Arguments3

8/17/06

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8/17/06

If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theatre of operations during the last 22 months and a total of 2,112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers.
The firearm death rate in Washington, D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000 for the same period.
That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in the U.S. Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you are in Iraq.
Conclusion: The U.S. should pull out of Washington immediately.

Clever, but invalid. Why the given time period? Obviously to skew the numbers. Give that false choice to any segment of the population and guess what the surveyed results would be. And, if you add in the 40,000 US war casualties with no arms, legs, hearing, sight, mental problems, and lifetime needs/ disabilities, the math comes out differently.

More math: Aug 15 1945 was victory in Japan, less than 4 years after Dec 7 1941. Wars run by Democrats seem to be truly successful. Where’s bin Laden?????? “...he can run but he can’t hide...” HA!

George Allen???

Why would we want a certified bigot for Prez????????

“Stepping in “macaca” With his Confederate-flag-draped past, Sen. George Allen is in trouble for using a term for monkeys -- and a racial slur elsewhere in the world -- to ridicule a dark-skinned man at a campaign rally.”

By Michael Scherer

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8/21/06

One person’s note on US security: the government is spending 100 billion dollars on the Star Wars defense that doesn‘t work, when the most likely next attack will come from a model airplane!

The proverbial political question: ask what you can do for your country?

My answer is in trying to bring light to the darkness:

“http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20060820_insurgency_outlasts_nazi_war/”

Iraq War Is Now Longer Than U.S. War Against Nazi Germany

America has been fighting the war in Iraq longer than it took to defeat Nazi Germany. Some 1,244 days passed from Germany’s declaration of war on the United States to the Allies’ victory in Europe—six days fewer than the Iraq war so far.

Hoping for Fear
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Monday 14 August 2006

Just two days after 9/11, I learned from Congressional staffers that Republicans on Capitol Hill were already exploiting the atrocity, trying to use it to push through tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. I wrote about the subject the next day, warning that “politicians who wrap themselves in the flag while relentlessly pursuing their usual partisan agenda are not true patriots.”

The response from readers was furious - fury not at the politicians but at me, for suggesting that such an outrage was even possible. “How can I say that to my young son?” demanded one angry correspondent.

I wonder what he says to his son these days.

We now know that from the very beginning, the Bush administration and its allies in Congress saw the terrorist threat not as a problem to be solved, but as a political opportunity to be exploited. The story of the latest terror plot makes the administration’s fecklessness and cynicism on terrorism clearer than ever.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/08/14/tidwell/index_np.html?source=newsletter

The next New Orleans

The author who predicted Katrina now forecasts watery catastrophe for New York, Houston and Miami in “The Ravaging Tide.”

By Katharine Mieszkowski

Mike Tidwell predicted Hurricane Katrina and the catastrophic flooding of New Orleans in his 2003 book “Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana’s Cajun Coast.” In his new book, “The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas and the Coming Death of America’s Coastal Cities,” Tidwell argues that building stronger, higher levees for the ruined city, like devising better evacuation plans, amounts to treating the symptoms instead of the disease. When President Bush tells businesses and residents to return to New Orleans, Tidwell says, it’s an act of “mass homicide.” The multibillion-dollar plan that would have prevented the tragedy was never implemented before Katrina, and even after the storm the plan languishes.

But Tidwell’s new book is about more than the fate of one city. It’s a warning about a much bigger disaster looming on the horizon. “The Ravaging Tide” draws a stark parallel between the apathy now gripping the U.S. about climate change, despite all the well-documented signs, to the apathy that gripped pre-Katrina New Orleans. Tidwell argues that the sea-level rise and bigger hurricanes caused by global warming will put many cities -- including New York, Miami and Houston -- at risk of becoming the next New Orleans, ultimately endangering as many as 150 million Americans.

A member of the House Judiciary Committee that approved articles of impeachment against a president she described as “swollen with power and grown tyrannical,” Congressman Barbara Jordan (D-Texas) addressed her colleagues:

My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.... The Constitution charges the president with the task of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed.

Osama Hearts Lamont
If you listen to Dick Cheney, Bin Laden & Co. were staying up late to hear the Lamont-Lieberman election returns from Darien, Conn.

by Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas—The most cunning refinement yet in the administration’s plot to scare the liver, lights and onions out of us with Tales of Terror Plots is the Department of Homeland Security’s brilliant move to declare Indiana the national center of terrorism, with 8,591 potential targets.

Against the Climate Pornographers

“Putting effective policies in place to help stimulate climate-friendly behavior is essential, but so too is deploying effective communications,” says Simon Retallack.

Beyond Propaganda

John Kenney helped to design BP’s “beyond petroleum” ad campaign and believed for awhile that this oil company was different: “I guess, looking at it now, ‘beyond petroleum’ is just advertising. It’s become mere marketing - perhaps it always was - instead of a genuine attempt to engage the public in the debate or a corporate rallying cry to change the paradigm.”

Gates Breaks Ranks With Attack on US Aids Policy

Bill and Melinda Gates came off the political fence yesterday and backed key causes of Aids campaigners, criticizing the abstinence policies advocated by the US government and calling for more rights for women and help for sex workers.

Officials Cut Corners With Biotech Crop Permits in Hawaii

Citing possible harm to Hawaii’s 329 endangered and threatened species, a federal district judge has ruled that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) violated the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in permitting the cultivation of drug-producing, genetically engineered crops throughout Hawaii.

Bush’s Iraq Gamble Comes Up “Snake Eyes”

“It is in the nature of gambling that the gamble may lose. The dice have now been well and truly rolled,” writes Hendrik Hertzberg, “and they have come up snake eyes. The war’s sole real gain - the overthrow of the murderous Saddam Hussein regime - is mocked by the chaos and suffering that have overwhelmed millions of Iraqis, whose country is again a republic of fear.”

Former Generals and Officials: Iran Is “Not a Crisis”

Seeking to counter the White House’s depiction of its Middle East policies as crucial to the prevention of terrorist attacks at home, 21 former generals, diplomats and national security officials will release an open letter tomorrow arguing that the administration’s “hard line” has actually undermined US security.

FCC Cracks Down on “Fake News”

The Federal Communications Commission has mailed letters to the owners of 77 television stations inquiring about their use of video news releases, a type of programming critics refer to as “fake news.” Video news releases are packaged news stories that usually employ actors to portray reporters who are paid by commercial or government groups.

Over 3,400 Iraqis Killed in July; US Deaths Reach 2,600

July appears to have been the deadliest month of the war for Iraqi civilians, according to figures from the Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue, reinforcing criticism that the Baghdad security plan that was started in June by the new Iraqi government has failed. An average of more than 110 Iraqis were killed each day in July, according to the figures. The total number of civilian deaths that month, 3,438, is a 9 percent increase over the tally in June and nearly double the toll in January.

Spinning Old Threats Into New Fears

“Investigators have known for a decade about terrorist plots to bring down passenger jets with liquid explosives. So why, all of a sudden,” Robert Scheer asks, “did Bush ban most liquids on flights? Government-induced hysteria thrives on public ignorance, which is why President Bush is so confident of turning the British bomb plot to his partisan purposes.

A Self-Defeating War

“The war on terror is a false metaphor that has led to counterproductive and self-defeating policies. Five years after 9/11,” writes George Soros, “a misleading figure of speech applied literally has unleashed a real war fought on several fronts - Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Somalia - a war that has killed thousands of innocent civilians and enraged millions around the world. Yet al Qaeda has not been subdued; a plot that could have claimed more victims than 9/11 has just been foiled by the vigilance of British intelligence.”

Fire, Flood, Famine: Global Warming and Our Future

More than half of the world’s major forests will be lost if global temperatures rise by an average of 3C or more by the end of the century. The prediction comes from the most comprehensive analysis yet of the potential effects of human-made global warming.

Afghan Opium Cultivation Hits a Record

Opium cultivation in Afghanistan has hit record levels - up by more than 40 percent from 2005 - despite hundreds of millions in counter-narcotics money. The increase could have serious repercussions for an already grave security situation, with drug lords joining the Taliban-led fight against Afghan and international forces.

Terror and Politics in America

Keith Olbermann does a stunning job of laying out a five year history of Bush administration Terror Alerts that came at moments when the administration may have wanted to change the subject.

Three Years After Blackout, Power Problems Persist

“Today,” writes Jason Leopold, “the US power grid - three interconnected grids made up of 3,500 utilities serving 283 million people - still hangs together by a thread, and its dilapidated state is perhaps one of the greatest threats to homeland security, as opposed to, say, that vial of lip gloss in your purse or the bottle of shampoo in your travel bag.”

Insurgent Bombs Directed at GIs Increase in Iraq

The number of roadside bombs planted in Iraq rose in July to the highest monthly total of the war, offering more evidence that the anti-American insurgency has continued to strengthen despite the killing of the terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The Bursting of the Housing Bubble and the Coming Recession

“At this point there is little doubt that the housing market is headed downward,” Dean Baker writes. “The question is how low will it go and what will be the impact on the economy. If housing construction and sales prices revert to long-term trends, the decline will be severe, as will be the impact on the economy.

Groundhog Day

James K. Galbraith writes, “Let’s see ... It’s August. Bush is in Crawford on a ‘working vacation.’ His polls are in the tank. Congress is in revolt. The economy is going soft. The next elections don’t look good. Cheney is off in Wyoming, or wherever he goes. It’s 2001. No, it’s 2006.”

Spike Lee Turns Cameras on New Orleans

“When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts,” hailed as most essential work of Spike Lee’s career, premieres in New Orleans. It will be shown on US television twice in the coming weeks, once in two parts, and once as a whole on August 29, the first anniversary of the night the storm hit land. By the end of the crisis, at least 1,836 people had died; thousands more remain displaced; the economic aftermath continues.

Congressman John Conyers reports, “We have found that there is substantial evidence the President, the Vice-President and other high ranking members of the Bush administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war in Iraq; misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for such war; countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in Iraq; permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of their administration; and approved domestic surveillance that is both illegal and unconstitutional. We also have found there has been no independent review of the circumstances surrounding the Bush administration’s domestic spying scandals.”

Pentagon Studying Its War Errors

The US military establishment has quietly undertaken a wholesale reassessment of its war strategy with a goal of identifying the mistakes made in Iraq and Afghanistan - and remedying them before the next conflict.

US Army Erects Walls Between Baghdad Communities

In an attempt to reduce sectarian violence, the US and Iraqi armies have begun to build walls around neighborhoods, while armed militia form “self-defense” committees.

Fire and Heat

Mike Tidwell and Ted Glick explain, “Only a fiery grassroots rebellion in the USA will end global warming and the runaway wildfires and heat waves now afflicting our nation.”

Disaster Profiteering on the American Gulf Coast Revealed

On the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, “disaster profiteers” have made millions while local companies and laborers in New Orleans and the rest of the devastated Gulf Coast region are systematically getting the short end of the stick, according to a major new report from the nonprofit CorpWatch.

Former CIA Contractor Is Found Guilty

A former CIA contractor accused of severely beating an Afghan detainee with a flashlight during questioning was found guilty Thursday of assault. The beaten detainee later died, but David Passaro, 40, wasn’t charged in his death.

Marine Corps May Have Cleansed Haditha Files

A high-level military investigation into the killings of 24 Iraqis in Haditha last November has uncovered instances in which American marines involved in the episode appear to have destroyed or withheld evidence, according to two Defense Department officials briefed on the case.

Kurds Flee Homes as Iran Shells Iraq’s Northern Frontier

Turkey and Iran have dispatched tanks, artillery and thousands of troops to their frontiers with Iraq during the past few weeks in what appears to be a coordinated effort to disrupt the activities of Kurdish rebel bases.

In the NSA Case, a Judge Says No to King George

In ruling on Thursday that the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program is unconstitutional and must be halted, US District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor slammed the White House on several critical fronts. “In her decision,” writes David Corn, “she accused the administration of dishonestly arguing that the lawsuit filed by the ACLU and others (including journalists, researchers and lawyers) against the NSA wiretapping should be dismissed because it would expose state secrets.”

White House Sees “Huge Challenges” in Iraq

Bush is under election-year pressure to start bringing some troops home this year, but a spasm of violence in Baghdad has forced commanders to move some American forces from other parts of Iraq into the capital.

Welcome to Neo-Fascism 101

“Neo-conservatives decided that World War III is to be waged against ‘Islamic-Fascists’ or ‘Islamo-Fascism.’” Andrew Bosworth asks, “Who is reading from the new script? William Kristol, Bill O’Reilly, Christopher Hitchens, Michelle Mankin, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, Nick Cohen, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Daniel Pipes, Glenn Beck, Oliver North - even George W. Bush, prompting legitimate complaints from Muslim-Americans.”

Judge: Tobacco Lied to Public

A federal judge ruled yesterday that tobacco companies have violated civil racketeering laws, concluding that cigarette makers conspired for decades to deceive the public about the dangers of their product, and ordering the companies to make landmark changes in the way cigarettes are marketed.

Republicans Losing the “Security Moms”

Married women with children, the “security moms” whose concerns about terrorism made them an essential part of Republican victories in 2002 and 2004, are taking flight from GOP politicians this year in ways that appear likely to provide a major boost for Democrats in the midterm elections, according to polls and interviews.

The Constitution: Checking a Would-Be King

Ray McGovern writes that yesterday Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, “ruled that Bush’s eavesdropping program is ‘obviously in violation of the Fourth Amendment’ as well as the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which expressly forbids eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant.”

Bush’s Weapon of Mass Deception

“It is a week since news broke in London about an alleged plot to blow up nine commercial jetliners, and there are emerging indicators that Bush and Blair exaggerated the truth about the actual readiness of the so-called plot,” writes Larry C. Johnson.

CBO: “Staying the Course” in Iraq - $1.3 Trillion

Today, the Congressional Budget Office released its budget projections, estimating the deficit will rise to $286 billion in fiscal 2007, up from this year’s $260 billion projected deficit. Moreover, the long-term outlook remains bleak; total deficits over the next decade are estimated at $1.7 trillion.

Gas Lines Last All Night as Baghdad Runs Out of Gas

The shortage could have more far-reaching consequences than creating misery for Baghdad’s car owners. It is the latest sign that the economy may be on the brink of collapse. Inflation is running at 50 per cent, corruption is rife and, most importantly, the end of next month will bring to a close the American-funded reconstruction program, even though electricity in Baghdad remains on for one hour in three at best.

Radioactive Leak Reaches Nuclear Plant’s Groundwater

Radioactive, cancer-causing tritium has leaked into the groundwater beneath the San Onofre nuclear power plant, prompting the closure of one drinking-water well in southern Orange County.

“GOP Goes to Work for Joe Lieberman”

“Facing Senator Joseph I. Lieberman’s independent candidacy, Republican officials at the state and national level have made the extraordinary decision to abandon their official candidate, and some are actively working to help Mr. Lieberman win in November.”

Major Arms Soar to Twice Pre-9/11 Cost

The estimated costs for the development of major weapons systems for the US military have doubled since September 11, 2001, with a trillion-dollar price tag for new planes, ships, and missiles that would have little direct role in the fight against insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq.

US Names Spy Operations ‘Manager’ for Cuba, Venezuela

The United States has named a special “manager” for its intelligence operations against Cuba and Venezuela, in effect putting the two Latin American nations on a par with “axis of evil” states confronted on multiple levels by the administration of President George W. Bush.

Colombia’s Coca Survives US Plan to Uproot It

The latest chapter in America’s long war on drugs _ a six-year, $4.7 billion effort to slash Colombia’s coca crop _ has left the price, quality and availability of cocaine on American streets virtually unchanged.

Law Cuts Survivor Benefits to 61,000 Military Widows

As many as 61,000 military widows whose husbands died of causes relating to their military service lose out on thousands of dollars a year in survivor benefits because of a law that dates from the 1970s.

Bush Must Negotiate to Make America Safer, Say Former Generals

Twenty-one former generals and high ranking national security officials have called on United States President George W. Bush to reverse course and embrace a new area of negotiation with Iran, Iraq,and North Korea. In a letter released Thursday, the group told reporters Bush’s “hard line” policies have undermined national security and made America less safe.

Former President Carter: US and Israel Stand Alone

Former US president Jimmy Carter speaks with Der Spiegel about the danger posed to American values by George W. Bush, the difficult situation in the Middle East and Cuba’s ailing Fidel Castro.

Iraq’s Spreading Civil War

The debate is over: By any definition, Iraq is in a state of civil war. Indeed, the only thing standing between Iraq and a descent into total Bosnia-like devastation is 135,000 US troops -- and even they are merely slowing the fall. The internecine conflict could easily spiral into one that threatens not only Iraq but also its neighbors throughout the oil-rich Persian Gulf region with instability, turmoil and war.

Sexual Misconduct by Military Recruiters on the Rise

More than 100 young women who expressed interest in joining the military in the past year were preyed upon sexually by their recruiters. Women were raped on recruiting office couches, assaulted in government cars and groped en route to entrance exams. A six-month Associated Press investigation found that more than 80 military recruiters were disciplined last year for sexual misconduct with potential enlistees.

Congress Poised to Unravel the Internet

“Lured by huge checks handed out by the country’s top lobbyists, members of Congress could soon strike a blow against Internet freedom as they seek to resolve the hot-button controversy over preserving ‘network neutrality.’ The telecommunications reform bill...sets the stage for the privatized, consolidated and unregulated communications system that is at the core of the phone and cable lobbies’ political agenda,” says Jeffrey Chester.

Government Fulfills Few Katrina Promises

A year after the storm, the federal government has proven slow and unreliable in keeping the president’s promise to “do what it takes” to rebuild the communities and lives laid to waste by Hurricane Katrina.

\A Tortured Past

In early 1973, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Creighton Abrams received some bad news from the service’s chief of criminal investigations. An internal inquiry had confirmed an officer’s widely publicized charge that members of the 173rd Airborne Brigade had tortured detainees in Vietnam.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Plaguing US Troops

There are times when Trinette Johnson’s life seems to stall, when she finds herself staring at the ceiling fan in her bedroom, watching the blades spin, her mind hung on nothing - not her receptionist job, not her fiancé, not her ailing father or her four children. Not even the war. As these women have returned home, Army researchers studying the psychological fallout of Iraq have noted a surprising trend in early studies: Women appear to be showing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health troubles at roughly the same rates as men.

Editorial Five Years After 9/11, Fear Finally Strikes Out

Frank Rich writes, “The results are in for the White House’s latest effort to exploit terrorism for political gain: the era of Americans’ fearing fear itself is over.”

NEWLY UNCERTAIN ABOUT THE TERRORIST PLOT?

One must surely err on the side of caution – I have willingly emptied my carry-on bag of toothpaste – and one desperately wants to believe our government does not manipulate such things for political gain. So who knows what to make of this, from Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan?

. . . In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. Of the over one thousand British Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything. That is simply harassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few – just over two per cent of arrests – who are convicted, are not convicted of anything to do terrorism, but of some minor offence the Police happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the lives they had shattered.

Be sceptical. Be very, very sceptical.

F I don’t want to be skeptical of my government (or Tony Blair’s). But given the track record, it’s hard not to wonder.

Craig Murray:

The Timing is Political: We should be sceptical about this alleged plot, and wary of politicians who seek to benefit

Published on Tuesday, August 15, 2006 by “http://www.truthdig.com”

The Pols Who Cried Wolf

by Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas - We have nothing to fear but fear itself, especially since fear is now being fomented and manipulated for political purposes by a bunch of shameless hacks. Who is trying to make you afraid and why? This Karl Rove tactic is getting quite threadbare, in fact, and so much so that it is getting dangerously close to comedy.

My favorite episode, of course, was the Miami terrorists, a fearsome horde of seven described by the FBI’s deputy director as “more aspirational than operational.” That means wannabes. An FBI informant posing as a member of Al Qaeda offered to supply the plotters with material for the jihad, so they asked for boots and uniforms. Every terrorist needs a uniform.

Matthew Rothschild:

Bush Contemplates Rebirth of Dictatorship for Iraq

John Nichols:

It is Time to Censure a Lawless President

Bob Herbert:

The Tyranny of Fear

Mistaken Coalition Bombing Kills up to 12 Afghan Policemen

Lapse Allows Guns into Tennessee Nuke Plant

Muslim Leaders Begin to Doubt Airline Bombing Plot

Rights Groups Warn of Danger of Unexploded Cluster Bombs

Chinese UN Ambassador Tells US to ‘Shut up’ on Arms Spending

Bush is Crap, Says Britain’s Deputy PM

US Suffers World’s First Climate Change Exodus: Study

“http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060817_marie_cocco_potemkin_village_baghdad/”

Marie Cocco —

The Iraqi government, which President Bush heralded last spring as a “milestone,’’ a “turning point’’ and a “watershed event,’’ is perilously ineffectual.

“http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/20060627_occupation_iraq_hearts_minds/”

Truthdig contributor Nir Rosen, an American reporter who has lived for the last three years in Iraq and who can pass as Middle Eastern, describes what it’s like to live under the boot of a culturally callous—and sometimes criminal—occupying force in Iraq.

Inside the Iraqi forces fiasco

The U.S. effort to train Iraqi forces -- and bring our troops home -- is mired in bureaucratic mismanagement, inept recruits and astonishing shortages of equipment.

By David J. Morris

“http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/hezbollah_victory_boosts_islamism_in_mideast/” Hezbollah ‘Victory’ Boosts Islamism in Mideast

In the search for a sense of dignity, basic services and honesty, Arabs from all walks of life are turning to fundamentalist groups that have succeeded where their own governments have failed. “I have more faith in Islam than in my state; I have more faith in Allah than in Hosni Mubarak,” said one educated middle-class Egyptian woman.

“http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20060819_billionaire_scion_tom_friedman/”

A Billionaire Scion: Tom Friedman

Tom Friedman’s opinions on the Iraq war have long been proved bankrupt (here, here and most recently, here) but if you still put stock in his economic analysis about free trade and outsourcing, keep in mind that he’s the heir to a multibillion-dollar real estate fortune, and may not be speaking for the little guy.

(”http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/20060613_tom_friedman_being_wrong/”, “http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20060518_tom_friedman_iraq_deadlines/” and most recently, “http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20060804_friedman_anti_war/”)

**

“http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060818_andy_borowitz_fiasco/”

Andy Borowitz —

Mr. Bush acknowledged some errors in judgment about the war, including posing in front of a banner that said “Mission Accomplished” when it should have said “Mission Impossible.”

Bush Seeks Exit Strategy at Mapquest

Vows to Find Most Direct Route from Iraq to U.S.

Hoping to reassure voters before the midterm elections that he is actively looking for a way to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq, President George W. Bush said today that he has been looking for an exit strategy at the popular Internet site, Mapquest.com.
By announcing that he was relying on Mapquest to navigate the United States’ exit from an apparent quagmire in Iraq, the president was running the risk of making his Administration appear as if it had run out of ideas of its own.
But in a White House press briefing this morning, Mr. Bush defended his use of what he called “the Internets,” adding that he was also hoping to find an international peacekeeping force for Lebanon at Craig’s List.
The president said that he began his search at Mapquest by typing in “Iraq” as the starting location and “United States of America” as the ending location.
He acknowledged that the process of finding an exit strategy at the Mapquest site was complicated by the fact that many of the streets that Mapquest displays for Iraq have not existed since the U.S. began bombing the country in 2003.
Ultimately, Mr. Bush said his search for an exit strategy at Mapquest yielded mixed results: “The good news is that I found the most direct route from Iraq to the U.S. The bad news is that the estimated travel time is twenty years.”

JonBenet Suspect Says He Also Killed Amelia Earhart

Claims Aviator’s Death Was ‘Accident’

Just days after confessing to the 1996 murder of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, itinerant schoolteacher John Mark Karr took full responsibility for the 1937 death of aviatrix Amelia Earhart.
Mr. Karr made the stunning announcement at a chaotic airport press conference upon his arrival in Los Angeles from Bangkok.
“I was with Amelia Earhart when she died,” Mr. Karr told reporters. “It was an accident. I loved Amelia Earhart.”
Mr. Karr refused to give out details about Ms. Earhart’s death, including where and how she died and how he came to be in the same location as the legendary aviation pioneer.
But according to Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacey, “We had enough evidence linking John Mark Karr to the death of Amelia Earhart to bring him in.”
Some Amelia Earhart experts, however, expressed skepticism about Mr. Karr’s confession, including Professor Davis Logsdon at the University of Minnesota, who noted today that “there are problems with the timeline.”
“Amelia Earhart died in 1937, and John Mark Karr was not born until 1965,” Professor Logsdon said. “I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around that.”
Regardless of the skepticism, D.A. Mary Lacey said she was “confident” that she had her man.
“It looks like we’ve solved both the JonBenet mystery and the Amelia Earhart mystery in the same week,” she said. “This is awesome!”
Elsewhere, President Bush said he was “not surprised” by federal judge Anna Diggs Taylor’s decision to declare his practice of warrantless wiretaps unconstitutional, telling reporters, “I heard her talking to her husband about it last week.”

August 16, 2006

HILLARY OFFERS TO HOUSESIT FOR BUSH

Would Water Plants, Read Presidential Briefings in Oval Office

August 15, 2006

FAA BANS PEOPLE FROM FLIGHTS

‘Zero Tolerance for People,’ Chertoff Says

August 14, 2006

U.N. TO SEND PEACEKEEPERS; HEZBOLLAH TO SEND WARKEEPERS

‘Roadmap to Chaos’ Still Intact, Says Hezbollah Leader

August 9, 2006

BLAIR TELLS BUSH THEY SHOULD START SEEING OTHER PEOPLE

British Prime Minister Signals End to Exclusive Relationship

August 8, 2006

ATHLETE TESTS NEGATIVE FOR STEROIDS

Congress Demands Full Investigation

“The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

- Plato

***

8/24/06

“For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.”

-FREDERICK DOUGLASS, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?,” address delivered in Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14473431/

Bush shows pessimism on Iraq

President shifts tone as he makes case for U.S. policy

By Peter Baker=The Washington Post”

Updated: 11:16 p.m. ET Aug 23, 2006

Of all the words that President Bush used at his news conference this week to defend his policies in Iraq, the one that did not pass his lips was “progress.”

For three years, the president tried to reassure Americans that more progress was being made in Iraq than they realized. But with Iraq either in civil war or on the brink of it, Bush dropped the unseen-progress argument in favor of the contention that things could be even worse.

The shifting rhetoric reflected a broader pessimism that has reached into even some of the most optimistic corners of the administration -- a sense that the Iraq venture has taken a dark turn and will not be resolved anytime soon. Bush advisers once believed that if they met certain benchmarks, such as building a constitutional democracy and training a new Iraqi army, the war would be won. Now they believe they have more or less met those goals, yet the war rages on.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AUGUST 23, 2006
12:07 PM

CONTACT: “http://www.sierraclub.org/”
Annie E. Strickler (415) 977-5619

Bush Administration’s Answer to BP Spills: More Drilling on Alaska’s North Slope
Fragile Teskekpuk Lake Area Up For Oil Leasing

WASHINGTON - August 23 - Following closely on the heels of the largest oil spill in North Slope history and the recent pipeline shutdown in Prudhoe Bay, the Bush administration today formally announced a Sept. 27th oil and gas lease sale for portions of the National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska, including 100 percent of the irreplaceable wildlife habitat around Teshekpuk Lake.

The recent oil spill and pipeline shutdown underscore the need to break America’s oil addiction and embrace smart energy solutions that promise a cheaper, smarter, cleaner and more reliable energy future. Making our cars and trucks go farther on a gallon of gas, increasing efficiency standards for homes and businesses and harnessing the power of the wind and sun would mean we wouldn’t have to worry about corroding pipelines or oil spills and American families and businesses would save money.

The history of Alaska’s North Slope drilling is a history of oil spills and environmental destruction.The Prudhoe Bay oil fields and Trans-Alaska Pipeline have caused an average of 504 spills annually on the North Slope since 1996, more than one spill each day, according to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (ADEC). This shutdown comes shortly after of the single largest oil spill ever on Alaska’s North Slope, when a corroded BP pipe dumped 267,000 gallons of oil onto the frozen tundra. BP also recently was forced to shut down 12 oil wells after whistleblowers revealed that more than 50 wells, most of which are in the Prudhoe Bay area, were leaking.

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http://harpers.org/sb-seven-michael-scheuer-1156277744.html

Six Questions for Michael Scheuer on National Security

Posted on Wednesday, August 23, 2006. By “http://by106fd.bay106.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/dasp/EN/KenSilverstein.html/lsb-seven-michael-scheuer-1156277744”.

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Michael Scheuer served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004; he served as the chief of the bin Laden unit at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is the formerly anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror and Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America. I met him for breakfast last week at an IHOP in the Virginia suburbs outside of Washington. Over a plate of eggs and hash browns, he answered a series of questions about the current state of the Bush Administration’s “War on Terrorism.” His prognosis was illuminating and insightful—and, unfortunately, almost unrelentingly grim.

1. We’re coming up on the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Is the country safer or more vulnerable to terrorism?

On balance, more vulnerable. We’re safer in terms of aircraft travel. We’re safer from being attacked by some dumbhead who tries to come into the country through an official checkpoint; we’ve spent billions on that. But for the most part our victories have been tactical and not strategic. There have been important successes by the intelligence services and Special Forces in capturing and killing Al Qaeda militants, but in the long run that’s just a body count, not progress. We can’t capture them one by one and bring them to justice. There are too many of them, and more now than before September 11. In official Western rhetoric these are finite organizations, but every time we interfere in Muslim countries they get more support.

In the long run, we’re not safer because we’re still operating on the assumption that we’re hated because of our freedoms, when in fact we’re hated because of our actions in the Islamic world. There’s our military presence in Islamic countries, the perception that we control the Muslim world’s oil production, our support for Israel and for countries that oppress Muslims such as China, Russia, and India, and our own support for Arab tyrannies. The deal we made with Qadaffi in Libya looks like hypocrisy: we’ll make peace with a brutal dictator if it gets us oil. President Bush is right when he says all people aspire to freedom but he doesn’t recognize that people have different definitions of democracy. Publicly promoting democracy while supporting tyranny may be the most damaging thing we do. From the standpoint of democracy, Saudi Arabia looks much worse than Iran. We use the term “Islamofascism”—but we’re supporting it in Saudi Arabia, with Mubarak in Egypt, and even Jordan is a police state. We don’t have a strategy because we don’t have a clue about what motivates our enemies.

2. Is Al Qaeda stronger or weaker than it was five years ago?

The quality of its leadership is not as high as it was in 2001, because we’ve killed and captured so many of its leaders. But they have succession planning that works very well. We keep saying that we’re killing their leaders, but you notice that we keep having to kill their number twos, threes and fours all over again. They bring in replacements, and these are not novices off the street—they’re understudies. From the very first, bin Laden has said that he’s just one person and Al Qaeda is a vanguard organization, that it needs other Muslims to join them. He’s always said that his primary goal is to incite attacks by people who might not have any direct contact with Al Qaeda. Since 2001, and especially since mid-2005, there’s been an increase in the number of groups that were not directly tied to Al Qaeda but were inspired by bin Laden’s words and actions.

We also shouldn’t underestimate the stature of bin Laden and Zawahiri in the Muslim world now that they’ve survived five years of war with the United States. You see commentary in the Muslim press: “How have they been able to defy the United States? It takes something special.” Their heroic status is an important fact. It helps explain why these cells keep popping up. Meanwhile, Al Qaeda is also assisting insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq. I agree with the view that we’ve moved from man and organization to philosophy and movement, but one hasn’t entirely replaced the other. There are three levels: Al Qaeda central is still intact; there are groups long affiliated with Al Qaeda, in places like Kashmir, the Philippines, and Indonesia; and there are the new groups inspired by Al Qaeda.

3. Given all this, why hasn’t there been an attack on the United States for the past five years?

It’s not just a lack of capacity; they’re not ready to do it. They put more emphasis on success than speed, and the next attack has to be bigger than 9/11. They could shoot up a mall if that’s what they wanted to do. But the world is going their way. Our leaders have been clever in defining success as preventing a big terrorist attack on the United States, but we’ve lost some 3,000 soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’ve spent billions on those wars, and as in Vietnam the government has suffered a real hit on its credibility. The war in Iraq has created huge divisiveness in our domestic politics, not to mention in our relationships with our European allies. At the same time, there are more people willing to take up arms against the United States, and we have less ability to win hearts and minds in the Arab world. If you’re bin Laden living in a cave, all those things are part of the war and those things are going your way.

4. Has the war in Iraq helped or hurt in the fight against terrorism?

It broke the back of our counterterrorism program. Iraq was the perfect execution of a war that demanded jihad to oppose it. You had an infidel power invading and occupying a Muslim country and it was perceived to be unprovoked. Many senior Western officials said that bin Laden was not a scholar and couldn’t declare a jihad but other Muslim clerics did. So that religious question was erased.

Secondly, Iraq is in the Arab heartland and, far more than Afghanistan, is a magnet for mujahideen. You can see this in the large number of people crossing the border to fight us. It wasn’t a lot at the start, but there’s been a steady growth as the war continues. The war has validated everything bin Laden said: that the United States will destroy any strong government in the Arab world, that it will seek to destroy Israel’s enemies, that it will occupy Muslim holy places, that it will seize Arab oil, and that it will replace God’s law with man’s law. We see Iraq as a honey pot that attracts jihadists whom we can kill there instead of fighting them here. We are ignoring that Iraq is not just a place to kill Americans; Al Qaeda has always said that it requires safe havens. It has said it couldn’t get involved with large numbers in the Balkans war because it had no safe haven in the region. Now they have a safe haven in Iraq, which is so big and is going to be so unsettled for so long. For the first time, it gives Al Qaeda contiguous access to the Arabian Peninsula, to Turkey, and to the Levant. We may have written the death warrant for Jordan. If we pull out of Iraq, we have a problem in that we may have to leave a large contingent of troops in Jordan. All of this is a tremendous advantage for Al Qaeda. We’ve moved the center of jihad a thousand miles west from Afghanistan to the Middle East.

5. Things seemed to have turned for the worse in Afghanistan too. What’s your take on the situation there?

The President was sold a bill of goods by George Tenet and the CIA—that a few dozen intel guys, a few hundred Special Forces, and truckloads of money could win the day. What happened is what’s happened ever since Alexander the Great, three centuries before Christ: the cities fell quickly, which we mistook for victory. Three years later, the Taliban has regrouped, and there’s a strong insurgency. We paid a great price for demonizing the Taliban. We saw them as evil because they didn’t let women work, but that’s largely irrelevant in Afghanistan. They provided nationwide law and order for the first time in 25 years; we destroyed that and haven’t replaced it. They’re remembered in Afghanistan for their harsh, theocratic rule, but remembered more for the security they provided. In the end, we’ll lose and leave. The idea that we can control Afghanistan with 22,000 soldiers, most of whom are indifferent to the task, is far-fetched. The Soviets couldn’t do it with 150,000 soldiers and utter brutality. Before the invasion of Afghanistan, [the military historian] John Keegan said the only way to go there was as a punitive mission, to destroy your enemy and get out. That was prescient; our only real mission there should have been to kill bin Laden and Zawahiri and as many Al Qaeda fighters as possible, and we didn’t do it.

6. Has the war in Lebanon also been a plus for the jihadists?

Yes. The Israel-Hezbollah battle validates bin Laden. It showed that the Arab regimes are useless, that they can’t protect their own nationals, and that they are apostate regimes that are creatures of the infidels. It also showed that the Americans will let Israel do whatever it wants. It was clear from the way the West reacted that it would let Israel take its best shot before it tried diplomacy. I saw an article in the Arab press—in London, I think—that said Lebanon was like a caught fish, that the United States nailed it to the wall and Israel gutted it. The most salient point it showed for Islamists is that Muslim blood is cheap. Israel said it went to war to get back its captured soldiers. The price was the gutting of Lebanon. Olmert said that Israel would fight until it got its soldiers back and until Hezbollah was disarmed. Neither happened. No matter how you spin it, this will be viewed as a victory for Hezbollah. Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon six years ago. Since then there have been the two intifadas, and now this. The idea of Israel being militarily omnipotent is fading.

7. And finally, an extra question—what needs to be done?

This may be a country bumpkin approach, but the truth is the best place to start. We need to acknowledge that we are at war, not because of who we are, but because of what we do. We are confronting a jihad that is inspired by the tangible and visible impact of our policies. People are willing to die for that, and we’re not going to win by killing them off one by one. We have a dozen years of reliable polling in the Middle East, and it shows overwhelming hostility to our policies—and at the same time it shows majorities that admire the way we live, our ability to feed and clothe our children and find work. We need to tell the truth to set the stage for a discussion of our foreign policy.

At the core of the debate is oil. As long as we and our allies are dependent on Gulf oil, we can’t do anything about the perception that we support Arab tyranny—the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, and other regimes in the region. Without the problem of oil, who cares who rules Saudi Arabia? If we solved the oil problem, we could back away from the contradiction of being democracy promoters and tyranny protectors. We should have started on this back in 1973, at the time of the first Arab oil embargo, but we’ve never moved away from our dependence. As it stands, we are going to have to fight wars if anything endangers the oil supply in the Middle East.

What you want with foreign policy is options. Right now we don’t have options because our economy and our allies’ economies are dependent on Middle East oil. What benefit do we get by letting China commit genocide-by-inundation by moving thousands and thousands of Han Chinese to overcome the dominance of Muslim Uighurs? What do we get out of supporting Putin in Chechnya? He may need to do it to maintain his country, but we don’t need to support what looks like a rape, pillage, and kill campaign against Muslims. The other area is Israel and Palestine. We’re not going to abandon the Israelis but we need to reestablish the relationship so it looks like we’re the great power and they’re our ally, and not the other way around. We need to create a situation where moderate Muslims can express support for the United States without being laughed off the block.

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“http://by106fd.bay106.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/dasp/EN/WashingtonEditor.html/lsb-seven-michael-scheuer-1156277744”

Where Bush’s Arrogance Has Taken Us
By Jim Hightower
AlterNet.org

Wednesday 23 August 2006

An illegal war, a long list of eroded rights, and a country run by and for the benefit of corporate campaign donors - all courtesy of the imperial presidency.

During his gubernatorial days in Texas, George W let slip a one-sentence thought that unintentionally gave us a peek into his political soul. In hindsight, it should’ve been loudly broadcast all across our land so people could’ve absorbed it, contemplated its portent - and roundly rejected the guy’s bid for the presidency. On May 21, 1999, reacting to some satirical criticism of him, Bush snapped: “There ought to be limits to freedom.”

Gosh, so many freedoms to limit, so little time! But in five short years, the BushCheneyRummy regime has made remarkable strides toward dismembering the genius of the Founders, going at our Constitution and Bill of Rights like famished alligators chasing a couple of poodles.

Forget about such niceties as separation of powers, checks and balances (crucial to the practice of democracy), the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, and open government-these guys are on an autocratic tear. Whenever they’ve been challenged (all too rarely), they simply shout “war on terror,” “commander-in-chief,” “support our troops,” “executive privilege,” “I’m the decider,” or some other slam-the-door political phrase designed to silence any opposition. Indeed, opponents are branded “enemies” who must be demonized, personally attacked, and, if possible, destroyed. Bush’s find-the-loopholes lawyers assert that a president has the right to lie (even about going to war), to imprison people indefinitely (without charges, lawyers, hearings, courts, or hope), to torture people, to spy on Americans without court or congressional review, to prosecute reporters who dare to report, to rewrite laws on executive whim?and on and on.

Here, we are pleased to give you a sense of the enormity of what Bush & Company are doing under the cloak of war and executive privilege in a handy-dandy poster format.

The War President

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”
-George W., August 2004

Number of Americans killed in Bush’s Iraq war as of August 2006: 2577

What Bush press flack Tony Snow said the day the total number of American dead reached 2,500: “It’s a number”

Number of Americans killed since Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” on May 1, 2003: 2,438

Number of Americans wounded (a vague term that includes such horrors as brain damage, limb blasted off, eyes blown out, psyche shattered, etc.) in Bush’s war:

Official count: 18,777

Independent count: up to 48,000

Estimated number of Iraqi civilians (men, women, and children) killed in Bush’s war since Saddam Hussein was ousted: 38,960

For Iraqis, the bloodiest month of the war so far: June 2006

more than 100 civilians killed per day

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmit’s advice to Iraqis who see TV reports of innocent civilians being killed by occupying troops: “Change the channel.”

Percent of Iraqis who want American troops to leave: 82

Stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction found in Iraq since Bush committed Americans to war in 2003 on the basis that Saddam had and was about to use WMDs: 0

Number of nations in the world: 192

Number that joined Bush’s “Coalition of the Willing” (COW) to invade Iraq: 48
(The list includes such military powers as Angola, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Latvia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Romania, Solomon Islands, and Uganda.)

Number of COW nations that actually sent any troops to Iraq: 39
(Of these, 32 sent fewer than 1,000 troops. Many sent no fighting units, deploying only engineers, trainers, humanitarian units, and other noncombat personnel.)

Number of the 39 COW nations contributing troops that have since withdrawn them: 17
(An additional 7 have announced plans to withdraw all or part of their contingents this year.)

Number of COW troops in Iraq: 150,000

Number of these that are U.S. troops: 139,000

Number of White House officials and cabinet members who have any of their immediate family in Bush’s war: 0

Follow the Money

We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”
-”Howling Paul” Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary, in testimony to Congress, March 2003

The official White House claim before the invasion of what the war and occupation would cost U.S. taxpayers: $50 billion

As of July 2006, the total amount appropriated by Congress for Bush’s ongoing war and occupation: $295,634,921,248

Current Pentagon spending per month in Iraq: $8 billion (or $185,185.19 per minute)

Assuming all troops return home by 2010, the projected “real costs” for the war: More than $1 trillion
(includes veterans’ pay and medical costs, interest on the billions Bush has borrowed to pay for his war, etc.)

Bonus Stat!

Annual salary of Stuart Baker, hired by the Bushites to be the White House “Director for Lessons Learned”: $106,641

Number of lessons that Bush appears to have learned: 0

The Imperial Presidency

“I’m the commander - see, I don’t need to explain - I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.”
George W., August, 2002.

Signing Statements

When signing a particular congressional act into law, a few presidents have occasionally issued a “signing statement” to clarify their understanding of what Congress intended. These have not had the force of law and have been used discreetly in the past.

Very quietly, however, Bush has radically increased both the number and reach of these statements, essentially asserting that the president can arbitrarily decide which laws he will obey.

Number of signing statements issued by Bush as of July 2006: more than 800
(This is more than the combined total of all 42 previous presidents.)

A few examples of congressionally passed laws he has effectively annulled through these extralegal signing statements:

a ban against torture of prisoners by the U.S. military

a requirement that the FBI periodically report to Congress on how it is using the Patriot Act to search our homes and secretly seize people’s private papers

a ban against storage in military databases of intelligence about Americans that was obtained illegally

a directive for the executive branch to transmit scientific information to Congress “uncensored and without delay” when requested

Provision of the Constitution clearly stating that Congress alone has the power “to make all laws”: Article 1, Section 8

Provision of the Constitution clearly stating that the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed”: Article 2, Section 3

Name of the young lawyer in the Reagan administration who wrote a 1986 strategy memo on how to pervert the use of signing statements in order to concentrate more power in the executive branch, as Bush is now doing: Samuel Alito, named to the U.S. Supreme Court by Bush this year

National Security Letters

These are secret executive writs that the infamous 2001 Patriot Act authorizes the FBI to issue to public libraries, internet firms, banks, and others. Upon receiving an NSL, the institution or firm is required to turn over any private records it holds on you, me, or whomever the agents have chosen to search.

Who authorizes the FBI to issue these secret writs? The FBI itself.

Surely the agents have to get a search warrant, a grand jury subpoena, or a court’s approval? No

But to issue an NSL, an agent must show probable cause that the person being searched has committed some crime, right? No

Well, don’t officials have to inform citizens that their records are being seized so they can defend themselves or protest? No

Number of NSLs issued by various FBI offices last year alone: 9,254

NSA Eavesdropping

In 2001, Bush issued a secret order for the National Security Agency to begin vacuuming up massive numbers of telephone and internet exchanges by U.S. citizens, illegally seizing this material without any judicial approval or informing Congress, as required by law.

Number of Americans who have had their phone and internet communications taken by NSA: Just about everyone!
(NSA is tapping into the entire database of long-distance calls and internet messages run through AT&T and probably other companies as well.)

In May of this year, the Justice Department abruptly halted an internal investigation that was trying to uncover the name of the top officials who had authorized NSA’s warrantless, unconstitutional program. Who killed this probe, which was requested by Congress? George W himself! (He directed NSA simply to refuse security clearances for the department’s legal investigators.)

What happened to NSA Director Michael Hayden, who was the key architect of Bush’s illegal eavesdropping program and the one who would’ve formally denied clearances to Justice Department investigators? In May, Bush promoted him to head the CIA.

This past May, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales warned that journalists who report on NSA’s spy program could be prosecuted under the antiquated Espionage Act of 1917.

Times in U.S. history this act has been used to go after the press: 0

Margin by which the U.S. House in 1917 voted down an amendment to make the Espionage Act apply to journalists: 184-144

Interesting Fact:

The New York Times reported this June that Bush was running another spy program. This one was snooping through international banking records, including millions of bank transactions done by innocent Americans. George reacted angrily to the exposure, branding the Times report “disgraceful” and declaring that revelation of his spy program “does great harm to the United States.” The White House and its right-wing acolytes promptly launched a “Hate-the-Times“ political campaign.

Name the guy who was the first to reveal that such a bank-spying program was in the works: George W. Bush! At a September 2001 press conference, he announced that he’d just signed an executive order to monitor all international bank transactions.

Watch Lists

From the Bushites’ ill-fated Total Information Awareness program (meant to monitor all of our computerized transactions) to the robust efforts by Rumsfeld’s Pentagon to barge into the domestic surveillance game, America under Bush has fast become “The Watched Society.”

Number of data-mining programs being run secretly on us by the federal government: Nearly 200 separate programs at 52 agencies

Number of “local activity reports” submitted to the Pentagon in 2004 under the “Threat and Local Observation Notice” program (TALON), which directed military officers throughout our country to keep an eye on suspicious activities by civilians: More than 5,000
(They included such “threats” as peace demonstrators and 10 activists protesting outside Halliburton’s headquarters.)

Number of official “watch lists” maintained by the feds: More than a dozen run by 9 different agencies

Number of Americans on the Transportation Security Administration’s “No- Fly” list: That’s a secret.
(TSA concedes that it’s in the tens of thousands. In 2005 alone, some 30,000 people called TSA to complain that their names were mistakenly on the list.)

Most famous citizen who is on the No-Fly list and has been repeatedly pulled aside by TSA for additional screenings at airports: Sen. Ted Kennedy

How can you get your name removed from TSA list? That’s a secret.

Name That Guy!

In 1966, a young Republican congressman stood against his party’s elders to cosponsor the original Freedom of Information Act, valiantly declaring that public records “are public property.” He said that FOIA “will make it considerably more difficult for secrecy-minded bureaucrats to decide arbitrarily that the people should be denied access to information on the conduct of government.”

Who was that virtuous lawmaker? Donald Rumsfeld!

Only eight years later, Gerald Ford’s chief of staff strongly urged him to veto the continuation of FOIA. Who was that dastardly staffer? Donald Rumsfeld!

Who is now one of the chief “secrecy-minded bureaucrats” who routinely violates OIA’s principles? Right, him again!

Regime of Secrecy

“Democracies die behind closed doors.”
- Appeals court judge Damon Keith, ruling in a 2002 case that the Bushites cannot hold deportation hearings in secret

Increase in the number of government documents marked “secret” between 2001 and 2004: 81 percent

Number of government documents stamped “secret” in 2001: 8.6 million

Number of government documents stamped “secret” in 2004: 15.6 million (a new record)

Cost to taxpayers of classifying and securing documents in 2004: $7.2 billion ($460 per document)

Number of previously declassified documents that the CIA tried to reclassify as “secret” under a 2001 secret agreement with the National Archives, even though many had already been published and some date back to the Korean War: 25,315

Number of different “official designations” the government now has to classify nonsecret information so it still is kept out of the public’s reach: Between 50 and 60
(They include such stamps as CBU: Controlled But Unclassified, SBU: Sensitive But Unclassified, and LOU: Limited Official Use Only.)

The only vice-president in history who has claimed that he, like the president, has the inherent authority to mark “secret” on any document he chooses: “Buckshot” Cheney

Number of documents Cheney has classified: That’s a secret.
(He claims he does not have to report this to anyone -- not even the president.)

Of the 7,045 advisory committee meetings held by the Bushites in 2004, percentage that were completely closed to the public, contrary to the clear intent of the Federal Advisory Committee Act: 64 percent (a new record)

Number of times from 1953 to1975 (the peak of the Cold War) that presidents invoked the “state secrets” privilege, which grants them unilateral power in extraordinary instances literally to shut down court cases on the grounds they could reveal secrets that the president doesn’t want disclosed: 4

Number of times the same privilege was invoked between 2001 and 2006: At least 24

Under Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno issued an official memo instructing agencies to release as much information as possible to the public. In October 2001, AG John Ashcroft issued a memo canceling Reno’s approach, expressly instructing agencies to look for reasons to deny the public access to information and pledging to support the denials if the agencies were sued.

2005 FOIA requests still awaiting a response at year’s end: 31 percent
(a one-third increase over the 2004 backlog)

Median waiting time to get an answer on FOIA request from Bush’s justice department: 863 days

Halliburton

“Halliburton is a unique kind of company.”
- Dick Cheney, September 2003

Total value of contracts given to Halliburton for work in the Bush-Cheney “War on Terror” since 2001: More than $15 billion

Amount that Halliburton pays to the Third World laborers it imports into Iraq to do the work in its dining facilities, laundries, etc.: $6 per 12-hour day (50 cents an hour)

Amount that Halliburton bills us taxpayers for each of these workers: $50 a day

Amount that Halliburton bills U.S. taxpayers for:

A case of sodas: $45

Washing a bag of laundry: $100

Halliburton’s campaign contributions in Bush-Cheney election years:

In 2000: $285,252 (96 percent to Republicans)

In 2004: $145,500 (89 percent to Republicans)
Plus $365,065 from members of its board of directors (99 percent to Republicans)

Increase in Halliburton’s profits since Bush-Cheney took office in 2000: 379 percent

Halliburton’s 2005 profit: $1.1 billion
(highest in the corporation’s 86-year history

“Since leaving Halliburton to become George Bush’s vice-president, I’ve severed all of my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind.”
Former CEO Dick Cheney, Meet the Press, September 2003

Annual payments that Cheney has received from Halliburton since he’s been vice-president:

2001: $205,298

2002: $162,392

2003: $178,437

2004: $194,852

2005: $211,465

Cash bonus paid to Cheney by Halliburton just before he took office: $1.4 million

Retirement package he was given in 2000 after only 5 years as CEO: $20 million

Number of times in the past two years that Republicans have killed Sen. Byron Dorgan’s amendment to set up a Truman-style committee on war profiteering to investigate Halliburton: 3

Naughty word Cheney used during a Senate photo session in 2004 to assail Sen. Patrick Leahy, who had criticized Cheney’s ongoing ties to Halliburton: “Go #@! percent yourself.

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Jim Hightower is the author of Let’s Stop Beating Around the Bush (Viking Press). He publishes the monthly “http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/”.

Editor’s Note: The August issue of “http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/” contains a poster-sized chart detailing the many grievances, lies and miscues of the Bush Administration. Below is the story in text form, you can also download the full poster from “http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/node/833”

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Why Doesn’t America Believe in Evolution?
By Jeff Hecht
The New Scientist

Sunday 20 August 2006

Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals: true or false? This simple question is splitting America apart, with a growing proportion thinking that we did not descend from an ancestral ape. A survey of 32 European countries, the US and Japan has revealed that only Turkey is less willing than the US to accept evolution as fact.

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Issue Date: www.insightmag.com - Aug. 22-28, 2006, Posted On: 8/22/2006

Bush, Cheney in deep funk after Israel war performance

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have been extremely disappointed by Israel’s failure to defeat Hezbollah.

Government sources said the Israeli failure has led to deep pessimism within the National Security Council and Pentagon regarding U.S. goals in the Middle East, particularly the effort to

stop Iran’s advance in Iraq and toward nuclear weapons. The sources said the Israeli experience has been used by the Pentagon to explain the U.S. difficulty in halting the deterioration of order in Iraq.

“There’s a lot of doom and gloom in the White House over the U.S. future in the Middle East,” a source said.

“The overall impression is that the Israeli government is not the kind of government that provides clear and effective management of war,” said Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon official and now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The same message is one that is being communicated about the senior command of the IDF [Israel’s military]. It was very clear that the government began this war rapidly, without proper preparation, without proper training of the reserves.”

Sort of like the US!

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Bush Faces Revolt on Iraq
By Olivier Knox
Agence France-Presse

Tuesday 22 August 2006

Washington - US President George W. Bush has defiantly reaffirmed his “stay-the-course” message on Iraq, even as some of the unpopular war’s strongest defenders have turned critical ahead of key November elections.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/08/13/bush-caught-lying-claims_n_27169.html

Bush Caught Lying: Claims Terror Plot Included “New” Explosive Threat...

Eat The Press | Posted August 13, 2006 01:31 PM

From the President’s Radio Address, August 12, 2006:

This plot is further evidence that the terrorists we face are sophisticated, and constantly changing their tactics... We’re dealing with a new enemy that uses new means of attack and new methods to communicate.

From the New York Times, Aug. 12, 2006:

In 1995, a plot to bomb 12 American jumbo jets over the Pacific with a liquid explosive was discovered when the bomb makers accidentally set fire to their laboratory in Manila.

From the New York Times editorial, Aug. 12, 2006 :

The most frightening thing about the foiled plot to use liquid explosives to blow up airplanes over the Atlantic is that both the government and the aviation industry have been aware of the liquid bomb threat for years but have done little to prepare for it.

From the Associated Press:

As the British terror plot was unfolding, the Bush administration quietly tried to take away $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new explosives detection technology....Rep. Martin Sabo, D-Minn., who joined Republicans to block the administration’s recent diversion of explosives detection money, said research and development is crucial to thwarting future attacks, and there is bipartisan agreement that Homeland Security has fallen short. ‘’They clearly have been given lots of resources that they haven’t been using,’‘ Sabo said.

