Click here to go to the InfoWars website for information on 9-11, etc.!


Click here to go to the Wikipedia website to learn more about the book, '1984', and its author!


Click here to go to the ImpeachForPeace.org website for information on impeachment!


Click here to go to the 'We The People Foundation's' website to sign the 'Petition(s) for Redress of Grievances'!Click here to go to the 'We The People Foundation's' website to sign the 'Petition(s) for Redress of Grievances'!


Click here to go to The Committee to Protect Bloggers website for more information!


Click here to go to the Center for Constitutional Rights website for more information!


Click here to go to The Committee to Protect Bloggers website for more information!








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Sunday, February 26, 2006


TIA “DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY” SUBVERTING THE BILL OF RIGHTS

Written by Kurt Nimmo
[Copyright (c) 2006 in the U.S.A. and
Internationally by Another Day in
the Empire (kurtnimmo.com),
and/or Kurt Nimmo.
All rights reserved.]

Recall Total Information Awareness, changed to Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA) after a self-conscious PR revamp (including the dumping of its obvious Masonic-Illuminati logo), and criticism of its Iran-Contra convicted criminal overlord, John Poindexter. TIA weathered blistering scrutiny after its purpose was revealed—it was a massive program in the making designed to snoop the American people, who are of course the real enemy of criminal government. On January 16, 2003, Senator Russ Feingold introduced legislation to put an end to TIA. In February of 2003, so we were told, Congress passed legislation closing down the Information Awareness Office, run out of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and supposedly halted all TIA activity, a highly unusual effort considering the fact Congress rarely messes with specific internal Department of Defense projects.

Congress did this because TIA was an obvious and serious threat to the constitutional rights of the American people. However, these days, the Straussian neocon controlled Pentagon and the White House do not take orders from the American people and TIA is alive and well, as revealed by Shane Harris of the National Journal.

“A controversial counter-terrorism program, which lawmakers halted more than two years ago amid outcries from privacy advocates, was stopped in name only and has quietly continued within the intelligence agency now fending off charges that it has violated the privacy of U.S. citizens,” Harris writes. “Two of the most important components of the TIA program were moved to the Advanced Research and Development Activity, housed at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md., documents and sources confirm. One piece was the Information Awareness Prototype System, the core architecture that tied together numerous information extraction, analysis, and dissemination tools developed under TIA. The prototype system included privacy-protection technologies that may have been discontinued or scaled back following the move to ARDA.” In other words, it appears TIA was merged with the NSA’s current snoop effort under the control of the perfidious Straussian neocons.

Sen. Ron Wyden, instrumental, along with Feingold, in closing down the original TIA, grilled Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and FBI Director Robert Mueller earlier this month. Wyden asked if it was “correct that when [TIA] was closed, that several… projects were moved to various intelligence agencies…. I and others on this panel led the effort to close [TIA]; we want to know if Mr. Poindexter’s programs are going on somewhere else.” Negroponte and Mueller claimed ignorance, although Negroponte’s deputy, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, until recently director of the NSA and unaware that the Fourth Amendment requires probable cause, said, “I’d like to answer in closed session.” In short, Hayden admitted that TIA was alive, well, and kicking the Bill of Rights in the drawers.

Harris notes:

The NSA is now at the center of a political firestorm over President Bush’s program to eavesdrop on the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States who the agency believes are connected to terrorists abroad. While the documents on the TIA programs don’t show that their tools are used in the domestic eavesdropping, and knowledgeable sources wouldn’t discuss the matter, the TIA programs were designed specifically to develop the kind of “early-warning system” that the president said the NSA is running.

In other words, we would be foolish to believe the TIA “tools” are not being used to snoop the American people.

“ARDA now is undergoing some changes of its own,” Harris continues. “The outfit is being taken out of the NSA, placed under the control of Negroponte’s office, and given a new name. It will be called the ‘Disruptive Technology Office,’ a reference to a term of art describing any new invention that suddenly, and often dramatically, replaces established procedures. Officials with the intelligence director’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.”

Disruptive technology, indeed—disruptive of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Obviously, the NSA is too hot for this “early-warning system,” a system we are told is designed to snoop “al-Qaeda” phone calls and instant messages (sent from caves), and it will now be moved into its own digs and continue to operate.

Echelon, Carnivore, Magic Lantern, etc., these are all “systems” designed to render our former constitutional republic into a sprawling Panopticon, or surveillance prison. “A government engaging in escalating criminal actions and becoming more and more secretive should not be watching and tracking us as if we’re all criminals,” write Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones. “This is systematic. They built the electrically wired cage around us and then they turned it on. The state is doing all this for the moment when they take your pension funds, private property, and guns because you won’t be able to resist. Big Brother will be two steps ahead at all times and there will be nowhere to hide,” as Winston Smith, the protagonist in George Orwell’s nightmarish dystopian novel, 1984, ultimately had nowhere to hide.

One thing is for certain—the Straussian neocons will continue to erect the Panopticon mass surveillance state, regardless what a few isolated members of Congress do or no matter how many lawsuits and FOIA requests are issued by a gaggle of so-called “civil libertarians” (they should call themselves Bill of Rights libertarians).

Bush, the front man for the Straussian neocons, is now for all practical purposes a dictator, a status that makes his “job easier,” as he told us before he was appointed to the presidency by Supreme Court fiat. Bush will now take his place in a long line of dictatores, from Lucius Sulla and Julius Caesar to Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler. Mussolini and Hitler, however, never dreamed of the sort of awesome control and surveillance mechanisms at the disposal of the Straussian neocons, who like Mussolini and Hitler also have dreams of conquest and never-ending war and nihilistic destruction [including against the Bill of Rights and the American people]. [Words in brackets ("[ ]") and/or emphasis added by Wolf Britain.]









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Saturday, February 25, 2006


BUSH NEOCONS: GOING AFTER (SO-CALLED) "FIFTH COLUMNISTS"

Written by Kurt Nimmo
[Copyright (c) 2006 in the U.S.A. and
Internationally by Another Day
in the Empire (kurtnimmo.com),
and/or Kurt Nimmo.
All rights reserved.]

David Horowitz, on the paycheck of the reactionary Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and CIA collaborator Richard Scaife’s foundation, ranted and raved back at the outset of the Iraqi invasion in early 2003, issuing shrill warnings about a “Fifth Column … preparing to move into action to attempt to defeat America in its war against Saddam.” According to Horowitz, the incipient “peace movement is not about peace” but is instead “a fifth column communist movement” determined “to destroy America and give victory to our totalitarian enemies.” Horowitz predicted a violent communist revolution in the streets of America—possibly a flashback to earlier times when Horowitz was an antiwar radical responsible for orchestrating an often violent “peace” movement with his high profile Ramparts Magazine (until he decided working for the Straussian neocons was more profitable)—a hateful bedlam that did not occur because the 2003 antiwar movement primarily consisted of average Americans, not “communists” or “America-haters,” as Horowitz would have it in his paranoid fantasies.

“On the day after the U.S. military action in Iraq begins, the Fifth Column is preparing to begin its own war at home,” Horowitz prognosticated. “The plan is to cause major disruptions—illegal in nature—in cities across the country to disrupt the flow of normal civic life. These actions will tie up Homeland Security forces and create a golden opportunity for domestic terrorists. The Fifth Column left is also planning to invade military bases.” Of course, none of this happened because it is no longer 1970 and Horowitz is no longer editorializing for Ramparts or hanging out with the Black Panthers, as he was wont to do in the day.

Nonetheless, paranoids such as David Horowitz have managed to infect influential Congress critters such as Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, heir apparent of the reactionary reptile Strom Thurmond, and member of the Armed Services and Judiciary committees in the Senate. Earlier this month, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing “on Wartime Executive Power and the National Security Agency’s Surveillance Authority,” Graham, in an exchange with AG Alberto Gonzales, declared “the administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue fifth column movements” and “I stand by this president’s ability, inherent to being commander in chief, to find out about fifth column movements, and I don’t think you need a warrant to do that.”

In other words the Bill of Rights does not apply to U.S. citizens who “sympathize with the enemy and collaborate with the enemy,” even though the idea of Americans collaborating with the resistance in Iraq is nothing short of absurd on its face and, moreover, sympathizing with the victims of Bush’s invasion is hardly illegal, although millions of Americans obviously find it offensive. “Senator, the president already said we’d be happy to listen to your ideas,” Gonzales enthusiastically responded.

In fact, as we know, the NSA snoop program is not about listening in on “al-Qaeda” phone calls (which do not exist) but rather is more precisely about snooping the email and phone calls of Americans, in particular Americans involved in “a fifth column communist movement,” as Horowitz would have it, exercising their one-time constitutional right to petition the government and speak their mind in the commons.

“In less paranoid times, Graham’s comments might be viewed by many Americans as a Republican trying to have it both ways—ingratiating himself to an administration of his own party while seeking some credit from Washington centrists for suggesting Congress should have at least a tiny say in how Bush runs the War on Terror,” writes Nat Parry. “But recent developments suggest that the Bush administration may already be contemplating what to do with Americans who are deemed insufficiently loyal or who disseminate information that may be considered helpful to the enemy.”

For instance, this blog—and thousands of other websites—may be considered outlets disseminating information “considered helpful to the enemy” simply because they do not “support the troops,” or rather support the “war effort,” in fact an effort to illegally occupy a once sovereign nation. For diehard Straussian neocons and their facilitators such as Lindsey Graham, opposition to the invasion and occupation makes one a direct supporter of Osama bin Laden (or his ghost), Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (or his ghost), and Saddam Hussein (or his many doubles). As we know, Bush and the Straussian neocons live in a Manichean world where polarized black and white is the order of the day—you’re either with the neocons, neoliberals, and the Zionists or you’re with the terrorists, who consist of millions of Muslims in the Middle East (and possibly a billion or more if you throw in the Muslims of Asia and Africa).

There “was that curious development in January when the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million contract to construct detention centers somewhere in the United States, to deal with ‘an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs,’ KBR said,” Parry continues.

Later, the New York Times reported that “KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space.” [Feb. 4, 2006]

Like most news stories on the KBR contract, the Times focused on concerns about Halliburton’s reputation for bilking U.S. taxpayers by overcharging for sub-par services.

“It's hard to believe that the administration has decided to entrust Halliburton with even more taxpayer dollars,” remarked Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California.

Less attention centered on the phrase “rapid development of new programs” and what kind of programs would require a major expansion of detention centers, each capable of holding 5,000 people. Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to elaborate on what these “new programs” might be.

Some of us, however, have a pretty good idea what these “new programs” might very well be. Rex-84 Alpha Explan (Readiness Exercise 1984, Exercise Plan) was a “gaming exercise” created specifically by FEMA and DoD—with the participation of other federal agencies, including the CIA, the Secret Service, the Treasury, the FBI, and the Veterans Administration—to “fight subversive activities” and provide “authorization for the military to implement government ordered movements of civilian populations at state and regional levels,” “arrest of certain unidentified segments of the population” and impose “martial rule,” according to scholar Diana Reynolds. Rex-84 was part of “Operation Garden Plot,” or Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, an outgrowth of the Kerner Commission “study” of “civil disorder” during the Johnson administration in the 1960s. “Garden Plot evolved into a series of annual training exercises based on contingency plans to undercut riots and demonstrations, ultimately developed for every major city in the United States. Participants in the exercises included key officials from all law enforcement agencies in the nation, as well as the National Guard, the military, and representatives of the intelligence community. According to the plan, joint teams would react to a variety of scenarios based on information gathered through political espionage and informants. The object was to quell urban unrest,” Donald Goldberg and Indy Badhwar wrote for Penthouse Magazine in 1985 (see Frank Morales, U.S. Military Civil Disturbance Planning: the War at Home).

