The Peace Table

Cheney Sent Norad to Alaska on 9-11

2005-09-02T17:48:00.000-07:00

Cheney’s 5 War Games

Left New York & DC Defenseless on 9-11-2001

Dick Cheney was in charge of managing all training exercises for the Air Force on Sept. 11, 2001. Cheney oversaw at least five (5) War Games and terror drills, including several exercises of NORAD, the Air Force agency protecting America from attacks by air.

Michael Ruppert’s Crossing the Rubicon documents a live-fly drill on 9/11 titled “Vigilant Warrior.” The Vigilant Warrior drill conducted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff involved at least one real Commercial Aircraft in the skies, to simulate exactly the 4 Airliners hijacked on 9/11.

On April 18 2004 USA Today reported, "NORAD had drills of jets as weapons." Their report cited NORAD officials who confirmed live-fly drills were conducted using hijacked Airliners originating from the continental United States. They were used as weapons crashing into targets like the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Remember, right after 9/11, Condi Rice and the Bush administration claimed they had "no idea" aircraft could be used as weapons. Then why were they drilling such scenarios before and during 9/11?

Joint Chiefs of Staff drill “Vigilant Warrior” was run through Secret Service lines from a central command center under the White House by Vice President ‘Big’ Dick Cheney.

Additional War Games on 9/11 included “Northern Vigilance”, that pulled Air Force fighters from the East Coast of the United States up into Canada and Alaska simulating an attack out of Russia.

All of those fighters were rendered useless as the 9/11 plot unfolded too far away to respond.

One of the components of this drill included "false blips" (radar injects simulating aircraft in flight) placed on FAA radar screens. FAA head Jane Garvey said they suspected up to 11 hijackings on 9/11.

Air War Over America documents that General Arnold of NORAD didn't pull out of the War Game titled “Vigilant Guardian” until reports of flight 93 being hijacked were coming in.

Now imagine being an air traffic controller with both real planes and "false blips" simulating hijackings on your screens when suddenly there are real, multiple, hijackings. Where do you send the few Air Force fighters that you have?

Cheney had other 9/11 War Games called “Northern Guardian,” and “Northern Denial” (confirmed by Harper's Magazine). Also he had a drill for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in which a plane crashes into NRO headquarters at precisely the time of the actual crashes in New York. The NRO features photos of air traffic from satellites. They could have distinguished real hijackings from phony exercise blips. The NRO employees were sent home for the day, because of Cheney’s exercise.

Re-Open the 9-11 Investigation

Cheney’s War Games Mean War on Terror is Phony

S.M. Peace Club and PeaceTable.org

Iraq War for No WMDs, No Nukes is MURDER

2005-08-31T16:09:00.000-07:00

Nuremberg Lesson

by Michael Mandel

This month marks the 60th anniversary of the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal, the basic legal document for the trial of the major Nazi war criminals that commenced in November 1945.

One of the great innovations of that charter was the charge of "Crimes Against Peace," defined as the "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances."

In a famous passage from their judgment of the following year, the four judges of the tribunal (American, British, French and Russian) declared the crime of aggressive war to be "the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

The innovation of the crime of aggressive war was in fact denounced by the Nazi defendants as "ex post facto law," but Justice Robert Jackson, America's prosecutor at Nuremberg, had an answer for this: Illegal wars were nothing more than mass murder, and there was nothing ex post facto about the crime of murder. Here's what Jackson said to the tribunal in his opening statement on Nov. 21, 1945:

Any resort to war - any kind of war - is a resort to means that are inherently criminal. War inevitably is a course of killings, assaults, deprivations of liberty and destruction of property. An honestly defensive war is, of course, legal and saves those lawfully conducting it from criminality. But inherently criminal acts cannot be defended by showing that those who committed them were engaged in a war, when war itself is illegal. The very minimum legal consequence of the treaties making aggressive war illegal is to strip those who incite or wage them of every defense the law ever gave, and to leave the war-makers subject to judgment by the usually accepted principles of the law of crimes.

The crime of aggression is nowhere to be seen in modern international criminal codes, and leading the charge against including it has been the United States itself. It's easy to see why. The war in Iraq, for one example, constitutes the quintessential war of aggression, falling very far short, rhetoric apart, of any justification in self- defense or authorization by the Security Council of the United Nations, the only two accepted legal grounds for war in international law. The U.N. Charter is one of those "international treaties" mentioned in the London Charter of 1945. And with the best estimates of the cost in Iraqi civilian lives ranging between 25,000 (Iraq body count) and 100,000 (Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Baltimore), all well within prewar predictions, it seems perverse to keep on insisting that this was a "humanitarian intervention," itself a dubious legal ground for war. In fact, it amounts to rather a lot of counts of murder on Jackson's definition.

To put this in some kind of perspective, in Canada the press has recently been obsessed with sex killer Karla Homolka, who participated with her husband, Paul Bernardo, in the sadistic murder of two teenage girls, and then served only 12 years in jail for it. And the British press has been desperate to understand how four Britons could have had it within them to murder 52 people on July 7. The claim that civilians aren't targeted by American weaponry ("collateral damage") is irrelevant. Not only does Jackson's definition apply to soldiers as well, but, according to most definitions of murder, it's enough that the criminal knew that his or her unlawful behavior would result in death, whether or not it was meant to. Under Texas law, for example, a person commits murder if he or she "intentionally or knowingly causes the death of an individual." It's also murder if the person "intends to cause serious bodily injury and commits an act clearly dangerous to human life that causes the death of an individual."

Nuremberg prosecutor Bernard Meltzer wrote soon after the Nazi trials that, "a modern war, no matter how chivalrous, involves so much misery that to punish deviations from the conventions without punishing the instigators of an aggressive war seems like a mocking exercise in gentlemanly futility."

Perhaps it is worth pondering, in the midst of the immense suffering unleashed by the Iraq war whether we are engaged in the same mocking exercise when we prosecute those far down the chain of command for violations of the Geneva Conventions and let the unleashers of illegal wars get away with murder.

Michael Mandel is a professor of law at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University.

Democrats Need Courage

2005-08-28T07:11:00.000-07:00

Who Will Say 'No More?'
By Gary Hart, in The Washington Post

"Waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool said to push on," warned an anti-Vietnam war song those many years ago. The McGovern presidential campaign, in those days, which I know something about, is widely viewed as a cause for the decline of the Democratic Party, a gateway through which a new conservative era entered.

Like the cat that jumped on a hot stove and thereafter wouldn't jump on any stove, hot or cold, today's Democratic leaders didn't want to make that mistake again. Many supported the Iraq war resolution and -- as the Big Muddy is rising yet again -- now find themselves tongue-tied or trying to trump a war president by calling for deployment of more troops. Thus does good money follow bad and bad politics get even worse.

History will deal with George W. Bush and the neoconservatives who misled a mighty nation into a flawed war that is draining the finest military in the world, diverting Guard and reserve forces that should be on the front line of homeland defense, shredding international alliances that prevailed in two world wars and the Cold War, accumulating staggering deficits, misdirecting revenue from education to rebuilding Iraqi buildings we've blown up, and weakening America's national security.

But what will history say about an opposition party that stands silent while all this goes on? My generation of Democrats jumped on the hot stove of Vietnam and now, with its members in positions of responsibility, it is afraid of jumping on any political stove. In their leaders, the American people look for strength, determination and self-confidence, but they also look for courage, wisdom, judgment and, in times of moral crisis, the willingness to say: "I was wrong."

To stay silent during such a crisis, and particularly to harbor the thought that the administration's misfortune is the Democrats' fortune, is cowardly. In 2008 I want a leader who is willing now to say: "I made a mistake, and for my mistake I am going to Iraq and accompanying the next planeload of flag-draped coffins back to Dover Air Force Base. And I am going to ask forgiveness for my mistake from every parent who will talk to me."

Further, this leader should say: "I am now going to give a series of speeches across the country documenting how the administration did not tell the American people the truth, why this war is making our country more vulnerable and less secure, how we can drive a wedge between Iraqi insurgents and outside jihadists and leave Iraq for the Iraqis to govern, how we can repair the damage done to our military, what we and our allies can do to dry up the jihadists' swamp, and what dramatic steps we must take to become energy-secure and prevent Gulf Wars III, IV and so on."

At stake is not just the leadership of the Democratic Party and the nation but our nation's honor, our nobility and our principles. Franklin D. Roosevelt established a national community based on social justice. Harry Truman created international networks that repaired the damage of World War II and defeated communism. John F. Kennedy recaptured the ideal of the republic and the sense of civic duty. To expect to enter this pantheon, the next Democratic leader must now undertake all three tasks.

But this cannot be done while the water is rising in the Big Muddy of the Middle East. No Democrat, especially one now silent, should expect election by default. The public trust must be earned, and speaking clearly, candidly and forcefully now about the mess in Iraq is the place to begin.

The real defeatists today are not those protesting the war. The real defeatists are those in power and their silent supporters in the opposition party who are reduced to repeating "Stay the course" even when the course, whatever it now is, is light years away from the one originally undertaken. The truth is we're way off course. We've stumbled into a hornet's nest. We've weakened ourselves at home and in the world. We are less secure today than before this war began.

Who now has the courage to say this?

The writer is a former Democratic Senator from Colorado.

"Noble War" Based on Lies

2005-08-20T16:17:00.000-07:00

Hypocrites and Liars
By Cindy Sheehan
Gold Star Mothers for Peace

The media are wrong. The people who have come out to Camp Casey to help coordinate the press and events with me are not putting words in my mouth, they are taking words out of my mouth. I have been known for sometime as a person who speaks the truth and speaks it strongly. I have always called a liar a liar and a hypocrite a hypocrite. Now I am urged to use softer language to appeal to a wider audience. Why do my friends at Camp Casey think they are there? Why did such a big movement occur from such a small action on August 6, 2005?

I haven't had much time to analyze the Camp Casey phenomena. I just read that I gave 250 interviews in less than a week's time. I believe it. I would go to bed with a raw throat every night. I got pretty tired of answering some questions, like: "What do you want to say to the President?" and "Do you really think he will meet with you?" However, since my mom has been sick I have had a chance to step back and ponder the flood gates that I opened in Crawford, Tx.

I just read an article posted today on LewRockwell.com by artist Robert Shetterly who painted my portrait. The article reminded me of something I said at the Veteran's for Peace Convention the night before I set out to Bush's ranch in my probable futile quest for the truth. This is what I said:

I got an email the other day and it said, "Cindy if you didn't use so much profanity ... there's people on the fence that get offended.
And you know what I said? "You know what? You know what, god damn it? How in the world is anybody still sitting on that fence?
If you fall on the side that is pro-George and pro-war, you get your ass over to Iraq, and take the place of somebody who wants to come home. And if you fall on the side that is against this war and against George Bush, stand up and speak out.

This is what the Camp Casey miracle is all about. American citizens who oppose the war but never had a conduit for their disgust and dismay are dropping everything and traveling to Crawford to stand in solidarity with us who have made a commitment to sit outside of George's ranch for the duration of the miserable Texan August. If they can't come to Texas, they are attending Vigils, writing letters to their elected officials and to their local newspapers; they are setting up Camp Casey branches in their hometowns; they are sending flowers, cards, letters, gifts, and donations here to us at Camp Casey. We are so grateful for all of the support, but I think pro-peace Americans are grateful for something to do, finally.

One thing I haven't noticed or become aware of though is an increased number of pro-war, pro-Bush people on the other side of the fence enlisting to go and fight George Bush's war for imperialism and insatiable greed. The pro-peace side has gotten off their apathetic butts to be warriors for Peace and Justice. Where are the pro-war people? Everyday at Camp Casey we have a couple of anti-Peace people on the other side of the road holding up signs that remind me that "Freedom isn't Free" but I don't see them putting their money where their mouths are. I don't think they are willing to pay even a small down payment for freedom by sacrificing their own blood or the flesh of their children. I still challenge them to go to Iraq and let another soldier come home. Perhaps a soldier that is on his/her third tour of duty, or one that has been stop-lossed after serving his/her country nobly and selflessly, only to be held hostage in Iraq by power mad hypocrites who have a long history of avoiding putting their own skin in the game.

Contrary to what the main stream media thinks, I did not just fall off a pumpkin truck in Crawford, Tx. on that scorchingly hot day two weeks ago. I have been writing, speaking, testifying in front of Congressional committees, lobbying Congress, and doing interviews for over a year now. I have been pretty well known in the progressive, peace community and I had many, many supporters before I even left California. The people who supported me did so because they know that I uncompromisingly tell the truth about this War. I have stood up and said: "My son died for NOTHING, and George Bush and his evil cabal and their reckless policies killed him. My son was sent to fight in a War that had no basis in reality and was killed for it." I have never said "pretty please" or "thank you." I have never said anything wishy-washy like he uses "Patriotic Rhetoric." I say my son died for LIES. George Bush LIED to us and he knew he was LYING.

The Downing Street Memos dated 23 July, 2002 prove that he knew that Saddam didn't have WMD's or any ties to Al Qaeda. I believe that George lied and he knew he was lying. He didn't use patriotic rhetoric. He lied and made us afraid of ghosts that weren't there. Now he is using patriotic rhetoric to keep the US military presence in Iraq: Patriotic rhetoric that is based on greed and nothing else.

Now I am being vilified and dragged through the mud by the righties and so-called "fair and balanced" main stream media who are afraid of the truth and can't face someone who tells it by telling any truth of their own. Now they have to twist, distort, lie, and scrutinize anything I have ever said when they never scrutinize anything that George Bush said or is saying. Instead of asking George or Scotty McClellan if he will meet with me, why aren't they asking the questions they should have been asking all along:

"Why are our young people fighting, dying, and killing in Iraq? What is this noble cause you are sending our young people to Iraq for? What do you hope to accomplish there? Why did you tell us there were WMD's and ties to Al Qaeda when you knew there weren't? Why did you lie to us? Why did you lie to the American people? Why did you lie to the world? Why are our nation's children still in harm's way and dying everyday when we all know you lied? Why do you continually say we have to "complete the mission" when you know damn well you have no idea what that mission is and you can change it at will like you change your cowboy shirts?"

Camp Casey has grown and prospered and survived all attacks and challenges because America is sick and tired of liars and hypocrites and we want the answers to the tough questions that I was the first to dare ask. THIS is George Bush's accountability moment and he is failing ... miserably. George Bush and his advisers seriously "misunderestimated" me when they thought they could intimidate me into leaving before I had the answers, or before the end of August. I can take anything they throw at me, or Camp Casey. If it shortens the War by a minute or saves one life, it is worth it. I think they seriously "misunderestimated" all Mothers. I wonder if any of them had authentic Mother-child relationships and if they are surprised that there are so many Mothers in this country who are bear-like when it comes to wanting the truth and who want to make meaning of their child's needless and seemingly meaningless deaths?

The Camp Casey movement will not die until we have a genuine accounting of the truth and until our troops are brought home. Get used to it George, we are not going away.

UK Families Ask Blair, Why?

2005-08-19T10:25:00.000-07:00

Iraq: Families Demand an Investigation
Le Nouvel Observateur

Wednesday 17 August 2005

The families of seventeen British soldiers killed in Iraq have initiated a procedure before the High Court to obtain an independent investigation of the legality of that war.

"Why were these soldiers sent to Iraq when it appears (...) that this war was illegal and consequently that the sons and daughters of these families died for no valid reason," declared Master Phil Shiner, charged with filing the suit, as he left the Royal Court of Justice.

The British government has always opposed this request, arguing that the decision to commit the Army in Iraq was legal, in conformity with the opinion of its legal counsel, Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, delivered in March 2003 the day before the launch of hostilities.

92 British Soldiers Killed

The families, however, contest this argument, and assert that, on the contrary, that opinion was modified at the government's demand in order to allow Great Britain's entry into the war.

They demand testimony from Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Defense Minister at the time, Geoff Hoon, Foreign Affairs Minister Jack Straw, as well as from the Attorney General.

Their suit will be considered by the court this coming September.

Rose Gentle, mother of Gordon Gentle, killed in June 2004 in Basra (southern Iraq) figures among the families. Since the death of her son, Rose Gentle has not ceased to campaign against the Prime Minister and his decision to intervene in Iraq.

92 British soldiers have died in Iraq since the outset of the war on March 20, 2003.

Some 7,500 British soldiers are currently deployed in Iraq, principally around Basra, in the south of the country.

Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher. ---

It's the US Occupation, Not Religion

2005-07-14T12:22:00.000-07:00

The Logic of Suicide Terrorism:

By Scott McConnell
The American Conservative

Associate Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago has written a book on suicide terrorism, DYING to WIN, and it is beginning to receive wide notice. Pape has found that the most common American perceptions about who the terrorists are and what motivates them are off by a wide margin. In his office is the world's largest database of information about suicide terrorists, rows and rows of manila folders containing articles and biographical snippets in dozens of languages compiled by Pape and teams of graduate students, a trove of data that has been sorted and analyzed and which underscores the great need for reappraising the Bush administration's current strategy.

The American Conservative: Your new book, Dying to Win, has a subtitle: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Can you just tell us generally on what the book is based, what kind of research went into it, and what your findings were?

Robert Pape: Over the past two years, I have collected the first complete database of every suicide-terrorist attack around the world from 1980 to early 2004.

This wealth of information creates a new picture about what is motivating suicide terrorism. Islamic fundamentalism is not as closely associated with suicide terrorism as many people think. The world leader in suicide terrorism is a group that you may not be familiar with: the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.

This is a Marxist group, a completely secular group that draws from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of the country. They invented the famous suicide vest for their suicide assassination of Rajiv Ghandi in May 1991. The Palestinians got the idea of the suicide vest from the Tamil Tigers.

TAC: So if Islamic fundamentalism is not necessarily a key variable behind these groups, what is?

RP: The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign-over 95 percent of all the incidents-has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.

TAC: That would seem to run contrary to a view that one heard during the American election campaign, put forth by people who favor Bush's policy. That is, we need to fight the terrorists over there, so we don't have to fight them here.

RP: Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.

Since 1990, the United States has stationed tens of thousands of ground troops on the Arabian Peninsula, and that is the main mobilization appeal of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. People who make the argument that it is a good thing to have them attacking us over there are missing that suicide terrorism is not a supply-limited phenomenon where there are just a few hundred around the world willing to do it because they are religious fanatics. It is a demand-driven phenomenon. That is, it is driven by the presence of foreign forces on the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. The Occupation of Iraq has stimulated suicide terrorism and has given suicide terrorism a new lease on life.

TAC: If we were to back up a little bit before the invasion of Iraq to what happened before 9/11, what was the nature of the agitprop that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were putting out to attract people?

RP: Osama bin Laden's speeches and sermons run 40 and 50 pages long. They begin by calling tremendous attention to the presence of tens of thousands of American combat forces on the Arabian Peninsula.

In 1996, he went on to say that there was a grand plan by the United States-that the Americans were going to use combat forces to conquer Iraq, break it into three pieces, give a piece of it to Israel so that Israel could enlarge its country, and then do the same thing to Saudi Arabia. As you can see, we are fulfilling his prediction, which is of tremendous help in his mobilization appeals.

Now, of course, today we have 150,000 troops on the Arabian Peninsula, and we are more in control of the Arabian Peninsula than ever before.

TAC: If you were to break down causal factors, how much weight would you put on a cultural rejection of the West and how much weight on the presence of American troops on Muslim territory?

RP: The evidence shows that the presence of American troops is clearly the pivotal factor driving suicide terrorism.

If Islamic fundamentalism were the pivotal factor, then we should see some of the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world, like Iran, which has 70 million people - three times the population of Iraq and three times the population of Saudi Arabia-with some of the most active groups in suicide terrorism against the United States. However, there has never been an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from Iran, and we have no evidence that there are any suicide terrorists in Iraq from Iran.

Sudan is a country of 21 million people. Its government is extremely Islamic fundamentalist. The ideology of Sudan was so congenial to Osama bin Laden that he spent three years in Sudan in the 1990s. Yet there has never been an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from Sudan.

I have the first complete set of data on every al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from 1995 to early 2004, and they are not from some of the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world. Two thirds are from the countries where the United States has stationed heavy combat troops since 1990.

Another point in this regard is Iraq itself. Before our invasion, Iraq never had a suicide-terrorist attack in its history. Never. Since our invasion, suicide terrorism has been escalating rapidly with 20 attacks in 2003, 48 in 2004, and over 50 in just the first five months of 2005. Every year that the United States has stationed 150,000 combat troops in Iraq, suicide terrorism has doubled.

TAC: So your assessment is that there are more suicide terrorists or potential suicide terrorists today than there were in March 2003?

RP: I have collected demographic data from around the world on the 462 suicide terrorists since 1980 who completed the mission, actually killed themselves. This information tells us that most are walk-in volunteers. Very few are criminals. Few are actually longtime members of a terrorist group. For most suicide terrorists, their first experience with violence is their very own suicide-terrorist attack.

There is no evidence there were any suicide-terrorist organizations lying in wait in Iraq before our invasion. What is happening is that the suicide terrorists have been produced by the invasion.

TAC: Do we know who is committing suicide terrorism in Iraq? Are they primarily Iraqis or walk-ins from other countries in the region?

RP: Our best information at the moment is that the Iraqi suicide terrorists are coming from two groups - Iraqi Sunnis and Saudis-the two populations most vulnerable to transformation by the presence of large American combat troops on the Arabian Peninsula. This is perfectly consistent with the strategic logic of suicide terrorism.

TAC: Does al-Qaeda have the capacity to launch attacks on the United States, or are they too tied down in Iraq? Or have they made a strategic decision not to attack the United States, and if so, why?

RP: Al-Qaeda appears to have made a deliberate decision not to attack the United States in the short term. We know this not only from the pattern of their attacks but because we have an actual al-Qaeda planning document found by Norwegian intelligence. The document says that al-Qaeda should not try to attack the continent of the United States in the short term but instead should focus its energies on hitting America's allies in order to try to split the coalition.

What the document then goes on to do is analyze whether they should hit Britain, Poland, or Spain. It concludes that they should hit Spain just before the March 2004 elections because, and I am quoting almost verbatim: Spain could not withstand two, maximum three, blows before withdrawing from the coalition, and then others would fall like dominoes.

That is exactly what happened. Six months after the document was produced, al-Qaeda attacked Spain in Madrid. That caused Spain to withdraw from the coalition. Others have followed. So al-Qaeda certainly has demonstrated the capacity to attack and in fact they have done over 15 suicide-terrorist attacks since 2002, more than all the years before 9/11 combined. Al-Qaeda is not weaker now. Al-Qaeda is stronger.

TAC: What would constitute a victory in the War on Terror or at least an improvement in the American situation?

RP: For us, victory means not sacrificing any of our vital interests while also not having Americans vulnerable to suicide-terrorist attacks. In the case of the Persian Gulf, that means we should pursue a strategy that secures our interest in oil but does not encourage the rise of a new generation of suicide terrorists.

In the 1970s and the 1980s, the United States secured its interest in oil without stationing a single combat soldier on the Arabian Peninsula. Instead, we formed an alliance with Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which we can now do again. We relied on numerous aircraft carriers off the coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and naval air power now is more effective not less. We also built numerous military bases so that we could move large numbers of ground forces to the region quickly if a crisis emerged.

That strategy, called "offshore balancing," worked splendidly against Saddam Hussein in 1990 and is again our best strategy to secure our interest in oil while preventing the rise of more suicide terrorists.

TAC: Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders also talked about the "Crusaders-Zionist alliance," and I wonder if that, even if we weren't in Iraq, would not foster suicide terrorism. Even if the policy had helped bring about a Palestinian state, I don't think that would appease the more hardcore opponents of Israel.

RP: I not only study the patterns of where suicide terrorism has occurred but also where it hasn't occurred. Not every foreign occupation has produced suicide terrorism. Why do some and not others? Here is where religion matters, but not quite in the way most people think. In virtually every instance where an occupation has produced a suicide-terrorist campaign, there has been a religious difference between the occupier and the occupied community. That is true not only in places such as Lebanon and in Iraq today but also in Sri Lanka, where it is the Sinhala Buddhists who are having a dispute with the Hindu Tamils.

When there is a religious difference between the occupier and the occupied, that enables terrorist leaders to demonize the occupier in especially vicious ways. Now, that still requires the occupier to be there. Absent the presence of foreign troops, Osama bin Laden could make his arguments but there wouldn't be much reality behind them. The reason that it is so difficult for us to dispute those arguments is because we really do have tens of thousands of combat soldiers sitting on the Arabian Peninsula.

TAC: Has the next generation of anti-American suicide terrorists already been created? Is it too late to wind this down, even assuming your analysis is correct and we could de-occupy Iraq?

RP: Many people worry that once a large number of suicide terrorists have acted that it is impossible to wind it down. The history of the last 20 years, however, shows the opposite. Once the occupying forces withdraw from the homeland territory of the terrorists, they often stop-and often on a dime.

In Lebanon, for instance, there were 41 suicide-terrorist attacks from 1982 to 1986, and after the U.S. withdrew its forces, France withdrew its forces, and then Israel withdrew to just that six-mile buffer zone of Lebanon, they virtually ceased. They didn't completely stop, but there was no campaign of suicide terrorism. Once Israel withdrew from the vast bulk of Lebanese territory, the suicide terrorists did not follow Israel to Tel Aviv.

This is also the pattern of the second Intifada with the Palestinians. As Israel is at least promising to withdraw from Palestinian-controlled territory (in addition to some other factors), there has been a decline of that ferocious suicide-terrorist campaign. This is just more evidence that withdrawal of military forces really does diminish the ability of the terrorist leaders to recruit more suicide terrorists.

That doesn't mean that the existing suicide terrorists will not want to keep going. I am not saying that Osama bin Laden would turn over a new leaf and suddenly vote for George Bush. There will be a tiny number of people who are still committed to the cause, but the real issue is not whether Osama bin Laden exists. It is whether anybody listens to him. That is what needs to come to an end for Americans to be safe from suicide terrorism.

TAC: There have been many kinds of non-Islamic suicide terrorists, but have there been Christian suicide terrorists?

RP: Not from Christian groups per se, but in Lebanon in the 1980s, of those suicide attackers, only eight were Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were Communists and Socialists. Three were Christians.

TAC: Has the IRA used suicide terrorism?

RP: The IRA did not. There were IRA members willing to commit suicide-the famous hunger strike was in 1981. What is missing in the IRA case is not the willingness to commit suicide, to kill themselves, but the lack of a suicide-terrorist attack where they try to kill others.

If you look at the pattern of violence in the IRA, almost all of the killing is front-loaded to the 1970s and then trails off rather dramatically as you get through the mid-1980s through the 1990s. There is a good reason for that, which is that the British government, starting in the mid-1980s, began to make numerous concessions to the IRA on the basis of its ordinary violence. In fact, there were secret negotiations in the 1980s, which then led to public negotiations, which then led to the Good Friday Accords. If you look at the pattern of the IRA, this is a case where they actually got virtually everything that they wanted through ordinary violence.

The purpose of a suicide-terrorist attack is not to die. It is the kill, to inflict the maximum number of casualties on the target society in order to compel that target society to put pressure on its government to change policy. If the government is already changing policy, then the whole point of suicide terrorism, at least the way it has been used for the last 25 years, doesn't come up.

TAC: Are you aware of any different strategic decision made by al-Qaeda to change from attacking American troops or ships stationed at or near the Gulf to attacking American civilians in the United States?

RP: I wish I could say yes because that would then make the people reading this a lot more comfortable.

The fact is not only in the case of al-Qaeda, but in suicide-terrorist campaigns in general, we don't see much evidence that suicide-terrorist groups adhere to a norm of attacking military targets in some circumstances and civilians in others.

In fact, we often see that suicide-terrorist groups routinely attack both civilian and military targets, and often the military targets are off-duty policemen who are unsuspecting. They are not really prepared for battle.

The reasons for the target selection of suicide terrorists appear to be much more based on operational rather than normative criteria. They appear to be looking for the targets where they can maximize the number of casualties.

In the case of the West Bank, for instance, there is a pattern where Hamas and Islamic Jihad use ordinary guerrilla attacks, not suicide attacks, mainly to attack settlers. They use suicide attacks to penetrate into Israel proper. Over 75 percent of all the suicide attacks in the second Intifada were against Israel proper, and only 25 percent on the West Bank itself.

TAC: What do you think the chances are of a weapon of mass destruction being used in an American city?

RP: I think it depends not exclusively, but heavily, on how long our combat forces remain in the Persian Gulf. The central motive for anti-American terrorism, suicide terrorism, and catastrophic terrorism is response to foreign occupation, the presence of our troops. The longer our forces stay on the ground in the Arabian Peninsula, the greater the risk of the next 9/11, whether that is a suicide attack, a nuclear attack, or a biological attack

S.M. Peace Club: While many Democrats such as Sen. Feinstein and Sen. Clinton argue for continuing the Occupation of Iraq, an American Conservative magazine exposes the truth. The longer our U.S. Troops stay in Iraq and Afghanistan, the more attacks we can expect in Britain and the United States. If we stay in Iraq killing and torturing the innocent Iraqi people for 12 years, as Secretary of Offense Donald Rumsfeld wants, who knows what awful weapon of mass destruction will be unleashed against our unsuspecting people here at home?

We must organize a Peace Movement across the Nation, and shine the evidence discovered by Professor Pape on the dark web of lies of the Bush - Cheney - Rumsfeld Cabal. We must get out of Iraq and Afghanistan immediately. And we must begin sending healing reparations to the victims of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld's illegal and immoral War of aggression.

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Iraq War Makes Britain Vulnerable

2005-07-14T09:35:00.000-07:00

Many adults in Britain believe their Government’s backing of the Iraq War Coalition effort may have made their country a target, according to a poll by YouGov published in the Daily Telegraph. 72 per cent of respondents believe Britain’s role in the Iraq War made the country more vulnerable to attack by Islamic terrorists.

On Jul. 7, four blasts in London killed at least 52 people and injured 700 more in an apparent terrorist attack. Investigators say the explosions at three underground stations occurred "almost simultaneously," suggesting that timing devices may have been used. A fourth bomb exploded inside a double-decker bus.

On Jul. 9 in a BBC Radio 4 interview, British Prime Minister Tony Blair rejected suggestions that the attacks were a response to Britain’s presence in Iraq, saying, "September the 11th happened before Iraq, before Afghanistan, before any of these issues, and that was the worst terrorist atrocity of all. I think this type of terrorism has very deep roots. It’s only when you start to pull it out by the roots that you would deal with it."

Britain currently has 8,500 soldiers participating in the U.S.-led military effort in Iraq. There have been 1,941 coalition deaths since the conflict began in March 2003, including 90 British citizens. 48 per cent of respondents believe British troops should remain in Iraq as long as they are needed, while 45 per cent of respondents would bring the soldiers home within the next 12 months.

A leaked British government memorandum—published by the Mail on Sunday and deemed authentic—suggests the current Blair Administration might scale back its Troop presence in Iraq to 3,000 by mid-2006.

“YouGov” Polling Data

Do you think Britain’s role in Iraq has made the country more vulnerable or less vulnerable to attack by Islamic terrorists?

More Vulnerable 72%

Less Vulnerable 1%

Made No Difference 23%

Do Not Know 3%

Ref: Angus Reid Global Scan

History Shall Make Us Free

2005-07-14T07:53:00.000-07:00

Letter from THOMAS JEFFERSON to John Taylor, 6/4/1798.

"A little patience, and we shall see the reign of Witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the People, recovering their true sight, restore their Government to its true Principles.

It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring *the horrors of a War, and long oppressions of enormous public debt.

If the game runs sometimes against us at home, we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the Principles we have lost, for this is a game where Principles are at stake."

by William Floyd

THOMAS JEFFERSON (Virginia) wrote this letter to John Taylor from Philadelphia, after passage of President John Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts.

The 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts were devised by the Boston Federalists under John Adams (second U.S. President) to cancel the financial assistance revolutionary France granted Thomas Jefferson. This Jefferson-France connection was based on a friendship started with Lafayette’s heroic help trapping and defeating British General Howe at Brandywine. Gen. Howe’s capture ended our patriotic American Revolutionary War.

Under the Federalist Alien and Sedition Acts many Francophile friends of Thomas Jefferson were arrested, journalists were handcuffed for criticizing Adams’ rule, and political opponents were dragged from their homes during elections and locked up until the election had ended.

These Federalist excesses led to a crushing defeat for the Boston-based Adams Party in 1800, and a landslide victory for Thomas Jefferson’s unfortunatetly pro-slavery Party. (The Jeffersonian victory was also partially based on 3/5 vote for each Slave granted to each Slaveowner.) This Slavery "compromise" allowed the Southern states to control the Federal Government for most of our first Century. “Seniority rules” then permitted the racist dominated Southern states to control Congress ever since. Thomas Jefferson (Virginia) was our 3rd President. Most Presidents have come from the South. Truman (Missouri), Lyndon Johnson (Texas), Nixon and Reagan (Southern California), Jimmy Carter (Georgia), Clinton (Arkansas), Bush I & II (Texas).

“History shall make us free”

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Was Bush Behind Smear of Amb. Wilson?

2005-07-11T13:45:00.000-07:00

Rove's Leak Points to Bush Conspiracy

By Robert Parry
July 11, 2005

A key national security principle for dealing with top-secret information, such as the identity of undercover CIA officers, is strict compartmentalization, often called “the need to know” – which raises the question why George W. Bush’s chief political adviser Karl Rove would know anything about the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.

The answer to that mystery – why was Rove involved – may be more crucial to unraveling who was behind the illegal leaking of Plame’s name and the subsequent cover-up than even the identity of which Bush officials passed the information to right-wing pundit Robert Novak for his infamous column on July 14, 2003.

But rather than focusing on how and why Rove knew about Plame, the latest controversy around the case has centered on whether Rove explicitly used her name in an interview with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper three days before Novak’s column.

Rove’s lawyer Robert Luskin told the Washington Post that his client didn’t identify Plame by name, only mentioning her in giving Cooper guidance about who was responsible for authorizing a fact-finding trip by Plame’s husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger in February 2002. [Washington Post, July 11, 2005]

According to an internal Time e-mail (obtained by Newsweek), Cooper informed his editor that Rove offered a “big warning” not to “get too far out on Wilson” and that “KR said” the Niger trip was authorized by “wilson’s wife, who apparently works at the agency (CIA) on wmd issues.” [Newsweek, July 18, 2005, issue]

During Wilson’s 2002 trip to Niger, the ex-ambassador discovered that claims about Iraq trying to buy yellowcake uranium were almost certainly bogus. But Wilson’s findings – which were later corroborated by United Nations officials – would remain politically sensitive because they undercut Bush’s assertions about Iraqi nuclear ambitions, a central rationale for invading Iraq in March 2003.

On July 6, 2003, three months after the U.S.-led invasion, Wilson disclosed his Niger findings in a New York Times op-ed article that represented an early crack in the president’s credibility on the Iraq War.

Bush Spin Machine

The Bush spin machine quickly whirled into action, even though it was clear by July 2003 that Bush was wrong about the existence of large caches of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as well as about an active nuclear weapons program. Still, the goal in summer 2003 was to discredit Joe Wilson.

It was in that context that the secret about Plame’s covert role as a CIA officer working on WMD issues was somehow delivered to the White House. From there, the sensitive fact, which also could have jeopardized the lives of other operatives who were cooperating with Plame, was fashioned into a public-relations attack on her husband.

Rather than keep the secret under tight control, Bush’s White House bandied it about as a way to question Wilson’s manhood, as a guy who needed his wife’s intervention to get him a job – although Plame appears only to have mentioned her husband as one Africa expert suitable for the Niger assignment.

To professional U.S. intelligence officers, the notion of sharing such a precise secret – the identity of an undercover CIA officer – with a spinmeister like Rove is anathema.

From a national security viewpoint, it also doesn’t matter much whether Rove used Plame’s name. He certainly gave Time magazine enough information – that Joe Wilson’s wife was a CIA officer – to unmask her identity with a little bit of research.

But again, the national news media seems to have missed the forest for the trees. By concentrating on whether Rove specifically spoke Plame’s name to Cooper, the media is missing the significance of the fact that a political operative like Rove would have a hand in this operation at all.

The larger point is that senior White House officials, possibly including Bush, revealed the identity of a covert CIA officer as part of what appears to be a conspiracy to discredit Wilson in retaliation for telling the truth in his op-ed column.

The key incriminating fact in this mystery is that Rove had no reason to know who Plame was, except as part of a public relations attack against her husband. It was a classic case of dirtying up – or punishing – the messenger for delivering unwanted news.

It also fits with the long-running neoconservative strategy of using “perception management” techniques to “controversialize” critics and keep the American people in a constant state of confusion. [For more on the evolution of those strategies, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.]

Identifiable Harm

In the Plame case, there also was identifiable harm to national security – the outing of a covert CIA officer working on WMD issues – and a possible violation of a federal law that bars willful disclosure of secret agents. That is why federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was assigned to investigate the matter two years ago.

At minimum, the White House behavior indicates gross negligence in handling a sensitive secret. But if the case were simply negligence, heads probably would have rolled long ago. Any administration serious about protecting national security would have carried out stern disciplinary actions even as Fitzgerald’s investigation continued.

In the Iran-Contra Affair, for instance, Ronald Reagan fired aides Oliver North and John Poindexter on Nov. 25, 1986, the day the scandal was revealed, rather than wait for the conclusion of a criminal probe.

On April 30, 1973, as the Watergate scandal was unfolding, Richard Nixon ousted chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman and White House counsel John Dean. Nixon famously promised “no whitewash at the White House.”

By contrast, George W. Bush has taken no known disciplinary action against anyone for letting the identity of a covert CIA officer leak out. Rove played a prominent role in Bush's reelection campaign and has since been promoted to deputy White House chief of staff.

Nor has Bush done anything to discourage his right-wing supporters from denigrating Wilson, who gets routinely mocked as a flaky self-promoter or a partisan Democrat.

These orchestrated attacks on Wilson have continued despite the fact that U.S. government investigations – including several ordered by Bush himself – have corroborated the absence of a pre-invasion Iraqi nuclear weapons program.

So, this long-term pattern of White House behavior suggests that negligence isn’t the whole story. Rather it looks as if the dissemination of Plame’s identity may have crossed the line into a criminal conspiracy at the highest levels of the U.S. government.

Unanswered Questions

For two years now, what has been lacking from the White House is a coherent explanation of how the information about Plame’s identity got from the cloistered world of the CIA to White House meetings and then into the hands of political adviser Rove.

Long ago, there should have been answers to the following questions:

--What national security purpose was served by giving Karl Rove a sensitive secret that, if leaked, could endanger the lives of covert intelligence operatives?

--Who attended White House meetings at which Wilson’s disclosures and Plame’s identity were discussed? How was Plame’s identity brought into these talks? By whom?

--Was George W. Bush present at any of these meetings? As the president, who is ultimately responsible for decisions about national security secrets, did Bush say anything about Wilson and Plame? If so, what did he say and to whom?

--Did Bush or anyone else in the White House order Rove to disparage Wilson?

In a healthy democracy, the news media would have demanded answers before Election 2004, rather than focusing primarily on the plight of several journalists caught up in demands for testimony from prosecutor Fitzgerald.

Ironically, it was the caving in by Time magazine last week that has opened the door slightly into the long-running White House cover-up of the Plame case. But still the major news media misses the bigger picture.

The answer to the Plame mystery is not the Watergate advice of “follow the money” or even the obvious question of who spilled the beans to Novak. Instead, the route to the heart of this mystery is to follow the trail from who knew Plame’s identity at the CIA through the White House meetings to Karl Rove.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His new 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.'

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/071105.html

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Blair and Bush Are Blamed for London Attacks

2005-07-10T14:08:00.000-07:00

No one doubts the atrocious inhumanity of those who planted the bombs, but no one should also doubt that this has been coming since the day Tony Blair joined George Bush in their bloody invasion and occupation of Iraq. They are "Blair's bombs", and he ought not be allowed to evade culpability with yet another unctuous speech about "our way of life", which his own rapacious violence in other countries has despoiled.

Indeed, the only reliable warning from British intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq was that which predicted a sharp increase in terrorism "with Britain and Britons a target". A House of Commons committee has since verified this warning. Had Blair heeded this warning instead of conspiring to deceive the nation that Iraq offered a threat the Londoners who died on Thursday might be alive today, along with tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis.

Three weeks ago, a classified CIA report revealed that the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq had turned that country into a focal point of terrorism. . None of the intelligence agencies regarded Iraq as such a flashpoint before the invasion, however tyrannical the regime. On the contrary, in 2003, the CIA reported that Iraq "exported no terrorist threat to his neighbours" and that Saddam Hussein was "implacably hostile to Al-Qaeda".

Blair's and Bush's invasion changed all that. In invading a stricken and defenceless country at the heart of the Islamic and Arab world, their adventure became self-fulfilling; Blair's epic irresponsibility has brought the daily horrors of Iraq home to Britain. For more than a year, he has urged the British to "move on" from Iraq, and last week it seemed that his spinmeisters and good fortune had joined hands. The awarding of the 2012 Olympics to London created the fleeting illusion that all was well, regardless of messy events in a faraway country.

Moreover, the G8 meeting in Scotland and its accompanying "Make Poverty History" campaign and circus of celebrities served as a temporary cover for what is arguably the greatest political scandal of modern times: an illegal, brutal and craven invasion conceived in lies and which, under the system of international law established at Nuremberg, represented a "paramount war crime".

Over the past two weeks, the contrast between the coverage of the G8, its marches and pop concerts, and another "global" event has been striking. The World Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul has had virtually no coverage, yet the evidence it has produced, the most damning to date, has been the silent spectre at the Geldoff extravaganzas.

The Tribunal is a serious international public inquiry into the Invasion and Occupation, the kind Governments dare not hold. Its expert, eyewitness testimonies, said the author Arundathi Roy, a Tribunal jury member, "demonstrate that even those of us who have tried to follow the war closely are not aware of a fraction of the horrors that have been unleashed in Iraq." The most shocking was given by Dahr Jamail, one of the best un-embedded reporters working in Iraq. He described how the hospitals of besieged Fallujah had been subjected to an American tactic of collective punishment, with US marines assaulting the Staff and stopping the wounded entering. American Snipers fired at the doors and windows. Medicines and emergency blood was prevented from reaching them. Children, the elderly, were shot dead in front of their families, in cold blood.

Imagine for a moment the same appalling state of affairs imposed on the London hospitals that received the victims of Thursday's bombing. Unimaginable? Well, it happens, in our name, regardless of whether the BBC reports it, which is rare. When will someone ask about this at one of the staged "press conferences" at which Blair is allowed to emote for the cameras stuff about "our values outlasting theirs"? Silence is not journalism. In Fallujah, they know "our War values" only too well.

While the two men responsible for the carnage in Iraq, Bush and Blair, were side by side at Gleneagles, why wasn't the connection of their fraudulent "war on terror" made with the bombing in London? And when will someone in the political class say that Blair's smoke-and-mirrors "debt cancellation" at best amounts to less than the money the government spent in a week brutalising Iraq, where British and American violence is the cause of the doubling of child poverty and malnutrition since Saddam Hussein was overthrown (Unicef).

At the G8 Concerts, there was Bob Geldoff resting his smiling face on smiling Blair's shoulder, the war criminal and his knighted jester. There was an heroically silhouetted Bono, who celebrates men like Jeffrey Sachs as saviours of the world's poor while lauding "compassionate" George Bush's "war on terror" as one of his generation's greatest achievements; and there was Paul Wolfowitz, beaming and promising to make poverty history: this is the man who, before he was handed control of the World Bank, was an apologist for Suharto's genocidal regime in Indonesia, who was one of the architects of Bush's "neo-con" putsch, and of the bloodfest in Iraq, and the notion of "endless war".

For the politicians and pop stars and church leaders and polite people who believed Blair and Gordon Brown when they declared their "great moral crusade" against poverty, Iraq was an embarrassment. The killing of more than 100,000 Iraqis mostly by American gunfire and bombs -- a figure reported in a comprehensive peer-reviewed study in The Lancet -- was airbrushed from mainstream debate.

In our "free societies", the unmentionable is that "the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people", as Arthur Miller once wrote, "and so the evidence has to be internally denied." Not only denied, but distracted by an entire court: Geldoff, Bono, Madonna, McCartney et al, whose "Live 8" was the very antithesis of 15 February 2003 when two million people brought their hearts and brains and anger to the streets of London.

Blair will almost certainly use last week's atrocity and tragedy to further deplete basic human rights in Britain, as Bush has done in America. The goal is not security, but greater control. Above all this, the memory of their victims, "our" victims, in Iraq demands the return of our anger. And nothing less is owed to those who died and suffered in London last week, unnecessarily.

by John Pilger, from www.Truthout.org

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2005-07-08T07:45:00.000-07:00

British MP George Galloway on London Attacks

July 7th, 2005

George Galloway, former Labor MP, and now Respect Party MP, who created quite a stir here when he stood up to Republican Sen. Norm Coleman's show trial tactics at the Senator hearings on the Oil for Food scandal, spoke out this morning about the London Terror attacks. Not surprisingly, he was not afraid to go after Prime Minister Tony Blair.

"We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the British Government ignoring such warnings."

We extend our condolences to those who have lost their lives today and our heartfelt sympathy to all those who have been injured by the bombs in London.

No one can condone acts of violence aimed at working people going about their daily lives. They have not been a party to, nor are they responsible for, the decisions of their government. They are entirely innocent and we condemn those who have killed or injured them.

The loss of innocent lives, whether in this country or Iraq, is precisely the result of a world that has become a less safe and peaceful place in recent years.

We have worked without rest to remove the causes of such violence from our world. We argued, as did the Security Services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the government ignoring such warnings.

We urge the government to remove people in this country from harms way, as the Spanish government acted to remove its people from harm, by ending the occupation of Iraq and by turning its full attention to the development of a real solution to the wider conflicts in the Middle East.

Only then will the innocents here and abroad be able to enjoy a life free of the threat of needless violence.

S.M. Peace Table: These horrific attacks have laid bare the phony Bush and Cheney claim that the illegal Iraq War keeps the terrorists "over there". Even Bush's CIA has warned that the Iraq War heightens the terrorist threat to the United States. By indiscriminate bombings on civilians in Falluja, Ramadi, and Mosul and the rampant torture of whole neighborhoods at Abu Ghraib Prison, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have made the U.S and it's paper "coalition" targets to terrible terrorism like the London, and Madrid (Spain) bombings.

As the pseudo-con architects of this immoral War now call for more Police State "protections", cooler heads must now renew our call for PEACE, and an immediate end to the illegal U.S. Occupation in Iraq.

Bush's War Without End

2005-07-05T10:06:00.000-07:00

Bush Is Serving Up the Cold War Warmed Over

By Robert Scheeer

The "war on terror" is turning out to be nothing more than a recycled formulation of the dangerously dumb "domino theory." Listen to the way President Bush justifies the deepening quagmire of Iraq: "Defeat them abroad before they attack us at home." If we didn't defeat communism in Vietnam, or even tiny Grenada, went the hoary defense of bloody proxy wars and covert brutality in the latter stages of the Cold War, San Diego might be the next to go Red.

Now, the new version of this simplistic concept seems to say, "If we don't occupy a Muslim country, inciting terrorists to attack us in Baghdad, we'll suffer more terror attacks at home." The opposite is the case. Invading Iraq has, like the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan before, proved to be a massive recruiting tool for Muslim extremists everywhere. Even the embattled CIA, which the White House is struggling to neuter as a semi-objective voice on foreign affairs, recently declared the Iraq occupation to be a boon to terrorists.

Yet the president stumbles on, demanding that we support his Iraq adventure lest we sully the memory of the victims of Sept. 11, 2001. "We fight today because terrorists want to attack our country and kill our citizens, and Iraq is where they are making their stand," said Bush last week.

Actually, no. We fight in Iraq today because Bush listened to a band of right-wing intellectual poseurs who argued America could create a reverse domino effect, turning the Middle East into a land of pliable free-market, pro-Western "democracies" through a crude use of military force. This is rather like claiming a well-placed stick of dynamite can turn a redwood forest into a neighborhood of charming Victorians.

Furthermore, it is not Bush and his band of neocons who are fighting -- and dying -- for the Iraq domino, but rather raw 19-year-old recruits, hardworking career military officers and impoverished or unlucky Iraqis. And foreign terrorists linked to Al Qaeda are in Iraq because it is a field of opportunity, not because it is their last stand.

For four years the White House has framed the war on terror as an open-ended global battle against a monolithic enemy on many fronts, rather than employing a modern counterterrorism model that sees terrorism as a deadly pathology that grows out of religious or ethnic rage and must be isolated and excised.

>From the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Bush has systematically sought to parlay the public's shock over a singular, if devastating, terrorist assault by a small coterie of extremists into what amounted to a call for World War III against a supposed "axis of evil." But these countries -- Iran, Iraq and North Korea -- shared only a clear hostility to the United States, rather than any real alliance or ties to 9/11 itself.

In the process, Bush has justified an enormous military buildup, spent tens of billions of dollars in Iraq, reorganized the federal government, driven the nation's budget far into the red and assaulted the civil liberties of Americans and people around the world, all without bothering to seriously examine the origins of the 9/11 attacks or compose a coherent strategy to prevent similar ones in the future. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden remains at large, as do his financial and political backers in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

But why has the White House pursued this nonsensical approach over the loud objections of the country's most experienced counterterrorism and Islamic experts? Because it allows the administration all the political benefits the Cold War afforded its predecessors: political capital, pork-barrel defense contracts and a grandiose sense of purpose.

And because the war on terror has no standard of victory, it can never end -- thus neatly replacing the Cold War as a black-and-white, us-against-them worldview that generations of American (and Soviet) politicians found so useful for keeping the plebes in line. It's a one-size-fits-all bludgeon.

The terrible, unspoken truth of the war on terror is that the tragedy of 9/11 has been exploited as a political opportunity by George W. Bush, Halliburton, the Pentagon and the other pillars of what President Eisenhower dubbed the "military-industrial complex" in his final speech as president.

The former general who led us in World War II warned of the dangers of an unbridled militarism. "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex," said Eisenhower, a Republican, in 1961. "The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."

Consider yourself warned.

Brits Call Bush & Blair Liars

2005-06-22T08:57:00.000-07:00

In the US the latest leaked memos are seen as a smoking gun on Iraq, but in Britain we are struggling to keep up

By Jonathan Freedland
The Guardian

Before the War on Iraq, Britain witnessed a ferocious debate over whether the case for conflict was legal and honest. It culminated in the largest demonstration in the country's history, as a Million or more took to the streets to stop the War. At the same time, the US sleepwalked into battle. Its press subjected George Bush to a fraction of the scrutiny endured by Tony Blair: the President's claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and links to Al-Qaida were barely challenged. While Blair had to cajole and persuade his MPs to back him, Bush counted on the easy loyalty of his fellow Republicans - and of most leading Democrats.

Yet now the picture has reversed. In Washington Iraq remains close to the centre of politics while in Britain it has all but vanished. So the big news on Capitol Hill is the Democrats' refusal to confirm John Bolton, the man Bush wants to serve as US Ambassador to the UN, in part because of suspicions arising from the lead-up to war. Meanwhile, RAF planes were involved last weekend in bombing raids in north-west Iraq - a marked escalation of their role - and British politics barely stirs. America has woken up; we are asleep.

The best illustration of this strange reversal is the curious fate of the Downing Street memo. Leaked to the Sunday Times just before the (British) Election, it contained a slew of striking revelations. It minuted a meeting of Blair, Jack Straw, Geoff Hoon and a clutch of top officials back on July 23 2002 - when both Bush and Blair were adamant that no decision had been taken - and confirms that, on the contrary, Washington had resolved to go to War. Despite Straw's insistence that the case against Saddam was "thin", the course was set.

According to the (DSM) memo, Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6 (British NSA), explained that "Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

As if that were not devastating enough - vindicating one of the anti-war camp's key charges, that the decision for War came first and the evidence was "fixed" to fit - the leaks have kept coming. In the past fortnight, six more documents have surfaced, their authenticity not challenged. One shows that Britain and the US heavily increased bombing raids on Iraq in the Summer of 2002 - when London and Washington were still insisting that War was a last resort - even though the Foreign Office's own lawyers had advised that such action was illegal.

These "spikes of activity" were aimed at provoking Saddam into action that might justify War. Other documents confirm that Blair had agreed to back Regime Change in the spring of 2002, that he was warned it was illegal and that ministers were told to "create the conditions" that would make it legal. Other gems include the admission that the threat from Saddam and WMD had not increased and that US attempts to link Baghdad to al-Qaida were "frankly unconvincing".

Taken together, these papers amount to an indictment of the way the British and American peoples were led to War. In Britain they have scarcely made a dent, but in America they have developed an unexpected momentum. Initially circulated on left-leaning websites, they have now broken out of the blogosphere and into the mainstream. The big newspapers have editorialised on the topic; last week Democratic Congressmen held unofficial hearings into the memos; whole campaigns have formed solely to publicise their existence.

Now DOWNINGSTREETMEMO.com is there as an alternative to THANKYOUTONY.com, where Americans are invited to signal their gratitude to their staunchest ally. The memos have earned the two definitive accolades of a hot political issue: their own abbreviation - the DSM - and a customised line of T-shirts. ("Read the memo or die" is available in extra-large.)

The Bush Administration has been put on the defensive, lamely insisting that the decision for War was only taken in February 2003. Some Democrats believe the distance between that claim and these memos supplies the vital element of any scandal: proof that the President lied.

They argue that if a fib about a dalliance with an intern was enough to see Bill Clinton impeached, lies that led to the deaths of 1,700 US troops and hundreds of thousands of uncounted and unnamed Iraqi civilians deserve at least the same treatment.

That's not going to happen - at least not while Republicans control both the House and Senate, chairing the Committees that are meant to investigate such matters. It's also true that, while the mainstream US press has given space to the DSM issue, much of the coverage has sought to play down the documents' importance. (Having failed to expose the holes in the administration's case before the war, the American media is perhaps embarrassed to show how gaping those holes were.)

One senior Democrat I spoke to yesterday suggested that the lead-up to war will never become a pivotal question because "it's not in Americans' nature to look backward". The focus now, he says, even among opponents of the war, is on "how to get out of this mess - not how we got into it".

For all that, the awkward questions linger. Last week Harry Reid, the Democrats' leader in the Senate, explained his opposition to Bolton's nomination partly in terms of the Downing Street memo: that document had established that "hyping intelligence" happened and he wanted to know if Bolton had ever been involved in similar exercises.

Even when the past is put to one side, Iraq continues to have a salience in the US that it lacks here. Coverage of the daily cost of the occupation remains intense, with a constant gaze on the insurgency that refuses to fade away.

What explains this contrast? Part of it is bad timing. The first memo was leaked in the dog days of a British election campaign after a week dominated by the publication of the Attorney General's famed advice. Journalists decided that voters were Iraq-ed out and so gave the memo much less coverage than it deserved. The Election itself has played a role too. The assumption is that Britons delivered their verdict on Iraq by cutting Labour's (Blair's) majority and therefore the reckoning has, at least partially, happened. That is certainly how the Government likes to play it: privately, Ministers will hint that the whole Iraq business was a bit of a nightmare but it's behind us now and we can all move on.

The trouble is, it is not behind us. The Occupation continues and people are still dying, daily, in substantial numbers. In the US the realisation seems to be dawning that this episode represents, at the very least, a case of maladministration, of desperately poor governance. That failure should be investigated, by Commons committees as much as by Congressional ones, not because some of us cannot let go of the past - but because there is no other way to ensure such folly never happens again.

Email British Journalist at freedland@guardian.co.uk

Key documents: advice to the Government
07.03.03: Attorney General's full advice on Iraq war (pdf)
07.03.03: Summary of the Attorney General's advice on Iraq War
17.03.03: Full text of the Attorney General's published advice

Key documents: UN security council
28.02.03: Hans Blix's report to the UN security council (pdf)
US security council resolution 678 (pdf)
UN security council resolution 687 (pdf)
UN security council resolution 1441 (pdf)

Key documents: House of Commons
18.03.03: Full text of Commons Iraq debate (Hansard)
15.03.03 report: Iraqi non-compliance with UNSCR
Butler report into intelligence on WMD

Analysis
Lord Lester's analysis of the summary of the attorney general's advice of 07.03.03 (pdf)
27.04.2005: Q&A: Lord Goldsmith's legal advice and the Iraq war

Timeline
28.04.2005: Countdown to war

Full coverage
Iraq Election 2005
UK politics and Iraq
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1472502,00.html

Exit From Iraq

2005-06-21T16:33:00.000-07:00

GOP Senators Break with Bush, Face Reality on Iraq

How best to support our troops in Iraq? By sacrificing more of them in a war that should never have been launched and has no end in sight, or by bringing them home? The latter is the best course for the U.S. and Iraq. Our military occupation fuels nationalist and religious insurgents and we should begin a phased withdrawal as soon as feasible, while increasing aid.

Although this position is shared by millions of Americans and many others globally, it has long been deemed beyond the pale by leading politicians of both parties. Now that appears finally to be changing, as an increasing number of Republicans are admitting that the emperor has no clothes -- having lied his pants off about our motives for invading Iraq, and ever since about how great things are going there. Declining public support for the war and the latest outrageous claims by Vice President Dick Cheney have given these moderates an opening to challenge their own party's administration.

"Too often we've been told, and the American people have been told, that we're at a turning point," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on NBC's "Meet the Press," as he disagreed with Cheney's absurd claim last week that the Iraq insurgency is in its "last throes." "What the American people should have been told and should be told [is that] it's long, it's hard, it's tough."

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, was even more blunt: "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse," he told U.S. News and World Report, as the latest suicide bombings claimed the lives of dozens of Iraqis. "The White House is completely disconnected from reality. It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."

Even Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.), who brought us "freedom fries," has found enough of his wits to admit publicly that he has lost confidence in the Iraq occupation and would sponsor legislation calling on the administration to more clearly define how, and when, it intends to bring the war to a close.

All of this means we may finally get a long-overdue national debate on ending the U.S. occupation. A "democracy can't do certain things if, in fact, the citizens don't support it," the Pentagon's Lt. Gen. James T. Conway admitted, citing the Vietnam War experience. "It's extremely important to the soldier and the Marine, the airman and the sailor over there to know that their country's behind them," he said. A Gallup poll released last week found that about six in 10 Americans don't approve of President Bush's handling of the war and want a partial or full withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Funny that Conway should mention Vietnam. Its prime minister arrives today for a historic visit to the White House, in belated recognition of the renewed diplomatic relations and robust economic trade now enjoyed between the two countries. It is thus an especially good time to reflect on the pitfalls of false patriotism and blind loyalty to a lost cause.

The general was right that growing public opposition to the Vietnam War pushed President Nixon to pull the plug on that conflict. But he was wrong to imply that being guided by voters to set firm deadlines for withdrawing from a foreign quagmire was a bad thing for either side. An estimated 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 American deaths later, Vietnam is run by the same Communist Party that was our enemy back then, but it now seems to matter not at all. We are perfectly happy to see them open their cheap labor markets to the West.

The sad irony is that Iraq -- unlike Japan or Germany during World War II -- also wasn't a viable threat to the United States when we "preemptively" invaded it. Once again, we have been reminded that violent intrusions into other people's history have unforeseen consequences, usually negative. First among these effects is the inciting of insurgencies, united only by common hatred of the occupying foreign soldiers

Iraq, as Vietnam, will likely have serious problems after the American withdrawal. These problems, however, will be Iraq's, destined for Iraqis to sort out. Simply put, the best thing we can do now to encourage stability in Iraq is to stop serving as a recruitment poster for the insurgency.

By Robert Scheer

Historic High Crimes

2005-06-19T07:24:00.000-07:00

High Crimes and Misdemeanors
by Ken Sanders

Under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Any reasonable interpretation of the Constitution's impeachment clause, and the historical application thereof, leads to the inescapable conclusion that articles of impeachment should be brought against President Bush for his commission of high crimes against the United States.

It is the consensus among legal and constitutional scholars that the phrase "other high Crimes and Misdemeanors" refers to "political crimes." While not necessarily indictable crimes, "political crimes" are great offenses against the federal government. They are abuses of power or the kinds of misconduct which can only be committed by a public official by virtue of the unique power and trust which he holds. Thus, high crimes and misdemeanors refer to major offenses against our very system of representative democracy. Likewise, high crimes and misdemeanors can be serious abuses of the governmental power with which the President has been trusted.

In the case of Iraq, it is becoming harder and harder to deny that Bush engaged in official misconduct that caused serious and likely irreparable injury to the United States.

Take, for instance, the increasingly notorious Downing Street Memo. According to the Memo, nearly one year before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq to disarm Saddam of his mythical weapons of mass destruction, at the White House "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Bush and his apologists dismiss the Memo as meaningless and accuse those deluded enough to find meaning within it of rehashing old arguments. However, aside from dismissing or simply ignoring the Memo, the Bush administration has made no attempt at an innocent explanation for the claim that it "fixed" the intelligence to fit its Iraq policy.

In fact, the Bush administration has never explicitly denied that the intelligence on Iraq was "fixed." The only senior government official to make such an unequivocal denial is Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister. However, while Blair did deny that the intelligence was "fixed," he did not endeavor to explain why such a claim made its way into an official British government document.

An explanation for the Bush administration's reluctance to address the Memo head-on and deny outright its claims of fixed intelligence can be gleaned from circumstantial evidence. It is commonly (and mistakenly) accepted that the false claims about Iraq's WMD were solely the result of a massive intelligence failure. Indeed, two purportedly independent commissions, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Commission on Intelligence Capabilities of the U.S. regarding Iraq's WMD, both determined that the White House and Pentagon were innocent victims of bad intelligence.

Whether or not the findings of those commissions are accurate or supportable is an argument for another time. What is telling about both commissions, however, is what they specifically did not investigate: whether the Bush administration manipulated or otherwise misused the "bad" intelligence. In the case of the Commission on Intelligence, a body created by the White House, it was not authorized by the White House to investigate the use of the Iraq intelligence. That issue was expressly out of bounds. In the case of the Senate Intelligence Committee, its Republican members circled wagons and insisted that any inquiry into the White House's use of the intelligence be deferred for a later date. That deferral continues.

The White House clearly has something to hide.

Regardless of what Bush is scrupulously trying to conceal, during the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, Bush openly lied about Iraq's nuclear capabilities on no fewer than four separate occasions. Bush knowingly and deliberately manipulated, inflated, and "fixed" the intelligence he was given in order to inflame the nation's passions and fraudulently bolster support for his war.

There is precedent for impeaching President Bush for the high crimes and misdemeanors of involving the country in armed conflict through fraudulent means. Take the case of William Blount, the first federal impeachment in U.S. history. Blount, an original U.S. senator from Tennessee, attempted to incite the Cherokee and the Creek to displace the Spanish from what is now Florida and Louisiana. Blount intended to then sell the land to the British. When the plot was exposed, the House of Representatives leveled articles of impeachment against Blount, asserting that Blount committed high crimes and misdemeanors by undertaking a course of conduct that threatened American neutrality and peace, and potentially violated international treaties.

Clearly, the acts of President Bush regarding Iraq are far more egregious than those of Blount. Not only did Blount's scheme never come to fruition, Blount's machinations did not result in the military invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of U.S. treaty obligations and international law.

Take also the case of President Richard Nixon. The articles of impeachment brought against him in 1974 alleged serious abuses of presidential powers. The articles alleged that Nixon used government agencies, including the F.B.I., C.I.A., I.R.S., and the Office of the President itself, to engage in a series of unlawful acts for political gain. Thus, Nixon was accused of, among other things, abusing his position as President in order to undermine the democratic process.

In the case of the Iraq war, Bush similarly abused his position as President by lying to the public and to Congress, as well as the United Nations, about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Bush "fixed" and falsified intelligence in order to obtain the Congressional authority he needed to invade Iraq, thereby undermining the democratic process and injuring the constitutional system of government. Bush engaged in these acts of wrongdoing to enhance his political influence and to enrich corporate entities with which he and his cronies had financial ties.

The impeachment of President Clinton, by contrast, did not involve an abuse of presidential power. Rather, the impeachment of Clinton arose from his extramarital affair and his subsequent perjury and obstruction of justice in his grand jury and civil deposition testimony. As acknowledged by the Senate in its decision to acquit Clinton of both the articles of impeachment brought by the House of Representatives, there was no evidence that Clinton's personal misconduct constituted a misuse of presidential power or injured the constitutional system of government. A national embarrassment to be sure, but not an abuse of presidential power.

Whether or not one considers the Clinton impeachment a legitimate constitutional exercise or a vindictive partisan sham, it serves as a precedent for impeachment of the President. If lying in legal proceedings regarding fellatio by a portly intern warranted articles of impeachment, then repeatedly lying to the American public and Congress, as well as fabricating intelligence -- acts of fraud which have resulted in thousands of dead and wounded Americans, and tens of billions of dollars in deficit spending -- ought to warrant the same.

Fortunately for Bush, both the House and Senate are controlled by his Republican supporters and apologists, thereby guaranteeing that he will never be held accountable under the Constitution for the irreparable damage he has done to this country.

Talk about getting away with murder.

Ken Sanders (tkensand@yahoo.com) is an attorney in Tucson, Arizona. Additional samples of his writing can be found on the blog: www.politicsofdissent.blogspot.com

Ex-President Eisenhower on War

2005-06-10T18:15:00.000-07:00

Former Supreme Allied Commander of D-Day Invasion 1944

Speech by General Dwight David Eisenhower in 1953

"Every gun that is made, every Warship launched, every Rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

"This world of Arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its Laborers, the genius of its Scientists, the hopes of its Children.”

“The cost of one modern heavy Bomber is this:

1. A modern brick School in more than 30 Cities
2. 2 Electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
3. Two fine, fully equipped Hospitals
4. Fifty (50) miles of concrete pavement ”

“We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat."

"We pay for one Destroyer with new Homes that could have housed more than 8,000 People.”

“This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense, under the cloud of threatening War, it is humanity hanging from a (Nazi) Cross of Iron"

Former Gen. D. Eisenhower, later President of the United States also warned America about the growing power of the "Military-Industrial Complex" over the U.S. Government.

Today we would add the Monopoly TV Media and its Foxx replicant lies, night after night.

PeaceTable.org

GOP Join Democrats Against War

2005-06-09T20:08:00.000-07:00

Faced with plummeting public support for the War in Iraq, a growing number of members of Congress from both parties are reevaluating the reasons for the invasion and demanding the Bush administration produce a plan for withdrawing US troops.

A bipartisan group of House members is drafting a resolution that calls on the administration to present a strategy for getting the United States out of Iraq, reflecting an increasing restlessness about the War in a chamber that 2 1/2 years ago voted overwhelmingly to support the use of force in Iraq.

The House International Relations Committee approved a similar proposal, 32 to 9, with strong bipartisan support. Sponsored by Representative Joseph Crowley, a New York Democrat who voted to authorize force in Iraq in 2002, the proposal represents the first time a congressional committee has moved to demand steps be taken so that US troops can start coming home.

More than 100 Democrats - including 11 who voted for the war resolution - have signed onto a letter to President Bush requesting an explanation of the so-called Downing Street memo, a British document that charges the administration planned to go to War even without hard evidence of the presence of weapons of mass destruction.

The proposed resolutions would not have the force of law, if approved by the House and Senate. But the actions reflect discontent among lawmakers in both parties who are hearing constituent complaints about the war's escalating body counts and uncertain end.

Representative Walter Jones of North Carolina, a conservative Republican who voted to authorize force, said his district is growing weary of a war that has cost the lives of more than 1,600 US troops and left more than 12,000 wounded.

"I'm hearing: 'How much do we have to do? We're giving blood. We're giving money. What is the final chapter for our involvement?' I think people are looking to the administration for an explanation, whether we have done all we can do," said Jones, whose district is home to 60,000 retired military personnel.

Jones said he felt misled by the administration on the reasons for the war because no weapons of mass destruction have been found. "If I knew [then] what I knew today, I would not have voted for the resolution," Jones said.

Representative Marty Meehan, a Lowell Democrat who voted for the War resolution, said he and some Democratic colleagues are working with five to 10 House Republicans on a resolution calling for an exit strategy to ease the United States out of Iraq. He said he hoped to get the support of 25 or more Republicans, despite the fact that only six voted against the war resolution.

"The war is going terribly," Meehan said. "It's due to a lack of a plan to win the peace. Mistakes have been piling up."

The administration has consistently said that the military is making progress in Iraq, noting successes in rounding up insurgents. Representative Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he rejects the idea of forcing the administration to lay out a clear exit strategy because it "sends a message" that the United States is not committed to finishing the job in Iraq.

Other lawmakers who voted for the Iraq war said their constituents are getting restless. A Washington Post/ABC poll this week showed support for the War dropping dramatically, with nearly two-thirds of Americans surveyed saying that the United States has gotten "bogged down" in Iraq, compared with 41 percent in August 2003.

Representative Harold Ford, a centrist Democrat who also voted for the War, said his constituents in military-friendly Tennessee are clamoring to have their loved ones in Iraq brought home, and are growing increasingly skeptical about the future of the mission there.

While they supported the War initially, Tennessee voters have begun to express "a lot of frustration" about the duration of the mission and the number of casualties, said Ford, who recently returned from a trip to Iraq. "The President has to start sharing with the American people how long we are going to be there."

Some Democrats want a definite timeline for withdrawing, while others continue to berate the administration and their own colleagues for backing an invasion lawmakers believe was based on faulty or exaggerated intelligence.

Many Republicans are reluctant to criticize the President, while some Democrats who voted for the War are nervous about being lumped together with two of their party's most prominent antiwar figures - House minority leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean.

"Many of the Democrats who voted for the resolution authorizing the use of force do not want to be perceived as weak on national security, and those who voted against the resolution somehow think it's someone else's problem," Meehan said.

Still, despite lingering differences over the decision to go to War, a consensus has been growing among lawmakers in both parties - and on both sides of the War resolution - that the United States is in danger of getting mired in a protracted, costly conflict, Crowley said.

"I think the amendment sends a clear message that both sides, for the first time, are saying the situation in Iraq is not OK," Crowley said of the International Relations Committee's resolution, which drew support from 13 Republicans and 19 Democrats. "What I'm trying to do is create an umbrella we can all get under."

Susan Milligan in The Boston Globe

128 in House Vote for Peace

2005-05-29T13:45:00.000-07:00

by William Floyd

House Member Lynn Woolsey, Democrat from Marin (No. California) introduced an amendment to a bill May 25th, 2005 that would require Bush and Rumsfeld to develop an immediate plan to withdraw all U.S. Troops from Iraq.

“Pseudo Cons” in the Republican Party, joined misguided Democratic chicken hawks to vote to continue the Bush/Rumsfeld quagmire in Iraq (of roadside suicide attacks, checkpoint family slaughter, and neighborhood teen round ups for torture at Abu Ghraib Prison).

The Congressional record: 128 for Peace, 300 for continuing the quagmire ad infinitum.

This crucial Congressional vote, ignored by everyone in the Foxx-replicant Media, is both historical and inspirational.

It took a decade of mass peace Mobilizations of millions of American protestors, a nationwide draft resistance and CO movement, and selective wildcat strikes against once mammoth Corporations (from GM & Ford to AT&T) to convince 128 Congress Members to vote for Peace in Vietnam.

Join your local Santa Monica Peace Table (now 1600 strong).

A few special Patriotic Memberships are still available...

The Peace Table
http://www.peacetable.org/

Join us. Peace is growing. Peacetable@Earthlink.Net

High Crimes and Misdemeanors

2005-05-28T08:47:00.000-07:00

90 Congress Members Want to Know

Dear President Bush:

We the undersigned write to you because of our concern regarding recent disclosures of a “Downing Street Memo” in the London Times, comprising the minutes of a meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers. These minutes indicate that the United States and Great Britain agreed to by the summer of 2002 to attack Iraq, well before the invasion and before you even sought Congressional authority to engage in military action, and that U.S. officials were deliberately manipulating intelligence to justify the War.

Among other things, the British Government document quotes a high-ranking British official as stating that by July, 2002, “Bush had made up his mind to take military action.” Yet, a month later, you stated you were still willing to “look at all options” and that there was “no timetable” for War. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, flatly stated that “The President has made no such determination that we should go to War with Iraq.”

The origins of the false contention that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) remains a serious and lingering question about the lead up to the War. There is an ongoing debate about whether this was the result of a “massive intelligence failure,” in other words a mistake, or the result of intentional and deliberate manipulation of intelligence to justify the case for War? The memo appears to resolve that debate, quoting the head of British intelligence as indicating that in the United States “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” We ask you to respond to the following questions:

1) Do you or anyone in your administration dispute the accuracy of the leaked document?

2) Were arrangements being made, including the recruitment of allies, before you sought Congressional authorization to go to War? Did you or anyone in your Administration obtain Britain’s commitment to invade prior to this time?

3) Was there an effort to create an ultimatum about Weapons Inspectors in order to help with the justification for the War as the document indicates?

4) At what point in time did you/Prime Minister Blair first agree it was necessary to invade Iraq?

5) Was there a coordinated effort with the U.S. intelligence community and/or British officials to “fix” the intelligence and facts around the policy, as the leaked document states?

These are the questions 90 Members of Congress, led by Rep. John Conyers, Jr., submitted to you on May 5, 2005. As Citizens and Taxpayers, we believe it is imperative that our People be able to trust our Government and our Commander-in-Chief when you make representations and statements regarding our nation engaging in War. As a result, we would ask that you publicly respond to these questions as promptly as possible.

Sincerely, John Conyers, Congressman, Michigan

Join Now. A few Patriotic Memberships still available…

The Peace Table at Farmers Market

Bush Covers Up Abuse

2005-05-26T08:49:00.000-07:00

Amnesty International accused the Bush administration on Wednesday of condoning "atrocious" human rights violations, thereby diminishing its moral authority and setting a global example encouraging abuse by other nations.

In a string of accusations introducing the organization's annual report in London, Irene Khan, Amnesty's secretary general, listed the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the so-called rendition of prisoners to countries known to practice torture as evidence that the United States "thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights."

Defending its human rights record as "leading the way," the White House dismissed the accusations as "ridiculous and unfounded".

Ms. Khan labeled the United States detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, where more than 500 prisoners from about 40 countries are being held, as "the gulag of our times."

In Washington, William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, urged President Bush to press for a full investigation of what he called the "atrocious human rights violations at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers."

"When the U.S. government calls upon foreign leaders to bring to justice those who commit or authorize human rights violations in their own countries, why should those foreign leaders listen?" Dr. Schulz said. "And if the U.S. government does not abide by the same standards of justice, what shred of moral authority will we retain to pressure other governments to diminish abuses?

"It's far past time for President Bush to prove that he is not covering up the misdeeds of senior officials and political cronies who designed and authorized these nefarious interrogation policies," he said. "So Congress must appoint a truly impartial and independent commission to investigate the masterminds of the atrocious human rights violations at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers, and President Bush should use the power of his office to press Congress to do so."

In response, Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said: "I think the allegations are ridiculous, and unsupported by the facts. The United States is leading the way when it comes to protecting human rights and promoting human dignity. We have liberated 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan.

TPT: In the latest Baghdad poll 83% of the Iraqi people do not think Bush "liberated" them. They want U.S. troops to exit immediately to stop the brutal roadblock killings, and "random neighborhood round ups" for torture at Abu Ghraib Prison.

Please email Reps. Henry Waxman and Jane Harman to support Rep. Lynn Woolsey's (D-Marin, CA) bill known as H. Con. Res. 35, calling for immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

In Secret, Sneak & Peek

2005-05-24T07:34:00.000-07:00

SNEAKERS and PEEKERS

Secretly Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) has written a new bill that gives the FBI additional powers to snag records in “intelligence probes” without the oversight by a Judge. This would make it easy for the FBI to get copies of your Mail and Phone records without an indpendent Judge.

Civil Liberties groups vowed yesterday to fight the proposals, arguing that they pose significant threats to individual Privacy rights and that the Government's so-called anti-terrorism powers need to be rolled back significantly.

James Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said the bill would give the FBI new powers that have been "long sought, and rejected" by Congress because of the long tradition of Civil Liberties under the U.S. Constitution.

In the Open in Britain:

PM Tony Blair is busy preparing a National I.D. bill in Britain, but his Labour Party is split over this over-reach in Police powers.

Gwyneth Dunwoody, the redoubtable Labour MP for Crewe and Nantwich, told him in no uncertain terms that there were Labour MPs who were seriously concerned about ID cards: "There are some of us in this House who are deeply uneasy about this scheme, who believe that it is a question of Civil Rights.

"It is one that disturbs us very greatly and the history of Police forces or Governments holding every element of information about people's lives is not that they are always used responsibly, but used in some instances by Governments for the worst possible reasons," she said.

For the complete story see the Guardian at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/idcards/story/0,15642,1490589,00.html

TPT

The history of the FBI abuses against the Quakers and other peace groups during the Vietnam War, show the FBI does not chase "real enemies", only 1st Amendment free speech opponents of current Government policies. History shows that Judges are the only independent third party capable of stopping widespread "sneak and peek" Police abuses by the FBI.

Letter from Sen. Boxer

2005-05-19T11:12:00.000-07:00

Letter from Senator Barbara Boxer

May 18, 2005
Mr. William Floyd
c/o PeaceTable.org
2101 Ocean Avenue
Santa Monica, California 90405-2222

Dear Mr. Floyd:

Thank you for contacting me about the war in Iraq. I appreciate hearing from you.

I recently traveled to Iraq and would like to share my thoughts with you regarding my experiences. Meeting with our nation's brave service men and women was truly inspiring. I admire and appreciate their courage, skill, and devotion to duty. In order to best support our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, I voted for the 2005 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill to get them the equipment and support they need.

However, my trip to Iraq confirmed my view that the United States must set a timetable to withdraw our forces. I agree with retired Marine Corps General Gregory Newbold, one of the prime planners of the war in Iraq, who proposes that we set a goal for withdrawal. I believe our long-term presence in Iraq is becoming counter-productive.

Many Iraqis have come to view us as permanent occupiers, intensifying the cycle of hatred and anger that is attracting terrorists to the area and making our troops a primary target. In addition, the Iraqi people must takeover their own security.

Please know that for as long as our troops remain in harm's way, I will continue to push for an international effort to reduce the hardship on our troops while increasing the pace of training Iraqi Security Forces.

Once again, thank you for your letter, and for caring deeply about this critical matter.

Sincerely
Barbara Boxer
United States Senator

Please email me at http://boxer.senate.gov/contact/webform.cfm

"The Lies That Kill"

2005-05-19T11:05:00.000-07:00

The Lies that Kill - Why Isn't Bush in the (Trial) Dock?

By Paul Craig Roberts

George Bush and his gang of neo-con warmongers have destroyed America's reputation. It is likely to stay destroyed, because at this point the only way to restore America's reputation would be to impeach and convict President Bush for intentionally deceiving Congress and the American people in order to start a war of aggression against a country posing no threat to the US. America can redeem itself only by holding Bush accountable.

As intent as Republicans were to impeach President Clinton for lying about a sexual affair, they have a blind eye for President Bush's far more serious lies. Bush's lies have caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people, injured and maimed tens of thousands more, devastated a country, destroyed America's reputation, caused one billion Muslims to hate America, ruined our alliances with Europe, created a police state at home, and squandered $300 billion dollars, and counting.

America's reputation is so damaged that not even our puppets can stand the heat. Anti-American riots, which have left Afghan cities and towns in flames and hospitals overflowing with casualties, have forced Bush's Afghan puppet, "President" Hamid Karzai, to assert his independence from his US overlords. In a belated act of sovereignty, Karzai asserted authority over heavy-handed US troops whose brutal and stupid ways sparked the devastating riots. Karzai demanded control of US military activities in Afghanistan and called for the return of the Afghan detainees who are being held at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Abundant evidence now exists in the public domain to convict George W. Bush of the crime of the century. The secret British government memo (dated July 23, 2002, leaked to the London Times (5/1/5), reports that Bush wanted…

“To remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. The [UK] Attorney General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military ac

Torture Strangles Democracy

2005-05-16T08:54:00.000-07:00

Goal of U.S. Torture is to Terrorize All

Who Criticize, Not Just the "Suspects"

The fear is even thicker among Muslims in the United States, where the Patriot Act gives Police the power to seize the records of any Mosque, school, library or community group on mere suspicion of terrorist links. When this intense surveillance is paired with the ever-present threat of torture, the message is clear: you are being watched, your neighbour may be a spy, the Government can find out anything about you. If you misstep, you could disappear on to a plane bound for Syria, or into "the deep dark hole that is Guantánamo Bay", to borrow a phrase from Michael Ratner, president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights.

But this fear has to be finely calibrated. The people being intimidated need to know enough to be afraid but not so much that they demand justice. This helps explain why the Defence Department will release certain kinds of seemingly incriminating information about Guantánamo - pictures of men in cages, for instance - at the same time that it acts to suppress photographs on a par with what escaped from Abu Ghraib. And it might also explain why the Pentagon approved a new book by a former military translator, including the passages about prisoners being sexually humiliated, but prevented him from writing about the widespread use of attack Dogs. This strategic leaking of information, combined with official denials, induces a state of mind that Argentinians describe as "knowing/not knowing", a vestige of their "dirty war".

"Obviously, intelligence agents have an incentive to hide the use of unlawful methods," says Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "On the other hand, when they use rendition and torture as a threat, it's undeniable that they benefit, in some sense, from the fact that people know that intelligence agents are willing to act unlawfully. They benefit from the fact that people understand the threat and believe it to be credible."

And the threats have been received. In an affidavit filed with an ACLU court challenge to section 215 of the Patriot Act, Nazih Hassan, president of the Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor in Michigan, describes this new climate. Membership and attendance are down, donations are way down, board members have resigned - Hassan says his members avoid doing anything that could get their names on lists. One member testified anonymously that he has "stopped speaking out on political and social issues" because he doesn't want to draw attention to himself.

This is the torturer's true purpose: to terrorise - not only the people in Guantánamo's cages and Syria's isolation cells but also, and more importantly, the broader Community that hears about these abuses. Torture is a machine designed to break the will to resist - the individual prisoner's will and the collective will (of the whole nation).

This is not a controversial claim. In 2001 the US NGO Physicians for Human Rights published a manual on treating torture survivors that noted: "Perpetrators often attempt to justify their acts of torture and ill-treatment by the need to gather information. Such conceptualisations obscure the purpose of torture...."

"The aim of torture is to dehumanise the victim, break his/her will, and at the same time set horrific examples for those who come in contact with the victim. In this way, torture can break or damage the will and coherence of entire communities."

Yet despite this body of knowledge, torture continues to be debated in the United States as if it were merely a morally questionable way to extract information, not an instrument of State Terror. But there's a problem: no one claims that torture is an effective interrogation tool - least of all the people who practise it.

Torture "doesn't work. There are better ways to deal with captives," CIA Director Porter Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee on February 16. And a recently declassified memo written by an FBI official in Guantánamo states that extreme coercion produced "nothing more than what FBI got using simple investigative techniques". The Army's own interrogation Field Manual states that force "can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear".

And yet the abuses keep on coming - Uzbekistan as the new hotspot for Renditions; the "El Salvador model" imported to Iraq. And the only sensible explanation for torture's persistent popularity comes from a most unlikely source. Lynndie England, the fall girl for Abu Ghraib, was asked during her botched trial why she and her colleagues had forced naked prisoners into a human pyramid. "As a way to control them," she replied.

Exactly. As an interrogation tool, torture is a bust. But when it comes to social control, nothing works quite like torture.

Edited by TPT from article by Naomi Klein in "The Nation"
www.thenation.com

Additional Source Articles:

Detention in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay: statement by Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed (pdf)

Read the letter from Moazzam Begg (pdf)

Useful Web Links:

Lawyers Committee for Human Rights
Centre for Constitutional Rights
Office of Military Commissions

China Accuses Bush

2005-05-13T09:08:00.000-07:00

BEIJING - A senior Chinese diplomat accused the Bush administration of sabotaging efforts to revive negotiations with the North Korean government and said there was “no solid evidence” that North Korea was preparing to test a nuclear weapon. (Phony evidence again? TPT)

The comments by Yang Xiyu, a Senior Foreign Ministry official and China's top official on the North Korean nuclear problem, were noteworthy because the Chinese authorities very rarely speak to journalists about the issue. The comments reflect growing frustration in China with the Bush (and Bolton) administration.

The White House has pressured China to find a solution to the nuclear issue, Chinese officials say, while hurling insults at North Korea. This has given its leaders excuses to stay away from the bargaining table.

“The basic reason for the unsuccessful effort lies in the lack of cooperation from the U.S. side.”

Mr. Yang said that when President Bush referred to the North Korea leader, Kim Jong Il, as a “tyrant” in late April, Bush “destroyed the atmosphere" for negotiations, undoing weeks of efforts to persuade North Korea that the United States would bargain in good faith.

Mr. Yang said formally what diplomats here had been whispering for months: personal attacks against Mr. Kim by Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and UN nominee John Bolton had caused a “loss of face” for North Korean officials.

Beijing is determined to head off a looming confrontation between the United States and North Korea, which it fears could prompt a regional nuclear arms race and shatter the stability that has underpinned China's own economic rise. NY Times 5.13.05

TPT:

China currently holds about $900 Billion in US Treasuries, the result of our imbalance in Trade. Even a hint that China might start selling a small part of these dollars, would cause Wall Street to Crash. Financial experts have predicted this scenario for months. The Bush-Bolton ugly American approach to diplomacy is hurtling us towards nuclear confrontation with North Korea, and a Dollar melt down via the frustrated Chinese.

Bush Twists Facts to Fool Congress

2005-05-12T18:19:00.000-07:00

Bush Asked to Explain Iraq War Memo in UK

Eighty-nine (89) Democratic Members of the U.S. Congress last week sent Pres. George II a letter asking for explanation of a secret British memo that said "intelligence and facts were being fixed" to support the Iraq War in June 23, 2002.

The timing of the memo was well before the lying Bush brought the issue to Congress for approval.

The letter, initiated by Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, said the memo "raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the War as well as the integrity of your own Administration..."

A British official identified as "C" said that he had returned from a meeting in Washington and that "military action was now seen as inevitable" by US officials. "Bush II wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

The Memo quoted Defense Secretary Hoon as saying the United States had not finalized a timeline, but that it would likely begin "30 days before the US Congressional Elections," culminating with the actual attack in January 2003.

"But the case for War was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

Britain's Attorney General, Peter Goldsmith, advised the group that "the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action" and two of three possible legal bases - self-defense and humanitarian intervention - could not be used.

Lies, and more lies. When are the pseudo-con Republicans going to realize Bush II lied to them to launch this illegal War, as well the American people, and bring George II (and Cheney, Rumsfeld) to an Impeachment Trial for Treason?

June Conference to Ban DU Weapons

2005-05-12T08:24:00.000-07:00

June 23th-24th, 2005

‘International Conference to Ban Uranium Weapons’

in the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium

The International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW) will host an International Conference in the European Parliament headquarters in Brussels, on 23 and 24 June 2005. Members of Parliament and Scientists will participate in a debate and in workshops. The Public is invited.

Programme: BAN URANIUM WEAPONS

Thursday June 23, 2005

10 a.m.- 1 p.m. Welcome, Board report and Country presentations

3 p.m. Actions on ‘Ban Uranium Weapons’: Panel debate with guest speakers.

The participants are:

1) Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, Head of the Sadr Teaching Hospital at Basra.

2) Dr. Keith Baverstock, former Head of the WHO Radiation Protection Division.

3) Dr. Manfred Mohr, EU Affairs Officer Red Cross Germany, co-author of the Draft Treaty.

Members of the European Parliament will participate.

Panel ends at 6 p.m.

Friday June 24, 2005 - 10 a.m.

Presentation/workshop on the campaign ‘Banks investing in Arms and Uranium Weapons’ by Network Flanders at 11 a.m.

Presentation/workshop on the illegality of Uranium Weapons, arguments and instruments at Noon

Workshop/brainstorming with the ICBUW at 3 p.m.

ICBUW work teams presentations at 6 p.m.

Closing Meeting at the European Parliament

<www.banuraniumweapons.org>

<www.CADU.uk> Campaign Against Depleted Uranium

DU Threatens World Via Wind

2005-05-11T18:45:00.000-07:00

"I'm horrified. The people out there - the Iraqis, the media and the troops - risk the most appalling ill health. And the radiation from depleted uranium can travel literally anywhere. It's going to destroy the lives of thousands of children, all over the world. We all know how far radiation can travel. Radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales and in Britain you sometimes get red dust from the Sahara on your car."

The speaker is not some alarmist doomsayer. He is Dr. Chris Busby, the British radiation expert, Fellow of the University of Liverpool in the Faculty of Medicine and UK Representative on the European Committee on Radiation Risk.

He was talking about the best-kept secret of this war: the fact that by illegally using hundreds of tons of depleted uranium (DU) against Iraq, Britain and America have gravely endangered not only the Iraqis but the whole world.

For these weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that-whipped up by sandstorms and carried on trade winds - there is no corner of the globe they cannot penetrate-including Britain and America, for the wind has no boundaries and time is on their side: the radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years and can cause cancer, leukemia, brain damage, kidney failure, and extreme birth defects - killing millions of every age for centuries to come. A crime against humanity which may, in the eyes of historians, rank with the worst atrocities of all time.

These weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that there is no corner of the globe they cannot penetrate - including America and Britain. Yet, officially, no crime has been committed. For this story is a dirty story in which the facts have been concealed from those who needed them most. It is also a story we need to know if the people of Iraq are to get the medical care they desperately need, and if our troops, returning from Iraq, are not to suffer as terribly as the veterans of other conflicts in which depleted uranium was used.

'Depleted' uranium is in many ways a misnomer. 'Depleted' sounds weak. The only weak thing about depleted uranium is its price. It is dirt cheap, toxic, waste from nuclear power plants and bomb production. However, uranium is one of earth's heaviest elements and DU packs a Tyson's punch, smashing through tanks, buildings and bunkers with equal ease, spontaneously catching fire as it does so, and burning people alive.

'Crispy critters' is what US servicemen call those unfortunate enough to be close. And, when John Pilger encountered children killed at a greater distance he wrote: "The children's skin had folded back, like parchment, revealing veins and burnt flesh that seeped blood, while the eyes, intact, stared straight ahead. I vomited." (Daily Mirror) Written by James Denver, for full article see:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/051105K.shtml

TPT:

Bush and Rumsfeld's continued use of Depleted Unranium on tank shells, artillery shells, and even bullets is a WAR CRIME. The inherent danger of Depleted Unranium has been known for many years.

Iraq=Quagmire=Vietnam

2005-05-09T17:04:00.000-07:00

By Robert Dreyfuss in Rolling Stone

As the Iraq war drags on, it's beginning to look a lot like Vietnam.

The news from Iraq is bad and getting worse with each passing day. Iraqi insurgents are stepping up the pace of their attacks, unleashing eleven deadly bombings on April 29th alone. Many of the 150,000 Iraqi police and soldiers hastily trained by U.S. troops have deserted or joined the insurgents. The cost of the war now tops $192 billion, rising by $1 billion a week, and the corpses are piling up: Over 1,600 American soldiers are dead, and 10,000 plus maimed or amputees. Up to 125,000 Iraqi civilians are dead, as well as 177 allied troops and 229 private contractors. But to hear President Bush tell it, the war in Iraq is going very, very well.

In private, however, Senior Military advisers and intelligence specialists on Iraq offer a starkly different picture. Two years after the U.S. invasion, Iraq is perched on the brink of civil war. Months after the election, the new Iraqi Government remains hunkered down inside the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, surviving only because it is defended by 140,000 U.S. troops. Iraqi Officials hold meetings and press conferences in Alamo-like settings, often punctuated by the sounds of nearby explosions.

Outside the Green Zone, party offices and Government buildings are surrounded by tank traps, blast walls made from concrete slabs eighteen feet high, and private militias wielding machine guns and AK-47s. Even minor government officials travel from fort to fort in heavily armed convoys of Humvees.

"I talk to senior military people and combat commanders who tell me that the situation is much more precarious than admitted," says Col. Patrick Lang, former Middle East chief for the Defense Intelligence Agency. "Even inside the Green Zone you are not safe, because of indirect fire. And if you were to venture outside at night, they'd probably find your headless body the next morning."

Car bombs rock Baghdad and other cities virtually every day, and insurgents conduct almost a hundred of attacks each day on U.S. troops, Iraqi recruits and civilian police. Thousands of Iraqi police and soldiers have scattered or disappeared, and countless others either do no fighting or covertly support the insurgency. The out-of-control security situation means that few reconstruction projects can get off the ground. Transport is crippled, and Iraq's core infrastructure -- its roads and bridges, its power plants, its water-treatment facilities, and its all-important oil fields, pipelines and oil terminals -- remains heavily damaged from the war.

According to U.S. officials, the resistance attacks are being aided by an extensive network of informers. Insurgents, apparently making use of engineers and former insiders, have been able to hit oil installations and power plants expertly, foiling U.S. efforts to sustain Iraqi oil exports and to provide electricity and water to Iraqi cities. "They have tentacles that reach all through the new government and the new military," Lt. Gen. Walter Buchanan, who commands U.S. air forces in the Persian Gulf, admitted recently.

The new government is not only powerless to stop the attacks by insurgents, it is dominated by the same clique of warlords and exiles who lobbied the Pentagon to go to war in the first place, many of whom have close ties to the warring camps that control vast parts of the country. "In the Arab world, Iraq is seen as a zone of chaos in a pre-civil-war situation, held together only by the U.S. occupation," says Chas Freeman, who served as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia under Bush's father. A brief survey of the three major forces in Iraq -- Shiites in the south, Sunnis in the center and Kurds in the north -- makes clear the sharp divisions that threaten to blow the country apart.

More at the Original at Rolling Stone via Truthout.org

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/050905D.shtml

Bush Fixed Facts for War

2005-05-05T09:59:00.000-07:00

Fresh back in London from consultations in Washington, Richard Dearlove, then head of MI-6, the British CIA, briefed Prime Minister Blair and his top national security officials on July 23, 2002, on the Bush administration's plans to make war on Iraq.

Dearlove tells Tony Blair and others that President Bush has decided to remove Saddam Hussein by launching a war that is to be "justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction." Period. What about the intelligence? Dearlove adds matter-of-factly, "The intelligence and facts are being 'fixed' around the policy."

At this point, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirms that Bush has decided on war, but notes that stitching together justification would be a challenge, since "the case was thin." Straw noted that Saddam was not threatening his neighbors and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.

In the following months, "the case" would be buttressed by a well-honed U.S.-U.K. intelligence-turned-propaganda-machine.

Aluminum artillery tubes misdiagnosed as nuclear related;
Forgeries alleging Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in Africa;
Tall Tales from a drunken defector about mobile biological weapons laboratories ("Curveball");
Bogus warnings that Iraqi forces could fire WMD-tipped missiles within 45 minutes;
Dodgy dossiers fabricated in London;
A phony U.S. National Intelligence Estimate thrown in for good measure.

http://www.tompaine.com/20050504/articles/proof_bush_fixed_the_facts.php

TPT:

Impeachment Time for Liars Bush and Cheney

Do Not Arrest Osama: CIA

2005-05-03T10:12:00.000-07:00

Why Osama Bin Forgotten Was Never Caught

The world may be better off if Osama Bin Laden remains at large, according to the Central Intelligence Agency’s recently departed Executive Director.

If the world’s most wanted terrorist is captured or killed, a power struggle among his Al-Qaeda subordinates may trigger a wave of terror attacks, said A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard, who stepped down six weeks ago as the CIA’s third most senior Executive.

“You can make the argument that we’re better off with him (at large),” Krongard said. “Because if something happens to Bin Laden, you might find a lot of people vying for his position and demonstrating how macho they are by unleashing a stream of terror.”

Krongard, a former investment banker who joined the CIA in 1998, said Bin Laden’s role among Islamic militants was changing. “He’s turning into more of a charismatic leader than a terrorist mastermind,” he said. “Some of his Lieutenants are the ones to worry about.”

Krongard, 68, said he viewed Bin Laden “not as a chief Executive but more like a venture capitalist”.
He added: “Let’s say you and I want to blow up Trafalgar Square. So we go to Bin Laden. And he’ll say, ‘Well, here’s some money and some passports and if you need weapons, see this guy’.

“I don’t see him keeping his fingers on everything because the lines of communications are just too difficult.”
Several US officials have privately admitted that it may be better to keep Bin Laden pinned down on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan rather than make him a martyr or put him on trial. But Krongard is the most senior figure to acknowledge publicly that his capture might prove counter-productive.

The Sunday Times, London

TPT:

If Bush's CIA does not want to catch Osama Bin Forgotten, he will not be caught. But since the Bush Family is such long time friends of the Saudi Royal Family, and the Bin Laden Family empire (See House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger), all Bush's rhetoric about "catching Osama Bin Laden dead or alive" is just Faux News propaganda.

Why is this news appearing in a British newspaper and not in the U.S.A. ?

Peace History May 1971

2005-05-03T06:37:00.000-07:00

7,000 Arrested in Washington DC Peace Protest

15,000 Clash With Police and Tear Gas Disrupts Traffic

About 7,000 Antiwar Protesters were arrested yesterday morning after fighting running skirmishes with Metropolitan Police and Federal troops throughout large areas of the nation's capital.

About 150 were also injured in the six hours of disturbances as the Protesters, demanding an immediate halt to the War in Vietnam.

The Protesters, who called themselves the Mayday Tribe, did succeed in disrupting the city's normal functioning by impeding traffic and harassing Government employees on their way to work, using as weapons trash, tree limbs, stones, bottles, bricks, lumber, nails, tires, rubbish bins and parked cars.

The Police fought these tactics with tear gas and nightsticks. Chief Jerry V. Wilson said the demonstrators numbered up to 15,000. The 7,000 arrests were a Record for a single day in the capital.

At the height of the disturbances, tear gas fumes filled the air over some of the city's most famous monuments, streets and grassy flowered parks. Garbage cans, trash, abandoned automobiles and other obstacles littered some chief arteries.

Many of those arrested were herded into buses and taken to the fenced practice field of the Washington Redskins football team, near Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium on the eastern edge of the city, or to the District of Columbia Jail, where they were placed in an outdoor courtyard.

The entire force of 5,100 metropolitan police, acting under Administration instructions to be "firm," was on duty yesterday. They were backed up by 1,500 National Guardsmen and 500 park police. In addition, 10,000 Federal troops were in reserve or deployed to support the police.

Leaflets being distributed by the Mayday Tribe stated that the organization had selected four targets for demonstrations early today. The leaflets said the targets were Dupont, Thomas and Scott Circles and Mount Vernon Square, all downtown areas.

This marked the beginning of the third week of protests in the capital over the war. The first week was entirely peaceful, beginning with a group of perhaps 1,000 young Veterans camped on the Mall, a block from the Capitol, who spent the week lobbying in Congress, and continuing through a massive march and rally April 24, 1971. This week the theme was civil disobedience as small groups blocked the doors of Government buildings and allowed themselves to be arrested. This was the first time that the Police had to use riot control tactics to break up the demonstrations.

Throughout the morning, some 30,000 youths streamed out of their campsite, some heading for home, others seeking refuge in universities, churches, and private homes. Sunday night, they regrouped to plan their assaults.

Before dawn yesterday, they drifted silently in groups of five or 10 toward their designated targets. Regional units had been assigned to the four bridges leading into Washington from Virginia and to major intersections on roads from Maryland. One group assembled at the Washington Monument to march on the Pentagon.

Police "flying squads" moved to scenes of trouble on motorcycles, motor scooters and aboard buses. The police did not wait for the Protesters to seize a target. Instead, they dispersed the demonstrators with nightsticks and tear gas. The Police tactics broke the Protesters into small bands -- some as small as 10 to 20, the largest numbering 50 or 100 -- that roved the streets trying to stop traffic and to plead with motorists to join the demonstration.

The group that headed for the Pentagon was dispersed before reaching the 14th Street Bridge across the Potomac. It split into bands that sat down on Maine Avenue underneath the bridge. These protesters were tear gassed and fled. Another group stopped cars by holding hands and spreading across a southbound lane.

Much of the tear gas thrown along the approaches to the bridge floated into cars and buses bringing Government workers into the city. Dozens of employers were seen hurrying to their offices with tears streaming down their faces.

About 20 Vietnam Veterans crossed a railroad bridge and flung paper bags of chicken excrement on the steps of the Pentagon mall entrance, shouting that it was "for the chicken colonels."

Another area of conflict was Georgetown, west of the State Department and near the university, where many of the demonstrators spent the night. As they were driven back from the Francis Scott Key Bridge, they cluttered the intersection of M Street and Wisconsin Avenue with cars, wooden railings and garbage cans. At Dupont Circle, where Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire Avenues intersect, small groups dashed into the circle and out again to draw off the Police, while others abandoned trash on a side street to jam up traffic.

Along 21st Street, just west of the circle, traffic was blocked for more than an hour by youths who found a supply of cinderblocks and lumber and placed them in the street along with two automobiles.

Rennie Davis, a leader of the Mayday Tribe, who is a militant activist and was one of the Chicago Seven convicted under the Federal anti-riot law, was held on $25,000 bond on a charge of conspiring to violate citizens' rights to travel in interstate commerce and to work for agencies of the United States Government.

New York Times, May 4th, 1971

War Profits Sky Rocket

2005-04-30T11:13:00.000-07:00

War Makers Gouge Super Profits

War Profits soared 76 percent at Northrop Grumman Corp.

Up 30 percent at Raytheon Co., and up 22 percent at Goodrich.

Iraq War helped Lockheed Martin Corp. to beat forecasts and raised guidance for the rest of the year. (Hooray)

Mega bucks from the Pentagon as well as the Department of Homeland Security also boosted results at the Titan Corp. which provides Intelligence and Translation services. Titan said on Thursday its profits rose 600%.

600% ?

Contractors are reaping the rewards of a surge in War spending from a little over $300 billion before the 9/11/01 attacks, to over $500 billion now.

TPT:

All these War profiteers were "experts" called to appear on CNN, MSNBC, Faux News, ABC, CBS and NBC before the illegal invasion of Iraq. All were certain of the WMD, and Hitler-like capabilities of Iraq. All had up to an obscene 600% Profits to gain whether they were right or wrong.

Congress needs to re-examine the role of War profiteers in providing False "information" to decision makers that help War makers profit from an illegal and immoral War.

Poll: Get Out of Iraq

2005-04-30T10:57:00.000-07:00

Gallup Poll

The top piece of advice Americans would give President Bush is to pull out of the War in Iraq, Gallup Poll reported Thursday April 28, 2005.

Nearly a quarter of respondents (25%) said that, “If I had 15 minutes to talk to the President Bush I would tell him to End the War in Iraq, making it the No. 1 response.

The second most popular response was telling Bush to control the prices of Fuel and Oil and improve energy. This received 8 percent of Respondents.

6 percent said they would tell him to leave Social Security alone.

Only 6 percent of Respondents said they would tell Bush he was doing a good job.

The findings were based on Telephone interviews conducted April 18-21 with 1,003 U.S. adults. The survey has an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The other 55% of Respondents had no opinion for the Pollster.

Washington Post-ABC Poll

An ABC News-Washington Post poll on Tuesday, April 26, 2005 said that 64 percent of Americans did not approve of the way Bush was handling Social Security.

57 percent did not like his stewardship of the U.S. Economy.

54 percent disapproved his energy policy.

TPT:

When will Chairman Howard Dean and the Democratic Party begin to listen to the overwhelming majority of Democrats?

Withdraw our troops now. End the killing and torture NOW.

Question Dean on Iraq

2005-04-29T12:38:00.000-07:00

Tom Hayden Questions Dean on Support for Bush War

This is a familiar pattern for those of us who suffered through the Vietnam War. Today it is conventional wisdom among Washington insiders, including even the liberal media, that the Democratic Party must distance itself from its antiwar past, and must embrace a position of military toughness.

The truth is quite the opposite. What the Democratic Party should distance itself from is its immoral and self-destructive pro-War positions in the 1960s which led to unprecedented polarization, the collapse of funds for the War on Poverty, a schism in the Presidential primaries, and the destruction of the Lyndon Johnson Presidency.

Thirty years after our forced withdrawal from Vietnam, the US government has stable diplomatic and commercial relations with its former Communist enemy. The same future is possible in Iraq.

by Tom Hayden in The Nation magazine

Bush Wiretaps Jump 20%

2005-04-29T10:03:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON - The number of court-authorized Bush wiretaps rose nearly 20 percent last year as Bush gum shoes pursued so called drug and "terror" cases against suspects.

Every surveillance request made by authorities was granted. (?)

Federal and State Judges approved 1,710 applications for wiretaps of wire, oral or electronic communications last year, and four states — New York, California, New Jersey and Florida — accounted for three of every four surveillance orders, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. (The Administrative office is required by Law to collect the figures and report them to Congress.)

The numbers do not include court orders for so called "terror-related" investigations under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, which reached a record 1,754 warrants last year, according to the Justice Department.

The American Civil Liberties Union, said traditional law enforcement work is catching up with increases in anti-terror wiretaps. When you trash the Bill of Rights, every pseudo con Republican jumps on board.

"We're still seeing a huge trend toward increased surveillance," said the ACLU.

Some 1,507 wiretaps — or about nine out of every ten — targeted portable devices, such as cell phones and pagers.

By the end of the year, the surveillance had generated 4,506 arrests but only 634 convictions based on wiretap evidence.

Between 1994 and 2004, the number of wiretap authorizations have increased 48 percent, according to the report.

Every request by Bush's police state enforcers has been approved? No minor rejections? Like a name misspelled? Wrong address, or typos, or old phone numbers? 100% wiretap approval is better than the old Soviet Union, or Nazi Germany. The Gestapo had old phone numbers, because everyone was in a Concentration Camp or oven.

Dictatorships are safer, if you define safety as Orwell did '1984'. In Orwell's novel police video TV cameras were installed for "National Security" in everybody's bedroom.

The Republicans (Pseudo Cons) are hurtling towards a police state under the smokescreen of protecting us from terror. Yet only 12% of wiretaps led to arrests. 88% were simply cluster bombs against the US Constitution.

This unAmerican crime of subverting the Bill of Rights is opposed by a real Conservative, former Congressman Robert Barr (R-Georgia), and many others in the "Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances" (http://www.checksbalances.org. But Congress Members led by Tom DeLay and the "pseudo cons", joined spineless Democrats to rubber stamp this Patriot Act police state created by and for the lawbreakers in the Bush Administration.

Action

Please call and write Senator Barbara Boxer, Rep. Henry Waxman and Rep. Jane Harman and demand they oppose Bush and the new Republican pseudo cons' shredding of our Bill of Rights.

Boycott Exxxon - War Profiteer

2005-04-29T09:09:00.000-07:00

Oil Monopolies Gouge 33% Spike in Prices

by William Floyd

Exxxon Mob has become the latest Oil War profiteer to report obscene profits, driven by crude Oil's recent record-breaking surge.

Exxxon's net profit from July to September 2004 jumped 56%. At 56% for three months this is a record. Exxxon gouged a record $5.7 Billion, compared with only $3.7 Billion, a year ago. Sales also climbed to $76 Billion from $60 Billion. In a mere 90 days!

"Earnings" (Profits) topped market estimates and are on course to set all-time highs.

Big Monopoly Oil is benefiting from record prices, which have been "generated by strong demand", combined with what they term "uncertainties over supply".

"Uncertainties" for American workers, but not for Exxxon and Shell, who have been closing Refineries as fast as they can. We now have only half as many Refineries as we had in the 1970s. "Just-in-time" business theory results in supply crises, and spiking prices.

Rising prices are bad for all businesses, except one. Monopoly OIL.

The Anglo-Dutch Oil group Shell reported a 70% rise in third-quarter net income to $4.4 Billion. 70% spike in just 90 days?

BP (British Petroleum) gouged profits of $3.9 Billion for the same 3 months. Where's the shame?

A 47% rise in phoney, manipulated gasoline prices hurts the working and middle classes the same as a TAX Increase of 33%. Where is the Democratic Party outrage? When will they fault Bush for his profit gouging Energy policy?

Boycott War Profiteer "Exxxon Mob"

The Exxxon Mob carved up the Iraqi Oil Fields for themselves at Dick Cheney's Energy Meeting (Jan. 2001). And since they are one of the biggest contributors to 2 stolen Republican Elections, Exxxon presents an ideal War Profiteer to boycott.

CIA Chief Dumb or Liar?

2005-04-29T03:39:00.000-07:00

Tenet Regrets 'Slam Dunk' Comment re WMD

CNN.com

Kutztown, Pennsylvania (real name):

Former CIA Director George Tenet said he regretted assuring President Bush in 2002 that he had "slam dunk" evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD). (It was told to the Corporate Monopoly Media, not Bush.)

"Those were the two dumbest words I ever said," Tenet told about 1,300 people at a Kutztown University forum Wednesday, April 27.

Tenet's assurance was a leading justification for the War in Iraq.

Such weapons were never found. (In fact they were burned in 1992.)

TPT:

Brown nosing Bush and Cheney was not "dumb", it was key to Tenet's survival after Bill Clinton's term. Tenet lied more than a dozen times about the phoney "imminent threat" of Iraq.

He should be investigated and have his Medal of Freedom taken away and given to that heroic CIVIC aid martyr, Marla Ruzicka.

Then, after Bush and Cheney are impeached in 2006, maybe somebody will jail George Tenet, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz and Bolton for treason (lies leading to illegal War).

Bush Asked to Obey Law

2005-04-28T10:52:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, April 26th, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe "adamantly" asked the American government to "observe the principles of the preeminence of Law and Human Rights" with respect to the detainees at Guantánamo.

In a resolution adopted in Strasbourg by 83 votes, none against, the Assembly invites the United States to "stop all mistreatment of the Guantánamo detainees" and to authorize "a suit for the examination of the legality of their detention by a properly constituted tribunal."

The Assembly deems that Washington must "immediately free all detainees for whom there does not exist sufficient proof to justify their criminal incarceration" and that in those cases where such proof does exist, the detainees should be charged and tried "with no further delay."

The United States is furthermore invited to "exclude any declaration obtained by torture or by punishments or treatment of a cruel, inhuman, or degrading character," in conformity with "International Law and the Constitution of the United States."

Mistreatment

The Assembly emphasizes that it "shares the United States' determination to fight international terrorism," but considers that "the American Government has betrayed its own highest principles in the zeal with which it has tried to conduct 'the War against Terrorism.'"

Some 540 suspects, for the most part captured in Afghanistan, are detained at the American Guantánamo base on the island of Cuba. The United States has attributed to the detainees the status of "Enemy Combatants" unable to claim the rights reserved to Prisoners of War under the Geneva Conventions.

Testimony from several former prisoners, as well as a recent report by the British Parliament and internal memoranda of the FBI published in the press, have recorded mistreatment of the Guantánamo detainees that could correspond to acts of torture.

Reuters

TPT:

Impeach Bush and Cheney in 2006

Ray McGovern on Bolton

2005-04-28T09:20:00.000-07:00

Former Intelligence agent Ray McGovern details how the Senate Confirmation of former CIA Chief Robert Gates (a mirror to Russia-hating William Casey) led to an exodus of honest, objective, and hard-working intelligence agents. They were gradually replaced by yes-men for whosoever became President.

If John Bolton is confirmed by the Senate, McGovern warns there will be mass resignations from the CIA, DIA, INR (et al) of the last of the remaining honest and objective intelligence analysts.

Visit "Common Dreams" April 27, 2005 - by Ray McGovern

<http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0427-32.htm>

May 1st Rally in Central Park

2005-04-28T08:48:00.000-07:00

Womens Action for New Directions (WAND.org) and United for Peace and Justice (NYC) have called for a massive Peace Rally in Central Park to abolish Nuclear weapons and end the War in Iraq.

The May Day Rally will march to the United Nations which is reviewing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Visit www.AbolitionNow.org.

<http://www.wand.org/issuesact/actions/actionmay1-05.htm>

Destruction of Falluja

2005-04-27T17:07:00.000-07:00

Other glimpses of life in Falluja come from Dr Hafid al-Dulaimi, head of the Falluja's compensation commission, who reports that 36,000 homes were destroyed in the US onslaught, along with 8,400 shops. Sixty nurseries and schools were ruined, along with 65 mosques and religious sanctuaries.

Daud Salman, an Iraqi journalist with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, on a visit to Falluja two weeks ago, found that only a quarter of the city's residents had gone back. Thousands remain in tents on the outskirts. The Iraqi Red Crescent finds it hard to go in to help the sick because of the US cordon around the city.

Burhan Fasa'a, a cameraman for the Lebanese Broadcasting Company, reported during the siege that dead family members were buried in their gardens because people could not leave their homes. Refugees told one of us that civilians carrying white flags were gunned down by American soldiers. Corpses were tied to US tanks and paraded around like trophies.

By Jonathan Steele and Dahr Jamail in the Guardian

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1471011,00.html>

War at Six Miles High

2005-04-27T15:34:00.000-07:00

HOWARD ZINN, Bombadier 1945

Well, we thought the bombing missions were over. World War II was about to come to an end. This was in April of 1945, and remember the War ended in early May 1945. This was a few weeks before the War was going to be over, and our Armies were past France into Germany, but there was a little pocket of German soldiers hanging around this little town of Royan on the Atlantic coast of France, and the Air Force decided to bomb them. 1,200 heavy bombers, and I was in one of them, flew over this little town of Royan and dropped Napalm -- first use of Napalm in the European theater.

And we didn't know how many people were killed, how many people were terribly burned as a result of what we did. But I did it like most soldiers do, unthinkingly, mechanically, thinking we're on the right side, they're on the wrong side, and therefore we can do whatever we want, and it's okay. And only after reading about Hiroshima from John Hersey and reading the stories of the survivors of Hiroshima and what they went through, only then did I begin to think about the human effects of bombing.

Only then did I begin to think about what it meant to human beings on the ground when bombs were dropped on them, because as a bombardier, I was flying at 30,000 feet, six miles high, couldnít hear screams, couldn't see blood.

And this is Modern warfare. In Modern warfare, soldiers fire, they drop bombs, and they have no notion, really, of what is happening to the human beings that they're firing on. Everything is done at a distance. This enables terrible atrocities to take place.

And I think reflecting back on that bombing raid, and thinking of that in Hiroshima and all of the other raids on civilian cities and the killing of huge numbers of civilians in German and Japanese cities, the killing of a hundred thousand people in Tokyo in one night of fire-bombing, all of that made me realize War, even so-called good Wars against Fascism like World War II, Wars don't solve any fundamental problems, and they always poison everybody on both sides.

They poison the minds and souls of everybody on both sides. We are seeing that now in Iraq, where the minds of our soldiers are being poisoned by being an Occupying Army in a land where they are not wanted. And the results are terrible.

AMY GOODMAN: You learned you dropped Napalm on this French village in 1945?

HOWARD ZINN: Well, we actually didn't know what it was. They said, oh, you're not going to have the usually 500 pound demolition bombs. You're going to carry one -- you're going to carry 30 100-pound canisters of jellied gasoline. We had no idea what that was, but it was Napalm.

AMY GOODMAN: You went back to that village later?

HOWARD ZINN: Later, yeah. Later I visited that village, about ten years after the War. And I went to the Library which had been destroyed, and which was now rebuilt, and I dug out records of the survivors and what they had written about the bombing. I wrote, I wrote a kind of essay about the bombing of Royan which appears in my book, The Zinn Reader, and also in my book, The Politics of History. But it was, for me, it was a very important experience, a very great sobering lesson about so-called good Wars.

AMY GOODMAN: You learned when you were there on the ground many years later who had died?

HOWARD ZINN: Well, I -- you know, I spoke to people who had survived that and whose family members had died. And they were very bitter about the bombing, and you know, they attributed it to all sorts of things, the desire to try out a new weapon. It's amazing how many things are done in a War just to try out new weapons. You know, maybe the -- one of the reasons for dropping the Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were to see what this does to human beings. Human beings become sacrifices in the desire to develop new military technology. And I think that was one of those instances.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to historian Howard Zinn, here in our Firehouse Studio in Chinatown, just blocks from where the Towers of the World Trade Center once stood.

TPT:

Stop the Slaughter of Innocent Iraqis

________________________

Save Our Troops - Bring Them Home Alive

Support Congresswoman Woolsey's

H-R 35

Patriotism by Howard Zinn

2005-04-27T15:17:00.000-07:00

HOWARD ZINN

on Real Patriotism

There are people in Voices in the Wilderness, Americans who went to Iraq and violating the US sanctions, bringing food and medicine, you know, and the whole business of being traitors. You know, I think there's a whole -- there's somehow some wrong-headed notion of what treason is, and what patriotism is, and there's some notion that if you disobey the orders of your Government or the laws of your Government, you are being treasonous.

But I believe the Government is being treasonous, and the Government is being unpatriotic when the Government violates the fundamental Rights of human beings.

When the Government invades another country, a country that has not attacked it, the country that's not threatened it, when our Government invades another country and drops bombs and kills huge numbers of people, and then Americans have the guts to go to that country and bring people food and medicine or go to see what is going on, I think these are the most Patriotic Americans.

And you know, if you define Patriotism as obedience to the Government, then you are, I think, following a kind of Totalitarian principle, because that's the principle of a Totalitarian state, that you do what the Government tells you to do. And Democracy means that the Government is an instrument of the people.

This is the Declaration of Independence. Governments are artificial entities set up in order to preserve the Rights, equal right to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness of People. When the Government violates those Rights, it is the Duty of People to defy that Government. That is Patriotism.

Amy Goodman interview with HOWARD ZINN

on KPFK - www.DemocracyNow.org

The Progressive Movement?

2005-04-26T14:02:00.000-07:00

by William Floyd

Our anti-War candidate Howard Dean has lost contact with his Democratic base. Dean now echoes Bush II, Cheney and Rumsfeld calling for a long Iraq Occupation. Progressive Congressman Henry Waxman mimes Colin Powell’s bellicose Pottery Barn bark “We broke it. Now we own it.”

Does a broken cup pass the property title of the entire Pottery Barn to the clumsy oaf? We owe the Iraqi people billions of dollars for Reconstruction. Not the current practice of indiscriminate round-ups of all males. Then carting them off to Abu Ghraib, where 25%-30% of the neighborhood regulars are routinely tortured.

“Working dogs” and “Waterboarding” (fake drowning) were specifically authorized by Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, and are still in common use today. Since the victims know nothing, after a year or two, they are released, uncharged. (See Mark Danner “Torture and Truth”, CCR-NY.org, ACLU.org)

This Bush-Rumsfeld-ordered crucible of torture is the same “breeding ground” of terrorism the CIA warned Bush and Rumsfeld about. They ignore the CIA. Who needs facts? “Faith” is all Bush needs. “Democracy and Freedom are on the March” they sing in lock step, despite the growing number of 100-man Rebel assault teams (twice at Abu Ghraib Prison, and once at the Syrian border).

Over 58% of the American people want the senseless slaughter in Iraq to cease. 71% want the Torture in all U.S detention centers from Abu Ghraib to Kabul Airport to Guantanamo to end immediately. The Army has ordered all cameras off limits instead.

The Progressive Democrats (PDA) are fighting the Republican Social Security assault, tailing behind the DNC Democrats. They are also still fighting the last Election. On their web site they list Congressional Bills coming up. Both Republican and Democratic bills! Thanks PDA.

“I am a member of the Carter-Baker Federal Election Reform Commission. P.D.A. submitted a list that included "Voter identification by any official form of identification." Please note the following commentary I wrote published by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.”Submitted by Alysia Fischer, Ph.D., National Policy Director, Progressive Democrats of America Please consider supporting PDA by becoming a sustaining member. You can now have your contribution processed automatically each month by going to…

Progressive Democrats ?

Please. Gag me with a Waterboard. Progressives need to confront this illegal Administration.

There are only 2 Crimes that Progressives can raise that really challenge the Bush Administration:

1) Torture Memos authorizing Dogs and Waterboarding of 25%-30% of innocent prisoners

2) Lies leading America into an illegal Occupation. A War crime under US and Geneva Laws.

Both Crimes should lead to the Impeachment of Bush and Cheney, if the Democrats can re-capture the House in 2006. (Even Ronald Reagan lost seats in the House, during his very popular second term.)

Impeach Bush - Cheney 2006 ------- PeaceTable@Earthlink.net

Rewards of Endless War

2005-04-25T16:52:00.000-07:00

Bush Will Bomb Iran in June 2005 - by William Floyd

United Nations Senior Weapons Inspector, Scott Ritter claims Bush signed off on Pentagon Plans to bomb Iran in mid-June 2005. (Possibly June 11th)

Faux News and the Monopoly Media, will praise Bush II for mini-bombing “probable” Nuclear sites. On right wing websites, the real Bush goal is the familiar “Iran regime change”. Shock and awe succeeded so well in Iraq, Republique hawks day-dream of “flowers and kisses” in Tehran, too.

Republican shoot-first ideologues have convinced themselves that the Iranian people will rise up in revolt against the Mullahs - right after the Pentagon’s rockets fall. This neo-con fantasy is not for the nightly news. It is for the right wing Heritage Foundation propaganda and mega-media empire.

Polls show even Iranian dissidents support Iran’s right to have a nuclear Deterrent against Israel’s massive Nuclear arsenal. And Bush’s own CIA claims Iranian dissidents will be crushed by the Mullahs during any U.S. aerial attack. But Bush's dreams of a U.S. empire die hard.

1) Neo-cons are in a time warp from the 1979 US Embassy take-over in Iran.

2) Iran’s memory starts with a CIA coup against President Moussadegh (1953).

3) Democratically elected Moussadegh was overthrown by the Dulles CIA for nationalizing Iranian Oil. Big Oil blew a spigot.

4) Iran has powerful allies all over the European Union. They have Embassies in almost every nation in the world. Thousands of militarily trained secret agents are ready.

5) A Regime change in Iran would unleash a wave of Oil-funded terrorism against U.S. Embassies, Oil Corps, and domestic U.S. targets (c.f. 9/11/2001).

6) After wasting $300 Billion on Iraq/Afghanistan, world wide Terrorism by an Oil rich Iran could cost another $300 Billion. This could bankrupt the Treasury.

7) The American people will be forced to choose between Defense against a new Iranian world wide terror, and domestic programs like universal healthcare, Hospitals, Education, Aid to the Poor, Blind and Disabled, guaranteed Pensions, Veterans benefits and of course, Social Security.

8) This GOP goal of endless War is to “to shrink the Federal Government down to the size where we can drown it in the bath tub” a dream of right wing ideologue Grover Norquist, darling of the Heritage unFounded, and President of Americans for Tax Reform (for the filthy rich).

9) Facing an unpopular mid-term Election in 2006, Bush and the neo-cons hope to have U.S. Troops fighting an endless worldwide War against “Enemies everywhere”.

The Prize for Bombing Iran May Be the 2006 & 2008 Elections

Karl Rove’s goal in the 2005-6 War on Terrorism is to increase GOP robots in Congress. Then Bush, Frist & DeLay can conclude the Wall Street destruction of Social Security (and every Depression-era safety net for Americans who are not Billionaires for Bush). What cannot be achieved now through scare tactics about Social Security’s “default”, could be a big winner during the endless War with Iranian terrorists.

Remember the never-ending War in Orwell’s “1984”? The “War” was devised by “Big Brother” to instill a level of fear and paranoia that would invite Government surveillance via wide screen TVs into every Citizen’s bedroom.

Iraq 2003 – Exitless War ......Iran War 2005 - Endless Fear

Size: 170,000 square miles .............Size: 630,000 square miles
Population: 24 million ...................Population: 65 million
135,000 US and “75,000” Iraqi........550,000 Revolutionary Guards
Oil $4.5 Billion (mostly California)...Oil Export: $13 Billion - Euro Union

Ideas: PeaceTable@Earthlink.net

Dean Supports Bush on Iraq

2005-04-22T09:36:00.000-07:00

Democratic Chairman Howard Dean Favors Bush Occupation

The Chair of the Democratic National Committee Howard Dean has come out in support of President Bush's current Iraq policy. In a speech earlier this week in Minnesota, Dean said, "The President has created an enormous security problem for the United States where none existed before. But I hope the President is incredibly successful with his policy now that he's there."

Dean said a US pullout could endanger the United States in three ways:

1) By leaving a Shiite Theocracy worse than that in Iran

2) By creating an independent Kurdistan in the North, with destabilizing effects on neighboring Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iran and Syria

3) By by making the so-called Sunni Triangle a magnet for what Dean called Islamic terrorists similar to the former Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

Howard Dean was portrayed as an Antiwar candidate in the media during the 2004 Presidential race.

by Amy Goodman and DemocracyNow.org 4.22.05

TPT:

Anyone who experienced the Vietnam War web of lies has heard better than these before. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer are still alive who remember the two Presidents (Johnson and Nixon) lying on the nightly News. Night after night. Over a decade of lies.

Lie No. 1

South Vietnam had a sophisticated French Colonial society. To abandon the Catholic Nuns to rape by the "international communist conspiracy" was unthinkable, unpatriotic, and unAmerican. (Most of the pro-Western, French speaking Vietnamese departed with the U.S retreat, and now live in Orange County, California.)

Lie No. 2

Does Howard Dean feel some new colonial "white man's burden" to control and manipulate Muslim people? Why does he believe ugly Americans (like Rumsfeld, John Bolton and DNI Negroponte) are the best qualified to tell the Iraqis how to organize their society?

Is Howard Dean using the "Fear of 9/11" to sell the neo-con's continuing collateral damage and prison abuse originated under Rumsfeld, Bush and Cheney? How many more Children must die, Doctor?

Lie No. 3 - "The Sunni axis of foreign witchcraft and all things evil, ugly and not good for us"

The U.S. Army proved our troops can capture Baghdad in 3 weeks. Why would any Government in Iraq threaten their neighbors, when they know a force can reach Baghdad in 3 weeks? Why is the Democratic Chairman projecting all this irrational fear?

The Peace Movement was silenced by the Kerry Campaign, and needs now to become nationwide.

1) We need to bring a Million protestors to Washington this Spring or Summer

2) We need to picket Bush, Cheney, and any Democratic Chairman who supports the continued killing in this illegal, immoral and corrupt Occupation.

US Martyr in Baghdad

2005-04-20T13:20:00.000-07:00

Marla Ruzicka, California Hero at 28

Bright blonde and giggly, Marla Ruzicka was at first easy to dismiss. Yet, single-handedly, the idealistic Northern California aid worker secured millions of dollars worth of compensation from the U.S.for the victims of its Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Marla Ruzicka started her own NGO called the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), rented an office in Washington DC and forged ties with Congressmen such as Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT). When Donald Rumsfeld testified at a Senate hearing, she engaged him on his way out and quietly made her case for the innocent victims.

She was in Baghdad for the March 2003 invasion and mobilised 150 volunteers to visit hospitals and attempt to make the first proper list of people killed or injured by US forces. Their total of more than 2,000 dead formed the basis for subsequent estimates which touched 20,000.

Marla had summoned the Foreign Press corps to a party last night at the Hamra Hotel and her failure to show was our first inkling that something was wrong. The next morning her death was confirmed.

Marla was a wide-eyed 28 year old wonder who transformed into a networking queen who knew all the journalists, peacekeepers, aid workers and politicians. She had lured Bianca Jagger to the capital. Marla would totter around parties in heels and slinky dresses, vodka in hand, making introductions. The socialising bordered on the frenzied and sometimes ended with Marla slumped, but not before the room had been worked for an unofficial survey which confirmed 824 dead.

Former Iraq Ambassador Negroponte (now DNI) and the US embassy loathed Marla, not least for the day she assembled dozens of mostly tribesmen, some bandaged and limping, in front of its walls to demand compensation. The stunt received wide coverage. Marla became a media star, popping up on CNN and becoming the subject of a biography. Publicity for the cause, she said, relishing the attention.

Marla wrote about the Baghdad Airport road in her online journal: "The ride is not pleasant. Military convoys passing every moment. Faiz and I hold our breath."

The target of the "suicide" attack appears to have been a convoy of civilian Contractors who happened to be passing the couple when the bomber struck. Witnesses described the car of Faiz and Marla bursting into flames. Marla suffered burns to 90% of her body. A medic who treated her at the scene reported her last words:

"I'm alive."

For the complete article visit The Guardian (London)

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1463729,00.html>

Taliban Talk Radio Back

2005-04-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

Taliban Rebel Air Waves in Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN

Afghanistan's Taliban guerrillas launched a clandestine radio station on Monday, broadcasting anti-government commentaries and Islamic hymns from a mobile transmitter.

Called "Shariat Shagh," or Voice of Shariat, after the station the Taliban ran while in power, the broadcast can be heard in five southern provinces, including the former regime's old power base of Kandahar.

"It goes on the air between six and seven o'clock in the mornings and same time in the evenings," he said by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Hakimi, fighting an insurgency in the South and East of the country since they were driven from power in late 2001, said that the Taliban needed their own voice because the world's Media were pro-American.

Many Afghans listen to the BBC and Voice of America which broadcast in the country's two main languages, Pashto and Dari. In addition to Government-run radio, numerous small, private stations have sprung up, many funded by independent Aid donors (N.G.O.s).

As well as Islamic hymns and anti-Government commentary, the Taliban Station also criticized U.S. and other foreign Troops operating in Afghanistan since the Taliban were ousted.

Asked what the Taliban would do if U.S. forces detected and destroyed their transmitter, Hakimi said they would set up another.

Taliban attacks have picked up following a winter lull...

From Reuters

TPT:

"Bring 'em on," Pres. Bush bragged again and again. After stealing the 2004 Election in the name of the 3000+ victims of 9/11, Bush has been unable to find Osama Bin Forgotton (aka Binladen).

Now the Taliban are back on the Air waves. This is significant, in a nation with far more radios than TVs. Feel safer?

Let's all send notes of congratulations to George II, and Rummie, today. After torturing hundreds of innocent Afghans, Bush has failed to silence the Taliban, or find the rebellious son of a Bush family friend. (Please see "House of Bush, House of Saud" by Craig Unger)

DeLay Attacks Supremes

2005-04-20T00:33:00.000-07:00

Embattled Texas Rep. Tom DeLay told the FOX News Radio 4/19, "We've got Justice Kennedy writing decisions based upon international Law, not the Constitution of the United States. That's just outrageous."

DeLay barked "And not only that, but he said in Session that he does his own research on the Internet? That is just incredibly outrageous."

Although Justice Kennedy was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Reagan, a Conservative icon, he has aroused Neo-Con's anger by siding with the Supreme Court's more Liberal members. Nevertheless, it is rare and unusual for a Congressional leader to single out a Supreme Court Justice for criticism.

DeLay himself has been criticized for his comments following Schiavo's death, which came despite Congress' passage of a Law giving the Federal Courts jurisdiction to review her case. They declined to intervene.

Majority Leader DeLay threatened "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."

He apologized last week, saying he had spoken in an "inartful" way.

Conservatives have been pushing to get the Senate to confirm President Bush's most Conservative Judicial nominees, which Senate Democrats are blocking. The House has no power over which Judges are given lifetime appointments to the Federal bench.

However, DeLay has called repeatedly for the House to find a way to hold the Federal Judiciary accountable for its decisions. "The Judiciary has become so activist and so isolated from the American people that it's our job to do that," he said.

One way would be for the House Judiciary Committee to investigate the clause in the Constitution that says "Judges can serve as long as they serve with good behavior," he said. "We want to define what good behavior means. And that's where you have to start."

TPT:

When the Majority Leader of the Republican Congress threatens to fire a Republican Supreme Court Justice, we have entered a Constitutional crisis. (DeLay's attack on Justice Kennedy for using the internet is partcularly obtuse.)

When neo-con Congressional extremists like Tom DeLay attack the Judicial Branch they are undermining our Constitutional guarantee to Separation of Powers. In his lust for power, DeLay wants Congress to define "good behavior" for the Supremes as parroting his extremist Republican line.

Election Reform Rigged by GOP

2005-04-19T09:35:00.000-07:00

OUTRAGEOUS" GOP Run Election Reform Hearing

by Congressman John Conyers

The first meeting of the Baker-Carter Election Commission was disappointing and, at times, outrageous and tainted with racially-charged innuendo. Let me make absolutely clear that I greatly admire former President Jimmy Carter and believe he was insightful and on-target throughout the hearing. However, given the incredible lack of balance and profound lack of good faith demonstrated by some of Carter's fellow Commissioners and many of the witnesses at this hearing, at times he seemed to be a very lonely voice of sanity.

The remarks of Mr. James Baker III, which were echoed by a number of right wing political operatives called as witnesses, seemed to have a singular purpose of spreading hoaxes and conspiracy theories about ineligible Democratic voters being allowed to cast votes. The remedy was cleverly repeated like a broken record, "photo ID, photo ID, photo ID." Right wing pundit John Fund was called as an "expert" witness by the hearing and offered racially charged proposals with racially charged rhetoric.

Diaries :: Congressman John Conyers's diary :: :: Trackback ::

The substance of the testimony alleging "voter fraud" was a fraud itself. One panel on "access and integrity" inexplicably included two partisan Republican political operatives, Colleen McAndrews (most recently a leader in the successful campaign to recall former California Governor Gray Davis and described as a "behind the scenes force in Republican politics for years") and John Fund (of the notoriously far-right Wall Street Journal editorial page).

At the outset, Mr. Fund laid bare the nasty, racial underbelly of these proposals. The right-wing has been long engaged in tactics to suppress minority votes, but rarely lets slip about such tactics, as Fund did today. In a discussion about provisional ballots, Mr. Fund said that Congress should allow precinct workers to determine whether a provisional ballot should count because they would know who "looks as if they belong in the neighborhood." Wonder what he meant by that?

But we don't have to wonder what effect the discarding of provisional ballots would have on voters, particularly those that are racial minorities. As detailed in the House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff's report Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio?, the Republican Governor of Ohio rightly predicted that such a rule would result in discarding 100,000 valid votes. In one county alone, 1,100 eligible voters, who voted the correct ballot in the wrong precinct, had their ballots discarded. Fund wants to bring Blackwell's tactics to the rest of the country so what went wrong in Ohio, can go right for Republicans across the country.

It is common experience that the poor, elderly voters, minority voters and recent transplants to a state, like students, do not drive and, therefore, do not have a drivers' license or a license with an in-state address to show at the polls. It is a fact that experts have estimated that nearly ten percent of voters do not have a picture identification card. What facts does the conspiracy theorist Mr. Fund have to offer? A Republican Congressman's contention that someone voted in his sister's name. I know and like the Congressman he cites as an authority, but think his lonely experience is hardly a justification for a new rule that would result in the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of voters.

And I don't suppose that Mr. Fund could be striving to suppress reliable Democratic votes with this proposal, do you? Particularly minority voters? I don't suppose he could be looking for turn away voters who don't look like "they belong in the neighborhood," do you?

For a moment, I was encouraged when someone appeared to have bumped the phonograph and the broken record of "voter id" suddenly stopped. Instead, a new broken record began repeating "no voter verified paper ballot, no voter verified paper ballot, no voter verified paper ballot."

On a Panel supposedly designed to address "voting technology," only one of the four witnesses, Professor David Dill, spoke of the need for a voter verified paper ballot. Two of the witnesses on this panel spoke in total opposition to such a proposal.

The pattern of the hearing was clear: Republican political operatives, with little or no track record of involvement in voting rights issues, facing non-partisan advocates for Civil rights.

Predictably, this hardly was a fair fight. The deck was stacked from the beginning.

What can be said of a Commission that holds such a hearing? What hope is there for the recommendations of such a Commission? I am scheduled to meet with Commission officials this week and I am trying very hard to have an open mind. But, frankly, at this point - seeing this first hearing - I think we should all be very wary of this Commision's recommendations.

http://www.conyersblog.us/archives/00000063.htm

TPT:

Instead of just complaining, why not convene a real "blue ribbon" panel? How about Bill Clinton and Bob Dole (Repub), or former Sen. Bill Bradley and John McCain (Repub)?

AND: We progressives should convene a parallel panel consisting of BlackboxVoting, Rep. John Conyers, Sen. Barbara Boxer, Contest the Vote, Green Party, Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean, National Voting Rights Institute, et al.

The New Spies Among Us

2005-04-18T17:58:00.000-07:00

New Pentagon Spies on US Citizens and

Send Marines Down Main Street

In early 2004, Sahar Aziz, a Law student at the University of Texas at Austin, organized a conference called "Islam and the Law: The Question of Sexism."

The Seminar attracted several hundred people. Unbeknownst to Aziz, who is Muslim, in the audience were two Army Lawyers in civilian attire. They reported to Military Intelligence that three Middle Eastern men had asked them "suspicious" questions about their identity during a refreshment break. A few days later, two Military Intelligence agents materialized on campus, demanding to see a video-tape of the Seminar along with a roster of attendees.

Aziz didn't respond and instead helped arrange a press conference. When the Wall Street Journal highlighted the episode in a story about domestic intelligence gathering by the military, the Army's Intelligence and Security Command acknowledged that the agents "exceeded their authority" and introduced "refresher training" on the limits of the military's jurisdiction.

As it turns out, though, it may be the public that needs a refresher course on the role of its military forces. In 2002, the Defense Department updated its Unified Command Plan, which made the already blurry lines between Civilian and Military even less legible. Since then, all over America, Law enforcement and Intelligence agencies have been making information about the public available to a Pentagon power center most people have never heard about.

U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, located at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. Hidden deep inside Cheyenne Mountain, more than 100 Intelligence analysts sift through streams of data collected by Federal agents and local Law enforcers - continually updating a virtual picture of what the command calls the North American "battlespace," which includes the United States, Canada, and Mexico, as well as 500 miles out to sea.

If they find something amiss, they have resources to deploy in response that no law enforcement agency could dream of. They've got an Army, a Navy, an Air Force, the Marines, and the Coast Guard.

The creation of NORTHCOM, as part of the "unified plan" in the wake of 9/11, established the military's first domestic combatant command center. This precedent departs from a long-standing tradition of distinguishing between the responsibilities of the military and those of law enforcement.

Since 1878, when Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act in response to interference in elections by Federal Troops, an underlying assumption of U.S. Democracy has been that Soldiers should not act as Police officers on American soil. While the Chinese army might send tanks to Tiananmen Square and the Liberian military might man checkpoints in the capital, the presence of National Guardsmen, carrying firearms and dressed in camouflage, patrolling American territory in the weeks after 9/11 was a striking anomaly.

The new NORTHCOM is designed to take command of every National Guard unit in the country, as well as Regular Army troops, and wield them as a unified force. It has a variety of jobs, including fighting the war on drugs and supporting civilian authorities in cases of natural disaster, civil disorder, or terrorist attack. But it also has the less straightforward task of locating terrorists before they strike, which means, first and foremost, coordinating intelligence work.

To this end, the Command has been forging a National Surveillance System directly linking Military Intelligence operations to local Law enforcement intelligence operations and private security and information companies. These partnerships allow the military to skirt Federal privacy laws that restrict its ability to maintain files on ordinary people - prohibitions that apply to the Pentagon but not to private data miners, such as ChoicePoint and LexisNexis Group, or state and local police departments. In addition, personal data is culled from public records, confidential sources, and other repositories routinely cultivated by more than 50 government agencies.

For example, NORTHCOM taps into one law enforcement intelligence-sharing network into which local, state, and federal law enforcement can upload information on individuals they've surveilled.

Because all of its activity takes place in secret, and because the Pentagon has still not fully clarified its mandate, very little is known about exactly what kind of information NORTHCOM is gathering, and on whom. A review of documents and interviews with military and civil liberties experts makes clear, however, that the command's domestic intelligence ambitions are more far-reaching than anything the U.S. military has undertaken in the past and that the hope is to "fuse" disparate government databases so they can be readily accessed by NORTHCOM's leadership.

Not surprisingly, all of this worries civil liberties advocates. "There is no explicit prohibition in any law to the effect that the Pentagon may not engage in domestic intelligence," says Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, D.C. To place a wiretap or to search a home of a suspected terrorist without their knowledge, Martin notes, officials need a secret warrant from an intelligence court-but other than that, they have a great deal of leeway.

"The military can follow you around," she notes. "It can use giant, secret databases of linked networks to gather a picture of the activities of millions of Americans, mapping all of their associations, and the only restriction is that such surveillance be done for purposes of foreign intelligence, counterterrorism, the drug war, or force protection."

Indeed, to beef up protection of its "battlespace," the new command also includes "influence operations specialist[s]," who work on psy-ops "themes" and "deception plans," as first reported in Congressional Quarterly last year. Although the category of "enemy combatant" muddies old definitions of foreign and domestic subjects, NORTHCOM spokesman Sean Kelly assured Mother Jones in an email that the Command draws "distinctions between domestic operations and operations conducted outside of U.S. territory.... The idea that the American Public would ever be the target of Psychological Operations or deception by NORTHCOM is completely inconsistent with U.S. law and our mission."

Critics of NORTHCOM say they recognize the need to protect America from terrorist attack, but argue that the delicate task of domestic intelligence gathering should be left to law enforcement. Military affairs expert William Arkin-who recently broke the news that NORTHCOM had established a set of domestic Commando teams who were, among other things, deployed at President Bush's inaugural - observes that "once you cross the threshold of believing that databases are going to reveal illegal behavior, it is only steps away from getting into the business of domestic Intelligence…and supplanting the role of the FBI, which has traditionally been in charge of domestic security."

Concern about NORTHCOM's expanding powers is not limited to Civil Liberties watchdogs. Former CIA lawyer Suzanne Spaulding was the Executive Director of the National Commission on Terrorism under L. Paul Bremer III in 2000, and now works as a national security consultant. She worries that Military Intelligence services won't always distinguish between people who are fair game - such as foreign terrorists - and ordinary people who are going about their lives with an expectation of privacy. "People will say, 'Hey, wait a minute, you can't do that!'" she says.

"And the military may say, 'This is not law enforcement, this is a military operation against a group of enemy combatants.'" She points out that constitutional safeguards against surveillance of individuals by law enforcement may apply differently to defense activities under NORTHCOM. "This issue needs discussion and debate," she says, "and the Public ought to know about it."

More troubling than being watched, though, is what might happen after the spying is over. NORTHCOM is still prohibited from doing much of the work Police departments and the FBI do, but it could end up doing the same work that its parallel commands do overseas.

Joseph Onek of the Constitution Project in Washington, D.C., a bipartisan nonprofit focused on Civil Liberties during wartime, puts it this way: "We're worried that some hotshot military intelligence guy gets back from the Middle East and goes to work with NORTHCOM, using some of the same Interrogation methods used at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay."

From Mother Jones

History of Iraq

2005-04-18T14:23:00.000-07:00

US and British Occupation of Iraq is regarded as the re-emergence of the old colonialist practices of the Western empires in some quarters. The real ambitions underlying the brutal onslaught are still highly questionable - and then there are the blatant lies over Weapons of Mass Destruction originally used to justify the War.

There were no great victory marches by the Occupiers, nor were they thrown garlands of flowers and greeted in triumph. More US soldiers have died in Iraq since George Bush declared an end to the war on 1 May 2003 prompting the question: Will Iraq turn into a new Vietnam eventually bringing the US to its senses ... or perhaps to its knees?

Iraq's history, and along with it that of the Arab Muslim world, speaks of several similar encounters. In the past, enemies attacked from East and West before they were swallowed by the moving sands of the region, or forced to retreat, leaving behind a phoenix-like people who adore life and still accept to die for their freedom.

The escalating Iraqi Resistance seems to be setting the stage for another act which might usher in a new Arab World or set the clock ticking for the end of yet another Empire.

Good History of Iraq at

< www.english.aljazeera.net >

Dear Doctor Howard Dean

2005-04-18T12:36:00.000-07:00

Democrats Should Fight Back

ANNOUNCE: 2006-8 Democratic Judicial Appointments

1. Bill Clinton
2. ex-Sen. Bill Bradley
3. Rep. Dennis Kucinich

4. Sen. Barbara Boxer
5. Rep. Henry Waxman, then
6. Jane Fonda
7. Bob Dylan
8. Robert Redford
9. Barbra Streisand

10. Whoopi Goldberg

11. Bruce Springsteen

12. Kid Rock

13. Eminem

Let those responsible for the death of 100,000 Iraqi innocents

and 1559 U.S. Heroes, and their criminal corporate co-conspirators

know what to expect with -

NO Filibuster to protect them in 2006.

House and Senate Investigative Sub-Committees

1. Was the White House both the Legal source and Legitimizing Authority for the Torture of thousands at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Camp Bucca, and 48 US Military Detention centers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in dozens of other ‘torture-friendly nations’?

2. How was the phony WMD intel manipulated by President Bush and VP Cheney via the ‘Office of Special Plans’ in the Pentagon?

3. Did Cheney help Halliburton out of its financial predicament through the illegal “no-bid contract” to “fix Iraq” (for $10.5 Billion)?

4. Did any chicken hawks besides John Bolton harass and dismiss underlings for failing to propagate the WMD-mushroom cloud lies?

5. Sons and Daughters of House and Senate Members should volunteer for service in Iraq. A quota should be set. $1,000,000 waiver? Funds collected could go to Veterans of the Iraq War.

6. Investigation of Jerry Lewis Paul Bremer and the Coalition Authority (CPA) in Iraq to find out who stole the missing $9 Billion?

And many more...

by W.L. Floyd for TPT

Boxer for Iraq Deadline

2005-04-16T14:36:00.000-07:00

Sen. Boxer's Fresh, No Nonsense Reasoning

Senator Boxer recently returned from Iraq, and based on what she saw, believes that a deadline for the removal of US Troops is imperative.

Otherwise, she says, the Iraqi Government will become too dependent on the US troop presence, and delay what needs to be done to provide for their own Security.

"If we do not set a date, the signals are very mixed,'' Boxer said in San Francisco. "People will just sit back and let us defend them.''

U.S. military leaders were both concerned about the growing danger of a lengthy stay in Iraq, and confident that the newly trained Iraqi military forces can handle the country's Security, the California Senator said.

With the current open-ended commitment of U.S. troops, there's a danger the Iraqis will become too dependent on the U.S. presence, she said.

"We need to lay out a plan, a goal, an expectation,'' Boxer said. "We have to tell the Iraqis, 'You have to take the second step now.' ''

From the San Francisco Chronicle

TPT:

Please write her asap. Demanding our immediate withdrawal will motivate Bush to exit sooner than asking for an open ended exit plan.

The majority of Americans want our troops home safely. But the Oil Pioneers that donated millions to the Bush election theft want Iraq's oil. They want a WWII type Occupation to extract the oil.

We cannot let the Oil barons in this country kill hundreds of Iraqis weekly for their own rapacious greed.

< http://boxer.senate.gov/contact/webform.cfm>

National Boycott of Exxon

2005-04-16T10:12:00.000-07:00

Internet Activists Target Exxon-Mobil for Boycott

Internet Activists across the country are calling for a complete shut down by consumers of purchases of Exxon-Mobil gasoline and oil products.

An internet action was started against painful pump prices last year. In that action, Americans were asked to not buy any Oil Company's fuel on a certain day.

"For the rest of the year, don't purchase any gasoline from the two biggest companies (which are now one) Exxon and Mobil," exclaimed the e-mail, signed by "Kerry Lyle" of the University of Alabama. When corporate Media called Alabama U. for Kerry Lyle they found nobody at the University with that name. Neither in the Faculty nor Staff.

"This makes much more sense than the don't-buy-gas-on-a-certain-day campaign," said the e-mail, which many Websters have circulated to their friends and which has buzzed several chat rooms on the Web.

Corporate Oil Company Analysts say that unless overall U.S. gasoline demand declines, or the price of crude oil slips, the Boycott of one company would do little to bring down fuel prices.

TPT:

Yes, but demand for crude oil did drop for the last 2 weeks from 20.5 million barrels per day, to 20.2 million barrels per day, according to the US Energy Information Agency (EIA).

As one of the oil conglomerates at Dick Cheney's Energy Meeting of 2001, Exxon-Mobil agreed to carve up Iraq's oil fields for imperial profit (the booty of war). This was the real impetus for the Iraq Invsaion. France and Russia had designs on Saddam's oil, too. By illegally invading the defenseless mideast nation, Bush delivered Iraq's oil to Mobil-Exxon.

As the largest super ogre in world oil, Exxon-Mobil was a huge contributor to Bush's stolen election of 2004. Now, the Web activists say, it's time to pay the piper.

Internet Boycott of Exxon-Mobil is Buzzing America

Release Iraqi Prisoners

2005-04-16T08:23:00.000-07:00

A leading Sunni Cleric has urged Iraq's new interim President to buck US pressure and free thousands of suspected fighters.

Ahmad Abd al-Ghafur al-Samarrai, a Cleric in the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, said during Friday prayers that if President Jalal Talabani wanted to begin a new phase, he first had to release those in prison.

The statement, from the religious group most often associated with the Iraqi militias, has been taken as a sign of willingness to work with the new Iraqi Government. He urged Talabani not to bend to US pressure, particularly from US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Talabani, after he was sworn in as president this month, appealed to Iraq's Resistance groups to work with the newly elected leadership and suggested they could be pardoned, although he said the Iraqi government would continue to fight foreign elements.

"We must find political and peaceful solutions with those duped Iraqis who have been involved in terrorism and pardon them, and invite them to join the democratic process," Talabani said after his inauguration.

There have been growing calls to deal with detained Iraqis. Outgoing interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi recently sent a message to the US military commander in Iraq, General George Casey, asking him to review the Prisoners' cases.

TPT:

Estimates of Prisoners held by US Military forces vary between 10,500 and 15,000. Also the corporate US Media continues to focus on 3 Iraqi Prisons, when Iraqis claim there are over 50 US Prisons throughout Iraq.

US Military admits many of the Prisoners were rounded up in broad neighborhood "sweeps". Estimates vary, but the Red Cross predicted 90-95% of the Prisoners are completely innocent.

Bush Toasts Tax Day

2005-04-15T16:58:00.000-07:00

SINGING for TV NEWS

President Bush has been desperate to seize the headlines back from poor Terri Schiavo, the Pope, Michael Jackson (plus entourage), and even Indian robber, million dollar Casino manipulator/developer, Tom DeLay (R-Sugar Land, TX).

Noting it was April 15th and therefore IRS tax day, the Bush Administration released a Fact sheet (http://www.treas.gov/press/taxes.html) boasting that, as a result of the President's tax cuts, "110 million American taxpayers will see their taxes decline by an AVERAGE of $1,716" in 2005.

NOT MENTIONED BY BUSHIES

Bush's Fact sheet neglects to mention (http://www.cbpp.org/4-13-05tax.htm)

that in 2005 the wealthiest one percent received cuts of $34,948.

TOP 1% received $34,948.

This is 47 times larger than the $742 average tax cut that those in the middle class received.

MIDDLE 20% received $742.

The overall average cited by Bushies is stretched beyond limit by the Millionaires.

Millionaires will profit via Bush's tax cut on average $103,000 in 2005

MILLIONAIRES receive $103,000

LOWER 20% received 4 million pink slips, and can no longer afford the rising gas prices, food prices, travel costs, housing bubbles, rental hikes, or skyrocketing health care costs. Everything else is quickly leaping out of control.

The U.S. Dollar dives daily, only outperformed by the NY Stock Market's decline.

The unChristian, and illegal unAmerican slaughter in Iraq continues, while the Bush Machine annihilates the Debt-Slavery Act (Bankruptcy Law), tries to pack the Courts with racist kooks, and religious zealots. God forbid.

Venezuela Conference

2005-04-15T16:29:00.000-07:00

Venezuela Opens 3rd Global Conference in

Solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution

Caracas, "Learn from the world and share of ourselves," announced Yadira Pirela, the General Coordinator of the 3rd Global Conference in Solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution, at its opening ceremony today in the Teresa Careño Theater. During the ceremony, which was also attended by Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, Pirela thanked the audience for contributing to a common dream of "an independent and sovereign country, with a highly developed economic potential, but fundamentally, a country that establishes itself as an example for all of the people of the world."

Between April 14th and 16th 2005, Venezuelal brings together over 4,000 people from twenty countries across the world to participate in eight different discussion tables in eight different cities throughout the country. They will exchange national and international experiences, consolidate the revolutionary process and interact with the Venezuelan people.

This encounter is distinct from the other two international gatherings: "The 4th International Conference on the Social Debt" and "The World Forum of Intellectuals and Artists in Defense of Humanity" that Venezuela hosted in the last four months. Instead of focusing on inviting world-renown intellectuals, the fifty-one Panelists who will partake in the discussion tables are either actual participants living the reality of these areas or experts in these fields.

For example, in San Felipe, Yaracuy, members of the Landless Movement (MST) in Brazil will speak in the "Agrarian Reform" discussion table. In the "Democracy and Communicational Sovereignty" table in the northern state of Miranda Telesur directors will share their vision for a Latin American TV news channel and a documentary will be shown in homage of those who lost their lives and those who continue to fight for freedom of the press.

"We decided to do a quality rather than a quantity encounter," affirmed Marta Harnecker, the coordinator of the "Experiences of Citizens' Participation in the Local Sphere" discussion table during a press conference yesterday. Harnecker added that the "Citizens' Participation" discussion table, to be held in the southeastern city of Puerto Ordaz, will include contributions of participatory democracy experts from the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre.

Referring to the "Inhabitants, Public Housing and Habitat" discussion table, Yadira Pirela noted that members of Venezuelan cooperatives such as Vuelvan Caras will share their experiences with participants. Argentine and Cuban architects will journey to Barquisimeto, a tourist city in the northern state of Lara, to speak on the construction of popular living alternatives. Additionally, there will be a panelist presenting "Constructing Houses and Transforming Man," a presentation detailing the connection between forming values and maintaining living spaces.

According to Pirela, "we did not want a large panel of speakers but instead we wanted the participants to see where the people eat, live and sleep...this is an opportunity for the people to share their experiences with the participants.

"Education is very important for transforming society," stated Luis Bonilla, adding that, "educators from all over Venezuela, including teachers, professors and the people who work day after day for change, will be traveling to Barinas" to participate in the `Education, Human Rights and Youth´ discussion table. Bonilla, who will lead the Education discussion table, added that that international experts from countries such as Colombia, Cuba, Mexico and Argentina as well as others, will also contribute their views and experiences.

From to the "Political Protagonism of Indigenous and Afro-Descendents" panel in the mid-Eastern state of Anzoátegui to "The Women's Movement and Their Prominent Role in the Revolutionary Process," in Caracas, Harnecker affirms, "the world is watching the Venezuelan process...this encounter demonstrates the world's will to move forward."

Organizer Harnecker explained, "This is an event that is trying to gather people who think outside the framework of a capitalist world. We don't have many answers yet, but we have a great will and the world has many expectations of us…this is not an event for those who make alliances with the United States instead of with Venezuela or for those who think first of profits, no. But this is not just an event for Chavistas either. This is for anyone who believes in popular power."

by Sarah Wagner in <www.Venezuelanalysis.com>

TPT:

Another good site is

Bush Protest Victim and Mom

2005-04-15T14:38:00.000-07:00

Yusuke Joshua Banno is a college student from Arizona marooned in Manhattan. In his old life, he would be feeding his two chickens, riding his bike and working in the maintenance department of the student union. He would also be graduating next month.

Instead, Mr. Banno is answering phones at a Midtown restaurant, Blockhead's Burritos, to help pay his legal expenses. He has fallen a semester behind at Prescott College in Tucson.

The change in Mr. Banno's life dates from August, when he traveled by bus to New York City to join crowds of Protesters at the Republican National Convention.

He was arrested on Aug. 29, 2005 and he was charged with Assault and Reckless Endangerment, accused of igniting a papier-mâché dragon. For months he has proclaimed his innocence, saying that in the chaos of the crowd, the Police just picked the wrong person.

Last week, Prosecutors seemed to agree, after concluding that a Police Officer had misidentified Mr. Banno. Yesterday, a Spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney's office said the case would probably be dismissed.

Behind the story of Mr. Banno's legal travails, there is a personal one. It is a tale of the obstacles and financial hardships faced by an ordinary working family in a case that appears likely to be dismissed, like so many others from Convention week. As of last month, about 80 percent of the Convention arrests had been dismissed, adjourned in contemplation of dismissal, or ended in Acquittals, according to statistics from the District Attorney's office.

Beyond the immediate problem of the charges, which could have brought Mr. Banno a prison term of up to seven years, money was a serious concern. His lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, took the case for a very low fee, but it would still cost thousands of dollars to take to trial.

For Mr. Banno's Mother, Betty Jo Banno, who learned of his arrest while watching television at home in Prescott, Ariz., the amount of her son's bail, $200,000, came as an early shock.

"I just couldn't believe it; I thought it couldn't be real," she said, sitting on a couch in a Midtown NYC apartment that she sublet for herself, her Son and out-of-towners involved in the case. "The first thing I thought was, 'I don't have $200,000.' "

Mr. Banno's friends mobilized for his defense. They held a potluck party in Tucson. One friend started a Web site. Another sold T-shirts. His college put out a jar for donations. A friend, Toby Fraser, watched dozens of hours of videotape at the National Lawyers Guild, an advocacy group for justice in political and economic trials.

Mr. Banno spent six days in Jail. Eventually, Mr. Banno's bail was reduced to $10,000. Mrs. Banno wiped out nearly half her savings to send the bail money. As the case wound its way through the legal system, Mr. Banno's trial was delayed five times, Ms. Shroff said. Mrs. Banno bought plane tickets for herself, Ms. Shroff, Mr. Fraser and four witnesses.

In January, Mrs. Banno left her job to help with the trial preparations. She took out a $55,000 home equity loan to cover her family's living expenses. In all, she said, she has spent about $30,000 on the case.

"I used to feel pretty free going out to eat and taking a trip to visit my Mom in Hawaii," Mrs. Banno said. "All of that has pretty much stopped."

The ordeal has created plenty of tension for Mr. Banno's extended family in Japan. His father, who is Japanese and works in Fukuoka as a yoga teacher, was told by his relatives that his son's arrest had shamed them. Mrs. Banno has not heard from her in-laws since then.

After months of pressing the case for Mr. Banno's innocence, a big break came late last month, when Ms. Shroff and Mr. Fraser tracked down time-sequence photographs taken by a Daily News photographer that showed Mr. Banno was far from where the fire began.

A week later, Prosecutors stated in court that the Officer had misidentified Mr. Banno, and yesterday a District Attorney Spokeswoman said that the case would probably be dropped.

by Sabrina Tavernice in NY Times

TPT:

After gouging an everyday American working mother of half her savings ($30,000).

Pentagon Wasted Billions

2005-04-14T16:37:00.000-07:00

The Defense Department is unable to track how it spent tens of millions of dollars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the US War on terrorism, Congress's top Investigator said on Wednesday.

The Department "doesn't have any system to be able to determine with any degree of reliability and specificity how we spent" tens of millions in war-related emergency funds set aside by Congress, Comptroller General David Walker told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee. He disclosed the accounting gap as part of a broader indictment of Pentagon business practices.

Congress approved $25 billion in extra Defense spending for fiscal 2005, which ends on Sept. 30, 2005. Lawmakers were moving to approve $81 billion more this week outside the normal Budget process, including about $75 billion for war-related Defense Department operations.

While there was no doubt that appropriated funds were spent, "trying to figure out what they were spent on is like pulling teeth," Walker said, referring to an accounting effort he said was under way for Congress.

Overall, Walker said the Defense Department, which is seeking $419.3 billion for its fiscal 2006 budget, was wasting billions of dollars a year because of ineffective management of its business operations.

TPT:

U.S. prisons are bursting at the seams with 3 strike petty shoplifters, but Pentagon and Bush Coalition Authority executives in Iraq pay no penalty for losing track of 10 Billion dollars.

With Bush loyal Republicans in charge of the Supreme Court and Congress, there is a justice vacuum in Washington. Who has the authority to question the Pentagon? The Bush Attorney General?

Att. Gen. Alberto Gonzales should follow-up indictments from the Comptroller General such as this one. But as a Partisan 'bud' of Bush's, he would never dare investigate anyone who is supposed to be 'fighting the terrorists'.

The open robbery of U.S. Taxpayers by Halliburton, Kellogg Brown & Root, and dozens of other independent Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan is a scandal only historians will have the courage to tell.

New Department of Peace

2005-04-14T11:55:00.000-07:00

Congressman Proposes a New Department of Peace

By W.L. Floyd TPT

Washington DC:

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today proposed a new Department of Peace for President Bush’s Cabinet. Kucinich predicted on CNN that the Secretary of Peace would have challenged the pre-Iraq War Intelligence and told Bush that the WMD evidence was simple “insufficient” to justify War.

The Act would also create an “Academy of Peace” to teach proven methods of non-violence, interventions into Family abuse, and retraining the nation’s teachers for School grounds abuse.

Rep. Kucinich proposed an annual budget of about $6 billion, a small pittance compared to the over $400 billion spent yearly on Pentagon weapons and personnel, and additional $82 billion for the two Wars in 2005.

More at: www.PeaceAlliance.org and at http://www.kucinich.us/

Montana Supports SAFE Act

2005-04-14T08:22:00.000-07:00

Make Patriot Act SAFE for All

The 2005 Montana Legislature took a bipartisan stand for principles of liberty and freedom embodied in the State and U.S. Constitutions when it overwhelmingly approved a resolution saying that provisions of the USA Patriot Act should expire this year.

Senate Joint Resolution 19 was supported by 39 Senators and 87 Representatives. The resolution united Legislators from all points of the political spectrum because they all support fighting terrorism but oppose "any portion of the USA Patriot Act that violates the rights and liberties guaranteed under the Montana Constitution or the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights."

The Resolution doesn't have the force of law. But it does "exhort" state officials against assisting with any investigation or detentions under the USA Patriot Act that violate Constitutionally guaranteed rights. It requests public schools and colleges to notify each individual whose education records have been obtained by law enforcement under the Patriot Act. It requests public libraries to post a notice to patrons that their library records may be obtained by federal authorities.

"Frankly, what it says to me is that civil liberties are a bipartisan issue in Montana," said Rep. Rick Maejde, Republican from Trout Creek.

"Montana isn't the first state that passed a resolution," said Sen. Jim Elliot, D-Trout Creek, "but this resolution is the strongest statement against the Constitutional violations of the Patriot Act of any state and almost every city or county." In fact, more than 370 state or local legislative bodies nationwide have approved resolutions against all or parts of the Patriot Act.

The Patriot Act was rushed through Congress in the terrifying days immediately after the 9/11 attacks. Even then, the Congressional majority recognized that some of the act's far-reaching powers should not be permanent. That's why 16 provisions are due to sunset (expire) at year's end.

That's why a group of Congressional Democrats and Republicans are supporting the Security and Freedom Enhancement Act (SAFE) of 2005. House and Senate versions of the SAFE Act were introduced earlier this month with Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, sponsoring the Senate bill.

"It is possible to fight terrorism without eroding the Constitution and the rights of Americans," Sen. Craig said.

The range of support for the SAFE Act speaks volumes about why this legislation is necessary. It has the backing of the American Civil Liberties Union as well as the American Conservative Union and the League of Women Voters.

The SAFE Act of 2005

Limit "sneak and peak" searches in which individuals aren't notified that the government seized private records or searched their homes or businesses.

Limit roving wiretaps.

Limit access to business records.

Limit the definition of terrorism so that the Patriot Act couldn't be used to stifle political dissent.

Require that the Government have documented suspicion of a crime before seizing personal information, such as library and medical records.

Cheney Targets Iran

2005-04-13T16:29:00.000-07:00

by Ray McGovern

Dick Cheney's Causa Belli: Iran has a lot of oil. Therefore, Iran does not need Nuclear energy for civil purposes. Ergo, Iran's Nuclear development program must be for Weapons of Mass Destruction!!

Linzer reminds us that in 1975 – with Gerald Ford President, Dick Cheney his Chief of Staff, Donald Rumsfeld Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz responsible for nonproliferation at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and Henry Kissinger Secretary of State and National Security Adviser – the Ford Administration sold the Shah that Iran needed a Nuclear program to meet its future energy requirements.

This is precisely what Iranian officials claim today. There is legitimacy to that claim. Energy experts note that oil extraction in Iran is already at or near peak and confirm that the country will need alternatives to oil in the coming decades.

Dick Cheney eagerly persuaded President Ford to sign a directive in 1976 offering Iran a deal that would have meant at least $6.4 billion for U.S. corporations like Westinghouse and General Electric, had not the Shah been overthrown three years later.

The offer included a reprocessing facility for a complete Nuclear-fuels cycle – essentially the same capability that the United States, Israel, and other countries now insist Iran cannot be allowed to acquire.

Given Big Dick Cheney's success in orchestrating the "news" media overture to the invasion of Iraq, he is now choreographer of truth for this year's campaign against Iran.

VP Calls for US Exit

2005-04-13T14:51:00.000-07:00

Vice President Yawar Asks for U.S. Departure

Iraqi Vice President Ghazi Yawar said it was time to put aside the official Government line that "U.S. Troops will leave only when Iraqi troops are ready", and start discussing a mechanism for their departure.

TPT:

That's why Rumsfeld flew so suddenly to Baghdad. The Shiites want U.S. Troops to leave. Moktada Al Sadr and his Badr Brigades wants U.S. Troops on the next plane out.

100,000-500,000 Demonstrators want an immediate End to the Occupation. Now the Sunni Vice President. Rumsfeld flew in to stop the mutiny.

Stay tuned.

500,000 Iraqis Protest Occupation

2005-04-13T09:42:00.000-07:00

Chanting "No! No to Terrorism!" and "No! No to America," and "Yes, Yes to Islam," between about 500,000 Supporters of Cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr held a massive demonstration in Baghdad’s Firdos Square, where the statue of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was pulled down by Iraqis and American Soldiers, two years ago.

The Rally was called on the second Anniversary of the fall of Baghdad with Protesters demanding an End to the U.S. Military Occupation in Iraq, and a speedy trial for former President Saddam Hussein.

The supporters of radical Shiite Cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army Militiamen signed truces last year with U.S.-led forces, filled Firdos Square and spilled into nearby avenues, waving Iraqi flags and burning effigies of U.S. President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Saddam Hussein.

Protesters carried the coffin of a Senior al-Sadr Official who was gunned down late Friday in Baghdad. Two others were wounded in the ambush on their car.

U.S. and Iraqi Security Forces kept a close eye on the March, with U.S. soldiers standing behind blast walls and armed Soldiers watching from rooftops.

Iraqi Shi’ites loyal to Cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr held cut-outs of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, and U.S. President George W. Bush during the Protest Rally.

Al-Sadr had stayed out of the limelight since leading failed uprisings last year in the southern city of Najaf and Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood. But he has stepped up criticism of the United States in recent weeks, mainly by organizing Saturday’s Protest, which he hoped would draw 1 million people.

Officials organized the Demonstration with the Iraqi Interior Ministry’s promise of protection. A group of Protesters and Police spent all night securing Firdos Square.

Sunni Muslim Clerics also called on their followers to protest on the two year Anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, but a Senior Official in the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, Jalil al-Shemari, said their followers would not be joining in the Rally at Firdos Square. He said there will be a Sunni Demonstration against US Occupation, but he would not say where his followers would protest.

Several other Marches were held across Iraq to demand that the United States set a timetable for its withdrawal.

REUTERS / Ali Jasim

Image of King George W

2005-04-13T09:14:00.000-07:00

Secret Service Visits Chicago Art Gallery Over Bush Artwork

In Chicago, the Secret Service sent two Agents last week to the opening of Art exhibit at a school-run gallery at Columbia College. The target of the Investigation was a piece titled Patriot Act.

It depicts a sheet of mock postage stamps that show President Bush with a gun pointed at his head.

Last spring, Secret Service agents in Washington State questioned a high school student about anti-war drawings he did for an art class. One drawing depicted Bush's head on a stick.

TPT:

Compared to the Vietnam War protest period this seems about right. Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were both lambasted by leading American artists from coast to coast.

Doctors Legitimize Torture

2005-04-13T00:50:00.000-07:00

Doctors Aiding and Abetting Torture at Abu Ghraib?

by Robert Jay Lifton, M.D.

We know that Medical personnel have failed to report to higher Authorities wounds that were clearly caused by Torture, and that they have neglected to take steps to interrupt this torture.

In addition, they have turned over Prisoners' medical records to Interrogators who could use them to exploit the Prisoners' weaknesses or vulnerabilities. We have not yet learned the extent of Medical involvement in delaying and possibly falsifying the Death Certificates of Prisoners who have been killed by torturers.

A May 22, 2005 article on Abu Ghraib in the New York Times states that "much of the evidence of abuse at the Prison came from Medical documents" and that records and statements "showed Doctors and Medics reporting to the area of the Prison where the abuse occurred several times to stitch wounds, tend to collapsed Prisoners or see patients with bruised or reddened genitals."1

According to the article, two Doctors who gave a painkiller to a Prisoner for a dislocated shoulder and sent him to an outside Hospital recognized that the injury was caused by his arms being handcuffed and held over his head for "a long period," but they did not report any suspicions of abuse.

A Staff Sergeant–Medic who had seen the Prisoner in that position later told Investigators that he had instructed a Military Policeman to free the man but that he did not do so. A Nurse, when called to attend to a Prisoner who was having a panic attack, saw naked Iraqis in a human pyramid with sandbags over their heads, but did not report it until an investigation was held several months later.

A June 10 article in the Washington Post tells of a long-standing Policy at the Guantanamo Bay facility whereby Military Interrogators were given access to the Medical records of individual Prisoners.2 This policy was maintained despite complaints by the Red Cross that such records "are being used by Interrogators to gain information in developing an interrogation plan."

A civilian Psychiatrist who was part of a Medical review team was "disturbed" about not having been told about the practice, and said that it would give Interrogators "tremendous power" over Prisoners.

Other Reports, though sketchier, suggest that the Death Certificates of Prisoners who might have been killed by various forms of mistreatment have not only been delayed but may have camouflaged the fatal abuse by attributing deaths to conditions such as cardiovascular disease.3 Various medical protocols — notably, the World Medical Association Declaration of Tokyo in 1975 — prohibit all three of these forms of Medical complicity in torture.

Moreover, the Hippocratic Oath declares, "I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing." To be a Military Physician is to be subject to potential moral conflict between commitment to the healing of individual people, on the one hand, and responsibility to the Military hierarchy and the Command structure, on the other.

I experienced that conflict myself as an Air Force Psychiatrist assigned to Japan and Korea some decades ago: I was required to decide whether to send psychologically disturbed Men back to the United States, where they could best receive treatment, or to return them to their units, where they could best serve Combat needs.

American Doctors at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere have undoubtedly been aware of their medical responsibility to document injuries and raise questions about their possible source in abuse. But those Doctors and other Medical personnel were part of a Command structure that permitted, encouraged, and sometimes orchestrated torture to a degree that it became the norm — with which they were expected to comply — in the immediate Prison environment.

The Doctors thus brought a Medical component to what I call an "atrocity-producing situation" — one so structured, psychologically and militarily, that ordinary people can readily engage in atrocities. Even without directly participating in the abuse, Doctors may have become socialized to an environment of torture.

The prestige and virtue of their Medical authority helped sustain the torture.

In studying various forms of medical abuse, I have found that the participation of Doctors can confer an aura of legitimacy and can even create an illusion of therapy and healing. The Nazis provided the most extreme example of Doctors' becoming socialized to atrocity.4 In addition to cruel medical experiments, many Nazi Doctors, as part of Military units, were directly involved in killing.

To reach that point, they underwent a sequence of socialization: first to the Medical Profession, always a self-protective Guild; then to the Military, where they adapted to the requirements of Command; and finally to Camps such as Auschwitz, where adaptation included assuming leadership roles in the existing death factory.

The great majority of these Doctors were ordinary people who had killed no one before joining murderous Nazi institutions. They were corruptible and certainly responsible for what they did, but they became murderers mainly in atrocity-producing settings.

...Probably some Doctors, Nurses, or Medics took steps, of which we are not yet aware, to oppose the torture. It is certain that many more did not. But all those involved could nonetheless reveal, in valuable Medical detail, much of what actually took place. By speaking out, they would take an important step toward reclaiming their role as healers.

Source Information From the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston.

References1. Zernike K. Only a few spoke up on abuse as many soldiers stayed silent. New York Times. May 22, 2004:A1. 2. Slevin P, Stephens J. Detainees' medical files shared: Guantanamo interrogators' access criticized. Washington Post. June 10, 2004:A1. 3. Squitieri T, Moniz D. U.S. Army re-examines deaths of Iraqi prisoners. USA Today. June 28, 2004. 4. Lifton RJ. The Nazi doctors: medical killing and the psychology of genocide. New York: Basic Books, 1986. 5. Statement of Leonard Rubenstein, executive director, Physicians for Human Rights.

More at the New England Journal of Medicine and at

www.aclu.org/newsNewsPrint/

Negroponte Contra Scandal

2005-04-12T11:30:00.000-07:00

The day after the House voted to halt all aid to the Contra Rebels fighting to overthrow the Sandinista Government of Nicaragua, U.S. Ambassador to Honduras John D. Negroponte urged the President's National Security Adviser and the CIA Director to hang tough.

The thrust of the envoy's "back channel" July 1983 message to the men running the Contra War against Nicaragua was contained in a single cryptic sentence: "Hondurans believe special project is as important as ever."

"Special Project" was code for the secret arming of Contra Rebels from bases in Honduras -- a cause championed by Negroponte, then a rising diplomatic star. In cables and memos, Negroponte made it clear that he saw the "special project" as key to the Reagan Administration's strategy of rolling back communism in Central America.

As Negroponte prepares for his Senate Confirmation hearing today for the new post of Director of National Intelligence, hundreds of previously secret cables and telegrams have become available that shed new light on the most controversial episode in his four-decade diplomatic career. The documents, drawn from Negroponte's personal records as Ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, were released by the State Department only in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Washington Post.

The documents were initially declassified and provided to Negroponte in 1998, after his retirement from the Foreign Service, but the vast majority have never been made public. A State Department FOIA official said yesterday that about 100 documents from the collection are still being "processed."

....Negroponte's determination to reverse the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua occasionally put him at odds with fellow envoys and with more cautious State Department bureaucrats.

"I have my doubts about a dinner at the residence for a man who is in the business of overthrowing a neighboring Government," cabled U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua Anthony Quainton, after Negroponte played host to the political leader of the Contra Rebels, Adolfo Calero. Quainton made it clear that he was not a fan of Negroponte's "gastronomic diplomacy."

The contrast with his immediate predecessor, Ambassador Jack R. Binns, who was recalled to Washington in the fall of 1981 to make way for Negroponte, is striking. Before departing, Binns sent several cables to Washington warning of possible "death squad" activity linked to Honduran strongman Gen. Gustavo Alvarez. Negroponte dismissed the talk of death squads and, in an October 1983 cable to Washington, emphasized Alvarez's "dedication to Democracy."

The cables show that the two men typically met once a week, and sometimes several times a week. Ambassador Negroponte supported an April 1983 request by Alvarez for more weapons for the Contra Rebels, and he predicted that the size of the Contra force "could be doubled in next five months if we provided necessary weapons.

Michael Dobbs - Washington Post

TPT:

Ambassador Negroponte was the main conduit for many millions of dollars during the illegal "Drugs for Guns" Contra scandal. He funneled Pres. Reagan's "Iran-Contra" funds (via Oliver North) to rogue mercenaries accused by the U.N. of murdering tens of thousands of innocent farmers (men, women and children).

News media documents prove that the murderous Contra Rebels began under Ambassador Negroponte with the sytematic disappearance, torture and death of Honduran Leaders opposed to the Military dictatorship in Honduras.

Ambassador Negroponte secretly covered up years of Contra abuses to avoid Congressional scrutiny that had voted to cut off all funding.

President Clinton and the Democratic Senate are chiefly responsible for not prosecuting the main leaders in the Iran-Contra 'drugs for guns' scandal. Negroponte, Elliot Abrams, and Feith were all young leaders in the Drugs for Guns scam. Rather than serving time for murdering tens of thousands of innocent farmers, these criminals were key to the Office of Special Plans which cooked the intelligence for the pre-emptive Iraq invasion strategy.

Had these Iran-Contra figures like Negroponte, Abrams and Feith been prosecuted, there might not have been an endless Iraq War morass.

Halliburton War Profiteer Arrested

2005-04-12T08:54:00.000-07:00

Former Kellogg Brown & Root (Halliburton) Manager in Kuwait

One of the Managers who worked in Kuwait was an American named Jeff Alex Mazon. Former business associates describe Mazon as a "high-energy guy" who was always flashing a smile and who worked his way up in Kellogg Brown & Root after joining the company in 1996. In Kuwait, he is said by several to have sported a goatee and long hair, enjoyed partying and comfortably assumed authority over many of the subcontractors that signed on for work in the early months leading up to the Iraq invasion.

"He was a powerful person in contracting and you could tell he felt the power," said one KBR subcontractor.

In February 2003, Mazon was given the job of soliciting bids from potential Subcontractors to supply fuel tanker trucks at a U.S. Military Airport in Kuwait for a six-month period from March through August of 2003. KBR's estimated cost for this six-month contract was about $685,000.

Mazon got at least two (2) bids -- one from an unnamed Kuwaiti company for about $1.9 million and another from a company called La Nouvelle, run by Ali Hijazi, a thought to be Lebanese by several sources, for nearly $1.7 million.

An Illinois grand jury is now alleging that Mazon fraudulently inflated both bids before the contract was awarded, more than tripling them to $6.2 million for the unnamed Company and $5.5 million for La Nouvelle. La Nouvelle then won the contract on the basis that it had submitted the lower bid.

In June 2003, Mazon quit his job. Then three months after leaving KBR, he was accused of receiving a $1 million payment from La Nouvelle. The Indictment was issued in mid-March 2005 by the Illinois Grand Jury.

On March 16, 2005, Mazon was arrested in Norcross, Georgia, just outside the city of Atlanta and charged with four counts of major fraud and six counts of wire fraud. He waived his right to appear before an Atlanta Court the next day and was sent to Rock Island, Illinois, where the United States Army Field Support Command is based, the Military authority which issued the fuel tanker contract. Hijazi was charged but has not been apprehended yet.

If convicted, Mazon faces a maximum penalty for up to 10 years in Prison and a fine of $5 million for each count of major fraud and no more than 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for each count of wire fraud.

Marie deYoung, a meticulous former Army Chaplain spent five months working for KBR in Kuwait where she was in charge of bringing Subcontracts up to date. She says she found plenty of problems with the contracts with La Nouvelle and other companies.Taking her complaints to Congress last June, deYoung testified that while reviewing those contracts, she found La Nouvelle had billed monthly for 37,200 cases of soda at a cost of $1.50 per case but delivered only 37,200 cans.

She also testified that KBR was paying La Nouvelle up to $1.2 million a month to provide laundry service, equivalent to $100 per 15-pound bag. Under a separate contract with the same company, KBR paid only $28 a bag, she said.

Founded in 1997, La Nouvelle is believed to have had a number of retail franchises before entering Military services. When preparations for the Iraq invasion began, the Company soon landed deals with KBR worth hundreds of millions of dollars to provide dining facilities and logistical services that included construction equipment leases, generators, tents, protective suits for hazardous materials, and other services.

BY DAVID PHINNEY - email at PhinneyDavid@yahoo.com

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12011

Abu Ghraib Rebel Attack

2005-04-11T09:41:00.000-07:00

Behind the 2-3 Attacks on Abu Ghraib Prison

Lies an Insistent Demand: "Occupiers Go Home"

Rory Carroll in the The Observer (London)

An orange sun set over the city, casting just enough light to finish the kickabout, when the players heard the unmistakable sound of Rockets whooshing overhead.

Seconds later the Missiles slammed into Abu Ghraib, the jail adjoining their football pitch. Explosions resounded across the complex and more rockets were launched. The Americans fired back.

The 25 children and seven adults sprinted to a wall enclosing the School grounds and huddled together, waiting for the storm to pass. But the attack intensified and bullets peppered closer so the group scrambled into a communal toilet. They cowered in darkness as hits on their shelter showered dust and masonry fragments. Some of the children started to sob, vomit and soil themselves.

'We put our hands in the Children's mouths to stop them crying. It was the most difficult time of my life,' said Abu Mohammad, 38. For 12 hours the group crouched in the three-square-metres space, murmuring prayers as car bombs detonated outside, until dawn broke and they emerged, waving a white T-shirt, to a scene of devastation.

Last Saturday's attack on Abu Ghraib drew worldwide headlines as one of the boldest insurgent operations in Iraq, which wounded 44 US troops and underlined the vulnerabilities of the Occupation, two years after the invasion.

Thousands of Shias loyal to the militant Cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr gathered in Baghdad yesterday, the anniversary of the City's fall and the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue, to demand an American withdrawal. It is a wish even closer to the heart of Arab Sunnis, who form the insurgency's backbone. The attack on Abu Ghraib, a symbolic target since last year's inmate abuse scandal, underlined a shift from hit-and-run ambushes to large-scale assaults.

To tackle the sprawling complex 20 miles west of the Capital, which doubles as a US base, they used almost every type of weapon in their armoury. An internet statement purportedly from the militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed it was the work of his group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, and depicted a heroic, slick engagement which lasted several hours and deployed seven suicide car bombers. 'Then the merciful brigades and Muslim soldiers clashed with the infidels.'

The Americans painted a less dramatic picture, saying mortar rounds and Rockets were followed by attacks by gunmen on foot. At one point, Defenders destroyed a suicide car bomb before it reached the walls and Rapid-Response troops, backed by Apache helicopters and artillery repulsed the rest of the attack after 40 minutes.

While conceding its sophistication, a US Spokesman said the assault did not breach the walls, free inmates or kill coalition forces and was therefore a failure, costing the insurgents dozens dead and wounded.

The Real Story

Only now have those caught in the crossfire given their version. It partly contradicts the US and al-Zarqawi statements by claiming there was chaos and panic on both sides and, in the aftermath, looting by US and Iraqi security forces.

Mohammad, one of the adults who sheltered in the toilet with the children, including his three-year-old son, lives in Khan Dhari, a district near the jail inhabited by working-class Arab Sunnis hostile to the Occupation.

As they do most Saturdays they met in the grounds of a primary School on the south-western side of the Jail to play football. Guards in watchtowers would have seen that the group was mostly young children, said Mohammad.

When Rockets landed around them, Guards returned fire wildly, apparently unconcerned about Civilian casualties. Even when searchlights 'turned the place into day', US bullets continued hitting the School, despite the absence of Rebels there, he said.

At that point the Jail gates clanged opened and U.S. Military Humvees roared out, the Rapid Response Forces. Suddenly, a black Opel, packed with explosives, slips into the Convoy and blows up. 'It was hell on fire,' said Mohammad, a tall, wiry Islamic scholar, who said he saw charred Humvee engines, and a human hand and leg.

Two suicide bombers in KIA vehicles rammed US tanks in the Rapid Response convoy.

Another bomber driving a pick-up truck got lost and knocked on doors asking directions to the nearest US target. 'He was a foreigner and asked why people were not coming out for jihad.'

By dawn the football players, thirsty, exhausted and terrified, heard the wail of a mosque's muezzin summoning people to prayer. They ventured out to be met by Iraqi Soldiers who were astonished no one was hurt given the damage to their shelter. Suspicious, the Soldiers demanded to see the football as proof of their story. It was found in a corner of the pitch.

Mohammad, who made no secret of his sympathy for the Rebels, claimed that in the clampdown that followed Iraqi troops broke into dozens of shops and looted fruit, biscuits, soft drinks and electronic goods.

US troops joined in, he said, with one Soldier wresting a bag of mobile phones from an Iraqi and several others catching a goat and a sheep which were driven in a Humvee back to their base.

Two months after the Election, Iraq's Parliament finally named a President and Prime Minister (last week), paving the way for a new Government which is expected to accelerate the handover of security from coalition to Iraqi forces and empower the majority Shia community.

But tens of thousands of militant Shias who gathered in Baghdad yesterday demanded an immediate pullout, or at least a timetable.

'No, no, to the Occupiers,' they chanted, waving effigies of George Bush and Tony Blair.

For The Original:

<http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1456153,00.html>

Ugly Mask of US Occupation

2005-04-11T08:50:00.000-07:00

Onto the dusty tan city that was Baghdad, dotted with Saddam's grandiloquent Babylonian modernism -- the minatory office towers, the ceremonial gates and looming monuments -- had been superimposed, in the two years of Occupation, an entirely new architecture, a harsh gray city of a distinctive high-brutalist style.

Oceans of concrete has flowed into Baghdad, miles of barbed wire had been unwound around and through it, mountains of sand has been poured over it, and everywhere these most basic of elements have been gathered and shaped into the distinctive forms I saw before me. Lining the bridge, Berliners: twelve or fifteen-foot-high blast barriers of rough concrete named for the Berlin Wall that now marched by the hundreds and thousands along Baghdad's main streets and avenues, masking vast parts of the City from public view.

Blocking the bridge and surrounding the American armor were Jersey barriers: concrete half-walls that, arranged in the form of "chicanes," or tight S-curve-shaped obstacles, force vehicles to slow and stop. Tank traps: massive iron bars welded together in crisscross forms so that they resemble the jacks a giant child might play with, typically draped, as here, in flamboyant swirls of barbed wire.

Hesco barriers: huge square canvas bags reinforced with steel and filled with dirt or cinderblocks, the giant's version of a sandbag, stacked in their scores and hundreds. Sandbagged bunkers. Steel watchtowers. Iron blast doors. X-ray machines. Magnetometers. Sniffer dogs.

And the ubiquitous Squads of men, some uniformed but more often not, armed with 9 mms and AK-47s and the clear willingness to fire first and ask questions afterward.

So pervasively had this new rough concrete and steel world imposed itself, that one evening, in the well-to-do district of Mansour, my driver, bewildered by the proliferating roadblocks and checkpoints and chicanes, found himself unable to find a way out of a neighborhood he had known well for decades.

By Mark Danner

More at http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2307

The Bully John Bolton

2005-04-10T17:29:00.000-07:00

U.N. Nominee John Bolton, Top Neo-Con Shout Specialist

Among those accusing Mr. Bolton is Carl Ford, a former Chief at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence. He is expected to tell the Senate Committee that Mr Bolton distorted intelligence gathered on Iraq's weapons programmes and other matters to make it fit the Administration's goals.

Senators will also hear allegations made by another State Department official, Christian Westermann, that Mr. Bolton ignored his advice that testimony he was about to make to Congress two years ago warning that Cuba was developing biological weapons went beyond available evidence.

Even before these questions about Mr. Bolton surfaced, there was widespread consternation at his choice, given his well-known record of disdain for the UN and lack of enthusiasm for multilateralism.

Ten years ago he told a conference that "if the UN building in New York lost 10 storeys, it wouldn't make a bit of difference". More recently he suggested that if the membership of the Security Council were to be changed, "I'd have one permanent Member, because that's the real reflection of the distribution of power in the World," John Bolton exclaimed.

By David Usborne The Independent UK.

NEWSWEEK

Efforts to derail John Bolton's nomination as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations are progressing. We learned that, in a closed-door interview with Senate Intelligence Committee staffers last week, Stuart Cohen, former Acting Chief of the National Intelligence Council (NSC), a panel of Senior Intel Analysts, said Bolton had visited his CIA office to demand that the Council's top Latin America Expert be removed from his post. Sources say the expert, who can't be identified because he serves Undercover overseas, tangled with Bolton about the draft of a speech Bolton made in 2002 claiming that Cuba was pursuing a germ-warfare program.

A Senate Intel-Committee Report last year quoted another WMD Analyst from the State Department as saying that Bolton had also tried to have him transferred because he raised questions about the same speech. (Neither analyst was reassigned, one was promoted.)

Democrats expect a Witness will appear at Bolton's delayed Confirmation hearing this week to testify about Bolton's alleged attempts to intimidate Intel professionals. Intel sources say a review last fall of Cuban WMD programs by the entire U.S. Intel community vindicated the Analysts who questioned the draft of Bolton's speech.

The Review concluded that U.S. Agencies had reason to doubt the accuracy of a 1999 Intel estimate which Bolton used to justify his claim that Cuba had "at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort."

Students Protest Army Recruiters

2005-04-10T11:44:00.000-07:00

Madison Students Protest Military Recruitment on Campus

To do your part, walk out of class, out of work or just out of bed at 11 a.m. April 14 and join the rally at Bascom Hill with those who are too outraged to stand for it any longer.

It’s called the Troops Out Walk Out and it’s being planned by Stop the War! There are two demands: troops out of Iraq and out of our schools. In place of Military Recruiters on campus we should have increased financial aid availability (with no war-strings attached).

It should be funded with the billions currently wasted on the Occupation of Iraq.

If you’re not quite convinced, let me consider a FAQ:

If the troops leave, there will be chaos. Don’t we have a responsibility to the Iraqi people to clean up the mess we made?

This assumes Iraq isn’t currently in chaos and that the U.S. military can play a humanitarian role. Yet reports from Iraq consistently show that access to clean water, electricity and gasoline is unreliable at best.

The rate of infant malnourishment under the American Occupation is roughly double what it was under Saddam Hussein (7.7 percent in December 2004 versus 4 percent in March 2003).

To boost the image of a post-Occupation collapse into chaos, the Bush Administration makes the Insurgency out to be Terrorism against civilians and journalists. However, of the 4,303 attacks by the insurgency between September 2003 and October 2004, only 180 were against civilian targets and eight were against journalists. In reality, the overwhelming majority of violence in Iraq is waged by the United States, and the lion’s share of attacks by Iinsurgents is against the Ooccupation, not civilians.

End the Ooccupation and you end the violence. The War and Occupation has taken the lives of over 100,000 Iraqis — a conservative estimate made by the peer-reviewed British Lancet Journal several months ago. Then there are the thousands of American families who suffer the death or injury of loved ones. 1,549 American military deaths and 11,442 injuries are recorded as of this writing.

Leaving America to “clean up its mess” in Iraq is tantamount to leaving the fox in the hen ouse. The United States doesn’t wage Occupations for different reasons than it wages Wars. The goal in Iraq is the same it always has been: control the flow of Iraqi oil, limit Trade Tariffs and Labor Laws.

And to set an example to the rest of the World that the United States will call the shots anywhere it pleases. Such an undemocratic mission requires a violent response to the inevitable resistance.

http://badgerherald.com/oped/2005/04/08/iraq_war_protest_sti.php

Girl Blogging from Baghdad

2005-04-10T08:30:00.000-07:00

It seems that The Shiite's Da’awa Party’s Jaffari is going to be the Prime Minister and Talbani is going to get the decorative position of President. It has been looking like this since the elections. There is talk of giving our token Sunni Ghazi Al Yawir some high-profile position like National Assembly spokesperson.

The gesture is meant to appease the Sunni masses but it isn’t going to do that because it’s not about Sunnis and Shia. It’s about Occupation and Vichy governments. They all look the same to us.

What it seems policy makers in America don’t get, and what I suspect many Americans themselves "do get", is that millions of Iraqis feel completely detached from the current people in power. If you don’t have an alliance with one of the Political parties (ie under their protection or on their payroll) then it’s difficult to feel any affinity with people like Jaffari, Allawi, Talbani, Yawir, etc.

We watch them on television, tight-lipped and shifty-eyed after a meeting where they quarreled about Kirkuk or Sharia in the Constitution and it feels like what I imagine an out-of-body experience should feel like. In spite of Elections, they still feel like puppets. But now, they are high-tech puppets.

They were upgraded from your ordinary string puppets to those life-like, battery-powered, talking puppets. It’s almost like we’re doing that whole rotating President thing Bremer did in 2003, all over again. The same faces are getting tedious.

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

The Mahdi Army Returns

2005-04-09T10:55:00.000-07:00

The Friday prayers at the Kufa Mosque, the shrine a few miles from Najaf where Moktada Sadr's Father preached in the 1990s, and where his Son built his movement after the U.S. invasion, are akin to street theater.

Religion is less pronounced than politics, and politics helps to rally the thousands of men who gather each week in the open-air courtyard.

"Long live Sadr!" his Mahdi Army shout as they file through the arched brick entrance. "Moqtada is the bridge to heaven!"

The prayers led by Members of Sadr's movement have long drawn some of the largest crowds in post-invasion Iraq, in Baghdad and Kufa.

Just as constant is the message of protest, delivered in the sermon by Nasser Saadi, a rousing, swaggering Cleric built like a wrestler. The Enemies of the Shiites are not their Sunni brothers, he insisted. The adversaries of Iraq are not fellow Arab countries.

"I am addressing my call to the honest Iraqi people who stand against the Occupation, who reject the Occupation and who demand Freedom," he shouted, dressed as others in a funeral shawl. "The Enemy is one Enemy, and that Enemy is the Occupier."

The crowd erupted, fists in the air: "No to the Occupier! No to Terrorism! No to the Devil!"

"Wherever America is present, then there is Terrorism," Saadi said. "When they ask the Terrorists why they're here, they say we came to fight America. If America leaves, there would be no Terrorism. Terrorism would leave with it."

For the complete, in depth article go to
Anthony Shadid at The Washington Post 4/8/05

Bush Booed in Rome

2005-04-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

VATICAN CITY

Mourners outside St. Peter's Square booed and whistled when the President's face was shown on giant video monitors set up for the thousands who couldn't get into the square.

Bush accompanied a delegation that included two former Presidents, George I and Bill Clinton. The First Lady and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice were also there.

The war President and First Lady sat next to French President Jacques Chirac.

CBS Cameraman Shot and Arrested

2005-04-09T09:04:00.000-07:00

A freelance Cameraman for CBS News was shot and wounded by American troops during a gunfight in the northern city of Mosul. Originally, the U.S. military said it had mistaken his camera for a gun.

But they did not apologize to the CBS freelancer. Instead, they arrested him, and said they were investigating his ties to the anti-U.S. insurgents.

In some ways, the incident carries echoes of the right-wing "keyboard assault" on the Associated Press, and its Pulitzer-winning shot. The shot taken by an Iraqi freelancer who had been told of an anti-U.S. demonstration, of two Election Workers being executed.

From the Associated Press story about this episode:

The Cameraman suffered minor injuries Tuesday during a battle between U.S. soldiers and suspected Insurgents, the Military said. He was standing next to an alleged Insurgent who was killed during the shootout, the statement said.

The Military issued a statement then saying the Cameraman was shot because his equipment was mistaken for a weapon.

But on Friday, the Military said the Cameraman was detained because there was probable cause to believe he posed "an imperative threat to Coalition forces."

"He is currently detained and will be processed as any other security Detainee," the statement said.

CBS News spokeswoman Leigh Farris said, "We're looking into the situation."

The group Reporters Without Borders, which has called for a thorough and transparent probe of the entire incident:

"Once again the US Forces have targeted a Journalist just doing his job," the press freedom organization said. Reporters Without Borders pointed out that this was not the first time that US Soldiers shot a Cameraman after mistaking his camera for a gun.

Indeed, certainly from the initial Military report quoted here, there's nothing that suggests that the unnamed Cameraman was anything but a Journalist trying to do his job, which is to freely cover a news event. If he is an Insurgent, then yes, by all means detain him.

But unfortunately, the pattern we've seen so far doesn't encourage us that CBS and their Employee will get that transparent investigation that Reporters Without Borders is seeking.

And that's a shame. Free elections are worthless without a free press. We already know where the "101st Fighting Keyboarders" stand on this, but we hope and pray for more from the American military.

Iraq Union Wants US Withdrawal

2005-04-08T13:40:00.000-07:00

By David Bacon

(Truthout.org Interview with Hassan Juma'a Awad in Basra, Iraq)

Q: How do the Members of the oil workers Union look at the Occupation?

A: From all the meetings we've had with Workers all over the industry, we've heard from almost everyone that they want the Occupation to end immediately, and the immediate withdrawal of all Occupying forces from Iraq.

Q: Are you concerned about your security if the Occupation ends immediately?

A: No, we are not worried. We don't have any problem with that because we are able to look after ourselves and our own security.

Q: If the Occupation Forces withdraw, isn't there a danger that there could be attacks on Trade Unionists by the insurgents, like those which have taken place in Baghdad?

A: That could happen, but we have to solve our problems ourselves.

Q: What kind of Government do you want to see?

A: We want a Government that will represent the national Iraqi movements. It should be friendly to all countries, especially those that stood against the war and occupation.

The next Government should not only ensure the security of the Iraqi people, but also oppose the privatization of industry. We oppose privatization very strongly, especially in the oil industry. It is our industry. We don't want a new Colonization under the guise of privatization, with international companies taking control of the oil.

The day will come when the Occupation forces leave. The US timetable foresees the formation of an Iraqi Government after the elections. The US should then leave, but I don't have faith that they will leave so easily. We should all come together to resist the Occupation.

Q: How do you see the armed resistance to the Occupation?

A: We support all types of honorable struggle in Iraq, and we want the Occupation to end immediately. But we are against acts of terrorism against Iraqi civilians, from certain terrorist organizations in Iraq. We do not support that. We oppose it as much as we oppose the occupation. If the Occupying forces are withdrawn, we are capable of building a new democracy, one that will represent the interests of the Iraqi people, and not the US Military.

White House TV News

2005-04-08T11:10:00.000-07:00

How the White House Fakes Everything

Escalating violence in Iraq, a struggling U.S. economy, an unpopular plan to privatize Social Security, Homeland Security left underfunded, while the rich get giant Tax cuts....What's a White House to do when the news about its policies isn't favorable? Fake it.

Over the past four years, at least 20 different Federal Agencies have been involved in producing hundreds of fake TV News segments, many of which were "subsequently broadcast on Local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the U.S. Government's role in their production."

Since Bush took office, the White House has spent at least $254 million on these fake segments and other Public Relations ploys to spread positive propaganda about his policies.

The concerns about these fake News segments is that they obscure the fact that they are paid for using Taxpayer money and contain a one-sided, purely positive spin on Administration policy.

The Office of Broadcasting Services is a branch of the State Department which traditionally has acted as a clearinghouse for video from News conferences. That all changed three years ago. In 2002, "with close editorial direction from the White House," the Unit started producing fake News segments to back up President Bush's rationale for going to War in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As one Senior official told Congress, the phony segments were "powerful strategic tools" used to influence Public Opinion. In all, the Office produced nearly 60 segments, which were then distributed around the world for local Stations to use as actual News footage.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) criticized the Administration's role in creating phony News three separate times in the past year, saying unless viewers are aware that what they're watching is Government produced, it constitutes "covert propaganda." The GAO also forbade Federal Agencies from creating prepackaged News reports "that conceal or do not clearly identify for the television viewing Audience that the Agency was the source of those materials."

These fake news spots are produced with Taxpayer money by outside Public Relations firms. Federal Law forbids Federal Agencies from doing exactly that; the U.S. Code states "appropriated funds may not be used to pay a Publicity Expert unless specifically appropriated for that purpose."

However, the GAO, which monitors the Law, has no enforcement power. That responsibility lies with Congress and the Supreme Court.

U.S. Federal Law also contains the Smith Mundt Act of 1948, which prohibits the spread of Government propaganda inside the United States (although it allows groups like Voice of America to broadcast it to Foreign audiences.)

___________________________________________________________

Goon Boots Kids Out of Bush 'Town Hall' Meeting

ALEXANDER YOUNG: At an event billed as a “conversation on saving Social Security,” I and two friends, Leslie Weise and Karen Bauer, decided to go down and participate in this Bush Town Hall Meeting. Unfortunately, we were evicted before the President arrived by an as yet unnamed man, because of the content on the Bumper sticker of my friend's car. That bumper sticker said, “No more blood for oil.”

"We parked in the parking lot, stood in line for a half an hour or so, went and sat down in the Audience and then were forcibly ejected by a Person who was posing as a Secret Service Agent.

AMY GOODMAN: Why did you think he was a Secret Service Agent?

ALEXANDER YOUNG: Previous to our entry, he had pulled aside a couple of friends of mine. Leslie and Karen were pulled aside and were told to wait for the Secret Service to arrive. And this Man appeared and started threatening them, telling them that they would be sent to Prison and arrested if they pulled anything while they were inside.

AMY GOODMAN: And then?

ALEXANDER YOUNG: And then, this is the same individual who came and grabbed us from the Audience and started pushing and shoving us out of the Hall. We kept asking, “Why are you doing this? Who are you? Where are we going?” He wouldn’t answer any of those questions. This Man was wearing a wire. He had one of those Earpiece Microphones on, and he had a lapel pin similar to a Secret Service Agent, wearing a navy blue suit.

AMY GOODMAN: Now -- at the time, you definitely thought he was Secret Service.

ALEXANDER YOUNG: Definitely.

AMY GOODMAN: What about now?

ALEXANDER YOUNG: Well, the secret service has informed us that he was not an agent, that he was in fact a host committee person. So we believe that that is in stark contrast to the White House's official description of him being a volunteer.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain.

ALEXANDER YOUNG: Scott McClellan said that this person was a Volunteer and that this was an anomalous event. We think that this event is quite like other events that have happened around the country, like in Fargo, North Dakota, and in Oregon, where people have been evicted because of Political speech. And we find that to be really, really atrocious, an abuse of Taxpayer funds to have events that are posed as public events, but at the same time they're really very Private events to a select crowd so that the President can SPIN his message to the public.

We asked our Congressional Delegation to open investigations. As you said earlier, Diana Degette has asked for Congressional investigations. Senator Ken Salazar has asked Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey to investigate allegations that this person posed as a Law Enforcement Officer, which is a crime in Colorado and Federally. We're just trying to find out, first of all, who this person is, and secondly, make sure that this doesn't happen again.

It's just – it’s wrong.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/08/1346227

Faking Civil Society

2005-04-08T09:58:00.000-07:00

By Jonathan Schell

....Here in America, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was created in the early 1980s. Funded by Congress and governed by a Board that includes active and retired politicians of both Parties, it nevertheless calls itself a "nongovernmental" organization. Its declared mission was to support democracy per se, not any political party, but the distinction was soon lost in practice. Most of the $10.5 million handed out in Nicaragua during the elections of 1990 went to the opposition to the Sandinistas, who were duly voted out of power.

In 2002, the Endowment (NED) funded groups in Venezuela that backed the briefly successful Coup against President Hugo Chávez, in which the Venezuelan Parliament, Judiciary and Constitution were suspended by the Coup leaders.

The day after the overthrow, which Omar Encarnación of Bard College has called a "Civil society coup," the President of the International Republican Institute, which is loosely tied to the GOP, and is a conduit for Endowment (NED) funds, stated, "Last night, led by every sector of Civil society, the Venezuelan people rose up to defend democracy in their country." Speaking for the U.S. Government, Presidential Press Secretary Ari Fleischer stated that the Coup "happened in a very quick fashion as a result of the message of the Venezuelan people."

In fact, the Venezuelan people opposed the Coup, and Chávez, almost immediately returned to power by a democratic Election.

More recently National Endowment contributions went to groups in Ukraine that supported Presidential candidate Victor Yushchenko, who became President after fraudulent results engineered by the opposition Government candidate were reversed by popular pressure. In Venezuela, the outcome was the destruction, however brief, of all Democratic institutions, whereas in Ukraine the outcome was the rescue of Democracy; yet in both cases the integrity of Civil society, which depends on independence from Governments, was partially corrupted.

Something similar was meanwhile happening within the United States. The Republican Party and its supporters have been the pioneers, creating what might be called a shadow Civil society and seeking to merge it imperceptibly with the real one. Former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley summarized the process in a March 30, 2005 op-ed in the New York Times: Large donors founded partisan Think Tanks more interested in propagandizing than in thinking; then proceeded to establish seemingly independent but actually politically subservient news organizations such as FOX News and the Rush Limbaugh show.

Recently, some new wrinkles in the process have emerged: the use of fake Newscasters, pretending to report from an independent News station while actually working for a Department of Government, and fake Reporters, such as "Jeff Gannon," the imposter permitted by the White House to ask sycophantic questions of the President at White House Press conferences. There are also fake "Town Meetings" (the very emblem of Civil society) with the President, at which a screened audience asks pre-tested questions.

The strategy of faking Civil activity has a long tradition in the foreign sphere. For example, the CIA virtually cut its teeth manipulating popular and intellectual movements in Europe in the late 1940s and '50s. (Indeed, historian Allen Weinstein, who was the National Endowment's first acting President, has commented, "A lot of what we do today was done covertly twenty-five years ago by the CIA.")

But the domestic practice is more recent. One of the lesser-known points of origin is the Presidency of Richard Nixon, who once ordered his aide Charles Colson to firebomb the Brookings Institution, then called it off. But he also had some more workable ideas.

He told Patrick Buchanan, then his Communications Director, that he wanted somehow not only to cut off existing "left-wing" Foundations "without a dime" but also to found a right-wing Institute that would seem to be independent but actually be managed by the White House.

As Buchanan commented in a memo, "some of the essential objectives of the Institute would have to be blurred, even buried, in all sorts of other activity that would be the bulk of its work, that would employ many people, and that would provide the cover for the more important efforts."

In this matter, as in so many others, today's Republican Party is the legatee of Richard Nixon.

TomDispatch / The Nation Magazine

Army Kicked Off Campus

2005-04-07T15:10:00.000-07:00

Students Against War (SAW) Kick Military off UCSC Campus

On April 5, 2005 about 300 UC Santa Cruz Students led by Students Against War (SAW) kicked U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps Recruiters out of the annual Career Center Job Fair, marking yet another success for the nation-wide Counter-Military Recruitment Campaign.

Call to Action!

Joined by Watsonville’s Brown Berets, SAW Protesters gathered for a Rally at the campus Bookstore and occupied the streets in a traffic-stopping procession up to the Stevenson Event Center, where the Job Fair was being held.

Students were motivated by fiery speeches about the racist, sexist, classist and heterosexist biases of the Military, all of which are in Violation of the University of California at Santa Cruz’s non-Discrimination policies.

As the March began, a small group of Students infiltrated the Job Fair and surrounded the Recruiter’s tables. They chanted and linked arms. This small group was soon joined by more Students from the March, who pushed their way through front and side doors, chanting, “Whose Campus? Our Campus!” The Job Fair Administrators attempted to literally shove them out the door.

Ultimately, 100 Students surrounded the Recruiters’ tables while the remaining 200 Marchers stayed outside the Event Center, blocking the Entrances and chanting in support of those inside.

Evil is Classified Secret

2005-04-07T08:50:00.000-07:00

The White House is maintaining extraordinary restrictions on information about the Detention of high-level Terror suspects, permitting only a small number of Members of Congress to be briefed on how and where the Prisoners are being held and interrogated, Senior Government Officials say.

Some Democratic Members of Congress say the restrictions are impeding effective oversight of the Secret program, which is run by the Central Intelligence Agency and is believed to involve the detention of about three dozen senior Al Qaeda leaders at secret sites around the world.

By Law, the White House is required to notify the House and Senate Intelligence Committees of all intelligence-gathering activities. But the White House has taken the stance that the secret Detention Program is too sensitive to be described to any Members other than the top Republican and Democrat on each Panel.

The issue is expected to be discussed at a Hearing scheduled for Thursday, at which Porter J. Goss, the Director of Central Intelligence, is to testify in closed session before the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Detention program remains so highly classified that the Members of Congress would discuss the restrictions that surround it only in the most general of terms.

"These restricted briefings should be expanded," said Representative Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who is a Member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Since the C.I.A. first took custody of Al Qaeda members in 2002, other Government Officials said, the only Lawmakers on the House Panel and its Senate counterpart whom the White House has permitted to be briefed on the issue have been the Chairmen and Ranking Minority (Democratic) Members.

More at <http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/040605D.shtml>

TPT:

The secrecy Bush seeks is not to prevent weapons from being copied by enemy agents. Bush classifies Renditions to keep them secret from the American people, the Congress and the monopoly Media.

Renditions, run by the CIA, continue to ferry Prisoners-without-names to nations that regularly torture Prisoners. Why is this so secret? Oh, the White House answers, if host nations hear the Liberal Media is spotlighting their abusive prisons they'll shut down the CIA Rendition Program.

Congress cannot discuss the immorality and total illegality of the CIA Rendition Program, because Egypt or Jordan might stop accepting Detainees for torture.

Venezuela Oil Goes to Europe

2005-04-07T00:42:00.000-07:00

Oil giant ChevronTexaco (current chief Oil contractor in Iraq) is looking to invest between $5 billion and $6 billion US in a heavy crude Oil project in Venezuela's Orinoco tar belt this year, a company official said.

Spain's Repsol YPF and Chevron announced last week plans for a joint project to refine extra-heavy crude from the tar belt in eastern Venezuela into synthetic crude. The fuel would then be transported through a new regional pipeline. ...The upcoming project will be the first heavy Oil venture for Spain's Repsol in Venezuela.

Norwegian Oil company Statoil and France's Total hope to begin a similar project this year.

Royal Dutch Shell Group is also interested in a heavy crude venture with State-run Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA, in the area.

Venezuela's Government is entitled by Law to at least a 51 per cent stake in any new upstream Oil projects...

TPT:

Blow back from White House neo-con meddling in the Venezuelan Election, the 2002 Coup against the democratically elected President Hugo Chavez, and the ongoing CIA, U.S. State Department, and phony front group National Endowment for Democracy campaign to overthrow Chavez.

Venezuela is now selling their Oil to Europe via Spain. This will put an immediate squeeze on U.S gasoline supplies normally exported by Caracas. Hugo Chavez also announced Oil supply contracts with China and Japan.

By funneling $40 million for TV Ads and Rallies via CIA front groups to sabotage a democratically elected Venezuela President, the bullies in the Bush Administration have risked what they often term "our national security" - Oil supplies.

For more details see the excellent news site VenezuelaAnalysis.com

Goodbye cheap Venezuela Oil. Another neo-con victory for former Assistant Secretary of State John Bolton, Bush's new attack mouth at the U.N. (U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.).

Condi Rice fired John Bolton. Bush quickly appointed the shout specialist (Bolton) to the U.N. to please conservative extremists and U.N. hatemongers.

But the key is the neo-con PNC Cabal of Wolfowitz, Bolton, Perle, and Feith are out of Bush's inner circle. If Condi Rice wants "Escape from Iraq", this is an excellent time for the Peace Movement to show our size. We are, by all monopoly media Polls, the Silent Majority.

May 1st, 2005, New York City UFPJ.org is having a HUGE RALLY (See elsewhere on this blogspot for details.)

Also Rep. Henry Waxman needs emails, letters, and phone calls in Washington. He must step forward and announce his solid support for Lynn Woolsey's Peace Resolution in the House, HR-35.

HR - 35 = Bring Our Troops Home Alive

Ralph Nader on Escape

2005-04-05T09:50:00.000-07:00

Ralph Nader

Columnist Robert Novak, who has a long history of credible reporting and strong contacts in the Bush Administration, reported in The Chicago Sun-Times that there is "determination in the Bush administration to begin irreversible withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq this year." Novak gives credit primarily to Secretary of State Condolezza Rice who he says "is expected to support administration officials who want to leave even if what is left behind does not constitute perfection."

Novak reports that the national consensus and the preponderance of Republican opinion support withdrawal saying: "President Bush's supporters believe it is time to go and leave the task of subduing the insurgents to Iraqis." Indeed, polls show a majority of Americans disapprove of Bush's handling of the war and according to a recent Harris poll 59% want most of U.S. troops home within a year even if Iraq does not have a stable government.

What is driving the Administration, in addition to public opinion, the weight of more than 1,500 U.S. soldiers who have died and tens of thousands injured or sick in the Iraq War. According to Novak, the administration has concluded: "That is too heavy a price to continue paying for not letting Iraqis try to make the best of their country now that we have eliminated Saddam Hussein."

The article refers to Paul Wolfowitz who Novak describes as "a pragmatist who views an intrusive U.S. occupation in Iraq as a political benefit for the insurgency."

These concerns echo a statement publicly expressed by CIA Director Porter Goss who testified before the Senate in February that Iraq has become a training ground for terrorists saying: "These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism. They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups, and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries."

It seems many of President Bush's top advisors and some Congressional Republicans are telling him - the U.S. needs to get out of Iraq. If Novak is right, perhaps Bush-Cheney are finally listening. Perhaps.

However, a Withdrawal can take many forms. The plans for Withdrawal we put forward at DemocracyRising.US calls for a dual withdrawal of the U.S. Military as well as U.S. corporate occupation.

The Military withdrawal needs to include stopping construction on the 14 "enduring" Military bases that are being built to provide the United States with a large Military presence in the region. Withdrawal needs to mean that the U.S. military will leave the country.

And, a Corporate withdrawal is also needed. The U.S. has tried to remake the Iraq economy so that U.S. corporate interests could take it over. Paul Bremer put in place rules that allowed for massive Foreign ownership and domination of Iraqi businesses, low Corporate Tax Rates, immunity protection from Lawsuits and now allowing Workers to form Trade Unions. The U.S. needs to give Iraq its economy back and let them determine their own future.

In the DemocracyRising.US withdrawal plan we urge continued humanitarian aid to Iraq to rebuild its infrastructure. The U.S. invasion of Iraq and the long-term US-led economic sanctions and embargoes of products critical to Public Health against Iraqi Civilians resulted in tremendous damage to people, especially their Children and the Iraqi infrastructure. During the Clinton administration Economic sanctions brought ruin to the Iraqi economy and the loss of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives.

The current illegal War and Occupation have devastated the country. Therefore, the US has a responsibility to the Iraqi people so Iraq can become a functioning nation again. However, we should not allow U.S. oil and other corporations to profit from the illegal invasion and occupation of their country. Control over Iraqi oil and other assets should be exercised by Iraqis.

There may be light at the end of the tunnel. The anti-war movement can have a larger impact soon. It is time for us to redouble our efforts to ensure a complete and responsible U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. We have the power to make this happen.

DemocracyRising.US

Escape from Iraq

2005-04-05T09:26:00.000-07:00

ROBERT NOVAK
Chicago Sun-Times
(Conservative alternative to Chicago Tribune, which owns L.A. Times)

Determination high in the Bush Administration to begin irreversible withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq this year is reinforced by the presence at the State Department of the most dominant Secretary since Henry Kissinger three decades ago.

Condoleezza Rice is expected to support administration officials who want to leave even if what is left behind does not constitute perfection.

Amid the Presidential campaign's furious debate over Iraq, I reported last Sept. 20 ("Quick exit from Iraq is likely") about strong feeling in the policymaking apparatus to get out of Iraq in 2005 even if Democracy and Peace had not been achieved there.

My column evoked widespread expressions of disbelief, but changes over the last six months have only strengthened the view of my Bush administration sources that the escape from Iraq should begin once a permanent Government is in place in Baghdad.

The most obvious change is the improved situation on the ground in Iraq, where it is no longer preposterous to imagine local security forces in control. Subtler is the advent of Secretary of State Rice. This willowy, vulnerable-looking woman wields measurably more power than Colin Powell, the robust general who preceded her.

Officials who know Rice well believe she favors the escape from Iraq.

"She is not controlled by the Neo-cons insisting on achieving a perfect Democracy before we go," a Colleague told me. That reflects not only the national Consensus but also the preponderance of Republican opinion. Without debating the wisdom of Military intervention in Iraq two years ago, President Bush's supporters believe it now is time to go and leave the task of subduing the Insurgents to Iraqis.

In the Sept. 20 column...I reported that Rice, Hadley and Wolfowitz all would opt for withdrawal, skeptics claimed that I had misrepresented Wolfowitz and ignored his neo-conservative mind-set. In fact, Wolfowitz resents the neo-con label and privately regards its use as a catchword to be a form of anti-Semitism. (?)

Nor is Rumsfeld a Neo-con determined to spread Democracy to every corner of the world and eager to place U.S. boots wherever needed. He is a pragmatist who views an intrusive U.S. occupation in Iraq as a political benefit for the Insurgency. Rumsfeld consequently opposes the addition of more American troops, which is advocated by some supporters and by many critics of Bush.

The central figure in shaping the policy is Rice. Not since the days of Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft has a Secretary of State had the power position of working with a former Deputy at the National Security Council, as Rice does now. Furthermore, she is Bush's closest adviser. During Bush's first term, he spent vastly more time with Rice than with Powell or Rumsfeld.

Actually, withdrawal from Iraq short of an absolute Military victory seems more feasible today than it did last September. Six months ago, it appeared that U.S. officials might have to ignore a bloody secular conflict between Sunnis and Shiites. Lethal though it is, the current insurgency does not rise to the level of a genuine Civil War.

But how does the President rationalize an escape from Iraq with his Inaugural Address' embrace of a Wilsonian or Neo-conservative dogma to spread Democracy worldwide? Bush officials who want to reduce the Military profile in the region argue that the grass-roots democratic sentiment boiling up in Lebanon is to get rid of Syrian troops, not to welcome U.S. troops.

Escape from Iraq for Bush, however, does abandon the Neo-con dream of micromanaging creation of a democratic state in Iraq. Since I wrote about this option last September amid much skepticism, 500 more U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq to bring the toll to 1,500. That is too heavy a price to continue paying for not letting Iraqis try to make the best of their country now that we have eliminated Saddam Hussein.

Source
ww.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak281.html