons that could be launched somehow in a way that threatened the US. And finally that Saddam was working with Al Qaeda. According to some polls, as much as 70 percent of the public believed this. But now it seems clear these were all falsehoods. The lies and deceptions Bush and his minions were feeding to the media are making their way into public discourse and are being covered fairly extensively in the press, in columns by Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd in the NY Times and in wide ranging reporting at the Washington Post, and elsewhere.

But far, far less is known about the planning and the actors that brought us this foreign policy disaster? What ideas and worldviews motivated the push to overreach and try to dominate the globe, with Iraq as step number one? What secrets, maneuvers behind the scenes policy power struggles after the attacks of 9/11, led the U.S. to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11?

The reminder that the media often reports the “news” as fed to it by those in power, and skips past the real news — the reasons for the behaviors and policies — is good reason for the continued existence of Project Censored, a program in its 27th year that collects under-reported stories from around the country and compiles a list of the top 10 “censored stories” as well as 15 runner-ups. About 200 students and faculty from Sonoma State University compiled and reviewed the stories for Project Censored. The project describes its mission “to stimulate responsible journalists to provide more mass media coverage of those under-covered issues and to encourage the general public to demand mass media coverage of those issues or to seek information from other sources.”

Most of the stories on Project Censored’s Top Ten relate to the US’s war on terrorism and the invasion of Iraq. On the one hand, this emphasis indicates how the issue dominates the news, but on the other, how few news consumers really understand very little about how it happened and why. Taken together, these stories paint a chilling picture of a long-ranging plan to dominate huge sections of the globe militarily and economically, and to silence dissent, curb civil liberties and undermine workers’ rights in the course of it. Some of the information published as part of the project is pretty shocking, like the fact that the US removed 8,000 incriminating pages from Iraq’s weapons report to the UN; or that Donald Rumsfeld may have a plan to deliberately provoke terrorists so we can react. Other issues like the attacks on civil liberties have been covered in the mainstream press, but not in the comprehensive way Project Censored would like to see.

The “Top Ten Censored Stories” followed by the 15 runner-ups:

1. The Neoconservative Plan for Global Dominance
Sources: The Sunday Herald (9/15/02), Harper’s Magazine (10/02), Mother Jones (3/03), Pilger.com (12/12/02)

Project Censored has decided that the incredible lack of public knowledge of the US plan for total global domination, represented by the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) represents the media’s biggest failure over the past year. The PNAC plans advocated the attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan and other current foreign policy objectives, long before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Chillingly, one document published by the PNAC in 2000 actually describes the need for a “new Pearl Harbor” to persuade the American public to accept the acts of war and aggression the administration wants to carry out. “But most people in the country are totally unaware that the PNAC exists,” said Peter Phillips, a professor at Sonoma State and major domo of The Project Censored Project, “and that failure has aided and abetted this disaster in Iraq.”

According to Project Censored authors. “In the 1970s, the United States and the Middle East were embroiled in a tug-of-war over oil. At the time, the prospect of seizing control of Arab oil fields by force was considered out of line. Still, the idea of Middle East dominance was very attractive to a group of hard-line Washington insiders that included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, William Kristol and other operatives. During the Clinton years they were active in conservative think tanks like the PNAC. When Bush was elected they came roaring back into power.

In an update for the Project Censored Web site, Mother Jones writer Robert Dreyfuss notes “There was very little examination in the media of the role of oil in American policy towards Iraq and the Persian Gulf, and what coverage did exist tended to pooh-pooh or debunk the idea that the war had anything to do with it.”

2. Homeland Security Threatens Civil Liberties
Sources: Global Outlook (Winter 2003), Rense.com (2-11-03 & Global Outlook, Volume 4), Center for Public Integrity (publicintegrity.org) Corporate Media partial coverage: Atlanta Journal-constitution (5/11/03/), The Tampa Tribune (3/28/03), Baltimore Sun (2/21/03)

While the media did cover the Patriot Act, and the so-called Patriot Act II, which was leaked to the press in February 2003, there wasn’t sufficient analysis of some of the truly dangerous and precedent-setting components of both acts. This goes especially for the shocking provision in Patriot II that would allow even US citizens to be treated as enemy combatants and held without counsel, simply on suspicion of connections to terrorism.

“Under section 501 a US citizen engaging in lawful activity can be picked off the streets or from home and taken to a secret military tribunal with no access to or notification of a lawyer, the press or family.” This would be considered justified if the agent ‘inferred from the conduct’ suspicious intention.