In 2002, a few months after nine eleven, then AG Ashcroft made the Gestapo round-up aspect of REX-84 a frightening reality, although the corporate media buried the story in characteristic fashion. “Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft’s announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems to be ‘enemy combatants’ has moved him from merely being a political embarrassment to being a constitutional menace,” Jonathan Turley wrote for the Los Angeles Times. “Ashcroft’s plan, disclosed last week but little publicized, would allow him to order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip them of their constitutional rights and access to the courts by declaring them enemy combatants…. The camp plan was forged at an optimistic time for Ashcroft’s small inner circle, which has been carefully watching two test cases to see whether this vision could become a reality. The cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi will determine whether U.S. citizens can be held without charges and subject to the arbitrary and unchecked authority of the government.”

Hamdi’s case went before the Supreme Court on June 28, 2004, and, as Justice O’Connor stated, “a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens.” However, O’Connor has since retired, replaced by the Federalist Society reactionary, Samuel Alito, who will undoubtedly rule in favor of an imperial presidency in the not too distant future. On November 22, 2005, Jose Padilla was indicted on charges he “conspired to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas” after being held without charge since May 8, 2002, thus suspending the Constitution’s 5th and 14th Amendments (”due process of law”) and Sixth Amendment (trial by “an impartial jury”) for several years.

“It is clear that the Bush administration is thinking seriously about martial law,” Peter Dale Scott wrote earlier this month, following a January announcement Halliburton subsidiary KBR had received the little-known $385 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security to build “temporary detention and processing capabilities.” In the wake of nine eleven, “new martial law plans began to surface similar to those of FEMA in the 1980s,” Scott explains. “In January 2002 the Pentagon submitted a proposal for deploying troops on American streets. One month later John Brinkerhoff, the author of the 1982 FEMA [continuity of government] memo, published an article arguing for the legality of using U.S. troops for purposes of domestic security” in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.

“Many critics have alleged that FEMA’s spectacular failure to respond to Katrina followed from a deliberate White House policy: of paring back FEMA, and instead strengthening the military for responses to disasters,” Scott concludes. “A multimillion program for detention facilities will greatly increase NORTHCOM’s [specifically tasked with domestic U.S. military operations] ability to respond to any domestic disorders,” apparently including the “disorder” created by “fifth column movements,” or people opposed to the invasion and occupation of Iraq and, soon enough, the invasion or at minimum “shock and awe” attack on the next target on the Straussian neocon roster, Iran. “Contrary to popular belief, there is no absolute ban on [military] intelligence components collecting U.S. person information,” states a 2001 Defense Department memo that surfaced in January 2005. “MI [military intelligence] may receive information from anyone, anytime,” Lt. Gen. Robert W. Noonan Jr., the deputy chief of staff for intelligence, wrote in the memo.

“Despite the Posse Comitatus Act’s prohibitions against U.S. military personnel engaging in domestic law enforcement, the Pentagon has expanded its operations beyond previous boundaries, such as its role in domestic surveillance activities,” writes Nat Parry. One such operation falls under the Pentagon’s Counterintelligence Field Activity (or CIFA; see my CIFA: The Pentagon's COINTELPRO) “The White House is considering expanding the power of a little-known Pentagon agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, which was created three years ago,” noted the Washington Post last November. “The proposal, made by a presidential commission—to one that also has authority to investigate crimes within the United States such as treason, foreign or terrorist sabotage or even economic espionage,” and more than likely “fifth column” behavior considered treason by at least one senator from South Carolina and no shortage of Straussian neocons, both in the White House and Pentagon.

As the NSA snoop program revealed, “investigating crimes” such as “treason” is not strictly for the likes of CIFA and the Pentagon. “This receipt of information presumably would include data from the National Security Agency, which has been engaging in surveillance of U.S. citizens without court-approved warrants in apparent violation of the Foreign Intelligence Security Act. Bush approved the program of warrantless wiretaps shortly after 9/11,” Parry summarizes. “There also may be an even more extensive surveillance program. Former NSA employee Russell D. Tice told a congressional committee on Feb. 14 that such a top-secret surveillance program existed, but he said he couldn't discuss the details without breaking classification laws.”

“Tice said he believes it violates the Constitution’s protection against unlawful search and seizures but has no way of sharing the information without breaking classification laws,” United Press International reported on February 14. “He is not even allowed to tell the congressional intelligence committees—members or their staff—because they lack high enough clearance.” As an example to what whistleblowers can expect in the future, the UPI article concludes: “Tice was testifying because he was a National Security Agency intelligence officer who was stripped of his security clearance after he reported his suspicions that a former colleague at the Defense Intelligence Agency was a spy. The matter was dismissed by the DIA, but Tice pressed it later and was subsequently ordered to take a psychological examination, during which he was declared paranoid. He is now unemployed.”

Horowitz’s reactionary paranoia and mistrust of “communist” antiwar citizens and anti-Bush activists has infected the very highest reaches of the White House and Pentagon, where dissent is considered treason and the Bill of Rights viewed as an impediment to the Straussian neocon plan to destroy Muslim societies and culture. According to Horowitz, “this country was too tolerant toward the treason of its enemies within” and should not repeat the mistake of the Vietnam era, for which he shares partial responsibility. But as Newsweek noted on a sarcastic note, these “seem to be lonely days for the Birkenstock-and-beads set,” and for good reason, although unmentioned by the likes of David Horowitz—because the vast majority of people opposed to the invasion and occupation of Iraq are wholly average, not especially radical and certainly not communist, middle class Americans. It is David Horowitz who lives in the past, not the antiwar “movement,” which is in fact not even a movement as we understand it, taking the late 60s and early 70s as our yardstick.

Of course, the Straussian neocons running foreign policy and now the national security state out of the Bush White House, Pentagon, Justice and State Departments are not especially concerned with Horowitz’s paranoid interior monologue as he chases “communist” ghosts from his antiwar and Black Panther past. Instead, as is the habit of all authoritarians and fascists, the Straussian neocons are simply interested in neutralizing and rendering ineffective any possible opposition—from Code Pink to legions of soccer moms—to their long-held master plan to decimate Islam and establish “American global military supremacy and to thwart the emergence of a rival superpower in Europe, Asia or the former Soviet Union,” as spelled out in a 1992 “Defense Planning Guidance” memo crafted under then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, then the Pentagon’s Under Secretary for policy, and subsequently adopted by the Project for the New American Century in 1997. In order to run “multiple wars” in “multiple theaters,” there will need to be zero tolerance for dissent on the home front—and that is what the Ministry of Homeland Security, the NSA snoop program, and CIFA are all about.

In the months ahead, we will see if the Halliburton camps are little more than another stupendous waste of taxpayer money or if the Straussian neocons sincerely intend to populate them with domestic enemies after some “catalyzing event” such as yet another “new Pearl Harbor” designed to light a fire under Iran or other targets on the neocon hit list. If history serves, chances are the latter will come to pass, and with a vengeance, as even a cursory examination of the Straussian philosophy reveals these guys are playing hardball and their teachers consist of the antediluvian Constitution hater Leo Strauss, the master of deception Niccolo Machiavelli, the “overman” theorist Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, and Nazi jurist and “concept of the political” (belligerent totalitarianism) proponent Carl Schmitt. If you throw these together and mix in a bit of Thomas Hobbes (“war of all against all”) you certainly have a recipe for not only a crisis of civilization [including imprisonment without Due Process (access to the courts and fair trials by juries of their peers) tens if not hundreds of thousands of innocent Americans (like Kurt Nimmo and myself) who are doing nothing but non-violently exercising their rights and duties under the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution to oppose the Orwellian abrogation of privacy and true freedom, spying on average, innocent Americans, and all war all the time against sovereign countries that have not attacked the shores of the United States], but nuclear Armageddon [as well, at least on a "limited" basis in the Middle East, something the Bush, neo-fascist administration has wanted to do for several years now---and in fact have already done to a great extent by the spreading of thousands of tons of still highly radioactive, and still extremely hazardous to human health, D.U. (Depleted Uranium) from thousands of tons of U.S. bombs and missiles all over Iraq and Afghanistan, which is already causing many little babies and others in those countries to die from horrible cancers, and thousands of U.S. soldiers to come home with a much worse version of "Gulf War Syndrome" than they came home with from the first Gulf War, causing them to develop very serious, life-threatening cancers themselves, and to pass very serious genetic damage and birth defects on to their offspring]. [Words in brackets ("[ ]") and/or emphasis added by Wolf Britain.]









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Tuesday, February 21, 2006


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Read more of Marjorie Cohn's columns.

For background, see:
Marjorie Cohn | Close Guantanamo Prison

Click here to go to t r u t h o u t ' s 'Marjorie Cohn' Page!    U.S. Force-Feeding Prisoners
    In Torture Camp

    By Marjorie Cohn
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective
    Monday, 20 February 2006
    [Copyright (c) 2006 in the
    U.S.A. and Internationally
    by t r u t h o u t (.org)
    and/or Marjorie Cohn.
    All rights reserved.]

    Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Commission reported that the violent force-feeding of detainees by the US military at its Guantanamo prison camp amounts to torture.

    More than a third of the prisoners held there have refused food to protest being held incommunicado for years with no hope of release. They have concluded that death could not be worse than the living hell they are enduring. Attorney Julia Tarver's client Abdul-Rahman told her "of his determination to die and said that, 'now, after four years in captivity, life and death are the same,'" Tarver wrote in a sworn declaration filed in federal district court.

    Yousef Al Shehri, another of Tarver's clients, was taken prisoner by the US military while he was still a juvenile. Both clients described being force-fed by the guards. Tarver wrote in her declaration: "Yousef was the second detainee to have an NG [nasal gastric] tube inserted into his nose and pushed all the way down his throat and into his stomach, a procedure which caused him great pain. Yousef was given no anesthesia or sedative for the procedure; instead, two soldiers restrained him -- one holding his chin while the other held him back by his hair, and a medical staff member forcefully inserted the tube in his nose and down his throat. Much blood came out of his nose. Yousef said he could not speak for two days after the procedure; he said he felt like a piece of metal was inside of him. He said he could not sleep because of the severe pain."

    When Yousef and others "vomited up blood, the soldiers mocked and cursed at them, and taunted them with statements like 'look what your religion has brought you,'" Tarver wrote.

    After two weeks of this treatment, the forced feeding stopped for five days. Then, guards began to insert larger, thicker tubes into the detainees' noses. "These large tubes," Tarver wrote, "the thickness of a finger, [Yousef] estimated -- were viewed by the detainees as objects of torture. They were forcibly shoved up the detainees' noses and down into their stomachs. Again, no anesthesia or sedative was provided to alleviate the obvious trauma of the procedure. When the tube was removed, it was even more painful, and blood came gushing out of him. He fainted, and several of the other detainees also lost consciousness. They were told that this tube would be inserted and removed twice a day every day until the hunger strike ended. Yousef described the pain as 'unbearable.'"

    Both of Tarver's clients independently identified physicians as participants in this procedure. "The guards took NG tubes from one detainee, and with no sanitization whatsoever, re-inserted it into the nose of a different detainee. When these tubes were re-inserted, the detainees could see the blood and stomach bile from other detainees remaining on the tubes," Tarver wrote in her declaration.

