What DeLay Left Out of His "Iraq by the Numbers"

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay put out the following press release on 10/16:

Iraq By the Numbers
Here is what was known about Iraq based on its own admissions:

3.9 -- Number of tons of VX nerve gas Iraq produced in the years immediately prior to the first Gulf War
25 -- Number of missile warheads containing germ agents (anthrax, aflatoxin, and botulinum) Iraq produced
157 -- Number of aerial bombs Iraq produced that were filled with germ agents
500 -- Number of bombs Iraq had fitted with parachutes for the purpose of delivering poison gas or germ payloads
550 -- Number of artillery shells Iraq had filled with mustard gas
805 -- Number of tons of ingredients for the production of more VX
4,000 -- Number of tons of ingredients to produce certain types of poison gas Saddam produced or imported
8,500 -- Number of liters of anthrax Saddam produced
107,500 -- Number of casings for chemical weapons Iraq had produced or imported
(Robert Kagan, William Kristol, Weekly Standard, October 10, 2003)

0 -- Number of Americans made safer by Ted Kennedy and the Democrats' weak and indecisive foreign policy
9 -- Number of presidential candidates who will pathetically claim DeLay is questioning their patriotism

However, this is what DeLay left out:

0 -- number of WMDs Iraq claimed it had after destroying its stockpiles
0 -- Number of WMDs discovered by UN inspectors
0 -- tons of VX nerve gas discovered
0 -- number of bombs fills with germ agents discovered
0 -- number of missiles filled with poison gas discovered
0 -- number of artillery shells filled with mustard gas discovered
0 -- number of tons of VX ingredients discovered
0 -- number of liters of Anthrax discovered
0 -- number of Bush's prewar claims proven true
0 -- number of Americans made safer by invading Iraq
("war in Iraq has probably inflamed radical passions among Muslims and thus increased al Qaeda's recruiting power and morale..." International Institute for Strategic Studies, Annual Report)

Read Enron's E-Mails -- Here's One of Our Favorites!
14-Oct-03
Enron
To: Ken Lay and Steve Kean
From: Enron governmental affairs executives Rick Shapiro and Linda Robertson
Date: June 1, 2001
Subject: The President's Dinner, A Congressional Salute Honoring President Bush and Vice President Cheney, June 7, 2001

With the assistance of... Tom DeLay, we were able to apply our previously contributed soft money toward this dinner. Consequently, we will be credited as giving $250,000 to this event, even though we are being asked to give only $50,000 in new soft money... Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison has requested that Enron give her some credit for raising the money.

...In addition, ...Tom DeLay has asked Enron to contribute $100,000 to his leadership committee, ARMPAC, through a combination of corporate and personal money from Enron's executives. ARMPAC funds will be used to assist other House Members as well as the redistricting effort in Texas. We will be meeting this request over the course of this calendar year.

Tom DeLay Stops Congressional Vote on FCC Rules

Big Media companies keep getting bigger, with more and more power over our lives. This week's deal between General Electric (GE) and Vivendi means that GE'S NBC, which helped elect Arnold Schwarzenegger Governor of California, has just picked up not only Universal Studios, but the USA, Trio, and Sci-fi cable channels to go with CNBC and MSNBC, all part now of a $43 billion dollar empire.

Then there's radio. The non-partisan Center for Public Integrity is out with a new study showing that in each of 43 different cities a third of the radio stations are owned by a single company. No company's supposed to own more than eight in any market, but the media giants thumb their nose at the rules all the time. In 34 of those 43 markets, one company owns more than eight stations.
The big daddy of all is Clear Channel Communications — 1200 stations altogether. In Mansfield, Ohio, Clear Channel owns eleven of the seventeen radio stations in your town. In Corvallis, Oregon, over half of what people hear is decided by Clear Channel — seven of thirteen radio stations.

Cumulus Media is the second biggest radio empire. Cumulus, remember, banned the Dixie Chicks. Cumulus owns eight of the fifteen radio stations in Albany, Georgia.

It's a similar story in television. No single company is supposed to control more than one television station per city, except in some big markets. But look at what's happened in Wilmington, North Carolina, where there are three network affiliate stations: Fox, NBC and ABC. This year, the Fox station changed hands. On paper, the new owner was Southeastern Media Holdings. But then Southeastern Media announced that Raycom Media would help manage the company. Raycom already owns the NBC station, so it combined the two news departments and laid off much of the staff.

But hold on to your hat. Raycom and Southeastern Media Holdings turn out to be part of the same company. Now there's not only one less independent news operation in Wilmington, there's also one less media company.

The flimflam-ery goes on. In 33 other cities, stations that are supposed to be competitors have found clever ways to undermine the existing rules, mergers and takeovers, for example. Remember when Viacom married CBS and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp ponied up for the television stations owned by Chris-Craft? Those deals put both conglomerates in violation of the rule that no one company can control stations that reach more than thirty five percent of the total audience. But so what? The FCC just rolled over, winked, and gave both conglomerates temporary waivers of the rule. A little time passed and this summer the FCC raised the limit to give the big guys what they wanted, anyway. But that giveaway brought protests from over two million citizens; they turned the FCC into a beseiged Bastille on the Potomac. Such indignation from the grass roots caused even the Senate to say, "Whoa, something's going on. People really care about this issue." And the Senate stopped the FCC in its tracks. There are enough votes to do the same in the House. But then General Electric, owner of NBC; News Corp, owner of Fox; Viacom, owner of CBS; and Walt Disney, owner of ABC, brought on the hired guns — the lobbyists — to wage a Trojan War on Congress. A passel of former insiders moved through the revolving door, rolodex in tow, trading their influence for cash — top aides of the Senate Majority Leader, the House Majority Whip and of John Ashcroft himself.

Now the most powerful Republican in Congress — Tom Delay, the House Majority Leader — won't let a vote happen. The effort to reverse the FCC is dead in the water, sinking the democratic process with it.

Bill Moyers on Big Media