Fortunately Patriot I is under major duress in Congress as both parties are supporting significant revisions. Yet, President Bush, realizing that he and his unpopular Attorney General John Ashcroft are losing popular support, is threatening a veto, and has aggressively gone on the offense in favor of the repugnant Patriot II. Let’s see if the media has learned its lesson from Patriot I. Will it probe the new legislation much more thoroughly than the first round, which received inadequate analysis post 9/11?

3. US Illegally Removes Pages from Iraq UN Report
Source: The Humanist and ArtVoice (March/April 2003), first covered by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!

Story three is the shockingly under-reported fact that the Bush administration removed a whopping 8,000 of 11,800 pages from the report the Iraqi government submitted to the UN Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency. The pages included details on how the US had actually supplied Iraq with chemical and biological weapons and the building blocks for weapons of mass destruction. The pages reportedly implicate not only Reagan and Bush administration officials but also major corporations including Bechtel, Eastman Kodak and Dupont and the US Departments of Energy and Agriculture.

In comments to Project Censored, Michael Niman, author of one of the articles cited, noted that his article was based on secondary sources, mostly from the international press, since the topic received an almost complete blackout in the US press. Referring to his first Project Censored nomination in 1989, in which he went into the bush in Costa Rica, he said, “With such thorough self-censorship in the US press, reading the international press is now akin to going into the remote bush.”

4. Rumsfeld’s Plan to Provoke Terrorists
Source: CounterPunch (11/1/02)

Moscow Times columnist and CounterPunch contributor Chris Floyd developed this story off a small item in the Los Angeles Times in October 2002 about secret armies the Pentagon has been developing around the world. “The Pro-active, Preemptive Operations Group (or “Pee-Twos’) will carry out secret missions designed to ‘stimulate reactions’ among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to ‘counterattack’ by US forces,” Floyd wrote. “The Pee-Twos will thus come in handy whenever the Regime hankers to add a little oil-laden real estate or a new military base to the Empire’s burgeoning portfolio. Just find a nest of violent malcontents, stir ‘em with a stick, and presto: instant justification for whatever level of intervention-conquest-raping that you might desire.”

Floyd notes that while the story received considerable play in international and alternative media, it has hardly been mentioned in the mainstream US press.

“At first glance, this decided lack of interest might seem a curious reaction, given the American media’s insatiable — and profitable — obsession with terrorism,” he told Project Censored. “But the media’s equally intense abhorrence of moral ambiguity — especially when it involves possible American complicity in mayhem and murder — makes the silence easier to understand.”

5. The Effort to Make Unions Disappear
Sources: Z Magazine, (11/20/02), War Times (10/11 2002), The Progressive (11/03), The American Prospect (3/03)

The war on terrorism has also had the convenient side benefit for conservatives of making it easier for employers and the government to suppress organized labor in the name of national security. For example, in October 2002 Bush was able to force striking International Longshore and Warehouse Union members back to work in the San Francisco Bay Area in the name of national safety.

Chicago journalist Lee Sustar noted that labor coverage is usually woefully inadequate in the mainstream media, even though union membership, while shrinking, still makes up a national constituency 13 million strong.

“Twenty years ago every paper had a beat reporter on labor who knew what was going on,” he said. “Today that’s not the case. Besides a token story on Labor Day or a human-interest story here and there, you don’t see coverage of labor. You only see coverage from the business side.” said Sustar, Although Steven Greenhouse, the labor reporter for the New York Times is one obvious exception to Sustar’s claim.

Ann Marie Cusac, whose story for The Progressive about the decimation of unions was cited, said she thinks the position of organized labor is worse than it has ever been.

She combed National Labor Relations Board files for egregious examples of the lengths to which employers will go to bust unions. And she found a lot. “They had a woman with carpal tunnel syndrome pulling nails out of boards above her head, because they wanted her to go on disability so she couldn’t organize,” she said. “But she did it, even knowing she might disable herself. The willingness of people to sacrifice, because they know how important it is to unionize, is a sign of hope.”

6. Closing Access to Information Technology
Source: Dollars and Sense (9/02)

The potential closing of access to digital information is a development that could have a harmful effect on the powerful role online media plays in side stepping media gate keepers and keeping people better informed. “The FCC and Congress are currently overturning the public-interest rules that have encouraged the expansion of the Internet up until now,” writes Arthur Stamoulis, whose story was published in Dollars and Sense.

The Internet currently provides a buffet of independent and international media sources to counter the mostly homogenous offerings of mainstream US media, especially broadcast.