**

“http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/the-president-explains-ho_b_27838.html”

Monday’s press conference, President Bush explained exactly how his administration misled people into believing Iraq was connected to 9/11. All you had to do was “http://www.theyoungturks.com/story/2006/8/22/221935/557” (which I know isn’t that easy often times).

The parts of the conference that the press has been focusing in on are when the president said there was no WMD in Iraq and Saddam had no connection to 9/11.

But actually that’s not quite what he said. At one point Bush said:

“Nobody’s ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq.”

He also said no one in his administration had suggested that Saddam Hussein had ordered the attack.

But right before those statements, the president said:

“Imagine a world in which Saddam Hussein was there, stirring up even more trouble in a part of the world that had so much resentment, so much hatred that three ... that people came and killed three thousand of our citizens.”

There it is in a nutshell: We didn’t say he ordered the attacks, we just said he came from “a part of the world” that had “so much hatred” that “people came and killed three thousand of our citizens.”

**

Report: War On Terror Has Increased Iran’s Power...

Guardian | Posted August 24, 2006 10:32 AM

The US-led “war on terror” has bolstered Iran’s power and influence in the Middle East, especially over its neighbour and former enemy Iraq, a thinktank said today.

A report published by Chatham House said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had removed Iran’s main rival regimes in the region.

**

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-slater/bush-in-his-helmet-stands_b_27855.html

08.23.2006

“http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-slater/bush-in-his-helmet-stands_b_27855.html”

“http://by106fd.bay106.hotmail.msn.com/philip-slater”

Bush’s latest argument for staying in Iraq is shocking testimony to the fantasy world he inhabits. “If we withdraw before the job is done,” he says, “the enemy will follow us here.” In his fantasy world the ‘enemy’ is a uniformed army poised to invade the United States. He’s living out the drama of World War II--the “Watch on the Rhine” argument--”if our armies don’t fight the Germans in France we’ll be fighting them in Ohio”.

This was the ‘lesson’ of World War II, one that has been trotted out repeatedly to justify our invasions of little countries the world over. The irony is that many, if not most, of the rabid anti-communists who first made use of this argument in the late 1940s and early 1950s were pro-Hitler isolationists in the 1930s, before the atom bomb, when the argument had some validity.

Bush doesn’t seem to realize that (1) it isn’t 1940, (2) no one on the planet has the capacity to invade the United States, (3) terrorists aren’t national armies, but networks of individuals with no real national allegiances, and (4) whether they’re “here” or not has nothing to do with Iraq, except that the Iraq invasion has created an awful lot more of them.

Has his mental illness reached the stage where he really believes that if we leave Iraq a horde of bearded Iraqi dissidents will suddenly descend on customs officials at JFK, trying to smuggle in weapons of mass destruction?

While Bush has been playing tin soldier in Iraq, Europeans have actually been apprehending terrorists. While the Bush administration has been cutting corners on security at home to pay for the war, other countries have been expanding and sharing intelligence. While the Bush administration has been making PR noises with colored alerts and dire warnings, and arresting a few incompetent bozos who couldn’t blow up a coke bottle with a grenade, the British have foiled a major terrorist assault. This is because everyone else in the world seems to be aware that the ‘war’ on terrorism is not a war but a police operation.

Some will argue that Bush isn’t nuts, that the Iraq war was never about terrorism, but about getting control of Iraqi oil. And how rational did that turn out to be? Where’s all that oil, and how much control over it do we have now?

Or that the war was about countering the power of Iran--the reason Rummy and Saddam were such bosom buddies during the eighties, when we were supplying Saddam with weapons. And how rational was that plan? Since the war in Iraq has now made the influence of Iran greater than ever?

Or that the war was intended as a prelude to Armageddon, when all the Muslims will be banished to Hell and the neo-cons will be swept up to their special heaven, where they’ll get to sit on the right hand of Hitler and be waited on by naked SS men..

When you get right down to it there just isn’t any rational foundation for the Iraq war, just a choice between different brands of nuttiness. Whether you opt for the so-called ‘realpolitik’ motives or the out-and-out bizarre ones, reality has been banished from Washington.

**

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/why-not-impeachment_b_27803.html

So a judge has ruled that not only is Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program illegal, it’s also unconstitutional. And not just unconstitutional, but doubly unconstitutional; it violates both the 1st and 4th amendments. We’re talking a smackdown of Judge Judy-esque proportions.

Now, I’m not really pushing the impeachment of George Bush, unless it’s about lying about that fish I talked about last season. Them I’m all for it.

But if this decision stands, and this program is unlawful and unconstitutional, federal law expressly makes the ordering of surveillance under the program a federal felony. That would mean that the president could be guilty of no fewer than 30 felonies while in office. Moreover, it is not only illegal for a president to order such surveillance, it is illegal for other government officials to carry out such an order. And that means Alberto Gonzalez could be tried, convicted, and deported.

So let’s just say for the sake of argument that the Supreme Court upholds this decision and says Bush broke the law and violated the Constitution. President Clinton was impeached for lying under oath in a civil case, a case that had no bearing on the public as a whole. This would - unquestionably - be a greater offense.

How would you square impeaching Clinton and not impeaching Bush? Or would Bush have to sleep with this judge in Detroit?

It’s sort of like the 7 minutes question I always ask Republicans. Are you loyal to the man, or to the principle?

Bill Maher is the host of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” which returns to the air 11PM Friday, August 25.

**

Dangerous Days

The world crisis has grown far too serious for the U.S. president to take an extended summer break.

By “http://by106fd.bay106.hotmail.msn.com/id/4901231/site/newsweek/”

Newsweek

Updated: 4:35 p.m. ET Aug 23, 2006

Aug. 23, 2006 - This is as dangerous an August as I can recall, at least since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait 16 years ago. The Europeans are dithering over contributions to a peacekeeping force while a dangerously unstable Lebanon slips into a “security vacuum,” in the words of United Nations envoy Terje Roed-Larsen. Iran is stringing along the West in negotiations as it rushes to perfect the nuclear fuel cycle—which could occur as soon as the next several months—while bidding skillfully for regional hegemony. North Korea is hinting darkly at a nuclear test after firing off missiles. And Iraq is, well, say no more.

It is the sort of moment when peace and history could be hanging in the balance for a generation to come—the kind of tipping point when American presidents can no longer leave the negotiating to underlings. They must take the world stage themselves to find a new way out, simply because no one else has the globo-oomph to do so. There is a grand American tradition behind this sort of personal involvement of America’s chief executive, one that goes back almost precisely a century. Teddy Roosevelt spent much of August 1905 directing talks in Portsmouth, N.H, that prodded Japan and Russia into an agreement ending the Russo-Japanese war. Woodrow Wilson went to Paris for nearly six months between January and June of 1919 to negotiate the end of World War I. Franklin Roosevelt, though he was dying and suffered a terrible physical disability, flew halfway around the world to hash out the postwar peace at Yalta. Richard Nixon went to China, Ronald Reagan journeyed to Reykjavik and Jimmy Carter holed up at Camp David, where he tested the limits of brinksmanship with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat.

George W. Bush is going to Kennebunkport, where he’ll test his golf skills with Poppy.

**

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14487361/site/newsweek/

American Psyche

George Bush says Iraq is draining for America. He should see what it’s doing to the Iraqis.

By Michael Hastings

Newsweek

Updated: 6:03 p.m. ET Aug 23, 2006

Aug. 23, 2006 - Is Iraq the latest stage for an American psychodrama? President George W. Bush seems to think so. His remarks earlier this week about how the war is “straining America’s psyche” suggest that the key to winning is preventing a nervous breakdown on a national scale. He defined the terms of the crisis like so: “If we ever give up the desire to help people who want to live in a free society, we will have lost our soul as a nation.” Iraq itself is no longer just a battleground for the war on terror; it is no longer only a Mideast country to act as a model democracy; it is a place where our innermost being is up for grabs. That strain we feel is both spiritual and mental. At stake in this war for Arab hearts and minds is our American soul.

Sound familiar? I was reminded of all the Vietnam films I’d watched as a kid. There’s a simple message in each of them, from “Platoon” to “Full Metal Jacket.” The war is about us, not them. Vietnam is merely the setting for Americans to understand what it means to be an American. What moral choices do we make? What is our national identity? How much strain on the psyche can we take before we crack? Did we lose our soul somewhere between Saigon and Hanoi? Those same questions are starting to be asked about Iraq—support for the war is at an all-time low—and the president was forced to acknowledge them.

**

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14122053/site/newsweek/

By Michael Hirsh

Newsweek

Updated: 3:06 p.m. ET July 31, 2006

July 31, 2006 - Perhaps the most truthful moment about Iraq came recently when a U.S. official said nothing at all. This occurred when Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker was asked at a Capitol Hill luncheon in mid-July whether the United States was “winning” in Iraq. Several agonizing seconds passed before a grimacing Schoomaker finally replied: “I don’t think we’re losing.” One of the most eloquent pauses in recent memory, it gave voice to the U.S. military’s most deep-seated fears not only about Iraq, but about America’s entire strategic position in the Mideast.

***

9/2/06

The enigma continues. How can anyone think it’s great to have an energy policy written by the energy companies, bankruptcy laws written by the credit card industry, military specifications directed by the corporations with no bid contracts and carried out fraudulently, a prescription plan giveaway to the drug and insurance companies that forbids negotiation for prices or imports from Canada, a debt of $10 trillion, etc.?

It’s too bad we don’t yet have access to more smoking guns like the omniscience of a White House recording system (that gave us Nixon, Haldeman, Erlichmann, et. al., proving they were crooks) now telling us of the past 5 years 7 months and all the conspiracies and machinations originating in the huddle of the various Bush Christofacists sitting around talking of the plots to destroy the very fabric of our republic, the rule of law, the benefits of the social contract, the concept of a moral government...

So many anniversaries! Katrina, 9/11, remembering the importance of human Labor...

On February 27, 1933, four weeks after Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor, the Reichstag building, Germany’s parliament was destroyed in a fire. Hitler took full advantage of this 9/11-like calamity to whip up fear of “terrorists” - in this case, Communist terrorists - and to impose legislation curtailing the rights of German citizens. The Germans, by and large, acquiesced.

In Defying Hitler: A Memoir, Sebastian Haffner provides an eyewitness account of those days in Berlin:

With sheepish submissiveness the German people accepted that, as a result of the fire, each one of them lost what little personal freedom and dignity was guaranteed by the constitution; as though it followed as a necessary consequence.... more than one [of my colleagues] hinted that they had doubts about the official version; but none of them saw anything out of the ordinary in the fact that, from now on, one’s telephone would be tapped, one’s letters opened, and one’s desk might be broken into. (pp 121-122)

“I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is fallacious. I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force. How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? How many casualties should the US accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable? I think it is vitally important for a president to know when not to commit US military force. It would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq.”

VP Richard B. Cheney, Washington Institute, Soref Symposium 4/29/1991

[February 24, 2001]

COLIN POWELL, Secretary of State: He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.

Condi Rice:

7/29/2001 “We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.”

9/11/2001 Topic: “the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday.” The address was designed to promote missile defense as the cornerstone of a new national security strategy, and contained no mention of terrorists.

Scheduled but not given Johns Hopkins University speech, from Washington Post, 4/1/2004

Terror management theory, “The present findings support the views of many theorists who have noted that political allegiances are not always based on the balanced, rational forces of self-interest suggested by the Jeffersonian notion of democracy but also on the operation of nonrational forces of which we are not always aware.”

Florette Cohen, psychological scientist

Molly Ivins: “deflecting unwelcome intrusions of reality as blithely as any cult member.”

“It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so…”

-Robert Anson Heinlein, 7/7/1907 - 5/8/1988, US science-fiction writer

“Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice.”

(John Emerich Edward Dalberg) Lord Acton, 1/10/1834 - 6/19/1902, English historian

“This administration is the most secretive of our lifetime, even more secretive than the Nixon administration. They don’t believe the American people or Congress have any right to information.”

-Larry Klayman, Judicial Watch

“The public should view excessive secrecy among government officials as parents view sudden quiet where youngsters are playing. It is a sign of trouble.”

William Rogers, US Attorney General, Secretary of State

“Everybody knows that corruption thrives in secret places, and avoids public places, and we believe it a fair presumption that secrecy means impropriety.”

Woodrow Wilson

“The greatest danger to liberty lurks in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

-Louis Dembitz Brandeis, 11/13/1856 - 10/5/1941, U.S. Supreme Court Justice (1916-39)

“Light is the only thing that can sweeten our political atmosphere.”

Woodrow Wilson

“This administration is the most closed-mouthed, more closed door than any in memory.”

Michael Duffy, Time magazine

“There is a pernicious and damaging kind of secrecy being practiced by this administration. The public is thus being denied access to the workings of the government it elected.”

John Stacks, The War on Our Freedoms

“I believe a veil of secrecy has descended around the administration and I think that’s unseemly.”

Dan Burton, US Rep

“I don’t give a shit what happens, I want you all to stonewall it.”

Richard Nixon, 3/22/1973

“True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.”

-Clarence (Seward) Darrow, 4/18/1857 - 3/13/1938, US defense lawyer, writer

“Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear”...
1Peter2:18

Those of us who live off our investments (and, some might say, your labor) can, as I mentioned Tuesday, be pleased that you are getting paid less – and that, to sweeten our pot further, our taxes have been slashed. If you average $250,000 in dividends, $250,000 in municipal bond interest, and $500,000 in long-term capital gains each year, then you were paying $199,000 in federal income tax when President Clinton left office – a crushing 19.9% of your income. Today, thanks to Republican rule, you pay only $112,500 – 11.25% of your income. Like the President says: you have sacrificed in the wake of 9/11. You pay a lot of taxes!

AT

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/08/30/keith-olbermann-delivers-one-hell-of-a-commentary-on-rumsfeld/

Keith Olbermann Delivers One Hell Of a Commentary on Rumsfeld

By: Jamie Holly on Wednesday, August 30th, 2006

Keith had some very choice words about Rumsfeld’s “fascism” comments tonight. Watch it, save it and share it.

Olbermann delivered this commentary with fire and passion while highlighting how Rumsfeld’s comments echoes other times in our world’s history when anyone who questioned the administration was coined as a traitor, unpatriotic, communist or any other colorful term. Luckily we pulled out of those times and we will pull out of these times.

Remember - Rumsfeld did not just call the Democrats out yesterday, he called out a majority of this country. This wasn’t only a partisan attack, but more so an attack against the majority of Americans.

The transcript of Keith’s comments tonight is available below the fold.

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and

shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

We end the countdown where we began, our #1 story.

with a special comment on

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion

yesterday. It demands the deep analysis - and the sober contemplation - of every

American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or

intelligence - indeed, the loyalty - of the majority of Americans who

oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land;

Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants - our

employees - with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither

common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad,

suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of

human freedom; And not merely because it is the first roadblock against the

kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still

fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile… it

is right - and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was

adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis.

For, in their time, there was another government faced with true

peril - with a growing evil - powerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the

facts. It, too, had the secret information. It alone had the true

picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in

terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s - questioning their intellect and their

morality.

That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone to

England.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all

treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it had received, which

contradicted it’s own policies, it’s own conclusions - it’s own omniscience - needed to be

dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew

the truth.

Most relevant of all - it “knew” that its staunchest critics

needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost

of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile - at

best morally or intellectually confused.

That critic’s name… was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this

evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way

Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

History - and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England

- had taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty - and his own

confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the

man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy

excepting the fact that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

His government, absolute and exclusive in its knowledge, is not the

modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis. It is the modern

version of the government… of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to today’s Omniscient Ones.

That about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this:

This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely. And as such,

all voices count - not just his. Had he or his president perhaps

proven any of their prior claims of omniscience - about Osama Bin

Laden’s plans five years ago - about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago

- about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago - we all might be able to

swallow hard, and accept their omniscience as a bearable, even useful

recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own

arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or

intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to

Katrina, to flu vaccine shortages, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelope this

nation - he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies, have - inadvertently

or intentionally - profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up in public, and question the morality and

the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the

Emporer’s New Clothes.

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised?

As a child, of whose heroism did he read?

On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day

to fight?

With what country has he confused… the United States of

America?

–

The confusion we - as its citizens - must now address, is

stark and forbidding. But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when

men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and

obscured our flag. Note - with hope in your heart - that those earlier

Americans always found their way to the light and we can too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and

this Administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the

terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for

which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City,

so valiantly fought.

–

And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country

faces a “new type of fascism.”

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew

everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he

said that - though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.

–

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble

tribute… I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist

Edward R. Murrow.

But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could

come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of

us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew

everything, and branded those who disagreed, “confused” or “immoral.”

Thus forgive me for reading Murrow in full:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954.

“We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction

depends upon evidence and due process of law.

We will not walk in fear - one, of another. We will not be

driven by fear into an age of un-reason, if we dig deep in our history

and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men;

Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to

defend causes that were - for the moment - unpopular.”

And so, good night, and good luck.

**

Published on Tuesday, August 22, 2006 by TruthDig

Let the Truth-Telling Begin

by Molly Ivins

The Bushies are having the hardest time trying to un-lie now. For example, at his Monday press conference the president asserted, “Nobody’s ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the [Sept. 11] attack.”

How true: What Vice President Cheney in December 2001 said about links between 9/11 and Iraq was that it was “pretty well confirmed” that hijacking ringleader Mohammed Atta had met with Iraqi intelligence. On June 17, 2004, Cheney said: “We have never been able to confirm that, nor have we been able to knock it down, we just don’t know. ... I can’t refute the Czech claim, I can’t prove the Czech claim, I just don’t know.”

In July 2004, the CIA’s own report stated the agency did not have “any credible information” that the alleged meeting ever took place. The CIA said the whole concoction was based on a single source “whose veracity ... has been questioned” and that the Iraqi official allegedly involved was in U.S. custody and denied the meeting ever took place. The 9/11 commission had already concluded that the meeting never occurred.

Cheney has a consistent pattern of exaggeration on intelligence related to Iraq. The tragedy is that at least half the American people believed Saddam Hussein was connected to the 9/11 plot_and most soldiers serving in Iraq still believe this.

**

CONTACT: Institute for Public Accuracy

Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Behind Bush’s Rhetoric on Iraq: · Democracy · Oil

WASHINGTON - August 21 -

RAED JARRAR

Jarrar, the Iraq Project director for Global Exchange, is just back from a trip to the Mideast which included meetings with Iraqi Parliament members in Jordan and a visit to Syria.

Jarrar said: “Our meetings with the Iraqi Parliament members were very fruitful, especially with the mainstream Sunni and Shia parties, because we got this strong united message from Iraqi Sunnis and Shia demanding a timetable for pulling out the U.S. troops.

“What is developing in Iraq is an anti-occupation parliament, especially after the war on Lebanon, where people are in the streets in Iraq rallying against the British, the U.S. and Israeli occupations.

“So, rhetoric aside, the U.S. will try to go back to their original plan and insert yet another dictatorship in the Middle East in Iraq that will take its cues from Washington like the dictatorships in Egypt or Jordan or Saudi Arabia which are supported by the U.S. government.”

ANTONIA JUHASZ

Juhasz is the author of the book The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time and a visiting scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies. She said today: “More than three years since the war began, President Bush is finally telling the truth about why the U.S. is in Iraq: Oil. Bush told reporters today that U.S. troops must stay in Iraq because ‘terrorists and extremists’ must be denied access to Iraq’s oil sales. Of course, Bush not only wants to keep oil out of his enemies’ hands, he also wants to put it into the hands of his friends. And this front in the war is right on track.

**

Published on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 by the New York Times

Poll Shows a Shift in Opinion on Iraq War

by Carl Hulse and Marjorie Connelly

Americans increasingly see the war in Iraq as distinct from the fight against terrorism, and nearly half believe President Bush has focused too much on Iraq to the exclusion of other threats, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

**

Published on Tuesday, August 22, 2006 by the Niagara Falls Reporter (New York)

Bush Peddles Lies, Fear in Campaign

by Bill Gallagher

“One can’t doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed.”

-- William F. Buckley Jr., Feb. 26, 2006.

DETROIT -- Bill Buckley, the conservative icon, wrote that line six months ago, when the situation in Iraq was actually much better than it is today. By every important military measurement, things have gotten much worse. But we are told we must slog it out or the bogeymen now based Iraq will plot to attack American families, and the unwashed hordes of jihadists will do a reverse crusade and seize our campsites.

At what point will the Bush administration recognize its strategy in Iraq is a disaster and a seismic shift of direction is required? Tragically, for the Iraqi people and U.S. troops there, President George W. Bush will never admit the obvious and humbly change course -- at least not before the midterm elections.

He will try to win one more time on the theme that his policies best protect the nation from terrorist attacks and that the Democrats’ push for a phased withdrawal from Iraq shows weakness. In fact, a withdrawal is just what Bush will ultimately do, but not until after this election cycle.

The anti-American insurgency is growing stronger and more deadly. The violence is everywhere and security is deteriorating. The evidence of failure is overwhelming. The arrogant experiment in nation-building is blowing up -- literally -- as the number of roadside bombs in July rose to the highest total for one month since the war began. The New York Times obtained bomb statistics from American military authorities showing that “in July, of 2,625 explosive devices, 1,666 exploded, 959 were discovered before they went off. In January, 1,454 bombs exploded or were found.”

Bush and the neocon nuts that brought us this horrible mess refuse to accept the stark reality of their failure.

“The American policy has failed in terms of politics and security, but the big problem is that they will not confess or admit that,” Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the Iraqi parliament told McClatchy Newspapers (formerly Knight Ridder) Baghdad bureau chief Tom Lasseter.

American policy -- as the Bush-Cheney-Rice-Rumsfeld quartet of deception spout it -- is fantasy, totally disconnected from the reality in Iraq. Their posture is based on simple slogans meant for the domestic political audience and disconnected from the bloody truth. Bush usually saves his most outlandish claims and twisted rhetoric for political fund-raisers, as he did last week when he picked up checks for the GOP at a stop in Lancaster, Pa.

Bush argued that “leaving before we complete our mission would create a terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East, a country with huge oil reserves that the terrorist network would be willing to use to extract economic pain from those of us who believe in freedom.”

That is one of the most revealing sentences Bush has ever uttered. The basic questions it raises underscore the disaster in Iraq. What is the mission? What is the policy to complete the mission? Did not the invasion itself spawn the terrorists? Why were we told repeatedly that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a terrorist state? Why should “huge oil reserves” matter when it comes to spreading freedom? Are we not already feeling the “economic pain” from higher oil prices and the $300 billion price tag for the war so far?

And then, in yet another deceptive conflation of the Sept. 11 attacks and his war of choice, Bush warns if we withdraw, “the enemy will follow us home.” Alert neighborhood watches! Patrol your campsites! Our inept commander in chief wants renewed enthusiasm for his Operation Iraqi Fiasco so we can keep those freedom-despising terrorists holed up in the desert far away from our shores.

Lasseter puts the unending violence in perspective. Simply doing the math, he provides numbing numbers. Deputy Health Minister Adel Mushin told Lasseter that in the month of July, about 3,500 Iraqis died in sectarian and political violence. That’s the highest monthly death toll since March 2003, the month the war began.

Other data and trend lines show the disturbing evidence that 38 months after Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” theatrics, U.S. policies are failing to secure Iraq.

“When L. Paul Bremer, then the top U.S. official in Iraq, appointed an Iraqi Governing Council in July 2003, insurgent attacks averaged 16 daily,” Lasseter notes. But the number of attacks has grown steadily, in spite of the milestones of “progress” the Busheviks always reference. Since Saddam Hussein’s capture, the handover of sovereignty, the election of the Iraqi parliament, the selection of two prime ministers and the killing of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the violence has steadily escalated. In June, the number of daily attacks averaged 90.

Bush spent about four hours last week -- that’s a very long time for him -- at the State Department and Pentagon discussing Iraq and other Middle East issues. Bush is getting antsy as the November elections approach. If the Democrats win even one house of Congress, that means serious hearings about the fiasco in Iraq, fabricated intelligence and all those other messy topics. People would have to face tough questions while under oath.

A quiet but important project is underway aimed at extricating Bush from his wreckage in Iraq. The project is under the direction of James A. Baker, former secretary of state, Bush family consigliere, valet and toilet unplugger. Baker is a skilled diplomat and supreme political manipulator. Since March, he’s headed a bipartisan commission innocuously called the Iraq Study Group. In the September issue of “Washington Monthly,” Robert Dreyfuss wrote a revealing piece on the work of the group, whose task is to “devise a fresh set of policies to help the president chart a new course in -- or, perhaps, to get the hell out of -- Iraq.”

The commission is the brainchild of Rep. Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican who harnessed bipartisan support for the creation of a high-powered group to take a fresh look at Iraq. Starting in April, Baker, along with big-name Republicans like former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and influential Democrats like William Perry, Bill Clinton’s secretary of defense, and Clinton’s chief of staff Leon Panetta, have been looking at new options in Iraq and doing so far away from the public eye.

“Baker is primarily motivated by his desire to avoid war at home. So he wants a ceasefire in American politics,” a source told the magazine. Seeing the potential for an electoral disaster for the Republicans in 2008, the commission staffer added, “I guess there are people in the party, on the Hill and in the White House, who see a political train wreck coming, and they’ve called in Baker to try to reroute the train.”

The Iraq Study Group is noticeably devoid of any neocon representation. Those cheerleaders for the war in Iraq are no longer welcome in circles that include serious, practical people.

“The object of our policy has to be to get our little white asses out of there as soon as possible,” another participant told Dreyfuss. Baker must confront the president “like the way a family confronts an alcoholic. You bring everyone in, and you say, ‘Look, my friend, it’s time to change.’”

George W. Bush will make that change, but not because it is the right thing to do, and he’ll certainly never admit his failure. He’ll do it for political purposes and to protect his corporate sponsors.

Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city councilman who now

**

Published on Tuesday, August 22, 2006 by The Progressive

Judge Taylor Makes It Clear: Bush Is a Criminal

by Matthew Rothschild

They’re the only ones standing in the way of Bush’s lawlessness.

Thursday’s decision by Judge Anna Diggs Taylor represents a huge and welcome slapdown to Bush. And no amount of slamming the judge by the pundits on the right over the weekend can detract from its power. Ruling the NSA spying to be illegal and unconstitutional, Judge Taylor said Bush was acting like a king.

The Administration, the judge ruled, “undisputedly” violates the Fourth Amendment, “undisputedly” violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, violates the First Amendment, and violates the separation of powers. (You can find her ruling at aclu.org or by clicking here.)

Not mincing any words, she added: “The Constitution itself has been violated.”

**

Published on Tuesday, August 22, 2006 by the Boston Globe

Wars of Great Miscalculation

by HDS Greenway

THE YEAR 2006 will long be remembered for its summer of great miscalculation. Hamas began by thinking that taking an Israeli soldier hostage could lead to the release of Palestinian prisoners. Instead, it brought an Israeli invasion of Gaza.

Hezbollah followed suit by capturing two Israeli soldiers, which brought down the wrath of Israel’s armed might on Lebanon in a manner that Hezbollah could not have expected.

The Bush administration badly miscalculated by thinking that if it gave Israel a green light to continue the war, in the face of almost universal calls for an immediate cease-fire, Israel could get the job done and rid Lebanon of an armed state within a state. But Israel did not get the job done.

President Bush tried to make it appear that Hezbollah ``suffered a defeat in this crisis,” but Israelis and Lebanese know better.

In Iraq -- the mother of all American miscalculations -- Shiites took to the streets by the thousands to support their Shiite brothers in Lebanon, and President Bush expressed bewilderment and wondered aloud why Iraqis aren’t more grateful.

As Fawaziah al-Bakr, a Saudi promoter of educational change and women’s rights, said, ``There is no question that the US has lost morally because of the war. Even if you like the people and the culture of the United States, you can’t defend it.”

This summer’s wars of miscalculation will cast a long shadow down the decades to come to the detriment of this country’s national interests.

H.D.S. Greenway’s column appears regularly in the Globe.

**

Published on Tuesday, August 22, 2006 by the Daytona Beach News-Journal (Florida)

America’s Other Perpetual War: $40 Billion a Year to Deny Defeat

by Pierre Tristam

David Murray, a drug policy analyst for the Bush administration, was asked recently about cocaine cultivation in Colombia, where the United States has been fighting an expensive, low-grade war against coca growers since 2000. “This is a trade whose days are numbered,” Murray told The New York Times. The phrase rang of Vice President Dick Cheney’s evaluation of the Iraqi civil war in May 2005: “I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.” Someone should find out what these Bush types are, if you will, smoking.

Iraqis are now getting killed at a rate of 40,000 a year, more than three times the average annual kill-rate of the Saddam years. Even the most friendly kind of reporting coming out of Iraq -- the military embedded kind designed to make reporters sound like Cheney cracking softballs on “Larry King Live” -- can’t mask the region’s approximation of a Sam Peckinpah movie (think “The Wild Bunch” in fast-forward). Coverage of the war is declining as the certainty of American defeat is increasing. At least the debate over the Iraq catastrophe goes on. The same can’t be said about that other futility warped by official lies, public indifference and $40 billion a year in wasted taxpayer dollars -- the war on drugs.

**

Top Ten Chapter Titles In George W. Bush’s Memoirs

10. “101 Ways I’ve Misspelled ‘Condoleezza’”

9. “Why Mom And Dad Voted For Kerry”

8. “The Best Memos I’ve Never Read”

7. “The War In Iraq, A 6-Foot Sandwich, And Other Things I Started But Couldn’t Finish”

6. “How To Lose An Election And Still Become President”

5. “Good News, America - Just 923 More Days”

4. “1962-1964: The Cheerleader Years”

3. “Huh?”

2. “Bubba Was Right - - Monica Is Up For Anything”

1. “Chapter 20...Or is That My Approval Rating?”

**

Conservatives Love Government

By Dean Baker

t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Tuesday 22 August 2006

The Bush administration has repeatedly demonstrated extraordinary incompetence in a wide range of areas. The response to Hurricane Katrina, the coordination of “homeland security,” and the implementation of the Medicare drug benefit top a long list of disasters. These failures have led many to say that the incompetence is attributable to the fact that Bush and other conservatives dislike government, and therefore can’t run it well. Nothing could be further from the truth.

President Bush and other conservatives like government every bit as much as any big-spending liberal. The difference lies in what the conservatives want the government to do. Liberals and progressives think that government should be acting to ensure the population a decent standard of living and provide it with essential services like health care and education.

Conservatives want the government to redistribute income upward. This is done through a variety of mechanisms, the most obvious of which are their tax policies, which favor upper-income people. But conservatives want the government to intervene in the market in a wide variety of ways that have the effect of redistributing income from those at the middle and the bottom to those at the top.

-Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer (www.conservativenannystate.org). He also has a blog, “Beat the Press,” where he discusses the media’s coverage of economic issues. You can find it at the American Prospect’s web site.

**

Is Bush a Clear & Present Danger?

By Robert Parry

Consortium News

Wednesday 23 August 2006

Faced with George W. Bush’s disastrous policies in the Middle East and his adamant refusal to change course, the question now arises whether the President has become a “clear and present danger” to the security of the United States and, indirectly, to Israel.

For more than five years - even predating the 9/11 attacks - Bush has insisted on a “unilateralist” approach toward the world, asserting U.S. global hegemony under a strategy laid out by the neoconservative Project for the New American Century.

-Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty From Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It’s also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & “Project Truth.”

**

No Exit

Missy Comley Beattie begins, “I’m watching a drama. George Bush is the production’s star, with Richard Cheney in the supporting role. Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld have major parts. Directing, producing, and in charge of special effects is Karl Rove.”

Nation Faltering, Afghans’ Leader Draws Criticism

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/082306G.shtml

After months of widespread frustration with corruption, the economy and a lack of justice and security, doubts about President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, and by extension the American-led effort to rebuild that nation, have led to a crisis of confidence.

Venezuela Plans to Export Oil to China

Venezuela plans to export 500,000 barrels of oil a day to China within five years, Venezuela President Hugo Chavez said Wednesday. Chavez said Venezuela’s growing relations with China are part of his government’s efforts to create a “multipolar” world to counter US hegemony.

Judge Blocks Logging in Sequoia Monument

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that a Bush administration plan to allow commercial logging inside the Giant Sequoia National Monument violates environmental laws. Environmental groups had sued the US Forest Service over its plans for managing the 328,000-acre preserve, home to two-thirds of the world’s largest trees.

Joel Connelly | West Can’t Beat Heat of Global Warming

Forests in the interior of British Columbia are changing color, turning from green to red as they become infected by the pine bark beetle, and then from red to gray once they are dead. In the words of retired US Forest Service scientist Jesse Logan, “There is a continental-scale event waiting to happen.”

Cuba’s Pathbreaking Energy Policies

“If America were like the little pig who built his house of bricks, the nation would be getting ready for the post-carbon world. But we are the pig who built his house of straw, scoffing at the existence of the wolf of scarcity who is coming to blow our house in,” writes Nicholas von Hoffman. Cuba, he says, offers us the example of a different approach.

Big Ag, Oil and Tobacco Will Kill You for a Profit

Author Jane Smiley calls for a return to regulation: “The fact is, the day Ronald Reagan was elected and the corporations decided to roll back the regulations that limited their power, greed, and egomania was the day they doomed themselves and all of us, because it was the day they began living the lie that there are no consequences to corporate activities.”

Coming Recession Will Be “Deep and Nasty”

The United States is headed for a recession that will be “much nastier, deeper and more protracted” than the 2001 recession, says Nouriel Roubini, president of Roubini Global Economics.

Marine Reservists Facing Involuntary Combat Duty

The Marine Corps is planning to call up as many as 2,500 Marine reservists for combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, dipping into a rarely used pool of troops to fill growing personnel gaps in units scheduled to deploy in coming months, officials said yesterday.

Life Under the Bombs

Rasha Salti writes, “ I am haunted by the nameless and faceless caught under rubble. In the undergrounds of destroyed buildings or simply in the midst of its ravages. Awaiting to be given a proper burial.”

King George’s Crumbling Monarchy

“Somehow political power has fallen into the hands of people who want to dismantle everything that works, and conduct business as if they were running a medieval duchy - or a third world tin-pot dictatorship. (Yes, contractors in Iraq really did receive duffel bags filled with $100 bills.) And it turns out that they can do immense damage in a very short time,” writes Paul Krugman. “Remember that FEMA was regarded as one of the best agencies in the federal government at the end of the Clinton years.”

Labor Department Undercounts Poor, Uninsured, and the Non-Employed

An analysis of the nation’s most important labor-market survey concludes that official estimates of the number of Americans living in poverty and without health insurance may significantly underestimate the true number of poor and uninsured. According to the study, conducted by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), the measurement problems with the Current Population Survey (CPS) have been growing, making it difficult to assess changes in economic well being over time.

Norman Solomon | The Mythical End to the Politics of Fear

Only as journalists stop cowering and start reporting on the basic flaws of the “war on terror” concept will the body politic benefit from the free circulation of ideas and information - the lifeblood of democracy. And only then will there be appreciable media space to really explore why so many people have become violently angry with America.

CIA Veteran Offers Grim Assessment of “War on Terror”

Ken Silverstein interviews CIA Veteran Michael Scheuer: “Every time we interfere in Muslim countries, they get more support. In the long run, we’re not safer, because we’re still operating on the assumption that we’re hated because of our freedoms, when in fact we’re hated because of our actions in the Islamic world.”

Bush Ensured Iran Offer Would Be Rejected

Even before Iran gave its formal counter-offer to ambassadors of the P5+1 countries Tuesday, the Bush administration had already begun the process of organizing sanctions against Iran. A day later, a Congressional report warned that the US was facing “significant gaps” in its intelligence on Iran that could be as serious as the shortcomings in its pre-war knowledge about Iraq, leaving Washington ill-prepared to assess Tehran’s military capabilities.

How to Look Like a Failure

“By linking Iraq with the war on terror,” writes Sidney Blumenthal, “Bush has created a dynamic that threatens to destroy him.”

Once-Powerful Christian Coalition Is Falling Apart

The coalition, founded by Pat Robertson, became politically powerful under Executive Director Ralph Reed, who left in 1997. Reed lost an election in Georgia last month after being linked to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. “The sooner the organization goes completely away, the better,” says Steve Scheffler, who led the breakaway of the coalition’s Iowa chapter. “They’re a total disgrace.”

Louisiana Levees Not Ready for Another Katrina

Repairs on the levees in New Orleans, Louisiana, which burst last year under the fury of Hurricane Katrina, should do some good but are not enough to handle another storm that size, a US military official said Tuesday. “There’s still a huge amount of risk in that part of the country for a levee system,” Don Basham, chief engineer for construction in the US Army Corps of Engineers, said at a a news conference.

Losing Afghanistan

The New York Times writes: “Reclaiming Afghanistan from the Taliban remains a crucial element in America’s global struggle against terrorism. So it should be setting off alarm bells in Washington that Afghans are becoming disenchanted with the performance of the country’s pro-American president, Hamid Karzai.”

Supporting the Troops

William Rivers Pitt says: “The question of how, exactly, one can and should support the troops has been a live political hand grenade over the last several years.... All too often dominated by sound bytes and talking points. True assistance to American soldiers, within all this noise, is difficult to find. Enter the Patriot Guard Riders.”

No Bid Required on 70 Percent of Katrina Contracts

The government awarded 70 percent of its contracts for Hurricane Katrina work without full competition - wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in the process - says a House study released Thursday by Democrats.

Congressional Corruption

Congressional corruption - will there be a voter backlash this fall? This time on NOW.

Hot Toxic Mud Engulfs Villages, Oil Exploration at Fault

Four villages and 19 factories have been submerged in a 600-acre sea of mud in East Java that is growing by up to 50,000 cubic meters a day in a major environmental disaster triggered during an oil exploration venture.

Biotech Firm, Government Hid Rice Contamination From Public

The recently revealed spread of genetically modified rice has critics alarmed on two levels: the problem itself and the fact that authorities suppressed the news.

Africa Adds to Miserable Ranks of Child Workers

By the United Nations’ latest estimate, more than 49 million sub-Saharan children age 14 and younger worked in 2004. Their tasks are not merely housework and garden-tending. They are prostitutes, miners, construction workers, pesticide sprayers, haulers and street vendors, and they are not necessarily even paid for their labor.

http://thinkprogress.org/the-architects-where-are-they-now/

Thom Hartmann: Reclaiming The Issues: Islamic Or Republican Fascism?

James Carroll: War’s Reckoning

William Greider: Course Correction

Ann Jones: Why It’s Not Working in Afghanistan

Beth Quinn: Vast Majority of Us Now Officially ‘Bitter and Angry’

Elizabeth Sullivan: Ratcheting Up the Iran Threat

Robert Parry: Bush’s Disdainful Presidency

James Bovard: Modest Proposal: Waterboard Congress

Marie Cocco: Iraq: a War About Nothing

Derrick Jackson: Prolonged War Wasn’t in the Deal

Ralph Nader: In the Public Interest

Robert Kuttner: The Cheney Presidency

New York Times: No Place for Cluster Bombs

Andrew Murray: Empire, and Resistance To It, is the Central Issue of our Time

Marilou Johanek: GOP Strategists Shamelessly Exploit the ‘T’ Word

Emma Dixon: Katrina Survivors: Simply Blown Away

Helen Thomas: Warrantless Wiretap Program in Doubt

Dean Baker: Conservatives Love Government

Jeremy Scahill: Blackwater Shot Down in Federal Court

César Chelala: Amnesty International’s Severe Criticism of Israel’s Tactics

Jeremy Seabrook: Alienation Can be a Humane Response to Globalisation

Cole Krawitz and Jay Toole: We’re a Long Way from Real Democracy

Bill McKibben: Finally, Fired up over Global Warming

Molly Ivins: The New Activist Judges

Tad Daley: Watered Down Terror

Garrison Keillor: Hear the Voices of 9/11

George Monbiot: Promoting Peace is for Wimps - Real Governments Sell Weapons

Marianne Means: Distorted View from Bush’s Rabbit Hole

Bush ‘Palace’ Shielded from Iraqi Storm

‘Middle East Conflict Threatens Global Peace’

Iraq War Has Bush Doctrine in Tatters

Jimmy Carter’s Explosive Critique of Tony Blair

Another Miserable Milestone for Bush’s War

Air Conditioning for Eskimos as the Arctic Warms Up

Rice Contaminated by GM has been on Sale for Months

Inquiry Opened Into Israeli Use of US Cluster Bombs

GRAND TIME

“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/opinion/27sun2.html?ex=1314331200&en=601348193a388e11&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss” Sunday’s New York Times: “In coming weeks, the Internal Revenue Service plans to start siccing private debt collectors on people with up to $25,000 in unpaid income taxes – and laying off nearly half of the auditors who examine estate tax returns of the wealthiest taxpayers.”

F Truly, it is a grand time to be rich and powerful in America. And if you had any doubt:

GRAND TIME II

“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/business/28wages.html?ex=1314417600&en=ea4fce3d527e44a0&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss” Monday’s New York Times: “The median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation. The drop has been especially notable, economists say, because productivity . . . has risen steadily over the same period.”

F Workers are producing more per hour and getting paid less. We shareholders should be thrilled! (The long-term implications are terrible – a declining middle class is one more way America has become weaker in the last six years. But who says you have to anchor your yacht in an American port?)

The Times continues:

“ . . . wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s.”

Isn’t that great?

“UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as ‘the golden era of profitability.’”

I am loving it!

And as long as the current party rules, I think we need not worry. Republicans stand true to their core principles – as when, a few weeks ago, they refused for the tenth year running to hike the minimum wage (“The buying power of the minimum wage is at a 50-year low,” reports the Times) unless we completely eliminated the estate tax on billionheirs.

If any of this strikes you as cruel, you have not been listening. This is compassionate conservatism.

The president believes in a humble foreign policy. He and his allies in Congress are uniters, not dividers. And, most important to those of us who care about money . . . “by far, the vast majority of the help [from the tax cuts] goes to the people at the bottom end of the economic ladder.”

More good news from the same Times story: In 2004, the top 1 percent of earners got 11.2% of all the wage income, up from 6% three decades ago.

RECONSTRUCTION

And while we’re at it, there’s Paul Krugman’s devastating column from yesterday’s paper.

(But wait – isn’t it time you subscribed to “http://www.nytimes.com/products/timesselect/overview.html?mkt=ROSTSFRCLASSbig” – both because it’s great, and because the world needs a healthy New York Times? You can start with a free trial; you can give subscriptions as gifts; if you’re a student or faculty member, you can get it even cheaper. “http://www.nytimes.com/products/timesselect/overview.html?mkt=ROSTSFRCLASSbig”)

So here is “http://select.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/opinion/28krugman.html?hp”:

Last September President Bush stood in New Orleans, where the lights had just come on for the first time since Katrina struck, and promised “one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen.” Then he left, and the lights went out again.

What happened next was a replay of what happened after Mr. Bush asked Congress to allocate $18 billion for Iraqi reconstruction. In the months that followed, congressmen who visited Iraq returned with glowing accounts of all the wonderful things we were doing there, like repainting schools and, um, repainting schools.

But when the Coalition Provisional Authority, which was running Iraq, closed up shop nine months later, it turned out that only 2 percent of the $18 billion had been spent, and only a handful of the projects that were supposed to have been financed with that money had even been started. In the end, America failed to deliver even the most basic repair of Iraq’s infrastructure; today, Baghdad gets less than seven hours of electricity a day.

And so it is along our own Gulf Coast. The Bush administration likes to talk about all the money it has allocated to the region, and it plans a public relations blitz to persuade America that it’s doing a heck of a job aiding Katrina’s victims. But as the Iraqis learned, allocating money and actually using it for reconstruction are two different things, and so far the administration has done almost nothing to make good on last year’s promises.

It’s true that tens of billions have been spent on emergency relief and cleanup. But even the cleanup remains incomplete: almost a third of the hurricane debris in New Orleans has yet to be removed. And the process of going beyond cleanup to actual reconstruction has barely begun.

For example, although Congress allocated $17 billion to the Department of Housing and Urban Development for Katrina relief, primarily to provide cash assistance to homeowners, as of last week the department had spent only $100 million. The first Louisiana homeowners finally received checks under a federally financed program just three days ago. Mississippi, which has a similar program, has sent out only about two dozen checks so far.

Local governments, which were promised aid in rebuilding facilities such as fire stations and sewer systems, have fared little better in actually getting that aid. A recent article in The National Journal describes a Kafkaesque situation in which devastated towns and parishes seeking federal funds have been told to jump through complex hoops, spending time and money they don’t have on things like proving that felled trees were actually knocked down by Katrina, only to face demands for even more paperwork.

Apologists for the administration will doubtless claim that blame for the lack of progress rests not with Mr. Bush, but with the inherent inefficiency of government bureaucracies. That’s the great thing about being an antigovernment conservative: even when you fail at the task of governing, you can claim vindication for your ideology.

But bureaucracies don’t have to be this inefficient. The failure to get moving on reconstruction reflects lack of leadership at the top.

Mr. Bush could have moved quickly to turn his promises of reconstruction into reality. But he didn’t. As months dragged by with little sign of White House action, all urgency about developing a plan for reconstruction ebbed away.

Mr. Bush could have appointed someone visible and energetic to oversee the Gulf Coast’s recovery, someone who could act as an advocate for families and local governments in need of help. But he didn’t. How many people can even name the supposed reconstruction “czar”?

Mr. Bush could have tried to fix FEMA, the agency whose effectiveness he destroyed through cronyism and privatization. But he didn’t. FEMA remains a demoralized organization, unable to replenish its ranks: it currently has fewer than 84 percent of its authorized personnel.

Maybe the aid promised to the gulf region will actually arrive some day. But by then it will probably be too late. Many former residents and small-business owners, tired of waiting for help that never comes, will have permanently relocated elsewhere; those businesses that stayed open, or reopened after the storm, will have gone under for lack of customers. In America as in Iraq, reconstruction delayed is reconstruction denied — and Mr. Bush has, once again, broken a promise.

© 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Andrew Tobias

http://www.slate.com/id/2148197/

What a Moronic Presidential Press Conference! It’s clear Bush doesn’t understand Iraq, or Lebanon, or Gaza, or …

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2006, at 5:48 PM ET

Among the many flabbergasting answers that President Bush gave at his “http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/08/20060821.html”, this one—about Democrats who propose pulling out of Iraq—triggered the steepest jaw drop: “I would never question the patriotism of somebody who disagrees with me. This has nothing to do with patriotism. It has everything to do with understanding the world in which we live.”

George W. Bush criticizing someone for not understanding the world is like … well, it’s like George W. Bush criticizing someone for not understanding the world. It’s sui generis: No parallel quite captures the absurdity so succinctly.

This, after all, is the president who invaded Iraq “http://www.slate.com/id/2079678/” of the country’s ethnic composition or of the volcanic tensions that toppling its dictator might unleash. Complexity has no place in his schemes. Choices are never cloudy. The world is divided into the forces of terror and the forces of freedom: The one’s defeat means the other’s victory.

Defeating terror by promoting freedom—it’s “the fundamental challenge of the 21^st century,” he has said several times, especially when it comes to the Middle East. But here, from the transcript of the press conference, is how he sees the region’s recent events:

What’s very interesting about the violence in Lebanon and the violence in Iraq and the violence in Gaza is this: These are all groups of terrorists who are trying to stop the advance of democracy.

What is he talking about? Hamas, which has been responsible for much of the violence in Gaza, won the Palestinian territory’s parliamentary elections. Hezbollah, which started its recent war with Israel, holds a substantial minority of seats in Lebanon’s parliament and would probably win many more seats if a new election were held tomorrow. Many of the militants waging sectarian battle in Iraq have representation in Baghdad’s popularly elected parliament.

The key reality that Bush fails to grasp is that terrorism and democracy are not opposites. They can, and sometimes do, coexist. One is not a cure for the other.

Here, as a further example of this failing, is his summation of Iraq:

I hear a lot about “civil war”… [But] the Iraqis want a unified country. … Twelve million Iraqis voted. … It’s an indication about the desire for people to live in a free society.

What he misses is that those 12 million Iraqis had sharply divided views of what a free society meant. Shiites voted for a unified country led by Shiites, Sunnis voted for a unified country led by Sunnis, and Kurds voted for their own separate country. Almost nobody voted for a free society in any Western sense of the term. (The secular parties did very poorly.)

The total number of voters, in such a context, means nothing. Look at American history. In the 1860 election, held right before our own Civil War, “http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/turnout.php”.

Another comment from the president: “It’s in our interests that we help reformers across the Middle East achieve their objectives.” But who are these reformers? What are their objectives? And how can we most effectively help them?

This is where Bush’s performance proved most discouraging. He said, as he’s said before, “Resentment and the lack of hope create the breeding grounds for terrorists.” This may or may not be true. (Many terrorist leaders are well-off, and, according to “http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812973380/sr=1-1/qid=1156277806/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-7805717-5672112?ie=UTF8&s=books”, their resentment is often aimed at foreign occupiers.) In any case, what is Bush doing to reduce their resentment?

He said he wants to help Lebanon’s democratic government survive, but what is he doing about that? Bush called the press conference to announce a $230 million aid package. That’s a step above the pathetic $50 million that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had offered the week before, but it’s still way below the $1 billion or more than Iran is shoveling to Hezbollah, which is using the money to rebuild Lebanon’s bombed-out neighborhoods—and to take credit for the assistance.

As for Iraq, it’s no news that Bush has no strategy. What did come as news—and, really, a bit of a shocker—is that he doesn’t seem to know what “strategy” means.

Asked if it might be time for a new strategy in Iraq, given the unceasing rise in casualties and chaos, Bush replied, “The strategy is to help the Iraqi people achieve their objectives and dreams, which is a democratic society. That’s the strategy. … Either you say, ‘It’s important we stay there and get it done,’ or we leave. We’re not leaving, so long as I’m the president.”

The reporter followed up, “Sir, that’s not really the question. The strategy—”

Bush interrupted, “Sounded like the question to me.”

First, it’s not clear that the Iraqi people want a “democratic society” in the Western sense. Second, and more to the point, “helping Iraqis achieve a democratic society” may be a strategic objective, but it’s not a strategy—any more than “ending poverty” or “going to the moon” is a strategy.

Strategy involves how to achieve one’s objectives—or, as the great British strategist B.H. Liddell Hart put it, “the art of distributing and applying military means to fulfill the ends of policy.” These are the issues that Bush refuses to address publicly—what means and resources are to be applied, in what way, at what risk, and to what end, in pursuing his policy. Instead, he reduces everything to two options: “Cut and run” or, “Stay the course.” It’s as if there’s nothing in between, no alternative way of applying military means. Could it be that he doesn’t grasp the distinction between an “objective” and a “strategy,” and so doesn’t see that there might be alternatives? Might our situation be that grim?

Pierre Tristam:

How Long Will America Spill Blood for Liberty’s Hijackers to Save Face?

John Nichols:

War in Iraq is Indeed a State Issue

Molly Ivins:

Cow Whisperers Against the War

Jesse Jackson:

Bush’s Pledge to Rebuild New Orleans has Proved to be All Wet

Dave Lindorff:

Public is Hungry for Impeachment News and Information

Katrina vanden Huevel:

The Battle Over Reconstruction

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George Monbiot:

We Can’t Reverse Global Warming by Triggering Another Catastrophe

HDS Greenway:

In Mideast, Remember the People

Darfur Crisis Set to Worsen?

Washington State’s Glaciers are Melting, and That Has Scientists Concerned

Ex-FEMA Chief Blames Administration

Environmental Disaster Emerges in the Mediterranean

Bush’s Miserable Vacation

“Love him or hate him,” writes Larry C. Johnson, “President Bush is having a terrible week while trying to catch some downtime in Maine. Watching the self-immolation of the Bush Presidency is certainly a spectacularly sad show. When this week is over and opinion polls are taken, we are likely to see Bush close in on low thirties or high twenties in terms of public support for his presidency. The drumbeat of bad news is incessant.”

FEMA Disputes Hold Up Nearly $1 Billion in Relief Funds on Gulf

Critics say FEMA is impeding gulf coast rebuilding as disputes hold up nearly $1 billion in relief funds. The most costly disaster in US history is fast becoming its most contentious, with appeals and disputes worth nearly a billion dollars bogging down repairs of critical public systems and delaying the return of residents.

The Militarization of the American Language

Vicki Gray writes: “Once was a time when we used to joke that military justice is to justice as military music is to music. You musicians get the point. Trouble is, military justice is no longer a joking matter. And we have moved apace in other regards. Now we must add: military language is to language as ... well ... Orwellian ‘newspeak’ is to reality. And unfortunately for those in the ‘reality-based community,’ military newspeak has replaced standard American English as the lingua franca of the United States, thanks to the spinmeisters in the White House and a pusillanimous press corps eager to lap up whatever Karl Rove, Tony Snow, and Ken Mehlman feed them.”

Rumsfeld Likens Iraq War Opponents to Those Who Appeased Hitler

Senator Jack Reed, Democrat - Rhode Island, a former Army officer and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview Tuesday that “No one has misread history more than Rumsfeld. It’s a political rant to cover up his incompetence.”

Israel Responsible for Most Truce Violations

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said Tuesday that Israel was responsible for most of the violations of the UN-brokered cease-fire that ended the 34-day conflict between Israel and Hezbollah two weeks ago. Annan has asked Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to lift Israel’s air and sea blockade of Lebanon.

The Bush-Is-an-Idiot Camp Grows

“If the commander in chief cannot talk more articulately about his strategy for winning an elective war he initiated, the problem is serious,” writes David Corn. “It’s become a truism tossed about by partisan Democrats looking to score political points, but it actually is true: Bush has little to offer but stay-the-course-ism. And he shows no signs of considering other options.”

US Accused of Bid to Oust Chavez With Secret Funds

The US government has been accused of trying to undermine the Chavez government in Venezuela by funding anonymous groups via its main international aid agency. Millions of dollars have been provided in a “pro-democracy program” that Chavez supporters claim is a covert attempt to bankroll an opposition to defeat the government.

Iran’s Leader Calls for TV Debate With Bush

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called on US President George W. Bush to participate in a “direct television debate with us,” so Iran can voice its point of view on how to end world predicaments. “But the condition is that there can be no censorship, especially for the American nation,” he said Tuesday.

US Data Show One in Eight Americans in Poverty

In the world’s biggest economy one in eight Americans and almost one in four African-Americans lived in poverty last year, the US Census Bureau said on Tuesday. The survey also showed 15.9 percent of the population, or 46.6 million, had no health insurance, up from 15.6 percent in 2004 and the fifth increase in a row.