    The UN commission confirmed that "doctors and other health professionals are participating in force-feeding detainees." It cites the Declarations of Tokyo and Malta, the World Medical Association, and the American Medical Association, which prohibit doctors from participating in force-feeding a detainee, provided the detainee is capable of understanding the consequences of refusing food.

    International Committee of the Red Cross guidelines state: "Doctors should never be party to actual coercive feeding. Such actions can be considered a form of torture and under no circumstances should doctors participate in them on the pretext of saving the hunger striker's life."

    The Bush administration is force-feeding the hunger strikers for political reasons. If any of the Guantanamo prisoners dies as a result of the hunger strike, it would be embarrassing to the Bush administration, which claims it treats the detainees "humanely."

    The Human Rights Commission called on the US government to ensure that the authorities at Guantanamo Bay do not force-feed any detainee who is capable of forming a rational judgement and is aware of the consequences of refusing food. "The United States Government should invite independent health professionals to monitor hunger strikers, in a manner consistent with international ethical standards, throughout the hunger strike," the commission recommended.

    In its report, the commission also recommended that the US government "close the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities without further delay. Until the closure, and possible transfer of detainees to pre-trial detention facilities on United States territory, the Government should refrain from any practice amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

    The commission further said that "the United States Government should ensure that all allegations of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment are thoroughly investigated by an independent authority, and that all persons found to have perpetrated, ordered, tolerated or condoned such practices, up to the highest level of military and political command, are brought to justice."

    Not surprisingly, the Bush administration rejected the commission's report, saying that the rapporteurs who prepared it did not interview people at the prison camp. The commission relied on interviews with former detainees, public documents, media repots, lawyers and questions answered by the US government. The Bush administration invited the rapporteurs to visit the Guantanamo camp, but refused to allow them to speak with the prisoners.

    The overwhelming majority of the prisoners our government is holding at Guantanamo are not terrorists or jihadists. Many were picked up in Afghanistan and other countries and sold to the US military by bounty hunters. Of the roughly 500 men there, only 9 have been designated for trial on criminal charges.

    The US government's treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo is an international travesty and a national disgrace.



    Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, President-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. She writes a weekly column for t r u t h o u t.

  ________

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Monday, February 20, 2006


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Marjorie Cohn | Bush Mouthpiece Defends Illegal Spying

Click here to go to t r u t h o u t ' s 'Marjorie Cohn' Page!    SPINNING FEAR
    (Bush Administration Redbating)

    By Marjorie Cohn
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective
    Monday, 13 February 2006
    [Copyright (c) 2006 in the
    U.S.A. and Internationally
    by t r u t h o u t (.org)
    and/or Marjorie Cohn.
    All rights reserved.]

The terror's in the room.
-- CBS Journalist Edward R. Murrow, "Good Night and Good Luck," 1954

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
-- President Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933

    During the 1950s, our government succumbed to the fear of Communism hyped by Senator Joseph McCarthy. People lost their jobs, lives were ruined, and many committed suicide in response to the "red scare." Fear pervaded every facet of life, leading neighbors to inform on one another. CBS newscaster Edward R. Murrow was one of the few journalists who had the courage to stand up to the fear-mongering and bring the truth to the American people. Describing the omnipresent fear that the government was fostering, Murrow told his colleagues, "The terror's in the room."

    It's deja vu with the Bush administration ensuring that terror is always in the room. Since September 11, 2001, George W. Bush has successfully manipulated the memory of the terrorist attacks to maintain power and mute effective criticism of his dangerous and illegal policies.

    Bush continues to exploit 9/11, and the media is complicit in the hype. Cable news stations keep us informed of an "elevated" terror alert level.

    The month after the 9/11 attacks, former Attorney General John Ashcroft rammed the USA Patriot Act through a Congress terrified of looking soft on terror. That same Congress had rejected many of the act's provisions months earlier because they threatened civil liberties.

    Ashcroft warned that criticism of the government's policies "only aids terrorists." His successor, Alberto Gonzales, told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, "We remain a nation at war."

    The war is in Iraq, created from whole cloth by George W. Bush. There were no terrorists in Iraq before Bush invaded that country, changed its regime and occupied its land. Now it is a breeding ground for terrorism.

    Hundreds of men are being held like animals, tortured and abused in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay. Only a handful of them have been charged with crimes. The despicable conditions there have caused many to participate in a hunger strike. Rather than suffer the embarrassment of dying prisoners, jailers have been violently force-feeding them. They tie the prisoners down and insert large, unsterilized tubes down their noses with no anesthesia. A new UN report calls it torture.

    Reports from Guantanamo and pictures of the torture of Iraqi prisoners by US forces at Abu Ghraib prison have also fanned the flames of anti-American sentiment.

    Bush calls his illegal domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency the "Terrorist Surveillance Program." Dick Cheney told PBS's Jim Lehrer that "this program has saved thousands of American lives." Yet there's no way to prove -- or disprove -- Cheney's claim.

    The Washington Post reported that, of the thousands of calls Bush's NSA program has intercepted, almost none relate to anything approximating terrorism.

    The hallmark of the Bush administration is secrecy. CIA Director Porter Goss wrote in a recent op-ed in the New York Times, "Disclosure of classified intelligence inhibits our ability to carry out our mission and protect the nation."

    Yet, as whistleblower Sibel Edmonds pointed out yesterday (See "Porter Goss's op-ed: Ignoturn per Ignotius!"), the 9/11 Commission concluded that only "publicity" could have prevented the attacks. Had Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed known the so-called 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui had been arrested, they would have called off the attacks. The 9/11 Commission sharply criticized the government for classifying too much information.

    In 2003, the Bush administration rescinded Clinton's rule that information should not be classified "if there is significant doubt" that releasing it would harm national security.

    The deputy undersecretary of defense for counterintelligence and security testified at a March 2005 Congressional hearing that 50 percent of the Pentagon's information was over-classified; the head of the Information Security Oversight Office said it was "even beyond 50 percent."

    When whistleblowers and leakers reveal information critical of Bush policies, the administration mounts an attack on the messenger. In response to the New York Times report on the NSA spying program, the government launched an investigation to determine who leaked the information to the Times. When Gonzales tried to turn criticism of the program into an assault on the leakers, Senator Patrick Leahy declared, "Thank god we have press that tell us what you're doing because you're not telling us."

    After the Times carried its report of the NSA program, some senators refused to vote to renew provisions of the Patriot Act that were due to expire on December 31, 2005. A last-minute compromise was cobbled together to extend those provisions for five weeks.

    Just as the five week period was about to run out, Bush announced with great fanfare that an October 2001 al Qaeda plan to attack the tallest building on the West Coast had been thwarted by an unnamed Southeast Asian country. Once again, we have no corroboration of the accuracy of Bush's claim. His past lies lead many to question the truthfulness of his report.

    Bush gave no credit to the NSA spying program. He most certainly would have if it had foiled the plot. The day after Bush's "revelation," Congress announced it had reached an agreement to make the Patriot Act permanent. Once again, the manipulation of fear succeeded in neutering the Congress.

    Another example of the Bush administration's selective revelations of its own secret information is the leaking of former CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to journalists. The leak was strategically designed to punish Plame's husband Joseph Wilson for blowing the whistle on the lies Bush used to bolster support for his impending invasion of Iraq. (See Jason Leopold's "Cheney Spearheaded Effort to Discredit Wilson.")

    The most famous leaker in United States history is Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971. Those documents revealed the lies and hypocrisy of US policy in Southeast Asia. In 2003, Ellsberg told Salon writer Michelle Goldberg, "We're now in an aggressive, costly war. The White House had to lie about those policies to make them viable, and when you lie you have to keep the lies secret, you have to intimidate people who might be inclined to tell the truth, all that goes together. Why do they do it?" he asked rhetorically. "Wilson and I have no trouble knowing why they did it. They don't want people to act the way we do."

    Franklin D. Roosevelt assumed the mantle of President at the height of the Great Depression. People were broke, out of work, and afraid there might not be a next meal. Roosevelt told them, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." The people jumped on board with his New Deal, and pulled themselves out of the depression. FDR didn't exploit people's real fears. He courageously challenged them to face their fears and overcome them.

    The Bush administration continues to perfect the art of terrifying. Many in Congress live in fear of losing their seats if they appear soft on terrorism.

    But most Americans oppose Bush's illegal Iraq war and his secret spying program. The power to stop this war and the assault on our civil liberties rests in the hands of the people. Congress is reactive. It reacts to Bush's tactics of manipulation. But it will not be able to avoid reacting to an overwhelming call by the people to check the imperial executive.



    Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, President-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. She writes a weekly column for t r u t h o u t.

  ________

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

"Go to Original" links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted on TO may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the "Go to Original" links.

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Sunday, February 19, 2006


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Click here to go to Tom Engelhardt's 'TomDispatch.com'!     TOMGRAM: BUSHWHACKED
    IN BUSHWORLD
    "Beam Me Up, Scottie!"

    By Tom Engelhardt
    TomDispatch.com
    Sunday, 05 February 2006
    [Copyright (c) 2006 in the
    U.S.A. and Internationally
    by t r u t h o u t (.org),
    TomDispatch (.com) and/or
    Tom Engelhardt. All
    Rights Reserved.]

    Just in case you hadn't noticed, we're in a Bushworld too absurd for words. But that hasn't stopped this administration from yakking its collective head off.

    Over the last week: The President came out for an ethanol-powered globe -- that's corn on the cob to you, buddy -- while his Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld announced that our poor planet had somehow gotten more terroristically dangerous since George took the helm. (No fault of his, natch.) Last Tuesday night, of course, the Great Helmsman stood on the congressional deck of state -- perhaps confusing it with the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln (Didn't anyone hear me? Mission accomplished!) -- and declared that we were on nothing less than the "road to victory" in Iraq. (Unfortunately, the message seems not to have gotten through to Iraqis lining that road with IEDs, possibly due to power outages in that country.) Intelligence "Tsar" John Negroponte visited Congress to deliver the news that Earth was virtually swarming with terrorist groups which already had their hands on WMD. (Sleep well, Virginia.) At the same time, multitasking like mad, the administration continued its noble war on T-shirts; the Pentagon put political cartoonists on notice that the military high command wasn't going to take a pen jab lying down (no sir!); and KBR, one of two subsidiaries of the Halliburton Corporation (the other being the U.S. government), received an almost $400 million dollar contract to build emergency "detention facilities" in the homeland (after much practice at Guantanamo). Oh yes, and in their spare time, the President and his closest advisors happily continued to exercise another of those handy prerogatives of the Commander-in-Chief in wartime by essentially amending the Constitution to wipe out the odd check or balance.

    Am I going too fast for you? Then, take a breath, buckle on your seatbelt, put on your helmet, check your oxygen gauge, and then let me beam these stories up to you one at a time (along with a few other gems stored in the Mother Ship of my brain).

    George's Half-Step Program to Energy Independence: So this was the year that the President of Oil discovered we were "addicted" to the stuff and, worse yet, that it came from "unstable parts of the world" -- hold on a sec, while I fill my gas tank -- but he also came up with a solution! Thanks to his Advanced Energy Initiative, ethanol, essentially a corn product, would power us into the future along with hybrid car engines and the odd nuclear power plant. Twenty years from now, he assured us in his State of the Union Address, we more or less won't know the Middle East exists.

    Though our brush-cutting President did mention wood chips and switch grass, ethanol is essentially a corn product; and corn is our petroleum farm crop of choice, since growing it in quantity involves massive infusions of oil-based chemical fertilizer. So maybe we should consider George's ethanol-fix like one of those nicotine patches for cigarette smokers. Throw in some leftover radioactive waste from those nuclear plants his administration would love to hug into existence and it all made perfect sense to me... until the next day when an administration that had never heard of no-backsies took it all back. The President's suggestion about making 75% of Middle Eastern oil imports go away "was purely an example," insisted an embarrassed Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. And anyway, it turned out that none of it really mattered since, as Paul Krugman pointed out: "[T]he National Renewable Energy Laboratory is about to lay off staff because of budget cuts. 'A veteran researcher,' reports The New York Times, 'said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol.'" Of course, the President and his men generated enough wind last week to create a little extra power -- if only we'd put some money into alternative fuels.

    By the way, elsewhere in the world -- and yes, in case you didn't notice, there is an elsewhere -- King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia set off on his first trip outside the Middle East, perfectly timed to the President's desire to ditch the whole region. (And given what's happened to him there, you can't blame the guy, can you?) The Saudi king, in search of reliable allies, boarded his plane and promptly headed for... China. At his blog, The Dreyfuss Report, Robert Dreyfuss sums up administration oil planning in the Middle East thusly:

America's military effort to secure hegemony over the world's oil deposits in the Gulf looks like this: Iraq, a mess, governed by Iran-linked Shiites; Iran, angry once again at the Great Satan and looking toward Russia and China; and Saudi Arabia, the big enchilada, starting to learn to speak Chinese. Some hegemony.

    Encouraging Energy Independence in Iraq: In his State of the Union Address, the President once again invoked victory in discussing the war in Iraq -- "Fellow citizens, we are in this fight to win, and we are winning. (Applause.) The road of victory is the road that will take our troops home." At a taxpayer cost of at least $4.5 billion a month, the price of "victory" in Iraq is now (in case you're curious) an estimated $100,000 a minute. Strangely, though, the President never mentioned how Iraq, with staggering oil reserves, might actually aid his plan for American energy independence from the Middle East. Who remembers those three to five million barrels of oil that Paul Wolfowitz and other administration neocons once knew the Iraqis would be pumping in next to no time at all, giving them the wherewithal to pay for us for occupying them, setting up permanent bases on their territory, and (unlike ET) never going home. After all, as Wolfowitz put it way back in May 2003, Iraq "floats on a sea of oil." ("The oil revenue of that country could bring between 50 and 100 billion dollars over the course of the next two or three years. We're dealing with a country that could really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.")

    Well, in the years since our "cakewalk" invasion, oil production in Iraq has taken a slightly different turn. At about 2.5 million barrels a day in the final days of Saddam's rule, output nosedived by another 8% last year, reaching 1.5 million barrels a day, and is probably significantly below that now. In fact, it's been dropping faster than the President's polling numbers -- and last week, just as George was touting our coming victory in Iraq, rebels there mortared a major petroleum facility in Kirkuk, setting it ablaze, and hitting an important pipeline to Turkey. An Iraqi executive with the North Oil Co. called it the "most severe attack we have ever faced on an oil installation." So far, thanks to American "reconstruction" and insurgent sabotage, Baghdad has been liberated from all but a few hours a day of electricity. Soon, the whole country (and so the world) may be able to declare its independence from any significant amount of exportable Iraqi oil -- making it a model for energy independence on the planet.

    Oh, and while we're talking about Iraq, we Americans are a proud, traditionalist nation and one of our more regular traditions of recent years has been firing missiles into crowded streets, or small villages across those lands long labeled an "arc of instability," knocking off innocent civilians, including women and children. After each such incident, our military announces an investigation that fades into space and out of media memory without any spokesperson ever having to utter the words, "We're sorry." (That's a matter of principle!)

    On January 13, a Predator drone shot a Hellfire missile into a house in a Pakistani village near the Afghan border in a botched assassination attempt against al-Qaeda number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Of course, the requisite group of women and children was murdered in the process. Then, last Thursday, a U.S. helicopter, reportedly fired on by gunmen from a rooftop in Sadr City, the vast Shiite slum in Baghdad, sent one or more missiles into a crowded street, killing a 20 year old woman, Ikhlas Abdul-Hussein, and wounding a two-year old child. Admittedly, we haven't hit a wedding party -- a sub-specialty of our Air Force -- since 2004, but last week American soldiers did their best to make up for that oversight by extending another small tradition, shooting up the cars of diplomats in and around Baghdad. A trigger-happy gunner on an American convoy in that city's Green Zone riddled a vehicle ("with a Maple Leaf flag plastered to the windshield") occupied by a group of Canadian diplomats, including the Acting Ambassador. Miraculously, no one was hit. The Canadians, a sober lot, claimed they were driving slowly and at a careful distance from the convoy. The Americans insisted their car was overtaking the convoy at a rapid speed and that they had ignored warning hand-signals. The obligatory meaningless investigation is now underway, while "the Bush administration voiced regret but, so far, no official apology." (Canada, mind you, has just elected a conservative Prime Minister, friendly to Washington, but never saying sorry is a near-Constitutional matter and allies, after all, are only allies.)

    Meanwhile, from the news desk of the future -- but released this week -- the Pentagon has plans to create a new "Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron" under the ever-expanding U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM). Undoubtedly, in the never-ending search for victims, it will be tasked "to go boldly where no drone has gone before."

    Money Makes the World Go Boom! Here's a genuine surprise: In his new budget, the President, who last week declared himself boldly determined, as the Washington Post put it, to "constrain the massive entitlement programs for the elderly and the poor," and "carve money from Medicaid," is proposing a 5% rise in funds for the hapless Department of Homeland Confusion (er... Security), and another 5% rise for the Pentagon. The Pentagon's budget is slated to come in at a mere $439.3 billion, but here's the curious thing -- it includes no funds for the Afghan or Iraqi wars, minimally estimated at $120 billion next year. Makes sense, no? Who would put the costs of actual warfare in the budget of what was once the War Department before we spread our military across the globe and renamed it the Department of Defense?

    The Pentagon's just released Quadrennial Defense Review puts great weight on fighting the war on terror for eons to come and, in preparation, a series of weapons systems that have nothing to do with that "war" are getting infusions of extra funds. Following the sort of sacrificial behavior for which the Pentagon is well known, not a single major weapons system has even been modestly cut back. In other words, weapons-entitlement programs are alive and well in America. (As the insider Nelson Report pointed out recently: Since 2001, in current dollars, the Pentagon budget has experienced "a 41% increase, exclusive of the supplemental allocations for Iraq, Afghanistan, and the [Global War on Terror].")

    To celebrate their prospective good fortune, the six Chiefs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff pointedly launched... a letter-writing assault on a cartoonist. No kidding. As Paul Woodward of the War in Context website put it, this "24-star letter" was aimed at protesting a Tom Toles cartoon ("beyond tasteless") in the Washington Post that used an armless, legless soldier in a hospital bed to mock Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld for "breaking" the Army. You can only hope that the Chiefs are better at fighting a war than (mis)interpreting a cartoon.

    A small sartorial suggestion to head Chief, Gen. Peter Pace: I wouldn't put that "beyond tasteless" slogan on a T-shirt and wear it to an official do in Washington, given the endless T-shirt wars the Bush administration has been fighting for years at its campaign events nationwide. These burst out again in the galleries of the House of Representatives the night of the State of the Union. Police roughly arrested, handcuffed, and briefly charged Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq and a guest of Representative Lynn Woolsey of California, for wearing a T-shirt with the treasonous slogan, "2,245 Dead. How Many More?" They also ejected Beverly Young, wife of Republican Representative Bill Young of Florida, Chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, for wearing a T-shirt "bearing words of support for U.S. Troops." (Then again, if I remember my song lyrics correctly, isn't freedom just another word for nothing left to wear?)

    While the Joint Chiefs face down a cartoonist and the administration fights its war on T-shirt terror, let me return to the subject of mega-money and entitlements for a moment. Last week, the President reassured Exxon Mobil Corporation, which had just announced record profits of $10.71 billion for the fourth quarter of 2005, that Americans should not expect any price breaks from a genuinely entitled winner while waiting for their future ethanol fix. "I think that basically the price is determined by the marketplace," he told the Associated Press, "and that's the way it should be."

    Hi-ho, Hi-ho, It's Off to the Longest War We Go: Language, what would the Bush administration do without it? One of John Wayne's famous lines was, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." And the Bush administration is actively of that linguistic school. Of course, when reality bites you in the you-know-what and you can't do a heck of a lot about it, what are you going to do but re-label your product? In this way, the "war on terror," aka, "the Global War on Terror," aka "GWOT," aka "World War IV," aka "the Global Struggle against Violent Extremism," has just become, by administration fiat, "the Longest War" (a phrase that's been hanging around unloved in Neocon Land for a long time, though it's now being attributed to former Centcom Commander John Abizaid. It's undoubtedly been chosen because the President's lovely global "war" has gone on remarkably... well, long.

    The phrase was on the President's lips last Tuesday night. It led off the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review, released last week. It was mentioned by various administration officials and promoted heavily by Donald Rumsfeld, who was also plugging a world in which, as Lolita Baldor of AP reported, "despite progress in fighting terrorism, the threat today may be greater than ever before because the available weapons are far more dangerous." In a speech at the National Press Club, subtly entitled, "The Long War," the Don touched all the bases. He compared Osama bin Laden to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin, and claimed we were in a "generational conflict" like the Cold War of which Iraq and Afghanistan were merely the "early battles." Meanwhile, across town, our intelligence tsar was assuring Congress that U.S. "intelligence reporting" -- why am I already losing confidence in this statement? -- "indicates that nearly 40 terrorist organizations, insurgencies, or cults have used, possessed, or expressed an interest in chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear agents or weapons." (Somewhere in all this, I think I can hear Karl Rove conducting a midterm election campaign based on the only card this administration still has in its hand: the fear of terrorism.)

    Still, I suspect "the Long War" will soon join the "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism" in the dust bin of history. In fact, on naming its terror war, the Bush administration could probably use a little help. How about the Scare-You-to-Death-Struggle-for-Global-Ethanol-Independence-and-Republican-Electoral-Victories War (or SYTDSFGEIAREVW)? If that doesn't work for you, the Nation magazine's Katrina van den Heuvel is ready to lend a hand. Having already published her hilarious The Dictionary of Republicanisms, she's now launching a contest to capture the essence of GWOT-ability (a little like guacamole) in a single, punchy name.

    Club Homeland Detention: Halliburton, the first corporation into Iraq, contractually speaking, and the biggest financial winner in the "reconstruction" sweepstakes for that deconstructed country, fortuitously also found itself perched right atop the list of post-Katrina New Orleans reconstruction contractors. Now, through its subsidiary KBR, known for building military bases to last, as well as Guantanamo's infamous "cages," Halliburton gets a shot at the real American thing -- actual emergency detention centers for "immigrants" -- or, hey, in a crisis, for whomever. The Army Corps of Engineers awarded it a contract last month -- though the story only oozed out this week -- worth up to $385 million (not including the near-obligatory overcharges) for, according to the New York Times, "an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space." It's those "new programs" that give special pause.

    They Fought the Law and the Law Lost: Finally, in the week that just was, our President and his top officials continued their vigorous efforts to rewrite the Constitution. They took up the National Security Agency warrantless spying, evidently had an unannounced constitutional convention in the White House, called on the peerless minds of various White House and justice department lawyers, asked the Attorney General (former White House Counsel, former General Counsel, and friend) Alberto Gonzales for his honest opinion, and then had the good sense to double check with lawyers at the NSA to make sure everything that agency had been doing was genuinely and legally below board and utterly constitutional. Finally, they turned the whole ball of wax over to Karl Rove, who recognized an election issue when he saw one, and next thing you knew, there was the President, at the State of the Union, insisting, as in some Avon ad, that al-Qaeda was calling and it was darn tootin' constitutional as all get out to listen in on what's conveniently been relabeled "a terrorist surveillance program" (no genuine citizens allowed to join!).

    I suppose, based on that unbelievably dreary textbook you had to read back in junior high civics class, you thought amending the Constitution took a two-thirds vote of each house of Congress and then passage by three-quarters of the states. Silly you! It only takes two-thirds of the President's brain, three-quarters of the Vice President's brain, and 100% of his Chief of Staff David Addington's brain; toss in the odd administration lawyer or two to check the fine print, and, as they say in one province of Canada (don't shoot!), Voilà!

    Now, unbuckle those straps, take that helmet off, and relax. It's a new week. Enjoy yourself!



    Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War. His novel, The Last Days of Publishing, has recently come out in paperback.

  ________

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

"Go to Original" links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted on TO may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the "Go to Original" links.

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Tuesday, February 14, 2006


BUSH GETS (MORE THAN WELL-)DESERVED DRESSING DOWN AT KING FUNERAL

Written by Kurt Nimmo
[Copyright (c) 2006 in the U.S.A. and
Internationally by Kurt Nimmo.
All rights are reserved.]

It says something about our “democracy” when Bush can only face criticism in public as a side effect of his attendance at a funeral. Earlier today, the civil-rights leader Pastor Joseph Lowery managed to take Bush to task for his war crimes and pathological lies (or the lies programmed in his alcohol and coke damaged head by the Straussian neocons) during the funeral of Coretta Scott King. “We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there,” Lowery said, reading a poem. “But Coretta knew and we knew that there are weapons of misdirection right down here.” In response, Lowery received a two minute standing ovation.

As if to add insult to injury, former president Jimmy Carter lambasted the neocons for their authoritarian NSA snoop program, comparing it to the FBI’s surveillance of the civil rights leader. “It was difficult for them personally with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated, and they became the targets of secret government wiretapping and other surveillance,” said Carter.

No doubt, by this time tomorrow, “conservatives” (neocons) far and wide will take umbrage, outraged that somebody would dare criticize our ruler in public. I happened to catch a few seconds of Fox News on my way toward the computer. Michael Reagan, the neocon son of the dead president, expressed his anger in conversation with faux Fox “liberal” Alan Colmes. Reagan was upset over Carter’s comparison of the unconstitutional and illegal NSA snoop program to the surveillance carried out on King. Neocon cheerleaders such as Reagan, of course, want us to believe the NSA, at the behest of the Straussian neocons, are limiting the J. Edgar Hoover Memorial Vacuum Cleaner snoop program to “al-Qaeda” bad guys supposedly making phone calls when anybody with two or more brain cells to rub together realizes Bush and crew are using the criminal program to snoop thousands if not millions of Americans, especially those involved in activism against his Mafioso regime.

“No holds were barred,” William Sullivan, assistant director of the FBI’s Intelligence Division, testified before the Church Committee on the aggressive surveillance of King. “We have used [similar] techniques against Soviet agents. [The same methods were] brought home against any organization against which we were targeted. We did not differentiate. This is a rough, tough business.”

No doubt, as well, the Bush Straussians, utilizing the NSA and the FBI (and a grab bag of other federal agencies, including the Straussian infested Pentagon), believe subverting the Bill of Rights is “a rough, tough business.” In much the same way as the FBI surveilled and harassed King and his “Negro followers” (as Sullivan wrote Hoover in a memo dated January 8, 1964), the Straussian neocons are anxious to dig up as much dirt on their enemies as possible. “When the true facts concerning [King’s] activities are presented, such should be enough, if handled properly, to take him off his pedestal and to reduce him completely in influence,” Sullivan told his boss. “When this is done, and it can be and will be done, obviously much confusion will reign, particularly among the Negro people.” Of course, confusion did not “reign,” the civil rights movement grew in strength and intensity, and the government instead decided to have King assassinated.

The vicious Straussian neocons will likewise deal with their enemies as they mobilize against Phase Two (attack Iran) of the Master Plan to sow chaos and murder in the Muslim Middle East. Oliver North, working diligently from the basement of the Reagan White House, did not collaborate with FEMA to set up camps for illegal immigrants, but rather official enemies. And if you believe the CIA has established its flying torture circus of sadism strictly for Muslim goat herders and taxi drivers, you should think again. For the Straussians, there is no difference between Muslims and domestic opponents of the Bush administration.









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Thursday, February 09, 2006


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Read more of William Rivers Pitt's columns.

    

Click here to go to t r u t h o u t ' s 'William Rivers Pitt' Page!    TRAPPED LIKE A RAT
    (Bush Cornered with
    Criticism)

    By William Rivers Pitt
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective
    Thursday, 9 Feb. 2006
    [Copyright (c) 2006 in the
    U.S.A. and Internationally
    by t r u t h o u t (.org)
    and/or William Rivers
    Pitt. All rights reserved.]

    The funeral for civil rights leader Coretta Scott King on Tuesday was quite a sight to see. The depth of sadness in the room could not be overcome by the happiness that came with the celebration of her life and accomplishments. It was the measure of Mrs. King's impact upon our society that four presidents - Carter, Bush, Clinton and Bush - sat before her flower-draped casket and spoke of her life.

    And then, of course, the foolishness began. The nattering nabobs of network nonsense blithered into their cable news studios to deplore all the political statements that were served up before the appreciative crowd in that church. It was the Wellstone funeral all over again.

    Let's be clear. The life of Coretta Scott King was one that involved politics from every angle. Any lifelong struggle against poverty, racism and war is going to be a life immersed in politics. That is simply the way it is; because so many politicians and political ideologies center around statements and legislation that directly add to the burdens of the poor and minorities, any person choosing to fight poverty and racism is going to wind up dealing in politics.

    Gandhi was elected to no office in his entire lifetime, but every action he took involved politics. The same can be said for Martin Luther King Jr., who won no elections but changed politics in America forever. Coretta Scott King held no office, but her work affected the politics of this country in every way. Ask Gold Star mother Cindy Sheehan, who received a warm telephone call from Mrs. King while standing vigil outside George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford last August. If this was not a political act, then political acts do not exist.

    Politics belonged in that church on Tuesday. Period.

    A good deal of the humbug arising from the political statements at the funeral are based upon the fact that George W. Bush changed his schedule to appear at the event. Because he did this, the thinking goes, he should be above the pointed criticism he absorbed up on that stage. Smart money says he came to the funeral only to avoid the criticism he would have received had he not shown up with those three other presidents. Smart money likewise says he came to try and shore up his poll numbers with African Americans; his support among this constituency stands in the low single digits, well within the margin of error in any poll, suggesting his actual support among this group is zero. This is, however, an issue for another day.

    The central tenet of the civil rights movement has, is and will always be one simple truth: one must speak truth to power in order to affect change. This was the maxim by which Coretta Scott King lived her life, and the maxim by which her husband lived and ultimately died by. Had her funeral not involved speaking truth to power, the ceremony would have been incomplete. George W. Bush heard on Tuesday some hard truths that his fanatical insulation has to date spared him from. It may have been the healthiest moment this republic has absorbed in years.

    President Jimmy Carter, who has come to be one of the harshest critics of Mr. Bush, hurled fire across the stage over the deplorable administration response to Hurricane Katrina. "This commemorative ceremony this morning and this afternoon is not only to acknowledge the great contributions of Coretta and Martin, but to remind us that the struggle for equal rights is not over," said Carter. "We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, those who were most devastated by Katrina, to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans."

    Carter also took a moment to drop a brick over the recent revelations that the NSA has been spying on Americans, without court approval or warrants, at the behest of Mr. Bush. "It was difficult for them personally," said Carter, "with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the target of secret government wiretapping, other surveillance, and as you know, harassment from the FBI."

    By far, the harshest criticism came from Rev. Joseph Lowery, a King protégé, who spoke of Mrs. King's staunch opposition to the occupation of Iraq. "She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar," said Lowery. "We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew, and we knew, that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war, billions more, but no more for the poor."

    Would Coretta Scott King have approved of this? One can be certain that the woman who said "If American women would increase their voting turnout by ten percent, I think we would see an end to all of the budget cuts in programs benefiting women and children" would have certainly approved.

    This was a day for speaking truth to power, but it was more than that. Mr. Bush and his people have worked incredibly hard to keep this president from hearing anything that rubs against what he believes to be true. He speaks before hand-picked crowds of adoring supporters, never once seeing the face of someone who thinks he is running the nation into the ground. Millions upon millions of protesters have followed his every move, and yet it is almost certain he has never laid eyes upon a single one of them.

    On Tuesday, by his own design. George W. Bush was trapped like a rat on that stage. He was forced to listen to eloquent denunciations of his politics and his policies, perhaps for the first time since he took office. The effect upon him was clear; during the speeches delivered by Rev. Lowery and president Carter, Bush looked as if he was sucking on a particularly bitter lemon.

    When one speaks truth to power, especially arrogant power, that is usually the effect. Coretta Scott King would have approved.


    William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.

  ________

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Sunday, February 05, 2006

SUPER BOWL POLICE STATE

Written by Kurt Nimmo
[Copyright (c) 2006 in the U.S.A. and
Internationally by Kurt Nimmo.
All rights are reserved.]

According to a Department of Perpetual War (formerly the Department of Defense) “news release,” NORAD “will contribute to security operations” during the Super Bowl in Detroit. “The aerospace command will fly Operation Noble Eagle air defense protection missions in the Detroit and Windsor, Ont., Canada area, officials said. Windsor is just across the Detroit River from Michigan. And NORAD has military assets from both Canada and the U.S,” explains the American Forces Press Service. “Operation Noble Eagle is a defense and civil support mission started after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to help protect the U.S. homeland.” In other words, the Pentagon is exploiting a premier gladiatorial event watched by millions of Americans in order to get folks accustomed to a “wider portfolio of missions,” as the Carlyle Group-influenced RAND corporation deems it, shorthand for ever-increasing militarization of society.

“The Pentagon has … shown a disturbing interest in high-tech surveillance of American citizens,” writes Gene Healy of Cato. “And key figures in the Bush administration and Congress have considered weakening the Posse Comitatus Act, the federal statute that limits the government’s ability to use the military for domestic police work.” In fact, the high tech militarization of the Super Bowl may be considered part of an effort by the Straussian neocons and NORAD to put a final nail in the coffin of the Posse Comitatus Act. “My view has been that Posse Comitatus will constantly be under review as we mature this command,” declared NORAD Gen. Ralph Eberhart in September, 2002. (For more on the infusion of high-tech into the “security” arrangements at the Super Bowl, see this article.)

“Constitutional authority gives the president and Congress the right to suspend Posse Comitatus during emergencies,” Juliette N. Kayyem and Steven E. Roberts, writing for National Defense Magazine, told us back in December, 2002. “The military services can freely participate in domestic operations with no legal consequences. In fact, following progressively sophisticated terrorism—highlighted by the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing—the armed forces increasingly supplement and assist local and federal law enforcement agencies in the operational, logistical, and technical aspects of anti-terrorism…. The military's anti-terror responsibilities during so-called ’special security events’ provide the best example of this role. It has become commonplace for the armed forces to help secure high-profile targets from terrorist attacks, such as the Super Bowl and presidential inaugurals.” It is a stretch, to say the least, to declare that the dead Osama bin Laden and his band of dour Muslim cave dwellers are capable of “progressively sophisticated terrorism,” for as we know, or should know if we pay attention, “sophisticated terrorism” is strictly in the province of state intelligence and military operations, as recently pointed out by General Leonid Ivashov, former Chief of Staff of the Russian armed forces.

Nonetheless, Kayyem and Roberts write that “the likelihood of future terrorist acts comparable to those of September 11 suggests that military participation in national domestic security is here to stay. It would not be unreasonable to assume that there might be limited situations, such as an attack with weapons of mass destruction, when the military would need to expand its role from mere support to active deployment.”

This reveals a complete lack of historical understanding, since the “active deployment” of military forces in the “homeland” usually results in military dictatorship. James Madison and the framers of the Constitution understood the threat of standing armies well. “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty,” Madison wrote. “The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.” Bush, the cardboard cut-out of the Machiavellian Straussians, represents perfectly the “overgrown Executive” and the eventual enslavement of the people through gradual domestic use of the military.

Of course, the would-be slaves, by and large, remain blissfully unaware of their impending slavery. It is nothing short of a stroke of genius to mix police state imagery in with football imagery and thus make slavery palatable to the masses. I have no idea if there will be a “terrorist event” at the Super Bowl later this afternoon—really, it is not necessary, because more distant events can be exploited—for instance the latest installment of the Osama and al-Zawahri audio and video tapes and, more dramatically, the Muslim riots over cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammad. As for the latter, it is not inconceivable that this is a NATO orchestrated event designed to up the level of violence, as the “Venstre” (or so-called liberals) are out of power in Denmark and the Danish People’s Party with its strong anti-immigration policies are firmly entrenched. But then this is a subject for another blog entry down the road.






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Marjorie Cohn | Close Guantanamo Prison

Click here to go to t r u t h o u t ' s 'Marjorie Cohn' Page!    U.S. Force-Feeding Prisoners
    In Torture Camp

    By Marjorie Cohn
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective
    Monday, 20 February 2006
    [Copyright (c) 2006 in the
    U.S.A. and Internationally
    by t r u t h o u t (.org)
    and/or Marjorie Cohn.
    All rights reserved.]

    Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Commission reported that the violent force-feeding of detainees by the US military at its Guantanamo prison camp amounts to torture.

    More than a third of the prisoners held there have refused food to protest being held incommunicado for years with no hope of release. They have concluded that death could not be worse than the living hell they are enduring. Attorney Julia Tarver's client Abdul-Rahman told her "of his determination to die and said that, 'now, after four years in captivity, life and death are the same,'" Tarver wrote in a sworn declaration filed in federal district court.

    Yousef Al Shehri, another of Tarver's clients, was taken prisoner by the US military while he was still a juvenile. Both clients described being force-fed by the guards. Tarver wrote in her declaration: "Yousef was the second detainee to have an NG [nasal gastric] tube inserted into his nose and pushed all the way down his throat and into his stomach, a procedure which caused him great pain. Yousef was given no anesthesia or sedative for the procedure; instead, two soldiers restrained him -- one holding his chin while the other held him back by his hair, and a medical staff member forcefully inserted the tube in his nose and down his throat. Much blood came out of his nose. Yousef said he could not speak for two days after the procedure; he said he felt like a piece of metal was inside of him. He said he could not sleep because of the severe pain."

    When Yousef and others "vomited up blood, the soldiers mocked and cursed at them, and taunted them with statements like 'look what your religion has brought you,'" Tarver wrote.

    After two weeks of this treatment, the forced feeding stopped for five days. Then, guards began to insert larger, thicker tubes into the detainees' noses. "These large tubes," Tarver wrote, "the thickness of a finger, [Yousef] estimated -- were viewed by the detainees as objects of torture. They were forcibly shoved up the detainees' noses and down into their stomachs. Again, no anesthesia or sedative was provided to alleviate the obvious trauma of the procedure. When the tube was removed, it was even more painful, and blood came gushing out of him. He fainted, and several of the other detainees also lost consciousness. They were told that this tube would be inserted and removed twice a day every day until the hunger strike ended. Yousef described the pain as 'unbearable.'"

    Both of Tarver's clients independently identified physicians as participants in this procedure. "The guards took NG tubes from one detainee, and with no sanitization whatsoever, re-inserted it into the nose of a different detainee. When these tubes were re-inserted, the detainees could see the blood and stomach bile from other detainees remaining on the tubes," Tarver wrote in her declaration.

    The UN commission confirmed that "doctors and other health professionals are participating in force-feeding detainees." It cites the Declarations of Tokyo and Malta, the World Medical Association, and the American Medical Association, which prohibit doctors from participating in force-feeding a detainee, provided the detainee is capable of understanding the consequences of refusing food.

    International Committee of the Red Cross guidelines state: "Doctors should never be party to actual coercive feeding. Such actions can be considered a form of torture and under no circumstances should doctors participate in them on the pretext of saving the hunger striker's life."

    The Bush administration is force-feeding the hunger strikers for political reasons. If any of the Guantanamo prisoners dies as a result of the hunger strike, it would be embarrassing to the Bush administration, which claims it treats the detainees "humanely."

    The Human Rights Commission called on the US government to ensure that the authorities at Guantanamo Bay do not force-feed any detainee who is capable of forming a rational judgement and is aware of the consequences of refusing food. "The United States Government should invite independent health professionals to monitor hunger strikers, in a manner consistent with international ethical standards, throughout the hunger strike," the commission recommended.

    In its report, the commission also recommended that the US government "close the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities without further delay. Until the closure, and possible transfer of detainees to pre-trial detention facilities on United States territory, the Government should refrain from any practice amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

    The commission further said that "the United States Government should ensure that all allegations of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment are thoroughly investigated by an independent authority, and that all persons found to have perpetrated, ordered, tolerated or condoned such practices, up to the highest level of military and political command, are brought to justice."

    Not surprisingly, the Bush administration rejected the commission's report, saying that the rapporteurs who prepared it did not interview people at the prison camp. The commission relied on interviews with former detainees, public documents, media repots, lawyers and questions answered by the US government. The Bush administration invited the rapporteurs to visit the Guantanamo camp, but refused to allow them to speak with the prisoners.

    The overwhelming majority of the prisoners our government is holding at Guantanamo are not terrorists or jihadists. Many were picked up in Afghanistan and other countries and sold to the US military by bounty hunters. Of the roughly 500 men there, only 9 have been designated for trial on criminal charges.

    The US government's treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo is an international travesty and a national disgrace.



    Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, President-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. She writes a weekly column for t r u t h o u t.

  ________

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

"Go to Original" links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted on TO may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the "Go to Original" links.

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Click here to go to t r u t h o u t ' s 'Marjorie Cohn' Page!    SPINNING FEAR
    (Bush Administration Redbating)

    By Marjorie Cohn
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective
    Monday, 13 February 2006
    [Copyright (c) 2006 in the
    U.S.A. and Internationally
    by t r u t h o u t (.org)
    and/or Marjorie Cohn.
    All rights reserved.]

The terror's in the room.
-- CBS Journalist Edward R. Murrow, "Good Night and Good Luck," 1954

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
-- President Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933

    During the 1950s, our government succumbed to the fear of Communism hyped by Senator Joseph McCarthy. People lost their jobs, lives were ruined, and many committed suicide in response to the "red scare." Fear pervaded every facet of life, leading neighbors to inform on one another. CBS newscaster Edward R. Murrow was one of the few journalists who had the courage to stand up to the fear-mongering and bring the truth to the American people. Describing the omnipresent fear that the government was fostering, Murrow told his colleagues, "The terror's in the room."

    It's deja vu with the Bush administration ensuring that terror is always in the room. Since September 11, 2001, George W. Bush has successfully manipulated the memory of the terrorist attacks to maintain power and mute effective criticism of his dangerous and illegal policies.

    Bush continues to exploit 9/11, and the media is complicit in the hype. Cable news stations keep us informed of an "elevated" terror alert level.

    The month after the 9/11 attacks, former Attorney General John Ashcroft rammed the USA Patriot Act through a Congress terrified of looking soft on terror. That same Congress had rejected many of the act's provisions months earlier because they threatened civil liberties.

    Ashcroft warned that criticism of the government's policies "only aids terrorists." His successor, Alberto Gonzales, told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, "We remain a nation at war."

    The war is in Iraq, created from whole cloth by George W. Bush. There were no terrorists in Iraq before Bush invaded that country, changed its regime and occupied its land. Now it is a breeding ground for terrorism.

    Hundreds of men are being held like animals, tortured and abused in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay. Only a handful of them have been charged with crimes. The despicable conditions there have caused many to participate in a hunger strike. Rather than suffer the embarrassment of dying prisoners, jailers have been violently force-feeding them. They tie the prisoners down and insert large, unsterilized tubes down their noses with no anesthesia. A new UN report calls it torture.

    Reports from Guantanamo and pictures of the torture of Iraqi prisoners by US forces at Abu Ghraib prison have also fanned the flames of anti-American sentiment.

    Bush calls his illegal domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency the "Terrorist Surveillance Program." Dick Cheney told PBS's Jim Lehrer that "this program has saved thousands of American lives." Yet there's no way to prove -- or disprove -- Cheney's claim.

    The Washington Post reported that, of the thousands of calls Bush's NSA program has intercepted, almost none relate to anything approximating terrorism.

    The hallmark of the Bush administration is secrecy. CIA Director Porter Goss wrote in a recent op-ed in the New York Times, "Disclosure of classified intelligence inhibits our ability to carry out our mission and protect the nation."

    Yet, as whistleblower Sibel Edmonds pointed out yesterday (See "Porter Goss's op-ed: Ignoturn per Ignotius!"), the 9/11 Commission concluded that only "publicity" could have prevented the attacks. Had Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed known the so-called 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui had been arrested, they would have called off the attacks. The 9/11 Commission sharply criticized the government for classifying too much information.

    In 2003, the Bush administration rescinded Clinton's rule that information should not be classified "if there is significant doubt" that releasing it would harm national security.

    The deputy undersecretary of defense for counterintelligence and security testified at a March 2005 Congressional hearing that 50 percent of the Pentagon's information was over-classified; the head of the Information Security Oversight Office said it was "even beyond 50 percent."

    When whistleblowers and leakers reveal information critical of Bush policies, the administration mounts an attack on the messenger. In response to the New York Times report on the NSA spying program, the government launched an investigation to determine who leaked the information to the Times. When Gonzales tried to turn criticism of the program into an assault on the leakers, Senator Patrick Leahy declared, "Thank god we have press that tell us what you're doing because you're not telling us."

    After the Times carried its report of the NSA program, some senators refused to vote to renew provisions of the Patriot Act that were due to expire on December 31, 2005. A last-minute compromise was cobbled together to extend those provisions for five weeks.

    Just as the five week period was about to run out, Bush announced with great fanfare that an October 2001 al Qaeda plan to attack the tallest building on the West Coast had been thwarted by an unnamed Southeast Asian country. Once again, we have no corroboration of the accuracy of Bush's claim. His past lies lead many to question the truthfulness of his report.

    Bush gave no credit to the NSA spying program. He most certainly would have if it had foiled the plot. The day after Bush's "revelation," Congress announced it had reached an agreement to make the Patriot Act permanent. Once again, the manipulation of fear succeeded in neutering the Congress.

    Another example of the Bush administration's selective revelations of its own secret information is the leaking of former CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to journalists. The leak was strategically designed to punish Plame's husband Joseph Wilson for blowing the whistle on the lies Bush used to bolster support for his impending invasion of Iraq. (See Jason Leopold's "Cheney Spearheaded Effort to Discredit Wilson.")

    The most famous leaker in United States history is Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971. Those documents revealed the lies and hypocrisy of US policy in Southeast Asia. In 2003, Ellsberg told Salon writer Michelle Goldberg, "We're now in an aggressive, costly war. The White House had to lie about those policies to make them viable, and when you lie you have to keep the lies secret, you have to intimidate people who might be inclined to tell the truth, all that goes together. Why do they do it?" he asked rhetorically. "Wilson and I have no trouble knowing why they did it. They don't want people to act the way we do."

    Franklin D. Roosevelt assumed the mantle of President at the height of the Great Depression. People were broke, out of work, and afraid there might not be a next meal. Roosevelt told them, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." The people jumped on board with his New Deal, and pulled themselves out of the depression. FDR didn't exploit people's real fears. He courageously challenged them to face their fears and overcome them.

    The Bush administration continues to perfect the art of terrifying. Many in Congress live in fear of losing their seats if they appear soft on terrorism.

    But most Americans oppose Bush's illegal Iraq war and his secret spying program. The power to stop this war and the assault on our civil liberties rests in the hands of the people. Congress is reactive. It reacts to Bush's tactics of manipulation. But it will not be able to avoid reacting to an overwhelming call by the people to check the imperial executive.



    Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, President-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. She writes a weekly column for t r u t h o u t.

  ________

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

"Go to Original" links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted on TO may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the "Go to Original" links.

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Click here to go to Tom Engelhardt's 'TomDispatch.com'!     TOMGRAM: BUSHWHACKED
    IN BUSHWORLD
    "Beam Me Up, Scottie!"

    By Tom Engelhardt
    TomDispatch.com
    Sunday, 05 February 2006
    [Copyright (c) 2006 in the
    U.S.A. and Internationally
    by t r u t h o u t (.org),
    TomDispatch (.com) and/or
    Tom Engelhardt. All
    Rights Reserved.]

    Just in case you hadn't noticed, we're in a Bushworld too absurd for words. But that hasn't stopped this administration from yakking its collective head off.

    Over the last week: The President came out for an ethanol-powered globe -- that's corn on the cob to you, buddy -- while his Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld announced that our poor planet had somehow gotten more terroristically dangerous since George took the helm. (No fault of his, natch.) Last Tuesday night, of course, the Great Helmsman stood on the congressional deck of state -- perhaps confusing it with the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln (Didn't anyone hear me? Mission accomplished!) -- and declared that we were on nothing less than the "road to victory" in Iraq. (Unfortunately, the message seems not to have gotten through to Iraqis lining that road with IEDs, possibly due to power outages in that country.) Intelligence "Tsar" John Negroponte visited Congress to deliver the news that Earth was virtually swarming with terrorist groups which already had their hands on WMD. (Sleep well, Virginia.) At the same time, multitasking like mad, the administration continued its noble war on T-shirts; the Pentagon put political cartoonists on notice that the military high command wasn't going to take a pen jab lying down (no sir!); and KBR, one of two subsidiaries of the Halliburton Corporation (the other being the U.S. government), received an almost $400 million dollar contract to build emergency "detention facilities" in the homeland (after much practice at Guantanamo). Oh yes, and in their spare time, the President and his closest advisors happily continued to exercise another of those handy prerogatives of the Commander-in-Chief in wartime by essentially amending the Constitution to wipe out the odd check or balance.

    Am I going too fast for you? Then, take a breath, buckle on your seatbelt, put on your helmet, check your oxygen gauge, and then let me beam these stories up to you one at a time (along with a few other gems stored in the Mother Ship of my brain).

    George's Half-Step Program to Energy Independence: So this was the year that the President of Oil discovered we were "addicted" to the stuff and, worse yet, that it came from "unstable parts of the world" -- hold on a sec, while I fill my gas tank -- but he also came up with a solution! Thanks to his Advanced Energy Initiative, ethanol, essentially a corn product, would power us into the future along with hybrid car engines and the odd nuclear power plant. Twenty years from now, he assured us in his State of the Union Address, we more or less won't know the Middle East exists.

    Though our brush-cutting President did mention wood chips and switch grass, ethanol is essentially a corn product; and corn is our petroleum farm crop of choice, since growing it in quantity involves massive infusions of oil-based chemical fertilizer. So maybe we should consider George's ethanol-fix like one of those nicotine patches for cigarette smokers. Throw in some leftover radioactive waste from those nuclear plants his administration would love to hug into existence and it all made perfect sense to me... until the next day when an administration that had never heard of no-backsies took it all back. The President's suggestion about making 75% of Middle Eastern oil imports go away "was purely an example," insisted an embarrassed Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. And anyway, it turned out that none of it really mattered since, as Paul Krugman pointed out: "[T]he National Renewable Energy Laboratory is about to lay off staff because of budget cuts. 'A veteran researcher,' reports The New York Times, 'said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol.'" Of course, the President and his men generated enough wind last week to create a little extra power -- if only we'd put some money into alternative fuels.

    By the way, elsewhere in the world -- and yes, in case you didn't notice, there is an elsewhere -- King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia set off on his first trip outside the Middle East, perfectly timed to the President's desire to ditch the whole region. (And given what's happened to him there, you can't blame the guy, can you?) The Saudi king, in search of reliable allies, boarded his plane and promptly headed for... China. At his blog, The Dreyfuss Report, Robert Dreyfuss sums up administration oil planning in the Middle East thusly:

America's military effort to secure hegemony over the world's oil deposits in the Gulf looks like this: Iraq, a mess, governed by Iran-linked Shiites; Iran, angry once again at the Great Satan and looking toward Russia and China; and Saudi Arabia, the big enchilada, starting to learn to speak Chinese. Some hegemony.

    Encouraging Energy Independence in Iraq: In his State of the Union Address, the President once again invoked victory in discussing the war in Iraq -- "Fellow citizens, we are in this fight to win, and we are winning. (Applause.) The road of victory is the road that will take our troops home." At a taxpayer cost of at least $4.5 billion a month, the price of "victory" in Iraq is now (in case you're curious) an estimated $100,000 a minute. Strangely, though, the President never mentioned how Iraq, with staggering oil reserves, might actually aid his plan for American energy independence from the Middle East. Who remembers those three to five million barrels of oil that Paul Wolfowitz and other administration neocons once knew the Iraqis would be pumping in next to no time at all, giving them the wherewithal to pay for us for occupying them, setting up permanent bases on their territory, and (unlike ET) never going home. After all, as Wolfowitz put it way back in May 2003, Iraq "floats on a sea of oil." ("The oil revenue of that country could bring between 50 and 100 billion dollars over the course of the next two or three years. We're dealing with a country that could really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.")

    Well, in the years since our "cakewalk" invasion, oil production in Iraq has taken a slightly different turn. At about 2.5 million barrels a day in the final days of Saddam's rule, output nosedived by another 8% last year, reaching 1.5 million barrels a day, and is probably significantly below that now. In fact, it's been dropping faster than the President's polling numbers -- and last week, just as George was touting our coming victory in Iraq, rebels there mortared a major petroleum facility in Kirkuk, setting it ablaze, and hitting an important pipeline to Turkey. An Iraqi executive with the North Oil Co. called it the "most severe attack we have ever faced on an oil installation." So far, thanks to American "reconstruction" and insurgent sabotage, Baghdad has been liberated from all but a few hours a day of electricity. Soon, the whole country (and so the world) may be able to declare its independence from any significant amount of exportable Iraqi oil -- making it a model for energy independence on the planet.

    Oh, and while we're talking about Iraq, we Americans are a proud, traditionalist nation and one of our more regular traditions of recent years has been firing missiles into crowded streets, or small villages across those lands long labeled an "arc of instability," knocking off innocent civilians, including women and children. After each such incident, our military announces an investigation that fades into space and out of media memory without any spokesperson ever having to utter the words, "We're sorry." (That's a matter of principle!)

    On January 13, a Predator drone shot a Hellfire missile into a house in a Pakistani village near the Afghan border in a botched assassination attempt against al-Qaeda number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Of course, the requisite group of women and children was murdered in the process. Then, last Thursday, a U.S. helicopter, reportedly fired on by gunmen from a rooftop in Sadr City, the vast Shiite slum in Baghdad, sent one or more missiles into a crowded street, killing a 20 year old woman, Ikhlas Abdul-Hussein, and wounding a two-year old child. Admittedly, we haven't hit a wedding party -- a sub-specialty of our Air Force -- since 2004, but last week American soldiers did their best to make up for that oversight by extending another small tradition, shooting up the cars of diplomats in and around Baghdad. A trigger-happy gunner on an American convoy in that city's Green Zone riddled a vehicle ("with a Maple Leaf flag plastered to the windshield") occupied by a group of Canadian diplomats, including the Acting Ambassador. Miraculously, no one was hit. The Canadians, a sober lot, claimed they were driving slowly and at a careful distance from the convoy. The Americans insisted their car was overtaking the convoy at a rapid speed and that they had ignored warning hand-signals. The obligatory meaningless investigation is now underway, while "the Bush administration voiced regret but, so far, no official apology." (Canada, mind you, has just elected a conservative Prime Minister, friendly to Washington, but never saying sorry is a near-Constitutional matter and allies, after all, are only allies.)

    Meanwhile, from the news desk of the future -- but released this week -- the Pentagon has plans to create a new "Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron" under the ever-expanding U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM). Undoubtedly, in the never-ending search for victims, it will be tasked "to go boldly where no drone has gone before."

    Money Makes the World Go Boom! Here's a genuine surprise: In his new budget, the President, who last week declared himself boldly determined, as the Washington Post put it, to "constrain the massive entitlement programs for the elderly and the poor," and "carve money from Medicaid," is proposing a 5% rise in funds for the hapless Department of Homeland Confusion (er... Security), and another 5% rise for the Pentagon. The Pentagon's budget is slated to come in at a mere $439.3 billion, but here's the curious thing -- it includes no funds for the Afghan or Iraqi wars, minimally estimated at $120 billion next year. Makes sense, no? Who would put the costs of actual warfare in the budget of what was once the War Department before we spread our military across the globe and renamed it the Department of Defense?

    The Pentagon's just released Quadrennial Defense Review puts great weight on fighting the war on terror for eons to come and, in preparation, a series of weapons systems that have nothing to do with that "war" are getting infusions of extra funds. Following the sort of sacrificial behavior for which the Pentagon is well known, not a single major weapons system has even been modestly cut back. In other words, weapons-entitlement programs are alive and well in America. (As the insider Nelson Report pointed out recently: Since 2001, in current dollars, the Pentagon budget has experienced "a 41% increase, exclusive of the supplemental allocations for Iraq, Afghanistan, and the [Global War on Terror].")

