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Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 Accuracy IPA
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Interviews Available
CELESTE ZAPPALA, (215) 520-7040, (215) 686-8416, cell: (215) 570-5484,
czappala1@yahoo.com, http://www.gsfso.org
A member of Gold Star Families Speak Out, Zappala’s eldest son, Sgt.
Sherwood Baker, was the first Pennsylvania National Guardsman to die in
combat since World War II. He was killed in action in Baghdad on April
26, 2004, while searching for weapons of mass destruction.
She said today: “Yesterday George Bush spoke with unsubstantiated
optimism about the war in Iraq; yesterday another U.S. soldier was
killed, bringing the total to 2,243. If all of the families of all of
those soldiers had been sitting in the chamber, could Bush’s
self-serving comments about sacrifice have been heard above the cries of
grief and anguish?”
KATHY KELLY, (773) 878-3815, kathy@vitw.org, http://www.vcnv.org
Co-founder of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Kelly said today:
“President Bush states that ‘The only way to control our destiny is by
our leadership — so the United States of America will continue to
lead.’ This president led the U.S. into an immoral, illegal war against
Iraq based on lies and deception. The president worries that ‘a sudden
withdrawal of our forces from Iraq would abandon our Iraqi allies to
death and prison.’ He does not mention that U.S. forces are imprisoning
16,000 Iraqis, many of them held without charges. The British medical
journal The Lancet reported in October 2004 that the U.S. invasion and
occupation have cost the lives of 100,000 Iraqis.”
TALAT HAMDANI, (212) 598-0970, (917) 579-5416, Ameerjaan2@aol.com,
http://peacefultomorrows.org
Hamdani is the mother of Mohammad Salman Hamdani, who was a New York
City police cadet killed in the World Trade Center attack on 9/11. She
is available to discuss Bush’s continuing references to 9/11.
RUSSELL MOKHIBER, cell: (202) 468-8868,
russell@corporatecrimereporter.com, http://corporatecrimereporter.com
Editor of Corporate Crime Reporter, Mokhiber said today: “President
Bush said that ‘violent crime rates have fallen to their lowest levels
since the 1970s.’ This is true only if you look at violent street crime
and ignore the violent corporate crime that results in pollution, worker
and consumer deaths. The rate of violent corporate crime is by all
indications on the increase. But we don’t know for sure, for while
President Bush’s FBI tracks street crime district by district, the FBI
does not track corporate crime and violence.”
QUENTIN YOUNG, (312) 782-6006, (773) 324-5920, pnhp@aol.com, http://pnhp.org
Young is coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program. He
said today: “The speech was monumentally cynical from beginning to end.
He didn’t say much on healthcare, and what he did say was useless. The
medical savings accounts he talks about have no way of improving
coverage and access to healthcare; or lowering costs.
“Bush claimed: ‘Our government has a responsibility to help provide
healthcare for the poor and the elderly, and we are meeting that
responsibility.’ That’s an absolute lie. Under his watch, there are
ongoing brutal slashes in Medicaid.”
Added Young, “You also had a cynical invocation of helping AIDS
victims in Africa; but Bush has backed off from prior commitments on
that after garnishing applause for those promises like he did last night.”
TYSON SLOCUM, (202) 454-5191, cell: (202) 256-3152, tslocum@citizen.org,
Acting director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, Slocum said
today: “Bush didn’t talk about scaling back demand at all; we need to
greatly expand our public transportation systems. He talked about
hydrogen, but he used the same rhetoric in 2003. The plans for hydrogen
fuel actually involve it coming from coal fire power plants. This means
using a high pollution process to create ‘clean’ energy.
“Bush made no mention of the comprehensive energy bill he recently
signed. That makes sense; the lobbyists went wild with it, the oil
companies got $5 billion, $8 billion for coal, $12 billion for nuclear
and only $3 billion for renewables. Oil companies are posting record
profits.
“We should tax the oil companies to pay to develop renewables and
programs like giving people a financial incentive to weatherize their
homes so we conserve more fuel.”
MARY OLSON, via Linda Gunter, (202) 328-0002, lindag@nirs.org,
Olson is with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. She said
today: “The administration has been desperate to find a nuclear waste
solution in order to resuscitate the moribund and unpopular nuclear
power industry. … Its latest scheme is reprocessing of irradiated
commercial fuel, one of the dirtiest and most proliferation-vulnerable
processes in the nuclear fuel chain.”
PRATAP CHATTERJEE, (510) 271-8080, cell: (510) 759-8970,
pratap@corpwatch.org, http://www.corpwatch.org
Bush stated yesterday: “We are continuing reconstruction efforts,
and helping the Iraqi government to fight corruption and build a modern
economy, so all Iraqis can experience the benefits of freedom.”
