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HAS BUSH BECOME A REALIST??? ... DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATHE!!!

05.31.04 (7:48 am) [edit]

[b]Has Bush Become A Realist??? That is Patrick J. Buchanan's opinion ... I wonder ... Is Bush just trying to keep the 'lid-on' until after the November election??? ... Then will the neo-con traitors using Chalabi/Allawi stage a coup d'etat resulting in an Iraq no better off than under Saddam Hussein??? ... You decide ...[/b]

America may be heading home from Iraq sooner than many of us realize. For the implied message of the president's address at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., is that America wants out of Iraq.

Rereading that speech, one finds in it little of Churchill's "We-shall-fight-them-on-t he-beaches" defiance. Rather, the president laid out a five-step strategy to secure "freedom and independence, security and prosperity for the Iraqi people" – and then depart.

The five steps? Besides helping to establish security, rebuild infrastructure and increase international aid, they are to transfer sovereignty to a U.N.-appointed interim government by June 30 and hold elections by Jan. 31 for a national assembly. Says Bush, the interim government "will exercise full sovereignty." But full sovereignty means control of foreign forces. It means the authority to tell the U.S. military it cannot attack sanctuaries like Najaf and Fallujah without Baghdad's approval. China, France and Russia want that restriction written into the U.N. resolution Bush is seeking. And Tony Blair has said that any government appointed by U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, a Sunni Arab, will have the power to restrict U.S. military operations.

Why might this mean the war may end sooner than imagined?

With a majority of Sunnis and Shi'ites now hostile to continued U.S. military presence, how many Sunni or Shi'ite leaders, either appointed or elected, will defy the popular will and authorize American attacks on their co-religionists? How many will publicly agree to permanent U.S. military bases inside their country?

Should the new interim government remain silent in the face of a U.S. attack, say, on Fallujah, would it not be seen as a puppet government? Would not its leaders risk the fate of Izzedine Saleem, leader of the Iraqi Governing Council killed by car bomb at the gates of the Green Zone?

If the Iraqis tell us to stop initiating attacks, U.S. officers will have three options. They can defy Baghdad and refuse to fight under rules of engagement handed down by Iraqi politicians sympathetic to the enemy. They can accept the orders from Baghdad, which would enrage and inflame the Army. Or we can declare the U.S. military does not take commands from local rulers or U.N. bureaucrats, withdraw and come home.

It is hard to believe President Bush or the U.S. military will allow any U.N.-appointed Iraqi government to tell us when, where or how we must fight. Hence, an early collision between Gen. Abizaid and the new U.N.-appointed government seems inevitable.

And this summer and fall, as the election campaign heats up for the national assembly, how many candidates will be willing to run on a "Stand by Uncle Sam!" platform? Is it not more likely that, seeing how popular Sheik Moqtada Al Sadr became by defying America and killing our troops, candidates will appeal to voters by pledging to end the occupation and send the Americans packing?

How will Americans react to Iraqi politicians, whose freedom is being guaranteed by U.S. troops, campaigning openly for the ouster of those American troops from the country?

At Carlisle, President Bush spoke of a swift transfer of power to Iraqi officials and security forces. As was always inevitable in this war, the president must now begin to rely for the attainment of his strategic goals on Iraqis themselves. But when have Iraqi forces ever taken the initiative and attacked the insurgents?

"Fallujah must cease to be a sanctuary for the enemy," said the president. But when the Marines pulled out of Fallujah and we left it to Iraqis to deal with the militias, the Ba'athists and foreign fighters, what took place was not a fight, but fraternization.

President Bush has called Iraq the central front in the war on terror and his "world democratic revolution." He is now wagering the success of both causes on an Iraqi police and army that have yet to show any of the willingness to fight exhibited by the insurgents in Fallujah or the militia of Al Sadr.

The neoconservative dream was to create a pro-American, free-market democracy in Iraq to serve as a model and catalyst for Arab peoples and convert Iraq into a base camp of American Empire, flanking Iran and Syria. It was to bring to power an Iraqi DeGaulle named Ahmed Chalabi, who would recognize Israel, build a Mosul-to-Haifa oil pipeline and become the Simon Bolivar of the Middle East.

That utopian vision has vanished. President Bush has rejoined the realist camp. We are not going deeper in. We are on the way out.

[b]Patrick J. Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party’s candidate in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of the new magazine, The American Conservative. Now a commentator and columnist, he served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national television shows, and is the author of seven books. See his MSNBC site[/b]. - http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?a...

HAS BUSH BECOME A REALIST??? ... DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATHE!!!

05.31.04 (7:47 am) [edit]

IRAQ, R.I.P.

05.31.04 (7:31 am) [edit]

[b]Iraq, R.I.P.

[i]Get out while the going is good [/i][/b]

Retired four-star general William E. Odom, who once headed the National Security Agency during the Reagan administration, is no peacenik. Nor would anyone outside the David Horowitz wing of the War Party call him "anti-American," but General Odom believes the time has come to call a spade a spade. "We have failed" in Iraq, he says, and "the issue is how high a price we're going to pay — less by getting out sooner, or more by getting out later."

The logic of Odom’s proposal is unassailable, which is why the War Party is in a panic to refute it, in spite of the unwillingness of politicians in either party to so much as mention the possibility of pulling out. In an interview with Odom on the [i]Today Show[/i], the clueless Katie Couric threw the "what will it do for the reputation of this country" question at him, invoking "stick-to-it-ness" as some kind of sacred American principle, to which the General replied:

"[i]I think you've misunderstood what I said. We have already failed. Staying in longer makes us fail worse. If we were a small power, we might have to worry about our so-called credibility. I don't think that's the issue. The issue is how effective we were going to use our power. The longer we st- ... if we blindly say we should stick to it, we're misusing our power and we're making it worse. Let me put it more bluntly. Let's suppose you murdered somebody, and you suddenly look and say, `We can't afford to have murdered this person, so therefore let's save him.' I think we've passed the chances to not fail. And now we are in a situation where we have to limit the damage. And the issue is just how much we are going to pay before we decide to limit the damage, not rescue ourselves by throwing good money after bad[/i]."

It seems like only yesterday that we were vowing to capture and, if necessary, kill Moqtada Sadr and his fellow Sadrists – today, we are negotiating with him, and his popularity is hitting new heights with the Iraqi people. Fallujah has yet to fall, and the Ayatollah Sistani has warned us off Najaf. We have the firepower, but our opponents have people power: the Iraqis want us out, and, with the level of hostility rising, by some estimates it would take up to half a million soldiers to "pacify" the place. We cannot ensure the security of the "Green Zone" where our commanders and assorted bureaucrats sit huddled in their bunker, never mind the rest of Iraq, which is rapidly breaking up into clan-based ethno-religious enclaves.

When we invaded Iraq we smashed the state apparatus and dismantled the Ba’athist military machine. That’s what our military is surpassingly good at: destruction. But we cannot create a state – or, as they’re presently trying to do with the imposition of "ex"-Ba’athist Iyad Alawai, recreate one – by fiat. All governments, even the worst dictatorships, depend on some form of popular support, even if that only amounts to passive resignation. But passivity is not what we’re seeing in the response to the American presence.

It is the insurgents, rather than Washington’s handpicked servitors, who enjoy popular support – and, increasingly, legitimacy – in the eyes of the Iraqi people. This perfectly illustrates what may be codified as a general principle: U.S. intervention, in theory launched to support Iraqis who advocate "democracy" and the American system of constitutionally limited government, in practice empowers the bad guys – the Sadrists, Shi’ite mullahs, and various other militias and bandit gangs feeding on the dismembered corpse of the Iraqi nation-state.

Faced with the paradox of American military power, the President, some aver, is sounding the call to retreat, even as he vows to "stay the course." The neoconservatives who dragged us into this conflict – those who haven’t recanted – are now criticizing Bush for going wobbly. But that is confusing fluctuations in rhetoric with troop movements: politically, the President is moving toward John Kerry’s non-position, calling for internationalizing the occupation even as he vows to send more American soldiers over there. Seeking a UN resolution, handing over the trappings of power to an "interim" government on June 30, it looks very much like we are seeking an exit from the Iraqi quagmire. The "utopian vision" of the neocons "has vanished," says Pat Buchanan, and "President Bush has rejoined the realist camp. We are not going deeper in. We are on the way out."

Not so fast. Politically, it may be advantageous for Bush to give that impression, but the reality is that this war could very well widen before it begins to contract. The recent incident near the Syrian border, in which a wedding party – or, if you believe the Pentagon, an incursion of foreign fighters – was bombed, illustrates where we are headed. It wouldn’t take much to drag the Syrians into this war, and many in Congress – which just approved sanctions on Syria – are itching for just that.

Yes, the vision of "democracy" spreading throughout the Middle East was a utopian fantasy, but it was never meant to be taken seriously: that’s just rhetorical window-dressing. Don’t bother to examine a folly, as Ayn Rand once put it: ask yourself only what it accomplishes. The answer, in this case, is: We have destroyed Iraq as a unitary state, pulverized it into at least three parts, probably more, and this particular Humpty Dumpty is not going to be put back together again.

Iraq was never a real nation to begin with, but just lines on a map drawn by the British Foreign Office. It was only Saddam Hussein and the Ba’athist terror that managed to keep it all together: when that passed into history, so did Iraq.

At least two successor states seem to be emerging from the wreckage: Kurdistan, and a Shi’ite Islamic "republic" in the south, with the infamous "Sunni Triangle" becoming an ungovernable No-man’s-land. Every ethnic and political grouping is armed to the teeth and in combat mode, and no one has a monopoly on coercion: as a nation, in any meaningful sense of the word, Iraq is effectively dead.

General Odom is right. Judged by our publicly declared war aims – establishing security, "democracy," and peace in the region – we have already failed in Iraq. But anyone who takes these at face value is simply deluding themselves. Washington’s real war aim was only to make the next war inevitable, and, I fear, they are practically on the brink of "success." It would take very little to escalate the conflict beyond Iraq’s borders: we are that close to an invasion of Syria, or even, given the developing crisis over Tehran’s nuclear program, with Iran.

One cannot but agree with General Odom’s logic: the longer we stay in, the greater our losses. But I would add a note of urgency to his call for a U.S. withdrawal. If we don’t get out now – like Ralph Nader, I would set a date certain – then we shall likely find ourselves embroiled in a far larger conflict than we ever imagined. It is not merely a matter of cutting our losses, but of preventing a catastrophe – and the clock is ticking. We either quit Baghdad, or we’ll soon find ourselves fighting to hold Damascus. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently declared that we’re closer to the beginning of the "war on terrorism" than the end, and there you have it straight from the horse’s mouth.

[b]NOTES IN THE MARGIN[/b]

I note, with sadness, that the Libertarian Party has chosen to commit suicide rather than grow up and become relevant. As a former member, I watched their recent national convention on CSPAN with growing horror as it became plain as day that they were going to reject a strong antiwar presidential candidate, Aaron Russo (who also used to be Bette Midler’s manager, and made it big as a Hollywood director/producer), in favor of somebody I never heard of -- and, given what I saw at the convention, hope to never hear of again. Nor do I expect to be disappointed in that hope. The media is going to totally ignore the LP, Nader is going to suck up all the third party attention, and this CBS story will have turned out to be the journalistic equivalent of vaporware. If I were Karl Rove, I’d be celebrating about now. - http://www.antiwar.com/justin...

[b]Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com. He is also the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (with an Introduction by Patrick J. Buchanan), (1993), and Into the Bosnian Quagmire: The Case Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans (1996). He is an Adjunct Scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, in Auburn, Alabama, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Libertarian Studies, and writes frequently for Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. He is the author of An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard[/b].

IRAQ, R.I.P.

05.31.04 (7:26 am) [edit]

DICK CHENEY LIED (AGAIN): THIS TIME IT'S HALLIBURTON, STUPID!!!

05.30.04 (11:00 am) [edit]

[b]Cheney coordinated Halliburton Iraq contract: report[/b]

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A Pentagon e-mail said Vice President Dick Cheney coordinated a huge Halliburton government contract for Iraq, despite Cheney's denial of interest in the company he ran until 2000.

The March 5, 2003 e-mail, from an Army Corps of Engineers official, said that top Pentagon official Douglas Feith got the job of shepherding the contract, according to the newsweekly Time that hits newsstands Monday.

Feith had approved the multi-billion-dollar deal "contingent on informing WH (the White House) tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w(ith) VP's (vice president's) office," said the e-mail obtained by Time.

The newsweekly said it was three days later that Halliburton won the contract, although no other bids had been submitted.

"As vice president, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the federal government," Cheney told NBC's "Meet the Press" in September, Time said.

Cheney had been Halliburton's CEO until 2000, when he accepted the vice presidential spot.

Halliburton's current CEO Dave Lesar told Time, "There are very few companies in the world that could or would adapt this quickly while, at the same time, (financing) an operation of this magnitude."

However, Halliburton was not up to the job, Lesar admitted.

"Our control system was not ready for the surge of activity," he told the New York-based weekly.

Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith was handed the job of coordinating the contract by his boss, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Time said.

Feith, Wolfowitz and Cheney, along with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Cheney's Chief of Staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby, form the core of Bush administration "hawks" who pushed for the war in Iraq. - http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

DICK CHENEY LIED (AGAIN): THIS TIME IT'S HALLIBURTON, STUPID!!!

05.30.04 (10:57 am) [edit]

PANICKY-BUSH'S NEW IRAQ PM WAS BEHIND THE PHONY 45-MINUTE WMD LIE... ANOTHER NEO-CON CON-MAN!!!

05.29.04 (5:58 am) [edit]

[b]Exiled Allawi was responsible for 45-minute WMD claim[/b]

The choice of Iyad Allawi http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/mi... , closely linked to the CIA and formerly to MI6, as the Prime Minister of Iraq from 30 June will make it difficult for the US and Britain to persuade the rest of the world that he is capable of leading an independent government.

He is the person through whom the controversial claim was channelled that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction could be operational in 45 minutes.

Dr Allawi, aged 59, who trained as a neurologist, is a Shia Muslim who was a member of Saddam Hussein's Baath party in Iraq and in Britain, where he was a student leader with links to Iraqi intelligence. He later moved into opposition to the Iraqi leader and reportedly established a connection with the British security services. His change of allegiance led to Dr Allawi being targeted by Iraqi intelligence. In 1978 their agents armed with knives and axes badly wounded him when they attacked him as he lay asleep in bed in his house in Kingston-upon-Thames.

Dr Allawi became a businessman with contacts in Saudi Arabia. He was charming, intelligent and had a gift for impressing Western intelligence agencies. After the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraq National Accord (INA) party, which he helped to found, became one of the building blocks for the Iraqi opposition in exile. The organisation attracted former Iraqi army officers and Baath party officials, particularly Sunni Arabs, fleeing Iraq.

In the mid-1990s the INA claimed to have extensive contacts in the Iraqi officer corps. Dr Allawi began to move from the orbit of MI6 to the CIA. He persuaded his new masters that he was in a position to organise a military coup in Baghdad.

With American, British and Saudi support, he opened a headquarters and a radio station in Amman in Jordan in 1996, declaring it was "a historic moment for the Iraqi opposition". After a failed coup attempt that year there were mass arrests in Baghdad. Abdul-Karim al-Kabariti, the Jordanian prime minister of the day, said that INA's networks were "all penetrated by the Iraqi security services".

Dr Allawi and the INA returned to Iraq after the fall of Saddam and set up offices in Baghdad and in old Baath party offices throughout Iraq.

There were few signs that they had any popular support. During an uprising in the town of Baiji, north of Baghdad, last year, crowds immediately set fire to the INA office.

Dr Allawi was head of the security committee of the Iraqi Governing Council and was opposed to the dissolution of the army by Paul Bremer, the US viceroy in Iraq. He stepped down in protest as head of the committee during the US assault on Fallujah. But his reputation among Iraqis for working first with Saddam's intelligence agents and then with MI6 and the CIA may make it impossible for them to accept him as leader of an independent Iraq. - http://news.independent.co.uk...

PANICKY-BUSH'S NEW IRAQ PM WAS BEHIND THE PHONY 45-MINUTE WMD LIE... ANOTHER NEO-CON CON-MAN!!!

05.29.04 (5:54 am) [edit]

REPUBLICANS CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH ...

05.29.04 (5:50 am) [edit]

[b]Republicans Can't Handle the Truth [/b]

I used to marvel at James Carville and Paul Begala. Despite the parade of scandals during the Clinton administration – eight years of lies, deceit and power abuses – they never got tired of defending the indefensible.

Now I stand in amazement at Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, fast on their way to becoming the Carville and Begala of the Bush administration.

Limbaugh compares the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal to fraternity hazing.

"This is no different than what happens at the Skull & Bones initiation. I'm talking about people having a good time," he said. "You ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of needing to blow some steam off?"

So in Limbaugh's mind (now drug-free, as far as we know), beating pledges to death and packing their bodies in ice to mask the stench are now typical hijinks at New Haven. And sodomizing them with night sticks is hilarious fun for all. (Urine test for Rush – stat!)

Hannity blames Democrats and their friends in the liberal media for making a big stink out of a few bad apples. "They never tell you about all the good things happening in Iraq!" he whines, even as the president of the Iraqi Governing Council is assassinated.

And I thought the Clinton apologists were bad.

Sadly, Limbaugh and Hannity have proved themselves no different, and no better. Ditto for all their dittoheads still in denial – and that's coming from someone who voted for George W. Bush and against Bill Clinton both times, and whose anti-Clinton stories have been read on air by Limbaugh and Hannity.

Slavishly pro-Bush, they've lost any credibility they gained as truth-tellers under Beelzebubba. If you get your news about Iraq and Bush from Limbaugh or Hannity, you are as woefully misinformed and misled as those who got their news from the New York Times and the Washington Post during the Clinton years.

Hannity, for his part, insists he's been critical of Bush. For example, he says he ripped Bush for co-opting some of the big-government ideas of Democrats, such as the Medicare drug benefit.

But those are issues of policy, not character. Hannity was mad because Bush wasn't Republican enough. He has never doubted Bush's honesty or integrity, in spite of the raft of White House scandals surrounding 9-11 and Iraq – from the Saudi evacuation and the censored 28 pages to Ahmed Chalabi, WMDs, Halliburton, Cheney-Scalia, Joe Wilson, the State of the Uranium and now the Abu Ghraib cover-up. These are monumental violations of the public trust, and they speak directly to Bush's character.

Yet Hannity goes right on giving Bush the benefit of the doubt he never gave Clinton (for good reason). And his arguments in his defense grow shriller and more sophomoric by the day. Here¹s the general thrust of what he argues each day during what amounts to a free, three-hour Bush campaign commercial:

*If you criticize Bush, you're a Democrat; and it doesn't matter if you aren't, because you might as well be, you closet liberal, you.

*If you criticize the Iraq war, you're a traitor – or worse, a Dixie Chicks fan.

*If you condemn the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, you don't support the troops and are undermining the war effort.

*If you question the timing of Iraq regime change in the middle of a war on al-Qaeda, you love Saddam.

*If you don't link Iraq and Afghanistan in the war on terrorism, you're a hair-splitting wimp who can't see that all "ragheads" need a good beatin' after 9-11.

*If you hear negative news, it's liberal news.

These are the fulminations of a high-paid party hack posing as a patriot (not to mention a journalist) to tap into the misplaced anger out there in fly-over country – the Bush red states – after 9-11. Intellectual bullies like Hannity, who set up bleeding-heart liberal strawmen like Alan Colmes (his Fox counterpart) just to knock them down, fear honest debate; and people who fear debate fear the truth. And the stone-cold truth is Republicans are overinvested in Bush and his Iraq fraud, and their credibility is sinking with his poll numbers.

Before the Grand Old Party loses all credibility, it's high time Republicans turn down their radios, put down their cups of RNC Kool-Aid, pull their heads out from under the flag and start asking some hard questions about the leader of their party, including whether he's worthy of nomination come August.

But before they can do that, they have to own up to some truths themselves. Here's a quick test to gauge your own intellectual honesty. Circle Yes or No after each question:

1. Do you still believe Bush's claim that Iraq was a "direct threat" to America? Y / N

2. Before Bush launched Operation Iraqi Freedom, did you ever say, "You know, honey, we really need to free those poor people in Iraq?" Y / N

3. With anti-Saddam Shi’ites now joining Sunnis in fighting U.S.-led occupation forces, do you still believe Bush when he says "terrorists" and "Saddam loyalists" are behind the resistance, and not nationalists? Y / N

4. With Iraqis now attacking Americans at a rate of 60 ambushes a day, do you still buy Bush's argument that Americans have to stay in Iraq to protect Iraqis, that we're the answer to the security problem and not the source of it? Y / N

5. Were any "terrorists" killing Americans in Iraq before Bush invaded Iraq? Y / N

6. Was capturing Saddam more urgent to the war on terrorism than capturing Osama bin Laden, as the president sold it? Y / N

If you answered Yes to all of the above, you support the war simply to support Bush.

You can no longer honestly say the war was to protect America. The weapons of mass destruction fraud has been exposed. Even Colin Powell admits peddling lies. And we now know the secret National Intelligence Estimate Bush used to justify invasion concluded that Saddam had no role in al-Qaeda's operations or its attacks on Americans.

Try as you may, you can no longer argue Saddam is behind the insurgency, given that more than a third of our GIs killed have been killed since his capture.

Nor can you claim to support the war to support the troops when many don't want to be there, and others are torturing, massacring and looting innocent Iraqi civilians. And you can't rationalize the prison brutality as a necessary tactic against terrorists when Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba testified he couldn¹t find a single terrorist in custody during his prison investigation.

Face it, there's nothing heroic or worthy left about this war in Iraq. It's just a pile of lies. Unless you support lies, the only thing you're supporting by supporting the war now is Bush. That's obviously good enough for Limbaugh and Hannity, but is it good enough for you? Is reelecting Bush more important to you than truth or young American lives? My party, right or wrong?

Republicans had a name for that warped kind of loyalty during the scandalous Clinton presidency. They called it "ends-justify-means morality." They fairly noted that Democrats didn't care if Clinton lied under oath to fix a lawsuit against him, so long as he kept hauling in money for the party.

Now many Republicans are rationalizing their support for Bush in much the same way, the only difference being his sins involve matters of life and death. "So what if he lied us into war?" they tell themselves. "He¹s the War President, and thanks to post-9-11 patriotism, we¹re raising more money from our base than Clinton ever dreamed of."

The Amen Corner of the party is spiritually, as well as politically and emotionally, invested in Bush, and even more delusional. They can't bring themselves to think such a church-going man could be guileful, especially when they've convinced themselves that God has anointed him to straighten out the problems in the Middle East, restore Zion to full glory and speed the End Times. They also believe his national security adviser is pure as the driven snow. How could cute little Condi not be? She taught Sunday school for Heaven's sake!

This is the same crowd that's still holding out hope for the Second Coming of weapons of mass destruction in Mesopotamia. You've got to believe they'll appear! Let not thy hearts be troubled by their absence! Blinded by their faith in George W.M.D. Bush, a man as fallible and sinful as the rest of us, they've practically constructed a whole new theology based on evidence that doesn't exist.

And these are the same Christian conservatives who demanded to know where the outrage was during the Lewinsky scandal. Well, where's their outrage now? Do war crimes not count as sins?

Apparently not to Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma. He said he's more "outraged by the outrage" over the American abuses of Iraqi prisoners than the abuses. He says it's all politically driven. And besides, the Iraqis in those cell blocks deserved what they got, he growled, because they're "terrorists." Never mind that such punishment is illegal, and that none of the detainees held at Abu Ghraib were in fact terrorists. And never mind that 3 out of 5 of them weren't guilty of any crimes at all, according to the Taguba report, and should never have been locked up in the first place.

That's all lost on Inhofe – though perhaps not on his staff. Rewind the videotape of his full remarks at the May 11 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, and you'll see a bespectacled female aide sitting behind him scowling and rolling her eyes in disbelief as her boss gives his blessing to sadism.

At least there is some sanity left within the Republican Party. Other Republicans on the Hill, most notably Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, are outraged by the ongoing fraud called Operation Iraqi Freedom, and they don't think the solution is adding more troops. They care more about protecting young lives and the nation's founding principles than Bush's political fortunes.

And listen to former Reagan official Paul Craig Roberts, who recently said: "Bush lied us into war and continues to lie to keep us there."

Not conservative enough for you? Then consider the advice a former foreign policy aide to conservative giant Sen. Jesse Helms gave me last month. "I would believe nothing you are told by anyone in the Bush administration," he warned. "We are in a world of official lies as a method of government."

Or, you can continue to be a proud member of the Coalition of the Willing to Believe White House Propaganda about Iraq. And you can go right on standing fast with Bush and his talk radio lapdogs.

But know that you are standing on the wrong side of truth and history – a place where the entire GOP may find itself stuck for many years if it doesn’t soon divest itself from Bush and his Iraq debacle.

[i][b]By Paul Sperry, Sperry, formerly Washington bureau chief of Investors Business Daily, is a Hoover Institution media fellow and author of Crude Politics: How Bush's Oil Cronies Hijacked the War on Terrorism (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003). [/b][/i]- http://www.antiwar.com/sperry...

READ AL GORE'S GREAT SPEECH: Bush Promised Us Humility; Brought Us Humiliation

05.28.04 (11:18 am) [edit]

[b]Bush Promised Us Humility; Brought Us Humiliation
by Al Gore

Prepared Remarks
New York University
May 26, 2004[/b]

George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world.

He promised to "restore honor and integrity to the White House." Instead, he has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest President since Richard Nixon.

Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. Just as he would not honor the United Nations, international treaties, the opinions of our allies, the role of Congress and the courts, or what Jefferson described as "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind." He did not honor the advice, experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of Iraq. And now he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or even by permitting photos of their flag-draped coffins.

How did we get from September 12th , 2001, when a leading French newspaper ran a giant headline with the words "We Are All Americans Now" and when we had the good will and empathy of all the world -- to the horror that we all felt in witnessing the pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib.

To begin with, from its earliest days in power, this administration sought to radically destroy the foreign policy consensus that had guided America since the end of World War II. The long successful strategy of containment was abandoned in favor of the new strategy of "preemption." And what they meant by preemption was not the inherent right of any nation to act preemptively against an imminent threat to its national security, but rather an exotic new approach that asserted a unique and unilateral U.S. right to ignore international law wherever it wished to do so and take military action against any nation, even in circumstances where there was no imminent threat. All that is required, in the view of Bush's team is the mere assertion of a possible, future threat - and the assertion need be made by only one person, the President.

More disturbing still was their frequent use of the word "dominance" to describe their strategic goal, because an American policy of dominance is as repugnant to the rest of the world as the ugly dominance of the helpless, naked Iraqi prisoners has been to the American people. Dominance is as dominance does.

Dominance is not really a strategic policy or political philosophy at all. It is a seductive illusion that tempts the powerful to satiate their hunger for more power still by striking a Faustian bargain. And as always happens - sooner or later - to those who shake hands with the devil, they find out too late that what they have given up in the bargain is their soul.

One of the clearest indications of the impending loss of intimacy with one's soul is the failure to recognize the existence of a soul in those over whom power is exercised, especially if the helpless come to be treated as animals, and degraded. We also know - and not just from De Sade and Freud - the psychological proximity between sexual depravity and other people's pain. It has been especially shocking and awful to see these paired evils perpetrated so crudely and cruelly in the name of America.