As the shift to broadband gains momentum, cable companies are trying hard to dominate the market, and eventually control access.

In 2002 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided to allow cable networks to avoid common carrier requirements. Now the giant phone companies, who offer the competitive DSL services, want the same freedoms to control access to their lines. In the long run, instead of the thousands of small ISP services to choose from, the switch from dial-up to broadband means that users will have less and less choice over who provides their internet access.

While the media finally woke up and gave significant coverage to the recent public rebellion against the FCC, which voted to increase media concentration even further, there has been scant coverage to the problem that the Internet as we now it might be lost.

7. Treaty Busting By the United States
Sources: Connections (6/02), The Nation (4/02), Ashville Global Report (6/20-26/02), Global Outlook (Summer 2002)

“The US is a signatory to nine multilateral treaties that it has either blatantly violated or gradually subverted,” says Project Censored. These include the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Treaty Banning Antipersonnel Mines and the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. Just as the Bush administration is crowing about the possibility of Saddam Hussein manufacturing nuclear or chemical weapons, it is violating treaties meant to curb these threats, including the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Commission.

8. US/British Forces Continue Use of Depleted Uranium Weapons Despite Massive Evidence of Negative Health Effects
Sources: The Sunday Herald (3/30/03), Hustler Magazine (6/03), Children of War (3/03)

The eighth story on the list deals with another subject that victims have tried to get into the mainstream media for over a decade — the US’s use of depleted uranium in Iraq, in both the recent invasion and in the Gulf War. Depleted uranium (DU) was also used in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Bosnia.

The writers cited, including the hard-core porn magazine Hustler, note that cancer rates have skyrocketed in Iraq since the first Gulf War, most likely because of the massive contamination of the soil with DU from the explosive, armor-piercing munitions. US soldiers are also victims of this travesty, suffering Gulf War syndrome and other ailments that many feel sure are linked to their exposure to DU.

Reese Erlich, a freelance journalist who reported on the topic for a syndicated radio broadcast and related web site report, said that the federal government has dealt with the issue of DU the way the tobacco industry deals with its liability problems. “They’ll fog the issue so no one can say for sure what’s happening,” he said. “They’ll commission studies so they can say, ‘There are conflicting reports,’ ‘We need more information.’”

He noted that while the US media is quiet about the issue, it is a hot topic in the international press. “When you get outside the US, the media is much more critical,” he said. “They refer to it as a weapon of mass destruction. This will be a legacy the US has left in Iraq. Long after the electricity is repaired and the oil wells are pumping, children will be getting cancer. The US knew this would happen, it can’t claim ignorance.”

9. In Afghanistan: Poverty, Women’s Rights and Civil Disruption Worse then Ever
Sources: The Nation (10/14/02), Left Turn (3-4/03), The Nation (4/29/02), Mother Jones (7-8/02) Mainstream Coverage: Toronto Star (3/2/03)

Though his work isn’t cited here, Erlich also reported on the topic of the ninth story on the list, the continuing poverty, civil disruption and repression of women in Afghanistan. While the country has virtually dropped off the radar screen in the US press and public consciousness, it is suffering its worst decade of poverty ever. Warlords and tribal fiefdoms continue to rule the country, and women are as repressed as ever, contrary to the feel-good images of burqa-stripping that have been broadcast in the media here.

“Reporters by and large don’t go to Afghanistan to report on what they see,” said Erlich, who spent several weeks reporting in the country. “They go to the state department officials, so everything is filtered through these rose-colored glasses, saying things are getting better. But they’re not.”

10. Africa Faces New Threat of New Colonialism
Source: Left Turn (7-8/02), Briarpatch, Vol. 32, No. 1, Excerpted from The CCPA Monitor, (10/02), New Internationalist (1-2/03)

While Afghanistan is being essentially ignored, the tenth story on the list shows how African countries are getting plenty of attention from the US — but not the kind of attention they need. These stories deal with the formation in June, 2002 of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, or NEPAD, by a group of leaders from the world’s eight most powerful countries (the G8) who claim to be carrying out an anti-poverty campaign for the continent. But the group doesn’t include the head of a single African nation, and critics charge that the plan is more about opening the continent to international investment and looting its resources than fighting poverty.

“NEPAD is akin to Plan Colombia in its attempt to employ Western development techniques to provide economic opportunities for international investment,” says Project Censored.