Chatterjee is executive director for CorpWatch. He said today:
“Bush’s claim that the United States plans to continue reconstruction in
Iraq is a cleverly worded lie. The government has no plans to ask for
new money in the February budget. The contractors are already shutting
down their work even though some of the original $18.4 billion allocated
for reconstruction over two years ago has not been spent and half of the
money spent so far has either been spent on insurance and private
security or worst of all diverted to other schemes such as the building
of a new United States embassy.”
Chatterjee, who wrote the book “Iraq Inc.: A Profitable Occupation,”
added: “Much of the money taken from Iraq’s coffers has been used to
swell American corporate coffers or even stolen by corrupt American
officials. Meanwhile the people of Iraq have less electricity, less
water and more sewage than before the 2003 invasion.”
AS’AD ABUKHALIL, (209) 667-3536, (209) 575-0210, AAbukhalil@csustan.edu
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2005/08/king-fahd-is-dead-and-oppressive.html
AbuKhalil is author of the book “The Battle for Saudi Arabia:
Royalty, Fundamentalism, and Global Power,” professor in the Department
of Politics at California State University, Stanislaus, and visiting
professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Bush stated yesterday: “We accept the call of history to deliver the
oppressed and move this world toward peace. … And we do not forget the
other half — in places like Syria and Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and
Iran.”
AbuKhalil responded: “Bush left out from that list … oppressive
countries that are aligned with the U.S. (Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, UAE,
Oman, Jordan, Libya, Algeria, Guatemala, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Bahrain, etc.).”
STEPHEN ZUNES, (415) 422-6981, (831) 234-9468, zunes@usfca.edu,
http://www.fpif.org
Bush said: “Let me speak directly to the citizens of Iran: America
respects you. … And our Nation hopes one day to be the closest of
friends with a free and democratic Iran.”
Professor of politics at the University of San Francisco, Zunes said
today: “If this is really the case, why did the United States overthrow
Iran’s last democratic government, that of Prime Minister Mohammed
Mossadegh? If the United States really respects the rights of the
Iranian people to choose their own future, why did successive U.S.
administrations support the tyrannical regime of Shah Reza Pahlavi,
installed by the United States following Mossadegh’s ouster, whose
dreaded CIA-trained SAVAK secret police tortured and murdered thousands
of dissidents, thereby spawning the Islamist revolution that has since
come to power?”
JACQUELINE CABASSO, (510) 839-5877, cell: (510) 306-0119,
wslf@earthlink.net, http://www.wslfweb.org,
http://www.disarmamentactivist.org
Executive director of the California-based Western States Legal
Foundation, Cabasso has written many articles assessing nuclear policy.
She said today: “While the United States accuses Iran of seeking nuclear
weapons and President Bush declares that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose
‘a grave threat to the security of the world’ (the same language he used
prior to attacking Iraq), the U.S. is retooling its own nuclear weapons
research, design, and production infrastructure to maintain thousands of
nuclear weapons for many decades to come, while enabling the production
of new nuclear weapons for ‘post-Cold War’ missions envisioned by U.S.
war planners. Following the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration openly
declared the potential first use of nuclear weapons — even against
those countries that don’t have them. The 2002 Nuclear Posture Review
revealed U.S. plans for first use of nuclear weapons in response to
non-nuclear attacks or threats involving biological or chemical weapons
or ‘surprising military developments’ and targeted countries including
Iraq, Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, Syria, and Libya.
“The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) … codified a pledge by
the U.S., Britain, Soviet Union, France and China to negotiate ‘in good
faith’ the end of the nuclear arms race and the elimination of their
nuclear arsenals. States that agreed to forswear nuclear weapons were
guaranteed ‘the inalienable right’ to develop nuclear energy for
peaceful purposes, ‘without discrimination.’ … The U.S. and the other
nuclear weapon states have failed to live up to their disarmament
obligations, establishing a de facto international system of ‘nuclear
apartheid,’ in which they claim the exclusive right to determine who may
possess (and threaten to use) nuclear weapons. They also have been
responsible for spreading ‘peaceful’ nuclear technology around the
globe, ensuring the possibility of nuclear proliferation.
“Now the Bush administration wants to add a second tier to its
nuclear double standard by denying uranium enrichment technology —
usable for both nuclear power and weapons — to countries that don’t
already have it. Iran will be the test case. But just beyond Iran’s
border, the U.S. continues to turn a blind eye towards Israel’s sizable
undeclared nuclear arsenal.”
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
Deanna Dee-Dee Taylor 