Those pictures of torture and sexual abuse came to us embedded in a wave of news about escalating casualties and growing chaos enveloping our entire policy in Iraq. But in order understand the failure of our overall policy, it is important to focus specifically on what happened in the Abu Ghraib prison, and ask whether or not those actions were representative of who we are as Americans? Obviously the quick answer is no, but unfortunately it's more complicated than that.

There is good and evil in every person. And what makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our natural distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have lead us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations more than the people any other nation.

Our founders were insightful students of human nature. They feared the abuse of power because they understood that every human being has not only "better angels" in his nature, but also an innate vulnerability to temptation - especially the temptation to abuse power over others.

Our founders understood full well that a system of checks and balances is needed in our constitution because every human being lives with an internal system of checks and balances that cannot be relied upon to produce virtue if they are allowed to attain an unhealthy degree of power over their fellow citizens.

Listen then to the balance of internal impulses described by specialist Charles Graner when confronted by one of his colleagues, Specialist Joseph M. Darby, who later became a courageous whistleblower. When Darby asked him to explain his actions documented in the photos, Graner replied: "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the Corrections Officer says, 'I love to make a grown man piss on himself."

What happened at the prison, it is now clear, was not the result of random acts by "a few bad apples," it was the natural consequence of the Bush Administration policy that has dismantled those wise constraints and has made war on America's checks and balances.

The abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib flowed directly from the abuse of the truth that characterized the Administration's march to war and the abuse of the trust that had been placed in President Bush by the American people in the aftermath of September 11th.

There was then, there is now and there would have been regardless of what Bush did, a threat of terrorism that we would have to deal with. But instead of making it better, he has made it infinitely worse. We are less safe because of his policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation -- because of his attitude of contempt for any person, institution or nation who disagrees with him.

He has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfulness, and bungling at stirring up hornet's nests that pose no threat whatsoever to us. And by then insulting the religion and culture and tradition of people in other countries. And by pursuing policies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children, all of it done in our name. President Bush said in his speech Monday night that the war in Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror." It's not the central front in the war on terror, but it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for terrorists. [Dick Cheney said, "This war may last the rest of our lives.] The unpleasant truth is that President Bush's utter incompetence has made the world a far more dangerous place and dramatically increased the threat of terrorism against the United States. Just yesterday, the International Institute of Strategic Studies reported that the Iraq conflict " has arguable focused the energies and resources of Al Qaeda and its followers while diluting those of the global counterterrorism coalition." The ISS said that in the wake of the war in Iraq Al Qaeda now has more than 18,000 potential terrorists scattered around the world and the war in Iraq is swelling its ranks.

The war plan was incompetent in its rejection of the advice from military professionals and the analysis of the intelligence was incompetent in its conclusion that our soldiers would be welcomed with garlands of flowers and cheering crowds. Thus we would not need to respect the so-called Powell doctrine of overwhelming force.

There was also in Rumsfeld's planning a failure to provide security for nuclear materials, and to prevent widespread lawlessness and looting.

Luckily, there was a high level of competence on the part of our soldiers even though they were denied the tools and the numbers they needed for their mission. What a disgrace that their families have to hold bake sales to buy discarded Kevlar vests to stuff into the floorboards of the Humvees! Bake sales for body armor.

And the worst still lies ahead. General Joseph Hoar, the former head of the Marine Corps, said "I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are looking into the abyss."

When a senior, respected military leader like Joe Hoar uses the word "abyss", then the rest of us damn well better listen. Here is what he means: more American soldiers dying, Iraq slipping into worse chaos and violence, no end in sight, with our influence and moral authority seriously damaged.

Retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, who headed Central Command before becoming President Bush's personal emissary to the Middle East, said recently that our nation's current course is "headed over Niagara Falls."

The Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Army Major General Charles H. Swannack, Jr., asked by the Washington Post whether he believes the United States is losing the war in Iraq, replied, "I think strategically, we are." Army Colonel Paul Hughes, who directed strategic planning for the US occupation authority in Baghdad, compared what he sees in Iraq to the Vietnam War, in which he lost his brother: "I promised myself when I came on active duty that I would do everything in my power to prevent that … from happening again. " Noting that Vietnam featured a pattern of winning battles while losing the war, Hughes added "unless we ensure that we have coherence in our policy, we will lose strategically."

The White House spokesman, Dan Bartlett was asked on live television about these scathing condemnations by Generals involved in the highest levels of Pentagon planning and he replied, "Well they're retired, and we take our advice from active duty officers."

But amazingly, even active duty military officers are speaking out against President Bush. For example, the Washington Post quoted an unnamed senior General at the Pentagon as saying, " the current OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) refused to listen or adhere to military advice." Rarely if ever in American history have uniformed commanders felt compelled to challenge their commander in chief in public.

The Post also quoted an unnamed general as saying, "Like a lot of senior Army guys I'm quite angry" with Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush Administration. He listed two reasons. "I think they are going to break the Army," he said, adding that what really incites him is "I don't think they care."

In his upcoming book, Zinni blames the current catastrophe on the Bush team's incompetence early on. "In the lead-up to the Iraq war, and its later conduct," he writes, "I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption."

Zinni's book will join a growing library of volumes by former advisors to Bush -- including his principal advisor on terrorism, Richard Clarke; his principal economic policy advisor, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was honored by Bush's father for his service in Iraq, and his former Domestic Adviser on faith-based organizations, John Dilulio, who said, "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."

Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki told Congress in February that the occupation could require "several hundred thousand troops." But because Rumsfeld and Bush did not want to hear disagreement with their view that Iraq could be invaded at a much lower cost, Shinseki was hushed and then forced out.

And as a direct result of this incompetent plan and inadequate troop strength, young soldiers were put in an untenable position. For example, young reservists assigned to the Iraqi prisons were called up without training or adequate supervision, and were instructed by their superiors to "break down" prisoners in order to prepare them for interrogation.

To make matters worse, they were placed in a confusing situation where the chain of command was criss-crossed between intelligence gathering and prison administration, and further confused by an unprecedented mixing of military and civilian contractor authority.

The soldiers who are accused of committing these atrocities are, of course, responsible for their own actions and if found guilty, must be severely and appropriately punished. But they are not the ones primarily responsible for the disgrace that has been brought upon the United States of America.

Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States would not observe the Geneva Convention. Specialist Charles Graner was not the one who approved a policy of establishing an American Gulag of dark rooms with naked prisoners to be "stressed" and even - we must use the word - tortured - to force them to say things that legal procedures might not induce them to say.

These policies were designed and insisted upon by the Bush White House. Indeed, the President's own legal counsel advised him specifically on the subject. His secretary of defense and his assistants pushed these cruel departures from historic American standards over the objections of the uniformed military, just as the Judge Advocates General within the Defense Department were so upset and opposed that they took the unprecedented step of seeking help from a private lawyer in this city who specializes in human rights and said to him, "There is a calculated effort to create an atmosphere of legal ambiguity" where the mistreatment of prisoners is concerned."

Indeed, the secrecy of the program indicates an understanding that the regular military culture and mores would not support these activities and neither would the American public or the world community. Another implicit acknowledgement of violations of accepted standards of behavior is the process of farming out prisoners to countries less averse to torture and giving assignments to private contractors

President Bush set the tone for our attitude for suspects in his State of the Union address. He noted that more than 3,000 "suspected terrorists" had been arrested in many countries and then he added, "and many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: they are no longer a problem to the United States and our allies."

George Bush promised to change the tone in Washington. And indeed he did. As many as 37 prisoners may have been murdered while in captivity, though the numbers are difficult to rely upon because in many cases involving violent death, there were no autopsies.

How dare they blame their misdeeds on enlisted personnel from a Reserve unit in upstate New York. President Bush owes more than one apology. On the list of those he let down are the young soldiers who are themselves apparently culpable, but who were clearly put into a moral cesspool. The perpetrators as well as the victims were both placed in their relationship to one another by the policies of George W. Bush.

How dare the incompetent and willful members of this Bush/Cheney Administration humiliate our nation and our people in the eyes of the world and in the conscience of our own people. How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace. How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison.

David Kay concluded his search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq with the famous verdict: "we were all wrong." And for many Americans, Kay's statement seemed to symbolize the awful collision between Reality and all of the false and fading impressions President Bush had fostered in building support for his policy of going to war.

Now the White House has informed the American people that they were also "all wrong" about their decision to place their faith in Ahmed Chalabi, even though they have paid him 340,000 dollars per month. 33 million dollars and placed him adjacent to Laura Bush at the State of the Union address. Chalabi had been convicted of fraud and embezzling 70 million dollars in public funds from a Jordanian bank, and escaped prison by fleeing the country. But in spite of that record, he had become one of key advisors to the Bush Administration on planning and promoting the War against Iraq.

And they repeatedly cited him as an authority, perhaps even a future president of Iraq. Incredibly, they even ferried him and his private army into Baghdad in advance of anyone else, and allowed him to seize control over Saddam's secret papers.

Now they are telling the American people that he is a spy for Iran who has been duping the President of the United States for all these years.

One of the Generals in charge of this war policy went on a speaking tour in his spare time to declare before evangelical groups that the US is in a holy war as "Christian Nation battling Satan." This same General Boykin was the person who ordered the officer who was in charge of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay to extend his methods to Iraq detainees, prisoners. … The testimony from the prisoners is that they were forced to curse their religion Bush used the word "crusade" early on in the war against Iraq, and then commentators pointed out that it was singularly inappropriate because of the history and sensitivity of the Muslim world and then a few weeks later he used it again.

"We are now being viewed as the modern Crusaders, as the modern colonial power in this part of the world," Zinni said.

What a terrible irony that our country, which was founded by refugees seeking religious freedom - coming to America to escape domineering leaders who tried to get them to renounce their religion - would now be responsible for this kind of abuse.

Ameen Saeed al-Sheikh told the Washington Post that he was tortured and ordered to denounce Islam and after his leg was broken one of his torturers started hitting it while ordering him to curse Islam and then, " they ordered me to thank Jesus that I'm alive." Others reported that they were forced to eat pork and drink alcohol.

In my religious tradition, I have been taught that "ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so, every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit… Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."

The President convinced a majority of the country that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11th. But in truth he had nothing whatsoever to do with it. The President convinced the country with a mixture of forged documents and blatantly false assertions that Saddam was in league with Al Qaeda, and that he was "indistinguishable" from Osama bin Laden.

He asked the nation , in his State of the Union address, to "imagine" how terrified we should be that Saddam was about to give nuclear weapons to terrorists and stated repeatedly that Iraq posed a grave and gathering threat to our nation. He planted the seeds of war, and harvested a whirlwind. And now, the "corrupt tree" of a war waged on false premises has brought us the "evil fruit" of Americans torturing and humiliating prisoners.

In my opinion, John Kerry is dealing with this unfolding tragedy in an impressive and extremely responsible way. Our nation's best interest lies in having a new president who can turn a new page, sweep clean with a new broom, and take office on January 20th of next year with the ability to make a fresh assessment of exactly what our nation's strategic position is as of the time the reigns of power are finally wrested from the group of incompetents that created this catastrophe.

Kerry should not tie his own hands by offering overly specific, detailed proposals concerning a situation that is rapidly changing and unfortunately, rapidly deteriorating, but should rather preserve his, and our country's, options, to retrieve our national honor as soon as this long national nightmare is over.

Eisenhower did not propose a five-point plan for changing America's approach to the Korean War when he was running for president in 1952.

When a business enterprise finds itself in deep trouble that is linked to the failed policies of the current CEO the board of directors and stockholders usually say to the failed CEO, "Thank you very much, but we're going to replace you now with a new CEO -- one less vested in a stubborn insistence on staying the course, even if that course is, in the words of General Zinni, "Headed over Niagara Falls."

One of the strengths of democracy is the ability of the people to regularly demand changes in leadership and to fire a failing leader and hire a new one with the promise of hopeful change. That is the real solution to America's quagmire in Iraq. But, I am keenly aware that we have seven months and twenty five days remaining in this president's current term of office and that represents a time of dangerous vulnerability for our country because of the demonstrated incompetence and recklessness of the current administration.

It is therefore essential that even as we focus on the fateful choice, the voters must make this November that we simultaneously search for ways to sharply reduce the extraordinary danger that we face with the current leadership team in place. It is for that reason that I am calling today for Republicans as well as Democrats to join me in asking for the immediate resignations of those immediately below George Bush and Dick Cheney who are most responsible for creating the catastrophe that we are facing in Iraq.

We desperately need a national security team with at least minimal competence because the current team is making things worse with each passing day. They are endangering the lives of our soldiers, and sharply increasing the danger faced by American citizens everywhere in the world, including here at home. They are enraging hundreds of millions of people and embittering an entire generation of anti-Americans whose rage is already near the boiling point.

We simply cannot afford to further increase the risk to our country with more blunders by this team. Donald Rumsfeld, as the chief architect of the war plan, should resign today. His deputies Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and his intelligence chief Stephen Cambone should also resign. The nation is especially at risk every single day that Rumsfeld remains as Secretary of Defense.

Condoleezza Rice, who has badly mishandled the coordination of national security policy, should also resign immediately.

George Tenet should also resign. I want to offer a special word about George Tenet, because he is a personal friend and I know him to be a good and decent man. It is especially painful to call for his resignation, but I have regretfully concluded that it is extremely important that our country have new leadership at the CIA immediately.

As a nation, our greatest export has always been hope: hope that through the rule of law people can be free to pursue their dreams, that democracy can supplant repression and that justice, not power, will be the guiding force in society. Our moral authority in the world derived from the hope anchored in the rule of law. With this blatant failure of the rule of law from the very agents of our government, we face a great challenge in restoring our moral authority in the world and demonstrating our commitment to bringing a better life to our global neighbors.

During Ronald Reagan's Presidency, Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan was accused of corruption, but eventually, after a lot of publicity, the indictment was thrown out by the Judge. Donovan asked the question, "Where do I go to get my reputation back?" President Bush has now placed the United States of America in the same situation. Where do we go to get our good name back?

The answer is, we go where we always go when a dramatic change is needed. We go to the ballot box, and we make it clear to the rest of the world that what's been happening in America for the last four years, and what America has been doing in Iraq for the last two years, really is not who we are. We, as a people, at least the overwhelming majority of us, do not endorse the decision to dishonor the Geneva Convention and the Bill of Rights….

Make no mistake, the damage done at Abu Ghraib is not only to America's reputation and America's strategic interests, but also to America's spirit. It is also crucial for our nation to recognize - and to recognize quickly - that the damage our nation has suffered in the world is far, far more serious than President Bush's belated and tepid response would lead people to believe. Remember how shocked each of us, individually, was when we first saw those hideous images. The natural tendency was to first recoil from the images, and then to assume that they represented a strange and rare aberration that resulted from a few twisted minds or, as the Pentagon assured us, "a few bad apples."

But as today's shocking news reaffirms yet again, this was not rare. It was not an aberration. Today's New York Times reports that an Army survey of prisoner deaths and mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanistan"show a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known.'

Nor did these abuses spring from a few twisted minds at the lowest ranks of our military enlisted personnel. No, it came from twisted values and atrocious policies at the highest levels of our government. This was done in our name, by our leaders.

These horrors were the predictable consequence of policy choices that flowed directly from this administration's contempt for the rule of law. And the dominance they have been seeking is truly not simply unworthy of America - it is also an illusory goal in its own right.

Our world is unconquerable because the human spirit is unconquerable, and any national strategy based on pursuing the goal of domination is doomed to fail because it generates its own opposition, and in the process, creates enemies for the would-be dominator.

A policy based on domination of the rest of the world not only creates enemies for the United States and creates recruits for Al Qaeda, it also undermines the international cooperation that is essential to defeating the efforts of terrorists who wish harm and intimidate Americans.

Unilateralism, as we have painfully seen in Iraq, is its own reward. Going it alone may satisfy a political instinct but it is dangerous to our military, even without their Commander in Chief taunting terrorists to "bring it on."

Our troops are stretched thin and exhausted not only because Secretary Rumsfeld contemptuously dismissed the advice of military leaders on the size of the needed force - but also because President Bush's contempt for traditional allies and international opinion left us without a real coalition to share the military and financial burden of the war and the occupation. Our future is dependent upon increasing cooperation and interdependence in a world tied ever more closely together by technologies of communications and travel. The emergence of a truly global civilization has been accompanied by the recognition of truly global challenges that require global responses that, as often as not, can only be led by the United States - and only if the United States restores and maintains its moral authority to lead.

Make no mistake, it is precisely our moral authority that is our greatest source of strength, and it is precisely our moral authority that has been recklessly put at risk by the cheap calculations and mean compromises of conscience wagered with history by this willful president.

Listen to the way Israel's highest court dealt with a similar question when, in 1999, it was asked to balance due process rights against dire threats to the security of its people:

"This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it, and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it. Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand. Preserving the Rule of Law and recognition of an individual's liberty constitutes an important component in its understanding of security. At the end of the day they (add to) its strength."

The last and best description of America's meaning in the world is still the definitive formulation of Lincoln's annual message to Congress on December 1, 1862:

"The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise - with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history…the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation…We shall nobly save, or meanly lose the last best hope of earth…The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just - a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless."

It is now clear that their obscene abuses of the truth and their unforgivable abuse of the trust placed in them after 9/11 by the American people led directly to the abuses of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison and, we are now learning, in many other similar facilities constructed as part of Bush's Gulag, in which, according to the Red Cross, 70 to 90 percent of the victims are totally innocent of any wrongdoing.

The same dark spirit of domination has led them to - for the first time in American history - imprison American citizens with no charges, no right to see a lawyer, no right to notify their family, no right to know of what they are accused, and no right to gain access to any court to present an appeal of any sort. The Bush Administration has even acquired the power to compel librarians to tell them what any American is reading, and to compel them to keep silent about the request - or else the librarians themselves can also be imprisoned.

They have launched an unprecedented assault on civil liberties, on the right of the courts to review their actions, on the right of the Congress to have information to how they are spending the public's money and the right of the news media to have information about the policies they are pursuing.

The same pattern characterizes virtually all of their policies. They resent any constraint as an insult to their will to dominate and exercise power. Their appetite for power is astonishing. It has led them to introduce a new level of viciousness in partisan politics. It is that viciousness that led them to attack as unpatriotic, Senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in combat during the Vietnam War.

The president episodically poses as a healer and "uniter". If he president really has any desire to play that role, then I call upon him to condemn Rush Limbaugh - perhaps his strongest political supporter - who said that the torture in Abu Ghraib was a "brilliant maneuver" and that the photos were "good old American pornography," and that the actions portrayed were simply those of "people having a good time and needing to blow off steam."

This new political viciousness by the President and his supporters is found not only on the campaign trail, but in the daily operations of our democracy. They have insisted that the leaders of their party in the Congress deny Democrats any meaningful role whatsoever in shaping legislation, debating the choices before us as a people, or even to attend the all-important conference committees that reconcile the differences between actions by the Senate and House of Representatives.

The same meanness of spirit shows up in domestic policies as well. Under the Patriot Act, Muslims, innocent of any crime, were picked up, often physically abused, and held incommunicado indefinitely. What happened in Abu Ghraib was difference not of kind, but of degree.

Differences of degree are important when the subject is torture. The apologists for what has happened do have points that should be heard and clearly understood. It is a fact that every culture and every politics sometimes expresses itself in cruelty. It is also undeniably true that other countries have and do torture more routinely, and far more brutally, than ours has. George Orwell once characterized life in Stalin's Russia as "a boot stamping on a human face forever." That was the ultimate culture of cruelty, so ingrained, so organic, so systematic that everyone in it lived in terror, even the terrorizers. And that was the nature and degree of state cruelty in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

We all know these things, and we need not reassure ourselves and should not congratulate ourselves that our society is less cruel than some others, although it is worth noting that there are many that are less cruel than ours. And this searing revelation at Abu Ghraib should lead us to examine more thoroughly the routine horrors in our domestic prison system.

But what we do now, in reaction to Abu Ghraib will determine a great deal about who we are at the beginning of the 21st century. It is important to note that just as the abuses of the prisoners flowed directly from the policies of the Bush White House, those policies flowed not only from the instincts of the president and his advisors, but found support in shifting attitudes on the part of some in our country in response to the outrage and fear generated by the attack of September 11th.

The president exploited and fanned those fears, but some otherwise sensible and levelheaded Americans fed them as well. I remember reading genteel-sounding essays asking publicly whether or not the prohibitions against torture were any longer relevant or desirable. The same grotesque misunderstanding of what is really involved was responsible for the tone in the memo from the president's legal advisor, Alberto Gonzalez, who wrote on January 25, 2002, that 9/11 "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

We have seen the pictures. We have learned the news. We cannot unlearn it; it is part of us. The important question now is, what will we do now about torture. Stop it? Yes, of course.

But that means demanding all of the facts, not covering them up, as some now charge the administration is now doing. One of the whistleblowers at Abu Ghraib, Sergeant Samuel Provance, told ABC News a few days ago that he was being intimidated and punished for telling the truth. "There is definitely a coverup," Provance said. "I feel like I am being punished for being honest."

The abhorrent acts in the prison were a direct consequence of the culture of impunity encouraged, authorized and instituted by Bush and Rumsfeld in their statements that the Geneva Conventions did not apply. The apparent war crimes that took place were the logical, inevitable outcome of policies and statements from the administration.

To me, as glaring as the evidence of this in the pictures themselves was the revelation that it was established practice for prisoners to be moved around during ICRC visits so that they would not be available for visits. That, no one can claim, was the act of individuals. That was policy set from above with the direct intention to violate US values it was to be upholding. It was the kind of policy we see - and criticize in places like China and Cuba.

Moreover, the administration has also set up the men and women of our own armed forces for payback the next time they are held as prisoners. And for that, this administration should pay a very high price. One of the most tragic consequences of these official crimes is that it will be very hard for any of us as Americans - at least for a very long time - to effectively stand up for human rights elsewhere and criticize other governments, when our policies have resulted in our soldiers behaving so monstrously. This administration has shamed America and deeply damaged the cause of freedom and human rights everywhere, thus undermining the core message of America to the world. President Bush offered a brief and half-hearted apology to the Arab world - but he should apologize to the American people for abandoning the Geneva Conventions.

He also owes an apology to the U.S. Army for cavalierly sending them into harm's way while ignoring the best advice of their commanders.

Perhaps most importantly of all, he should apologize to all those men and women throughout our world who have held the ideal of the United States of America as a shining goal, to inspire their hopeful efforts to bring about justice under a rule of law in their own lands.

Of course, the problem with all these legitimate requests is that a sincere apology requires an admission of error, a willingness to accept responsibility and to hold people accountable.

And President Bush is not only unwilling to acknowledge error. He has thus far been unwilling to hold anyone in his administration accountable for the worst strategic and military miscalculations and mistakes in the history of the United States of America.

He is willing only to apologize for the alleged erratic behavior of a few low-ranking enlisted people, who he is scapegoating for his policy fiasco.

In December of 2000, even though I strongly disagreed with the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to order a halt to the counting of legally cast ballots, I saw it as my duty to reaffirm my own strong belief that we are a nation of laws and not only accept the decision, but do what I could to prevent efforts to delegitimize George Bush as he took the oath of office as president.

I did not at that moment imagine that Bush would, in the presidency that ensued, demonstrate utter contempt for the rule of law and work at every turn to frustrate accountability…

So today, I want to speak on behalf of those Americans who feel that President Bush has betrayed our nation's trust, those who are horrified at what has been done in our name, and all those who want the rest of the world to know that we Americans see the abuses that occurred in the prisons of Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and secret locations as yet undisclosed as completely out of keeping with the character and basic nature of the American people and at odds with the principles on which America stands.

I believe we have a duty to hold President Bush accountable - and I believe we will. As Lincoln said at our time of greatest trial, "We - even we here - hold the power, and bear the responsibility." - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

REFUCTO KNOWS JACK-SHIT ABOUT JACK-SHIT ...

05.28.04 (10:25 am) [edit]

[b]THE FOLLOWING IS A LIST OF WHAT REFUCTO ACTUALLY KNOWS SOMETHING ABOUT:[/b]

Cheetos

HEY USEFUL IDIOT, REFUCTO BLAMES EVERYONE ELSE FOR BUSH'S FUCK-UPs... WATCH REFUCTO'S SCAPE-GOATS!!!

05.28.04 (10:22 am) [edit]

[b]HEY USEFUL IDIOT: JUST WATCH REFUCTO'S LIST OF SCAPE-GOATS FOR BUSH'S FUCK-UPs!!![/b]

http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=UsefulIdiot&stati c=189100" title="http://www.tblog.com/templates/index.php?bid=UsefulIdiot&stati c=189100" target="_blank"http://www.tblog.com/template...

BUSH PROMISED US HUMILITY; BROUGHT US HUMILIATION!!!

05.28.04 (7:01 am) [edit]

[b]Bush Promised Us Humility; Brought Us Humiliation
by Al Gore
Prepared Remarks
New York University[/b]

George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world.

He promised to "restore honor and integrity to the White House." Instead, he has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest President since Richard Nixon.

Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. Just as he would not honor the United Nations, international treaties, the opinions of our allies, the role of Congress and the courts, or what Jefferson described as "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind." He did not honor the advice, experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of Iraq. And now he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or even by permitting photos of their flag-draped coffins.

How did we get from September 12th , 2001, when a leading French newspaper ran a giant headline with the words "We Are All Americans Now" and when we had the good will and empathy of all the world -- to the horror that we all felt in witnessing the pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib.

To begin with, from its earliest days in power, this administration sought to radically destroy the foreign policy consensus that had guided America since the end of World War II. The long successful strategy of containment was abandoned in favor of the new strategy of "preemption." And what they meant by preemption was not the inherent right of any nation to act preemptively against an imminent threat to its national security, but rather an exotic new approach that asserted a unique and unilateral U.S. right to ignore international law wherever it wished to do so and take military action against any nation, even in circumstances where there was no imminent threat. All that is required, in the view of Bush's team is the mere assertion of a possible, future threat - and the assertion need be made by only one person, the President.

More disturbing still was their frequent use of the word "dominance" to describe their strategic goal, because an American policy of dominance is as repugnant to the rest of the world as the ugly dominance of the helpless, naked Iraqi prisoners has been to the American people. Dominance is as dominance does.

Dominance is not really a strategic policy or political philosophy at all. It is a seductive illusion that tempts the powerful to satiate their hunger for more power still by striking a Faustian bargain. And as always happens - sooner or later - to those who shake hands with the devil, they find out too late that what they have given up in the bargain is their soul.

One of the clearest indications of the impending loss of intimacy with one's soul is the failure to recognize the existence of a soul in those over whom power is exercised, especially if the helpless come to be treated as animals, and degraded. We also know - and not just from De Sade and Freud - the psychological proximity between sexual depravity and other people's pain. It has been especially shocking and awful to see these paired evils perpetrated so crudely and cruelly in the name of America.

Those pictures of torture and sexual abuse came to us embedded in a wave of news about escalating casualties and growing chaos enveloping our entire policy in Iraq. But in order understand the failure of our overall policy, it is important to focus specifically on what happened in the Abu Ghraib prison, and ask whether or not those actions were representative of who we are as Americans? Obviously the quick answer is no, but unfortunately it's more complicated than that.

There is good and evil in every person. And what makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our natural distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have lead us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations more than the people any other nation.

Our founders were insightful students of human nature. They feared the abuse of power because they understood that every human being has not only "better angels" in his nature, but also an innate vulnerability to temptation - especially the temptation to abuse power over others.