The Project Censored awards ceremony will take place Oct. 4 in San Rafael, Calif. For tickets or more information, visit the Web site at www.projectcensored.org

The 15 stories cited as runners-up to the top ten most censored stories of the year are the following:

#11: U.S. Implicated in Taliban Massacre
#12: Bush Administration Behind Failed Military Coup in Venezuela
#13: Corporate Personhood Challenged
#14: Unwanted Refugees a Global Problem
#15: U.S. Military’s War on the Earth
#16: Plan Puebla-Panama and the FTAA
#17: Clear Channel Monopoly Draws Criticism
#18: Charter Forest Proposal Threatens Access to Public Lands
#19: U.S. Dollar vs. the Euro: Another Reason for the Invasion of Iraq
#20: Pentagon Increases Private Military Contracts
#21: Third World Austerity Policies: Coming Soon to a City Near You
#22: Welfare Reform Up For Reauthorization, but Still No Safety Net
#23: Argentina Crisis Sparks Cooperative Growth
#24: Aid to Israel Fuels Repressive Occupation in Palestine
#25: Convicted Corporations Receive Perks Instead of Punishment

Kari Lydersen, a regular contributor to AlterNet, also writes for the Washington Post and is an instructor for the Urban Youth International Journalism Program in Chicago. She can be reached at karilyde@aol.com

homepage: http://www.projectcensored.org/

Wednesday, September 17, 2003

In pain, but so worth it...

On Sunday morning, I ran in the “Race for the Cure” to raise money for breast cancer research and to support local cancer victims. I managed to raise over $170, counting checks that were handed to me and my own donation on top of the pledges that were made online. BTW, if you’d like to donate, my fundraising page is still open until October 17th.

I ran the 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) in 30 minutes and 28 seconds. Not too bad, considering that the last time I ran a 5K was in 1986 (26 minutes), and that was the only time since high school track team in 1971 (19 minutes). I’ll be turning 50 in 2 months, but I felt like 90 on Monday morning. I woke to find I could hardly lift my legs, but going down stairs was the worst. You use an entirely different set of muscles running than bike riding, so all those hundreds of miles of biking to work I’ve been doing didn’t help much, other than upping my stamina. My legs are finally recovering, and I’m not shuffling along in major pain like I was Monday.

And yeah, I’ll run again next year, because it was a very inspirational thing to run with all those people who were there for the same purpose. There were 43,000(!!!) folks, split between several walks and runs, both 5K and one mile and women-only and coed. It was a beautiful morning and such a positive vibe in the air!

- Bob Woods

Monday, September 15, 2003

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

You know, that whole little snit that Bush had with the French would have almost been funny, if it weren’t so criminally stupid. Not to mention pissing off most of Europe in the process. Now, it seems that Bu$h is about to go, hat in hand, to beg for financial support and troops to clean up after his ill-advised adventure in Iraq. It’d serve him right if our former allies turn their collective backs on him and it costs him the 2004 election. Here’s hoping…

<sarcasm>
Just to show you how stupid Congress has been, it seems that they’ve realized the error of their ways. The following article is an example. Wow, they’re really starting to tackle some substantive issues here. Forget about the icecaps melting and hurricanes caused by global warming, the deficit spiralling out of control and ever-increasing numbers of people sliding into unemployment with no safety net; it’s time to move onto things like Constitutional amendments against flag-burning and for school prayer. Yeah, they better pray…
</sarcasm>

- Bob Woods

Lawmaker Wants to Put ‘French’ Back in Fries 
Monday, September 15, 2003 3:12 p.m. ET
http://www.wired.com

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - To get international help to rebuild Iraq, Congress may have to eat some French fries and French toast, according to Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee.

Saying it is time to put aside differences with France, the Texas Democrat circulated a letter on Monday urging the House of Representatives to put back the word “French” back in fries and toast on House cafeteria and dining hall menus.

Lawmakers ordered them renamed “Freedom” fries and “Freedom” toast last spring, reflecting anger at France for its opposition to the U.S.-led war to topple Saddam Hussein as Iraq’s president.

But times have changed, Jackson Lee said, and now the Washington is trying to get France and other members of the United Nations to contribute money and troops to help stabilize Iraq and rebuild its devastated infrastructure.

“President Bush is now urging that all parties put aside ‘past bickering,”’ she said in her letter. “A symbolic start to that effort” would be reinstating foods on the House menus “with their traditional ‘American’ names—French toast and French fries.”

Rep. Bob Ney, head of the House Administration Committee, ordered the changes in March. The Ohio Republican took the action at the suggestion of Rep. Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican.