126^th in continuing blog series on the administration push to war. The big news of this month is the election, which turns out to make little difference to the course of the war in Iraq. Although Sen. John Kerry looks good for the win at least in the electoral college, a desperately micro-targeted effort by the GOP, the last-minute appearance on television by Osama bin Laden, and the long-running effects of swift-boating take their toll. One final factor: on election day itself, exit polls are released around noon or in the early afternoon indicating that Kerry is ahead, and some three million voters stay home, probably in California and New York alone, determined not to give him a landslide.
November, 2004:

Nov. 2, 2004 – Election day. In spite of abundant evidence of massive election tampering in Ohio and elsewhere, John Kerry concedes the election to George W. Bush. Most large media outlets and the political press in the national capital ignore or downplay voting machine malfunctions, vote suppression and exit poll anomalies in Ohio, Florida and other states. A GOP administration and majority-GOP Congress are returned to office, though not by a landslide.

 
Meanwhile, the news from the front keeps getting worse.

November, 2004 – Petroleum industry figures indicate that Iraqi oil output declines again in November, down from 2.2M barrels per day in October to 1.8M barrels per day.

 
This is still a sizable quantity of oil, but the decline shows the effects of the ‘insurgency’ in Kirkuk and elsewhere.

Nov. 13, 2004 – In his weekly radio address, the president deals selectively with the topic of Fallujah:

“Earlier this week, Prime Minister Allawi of Iraq authorized military operations to rid the city of Fallujah of Saddam holdouts and foreign terrorists. American Marines and soldiers, alongside Iraqi security forces, are on the offensive against the killers who have been using Fallujah as a base of operations for terrorist attacks, and who have held the local population in the grip of fear.

Fighting together, our forces have made significant progress in the last several days. They are taking back the city, clearing mosques of weapons and explosives stockpiled by insurgents, and restoring order for law-abiding citizens.”

There is no mention in this address of the use of white phosphorous by the military, nor of the civilian deaths among Iraqis in Fallujah.

Nov. 17, 2004 – Friendly reporter Jeff Gannon/James Guckert asks another editorially loaded question at the White House press briefing conducted by Scott McClellan:

“Go ahead, Jeff.

Q I wanted to follow up on Connie's question about the Fallujah incident. She mentioned Al-Jazeera and their editorial policy, but I'd like to point out that MSNBC has been running that footage four times an hour for the last two days. Now is the administration or the Pentagon reconsidering embedding reporters with American troops?

MR. MCCLELLAN: Considering what?

Q Reconsidering the policy of embedding reporters.

MR. MCCLELLAN: I don't know of any -- no, I don't know of any change in that. That's a Department of Defense decision.

Q Well, how can American troops be expected to make life and death decisions when they have to worry about the camera that's at their back, portraying them to the world and the American public as somehow committing some kind of wrongdoing there?”

 
In typical administration counterattack, here represented by Gannon/Guckert, the revelation of war horrors is used to blame ‘embedding reporters with American troops,’ i.e. blaming the media – this after several years of media acquiescence enabled Bush to get into office in the first place and then to exploit it as he saw fit.
 

Incidentally, the line “Go ahead, Jeff” is subsequently deleted from the transcript of this press briefing on the White House web site.

Nov. 23, 2004 – A report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction finds that Halliburton “did not provide . . . sufficiently detailed cost data to evaluate overall project costs or to determine whether specific costs for services performed were reasonable” in a LOGCAP contract worth $569M.
 

The Inspector General concludes that the company did not provide the Army with “sufficient or reliable cost information to effectively manage” the task order.
Memorandum from Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Task Order 0044 of the Logistics Civilian Augmentation Program III Contract (Nov. 23, 2004)