Our founders understood full well that a system of checks and balances is needed in our constitution because every human being lives with an internal system of checks and balances that cannot be relied upon to produce virtue if they are allowed to attain an unhealthy degree of power over their fellow citizens.

Listen then to the balance of internal impulses described by specialist Charles Graner when confronted by one of his colleagues, Specialist Joseph M. Darby, who later became a courageous whistleblower. When Darby asked him to explain his actions documented in the photos, Graner replied: "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the Corrections Officer says, 'I love to make a grown man piss on himself."

What happened at the prison, it is now clear, was not the result of random acts by "a few bad apples," it was the natural consequence of the Bush Administration policy that has dismantled those wise constraints and has made war on America's checks and balances.

The abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib flowed directly from the abuse of the truth that characterized the Administration's march to war and the abuse of the trust that had been placed in President Bush by the American people in the aftermath of September 11th.

There was then, there is now and there would have been regardless of what Bush did, a threat of terrorism that we would have to deal with. But instead of making it better, he has made it infinitely worse. We are less safe because of his policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation -- because of his attitude of contempt for any person, institution or nation who disagrees with him.

He has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfulness, and bungling at stirring up hornet's nests that pose no threat whatsoever to us. And by then insulting the religion and culture and tradition of people in other countries. And by pursuing policies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children, all of it done in our name. President Bush said in his speech Monday night that the war in Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror." It's not the central front in the war on terror, but it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for terrorists. [Dick Cheney said, "This war may last the rest of our lives.] The unpleasant truth is that President Bush's utter incompetence has made the world a far more dangerous place and dramatically increased the threat of terrorism against the United States. Just yesterday, the International Institute of Strategic Studies reported that the Iraq conflict " has arguable focused the energies and resources of Al Qaeda and its followers while diluting those of the global counterterrorism coalition." The ISS said that in the wake of the war in Iraq Al Qaeda now has more than 18,000 potential terrorists scattered around the world and the war in Iraq is swelling its ranks.

The war plan was incompetent in its rejection of the advice from military professionals and the analysis of the intelligence was incompetent in its conclusion that our soldiers would be welcomed with garlands of flowers and cheering crowds. Thus we would not need to respect the so-called Powell doctrine of overwhelming force.

There was also in Rumsfeld's planning a failure to provide security for nuclear materials, and to prevent widespread lawlessness and looting.

Luckily, there was a high level of competence on the part of our soldiers even though they were denied the tools and the numbers they needed for their mission. What a disgrace that their families have to hold bake sales to buy discarded Kevlar vests to stuff into the floorboards of the Humvees! Bake sales for body armor.

And the worst still lies ahead. General Joseph Hoar, the former head of the Marine Corps, said "I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are looking into the abyss."

When a senior, respected military leader like Joe Hoar uses the word "abyss", then the rest of us damn well better listen. Here is what he means: more American soldiers dying, Iraq slipping into worse chaos and violence, no end in sight, with our influence and moral authority seriously damaged.

Retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, who headed Central Command before becoming President Bush's personal emissary to the Middle East, said recently that our nation's current course is "headed over Niagara Falls."

The Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Army Major General Charles H. Swannack, Jr., asked by the Washington Post whether he believes the United States is losing the war in Iraq, replied, "I think strategically, we are." Army Colonel Paul Hughes, who directed strategic planning for the US occupation authority in Baghdad, compared what he sees in Iraq to the Vietnam War, in which he lost his brother: "I promised myself when I came on active duty that I would do everything in my power to prevent that … from happening again. " Noting that Vietnam featured a pattern of winning battles while losing the war, Hughes added "unless we ensure that we have coherence in our policy, we will lose strategically."

The White House spokesman, Dan Bartlett was asked on live television about these scathing condemnations by Generals involved in the highest levels of Pentagon planning and he replied, "Well they're retired, and we take our advice from active duty officers."

But amazingly, even active duty military officers are speaking out against President Bush. For example, the Washington Post quoted an unnamed senior General at the Pentagon as saying, " the current OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) refused to listen or adhere to military advice." Rarely if ever in American history have uniformed commanders felt compelled to challenge their commander in chief in public.

The Post also quoted an unnamed general as saying, "Like a lot of senior Army guys I'm quite angry" with Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush Administration. He listed two reasons. "I think they are going to break the Army," he said, adding that what really incites him is "I don't think they care."

In his upcoming book, Zinni blames the current catastrophe on the Bush team's incompetence early on. "In the lead-up to the Iraq war, and its later conduct," he writes, "I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption."

Zinni's book will join a growing library of volumes by former advisors to Bush -- including his principal advisor on terrorism, Richard Clarke; his principal economic policy advisor, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was honored by Bush's father for his service in Iraq, and his former Domestic Adviser on faith-based organizations, John Dilulio, who said, "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."

Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki told Congress in February that the occupation could require "several hundred thousand troops." But because Rumsfeld and Bush did not want to hear disagreement with their view that Iraq could be invaded at a much lower cost, Shinseki was hushed and then forced out.

And as a direct result of this incompetent plan and inadequate troop strength, young soldiers were put in an untenable position. For example, young reservists assigned to the Iraqi prisons were called up without training or adequate supervision, and were instructed by their superiors to "break down" prisoners in order to prepare them for interrogation.

To make matters worse, they were placed in a confusing situation where the chain of command was criss-crossed between intelligence gathering and prison administration, and further confused by an unprecedented mixing of military and civilian contractor authority.

The soldiers who are accused of committing these atrocities are, of course, responsible for their own actions and if found guilty, must be severely and appropriately punished. But they are not the ones primarily responsible for the disgrace that has been brought upon the United States of America.

Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States would not observe the Geneva Convention. Specialist Charles Graner was not the one who approved a policy of establishing an American Gulag of dark rooms with naked prisoners to be "stressed" and even - we must use the word - tortured - to force them to say things that legal procedures might not induce them to say.

These policies were designed and insisted upon by the Bush White House. Indeed, the President's own legal counsel advised him specifically on the subject. His secretary of defense and his assistants pushed these cruel departures from historic American standards over the objections of the uniformed military, just as the Judge Advocates General within the Defense Department were so upset and opposed that they took the unprecedented step of seeking help from a private lawyer in this city who specializes in human rights and said to him, "There is a calculated effort to create an atmosphere of legal ambiguity" where the mistreatment of prisoners is concerned."

Indeed, the secrecy of the program indicates an understanding that the regular military culture and mores would not support these activities and neither would the American public or the world community. Another implicit acknowledgement of violations of accepted standards of behavior is the process of farming out prisoners to countries less averse to torture and giving assignments to private contractors

President Bush set the tone for our attitude for suspects in his State of the Union address. He noted that more than 3,000 "suspected terrorists" had been arrested in many countries and then he added, "and many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: they are no longer a problem to the United States and our allies."

George Bush promised to change the tone in Washington. And indeed he did. As many as 37 prisoners may have been murdered while in captivity, though the numbers are difficult to rely upon because in many cases involving violent death, there were no autopsies.

How dare they blame their misdeeds on enlisted personnel from a Reserve unit in upstate New York. President Bush owes more than one apology. On the list of those he let down are the young soldiers who are themselves apparently culpable, but who were clearly put into a moral cesspool. The perpetrators as well as the victims were both placed in their relationship to one another by the policies of George W. Bush.

How dare the incompetent and willful members of this Bush/Cheney Administration humiliate our nation and our people in the eyes of the world and in the conscience of our own people. How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace. How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison.

David Kay concluded his search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq with the famous verdict: "we were all wrong." And for many Americans, Kay's statement seemed to symbolize the awful collision between Reality and all of the false and fading impressions President Bush had fostered in building support for his policy of going to war.

Now the White House has informed the American people that they were also "all wrong" about their decision to place their faith in Ahmed Chalabi, even though they have paid him 340,000 dollars per month. 33 million dollars and placed him adjacent to Laura Bush at the State of the Union address. Chalabi had been convicted of fraud and embezzling 70 million dollars in public funds from a Jordanian bank, and escaped prison by fleeing the country. But in spite of that record, he had become one of key advisors to the Bush Administration on planning and promoting the War against Iraq.

And they repeatedly cited him as an authority, perhaps even a future president of Iraq. Incredibly, they even ferried him and his private army into Baghdad in advance of anyone else, and allowed him to seize control over Saddam's secret papers.

Now they are telling the American people that he is a spy for Iran who has been duping the President of the United States for all these years.

One of the Generals in charge of this war policy went on a speaking tour in his spare time to declare before evangelical groups that the US is in a holy war as "Christian Nation battling Satan." This same General Boykin was the person who ordered the officer who was in charge of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay to extend his methods to Iraq detainees, prisoners. … The testimony from the prisoners is that they were forced to curse their religion Bush used the word "crusade" early on in the war against Iraq, and then commentators pointed out that it was singularly inappropriate because of the history and sensitivity of the Muslim world and then a few weeks later he used it again.

"We are now being viewed as the modern Crusaders, as the modern colonial power in this part of the world," Zinni said.

What a terrible irony that our country, which was founded by refugees seeking religious freedom - coming to America to escape domineering leaders who tried to get them to renounce their religion - would now be responsible for this kind of abuse.

Ameen Saeed al-Sheikh told the Washington Post that he was tortured and ordered to denounce Islam and after his leg was broken one of his torturers started hitting it while ordering him to curse Islam and then, " they ordered me to thank Jesus that I'm alive." Others reported that they were forced to eat pork and drink alcohol.

In my religious tradition, I have been taught that "ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so, every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit… Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."

The President convinced a majority of the country that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11th. But in truth he had nothing whatsoever to do with it. The President convinced the country with a mixture of forged documents and blatantly false assertions that Saddam was in league with Al Qaeda, and that he was "indistinguishable" from Osama bin Laden.

He asked the nation , in his State of the Union address, to "imagine" how terrified we should be that Saddam was about to give nuclear weapons to terrorists and stated repeatedly that Iraq posed a grave and gathering threat to our nation. He planted the seeds of war, and harvested a whirlwind. And now, the "corrupt tree" of a war waged on false premises has brought us the "evil fruit" of Americans torturing and humiliating prisoners.

In my opinion, John Kerry is dealing with this unfolding tragedy in an impressive and extremely responsible way. Our nation's best interest lies in having a new president who can turn a new page, sweep clean with a new broom, and take office on January 20th of next year with the ability to make a fresh assessment of exactly what our nation's strategic position is as of the time the reigns of power are finally wrested from the group of incompetents that created this catastrophe.

Kerry should not tie his own hands by offering overly specific, detailed proposals concerning a situation that is rapidly changing and unfortunately, rapidly deteriorating, but should rather preserve his, and our country's, options, to retrieve our national honor as soon as this long national nightmare is over.

Eisenhower did not propose a five-point plan for changing America's approach to the Korean War when he was running for president in 1952.

When a business enterprise finds itself in deep trouble that is linked to the failed policies of the current CEO the board of directors and stockholders usually say to the failed CEO, "Thank you very much, but we're going to replace you now with a new CEO -- one less vested in a stubborn insistence on staying the course, even if that course is, in the words of General Zinni, "Headed over Niagara Falls."

One of the strengths of democracy is the ability of the people to regularly demand changes in leadership and to fire a failing leader and hire a new one with the promise of hopeful change. That is the real solution to America's quagmire in Iraq. But, I am keenly aware that we have seven months and twenty five days remaining in this president's current term of office and that represents a time of dangerous vulnerability for our country because of the demonstrated incompetence and recklessness of the current administration.

It is therefore essential that even as we focus on the fateful choice, the voters must make this November that we simultaneously search for ways to sharply reduce the extraordinary danger that we face with the current leadership team in place. It is for that reason that I am calling today for Republicans as well as Democrats to join me in asking for the immediate resignations of those immediately below George Bush and Dick Cheney who are most responsible for creating the catastrophe that we are facing in Iraq.

We desperately need a national security team with at least minimal competence because the current team is making things worse with each passing day. They are endangering the lives of our soldiers, and sharply increasing the danger faced by American citizens everywhere in the world, including here at home. They are enraging hundreds of millions of people and embittering an entire generation of anti-Americans whose rage is already near the boiling point.

We simply cannot afford to further increase the risk to our country with more blunders by this team. Donald Rumsfeld, as the chief architect of the war plan, should resign today. His deputies Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and his intelligence chief Stephen Cambone should also resign. The nation is especially at risk every single day that Rumsfeld remains as Secretary of Defense.

Condoleezza Rice, who has badly mishandled the coordination of national security policy, should also resign immediately.

George Tenet should also resign. I want to offer a special word about George Tenet, because he is a personal friend and I know him to be a good and decent man. It is especially painful to call for his resignation, but I have regretfully concluded that it is extremely important that our country have new leadership at the CIA immediately.

As a nation, our greatest export has always been hope: hope that through the rule of law people can be free to pursue their dreams, that democracy can supplant repression and that justice, not power, will be the guiding force in society. Our moral authority in the world derived from the hope anchored in the rule of law. With this blatant failure of the rule of law from the very agents of our government, we face a great challenge in restoring our moral authority in the world and demonstrating our commitment to bringing a better life to our global neighbors.

During Ronald Reagan's Presidency, Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan was accused of corruption, but eventually, after a lot of publicity, the indictment was thrown out by the Judge. Donovan asked the question, "Where do I go to get my reputation back?" President Bush has now placed the United States of America in the same situation. Where do we go to get our good name back?

The answer is, we go where we always go when a dramatic change is needed. We go to the ballot box, and we make it clear to the rest of the world that what's been happening in America for the last four years, and what America has been doing in Iraq for the last two years, really is not who we are. We, as a people, at least the overwhelming majority of us, do not endorse the decision to dishonor the Geneva Convention and the Bill of Rights….

Make no mistake, the damage done at Abu Ghraib is not only to America's reputation and America's strategic interests, but also to America's spirit. It is also crucial for our nation to recognize - and to recognize quickly - that the damage our nation has suffered in the world is far, far more serious than President Bush's belated and tepid response would lead people to believe. Remember how shocked each of us, individually, was when we first saw those hideous images. The natural tendency was to first recoil from the images, and then to assume that they represented a strange and rare aberration that resulted from a few twisted minds or, as the Pentagon assured us, "a few bad apples."

But as today's shocking news reaffirms yet again, this was not rare. It was not an aberration. Today's New York Times reports that an Army survey of prisoner deaths and mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanistan"show a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known.'

Nor did these abuses spring from a few twisted minds at the lowest ranks of our military enlisted personnel. No, it came from twisted values and atrocious policies at the highest levels of our government. This was done in our name, by our leaders.

These horrors were the predictable consequence of policy choices that flowed directly from this administration's contempt for the rule of law. And the dominance they have been seeking is truly not simply unworthy of America - it is also an illusory goal in its own right.

Our world is unconquerable because the human spirit is unconquerable, and any national strategy based on pursuing the goal of domination is doomed to fail because it generates its own opposition, and in the process, creates enemies for the would-be dominator.

A policy based on domination of the rest of the world not only creates enemies for the United States and creates recruits for Al Qaeda, it also undermines the international cooperation that is essential to defeating the efforts of terrorists who wish harm and intimidate Americans.

Unilateralism, as we have painfully seen in Iraq, is its own reward. Going it alone may satisfy a political instinct but it is dangerous to our military, even without their Commander in Chief taunting terrorists to "bring it on."

Our troops are stretched thin and exhausted not only because Secretary Rumsfeld contemptuously dismissed the advice of military leaders on the size of the needed force - but also because President Bush's contempt for traditional allies and international opinion left us without a real coalition to share the military and financial burden of the war and the occupation. Our future is dependent upon increasing cooperation and interdependence in a world tied ever more closely together by technologies of communications and travel. The emergence of a truly global civilization has been accompanied by the recognition of truly global challenges that require global responses that, as often as not, can only be led by the United States - and only if the United States restores and maintains its moral authority to lead.

Make no mistake, it is precisely our moral authority that is our greatest source of strength, and it is precisely our moral authority that has been recklessly put at risk by the cheap calculations and mean compromises of conscience wagered with history by this willful president.

Listen to the way Israel's highest court dealt with a similar question when, in 1999, it was asked to balance due process rights against dire threats to the security of its people:

"This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it, and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it. Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand. Preserving the Rule of Law and recognition of an individual's liberty constitutes an important component in its understanding of security. At the end of the day they (add to) its strength."

The last and best description of America's meaning in the world is still the definitive formulation of Lincoln's annual message to Congress on December 1, 1862:

"The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise - with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history…the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation…We shall nobly save, or meanly lose the last best hope of earth…The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just - a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless."

It is now clear that their obscene abuses of the truth and their unforgivable abuse of the trust placed in them after 9/11 by the American people led directly to the abuses of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison and, we are now learning, in many other similar facilities constructed as part of Bush's Gulag, in which, according to the Red Cross, 70 to 90 percent of the victims are totally innocent of any wrongdoing.

The same dark spirit of domination has led them to - for the first time in American history - imprison American citizens with no charges, no right to see a lawyer, no right to notify their family, no right to know of what they are accused, and no right to gain access to any court to present an appeal of any sort. The Bush Administration has even acquired the power to compel librarians to tell them what any American is reading, and to compel them to keep silent about the request - or else the librarians themselves can also be imprisoned.

They have launched an unprecedented assault on civil liberties, on the right of the courts to review their actions, on the right of the Congress to have information to how they are spending the public's money and the right of the news media to have information about the policies they are pursuing.

The same pattern characterizes virtually all of their policies. They resent any constraint as an insult to their will to dominate and exercise power. Their appetite for power is astonishing. It has led them to introduce a new level of viciousness in partisan politics. It is that viciousness that led them to attack as unpatriotic, Senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in combat during the Vietnam War.

The president episodically poses as a healer and "uniter". If he president really has any desire to play that role, then I call upon him to condemn Rush Limbaugh - perhaps his strongest political supporter - who said that the torture in Abu Ghraib was a "brilliant maneuver" and that the photos were "good old American pornography," and that the actions portrayed were simply those of "people having a good time and needing to blow off steam."

This new political viciousness by the President and his supporters is found not only on the campaign trail, but in the daily operations of our democracy. They have insisted that the leaders of their party in the Congress deny Democrats any meaningful role whatsoever in shaping legislation, debating the choices before us as a people, or even to attend the all-important conference committees that reconcile the differences between actions by the Senate and House of Representatives.

The same meanness of spirit shows up in domestic policies as well. Under the Patriot Act, Muslims, innocent of any crime, were picked up, often physically abused, and held incommunicado indefinitely. What happened in Abu Ghraib was difference not of kind, but of degree.

Differences of degree are important when the subject is torture. The apologists for what has happened do have points that should be heard and clearly understood. It is a fact that every culture and every politics sometimes expresses itself in cruelty. It is also undeniably true that other countries have and do torture more routinely, and far more brutally, than ours has. George Orwell once characterized life in Stalin's Russia as "a boot stamping on a human face forever." That was the ultimate culture of cruelty, so ingrained, so organic, so systematic that everyone in it lived in terror, even the terrorizers. And that was the nature and degree of state cruelty in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

We all know these things, and we need not reassure ourselves and should not congratulate ourselves that our society is less cruel than some others, although it is worth noting that there are many that are less cruel than ours. And this searing revelation at Abu Ghraib should lead us to examine more thoroughly the routine horrors in our domestic prison system.

But what we do now, in reaction to Abu Ghraib will determine a great deal about who we are at the beginning of the 21st century. It is important to note that just as the abuses of the prisoners flowed directly from the policies of the Bush White House, those policies flowed not only from the instincts of the president and his advisors, but found support in shifting attitudes on the part of some in our country in response to the outrage and fear generated by the attack of September 11th.

The president exploited and fanned those fears, but some otherwise sensible and levelheaded Americans fed them as well. I remember reading genteel-sounding essays asking publicly whether or not the prohibitions against torture were any longer relevant or desirable. The same grotesque misunderstanding of what is really involved was responsible for the tone in the memo from the president's legal advisor, Alberto Gonzalez, who wrote on January 25, 2002, that 9/11 "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

We have seen the pictures. We have learned the news. We cannot unlearn it; it is part of us. The important question now is, what will we do now about torture. Stop it? Yes, of course.

But that means demanding all of the facts, not covering them up, as some now charge the administration is now doing. One of the whistleblowers at Abu Ghraib, Sergeant Samuel Provance, told ABC News a few days ago that he was being intimidated and punished for telling the truth. "There is definitely a coverup," Provance said. "I feel like I am being punished for being honest."

The abhorrent acts in the prison were a direct consequence of the culture of impunity encouraged, authorized and instituted by Bush and Rumsfeld in their statements that the Geneva Conventions did not apply. The apparent war crimes that took place were the logical, inevitable outcome of policies and statements from the administration.

To me, as glaring as the evidence of this in the pictures themselves was the revelation that it was established practice for prisoners to be moved around during ICRC visits so that they would not be available for visits. That, no one can claim, was the act of individuals. That was policy set from above with the direct intention to violate US values it was to be upholding. It was the kind of policy we see - and criticize in places like China and Cuba.

Moreover, the administration has also set up the men and women of our own armed forces for payback the next time they are held as prisoners. And for that, this administration should pay a very high price. One of the most tragic consequences of these official crimes is that it will be very hard for any of us as Americans - at least for a very long time - to effectively stand up for human rights elsewhere and criticize other governments, when our policies have resulted in our soldiers behaving so monstrously. This administration has shamed America and deeply damaged the cause of freedom and human rights everywhere, thus undermining the core message of America to the world. President Bush offered a brief and half-hearted apology to the Arab world - but he should apologize to the American people for abandoning the Geneva Conventions.

He also owes an apology to the U.S. Army for cavalierly sending them into harm's way while ignoring the best advice of their commanders.

Perhaps most importantly of all, he should apologize to all those men and women throughout our world who have held the ideal of the United States of America as a shining goal, to inspire their hopeful efforts to bring about justice under a rule of law in their own lands.

Of course, the problem with all these legitimate requests is that a sincere apology requires an admission of error, a willingness to accept responsibility and to hold people accountable.

And President Bush is not only unwilling to acknowledge error. He has thus far been unwilling to hold anyone in his administration accountable for the worst strategic and military miscalculations and mistakes in the history of the United States of America.

He is willing only to apologize for the alleged erratic behavior of a few low-ranking enlisted people, who he is scapegoating for his policy fiasco.

In December of 2000, even though I strongly disagreed with the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to order a halt to the counting of legally cast ballots, I saw it as my duty to reaffirm my own strong belief that we are a nation of laws and not only accept the decision, but do what I could to prevent efforts to delegitimize George Bush as he took the oath of office as president.

I did not at that moment imagine that Bush would, in the presidency that ensued, demonstrate utter contempt for the rule of law and work at every turn to frustrate accountability…

So today, I want to speak on behalf of those Americans who feel that President Bush has betrayed our nation's trust, those who are horrified at what has been done in our name, and all those who want the rest of the world to know that we Americans see the abuses that occurred in the prisons of Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and secret locations as yet undisclosed as completely out of keeping with the character and basic nature of the American people and at odds with the principles on which America stands.

I believe we have a duty to hold President Bush accountable - and I believe we will. As Lincoln said at our time of greatest trial, "We - even we here - hold the power, and bear the responsibility." - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

BUSH PROMISED US HUMILITY; BROUGHT US HUMILIATION!!!

05.28.04 (7:00 am) [edit]

NEO-CON NEO-NAZI BANANA REPUBLICANS: PUMPING IRONY ...

05.28.04 (6:56 am) [edit]

[b]Banana Republicans

[i]Pumping Irony[/i][/b]

For Jay Leno, it was a big night, scoring the highest Nielsen rating that The Tonight Show had seen for a Wednesday in more than four years. The big guest was movie muscleman Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was coming on the show to announce whether he would run in California's recall election against Governor Gray Davis. The buzz had been in the air for weeks. A month and half earlier, when Schwarzenegger visited the show to promote his latest film, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Leno had playfully introduced him as "the next governor from the great state of California." And although Arnold's advisors had been hinting lately that the star was planning to forgo his shot at electoral office, Arnold had a surprise in store.

Bounding onstage, Schwarzenegger began with a warm-up joke, quipping that his decision was the most difficult in his career since his 1978 dilemma whether to get a bikini wax. Then he got serious. "The politicians are fiddling, fumbling and failing," Schwarzenegger said. "The man that is failing the people more than anyone is Gray Davis. He is failing them terribly, and this is why he needs to be recalled, and this is why I am going to run for governor." The announcement prompted whoops and cheers from Leno's studio audience, and Schwarzenegger rewarded them with some of the lines he had made famous in his movies. "Say hasta la vista to Gray Davis," he said, promising to "pump up Sacramento."

He also paraphrased a line from another movie--the 1976 film, Network. The people of California, Schwarzenegger said, were "mad as hell, and we're not going to take it anymore."

Written by Paddy Chayefsky, Network is a satire about television sensationalism run amok. In the movie, Peter Finch plays Howard Beale, a deranged newscaster who has rejuvenated his network's ratings by promising to kill himself live in front of the cameras. Instead of committing suicide, though, Beale urges his viewers to join him in chanting that they are "mad as hell," and a cult-like movement forms around his diatribes against "the system". Ironically, Beale's anger eventually becomes a predictable television ritual, his ratings drop again, and the network itself arranges to have him killed. The movie's message was that even when the public gets "mad as hell," nothing changes in the end. It was a grim and cynical cinematic statement--almost as cynical as Schwarzenegger's seemingly non-ironic use of Beale's line.

By all accounts, Arnold Schwarzenegger is a shrewd man, and his remarks on The Tonight Show were carefully crafted. He made a point, for example, of getting out in front of the main criticisms that his campaign would encounter. "I know that they're going to throw everything at me--I am a womanizer, no experience, a terrible guy," Schwarzenegger said. "We all know that Gray Davis can run a dirty campaign better than anyone, but we also know he doesn't know how to run a state."

Months previously, Schwarzenegger's approach had been spelled out by Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who conducted focus-group research for the party's "Rescue California" campaign to recall Davis. In a memo to "Rescue California," Luntz outlined 17 ways to "kill Davis softly." It was important, he advised, to "trash the governor," but, "Issues are less important than attributes and character traits in your recall effort." Accordingly, Schwarzenegger carefully avoided mentioning the budget or raising any policy questions during his Leno appearance, sticking to Luntz-tested lines such as, "Do your job for the people and do it well, otherwise you are 'hasta la vista, baby!'"

There is an art to "going negative" in political campaigns. Gray Davis was indeed an unpopular governor facing a voter backlash in a bleak economic year, and his centrist policies had alienated Democrats as much as Republicans. He had won re-election against Bill Simon less than a year before the recall drive began, but the race was marked by ugly mudslinging on both sides that left voters disgusted and gave his opponents plenty of material to use against him. Campaign consultants often advise that the best way to go negative is to find a lighthearted way to do it, preferably with a bit of humor. As Democratic campaign operative Deno Seder explains, humor "induces the flow of endorphins and other brain hormones, creating a sense of well-being or euphoria. ... Such 'statements' can cripple the opposition, yet they leave the viewer with a pleasant feeling, not the bitter aftertaste that often accompanies sober attack ads. Instead of earning the resentment of the targeted audience for presenting a 'downer,' leaving them laughing creates a feeling of goodwill toward the sponsor, while actually accentuating the sting of the attack on the opponent. We all know that when Jay Leno or David Letterman starts making jokes about a candidate, the effect can be devastating."