Cascades’ Reddened Forests Signal Threat to Humans

Forests in the West are dying. Pat Rasmussen says, “As I look around, I see humans continuing life as usual, seemingly unaware that the planetary forests that make life possible are more and more stressed, pushed toward death, by our actions. We stand at the edge of a catastrophic precipice, where life as we know it may no longer be possible.”

Engineers Race to Steal Nature’s Secrets

A new generation of small green companies is emerging with radical but proven ideas to revolutionize engineering and create anything from intelligent refrigerators to colossal wind turbines moored at sea.

Counties Eye Nuke Plants, Utilities Eye Government Handouts

With the Bush administration pushing nuclear power as an “alternative energy,” big utilities are looking to revitalize what was recently a dormant industry, and some local governments are keen on the potential industrial influx.

California Assembly Approves Universal Health Care

The Democratic-controlled Legislature is on the verge of sending Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger a bill that would create a state-run universal health care system, testing him on an issue that voters rate as one of their top concerns in this election year.

Americans Without Health Benefits May Have Set Record in 2005

The number of Americans without health insurance probably rose to a record in 2005 as medical costs increased three times as fast as wages, according to forecasts for a Census Bureau report today. The total has climbed every year since President George W. Bush took office, a point Democrats are likely to seize on in this year’s congressional election.

Labor Law Change Could Gut Unions

By reclassifying workers with any significant authority in the workplace as “supervisors,” the National Labor Relations Board may effectively gut millions’ right to unionize.

The Irresistible “Talibanization” of Pakistan’s Tribal Zones

The Taliban are now imposing their law on the Pashtun regions of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan - while the US turns a blind eye.

Republican Report Hypes Iran Threat

The new report, which was carried out under the auspices of the House Intelligence Committee chairman, Congressman Peter Hoekstra, appears to be designed mainly to cast doubt on estimates by the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community that Iran was unlikely to develop a nuclear weapon until at least 2010.

Robert Novak and the Perfect Stranger

Jason Leopold reports, “Recent news reports have fingered former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage as the official who first leaked Plame’s employment at the CIA to Novak on July 8, 2003. However, White House political adviser Karl Rove also spoke with Novak that day and told him that Plame was employed by the CIA, according to published reports. What’s left unclear, however, by the latest media reports is who was the first administration official to tell Novak about Plame? Armitage or Rove? July 8, 2003, as it turns out, was quite a busy day for some senior White House officials.”

Iraqi Soldiers Refuse to Go to Baghdad, Defying Order

A group of Iraqi soldiers recently refused to go to Baghdad, Iraq’s capital, to help restore order there, a senior American military officer said Monday.

Annan Has Stern Words for Israel, Hezbollah

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said today that both Israel and the Hezbollah militia must come into quick compliance with the terms of a shaky cease-fire, demanding the release of Israeli soldiers captured by the armed Shiite group and the lifting of the air, sea and land blockade imposed by the Israeli military.

Slowly Sidling to Iraq’s Exit

“By Election Day, how many Republican candidates will have come out against the Iraq war or distanced themselves from the administration’s policies?” asks E.J. Dionne. “August 2006 will be remembered as a watershed in the politics of Iraq. It is the month in which a majority of Americans told pollsters that the struggle for Iraq was not connected to the larger war on terrorism. They thus renounced a proposition the administration has pushed relentlessly since it began making the case four years ago to invade Iraq.”

Kelpie Wilson | Death to the Incandescent

People are finally starting to take to the streets to protest climate change. But for those who won’t or can’t do that, there are plenty of other actions you can take now to damp down climate change. On the top of the list, says Kelpie Wilson, is getting rid of grossly inefficient incandescent light bulbs.

Judge Blocks Florida Voter Registration Law

A federal judge on Monday declared a new Florida voter registration law unconstitutional, ruling that its stiff penalties for violations threaten free speech rights and that political parties were improperly exempted.

How “Merchant Coal” Is Changing the Face of America

Across the nation, 153 new coal plants are currently proposed, enough to power some 93 million homes. Of those 153 proposals, only 24 intend to adopt technology to limit carbon emissions. Many are speculative “merchant coal” plants, which aim to sell the power - or even the plant itself - to the highest bidder.

Childhood Allergies Have Increased Globally Since 1991

Childhood allergies have become more widespread around the globe since 1991, according to a large study. The most common allergies are hayfever, asthma and eczema.

Few Troops Tried in Deaths of Iraqi Civilians

The majority of US service members charged in the unlawful deaths of Iraqi civilians have been acquitted, found guilty of relatively minor offenses or given administrative punishments without trials, according to a Washington Post review of concluded military cases. Charges against some of the troops were dropped completely.

Democracy Is Under Attack

“Democracy is under attack,” Gore told an audience at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. “Democracy as a system for self-governance is facing more serious challenges now than it has faced for a long time. Democracy is a conversation, and the most important role of the media is to facilitate that conversation of democracy. Now the conversation is more controlled, it is more centralized.”

Iraq War Has Bush Doctrine in Tatters

Analysts across the political spectrum say the Bush Doctrine - preventive war, choking the roots of terrorism by planting democracy, and brandishing power to force others into line - has failed. Bush’s lofty goals, shared even by his critics, have been set back, perhaps decades, by the Iraq occupation.

Secret Senator Puts “Secret Hold” on Bill to Open Federal Records

In an ironic twist, legislation that would open up the murky world of government contracting to public scrutiny has been derailed by a secret parliamentary maneuver.

Why It’s Not Working in Afghanistan

Ann Jones writes: “Remember when peaceful, democratic, reconstructed Afghanistan was advertised as the exemplar for the extreme makeover of Iraq? In August 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was already proclaiming the new Afghanistan ‘a breathtaking accomplishment’ and ‘a successful model of what could happen to Iraq.’ As everybody now knows, the model isn’t working in Iraq. So we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that it’s not working in Afghanistan either.”

Activist’s Remark Starts FBI Probe

Jim Bensman thought his suggestion during a public hearing was harmless enough: Instead of building a channel so migratory fish could go around a dam on the Mississippi River, just get rid of the dam. Instead, the environmental activist found himself in hot water, drawing FBI scrutiny to see whether he had any terrorist intentions.

You Wouldn’t Catch Me Dead in Iraq

Scores of American troops are deserting - even from the front line in Iraq. But where have they gone? And why isn’t the US Army after them? They are the US troops in Iraq to whom the American administration prefers not to draw attention. They are the deserters - those who have gone AWOL from their units and not returned, risking imprisonment and opprobrium.

FEMA Head: “White House Told Me to Lie”

The ousted head of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown, says the White House wanted him to lie about the response to Hurricane Katrina. The former FEMA chief cited what he called an email “from a very high source in the White House” that quoted the president at a Cabinet meeting saying, “Thank goodness Brown’s taking all the heat because it’s better that he takes the heat than I do.”

The Cheney Presidency

“George W. Bush has been faulted in some quarters for taking an extended vacation while the Middle East festers. It doesn’t much matter; the man running the country is Vice President Dick Cheney. When historians look back on the multiple assaults on our constitutional system of government in this era, Cheney’s unprecedented role will come in for overdue notice.” Yet, Robert Kuttner writes, “Cheney’s shotgun mishap, when he accidentally sprayed his host with birdshot, has gotten more media attention than has his control of the government.”

Return to the Scene of the Crime

“President Bush travels to the Gulf Coast this week, ostensibly to mark the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.” Frank Rich writes, “Everyone knows his real mission: to try to make us forget the first anniversary of the downfall of his presidency.”

Real Wages Fail to Match a Rise in Productivity

With the economy beginning to slow, the current expansion has a chance to become the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages for most workers.

The Bush Doctrine of Ignorance

Leonard Pitts Jr. speculates “that we are undergoing a seismic moment in presidential communication: George W. Bush is the first Information Age president.”

Robin Morgan | Manhood and Moral Waivers

Her birthday is August 19, her death day March 12. We cannot let this crime, too, pass into oblivion. When news surfaced that GIs allegedly stalked, terrorized, gang-raped, and killed an Iraqi woman, the US tried minimizing this latest atrocity by our troops_claiming the victim was age 25 or even 50, implying a rape-murder is less horrific if the victim is an older woman.

Engineers Worried on New Orleans Levees

Despite aggressive efforts to repair the New Orleans levee system following the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, it isn’t clear yet whether it could withstand a hurricane with heavy storm surge this year, the head of the Army Corps of Engineers conceded Saturday.

Military Lawyers Oppose Use of Secret Evidence in Tribunals

Despite assuring Congress that career military lawyers are helping design new trials for accused terrorists, the Bush administration has limited their input on their key request, that any tribunals must give detainees the right to see the evidence against them, officials said. After the Supreme Court struck down the White House’s military tribunals system in June, government lawyers began drafting legislation that would set new rules for trials of terrorist suspects.

Bush Still Blind to the Poverty

“How could George W. Bush have blown the aftermath of Katrina?” wonders Jonathan Alter. “It’s not as if he lacks confidence in the power of his office.”

US Preparing to Go It Alone on Iran

With increasing signs that several fellow Security Council members may stall a United States push to penalize Iran for its nuclear enrichment program, Bush administration officials have indicated that they are prepared to form an independent coalition to freeze Iranian assets and restrict trade.

Kickbacks, Smuggling and Sexual Favors

A US Army Reserve officer pleaded guilty on Friday to improperly steering millions of dollars in Iraq reconstruction contracts as part of a conspiracy involving kickbacks, smuggling and sexual favors.

Just When You Thought You’d Seen Everything: Hoekstra’s Hoax

Ray McGovern writes: “I was suffering a bit from outrage fatigue yesterday but was shaken out of it as soon as I downloaded an unusually slick paper, ‘Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States,’ released this week by House intelligence committee chair, Pete Hoekstra.”

Whistleblowers Say State Farm Cheated Katrina Victims

State Farm Insurance supervisors systematically demanded that Hurricane Katrina damage reports be buried - or replaced or changed - so that the company would not have to pay policyholders’ claims in Mississippi, according to State Farm insiders.

Mother Nature Ups the Ante

Global warming is changing the insurance industry. Says Allstate CEO Edward Liddy: “We are in a period of increased land and sea surface temperatures. When you couple that with more people living along coasts and dramatically increased home values in those areas, that’s when you step back and you say, ‘Wait a minute. This is not yesterday’s game.’”

Feinstein Unveils Democrats’ Plan to Cut Greenhouse Gas

In a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco Thursday night, Senator Dianne Feinstein offered a new Democratic outline of a plan to attack global warming in the next session of Congress - and put political opponents on the defensive headed into the fall campaign season.

Government Proposes Oil and Gas Sales in Central Gulf of Mexico

The US Interior Department proposed Thursday that oil and gas leases be made available in an area now off-limits in the east-central Gulf of Mexico. The proposed plan also includes lease offerings in the Atlantic Ocean off the Virginia coast and in the Pacific Ocean’s North Aleutian Basin off Alaska.

Burning Wetlands Unleash Mercury in Wake of Climate Change

Released into the atmosphere most prodigiously with the launching of the industrial age, the toxic element mercury falls back onto Earth, and accumulates particularly in North American wetlands. A new study finds wildfires, growing more frequent and intense, are unleashing this sequestered mercury at levels up to 15 times greater than originally calculated.

Wal-Mart Licks Its Wounds

Barbara Ehrenreich says, “The Wal-Mart business model increasingly betrays what was once the operating principle of American capitalism, as explained by Henry Ford the First: ‘You’ve got to pay your workers enough so that they can buy your product; that’s what keeps the system going.’”

Wiretapping in America: The Moment of Decision Is Near

Bill Simpich writes: “Two district court rulings in the last month focus on whether the National Security Agency will be free to eavesdrop on Americans as a matter of domestic policy ... The odds are good that both of these cases will be heard by the United States Supreme Court before George Bush completes his term of office, if they are not mooted by the passage of the National Security Surveillance Act this autumn ... The outcome of these NSA cases and this autumn’s Congressional vote will affect the entire future of this country.”

GOP Candidate Says 9/11 Attacks Were a Hoax

A Republican candidate for the 2nd District congressional seat in New Hampshire said Wednesday that the US government was complicit in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In an editorial board interview with the Telegraph on Wednesday, Mary Maxwell said the US government had a role in killing nearly 3,000 people at the World Trade Center and Pentagon, so it could make Americans hate Arabs and allow the military to bomb Muslim nations like Iraq.

State Department Investigates Israeli Use of US-Made Cluster Bombs

The State Department is investigating whether Israel’s use of American-made cluster bombs in southern Lebanon violated secret agreements with the United States that restrict when it can employ such weapons. A report released Wednesday by the United Nations Mine Action Coordination Center said it had found unexploded bomblets, including hundreds of American types, in 249 locations south of the Litani River.

Bush and Saddam Should Both Stand Trial, Says Nuremberg Prosecutor

A chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg has said George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein. Benjamin Ferenccz, who secured convictions for 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating the death squads that killed more than 1 million people, told OneWorld that both Bush and Saddam should be tried for starting “aggressive” wars - Saddam for his 1990 attack on Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Russia Spins Global Energy Spider’s Web

W. Joseph Stroupe writes: “The vast bulk of the world’s oil, gas and strategic minerals resources either is coming under or is already under the control of authoritarian, or less-than-democratic, or leftist, or otherwise radical regimes either with a decidedly anti-Western political stance and ideology or pointedly decreased sensitivities to strategic US interests. Contrary to the assumptions of conventional wisdom, the US hasn’t any longer the global leverage to shape unfolding developments in its favor.”

Afghan Leader Orders Probe of Killings

President Hamid Karzai ordered an investigation Friday into the killings of eight people in eastern Afghanistan during a raid that US forces claimed targeted al Qaeda members, according to a government statement. The US military said seven al Qaeda suspects and a child were killed in Thursday’s joint American-Afghan operation in eastern Kunar province’s Shigal district. Police said civilians, not al Qaeda members, were targeted.

Chris Floyd | Judicial Cover for Crony Contractors

They say that America’s increasingly right-wing courts are bent on halting the forward march of civil rights, but that’s a typical liberal canard. Why, just last week, a federal judge - appointed by Ronald Reagan, no less - issued a bold ruling that offers shield and succor to a small, despised minority on the fringes of American society: war profiteers.

Botched Katrina Response Still Haunts Bush

Katrina, which killed about 1,500 people and displaced hundreds of thousands across four states, was a catalyst for a slide in Bush’s poll numbers from which he has only partially recovered.

GOP Congressman Shays Urges Iraq Withdrawal

Representative Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), once an ardent supporter of the war in Iraq, said yesterday that the Bush administration should set a time frame for withdrawing US troops. Shays is one of only a few Congressional Republicans supporting a timetable for ending US involvement in the Iraq fighting, which has claimed the lives of more than 2,600 US troops and an estimated 40,000 to 45,000 Iraqi civilians.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/31/ap/politics/mainD8JR543O0.shtml

Barkley Addresses Politics, Religion

Former NBA star Charles Barkley addresses politics, religion and gay rights in interview

NEW YORK, Aug. 31, 2006
AP) Charles Barkley was his usual outspoken self during a recent television interview in which he said, among other things, that he advocates gay marriage, believes Republicans have screwed up the country and is “struggling with my idea of what religion is.”

Barkley was a Republican until recently, saying he switched parties when the Republicans “lost their minds.”

August 31, 2006

Remembrance of Bush’s fiascoes

Each disaster of Bush’s presidency triggers remembrance of another. Bush’s neglectful behavior before Katrina recalls his studious indifference to terrorism on the eve of 9/11. His refusal to respond to the briefing by Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, that the levees would likely be breached eerily repeated his administration’s dismissive attitude toward Clarke’s warnings and the Aug. 6 PDB on bin Laden. From 9/11 to Katrina, the pattern, we can now recall, is remarkably consistent.

Remembrance of Bush’s fiascoes does not overshadow the reality that they are not sealed in the past but are continuing catastrophes. As new failures unfold, the old ones appear in their refracted light. Memories of Bush’s damage acquire deeper meanings with each new calamity.

Consider: In the New Orleans black community of the Lower 9th Ward, only 200 of its original 14,400 residents have returned to their blasted homes. Though statistics are unavailable, it is likely that Hezbollah has already rebuilt more homes in southern Lebanon than Bush has a year after Katrina in the Lower 9th Ward.

Sidney Blumenthal | Salon (read more. . .)

August 30, 2006

The Crock of Appeasement

The warmongers, imperialists, and just plain greedy who wish to use up US troops to gain their ill-gotten goods love to use the word “appeasement.” Anyone who stands against their expansionist ambitions will be tagged with this term. In the lexicology of the Rabid Right, it evokes British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s attempt to negotiate with German Chancellor Adolph Hitler. It is certainly the case that Hitler was a genocidal maniac and not the sort of man with whom one could usefully negotiate. But not all negotiation is equally fruitless. Before that incident, by the way, “appeasement” had a positive connotation, of “seeking peace.”

The rightwing use of the term appeasement, however, turns it on its head. Taken seriously, the doctrine of “no appeasement” on the right would mean we are stuck in perpetual war, always doomed to be on the offensive, always dedicated to gobbling up more of other people’s territory and wealth even at the expense of living in constant dread of being blown up and being forced to give up the civil liberties which had made American civilization great.

It would never be possible to negotiate a truce with any enemy. That would be appeasement. It would never be possible to compromise. That would be appeasement. It would never be prudent to withdraw troops from a failed war. That would be appeasement. In other words, the rightwing doctrine of “no appeasement, ever” actually turns you into Hitler rather than into Churchill.

Juan Cole | Informed Comment (read more. . .)

August 29, 2006

War’s Reckoning

Both the United States and Israel have been at the mercy of the same illusion, that the hammer of military force is the tool to use against every threat. To oppose the rush to war is not to deny that threats are real, but only to insist that war is as likely to exacerbate the threat as to eliminate it. In the age of weapons of mass destruction, especially, the old dichotomy between “realists” and “idealists” is a false one. Now the argument against war starts not from a moralizing pacifism, but from a profoundly realistic assessment of what actually happens when violence takes over. When mass destruction and pain are inflicted to no purpose, the old lesson of ethics reverses itself: If the ends don’t justify the means, nothing does.

This is the kind of reckoning that should be going on in America and Israel today. The failures are not of tactics or strategy, but of insight and history. Across the last 60 years, wars have been waged to no purpose. Millions of civilians have been killed. Enemies have been empowered, not defeated. That history is denied with every national budget drawn to give primacy to weapons, at the expense of humane investments that attack structures of violence at the source. The only justification for these terrible wars today will be if they lead to new thinking tomorrow.

James Carroll | Boston Globe (read more. . .)

August 28, 2006

Iraq: a War About Nothing

As the anniversary approaches, we hear again some voices of reason and some voices of passion, from those who tried to penetrate the sophistry and bring some clarity to the public. Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, co-chairmen of the 9/11 commission, describe in their new book “Without Precedent” the freakish political reaction to the panel’s conclusion that there were no operational links between Iraq and al-Qaeda. After the president publicly contradicted their findings, and the vice president attacked the press for its account of them, Kean found himself at a news conference searching for the right words: The commission found “there is no credible evidence that we can discover, after a long investigation, that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were in any way part of the attack on the United States,” he said.

Kristen Breitweiser, most prominent of the 9/11 widows who became known as the Jersey Girls, voted for Bush in 2000. Her late husband, Ron, idolized Cheney. But in her new autobiography, Breitweiser recounts the fear that overtook her while watching the 2004 Republican National Convention. “I heard the expressions ‘war for a lifetime’ and ‘9/11’ repeated endlessly,” Breitweiser writes in “Wake-Up Call.” “I started thinking about Caroline and her future. I started getting scared about her safety. I didn’t want to hand her a war for the next hundred years. That wasn’t my job as a mom.”

If we now are embarked on a contemporary hundred years’ war, what will historians say was its cause? Certainly 9/11 was the watershed event, but before that was the founding of Israel in 1948 and before that, the carving up of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. What separates Bush from other world leaders who have tried to contain the centrifugal forces of the Middle East is not a lack of historical information or sound advice or allies who seek the same goals.

It is his own distorted thinking, a trait that is personal and not political, and has put the United States on a path that runs through darkness.

Marie Cocco | Daily Camera (read more. . .)

August 27, 2006

The Trouble with Bush’s ‘Islamofascism’

“Islamo-fascism” looks like an analytic term, but really it’s an emotional one, intended to get us to think less and fear more. It presents the bewildering politics of the Muslim world as a simple matter of Us versus Them, with war to the end the only answer, as with Hitler. If you doubt that every other British Muslim under the age of 30 is ready to blow himself up for Allah, or that shredding the Constitution is the way to protect ourselves from suicide bombers, if you think that Hamas might be less popular if Palestinians were less miserable, you get cast as Neville Chamberlain, while Bush plays FDR. “Islamo-fascism” rescues the neocons from harsh verdicts on the invasion of Iraq (”cakewalk… roses… sweetmeats… Chalabi”) by reframing that ongoing debacle as a minor chapter in a much larger story of evil madmen who want to fly the green flag of Islam over the capitals of the West. Suddenly it’s just a detail that Saddam wasn’t connected with 9/11, had no WMDs, was not poised to attack the United States or Israel — he hated freedom, and that was enough. It doesn’t matter, either, that Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites seem less interested in uniting the umma than in murdering one another. With luck we’ll be so scared we won’t ask why anyone should listen to another word from people who were spectacularly wrong about the biggest politico-military initiative of the past thirty years, and their balding heads will continue to glow on our TV screens for many nights to come. On to Tehran!

It remains to be seen if “Islamo-fascism” will win back the socially liberal “security moms” who voted for Bush in 2004 but have recently been moving toward the Democrats. But the word is already getting a big reaction in the Muslim world. As I write the New York Times is carrying a full page “open letter” to Bush from the Al Kharafi Group, the mammoth Kuwaiti construction company, featuring photos of dead and wounded Lebanese civilians. “We think there is a misunderstanding in determining: “‘Who deserves to be accused of being a fascist’!!!!”

“Islamo-fascism” enrages to no purpose the dwindling number of Muslims who don’t already hate us. At the same time, it clouds with ideology a range of situations — Lebanon, Palestine, airplane and subway bombings, Afghanistan, Iraq — we need to see clearly and distinctly and deal with in a focused way. No wonder the people who brought us the disaster in Iraq are so fond of it.

Katha Pollitt | The Nation (read more. . .)

August 26, 2006

Why anyone should hate us

The Israeli military extensively used US-made cluster bombs in civilian areas of Lebanon, which is a war crime. The bombs frequently do not detonate, so now south Lebanon is littered with deadly fist-size bomblets that will inevitably kill and disfigure children and other civilians.

The US State Department will investigate whether Israeli deployment of these weapons in civilian areas violated secret agreements under which Washington supplied them to Israel.

Nothing will come of the investigation, given the clout of the Israel lobby in Washington, but someday the relative of an innocent maimed Lebanese may decide to take revenge on the country that supplied the cluster bombs. And the American public will ask in astonishment why anyone should hate us.

Juan Cole | Informed Comment (read more. . .)

August 25, 2006

To Iran with love

The Iranians have also enjoyed the fruits of an incredibly reckless decision by the Bush administration — again encouraged by the neoconservatives — to back Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon. Tehran’s friends in Hezbollah are now the toast of the Arab world, and they are well on their way to destabilizing Iran’s enemies (and America’s allies), destroying any chance to revive the peace process, and radicalizing Muslims around the world. What benefit, if any, the U.S. or Israel derived from this latest misadventure is hard to see.

At still another level of policy, the Bush administration has fought to prevent the imposition of automobile fuel economy standards or other conservation measures that would begin to free us from Iranian threats to withhold oil. While the White House occasionally pretends to be interested in new energy technologies, the government has done little or nothing to pursue real energy independence. But then, that is simply the inevitable result of electing George W. Bush as president, a failed oilman more concerned with chopping brush and making fart jokes than foreign policy.

And then there’s Dick Cheney, the real author of these disastrous policies. It is the vice president who has provided the bureaucratic muscle behind the neoconservatives, whose patronage he has long enjoyed at the American Enterprise Institute. Cheney too has a curious history with Iran, as the former chief executive of Halliburton, a company that blithely and repeatedly violated U.S. sanctions against Iran through foreign subsidiaries. As a congressman, Cheney was also the most outspoken apologist for the secret arms trading with the Iranian mullahs, despite their record of supporting terrorism against American troops, that almost brought down the Reagan administration.

But Cheney is an opponent of Tehran, as are his comrades at the Weekly Standard, in the Pentagon and elsewhere in the ranks of neoconservatism. They aren’t secretly trying to give aid and comfort to Tehran.

It only looks that way.

Joe Conason | Salon (read more. . .)

August 24, 2006

When War is on the Horizon, Follow the Money

While Americans understand that making money motivates McDonald’s or Wal-Mart, and some are concerned about businesses donating large sums to influence politicians, most are unaware of how the profit motive helps shape U.S. foreign policy.

This is caused in part by our leaders draping decisions, especially wars, in patriotism. Take Iraq; President Bush leads Americans to believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11, has weapons of mass destruction, and threatens our national security. Once he invades Iraq, any questioning is portrayed as endangering our troops and homeland.

By the time most Americans realize that none of it is true, thousands of young soldiers are killed or maimed and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars are flowing to often incompetent, politically connected Pentagon contractors.

For most decent, caring Americans it is almost unthinkable that the profit motive played a significant role in putting our soldiers in harm’s way. It is painful to acknowledge that we have been lied to, and to ask, why? Why was this war started? What role did our president’s, vice president’s, and secretary of state’s close ties to the oil industry play? Which powerful American companies stood to profit?

Bruce Jackson founded the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq in 2002, a few months after retiring from Lockheed Martin. In 2001, he and other members of the neocon Project for a New American Century wrote to President Bush stating that “American forces must be prepared to back up our commitment to the Iraqi opposition by all necessary means.” A year earlier, Jackson had chaired the subcommittee that produced the Republican Party’s foreign policy plank that George Bush ran on in 2000.

Any chance that the views Jackson promoted had something to do with the billions that Lockheed Martin pockets thanks to the war?

For war profiteers, soldiers returning maimed or in caskets, and a $500 billion Pentagon budget paid for by the taxes of ordinary citizens, are externalities — costs and consequences borne by others.

Gary Ferdman and Myriam Miedzian | Seattle Post-Intelligencer (read more. . .)

August 22, 2006

Their Bodies as Weapons

The victim’s name was Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi. Abeer means “fragrance of flowers”. She was 14 years old. According to a statement by one of the accused, the soldiers first noticed her at a checkpoint. On March 12, after playing cards while slugging whisky, they changed into civvies and burst into Abeer’s home. They killed her mother, father and five-year-old sister and “took turns” raping Abeer. Finally, according to the statement, they murdered her, drenched the bodies with kerosene, and set them on fire. Then the GIs grilled chicken wings.

The US military is now a mercenary force. In addition to hired militias and “independent contractors”, we have a draft: a poverty draft. That’s why the army is disproportionately comprised of ethnic minorities seeking education, healthcare, housing. But there are other perks. Teenage males, hormones surging, are taught to confuse their bodies with weapons, and relish it.

One training song (with lewd gestures) goes: “This is my rifle, this is my gun; one is for killing, one is for fun.” The US air force admits showing films of violent pornography to pilots before they fly bombing raids. Feminist scholars have been exposing these phallocentric military connections for decades. When I wrote The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism, I presented evidence on how the terrorist mystique and the hero legend have the same root: the patriarchal pursuit of manhood. How can rape not be central to the propaganda that violence is erotic - a pervasive message affecting everything from US foreign policy to “camouflage chic” and glamorised gangsta styles?

Atrocity fatigue has set in. Wasn’t rape a staple of war long before the Iliad? Weren’t thousands of women and girls raped and killed in death camps in the former Yugoslavia? And weren’t early reports of gang rape attacks from another small troubled country ignored? It was merely about women, and hardly anyone had heard of the place: Rwanda.

Yet the Pentagon is shocked. Have we already forgotten Abu Ghraib? Photographs of sexually tortured men leaked, but those of abused women are still classified for fear of greater outrage. So many military rapes have occurred in Okinawa, Korea, and the Philippines that feminists organised movements in protest. Incidents keep occurring near US bases, including hundreds of reported rapes of female soldiers by their fellow GIs.

In 1998, a landmark United Nations decision recognised rape as a war crime. The international tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia issued indictments and convictions on sexual violence grounds.

Sometimes, a few “nice American guys” are found guilty. Then all returns to normal. They are sacrificed to save those who train them to do what they did, and to save the careers of politicians who sermonise obscenely about “moral values” while issuing moral waivers.

Robin Morgan | Guardian/UK (read more. . .)

Goats and Hussars: A British Harbinger of American Defeat

Chris Floyd writes: “Don Rumsfeld is fond of historical analogies when pontificating about Iraq; he particularly favors comparisons to the Nazi era and the Allied occupation of Germany after World War II. Unfortunately, any historian will tell you that Rummy’s parallels are invariably false, even ludicrous. So we thought we’d give the beleaguered Pentagon warlord a more accurate and telling analogy to chew on.”

Letter From Ally Denouncing Bush’s WMD Hunt - Suppressed

A damning six-page letter on the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was suppressed by Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, according to a former senior diplomat.

Senator Stevens Exposed as “Secret Blocker” of Legislation

Alaska Senator Ted Stevens has been exposed, by the process of elimination, as the middle-of-the-night insider who blocked a bill to make public the spending patterns of the government.

$20 Million PR Bid Offered to Change US Image in Iraq

US military leaders in Baghdad have put out for bid a two-year, $20 million public relations contract that calls for extensive monitoring of US and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq.

Indiana Residents Fight Plans for “Divine Strake” Explosion

After a Nevada newspaper reported the Department of Defense was considering conducting the largest non-nuclear blast in US history at a site it has tested before, like the quarry in Mitchell, Indiana, the word spread and spurred residents to make sure the possibility never becomes reality there.

Soldiers Die, CEOs prosper

Derrick Z. Jackson points out: “While Army privates died overseas earning $25,000 a year, David Brooks, the disgraced former CEO of body armor-maker DHB, made $192 million in stock sales in 2004. He staged a reported $10 million bat mitzvah for his daughter. The 2005 pay package for Halliburton CEO David Lesar, head of the firm that most symbolizes the occupation’s waste, overcharges and ghost charges on no-bid contracts, was $26 million.”

The Courage to Say No to War

A Report by Geoffrey Millard and Scott Galindez

22-year-old Army Specialist Mark Wilkerson sat down with Geoffrey Millard last night to discuss his decision to turn himself in to the Army after over 18 months of being AWOL. As Millard points out in the interview, there is now a growing, visible GI resistance to the war in Iraq.

Bush Bets on War, Again

With the midterm elections coming into view, President Bush is launching an extended publicity tour to draw attention back to the threat of terrorism, quickly pivoting to more comfortable political territory for him after the focus in recent days on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Blinded by a Concept

“The failure of Israel to subdue Hezbollah demonstrates the many weaknesses of the war-on-terror concept. One of those weaknesses is that even if the targets are terrorists,” writes George Soros, “the victims are often innocent civilians, and their suffering reinforces the terrorist cause.”

Ohio to Delay Destruction of Presidential Ballots

With paper ballots from the 2004 presidential election in Ohio scheduled to be destroyed next week, the secretary of state in Columbus, under pressure from critics, said yesterday that he would move to delay the destruction at least for several months.

UN Slams Israel’s Use of US Cluster Bombs

The UN humanitarian chief on Wednesday accused Israel of “shocking” and “completely immoral” behavior for dropping large numbers of cluster bombs on Lebanon when a cease-fire in its war with Hezbollah was in sight.

Globalization: It Didn’t Just Happen

“Most workers have seen very little real wage growth over the last quarter century. There is not a single explanation for the upward redistribution of income over this period, but most economists agree that globalization is at least part of the story,” writes Dean Baker.

Sarah Olson | Bush Pushes Nuclear Weapons Development in US

In the face of increased Congressional opposition to US nuclear weapons development, the Bush administration appears to be making an end run around governmental checks and balances. The bizarrely named Divine Strake project is a 700-ton explosive experiment first scheduled to detonate at the Nevada Test Site in June of this year. Thanks to furious grass-roots opposition to the proposal, Divine Strake has been twice delayed, and is currently projecting a detonation date of no sooner than early 2007.

Challenging the Culture of Obedience

“We are here to say, ‘We will not stand for it any more. No more lies. No more pre-emptive, illegal war, based on false information. No more God-is-on-our-side religious nonsense to justify this immoral, illegal war. No more inhumanity.’ Let’s raise our voices,” Salt Lake City mayor Ross C. “Rocky” Anderson proclaimed, “and demand, ‘Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give us the truth!’”

The Bush Administration and Godwin’s Law

Ken Silverstein writes: “There is a dictum known as ‘Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies,’ coined in 1990 by a man named Mike Godwin. This law holds that ‘as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.’ Anyone who has spent time on political discussion boards can see that it’s true; in any charged debate (abortion, Iraq, Israel, foreign policy), it’s only a matter of time before someone compares his opponent to Hitler.”

US Force in Iraq Expands to 140,000

The United States has expanded its force in Iraq to 140,000 troops, the most since January and 13,000 more than five weeks ago, the Pentagon said on Thursday, amid relentless violence in Baghdad and elsewhere.

Fascist Appeasers

“I am no appeaser of fascism, for I have fought this administration at every step. Millions have done the same, and will continue to do so. To stand in opposition to this new type of fascism, embodied in the hypocrisies and lies of men like Rumsfeld and Bush, is as much our patriotic duty as the time I spent in that jury room,” writes William Rivers Pitt.

Pentagon Gives Gloomy Iraq Report

Sectarian violence is spreading in Iraq and the security problems have become more complex than at any time since the US invasion in 2003, the Pentagon said Friday.

Leaked Memo: BLM Fails to Track Environmental Data on Gas Fields

The Bureau of Land Management has neglected its public commitments to monitor and limit harm to wildlife and air quality from gas drilling on public land in western Wyoming, according to an internal BLM assessment.

Defense Department Continues to Stall Wind Power Projects

Environmental groups are accusing the Defense Department of “paralyzing” the development of wind energy projects, and costing citizens the environmental benefits of clean energy in the process.

US State CO2 Laws Won’t Prevent Coal Boom

US states’ plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions could lead to little change in national carbon output - simply pushing coal-fired power plants and other dirty industries to relocate in states without rules - experts said on Thursday.

Has Canada Got the Cure?

“Should the United States implement a more inclusive, publicly funded health care system? That’s a big debate throughout the country. But even as it rages, most Americans are unaware that the United States is the only country in the developed world that doesn’t already have a fundamentally public - that is, tax-supported - health care system,” writes Holly Dressel.

On the Job, Nursing Mothers Find a Two-Class System

When a new mother returns to Starbucks corporate headquarters in Seattle after maternity leave, she learns what is behind the doors mysteriously marked “Lactation Room.” Whenever she likes, she can slip away from her desk and behind those doors ... depositing her breast milk in bottles to be toted home later. But if the mothers who staff the chain’s counters want to do the same, they must barricade themselves in small restrooms intended for customers, counting the minutes left in their breaks.

Bush vs. Ahmadinejad: A TV Debate We’ll Never See

“When Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, invited President Bush to engage in a ‘direct television debate’ a few days ago, the White House predictably responded by calling the offer ‘a diversion.’ But even though this debate will never happen, it’s worth contemplating,” writes Norman Solomon.

Activists Want Ohio Election Chief Out

Activists filed a civil-rights lawsuit Thursday claiming Secretary of State Ken Blackwell deprived people of their voting rights during the 2004 presidential election, and are seeking to have him removed from overseeing the general election in November.

US Direct Action: How American Cities Have Bypassed Bush on Kyoto

It is not just the state of California that is bypassing the authority of the US government to take action on global warming. The mayors of more than 300 cities across the country have signed a Climate Protection Agreement in which they have pledged to meet the emissions-cutting timetable laid down by the Kyoto Protocol - regardless of what the Bush administration decides.

Guantanamo Detentions Over Charity Ties Questioned

The US military has held Adel Hassan Hamad in prison at Guantanamo Bay, based in part on allegations that he worked for two charity groups in Afghanistan that the US military says support terrorism. But neither group appears on the State Department’s list of designated terrorist organizations, and one of them operates openly from an office in Britain.

Perfect Storm for the Poor

E.J. Dionne Jr. writes: “The proportion of the poor who are very poor has risen. People are considered in deep poverty if they have half or less of the yearly income of those at the poverty line. In 2005 half the poverty line for a family of three was $7,788; for a family of four it was $9,985. (Try living on that.) According to the new report, 43.1 percent of poor people lived in that sort of deep poverty - a record since 1975, when the government started assembling such statistics.”

Women Suddenly Scarce Among Justices’ Clerks

Everyone knows that with the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the number of female Supreme Court justices fell by half. The talk of the court this summer, with the arrival of the new crop of law clerks, is that the number of female clerks has fallen even more sharply.

“We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft.”

-Adlai Ewing Stevenson, 2/5/1900 - 7/14/1965, American politician/diplomat

“I’ve got a eckelectic reading list!” -GWB

(The transcript, somewhat understandably, just says “eclectic,” but if you heard it on television, he says, in his on-going stumbling, “eck-electic.”)

WHAT??

***

9/10/06

Contract for America? In what ways has this group of yahoos in power has fulfilled the promises? All I see is shredded pieces of paper and exponential corruption...

“To restore accountability to Congress. To end its cycle of scandal and disgrace. To make us all proud again of the way free people govern themselves.“

http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2003/tst071403.htm

What Happened to Conservatives?

The so-called conservative movement of the last 20 years, starting with the Reagan revolution of the 1980s, followed by the 1994 Gingrich takeover of the House, and culminating in the early 2000s with Republican control of both Congress and the White House, seems a terrible failure today. Republicans have failed utterly to shrink the size of government; instead it is bigger and costlier than ever before. Federal spending spirals out of control, new Great Society social welfare programs have been created, and the national debt is rising by more than a half-trillion dollars per year. Whatever happened to the conservative vision supposedly sweeping the nation?

One thing is certain: those who worked and voted for less government, the very foot soldiers in the conservative revolution, have been deceived. Today, the ideal of limited government has been abandoned by the GOP, and real conservatives find their views no longer matter.

True limited government conservatives have been co-opted by the rise of the neoconservatives in Washington. The neoconservatives- a name they gave themselves- are largely hardworking, talented people who have worked their way into positions of power in Washington. Their views dominate American domestic and foreign policy today, as their ranks include many of the President’s closest advisors. They have successfully moved the Republican party away from the Goldwater-era platform of frugal government at home and nonintervention abroad, toward a big-government, world empire mentality more reminiscent of Herbert Hoover or Woodrow Wilson. In doing so, they have proven that their ideas are neither new nor conservative.

Modern neoconservatives are not necessarily monolithic in their views, but they generally can be described as follows:

-They agree with Trotsky’s idea of a permanent revolution;
-They identify strongly with the writings of Leo Strauss;
-They express no opposition to the welfare state, and will expand it to win votes and power;
-They believe in a powerful federal government;
-They believe the ends justify the means in politics- that hardball politics is a moral necessity;
-They believe lying is necessary for the state to survive;
-They believe certain facts should be known only by the political elite, and withheld from the general public;
-They believe in preemptive war and the naked use of military force to achieve any desired ends;
-They openly endorse the idea of an American empire, and hence unapologetically call for imperialism;
-They are very willing to use force to impose American ideals;
-They scoff at the Founding Father’s belief in neutrality in foreign affairs;
-They believe 9/11 resulted from a lack of foreign entanglements, not from too many;
-They are willing to redraw the map of the Middle East by force, while unconditionally supporting Israel and the Likud Party;
-They view civil liberties with suspicion, as unnecessary restrictions on the federal government;
-They despise libertarians, and dismiss any arguments based on constitutional grounds.

Those who love liberty, oppose unjustified war, and resent big-brother government must identify the philosophy that is influencing policy today. If the neoconservatives are wrong- and I believe they are- we must demonstrate this to the American people, and offer an alternative philosophy that is both morally superior and produces better results in terms of liberty and prosperity. It is time for true conservatives to retake the conservative movement.

As far fetched as your declarations of political science are now appearing, those of physical science seem even less accurate. The evidence piles up to a new level, 800,000 years of history...

“I believe Global Warming is a myth perpetuated by the Sierra Club.” (August 26, 2005)

Published on Tuesday, September 5, 2006 by the Independent / UK

Ice Bubbles Reveal Biggest Rise in CO2 for 800,000 Years

by Steve Connor

The rapid rise in greenhouse gases over the past century is unprecedented in at least 800,000 years, according to a study of the oldest Antarctic ice core which highlights the reality of climate change.

Air bubbles trapped in ice for hundreds of thousands of years have revealed that humans are changing the composition of the atmosphere in a manner that has no known natural parallel.

Scientists See New Global Warming Threat

Sep 06 1:01 PM US/Eastern

By SETH BORENSTEIN

AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON

New research is raising concerns that global warming may be triggering a self-perpetuating climate time bomb trapped in once-frozen permafrost.

As the Earth warms, greenhouse gases once stuck in the long-frozen soil are bubbling into the atmosphere in much larger amounts than previously anticipated, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Nature.

US Direct Action: How American Cities Have Bypassed Bush on Kyoto

It is not just the state of California that is bypassing the authority of the US government to take action on global warming. The mayors of more than 300 cities across the country have signed a Climate Protection Agreement in which they have pledged to meet the emissions-cutting timetable laid down by the Kyoto Protocol - regardless of what the Bush administration decides.

Published on Tuesday, September 5, 2006 by the Sydney Morning Herald

Inconvenient Truth That Can’t be Ignored

by Tanya Plibersek

When a film about climate change featuring Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, was shown in Parliament House in Canberra on Monday night, even the enviro-sceptics and climate change flat-earthers were shocked. Climate change requires determined government action and a change in the way we live that goes well beyond the next electoral cycle.

The film examines some of the effects of climate change: extreme weather - droughts, floods, cyclones; the potential displacement of millions of environmental refugees as water levels rise; extinction of plant and animal species. It shows that last year was the hottest year on record, and the 10 hottest years have been in the past 14. Category 4 and 5 cyclones and hurricanes have doubled in the past 30 years.

Gore’s film focuses mostly on US science, but the Australian context is just as scary. By 2030, the CSIRO says, Sydney’s water supply will drop by 25 per cent, as will rainfall in the Murray-Darling Basin. Domestic food supply and agricultural exports will be affected. NSW is experiencing its worst drought ever. Wetlands such as Kakadu face permanent change and warmer oceans threaten the coral that builds our Great Barrier Reef.

The respected international biodiversity expert Professor Norman Myers has warned the world is facing the largest mass extinction in 65 million years. Myers told the National Press Club in March that Australia’s conservation efforts would be brought to nought unless we tackled climate change. There was little point trying to protect individual species, he said, without tackling global warming.

We can’t pick and choose the environmental science that suits our political purposes. Unarguably climate change is happening, although uncertainty exists about the pace of change - it could be that disaster is approaching faster than we thought.

Deadly Diseases Migrate With Global Warming

Climate change is exacerbating the spread of infectious diseases, according to new research. Warming temperatures are causing organisms to migrate, and European countries are seeing outbreaks of tropical diseases. Researchers also warn that not enough is being done to monitor the spread of big killers such as malaria in Africa.

EARTHTALK

Week of 9/3/2006

Climate change accelerates the spread of disease primarily because warmer global temperatures enlarge the geographic range in which disease-carrying animals, insects and microorganisms--as well as the germs and viruses they carry--can survive. Analysts believe that, as a result of global temperature rises, diseases that were previously limited only to tropical areas may show up increasingly in other, previously cooler areas

A Congressionally-mandated assessment of climate change and health conducted in 2001 predicted that global warming will cause or increased incidences of malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, encephalitis and respiratory diseases throughout the world in coming decades. The assessment also concluded that insect- and rodent-borne diseases would become more prevalent throughout the U.S. and Europe.

The news isn’t good for less developed parts of the world either. Researchers have found that more than two-thirds of waterborne disease outbreaks (such as cholera) follow major precipitation events, which are already increasing due to global warming.

CONTACTS: Natural Resources Defense Council Consequences of Global Warming, www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/fcons.asp.

The End of Eden

James Lovelock Says This Time We’ve Pushed the Earth Too Far

By Michael Powell

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, September 2, 2006; C01

“Our global furnace is out of control. By 2020, 2025, you will be able to sail a sailboat to the North Pole. The Amazon will become a desert, and the forests of Siberia will burn and release more methane and plagues will return.”

Sulfurous musings are not Lovelock’s characteristic style; he’s no Book of Revelation apocalyptic. In his 88th year, he remains one of the world’s most inventive scientists, an Englishman of humor and erudition, with an oenophile’s taste for delicious controversy. Four decades ago, his discovery that ozone-destroying chemicals were piling up in the atmosphere started the world’s governments down a path toward repair.

Now Lovelock has turned his attention to global warming, writing “The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity.” Already a big seller in the United Kingdom, the book was released in the United States last month.

Within the next decade or two, Lovelock forecasts, Gaia will hike her thermostat by at least 10 degrees. Earth, he predicts, will be hotter than at any time since the Eocene Age 55 million years ago, when crocodiles swam in the Arctic Ocean.

“There’s no realization of how quickly and irreversibly the planet is changing,” Lovelock says. “Maybe 200 million people will migrate close to the Arctic and survive this. Even if we took extraordinary steps, it would take the world 1,000 years to recover.”

Have you googled “failure” yet?

And another assortment from headlines and the well spoken realists, even better in their entirety...

US Deaths in Iraq, War on Terror Surpass 9/11 Toll

CNN

Sunday 03 September 2006

As the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States approaches, another somber benchmark has just been passed.

The announcement Sunday of four more U.S. military deaths in Iraq raises the death toll to 2,974 for U.S. military service members in Iraq and in what the Bush administration calls the war on terror.

The 9/11 attack killed 2,973 people, including Americans and foreign nationals but excluding the terrorists. The 9/11 death toll was calculated by CNN.

Of the 2,974 U.S. military service members killed, 329 died in Operation Enduring Freedom and 2,645 in Operation Iraqi Freedom, according to the Pentagon. The total includes seven American civilian contractors working for the military in Iraq.

Published on Friday, September 1, 2006 by the “http://www.suntimes.com/output/greeley/cst-edt-greel01.html”

Blame 9/11 on Airlines, Congress, Bush

by Andrew Greeley

The most guilty individuals were President Bush and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. They wrote off the warnings about al-Qaida they inherited from the Clinton administration as just one more element of the Clinton years they wanted to discard. We won’t give terrorism as high a priority as the previous administrations, Rice told Richard Clark. In a work of prestidigitation worthy of the greatest political crooks in history, the administration excused itself from responsibility and shifted the blame onto President Bill Clinton. Again the national media let them get away with it.

Published on Friday, September 1, 2006 by the “http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329566104-103677,00.html”

Their View of the World is Through a Bombsight
American support for Israel’s unwinnable aim of destroying Hizbullah only boosts its support in Lebanon and beyond

by Noam Chomsky

It is no secret that Israel has helped to destroy secular Arab nationalism and to create Hizbullah and Hamas, just as US violence has expedited the rise of extremist Islamic fundamentalism and jihadi terror. The latest adventure is likely to create new generations of bitter and angry jihadis, just as the invasion of Iraq did.

The core issue - the Israel-Palestine conflict - can be settled by diplomacy, if the US and Israel abandon their rejectionist commitments. Other outstanding problems in the region are also susceptible to negotiation and diplomacy. Their success can never be guaranteed. But we can be reasonably confident that viewing the world through a bombsight will bring further misery and suffering, perhaps even in “apocalyptic terms”.

War Is Not a Solution for Terrorism
By Howard Zinn
The Boston Globe

Saturday 02 September 2006

There is something important to be learned from the recent experience of the United States and Israel in the Middle East: that massive military attacks, inevitably indiscriminate, are not only morally reprehensible, but useless in achieving the stated aims of those who carry them out.

Polls Show Opposition to Iraq War at All-Time High
By Tom Regan
The Christian Science Monitor

Friday 01 September 2006

Sixty percent also say terrorism is more likely in US because of Iraq.

A series of polls taken over the last few weeks of August show that support for the war in Iraq among Americans is at an all-time low. Almost two-thirds of Americans in each of three major polls say that they oppose the war, the highest totals since pollsters starting asking Americans the question three years ago.

Saturday, September 2

Robert Kuttner:

Another Year, Another Wage Loss

Published on Saturday, September 2, 2006 by the “http://www.progressive.org”

Bush’s Salt Lake Whoppers

by Matthew Rothschild Did you catch Bush’s speech to the American Legion on Thursday?

It was another warm-up to the Iran War, with Bush rehearsing some of the same old lines he once used to whip up a frenzy over Iraq.

Just as he once called Iraq a “grave threat,” he said in Salt Lake City that “the world now faces a grave threat from the radical regime in Iran.”

My favorite line of the whole speech was this: “Governments accountable to the voters focus on building roads and schools—not weapons of mass destruction.” If that’s true, Bush ought to start unilaterally disarming our 10,000 nuclear weapons, or simply confirm that our government is not accountable to the voters. Just as he once fused Al Qaeda and Iraq, so he is fusing Al Qaeda and Iran.

Said Bush: “The Iranian regime arms, funds, and advises Hezbollah, which has killed more Americans than any terrorist network except Al Qaeda.”

Get it?

Your Pavlovian reaction to Al Qaeda is still supposed to make you salivate for war against whichever country Bush links it it to in a single sentence.

Just as he once denounced Iraq for “sponsoring terrorists,” so he now does with Iran.

Just as he once denounced Iraq for denying “basic human rights to millions of its people,” so he now does with Iran.

Just as he once denounced Iraq for pursuing weapons of mass destruction, phantom as they were, so he now decries Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

And just as he once said it was time for Iraq to make a choice, when he himself had already chosen war, so he now says, “It is time for Iran to make a choice.”

I have no doubt whatsoever about Bush’s intentions.

Published on Sunday, September 3, 2006 by the Binghamton “http://www.pressconnects.com” (New York)

White House Wages War against Reality

by David Rossie

Men and women who have already put their lives on the line two or more times are going to be asked to do it again, because crazy Don Rumsfeld ignored real military men such as Marine General Anthony Zinni and Army General Eric Shinseki when they warned him he was going into Iraq with too few soldiers and too little equipment.

Four years later and the troops continue to pay the price of that blunder, with no end in sight and little or nothing they can do about it. Unless they revive Nancy Reagan’s solution to the drug problem: Just say no!

“Iraqi, American and British officials continue to assert that a civil war here can be averted.”

Including the one that’s going on around them?

**

‘Secrecy and a Free, Democratic Government Don’t Exist’

by Christopher Brauchli

“Secrecy and a free, democratic government don’t exist.”
-- Harry S. Truman

There are so many choices it’s like being in a candy shop. What public information about the government can George Bush now turn into secret information so that an uninformed citizen will be forced to an even greater degree than is presently the case, to believe what liars say?

In March it was disclosed that Mr. Bush was wandering about the National Archives in Washington selecting documents that had been sitting on the shelves for years, available to all casual and serious browsers, and marking them “classified”. Of course Mr. Bush didn’t personally go through the Archives. He delegated the task to his minions.

As a result of the exercise, documents that had been resting harmlessly in the National Archives found themselves removed from the shelves, taken to dark places and turned into dark secrets.

**

Published on Sunday, September 3, 2006 by the New York Times

Donald Rumsfeld’s Dance with the Nazis

by Frank Rich

President Bush came to Washington vowing to be a uniter, not a divider. Well, you win some and you lose some. But there is one member of his administration who has not broken that promise: Donald Rumsfeld. With indefatigable brio, he has long since united Democrats, Republicans, generals and civilians alike in calling for his scalp.

Last week the man who gave us “stuff happens” and “you go to war with the Army you have” outdid himself. In an instantly infamous address to the American Legion, he likened critics of the Iraq debacle to those who “ridiculed or ignored” the rise of the Nazis in the 1930’s and tried to appease Hitler. Such Americans, he said, suffer from a “moral or intellectual confusion” and fail to recognize the “new type of fascism” represented by terrorists. Presumably he was not only describing the usual array of “Defeatocrats” but also the first President Bush, who had already been implicitly tarred as an appeaser by Tony Snow last month for failing to knock out Saddam in 1991.

What made Mr. Rumsfeld’s speech noteworthy wasn’t its toxic effort to impugn the patriotism of administration critics by conflating dissent on Iraq with cut-and-run surrender and incipient treason. That’s old news. No, what made Mr. Rumsfeld’s performance special was the preview it offered of the ambitious propaganda campaign planned between now and Election Day. An on-the-ropes White House plans to stop at nothing when rewriting its record of defeat (not to be confused with defeatism) in a war that has now lasted longer than America’s fight against the actual Nazis in World War II.

Here’s how brazen Mr. Rumsfeld was when he invoked Hitler’s appeasers to score his cheap points: Since Hitler was photographed warmly shaking Neville Chamberlain’s hand at Munich in 1938, the only image that comes close to matching it in epochal obsequiousness is the December 1983 photograph of Mr. Rumsfeld himself in Baghdad, warmly shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein in full fascist regalia. Is the defense secretary so self-deluded that he thought no one would remember a picture so easily Googled on the Web? Or worse, is he just too shameless to care?

Mr. Rumsfeld didn’t go to Baghdad in 1983 to tour the museum. Then a private citizen, he had been dispatched as an emissary by the Reagan administration, which sought to align itself with Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam was already a notorious thug. Well before Mr. Rumsfeld’s trip, Amnesty International had reported the dictator’s use of torture — “beating, burning, sexual abuse and the infliction of electric shocks” — on hundreds of political prisoners. Dozens more had been summarily executed or had “disappeared.” American intelligence agencies knew that Saddam had used chemical weapons to gas both Iraqi Kurds and Iranians.

According to declassified State Department memos detailing Mr. Rumsfeld’s Baghdad meetings, the American visitor never raised the subject of these crimes with his host. (Mr. Rumsfeld has since claimed otherwise, but that is not supported by the documents, which can be viewed online at George Washington University’s National Security Archive.) Within a year of his visit, the American mission was accomplished: Iraq and the United States resumed diplomatic relations for the first time since Iraq had severed them in 1967 in protest of American backing of Israel in the Six-Day War.

In his speech last week, Mr. Rumsfeld paraphrased Winston Churchill: Appeasing tyrants is “a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.” He can quote Churchill all he wants, but if he wants to self-righteously use that argument to smear others, the record shows that Mr. Rumsfeld cozied up to the crocodile of Baghdad as smarmily as anyone. To borrow the defense secretary’s own formulation, he suffers from moral confusion about Saddam.

Mr. Rumsfeld also suffers from intellectual confusion about terrorism. He might not have appeased Al Qaeda but he certainly enabled it. Like Chamberlain, he didn’t recognize the severity of the looming threat until it was too late. Had he done so, maybe his boss would not have blown off intelligence about imminent Qaeda attacks while on siesta in Crawford.

For further proof, read the address Mr. Rumsfeld gave to Pentagon workers on Sept. 10, 2001 — a policy manifesto he regarded as sufficiently important, James Bamford reminds us in his book “A Pretext to War,” that it was disseminated to the press. “The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America” is how the defense secretary began. He then went on to explain that this adversary “crushes new ideas” with “brutal consistency” and “disrupts the defense of the United States.” It is a foe “more subtle and implacable” than the former Soviet Union, he continued, stronger and larger and “closer to home” than “the last decrepit dictators of the world.”

And who might this ominous enemy be? Of that, Mr. Rumsfeld was as certain as he would later be about troop strength in Iraq: “the Pentagon bureaucracy.” In love with the sound of his own voice, he blathered on for almost 4,000 words while Mohamed Atta and the 18 other hijackers fanned out to American airports.

Three months later, Mr. Rumsfeld would still be asleep at the switch, as his war command refused to heed the urgent request by American officers on the ground for the additional troops needed to capture Osama bin Laden when he was cornered in Tora Bora. What would follow in Iraq was also more Chamberlain than Churchill. By failing to secure and rebuild the country after the invasion, he created a terrorist haven where none had been before.

That last story is seeping out in ever more incriminating detail, thanks to well-sourced chronicles like “Fiasco,” “Cobra II” and “Blood Money,” T. Christian Miller’s new account of the billions of dollars squandered and stolen in Iraq reconstruction. Still, Americans have notoriously short memories. The White House hopes that by Election Day it can induce amnesia about its failures in the Middle East as deftly as Mr. Rumsfeld (with an assist from John Mark Karr) helped upstage first-anniversary remembrances of Katrina.

One obstacle is that White House allies, not just Democrats, are sounding the alarm about Iraq. In recent weeks, prominent conservatives, some still war supporters and some not, have steadily broached the dread word Vietnam: Chuck Hagel, William F. Buckley Jr. and the columnists Rich Lowry and Max Boot. A George Will column critical of the war so rattled the White House that it had a flunky release a public 2,400-word response notable for its incoherence.

If even some conservatives are making accurate analogies between Vietnam and Iraq, one way for the administration to drown them out is to step up false historical analogies of its own, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s. In the past the administration has been big on comparisons between Iraq and the American Revolution — the defense secretary once likened “the snows of Valley Forge” to “the sandstorms of central Iraq” — but lately the White House vogue has been for “Islamo-fascism,” which it sees as another rhetorical means to retrofit Iraq to the more salable template of World War II.

“Islamo-fascism” certainly sounds more impressive than such tired buzzwords as “Plan for Victory” or “Stay the Course.” And it serves as a handy substitute for “As the Iraqis stand up, we’ll stand down.” That slogan had to be retired abruptly last month after The New York Times reported that violence in Baghdad has statistically increased rather than decreased as American troops handed over responsibilities to Iraqis. Yet the term “Islamo-fascists,” like the bygone “evildoers,” is less telling as a description of the enemy than as a window into the administration’s continued confusion about exactly who the enemy is. As the writer Katha Pollitt asks in The Nation, “Who are the ‘Islamo-fascists’ in Saudi Arabia — the current regime or its religious-fanatical opponents?”

Next up is the parade of presidential speeches culminating in what The Washington Post describes as “a whirlwind tour of the Sept. 11 attack sites”: All Fascism All the Time. In his opening salvo, delivered on Thursday to the same American Legion convention that cheered Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Bush worked in the Nazis and Communists and compared battles in Iraq to Omaha Beach and Guadalcanal. He once more interchanged the terrorists who struck the World Trade Center with car bombers in Baghdad, calling them all part of the same epic “ideological struggle of the 21st century.” One more drop in the polls, and he may yet rebrand this mess War of the Worlds.

“Iraq is not overwhelmed by foreign terrorists,” said the congressman John Murtha in succinct rebuttal to the president’s speech. “It is overwhelmed by Iraqis fighting Iraqis.” And with Americans caught in the middle. If we owe anything to those who died on 9/11, it is that we not forget how the administration diverted our blood and treasure from the battle against bin Laden and other stateless Islamic terrorists, fascist or whatever, to this quagmire in a country that did not attack us on 9/11. The number of American dead in Iraq — now more than 2,600 — is inexorably approaching the death toll of that Tuesday morning five years ago.

**

Is There Still a Terrorist Threat?
By John Mueller
Foreign Affairs

September/October 2006

Despite all the ominous warnings of wily terrorists and imminent attacks, there has been neither a successful strike nor a close call in the United States since 9/11. The reasonable -- but rarely heard -- explanation is that there are no terrorists within the United States, and few have the means or the inclination to strike from abroad.

The Myth of the Omnipresent Enemy

**

The War on Terror, Five Years on: An Era of Constant Warfare
By Tom Coghlan and Kim Sengupta
The Independent UK

Monday 04 September 2006

Five years ago this week, the Taliban’s al-Qa’ida allies made final preparations to launch devastating attacks on America that would precipitate the “war on terror,” the US led invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent invasion of Iraq.

Far from ending terrorism, George Bush’s tactics of using overwhelming military might to fight extremism appear to have rebounded, spawning an epidemic of global terrorism that has claimed an estimated 72,265 lives since 2001, most of them Iraqi civilians.

**

90% of Terror Cases Never Prosecuted

Afghanistan’s Opium Production Jumps by Nearly 50 Percent

Afghanistan’s opium production will increase by nearly 50 percent this year to a record 6,100 tons after an “alarming” jump in cultivation in the lawless south.

11 of America’s Worst Places to Vote (or Try)

We used to think the voting system was something like the traffic laws - a set of rules clear to everyone, enforced everywhere, with penalties for transgressions; we used to think, in other words, that we had a national election system. As it turns out, except for a rudimentary federal framework, US elections are shaped by a dizzying mélange of inconsistently enforced laws, conflicting court rulings, local traditions, various technology choices, and partisan trickery. Mother Jones provides a list - partial, but emblematic - of American democracy’s more glaring weak spots.

war stories: Military analysis.

Bush Goes a Bridge Too Far

The president’s latest dumb speech.

By Fred Kaplan

Posted Thursday, Aug. 31, 2006, at 6:23 PM ET

In his speech this morning before the American Legion’s national convention, President George W. Bush may have

gone a bridge too far. It was the first of several speeches he plans to deliver in the coming days to rally support for the war in Iraq (and, not incidentally, for Republicans in November). But one passage in particular reveals that the campaign is getting desperate:

The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq.

Here’s the question: Does anybody believe this? If you do, then you must ask the president why he hasn’t reactivated the draft, printed war bonds, doubled the military budget, and strenuously rallied allies to the cause.

Published on Monday, September 4, 2006 by the St. Petersburg Times (Florida)

Bush Fearmongering on Iraq Loses Its Punch

by Philip Gailey

The war is going miserably in Iraq. And it’s not going that well on the home front, either. Public support for the war is collapsing, and even some Republican hawks are beginning to distance themselves from the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld quagmire in Iraq. But it turns out that critics of the war are just confused. They still think it’s about weapons of mass destruction, regime change and democracy. They don’t understand that the administration’s disastrous enterprise in Iraq is a continuation of the last century’s battles against Nazism, fascism and communism.

It took President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to open our eyes last week.

Thank goodness Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are students of history and didn’t listen to those foolish generals and diplomats who tried to warn them about what they were getting into by invading Iraq.

Published on Monday, September 4, 2006 by the Guardian/UK

Bush’s Performance Has Been Poor, But His Packaging is Exemplary

by Gary Younge

The appeal of any presidential candidate is based on a “gut reaction, unarticulated, non-analytical, a product of the particular chemistry between the voter and the image of the candidate”, argued Richard Nixon’s speechwriter Raymond Price. “[It’s] not what’s there that counts, it’s what’s projected.” And that projection, he continued, “depends more on the medium and its use than it does on the candidate himself”. In other words, the American presidency is not just a political role but a performative one.

Over the past six years, George Bush’s performance, both in office and on the campaign trail, has often been less than stellar. But his packaging has, for the most part, been exemplary. He has been projected as a man of the people and a man of action. Never mind that he did precious little for the first 40 years of his life and that most of what he did achieve came courtesy of his father’s connections. Image was everything. This was the MBA candidate who would take care of business - literally and metaphorically; the blue-blood whose folksy affectations turned blue states red; the affable jock who created a softball team called Nads in college just so that he could make banners saying “Go Nads”.

Liberals ridiculed Bush for being ignorant about the rest of the world, but what many of them failed to grasp is that this is precisely what so many of their fellow countrymen liked about him. He didn’t know the name of the president of Pakistan, and nor did they. The fact that he mangled his syntax was taken not as evidence that he had squandered an expensive education but as a sign of his unrehearsed folksiness. His supporters like the fact that he doesn’t think too much. He’s not a ditherer but, in his own words, “the decider”.

Only twice did reality intrude on this meticulously constructed and carefully choreographed image: first after the terrorist attacks of September 11, and then almost exactly four years later, following Hurricane Katrina.

Today he stands between the two anniversaries that have come to define his tenure. Last week marked a year since Katrina flooded New Orleans, exposing his administration as aloof and incompetent - an impression from which he has never recovered.

On both occasions Bush displayed not a commanding presence but a conspicuous absence. On hearing of the terrorist attacks he finished reading My Pet Goat to schoolchildren in Florida before zigzagging around the country for fear that he too would become a target. This did little to inspire confidence in the nation in its hour of need.

The late Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory concluded: “Bush said the attack was a ‘test’ for the country. It was also one for him. He flunked.” He did not arrive in New York for four days. In New York, Newsday’s Ellis Henican pleaded: “I know we’re all rallying round the president now, and here I’ve been, rallying like everybody else. But the hours are passing. The body count is rising. The question can’t wait much longer. New York has a right to know. Where are you, Mr President?”

The fact that, after just five years, this is remembered as his finest hour is a triumph of image over reality.

Published on Monday, September 4, 2006 by the San Francisco Chronicle

On America Working: The War on Workers

by David Sirota

U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige labeled one “a terrorist organization.” Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, called them “a clear and present danger to the security of the United States.” And U.S. Rep. Charles Norwood, R-Ga., claimed they employ “tyranny that Americans are fighting and dying to defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan” and are thus “enemies of freedom and democracy,” who show “why we still need the Second Amendment” to defend ourselves with firearms.

Who are these supposed threats to America? No, not Osama bin Laden followers, but labor unions made up of millions of workers -- janitors, teachers, firefighters, police officers, you name it.

Bashing organized labor is a Republican pathology, to the point where unions are referenced with terms reserved for military targets. In his 1996 article, headlined “GOP Readies for War With Big Labor,” conservative columnist Robert Novak cheered the creation of a “GOP committee task force on the labor movement” that would pursue a “major assault” on unions. As one Republican lawmaker told Novak, GOP leaders champion an “anti-union attitude that appeals to the mentality of hillbillies at revival meetings.”

The hostility, while disgusting, is unsurprising. Unions wield power for workers, meaning they present an obstacle to Republican corporate donors, who want to put profit-making over other societal priorities.

Published on Monday, September 4, 2006 by the Baltimore Sun

Bush Team Still in Deep Denial

by Cynthia Tucker

Suffice it to say that this administration has no intention of owning up to the awful realities of its misguided invasion of Iraq. Indeed, it’s now clear that Karl Rove intends to duplicate for the current campaign season the fear-mongering, name-calling tactics he used successfully in earlier campaigns.

Recent polls show that a majority of voters no longer believe in Mr. Bush’s favorite fallacy - linking the so-called war on terror with the invasion of Iraq.

But the White House shows few signs of acknowledging reality. Mr. Bush says we can’t withdraw because the sacrifices of the men and women in uniform who have died there - more than 2,600 so far - would be in vain. More Americans must die, it seems, because so many have already died - a pernicious bit of circular reasoning.

So, for now, tens of thousands of soldiers, sailors and Marines are stuck in a quagmire.

Published on Tuesday, September 5, 2006 by ABC News

Documentary Slams US Companies Working in Iraq

“Iraq for Sale” Claims Halliburton and Others Profit at Expense of Safety

by Dan Harris

He’s tackled Wal-Mart and Fox News with his scathing documentaries. Now, filmmaker Robert Greenwald is releasing a documentary which argues that private companies helping to fight the war in Iraq don’t have the nation’s best interests in mind.

“Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers” debuts in limited release this week, and presents an assault on companies that provide the kinds of services in Iraq that the military once handled itself, such as supplying food, water and mail delivery for the reconstruction.

Published on Tuesday, September 5, 2006 by CommonDreams.org

Rehabilitating Fascism: How Would We Know It If We Saw It?

by Robert Freeman

With his announcement that the war on terror is actually a war against “Islamo-fascism,” President Bush has opened a fruitful debate. As is so common with Bush, however, his use of the term seeks to stigmatize more than characterize, to evoke glandular excretions more than intellectual reflections.

But in one sense, the president has performed a useful service. By re-introducing fascism into legitimate public discourse - by “rehabilitating” it, as it were - the president may actually help inform the country about the real dangers it faces as the war on terror continues its relentless march.

Published on Tuesday, September 5, 2006 by Mediachannel.org

911 Redux: Where is That Decoder Ring When We Need It?

by Danny Schechter

In times like these, wouldn’t it be great if we all had what, Captain Midnight, A TV hero from my youth brandished as a “decoder ring?” As we get ready to begin September’s fifth year anniversary commemoration of events of 9/11, we all need help in sorting out_”decoding”---the dramatic changes that followed the “Day That Changed Everything.”

And, yes, there is a “code,” a top secret code, a clear understanding among many in power that the American public would never understand, much less support, what would be done, what “had to be done” in their/our name unless it was coded, renamed, reframed, and in effect, hidden in a very public language that made it culturally acceptable, and politically palatable.

And so it was “concealed in plain sight,” as language used to convey its opposite meaning in the way that George Orwell anticipated so many years ago, when “peace” meant war, and black was really white in his prophetic book Animal Farm. He was decoding a Soviet Empire then. We are confronting an American one now.

But the challenge is the same.

Published on Tuesday, September 5, 2006 by the Inter Press Service

US Losing Control Fast

by Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-Fadhily

RAMADI - The U.S. military has lost control over the volatile al-Anbar province, Iraqi police and residents say.

The area to the west of Baghdad includes Fallujah, Ramadi and other towns that have seen the worst of military occupation, and the strongest resistance.

Despite massive military operations which destroyed most of Fallujah and much of cities like Haditha and al-Qa’im in Ramadi, real control of the city now seems to be in the hands of local resistance.

In losing control of this province, the U.S. would have lost control over much of Iraq.

“We are talking about nearly a third of the area of Iraq,” Ahmed Salman, a historian from Fallujah told IPS. “Al-Anbar borders Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia, and the resistance there will never stop as long as there are American soldiers on the ground.”

SEPTEMBER 5, 2006

10:44 AM

CONTACT: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)

Carol Goldberg (202) 265-7337

Environmental Enforcement Continues to Decline under Bush

Sharp Drop in New Case Referrals Means Fewer Civil and Criminal Prosecutions

WASHINGTON - September 5 - Enforcement of anti-pollution laws by the federal government has declined steadily and substantially since George W. Bush became president, according to U.S. Justice Department figures released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Requests by federal agencies for criminal prosecution have dropped by more than half since 2000 while such referrals for civil prosecution have declined by more than a third.

While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is responsible for most of the anti-pollution enforcement, environmental prosecutions are also initiated from cases developed by other federal agencies, ranging from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to the Army Corps of Engineers.

“Have You No Sense of Decency, Sir?”

By Keith Olbermann

MSNBC Countdown

Tuesday 05 September 2006

It is to our deep national shame-and ultimately it will be to the President’s deep personal regret - that he has followed his Secretary of Defense down the path of trying to tie those loyal Americans who disagree with his policies - or even question their effectiveness or execution - to the Nazis of the past, and the al Qaeda of the present.

Today, in the same subtle terms in which Mr. Bush and his colleagues muddied the clear line separating Iraq and 9/11 - without ever actually saying so - the President quoted a purported Osama Bin Laden letter that spoke of launching, “a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government.”

Make no mistake here - the intent of that is to get us to confuse the psychotic scheming of an international terrorist, with that familiar bogeyman of the right, the “media.”

The President and the Vice President and others have often attacked freedom of speech, and freedom of dissent, and freedom of the press.

Now, Mr. Bush has signaled that his unparalleled and unprincipled attack on reporting has a new and venomous side angle:

The attempt to link, by the simple expediency of one word - “media” - the honest, patriotic, and indeed vital questions and questioning from American reporters, with the evil of Al-Qaeda propaganda.

That linkage is more than just indefensible. It is un-American.

Mr. Bush and his colleagues have led us before to such waters.

We will not drink again.

And the President’s re-writing and sanitizing of history, so it fits the expediencies of domestic politics, is just as false, and just as scurrilous.

Whatever the true nature of al Qaeda and other international terrorist threats, to ceaselessly compare them to the Nazi State of Germany serves only to embolden them.

More over, Mr. Bush, you are accomplishing in part what Osama Bin Laden and others seek - a fearful American populace, easily manipulated, and willing to throw away any measure of restraint, any loyalty to our own ideals and freedoms, for the comforting illusion of safety.

It thus becomes necessary to remind the President that his administration’s recent Nazi “kick” is an awful and cynical thing.

And it becomes necessary to reach back into our history, for yet another quote, from yet another time and to ask it of Mr. Bush:

“Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

The 10 Most Brazen War Profiteers

By Charlie Cray

AlterNet

Tuesday 05 September 2006

Soldiers’ Stories: Endurance Meets Doubt in Iraq

By Michael R. Gordon

The New York Times

Sunday 03 September 2006

Hit, Iraq - Soon after Specialist Michael Potocki was shot and killed in June, the soldiers in his platoon agreed on their goal for the months ahead: to survive and make it home alive.

Survival may be the only thing the troops here agree on. The first death of a comrade in battle is always an emotional shock, and the views from the foxhole here are probably as varied as the 34 soldiers. Still, in this hostile stretch of western Iraq, some of the troops have begun to wonder if the presence of United States forces here is worth the cost in American lives.

“As a soldier, I am going to do whatever we got to do,” he said. “As a personal opinion, I don’t think we need to be in this city, period. How much money and how many soldiers is it going to take when these people don’t want our help? They just don’t. We don’t even know who we can trust.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/09-05-2006/news/story/449475p-378328c.html

Condi uses Civil War to slap Iraq critics

Secretary of State Rice compared the Iraq war with the American Civil War, telling a magazine that slavery might have lasted longer in this country if the North had decided to end the fight early.

“I’m sure there are people who thought it was a mistake to fight the Civil War to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold,” Rice said in the new issue of Essence magazine.

“I know there were people who said, ‘Why don’t we get out of this now, take a peace with the South, but leave the South with slaves?’” Rice said.

Lobbying Probe Looks at Payments to DeLay’s Wife

In the last few weeks, FBI agents have interviewed several people at the Alexander Strategy Group lobbying firm to determine if Christine DeLay, wife of former House majority leader Tom DeLay, was being paid $3,200 per month - a total of $115,000 over three years - but not earning it. In a series of interviews last month, investigators questioned people who used to work at Alexander Strategy as well as people who worked in the same building as the now-defunct firm.

Afghanistan High on Opium, Not Democracy

“The Bush administration has, for half a decade, celebrated its overthrow of the Taliban and subsequent national elections in Afghanistan,” writes Robert Scheer. “But if this is democratic nation-building, then the model must be Colombia, the narco-state where the political process masks the real power held by drug lords and radical insurgents. Afghanistan is dominated not by the government in Kabul but by a patchwork of warlords, terrorist groups and drug traffickers completely addicted to the annual poppy harvest’s profits.”

Afghanistan: Campaign Against Taliban “Causes Misery and Hunger”

Reports indicate that US and UK policy in Afghanistan has inflicted lawlessness, misery and starvation on the Afghan people. Thousands of villagers, fleeing the fighting and a continuing drought, have lost their livelihood and are suffering dreadful conditions in refugee camps.

Afghan Symbol for Change Becomes a Symbol of Failure

When the Taliban fell nearly five years ago, Lashkar Gah seemed like fertile ground for the United States-led effort to stabilize the country. For 30 years during the Cold War, Americans carried out the largest development project in Afghanistan’s history here. Afghans called this city “Little America.” Today, across Afghanistan, roadside bomb attacks are up by 30 percent; suicide bombings have doubled. Statistically it is now nearly as dangerous to serve as an American soldier in Afghanistan as it is in Iraq.

Inside the Anti-US Resistance

Osama bin Laden is ill and invisible, but five years after September 11, 2001, his al-Qaeda movement has become the fulcrum of a global Islamic resistance against the United States.

Published on Wednesday, September 6, 2006 by the Progressive

Bush Wheels Out Lenin and Hitler

by Matthew Rothschild In his speech on Tuesday, Bush was up to his old game of hyperbole, casting today’s enemies in the same outfits as Lenin and Hitler.

The costumes may be scary, but they are way too large.

Bush said that Al Qaeda aims to “destroy the free world.” But it is not capable of doing so, and no one is suggesting that Al Qaeda be left alone while it regroups.

He said Islamic fundamentalists, armed with nuclear weapons, would “raise a mortal threat to the American people.”

All he can do now is jump from behind a corner and yell boo.

He’s got nothing else.

Published on Monday, September 4, 2006 by the McClatchy Newspapers

U.S. Winning Battles Against Terror, But May Be Losing the War

by Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay

KABUL, Afghanistan - Five years ago, the United States fired its first shots in the post-Sept. 11 war on terror here in Afghanistan, evicting al-Qaida and toppling the Taliban regime that hosted Osama bin Laden’s network.

Today, the United States and its allies are struggling to halt advances by a resurgent Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in large swaths of this still desperately poor and unstable country.

“Things are going very badly,” admitted an official with the allied military forces, who asked not to be identified because the issue is so sensitive. “We’ve arrived at a situation where things are significantly worse than we anticipated.”

The trends in Afghanistan appear to mirror the global war on terror a half-decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Bush administration and allied governments have won battle after battle, but appear to be in danger of losing the war.

Indeed, a growing number of analysts, many of them former top government counterterrorism officials, argue that the very notion of a “war” on terrorism is the wrong strategy.

In relying overwhelmingly on bombs and bullets, they say, the United States has alienated much of the Muslim world, driving away even moderates who might be open to Western ideas. The West has largely failed to offer a positive vision or deal with the root causes of Islamic extremism.

Published on Tuesday, September 5, 2006 by the Associated Press

Israel Said to Fear War Crimes Charges

by Matti Friedman Three weeks after a cease-fire ended Israel’s monthlong war against Hezbollah guerrillas, Israel is increasingly concerned that government officials and army officers traveling abroad could face war crimes charges, a Foreign Ministry official said Monday.

A special legal team is preparing to provide protection for officers and officials involved in the 34-day conflict in Lebanon, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

More than 850 Lebanese were killed during the conflict, most of them civilians. The human rights group Amnesty International has accused Israel of war crimes, including indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on civilian targets.

Published on Wednesday, September 6, 2006 by the Guardian / UK

Blair’s Legacy is a Reckless Adventure That’s Wreaked Havoc the World over

The prime minister sealed his fate by signing up in full to a policy now recognised by most Americans as a disaster

by Jonathan Freedland

Published on Wednesday, September 6, 2006 by the Inter Press Service

Intel Estimate on Iran Blocks Neo-Con Plans

by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - In the struggle over U.S. policy toward Iran, neoconservatives in the George W. Bush administration spoiling for an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites have been seeking to convince the public that the United States must strike before an Iranian nuclear weapons capability becomes inevitable.

In order to do so, they must discredit the intelligence community’s conclusions that Iran is still as many as 10 years away from being able to build a nuclear weapon and that such a weapon is not an inevitable consequence of its present uranium enrichment programme.

The Robber Barons’ Party

Let’s Bring Tea

by Thom Hartmann

The Robber Barons are back.

They’re staging a celebration of their power in Washington, DC, where they help write the majority of legislation and hold captive all but a very few of our nation’s legislators. The television networks they own are showing the party in all its pomp and ceremony. The newspapers and magazines they own are telling us what a fine time is being had by all in Washington, DC. The radio stations, networks, and talk show hosts they own are reassuring us that they know what is best, that all will be well, that “freedom is on the march.”

Every generation, it is often said, must relearn the lessons of history. This generation is getting a crash course.

Published on Monday, May 15, 2006 by MediaChannel.org

From Hobbes To Your Cell: Hail the Surveillance State

by Danny Schechter

Shall we have a government of, by, and for We, the People? Or shall we be governed by a powerful elite made up of the super-rich, multi-national corporations, and well-paid shills who do their bidding?

Hobbes’ Leviathan begat Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World. His worries are still timely, and, as Billmon intimates, it offers a vision of chickens_and chicken hawks-- playing “gobble, gobble” with our freedoms and our lives.

“Having entrusted their security and their liberties to the beast,” he writes, “Leviathan’s subjects will be lucky not to wind up like Jonah, lodged in its belly.”

Bush Threatens Adam Clymer

by Eric Hananoki on September 7, 2006 - 11:17am.

Shocking! Bush said this in his press conference yesterday to Adam Clymer, the NY Times reporter who President Bush referred to as a ‘major league asshole’ in 2000:

I’ll never forget your face. I will kill you, your brothers, your mother, and sisters.

Morgan O. Reynolds, appointed by George W. Bush as chief economist at the Labor Department. He left in 2002 and doesn’t think much of his former boss; he describes President Bush as a “dysfunctional creep,” not to mention a “possible war criminal.”

Published on Thursday, September 7, 2006

I Want Future Generations to Know This: Many from Our Generation Never Sold You Out

by Rex Weyler

Published on Thursday, September 7, 2006 by the Guardian / UK

Delirious Rhetoric

Condoleezza Rice Flatters Her President with Empty Words as the War on Terror Loses All Direction

by Sidney Blumenthal

About two weeks after the 2004 presidential election, on November 13, the British embassy held a surprise 50th birthday party for Condoleezza Rice. On her arrival, Ambassador David Manning presented her with a red Oscar de la Renta gown. When Rice changed into the dress and emerged like Cinderella, she was met by her Prince Charming, dressed in a tuxedo, the man she once called “my husband”, President Bush.

The following week, Bush appointed his national security adviser as his secretary of state. Bush’s relationship with Rice is perhaps the strangest of his many strange relationships. The mysterious attachment involves complex transactions of noblesse oblige and deference, ignorance and adulation, vulnerability and sweet talk. Like his other female enablers - Karen Hughes, his political image-maker and undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, and Harriet Miers, his legal counsel - Rice is ferociously protective. She shields him from worst-case scenarios, telling him to ignore criticism, and showers him with flattery that he is a world-historical colossus.

Published on Thursday, September 7, 2006

Know Nothing News

by Jerry Lanson

It’s time for news media organizations to have the guts to turn down George Bush’s megaphone, not amp it up. On some days recently, that megaphone has resonated so loudly in the world of instantly breaking broadcast news and web site headlines that any Democratic response has quickly been drowned out. Which, of course, is just what Karl Rove wants.

No matter how outrageous Bush’s assertions, no matter how they fly in the face of the reality of what even his Pentagon is saying about Iraq, the news media dutifully trot after the president, giving him lead play on the news in speech after speech. Whether he’s howling about “cut and run” Democrats or asserting, yet again, that the mire of Iraq is a central battlefield in his War Against Terror (read War Without End), the format of news is predictable: Amplify the president’s dire predictions, let him brainwash the public a little bit more, then dutifully -- for the sake balance, of course -- give the opposition a quick soundbite or a few lines to disagree.

Published on Thursday, September 7, 2006 by the Associated Press

War Turns Southern Women Away From GOP

by Shannon McCaffrey

MACON, Georgia - President Bush’s once-solid relationship with Southern women is on the rocks. “I think history will show him to be the worst president since Ulysses S. Grant,” said Barbara Knight, a self-described Republican since birth and the mother of three. “He’s been an embarrassment.” In the heart of Dixie, comparisons to Grant, a symbol of the Union, is the worst sort of insult.

Pentagon Spends Billions to Outsource Torture

By Joshua Holland

AlterNet

Thursday 07 September 2006

Bush administration hawks are getting profit-hungry companies like CACI to do their dirty work in the war zones of the New American Empire. And we’re footing the bill.

The thousands of mercenary security contractors employed in the Bush administration’s “War on Terror” are billed to American taxpayers, but they’ve handed Osama Bin Laden his greatest victories - public relations coups that have transformed him from just another face in a crowd of radical clerics to a hero of millions in the global South (posters of Bin Laden have been spotted in largely Catholic Latin America during protests against George W. Bush).

Published on Friday, September 8, 2006 by the Guardian / UK

Bush and Bin Laden Locked in an Embrace

by Simon Tisdall After studiously ignoring him for much of the past five years, George Bush is making Osama bin Laden a headline issue in this autumn’s knife-edge mid-term congressional elections. But the US president’s tactical switch has raised suspicions that Republicans are once again resorting to the politics of fear.

Afghanistan: “Taliban Taking Over”

By Sanjay Suri

Inter Press Service

Tuesday 05 September 2006

London - The Taliban have regained control over the southern half of Afghanistan and their frontline is advancing daily, a group closely monitoring the Afghan situation said in a report Tuesday.

The Other War

By William Rivers Pitt

Friday 08 September 2006

Most people in the United States haven’t given a moment’s thought to the war in Afghanistan in a very long time. That war is over, we are told, and we won. The Taliban was routed, and al Qaeda lost a safe haven. Seventy-four families have had a different experience, however. Seventy-four families have received the awful notification since the beginning of 2006, telling them their child was killed in Afghanistan. 333 American soldiers have died there since we first invaded.

The war in Afghanistan, as it turns out, is far from over.

The Myth of Fair Elections in America

By Paul Harris

The Guardian UK

Thursday 07 September 2006

The debacle surrounding the Republican victory in 2000 demonstrated to the world that America’s electoral process is wide open to abuse. But as Paul Harris discovers, the system has actually worsened since then.

One person, one vote. Count the totals. The one with the most wins. The beauty of democracy is its simplicity and its inherent fairness. It equalises everyone, even as it empowers everyone. What could go wrong? In America, it turns out, quite a lot.

Fear-Mongering

So now, even while denying he has anything against Muslims, Bush is creating this “Islamic Fascist” bogeyman, which mostly is a figment of his fevered imagination, or is woefully imprecise as a way of describing the phenomenon, or lacks any real political power, or could be dealt with by containment and decisiveness (remember the Soviet Union), or turns out to be some goatherds on the side of a hill in southern Lebanon.

If you want to know what is really going on, it is a struggle for control of the Strategic Ellipse, which just happens demographically to be mostly Muslim. Bush has to demonize the Muslim world in order to justify his swooping down on the Strategic Ellipse. If demons occupy it, obviously they have to be cleared out in favor of Christian fundamentalists or at least Texas oilmen. . . .

Bush didn’t do anything about al-Qaeda his first 8 months in office. He left the job half done in Afghanistan and ran off to Iraq, which was always irrelevant to al-Qaeda. There were no good targets in Afghanistan, just Bin Laden and Zawahiri. Iraq, now that is prime Ellipse territory.

Bush is undermining our Republic, gutting our rights, spending us into penury, and smearing a great civilization, in order to get his grubby fingers on the Ellipse. You get to pay for it twice, once at the pump and once on your annual tax return.

Juan Cole | Informed Comment

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060908/ap_on_go_co/iraq_report

Senate: No prewar Saddam-al-Qaida ties

WASHINGTON - There’s no evidence Saddam Hussein had ties with al-Qaida, according to a Senate report on prewar intelligence that Democrats say undercuts President Bush’s justification for invading Iraq

Bush administration officials have insisted on a link between the Iraqi regime and terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Intelligence agencies, however, concluded there was none.

Illness Persisting in 9/11 Workers, Big Study Finds

By ANTHONY DePALMA

Published: September 6, 2006

The largest health study yet of the thousands of workers who labored at ground zero shows that the impact of the rescue and recovery effort on their health has been more widespread and persistent than previously thought, and is likely to linger far into the future. The study, released yesterday by doctors at Mount Sinai Medical Center, is expected to erase any lingering doubts about the connection between dust from the trade center and numerous diseases that the workers have reported suffering.

Bush Duped Public On Iraq

After 2 1/2 years of reviewing pre-war intelligence behind closed doors, the lead Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Senator John Rockefeller of West Virginia, who voted for the Iraq War, says the Bush administration pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes.

Dick Meyer | Torturing the Truth

“I’ve said to people we don’t torture. And we don’t. “That’s what President Bush told Katie Couric. The president’s statement here is beyond doublespeak and above spin. It’s untrue, it’s egregious. The Pentagon’s backhanded, long-delayed and uncourageous acknowledgment that torture was used also repudiated what the president has been telling citizens for years. We’ve been lied to and we are still being lied to.

And, finally, one item from the truly outraged:

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/NanceGreggs/78

NanceGreggs’s Journal: Nance Rants

Sat Aug 26th 2006, 08:43 PM

Let Me See If I’ve Got This RIGHT ...
By Nancy Greggs
I’m supposed to believe that the man who sat in a classroom reading a kids’ book for seven minutes AFTER he was told the country was under attack, who was warned repeatedly about imminent threats against the country and chose to ignore them, who has traipsed off on vacation every time there is a domestic or international disaster, is a decisive man-of-action with the fortitude to run a nation.
I am supposed to believe that God himself chooses my nation’s leaders and that, in His infinite wisdom, he chose a lying, thieving, self-absorbed, pro-torture, pro-war, lazy frat-boy jerk like George W. Bush.
I am supposed to believe that the same man who used family money and influence to duck military duty, who has failed at every business venture he ever tried, who never did an honest day’s work or accomplished anything of value in his entire life, is fit to be Commander-in-Chief.
I am supposed to believe that a man who ignores the Constitution he swore to uphold, breaks the law with abandon, repeatedly lied about the reasons for going to war, its cost, its duration, and even its goals, is honest and trustworthy.
I am supposed to believe that the escalating violence, chaos and deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan are a sign of progress.
I am supposed to believe that a man who, by his own admission, does not read newspapers, who only meets with and listens to ‘yes’ men, who refuses to speak before any group that is not hand-picked from his staunchest supporters, is in touch with the realities of the world.
I am supposed to believe that sending US soldiers into combat without proper equipment or a viable military strategy, while decreasing their pensions and their benefits, is a patriotic display of supporting the troops.
I am supposed to believe that gutting the funding of social programs aimed at assisting the poor, the sick, the hungry and the homeless is the outcome of good Christians being in office, and that torturing, maiming and killing innocent civilians is “doing the Lord’s work”.
Oh, don’t go anywhere, because I haven’t even gotten started yet …
I am supposed to believe that a president who acts like an ill-mannered, oafish, mindless buffoon in public, both at home and in international settings, and a vice president who tells a colleague to go f*ck himself in the course of conducting the country’s business, are both deserving of respect.
I am supposed to believe that spying on US citizens, quashing free speech, and suspending laws that govern detention and confinement without just cause is preserving the tenets of democracy.
I am supposed to believe that alienating our allies, isolating ourselves from the world, refusing to use diplomacy instead of aggression, and causing people around the globe to hate us is the best way to protect my country from violent attack.
I am supposed to believe that no-bid contracts awarded to companies owned by members of this Administration, its families and its cronies is pure coincidence, and that secret meetings resulting in policies that enrich their supporters to the detriment of hard-working Americans is good and honest government.
Hold on, because there’s MORE of this crap ...
I am supposed to believe that outsourcing American jobs, under-funding our educational system, and plunging the country deeper into debt with every passing day will lead to a stronger, more competitive nation in the years to come.
I am supposed to believe that the same people who left NOLA to drown, who refuse to secure our borders, who refuse to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, and who initiate policies that incite anger and violence the world over are protecting my country from harm.
I am supposed to believe that an Administration whose policies make basic medical care and life-saving drugs unaffordable for millions of Americans is pro-life.
I am supposed to believe that elected representatives who voted for the Bankruptcy Bill, tax breaks for wealthy individuals, and tax subsidies for multi-billion dollar corporations are looking out for their constituents.
Along with all of the above, I am also supposed to believe that selling authority over our ports to foreign nations, selling our national lands to private interests, and selling our children’s future by burdening them with debt for decades to come is in the best interests of our country.
Drum roll, please -- here’s the BIG FINALE ...
I am supposed to believe it is safe to board an airplane with a hold full of uninspected cargo as long as no passengers are in possession of baby formula, that a group of men in Britain were about to take down ten airliners without tickets or passports, that seven men in Miami were going to blow up buildings in cities they didn’t have the money to get to, that one lone guy in New York was going to take down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blow-torch, that if we leave Iraq every terrorist in the world is going to come to the US and fight us in the malls and the supermarkets, that the ‘Liberal media’ simply forgets to cover the lies, cover-ups and corruption of this Administration and its party members, that voting for a Democrat in Connecticut sends shockwaves of unbridled encouragement throughout the Muslim world, that a bunch of PNAC members whose predictions have been proven totally wrong in every instance should be dictating policy to my government, that our military isn’t stretched too thin and they are just recalling those who have already fulfilled their duty because they’ve got too much time on their hands, and that George W. Bush spends his summers reading CAMUS and SHAKESPEARE.
Oh, if only I were GULLIBLE, ILL-INFORMED, EASILY LED and TOTALLY STUPID – what a FINE Bush supporter I would have made!

**

“People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.”

- Alice Walker <http://www.bartleby.com/65/wa/Walker-Al.html>

***

9/13/06

oh say can you see

It was on this day in 1814 that Francis Scott Key was inspired to write the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner”

BONUS SITE: “http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=288”

Five years later, Americans’ views of the impact of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have changed little, but opinions about how best to protect against future attacks have shifted substantially. In particular, far more Americans say reducing America’s overseas military presence, rather than expanding it, will have a greater effect in reducing the threat of terrorism. This is the full report by the Pew Research Center.

**

http://dispatch.com/editorials-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/09/11/20060911-A9-04.html

Five years after 9/11, is the nation safer?:

No: Flawed war on terror has created many more deadly enemies for America

Monday, September 11, 2006

MARK WEISBROT

It is now accepted by most experts that the decision to invade Iraq has increased the threat of terrorism. The latest polls show that 60 percent of Americans believe this, too.

Five years after the twin towers crumbled in a horrifying spectacle, our government’s foreign policy has done more to recruit terrorists and sympathizers than anything that Osama bin Laden could have imagined.

**

http://www.andrewtobias.com/

Strength is only as good as the strategic thinking behind it . . . and according to a bipartisan collection of foreign policy experts, America has been acting like an idiot, playing right into Bin Laden’s hands. SThink jujitsu.

Afghanistan – yes. Absolutely.

But invading Iraq just confirmed Al Qaeda’s line that America wants to occupy the Mideast and steal its oil . . . (and invading it without adequate planning – invading it incompetently – has proved a complete, uber-tragic fiasco “http://www.amazon.com/Fiasco-American-Military-Adventure-Iraq/dp/159420103X/sr=8-1/qid=1157903614/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-6374408-5569625?ie=UTF8&s=books”) . . .

Guantanamo negatively affects the war on terror, 81% of the more than 100 conservative, moderate, and liberal foreign policy experts polled

“http://web0.foreignpolicy.com/issue_julyaug_2006/TI-index/index.html” say . . . (not to mention Abu Ghraib) . . .

And framing the enemy as Islamo-fascism (accurate though that may be) turns it into the global holy war Bin Laden so desperately hoped to start.

Seventy-one percent of the conservative experts polled (and 90% of the moderates) disagree with the President’s assertion that we are winning the war on terror.

The Administration has sapped our nation’s military and financial strength, turned much of the world against us, and, in the process, created tens of millions of passionate new Islamo-fascists.

We are likely to hear a different view from the President tonight.

But what the world needs to hear November 7 (and had so hoped to hear two years ago) is that Americans are not comfortable with the strategic thinking of our current leadership. We need a new direction.

**

http://dispatch.com/editorials-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/09/09/20060909-A6-00.html

U.S. quickly lost its way in terror war

Saturday, September 09, 2006

ELLEN GOODMAN

here is something I never imagined five years ago: that America would lose its status as the good guy in the struggle against terrorism. I didn’t imagine that our government would squander the righteous role won for us the hard way by victims falling from the twin towers and firefighters racing to their deaths.

When we went into Afghanistan in hot pursuit, the world stayed with us. But then we swung from a just war to a pre-emptive war, from a war on terror to a war of choice, from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein.

“When we crossed the (Iraq) border, there was another great pause, then a transfer of sympathy,” an American intelligence officer told Newsweek. “The entire Islamic world took a step to the right.” The Bush administration imagined flowers and rose water, shock and awe, mission accomplished. It failed to imagine civil war, and that step to the right.

We went from the twin towers to Abu Ghraib, from civil defense to civil war, from innocent passengers to soldiers in Haditha. We blew it all on Iraq. In one poll, Europeans now find us more of a threat to world stability than even Iran. In a survey of 14 countries, none of them believe that removing Saddam made the world safer. And in Iraq itself, only 2 percent of the people now believe we invaded to liberate them from tyranny while 76 percent think we did it “to control Iraqi oil.” Imagine that.

Meanwhile, the “war president” attacks opponents as appeasers and his only strategy is to “stay the course.” Here we are, 9/11 plus five, trapped by another failure of imagination.

**

Published on Monday, September 11, 2006 by the Agence France Presse

Global Media Abhors US Response to 9-11

Newspapers across the world have strongly criticised the US response to September 11, accusing the Bush administration of bungling its “war on terror” and squandering global goodwill by invading Iraq.

Summing up the mood in the British press, the Financial Times said: “The way the Bush administration has trampled on the international rule of law and Geneva Conventions, while abrogating civil liberties and expanding executive power at home, has done huge damage not only to America’s reputation but, more broadly, to the attractive power of Western values.”

German daily Handelsblatt said the war in Iraq had been erroneously started in the name of September 11, while Spain’s El Pais said the Bush administration used the attacks to impose a neo-conservative foreign policy.

“The result, five years after, is a more dangerous world,” El Pais said.

The criticism, and in particular the condemnation of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, was echoed in newspapers across the Middle East and Asia.

Many Arab newspapers said the US campaign and the invasion of Iraq had pushed the world closer to a clash of civilisations between the West and the Muslim world.

“Instead of isolating and wiping out Al-Qaeda, Bush has created a long list of new foes in his ever-broadening war on terror,” Lebanon’s Daily Star said.

“In doing so, he has bolstered the popular impression that the United States is waging a crusade against Islam -- an impression which Al-Qaeda skillfully exploits in order to gain more support.”

Egypt’s semi-official Al-Ahram compared Bush to the mastermind of the attacks Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.

“Five years ago, the history of the world changed twice, once in the hands of Bin Laden and his gang, and once in the hands of Bin Bush and his administration.”

The Al-Ghad daily in Jordan was similarly critical saying: “The administration of George W. Bush used a vengeful mentality in dealing with the 9/11 crime and has turned the entire world into a battleground.”

**

This Hole in the Ground

By Keith Olbermann

MSNBC Countdown

Monday 11 September 2006

However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast - of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds - none of us could have predicted this.

Five years later this space is still empty.

Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, “bi-partisanship” meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President’s words yesterday, “validate the strategy of the terrorists.”

They promised protection, and then showed that to them “protection” meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had ‘something to do’ with 9/11 is “lying by implication.”

The impolite phrase is “impeachable offense.”

Yet what is happening this very night?

A mini-series, created, influenced - possibly financed by - the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.

The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you - or those around you - ever “spin” 9/11?

Just as the terrorists have succeeded - are still succeeding - as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero.

So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.

Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight: “The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.

“For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own - for the children, and the children yet unborn.”

When those who dissent are told time and time again - as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus - that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American ... When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have “forgotten the lessons of 9/11” ... look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you.

**

http://dispatch.com/editorials-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/09/13/20060913-A11-00.html

Bush team’s assault on war critics is the real threat

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

TRUDY RUBIN

Of all the misleading speeches about terrorism given by the Bush team in the lead-up to the 9/11 anniversary, the prize for chutzpah goes to Donald H. Rumsfeld.

In a pitch last week to the American Legion, the defense secretary cited the failure of “a great many” to recognize the rise of Adolf Hitler and fascism in 1939. He then accused unnamed pols of eagerness to appease “vicious extremists.” Then he charged that “moral or intellectual confusion” is sapping the war on terrorism and the fight in Iraq.

Moral and intellectual confusion?

Rumsfeld’s text and the pre-9/11 speeches by President Bush are riddled with both _ to the detriment of America’s future safety. What makes these speeches so unnerving is the possibility the Bush team members really believe everything they are saying. If so, you should truly fear for America’s security.

The contradiction between our Iraq and Iran policies displays intellectual confusion at its worst.

But the maximum level of confusion in the 9/11 speeches revolves around the claim that “Iraq . . . is the central front in our fight against terrorism.” Yes, Iraq has become a training center for jihadist terrorists _ which it wasn’t before Saddam fell. But the reason for Iraq’s descent into postwar hell is the administration’s arrogance and incompetence, which, of course, the president does not admit in his speeches.

This denial creates a black hole of moral and intellectual dishonesty at the heart of the Bush rhetoric.

**

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/12/opinion/12tue1.html?ex=1158292800&en=baef3598e5784194&ei=5087%0A

Editorial

President Bush’s Reality

Published: September 12, 2006

Iraq had nothing to do with the war on terror until the Bush administration decided to invade it. The president now admits that Saddam Hussein was not responsible for 9/11 (although he claimed last night that the invasion was necessary because Iraq posed a “risk”). But he has failed to offer the country a new, realistic reason for being there.

Warning that American withdrawal would “embolden” the enemy is far from an argument as long as there is constant evidence that American presence is creating a fearful backlash throughout the Muslim world that empowers the fanatics far more than it frightens them.

But the nation needs to hear a workable plan to stabilize a fractured, disintegrating country and end the violence. If such a strategy exists, it seems unlikely that Mr. Bush could see it through the filter of his fantasies.

It’s hard to figure out how to build consensus when the men in charge embrace a series of myths. Vice President Dick Cheney suggested last weekend that the White House is even more delusional than Mr. Bush’s rhetoric suggests. The vice president volunteered to NBC’s Tim Russert that not only was the Iraq invasion the right thing to do, “if we had it to do over again, we’d do exactly the same thing.”

It is a breathtaking thought. If we could return to Sept. 12, 2001, knowing all we have seen since, Mr. Cheney and the president would march right out and “do exactly the same thing” all over again. It will be hard to hear the phrase “lessons of Sept. 11” again without contemplating that statement.

**

Published on Tuesday, September 12, 2006 by the Rocky Mountain News (Colorado)

Bush is Our Failure-In-Chief

by Paul Campos

Of all the phony political images that have bombarded us in the five years since al-Qaida terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, the phoniest of all remains the sight of George W. Bush donning a fighter pilot’s uniform and landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier to proclaim “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq.

The point of that little stunt was to send the visual message that Bush was the strong leader that America needed to triumph in a war against our enemies. As a piece of propaganda, it was fabulously successful. If the goal of propaganda is to make black seem white, then the fact the Bush administration still emphasizes this message is a tribute to the administration’s ongoing triumph in its propagandistic war against reality.

That, however, is the only war this president is actually winning. With a little more than two years remaining in his presidency, Bush is on course to end up as the worst commander-in-chief in the 217-year history of his office.

Imagine, if you will, how George W. Bush’s performance as commander-in-chief would be perceived if he happened to be a woman. To help this thought experiment along, let’s give him a woman’s name. Don’t think of him as George; think of him as Hillary.

Now imagine if Hillary had been president on Sept. 11, 2001. Suppose that, five years later, the man responsible for that attack was not only still alive and free, but was thumbing his nose at the United States via tape recordings that mocked America’s military power and national resolve. Would such a woman seem like a strong leader?

Imagine if Hillary were in the process of losing not one, but two wars against miserable Third World countries whose combined armed forces didn’t equal a fiftieth of America’s military might. Would she still seem like an able commander-in-chief? How would Americans react to her repeated assertions that, despite her catastrophic record as a military leader, we could trust her to keep America safe?

Imagine if this woman had allowed a surrounded Osama bin Laden to escape, because instead of sending American troops to either kill or capture a man who has murdered thousands of Americans, she trusted foreign mercenaries to do the job instead.

Imagine if she refused to fire the inept buffoon who was her secretary of Defense, despite repeated complaints from across the political spectrum - and even from her own generals - that he had utterly bungled both the wars her administration was in the process of losing. Would that decision project an image of strength?

It is indeed a miracle of propaganda that President Bush can claim he has been anything but a spectacular failure as commander-in-chief, and not elicit hoots of derision from everyone who isn’t actually paid by the administration to utter politically convenient lies.

If he were a Democrat or a woman (or, God forbid, both) he could have never gotten away with any of this. After five years of his “strong leadership,” Iraq is a chaotic mess, much of Afghanistan is back in the hands of the Taliban, and Osama bin Laden is alive, free and planning more terrorist attacks. With strength like this, who needs weakness?

Yet our lapdog media keep obediently delivering the message that black is white. Perhaps the president should land on another aircraft carrier, and call it “Mission Accomplished Again.”

Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado. He can be reached at paul.campos@colorado.edu.

**

Subverting Democracy With the Big Lie

By Robert Scheer

Truthdig

Tuesday 12 September 2006

Bush was correct in saying Monday night that “Our nation is being tested in a way that we have not been since the start of the Cold War.” Unfortunately, it’s Bush’s administration that is testing us - with its relentless incompetence, attacks on our civil liberties and inability to acknowledge the bankruptcy of its policies.

If representative government were alive and well in America, President Bush would not have dared to give the speech he made Monday on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. In a blatantly partisan screed, the president ripped off a nation’s mourning for the 9/11 victims in order to justify his totally unrelated and disastrous invasion of Iraq.

The president’s shameless remarks on this solemn occasion were so rife with egregious distortions of fact and logic as to beg ridicule, let alone refutation by a free press, a sturdy political opposition party and an informed public. Sadly, those three essential pillars of a free society have been subverted by five years of willful presidential exploitation of our fears, mocking the Founding Fathers’ historic dream of a government accountable to the public.

**

Winner Of The First-Ever National Press Club Award For Humor September 5, 2006

Breaking News

Child, 11, Left Behind

Sign That President’s ‘No Child Left Behind’ Law May Not Be Working, Critics Say

In what critics are calling a sign that President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” law is not delivering on its promise, an eleven-year-old child in Toledo, Ohio was left behind today.

On a day when millions of American children returned to school, the news that a child had been left behind came at a most inopportune moment for President Bush, who has repeatedly vowed that his educational policy would leave no child behind.

Zack Steidel, the Toledo boy who was left behind, seemed to be taking his newsworthy status in stride today.

“I didn’t want to go to school anyway,” said Mr. Steidel. “This way I can just stay at home and play Xbox, which totally rocks.”

At the White House, spokesman Tony Snow tried to downplay the importance of young Mr. Steidel having been left behind.

“At this point it is way too early to say that Zack being left behind means that ‘No Child Left Behind’ does not work,” Mr. Snow said. “He may have just missed the school bus.”

But education expert Davis Logsdon says that “No Child Left Behind,” which requires that students pass standardized tests in order to advance to the next grade, may be flawed at its core: “If that law had been around when President Bush was in school, he would still be in seventh grade.”

Elsewhere, Medicare chief Mark McClellan resigned today, saying that he wanted to devote the rest of his life to trying to understand the new Medicare rules.

**

Why Mommy is a Democrat
The book George Bush doesn’t want your children to read!
“A marvelous and child-friendly introduction to the values of Democrats.” -Thom Hartmann, Air America Radio

**

Madison Capital Times:

A Civil War, but Not Ours

**

http://www.dispatch.com/science/science.php?story=dispatch/2006/09/05/20060905-D7-01.html

GEOLOGY

Time, elements combined to create unique Ohio Caverns

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

DALE GNIDOVEC

Sometimes it’s the things in your own backyard that you don’t see.

I’ve been to many U.S. geological sites _ the Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountains, Devil’s Tower, La Brea Tar Pits _ but I had never been to Ohio Caverns until last weekend, when an organization meeting there asked me to give a talk on the caverns’ origin.

The geological story of the Logan County attraction has three chapters. The first begins 380 million years ago, when the land we call Ohio was under an ocean. Currently, 40 degrees north of the equator _ the 40-degree parallel runs through the Ohio State University campus, near the Main Library _ but 380 million years ago, Ohio was 15 degrees south of the equator.

That means Ohio was about where northern Australia is today, so Ohio was like the Bahamas.

That ocean teemed with life: some familiar to us, such as clams, snails and corals, and some odd, such as crablike trilobites, squidlike cephalopods and giant armored fish.

Most of the shellfish had shells composed of calcium carbonate _ lime. Their shells settled to the bottom, became deeply buried and eventually hardened into a thick layer of limestone. The first chapter was complete.

Now fast forward, past 250 million years ago, when the landmass Pangaea began splitting into the continents we know today; past 225 million years ago, when dinosaurs appeared; past 65 million years ago, when dinosaurs became extinct; to 1.8 million years ago, when Earth’s climate cooled and we entered the Pleistocene Epoch, or Ice Age.

The limestone was near the surface but below the water table. The limestone was porous, with many voids. Rainwater, which becomes slightly acidic when it comes in contact with carbon dioxide in the air, flowed through through cracks, slowly dissolving the limestone and forming caves. Chapter two was finished.

Tens of thousands of years ago, the water table dropped, leaving the caves empty. Water percolating from above carried dissolved lime. Upon reaching the cave, a drop would loose carbon dioxide, becoming less acidic and less able to hold lime. The lime precipitated, starting a stalactite.

A drop that dripped to the floor also lost acidity, starting a stalagmite. Eventually, the two met in the middle to form a column.

Beautiful stalactites and stalagmites make Ohio Caverns one of the prettiest caves I’ve seen. I highly recommend it.

Dale Gnidovec is curator of the Orton Geological Museum at Ohio State University.

gnidovec@geology.ohio-state.edu

**

Morgan O. Reynolds, appointed by George W. Bush as chief economist at the Labor Department. He left in 2002 and doesn’t think much of his former boss; he describes President Bush as a “dysfunctional creep,” not to mention a “possible war criminal.”

**

Rev. Frank Morales, 57, the bohemian Episcopalian minister with the hipster goatee, who came out of the Lower East Side housing projects, spent days at Ground Zero performing last rites for the dead, many little more than a collection of body parts.

“I wonder at what point massive incompetence crosses over into negligent homicide.”

**

Fatal Vision: The Strategy of Chaos and Ethnic Cleansing

Chris Floyd writes, “In Dostoevsky’s 1872 novel, ‘The Possessed,’ a prescient dissection of the roots of political terrorism, a bit player named Shigalov provides a revealing glimpse of how the noble idea of ‘humanitarian intervention’ to bring freedom and democracy to the benighted places of the earth invariably becomes a brutal despotism, geared toward imposing a single vision of world order.”

**

The Day That Changed Everything Wasn’t 9/11

“Through four decades of the Cold War, Americans had been able to feel reasonably united in their determination to fight evil. And everyone, even children, knew the name of the evildoers: ‘the commies,’” writes Ira Chernus. “Within two years after the Wall fell, the Soviet Union had simply disappeared. In the US, nobody really knew how to fight evil now, or even who the evildoers were. The world’s sole remaining superpower was ‘running out of demons,’ as Colin Powell complained.”

**

US Strategy May Be Helping Taliban

A leading Afghanistan scholar says that America’s military counterterrorism strategy has failed to eliminate the Taliban - and may actually be contributing to the growth of the insurgent Islamist group.

**

Bush Exploited, Shamed 9/11

Brent Budowsky writes, “The man who campaigned as the Great Uniter, and declared himself the Great Decider, will burn in history as the Great Divider with all of the catastrophic consequences that are escalating every hour of every day.”

**

Cindy Sheehan | Hey George

Cindy Sheehan writes to George W. Bush: “Torture is a crime against humanity, George, and information gained from torture is highly compromised and not even admissible in a court of law, so basically, the information you have been cruelly gleaning from ‘suspected’ terrorists is useless in protecting America.”

**

Military Wants to Use Microwave Weapons on American Citizens

The Secretary of the Air Force said the military is interested in using nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices on American citizens in crowd-control situations before they are used on the battlefield.

**

Soldiers Reveal Horror of Afghan Campaign

Soldiers deployed in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, say that the sheer ferocity of the fighting in the Sangin valley and privations faced by the troops are far worse than is generally known.

**

Real Link Between 9/11 and Iraq (Finally) Revealed

By Tom Engelhardt

TomDispatch.com

Tuesday 12 September 2006

You’ve heard the President and Vice President say it over and over in various ways: There was a connection between the events of September 11, 2001 and Iraq. Let’s take this seriously and consider some of the links between the two.

Numbers and Comparisons

“As is often the case, under such lies and manipulations lurks a deeper truth. In this case, let’s call it the truth of wish fulfillment.”

**

Iraq Vets Force Congressional Investigation of Suzanne Swift Case

Members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), Veterans for Peace, and Oregon constituents achieved a victory on the road to ending military sexual violence today with a pledge from Congressman Peter DeFazio’s (D-Ore.) office that he will be initiating a congressional investigation into the case of Army Specialist Suzanne Swift.

**

Pakistan Rape Reform Fails After Musharraf Caves In

In a setback for women’s rights in Pakistan, the government has caved in to religious conservatives by dropping its plans to reform rape laws. Statutes known as the Hudood ordinances, based on sharia law, currently operate in Pakistan. They require a female rape victim to produce four male witnesses to corroborate her account, or she risks facing a new charge of adultery.

**

Iraqi Leader Asks Iran for Help With Security

In his first state visit to Iran, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki today discussed the security situation in Iraq with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and asked for Mr. Ahmadinejad’s support in quelling the violence that threatens to fracture his country.

**

Climate Change Seen Pushing Plants to the Brink

Thousands of plant species are being pushed to the brink of extinction by global warming, and those already at the extremes are in the greatest danger, a leading botanist said on Tuesday. Botanists are on target to have sorted and stored seeds from 10 percent of the world’s plant species by 2010 in a race against time as global temperatures rise due to burning fossil fuels.

**

Arizona Seeks to Bypass Bush on CO2 Emissions

Arizona’s governor signed an executive order late last week to cut emissions of gases linked to global warming, becoming the second state leader in the US West to try to bypass President George W. Bush’s refusal to regulate output of the gases.

**

Firefighters Feeling the Wear and Tear of Long, Stubborn Season

All across the West, firefighters are feeling the wear and tear of a wildfire season that never ends. For many, it began a year ago with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. There’s been little chance to rest since. By January, Texas and Oklahoma were on fire and the flames slowly started marching north and west. Some have worked as long as 45 days without a break.

Union Says New Mine Fines Fail to Address “Lax” Enforcement

Nine months after the deaths of twelve workers at West Virginia’s Sago Mine, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) has proposed new rules for safety violations that it says will increase the average penalty from $213 to $587. Mine workers say the rules fail to address the issue of lax enforcement. The public comment period is open until October 23rd.

**

The Day After the Day

William Rivers Pitt begins: “The anniversary has passed, and with it went an ocean of televised words and images to mark the day. I can’t be sure, of course, because I marked the day by refusing to turn on my television. I didn’t care to commemorate the occasion by wallowing in a lot of noise from TV people who maybe should have known better five years ago, TV people who have hauled oceans of water between then and now to help us into our diseased estate, simply because scaring people to boost ratings is a shortcut to thinking.”

**

IDF Commander: More Than a Million Cluster Bombs Used Against Lebanon

“What we did was insane and monstrous; we covered entire towns in cluster bombs,” the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon said regarding the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous shells during the war. In addition, soldiers in IDF artillery units testified that the army used phosphorous shells during the war, widely forbidden by international law.

**

Meanwhile in Baghdad ...

Dahr Jamail quotes one of the emails he’s received from Baghdad: “Although I have perfect job satisfaction as a full professor with an MRCP, FRCP, and two more degrees from London and France, things are so unhappy here in Baghdad. There is no quality of life at all. There are no services; we are loaded with garbage as it is not collected more than once every so many weeks. Garbage collectors are also afraid of being killed. We have almost no electricity, no fuel, bad water supply and what is more, you could get killed whether you are Shi’ite or Sunni if you fall into the wrong hands!”

**

Jeff Cohen: Cable News, Hazardous to the Republic

Jason Salzman reviews Jeff Cohen’s new book, “Cable News, Hazardous to the Republic”: “After reading Cohen’s book, cable news will never look the same to you, as you’ll understand the formula of fake ‘breaking news,’ false debates, and journalistic gutter-feeding that add up to, as Cohen puts it, ‘disinfotainment.’”

**

The Failures of George W. Bush’s “War on Terrorism”

Arnaud de La Grange argues in the conservative Figaro that “everything takes place as though al-Qaeda’s would-be destroyers had been unceasingly knocking themselves out to enlarge the terrorist organization’s base of support the last five years.”

**

Spilling the Beans

A whistleblower and former employee of Monsanto says genetically engineered crops may cause disease and that GMOs are endangering the food supply.

**

It’s Personal

Cindy Sheehan writes, “One of the main lessons I have learned these past months, since BushCo’s war of terror took the life of my oldest son, is that one should also never argue with someone who is still so blind and/or so naive to stubbornly hold on to the gospel according to George and believe that Saddam had WMD or ties with al-Qaeda.”

**

The Phony War

Robert Dreyfuss writes, “President Bush not only created a fake ‘War on Terror’ to scare voters into supporting his policies - he is failing to address the real threat facing America.”

**

Marine Calls Situation in Anbar Province Dire

The chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that the prospects for securing that country’s western al-Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the US military can do to improve the political and social situation there.

**

The Prairie Populist: Byron Dorgan

David Sirota writes: “North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan is a popular Democrat from a very ‘red’ rural state. He’s remained a voter favorite not because he’s tried to split the difference with Republicans or suck up to the Washington power structure, but because of the populist stands embodied in his new book ‘Take This Job and Ship It: How Corporate Greed and Brain-Dead Politics Are Selling Out America.’”

**

Bush Administration Plans Even Bigger EPA Cuts for ‘08

“EPA planning is now driven entirely by external fiscal targets without regard to the effects upon public or environmental health,” says public employee advocate Jeff Ruch. “The Bush administration seeks to ‘disinvest’ in environmental science, pollution control and global sustainability.”

**

Maybe the Time for Apologies Has Not Yet Arrived

“The facts we know provide key answers: Was there a White House effort to discredit Wilson by dishing details to trusted journalists? Yes. Fitzgerald’s public filings last April make that clear. Were Cheney, Libby and Rove involved in the effort? Again, yes. And Fitzgerald’s filing says President Bush wanted it done,” writes Martin Schram.

**

Dominique Dhombres | Survivors of the CIA’s “Secret” Programs

Peaceful German citizen Chaled El-Masri, Canadian computer consultant Maher Arar, and Yemeni Muhammad al-Assad were all kidnapped, secretly imprisoned, tortured, and finally released by the CIA. None of them has been charged with any links to terrorism.

**

Ten Big News Stories You Aren’t Hearing

The San Francisco Bay Guardian newspaper has printed a list of stories the media have largely ignored over the past year. Here are the Top 10 most ignored stories from an annual list developed by Project Censored, a media research group based at Sonoma State University that tracks the news published in independent journals and newsletters.

**

Deficit Hits New Record

Dean Baker writes: “Most people didn’t see this headline, because the deficit that just soared to a new record was the trade deficit, not the budget deficit. The newly released trade data for July showed the deficit running at an annual rate of almost $820 billion, more than 6 percent of GDP. This is more than three times the size of the $260 billion dollar budget deficit now projected for 2006.”

**

Block Attempt to Curb Wiretapping

Senate Republicans blocked Democratic attempts to rein in President Bush’s domestic wiretapping program Wednesday amid a sustained White House campaign to give the administration broad authority to monitor, interrogate and prosecute terrorism suspects.

**

http://dispatch.com/editorials-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/09/11/20060911-A9-00.html

Crucial questions that arose out of twin towers’ smoke remain unanswered

Monday, September 11, 2006

GEORGIE ANNE GEYER

At this thought-provoking fifth anniversary of 9/11 _ a stunning event still little understood by us _ we finally ought to demand answers. Instead of any agreed-upon analysis or purposeful unity, we are a nation still torn apart. Thus, lacking answers, we can only begin with questions:

So the final question is the biggest one: Regardless of the immediate outcome, will the United States emerge from this ugly and unwelcome chapter of history even resembling the way it was?

I’m not so sure. America without its moral basis is not America. The world could look at Vietnam as an unfortunate colonial-style single diversion from our message; but Iraq is an immeasurably more permanent black mark on our national soul. Remember what Alexis de Tocqueville always emphasized: “If America is not good, America is not great.”

**

“The mind thinks, not with data, but with ideas whose creation and elaboration cannot be reduced to a set of predictable values.”

-Theodore Roszak

***

9/24/06

As we start our 6th year of fear-mongering and mendacity, the oblivious leading the obsequious, summarizing Iraq for the convenience of the two word culture as Stuck and Broke, I can’t help but be reminded of the Essential Chomsky, (1. in the following notes) which in just these short, dated interview segments so well have predicted our predicament. But even more enlightening is to take a look at what was considered common knowledge among the educated in some parts of world in 1996 (2.), and contrast that fervor with which Clinton was truly fighting terrorism to the total disinterest, massive incompetence, and negligent homicide of the Bush Regime during their first 8 months, and since! (3.)

Interesting too is the recent entire UN speech. (4.) It’s often worth checking the original source, rather than rely on the wailings from the Noise Machine. Chavez’s reference to Chomsky alone is worth the mention, but it also contains many other accuracies. In Bush World we have the Republican Democracy Hypocrisy which believes in freedom and liberty only if he agrees with the results, as repeatedly seen in which specific coups he’s either engineered or opposed, the autocratic juntas he’s supported, and well documented cases such as elected officials they’ve ignored, imperialized, or ousted in Haiti, Lebanon, Gaza, Thailand. (5.)

Some of the major confrontations we now face were created by the Bush Doctrine, by invading Iraq and threatening the rest of the world, by making other countries including Russia and China decide they had to militarize and unite to buffer US arrogance, by cutting off N. Korea’s fuel supplies and leaving no other option but nuclear, by forcing the most liberal country in the Mid East, Iran, to move to the right to counter US aggression, by not acknowledging the popular support and societal position of Hamas and Hezbollah, by not attacking the conditions from which terrorism springs, etc.

And while calling the Frat Boy Tyrant a devil is undiplomatic, it’s certainly true that it is not that much more insulting than the words commonly aped by King George XLIII or any of the other right wingnuts, politicians and pundits on the scene. After all, the endless use of terms like axis of evil, evildoers, Hitler, Lenin, appeasers, and so forth, are equally weighted and designed to demonize the target. It‘s easy too to appreciate the clever comparison and sulfur humor it alludes to in his reported love of fart jokes. (6.)

Given that even your hero wants us to believe he was really reading books this summer, “three Shakespeare’s” (???), thought you might enjoy some of these at your local library. (7.)

And, of course, it’s always so hard to keep up with the avalanche of material highlighting the ruling elite’s sinful circles of ideology. With these few screened items, you shouldn‘t be distracted from the Fox Cave for too much time. (8.)

**

(1.)

“9/11 terrorist atrocities are a gift to the harshest and most repressive elements on all sides, and are sure to be exploited-- already have been in fact-- to accelerate the agenda of militarization, regimentation, reversal of social democratic programs, transfer of wealth to narrow sectors, and undermining democracy in any meaningful form.

European leaders recognize, as does everyone with close knowledge of the region, that a massive assault on a Muslim population would be the answer to the prayers of bin Laden and his associates, and would lead the US and its allies into a “diabolical trap,“ as the French foreign minister put it.”

Noam Chomsky, 9/19/2001

“If the goal of a social activist or citizen concerned about justice is to escalate the cycle of violence and to increase the likelihood of further atrocities like that of Sep 11-- and, regrettably, even worse ones with which much of the world is all too familiar-- then they should certainly curb their analysis and criticisms, refuse to think, and cut back their involvement in these very serious issues. The same advice is warranted if they want to help the most reactionary and regressive elements of the political-economic power system to implement plans that will be of great harm to the general population here and in much of the world, and may even threaten human survival. If, on the contrary, the goal is to reduce the likelihood of further atrocities, and to advance hopes for freedom, human rights, and democracy, then they should follow the opposite course. They should intensify their efforts to inquire into the background factors that lie behind these and other crimes and devote themselves with even more energy to just causes. As a bishop is southern Mexico has said, after the US “has generated so much violence to protect its economic interests,” Northamericans need “to reflect on why they are so hated.”

“It is surely more comforting to listen to the words of the commentators who assure us that “They hate us because we champion a ‘new world order’ of capitalism, individualism, secularism and democracy that should be the norm everywhere.“ We must therefore disregard anything we have done that might provoke such responses. Neither their professed goals and actions nor the clearly articulated attitudes of the population of the region-- even highly pro American Kuwaitis-- make the slightest bit of difference. More comforting, no doubt, but not more wise if we care about what lies ahead.

Of course, there will be those who demand silent obedience. We expect that from the ultra-right. But it is important not to be intimidated by hysterical ranting and lies and to keep as closely as one can to the course of truth and honesty and concern for the human consequences of what one does, or fails to do.”

Noam Chomsky, 10/5/2001

“When Gandhi was asked what he thought about “Western civilization,” he is attributed to have said that it might be a good idea.”

Noam Chomsky, 9/20/2001

“Another possibility was to consider realistically the background concerns and grievances, and to try to remedy them, while at the same time following the rule of law to punish criminals. That is the course we follow if we have any concern for genuine justice and hope to reduce the likelihood of further atrocities rather than increase it.

The war on terror is neither new nor a “war on terror.” We should recall that the Reagan administration came to office 20 years ago proclaiming that “international terrorism “ is the greatest threat faced by the US. We must therefore dedicate ourselves to a war to eradicate this “cancer, this “plague” that is destroying civilization. The Reaganites acted on that commitment by organizing their own campaigns of international terrorism that were extraordinary in scale and destruction, even leading to a World Court condemnation of the US.

Bin Laden is quite clear about what he wants. The prime target is Saudi Arabia and other corrupt and repressive regimes of the region, none of which are truly “Islamic.” He is intent on supporting Muslims defending themselves against “infidels” wherever it may be: Chechnya, Bosnia, Kashmir, Western China, SE Asia, North Africa, Indonesia, elsewhere. They fought and won a Holy War to drive the Russians out, and they are even more intent on driving the Americans out of Saudi Arabia, a far more important country to them. His call for the overthrow of corrupt and brutal regimes of gangsters and torturers resonates quite widely, as does his indignation against the atrocities he attributes to the US, hardly without reason.

We should not underestimate the capacity of well-run propaganda systems to drive people to irrational, murderous, and suicidal behavior. We should be able to look at a remote example with some dispassion. WWI can’t have had two sides that were engaged in a noble war for the highest objectives. But, on both sides, the soldiers marched off to mutual slaughter with enormous exuberance, fortified by the cheers of the intellectual classes and those who they helped mobilize, across the political spectrum, from left to right. With the help of Wilson’s propaganda agencies and the enthusiastic support of liberal intellectuals, a pacifist country was turned in a few months into raving anti-German hysterics, ready to take revenge on those who had perpetrated savage crimes, many of them invented by the British Ministry of Information. We need not stride resolutely towards catastrophe, merely because those are the marching orders.”

Noam Chomsky, 9/22/2001

**

(2.)

http://www.fff.org/freedom/1196b.asp

Terrorism, Anti-Terrorism, and American Foreign Policy,
Part 1
by Richard M. Ebeling, November 1996

On July 17, 1996, TWA Fight 800 exploded into a fireball off the southern coast of Long Island and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, just minutes after it took off from John F. Kennedy International Airport. Two hundred and thirty human beings lost their lives. The anger and sorrow expressed by many Americans were understandable, as the evidence clearly pointed to a terrorist act.

Shortly after 1:00 a.m. on July 27, a pipe bomb exploded at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, Georgia, resulting in two deaths and more than a hundred injured, generating even more anger among Americans.

There was also a sense of fatalistic inevitability. In comments collected from “man-on-the-street” interviews shown on the television news programs, a lot of people said they were surprised that more of these types of lethal attacks hadn’t occurred already around America. So much of the world is engulfed in violence and terror, it was logical that it would finally come to the United States. Time magazine’s August 5 issue, for example, warned that the United States may be entering “an awful time when terrorism might become woven into the fabric of American life.” And Newsweek , in its August 5 issue, referred to these explosions as “further evidence to Americans that their long immunity from domestic terrorism has ended.”

What is terrorism all about? In essence, terrorism is a form of politics by other means. The perpetrators of terrorism wish to use a method of unconventional warfare to attain political or ideological goals that regular warfare or diplomacy cannot achieve. Terrorism may be state-sponsored, i.e., individuals and groups carrying out terrorist acts may receive funds, support, training, and protection from a government that does not wish to clash directly and overtly with another government. Or terrorism may be undertaken by individuals and groups who operate underground and illegally within one or more countries, with the goal of overthrowing existing governments and replacing them with an alternative political, religious, or ideological order.

Terrorists are not “crazy people” in the ordinary sense of the phrase; they are dedicated, disciplined individuals. Even when their deeds are meant as revenge, there is almost always thoughtful and careful “method to their madness.” And they are extremely dangerous. They don’t care about human life. The taking of targeted human lives is the very essence of their chosen method of operation. Their purpose is shock, psychological demoralization, fear, and destruction. They are not nice people.

The fact is the United States has not only or merely been a “cultural imperialist” spreading it s way of life through the market appeal of the goods and services that private American companies offer to the consumers of the world. No, the United State government has also been a political and military interventionist throughout the world, including the Middle East, for all the decades since the Second World War. And this is the real and primary reason why Americans at home now find themselves “in harm’s way” from international terrorism.

The Middle East is a battleground of multiple combatants. There is the struggle between Israel and its Arab neighbors and the Palestinians. There are the rivalries for regional power and leadership between Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, with smaller countries (Jordan, Lebanon, or Kuwait) balancing in between or caught in the literal crossfire. And there is Islamic fundamentalism vying for power and control, with or without the covert assistance of one or more of the regional Arab powers.

The United States government has intervened time and again in these disputes — taking sides, dispensing foreign aid, providing military assistance and training, and supporting some governments and working to overthrow others. For decades, it supported the shah, whom the Iranian fundamentalists overthrew; it has twice militarily intervened in Lebanon; it has spent tens of billions of dollars on foreign and military aid to both Israel and Egypt; it has bombed Libya and killed the adopted child of Muammar al-Qaddafi; it has shot down a civilian Iranian airline, killing hundreds of people; it fought a war against Iraq, bombing and killing thousands of Iraqi civilians; it permanently stations thousands of army and naval personnel in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries; and it actively opposes Islamic fundamentalist movements throughout the Middle East.

By necessity, the U.S. government has made enemies. Why is it so difficult to find out and pinpoint which fundamentalist or other terrorist group may have been behind a particular act of terrorism, separate from the forensic problems? Because the number of known or possible enemies is in the dozens. The U.S. government has kept putting its political and military hands in one hornet’s nest after another, and the terrorist acts now reaching America are the responses of some of those hornets who are angry at and resentful of our intervention. It is terrorism of our own making.

We have aroused the wrath and anger of groups who care little for human life and who are collectivist in their thinking. Since they think in collectivist terms about themselves and their opponents in their own parts of the world, it is not surprising that they view all Americans as the collective enemy. The “Great Satan” is “America,” with no distinction between the individuals in Washington who plan and initiate American foreign policy and the private American citizens who are noncombatants having little or no interest and understanding of what is going on in other parts of the world and who are merely the uninformed and misinformed taxpayers footing the government’s interventionist bills. If TWA Flight 800 was an act of fundamentalist terrorism, the 230 victims were targets because, in the eyes of the perpetrators, all Americans are “the enemy.”

Though it is not a view heard on the television or radio news or seen on the op-ed pages of the newspapers, the fact is that the United States government is as responsible as any terrorists who may have planted a bomb on TWA Flight 800. Saying this in no way, shape, or form condones the terrorists who may have committed this brutal crime. They are cruel killers who have committed mass murder and shattered the lives of the family members and friends who have been left to mourn and suffer.

But whose interventions — whose interference into the politics and power rivalries of the Middle East — may have served as the motive for these terrorists to turn their violent activities in the direction of American territory? Whose diplomatic and military intrigues in the internal affairs of these Middle Eastern countries may have resulted in these terrorists’ looking upon all Americans as their enemy, rather than directing their violent fanaticism against their opponents in their own countries?

If the terrorist perpetrators of this cruel act are apprehended, tried, and convicted in a court of law, they should bear the punishment that fits the crime. But their apprehension will not end the danger of terrorism in America. That danger can be minimized only if the United States government stops its interventionist foreign policy.

George Washington’s wise advice of trade and commerce with all, but foreign alliances and intrigues with none, is the only foreign policy that will free America from the threat of foreign fanatics hunting for revenge for what they view as the American government’s interference into matters that are not its concern.

And they are not the U.S. government’s concern. Its responsibility is to secure and protect the life and property of the people within the territorial boundaries of the United States. Instead, the United States government, especially since the Second World War, has tried to take on the role of global social engineer and policemen, in a world that really does not want either American paternalism or military heavy-handedness. In the name of maintaining world peace and order according to the Washington policy-makers’ vision of a peaceful and properly ordered world, we have merely generated a seemingly endless number of enemies. And some of them are extremely nasty.

What does the U.S. government offer the American citizenry as an answer to the problem of terrorism? It proposes to fight terrorism by limiting even further the liberties of the American people at home and when they travel abroad. In the name of greater security, we are being asked to give up even more of our liberty.

http://www.fff.org/freedom/1296b.asp

Terrorism, Anti-Terrorism, and American Foreign Policy,
Part 2
by Richard M. Ebeling, December 1996

Shortly after the July 17, 1996, crash of TWA Flight 800, President Clinton called for the passage of a new anti-terrorism bill. He argued that unless federal law-enforcement agencies were given the tools needed to combat terrorism, the lives of Americans would be put into increasing danger. At the same time, he called for increased security measures at U.S. airports to foil terrorist attempts to plant bombs on airplanes on both domestic and international flights.

On July 26, President Clinton issued instructions to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to tighten airport security. He ordered increased screening of luggage, as well as greater inspection of airplane cargo. Hotel and curbside check-in, especially for international flights, was banned. Passengers were to be more carefully interviewed before boarding. And a plan for accelerating the introduction of more sophisticated bomb-detecting and screening devices was to be drawn up. The added costs and greater time at airports before being able to board a flight, the president said, would have be borne by the American people.

Two days later, on July 28, President Clinton called for new and tougher measures for fighting terrorism. He called for law-enforcement agencies to have the right to carry out “roving wiretaps,” in which not only would a single telephone line be approved by a judge for government eavesdropping but also any number of forms of telecommunication that might be used in sequence by a suspect being investigated by federal law-enforcement agents. The president also called for federal authority to control some types of Internet uses that federal agencies might believe are being used for unlawful or terrorist purposes. And he called for the use of “taggants,” or color-coded plastic identifiers, that would be mixed in with black and smokeless explosive powders, for purposes of easier tracing of any unlawful use of them back to their source.

Before its summer recess, on August 2, the House of Representatives took up the president’s bill and passed a modified version.

The president’s response, on August 10, was to accuse the House of being soft on terrorism. He insisted: “We cannot cast aside any tools in this fight for the security of our country and the safety of our people.” Terrorism, President Clinton insisted, was “a central national-security priority.”

Terrorism has reached the shores of the United States and is a threat to the lives and security of Americans. But it has become a threat to Americans not because of lax counterterrorist techniques at airports or insufficient methods for investigating suspected terrorists. Terrorism has become a threat in America because of decades of U.S. foreign-interventionist policy.

The international terrorism that seems to be beginning to plague Americans at home is the almost inevitable result of decades of U.S. intervention in various parts of the world. Guided since the 1940s by the ideology of the social engineer and stimulated by the pressure of certain special-interest groups at home that have various economic interests in different parts of the world, the U.S. government has embroiled the lives and fortunes of the American people in the affairs of other nations.

Whenever it has done so — whether to try to stabilize “friendly” governments; to secure resources or raw materials claimed by the Washington policymakers to be “vital” to American interests; to prevent “dangerous” ideologies or governments from spreading their influence in parts of the globe considered “essential” to American security — the U.S. government has invariably made enemies. Why? Because to intervene on the side of one group or a particular government in these foreign lands means, by definition, that the United States stands in opposition to the political groups, economic interests, or ideological movements attempting to change the existing circumstances in their own country or region of the world. Those groups, interests, and movements for change in those foreign lands now face two opposing forces: the government and policies of their own country and the political, financial, and military strength of the United States. As a result, they often begin to target not only the forces in their own country to which they are opposed but also the ally of those they oppose — the United States.

Since, unfortunately, the world we live in is dominated by collectivism, many of these political movements and causes around the world assign little or no importance to the rights or sanctity of the individual. As a consequence, all Americans, regardless of who they are and where they are, become targets for the terrorist acts of those wishing to strike a blow against America. And if teaching America a lesson involves these people’s bringing their war, civil war, or revolution to the United States itself, then Americans soon end up paying the price for the interventionist sins of their own government.

How does the U.S. government respond? Again, unfortunately, in a manner typical of the interventionist mind-set. It doesn’t recognize that its own foreign-policy adventures have brought this tragedy down upon the heads of the American people. It doesn’t consider the possibility of reevaluating the interventionist policies that have brought about this situation. It fails to contemplate a reversal of its courses of action and the ending of its foreign interventions.

Instead, the government immediately responds with new forms of domestic intervention to try to ameliorate the negative effects of the earlier foreign interventions. Foreign terrorists react to American political, financial, and military interventions in their parts of the world with acts of terrorism in the United States, and the U.S. government proposes restrictions on the liberties of Americans to minimize the damage of its own policies.

The only way to minimize the danger of terrorism is to eliminate the irritation that is creating the conditions under which fanatics, ideologues, and radical fundamentalists of various collectivist stripes have come to see Americans as their enemy and as targets for the achievement of their ends in their own parts of the world. However, this can happen only by ending America’s interventionist meddling in other people’s affairs around the world.

Professor Ebeling is the Ludwig von Mises Professor of Economics at Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan, and serves as vice president of academic affairs for The Future of Freedom Foundation.

**

(3.)

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/election/august96/clintonspeech_8-6.html

CLINTON URGES ANTI-TERRORISM ACTION
August 6, 1996

President Clinton, in a speech in Washington at George Washington University, decries Congress’ response to his anti-terrorism proposals, urging passage of laws that would increase wiretapping and allow explosives taggants.

**

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=53183

William J. Clinton The President’s Radio Address August 10th, 1996

What happened in the Olympic Centennial Park, that wonderful public space open to all people who visited Atlanta, is symbolic of the world’s problem with terrorism. Now, that’s why terrorism must be a central national security priority for the United States. Our efforts must and will be unrelenting, coordinated, and strong.

We are pursuing a three-part strategy against terrorism:

First, we’re rallying the world community to stand with us against terrorism. From the Summit of the Peacemakers in Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt, where 13 Arab nations for the very first time condemned terror in Israel and throughout the Middle East, to the antiterror agreements we reached with our G-7 partners in Russia last month to take specific common actions to fight terrorism, we are moving forward together. Our intelligence services have been sharing more information with other nations than ever, to stop terrorists before they act, capture them if they do, and see that they’re brought to justice. We’ve imposed stiff sanctions with our allies against states that support terrorists. When necessary, we’re acting on our own. A law I signed this week will help to deny Iran and Libya the money they use to finance international terrorism.

Second, our antiterrorism strategy relies on tough enforcement and stern punishment here at home. We made terrorism a Federal offense, expanded the role of the FBI, imposed the death penalty. We’ve hired more law enforcement personnel, added resources, improved training. And I’m proposing a new law that will help to keep terrorists off our soil, fight money laundering, and punish violent crimes committed against Americans abroad.

Third, we’re tightening security on our airplanes and at our Nation’s airports. From now on, we’ll hand-search more luggage and screen more bags and require preflight inspections for any plane flying to or from the United States. I’ve asked Vice President Gore to head an effort to deploy new high-technology inspection machines at our airports and to review all our security operations.

We’ll continue to press forward on all three of these fronts. But we cannot cast aside any tools in this fight for the security of our country and the safety of our people. That is exactly what the Republican majority in Congress did by stripping from the antiterrorism legislation key provisions that law enforcement needs to help them find out, track down, and shut down terrorists.

(4.)

Chavez Address to the United Nations

by Hugo Chavez

Address to the UN

New York

September 20, 2006

Representatives of the governments of the world, good morning to all of you. First of all, I would like to invite you, very respectfully, to those who have not read this book, to read it.

Noam Chomsky, one of the most prestigious American and world intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, and this is one of his most recent books, Hegemony or Survival: The Imperialist Strategy of the United States. [Holds up book, waves it in front of General Assembly.] “It’s an excellent book to help us understand what has been happening in the world throughout the 20th century, and what’s happening now, and the greatest threat looming over our planet.

The hegemonic pretensions of the American empire are placing at risk the very survival of the human species. We continue to warn you about this danger and we appeal to the people of the United States and the world to halt this threat, which is like a sword hanging over our heads. I had considered reading from this book, but, for the sake of time,” [flips through the pages, which are numerous] “I will just leave it as a recommendation.

It reads easily, it is a very good book, I’m sure Madame [President] you are familiar with it. It appears in English, in Russian, in Arabic, in German. I think that the first people who should read this book are our brothers and sisters in the United States, because their threat is right in their own house.

The devil is right at home. The devil, the devil himself, is right in the house.

“And the devil came here yesterday. Yesterday the devil came here. Right here.” [crosses himself] “And it smells of sulfur still today.

Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world.

I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday’s statement made by the president of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.

An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: “The Devil’s Recipe.”

As Chomsky says here, clearly and in depth, the American empire is doing all it can to consolidate its system of domination. And we cannot allow them to do that. We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated.

The world parent’s statement -- cynical, hypocritical, full of this imperial hypocrisy from the need they have to control everything.

They say they want to impose a democratic model. But that’s their democratic model. It’s the false democracy of elites, and, I would say, a very original democracy that’s imposed by weapons and bombs and firing weapons.

What a strange democracy. Aristotle might not recognize it or others who are at the root of democracy.

What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs?

The president of the United States, yesterday, said to us, right here, in this room, and I’m quoting, “Anywhere you look, you hear extremists telling you can escape from poverty and recover your dignity through violence, terror and martyrdom.”

Wherever he looks, he sees extremists. And you, my brother -- he looks at your color, and he says, oh, there’s an extremist. Evo Morales, the worthy president of Bolivia, looks like an extremist to him.

The imperialists see extremists everywhere. It’s not that we are extremists. It’s that the world is waking up. It’s waking up all over. And people are standing up.

I have the feeling, dear world dictator, that you are going to live the rest of your days as a nightmare because the rest of us are standing up, all those who are rising up against American imperialism, who are shouting for equality, for respect, for the sovereignty of nations.

Yes, you can call us extremists, but we are rising up against the empire, against the model of domination.

The president then -- and this he said himself, he said: “I have come to speak directly to the populations in the Middle East, to tell them that my country wants peace.”

That’s true. If we walk in the streets of the Bronx, if we walk around New York, Washington, San Diego, in any city, San Antonio, San Francisco, and we ask individuals, the citizens of the United States, what does this country want? Does it want peace? They’ll say yes.

But the government doesn’t want peace. The government of the United States doesn’t want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war.

It wants peace. But what’s happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? In Palestine? What’s happening? What’s happened over the last 100 years in Latin America and in the world? And now threatening Venezuela -- new threats against Venezuela, against Iran?

He spoke to the people of Lebanon. Many of you, he said, have seen how your homes and communities were caught in the crossfire. How cynical can you get? What a capacity to lie shamefacedly. The bombs in Beirut with millimetric precision?

This is crossfire? He’s thinking of a western, when people would shoot from the hip and somebody would be caught in the crossfire.

This is imperialist, fascist, assassin, genocidal, the empire and Israel firing on the people of Palestine and Lebanon. That is what happened. And now we hear, “We’re suffering because we see homes destroyed.’

The president of the United States came to talk to the peoples -- to the peoples of the world. He came to say -- I brought some documents with me, because this morning I was reading some statements, and I see that he talked to the people of Afghanistan, the people of Lebanon, the people of Iran. And he addressed all these peoples directly.

And you can wonder, just as the president of the United States addresses those peoples of the world, what would those peoples of the world tell him if they were given the floor? What would they have to say?

And I think I have some inkling of what the peoples of the south, the oppressed people think. They would say, “Yankee imperialist, go home.” I think that is what those people would say if they were given the microphone and if they could speak with one voice to the American imperialists.

And that is why, Madam President, my colleagues, my friends, last year we came here to this same hall as we have been doing for the past eight years, and we said something that has now been confirmed -- fully, fully confirmed.

I don’t think anybody in this room could defend the system. Let’s accept -- let’s be honest. The U.N. system, born after the Second World War, collapsed. It’s worthless.

Oh, yes, it’s good to bring us together once a year, see each other, make statements and prepare all kinds of long documents, and listen to good speeches, like Abel’s yesterday, or President Mullah’s . Yes, it’s good for that.

And there are a lot of speeches, and we’ve heard lots from the president of Sri Lanka, for instance, and the president of Chile.

But we, the assembly, have been turned into a merely deliberative organ. We have no power, no power to make any impact on the terrible situation in the world. And that is why Venezuela once again proposes, here, today, 20 September, that we re-establish the United Nations.

Last year, Madam, we made four modest proposals that we felt to be crucially important. We have to assume the responsibility our heads of state, our ambassadors, our representatives, and we have to discuss it.

The first is expansion, and Mullah talked about this yesterday right here. The Security Council, both as it has permanent and non-permanent categories, (inaudible) developing countries and LDCs must be given access as new permanent members. That’s step one.

Second, effective methods to address and resolve world conflicts, transparent decisions.

Point three, the immediate suppression -- and that is something everyone’s calling for -- of the anti-democratic mechanism known as the veto, the veto on decisions of the Security Council.

Let me give you a recent example. The immoral veto of the United States allowed the Israelis, with impunity, to destroy Lebanon. Right in front of all of us as we stood there watching, a resolution in the council was prevented.

Fourthly, we have to strengthen, as we’ve always said, the role and the powers of the secretary general of the United Nations.

Yesterday, the secretary general practically gave us his speech of farewell. And he recognized that over the last 10 years, things have just gotten more complicated; hunger, poverty, violence, human rights violations have just worsened. That is the tremendous consequence of the collapse of the United Nations system and American hegemonistic pretensions.

Madam, Venezuela a few years ago decided to wage this battle within the United Nations by recognizing the United Nations, as members of it that we are, and lending it our voice, our thinking.

Our voice is an independent voice to represent the dignity and the search for peace and the reformulation of the international system; to denounce persecution and aggression of hegemonistic forces on the planet.

This is how Venezuela has presented itself. Bolivar’s home has sought a nonpermanent seat on the Security Council.

Let’s see. Well, there’s been an open attack by the U.S. government, an immoral attack, to try and prevent Venezuela from being freely elected to a post in the Security Council.

The imperium is afraid of truth, is afraid of independent voices. It calls us extremists, but they are the extremists.

And I would like to thank all the countries that have kindly announced their support for Venezuela, even though the ballot is a secret one and there’s no need to announce things.

But since the imperium has attacked, openly, they strengthened the convictions of many countries. And their support strengthens us.

Mercosur, as a bloc, has expressed its support, our brothers in Mercosur. Venezuela, with Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, is a full member of Mercosur.

And many other Latin American countries, CARICOM, Bolivia have expressed their support for Venezuela. The Arab League, the full Arab League has voiced its support. And I am immensely grateful to the Arab world, to our Arab brothers, our Caribbean brothers, the African Union. Almost all of Africa has expressed its support for Venezuela and countries such as Russia or China and many others.

I thank you all warmly on behalf of Venezuela, on behalf of our people, and on behalf of the truth, because Venezuela, with a seat on the Security Council, will be expressing not only Venezuela’s thoughts, but it will also be the voice of all the peoples of the world, and we will defend dignity and truth.

Over and above all of this, Madam President, I think there are reasons to be optimistic. A poet would have said “helplessly optimistic,” because over and above the wars and the bombs and the aggressive and the preventive war and the destruction of entire peoples, one can see that a new era is dawning.

As Silvio Rodriguez says, the era is giving birth to a heart. There are alternative ways of thinking. There are young people who think differently. And this has already been seen within the space of a mere decade. It was shown that the end of history was a totally false assumption, and the same was shown about Pax Americana and the establishment of the capitalist neo-liberal world. It has been shown, this system, to generate mere poverty. Who believes in it now?

What we now have to do is define the future of the world. Dawn is breaking out all over. You can see it in Africa and Europe and Latin America and Oceanea. I want to emphasize that optimistic vision.

We have to strengthen ourselves, our will to do battle, our awareness. We have to build a new and better world.

Venezuela joins that struggle, and that’s why we are threatened. The U.S. has already planned, financed and set in motion a coup in Venezuela, and it continues to support coup attempts in Venezuela and elsewhere.

President Michelle Bachelet reminded us just a moment ago of the horrendous assassination of the former foreign minister, Orlando Letelier.

And I would just add one thing: Those who perpetrated this crime are free. And that other event where an American citizen also died were American themselves. They were CIA killers, terrorists.

And we must recall in this room that in just a few days there will be another anniversary. Thirty years will have passed from this other horrendous terrorist attack on the Cuban plane, where 73 innocents died, a Cubana de Aviacion airliner.

And where is the biggest terrorist of this continent who took the responsibility for blowing up the plane? He spent a few years in jail in Venezuela. Thanks to CIA and then government officials, he was allowed to escape, and he lives here in this country, protected by the government.

And he was convicted. He has confessed to his crime. But the U.S. government has double standards. It protects terrorism when it wants to.

And this is to say that Venezuela is fully committed to combating terrorism and violence. And we are one of the people who are fighting for peace.

Luis Posada Carriles is the name of that terrorist who is protected here. And other tremendously corrupt people who escaped from Venezuela are also living here under protection: a group that bombed various embassies, that assassinated people during the coup. They kidnapped me and they were going to kill me, but I think God reached down and our people came out into the streets and the army was too, and so I’m here today.

But these people who led that coup are here today in this country protected by the American government. And I accuse the American government of protecting terrorists and of having a completely cynical discourse.

We mentioned Cuba. Yes, we were just there a few days ago. We just came from there happily.

And there you see another era born. The Summit of the 15, the Summit of the Nonaligned, adopted a historic resolution. This is the outcome document. Don’t worry, I’m not going to read it.

But you have a whole set of resolutions here that were adopted after open debate in a transparent matter -- more than 50 heads of state. Havana was the capital of the south for a few weeks, and we have now launched, once again, the group of the nonaligned with new momentum.

And if there is anything I could ask all of you here, my companions, my brothers and sisters, it is to please lend your good will to lend momentum to the Nonaligned Movement for the birth of the new era, to prevent hegemony and prevent further advances of imperialism.

And as you know, Fidel Castro is the president of the nonaligned for the next three years, and we can trust him to lead the charge very efficiently.

Unfortunately they thought, “Oh, Fidel was going to die.” But they’re going to be disappointed because he didn’t. And he’s not only alive, he’s back in his green fatigues, and he’s now presiding the nonaligned.

So, my dear colleagues, Madam President, a new, strong movement has been born, a movement of the south. We are men and women of the south.

With this document, with these ideas, with these criticisms, I’m now closing my file. I’m taking the book with me. And, don’t forget, I’m recommending it very warmly and very humbly to all of you.

We want ideas to save our planet, to save the planet from the imperialist threat. And hopefully in this very century, in not too long a time, we will see this, we will see this new era, and for our children and our grandchildren a world of peace based on the fundamental principles of the United Nations, but a renewed United Nations.

And maybe we have to change location. Maybe we have to put the United Nations somewhere else; maybe a city of the south. We’ve proposed Venezuela.

You know that my personal doctor had to stay in the plane. The chief of security had to be left in a locked plane. Neither of these gentlemen was allowed to arrive and attend the U.N. meeting. This is another abuse and another abuse of power on the part of the Devil. It smells of sulfur here, but God is with us and I embrace you all.

May God bless us all. Good day to you.

**

(5.)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-scher/reject-republican-democra_b_29921.html

Chapter 4 of my new book Wait! Don’t Move To Canada! is titled “Reject Republican Democracy Hypocrisy,” and once again, we are witnessing that hypocrisy.

As today’s W. Post reports, the White House is sitting quietly as a democratically elected leader is ousted, and tanks roll through Thailand.

This isn’t new. Bush has screwed over friendly, democratically elected heads of state before. Dubya wanted coups in Haiti and Venezuela because those were leftist governments not considered to be on the Republican team. Witness how he undermined the Lebanese Prime Minister during the recent conflict with Israel.

And the support Bush gives autocrats around the world is considerable. Today’s W. Post piece goes over some of it, as does my book.

Thailand may not be on the radar of most Americans. Its relevance to our lives isn’t obvious (though there is a local Muslim separatist insurgency with ties to international militants, albeit not necessarily operational ties.)

However, as I detail in the book, it’s important to establish that the Republican Party is wholly insincere about promoting democracy.

**

(6.)

Washington Whispers

By Paul Bedard

Posted Sunday, August 20, 2006

Animal House in the West Wing

He loves to cuss, gets a jolly when a mountain biker wipes out trying to keep up with him, and now we’re learning that the first frat boy loves flatulence jokes. A top insider let that slip when explaining why President Bush is paranoid around women, always worried about his behavior. But he’s still a funny, earthy guy who, for example, can’t get enough of fart jokes. He’s also known to cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides, but forget about getting people to gas about that.

**

(7.)

Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism,

Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco. He serves as Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project

Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty From Watergate to Iraq,

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek.

Hostile Takeover: How Big Money & Corruption Conquered Our Government - and How We Take It Back.

David Sirota, co-chair of the Progressive States Network, blogger

Take This Job and Ship It: How Corporate Greed and Brain-Dead Politics Are Selling Out America.’

North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan is a popular Democrat from a very ‘red’ rural state.

Scandal: How `Gotcha’ Politics is Destroying America.

Lanny Davis, who served as Special Counsel to President Clinton from 1996 to 1998.

Bush’s Brain,

The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power.

James Moore, an Emmy-winning former television news correspondent and Wayne Slater, a senior political writer for The Dallas Morning News. Together they’re co-authors of the 2004 best-seller, and the new book

One Party Country: The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century.,

Tom Hamburger, an investigative political reporter for The Los Angeles Times

How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime

Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and advisor to President Bill Clinton.

Brave New Ballot: The Battle to Safeguard Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting.

Avi Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University

On Becoming Fearless _ in Love, Work, and Life

Arianna Huffington, creator of “The Huffington Post,”

“Doublespeak and the War on Terrorism.”

Timothy Lynch, the director of the Cato Institute’s project on criminal justice

Diplomacy Lessons: Realism for an Unloved Superpower

Brady Kiesling, who was a US foreign service officer for 20 years and resigned over US policy on Iraq.

The Raw Deal: How the Bush Republicans Plan to Destroy Social Security and the Legacy of the New Deal,

Joe Conason, a columnist for Salon and The New York Observer.

Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back.

Amy Goodman, the host of “Democracy Now” on Pacifica Radio. She’s the co-author, with her brother David Goodman

The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer

Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)

The Greatest Story Ever Sold: Bush’s America from Mission Accomplished to Heckuva Job, Brownie

Frank Rich’s New Book

Wait! Don’t Move To Canada!

Bill Scher

Republican War on Science

Chris Mooney

(8.)

Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid on Iraq War Planning

September 11, 2006

From the Newport News of Virginia:

Long before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists to develop plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.

In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said “he would fire the next person” who talked about the need for a post-war plan. [...]

**

Princeton Scientists Create Vote-Stealing Program for Diebold AccuVote-TS

Demonstration vote-stealing software can be installed within a minute on a common electronic voting machine. The software can fraudulently change vote counts without being detected.

**

Published on Wednesday, September 13, 2006 by the Baltimore Sun (Maryland)

President Bush Could Learn a Lot from Sun Tzu

by John Lang

Dear Mr. President,

It’s too bad The Art of War wasn’t on your summer reading list. If you’d read it, maybe we wouldn’t be mired in Iraq. According to the author, Sun Tzu, esteemed for thousands of years as the Sage of Warfare, you’re doing it all wrong.

**

Iraq War “Dangerously Wrong”

“We have sacrificed our daughters and sons and our treasure in a war we didn’t have to fight,” said Ned Lamont. “We have ignored the real threats and security needs in the war we should be fighting, the one against the terrorists.... Senator Lieberman believes that President Bush has it right in Iraq. I believe that he’s dangerously wrong.”

**

A Window Into Oil Lease Profiteering

An official overseeing oil leasing says he was directed in the 1990s to remove a provision concerning royalty payments, leading to a financial windfall to oil companies. He also said that mid-level department officials covered up the mistake for five years and thus failed to deal with ethical missteps and conflicts of interest.

**

A Murrow Moment

Looking back at McCarthy-era paranoia and Edward Murrow’s radio broadcasts, William Fisher writes, “There’s a reason I cite all this old radio-days history. Then, as now, there was little and largely ineffective public push-back against right-wing radio ‘news.’ Then, as now, networks controlled the airwaves, and sponsors controlled the networks. Today, we have television as well as radio. And today, both are still controlled by large corporate interests - owners and sponsors.”

**

Gazan Economy Nears Collapse and Children Go Hungry

It is difficult to exaggerate the economic collapse of Gaza, with the Palestinian Authority cut off from funds by Israel, the United States and the European Union after Hamas won the legislative elections on January 25. Since then, the authority has paid most of its 73,000 employees here, nearly 40 percent of Gaza’s work force, only 1.5 months’ salary, resulting in a severe economic depression and growing signs of malnutrition, especially among the poorest children.

**

How “Atta in Prague” Entered Iraq Story Line

The claim that terrorist leader Mohamed Atta met in Prague with an Iraqi spy a few months before 9/11 was never substantiated, but that didn’t stop the White House from trying to insert the allegation in presidential speeches, according to classified documents.

**

The Modern Successor to the Slave Trade

Desmond Tutu writes: “There have been international treaties to control the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons for decades. Yet, despite the mounting death toll, there is still no treaty governing sales of all conventional weapons, from handguns to attack helicopters. As a result, weapons fall into the wrong hands all too easily, fueling human rights abuses, prolonging wars and digging countries deeper into poverty.”

**

The Pentagon’s 12-Step Program to Create a Military of Misfits

“With a growing majority of Americans opposed to the war in Iraq, even ardent hawks refusing to enlist in droves, and the Pentagon pulling out ever more stops and sinking to new lows in recruitment and retention, a new all-volunteer generation of UUUU’s may emerge - the underachieving, unable, unexceptional, unintelligent, unsound, unhinged, unacceptable, unhealthy, undesirable, unloved, uncivil, and even un-American, all led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful,” Nick Turse writes.

**

The Reign of International Chaos

Daniel Vernet writes: “The strategy chosen by the Americans to respond to [the 9-11 attacks] leaves a more chaotic, less secure world, lacking not only the implacable logic of the antagonism between two blocs that obtained during the Cold War, but also the somewhat pacific benefits attributable to the reign of international law.”

**

NASA Scientists Find Strongest Evidence for Global Warming

“This is the strongest evidence yet of global warming in the Arctic,” said Josefino Comiso, a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. If the ice caps continue to melt, Comiso said, it could have very profound effects on the polar bear and other marine mammals living in the Arctic.

**

Published on Wednesday, September 13, 2006 by Foreign Policy in Focus

Bush Uses 9/11 Speech to Promote More Killing in Iraq

by Stephen Zunes

Despite promises from the White House that the address to the nation on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy would be non-political, President George W. Bush devoted much of the speech to defending his unrelated policy on Iraq.

**

Published on Wednesday, September 13, 2006 by the Binghamton Press & Sun Bulletin (New York)

The Imperial Presidency, Round Two

by David Rossie

It may not rank up there with Dec. 7, 1941, or Nov. 23, 1963, or Sept. 11, 2001, but the night of Oct. 20, 1973, is not far below in my memory bank.

For those under 40 who may be wondering why, that was the date of the Saturday Night Massacre, when Nixon ordered the dismissal of Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Attorney General Elliot Richardson resigned rather than comply, as did his second in command, William Ruckelshaus. Into the vacuum stepped Solicitor General Robert Bork, who was only too happy to oblige.

When news of that development came in on the AP teletype, a shiver of excitement swept across the newsroom. We sensed that a significant step had been taken, but we didn’t know where it would lead. Ten months later, we found out, when Nixon, facing impeachment, resigned from the presidency.

Editorial Page Editor Bill Lawton came in that night from whatever he’d been doing to write a lead editorial on the event for the next day’s paper, an editorial that began with these sentences:

“With every day that goes by, Richard Nixon manages to look more as though he was born to the presidency rather than elected to it. He has repeatedly defied the courts, ignored the prerogatives of Congress and refused to acknowledge any limits on the power of the presidency.”

With no more than a simple name change, that eerily prophetic editorial could have run in this paper yesterday, today or any day this month.

That editorial captured a sense that was growing nationwide; that the American people would put up with only so much blatant disregard for the very bedrock laws that had made this country what it was.

**

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SEPTEMBER 13, 2006

10:47 AM

CONTACT: Americans for Democratic Action

202) 785-5980 * 785-5969

ADA Condemns President’s Dishonesty

WASHINGTON - September 13 - Leaders of Americans for Democratic Action condemn the consistent and unmitigated misdirection that our nation’s Executive Branch has used in discussing terror threats, national security, and military engagement.

An ADA resolution on the subject was passed at a recent meeting that calls for an end to “President Bush’s continued shameful attempt to keep the American people in fear,” and for “elected officials and candidates for office to address the Administration’s ongoing deception and tell Americans the truth.”

**

I Hope That We May Find the Courage...

by Senator Robert C. Byrd

US Senate Floor Remarks

September 13, 2006

Mr. President,

September 11 has come and gone, and as we remember those lost on that fateful day, and contemplate events since the horrific attack, one truth stands out.

The war in Iraq has backfired, producing more recruits for terrorism, and deep divisions within our own country. It is a war we should never have begun. The detour from our attack on Bin Laden and his minions, hiding in the cracks and crevices of the rough terrain of Afghanistan, to the unwise and unprovoked attack on Iraq has been a disastrous one. Mr. Bush’s war has damaged the country because he drove our blessed land into an unnecessary conflict, utterly misreading the consequences, with the result now being a daily display of America’s vulnerabilities to those who wish us ill. The United States is a weaker power now, especially in the Middle East, but also in the court of world opinion. Where is the America of restraint, of peace and of inspiration to millions? Where is the America respected not only for her military might, but also for her powerful ideas and her reasonable diplomacy?

Our country may have deviated occasionally from its positive global image in the past, but Abu Ghraib, the body snatching for torture, euphemistically called rendition, Presidential directives which unilaterally alter conditions of the Geneva Convention -- these are not the stuff of mere slight deviations from the America of peacefulness, fairness, and goodwill. These are major policy and attitudinal changes of Tsunami-sized proportions. Our friends shake their heads in disbelief. Our enemies nod wisely and claim they knew all the while. I cannot remember a time in our history when our elected leaders have failed the people so completely, and yet, so far, are not held accountable for costly misjudgments and outright deceptions.

A display of ineptitude and spectacular miscalculation in Iraq has cost us dearly. Disenchantment at home with the dismal results in Iraq will have reverberations for years, much like the failure in Vietnam did in the 1960’s.

President Bush insists that his war must go on. He defends warrantless wiretapping of our own citizens as essential to his cause, despite a court decision that the President has no such authority under our Constitution. He defends torture and rendition, and says that they have produced valuable evidence which has subverted several terror attacks on our country. But, his credibility is so damaged that it is difficult to believe him. He demands the authority to hold terror suspects indefinitely, and then to try them using military tribunals which deny basic rights, also in defiance of a Supreme Court ruling. He seems convinced that he can “win” a global war on terror despite the demonstrated failure of his policies of unilateralism, militarism, overheated rhetoric, and a pathological dislike of diplomacy. It is up to the Congress to change course and to stop the heinous raiding of constitutionally protected liberties by a White House which does not fully appreciate the true meaning of the word freedom. I hope that we may find the courage.

**

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SEPTEMBER 13, 2006 2:44 PM

CONTACT: Public Citizen

(202) 588-1000

House GOP Leaders Apparently Not Serious About Earmark Reform

Congress Again Fails to Address Corruption, Lobbying Abuses

“It is tragic that Congress is failing to address in any meaningful way the corruption sweeping Capitol Hill in recent years,” said Laura MacCleery, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. “One member of Congress has already gone to prison; several others are under criminal investigation. Turning a blind eye to lobbying abuses on the Hill is a trademark of this Congress.”

**

US to Cut Funds for Two Renewable Energy Sources

The US Department of Energy (DOE) is quitting the hydropower and geothermal power research business - if Congress will let it. Declaring them “mature technologies” that need no further funding, the Bush administration in its FY 2007 budget request eliminates hydropower and geothermal research, venerable programs with roots in the energy crises of the 1970s.

**

US Has Been Stockpiling Banned Pesticide

The United States has stockpiled millions of pounds of methyl bromide, a pesticide that depletes the ozone layer, according to newly public documents - information that could create a stir during international negotiations next month, when the Bush administration seeks permission to produce more.

**

Scientist Who Refused to Be Silenced

Jim Hansen has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the science of global warming, issuing warning after warning about the consequences for the planet if we do nothing to stop the creation of greenhouse gases. For the past 30 years he has run up against a wall of resistance from politicians and policy-makers who simply don’t want to believe what they hear from him.

**

No $2 Billion for 9/11 Heroes

Senate Republicans killed a bid for nearly $2 billion to help sick 9/11 responders yesterday - blocking the measure without letting it come up for a vote. People suffering the effects from 9/11’s toxic dust were outraged by the move.

**

The Absurd Season

William Rivers Pitt writes: “Herein lies the absurdity. It was bad enough in 2004 to have an entire national election turn on issues that had nothing to do with what the country was facing. Today, there appear to be a number of serious issues on the table - Iraq, torture, national security - but these issues are being transmogrified by the GOP into debates that bear no relationship to reality.”

**

The President Goes to Capitol Hill to Lobby for Torture

The Washington Post reports: “President Bush rarely visits Congress. So it was a measure of his painfully skewed priorities that Mr. Bush made the unaccustomed trip yesterday to seek legislative permission for the CIA to make people disappear into secret prisons and have information extracted from them by means he dare not describe publicly.”

**

The Insecurity of Immorality

“The betrayal of our troops by the Bush administration is immoral. The betrayal of each of us by a president who talks tough on issues of security but who has done little more than nothing to enforce protection and, instead, invaded a country with no WMD and no ties to al-Qaeda is immoral. Bush’s colossal lie and mantra that “Iraq is the central front in the war on terra” is immoral,” writes Missy Comley Beattie.

**

Gandhi’s 100th Anniversary

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091506E.shtml

John Dear writes: “While many commemorated the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, we also celebrated the 100th anniversary of Gandhi’s satyagraha campaign in South Africa. It began with Gandhi’s speech to a crowd, a speech that inspired some 3,000 oppressed Indians to profess a vow of nonviolence to resist racist laws: ‘The government has taken leave of all sense of decency,’ Gandhi said.”

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Poisons at Large

While the US lags behind the rest of the world in its failure to ratify two key international treaties regulating the production of persistent organic pollutants and export of toxic waste, global poison traffickers break existing laws - and people die.

**

Jason Leopold | Murtha Lays the Dead at Rumsfeld’s Door

Democratic congressman John Murtha has released a 12-page report outlining severe shortfalls plaguing the US Army as thousands of troops prepare to be deployed to Iraq. Murtha said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld bears full responsibility for the military’s consistent readiness failures and demanded that he resign.

**

World Bank Cites Poverty, Conflict as Key Creators of Terrorism

The World Bank concludes that weak and poorly governed nations can provide a breeding ground for global terrorism. The root causes of terrorism have little to do with “enemies who hate freedom,” or “enemies of democracy,” or even extremist fanatics pledged to a 7th-century interpretation of Islam. These are symptoms, but not the disease.

**

FCC Ordered Media Ownership Study Destroyed

The Federal Communications Commission ordered its staff to destroy all copies of a draft study that suggested greater concentration of media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage, a former lawyer at the agency says.

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CIA Knew in ‘02 Bin Laden Had No Iraq Ties

The CIA learned in late September 2002 from a high-level member of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle that Iraq had no past or present contact with Osama bin Laden and that the Iraqi leader considered bin Laden an enemy of the Baghdad regime, according to a recent Senate Intelligence Committee report.

**

Give it up for Chris Buckley – gentleman, conservative, author of the delicious Thank You for Smoking, son of William F. He writes, “http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0610.buckley.html”: in part:

Who knew, in 2000, that “compassionate conservatism” meant bigger government, unrestricted government spending, government intrusion in personal matters, government ineptitude, and cronyism in disaster relief? Who knew, in 2000, that the only bill the president would veto, six years later, would be one on funding stem-cell research?

[…]

On Capitol Hill, a Republican Senate and House are now distinguished by—or perhaps even synonymous with—earmarks, the K Street Project, Randy Cunningham (bandit, 12 o’clock high!), Sen. Ted Stevens’s $250-million Bridge to Nowhere, Jack Abramoff (Who? Never heard of him), and a Senate Majority Leader who declared, after conducting his own medical evaluation via videotape, that he knew every bit as much about the medical condition of Terry Schiavo as her own doctors and husband. Who knew that conservatism means barging into someone’s hospital room like Dr. Frankenstein with defibrillator paddles? In what chapter of Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom or Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind is that principle enunciated?

[ … ]

George Tenet’s WMD “slam-dunk,” Vice President Cheney’s “we will be greeted as liberators,” Don Rumsfeld’s avidity to promulgate a minimalist military doctrine, together with the tidy theories of a group who call themselves “neo-conservative” (not one of whom, to my knowledge, has ever worn a military uniform), have thus far: de-stabilized the Middle East; alienated the world community from the United States; empowered North Korea, Iran, and Syria; unleashed sectarian carnage in Iraq among tribes who have been cutting each others’ throats for over a thousand years; cost the lives of 2,600 Americans, and the limbs, eyes, organs, spinal cords of another 15,000—with no end in sight. But not to worry: Democracy is on the march in the Middle East. Just ask Hamas. And the neocons—bright people, all—are now clamoring, “On to Tehran!”

What have they done to my party? Where does one go to get it back?

**

U.S. War Prisons Legal Vacuum for 14,000
Sep 17 10:38 AM US/Eastern
By PATRICK QUINN
Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq

In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.

Disclosures of torture and long-term arbitrary detentions have won rebuke from leading voices including the U.N. secretary-general and the U.S. Supreme Court.

**

Published on Thursday, September 14, 2006 by The Progressive

Administration Shows Its Colors on September 11

by Ruth Conniff

Between Dick Cheney’s appearance on Meet the Press and the President’s speech to the nation this week the Administration made clear what its plans are on the anniversary of September 11: more of the same.

Incredibly, Bush and Cheney are still invoking the attacks of September 11 to justify the disastrous, degenerating U.S. policy in Iraq, even as the Senate Intelligence Committee reveals that there was no link between Saddam Hussein and the September 11 hijackings. Numerous news outlets, including the BBC reported last week that a CIA report released by the intelligence committee did away with any lingering notion of a Saddam/Al Qaeda connection. (Here’s an excerpt: “Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al-Qaeda to provide material or operational support.”)

When pressed by reporters, the President himself had to admit last week that Saddam had nothing to do with the hijackings. But that didn’t stop him from drawing the connection again in his September 11 commemorative speech.

**

Published on Thursday, September 14, 2006 by the “http://www.startribune.com/562/story/675247.html”

Bush Keeps Failing His Troops in Iraq
The administration put service members in harm’s way despite a puny threat, then cut and run from its responsibilities to them.

by Jerald Albrecht and Coleen Rowley

Duty. Honor. Country. For some, the West Point creed has become a cliché. But for 130,000-plus American soldiers in Iraq, these words mean a great deal.

It’s easy for those of us leading comfortable lives at home to forget about those serving in Iraq, the stresses they daily endure, and the horrors they have witnessed. It’s also easy to forget that they are volunteers; they chose to leave friends and family behind to defend and preserve our way of life, at the cost of their own lives if necessary.

The value of their commitment cannot be overstated. Neither can the responsibility the commander in chief owes our troops in return, a responsibility never to frivolously squander their commitment, never to put them in harm’s way except at utmost need. Unfortunately, George W. Bush has shamefully failed in this responsibility.

Bush first failed the troops when he put them in harm’s way despite knowing that the threat from Iraq was practically nonexistent. He then failed to provide them with the tools to succeed: no plan to secure the peace, insufficient body armor, questionable support from Dick Cheney’s Halliburton cronies and one-third the number of troops necessary to get the job done. But most shameful of all has been the willingness of Bush and the GOP leadership to use our troops as a tool for political gain.

**

Published on Thursday, September 14, 2006 by the “http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.mpl/editorial/outlook/4185059”

5 Years Later, Still a Voice Crying in the Wilderness

by Robert Jensen

On this anniversary week it’s important to mark not one, but two great tragedies. The first, of course, is the 9/11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 innocent people. Memorial services around the country this week marked our common sense of loss.

Unfortunately, there won’t be official memorial services for the second tragedy that followed — the commencement of the so-called “war on terror.” That misguided policy has taken far more innocent lives — now into the hundreds of thousands, in Afghanistan and Iraq — without making the U.S. public any safer. But there’s an even deeper tragedy — not in what has happened because of this illegal and immoral policy, but in what didn’t happen.

Sept. 11 offered a dramatic moment in which the most powerful country on the planet could have led the world on a new course. U.S. leaders had a choice to either (1) manipulate people’s legitimate fears and understandable desire for vengeance to justify wars of control and domination, or (2) help create a world in desperate need of more justice, not more war.

To choose the latter would have taken visionary leadership; a role for which, sadly, virtually no one in the Republican or Democratic parties appeared qualified, then or now. Antiwar activists immediately began developing the argument that war would exacerbate the terrorist threat and that a two-track solution — radically changing the unjust U.S. policies in the Middle East that provide fertile ground for terrorists to recruit, while pursuing vigorous law-enforcement efforts to track and capture terrorists — would be not only moral and legal, but also effective. War, we predicted, would not solve our problems.

Five years later, one thing is clear: The antiwar voices were right. We saw what was coming, not because we were so smart but because it was so obvious.

Since the end of World War II, U.S. policy in the Middle East and Central Asia has been designed to ensure U.S. control over the strategically crucial energy resources of that region. Democratic and Republican administrations alike have used violence — in covert operations and open warfare, conducted by the United States and its surrogates — to dominate the region’s politics. Talk of noble U.S. plans to build democracy are contradicted by actions on the ground. Around the world people understand that this quest to control the flow of oil and oil profits is at the heart of U.S. policy; only in this country are people seduced by politicians’ fanciful rhetoric about freedom.

Two top national-security reporters, Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay, surveyed the opinions of counterterrorism experts and former government officials and concluded: “In relying overwhelmingly on bombs and bullets, [analysts] say, the United States has alienated much of the Muslim world, driving away even moderates who might be open to Western ideas.”

Political scientist Robert Pape, the leading researcher on suicide terrorism, concluded that al-Qaida’s strength — measured as “the ability of the group to kill us” — is greater today than before 9/11 and that “suicide terrorism results more from foreign occupation than Islamic fundamentalism.”

The opportunity right after 9/11 to chart a new course — one that could have led to a stable peace rooted in a more just distribution of wealth and power worldwide — was lost. But that does not mean we are forever condemned to repeat our mistakes.

I ended that 9/14 essay with a plea “that the insanity stop here.” Five years later there is nothing to do but renew the plea:

It is time to end not just this current war in Iraq, but this insanity — here and now, while there is still time.

Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center thirdcoastactivist.org/. He is the author of “The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege” and “Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity” (both from City Lights Books). He can be reached at “mailto:rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu”.

**

Published on Thursday, September 14, 2006 by the “http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/14/opinion/14herbert.html?pagewanted=print”

The Stranger in the Mirror

by Bob Herbert

What I thought was the greatest expression of the American character in my lifetime occurred in the immediate aftermath of those catastrophic attacks. The country came together in the kind of resolute unity that I imagined was similar to the feeling most Americans felt after Pearl Harbor. We soon knew who the enemy was, and there was remarkable agreement on what needed to be done. Americans were united and the world was with us.

For a brief moment.

The invasion of Iraq marked the beginning of the change in the American character. During the Cuban missile crisis, when the hawks were hot for bombing — or an invasion — Robert Kennedy counseled against a U.S. first strike. That’s not something the U.S. would do, he said.

Fast-forward 40 years or so and not only does the U.S. launch an unprovoked invasion and occupation of a small nation — Iraq — but it does so in response to an attack inside the U.S. that the small nation had nothing to do with.

Who are we?

The president put us on this path away from the better angels of our nature, and he has shown no inclination to turn back. Lately he has touted legislation to try terror suspects in a way that would make a mockery of the American ideals of justice and fairness. To get a sense of just how far out the administration’s approach has been, consider the comments of Brig. Gen. James Walker, the top uniformed lawyer for the Marines. Speaking at a Congressional hearing last week, he said no civilized country denies defendants the right to see the evidence against them. The United States, he said, “should not be the first.”

How weird is it that this possibility could even be considered?

The character of the U.S. has changed. We’re in danger of being completely ruled by fear. Most Americans have not shared the burden of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Very few Americans are aware, as the Center for Constitutional Rights tells us, that of the hundreds of men held by the U.S. in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, many “have never been charged and will never be charged because there is no evidence justifying their detention.”

Even fewer care.

We could benefit from looking in a mirror, and absorbing the shock of not recognizing what we’ve become.

**

Published on Friday, September 15, 2006 by the “http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/285162_thomas15.html”

Bush’s Iraq Rationalization is Lame

by Helen Thomas

Clearly, the president has no regrets about the Iraqi debacle as evidenced by the administration’s fumbling efforts to fix the facts around his war policy and to fall back on contrived explanations for this tragedy.

This isn’t the accountability we should expect from any White House, especially when it comes to the power to wage war.

**

Published on Friday, September 15, 2006 by the “http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329577275-103681,00.html”

Bush Stance on al-Qaida Suspects is Morally Wrong, says Colin Powell
· Geneva convention must be respected
· Setback for White House military tribunals plan

by Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington

The former Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday repudiated White House plans to allow coercive interrogations of al-Qaida suspects, saying it would erode the moral basis of the US “war on terror”.

**

Published on Friday, September 15, 2006 by the “http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article1603643.ece”

The Climate Disaster is Upon Us - Now

by Michael McCarthy

Things have changed. Since the turn of the millennium, observations of the concrete effects of rising temperatures have started to mount up: the unprecedented European heatwave of 2003, which killed more than 30,000 people; the UK’s record temperature topping 100F for the first time in that year; the record US hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005, culminating in Katrina; and most of all, the melting ice.

The great ice masses are now shrinking rapidly everywhere; almost every mountain glacier, the great Greenland ice sheet, the great ice sheets of Antarctica, the legendary African snow on the top of Mt Kilimanjaro, and the ice of the Arctic, whose rate of disappearance, we now learn, has increased explosively.

It means two things: firstly, you can’t deny it any more. Last week, we had the remarkable spectacle of The Economist magazine, climate change sceptic-in-chief, cheerleader to the American business community, coughing, shuffling, looking at its feet and admitting gruffly, well, perhaps there is something in this global warming stuff, after all.

Secondly, it’s coming, to you. Doesn’t matter you’re not bothered about it. Doesn’t matter you’re thinking about your next holiday, or the state of your marriage or the next Big Brother. This vast phenomenon that is going to change the world unthinkably is coming right to your doorstep. A lot sooner than you think.

**

Published on Friday, September 15, 2006 by the “http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1603660.ece”

From Alaska to Australia, The World is Changing in Front of Us

by Daniel Howden, Andrew Buncombe in Washington and Justin Huggler in Delhi

Europe

**

Published on Thursday, September 14, 2006 by “http://www.reuters.com”

World has 10-Year Window to Act on Climate Warming - NASA Expert

by Mary Milliken

SACRAMENTO, California - A leading U.S. climate researcher said on Wednesday the world has a 10-year window of opportunity to take decisive action on global warming and avert a weather catastrophe.

NASA scientist James Hansen, widely considered the doyen of American climate researchers, said governments must adopt an alternative scenario to keep carbon dioxide emission growth in check and limit the increase in global temperatures to 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

“I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change ... no longer than a decade, at the most,” Hansen said at the Climate Change Research Conference in California’s state capital.

**

Published on Thursday, September 14, 2006 by the “http://www.ips.org”

Bad News From Iraq: Is It the PR, or the Policy?

by Bill Berkowitz

OAKLAND, California - In a recent speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared that, “The enemy is so much better at communicating. I wish we were better at countering that because the constant drumbeat of things they say -- all of which are not true -- is harmful.”

In their new book titled ““http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1585425095/commondreams-20/ref=nosim/”“ (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006), which goes on sale Thursday, co-authors John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton assert that television reporters “actually underplayed rather than overplayed the negative” in their reporting from Iraq, while “newspaper coverage during the subsequent occupation has also been sanitised.”

Stauber and Rampton cite a study by researchers at George Washington University that analysed 1,820 stories on five U.S. television networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and Fox News, as well as the Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera, and found that “all of the American media largely shied away from showing visuals of coalition, Iraqi military, or civilian casualties. Despite advanced technologies offering reporters the chance to transmit the reality of war in real time, reporters chose instead to present a largely bloodless conflict to viewers even when they did broadcast during firefights.”

“Rumsfeld’s complaints are an interesting twist of the truth since the reality is that the United States has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on media campaigns that have been spectacularly ineffective,” Rampton told IPS in a telephone interview. “That the enemy has been more effective in communicating its message to the world is not so much a reflection of their media savvy as it is on the ineffective message of the United States.”

“You can’t expect a better messaging strategy to compensate for the fact that the underlining policy is based on falsehoods and deliberate deception,” Rampton said.

With things continuing to spiral out of control in Iraq, the Bush administration has once again decided that it’s a public relations problem; a question of propaganda not policy. Around the same time that Rumsfeld was on the road railing about anti-war appeasers and confused critics that were enabling terrorism, and how much better the terrorists were in handling the media, the Washington Post reported that “U.S. military leaders in Baghdad have put out for bid a two-year, 20-million-dollar public relations contract that calls for extensive monitoring of U.S. and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq.”

**

Published on Saturday, September 16, 2006 by “http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=121672”

The Content of Our Character

by Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith

House Republicans have responded to the President’s order to “jump” by saying, “How high?” Republicans are supporting a law that countenances torture, prisoner abuse and repudiation of the Constitution, the Supreme Court, the Geneva Conventions, and the 800-year-old right to habeas corpus.

**

Published on Saturday, September 16, 2006 by the “http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1158357012648&call_pageid=968332188854”

Afghanistan: U.S. ‘Handed Off a Mess’ to NATO Forces
Bush failed to finish Afghan ‘job,’ senator says
Taliban emerge stronger, drug crops flourishing

by Tim Harper

**

“http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/opinion/17rich.html?hp”

The Longer the War, the Larger the Lies
By Frank Rich
The New York Times

Sunday 17 September 2006

Rarely has a television network presented a more perfectly matched double feature. President Bush’s 9/11 address on Monday night interrupted ABC’s “Path to 9/11” so seamlessly that a single network disclaimer served them both: “For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well as time compression.”

No kidding: “The Path to 9/11” was false from the opening scene, when it put Mohamed Atta both in the wrong airport (Boston instead of Portland, Me.) and on the wrong airline (American instead of USAirways). It took Mr. Bush but a few paragraphs to warm up to his first fictionalization for dramatic purposes.

**

As conservative New York Times columnist John Tierney points out in a September 12 column “”http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/12/opinion/12tierney.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fJohn%20Tierney”“ the President seems determined to exaggerate the power of the enemy, rather than minimizing it.

“When you treat one attack from a disorganized band of fanatics as a menace to civilization, you’ve doomed yourself to defeat and caused more damage than they could. You can’t completely stop terrorism, but you can scare people into giving up liberties, wasting huge sums of money and sacrificing more lives than would be lost in a terrorist attack.”

**

Interior’s Internal Messes

The New York Times says its suspicions are confirmed that “bad things would happen” when President Bush filled the Interior Department with industry lobbyists, pointing to congressional testimony this week from the Interior Department’s inspector general who said, “Short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of the Interior.”

**

In Replay of Iraq, Battle Brews Over Intelligence on Iran

In an echo of the intelligence wars that preceded the US invasion of Iraq, a struggle is brewing over Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program and involvement in terrorism. US intelligence and counterterrorism officials say Bush administration hardliners have manipulated information to portray Iran’s nuclear program as more advanced than it is and to exaggerate Tehran’s role in Hezbollah’s attack on Israel in mid-July.

**

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0609c.asp

Bush’s Evasion
September 15, 2006

Five years after 9/11, as things increasingly sour in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Bush’s public appearances get increasingly more pathetic.

During Bush’s August news conference a persistent reporter wouldn’t let him get away with his claim that Iraq is the central front on the so-called war on terror. “What did Iraq have to do with 9/11?” reporter Ken Herman asked.

“Nothing,” Bush said in a highly uncharacteristic moment of candor. The look on his face was priceless.

In a flash, the president realized he had finally admitted — before America and the world — what war opponents have said right along: there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

Let’s get this straight: U.S. intervention in the Middle East — euphemized as “the freedom agenda” — did not begin March 19, 2003, when Bush attacked Iraq in order to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The United States invaded Iraq in 1991 during the Gulf War. We might expect President Bush to know that, since his father was president at the time. Even though that war ended, the United States regularly flew warplanes over north and south Iraq to enforce illegal “no-fly zones.” This often entailed bombings that killed innocent Iraqis. Meanwhile a trade embargo caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children.

That covers only the involvement in Iraq over the last decade and a half. It doesn’t begin to account for heavy U.S. intervention in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East that goes back more than half a century, a bloody history with many Arab and Iranian casualties, thanks to U.S. money, arms, and CIA agents.

While this can in no way excuse what happened on 9/11, it is dishonest to pretend that those crimes had nothing to do with this long record of U.S. intervention.

**

THE ADVICE ISSUE (REPUBLICAN EDITION)

Save Yourself, Blame Bush

By Joe ScarboroughSunday, September 17, 2006; Page B01

I can’t help but feel sorry for my old Republican friends in Congress who are fighting for their political lives. After all, it must be tough explaining to voters at their local Baptist church’s Keep Congress Conservative Day that it was their party that took a $155 billion surplus and turned it into a record-setting $400 billion deficit.

How exactly does one convince the teeming masses that Republicans deserve to stay in power despite botching a war, doubling the national debt, keeping company with Jack Abramoff, fumbling the response to Hurricane Katrina, expanding the government at record rates, raising cronyism to an art form, playing poker with Duke Cunningham, isolating America and repeatedly electing Tom DeLay as their House majority leader?

How does a God-fearing Reagan Republican explain all that away?

Easy. Blame George W. Bush.

**

Published on Tuesday, September 19, 2006 by the Associated Press

Senator Says Media Study Suppressed

The FCC Media Bureau report analyzes the impact of deregulation in the radio industry

by John Dunbar

WASHINGTON - Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin on Monday ordered a formal investigation into why two agency reports on media ownership were never made public.

**

Published on Tuesday, September 19, 2006 by Reuters

Israel Cluster Bomb Use in Lebanon “Outrageous”: UN

by Alistair Lyon

BEIRUT - Israel scattered at least 350,000 unexploded cluster bomblets on south Lebanon in its war with Hizbollah, mostly when the conflict was all but over, leaving a deadly legacy for civilians, U.N. officials said on Tuesday.

“The outrageous fact is that nearly all of these munitions were fired in the last three to four days of the war,” David Shearer, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, told a news conference in Beirut.

“Outrageous because by that stage the conflict had been largely resolved in the form of (U.N. Security Council) Resolution 1701,” he said.

**

Published on Tuesday, September 19, 2006 by Inter Press Service

Big Jump Found in US Anti-Muslim Incidents

by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - Complaints involving anti-Muslim discrimination, harassment and violence jumped over 30 percent in 2005 compared to 2004, according to a new report released here Monday by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim organisation.

**

Published on Tuesday, September 19, 2006 by the Daytona Beach News-Journal (Florida)

Building War’s Engines of Defeat; Destroying Gross National Purpose

by Pierre Tristam

Year after year we hear that federal programs like Social Security and Medicare are heading for bankruptcy. We never hear about the Pentagon heading for bankruptcy. Yet the military budget increased 67 percent in the last five years, a rate by far exceeding that projected for any of the country’s social programs in their costliest coming years. Military spending last year, at $494 billion, exceeded combined Medicare and Social Security spending by $16 billion. The presumption is that social programs can and must be cut back if the nation is to survive, but military spending cannot be: Defense is indispensable if we’re to have something left to live for.

We have it backward. Military spending as a share of gross national purpose is driving us to bankruptcy in every way -- economic, social, moral --

**

Bush’s Paltry Excuse for Subverting Geneva Convention

by Robert S. Rivkin

President Bush claims to be worried that our CIA interrogators are confused by the rules that govern them. This claim is hogwash.

A prohibition contained in Common Article 3 (which is enforceable criminally through the 1996 War Crimes Act which Bush seeks to change) forbids “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.” Clearly, many of the nauseating abuses committed by Americans at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere (stripping detainees naked, dousing them with cold water, bombarding them with loud music for hours, putting them in stress positions, depriving them of sleep and light) would constitute violations of Common Article 3.

If Bush’s version of interrogation rules and military tribunals (including use of coerced and secret evidence) becomes law, not only will U.S. soldiers be put at greater risk of torture by other countries; the U.S.’s reputation in the world will be further diminished, and the moral high ground will be gone forever.

Robert S. Rivkin, author of GI Rights and Army Justice, is a San Francisco-based writer and lawyer who specialized in military law for many years.

**

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SEPTEMBER 14, 2006

10:18 AM

CONTACT: Center for Constitutional Rights

Mahdis Keshavarz, Riptide Communications, 212.260.5000

Attorneys Argue Military Commissions Bills Would Allow for Lifelong Detention Without Trial, Torture Without Accountability

‘Faces of Guantánamo’ By Center for Constitutional Rights Offers Rare Glimpse Into Lives of Men at Guantánamo

**

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SEPTEMBER 14, 2006

2:03 PM

CONTACT: Institute for Public Accuracy

Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020;

or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

IAEA: Congress Panel Cooking Intel on Iran

WASHINGTON - September 14 - The Washington Post is reporting today: “U.N. inspectors investigating Iran’s nuclear program angrily complained to the Bush administration and to a Republican congressman yesterday about a recent House committee report on Iran’s capabilities, calling parts of the document ‘outrageous and dishonest’ and offering evidence to refute its central claims.”

CARAH ONG, cong@armscontrolcenter.org, http://www.armscontrolcenter.org

Ong is Iran Policy Analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. She said today: “The International Atomic Energy Agency called the report’s assertions that Iran is producing weapons-grade uranium at its facility in the town of Natanz ‘incorrect,’ noting that weapons-grade uranium is enriched to a level of 90 percent or more. Iran has enriched uranium to 3.5 percent under IAEA monitoring.” Ong gives a breakdown of the evidence on her blog http://irannuclearwatch.blogspot.com.

ROBERT NAIMAN, naiman@justforeignpolicy.org, http://www.justforeignpolicy.org

National coordinator of Just Foreign Policy, Naiman said today: “As in Iraq, the faction of Congress and the administration hungry for military confrontation with Iran is again trying to cook the intelligence and undermine the international inspection system. While the Washington Post ran the committee’s report on page 1, the IAEA’s refutation ran on page 17. The IAEA’s refutation deserves at least as much attention as the committee report, since they are the legitimate experts. Americans should ask their representatives in Congress to oppose another U.S. military fiasco in the Middle East based on manufactured evidence.”

**

http://dispatch.com/features-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/09/20/20060920-F1-01.html

POLITICS IS A FUNNY BUSINESS

Elected officials provide satirists with plenty of material

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Stories by Tim Feran

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Americans are living in a new golden age _ the latest golden age of political humor. These days, they are given plenty of ways to laugh at the gaffes, inanity and malapropisms of political leaders.

Among the outlets: satirical troupes such as Second City and the Capitol Steps; “fake-news” TV series such as The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report; online sites such as the Onion and the Borowitz Report; and the late-night lampoonery of hosts such as Jay Leno, David Letterman and Bill Maher.

“Really, the last time there was anything like this was the Vietnam era, when there was great satire coming out of National Lampoon and Second City,” said Scott Dikkers, editor in chief of The Onion magazine and its Web site.

Or as Will Rogers, the leading voice in an earlier golden age, once said: “Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.”

Political satire is nothing new: The 18 th century had Benjamin Franklin and his Poor Richard’s Almanack, and the 19 th had Mark Twain and his social criticism.

The newest golden age, however, is marked by a nonstop barrage of wicked wit.

As a political battleground, Ohio is about to become the focus of that barrage: The Daily Show will tape episodes at Ohio State University the week before Election Day, and the Capitol Steps will visit central Ohio three times during the next four months.

The modern wave of political satire can be traced to Second City, formed by University of Chicago students in the 1960s, and the Capitol Steps, founded in 1981 by congressional staff members who knew the foibles of their bosses all too well.

“We worried at the beginning that politicians were going to get competent,” said Elaina Newport, a founding member of Capitol Steps.

“We stopped worrying after, oh, about five minutes.”

The relative calm of the ‘80s meant that Capitol Steps players kept their day jobs.

Newport, for instance, remained in her government position until 1988.

She initially “wondered” about the respectability of her career move.

“Then we realized: This is more respectable than being on Capitol Hill.”

Their reputation received a shot in the arm when the Comedy Central program The Daily Show adopted Stewart as its host in 1999 and became a cultural phenomenon.

“The Daily Show is a crack staff,” said Robert Thompson, a professor at Syracuse (N.Y.) University who directs the Center for the Study of Popular Television.

“They’re not reporters, but, even though they’re doing it all in service of comedy, what they manage to find and put together is really significant.”

Some satirists contend that humor clarifies an understanding of the world.

“I think this political-satire boom is actually making people better-informed,” said Andy Borowitz of the Borowitz Report, author of the new satirical book The Republican Playbook.

“Generally speaking, the way to get people to laugh is by getting to the truth. So Jon Stewart is generally more reliable than Larry King, although I go to Larry King for all my Barbara Eden news.”

Shortly before Stewart made his debut on The Daily Show, he told The Dispatch:

“I’d love to, at some point, bring on a newsmaker or a pundit, anyone relevant even in a skewed manner, as opposed to always a celebrity.”

Such a method of pursuing serious matters, Thompson said, became the Daily Show stock in trade during the months preceding the war in Iraq _ when TV journalists seemed wary of stirring controversy.

“Comedy moved in, especially in the form of The Daily Show, to do the work that is not being done by the Fourth Estate, journalism,” he said. “The Daily Show got clips of one speech and put it up against a speech contradicting it, got the talking points for one side and showed that the same thing was being purposely said by different people. Comedy became the Fifth Estate.”

Soon, The Daily Show and its spinoff, The Colbert Report, joined the cutting edge, too: Young, educated viewers treated the series as primary sources of news, studies found.

“The Daily Show,” Newport said, “brought political humor into _ what would you call it _ hipness? “

Other shows and comedians were forced to respond.

“Letterman, for instance, is much more politicized now,” Thompson said.

“Nowadays,” Borowitz said, “people introduce me as a political satirist or political humorist. I think of myself as a comedian. But over the past five years, politics has dominated my attention.”

The growth in political humor is driven mostly by dissatisfaction.

“This is just insanityprevention work. That’s all we’re doing,” said Dikkers, of The Onion. “I think I can speak for all satirists on this point: We would like to not have to do this. This is our way of responding, of expressing our displeasure with the universal foibles of our fellow man.

“That, and we’re just trying to show off how funny we are.”

Few topics, he said, are offlimits at The Onion, although some current events are difficult to satirize.

“There are always issues that are hard to approach,” Newport said. “Hurricane Katrina _ there was nothing really funny about what happened to those people. But, fortunately, we always have some politician around the most serious issue ready to stick his or her foot in his or her mouth.”

tferan@dispatch.com

**

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14913851/

Corporations get break on tariffs

Suspensions cost U.S. Treasury millions

By Joe Stephens

Updated: 12:58 a.m. ET Sept 20, 2006

Each legislative season, corporate executives and lobbyists quietly draft hundreds of bills to suspend tariffs. Over time, the changes cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue, a Washington Post analysis of U.S. trade data found.

Most of the tariff suspensions involve obscure chemicals and dyes, but many other products show up, including boilers for nuclear reactors, green peanuts, child potty seats, unicycles -- even chocolate coatings for laxatives.

`A lobbyists’ dream’

“It’s become sort of a lobbyists’ dream,” said Jim Schollaert, a former State Department trade specialist who now represents domestic manufacturers. “It’s a gravy train, and there’s little work to it.”

The bills in Congress generally give no hint of whom the suspensions have been designed to benefit and sometimes refer to the products only by strings of numbers linked to phone-book-size tariff tables. But many corporate names can be found in reports on the legislation produced for Congress by the U.S. International Trade Commission.

**

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/18/opinion/18mon3.html?_r=1&n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fEditorials&oref=slogin

Editorial

The Ghosts of Corruption Present

Published: September 18, 2006

One of the shabbiest shell games under way in Congress is the attempt to convince voters that lawmakers are curbing their corrupt relations with power lobbyists. The cravenness was never clearer as G.O.P. House leaders passed a placebo rules change in place of honest reform _ and on the very day when one of their own, Representative Bob Ney of Ohio, was plea bargaining in the corruption investigation of his old friend Jack Abramoff, the disgraced überlobbyist and influence peddler.

**

September 19, 2006

Deadly Harvest: The Lebanese Fields Sown with Cluster Bombs

The war in Lebanon has not ended. Every day, some of the million bomblets which were fired by Israeli artillery during the last three days of the conflict kill four people in southern Lebanon and wound many more.

Some Israeli officers are protesting at the use of cluster bombs, each containing 644 small but lethal bomblets, against civilian targets in Lebanon. A commander in the MLRS (multiple launch rocket systems) unit told the Israeli daily Haaretz that the army had fired 1,800 cluster rockets, spraying 1.2 million bomblets over houses and fields. “In Lebanon, we covered entire villages with cluster bombs,” he said. “What we did there was crazy and monstrous.” What makes the cluster bombs so dangerous is that 30 per cent of the bomblets do not detonate on impact. They can lie for years - often difficult to see because of their small size, on roofs, in gardens, in trees, beside roads or in rubbish - waiting to explode when disturbed.

Patrick Cockburn | lndependent/UK

**

September 17, 2006

Why we can’t win the “war on terror”

Having defined terrorism, given a history of it and established that terrorists are quite “normal” _ even exceptionally idealistic _ in their psychology and goals, Richardson then turns to the most important and provocative part of her book: a powerful critique of America’s reaction to 9/11. She argues that the 9/11 attacks did not change the world _ “rather it was our reaction to September 11 that changed the world.” And not for the better.

Rather than try to educate Americans _ teaching them, for example, that superpowers throughout history have been hated, or about the complexities of our Middle East policies _ the Bush administration “retreated to simplistic formulas of good and evil.” By so doing, Richardson argues, it squandered a crucial opportunity to “educate the American public to the realities of terrorism and to the implication of the United States’ global preeminence.” (She does not point out that the likelihood of the Bush administration, which regards U.S. hegemony as given by divine fiat, doing this is somewhere between zero and none.)

As for our reaction, its effects have been little short of catastrophic. By invading Iraq, we created the very terrorist boogeyman we feared. And by declaring an unwinnable “war on terror,” we escalated the conflict unnecessarily, elevated Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida to a bad eminence they did not deserve, and condemned ourselves to certain defeat. As Richardson points out, all a terrorist has to do is set off one bomb somewhere to make us “lose” the war on terrorism. This is making things much too easy for them.

Gary Kamiya, review of What Terrorists Want, by Louise Richardson in Salon |

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2006/09/15/richardson/

**

September 13, 2006

The Access of Evil

This is the state of the corporate media today. It’s a symptom of what we call the access of evil: journalists trading truth for access. The public unwittingly mistakes the illusion of news for reality. This also applies to the one-sided debates that are the rage on the networks and cable news. Viewers don’t even know what they don’t know.

We can’t even call this a “mainstream” media. It’s an extreme media _ a media that cheerleads for war.

Instead of learning from the media what is actually going on in the world, we get static _ a veil of distortion, lies, omissions, and half-truths that obscure reality. As bodies pile up in Iraq and New Orleans, many people are mystified, wondering where it went so wrong.

We need a media that creates static of another kind: what the dictionary defines as “criticism, opposition, or unwanted interference.” Instead of a media that covers for power, we need a media that covers the movements that create static _ and make history.

Amy Goodman and David Goodman, From the book Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back (Hyperion September 2006)

**

9/11/06

When we measure the possibilities created by 9/11 against what we have actually accomplished, it is clear that we have found one way after another to compound the tragedy. Homeland security is half-finished, the development at ground zero barely begun. The war against terror we meant to fight in Afghanistan is at best stuck in neutral, with the Taliban resurgent and the best economic news involving a bumper crop of opium. Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11 when it was invaded, is now a breeding ground for a new generation of terrorists.

Listing the sins of the Bush administration may help to clarify how we got here, but it will not get us out. The country still hungers for something better, for evidence that our leaders also believe in ideas larger than their own political advancement.

New York Times Editorial

**

Published on Wednesday, September 20, 2006 by the Guardian / UK

Royal Society Tells Exxon: Stop Funding Climate Change Denial

by David Adam

Britain’s leading scientists have challenged the US oil company ExxonMobil to stop funding groups that attempt to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change.

In an unprecedented step, the Royal Society, Britain’s premier scientific academy, has written to the oil giant to demand that the company withdraws support for dozens of groups that have “misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence”.

The scientists also strongly criticise the company’s public statements on global warming, which they describe as “inaccurate and misleading”.

**

Published on Wednesday, September 20, 2006 by Reuters

Ted Turner Says Iraq War among History’s “Dumbest”

by Daniel Trotta

NEW YORK - The U.S. invasion of Iraq was among the “dumbest moves of all time” that ranks with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the German invasion of Russia, billionaire philanthropist Ted Turner said on Tuesday.

**

Published on Wednesday, September 20, 2006 by the Independent / UK

Sea Levels are Rising Faster than Predicted, Warns Antarctic Survey

by Michael McCarthy

The global sea level rise caused by climate change, severely threatening many of the world’s coastal and low-lying areas from Bangladesh to East Anglia, is proceeding faster than UN scientists predicted only five years ago, Professor Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, said yesterday.

Climate change is causing sea levels to rise around the world because water expands in volume as it warms, and because land-based ice, such as that contained in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, adds to the volume when it melts and slips into the sea.

**

Published on Wednesday, September 20, 2006 by the San Francisco Chronicle

Toxic Mercury Contaminating More Species, Report Shows

by Jane Kay

Mercury pollution from power plants and other industrial sources has accumulated in birds, mammals and reptiles across the country, and only cuts in emissions can curtail the contamination, says a report released Tuesday by a national environmental group.

**

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/business/21royalty.html?ex=1159502400&en=c4b3811622016568&ei=5009&partner=MSN_NYTHOME

Suits Say U.S. Impeded Audits for Oil Leases

“The agency has lost its sense of mission, which is to protect American taxpayers’‘ said Bobby L. Maxwell, a former Interior Department auditor.

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

Published: September 21, 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 _ Four government auditors who monitor leases for oil and gas on federal property say the Interior Department suppressed their efforts to recover millions of dollars from companies they said were cheating the government.

**

A Tortured Debate

By Molly Ivins

The Free Press

Wednesday 20 September 2006

A debate on torture. I don’t know - what do you think? I guess we have to define it, first. The White House has already specified “water boarding,” making some guy think he’s drowning for long periods, as a perfectly good interrogation technique. Maybe, but it was also a great favorite of the Gestapo and has been described and condemned in thousands of memoirs and novels in highly unpleasant terms.

I don’t think we can give it a good name again, and I personally kind of don’t like being identified with the Gestapo. How icky. (Somewhere inside me, a small voice is shrieking, “Are you insane?”)

The safe position is, “Torture doesn’t work.”

Since only seven of the several hundred prisoners at Gitmo have ever been charged with anything, we face the unhappy prospect that the rest of them are innocent. And will sue. That’s going to be quite an expensive settlement. The Canadian upon whom we practiced “rendition,” sending him to Syria for 10 months of torture, will doubtlessly be first on the legal docket. I wonder how high up the chain of command a civil suit can go? Any old war criminals wandering around?

I was interested to find that the Rev. Louis Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition is so in favor of torture he told McCain that the senator either supports the torture bill or he can forget about the evangelical Christian vote. I’d like to see an evangelical vote on that one. I don’t know how Sheldon defines traditional values, but deliberately inflicting terrible physical pain or stress on someone who is completely helpless strikes me as ... well, torture. And, um, wrong.

**

Does Torture Really Work? Most Intelligence Experts Say No

By Evan Thomas

Newsweek

Wednesday 20 September 2006

**

Published on Wednesday, September 20, 2006 by TruthDig.com

Bush’s Rose Garden Debacle

by Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas_Is it just me, or was that the worst presidential press conference in history? So I went back and read it over. Of course, in print you don’t get the testy tone: I heard it on radio and thought the man was about to blow up_not just because he was being questioned, which Bush appears to consider an offensive action in the first place, but because people continue to refuse to see things the way he does. How can they be so stupid or malign, he appears to wonder.

I ask: How can he be so repetitive, repeatedly using the oldest tactic of a verbal bully_saying the same thing louder, as though that would make it true?

**

Published on Wednesday, September 20, 2006 by the Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin)

It’s Sad What Passes for News These Days

To prove a point, an Internet blog called Think Progress looked closely at the network newscasts the evening of Aug. 17th. That happened to be the day that U.S. District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled that the Bush administration had blatantly violated the U.S. Constitution with its secret NSA domestic communications surveillance program.

It also happened to be the same day the announcement was made that Thailand had in its custody a man who claims to have murdered JonBenet Ramsey.

According to the blog, here’s the score:

∙ NBC - 7 minutes, 39 seconds on the JonBenet story, 27 seconds on the judge’s decision.

∙ CBS - 3 minutes, 23 seconds on the JonBenet story, 25 seconds on the decision.

∙ ABC - 4 minutes, 3 seconds on JonBenet, 2 minutes on the decision.

There are some in Congress and elsewhere who view the Bush constitutional violations as impeachable offenses - certainly more serious than lying about having sex with an intern, for instance.

But violating the very Constitution that one has sworn to uphold doesn’t get the news juices flowing like a JonBenet development or sex in the White House, for that matter.

Yes, it’s unfortunately true that more folks will devour those scandal stories. The news business, though, needs to remember its role in keeping America free by keeping tabs on the people’s government.

If it becomes all about entertainment, we’re all doomed.

**

Published on Wednesday, September 20, 2006 by Foreign Policy in Focus

Bush at the UN: Annotated

by Stephen Zunes President George W. Bush’s address before the United Nations General Assembly on September 19 appeared to be designed for the domestic U.S. audience. Indeed, few of the foreign delegations or international journalists present could take seriously his rhetoric regarding the promotion of democracy in the Middle East, given the reality of U.S. policy in the region.

**

Published on Thursday, September 21, 2006 by the New York Times

U.N. Finds Baghdad Toll Far Higher Than Cited

by Richard A. Oppel Jr.

BAGHDAD- A United Nations report released Wednesday says that 5,106 people in Baghdad died violent deaths during July and August, a number far higher than reports that have relied on figures from the city’s morgue.

**

Published on Thursday, September 21, 2006 by the Toronto Star / Canada

Arctic Thaw Opens Passage to Pole

Satellite images reveal `dramatic’ change in sea ice

Area big enough to sail a ship through, space agency says

by Francois Murphy

PARIS - A warm summer and late storms in the past few months briefly opened a channel in the Arctic ice big enough to allow a ship to sail to the North Pole, the European Space Agency said yesterday.

The agency said satellite images showed “dramatic openings” over an area bigger than the British Isles in the Arctic’s sea ice, which normally stays frozen all year.

**

Published on Wednesday, September 20, 2006 by CommonDreams.org

Rumsfeld’s Guinea Pigs: US Citizens at Risk for Military-Weapons Testing

by Heather Wokusch

It barely made news last week when Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne called for the testing of nonlethal weaponry on US citizens in crowd-control situations. According to Wynne, “If we’re not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation.”

“War on terror” blowback hits Main Street.

But it’s naïve to think that once developed, US military weapons will only be used against foreign populations. The Bush administration’s “you’re with us or against us” mentality leaves little room for domestic dissent, and as the line blurs between military and national security technologies, folks back home will find themselves increasingly targeted.

**

The Ground Truth: Iraq War Veterans Speak Out

by Susan Van Haitsma

On Friday, September 15, the film, “The Ground Truth,” opened in selected cities around the country, including Austin. The riveting documentary directed by Patricia Foulkrod is scheduled to run for one week at the Dobie Theatre. The film gives voice to young veterans of the Iraq war, who speak candidly about the successive phases of their military experience: recruitment, basic training, combat, re-entry into civilian society, physical and psychological war injuries and the consequent realization that their country is unprepared for the levels of support they really need. Yellow car magnets and heroes’ welcomes don’t cut it.

Students are deceived if ground truths about military training, war and inadequate veteran care are withheld from them. And if images of real war are inappropriate to display to young people, then it is inappropriate to recruit young people to fight. The veterans who speak in “The Ground Truth,” several of whom are only a few years out of high school themselves, have undertaken a truth-telling mission. Supporting the troops means listening to what they have to say.

**

Published on Tuesday, September 19, 2006 by The Nation

Lab Rat for Crony Capitalism

by Katrina vanden Heuvel

In Sunday’s Washington Post, excerpts from Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City reveal the fundamentally corrupt approach this administration took to Iraq Reconstruction.

Chandrasekaran writes,”[Job] applicants didn’t need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.”

**

Published on Monday, September 18, 2006

Take it From Him: American is Safer?

Terrorism, Iraq and the Political Uses of Fear Five Years Into the “Long War”

by Frida Berrigan

“Five years after 9/11, are we safer?” asked President George W. Bush from an Atlanta podium on September 7, 2006. He assured the American people that, “The answer is, yes, America is safer.”

Can we believe him? A quick look at the facts says no. In fact, sectarian violence in Iraq has reached unprecedented levels, pushing the country into civil war and threatening stability throughout the region. The promised reconstruction and democracy are far off or impossible to imagine. Meanwhile, the Bush administration gives short-shrift to serious global threats like nuclear proliferation, global warming and the energy crisis.

The failed Iraq policy is creating more of the problem it purports to be solving--- there are more terrorists now, and they are more aggrieved and have more support throughout the world.

**

Only 25% in Poll Approve of the Congress

By Adam Nagourney and Janet Elder

The New York Times

Thursday 21 September 2006

With barely seven weeks until the midterm elections, Americans have an overwhelmingly negative view of the Republican-controlled Congress, with substantial majorities saying that they disapprove of the job it is doing and that its members do not deserve re-election, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

**

Control the Dictionary, Control the World

By Bernard Weiner

The Crisis Papers

Tuesday 19 September 2006

Clinton tried to fudge the truth when he claimed he’d “never had sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” but he felt he could get away with that language because, in his mind, he defined “sexual relations” as referring to vaginal intercourse.

Bush, with a straight face, tells us that he has never authorized torture, and he thinks he can get away with that lie because the public is mostly unaware that his administration has totally altered the definition of “torture.”

According to the infamous 2002 torture memos, which effectively set the policy, torture no longer means what we all understand that term to mean (physical beatings, shoving suspects under water to “drown” them unless they give up secrets, electric shocks to the genitals, unbearable stress, sexual abuse and humiliation, etc.). No, those internationally-understood definitions have become, under Bush&Co., “quaint” remnants from an earlier era.

Under the leadership of Alberto Gonzales and other lawyers - mainly from the White House, Rumsfeld’s office, and Cheney’s office - the Bush administration went through all sorts of moral gyrations and emerged with new definitions of what constituted torture. Basically, it’s not torture if it doesn’t kill you or if the excrutiating pain and injuries don’t lead to organ failure.

**

No One Dares to Help

The Los Angeles Times

Wednesday 20 September 2006

The wounded die alone on Baghdad’s streets. An offer of aid could be your own death sentence, an Iraqi reporter writes.

**

Torture Is Torture

By Eugene Robinson

The Washington Post

Tuesday 19 September 2006

Bush’s “program” disgraces all Americans.

I wish I could turn to cheerier matters, but I just can’t get past this torture issue - the fact that George W. Bush, the president of the United States of America, persists in demanding that Congress give him the right to torture anyone he considers a “high-value” terrorist suspect. The president of the United States. Interrogation by torture. This just can’t be happening.

It’s past time to stop mincing words. The Decider, or maybe we should now call him the Inquisitor, sticks to anodyne euphemisms. He speaks of “alternative” questioning techniques, and his umbrella term for the whole shop of horrors is “the program.” Of course, he won’t fully detail the methods that were used in the secret CIA prisons - and who knows where else? - but various sources have said they have included not just the infamous “waterboarding,” which the administration apparently will reluctantly forswear, but also sleep deprivation, exposure to cold, bombardment with ear-splitting noise and other assaults that cause not just mental duress but physical agony. That is torture, and to call it anything else is a lie.

It is not possible for our elected representatives to hold any sort of honorable “debate” over torture. Bush says he is waging a “struggle for civilization,” but civilized nations do not debate slavery or genocide, and they don’t debate torture, either. This spectacle insults and dishonors every American.

Colin Powell’s strongly worded rejection of torture should have embarrassed and chastened the White House, but this is a president who refuses to listen to critics of his “war on terrorism” - even critics who helped design and lead it.

There should be no need to spell out the practical reasons against torture, but, for the record, they are legion. As Powell and others have argued, if the United States unilaterally reinterprets Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions to permit torture, potential adversaries in future conflicts will feel justified in doing the same thing. Does the president want some captured pilot to be subjected to the tortures applied in the CIA prisons?

And, as has been pointed out by experts, torture works - far too well. Torture victims will tell what they know, and when their knowledge is exhausted they will tell their torturers what they want to hear, even if they have to invent conspiracies. But we shouldn’t have to talk about the practicalities of torture, because the real question is moral: What kind of nation are we? What kind of people are we?

Bush’s view of the world is based on the idea of American exceptionalism: that this country is unique, that its ideas and values are not just worthy or admirable but superior to any others. This attitude annoys the rest of the world to no end - a lot of other countries think they’re pretty special, too - but accept for the moment that the American system is in fact the best of all systems and that the great experiment begun by the Founding Fathers was a signal event in the history of mankind. Accept, if you will, Bush’s view that the United States is steadfastly blessed by a loving God.

What do you imagine God might think about torture, Mr. President?

**

Takings: The Conservative Nanny State Only Gives

By Dean Baker

Wednesday 20 September 2006

Many conservatives like to frame political debates as being a battle between tough-minded individualists, who want the government out of their life, and welfare-state liberals who run to the government at every turn. This framing is completely wrong - conservatives like the government every bit as much as liberals - but it is widely accepted by the media and even most of the liberals who pass as political leaders.

**

The Bushes and the Truth About Iran

Bush Shields Dad on Chile Terrorism

By Robert Parry

Consortium News

Thursday 21 September 2006

Having gone through the diplomatic motions with Iran, George W. Bush is shifting toward a military option that carries severe risks for American soldiers in Iraq as well as for long-term U.S. interests around the world. Yet, despite this looming crisis, the Bush Family continues to withhold key historical facts about U.S.-Iranian relations.

Chilean investigators say the Bush administration is undercutting their case against former dictator Augusto Pinochet for his alleged role in the terrorist assassination of a political rival on the streets of Washington three decades ago, a crime that then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush appears to have tolerated and then helped cover-up.

**

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/suzanne-nossel/bush-in-the-china-shop_b_29909.html

Bush in the China Shop

So today President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela got up behind a podium at the UN’s General Assembly and called President Bush the devil. The awful thing, of course, is that while the rhetoric is outrageous, much of the world’s reaction will be that they know what he means. If you doubt that, check out what the foreign media’s been saying about the US in recent days.

**

Published on Friday, September 22, 2006 by the “http://www.independent.co.uk” / UK

New Terror That Stalks Iraq’s Republic of Fear

by Patrick Cockburn

The republic of fear is born again. The state of terror now gripping Iraq is as bad as it was under Saddam Hussein. Torture in the country may even be worse than it was during his rule, the United Nation’s special investigator on torture said yesterday.

“The situation as far as torture is concerned now in Iraq is totally out of hand,” said Manfred Nowak. “The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it had been in the times of Saddam Hussein.”

**

Published on Friday, September 22, 2006 by the “http://www.ipsnews.net”

Top CIA Expert Slams Bush Anti-Terror Actions

by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - The Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) recently retired top expert on radical Islamists has strongly denounced the conduct of U.S. President George W. Bush’s “global war on terrorism” and the continued U.S. military presence in Iraq, which he said is “contributing to the violence”.
In an interview published this week by the online edition of Harper’s Magazine, Emile Nakhleh, who retired at the end of June as director of the agency’s Political Islam Strategic Analysis Programme, said that the Bush administration’s tactics had “lost a generation of goodwill in the Muslim world” and its Middle East democratisation programme “has all but disappeared, except for official rhetoric”.
**

EPA Closing Its Headquarters Library October 1

The US Environmental Protection Agency is closing its headquarters library to the public - as well as its own staff - effective October 1. This shutdown is the latest in a series of agency library closures during the past few weeks. The books, reports and research monographs in the EPA headquarters library have been boxed up and are currently inaccessible to anyone.

**

US Has Highest Infant Mortality Rate of All Industrialized Countries

When compared to nearly two dozen other industrialized countries, the US has the highest infant mortality rate and the lowest life expectancy for people who have reached the age of 60. The nation’s youngest and oldest citizens are suffering the most from a fragmented, wasteful and in some cases, dangerous health care system.

**

CIA Refused to Operate Secret Jails

The Bush administration had to empty its secret prisons and transfer terror suspects to the military-run detention center at Guantanamo this month, in part because CIA interrogators had refused to carry out further interrogations and run the secret facilities.

**

Keep Away the Vote

The New York Times states: “One of the cornerstones of the Republican Party’s strategy for winning elections these days is voter suppression, intentionally putting up barriers between eligible voters and the ballot box. The House of Representatives took a shameful step in this direction yesterday, voting largely along party lines for onerous new voter-ID requirements. Laws of this kind are unconstitutional, as an array of courts have already held, and profoundly undemocratic. The Senate should not go along with this cynical, un-American electoral strategy.”

**

Election Dysfunction

“One hundred and eight democratic nations in the world have explicit language guaranteeing the right to vote in their constitutions, and the United States - along with only ten other such nations - does not,” writes John Nichols. “As a result, the way we administer elections in this country changes from state to state, from county to county, from locality to locality. The Secretary of the Commonwealth must fight for a Constitutional amendment that affirmatively guarantees the right to vote in the US Constitution.”

**

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat

The American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism, according to portions of the highly classified National Intelligence Estimate.

**

Army Corps Faked Budget Entries

The Army Corps of Engineers improperly created fake entries in government ledgers to maintain control over hundreds of millions of dollars in spending for the reconstruction of Iraq, according to a federal audit released Friday. “They took this money and parked it to use later,” said one senior US official who requested anonymity. “It’s improper. It’s wrong. This is not the way you do government business.”

**

Bush’s “Dirty War” Amnesty Law

“The United States is following the lead of ‘dirty war’ nations, such as Argentina and Chile, in enacting what amounts to an amnesty law protecting US government operatives, apparently up to and including President George W. Bush, who have committed or are responsible for human rights crimes,” according to Robert Parry.

**

More War Veterans Suffering From Stress

More than one-third of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans seeking medical treatment from the Veterans Health Administration report symptoms of stress or other mental disorders - a tenfold increase in the last 18 months, according to an agency study. The dramatic jump in cases - coming as more troops face multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan - has triggered concern among some veterans groups that the agency may not be able to meet the demand.

**

Why Pakistan Gets A Nuclear Pass

Lakshmi Chaudhry writes, “The Bush administration’s pragmatic policy toward Pakistan suggests its foreign policy is less ideological than imperial.”

**

Renouncing Bush’s Failures Is a Start

“The president’s onetime lapdogs should also rethink the extremist ideology that got us here,” writes Todd Gitlin.

**

1,100 Laptops Missing From Commerce Department

More than 1,100 laptop computers have vanished from the Department of Commerce since 2001, including nearly 250 from the Census Bureau containing such personal information as names, incomes and Social Security numbers, federal officials said yesterday.

**

Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act Is Illegal

A scorching internal review of the Bush administration’s reading program says the Education Department ignored the law and ethical standards to steer money how it wanted. Reading First, a billion-dollar program each year, has been beset by conflicts of interest and willful mismanagement. The report suggests the department broke the law by trying to dictate which curriculum schools must use.

**

New Air Pollution Rules Rankle Health Groups

The US government approved new air pollution standards on Thursday, promising “cleaner air to all Americans,” but health and environmental groups said the revised rules are too weak to protect against lung disease and other pollution-related ailments.

**

Texans Debate Air Quality Amid Coal Expansion

Texans may consume more electricity than other Americans, but they’re suddenly debating the wisdom of doubling the number of coal-fired power plants in the state - plants critics say will worsen air quality and increase health risks.

**

The Globalization Excuse

“Citizen earnings are at historic lows, while corporate earnings are way, way up. To rationalize this lopsided state of affairs, the ‘global economy’ is often blamed.... What we don’t often hear is that the costs and benefits of globalization represent concrete political choices, not economic inevitability,” writes Susan B. Hansen.

**

National Guard to Be Further Stretched by Iraq, Afghan Wars

Strains on the Army from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have become so severe that Army officials say they may be forced to make greater use of the National Guard to provide enough troops for overseas deployments.

**

Pentagon’s 9/11 Claim Debunked by Inspector General

The Defense Department’s inspector general on Thursday dismissed claims by military officers and others, who had insisted that a secret Pentagon program identified Mohamed Atta and other terrorists involved in the September 11 attacks before the attacks occurred.

**

“Attack Against Democracy” Uncovered in Italy

A wiretapping scandal that involved illegal monitoring of virtually the whole Italian economic “who’s who” for as yet obscure reasons, and that appears to be indirectly linked to the CIA’s illegal abduction of a Muslim cleric, rocks Italy.

**

NSA Whistleblower’s Life Destroyed After Exposing Eavesdropping Program

Russell Tice says his choice to reveal what he says were unlawful acts at the National Security Agency while he was working there has cost him his career and livelihood: “My case, from beginning to end, is a testament to the utter and complete failure of whistleblower protections for federal employees who work within the most crucial aspects of national security.”

**

A Bad Bargain

The New York Times editors write: “Here is a way to measure how seriously President Bush was willing to compromise on the military tribunals bill: Less than an hour after an agreement was announced yesterday with three leading Republican senators, the White House was already laying a path to wiggle out of its one real concession.”

**

CIA Abductors of al-Masri Identified

The US intelligence agents involved in wrongly kidnapping a German citizen of Arab descent could soon face warrants for their arrest. Clues to their identity have turned up from Spanish authorities and German TV journalists.

**

UN Rights Envoys Condemn Bush Plan on Interrogation

United Nations human rights investigators said on Thursday that legislation proposed by President Bush for tough interrogations of foreign terrorism suspects would breach the Geneva Conventions. Washington’s admission of secret detention centers abroad pointed to very serious human rights violations in relation to the hunt for alleged terrorists.

**

Torture in Iraq Worse Now Than Under Saddam?

Militias, terrorist groups and government forces are disregarding rules on the humane treatment of prisoners.

“Eternal Progression”

Republican Motto, 1856

“The only money that’s tainted is money that taint mine or taint enough.”

-- an old Georgia governor~~ or, the New Republican Motto

“The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious.”

-- Joseph Goebbels

“See in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”

-- George W. Bush

Nationalist aggression. Fusing of the state with corporate interests. Single party rule. Suppression of civil liberties. The final characteristic that marks the existence of fascism is pervasive propaganda. It was in Mein Kampf, written in 1925, that Hitler first propounded the Big Lie as a technique for controlling the thoughts of the masses: lie; lie big; and lie often.

***

10/4/06

Thanks for your email, best thing I learned from it is this:

Russell Tice says his choice to reveal what he says were unlawful acts at the National Security Agency while he was working there has cost him his career and livelihood: “My case, from beginning to end, is a testament to the utter and complete failure of whistleblower protections for federal employees who work within the most crucial aspects of national security.”

Glad to hear his life is destroyed, as it should be, should have been hung for treason. Only hope it’s true.

Long live the King...tell me you’re not starting to warm up to W, with his poll numbers rising.

Given your agreeable glee at the bump in poll numbers for the Dark House Republicans, I suppose it’s just a quirk that he’s back into the 30’s this week. Perhaps you must agree too that even the fantasy network Fox is now accurately reporting that the percentage level of someone fanatically and irrationally holding onto your conclusions is reaching that of the lunatic fringe:

Angus Reid Global Monitor : Polls & Research

Iraq War Strategy Backed by 19% of Americans

September 30, 2006

Polling Data

Which best describes how you feel about the war in Iraq?

I support the war and the current strategy

19%

Source: Opinion Dynamics / Fox News

More support for your theory that Iraqis love Bush and the Americans:

Most Iraqis Want US to Leave Now

Iraqis Overwhelmingly Favor US Withdrawal

Country would be safer, less violent, they tell pollsters

A strong majority of Iraqis want US-led military forces to immediately withdraw from the country, saying their swift departure would make Iraq more secure and decrease sectarian violence, according to new polls by the State Department and independent researchers.

In Baghdad, for example, nearly three-quarters of residents polled said they would feel safer if U.S. and other foreign forces left Iraq, with 65 percent of those asked favoring an immediate pullout, according to polling results obtained by the Washington Post.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/09/27/D8KDJ98O0.html

Poll: Iraqis Back Attacks on U.S. Troops

Sep 27 10:33 PM US/Eastern

By BARRY SCHWEID

AP Diplomatic Writer

WASHINGTON

_Almost four in five Iraqis say the U.S. military force in Iraq provokes

more violence than it prevents.

_About 61 percent approved of the attacks _ up from 47 percent in January. A

solid majority of Shiite and Sunni Arabs approved of the attacks, according

to the poll.

_An overwhelmingly negative opinion of terror chief bin Laden and more than

half, 57 percent, disapproving of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

_Three-fourths say they think the United States plans to keep military bases

in Iraq permanently.

Your condemnation of Tice was absolute and vile. Why no concern for the lives of innocents destroyed by the illegal activities he describes? What we have here is a failure of logic. I wonder first about your knowledge of the man and his case, and secondly if it suggests your complete disregard and contempt for the basic tenets of our idealized notion of the American way of life, the Rule of Law, and the principles of civics like the Constitution, checks and balances of power among 3 co-equal branches of government, etc. Facts may not matter but some are included anyway. (1.)

For the sake of comparison, I question how you can not want to hang others such as Bush, Cheney, Libby, Rove, Novak, for conspiring to commit a far more heinous and real treason by publicizing the name of a covert CIA agent, naming her front company, exposing all the other secret agents around the world with the same business card to assassination, revealing the sources and methods by which the Agency sets up its undercover spy businesses and recruits informants, knee-capping an individual expert and the unit of the government most concerned with ending nuclear proliferation, and, in fact, even trying to develop the ground intelligence about Iraq, Iran and Korea that the King and Dick Vader said they needed to catapult the propaganda. (2.)

Speaking of whistleblowers, or their need, here are more proud employees of the insurance industry:

Horror Stories

Paul Krugman has a question: “Between 2000 and 2005, the number of Americans with private health insurance coverage fell by one percent. But over the same period, employment at health insurance companies rose a remarkable 32 percent. What are all those extra employees doing? Now we know at least part of the answer: they’re working harder than ever at identifying people who really need medical care, and ensuring that they don’t get it.”

Conscience of a Conservative:. perhaps you could take the time to reread it, or review the speech below for what its complaints and assertions have to say about today, and the betrayal your position represents. Even more erudite would be John Dean’s Conservatives Without Conscience ... (3.)

More depth of comprehension comes from a visit to the bowels of our political decency, and changing the context to reveal that the current King George the W is the tyrant we now face: (4.)

Try this Pop Quiz!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15013517/site/newsweek/

`Letting Students Down’

A new study finds that even top undergraduates are woefully ignorant of history and civic government

By Pat Wingert

Newsweek

Updated: 12:00 a.m. ET Sept 26, 2006

Amid all the other items (7.) of social, economic and political injustice are the week’s highlights about Woodward’s book; the Clinton interview (5.); the Congress enshrining torture in our law, ignoring 800 years of history, enabling a dictator, pre-pardoning Bush for crimes which would clearly end in conviction; and the Main Stream Media’s reluctant reports about the Denier-in-Chief and his refusal to acknowledge the collective wisdom of the 16 US intelligence agencies. But we can say the Bush Mafia is consistent. They haven’t read or paid attention to any of the other intelligence reports either. (6.)

And, of course, one of the many tag lines for Foley: the red state Hypocrisy Party has been screwing us for years, now they’re trying to screw our children!

As usual, the response from Vast Right Wing Megaphone is Wrong, but admirably disciplined and focused on the talking points: don’t discuss substance, use bombast, change the subject, kill the messenger, deny reality. With summer over and the pleasant briskness and color of Oct here, many of us stop drinking the Kool-Aid.

1 million years of history and science. The Pentagon, Congress, various states, private business, and most of the other countries in the world are starting to do what your American Idol won’t...

Global Warming Nears “Dangerous” Level

Global temperatures are dangerously close to the highest ever estimated to have occurred in the past million years, scientists reported Monday. In a study that analyzed temperatures around the globe, researchers found that Earth has been warming rapidly, nearly 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit (0.2 degrees Celsius) in the last 30 years.

Global Warming Fear Lights Fire Under Congress

After years of debating whether global warming was real or a hoax, the House and Senate staged six hearings last week on how the government should respond to climate change. And the Bush administration, which has downplayed the threat of global warming during its six years in office, released a 244-page strategic report laying out plans to address the rapid warming of the planet.

Antarctic Ozone Hole Nears Record

The hole over Antarctica’s ozone layer is bigger than last year and is nearing the record 11-million-square-mile hole seen in 2000, the World Meteorological Organisation said on Friday.

(1.)

President Bush made a decision to order the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens inside the country without the legally required court warrants. Bush’s decision was first revealed in the New York Times in mid-December.

Since the story broke, calls for Congressional hearings and the possible impeachment of the president have intensified. Conservative legal experts have even admitted Bush may have committed an impeachable offense by ordering the NSA to break the law.

On Sunday, the New York Times revealed there was dissent within the upper echelon of the Bush administration over the legality of the president’s order. According to the Times, Attorney General John Ashcroft’s top deputy, James Comey, refused to sign on to the continuation of the secret program in 2004 amid concerns about its legality and oversight. At the time, Comey was serving in place of then Attorney General John Ashcroft while Ashcroft was hospitalized for a medical condition. Comey’s refusal prompted senior Presidential aides Andrew Card and Alberto Gonzales to visit Ashcroft in his hospital room to grant the approval. The Times reports Ashcroft expressed reluctance to sign on to the program. It is unclear if he eventually relented.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post is reporting that the NSA passed on records of intercepted email and phone calls to other government agencies including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security. This news come on the heels of several other reports that the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, military intelligence and local police departments have all been engaged in monitoring peaceful groups including Greenpeace, PETA - the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Catholic Worker, anti-war groups and even bicyclists in New York City. During the 1960s and 1970s, the military used NSA intercepts to maintain files on U.S. peace activists. It was this domestic surveillance that led Congress to intervene and pass Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 in order to prevent future such abuses. The statute permits domestic intelligence surveillance with the approval of a court order from the FISA court.

Two weeks ago, a former NSA intelligence officer publicly announced that he wants to testify before Congress. His name is Russell Tice. For the past two decades he has worked in the intelligence field both inside and outside government, most recently with the National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency.

In his letter, Tice wrote, “It is with my oath as a US intelligence officer weighing heavy on my mind that I wish to report to Congress acts that I believe are unlawful and unconstitutional. The freedom of the American people cannot be protected when our constitutional liberties are ignored and our nation has decayed into a police state.”

RUSSELL TICE: Well, the letter is just a simple request under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, which is a legal means to contact Congress and tell them that you believe that something has gone wrong in the intelligence community.

RUSSELL TICE: Well, anytime where you have a situation where U.S. citizens are being arrested and thrown in jail with the key being thrown away, you know, potentially being sent overseas to be tortured, U.S. citizens being spied on, you know, and it doesn’t even go to the court that deals with these secret things, you know, I mean, think about it, you could have potentially somebody getting the wrong phone call from a terrorist and having him spirited away to some back-alley country to get the rubber hose treatment and who knows what else. I think that would kind of qualify as a police state, in my judgment.

I certainly hope that Congress or somebody sort of does something about this, because, you know, for Americans just to say, `Oh, well, we have to do this because, you know, because of terrorism,’ you know, it’s the same argument that we used with communism years ago: take away your civil liberties, but use some threat that’s, you know, been out there for a long time.

Terrorism has been there for -- certainly before 9/11 we had terrorism problems, and I have a feeling it’s going to be around for quite some time after whatever we deem is a victory in what we’re doing now in the Middle East. But, you know, it’s just something that has to be addressed. We just can’t continue to see our civil liberties degraded. Ultimately, as Ben Franklin, I think, had said, you know, those who would give up their essential liberties for a little freedom deserve neither liberty or freedom, and I tend to agree with Ben Franklin.

RUSSELL TICE: I am a Republican. I voted for President Bush both in the last election and the first election where he was up for president. I’ve contributed to his campaign. I get a post -- I mean, a Christmas card from the White House every year, I guess, because of my nominal contributions. But - so, you know, it’s not like, you know -- I think you’re going to find a lot of folks that are in the Department of Defense and the intelligence community are apt to be on the conservative side of the fence. But nonetheless, we’re all taught that you don’t do something like this.

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: This warrant-less eavesdropping program is not authorized by the PATRIOT Act, it’s not authorized by any act of Congress, and it’s not overseen by any court. According to the reports it’s being conducted under a secret presidential order, based on secret legal opinions by the same Justice Department, lawyers, the same ones who argued secretly that the President could order the use of torture. Mr. President, it is time to have some checks and balances in this country. We are a democracy. We are a democracy. Let’s have checks and balances, not secret orders and secret courts and secret torture, and on and on.

(2.)

Plame’s CIA status was revealed by Robert Novak (based on leaked information) in a 2003 column. In an interview on CNN, he said “Wilson’s wife, the CIA employee, gave $1,000 to Gore and she listed herself as an employee of Brewster-Jennings & Associates. There is no such firm, I’m convinced.” It later turned out that BJ&A did exist for all intents and purposes, listed on the Dun & Bradstreet database of company names.

Compounding the damage, the front company, Brewster-Jennings & Associates, the name of which has been reported previously, apparently also was used by other CIA officers whose work now could be at risk, according to Vince Cannistraro, former CIA chief of counterterrorism operations and analysis. Now, Plame’s career as a covert operations officer in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations is over. Those she dealt with -- on business or not -- may be in danger. The directorate is conducting an extensive damage assessment. And Plame’s exposure may make it harder for American spies to persuade foreigners to share important secrets with them, U.S. intelligence officials said.

(3.)

Goldwater’s 1964 Acceptance Speech

This party, with its every action, every word, every breath, and every heartbeat, has but a single resolve, and that is freedom -- freedom made orderly for this Nation by our constitutional government; freedom under a government limited by the laws of nature and of nature’s God; freedom balanced so that order lacking liberty [sic] will not become the slavery of the prison shell [cell]; balanced so that liberty lacking order will not become the license of the mob and of the jungle.

And because of this administration we are tonight a world divided; we are a Nation becalmed. We have lost the brisk pace of diversity and the genius of individual creativity. We are plodding along at a pace set by centralized planning, red tape, rules without responsibility, and regimentation without recourse.

Tonight, there is corruption in our highest offices. And where examples of morality should be set, the opposite is seen. Small men, seeking great wealth or power, have too often and too long turned even the highest levels of public service into mere personal opportunity.

Now, certainly, simple honesty is not too much to demand of men in government. We find it in most. Republicans demand it from everyone. They demand it from everyone no matter how exalted or protected his position might be.

(As could easily relate to the illegal US occupation in Iraq:)

Security from domestic violence, no less than from foreign aggression, is the most elementary and fundamental purpose of any government, and a government that cannot fulfill this purpose is one that cannot long command the loyalty of its citizens.

History shows us -- it demonstrates that nothing, nothing prepares the way for tyranny more than the failure of public officials to keep the streets safe from bullies and marauders.

Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. They -- and let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions, ladies and gentlemen, of equality. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

Fellow Republicans, it is the cause of Republicanism to resist concentrations of power, private or public, which -- which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism. It is the cause of Republicanism to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people. And, so help us God, that is exactly what a Republican President will do with the help of a Republican Congress.

(Under this White house) we have weakly stumbled into conflict, and tragically, letting our finest men die on battlefields, unmarked by purpose, unmarked by pride or the prospect of victory.

Make no bones of this. Don’t try to sweep this under the rug. His Secretary of Defense continues to mislead and misinform the American people, and enough of it has gone by.

What a destiny can be ours to stand as a great central pillar linking Europe, the Americas, and the venerable and vital peoples and cultures of the Pacific. I can see a day when all the Americas, North and South, will be linked in a mighty system, a system in which the errors and misunderstandings of the past will be submerged one by one in a rising tide of prosperity and interdependence. We know that the misunderstandings of centuries are not to be wiped away in a day or wiped away in an hour. But we pledge, we pledge that human sympathy -- what our neighbors to the South call an attitude of “simpatico” -- no less than enlightened self’-interest will be our guide.

And I can see this Atlantic civilization galvanizing and guiding emergent nations everywhere.

And I pledge that the America I envision in the years ahead will extend its hand in health, in teaching and in cultivation, so that all new nations will be at least encouraged (rather than forced at the end of a gunbarrel)-- encouraged! -- to go our way, so that they will not wander down the dark alleys of tyranny or the dead-end streets of collectivism.

We Republicans see in our constitutional form of government the great framework which assures the orderly but dynamic fulfillment of the whole man, and we see the whole man as the great reason for instituting orderly government in the first place.

We don’t seek to lead anyone’s life for him. We only seek -- only seek to secure his rights, guarantee him opportunity -- guarantee him opportunity to strive, with government performing only those needed and constitutionally sanctioned tasks which cannot otherwise be performed.

We Republicans seek a government that attends to its inherent responsibilities of maintaining a stable monetary and fiscal climate, encouraging a free and a competitive economy and enforcing law and order. Thus, do we seek inventiveness, diversity, and creative difference within a stable order, for we Republicans define government’s role where needed at many, many levels -- preferably, though, the one closest to the people involved.

That, let me remind you, is the ladder of liberty, built by decentralized power. On it also we must have balance between the branches of government at every level.

Balance, diversity, creative difference: These are the elements of the Republican equation. Republicans agree -- Republicans agree heartily to disagree on many, many of their applications, but we have never disagreed on the basic fundamental issues of why you and I are Republicans.

This Republican Party is a Party for free men, not for blind followers, and not for conformists.

And let our Republicanism, so focused and so dedicated, not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels.

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.

(Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.)

And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Why the beauty of the very system we Republicans are pledged to restore and revitalize, the beauty of this Federal system of ours is in its reconciliation of diversity with unity. We must not see malice in honest differences of opinion, and no matter how great, so long as they are not inconsistent with the pledges we have given to each other in and through our Constitution.

I repeat, I accept your nomination with humbleness, with pride, and you and I are going to fight for the goodness of our land.

Thank you.

delivered 16 July 1964, San Francisco

(4.)

American Crisis

THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. (Bush), with an army to enforce (his) tyranny, has declared that (he) has a right (not only to TAX) but “to BIND (*) us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER” and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.

However, the fault, if it were one, was all our own; we have none to blame but ourselves.

Time and a little resolution will soon recover.

I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up a people to destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent. Neither have I so much of the infidel in me, as to suppose that He has relinquished the government of the world, and given us up to the care of devils; and as I do not, I cannot see on what grounds (Bush) can look up to heaven for help against us: a common murderer, a highwayman, or a house-breaker, has as good a pretence as he.

‘Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them. Would that heaven might inspire some Jersey maid (Cindy Sheehan?) to spirit up her countrymen, and save her fair fellow sufferers from ravage and ravishment! Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact, they have the same effect on (Bush supporters), which an imaginary apparition would have upon a private murderer. They sift out the hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world. Many a (Bush cod piece) shall penitentially solemnize with curses the day on which (Bush invaded Iraq).

We are infested with (Bush straps). I have been tender in raising the cry against these men, and used numberless arguments to show them their danger, but it will not do to sacrifice a world either to their folly or their baseness. The period is now arrived, in which either they or we must change our sentiments, or one or both must fall. And what is a (Bush loyalist)? Good God! What is he? Every (Bush Torie) is a coward; for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of (Bush Loyalism); and a man under such influence, though he may be cruel, never can be brave.

A generous parent should have said, “If there must be (a rejection of the Bush Doctrine), let it be in my day, that my child may have peace;” and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty.

America did not, nor does not want force; but she wanted a proper application of that force.

Yet it is folly to argue against determined hardness; eloquence may strike the ear, and the language of sorrow draw forth the tear of compassion, but nothing can reach the heart that is steeled with prejudice.

Quitting this class of men, I turn with the warm ardor of a friend to those who have nobly stood, and are yet determined to stand the matter out: I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state or that state, but on every state: up and help us; lay your shoulders to the wheel; better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake. Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it. It matters not where you live, or what rank of life you hold, the evil or the blessing will reach you all. The far and the near, the home counties and the back, the rich and the poor, will suffer or rejoice alike. The heart that feels not now is dead; the blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole, and made them happy. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death. My own line of reasoning is to myself as straight and clear as a ray of light. Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder.

If we reason to the root of things we shall find no difference; neither can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in the one case and pardon in the other. Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man.

There are cases which cannot be overdone by language, and this is one. There are persons, too, who see not the full extent of the evil which threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the enemy, if he succeed, will be merciful. It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf, and we ought to guard equally against both. (Bush‘s) first object is, partly by threats and partly by promises, to terrify or seduce the people.

I thank God, that I fear not. I see no real cause for fear. I know our situation well, and can see the way out of it The sign of fear was not seen in our camp. Once more we are again collected and collecting; our new army at both ends of the continent is recruiting fast, and we shall be able to open the next campaign. This is our situation, and who will may know it. By perseverance and fortitude we have the prospect of a glorious issue; by cowardice and submission, the sad choice of a variety of evils _ a ravaged country _ habitations without safety, and slavery without hope. Look on this picture and weep over it! and if there yet remains one thoughtless wretch who believes it not, let him suffer it unlamented.

Thomas Paine

December 23, 1776

(*)

Now, thanks to the flaccid Congress, literally and figuratively, forever; or, until the Supremes again say NO WAY JOSE.

(5.)

“http://www.cnn.com/US/9604/18/anti.terror.bill/index.html” - April 18, 1996: ...The measure, which the Senate passed overwhelmingly Wednesday evening, is a watered-down version of the White House’s proposal. The Clinton administration has been critical of the bill, calling it too weak.

The original House bill, passed last month, had deleted many of the Senate’s anti-terrorism provisions because of lawmakers’ concerns about increasing federal law enforcement powers.

July 30, 1996 “http://www.cnn.com/US/9607/30/clinton.terrorism/” -- President Clinton urged Congress Tuesday to act swiftly in developing anti-terrorism legislation before its August recess.
“We need to keep this country together right now. We need to focus on this terrorism issue,” Clinton said during a White House news conference.
But while the president pushed for quick legislation, Republican lawmakers hardened their stance against some of the proposed anti-terrorism measures.
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, doubted that the Senate would rush to action before they recess this weekend. The Senate needs to study all the options, he said, and trying to get it done in the next three days would be tough.
One key GOP senator was more critical, calling a proposed study of chemical markers in explosives “a phony issue.”
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, said it is a mistake if Congress leaves town without addressing anti-terrorism legislation.

(6.)

Declassified Excerpts Released by the White House on July 18, 2003

Key Judgments (from October 2002 NIE)

Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction

State/INR Alternative View of Iraq’s Nuclear Program

The Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research (INR) believes that Saddam continues to want nuclear weapons and that available evidence indicates that Baghdad is pursuing at least a limited effort to maintain and acquire nuclear weapon-related capabilities. The activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq may be doing so, but INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment. Lacking persuasive evidence that Baghdad has launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program, INR is unwilling to speculate that such an effort began soon after the departure of UN inspectors or to project a timeline for the completion of activities it does not now see happening. As a result, INR is unable to predict when Iraq could acquire a nuclear device or weapon.

In INR’s view Iraq’s efforts to acquire aluminum tubes is central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, but INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors. INR accepts the judgment of technical experts at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment and finds unpersuasive the arguments advanced by others to make the case that they are intended for that purpose. INR considers it far more likely that the tubes are intended for another purpose, most likely the production of artillery rockets. The very large quantities being sought, the way the tubes were tested by the Iraqis, and the atypical lack of attention to operational security in the procurement efforts are among the factors, in addition to the DOE assessment, that lead INR to concluded that the tubes are not intended for use in Iraq’s nuclear weapon program.

INR’s Alternative View: Iraq’s Attempts to Acquire Aluminum Tubes

Some of the specialized but dual-use items being sought are, by all indications, bound for Iraq’s missile program. Other cases are ambiguous, such as that of a planned magnet-production line whose suitability for centrifuge operations remains unknown. Some efforts involve non-controlled industrial material and equipment - including a variety of machine tools - and are troubling because they would help establish the infrastructure for a renewed nuclear program. But such efforts (which began well before the inspectors departed) are not clearly linked to a nuclear end-use. Finally, the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in INR’s assessment, highly dubious.

(7.)

OPINION | September 28, 2006
By BOB HERBERT
Where are the voices of reason in the Republican Party?

In Case I Disappear

William Rivers Pitt writes: “I have been told a thousand times at least, in the years I have spent reporting on the astonishing and repugnant abuses, lies, and failures of the Bush administration, to watch my back. ‘Be careful,’ people always tell me. ‘These people are capable of anything. Stay off small planes, make sure you aren’t being followed.’” He continues: “I thought. I am a citizen, and the First Amendment hasn’t yet been red-lined, I thought. Matters are different now.”

Many Civil Rights Taken Away With New Law

The military trials bill approved by Congress redefines the rules for the detention, interrogation, prosecution and trials of terrorism suspects. This bill gives the government extraordinary power to bar terrorism suspects from challenging their detention or treatment through traditional habeas corpus petitions. It allows prosecutors, under certain conditions, to use evidence collected through hearsay or coercion to seek criminal convictions.

Note that this report doesn’t account for contacts initiated by the White House:

Report Links Rove and Disgraced Lobbyist Abramoff

A bipartisan Congressional report, completed by the House Government Reform Committee, documents hundreds of contacts between White House officials and the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his partners. The report, based on email messages and other records subpoenaed from Mr. Abramoff’s lobbying firm, found 485 contacts between Mr. Abramoff’s lobbying team and White House officials from 2001 to 2004, including 82 with Mr. Rove’s office.

A Quarter Million Iraqis Flee Sectarian Violence

A quarter of a million Iraqis have fled sectarian violence and registered as refugees in the past seven months with an upsurge in attacks over Ramadan. In Baghdad, police found the bodies of 40 more victims - bound, tortured and murdered. The United States says violence in Iraq has surged in the last two weeks, and this past week saw the most suicide bombs of any week since the war began in 2003.

HUD Secretary Admitted “Bias” Against Bush Critics

An investigation by the HUD Inspector General reportedly revealed that HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson instructed staff to award HUD contracts to President Bush’s political allies and withhold them from his political opponents. ThinkProgress has obtained access to the entire report which shows that the agency set aside the rules.

An Alternative Way Forward for the US

A Princeton report on National Security suggests that the policies pursued by President George W. Bush since September 11, 2001, have been simplistic and counter-productive for dealing with the challenges facing the United States in the 21st century. The US needs to rely less on military power and more on other tools of diplomacy; be more on cooperation with other democratic states; and focus on building “popular, accountable, rights-regarding [PAR] governments.”

Tracking the CIA Torture Flights

President George W. Bush admitted that the United States detains suspected terrorists in secret CIA-run prisons in foreign countries, but refused to disclose the location of said jails. “Doing so would provide our enemies with information they could use to take retribution against our allies and harm our country.” A.C. Thompson and Trevor Paglen detail how the CIA transports these “detainees” around the globe. In These Times spoke with Thompson about how they tracked planes going to and from locations that don’t officially exist.

Treating Criminality as Daring Boldness

David Swanson writes: “Bush has launched an illegal war, lied to Congress to do so, and misused funds by beginning the war before asking for approval. Bush has targeted civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, and used illegal weapons, including white phosphorous, depleted uranium, and the Napalm-like weapon found in Mark-77 fire bombs. Bush has arbitrarily detained Americans, legal residents and non-Americans without due process, without charge, and without access to counsel. To call this criminal is merely to agree with the US Supreme Court.”

Are We Really So Fearful?

Ariel Dorfman wants to know, “Can’t the United States see that when we allow someone to be tortured by our agents, it is not only the victim and the perpetrator who are corrupted, not only the ‘intelligence’ that is contaminated, but also everyone who looked away and said they did not know, everyone who consented tacitly to that outrage so they could sleep a little safer at night, all the citizens who did not march in the streets by the millions to demand the resignation of whoever suggested, even whispered, that torture is inevitable in our day and age, that we must embrace its darkness?”

Published on Monday, September 25, 2006 by the Los Angeles Times

Army Warns Rumsfeld It’s Billions Short

An extraordinary action by the chief of staff sends a message: The Pentagon must increase the budget or reduce commitments in Iraq and elsewhere.

by Peter Spiegel

WASHINGTON _ The Army’s top officer withheld a required 2008 budget plan from Pentagon leaders last month after protesting to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the service could not maintain its current level of activity in Iraq plus its other global commitments without billions in additional funding.

The decision by Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army’s chief of staff, is believed to be unprecedented and signals a widespread belief within the Army that in the absence of significant troop withdrawals from Iraq, funding assumptions must be completely reworked, say current and former Pentagon officials.

Due Process, Bulldozed

Bob Herbert writes, “Bilal Hussein was part of a team of Associated Press photographers who had won a Pulitzer Prize for photos documenting the fighting and carnage in Iraq. Now he’s a prisoner, having been seized by the US government. You might ask: What’s he been charged with? The answer: Nothing.”

Halliburton Employees, Subcontractors Allege More Abuses

One of the most notorious government contractors in Iraq, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, was under scrutiny again this week for allegedly overcharging US taxpayers and risking the lives of civilians.

Why Retired Military Brass Don’t Want Torture

Firsthand combat experiences compel old guard to attack Bush’s “alternative interrogation.” For all 43 retired generals and admirals, it was a combination of moral outrage and deep disgust over President Bush’s proposed legislation on interrogating terrorist suspects that propelled them into unfamiliar territory. “None of us feels comfortable speaking out publicly,” said Rear Adm. John D. Hutson (retired).

Part I: A Silence in the Afghan Mountains

Afghanistan is a case study in what went wrong in the war on terror. This report paints a troubling picture of abuse by US Special Forces units deployed to the country. Apparently unknown to Army officials, two detainees had died in the team’s custody in separate incidents during the unit’s final month in eastern Afghanistan. Several other detainees allege that they were badly beaten or tortured while held by US forces.

A Detainee’s Story: The Man Who Has Been to America

Why should Geneva Convention protections be applied to Guantanamo detainees? One innocent man’s journey through the legal black hole of the war on terror - four prisons, three countries, two years - may be the best argument yet.

Published on Monday, September 25, 2006 by Ekklesia / UK

Bush’s Church Urges Pull-out of US Troops from Iraq

by Peter Spiegel

US President George W. Bush’s own church has called for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and is urging direct action to end the war.

Writes Mark Schoeff Jr: United Methodist Church leaders helped launch a week of protest and civil disobedience against the war in Iraq by signing a declaration of peace in the capital, urging President Bush to pull US troops out of the country.

The Declaration of Peace, signed on 21 September 2006, is described as a call for nonviolent action to end the war in Iraq. The Washington DC event was one of 350 staged nationwide to promote the peace initiative.

Published on Monday, September 25, 2006 by the Associated Press

Retired Officers to Criticize Rumsfeld

by David Espo

Retired military officers on Monday are expected to bluntly accuse Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld of bungling the war in Iraq, saying U.S. troops were sent to fight without the best equipment and that critical facts were hidden from the public.

“I believe that Secretary Rumsfeld and others in the administration did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq,” retired Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste said in remarks prepared for a hearing by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

A second witness, retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, is expected to assess Rumsfeld as “incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically ....”

Batiste, Eaton and retired Col. Paul X. Hammes were unsparing in remarks that suggested deep anger at the way the military had been treated. All three served in Iraq, and Batiste also was senior military assistant to then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

Batiste, who commanded the Army’s 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, also blamed Congress for failing to ask “the tough questions.”

He said Rumsfeld at one point threatened to fire the next person who mentioned the need for a postwar plan in Iraq.

Batiste said if full consideration had been given to the requirements for war, it’s likely the U.S. would have kept its focus on Afghanistan, “not fueled Islamic fundamentalism across the globe, and not created more enemies than there were insurgents.”

Hammes said in his prepared remarks that not providing the best equipment was a “serious moral failure on the part of our leadership.”

The United States “did not ask our soldiers to invade France in 1944 with the same armor they trained on in 1941. Why are we asking our soldiers and Marines to use the same armor we found was insufficient in 2003,” he asked.

Hammes was responsible for establishing bases for the Iraqi armed forces. He served in Iraq in 2004 and is now Marine Senior Military Fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, National Defense University.

Eaton was responsible for training the Iraqi military and later for rebuilding the Iraqi police force.

He said planning for the postwar period was “amateurish at best, incompetent a better descriptor.”

Published on Monday, September 25, 2006 by the Independent / UK

A Journey into the ‘Taliban Republic’ Where the Militias Rule Unchallenged

by Patrick Cockburn

Civil war is raging through the Iraqi countryside. Sunni insurgents have largely taken control of the province of Diyala, where local leaders believe the insurgents are close to establishing a “Taliban republic”.

Officials in the strategically important province - composed of a mixture of Sunnis and Shias with a Kurdish minority - have no doubt about what is happening.

Media Tall Tales for the Next War

by Norman Solomon

The Sept. 25 edition of Time magazine illustrates how the U.S. news media are gearing up for a military attack on Iran.

When the media system undermines the free flow of information and prevents wide-ranging debate, what happens is a parody of democracy. That’s what occurred four years ago during the media buildup for the invasion of Iraq.

Now, warning signs are profuse: The Bush administration has Iran in the Pentagon’s sights. And the drive toward war, fueled by double standards about nuclear development and human rights, is getting a big boost from U.S. media coverage that portrays the president as reluctant to launch an attack on Iran.

Time magazine reports that “from the State Department to the White House to the highest reaches of the military command, there is a growing sense that a showdown with Iran ... may be impossible to avoid.”

The same kind of media spin -- assuming a sincere Bush desire to avoid war -- was profuse in the months before the invasion of Iraq. The more that news outlets tell such fairy tales, the more they become part of the war machinery.

Norman Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and the author of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” E-mail to: mediabeat@igc.org.

Published on Monday, September 25, 2006

Republicans Give In To Bush, Betray America

by Thom Hartmann

Senators John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham were presented with an opportunity to uphold the fundamental human right known as habeas corpus, or flinch and write a law that would retroactively make sure that George W. Bush could not be prosecuted for violations of habeas corpus in our overseas concentration camps and prisons. It was a contest between protecting the President and protecting the Constitution.

The Republican senators flinched, and in last week’s so-called “compromise” chose Bush over the Constitution. In doing so, they turned their backs on a rule of law that stretches back over nearly eight centuries to an epic moment in 1215 on a meadow by the River Thames in the United Kingdom.

Published on Sunday, September 24, 2006 by Agence France Presse

Leaked Intelligence Report Rocks Bush Election Stance

US spy agencies have dropped a political bombshell six weeks before national elections, with the leak of a classified report concluding that the war in Iraq has spawned a new wave of Islamic radicalism and increased the global threat of terrorism.

The intelligence document on Sunday rocked a central pillar of the Republican Party’s campaign platform ahead of November elections: that the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the ouster of Saddam Hussein made America safer, not weaker.

Published on Monday, September 25, 2006 by the Guardian / UK

The War on Terror is Unwinnable with Bush and Blair in Charge

It will take new leaders in the US and UK to restore faith that we deserve to win the struggle against Islamic fundamentalism

by Max Hastings

We must somehow survive the last months of Tony Blair’s premiership, and the more alarming two years left to George Bush. Thereafter, among the foremost responsibilities of their successors will be to restore faith that the west deserves to win the struggle against Islamic fundamentalism, as it certainly does.

It has become essential, however, to recreate an international perception that this country has a mind of its own. We are engaged in a struggle with fanatics whose vision is brutal, primitive and nihilistic. They will be defeated only when the west’s counter-vision is perceived by reasonable people as just and unselfish. Under Bush and Blair it is not, and never will be.

Sir Max Hastings is a British journalist, editor, historian and author. He became a foreign correspondent and reported from more than sixty countries and eleven wars for BBC television and for The Evening Standard in London. After ten years as editor and then editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph he returned to The Evening Standard as editor in 1996 until his retirement in 2001. He was knighted in 2002.

Published on Sunday, September 24, 2006

A Weekend with 10 Nobel Peace Laureates

by John Dear

“We will never win a war against terror as long as the conditions for poverty and injustice remain,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu said. “Poverty breeds terrorism. So we should stop spending billions on weapons of destruction and instead feed the hungry people of the world. Then, we’ll stop terrorism. If we want to live in peace, we have to realize we are all members of the same family.”

Published on Sunday, September 24, 2006 by the Baltimore Sun (Maryland)

Powell Belatedly Joins Bid to Save Our Nation’s Soul

by Leonard Pitts Jr.

Colin L. Powell is late. Late by weeks, late by months. Truth to tell, late by years.

“The world,” he wrote in a letter to Sen. John McCain this month, “is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.”

The eyes goggle at the word, neon-obvious in its understatement. Beginning to doubt? “Beginning”?

Au contraire. Surely the world began to doubt when we barreled unilaterally into Iraq, crying, “WMD! WMD!” Surely the world began to doubt when, finding no weapons of mass destruction, we declared that not finding them didn’t matter. Surely the world began to doubt when it read headlines of our soldiers committing acts of torture at Abu Ghraib. Surely the world began to doubt when news broke of the U.S. sending alleged terrorists to countries where they could be tortured. Surely the world began to doubt when Vice President Dick Cheney lobbied to exempt the CIA from rules prohibiting torture. Surely the world has doubted for a long time now.

Published on Saturday, September 23, 2006 by the Chicago Sun-Times

Bush Seeks Immunity for Violating War Crimes Act

by Elizabeth Holtzman

Thirty-two years ago, President Gerald Ford created a political firestorm by pardoning former President Richard Nixon of all crimes he may have committed in Watergate -- and lost his election as a result. Now, President Bush, to avoid a similar public outcry, is quietly trying to pardon himself of any crimes connected with the torture and mistreatment of U.S. detainees.

The ‘’pardon’‘ is buried in Bush’s proposed legislation to create a new kind of military tribunal for cases involving top al-Qaida operatives. The ‘’pardon’‘ provision has nothing to do with the tribunals. Instead, it guts the War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal law that makes it a crime, in some cases punishable by death, to mistreat detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions and makes the new, weaker terms of the War Crimes Act retroactive to 9/11.

Published on Friday, September 22, 2006 by the Los Angeles Times

Our Torturer-in-Chief

Until Bush took office, the U.S. had no problem defining what is cruel and inhuman.

by Rosa Brooks

We don’t torture detainees, President Bush has repeatedly insisted; we just make use of lawful “alternative procedures” of interrogation.

But if everything we’ve done is lawful, why is the White House suddenly so desperate to get a deal with Congress that would “clarify” Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention and amend the War Crimes Act, which criminalizes violations of the article?

According to Bush, the problem is that Common Article 3, which prohibits “cruel,” “humiliating” and “degrading treatment” and “outrages upon personal dignity,” is vague. He claims it doesn’t give “clear” guidance about what is permitted and what is prohibited during interrogations.

That’s not what Bush is actually worried about, though. His real problem is precisely the opposite _ Common Article 3 and the War Crimes Act aren’t nearly vague enough. If called on to determine whether several of the administration’s “alternative” techniques violate Common Article 3 _ and thus the War Crimes Act _ virtually any court in the land would agree that they do.

Our Constitution prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment.” That’s vague too, but our courts have always managed to define it. As the Supreme Court put it in the 2002 case Hope vs. Pelzer, the argument that a standard is vague and provides insufficient notice of what’s prohibited just doesn’t cut it sometimes. Some practices are just plain “antithetical to human dignity” and characterized by “obvious” and “inherent” cruelty.

Published on Thursday, September 21, 2006

Reclaiming The Issues: “Keep George Out Of Jail”

by Thom Hartmann

The Republicans are trying to keep George W. Bush out of jail. So far, the media and the Democrats haven’t done much to stop them.

On the surface, it seems the Republicans are having a debate about “wiretapping terrorists” and “harsh interrogation of prisoners.” These frames about the current “rebellion” by McCain, Graham, Warner, et al, are today embraced by both the Republican Party and the mainstream media.

But the real issue is whether Republicans in Congress will trade the principles of democracy and the rule of law to keep George W. Bush and several of his colleagues out of jail, or whether they’ll uphold the rule of law and American democracy while abandoning him to face the consequences of his illegal acts.

Published on Friday, September 22, 2006 by the Madison Capital Times (Wisconsin)

Founders Saw Impeachment as a Cure

by John Nichols

“... it may, perhaps, on some occasion, be found necessary to impeach the President himself...”- James Madison

Sept. 17 is Constitution Day. It was on Sept. 17, 1787, that 39 of the founders signed the U.S. Constitution and took the first formal step on America’s journey as a nation of laws rather than men.

It is possible, and indeed appropriate, to debate the intentions of the founders on a host of issues. But there can be no debate about their determination that the document guarantee the most necessary of all democratic protections: the power of impeachment.

George Mason, who along with James Madison was a definitional figure in the drafting of the Constitution, said of the document’s contents: “No point is of more importance than that the right of impeachment should be continued.”

Madison’s notes from the summer when the Constitution was drafted, as well as his letters to Jefferson regarding the product of that summer, leave no doubt that the founders intended for impeachment to be utilized whenever necessary in defense of the republic. They did not want the power to impeach treated as a fetish or a fantasy, nor did they intend for its application to be seen as a constitutional crisis. Rather, they wanted impeachment to be recognized for what it is: the cure for the crisis of executive excess.

It was Madison’s view that impeachment was an “indispensable” provision for defending the American experiment - and the American people - “against the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief Magistrate.” The promise of another election, at which a wrongdoing executive might be removed, was not enough to provide such protection, Madison had warned in his address to the Constitutional Convention that made provision for impeachment. “The imitation of the period of (the president’s) service, was not a sufficient security,” explained the man who would, himself, serve two full terms as the new nation’s fourth president. “(The president) might lose his capacity after his appointment. He might pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation or oppression. He might betray his trust to foreign powers. ... In the case of the Executive Magistracy which was to be administered by a single man, loss of capacity or corruption was more within the compass of probable events, and either of them might be fatal to the Republic.”

Gouverneur Morris, the “gentleman revolutionary” whose pen Madison credited with providing “the finish given to the style and arrangement of the Constitution,” was even blunter than his compatriot. Speaking of “the necessity of impeachments,” Morris asserted that only the broad power to remove the president - not merely for corruption and incapacity but for the far more fluidly defined act of “treachery” - would provide the essential insurance across time that: “This Magistrate is not the King. ... The people are the King.”

Published on Friday, September 22, 2006 by CommonDreams.org

“Devil” in the Details:

Chavez, Limbaugh and Hypocrisy over Name-Calling

by Jeff Cohen

Across the U.S. political and media spectrum, there was wide agreement yesterday: Name-calling and personal attacks are bad for national and global dialogue. Prompting the unity were Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’ comments that President Bush was the devil incarnate, “El Diablo.”

Among those exercised (and exorcized) about Chavez’ name-calling were some of the loudest name-callers in American media today -- including Rush Limbaugh and other rightwing talk hosts. Limbaugh tried to equate Chavez’ remarks with the alleged Bush-bashing that comes from top U.S. Democrats. In case you’ve forgotten, it was Limbaugh who ridiculed Chelsea Clinton, then 13, as the “White House dog.”

It was Limbaugh in 2001 who routinely referred to Democratic leader Tom Daschle, literally, as “El Diablo.” Along with “Devil in a Blue Dress” theme music, Limbaugh would carry on at length about how Daschle may well be Satan in soft-spoken disguise. Bellowed Limbaugh in July 2001: “Just yesterday, as Bush winged his way to Europe on a crucial mission to lead our allies into the 21st century_up pops `El Diablo,’ Tom Daschle, and his devilish deviltry, claiming that George Bush is incompetent.” (Months later, Limbaugh started describing Daschle more as a traitor than a devil, who’d decided to “align himself with Iran, North Korea and Hussein.”)

The Limbaughs, Hannitys, Scarboroughs and O’Reillys are in no position to point any fingers. Nor are the executives at Disney, GE and News Corp who have made them the loudest voices in American media.

Nor, for that matter, is Team Bush -- whose strategy has been to demonize and intimidate critics and other members of the “reality-based community.”

Jeff Cohen is the founder of the media watch group FAIR, and author of Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.

Clinton: “I Tried My Best to Kill bin Laden”

The Australian

Monday 25 September 2006

Mr Clinton’s defence of his record on terrorism came as the Democrats seized on newly disclosed intelligence assessments that contradict President George W. Bush’s claim the war in Iraq has made the US safer, warning that it has increased the danger of attack.

The assessment, the consensus view of the US federal intelligence network, concluded that the Iraq war has fuelled Islamic extremism and contributed to the spread of terrorist cells, prompting Democrats to challenge Republican assertions that Mr Bush and his Republican allies offer the best protection against terrorism.

Senator Edward Kennedy said the intelligence analysis “should be the final nail in the coffin for President Bush’s phony argument” about the Iraq war. “Despite what President Bush says, the intelligence community has reported the plain truth - the misguided war in Iraq has metastasised and spread terrorism like cancer around the world.”

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said the analysis was “further proof the war in Iraq is making it harder for America to fight and win the war on terror”.

Mr Bush “should read the intelligence carefully before giving another misleading speech about progress in the war on terrorism”, she said.

War Signals?

“As reports circulate of a sharp debate within the White House over possible US military action against Iran and its nuclear enrichment facilities, The Nation has learned that the Bush administration and the Pentagon have issued orders for a major ‘strike group’ of ships, including the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off Iran’s western coast,” writes Dave Lindorff.

Torture Victim Had No Terror Link, Canada Told US

When the United States sent Maher Arar to Syria, where he was tortured for months, the deportation order stated unequivocally that Mr. Arar, a Canadian software engineer, was a member of al-Qaeda. But a few days earlier, Canadian investigators had told the FBI that they had not been able to link him to the terrorist group.

Bush and Torture

Le Monde sees “little chance that the disposition that allows the president of the United States to enact rules that constitute an outrage to common law will be challenged _”

Newsweek caught polishing the news for US audience;

Losing Afghanistan: The Rise of Jihadistan

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092506R.shtml

Newsweek has scrubbed the cover of the United States edition for October 2, 2006. The cover of international editions, aimed at Europe, and other world regions has maintained the original title of the story, “LOSING AFGHANISTAN.” The new cover for the United States edition features photographer Annie Leibovitz and is titled “My Life in Pictures.” We offer the European edition cover and story here.

US Army Extends Iraq Duty for 4,000

The Army is stretched so thin by the war in Iraq that it is again extending the combat tours of thousands of soldiers beyond the promised 12 months - the second such move since August.

US Pursues Ties to Oil-Rich Kazakhstan

President Bush is pursuing closer ties to oil-rich Kazakhstan despite what human rights observers have said is a disturbing backslide toward autocracy in the former Soviet republic. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did not answer when asked Monday whether human rights or energy would top the agenda for a meeting with her Kazakh counterpart.

Wilderness Designation Trade-Offs Faulted

Congress is on the verge of approving half a dozen bills that would protect as much as one million acres of wilderness areas across the West, but the move has infuriated environmentalists who charge that lawmakers are giving away too much pristine public land to real estate developers and local communities in the process.

Al Meyerhoff and William B. Schultz | Something’s Rotten in Food Oversight

“Federal agents are scurrying across the Salinas Valley - the nation’s ‘salad bowl’ - in search of the source of the E. coli contaminating the spinach supply. They won’t find it without a mirror, because the real culprit in this case is the US government.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15024576/

Terror report rekindles political fight over Iraq

Updated: 6:47 a.m. ET Sept 27, 2006

WASHINGTON -

Declassified Key Judgments of the National

Intelligence Estimate .Trends in Global Terrorism:

Implications for the United States. dated April 2006

The report furthers the argument that the 2003 Iraq invasion has inflamed anti-U.S. sentiments in the Muslim world and left the U.S. less safe.

In a bleak National Intelligence Estimate, the government’s top analysts concluded Iraq has become a “cause celebre” for jihadists, who are growing in number and geographic reach. If the trend continues, the analysts found, the risks to the U.S. interests at home and abroad will grow.

“We also assess that the global jihadist movement _ which includes al-Qaida, affiliated and independent terrorist groups, and emerging networks and cells _ is spreading and adapting to counterterrorism efforts,” concluded the estimate, compiled by leading analysts across 16 U.S. spy agencies.

Policies ‘inflamed our enemies’ hatred’

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.

National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue, and are approved by John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence. Their conclusions are based on analysis of raw intelligence collected by all of the spy agencies.

Previous drafts described actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.

The report mentions the possibility that Islamic militants who fought in Iraq could return to their home countries, “exacerbating domestic conflicts or fomenting radical ideologies.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15004160/

A textbook definition of cowardice

Keith Olbermann comments on Bill Clinton’s Fox News interview

By Keith Olbermann

Anchor, ‘Countdown’

MSNBC

Updated: 9:01 a.m. ET Sept 26, 2006

The headlines about them are, of course, entirely wrong.

It is not essential that a past president, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back.

It is not important that the current President’s portable public chorus has described his predecessor’s tone as “crazed.”

Our tone should be crazed. The nation’s freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as al Qaida; the nation’s marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would’ve quit.

Nonetheless. The headline is this:

Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done in five years.

He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration.

“At least I tried,” he said of his own efforts to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. “That’s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They had eight months to try; they did not try. I tried.”

Thus in his supposed emeritus years has Mr. Clinton taken forceful and triumphant action for honesty, and for us; action as vital and as courageous as any of his presidency; action as startling and as liberating, as any, by any one, in these last five long years.

The Bush Administration did not try to get Osama bin Laden before 9/11.

The Bush Administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its predecessors.

The Bush Administration did not understand the Daily Briefing entitled “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S.”

The Bush Administration did not try.

Moreover, for the last five years one month and two weeks, the current administration, and in particular the President, has been given the greatest “pass” for incompetence and malfeasance in American history!

Thus was it left for the previous president to say what so many of us have felt; what so many of us have given you a pass for in the months and even the years after the attack:

You did not try.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your predecessor.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your own people.

Then, you blamed your predecessor.

That would be a textbook definition, Mr. Bush, of cowardice.

To enforce the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of the past.

That was one of the great mechanical realities Eric Blair_writing as George Orwell_gave us in the book “1984.”

The great philosophical reality he gave us, Mr. Bush, may sound as familiar to you, as it has lately begun to sound familiar to me.

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power...

“Power is not a means; it is an end.

“One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

“The object of persecution, is persecution. The object of torture, is torture. The object of power_ is power.”

Earlier last Friday afternoon, before the Fox ambush, speaking in the far different context of the closing session of his remarkable Global Initiative, Mr. Clinton quoted Abraham Lincoln’s State of the Union address from 1862.

“We must disenthrall ourselves.”

Mr. Clinton did not quote the rest of Mr. Lincoln’s sentence.

He might well have.

“We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.”

And so has Mr. Clinton helped us to disenthrall ourselves, and perhaps enabled us, even at this late and bleak date, to save our country.

The “free pass” has been withdrawn, Mr. Bush.

You did not act to prevent 9/11.

We do not know what you have done to prevent another 9/11.

You have failed us_then leveraged that failure, to justify a purposeless war in Iraq which will have, all too soon, claimed more American lives than did 9/11.

You have failed us anew in Afghanistan.

And you have now tried to hide your failures, by blaming your predecessor.

And now you exploit your failure, to rationalize brazen torture which doesn’t work anyway; which only condemns our soldiers to water-boarding; which only humiliates our country further in the world; and which no true American would ever condone, let alone advocate.

And there it is, Mr. Bush:

Are yours the actions of a true American?

Published on Tuesday, September 26, 2006 by The Nation

“You Did Your Nice Little Conservative Hit Job On Me.”

by John Nichols

Clinton used an appearance with “Fox News Sunday’s” Chris Wallace to challenge the lies of the Bush administration and its media acolytes. The interview, which was broadcast over the weekend, got to the heart of what’s wrong not with the Bush presidency but with a media that covers that presidency from the on-bended-knee position.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14717641/site/newsweek/

Where’s the Clarity?

Five years after 9/11, little of Bush’s `war on terror’ rhetoric is making sense.

By Michael Hirsh

Updated: 4:18 p.m. ET Sept 8, 2006

Published on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 by the San Francisco Chronicle

Most Iraqis Want US to Leave Now

Country would be safer, less violent, they tell pollsters

by Amit R. Paley

A strong majority of Iraqis want U.S.-led military forces to immediately withdraw from the country, saying their swift departure would make Iraq more secure and decrease sectarian violence, according to new polls by the State Department and independent researchers.

In Baghdad, for example, nearly three-quarters of residents polled said they would feel safer if U.S. and other foreign forces left Iraq, with 65 percent of those asked favoring an immediate pullout, according to polling results obtained by the Washington Post.

Published on Tuesday, September 26, 2006 by the Madison Capital Times (Wisconsin)

Science Hindered, Hurt by Bush Administration

I remain deeply concerned about the politicization of science and its ramifications. To preserve the health and well-being of our people, our environment and our great research institutions, we must respect the scientific peer-reviewed process; we must ensure that our scientists are not being silenced or censored; and we must carefully weigh scientific evidence in the policymaking process.

Tammy Baldwin represents the Wisconsin’s 2nd District in Congress.

Letter From Intelligence and Military Professionals on Use of Torture

Tuesday 26 September 2006

United States Senate

Committee on the Judiciary

224 Dirksen Senate Office Building

Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Arlen Specter, Chairman

The Honorable Patrick J. Leahy, Ranking Democratic Member

Dear Senators:

We write as experienced intelligence and military officers who have served in the frontlines in waging war against communism and Islamic extremism.

We are very concerned that the proposals now before the Congress, concerning how to handle detainees suspected of terrorist activities, run the risk of squandering the greatest resource our country enjoys in fighting the dictators and extremists who want to destroy us_our commitment as a nation to the rule of law and the protection of divinely granted human rights.

Published on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 by truthdig.com

A War on Intelligence

by Robert Scheer

You would think that a consensus report from all 16 U.S. intelligence

services concluding that he has blown the war on terror would be a really

big deal to the president. But that assumes that George W. Bush values

intelligence.

Clearly, he does not. So the news that a 2006 National Intelligence Estimate

concludes the threat of terror against the United States has increased since

9/11, largely thanks to his irrational invasion of Iraq, has not disturbed

Bush’s branded “what me worry” countenance.

Instead, predictably, the administration’s response to the leaked

conclusions of the shared assessments of both civilian and military

intelligence agencies was the same old historically ignorant claptrap that

leaves U.S. policies completely out of the equation.

Published on Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Giving Terrorism a Reason to Exist

by Camilo Mejia

According to a report by 16 U.S. Spy agencies leaked to The New York Times,

the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped create more global

terrorism and energize jihadist ideology throughout the world since the 9/11

attacks. The intelligence report, completed in April of this year but still

classified, contradicts more optimistic assessments by both The White House

and the House Intelligence Committee, which have claimed that America and

its Allies are safer since the September 11 attacks. The report, however,

also supports what critics of the war, especially dissenting U.S. veterans,

have been saying all along, that the war in Iraq is actually creating more

terrorism.

September 28, 2006 by the Guardian / UK

Iraq War Was Terrorism ‘Recruiting Sergeant’

by Richard Norton-Taylor

The Iraq war has acted as a “recruiting sergeant” for extremists in the

Muslim world, according to a paper prepared for a Ministry of Defence

thinktank, which also said the British government sent troops into

Afghanistan “with its eyes closed”.

Published on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 by the Boston Globe

Multiplying the Enemy

by Derrick Z. Jackson

President Bush first declared Iraq to be the ``central front” in his war on

terror in a nationally televised address in September of 2003, just before

the second anniversary of 9/11.

Even then, top intelligence officials were worried about such rhetoric. The

very next month, a National Intelligence Estimate warned -- in a story

unknown until Knight Ridder broke it this year -- that the unrelenting

violence in Iraq after the US invasion was over local conditions and the

presence of US forces. It was not inspired by foreign terrorism, as the

White House kept saying.

``Frankly, senior officials simply weren’t ready to pay attention to

analysis that didn’t conform to their own optimistic scenarios,” Robert

Hutchings, chairman of the National Intelligence Council from 2003 to 2005,

told Knight Ridder.

Spinning the Spin

For voters, the National Intelligence Estimate is probably the single most

important document to emerge in this election. Plus, Dick Cheney’s surprise

party.

By Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey

Newsweek

Updated: 5:58 p.m. ET Sept. 27, 2006

Sept. 27, 2006 - Amid all the hoopla about the National Intelligence

Estimate on terrorism, it’s worth stepping back to gain a little

perspective. Like three and a half years of perspective. Back in March 2003,

President Bush addressed the nation from the Oval Office just after the

first military strikes in Iraq. “The people of the United States and our

friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that

threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder,” he said.

Never mind that the weapons of mass murder were never found. And never mind

the suggestion, now retracted, that Saddam’s regime would coordinate

operations with terrorists. The central premise of the war in Iraq was that

military force would stop terrorists from attacking America_that troops

would fight the threat in Iraq rather than firefighters rescuing the victims

on the homeland.

Does the NIE’s key findings support that strategy? Not exactly.

Published on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 by USA Today

Detainees Compromise: Lose-Lose

The Constitution is being undermined, and the world still can’t be assured

that prisoners held by the U.S. are being humanely treated. So where are the

winners?

-Nat Hentoff is an authority on the U.S. Constitution and author of The War

on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14966272/site/newsweek/

Trickle-Up Economics?

No one should be happy with today’s growing inequality. It threatens our

social compact, which relies on a shared sense of well-being.

By Robert J. Samuelson

Heralded Iraq police academy a ‘disaster’

$75 million project so mismanaged that campus poses huge health risks

By Amit R. Paley

The Washington Post

Updated: 1:44 a.m. ET Sept. 28, 2006

BAGHDAD - A $75 million project to build the largest police academy in Iraq

has been so grossly mismanaged that the campus now poses health risks to

recruits and might need to be partially demolished, U.S. investigators have

found.

The Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S. efforts to prepare

Iraqis to take control of the country’s security, was so poorly constructed

that feces and urine rained from the ceilings in student barracks. Floors

heaved inches off the ground and cracked apart. Water dripped so profusely

in one room that it was dubbed “the rain forest.”

“This is the most essential civil security project in the country -- and

it’s a failure,” said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for

Iraq reconstruction, an independent office created by Congress.

Published on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 by the Los Angeles Times

Our Pathetic Congress

Little has been accomplished, too much will be left hanging and what was

done was often done badly.

“The Final Days of any Congress are never pretty, as lawmakers scramble to finish a string of bills while getting out of town as early as possible to hit the campaign trail. After 37 years in Washington - 18 elections - we are pretty well inured to these shenanigans. But even those of us with strong stomachs are getting indigestion from the farcical end of the 109th Congress, slated for early Saturday,” write Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein.

Cost of Iraq War Nearly $2 Billion a Week

By Bryan Bender

The Boston Globe

Thursday 28 September 2006

Washington - A new congressional analysis shows the Iraq war is now

costing taxpayers almost $2 billion a week - nearly twice as much as in the

first year of the conflict three years ago and 20 percent more than last

year - as the Pentagon spends more on establishing regional bases to support

the extended deployment and scrambles to fix or replace equipment damaged in

combat.

Integrity, Moral Authority, and Some Inconvenient Truths

By Stacy Bannerman

Thursday 28 September 2006

“The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against

terrorism. To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts.” General

Colin Powell’s statement came after a Congressional “compromise” that would

legalize torture and condone trials with secret evidence, among other

things. The nation whose Constitution [1] includes the “right to a fair and

speedy trial,” the country that crows about its moral values and commitment

to human rights, the government whose leader repeatedly states that “we do

not condone torture,” is preparing to sign off on a document that makes

those policies, protections, and professed moral values a lie.

There is no moral authority without integrity.

We cannot be a beacon of light for the world while shrouded in shadows.

America is not who we have said that we are. And the world is becoming wise

to what we have tried to hide.

We have tried to hide the hideously uncomfortable fact that America has

pursued an unscrupulous foreign policy predicated upon pre-emptive strikes,

and initiated a deadly, seemingly interminable, conflict as a matter of

first choice rather than last, necessary resort. Self-proclaimed patriots

have parroted the phrase about supporting the troops while sending them to

die in a war based on lies. Those same summer patriots have borne false

witness, standing silently by as the Veterans Administration has broken

every promise that’s been made to take care of the troops when they get

home.

The Bush administration is now asserting that the mission in Iraq is to

bring democracy to that nation, while methodically stripping away the very

basis of democracy in America. We have acquiesced to the unprecedented

destruction of civil rights and liberties, and the invasion of privacy,

which seems not to matter much to most in the “home of the free.”

Bush War III: Going to War to Save His Own Ass

Dave Lindorff writes: “Unless the American people and their ostensible representatives in Congress act quickly to make it clear that the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force does not apply to an attack on Iran, and that it did not make the president a dictator with the power to make war at will, I’m betting that we’ll be at war with Iran before Election Day.”

The Deep Breath Before the Plunge

William Rivers Pitt writes: “It seems the invasion and occupation of Iraq has spawned a new generation of radicalized men and women willing to die for the privilege of taking American soldiers, or you, or me, with them. The information contained in the newest National Intelligence Estimate, considered to be the most authoritative report on the subject, was so unutterably damning that even the White House was forced to cede the point.”

Why We Fight: A Mother’s Guide to Civil Disobedience

Elaine Brower writes: “While my son is fighting for his life in Fallujah, under some false pretense that we are ‘defending democracy’ or ‘killing terrorists,’ I decided to take up the fight at home. Very few here are left defending our Constitutional rights.” Frustrated, she decries “spying on US citizens in the name of preserving our freedoms, domestic economic failures and disasters, higher gas prices, and the global cowboy foreign policies that we have to listen to and witness on a daily basis.”

Federal Court Decision Protects Alaskan Lake, Wetlands From Oil Drilling

The US District Court for Alaska issued a strongly worded decision that could save the internationally significant wildlife habitat around Teshekpuk Lake in the Northeast Planning Area of the National Petroleum Reserve, Alaska (NPRA). The court found the government’s environmental analysis violated federal environmental laws.

Panel Urges Basic Coverage on Health Care

A federal advisory panel said Monday that Congress should take immediate steps to guarantee that all Americans have access to affordable health care by 2012. As a first step, the 14-member panel, appointed by the comptroller general of the United States, said, “A national public or private program must be established to ensure protection against very high out-of-pocket medical costs for everyone.”

The Fine Art of Declassification

The New York Times’s editors write: “It’s hard to think of a president and an administration more devoted to secrecy than President Bush and his team. Except, that is, when it suits Mr. Bush politically to give the public a glimpse of the secrets. And so, yesterday, he ordered the declassification of a fraction of a report by United States intelligence agencies on the global terrorist threat.”

“But the three declassified pages from what is certainly a voluminous report told us what any American with a newspaper, television or Internet connection should already know. The invasion of Iraq was a cataclysmic disaster.”

Chickens Are Home to Roost in Iraq

By Andrew Bacevich

The Australian

Wednesday 27 September 2006

The Bush administration is running out of troops, money and ideas.

As if by stealth, almost without our noticing, the Iraq war’s long-awaited turning point has arrived. After the innumerable events touted as decisive that turned out to be anything but that - the capture of Saddam Hussein, the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the various milestones related to the creation of a new Iraqi political order - the end game now becomes clear. And the outcome points ineluctably towards an American failure of immense proportions.

Historians of the global war on terror will likely recall September 2006 as a pivotal moment. Throughout this month, chickens have come home to roost. Each has arrived bearing bad news for the Bush administration.

Andrew Bacevich, a US Vietnam veteran and a contributing editor of The American Conservative, is professor of international relations at Boston University. He is the author of The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (Oxford, 2005).

Medicare: Why Are Conservatives Scared of Competition?

Dean Baker writes, “In their public pronouncements, conservatives like to claim that they are free-market individualists. They want to leave everything to the markets and let businesses and individuals fend for themselves. The tough-guy rhetoric makes for a nice story, but the reality is very different. The conservatives need to be constantly coddled against the rigors of an unfettered marketplace. It turns out that life can be tough for rich people in a competitive market. That’s why they need the helping hand of the government at every turn.”

The Diminished Dividends of War

By Jim Lobe

Inter Press Service

Wednesday 27 September 2006

Washington - With the US intelligence community agreed that the invasion and occupation of Iraq have made the United States less safe from terrorist threats, President George W Bush appears to be facing a growing revolt among top military commanders who say their ground forces are stretched close to breaking point.

According to Monday’s Los Angeles Times, the US Army’s top officer, General Peter Schoomaker, has called for a nearly 50% increase in spending, to nearly US$140 billion, in 2008 to cope with the situation in Iraq and maintain minimal readiness for emergencies.

Bush: “Read It Yourself” Portion of Intel Report Released

“The Bush administration’s failed policies in Iraq are fueling global terrorism and making America less safe,” said Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader. “These results are the unfortunate consequences of the administration’s decision to cherry-pick pre-war intelligence, ignore our senior military leaders, and completely fail to plan for the post-Saddam occupation.”

Intact Northern Forests Worth US$250 Billion/Year

Forests in northern nations such as Russia and Canada are worth $250 billion a year because of services they provide by purifying water or soaking up greenhouse gases, a researcher said on Tuesday. Mark Anielski, an ecological economist, urged governments to follow suit and place value on natural services rather than go on treating them as free.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15019350/

U.S. blocked hurricane report, journal says

Nature: Commerce official withheld panel finding on global warming

Updated: 10:51 p.m. ET Sept 26, 2006

WASHINGTON - A federal agency has blocked release of a report that suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes, the journal Nature reported Tuesday.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14852395/

Documentary slams corporate profits in Iraq war

By Daniel Trotta

Updated: 1:47 p.m. ET Sept 15, 2006

NEW YORK - A new film uses the $45 six-pack of Coke to open another front in the political battle over Iraq, decrying what it calls profiteering and incompetence by defense contractors with the right political connections.

Robert Greenwald, who took aim at Wal-Mart in a 2005 documentary, has turned his lens on private firms hired to help the U.S. military fight the war in Iraq with the just-released “Iraq for Sale.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14704890/

Iraq war fuels Islamic radicals-retired US general

By Susan Cornwell

Updated: 11:04 p.m. ET Sept 25, 2006

WASHINGTON - The conduct of the Iraq war fueled Islamic fundamentalism across the globe and created more enemies for the United States, a retired U.S. Army general who served in the conflict said on Monday.

The views of retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste buttressed an assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies, which intelligence officials said concluded the war had inspired Islamist extremists and made the militant movement more dangerous.

The Iraq conflict, which began in March 2003, made “America arguably less safe now than it was on Sept. 11, 2001,” Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq in 2004-2005, told a hearing on the war called by U.S. Senate Democrats.

“If we had seriously laid out and considered the full range of requirements for the war in Iraq, we would likely have taken a different course of action that would have maintained a clear focus on our main effort in Afghanistan, not fueled Islamic fundamentalism across the globe, and not created more enemies than there were insurgents,” Batiste said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15002956/site/newsweek/

Was the former president justified in blasting a Fox News interviewer who questioned his administration’s counterterrorism record?

By Michael Hirsh

Newsweek

Updated: 4:29 p.m. ET Sept 25, 2006

Clinton said, “They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try, they did not try.”

For the record, that is mostly true. Clinton and his national security advisor, Sandy Berger, who is ridiculed in the ABC mini-series for allegedly shrinking from efforts to assassinate bin Laden, regularly discussed the Al Qaeda problem and repeatedly pressed the U.S. military for more options against bin Laden. It was mainly the military, which feared another Desert One debacle, when eight U.S. commandoes died in a botched effort to rescue the American hostages in Tehran, that shrank from taking more aggressive action than cruise missile strikes. “No operation that was ever recommended to the president was ever turned down,” says Jim Steinberg, Berger’s former deputy and now dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin.

And for the record, the Bush administration barely paid attention to bin Laden before 9/11, as documented by the 9/11 Commission and other inquiries. On Jan. 26, 2001_six days after Bush’s inauguration_an FBI report for the first time conclusively tied the USS Cole bombing in Yemen to Al Qaeda. A few weeks later, CIA Director George Tenet raised the stakes, calling bin Laden’s global terror network “the most immediate and serious threat” to U.S. national security. Yet there was no retaliation for the Cole or any other Al Qaeda attack for eight months_the “principals” did not even hold a meeting on how to deal with the terrorist group_despite Tenet’s increasingly urgent warnings about an Al Qaeda attack in the summer of 2001. Even today, the Bush administration is spending more time, resources and energy on supposed state sponsors of terror, like Iraq, than on the terrorists themselves.

Study Doesn’t Share Bush’s Optimism on Terror Fight

By DAVID E. SANGER

Published: September 27, 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 _ Three years ago, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld wrote a memo to his colleagues in the Pentagon posing a critical question in the “long war’‘ against terrorism: Is Washington’s strategy successfully killing or capturing terrorists faster than new enemies are being created

Until Tuesday, the government had not publicly issued an authoritative answer. But the newly declassified National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism does exactly that, and it concludes that the administration has failed the Rumsfeld test.

Published on Tuesday, September 26, 2006 by TruthDig

New News Is Bad News

by Molly Ivins

Noshing on the news ...

-- The National Intelligence Estimate, agreed upon by 16 Bush-controlled spy services within the U.S. government, says the war in Iraq is making the war on terrorism harder and worse. It gives the phrase “leaking intelligence” a new meaning (a line not original with me).

We’ve been having a debate in this country about whether to continue the war_or “the comma,” as the president calls it_until it has become a semicolon. Now, the debate is over, and what we need to discuss is the best way out. This war is not a goddamn comma.

--Its death, violence, and tragedy is the legacy of this Bush Empire that history will mark not as a comma, but as the beginning, a turning point, of another Decline and Fall in human progress. Maybe we can still recover from its depth and duration.

Statistics behind the delusion that the Dweeb has made us safer:

Graph from “http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/09/the_facts_behin.html” \l “more”, who notes:

“A “Significant” terrorist incident is one in which a person was killed, wounded or kidnapped (or there was property damage in excess of $10,000).”

Rice Ignored bin Laden Warnings Prior to 9/11

Jason Leopold writes, “National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, in an attempt to rewrite history, told the New York Post in a wide-ranging interview this week that the Clinton administration had failed to leave a comprehensive plan in place for the incoming Bush administration on how to deal with bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist organization - a patently false accusation that smacks of election-season politics at play.”

Selective Intelligence

The White House’s release of a dire National Intelligence Estimate on global terrorism has illustrated once again how easy it is to publicly misrepresent intelligence-community findings - especially when almost all of the key documents remained shrouded in secrecy.

Terrorism and the Republican Way

William Rivers Pitt writes: “Iraq is now the training ground for global terrorism, according to the new NIE, and the extremism fueling and funding that training process has an ever-swelling cadre of fighters to call on. Those who conduct attacks against our troops in Iraq have proven themselves to be effective fighters, simply because they know the ground far better than our soldiers do, because they were born there.”

OPINION | September 28, 2006
“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/opinion/28thu1.html?ex=1160107200&en=14798c947c845b3b&ei=5070&emc=eta1”
In the name of fighting terrorism, Congress is set to pass a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15053727/

Many U.S. legal rights absent in detainee bill

Rules are far different than in American criminal justice system

By R. Jeffrey Smith

Updated: 11:33 p.m. ET Sept 28, 2006

The military trials bill approved by Congress lends legislative support for the first time to broad rules for the detention, interrogation, prosecution and trials of terrorism suspects far different from those in the familiar American criminal justice system.

A DIFFERENT BILL

A different Bill writes: “I voted for Bush, but I am now: Disappointed in my president. Disillusioned by the war in Iraq (I think we were mislead). Open minded, but still very nervous of depending on a Democrat to defend my family from terror threats. Yes, I voted for Bush – but don’t ridicule me; instead extend a hand and show me why the Democratic Party offers more. I was in favor of Iraq – don’t tell me how foolish I was – think about why I felt so strongly. Don’t just tell me what the Republicans are doing wrong; tell me what Democrats will do right. Don’t convince me I was wrong in the past; convince me you have a plan to go from this point forward, and you’ll be amazed. People like me (and not the closed-minded fringe like yesterday’s opposing point of view) are the voters that can make the difference in the next election – but I need to see less piling on and more substance to vote democratic.”

F This Bill, I think, is dead on. We make a terrible mistake when we ridicule people who don’t see things our way. My sense is that we don’t actually do this as much as they think – they keep hearing, from Rush Limbaugh and others, that we ridicule them, yet I don’t remember Bill Clinton or Al Gore or John Kerry (or Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi) doing a lot of ridiculing. And I hope my own continuous sharp criticism of the current Republican leadership does not often cross the line to ridicule of Republicans generally. (Ridiculing a few specific Republicans is all but irresistible. But “http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/index.jhtml” does it so much better than I ever could.)

To the extent we do cross that line, it’s dumb and we need to do better.

As to Different Bill’s specific points, I think most people actually do know the kinds of things Democrats favor domestically. Democrats will work much harder for affordable health care, college loans, safer coal mines, cleaner water, a hike in the minimum wage, a more effective FEMA, less government intrusion in personal decisions, a sustainable environment . . . all that. (And as “http://www.winterforcongress.com/”, a marine running for Congress in Colorado, is fond of saying: think of some of the things we liberals gave America that you like – like weekends. And the 40-hour work week. And an end to slavery, and public education, and women’s suffrage, and Social Security, and the Family and Medical Leave Act. Liberals did all that.)

But Different Bill’s main concern seems to be terrorism. And my own view is that if Al Gore had been in the White House, he would have taken the “tremendous” “immediate” threat of Bin Laden with utmost seriousness and very possibly killed him before 9/11 could have happened. He would surely not have taken a month vacation after getting an August 6 briefing titled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the U.S.”

I think the same kind of liberal Democrats who beat Hitler and took very tough action in Japan . . . the same kind who faced down Khrushchev over Cuba and Berlin . . . the same kind who deposed Slobodan Milosovich . . . and the same kind who were fighting terrorism only to see that effort ratcheted down and redirected toward Iraq – read Richard Clarke’s book, read Paul O’Neill’s book, read Bob Woodward’s book – those same kind of patriotic, tough Democrats would exercise better judgment than the current Administration has, and would find more effective ways to use what’s left of our strength to protect America. Strength is only as good as the strategic thinking behind it. The strategic thinking of this Administration has been abysmal, has weakened us terribly, and made us less safe.

And one final thing. Just by not being the Republican Party, the Democrats will have a leg up in keeping us safe. That’s because, whether you think it is fair or not, much of the rest of the world yearns for America to “reboot.” We will be stronger if we have more of the world back on our side. Even if we wound up doing exactly what the Bush team would have done, it would be better received and better supported coming from people who had worked hard to retire the Bush team.

We need you, Different Bill, and will welcome you with open arms.

**

TORTURE

“The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy.”

– George W. Bush, June 2003

To which, last week, conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan responded:

“Let’s be clear here: it is the president’s belief that anyone who sanctions mistreatment of military prisoners under the definition of the U.N. Convention on Torture should be prosecuted as a war criminal. One simple question: how exactly does that now not apply to him?”

– Andrew Sullivan, September 2006

Published on September 28, 2006 by “http://www.truthdig.com”

Habeas Corpus, R.I.P. (1215 - 2006)
With a smug stroke of his pen, President Bush is set to wipe out a safeguard against illegal imprisonment that has endured as a cornerstone of legal justice since the Magna Carta.

by Molly Ivins

“Fellow citizens, this bill throws out legal and moral restraints as the president deems it necessary - these are fundamental principles of basic decency, as well as law. I’d like those supporting this evil bill to spare me one affliction: Do not, please, pretend to be shocked by the consequences of this legislation. And do not pretend to be shocked when the world begins comparing us to the Nazis.”

This Time, Congress Has No Excuse

Andrew Cohen writes, “Of all the stupid, lazy, short-sighted, hasty, ill-conceived, partisan-inspired, damage-inflicting, dangerous and offensive things this Congress has done (or not done) in its past few recent miserable terms, the looming passage of the terror detainee bill takes the cake.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/opinion/28thu1.html?ex=1159675200&en=bc6c08daa222b80d&ei=5087%0A

Editorial

Rushing Off a Cliff

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

Deficit Comes in Below Projections, Thanks to “Off-Budget” Borrowing

The US government closes the books on fiscal 2006 Saturday, and politicians are likely to trumpet that the federal deficit came in almost $60 billion below projections. Problem is, they won’t be using the same math you use.

Former Pollster Describes 2000 Election Theft

Former UNH professor and pollster David Moore contends that his new book about the 2000 presidential election - titled “How to Steal an Election” - is not partisan. Moore said he knows it’s a “hard sell,” but he argues the book simply explains how George W. Bush took the presidency that was rightfully won by Al Gore.

Frightening Balance Sheet

Pierre Haski looks at what the US has accomplished in Iraq since its 2003 invasion, while Marc Semo points out that the only bright spot - Iraqi Kurdistan - is also negotiating parlous waters.

TFAs, The Food Industry’s “Trojan Horse” on Your Table

“If you’re thinking about a useful holiday gift for a teenager,”writes Sherwood Ross, “for $6.99 you can give the invaluable ‘Trans Fats: The Hidden Killer in Our Food’ (Pocket Books), by Judith Shaw, whose no-holds-barred introduction begins, ‘This is the story of a killer ingredient tucked into most of the food that you, your family, and most other Americans eat ...’”

Middle-Class Families in Worse Shape Than Ever

The typical double-income family is worse off financially than ever, a study released Thursday said, warning that few Americans have saved enough to brace for financial setbacks.

Bush Has Brought US “International Disgrace”

Former president Carter urged Nevadans on Thursday to elect his Democratic son, Jack, to the Senate to help combat a Bush administration he says has brought “international disgrace” to the United States.

Scandal-Rocked Congress Adjourns

“do-nothing Congress” campaigns for re-election

Leaving behind a pile of unfinished work, members of the scandal-rocked US Congress adjourned and went home on Saturday to ask voters to re-elect them in five weeks.

Uncomfortably Numb to Torture

“A year ago this week, a military jury convicted Army Reserve Pfc. Lynndie R. England of maltreating detainees,” says JoAnn Wypijewski. “So here is the bitter joke: England, the public emblem of torture, was convicted for nothing so awful as what the president and his flank have chosen to protect.”

Diebold Added Secret Patch to Georgia E-Voting Systems in 2002

Top Diebold corporation officials ordered workers to install secret files in Georgia’s electronic voting machines shortly before the 2002 elections, at least two whistleblowers are now asserting.

Published on Thursday, September 28, 2006

Ripping Off A Democracy Is As Old As Ancient Athens

by Mary Liz Thomson

Part of the American psyche likes to think that whatever the people at the top do to be successful must be good for everyone. This isn’t always so. Getting rich can also lead to extraordinary abuses of power. Aristocratic tyranny might sound quaint, but nearly every generation of leaders have warned us of the dangers. From Madison to Jefferson, Lincoln and Eisenhower, in their own ways they told us that money power corrupts and that it could be the death of our republic.

Times of war are crucial moments for the survival of democracies. Giving up too much power to secretive leaders can end up doing more harm than the enemy. That’s what happened to the first recorded democracy ever, in Ancient Athens. After flourishing for nearly 200 years, their democracy was taken over from within by its own most prominent civic leaders. Few of us know the story of Athens fall into tyranny and how eerily similar to our own current times. It is a potent reminder of how wartime fears can be used to con a free society into giving up everything.

Published on September 28, 2006 by the New York “http://www.nydailynews.com”

A Closer Reading of the National Intelligence Estimate: Iraq a Bigger Factor in the Rise of Terror than Reported. Plus, Anti-Globalization Forces Equated with Terrorists!

by Matthew Rothschild

So it turns out that the National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism does confirm what we’ve been saying all along: that the Iraq War is fueling terrorism.

Published on September 28, 2006 by the Baltimore “http://www.baltimoresun.com” (Maryland)

Mixed Feelings about Snap Judgments, Depending on the Frame

by Garrison Keillor

Good morning, Iraq and tortured prisoners hijacked to Syria and the war crimes committed by our own officials. One can escape at the movies or in Monet’s garden, but these crimes won’t stay hidden. There were photographs of Abu Ghraib. There are cell phones everywhere. People are taking photographs of almost everything nowadays.

Published on Friday, September 29, 2006

When Democracy Fails Us

by Jerry Lanson

On Thursday night, the U.S. Congress tore up large swaths of the Constitution.

Egged on by President Bush and a variety of pre-November election insecurities, the United States Senate joined the House in making a mockery of the principles on which this nation was founded.

Published on Friday, September 29, 2006

Toadies and Timid Men: How Empires Die

by Niranjan Ramakrishnan

Today there is no difference between disappearing in Iraq and disappearing in America. In one place you might be held incognito by a militia, in the other by the government.

Until yesterday, the difference was that in America, the governent was obliged to produce you before a magistrate, to let you have a lawyer, to allow your family to know.

The mobs in the middle east may raise a million cries of, “Death to America”, but it is George W. Bush and his pocket Congress that are carrying out their wishes.

If the Republic is to be saved, those who love it must ask themselves what they are ready to give up in return.

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, — go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!”

-Samuel Adams, 9/27/1722 - 10/2/1803, American revolutionary leader, statesman

Published on Friday, September 29, 2006 by “http://www.thenation.com”

Accessories to Torture

Editorial

These are grim days for the Constitution. At press time, the House had passed the catastrophic “compromise” negotiated by senators McCain & Co. to the President’s “enemy combatants” bill, and the Senate was poised to do the same. The only thing compromised is the rule of law; the bill would still strip detainees of the right to appeal, would broaden the President’s unilateral powers to decide who is an enemy and which interrogation methods violate the Geneva Conventions, and would fatally undermine the War Crimes Act.

As more than 300 law professors wrote in a letter to Congressional leaders, the enemy-combatants debate is “an urgent test of our nation’s constitutional and democratic values.” At this writing, Democrats as well as Republicans have failed the test.

Published on Friday, September 29, 2006 by “http://www.commondreams.org”

Cheney’s Statements on Justification of War Must Be Challenged

by International Scholars/Leaders

Sent by Fax to all members of the United States Congress
September 27, 2006

On September 10th in a televised interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, Vice President Dick Cheney stated with little ambiguity that we would have invaded Iraq in 2003 even if we knew that Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction. This statement by our nation’s Vice President repudiates the legal and moral principle of non-aggression which has been accepted by the international community and has won the United States international trust and respect. This repudiation must not go unnoticed or unchallenged by Congress and the American people.

For more info, go to “http://www.principledaction.org/index.html”

Published on Friday, September 29, 2006 by the “http://www.latimes.com”

I’m No Bush Hater
There’s a huge difference between disliking the president and disliking his policies.

by Rosa Brooks

Are you a Bush hater, so blinded by “primal” loathing for the president that you automatically dismiss everything he says or does?
It’s one of the far right’s favorite weapons: If anyone criticizes the administration, brand them a Bush hater. The implication is that no sane or fair-minded person could be appalled by this administration’s policies. Any criticism of Bush must be caused by what columnist Charles Krauthammer described as “contempt and disdain giving way to a hatred that is near pathological.” My column last week, for instance, generated a response from one right-wing blogger that not only mischaracterized what I said but referred to me as “Bush hating,” “blinded” by “virulent” anger, full of “unreconstructed rage” and typical of the “Bush-hatred of the American left.”
The right’s got it wrong.
I don’t love George Bush, it’s true. No matter how many times I urge myself to hate the sin but love the sinner, I just can’t get there. But I don’t hate Bush, either. I hope that he’ll never personally experience any of the “alternative methods” of interrogation he’s so willing to use on U.S. detainees; I hope he’ll never lose a child to war; I hope he’ll never experience the soul-sapping poverty to which his administration has abandoned so many Americans.
No, I don’t hate George Bush.
But I sure hate what he’s done to my country.
I hate the fact that Bush and the radicals in his administration play politics with patriotism, casting critics of misguided legislation on military commissions and wiretapping as “soft” on terrorism and telling us, as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld recently did, that “moral or intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong can weaken the ability of free societies to persevere.”
In Bush’s America, questioning makes us weak. In my America, we value dissent and debate because we know this is what makes us strong and free.
I hate the fact that after promising to unite us, this president has done his best to divide us. In Bush’s America, there are real Americans and then there are the blue states … and the Democrats. Sometimes, as Les Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, recently put it, the White House actually seems “as interested in defeating Democrats as in defeating terrorists.” In my America, we’re all citizens, from Texas and South Carolina and Ohio to New York and California. And every single one of us matters.
I hate the fact that to Bush, having “values” seems to mean absolutist opposition to gay marriage and abortion and indifference to many forms of suffering. In Bush’s America, preventing gay marriage is apparently more important than preventing cruel or degrading treatment of detainees, or helping the millions of Americans who struggle to make it from paycheck to paycheck. In my America, having “values” means believing that “inalienable rights” is more than just a pretty phrase, and it means pulling together to address the growing income inequality that, unchecked, will permanently distort our democracy.
I hate the fact that Bush’s reckless foreign policies have led many of our closest allies to regard this nation with contempt and fear. Increasingly, people around the world see the U.S. as a threat to global stability, not as a source of stability. In Bush’s America, the greatest traditions of American diplomacy seem to have been replaced by “my way or the highway.” In my America, we understand that being a good neighbor is part of what keeps us safe.
I hate the fact that to Bush, the phrase “the buck stops here” is apparently as quaint as the Geneva Convention. He has yet to come clean about the degree to which he overstated the charge that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or on the lack of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. In Bush’s America, being president means never having to say you’re sorry. In my America, presidents should admit it when they make mistakes — and then work in a bipartisan way to chart a better course instead of sticking stubbornly to failed policies.
The United States is in trouble. The spread of militant Islamic extremism and WMD will pose dangers for decades to come, and global warming, disease and poverty are all serious threats. If we’re going to respond to those threats, we need to pull together — and we need to stop letting the far right get away with dismissing all criticism of the Bush administration as irrational “hatred.”

Published on Friday, September 29, 2006 by TomDispatch.com

Iraq at the Gates of Hell

by Tom Engelhardt

How many Sunni Arabs support the insurgency?

75% of them, according to a Pentagon survey. In 2003, when the Pentagon first began surveying Iraqi public opinion, 14% of Sunnis supported the insurgency (then just beginning) against American occupation.

How many Iraqis want the United States to withdraw its forces from their country?

Except in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, strong majorities of Iraqis across the country, Shiite and Sunni, want an immediate U.S. withdrawal, according to a U.S. State Department survey “based on 1,870 face-to-face interviews conducted from late June to early July.” In Baghdad, nearly 75% of residents polled claimed that they would “feel safer” after a U.S. withdrawal, and 65% favored an immediate withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign forces. A recent Program on International Policy Attitudes or PIPA poll found 71% of all Iraqis favor the withdrawal of all foreign troops on a year’s timetable. (Polling for Americans is a dangerous business in Iraq. As one anonymous pollster put it to the Washington Post, “If someone out there believes the client is the U.S. government, the persons doing the polling could get killed.”)

How many Iraqis think the Bush administration will withdraw at some point?

According to the PIPA poll, 77% of Iraqis are convinced that the United States is intent on keeping permanent bases in their country.

How much of Bush’s Iraq can now be covered by Western journalists?

Approximately 2%, according to New York Times journalist Dexter Filkins, now back from Baghdad on a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. Filkins claims that “98 percent of Iraq, and even most of Baghdad, has now become ‘off-limits’ for Western journalists.” There are, he says, many situations in Iraq “even too dangerous for Iraqi reporters to report on.” (Such journalists, working for Western news outlets, “live in constant fear of their association with the newspaper being exposed, which could cost them their lives. ‘Most of the Iraqis who work for us don’t even tell their families that they work for us,’ said Filkins.”)

How is Iraqi reconstruction going?

Over three years after the invasion, the national electricity grid can only deliver electricity to the capital, on average, one out of every four hours (and that’s evidently on a good day). At the beginning of September, Iraq’s oil minister spoke hopefully of raising the country’s oil output to 3 million barrels a day by year’s end. That optimistic goal would just bring oil production back to where it was more or less at the moment the Bush administration, planning to pay for the occupation of Iraq with that country’s “sea” of oil, invaded. According to a Pentagon study, “Measuring security and stability in Iraq,” released in August, inflation in that country now stands at 52.5%. (Damien Cave of the New York Times suggests that it’s closer to 70%, with fuel and electricity up 270% from the previous year); the same Pentagon study estimates that “about 25.9% of Iraqi children examined were stunted in their physical growth” due to chronic malnutrition which is on the rise across Iraq.

The Iraqi dead are literally uncountable. Iraq is the tragedy of our times, an event that has brought out, and will continue to bring out, the worst in us all. It is carnage incarnate. Every time the President mentions “victory” these days, the word “loss” should come to our minds. A few more victories like this one and the world will be an unimaginable place. Back in 2004, the head of the Arab League, Amr Mussa, warned, “The gates of hell are open in Iraq.”

Published on Sunday, October 1, 2006 by the Florida “http://www.news-press.com”

Bush Uses the Word Fascism to Mislead

by John Cox

MARKETING IRAQ

So what is served by the bandying about of this misleading term? It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the true aim is simply to inflame opinion, at a time when support for the war on Iraq is waning. Fewer Americans are willing to accept the linkage, so often suggested by Cheney and others, between the Sept. 11 attacks and the war in Iraq. The horrifying human costs of this misguided adventure are also harder for us to ignore. So with the November elections on the horizon, it’s time to try out a new strategy to market the war.
“Islamic fascism” also is being used to bludgeon critics of the administration’s war against Iraq. Invoking the “fascist” menace, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently accused his critics of “moral and intellectual confusion.” He and other Bush spokespeople have linked antiwar sentiment with the appeasement of Hitler by European diplomats in the 1930s, a particularly outrageous parallel.

More than ever, we need reasoned and informed debate and reflection. Overheated and cynical oratory does not help, and we can appreciate the inhumanity of terrorism without equating it with Hitler. And as a historian, I believe we should try to learn more about the true nature and crimes of fascism and Nazism — crimes that are diminished by the indiscriminate use of those terms.
John Cox is assistant professor of European history at Florida Gulf Coast University.

Published on Saturday, September 30, 2006 by the New York Times

A Portrait of Bush as a Victim of His Own Certitude

by Michiko Kakutani

In Bob Woodward’s highly anticipated new book, “State of Denial,” President Bush emerges as a passive, impatient, sophomoric and intellectually incurious leader, presiding over a grossly dysfunctional war cabinet and given to an almost religious certainty that makes him disinclined to rethink or re-evaluate decisions he has made about the war.

As this new book’s title indicates, Mr. Woodward now sees Mr. Bush as a president who lives in a state of willful denial about the worsening situation in Iraq, a president who insists he won’t withdraw troops, even “if Laura and Barney are the only ones who support me.”

Published on Saturday, September 30, 2006 by CommonDreams.org

How George Bush Admitted His War Crimes

by Richard W. Behan

It was brilliantly deceptive, trumping even his orchestrated dishonesty in leading us to war.

Buried in the 94 pages of the Military Commissions Act of 2006-the “detainee act” or the “torture bill”-the Bush Administration tacitly admits it has committed war crimes.

It is retroactive. It shall “.take effect as of November 26, 1997, as if enacted.[on that date].” Nothing the Bush Administration has done can be called into question.

Why would the Bush people write these several requirements into a law? Only if they are guilty of committing war crimes and know they will face prosecution. Though ingeniously obscured, this is a de facto admission of guilt.

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 is mostly smokescreen. The law’s primary purpose is to immunize the Bush Administration, which explains the Administration’s frantic anxiety to have it passed. The thrust of the bill, relating to detainee trials, is hardly a matter of top priority: the detainees have been languishing for years. Elizabeth Holtzman saw through the smokescreen in a recent essay in the Chicago Sun-Times, “Bush Seeks Immunity for Violating War Crimes Act.” Not many other commentators have noticed.

This new law shields the Bush Administration from their mistreatment of prisoners, but that issue is truly a marginal one. Still to be confronted is the illegality of the Iraq war writ large: sold to the American people on conscious lies and prosecuted at horrific expense in human lives and treasure. Crimes against humanity are involved here.

The Military Commissions Act was created by desperate people terrified of prosecution. Imagine George W. Bush taking the stand in The Hague, following in the footsteps of Slobodan Milosevic. Imagine Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice imprisoned. Imagine.

Published on Saturday, September 30, 2006 by the Madison “http://www.madison.com” (Wisconsin)

Liars Started War; Why Trust Them To End It?

by Joy First, Mary Beth Schalgheck, Steve Burns, Janet Parker, Daryl Sherman, Char Brandl, Susan Spahn, Todd Kummer, Jim Murphy, Jackson Tiffany, Jo Vukelich, Bonnie Block

Thursday, Sept. 21, marked the International Day of Peace established by the United Nations in 1981. This year it also marked the culmination of the “http://www.declarationofpeace.org/” with 360 communities in all 50 states taking action to end the war in Iraq.

Why would a dozen ordinary people like us take time out of our busy lives to collectively put 324 hours into an effort to “declare peace”? Because we are tired of the lies that got us into the war and the fear that allows a small group of neo-cons, who now control the government, to make us give up our deepest values. And because we know that peace does not come by killing innocent people.

Democracy is not built at the point of a rifle. Security is not achieved by dropping bombs. Human rights are not honored by torture.

Published on Friday, September 29, 2006 by the “http://www.latimes.com”

Nuclear Energy: Still a Bad Idea

by Jeremy Rifkin

Today new technologies are giving people the tools they need to become active participants in an interconnected world. Nuclear power, by contrast, is elite power, controlled by the few. Its resurrection would be a step backward.

Instead, we should pursue an aggressive effort to bring the full range of decentralized renewable technologies online: solar, wind, geothermal, hydro and biomass. And we should establish a hydrogen storage infrastructure to ensure a steady, uninterrupted supply of power for our electricity needs and for transportation.

Our common energy future lies with the sun, not with uranium.

Jeremy Rifkin is the author of “The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the World Wide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth.”

Published on Sunday, October 1, 2006 by the “http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article1772334.ece”

Iraq: The Week the Truth was Told (Except by Tony Blair)
President George Bush is forced to release a secret US intelligence report that says the Iraq war has increased the threat of terrorism
An MoD think-tank, aided by MI6, says the Iraq war has served as a “recruiting sergeant” for extremists in the Muslim world
Former foreign secretary Jack Straw tells Question Time the situation in Iraq is “dire” because of Bush’s mistakes
The PM again refuses to countenance that the war in Iraq has increased Islamic terrorism, and the threat to Britain

by Rupert Cornwell in Washington

Secret intelligence assessments and public statements by former senior officials, the evidence presented in influential new books and in a simmering generals’ revolt against the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, all deliver the same message: the Anglo-American war of choice, the invasion of a sovereign country in March 2003 not only was founded on false pretences. It also created more problems than it has solved.

In London, Jack Straw, foreign secretary at the time, described the present state of Iraq, where 50,000 or more civilians have died since 2003, as “dire”. On the BBC programme Question Time, Mr Straw admitted he regretted various elements of the war.

“Many mistakes” had been made by the US in the aftermath of the invasion, and the efforts of General Colin Powell’s State Department to install a “proper civilian administration” were not followed through (stymied, it should be said, by a then ascendant Pentagon and by Vice-President Dick Cheney).

The day before, a research paper from the Ministry of Defence in London, produced an judgement on the international ramifications. The Iraq war had served as a “recruiting sergeant” for extremists, and had helped to radicalise an already disillusioned youth. “Al-Qa’ida,” said the document, “has given them the will, intent, purpose and ideology to act.” It also claimed a deal to pull British troops from Iraq to focus on Afghanistan foundered when UK commanders were overruled.

Published on Sunday, October 1, 2006 by the “http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/us/01judges.html”

Tilting the Scales? Campaign Cash Mirrors a High Court’s Rulings

by Adam Liptak and Janet Roberts

COLUMBUS, Ohio An examination of the Ohio Supreme Court by The New York Times found that its justices routinely sat on cases after receiving campaign contributions from the parties involved or from groups that filed supporting briefs. On average, they voted in favor of contributors 70 percent of the time. Justice O’Donnell voted for his contributors 91 percent of the time, the highest rate of any justice on the court.

In the 12 years that were studied, the justices almost never disqualified themselves from hearing their contributors’ cases. In the 215 cases with the most direct potential conflicts of interest, justices recused themselves just 9 times.

Published on Sunday, October 1, 2006

The Health Costs of Wealth Inequality

by John Robbins

Not that long ago in this country, you could raise a family on a single paycheck. If you were working, you didn’t have to worry about an unexpected medical bill making you homeless. If you were disabled, your basic needs were taken care of, and if you were elderly, you could count on benefits that made your final years restful and safe.

But real wages have been declining since the 1970s, and benefits have been deteriorating. Every year, more working people are losing their pensions and their health insurance.

Meanwhile, our wealth distribution has been becoming increasingly disparate. Today, many corporate executives earn more money in a couple of hours than the average factory worker makes in a year. The wealthiest 1 percent of America’s population owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. And the minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, has fallen by 37 percent since 1968, and become the lowest of any industrialized nation.

What impact is this having on the health of our people?

With 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States accounts for nearly 50 percent of the world’s healthcare spending, yet ranks only 26th in life expectancy, and 28th in infant mortality. Is it a coincidence that not a single one of the 25 countries that have longer life expectancies than the United States, nor a single one of the 27 countries that have better infant mortality rates, has as wide a wealth gap between its richest and poorest citizens?

I once believed that the wealthier a society, the better would be the health of its people. And it’s true that those nations whose annual per capita income is below $10,000 often suffer from poor sanitation and malnutrition and have the poorest health. But studies have consistently found that above that threshold, the health of nations is no longer a matter of absolute income, but is actually more a matter of the gap between the rich and the poor. Above that point, the more unequally wealth is distributed, the less health will prevail.

Book Says Bush Ignored Urgent Warning on Iraq

By DAVID E. SANGER

Published: September 29, 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 — The White House ignored an urgent warning in September 2003 from a top Iraq adviser who said that thousands of additional American troops were desperately needed to quell the insurgency there, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter and author. The book describes a White House riven by dysfunction and division over the war.

The warning is described in “State of Denial,” scheduled for publication on Monday by Simon & Schuster. The book says President Bush’s top advisers were often at odds among themselves, and sometimes were barely on speaking terms, but shared a tendency to dismiss as too pessimistic assessments from American commanders and others about the situation in Iraq.

As late as November 2003, Mr. Bush is quoted as saying of the situation in Iraq: “I don’t want anyone in the cabinet to say it is an insurgency. I don’t think we are there yet.”

Two Months Before 9/11, an Urgent Warning to Rice
The Washington Post

Sunday 01 October 2006

On July 10, 2001, two months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet met with his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, at CIA headquarters to review the latest on Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Black laid out the case, consisting of communications intercepts and other top-secret intelligence showing the increasing likelihood that al-Qaeda would soon attack the United States. It was a mass of fragments and dots that nonetheless made a compelling case, so compelling to Tenet that he decided he and Black should go to the White House immediately.

For months, Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy, including specific presidential orders called “findings” that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden. Perhaps a dramatic appearance - Black called it an “out of cycle” session, beyond Tenet’s regular weekly meeting with Rice - would get her attention.

Tenet had been losing sleep over the recent intelligence he’d seen. There was no conclusive, smoking-gun intelligence, but there was such a huge volume of data that an intelligence officer’s instinct strongly suggested that something was coming. He and Black hoped to convey the depth of their anxiety and get Rice to kick-start the government into immediate action.

He did not know when, where or how, but Tenet felt there was too much noise in the intelligence systems. Two weeks earlier, he had told Richard A. Clarke, the National Security Council’s counterterrorism director: “It’s my sixth sense, but I feel it coming. This is going to be the big one.”

Tenet had the NSA review all the intercepts, and the agency concluded they were of genuine al-Qaeda communications. On June 30, a top-secret senior executive intelligence brief contained an article headlined “Bin Laden Threats Are Real.”

Tenet hoped his abrupt request for an immediate meeting would shake Rice. He and Black, a veteran covert operator, had two main points when they met with her. First, al-Qaeda was going to attack American interests, possibly in the United States itself. Black emphasized that this amounted to a strategic warning, meaning the problem was so serious that it required an overall plan and strategy. Second, this was a major foreign policy problem that needed to be addressed immediately. They needed to take action that moment - covert, military, whatever - to thwart bin Laden.

The United States had human and technical sources, and all the intelligence was consistent, the two men told Rice. Black acknowledged that some of it was uncertain “voodoo” but said it was often this voodoo that was the best indicator.

Tenet and Black felt they were not getting through to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off. President Bush had said he didn’t want to swat at flies.

Revolt of the Generals
By Richard J. Whalen
The Nation

Thursday 28 September 2006

A revolt is brewing among our retired Army and Marine generals. This rebellion - quiet and nonconfrontational, but remarkable nonetheless - comes not because their beloved forces are bearing the brunt of ground combat in Iraq but because the retirees see the US adventure in Mesopotamia as another Vietnam-like, strategically failed war, and they blame the errant, arrogant civilian leadership at the Pentagon. The dissenters include two generals who led combat troops in Iraq: Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack Jr., who commanded the 82nd Airborne Division, and Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who led the First Infantry Division (the “Big Red One”). These men recently sacrificed their careers by retiring and joining the public protest.

In late September Batiste, along with two other retired senior officers, spoke out about these failures at a Washington Democratic policy hearing, with Batiste saying Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was “not a competent wartime leader” who made “dismal strategic decisions” that “resulted in the unnecessary deaths of American servicemen and women, our allies and the good people of Iraq.” Rumsfeld, he said, “dismissed honest dissent” and “did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war.”

Published on Sunday, October 1, 2006

The Medieval Detainee Bill: An Uncivilized People

by Jacqueline Marcus

What does it mean to be a civilized people?

There are laws that represent an Enlightened Age and, conversely, there are laws that represent a Dark Age. Today, our Congress has abolished, in Molly Ivins’ words, “a safeguard against illegal imprisonment that has endured as a cornerstone of legal justice since the Magna Carta,” and replaced it with barbaric laws. With a single vote, they’ve done away with a humane, civil right: the right to know what charges detainees’ have been accused of and the detainees’ right to challenge those accusations in a court of law. The traditional saying is every person has a right to a trial, a right to confront his/her accuser and to challenge the accusations. It is a profound safeguard to protect the innocent.

These humane laws that characterize a civilized nation have been usurped by a medieval oligarch: According to the new archaic law, George W. Bush determines the final fate of detainees, many of whom were innocent Afghani farmers, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. That fate is cruel and unusual. No presumption of innocence. The punishment is either life in prison or death.

~~Elsewhere, Osama bin Laden is dead and “I was with him when he died,” according to a confession by John Mark Karr.

~~

“Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.”

-Alfred Whitney Griswold (1906-63) president of Yale, “A Little Learning,” The Atlantic Monthly, November 1952, p. 52. Address to students at Phillips Academy, Andover, New Hampshire, spring 1952

“Youth is not a time of life - it is a state of mind. It is not a matter of red cheeks, red lips and supple knees. It is a temper of the will; a quality of the imagination; a vigor of the emotions; it is a freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means a tempermental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over a life of ease. This often exists in a man of fifty, more than in a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow old by deserting their ideals.”

- Samuel Ullman, “http://www.bartleby.com/73/2099.html”

“God bless America doesn’t mean God damn everyone else.”

bumper sticker

The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.

-Ernest Dimnet (1866-1954), French priest, writer and lecturer, The Art of Thinking

“Ambition is the last refuge of a failure.”

Oscar Wilde

Poem: “To be of use”

by Marge Piercy from Circles on the Water.

I want to be with people who submerge

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest

and work in a row and pass the bags along,

who are not parlor generals and field deserters

but move in a common rhythm

when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

“One of the hardest parts of my job is to

connect Iraq to the war on terror.”

--George W. Bush to Katie Couric

Iraq’s connected, just as Bush implied--

Producing fighters for the other side.

If we just stay the course and not take flight,

We’ll never lack for terrorists to fight.

deadline poet | posted September 28, 2006 (October 16, 2006 issue)

On the Intelligence Report Finding That the War in Iraq Has Produced a New Generation of Jihadists and Increased Terrorism

Calvin Trillin

“People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.”

-Otto Von Bismarck