Schwarzenegger, however, was on Jay Leno, and he had the audience laughing with him. Calling Davis "fiddling, fumbling and failing" was itself a negative attack, but in the jovial context of the Leno show, it didn't feel negative. And by being the person to bring up the allegations of his inexperience and womanizing, Schwarzenegger was inoculating voters against his most obvious weaknesses as a candidate. Two years previously, Premiere magazine had published a report that described him as a womanizer and recounted numerous instances in which he had allegedly groped or otherwise harassed women without their consent. Schwarzenegger had originally considered running for governor in the regular 2002 election, but had declined after Davis strategist Gary South launched a pre-emptive strike by blast-faxing copies of the Premiere piece around to reporters.

[b]The Running Man[/b]

Schwarzenegger's declaration on The Tonight Show may have appeared off-the-cuff and spontaneous, but months of planning and preparation had gone into both the recall petition that made his election possible and the campaign itself. Conventional wisdom suggests that Republican presidential candidates write off left-leaning California's 54 electoral votes, but such a substantial prize is hard to ignore. An associate of top Bush strategist Karl Rove calls the state "Karl's Ahab." Aside from the ambition of winning California in the presidential race, the party stood to benefit in other ways by electing Schwarzenegger, such as an increase in Republican voter registration with the potential to influence future elections. It also forces Democratic presidential candidates to spend more time and money in the state in 2004. "We can distract the opposition long enough to make them vulnerable elsewhere on the national political landscape," said California Republican strategist Dan Schnur. Longtime Republican strategist Kenneth L. Khachigian, who worked with recall backer and bankroller Congressman Darrell Issa, characterized the recall as "fundamentally a conservative Republican mainstream movement. That's where all the momentum and energy behind the recall comes from." Several other California GOP leaders, including former state legislator Howard Kaloogian, political consultant Sal Russo, and strategist David Gilliard, worked hard on the recall drive. Schwarzenegger's proclaimed liberal views on social issues such as abortion and gay rights were accepted by party activists as pragmatic necessities in California's cultural environment. As conservative strategist Matt Cunningham explained, "When a man is lost in the desert and dying of thirst, he's not going to insist on Perrier."

One of several Republican Party figures cheering Schwarzenegger in The Tonight Show studio was political consultant George Gorton. A year previously, Gorton had directed Schwarzenegger's campaign for Proposition 49--a noncontroversial measure providing grants for after-school programs--which many political insiders saw as a planned precursor to a future run for governor. Two weeks before the announcement on Leno, in fact, the Political Pulse, a newsletter of California politics, published a report by Anthony York noting that Schwarzenegger had recently raised nearly half a million dollars in new money for his already-concluded Prop. 49 campaign. "Is money in the Prop. 49 kitty going to be used for the upcoming governor's race?" York asked, adding, "At the very least, the fundraising does prime the pump."

Two months prior to his appearance on The Tonight Show, Schwarzenegger supporters conducted focus groups in San Francisco and the San Fernando Valley to determine participants' views of the actor and of Davis. The results guided a media strategy that more closely paralleled PR blitzes around Schwarzenegger's major movies than most political campaigns. Capitalizing on the uniquely short time frame of the recall election, it was a remarkably controlled and image-focused campaign. Voters in California--the most populous and one of the most diverse states in the country--had only two months to decide whether they wanted to recall Governor Davis and, if so, which of the more than 130 registered candidates should replace him.

Schwarzenegger required all of the aides and consultants to his campaign to sign a five-page confidentiality agreement. The agreement, which itself was supposed to be confidential (but leaked anyway to the Los Angeles Times), stated that Schwarzenegger "is a public figure and substantial effort and expense have been dedicated to limit the constant efforts of the press, other media and the public to learn of personal and business affairs" in which he was involved. Campaign aides agreed not to "take any photographs, movies, videos, or make any sketches, depictions or other likenesses of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Arnold Schwarzenegger's family, friends, associates or employees, all of which constitute confidential information." They also agreed not to divulge "financial, business, medical, legal, personal and contractual matters" and "any letter, memorandum, contract, photograph, film or other document or writing pertaining in any way" to Schwarzenegger "or any Related Parties." Nondisclosure agreements of this type are common in Hollywood but unusual for political candidates.

Newspapers and more serious television news shows were, for the most part, ignored by the Schwarzenegger camp, which waited until 30 days into his campaign before agreeing to his first interview with California newspapers. Instead, carefully crafted yet vague messages were relayed to the public via entertainment-focused venues such as Access Hollywood, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Howard Stern Show and Larry King Live. According to Sean Walsh, the campaign's co-director of communications, "We ran away from the established media. We went to the real mass media. We make no apologies for doing lots of radio or TV. It gave us five, seven, eight minutes of unfiltered opportunities to get out our message every day."

The campaign finale was an elaborate bus tour through the state, with journalists in tow. Each bus was named after a different Schwarzenegger film--"The Running Man" for Schwarzenegger himself and his immediate retinue, "Total Recall" for VIP tagalongs, and four buses for reporters, dubbed "Predator 1-4" by the campaign staff. Writing in the conservative Weekly Standard, Matt Labash called the caravan "the No Talk Express--in which he invites hundreds of access-starved journos along for the ride, then essentially tells them to buzz off. . . . Since it is fairly clear early on that access to Arnold will be next to nil, journalists interview other journalists from foreign countries."

The campaign was dominated by slogans parroting his movie tag lines: "I'll be back," or "Gray Davis has terminated opportunities! Now it is time that we terminate him!" The campaign even had its own special effect: a giant wrecking ball, used at a campaign stop to crush a car as a way of dramatizing Schwarzenegger's opposition to the state's auto tax.

As Schwarzenegger had anticipated on Leno, one of the areas that did come under scrutiny was his long-standing reputation as a womanizer. Reports of his rough handling of women were prominent in Wendy Leigh's 1990 book, Arnold: An Unauthorized Biography. According to Leigh, the actor's publicity team had responded to the book with lawsuits, threats and efforts to sabotage the book's publicity campaign. The 2001 report in Premiere magazine also left questions hanging about the candidate's character. The truncated time frame of the recall campaign, however, left little time for further investigations.

The Los Angeles Times conducted its own investigation and compiled a list of 15 women with stories of sexual harassment. The Times was able to find corroboration of each woman's story, either from independent witnesses or from friends or relatives who said the women had told them of the incidents long before Schwarzenegger's run for governor. The Times report, however, did not appear until the last week of the campaign and was quickly dismissed by the Schwarzenegger camp as a smear orchestrated by Davis. In its own bit of last-minute smearing, the Schwarzenegger campaign circulated an e-mail attacking the character of Rhonda Miller, a stuntwoman who said she had been manhandled on the set of Terminator 2. The e-mail pointed reporters to the website of a Los Angeles Superior Court, which showed that Rhonda Miller had an extensive rap sheet for theft, forgery, drugs and prostitution. After the election, it turned out that the felon in question was a different Rhonda Miller.

If anything, the reports of Schwarzenegger's sexual misconduct may have helped rather than hindered the campaign. More than 1,000 Times readers cancelled their subscriptions, accusing the paper of last-minute partisan attacks--a charge that editor John S. Carroll vigorously disputes, calling the stories "solid as Gibraltar" and noting that publishing them earlier would have been impossible given the amount of research needed to confirm them. "It was a daunting feat to get all this accomplished during the 62 days of Schwarzenegger's campaign, a year less time than we'd have to cover a normal gubernatorial race," Carroll wrote. The Times, he said, understood that publishing it late in the campaign was likely to "touch off an outcry against the newspaper. We had no illusion that it would be warmly received." But the only other options were either to "never publish it," which "could be justified only if the story were untrue or insignificant," or to "hold it and publish after the election," which would "prompt anger among citizens who expect the newspaper to treat them like adults and give them all the information it has before they cast their votes."

Like the campaign itself, Schwarzenegger's victory celebration resembled a Hollywood gala as much as anything political. The crowd surrounding him at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles could have been the receiving line at an NBC promotion. Prominent faces at the celebration included his wife, Dateline NBC correspondent Maria Shriver; actor Rob Lowe of NBC's Lyon's Den; and Pat O'Brien of NBC's Access Hollywood. The man who announced his victory and introduced him to the crowd of cheering supporters was Jay Leno. And the following night, Schwarzenegger made another appearance on The Tonight Show, this time as governor-elect. During his unbilled but clearly preplanned appearance, Leno's band played "Happy Days Are Here Again" while the studio audience chanted, "Arnold! Arnold!"

NBC representative Rebecca Marks attempted to play down the impression that the network had thrown its support behind the man now called California's "governator." Leno's election-night introduction, Marks said, "was something he agreed to do with Arnold as a friend. He was not in any way endorsing him politically. It was a personal appearance."

Marty Kaplan, associate dean of the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, disagreed. "What Leno's presence did is give legitimacy to the notion that it wasn't a partisan event, it wasn't a political event, it was somehow an American cultural event," Kaplan said. "It was like welcoming home an astronaut from a safe voyage. In so doing, it played into a campaign strategy that this was a campaign for all, beyond politics. Which is not true; he's a Republican candidate. ... It gives the impression of taking it out of the political realm into an extraterrestrial domain where politics don't matter, where we're all friends. It puts people who value dispute and debate [into the position] where we're all seen as earthly and petty, as if we should get with the program."

[b]Dancing Elephants[/b]

Conservatives frequently decry the "liberal bias" of the mass media. The grain of truth in their complaint is that people who work in the entertainment and news industries--television, movies, popular music, books, magazines and newspapers--tend to lean Democratic. People from these industries give about two-thirds of their campaign contributions to Democrats, and one-third to Republicans. People who work in the media are different in this regard from many other leading corporate sectors such as oil, livestock, trucking, chemicals, tobacco, railroads and the automobile and restaurant industries, all of which give more than 70 percent of their contributions to Republicans. There is no shortage of liberal performers in Hollywood--Ed Asner, Martin Sheen, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Rob Reiner and Barbra Streisand, to name just a few. While vocal in their views, however, Democratic-leaning actors have rarely sought political office and have almost never held it, preferring to advance their views through activism, lobbying and the arts. By contrast, acting has been a stepping-stone to political careers for numerous Republicans. In addition to Arnold Schwarzenegger, examples include:

* George Murphy, an actor, dancer and former president of the Screen Actors Guild who served as a U.S. senator from California from 1965 to 1971.

* Ronald Reagan, the former governor of California and two-term president of the United States.

* Clint Eastwood, who served two years as mayor of Carmel, California in the 1980s.

* Fred Grandy, who played the character of Gopher on the TV sitcom The Love Boat before serving as a congressman from the state of Iowa from 1986 to 1995.

* Sonny Bono, who followed his split from Cher by becoming the mayor of Palm Springs, California, followed by his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994.

* Fred Thompson, who was elected to the U.S. Senate from Tennessee in 1994 following an acting career that included roles in films such as In the Line of Fire and The Hunt for Red October (and, more recently, the district attorney role on NBC's Law and Order).

Following Schwarzenegger's declaration of his candidacy, Backstage, a professional magazine for actors, published a story on actors who had run successfully for political office, but the only example it cited from the Democratic side was Sheila Kuhn, a California state senator who many years previously had been a child actor on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (from which she was fired when CBS discovered that she was a lesbian). We were able to find only one other example--Ben Jones, who played the character of Cooter on the Dukes of Hazzard and then served two terms as a Democratic U.S. congressman from Georgia before losing in 1992.

There are several reasons for this disparity. One is that the Republican Party has actively recruited and supported candidates from the entertainment world. Another is that Republicans often run as "antigovernment" or "nonpolitician" candidates, so that an actor's lack of political experience can actually be an advantage for his campaign. And although Bill Clinton was clearly a master of showmanship, for the most part Republicans have shown greater mastery of the rules of postmodern politics, in which style is as important as substance and issues are less important than personality. Republican candidates understand these unwritten rules because they and their campaign consultants, some of whom actually started in the entertainment industry, played a big part in inventing them.

It is no accident that several of the names on the list above came from California. The first political-campaign firm in the United States, Campaigns Inc., was also established in California in the 1930s by the husband-and-wife team of Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter. Whitaker and Baxter drew on the culture of nearby Hollywood as they developed techniques for "selling" candidates through the mass media. Incumbent California governor Frank Merriam hired Whitaker and Baxter to defeat a 1934 election challenge by muckraking journalist and social reformer Upton Sinclair. Whitaker and Baxter developed a smear campaign to defeat Sinclair, arranging to have false stories printed in newspapers about Sinclair seducing young girls. To combat Sinclair's Depression-era populism, they worked with Hollywood studios, which controlled movie theaters throughout the state, to place phony newsreels in cinemas featuring fictional "Sinclair supporters" in rags advocating a Soviet-style takeover.

After their victory, Whitaker and Baxter explained the cynical philosophy behind their success: "The average American doesn't want to be educated, he doesn't want to improve his mind, he doesn't even want to work consciously at being a good citizen. But every American likes to be entertained. He likes the movies, he likes mysteries; he likes fireworks and parades. So, if you can't put on a fight, put on a show." In Whitaker's words, they transformed elections from "a hit or miss business, directed by broken-down politicians" into "a mature, well-managed business founded on sound public relations principles, and using every technique of modern advertising."

Whitaker and Baxter were in turn succeeded by another Californian, Murray Chotiner, who took Richard Nixon under his wing in 1945 and groomed him in the techniques of political campaigning. Nixon's career spanned the rise of television as a new medium that transformed both entertainment and politics. "It was Nixon's television performance in his Checkers speech that saved his place as Dwight Eisenhower's running mate in 1952," notes historian David Greenberg, the author of Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image. "In a historic piece of image-craft, Nixon talked earnestly about his onerous childhood and his struggles upon returning from the Navy--and adorned his speech with folksy touches about his wife's cloth coat and his daughters' cocker spaniel. So effective was his self-portrait that telegrams flooded in to the studio praising his sincerity, forcing Eisenhower to retain him. Only a handful of liberal critics dissented, warning that Nixon was using insidious new techniques to misrepresent himself--and endanger democracy. But Nixon innovated further." Following his defeat in the 1960s election against John F. Kennedy, Nixon set out to reinvent himself, hiring professional image manipulators including William Safire, then a New York public relations executive; advertising executives H.R. Haldeman and Harry Treleaven; and television producer Roger Ailes (currently the head of Fox News). Long before Bill Clinton played the saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show or Arnold Schwarzenegger traded quips with Jay Leno, Nixon paved the way by appearing on the comedy show Laugh-In to say "Sock it to me" as part of his 1968 campaign strategy for overcoming his humorless image.

Before Roger Ailes met Nixon, he was an executive producer of The Mike Douglas Show, a popular TV talk and variety program. They met in 1967, while Nixon was waiting to appear as a guest on the show. "It's a shame a man has to use gimmicks like this to get elected," Nixon said.

"Television is not a gimmick," Ailes replied, and Nixon hired him.

The problem for the Nixon campaign, Ailes said, is that "a lot of people think Nixon is dull. Think he's a bore, a pain in the ass. They think he's the kind of kid who always carried a book bag. . . . Now you put him on television, you've got a problem right away. He's a funny-looking guy. He looks like somebody put him in a closet overnight and he jumps out in the morning with his suit all bunched up and starts running around saying, 'I want to be President.' I mean this is how he strikes some people."

To change this image, the campaign paid to produce a series of television shows, in which Nixon fielded questions from panels of citizens. Although the shows were broadcast live, both the audiences and the panel were prescreened by the campaign, chosen carefully to have the right demographics--just enough blacks, for example, but not too many. Panel members were chosen so they would ask just enough tough questions to make the shows feel spontaneous, and since the audience was all Republican, applause was guaranteed.

"The audience is part of the show," Ailes said during a discussion with Harry Treleaven about whether to allow reporters to watch the tapings. "And that's the whole point. Our television show. And the press has no business on the set. And goddammit, Harry, the problem is that this is an electronic election. The first there's ever been. TV has the power now. Some of the guys get arrogant and rub the reporters' faces in it and then the reporters get pissed and go out of their way to rap anything they consider staged for TV. And you know damn well that's what they'd do if they saw this from the studio. You let them in there with the regular audience and they see the warmup. They see Jack Rourke [the show's warm-up man] out there telling the audience to applaud and to mob Nixon at the end, and that's all they'd write about it."

In 1968, Nixon's success in reinventing himself as the "New Nixon" helped him win the White House. When journalist Joe McGinniss detailed this strategy the next year in The Selling of the President, shamefaced reporters vowed to get wise to such manipulation, but the Nixon campaign was just the beginning. Although his impeachment in the Watergate scandal meant a temporary setback, the Republicans roared back into the White House in 1980 with Ronald Reagan, the first actor ever to become president. Reagan also relied on the talents of Ailes, who served as a consultant to his 1984 re-election campaign. Ailes oversaw production of the now legendary "Morning in America" campaign television ads, designed by Madison Avenue executive Philip Dusenberry and featuring swelling violin music and emotional, issue-free imagery of weddings, flag-raising, home-buying and peaceful, scenic vistas.

Ailes used a similar strategy in 1988, when he worked with Lee Atwater to mastermind George H.W. Bush's come-from-behind victory over Michael Dukakis. The Bush/Quayle '88 campaign combined morning-in-America imagery with ads that ridiculed Dukakis through deceptive visual imagery. One TV spot took Dukakis to task for pollution in Boston Harbor, displaying a sign that said, "Danger/Radiation Hazard/No Swimming." The sign actually had nothing to do with pollution or Dukakis. It was posted to warn Navy personnel not to swim in waters that had once harbored nuclear submarines under repair.

The most egregious ads, however, used visual imagery to exploit racial feelings. One featured a threatening photograph of William Horton, a black inmate who had escaped from a prison-furlough program and raped a woman, to suggest that Dukakis was unusually soft on crime. (Actually, Massachusetts was one of 45 states with prison furlough programs at the time of Horton's crime.) A second prison-furlough ad depicted a "revolving door" through which a line of white men entered prison, while blacks and Hispanics exited. "That phrase 'revolving-door prison policy' implies, of course, that Massachusetts criminals could, thanks to Governor Dukakis, slip out of jail as easily as commuters streaming from a subway station," observes Mark Crispin Miller. "But the image makes an even more inflammatory statement. . . . The 'revolving door' effects an eerie racial metamorphosis, implying that the Dukakis prison system was not only porous, but a satanic source of negritude--a dark 'liberal' mill that took white men and made them colored."

[b]True Lies[/b]

By its nature, television is expensive to produce and broadcast (although that may be changing, thanks to the Internet and other technological advances). It therefore lends itself to control by the people who can afford to pay for the considerable costs of production. It is also a highly emotional medium. Unlike print, which requires that the audience make a conscious effort, television is often absorbed unconsciously, as pure images and background in our information environment.

Reporter Leslie Stahl tells a story in her memoir, Reporting Live, of an experience she had in 1984 when she broadcast a piece for the CBS Evening News about the gap between rhetoric and reality under the Reagan administration. She juxtaposed images of staged photo opportunities in which Reagan picnicked with ordinary folks or surrounded himself with black children, farmers and happy flag-waving supporters. These images, she pointed out, often conflicted with the nature of Reagan's actual policies.

"Mr. Reagan tries to counter the memory of an unpopular issue with a carefully chosen backdrop that actually contradicts the president's policy," she said in her Evening News piece. "Look at the handicapped Olympics, or the opening ceremony of an old-age home. No hint that he tried to cut the budgets for the disabled or for federally subsidized housing for the elderly."

Stahl's piece was so hard-hitting in its criticism of Reagan, she recalled, that she "worried that my sources at the White House would be angry enough to freeze me out." Much to her shock, however, she received a phone call immediately after the broadcast from White House aide Richard Darman. He was calling from the office of Treasury Secretary Jim Baker, who had just watched the piece along with White House press secretary Mike Deaver and Baker's assistant, Margaret Tutwiler. Rather than complaining, they were calling to thank her. "Way to go, kiddo," Darman said. "What a great story! We loved it."

"Excuse me?" Stahl replied, thinking he must be joking.

"No, no, we really loved it," Darman insisted. "Five minutes of free media. We owe you big time."

"Why are you so happy?" Stahl said. "Didn't you hear what I said?"

"Nobody heard what you said," Darman replied.

"Come again?"

"You guys in Televisionland haven't figured it out, have you? When the pictures are powerful and emotional, they override if not completely drown out the sound. Lesley, I mean it, nobody heard you."

Stahl was so taken aback that she played a videotape of her segment before a live audience of a hundred people and asked them what they had just seen. Sure enough, Darman was right. "Most of the audience thought it was either an ad for the Reagan campaign or a very positive news story," Stahl recalls. "Only a handful heard what I said. The pictures were so evocative--we're talking about pictures with Reagan in the shining center--that all the viewers were absorbed. Unlike reading or listening to the radio, with the television we 'learn' with two of our senses together, and apparently the eye is dominant. When we watch television, we get an emotional reaction. The information doesn't always go directly to the thinking part of our brains but to the gut. It's all about impressions, and the White House understood that."

The George W. Bush administration also understands this lesson. At the Republican National Convention that nominated Bush in 2000, only 4 percent of the actual delegates were black, compared to 20 percent at the Democratic Convention, but the talent onstage looked quite different: not just Colin Powell, but comedian Chris Black, the Temptations, a gospel choir, rhythm and blues and salsa singers, and Representative J.C. Watts (the only black Republican in Congress). "It's all visuals," Karl Rove told campaign finance chief Don Evans. "You campaign as if America was watching TV with the sound turned down." - http://www.counterpunch.com/s...

TO TELL THE TRUTH: THE TYRANNY OF EVENHANDEDNESS ...

05.28.04 (6:46 am) [edit]

[b]To Tell the Truth[/b]

Some news organizations, including The New York Times, are currently engaged in self-criticism over the run-up to the Iraq war. They are asking, as they should, why poorly documented claims of a dire threat received prominent, uncritical coverage, while contrary evidence was either ignored or played down.

But it's not just Iraq, and it's not just The Times. Many journalists seem to be having regrets about the broader context in which Iraq coverage was embedded: a climate in which the press wasn't willing to report negative information about George Bush.

People who get their news by skimming the front page, or by watching TV, must be feeling confused by the sudden change in Mr. Bush's character. For more than two years after 9/11, he was a straight shooter, all moral clarity and righteousness.

But now those people hear about a president who won't tell a straight story about why he took us to war in Iraq or how that war is going, who can't admit to and learn from mistakes, and who won't hold himself or anyone else accountable. What happened?

The answer, of course, is that the straight shooter never existed. He was a fictitious character that the press, for various reasons, presented as reality.

The truth is that the character flaws that currently have even conservative pundits fuming have been visible all along. Mr. Bush's problems with the truth have long been apparent to anyone willing to check his budget arithmetic. His inability to admit mistakes has also been obvious for a long time. I first wrote about Mr. Bush's "infallibility complex" more than two years ago, and I wasn't being original.

So why did the press credit Mr. Bush with virtues that reporters knew he didn't possess? One answer is misplaced patriotism. After 9/11 much of the press seemed to reach a collective decision that it was necessary, in the interests of national unity, to suppress criticism of the commander in chief.

Another answer is the tyranny of evenhandedness. Moderate and liberal journalists, both reporters and commentators, often bend over backward to say nice things about conservatives. Not long ago, many commentators who are now caustic Bush critics seemed desperate to differentiate themselves from "irrational Bush haters" who were neither haters nor irrational — and whose critiques look pretty mild in the light of recent revelations.

And some journalists just couldn't bring themselves to believe that the president of the United States was being dishonest about such grave matters.

Finally, let's not overlook the role of intimidation. After 9/11, if you were thinking of saying anything negative about the president, you had to be prepared for an avalanche of hate mail. You had to expect right-wing pundits and publications to do all they could to ruin your reputation, and you had to worry about being denied access to the sort of insider information that is the basis of many journalistic careers.

The Bush administration, knowing all this, played the press like a fiddle. But has that era come to an end?

A new Pew survey finds 55 percent of journalists in the national media believing that the press has not been critical enough of Mr. Bush, compared with only 8 percent who believe that it has been too critical. More important, journalists seem to be acting on that belief.

Amazing things have been happening lately. The usual suspects have tried to silence reporting about prison abuses by accusing critics of undermining the troops — but the reports keep coming. The attorney general has called yet another terror alert — but the press raised questions about why. (At a White House morning briefing, Terry Moran of ABC News actually said what many thought during other conveniently timed alerts: "There is a disturbing possibility that you are manipulating the American public in order to get a message out.")

It may not last. In July 2002, according to Dana Milbank of The Washington Post — who has tried, at great risk to his career, to offer a realistic picture of the Bush presidency — "the White House press corps showed its teeth" for the first time since 9/11. It didn't last: the administration beat the drums of war, and most of the press relapsed into docility.

But this time may be different. And if it is, Mr. Bush — who has always depended on that docility — may be in even more trouble than the latest polls suggest. - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...

TO TELL THE TRUTH: THE TYRANNY OF EVENHANDEDNESS ...

05.28.04 (6:45 am) [edit]

CONCERNS RAISED BY THE VATICAN: Bush's "Christian" Blood Cult

05.27.04 (5:25 am) [edit]

[b]Bush's "Christian" Blood Cult[/b]

[u][b]Concerns Raised by the Vatican[/b][/u]

George W. Bush proclaims himself a born-again Christian. However, Bush and fellow self-anointed neo-Christians like House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, John Ashcroft, and sports arena Book of Revelations carnival hawker Franklin Graham appear to wallow in a "Christian" blood lust cult when it comes to practicing the teachings of the founder of Christianity. This cultist form of Christianity, with its emphasis on death rather than life, is also worrying the leaders of mainstream Christian religions, particularly the Pope.

One only has to check out Bush's record as Governor of Texas to see his own preference for death over life. During his tenure as Governor, Bush presided over a record setting 152 executions, including the 1998 execution of fellow born-again Christian Karla Faye Tucker, a convicted murderer who later led a prison ministry. Forty of Bush's executions were carried out in 2000, the year the Bush presidential campaign was spotlighting their candidate's strong law enforcement record. The Washington Post's Richard Cohen reported in October 2000 that one of the execution chamber's "tie-down team" members, Fred Allen, had to prepare so many people for lethal injections during 2000, he quit his job in disgust.

Bush mocked Tucker's appeal for clemency. In an interview with Talk magazine, Bush imitated Tucker's appeal for him to spare her life - pursing his lips, squinting his eyes, and in a squeaky voice saying, "Please don't kill me." That went too far for former GOP presidential candidate Gary Bauer, himself an evangelical Christian. "I think it is nothing short of unbelievable that the governor of a major state running for president thought it was acceptable to mock a woman he decided to put to death," said Bauer.

A former Texas Department of Public Safety officer, a devout Roman Catholic, told this reporter that evidence to the contrary, Bush was more than happy to ignore DNA data and documented cases of prosecutorial misconduct to send innocent people to the Huntsville, Texas lethal injection chamber. He said the number of executed mentally retarded, African Americans, and those who committed capital crimes as minors was proof that Bush was insensitive and a "phony Christian." When faced with similar problems in Illinois, Governor George Ryan, a Republican, commuted the death sentences of his state's death row inmates and released others after discovering they were wrongfully convicted. Yet the Republican Party is pillorying Ryan and John Ashcroft's Justice Department continues to investigate the former Governor for political malfeasance as if Bush and Ashcroft are without sin in such matters. Hypocrisy certainly rules in the Republican Party.

Bush's blood lust has been extended across the globe. He has given the CIA authority to assassinate those deemed a threat to U.S. national interests. Bush has virtually suspended Executive Orders 11905 (Gerald Ford), 12306 (Jimmy Carter), and 12333 (Ronald Reagan) which prohibit the assassination of foreign leaders. Bush's determination to kill Saddam Hussein, his family, and his top leaders with precision-guided missiles and tactical nuclear weapon-like Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bombs is yet another indication of Bush's disregard for his Republican and Democratic predecessors. It now appears that in his zeal to kill Hussein, innocent civilian patrons of a Baghdad restaurant were killed by one of Bush's precision Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs). Like it or not, Saddam Hussein was recognized by over 100 nations as the leader of Iraq -- a member state of the United Nations. Hussein, like North Korea' Kim Jong Il, Syria's Bashir Assad, and Iran's Mohammed Khatami, are covered by Executive Order 12333, which the Bush mouthpieces claim is still in effect. Bush's "Christian" blood cult sees no other option than death for those who become his enemies. This doctrine is found no place in Christian theology.

Bush has not once prayed for the innocent civilians who died as a result of the U.S. attack on Iraq. He constantly "embeds" himself with the military at Goebbels-like speech fests and makes constant references to God when he refers to America's "victory" in Iraq, as if God endorses his sordid killing spree. He makes no mention of the children, women, and old men killed by America's "precision-guided" missiles and bombs and trigger-happy U.S. troops. In fact, Bush revels in indiscriminate blood letting. Since he never experienced such killing in Southeast Asia, when he was AWOL from his Texas Air National Guard unit, Bush just does not seem to understand the horror of a parent watching one's children having their heads and limbs blown off in a sudden blast of shrapnel or children witnessing their parents burning to death with their own body fat nurturing the flames.

Bush and his advisers, previously warned that Iraq's ancient artifacts and collection of historical documents and books were in danger of being looted or destroyed, instead, sat back while the Baghdad and Mosul museums and Baghdad Library were ransacked and destroyed. Cult leaders have historically attempted to destroy history in order to invent their own. The Soviets tried to obliterate Russia's Orthodox traditions, turning a number of churches into warehouses and animal barns. Cambodia's Pol Pot tried to wipe out Buddhism's famed Angkor Wat shrine in an attempt to stamp out his country's Buddhist history. In March 2001, while they were negotiating with the Bush administration on a natural gas pipeline, Afghanistan's Taliban blew up two massive 1600-year old Buddhas in Bamiyan. The Bush administration, itself run by fanatic religious cultists, barely made a fuss about the loss of the relics. It would not be the first time the cultists within the Bush administration ignored the pillaging of history's treasures.

The ransacking of Iraq's historical treasures is explainable when one considers what the blood cult Christians really think about Islam. Franklin Graham, the heir to the empire built up by his anti-Semitic father, Billy Graham, has decided being anti-Muslim is far more financially rewarding than being anti-Jewish. Billy Graham, history notes from the Nixon tapes, complained about the Jewish stranglehold on the media and Jews being responsible for pornography.

Franklin Graham continues to enjoy his father's unfettered and questionable access to the White House. But in the case of Bush, the younger Graham has a fanatic adherent. Graham has called Islam a "very evil and wicked" religion. He then announces he wants to go to Iraq. Graham obviously sees an opportunity to convert Muslims and unrepentant Eastern Christians, who owe their allegiance to Roman and Greek prelates, to his perverted form of blood cult Christianity. Graham says he is ready to send his Samaritan's Purse missionaries into Iraq to provide assistance. Muslims and mainstream Christians are wary that Graham wants to exchange food, water, and medicine for the baptism of Iraqis into his intolerant brand of Christianity. In the last Gulf War, Graham could not get away with his chicanery. The Desert Storm Commander, General Norman Schwarzkopf, stopped dead in the tracks Graham's plan to send 30,000 Arabic language Bibles to U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. Today's Pentagon shows no such compunction to put a rein on Graham. It invited him to give a Good Friday sermon at the Pentagon to the consternation of the Defense Department's Muslim employees. To make matters worse, under Bush's "Faith Based Initiative," Graham's Samaritan's Purse stands to receive U.S. government funds for its proselytizing efforts in Iraq, something that should be an affront to every American taxpayer.

Bush's self-proclaimed adherence to Christianity (during one of the presidential debates he said Jesus Christ was his favorite "philosopher") and his constant reference to a new international structure bypassing the United Nations system and long-standing international treaties are worrying the top leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. Well-informed sources close to the Vatican report that Pope John Paul II is growing increasingly concerned about Bush's ultimate intentions. The Pope has had experience with Bush's death fetish. Bush ignored the Pope's plea to spare the life of Karla Faye Tucker. To show that he was similarly ignorant of the world's mainstream religions, Bush also rejected an appeal to spare Tucker from the World Council of Churches - an organization that represents over 350 of the world's Protestant and Orthodox Churches. It did not matter that Bush's own Methodist Church and his parents' Episcopal Church are members of the World Council.

Bush's blood lust, his repeated commitment to Christian beliefs, and his constant references to "evil doers," in the eyes of many devout Catholic leaders, bear all the hallmarks of the one warned about in the Book of Revelations - the anti-Christ. People close to the Pope claim that amid these concerns, the Pontiff wishes he was younger and in better health to confront the possibility that Bush may represent the person prophesized in Revelations. John Paul II has always believed the world was on the precipice of the final confrontation between Good and Evil as foretold in the New Testament. Before he became Pope, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla said, "We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel." The Pope, who grew up facing the evils of Hitler and Stalin, knows evil when he sees it. Although we can all endlessly argue over the Pope's effectiveness in curtailing abuses within his Church, his accomplishments external to Catholicism are impressive.

According to journalists close to the Vatican, the Pope and his closest advisers are also concerned that the ultimate acts of evil - the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon - were known in advance by senior Bush administration officials. By permitting the attacks to take their course, there is a perception within the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy that a coup d'etat was implemented, one that gave Bush and his leadership near-dictatorial powers to carry out their agenda.

The Pope worked tirelessly to convince leaders of nations on the UN Security Council to oppose Bush's war resolution on Iraq. Vatican sources claim they had not seen the Pope more animated and determined since he fell ill to Parkinson's Disease. In the end, the Pope did convince the leaders of Mexico, Chile, Cameroon, and Guinea to oppose the U.S. resolution. If one were to believe in the Book of Revelations, as the Pope fervently does, he can seek solace in scoring a symbolic victory against the Bush administration. Whether Bush represents a dangerous right-wing ideologue who couples his political fanaticism with a neo-Christian blood cult (as I believe) or he is either the anti-Christ or heralds one, the Pope should know he has fought the good battle and has gained the respect and admiration of many non-Catholics around the world. - http://www.fromthewilderness....

BUSH USES "WAR ON TERROR" AS A PRETEXT TO COMMIT WAR CRIMES!!!

05.27.04 (5:16 am) [edit]

[b]Bush uses "war on terror" as a pretext to commit war crimes, then White House lawyer tortures the truth.[/b]

President George W. Bush knew for over two years that his administration has been promoting policies that qualify as war crimes under the 1996 federal War Crimes Act, the international Third Geneva Convention, and the Torture Convention.

An article in the May 24 issue of Newsweek titled "The Roots of Torture" reveals that White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales wrote a January 25, 2002 memo to Bush, urging him to disregard the "obsolete" and "quaint" provisions of the Geneva Convention. He advised the Bush administration to do this precisely because the interrogation methods it was already using on prisoners captured in Afghanistan violated the Convention, leaving US officials open to prosecution for war crimes.

[b]Geneva Convention "Obsolete"[/b]

In his January 25 memo, Gonzales urges Bush to declare the war in Afghanistan, including the detention of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, exempt from the provisions of the Geneva Convention. This could be accomplished, Gonzales advised Bush, by inventing a technicality: declaring the detainees arrested in the "war on terror" to be outside the Geneva Convention -- and by extension, beyond the Torture Convention and the U.S. War Crimes Act. He gave his assurances that such a technicality "renders obsolete the Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners." Thus the ambiguity of Bush's newly created and constantly repeated "war on terror" gave his administration carte blanche to do anything it pleased with anyone labeled an "enemy combatant."

"Your determination would create a reasonable basis in law that [the War Crimes Act] does not apply which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution," Gonzales wrote. The best way to guard against such "unwarranted charges," Gonzales concluded, would be for President Bush to stick to his decision -- then being strongly challenged by Secretary of State Powell -- to exempt the treatment of captured Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters from the Geneva Convention's provisions.

Newsweek obtained Gonzales' memo and strongly stated dissents by Secretary of State Colin Powell and his chief legal advisor, William Howard Taft IV. These are among hundreds of pages of internal administration documents on the Geneva Conventions and related issues that have been reported for the first time in the May Newsweek magazine. Newsweek also made some of these documents available on the Internet.

[b]Recycling War Crimes[/b]

Dismissing the Geneva Conventions is nothing new. Fifty-eight years ago, after World War II, the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal showed that by labeling certain Allied soldiers terrorists, the Third Reich used a legalistic policy for attempting to get around the Geneva Conventions. Openly armed and uniformed Allied troops had been landed behind German lines in occupied France and Norway. In response, Adolf Hitler signed the Commando Order.

Hitler's legalistic directive claimed that Allied units inside of German occupied territory were engaged in terrorist activities. Thus the Commando Order provided for captured commandos to be summarily executed. A related order directed the population to retaliate against Allied airmen who parachuted from disabled aircraft. The airmen had been accused of indiscriminately and illegally attacking civilians -- in bombing raids -- thus making them terrorists. Clearly, similar principles were adopted by Gonzales so that Bush could ignore the Geneva Conventions to advance his policies for his so-called "war on terror."

By February 2002, the White House issued a statement declaring that while the United States would adhere to the Geneva Conventions in the conduct of the war in Afghanistan, captured Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters would be exempt from prisoner of war status under the Conventions. Administration lawyers believed that this maneuver would protect U.S. interrogators who mistreated prisoners and also their superiors in Washington so that they could not be subjected to prosecutions under the War Crimes Act.

The Nuremberg Tribunal had ruled that various defendants were liable for the abuse of prisoners of war. The Court conceded that some captured combatants were physically depleted. But this was not the cause of their death. They had been made to work in harsh conditions and deprived of food, clothing, and hygiene. The Tribunal concluded that such mistreatment violated a commander's responsibility to insure that prisoners received proper care and were not compelled to work in dangerous conditions. The summary execution of prisoners who allegedly had attempted to escape was also criminal. In addition, commanders were culpable for issuing and transmitting orders that transferred prisoners to the Security Police for "special treatment."

[b]Admitting Nothing[/b]

On May 15, 2004, The New York Times published a column by Alberto Gonzales titled "The Rule of Law and the Rules of War." This was a defense of the Bush administration�s use of torture, sexual abuse and severe "stress" techniques against detainees in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and Iraq. Reading Gonzales' article can only lead to two possible conclusions: either Gonzalez is completely ignorant of the Third Geneva Convention and its well established interpretations since 1949, or he has simply become an unmitigated propagandist for the war crimes of the Bush administration.

Gonzales� column was printed only two days after Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and the Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chairman General Peter Pace were summoned by a U.S. Senate committee to admit that interrogation techniques ordered by the Pentagon in Iraq violated the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war, and were "not humane." During questioning, Wolfowitz hesitated for a long time before answering the question (which he first tried to avoid): "Do you consider keeping a bag over a prisoner�s head for 72 hours to be humane?" Grudgingly, Wolfowitz finally said, "no."

Sounding like their counterparts at Nuremberg fifty-eight years ago, Wolfowitz and Pace claimed ignorance of the "Rules of Engagement Relative to Interrogation" approved by Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez. The top US commander in Iraq, Sanchez had adopted a policy that allowed prisoners to be placed in painful positions, deprived of sleep for up to 72 hours, threatened with dogs and kept in isolation for more than 30 days. Each of these methods is a clear violation of the Third Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

Contradicting his own January 25, 2002 memo (discussed above), Gonzales claimed, "There has never been any suggestion by our government that the [Geneva] conventions do not apply in that conflict�. The United States government understands and seeks to comply with its legal obligations and will act swiftly and responsibly under the law to address violations of those obligations."

[u][b]However, Article 12 of the Third Geneva Convention states[/b][/u]:

"Prisoners of war are in the hands of the enemy Power, but not of the individuals or military units who have captured them. Irrespective of the individual responsibilities that may exist, the Detaining Power is responsible for the treatment given them."

[b]Who's Responsible For What?[/b]

Even if Bush and Rumsfeld did not personally order the violation of the Convention, Article 12 of the Convention holds them -- not the individual soldiers directly involved -- responsible, as the leadership of the "Detaining Power," for the maltreatment of detainees. Thus, in theory, not only General Sanchez but President Bush and his Defense Secretary Rumsfeld should be placed on trial for violating the Geneva Convention, and also the 1996 federal War Crimes Act, and the Torture Convention.

The Geneva Convention's Articles 13 to 17 protect prisoners of war against interrogation, never mind torture. POWs are only obliged to provide their name, rank, date of birth and serial number. They must be treated "humanely" and with "respect," and may not be subjected to "cruel," "humiliating" or "degrading" treatment or any "form of coercion." Article 17 states:

"No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatsoever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind."

The Convention also stipulates that prisoners must not be held in close confinement and "shall be quartered under conditions as favorable as those for the forces of the Detaining Power who are billeted in the same area." The now notoriously over-crowded cells and tents of Abu Ghraib prison are textbook violations of the Geneva Conventions.

Gonzales claimed that Iraq was a "very different situation" to Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, because "in February 2002 President Bush determined that Al Qaeda terrorists were not prisoners of war under the treaty known as the Third Geneva Convention."

It is false that Al Qaeda supporters captured in Afghanistan are not covered by the Geneva Convention because Al Qaeda "is not a state." Article 2 of the Convention specifies that it governs the conduct of the signatories (such as the U.S.) even if the detainees were fighting for a power that had not signed the Convention. Moreover, the alleged Al Qaeda members were covered by Article 4, as "members of militias or volunteer corps" fighting in defense of the Taliban administration, at the time the de facto government of Afghanistan, a signatory of the Geneva Convention.

Bush claims that Taliban soldiers do not qualify as prisoners of war because the Convention stipulates that combatants must distinguish themselves from the civilian population, "which the Taliban clearly did not." But Article 4 of the Convention makes no such distinction. It simply requires members of militias, volunteer corps and "organized resistance movements" to have a commander, have distinctive insignia, carry arms openly and conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war. Article 4 also protects inhabitants of a territory who, on the approach of the enemy, "spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units."

[b]White House Lawyer Tortures Truth[/b]

Gonzales declared that alleged combatants must "earn" prisoner-of-war status by complying with the Convention. In fact, the treaty says the opposite: anyone who has been captured after committing a "belligerent act" must be protected until a properly constituted tribunal decides their status.

Accordingly, Article 5 of the Convention makes it clear that Bush had no right to make a unilateral, executive decision to strip the Taliban of legal protections. It specifies that where any doubt arises as to whether or not a person is a POW, the detainee shall be accorded the protection of the Convention until a "competent tribunal" has determined their status. No such tribunal had been provided by Washington. This is consistent with the Bush administration�s inventing an arbitrary, extra-legal machinery of rules.

Gonzales claimed that the invasion of Afghanistan was a war against the Afghan people, indiscriminately conducted against ordinary civilians. This then raises the following question: if the troops of a U.S.-led coalition couldn't recognize combatants, but instead regarded any civilian as a potential "enemy combatant," then isn't it most likely that most of those taken to Guantanamo Bay for interrogation and endless incarceration are innocent civilians?

Bush "reaffirmed" his claim that the U.S. has a policy of treating Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees "humanely" and "in keeping with the principles of the Third Geneva Convention." But released British detainees from Guantanamo Bay have confirmed that the prisoners there have been treated just as cruelly as those in Abu Ghraib.

Recently, Gonzales has spoken on behalf of the White House with statements that reveal the administration�s complete and general contempt for international law. The crudeness of his legal analysis and the cynicism of his defense is a direct expression of the increasingly Great Criminal style of the Bush administration.

Evidence is mounting of a Bush administration policy for torturing detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Iraq. A case can be made for war crimes charges to be filed against all of the American high officials, civilian and military, responsible for the invasion and conquest of Afghanistan and Iraq. Bush, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Myers, Cambone and others should all be placed in the dock. It is impossible for these perpetrators to ever wind up as defendants in a trial such as was held in Nuremberg sixty years ago. However, the U.S. Constitution does provide for the impeachment of the President or government officials who can be charged with "high crimes and misdemeanors."

Conspiring on January 25, 2002 to violate the 1996 federal War Crimes Act, the international Third Geneva Convention, and the Torture Convention, Bush and Gonzales should promptly be made to lead a parade of the other administrators in front of a Special Prosecutor to be tried for conspiracy to commit war crimes. - http://www.interventionmag.co...

BUSH USES "WAR ON TERROR" AS A PRETEXT TO COMMIT WAR CRIMES!!!

05.27.04 (5:14 am) [edit]

BUSH TOO STUPID TO WORK WITH OTHER NATIONS: BUSH IS A DISGRACEFUL BUFFOON!!!

05.27.04 (5:10 am) [edit]

[b]Bush's Plan Gets Tepid Response from Europe, Iraq [/b]

President Bush's plan for transforming Iraq met resistance from European leaders and some Iraqis on Tuesday as skeptics pressed for more details on the planned transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government.

A day after Bush vowed to stick with a June 30 power shift, disputes over the role of U.S. troops and other security issues soured the outlook for swift international endorsement of his plan.

Several European leaders called for more restraints on the American-led forces that will remain after next month. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush's closest European ally, seemed to split with the White House by suggesting that the interim government should have veto power over U.S. military operations in Iraq.

"That has to be done with the consent of the Iraqi government, and the final political control remains with the Iraqi government," Blair told reporters in London. "That is what the transfer of sovereignty means."

French President Jacques Chirac told Bush that a U.N. resolution should give Iraqis a role in military decisions.

Bush's plan would give the caretaker government control of most domestic issues and Iraq's own weak security forces, but ultimately leaves Iraq's security in U.S. hands until beefed-up Iraqi security forces are ready to take charge. Bush said the 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq would stay "as long as necessary."

Secretary of State Colin Powell, asked about Blair's remarks, said that even if Iraqi authorities object, "U.S. forces remain under U.S. command and will do what is necessary to protect themselves."

Some experts predict that training an Iraqi force to replace them could take three years, but top administration officials have declined to offer a timetable.

"One can't tell. That's why we didn't want to put a specific deadline on it," Powell said on NBC's "Today" show. "We are anxious to build up Iraqi forces, start to step back, and then, as the situation improves, bring our troop numbers down."

Bush's plan calls for a force of 260,000 Iraqi soldiers, police and other security personnel, including a 35,000-member army. Only about 10 percent of Iraqi police will be fully trained by the June 30 handoff.

In Iraq, the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council also called for Iraqi control over the U.S.-led coalition force.

"We understand sovereignty to be absolute," the Governing Council said in a written statement. Even Bush's plan to demolish Abu Ghraib prison, a detested symbol of torture under Saddam Hussein and prisoner abuse under U.S. occupation, met with dissent.

Although some members of the council endorsed the prison's destruction, interim Interior Minister Samir Shaker Mahmoud al Sumeidi said Tuesday that Iraq needs the facility to house "terrorists and criminals that we will be catching very soon."

But a group of Iraqis who had their hands chopped off at the prison for various offenses during Saddam's reign took a different view. During a visit to the White House Tuesday, they volunteered to help with the demolition.

Bush assured the Iraqis during an Oval Office visit that he would finish the job in Iraq.

"What President Chirac and others have said is they want to make sure that the transfer of sovereignty to the interim government is a real transfer. And that's what we want," Bush told reporters. "We'll help by making sure our security forces are there to work with their security forces."

But several key questions remained unanswered. Who will serve in the interim government? How much authority, if any, will it have over military operations? How long will U.S. troops stay? How much will the transition cost U.S. taxpayers?

In addition, while Bush said he planned to enlist more international support for rebuilding in Iraq, countries such as France, Germany and Belgium reiterated Tuesday they have no intention of sending troops.

"At the end of the day, what you have is legal authority being shifted to an interim government of questionable legitimacy and little power," said Lee Feinstein, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations. "You'll have de facto American sovereignty by remote control."

Anthony Cordesman, a leading Iraq expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Bush's plan was more like a litany of good intentions. It left out key details or made rosy assumptions on security, the political transition, economic rebuilding and training Iraqi forces, Cordesman said in a nine-page critique.

The president "has outlined a high-risk strategy," Cordesman said. He "did not address these risks in any detail or with any objectivity."

One key problem Bush failed to address "is the lack of anything approaching a popular government a little over a month before the transfer of power," he said.

A senior Bush administration official in Baghdad said U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is "on course" to announce by Monday or Tuesday the make-up of an Iraqi interim government. Brahimi is down to a "handful" of names for the positions of president, two vice presidents, prime minister and 26 Cabinet ministers, he said.

Brahimi has been struggling to help Iraqis form a government in the face of competing demands from the country's Sunni Muslims, Shiite Muslims and Kurds. It remains to be seen whether Iraqis will see it as legitimate.

The senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged open questions about how much control the interim government will have over Iraqi and U.S. military forces. He predicted the answers will be worked out once the interim government is named.

At the U.N. Security Council, the powers and mandate of U.S. troops in Iraq figure to be major points of contention between the United States and leading European countries.

France, Germany and Russia would like to put strict limits on the U.S. troop presence.

"Let's be clear: This resolution cannot be a blank check," French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said in an interview with the French daily newspaper Le Figaro.

"Sharing means sharing," he said. "The Iraqi government must at the least be consulted on the initiatives of that (U.S.-led) force. It must retain sovereign government authority over the Iraqi forces."

U.S. officials hope to ease some of the concerns in a letter to the U.N. Security Council declaring the administration's willingness to coordinate military operations with the interim government.

The Europeans want the mandate for foreign troops to end in a year or so, unless it's explicitly extended by the United Nations. A draft resolution introduced by Washington and London on Monday says the mandate will be reviewed in a year, but makes no commitment about when foreign troops would have to withdraw. - http://www.truthout.org/docs_...

BUSH TOO STUPID TO WORK WITH OTHER NATIONS: BUSH IS A DISGRACEFUL BUFFOON!!!

05.27.04 (5:09 am) [edit]

BUSH FUCKS-UP AGAIN: Four Nations to Seek Delay on U.S. Resolution on Iraq!!!

05.27.04 (5:06 am) [edit]

[b]Four Nations to Seek Delay on U.S. Resolution on Iraq [/b]

China, France, Germany and Russia say a U.S. and U.K. draft resolution on Iraq shouldn't be adopted by the United Nations Security Council until the Iraqi people and neighboring countries accept the interim government that is scheduled to take over from the U.S.-led coalition June 30.

``Our positions are similar,'' Russian envoy Alexander Konuzin said. ``If the government is accepted by Iraqi society it will be very easy to quickly finalize the resolution. We shall consult the new leaders. We shall invite them here.''

The four Security Council members -- including permanent members China, France and Russia, which could veto the resolution -- will make their case when the 15 members meet in private today. Their position, outlined in a Chinese memo, which Pakistan's Ambassador Munir Akram said was titled ``Run Iraq by Iraqis,'' might delay a vote for several weeks.

The U.S. and U.K. offered the Security Council a resolution Monday that gives U.S.-led forces in Iraq authority to maintain security after the interim government is installed. The U.S. wants the UN to endorse the interim government to build international support for Iraq's recovery from the war to end Saddam Hussein's regime.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN's top envoy to Iraq, is in Baghdad trying to identify leaders of the government. He is ``weeding out'' candidates for prime minister, president, two vice president and 26 heads of ministries, according to UN spokesman Fred Eckhard, who said he didn't know when Brahimi would finish the process.

Konuzin repeated Russia's call for a conference in New York that would include leaders of the interim government and representatives of neighboring countries such as Iran, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. He called acceptance of the interim government by Iraq's neighbors ``very important'' to the resolution's adoption. - http://quote.bloomberg.com/ap...

BUSH FUCKS-UP AGAIN: Four Nations to Seek Delay on U.S. Resolution on Iraq!!!

05.27.04 (5:04 am) [edit]

TRAITOR BUSH SQUANDERS OVER $191 BILLION ON WARS, AND NOW WE'RE IN MORE DANGER!!!

05.27.04 (5:02 am) [edit]

[b]U.S. Has So Far Provided $191B for Wars[/b]

President Bush and Congress have so far provided $191 billion for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and defensive military operations at home, and about two-thirds of the money has been spent or is owed, White House figures show.

The numbers show that since the Sept. 11 attacks, lawmakers have provided $61 billion for U.S. military and reconstruction activity in Afghanistan, $119 billion for operations in Iraq, $10 billion for domestic military steps and $1 billion for other expenses such as rebuilding the damaged Pentagon.

Congress has enacted at least five bills providing money for the wars, covering the 2001 through 2004 government budget years. At each step, figures on the expenditures have been reported.

But the numbers provided this week by the White House Office of Management and Budget represent the most comprehensive look at war spending that the administration has made available.

"The president has been very clear ... he will do what it takes to win the war on terror, and the war in Iraq is, as he's put it, the central front in the war on terror," Joel Kaplan, deputy director of the budget office, said in an interview this week.

Congress overwhelmingly has supported the war money, though it has opposed - with some success - administration attempts to control the funds with little input from lawmakers. But as the fighting in Iraq has dragged on, some lawmakers have challenged whether that operation is proceeding wisely.

"If you need to spend money to defend the country, you better doggone well do it," Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, a high-ranking Democrat, said in a recent interview. "But the idea we're reducing the terrorist threat with what we're doing in Iraq is preposterous."

Taken together, the $191 billion is more than double the $84 billion, in today's dollars, that the country spent for the 1991 Persian Gulf War. American taxpayers had to bear only $4.7 billion of that amount because of contributions and repayments by allied nations.

The figures exclude the $25 billion Bush requested this month for next year's operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Administration officials have acknowledged that ultimately, his total request for 2005 will probably top $50 billion.

So far, legislator have provided $165 billion for military action. That is in addition to the annual budget the Pentagon receives for its other costs, which have grown rapidly under Bush and this year should exceed $400 billion.

An additional $25 billion has been for reconstruction activities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

About 59 percent of the military funds and 85 percent of the rebuilding dollars have been for Iraq.

The figures show that through May 17, $123 billion, or 75 percent, of the military funds have been spent or committed to contracts.

About $9 billion, or 36 percent, of the reconstruction money has been spent or committed. Those expenditures have been slower because they are often for long-range projects such as building power stations, and because of security problems in both countries that have hampered work.

The domestic military expenditures are for combat aircraft patrols over U.S. cities and using reserves for strengthened security at domestic military bases.

The numbers exclude federal spending for domestic security, such as the new Department of Homeland Security. Such spending, which was $21 billion in 2001, hit $41 billion this year and Bush has requested $47 billion for 2005, according to a study last month by the Congressional Budget Office.

The White House figures also exclude anti-terrorism activities by the U.S. military in the Philippines and other countries. - http://www.sanluisobispo.com/...

TRAITOR BUSH SQUANDERS OVER $191 BILLION ON WARS, AND NOW WE'RE IN MORE DANGER!!!

05.27.04 (4:54 am) [edit]

U.N. FURY OVER HERR FUHRER BUSH'S ATTEMPTS TO INSTALL P.M.

05.27.04 (4:50 am) [edit]

[b]UN fury over Bush attempts to install PM[/b]

The Bush administration was accused yesterday of undermining the work of the UN envoy attempting to put together an interim Iraqi government, by suggesting that a respected nuclear scientist was tipped to be prime minister.

The spokesman for Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN envoy in Baghdad, reacted with fury after US officials were quoted as saying that Hussain Shahristani had emerged as the leading candidate. Mr Shahristani, a Shia, spent almost a decade in prison under Saddam Hussein after refusing to build a nuclear weapon, but he escaped into exile in 1991.

"There is no final list yet, we are still working on it," said the spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi, who denied that Mr Shahristani was the leading contender for the post. "Now his life could be in danger," he added, now that Mr Shahristani's name had been leaked. "This is a dangerous city." In New York, a UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said the report in yesterday's Washington Post was "pure speculation which is not helpful to the process".

Mr Brahimi is working against the clock to announce a government of 30 people by next Monday, with the delicate task of striking a viable balance among all the Iraqi factions. "He is getting into the endgame of this, but a number of names are still in play for the top jobs," said an official. While the lower level positions have been agreed, Mr Brahimi's private consultations have intensified as he attempts to nail down Iraqi approval for the positions of president, prime minister, and two vice-presidents.

UN and British officials dismissed suggestions that the Americans had a sinister motive in putting out Mr Shahristani's name, and said that the information was simply out of date. Asked whether the Americans might have been trying to "bounce" Mr Shahristani into the post, a senior British official replied that "it was just a leak".

Mr Shahristani, who had the support of the British Government as he had worked as a visiting professor in Britain, was apparently in the frame for the position of prime minister. But his candidacy ran into difficulties when Mr Brahimi held further consultations with a range of Iraqis, including the influential Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini Sistani. The formation of the Iraqi government is a crucial step towards the adoption of a UN resolution which is to officially end the occupation of Iraq, transfer political sovereignty to the Iraqis and map out the future towards an elected government.

The Anglo-American resolution was presented to the UN Security Council on Monday, but ran into immediate difficulties from France, Germany and Russia which are insisting on "real sovereignty" for the Iraqi interim government which is to take power on 1 July.

Among other contenders for the top posts is Adnan Pachachi, a Sunni who served as foreign minister in the 1960s and who is being touted as a possible president. Ibrahim Jaaferi, a potential vice-president, and Mr Pachachi are two of the only members of the current US-appointed Governing Council to command the respect of ordinary Iraqis.

Dr Jaaferi is one of the leaders of the Dawa party, a Shia faction that was opposed to Baathist rule and banned under the Saddam regime. Unusually, the Shia Dr Jaaferi is respected by Sunnis. Some Sunnis even said yesterday that if there were an election, they would vote for him.

By contrast, the name suggested to fill the other of the two vice-presidencies, Jalal Talabani, is one that will not please Iraq's Arabs, both Sunni and Shia. Mr Talabani's past, leading a Kurdish rebellion against Arab rule, and the fact that he was seen as close to Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, would make him a particularly unpopular choice. He is one of the two Kurdish leaders who control the Kurdish north of Iraq. - http://news.independent.co.uk...

U.N. FURY OVER HERR FUHRER BUSH'S ATTEMPTS TO INSTALL P.M.

05.27.04 (4:46 am) [edit]

RUMSFELD'S LONG LIST OF FAILURES!!!

05.26.04 (6:07 am) [edit]

[b]Rumsfeld's Long List of Failures

The muddles he has caused extend far past the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib[/b].

By the normal standards of business or government, Donald Rumsfeld should long since have resigned or been fired as secretary of Defense.

The reason is not ideology, nor is it his role in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, horrifying though that may be. The reason is incompetence. His record in Iraq over the last 13 months is the most dramatically incompetent performance by a public official in recent American history.

United States forces entered Baghdad in triumph in April 2003. Today they cannot prevent an assassination on the doorstep of occupation headquarters. Insecurity roils the country. Six weeks before some uncertain form of sovereignty is to be turned over to an Iraqi regime, no one knows what that regime will be.

Rumsfeld is the man responsible. He sought and won the responsibility for postwar Iraq from President Bush. He and his aides tossed aside State Department studies on the difficulties to be expected. Rumsfeld relied for advice on Ahmad Chalabi, an Iraqi exile who was wanted for fraud in Jordan and who provided what many have described as fraudulent intelligence. Chalabi and his organization got $39 million from the U.S. government until it finally, last week, stopped the gravy train.

The speed with which Iraq unraveled was stunning, beginning immediately after the military victory. Mobs looted Iraqi institutions � and for two months, incredibly, U.S. forces did nothing effective to stop it. Every Iraqi government department except the oil ministry was looted. The great national museum and the national library were ransacked. Looters took beds from hospitals, computers from universities.

It was a disaster for the occupation that followed. Electricity and water supplies were hurt. But the psychological damage was worse. Iraqis saw the occupying forces as being grotesquely unprepared to provide elementary security. The U.S. has never recovered from that loss of confidence. Asked about the looting at the time, Rumsfeld dismissed it as "untidiness."

Rumsfeld's man in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, started out by disbanding the entire Iraqi army. The result was to leave hundreds of thousands of men on the street without income or dignity � a recipe for resentment. Lately, under the pressure of growing nationalist resistance, Bremer has started trying to undo his folly and rehire some former soldiers. He dealt with the confrontation in Fallouja by turning security in that city over to Saddam Hussein's former officers.

It was Rumsfeld who thought it was wise to violate the third Geneva Convention, to which this country is a signatory, and unilaterally label all the prisoners held at Guantanamo as "unlawful combatants" � without the right to the hearings required by the convention.

The policy brought condemnation around the world; a top British justice, Lord Steyn, said Guantanamo was a "legal black hole." Rumsfeld dismissed complaints about the treatment of prisoners as "isolated pockets of international hyperventilation."

Brushing aside the law at Guantanamo was a prelude to the lawlessness at Abu Ghraib.

The Economist magazine, one of the most pro-American voices in the world, said the Guantanamo policy was "both wrong and dangerous for America's reputation. It was wrong because it violated the very values and rule of law for which America was supposedly fighting." The Economist added that it was "a symbol of a 'we'll decide' arrogance."

The political performance of the occupation authority in Iraq, again under Rumsfeld's agent, Bremer, has been halting. Bremer resisted Iraqi calls for early elections � an unpersuasive position for a power supposedly bringing democracy to Iraq. He imposed on Iraq a transitional constitution written by Americans � and sure to be disowned by the Shiite majority in any truly sovereign Iraqi government.

And now, Abu Ghraib, according to Seymour Hersh in the last issue of the New Yorker, can be traced directly back to Rumsfeld.

The results of this parade of incompetence are terrible for the United States. Countries long friendly to us are seething with anti-American feelings. And it is hard to see any way out of the mess Rumsfeld has created in Iraq. We are now reduced to pleading for help from a United Nations we so recently scorned.

The honorable course for a public official responsible for such disasters is to resign. Lord Carrington, the British foreign secretary, showed how when he resigned after Argentina occupied Britain's Falkland Islands in 1982 � even though he was only remotely responsible. But then, Rumsfeld's boss has shown that responsibility for disaster does not matter. "You are a strong secretary of Defense," President Bush told him this month, "and the nation owes you a debt of gratitude." - http://fairuse.1accesshost.co...

RUMSFELD'S LONG LIST OF FAILURES!!!

05.26.04 (6:06 am) [edit]

BUSH'S NEO-CON CAMPAIGN STRATEGY: STAGE A TERRORIST ATTACK ON THE U.S.A.!!!

05.26.04 (6:04 am) [edit]

[b]FAKE TERROR - THE ROAD TO WAR AND DICTATORSHIP[/b]

It's the oldest trick in the book, dating back to Roman times; creating the enemies you need.

In 70 BC, an ambitious minor politician and extremely wealthy man, Marcus Licineus Crassus, wanted to rule Rome. Just to give you an idea of what sort of man Crassus really was, he is credited with invention of the fire brigade. But in Crassus' version, his fire-fighting slaves would race to the scene of a burning building whereupon Crassus would offer to buy it on the spot for a tiny fraction of it's worth. If the owner sold, Crassus' slaves would put out the fire. If the owner refused to sell, Crassus allowed the building to burn to the ground. By means of this device, Crassus eventually came to be the largest single private land holder in Rome, and used some of his wealth to help back Julius Caesar against Cicero.

In 70 BC Rome was still a Republic, which placed very strict limits on what Rulers could do, and more importantly NOT do. But Crassus had no intentions of enduring such limits to his personal power, and contrived a plan.

Crassus seized upon the slave revolt led by Spartacus in order to strike terror into the hearts of Rome, whose garrison Spartacus had already defeated in battle. But Spartacus had no intention of marching on Rome itself, a move he knew to be suicidal. Spartacus and his band wanted nothing to do with the Roman empire and had planned from the start merely to loot enough money from their former owners in the Italian countryside to hire a mercenary fleet in which to sail to freedom.

Sailing away was the last thing Crassus wanted Spartacus to do. He needed a convenient enemy with which to terrorize Rome itself for his personal political gain. So Crassus bribed the mercenary fleet to sail without Spartacus, then positioned two Roman legions in such a way that Spartacus had no choice but to march on Rome.

Terrified of the impending arrival of the much-feared army of gladiators, Rome declared Crassus Praetor. Crassus then crushed Spartacus' army and even though Pompey took the credit, Crassus was elected Consul of Rome the following year.

With this maneuver, the Romans surrendered their Republican form of government. Soon would follow the first Triumvirate, consisting of Crassus, Pompeii, and Julius Caesar, followed by the reign of the god-like Emperors of Rome.

The Romans were hoaxed into surrendering their Republic, and accepting the rule of Emperors.

Julius Caesar's political opponent, Cicero, for all his literary accomplishments, played the same games in his campaign against Julius Caesar, claiming that Rome was falling victim to an internal "vast right wing" conspiracy in which any expressed desire for legislative limits on government was treated as suspicious behavior. Cicero, in order to demonstrate to the Romans just how unsafe Rome has become hired thugs to cause as much disturbance as possible, and campaigned on a promise to end the internal strife if elected and granted extraordinary powers.

What Cicero only dreamed of, Adolph Hitler succeeded in doing. Elected Chancellor of Germany, Hitler, like Crassus, had no intention of living with the strict limits to his power imposed by German law. Unlike Cicero, Hitler's thugs were easy to recognize; they all wore the same brown shirts. But their actions were no different than those of their Roman predecessors. They staged beatings, set fires, caused as much trouble as they could, while Hitler made speeches promising that he could end the crime wave of subversives and terrorism if he was granted extraordinary powers.

Then the Reichstag burned down; a staged terrorist attack.

The Germans were hoaxed into surrendering their Republic, and accepting the total rule of Der Fuhrer.

The state-sponsored schools will never tell you this, but governments routinely rely on hoaxes to sell their agendas to an otherwise reluctant public. The Romans accepted the Emperors and the Germans accepted Hitler not because they wanted to, but because the carefully crafted illusions of threat appeared to leave no other choice.

Our government too uses hoaxes to create the illusion that We The People have no choice but the direction the government wishes us to go in.

In 1898, Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal were arguing for American intervention in Cuba. Hearst is reported to have dispatched a photographer to Cuba to photograph the coming war with Spain. When the photographer asked just what war that might be, Hearst is reported to have replied, "You take the photographs, and I will provide the war". Hearst was true to his word, as his newspaper published stories of great atrocities being committed against the Cuban people, most of which turned out to be complete fabrications.

On the night of February 15, 1898, the USS Maine, lying in Havana harbor in a show of US resolve to protect her interests, exploded violently. Captain Sigsbee, the commander of the Maine, urged that no assumptions of enemy attack be made until there was a full investigation of the cause of the explosion. For this, Captain Sigsbee was excoriated in the press for "refusing to see the obvious". The Atlantic Monthly declared flat out that to suppose the explosion to be anything other than a deliberate act by Spain was "completely at defiance of the laws of probability".

Under the slogan "Remember the Maine", Americans went to war with Spain, eventually winning the Philippines (and annexing Hawaii along the way).

In 1975, an investigation led by Admiral Hyman Rickover examined the data recovered from a 1911 examination of the wreck and concluded that there had been no evidence of an external explosion. The most likely cause of the sinking was a coal dust explosion in a coal bunker imprudently located next to the ship's magazines. Captain Sigsbee's caution had been well founded.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt needed a war. He needed the fever of a major war to mask the symptoms of a still deathly ill economy struggling back from the Great Depression (and mutating towards Socialism at the same time). Roosevelt wanted a war with Germany to stop Hitler, but despite several provocations in the Atlantic, the American people, still struggling with that troublesome economy, were opposed to any wars. Roosevelt violated neutrality with lend lease, and even ordered the sinking of several German ships in the Atlantic, but Hitler refused to be provoked.

Roosevelt needed an enemy, and if America would not willingly attack that enemy, then one would have to be maneuvered into attacking America, much as Marcus Licinius Crassus has maneuvered Spartacus into attacking Rome.

The way open to war was created when Japan signed the tripartite agreement with Italy and Germany, with all parties pledging mutual defense to each other. Whereas Hitler would never declare war on the United States no matter the provocation, the means to force Japan to do so were readily at hand.

The first step was to place oil and steel embargoes on Japan, using Japan's wars on the Asian mainland as a reason. This forced Japan to consider seizing the oil and mineral rich regions in Indonesia. With the European powers militarily exhausted by the war in Europe, the United States was the only power in the Pacific able to stop Japan from invading the Dutch East Indies, and by moving the Pacific fleet from San Diego to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Roosevelt made a pre-emptive strike on that fleet the mandatory first step in any Japanese plan to extend it's empire into the "southern resource area".

Roosevelt boxed in Japan just as completely as Crassus had boxed in Spartacus. Japan needed oil. They had to invade Indonesia to get it, and to do that they first had to remove the threat of the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. There never really was any other course open to them.

To enrage the American people as much as possible, Roosevelt needed the first overt attack by Japan to be as bloody as possible, appearing as a sneak attack much as the Japanese had done to the Russians. From that moment up until the attack on Pearl Harbor itself, Roosevelt and his associates made sure that the commanders in Hawaii, General Short and Admiral Kimmel, were kept in the dark as much as possible about the location of the Japanese fleet and it's intentions, then later scapegoated for the attack. (Congress recently exonerated both Short and Kimmel, posthumously restoring them to their former ranks).

But as the Army board had concluded at the time, and subsequent de-classified documents confirmed, Washington DC knew the attack was coming, knew exactly where the Japanese fleet was, and knew where it was headed.

On November 29th, Secretary of State Hull showed United Press reporter Joe Leib a message with the time and place of the attack, and the New York Times in it's special 12/8/41 Pearl Harbor edition, on page 13, reported that the time and place of the attack had been known in advance!

The much repeated claim that the Japanese fleet maintained radio silence on it's way to Hawaii was a lie. Among other intercepts still held in the Archives of the NSA is the UNCODED message sent by the Japanese tanker Shirya stating, "proceeding to a position 30.00 N, 154.20 E. Expect to arrive at that point on 3 December." (near HI)

President Lyndon Johnson wanted a war in Vietnam. He wanted it to help his friends who owned defense companies to do a little business. He needed it to get the Pentagon and CIA to quit trying to invade Cuba. And most of all, he needed a provocation to convince the American people that there was really "no other choice".

On August 5, 1964, newspapers across America reported "renewed attacks" against American destroyers operating in Vietnamese waters, specifically the Gulf of Tonkin. The official story was that North Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an "unprovoked attack" on the USS Maddox while it was on "routine patrol".

The truth is that USS Maddox was involved in aggressive intelligence gathering in coordination with actual attacks by South Vietnam and the Laotian Air Force against targets in North Vietnam. The truth is also that there was no attack by torpedo boats against the USS Maddox. Captain John J. Herrick, the task force commander in the Gulf, cabled Washington DC that the report was the result of an "over-eager" sonar man who had picked up the sounds of his own ship's screws and panicked. But even with this knowledge that the report was false, Lyndon Johnson went on national TV that night to announce the commencement of air strikes against North Vietnam, "retaliation" for an attack that had never occurred.

President George Bush wanted a war in Iraq. Like Crassus, George Bush is motivated by money. Specifically oil money. But with the OPEC alliance failing to keep limits on oil production in the Mideast, the market was being glutted with oil pumped from underneath Iraq, which sat over roughly 1/3 of the oil reserves of the entire region.

George wanted a war to stop that flow of oil, to keep prices (and profits) from falling any further than they already had. But like Roosevelt, he needed the "other side" to make the first move.

Iraq had long been trying to acquire greater access to the Persian Gulf, and felt limited confined a narrow strip of land along Kuwait's northern border, which placed Iraqi interests in close proximity with hostile Iran. George Bush, who had been covertly arming Iraq during its war with Iran, sent word via April Glaspie that the United States would not intervene if Saddam Hussein grabbed a larger part of Kuwait. Saddam fell for the bait and invaded.

Of course, Americans were not about to send their sons and daughters to risk their lives for petroleum products. So George Bush arranged a hoax, using a public relations firm which has grown rich on taxpayer money by being most industrious and creative liars! The PR firm concocted a monumental fraud in which the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the United States, went on TV pretending to be a nurse, and related a horror story in which Iraqi troops looted the incubators from a Kuwaiti hospital, leaving the premature babies on the cold floor to die. The media, part of the swindle from the start, never bothered asking why the "nurse" didn't just pick the babies up and wrap them in blankets or something.

Enraged by the incubator story, Americans supported operation Desert Storm, which never removed Saddam Hussein from power but which did take Kuwait's oil off of the market for almost 2 years and limited Iraq's oil exports to this very day. That our sons and daughters came home with serious and lingering medical illnesses was apparently not too great a price to pay for increased oil profits.

Following the victory in Iraq, yet another war appeared to be in the offering in the mineral rich regions of Bosnia. Yet again, a hoax was used to create support for military action.

The photo (right) of Fikret Alic staring through a barbed wire fence, was used to "prove" the existence of modern day "Concentration Camps". As the headline of "Belsen 92" indicates, all possible associations with the Nazi horrors were made to sell the necessity of sending yet more American troops into someone else's nation.

But when German Journalists went to Trnopolje, the site of the supposed Concentration Camp. to film a documentary, they discovered that the photo was a fake! The camp at Trnopolje was not a concentration camp but a refugee center. Nor was it surrounded by barbed wire. Careful examination of the original photo revealed that the photographer had shot the photo through a broken section of fence surrounding a tool shed. It was the photographer who was on the inside, shooting out at the refugees.

Once again, Americans had been hoaxed into support of actions they might otherwise not have agreed with.

While several American Presidents have willingly started wars for personal purposes, perhaps no President has ever carried it to the extreme that Bill Clinton has.

Coincident with the expected public statement of Monica Lewinsky following her testimony, Bill Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack on Sudan and Afghanistan, claiming to have had irrefutable proof that bogeyman extraordinaire (and former Afghani ally) Osama Bin Ladin was creating terrorist chemical weapons there.

Examination of the photos of the debris revealed none of the expected structures one would find in a laboratory that handled lethal weapons-grade materials. Assurances from the CIA that they had a positive soil test for biological weapons fell on their face when it was revealed that there had been no open soil anywhere near the pre-bombed facility. Sudan requested that international observers come test the remains of the factory for any signs of the nerve gas Clinton had insisted was there. None was found. The Sudanese plant was a harmless aspirin factory, and the owner has sued for damages.

Later examination of the site hit in Afghanistan revealed it to be a mosque.

Meanwhile, back in Kosovo, stories about genocide and atrocities were flooding the media (in time to distract from the Sudanese embarrassments), just as lurid and sensational and as it turns out often just as fictional as most of William Randolph Hearst's stories of atrocities against the Cubans.

Again, the government and the media were hoaxing Americans. The above photo was shown on all the American networks, claiming to be one of Slobodan Milosovic's Migs, shot down while attacking civilians. Closer examination (click on the photo) shows it to be stenciled in English!

Like Germany under Chancellor Hitler, there have been events in our nation which strike fear into the hearts of the citizens, such as the New York World Trade Tower bombing, the OK City Federal Building, and the Olympic Park bomb (nicely timed to divert the media from witnesses to the TWA 800 shoot down). The media has been very quick to blame such events on "radicals", "subversives", "vast right wing conspiracies", and other "enemies in our midst", no different than the lies used by Cicero and Hitler.

But on closer examination, such "domestic terrorist" events do not appear to be what they are made out to be. The FBI had an informant inside the World Trade Tower bombers, Emad Salam, who offered to sabotage the bomb. The FBI told him "no". The so-called "hot bed" of white separatism at Elohim City, occasional home to Tim McVeigh in the weeks prior to the OK City bombing, was founded and is being run by an FBI informant!

And nobody has ever really explained what this second Ryder truck was doing in a secret camp half way from Elohim City to Oklahoma City two weeks before the bombing.

So, here we are today. Like the Romans of Crassus' and Cicero's time, or the Germans under a newly elected Hitler, we are being warned that a dangerous enemy threatens us, implacable, invisible, omnipresent, and invulnerable as long as our government is hamstrung by that silly old Bill of Rights. Already there have appeared articles debating whether or not "extraordinary measures" (i.e. torture) are not fully justified under certain circumstances such as those we are purported to face.

As was the case in Rome and Germany, the government continues to plead with the public for an expansion of its power and authority, to "deal with the crisis".

However, as Casio watch timers are paraded before the cameras, to the stentorian tones of the talking heads' constant dire warnings, it is legitimate to question just how real the crises is, and how much is the result of political machinations by our own leaders.

Are the terrorists really a threat, or just hired actors with bombs and Casio watches, paid for by Cicero and given brown shirts to wear by Hitler?

Is terrorism inside the United States really from outside, or is it a stage managed production, designed to cause Americans to believe they have no choice but to surrender the Republic and accept the totalitarian rule of a new emperor, or a new Fuhrer?

Once lost, the Romans never got their Republic back. Once lost, the Germans never got their Republic back. In both cases, the nation had to totally collapse before freedom was restored to the people.

Remember that when Crassus tells you that Spartacus approaches.

Remember that when thugs in the streets act in a manner clearly designed to provoke the public fear.

Remember that when the Reichstag burns down. - http://www.whatreallyhappened...

BUSH'S NEO-CON CAMPAIGN STRATEGY: STAGE A TERRORIST ATTACK ON THE U.S.A.!!!

05.26.04 (5:58 am) [edit]

THE TRAIL OF TORTURE: THE THINGS WAR-CROOK BUSH DIDN'T SAY IN HIS SCREED!!!

05.26.04 (5:49 am) [edit]

[b]The Trail of Torture

The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech[/b]

I can't wait to see Abu Ghraib prison reduced to rubble by the Americans--at the request of the new Iraqi government, of course. It will be turned to dust in order to destroy a symbol of Saddam's brutality. That's what President Bush tells us. So the re-writing of history still goes on.

Last August, I was invited to Abu Ghraib--by my favourite US General Janis Karpinski, no less--to see the million-dollar US refurbishment of this vile place. Squeaky clean cells and toothpaste tubes and fresh pairs of pants for the "terrorist" inmates. But now, suddenly, the whole kit and caboodle is no longer an American torture centre. It's still an Iraqi torture centre, and thus worthy of demolition.

The re-writing of Iraqi history is now going on at supersonic speed. Weapons of mass destruction? Forget it. Links between Saddam and al-Qa'ida? Forget it. Liberating the Iraqis from Saddam's Abu Ghraib life of torture? Forget it. Wedding party slaughtered? Forget it. Clear the decks for both "full (sic) sovereignty" and "chaotic events". This is, at any rate, according to Mr Bush. When I heard his hesitant pronunciation of Abu Ghraib as "Abu Grub" on Monday night, I could only profoundly agree.

But we're in danger again of missing the detail. Just as the unsupervised armed mercenaries being killed in Iraq are being described by the occupation authorities as "contractors" or, more mendaciously, "civilians"--so the responsibility for the porno interrogations at Abu Ghraib is being allowed to slide into the summer mists over the Tigris river. So let's go back, for a moment, to the long weeks in which the Department of Bad Apples allowed its jerks to put leashes around Iraqi necks, forced prisoners to have sex with each other and raped some Iraqi lasses in the jail.

And let's cast our eyes upon that little, all-important matter of responsibility. The actual interrogators accused of encouraging US troops to abuse Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib jail were working for at least one company with extensive military and commercial contacts with Israel. The head of an American company whose personnel are implicated in the Iraqi tortures, it now turns out, attended an "anti-terror" training camp in Israel and, earlier this year, was presented with an award by Shaul Mofaz, the right-wing Israeli defence minister.

According to Dr J P London's company, CACI International, the visit of Dr London--sponsored by an Israeli lobby group and including US congressmen and other defence contractors--was "to promote opportunities for strategic partnerships and joint ventures between US and Israeli defence and homeland security agencies".

The Pentagon and the occupation powers in Iraq insist that only US citizens have been allowed to question prisoners in Abu Ghraib--but this takes no account of Americans who may also hold double citizenship. The once secret torture report by US General Antonio Taguba refers to "third country nationals" involved in the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq.

General Taguba mentions Steven Staphanovic and John Israel as involved in the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Staphanovic, who worked for CACI--known to the US military as "Khaki"--was said by Taguba to have "allowed and/or instructed MPs (military police), who were not trained in interrogation techniques, to facilitate interrogations by 'setting conditions' ... he clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse". One of Staphanovic's co-workers, Joe Ryan--who was not named in the Taguba report--now says that he underwent an "Israeli interrogation course" before going to Iraq.

We know the Pentagon asked Israel for its "rules of engagement" in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Israeli officers have briefed their US opposite numbers and, according to the Associated Press, "in January and February of 2003, Israeli and American troops trained together in southern Israel's Negev desert ... Israel has also hosted senior law enforcement officials from the United States for a seminar on counter-terrorism".

Staphanovic of CACI, who may also be Australian, was accused by Taguba's army report of making "a false statement to the investigation team regarding ... his knowledge of abuses". Another outside interrogator, Adel Nakhla,who may be of Egyptian origin, was a witness to the "stacking" of naked prisoners in Abu Ghraib. John Israel "misled" investigators by denying he had witnessed misconduct and did not have "security clearance". Israel, according to Titan--two of whose employees were mentioned in Taguba's report--works for one of the company's "sub-contractors". Titan refused to name the "sub-contractor".

Why? Among the company's former directors is ex-CIA director James Woolsey, one of the architects of the US invasion of Iraq, a friend of Ahmed Chalabi and a prominent pro-Israeli lobbyist in Washington. Dr London says CACI "does not condone or tolerate or endorse in any fashion (sic) any illegal, inappropriate behaviour on the part of its employees in any circumstances at any time anywhere".

But it is clear the torture trail at Abu Ghraib has to run much further than a group of brutal US military cops, all of whom claim "intelligence officers" told them to "soften up" their prisoners for questioning. Were they Israeli? Or South African? Or British? Are we going to let the story go? - http://www.COUNTERPUNCH.COM

THE TRAIL OF TORTURE: THE THINGS WAR-CROOK BUSH DIDN'T SAY IN HIS SCREED!!!

05.26.04 (5:48 am) [edit]

U.S. ARMY ADMITS THAT WAR CRIMINAL BUSH'S TORTURE & ABUSE MORE WIDESPREAD!!!

05.26.04 (5:45 am) [edit]

[b]Abuse of Captives More Widespread, Says Army Survey[/b]

An Army summary of deaths and mistreatment involving prisoners in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan shows a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known.

The cases from Iraq date back to April 15, 2003, a few days after Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled in a Baghdad square, and they extend up to last month, when a prisoner detained by Navy commandos died in a suspected case of homicide blamed on "blunt force trauma to the torso and positional asphyxia."

Among previously unknown incidents are the abuse of detainees by Army interrogators from a National Guard unit attached to the Third Infantry Division, who are described in a document obtained by The New York Times as having "forced into asphyxiation numerous detainees in an attempt to obtain information" during a 10-week period last spring.

The document, dated May 5, is a synopsis prepared by the Criminal Investigation Command at the request of Army officials grappling with intense scrutiny prompted by the circulation the preceding week of photographs of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. It lists the status of investigations into three dozen cases, including the continuing investigation into the notorious abuses at Abu Ghraib.

In one of the oldest cases, involving the death of a prisoner in Afghanistan in December 2002, enlisted personnel from an active-duty military intelligence unit at Fort Bragg, N.C., and an Army Reserve military-police unit from Ohio are believed to have been "involved at various times in assaulting and mistreating the detainee."

The Army summary is consistent with recent public statements by senior military officials, who have said the Army is actively investigating nine suspected homicides of prisoners held by Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan in late 2002.

But the details paint a broad picture of misconduct, and show that in many cases among the 37 prisoners who have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army did not conduct autopsies and says it cannot determine the causes of the deaths.

In his speech on Monday night, President Bush portrayed the abuse of prisoners by American soldiers in narrow terms. He described incidents at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, which were the first and most serious to come to light, as involving actions "by a few American troops who disregarded our country and disregarded our values."

According to the Army summary, the deaths that are now being investigated most vigorously by Army officials may be those from Afghanistan in December 2002, where two prisoners died in one week at what was known as the Bagram Collection Point, where interrogations were overseen by a platoon from Company A, 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, from Fort Bragg.

The document says the investigation into the two deaths "is continuing with recent re-interviews," both of military intelligence personnel from Fort Bragg and of Army Reserve military police officers from Ohio and surrounding states, who were serving as guards at the facility. It was not clear from the document exactly which Army Reserve unit was being investigated.

On March 4, 2003, The New York Times reported on the two deaths, noting that the cause given on one of the death certificates was "homicide," a result of "blunt force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease." It was signed by an Army pathologist.

Both deaths were ruled homicides within days, but military spokesmen in Afghanistan initially portrayed at least one as being the result of natural causes. Personnel from the unit in charge of interrogations at the facility, led by Capt. Carolyn Wood, were later assigned to Iraq, and to the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib.

Lt. Col. Billy Buckner, a spokesman for the 18th Airborne Corps, said in an e-mail message on Monday that no one from the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion had yet been disciplined in connection with any deaths or other misconduct in Iraq. He declined to say if anyone from the unit was the subject of an ongoing investigation.

The document also categorizes as a sexual assault a case of abuse at Abu Ghraib last fall that involved three soldiers from that unit, who were later fined and demoted but whose names the Army has refused to provide.

As part of the incident, the document says, the three soldiers "entered the female wing of the prison and took a female detainee to a vacant cell."

"While one allegedly stood as look-out and one held the detainee's hand, the third soldier allegedly kissed the detainee," the report said. It says that the female detainee was reportedly threatened with being left with a naked male detainee, but that "investigation failed to either prove or disprove the indecent-assault allegations."

The May 5 document said the three soldiers from the 519th were demoted: two to privates first class and one to specialist. One was fined $750, the other two $500 each.

In what appeared to be a serious case of abuse over a prolonged period of time, unidentified enlisted members of the 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion, part of the California National Guard, were accused of abusing Iraqi detainees at a center in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

The unit, based in San Francisco, operated under the command of the Third Infantry Division, the armored force that led the Army assault on Baghdad last April and continued to patrol the city and the surrounding region into the summer.

According to the Army summary, members of the 223rd "struck and pulled the hair of detainees" during interrogations over a period that lasted 10 weeks. The summary said they "forced into asphyxiations numerous detainees in an attempt to obtain information."

The accusations were based on the statement of a soldier. No other details of the abuse � not the number of suspected soldiers nor the progress of the investigation � were disclosed.

A spokeswoman for the California National Guard in Sacramento, Maj. Denise Varner, said she could not discuss any investigation.

Another incident, whose general outlines had been previously known, involved the death in custody of a senior Iraqi officer, Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, who died last November at a detention center run by the Third Armored Cavalry, of Fort Carson, Colo. Soldiers acknowledged to investigators that interviews with the general on Nov. 24 and 25 involved "physical assaults."

In fact, investigators determined that General Mowhoush died after being shoved head-first into a sleeping bag, and questioned while being rolled repeatedly from his back to his stomach. That finding was first reported in The Denver Post.

According to Army officials and documents, at least 12 prisoners have died of natural or undetermined causes, including nine in Abu Ghraib. In six of those cases, the military conducted no autopsy to confirm the presumed cause of death. As a result, the investigations into their deaths were closed by Army investigators.

In another case, an autopsy found that a detainee, Muhammad Najem Abed, died of cardiac arrest complicated by diabetes, without noting, as the investigation summary does, that he died after "a self-motivated hunger strike."

In two cases, involving the deaths of prisoners at Abu Ghraib on Jan. 16 and Feb. 19, investigations continue even though the causes are believed to be natural. In the Feb. 19 case, Muhammad Saad Abdullah was found dead with "acute inflammation of the abdomen." An autopsy classified the death as natural, apparently caused by "peritonitis secondary to perforating gastric ulcer."

Army officials have been reluctant to discuss the type of detail that the document describes, even when investigations into the cases are closed. The Army has refused to make public the synopses of Army criminal investigations into the deaths or assaults of Iraqi or Afghan prisoners while in custody.

At a Pentagon briefing on Friday, a senior military official and a senior Pentagon medical official said the Army was investigating the deaths of 37 detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, an increase from at least 25 deaths that a senior Army general described on May 4.

Army officials have given rough breakdowns of those deaths, including those ruled natural deaths, homicides and ongoing investigations. But Army officials have been stingy with details. Of the two homicide cases the Army has closed, for instance, officials have given only spare details about a soldier who shot and killed an Iraqi detainee who was throwing rocks at the guards. The soldier was demoted and dishonorably discharged from the Army.

When asked Friday about details of pending investigations that military medical examiners had characterized as homicides, and that had been described in news accounts, a senior official would only confirm, "That's an ongoing investigation."

The official described the dates, locations and number of deaths involved in four cases ruled justifiable homicide, all in Iraq, including three at Abu Ghraib. But the official did not give details about the individual cases. - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...

U.S. ARMY ADMITS WAR CRIMINAL BUSH'S TORTURE & ABUSE MORE WIDESPREAD!!!

05.26.04 (5:44 am) [edit]

BUSH'S FIASCO IN IRAQ: DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES FOR THE U.S.A.

05.26.04 (5:41 am) [edit]

[b]Escalation vs. Exit: The Costs of Both [/b]

"Nitwit pundits and Sunday morning television sages, with that faked look of thoughtfulness which is their trademark, talk about an exit strategy � as if it were just one more Mapquest printout. But any such exit strategy will lead us only on a short path to hell."

So writes Tony Blankley, editorial editor at The Washington Times, adding, "The essential strategic element in war is to defeat the enemy's will to win, and accepting anything less than triumph in Iraq will catastrophically embolden the terrorists."

Blankley raises valid and grave questions. He is saying that, no matter where one stood on going to war, we went. Now, anyone who thinks we can swiftly exit Iraq without paying a hellish price is a nitwit.

Blankley is right. Should America pull out now, our enemies across the Islamic world will indeed be emboldened. The perception of American defeat could produce a domino effect running down through the sheikdoms of the Gulf into Saudi Arabia and spreading across the region. Iraq could dissolve into chaos and civil war.

All this is possible. Indeed, the possibility that Iraq could become a giant Lebanon for the United States was among the reasons some of us implored the president not to send our Army up the Euphrates Valley to occupy a city that was the seat of the caliphate for 500 years.

But if there are risks to a too-rapid transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis, there are risks to escalating this war. Query: When Osama sees Sunnis rising up to fight Americans from Fallujah to Baghdad, and Shi'ites taking up arms in Karbala and Najaf and marching against America in Beirut in the hundreds of thousands, is he not rejoicing that we took the bait and invaded Iraq? Has not the invasion enlarged the recruiting pool for anti-American terrorism?

In the war on terror, a critical objective was to isolate Osama as a mass murderer who did not represent Islam. Osama's goal was to embed himself in the Arab and Islamic causes of expelling the infidel Americans from the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia and ending what he denounced as our persecution of the oppressed Iraqi people.

Osama sought to conflate his war with the Arab cause. It was in our interest to keep them separate. But the invasion of Iraq � an attack on an Arab country that did not attack us and did not want war with us � united and aroused the Arab world against us, and with bin Laden.

And just as those who argue for an accelerated withdrawal must face up to the risks, those who favor escalation must consider the risks of trying to attain a political objective that appears to be receding before our eyes.

If victory means a pro-Western democracy in Iraq that embraces American values, what is the likelihood of achieving that now, given the raging hostility in the Sunni and Shi'ite sectors? Are we closer to the goal than we were 13 months ago? Or has the fighting of April-May and the moral squalor of Abu Ghraib pushed our goal even further away?

What will be the final cost in blood and treasure of ultimate victory? How lasting will victory be once our troops depart, as one day they must? Will the American people � who read polls where 57 percent of the Iraqis want us out and more than half think killing our soldiers is justified, and every lethal attack on a U.S. vehicle brings out a mob in wild celebration � continue to feel Iraqi democracy is worth Americans dying for?

As Washington Times columnist Terry Jeffrey writes, idealists may dream of a democratic, secular and pro-Western Iraq, but traditionalists would settle for an Iraq that has no WMD, does not invade its neighbors and does not collude with terrorists.

Horrible as the monster was, Saddam Hussein, after his rout in the Gulf War, came close to filling the bill. That is why some of us did not believe it vital to our security to invade and dethrone him. A nuclear North Korea or nuclear-armed Pakistan where President Musharraf has been taken down by some assassin seemed far the graver potential threat.

Still, Blankley has this point: Whether we go, or stay and fight on, we are going to pay a heavy price, because we went.

Neville Chamberlain is forever condemned for capitulating at Munich. Rightly so. But by the time he got to Munich, Chamberlain had no good choices left. His country had lost Italy in the Abyssinian crisis, failed to rearm, failed to stop Hitler when Britain and France could have chased him out of the Rhineland in 1936. By late September 1939, they could no longer stop Hitler in Central Europe without a European war.

No good options were left. Chamberlain could cede the Sudetenland � or declare war to rescue a Czechoslovakia Britain lacked the power to save. Conclusion: Chamberlain should never have gone to Munich � and Bush should never have gone to Baghdad.

[b]By Patrick J. Buchanan [/b]- http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?a...

BUSH'S FIASCO IN IRAQ: DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES FOR THE U.S.A.

05.26.04 (5:39 am) [edit]

KERRY: "I REQUEST DUTY IN VIETNAM" VS BUSH: "I REQUEST MORE BOOZE & SLUTS"

05.24.04 (10:46 am) [edit]

[b]"I request duty in Vietnam" [/b]-- the first line in one of the documents http://www.johnkerry.com/abou... from John Kerry's service records, now posted on the Kerry website on http://www.johnkerry.com/abou... .

[b]VERSUS[/b]

So, while the news networks have sat on this explosive story for months, it's well documented that George W. Bush[b] never showed up [/b]for National Guard duty for a period of approximately one year, possibly more, in 1972-1973. Despite all the talk about "honor and dignity," Bush seems to have a problem meeting his commitments on http://www.kings.edu/twsawyer... . - http://www.awolbush.com

WORLD CATHOLIC LEADERS CRITICIZE BUSH'S HYPOCRITICAL "RELIGIOUS" BLASPHEMY FOR WAR ...

05.24.04 (5:54 am) [edit]

[b]World Catholic Leaders Criticize Religious Motivation of War in Iraq[/b]

In anticipation of Pope John Paul II�s upcoming meeting with President George W. Bush at the Vatican, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem and Catholic leaders from around the globe have raised the level of religious criticism aimed at world leaders who orchestrated the war in Iraq.

�We who know that true peace can never be achieved through bombs and weapons of war must appeal to the consciences of all those who lead our nations into the ways of death blindly�those leaders who with an erroneous religious conscience think that they are doing the will of God,� said the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah. �A leader who believes in God and comes to the presence of God and calls for war must examine and reexamine the veracity and the coherence of his own prayer and presence before God.�

Sabbah delivered his remarks in a sermon given at Seton Hall University in New Jersey during the opening liturgy of the Pax Christi International council meeting on Thursday. Pax Christi International, the international Catholic peace movement at work in more than 50 countries, is holding their international council meetings in the United States for the first time in their 50-year history.

Sabbah, the bishop-president of Pax Christi International, concelebrated the opening liturgy with Archbishop Laurent Monsengwo of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Bishop Alvaro Leonel Ramazzini Imeri of Guatemala. His opening sermon questioned the motivation of the U.S.-driven �War on Terrorism� and referenced the recent revelations of torture and human rights violations in Iraq.

�When the first pictures (of torture and violence committed against detainees) were made public, we heard President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld and Prime Minister Blair express their outrage at such treatment�expressing their sorrow and the sorrow of their countries for such cruelty,� Sabbah said. �But such apologies are empty if the mentality�the worldview�that spawned such disregard for the value and dignity of human life is not also acknowledged and ultimately transformed.�

Following the opening liturgy, Catholic bishops and religious and lay leaders from around the world discussed issues related to international security and disarmament, human rights and economic justice as part of commission meetings throughout the day. The critique and considerations from those meetings will culminate in an international consultation, �From the War on Terrorism to Inclusive Security,� on Saturday, with participants from Brazil, Cambodia, Croatia, India, Israel/Palestine, Pakistan, South Africa, Germany and 20 other countries.

With the recent announcement of President Bush�s planned visit with Pope John Paul II in June, international council participants are hopeful that the leader of the world�s largest Christian community will continue to speak out strongly against the war in Iraq and elsewhere.

�From the beginning, the Holy Father was adamant in condemning President Bush�s plans for war in Iraq,� said Dave Robinson, national director of Pax Christi USA, a section of Pax Christi International. �We in Pax Christi represent millions of faithful Catholics from around the world who heeded the pope�s cry that �War is a defeat for humanity,� and worked to stop this war in Iraq as well as the wars in Israel/Palestine, Colombia, Haiti and elsewhere in the world.

�As Patriarch Sabbah reminded us today: �The seeds of war will never bear the fruit of peace.�� - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

WORLD CATHOLIC LEADERS CRITICIZE BUSH'S HYPOCRITICAL "RELIGIOUS" BLASPHEMY FOR WAR ...

05.24.04 (5:53 am) [edit]

WORLD CATHOLIC LEADERS CRITICIZE BUSH'S HYPOCRITICAL "RELIGIOUS" BLASPHEMY FOR WAR ...

05.24.04 (5:51 am) [edit]

RET. GENERAL ZINNI ON BUSH CROOKS: "THEY'VE SCREWED UP"!!!

05.24.04 (5:48 am) [edit]

[b]Gen. Zinni: 'They've Screwed Up' [/b]

Retired General Anthony Zinni is one of the most respected and outspoken military leaders of the past two decades.

From 1997 to 2000, he was commander-in-chief of the United States Central Command, in charge of all American troops in the Middle East. That was the same job held by Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf before him, and Gen. Tommy Franks after.

Following his retirement from the Marine Corps, the Bush administration thought so highly of Zinni that it appointed him to one of its highest diplomatic posts -- special envoy to the Middle East.

But Zinni broke ranks with the administration over the war in Iraq, and now, in his harshest criticism yet, he says senior officials at the Pentagon are guilty of dereliction of duty -- and that the time has come for heads to roll. Correspondent Steve Kroft reports.

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- -----

�There has been poor strategic thinking in this,� says Zinni. �There has been poor operational planning and execution on the ground. And to think that we are going to �stay the course,� the course is headed over Niagara Falls. I think it's time to change course a little bit, or at least hold somebody responsible for putting you on this course. Because it's been a failure.�

Zinni spent more than 40 years serving his country as a warrior and diplomat, rising from a young lieutenant in Vietnam to four-star general with a reputation for candor.

Now, in a new book about his career, co-written with Tom Clancy, called "Battle Ready," Zinni has handed up a scathing indictment of the Pentagon and its conduct of the war in Iraq.

In the book, Zinni writes: "In the lead up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worse, lying, incompetence and corruption."

�I think there was dereliction in insufficient forces being put on the ground and fully understanding the military dimensions of the plan. I think there was dereliction in lack of planning,� says Zinni. �The president is owed the finest strategic thinking. He is owed the finest operational planning. He is owed the finest tactical execution on the ground. � He got the latter. He didn�t get the first two.�

Zinni says Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time - with the wrong strategy. And he was saying it before the U.S. invasion. In the months leading up to the war, while still Middle East envoy, Zinni carried the message to Congress: �This is, in my view, the worst time to take this on. And I don�t feel it needs to be done now.�

But he wasn�t the only former military leader with doubts about the invasion of Iraq. Former General and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, former Centcom Commander Norman Schwarzkopf, former NATO Commander Wesley Clark, and former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki all voiced their reservations.

Zinni believes this was a war the generals didn�t want � but it was a war the civilians wanted.

�I can't speak for all generals, certainly. But I know we felt that this situation was contained. Saddam was effectively contained. The no-fly, no-drive zones. The sanctions that were imposed on him,� says Zinni.

�Now, at the same time, we had this war on terrorism. We were fighting al Qaeda. We were engaged in Afghanistan. We were looking at 'cells' in 60 countries. We were looking at threats that we were receiving information on and intelligence on. And I think most of the generals felt, let's deal with this one at a time. Let's deal with this threat from terrorism, from al Qaeda.�

One of Zinni's responsibilities while commander-in-chief at Centcom was to develop a plan for the invasion of Iraq. Like his predecessors, he subscribed to the belief that you only enter battle with overwhelming force.

But Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld thought the job could be done with fewer troops and high-tech weapons.

How many troops did Zinni�s plan call for? �We were much in line with Gen. Shinseki's view,� says Zinni. �We were talking about, you know, 300,000, in that neighborhood.�

What difference would it have made if 300,000 troops had been sent in, instead of 180,000?

�I think it's critical in the aftermath, if you're gonna go to resolve a conflict through the use of force, and then to rebuild the country,� says Zinni.

�The first requirement is to freeze the situation, is to gain control of the security. To patrol the streets. To prevent the looting. To prevent the 'revenge' killings that might occur. To prevent bands or gangs or militias that might not have your best interests at heart from growing or developing.�

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- -----

Last month, Secretary Rumsfeld acknowledged that he hadn't anticipated the level of violence that would continue in Iraq a year after the war began. Should he have been surprised?

�He should not have been surprised. You know, there were a number of people, before we even engaged in this conflict, that felt strongly we were underestimating the problems and the scope of the problems we would have in there,� says Zinni. �Not just generals, but others -- diplomats, those in the international community that understood the situation. Friends of ours in the region that were cautioning us to be careful out there. I think he should have known that.�

Instead, Zinni says the Pentagon relied on inflated intelligence information about weapons of mass destruction from Iraqi exiles, like Ahmed Chalabi and others, whose credibility was in doubt. Zinni claims there was no viable plan or strategy in place for governing post-Saddam Iraq.

�As best I could see, I saw a pickup team, very small, insufficient in the Pentagon with no detailed plans that walked onto the battlefield after the major fighting stopped and tried to work it out in the huddle -- in effect to create a seat-of-the-pants operation on reconstructing a country,� says Zinni.

�I give all the credit in the world to Ambassador Bremer as a great American who's serving his country, I think, with all the kind of sacrifice and spirit you could expect. But he has made mistake after mistake after mistake.�

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- -----

What mistakes?

�Disbanding the army,� says Zinni. �De-Baathifying, down to a level where we removed people that were competent and didn�t have blood on their hands that you needed in the aftermath of reconstruction � alienating certain elements of that society.�

Zinni says he blames the Pentagon for what happened. �I blame the civilian leadership of the Pentagon directly. Because if they were given the responsibility, and if this was their war, and by everything that I understand, they promoted it and pushed it - certain elements in there certainly - even to the point of creating their own intelligence to match their needs, then they should bear the responsibility,� he says.

�But regardless of whose responsibility I think it is, somebody has screwed up. And at this level and at this stage, it should be evident to everybody that they've screwed up. And whose heads are rolling on this? That's what bothers me most.�

Adds Zinni: �If you charge me with the responsibility of taking this nation to war, if you charge me with implementing that policy with creating the strategy which convinces me to go to war, and I fail you, then I ought to go.�

Who specifically is he talking about?

�Well, it starts with at the top. If you're the secretary of defense and you're responsible for that. If you're responsible for that planning and that execution on the ground. If you've assumed responsibility for the other elements, non-military, non-security, political, economic, social and everything else, then you bear responsibility,� says Zinni. �Certainly those in your ranks that foisted this strategy on us that is flawed. Certainly they ought to be gone and replaced.�

Zinni is talking about a group of policymakers within the administration known as "the neo-conservatives" who saw the invasion of Iraq as a way to stabilize American interests in the region and strengthen the position of Israel. They include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith; Former Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle; National Security Council member Eliot Abrams; and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Zinni believes they are political ideologues who have hijacked American policy in Iraq.

�I think it's the worst kept secret in Washington. That everybody - everybody I talk to in Washington has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to do,� says Zinni.

�And one article, because I mentioned the neo-conservatives who describe themselves as neo-conservatives, I was called anti-Semitic. I mean, you know, unbelievable that that's the kind of personal attacks that are run when you criticize a strategy and those who propose it. I certainly didn't criticize who they were. I certainly don't know what their ethnic religious backgrounds are. And I'm not interested.�

Adds Zinni: �I know what strategy they promoted. And openly. And for a number of years. And what they have convinced the president and the secretary to do. And I don't believe there is any serious political leader, military leader, diplomat in Washington that doesn't know where it came from.�

Zinni said he believed their strategy was to change the Middle East and bring it into the 21st century.

�All sounds very good, all very noble. The trouble is the way they saw to go about this is unilateral aggressive intervention by the United States - the take down of Iraq as a priority,� adds Zinni. �And what we have become now in the United States, how we're viewed in this region is not an entity that's promising positive change. We are now being viewed as the modern crusaders, as the modern colonial power in this part of the world.�

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- -----

Should all of those involved, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, resign?

�I believe that they should accept responsibility for that,� says Zinni. �If I were the commander of a military organization that delivered this kind of performance to the president, I certainly would tender my resignation. I certainly would expect to be gone.�

�You say we need to change course -- that the current course is taking us over Niagara Falls. What course do you think ought to be set,� Kroft asked Zinni.

�Well, it's been evident from the beginning what the course is. We should have gotten this U.N. resolution from the beginning. What does it take to sit down with the members of the Security Council, the permanent members, and find out what it takes,� says Zinni.

�What is it they want to get this resolution? Do they want a say in political reconstruction? Do they want a piece of the pie economically? If that's the cost, fine. What they�re gonna pay for up front is boots on the ground and involvement in sharing the burden.�

Are there enough troops in Iraq now?

�Do I think there are other missions that should be taken on which would cause the number of troops to go up, not just U.S., but international participants? Yes,� says Zinni.

�We should be sealing off the borders, we should be protecting the road networks. We're not only asking for combat troops, we�re looking for trainers; we�re looking for engineers. We are looking for those who can provide services in there.�

But has the time come to develop an exit strategy?

�There is a limit. I think it�s important to understand what the limit is. Now do I think we are there yet? No, it is salvageable if you can convince the Iraqis that what we're trying to do is in their benefit in the long run,� says Zinni.

�Unless we change our communication and demonstrate a different image to the people on the street, then we're gonna get to the point where we are going to be looking for quick exits. I don't believe we're there now. And I wouldn't want to see us fail here.�

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- -----

Zinni, who now teaches international relations at the College of William and Mary, says he feels a responsibility to speak out, just as former Marine Corps Commandant David Shoup voiced early concerns about the Vietnam war nearly 40 years ago.

�It is part of your duty. Look, there is one statement that bothers me more than anything else. And that's the idea that when the troops are in combat, everybody has to shut up. Imagine if we put troops in combat with a faulty rifle, and that rifle was malfunctioning, and troops were dying as a result,� says Zinni.

�I can't think anyone would allow that to happen, that would not speak up. Well, what's the difference between a faulty plan and strategy that's getting just as many troops killed? It�s leading down a path where we're not succeeding and accomplishing the missions we've set out to do.�

60 Minutes asked Secretary Rumsfeld and his deputy Wolfowitz to respond to Zinni's remarks. The request for an interview was declined. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

RET. GENERAL ZINNI ON BUSH CROOKS: "THEY'VE SCREWED UP"!!!

05.24.04 (5:47 am) [edit]

TOP GOP SENATOR RIPS BUSH ON IRAQ, TERRORISM

05.24.04 (5:41 am) [edit]

[b]GOP Senator Rips Bush on Iraq, Terrorism [/b]

Republican Sen. Richard G. Lugar on Saturday said the United States isn't doing enough to stave off terrorism and criticized President Bush (news - web sites) for failing to offer solid plans for Iraq (news - web sites)'s future.

Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the nation must prevent terrorism from taking root around the world by "repairing and building alliances," increasing trade, supporting democracy, addressing regional conflicts and controlling weapons of mass destruction.

Unless the country commits itself to such measures, "we are likely to experience acts of catastrophic terrorism that would undermine our economy, damage our society and kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people," the Indiana senator said during an appearance at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

Lugar said military might alone isn't enough to eradicate terrorism.

"To win the war against terrorism, the United States must assign U.S. economic and diplomatic capabilities the same strategic priority that we assign to military capabilities," he said.

He later added, "Military action is necessary to defeat serious and immediate threats to our national security. But the war on terrorism will not be won through attrition � particularly since military action will often breed more terrorists and more resentment of the United States."

Lugar, who was awarded the Dean's Medal for distinguished service in international affairs, said it's still unclear how much control the Iraqi people will have over their nation's security when power is transferred to them June 30.

"I am very hopeful that the president and his administration will articulate precisely what is going to happen as much as they can, day by day, as opposed to a generalization," he said.

It's not the first time that Lugar has criticized Bush, a fellow Republican. In 2003, Lugar and Sen. Joseph Biden, the committee's top Democrat, warned that the Bush administration had not given enough consideration to what would happen in Iraq after the fighting ended.

Also Saturday, Lugar blamed the Bush and Clinton administrations for not adequately funding the foreign affairs budget, noting that the military's budget is more than 13 times what the nation spends for diplomacy. - http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

TOP GOP SENATOR RIPS BUSH ON IRAQ, TERRORISM

05.24.04 (5:40 am) [edit]

WOLFOWITZ'S BLUNDERS COST US DEARLY

05.24.04 (5:38 am) [edit]

[b]Wolfowitz's blunders cost us dearly[/b]

It's a good thing the Pentagon didn't contract out the position of deputy defense secretary. Corporate America would have surely canned Paul Wolfowitz by now.

Almost every rosy prediction made by the Iraq war's architect has fallen flat. Instead of squandering company profits, however, Wolfowitz's high-stakes bungling and erroneous forecasts have helped sacrifice more precious commodities: thousands of lives, billions of taxpayer dollars and much of the global goodwill America enjoyed after Sept. 11.

How many strikes does this guy get before he's out? At this rate, Wolfowitz is turning into the Bob Uecker of foreign policy.

Let's recap.

[u]Blunder No. 1[/u]: Iraq as global threat. Like a wonkish Cotton Mather, Wolfowitz preached the gospel of the Iraqi menace through the 1990s from his university pulpit in Washington, while those actually charged with containing Saddam Hussein - including retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, former head of Central Command - declared Iraq a diminishing power and of little threat.

[u]Blunder No. 2[/u]: Troop strength. In February 2003, then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki told a congressional panel that America would need several hundred thousand troops to pacify Iraq after the invasion.

Wolfowitz rushed to Capitol Hill two days later to undermine Shinseki, declaring the general's numbers "way too high," telling a House committee "we can say with reasonable confidence" Shinseki's figures were "way off the mark."

A year later, America finds itself breaking deployment taboos, robbing troops from Korea and generally looking everywhere but under the sofa cushions for more soldiers. And we're still unable to pacify Iraq or even control the country's borders.

[u]Blunder No. 3[/u]: Foreign troop participation. According to Wolfowitz, countries skittish about invading Iraq would be willing to deploy peacekeeping troops afterward. But there has been no great global rush to help America. In fact, some countries that sent handfuls of troops to Iraq have now pulled out.

[i]Note to Wolfie[/i]: Peacekeeping troops tend to follow U.N. resolutions, not neo-cons testing academic theories.

[u]Blunder No. 4[/u]: Ahmed Chalabi. Wolfowitz pushed the Bush administration to position - and fund - Chalabi, an Iraqi exile, convicted embezzler and peddler of false intelligence about WMDs, to lead the newly freed country. And Wolfowitz's fingerprints are all over Iraq's new group of "benevolent rulers" known to locals as "Ahmed Chalabi and the 20 Thieves."

It was Chalabi who famously declared that Iraqis would welcome the American invaders with sweets and flowers. Wolfowitz echoed that, saying we would be greeted as liberators.

Instead, we got rocket-propelled grenades, roadside bombs and mutilation.

[u]Blunder No. 5[/u]: Paying for the occupation. Last year, Wolfowitz told a House panel that Iraq's oil could produce up to $100 billion in revenues over three years, making the entire operation self-financing.

Instead, Iraq continues to be a budgetary black hole. The $87 billion that U.S. taxpayers shelled out last year isn't even enough to get us through this one: Officials predict a $4 billion shortfall by summer.

Wolfowitz may be the only person happy to see oil prices rise. When crude reaches $1 million a barrel, Iraq might cease being a net drain on the U.S. Treasury.

Any real-world working stiff with this many gaffes in his personnel file would be trying desperately to avoid being hit by the screen door on his way out.

But Wolfowitz, protected by an administration that confuses denial with strength, continues making both national security policy and a sizeable taxpayer-funded salary.

And his flat-out wrong string of predictions about Iraq continue to cost us. Dearly.

Guess that's what they mean by "close enough for government work." - http://www.tallahassee.com/ml...

WOLFOWITZ'S BLUNDERS COST US DEARLY

05.24.04 (5:37 am) [edit]

AMERICAN SHAME IN RAFAH

05.24.04 (5:34 am) [edit]

[b]American Shame in Rafah [/b]

The current Israeli campaign in Rafah, which has already killed at least 40 people, and which the U.N. Security Council has condemned in a 14-0 vote (with the United States abstaining), is merely the continuation of a decades-long program of ethnic cleansing that Israel has conducted in the region.

A new report released by Amnesty International chronicles Israel�s tactics in this program. Close to 1,000 homes in Rafah have been seriously damaged or destroyed since 2000. The Israeli government has used various arguments for the demolitions. As Amnesty International reports:

"The destruction in the Rafah refugee camp has been progressive, targeting row after row of houses � contrary to claims by the Israeli authorities that only houses used by Palestinians to shoot at Israeli soldiers patrolling the border and houses used as cover for tunnels used for smuggling weapons from Egypt were destroyed. However, already from the end of 2000 Palestinians living in the refugee camp close to the border told Amnesty International that Israeli soldiers had told them that many rows of houses were going to be destroyed. Statements by Israeli army and government officials confirm that this was indeed the intention. In January 2002 Major-General Yom Tov Samiah, Commander of Israeli army Southern Command at the beginning of the intifada, commenting on the destruction of some 60 Palestinian homes in Rafah refugee camp by the Israeli army on 9 and 10 January 2002 told Israeli Radio:

"�These houses should have been demolished and evacuated a long time ago�Three hundred meters of the Strip along the two sides of the border must be evacuated� Three hundred meters, no matter how many houses, period.�"

Some Israeli officials said that this destruction was retaliation for the killing of four Israeli soldiers at the Kerem Shalom army base in southern Israel on January 9, 2002. According to Major-General Doron Almog, Commander of the Southern Command, "Most of our operations have focused on the Rafah area, as that is where the two Hamas terrorists came from." The Israeli army spokesperson's office claimed that the demolished houses "served as cover for gunmen's fire" and "were suspected of serving as cover for tunnels used weapon in smuggling operations."

Israel�s tactics also include zoning restrictions that secure Palestinian areas inside and outside Israel as "agricultural land" where no building can take place. If homes are built in such areas, they are demolished soon afterwards. Another reason given is "security," which almost always means making way for roads and other infrastructure for Israeli settlers. Even when the Israeli military takes revenge for actual terrorist activities committed by a resident of the home, the demolition often damages or destroys nearby structures.

The Israeli legal system has constructed an ex post facto procedure for justifying these actions. Attacks are carried out without warning; explanations follow later. As the Amnesty report puts it,

"The Israeli authorities contend that destruction of houses and other property is entirely justified and proportionate to their �military/security needs� to prevent or respond to attacks by armed Palestinians against Israeli settlements and Israeli army positions. They describe this kind of destruction as �preventive� or �in the course of combat activities.�"

The "preventive" category is extremely broad. It includes destruction of properties from which the army claims attacks were carried out, as well as properties which were used for cover during attacks. It also includes destruction needed to clear lines of sight in sensitive areas, create buffer zones around likely targets, and build fences or military installations. According to the Israeli army,

"The source of authority for the Israeli Defense Forces to harm private property during times of fighting and due to military needs is part of the laws of war, which are part of the international law. Specifically it refers to regulation 23(g) of the Hague Convention of 1907 which permits destruction of property in cases in which 'such destruction [is] imperatively demanded by the necessities of war��"

In response to legal challenges by Palestinians, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that "advance notice did not need to be given if it would hinder the success of the demolition, a virtual green light for demolitions to go forward without the possibility of appeal for those affected." Furthermore,

"In cases of advance notification of intended destruction where the owners of the targeted properties have appealed, the Israeli Supreme Court has usually accepted the Israeli army's arguments and assessment of what constitutes military/security needs, and has permitted the demolitions."

In a situation where private property rights count for nothing, chaos will ensue. The Israeli military can, with legal backing, do whatever it wants whenever it wants and simply make up justifications after the homes are gone. One of the recommendations Amnesty makes at the end of the report addresses this injustice:

"The law must be amended in a manner so as to require that, except during the actual conduct of military operations or armed confrontations which make the destruction absolutely necessary, no demolition should be carried out without prior notification to the concerned parties, who should be given adequate time and opportunity to challenge before an independent and impartial court of law any order for the demolition of a house or the destruction of land or other property."

All of the report�s recommendations could be implemented by all parties in short order if the U.S. would distance itself from Israel. Between 1949 and 1997, U.S. taxpayers spent $23,240 in foreign aid on each Israeli citizen. If this aid were to disappear, the Israeli government would find itself at least somewhat constrained. According to the Arms Trade Resource Center,

"Israel is one of the United States� largest arms importers. In the last decade, the United States has sold Israel $7.2 billion in weaponry and military equipment, $762 million through Direct Commercial Sales (DCS), more than $6.5 billion through the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program.

"In fact, Israel is so devoted to U.S. military hardware that it has the world's largest fleet of F-16s outside the U.S., currently possessing more than 200 jets. Another 102 F-16s are on order from Lockheed Martin."

And the U.S. has given Israel free small arms:

"The U.S. also gives Israel weapons and ammunition as part of the Excess Defense Articles (EDA) program, providing these articles completely free of charge. Between 1994-2001, the U.S. provided many weapons through this program, including:

- 64,744 M-16A1 rifles
- 2,469 M-204 grenade launchers
- 1,500 M-2 .50 caliber machine guns
- .30 caliber, .50 caliber, and 20mm ammunition."

In the old system of international law, selling arms and ammunition to warring states was itself an act of war. By selling contraband to one side in what is clearly a war, the U.S. has lowered itself to the status of war profiteer. These subsidized arms sales and handouts should cease immediately. Israel should be responsible for its own defense.

And if Israel wants to stamp out terrorism, the first place they should look is the office of the Prime Minister. - http://www.antiwar.com/orig/s...

AMERICAN SHAME IN RAFAH

05.24.04 (5:31 am) [edit]

BUSH'S RECKLESS DEFICITS WORSE THAN CLAIMED, BANKRUPTING AMERICA!!!

05.23.04 (6:04 am) [edit]

[b]Talking Deficits[/b]

A few weeks before the fall election, President Bush is likely to claim a victory, of sorts, over the budget deficit. The good news will be based on October data from the Office of Management and Budget in the executive branch, which, according to widespread estimates, will show red ink of $420 billion to $450 billion at the end of the 2004 fiscal year. When the year started, the budget office had conveniently projected a deficit of $521 billion. Hence, a bookkeeping triumph.

The administration would like to turn the budget deficit into a nonissue in the presidential campaign. But it deserves to be one of the central talking points, even more than it was in 1992, when Ross Perot rightly convinced the nation that deficits were threatening American prosperity.

The Bush deficit is worse than the administration says. And it appears that coming deficits will be worse than previous ones in terms of the impact on Americans' financial security and on national security, for these reasons:

� Size. Though the Bush deficit of 2003 was already a record in pure numbers, the administration's defenders often point out that it amounted to only 3.5 percent of gross domestic product. That doesn't sound too bad compared with the modern record of 6 percent set by President Ronald Reagan in 1983. But the size of the deficit now is masked by the Social Security Trust Fund surplus. If you believe that the Social Security surplus would be put to better use by being preserved for future retirees, the Bush deficit should really amount to 5 percent of G.D.P.

And it shows no signs of abating. It took 15 years of hard work and good luck before the Reagan deficits were vanquished. Even Mr. Reagan himself, after initially cutting taxes, raised them repeatedly. Mr. Bush shows no such intention, and that is the reason the current red ink he has unleashed will not stop flowing.

According to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, Vice President Dick Cheney swatted back questions about the tax cuts by saying, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." Mr. Reagan's own actions, and the political careers of many politicians since then, prove otherwise.

� Cause. The current deficits are unique in the degree to which they appear to be driven by tax cuts. That is terribly important because it shows that they are in large part a result of deliberate policy decisions, not unforeseen events. Last year, after two rounds of Bush tax cuts, taxes fell to a percentage of the economy not seen, even in the deepest recessions, since 1955. In 2004, they are estimated to come in at just over 16 percent of G.D.P., a level last seen in 1951. Even if the economy recovers fully, the country would have to revert to a 1957-era government to break even. In 1957, the Interstate System was just getting under way, and Medicare did not exist, much less a war on terrorism.

� Timing. President Reagan's deficit binge occurred decades before the baby boomers' retirement. This one is taking place on the eve. To use an analogy, President Bush's deficits are putting the nation in the position of a couple who take out a long-term mortgage just before retirement.

That's a travesty, because reducing the buildup of government debt is the key to strengthening Social Security. Social Security payments currently soak up about 4 percent of G.D.P. They are projected to rise to a bit more than 6 percent by the mid-2030's. Long before that, however, the Bush tax cuts will crimp incoming revenues by over 2 percent of G.D.P.

In other words, if the tax cuts are not made permanent, as Mr. Bush intends, the revenue from those taxes would cover the increased cost of Social Security, without reducing benefits. (Even in fantasy, no one has yet come up with a way to pay for Medicare.) Clearly, we could not have picked a worse demographic moment to be borrowing money on the next generation's credit.

� Foreign Dependence. Over the last few years, an unprecedented 80 percent of the deficit has been financed by foreign governments, institutions and individuals, mainly in the Far East. Over all, 37 percent of United States public debt is in foreign hands, up from 14 percent at the peak of the Reagan deficits in 1983.

A greater reliance on foreign creditors creates further economic instability, as nations like Argentina have found out the hard way. Debt is debt, to be sure, leading ultimately to a smaller economy than would otherwise be the case.

But debt owed to foreigners is more likely to affect the value of the dollar, and foreign capital is more nomadic, leaving the United States vulnerable to the whims of central bankers in Beijing and Tokyo.

But even if a sudden catastrophe never materializes, a slower one is already in the making. It is important that voters talk seriously about deficits in this political season. - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...

BUSH'S RECKLESS DEFICITS WORSE THAN CLAIMED, BANKRUPTING AMERICA!!!

05.23.04 (6:02 am) [edit]

WILL BUSH'S LIES NEVER END??? BUSH PLANS P.R. BLITZ TO SUCKER US YET AGAIN!!!

05.23.04 (5:52 am) [edit]

[b]President Plans Drive To Rescue Iraq Policy

[i]Speeches, U.N. Action Will Focus on Future [/i][/b]

President Bush will launch an ambitious campaign tomorrow night to shift attention from recent setbacks that have eroded domestic and international support for U.S. policy in Iraq, particularly the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the escalating violence, and focus instead on the future of post-occupation Iraq.

The president will open a tightly orchestrated public relations effort in a speech at the Army War College outlining U.S. plans for the critical five weeks before the limited transfer of political power June 30. The White House then intends to circulate this week a draft U.N. resolution on post-occupation Iraq, wrap up negotiations with Iraqis on an interim government and begin shoring up the coalition to ensure that other foreign forces also stay after June 30, U.S. officials said.

"There's a sense that this week is our chance to create some movement in a different direction. We'll start talking about the future, not the past, by focusing on the U.N. resolution and [U.N. envoy Lakhdar] Brahimi's transition process. Sure there'll still be plenty of arguments, but it will be about the future, and that's a healthy change," said a senior State Department official who would speak only on condition of anonymity.

The diplomatic campaign is a response to serious reversals over the past two months and to growing turmoil. Last week alone, the U.S.-appointed president of the Iraqi Governing Council was assassinated and a cabinet official was almost killed in a suicide bombing; in a disputed episode, more than 40 people were killed by U.S. troops at what Iraqis said was a wedding party; and 16 arrest warrants were issued for aides or associates of Ahmed Chalabi, a longtime Pentagon favorite to help lead postwar Iraq, on charges related to financial issues, leading him to sever ties with the U.S.-led coalition.

The road ahead could get bumpier. France and Germany are urging that any new U.N. resolution stipulate a cutoff date for U.S. and foreign forces in Iraq. And negotiations by the U.N. and U.S. envoys in charge of identifying a new president, prime minister, two vice presidents and more than two dozen cabinet ministers have been complicated by a Kurdish threat not to participate unless a Kurd gets one of the two top positions.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) criticized Bush's plans for Iraq's future as imprecise. "I am very hopeful that the president and his administration will articulate precisely what is going to happen as much as they can, day by day, as opposed to a generalization," the Associated Press quoted Lugar as saying yesterday at Tufts University.

In the first of at least six presidential speeches on Iraq before June 30, Bush will particularly try to counter growing criticism that Washington has lowered the goal posts for its year-long occupation, U.S. officials said. Critics and Iraq experts have charged that the administration has backed down from its original pledge to create a strong new democracy that would be a catalyst for a broad political transformation in the Middle East and is instead settling on an exit strategy that will leave a fragile government unable to protect itself.

"He will talk about the importance of not lowering our sights and sticking to our goals of a free, peaceful, democratic Iraq, of adhering to our commitment to the June 30 transfer of sovereignty, and of an election in a January time frame," said a White House official who insisted on anonymity.

Bush will also explain the U.S. security and political roles after June 30 until Iraq winds up the second of the three phases -- with the first democratic elections next January -- in the transition to a permanent government by the end of 2005, U.S. officials said. "He'll talk about the importance of Iraqis taking more and more responsibility for security in their own country and about our efforts to train up a professional army and security force," said the White House official.

After the Bush speech, the administration will circulate the text of a new U.N. resolution pledging to transfer "full sovereignty" to Iraq, compromise language addressing Iraqi and European requests that the United States not retain any powers after June 30, U.S. officials said. To get around French and German demands, the United States may offer to give Iraq the authority to decide whether it wants foreign forces to continue to provide security, the officials said.

The general U.S. hope is that both Iraqis and key U.N. members will view the language on the top political and security issues as a signal of Washington's commitment to cede control as soon as possible. The draft resolution, which is not expected to be put up for a vote until after the new Iraqi government is announced, will also underscore that the use of Iraq's resources, most notably oil, will be determined by Iraqis, U.S. officials said.

Before the Memorial Day weekend, the White House hopes Brahimi and U.S. presidential envoy to Iraq Robert D. Blackwill will put the most critical final piece in play by announcing the new interim government, although this will depend on wrapping up complicated negotiations among Iraq's ethnic and religious factions. The joint U.N.-U.S. team thought it had a tentative slate for the top four jobs until Kurdish leaders balked at settling for the vice presidency, forcing further talks, U.S. officials said.

To turn the tide, the Bush administration also hopes to generate movement on the two other most pressing issues in the volatile Middle East -- the Palestinian-Israeli crisis and the U.S. democracy initiative for the greater Middle East.

"The only way out of this hole is to keep our promises: to punish the people responsible for Abu Ghraib, to really turn over authority and full sovereignty to Iraqis, and to help the Palestinians take advantage of the opportunity offered by Israel [to turn over the Gaza strip] and to support reform," said the senior State Department official.

To shore up the coalition, Bush will also begin hosting leaders of countries that have troops in Iraq. The United States is intent on stopping contributing nations from pulling out after the June 30 handover, because some nations have mandates to stay in Iraq only until the U.S.-led occupation ends. Spain and Honduras have withdrawn troops, partly in response to the escalating violence.

Bush will host Salvadoran President Francisco Flores on Thursday and Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Friday, the White House announced last week. Among European nations, Denmark has been stalwart in its support for the U.S.-led intervention in Iraq -- a stark contrast to France, Germany and Russia, which opposed the war to topple Saddam Hussein. - http://www.washingtonpost.com...

WILL BUSH'S LIES NEVER END??? BUSH PLANS P.R. BLITZ TO SUCKER US YET AGAIN!!!

05.23.04 (5:49 am) [edit]

FBI AGENT ON "GAGGING CONGRESS" ...

05.23.04 (5:46 am) [edit]

[b]Sibel Edmonds began working for the FBI shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. Until the spring of 2002 she worked in the FBI's Washington field office translating top-secret documents pertaining to suspected terrorists. She first gained wide public attention in October of that year when she appeared on '60 Minutes' on CBS and charged that the FBI, State Department, and Pentagon had been infiltrated by agents of a Turkish intelligence officer suspected of ties to terrorism. She also accused members of the FBI's translation services of sabotage, intimidation, corruption and incompetence. On October 18, 2002, at the request of FBI Director Robert Mueller, Attorney General Ashcroft imposed a gag order on Ms. Edmonds, citing possible damage to diplomatic relations or national security[/b].

Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Department of Justice, and the FBI have been engaged in covering up my reports and investigations into my allegations for over two years now: They have blocked the release of all documents related to my case that were requested under FOIA for over two years. They have asserted the rarely invoked State Secret Privilege in my court proceedings. They have blocked the release of the DOJ-IG report of its investigations into my reports and allegations. They have quashed a subpoena for my deposition on information regarding 911. [u]And now they are gagging the United States Congress[/u]. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...

They are not protecting the 'national security' of the United States. On the contrary, they are endangering our national security by covering up facts and information related to criminal activities against this country and it's citizens. To this date the American people have not heard the real facts of these criminal activities, nor of the involved semi-legit organizations, nor of the connected officials. The Department of Justice and this administration are fully aware that making this information public will bring about the question of accountability. And they do not want to be held accountable. It is for these reasons that I have been striving to get the Congress to hold its own public hearings regarding these issues. I no longer intend to go behind their secured-closed doors to testify. I intend to testify openly, publicly, and under oath. - http://www.antiwar.com/orig/s...

FBI AGENT ON "GAGGING CONGRESS" ...

05.23.04 (5:44 am) [edit]

BUSH'S LEGACY: INMATES MURDERED, RAPED, RIDDEN LIKE ANIMALS, AND FORCED TO EAT PORK AT ABU GHRAIB

05.22.04 (6:30 am) [edit]

[b]Abu Ghraib: Inmates raped, ridden like animals, and forced to eat pork[/b]

The abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison continued yesterday with the publication of fresh pictures and sworn statements that detailed a teenage boy being raped, prisoners being ridden like animals and other Iraqis being forced to eat pork and drink alcohol in contravention of their religion. For the first time video footage of some of the abuse was also broadcast, a development likely to increase the political impact of the scandal.

The new details caused fresh outrage around the Arab world and further rocked the Bush administration -- already floundering after a week in which US forces killed dozens of guests at a wedding party in Iraq after mistaking them for insurgents. The latest pictures and allegations -- chronicling more calculated attempts to humiliate Muslim prisoners -- have only added to the suspicion that they were part of a policy formulated at a high level of authority.

Even though the existence of the images was known -- indeed, lawmakers on Capitol Hill have seen many of the images already -- their publication put further pressure on Washington as it prepares to hand over sovereignty to an Iraqi administration at the end of June.

Partly in preparation for that handover, a bus full of Iraqi prisoners left Abu Ghraib outside Baghdad yesterday as the US sought to reduce the numbers being held in the jail. But the new pictures and statements overshadowed the release.

In one statement, a prisoner tells how he witnessed a US army translator raping an Iraqi boy, aged somewhere between 15 and 18.

Kasim Mehaddi Hilas, prisoner number 151108, says a female soldier took photographs of the rape. Sheets had been hung to block the prisoners' view, but Mr Hilas says he heard the boy's screams and climbed a door to see what was going on. "The kid was hurting very bad," his statement reads.

The statements were published in The Washington Post, accompanied by images that will haunt America. One shows an Iraqi completely naked, his arms outstretched, his back to the camera. His body is smeared with a thick brown substance that looks like excrement. It is caked around the back of his head.

Yet it is not simply these images and details that are so shocking, but the overwhelming evidence suggesting that, far from being an isolated episode involving a "few bad apples" from Appalachia, as the administration claims, this abuse was part of a systematic, gloves-off approach to dealing with suspected "terrorists" in the post-9/11 world.

Compelling evidence is emerging that responsibility for the abuse goes right to the Pentagon, where an ultra-secret "black operation" was set up to run the interrogation process. This unit, under the direction of Stephen Cambone, under-secretary of defence for intelligence, reportedly used theories developed by an academic to guide the torture of the detainees.

The book, The Arab Mind by the late cultural anthropologist Raphael Patai, includes a 25-page chapter on Arabs and sex, stating that the biggest weakness of Arabs is shame and humiliation. Patai's book was described by The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh as providing an intellectual and practical underpinning of the culture of torture at Abu Ghraib. Another alleged victim of the orchestrated abuse tells how American soldiers held him down and sodomised him with a truncheon. This prisoner is not being named because he was the alleged victim of a sexual assault. Other prisoners tell how they were fed pork or forced to drink alcohol, which are forbidden to Muslims.

Ameen Saeed al-Sheikh says that he was tortured and ordered to denounce Islam. Mr Sheikh says that his leg was broken when one of the soldiers started hitting it and ordering him to curse Islam. "They ordered me to thank Jesus that I'm alive," he says.

Other photographs show a terrified Iraqi being menaced by a huge black dog while an American soldier stares aggressively on, and a man in women's underwear being forced to stand precariously on two boxes, one leg chained to a doorway and his hands handcuffed between his legs.

These are just some of the photographs the Pentagon tried to suppress. The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, claimed they could not be released because they might jeopardise the courts martial of seven soldiers charged with involvement in the abuses. The sworn witness statements had been kept secret until they were published yesterday.

Mr Rumsfeld is fighting for his political life. The New Yorker report suggests he approved the covert operation, to which he appointed Dr Cambone as leader in order to obtain fast, "actionable" intelligence in pursuit of Mr Bush's "war on terror". The pressure to obtain this information -- and the increasingly important role of the army's military intelligence soldiers and civilian interrogators -- grew as the Iraqi insurgency against US forces developed. At Abu Ghraib, it appears this effort was combined with ideas that had been developed by Patai's book. The New Yorker claimed the book was the "bible of the neo-cons on Arab behaviour" and left them with two ideas -- that Arabs only understood force and that humiliation and shame were their greatest weaknesses.

Specialist Charles Graner, one of seven soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Unit based in Cumberland, Maryland, charged and clearly identified in some of the prisoners' statements, has already said through his lawyer that he intends to plead at his court martial that he was following orders.

He and the others charged will say that they were told by American interrogators to soften the prisoners up for questioning.

It is likely that the hearings will further highlight the role of Major-General Geoffrey Miller, formerly the warden at Guantanamo Bay, who took control of Abu Ghraib last year with a plan to turn it into a hub of interrogation. He placed the military police under the tactical control of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade. Specialist Jeremy Sivits, who pleaded guilty as part of a plea bargain at a court martial this week, told the court in his evidence that one of the other accused had told him they had been told to keep abusing the prisoners by interrogators, and that they were doing good work.

That version of events is backed up one of the former detainees at Abu Ghraib, Saddam Saleh, who has come forward to say that he is one of the prisoners in the photographs: the one in which Private Lynndie England is pointing at the genitals of a row of naked, hooded Iraqi men, and grinning.

Mr Saleh, who has since been released, says he only knows that he is the third from the right -- he was hooded when the picture was taken and could not see Pte England -- because American soldiers brought the photograph to his cell and pointed him out, apparently in an effort to humiliate him further. That would back claims that the photographs were taken so they could be used to humiliate and demoralise the prisoners.

Mr Saleh has also said that he was tortured for 18 days in Abu Ghraib, but that the torture abruptly stopped. While other prisoners continued to be tortured, he was left alone. At exactly the same time as the torture stopped, interrogators began questioning him in regular sessions. He had not been questioned at all before. If the torture was designed to extract useful information from the prisoners, in Mr Saleh's case it did not work. He says that after what he had been through, he was ready to tell the interrogators anything just to escape further mistreatment.

"Whatever they asked me I just said, 'Yes'. I was desperate," he says in his statement.

Interrogators asked him if he was a member Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish Islamist group that has alleged links with al-Qa'ida. "I said yes," Mr Saleh says, although he says he knew nothing about the group, and he has since been released, which indicates that American interrogators decided he had nothing to do with it. They asked if he was a member of Jeish Mohammed, a Sunni Iraqi resistance group. "I said my cousin was the leader of Jeish Mohammed," Mr Saleh says.

They asked him if he knew Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a militant leader in Iraq with links to al-Qa'ida. "I said, 'Yes', but I'd never heard of him before."

Last night the Pentagon said that 37 deaths involving detainees held by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan were being investigated. There were 33 cases involved, eight more than previously revealed, according to officials. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

BUSH'S LEGACY: INMATES MURDERED, RAPED, RIDDEN LIKE ANIMALS, AND FORCED TO EAT PORK AT ABU GHRAIB

05.22.04 (6:28 am) [edit]