    To celebrate their prospective good fortune, the six Chiefs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff pointedly launched... a letter-writing assault on a cartoonist. No kidding. As Paul Woodward of the War in Context website put it, this "24-star letter" was aimed at protesting a Tom Toles cartoon ("beyond tasteless") in the Washington Post that used an armless, legless soldier in a hospital bed to mock Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld for "breaking" the Army. You can only hope that the Chiefs are better at fighting a war than (mis)interpreting a cartoon.

    A small sartorial suggestion to head Chief, Gen. Peter Pace: I wouldn't put that "beyond tasteless" slogan on a T-shirt and wear it to an official do in Washington, given the endless T-shirt wars the Bush administration has been fighting for years at its campaign events nationwide. These burst out again in the galleries of the House of Representatives the night of the State of the Union. Police roughly arrested, handcuffed, and briefly charged Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq and a guest of Representative Lynn Woolsey of California, for wearing a T-shirt with the treasonous slogan, "2,245 Dead. How Many More?" They also ejected Beverly Young, wife of Republican Representative Bill Young of Florida, Chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, for wearing a T-shirt "bearing words of support for U.S. Troops." (Then again, if I remember my song lyrics correctly, isn't freedom just another word for nothing left to wear?)

    While the Joint Chiefs face down a cartoonist and the administration fights its war on T-shirt terror, let me return to the subject of mega-money and entitlements for a moment. Last week, the President reassured Exxon Mobil Corporation, which had just announced record profits of $10.71 billion for the fourth quarter of 2005, that Americans should not expect any price breaks from a genuinely entitled winner while waiting for their future ethanol fix. "I think that basically the price is determined by the marketplace," he told the Associated Press, "and that's the way it should be."

    Hi-ho, Hi-ho, It's Off to the Longest War We Go: Language, what would the Bush administration do without it? One of John Wayne's famous lines was, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." And the Bush administration is actively of that linguistic school. Of course, when reality bites you in the you-know-what and you can't do a heck of a lot about it, what are you going to do but re-label your product? In this way, the "war on terror," aka, "the Global War on Terror," aka "GWOT," aka "World War IV," aka "the Global Struggle against Violent Extremism," has just become, by administration fiat, "the Longest War" (a phrase that's been hanging around unloved in Neocon Land for a long time, though it's now being attributed to former Centcom Commander John Abizaid. It's undoubtedly been chosen because the President's lovely global "war" has gone on remarkably... well, long.

    The phrase was on the President's lips last Tuesday night. It led off the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review, released last week. It was mentioned by various administration officials and promoted heavily by Donald Rumsfeld, who was also plugging a world in which, as Lolita Baldor of AP reported, "despite progress in fighting terrorism, the threat today may be greater than ever before because the available weapons are far more dangerous." In a speech at the National Press Club, subtly entitled, "The Long War," the Don touched all the bases. He compared Osama bin Laden to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin, and claimed we were in a "generational conflict" like the Cold War of which Iraq and Afghanistan were merely the "early battles." Meanwhile, across town, our intelligence tsar was assuring Congress that U.S. "intelligence reporting" -- why am I already losing confidence in this statement? -- "indicates that nearly 40 terrorist organizations, insurgencies, or cults have used, possessed, or expressed an interest in chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear agents or weapons." (Somewhere in all this, I think I can hear Karl Rove conducting a midterm election campaign based on the only card this administration still has in its hand: the fear of terrorism.)

    Still, I suspect "the Long War" will soon join the "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism" in the dust bin of history. In fact, on naming its terror war, the Bush administration could probably use a little help. How about the Scare-You-to-Death-Struggle-for-Global-Ethanol-Independence-and-Republican-Electoral-Victories War (or SYTDSFGEIAREVW)? If that doesn't work for you, the Nation magazine's Katrina van den Heuvel is ready to lend a hand. Having already published her hilarious The Dictionary of Republicanisms, she's now launching a contest to capture the essence of GWOT-ability (a little like guacamole) in a single, punchy name.

    Club Homeland Detention: Halliburton, the first corporation into Iraq, contractually speaking, and the biggest financial winner in the "reconstruction" sweepstakes for that deconstructed country, fortuitously also found itself perched right atop the list of post-Katrina New Orleans reconstruction contractors. Now, through its subsidiary KBR, known for building military bases to last, as well as Guantanamo's infamous "cages," Halliburton gets a shot at the real American thing -- actual emergency detention centers for "immigrants" -- or, hey, in a crisis, for whomever. The Army Corps of Engineers awarded it a contract last month -- though the story only oozed out this week -- worth up to $385 million (not including the near-obligatory overcharges) for, according to the New York Times, "an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space." It's those "new programs" that give special pause.

    They Fought the Law and the Law Lost: Finally, in the week that just was, our President and his top officials continued their vigorous efforts to rewrite the Constitution. They took up the National Security Agency warrantless spying, evidently had an unannounced constitutional convention in the White House, called on the peerless minds of various White House and justice department lawyers, asked the Attorney General (former White House Counsel, former General Counsel, and friend) Alberto Gonzales for his honest opinion, and then had the good sense to double check with lawyers at the NSA to make sure everything that agency had been doing was genuinely and legally below board and utterly constitutional. Finally, they turned the whole ball of wax over to Karl Rove, who recognized an election issue when he saw one, and next thing you knew, there was the President, at the State of the Union, insisting, as in some Avon ad, that al-Qaeda was calling and it was darn tootin' constitutional as all get out to listen in on what's conveniently been relabeled "a terrorist surveillance program" (no genuine citizens allowed to join!).

    I suppose, based on that unbelievably dreary textbook you had to read back in junior high civics class, you thought amending the Constitution took a two-thirds vote of each house of Congress and then passage by three-quarters of the states. Silly you! It only takes two-thirds of the President's brain, three-quarters of the Vice President's brain, and 100% of his Chief of Staff David Addington's brain; toss in the odd administration lawyer or two to check the fine print, and, as they say in one province of Canada (don't shoot!), Voilà!

    Now, unbuckle those straps, take that helmet off, and relax. It's a new week. Enjoy yourself!



    Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War. His novel, The Last Days of Publishing, has recently come out in paperback.

  ________

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

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|W|P|114038167945004944 |W|P||W|P|wolflegal@hotmail.com 2/14/2006 09:17:00 am|W|P|Wolf|W|P|

BUSH GETS (MORE THAN WELL-)DESERVED DRESSING DOWN AT KING FUNERAL

Written by Kurt Nimmo
[Copyright (c) 2006 in the U.S.A. and
Internationally by Kurt Nimmo.
All rights are reserved.]

It says something about our “democracy” when Bush can only face criticism in public as a side effect of his attendance at a funeral. Earlier today, the civil-rights leader Pastor Joseph Lowery managed to take Bush to task for his war crimes and pathological lies (or the lies programmed in his alcohol and coke damaged head by the Straussian neocons) during the funeral of Coretta Scott King. “We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there,” Lowery said, reading a poem. “But Coretta knew and we knew that there are weapons of misdirection right down here.” In response, Lowery received a two minute standing ovation.

As if to add insult to injury, former president Jimmy Carter lambasted the neocons for their authoritarian NSA snoop program, comparing it to the FBI’s surveillance of the civil rights leader. “It was difficult for them personally with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated, and they became the targets of secret government wiretapping and other surveillance,” said Carter.

No doubt, by this time tomorrow, “conservatives” (neocons) far and wide will take umbrage, outraged that somebody would dare criticize our ruler in public. I happened to catch a few seconds of Fox News on my way toward the computer. Michael Reagan, the neocon son of the dead president, expressed his anger in conversation with faux Fox “liberal” Alan Colmes. Reagan was upset over Carter’s comparison of the unconstitutional and illegal NSA snoop program to the surveillance carried out on King. Neocon cheerleaders such as Reagan, of course, want us to believe the NSA, at the behest of the Straussian neocons, are limiting the J. Edgar Hoover Memorial Vacuum Cleaner snoop program to “al-Qaeda” bad guys supposedly making phone calls when anybody with two or more brain cells to rub together realizes Bush and crew are using the criminal program to snoop thousands if not millions of Americans, especially those involved in activism against his Mafioso regime.

“No holds were barred,” William Sullivan, assistant director of the FBI’s Intelligence Division, testified before the Church Committee on the aggressive surveillance of King. “We have used [similar] techniques against Soviet agents. [The same methods were] brought home against any organization against which we were targeted. We did not differentiate. This is a rough, tough business.”

No doubt, as well, the Bush Straussians, utilizing the NSA and the FBI (and a grab bag of other federal agencies, including the Straussian infested Pentagon), believe subverting the Bill of Rights is “a rough, tough business.” In much the same way as the FBI surveilled and harassed King and his “Negro followers” (as Sullivan wrote Hoover in a memo dated January 8, 1964), the Straussian neocons are anxious to dig up as much dirt on their enemies as possible. “When the true facts concerning [King’s] activities are presented, such should be enough, if handled properly, to take him off his pedestal and to reduce him completely in influence,” Sullivan told his boss. “When this is done, and it can be and will be done, obviously much confusion will reign, particularly among the Negro people.” Of course, confusion did not “reign,” the civil rights movement grew in strength and intensity, and the government instead decided to have King assassinated.

The vicious Straussian neocons will likewise deal with their enemies as they mobilize against Phase Two (attack Iran) of the Master Plan to sow chaos and murder in the Muslim Middle East. Oliver North, working diligently from the basement of the Reagan White House, did not collaborate with FEMA to set up camps for illegal immigrants, but rather official enemies. And if you believe the CIA has established its flying torture circus of sadism strictly for Muslim goat herders and taxi drivers, you should think again. For the Straussians, there is no difference between Muslims and domestic opponents of the Bush administration.

|W|P|113993399766547567 |W|P||W|P|wolflegal@hotmail.com 2/09/2006 10:56:00 pm|W|P|Wolf|W|P|

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Click here to go to t r u t h o u t ' s 'William Rivers Pitt' Page!    TRAPPED LIKE A RAT
    (Bush Cornered with
    Criticism)

    By William Rivers Pitt
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective
    Thursday, 9 Feb. 2006
    [Copyright (c) 2006 in the
    U.S.A. and Internationally
    by t r u t h o u t (.org)
    and/or William Rivers
    Pitt. All rights reserved.]

    The funeral for civil rights leader Coretta Scott King on Tuesday was quite a sight to see. The depth of sadness in the room could not be overcome by the happiness that came with the celebration of her life and accomplishments. It was the measure of Mrs. King's impact upon our society that four presidents - Carter, Bush, Clinton and Bush - sat before her flower-draped casket and spoke of her life.

    And then, of course, the foolishness began. The nattering nabobs of network nonsense blithered into their cable news studios to deplore all the political statements that were served up before the appreciative crowd in that church. It was the Wellstone funeral all over again.

    Let's be clear. The life of Coretta Scott King was one that involved politics from every angle. Any lifelong struggle against poverty, racism and war is going to be a life immersed in politics. That is simply the way it is; because so many politicians and political ideologies center around statements and legislation that directly add to the burdens of the poor and minorities, any person choosing to fight poverty and racism is going to wind up dealing in politics.

    Gandhi was elected to no office in his entire lifetime, but every action he took involved politics. The same can be said for Martin Luther King Jr., who won no elections but changed politics in America forever. Coretta Scott King held no office, but her work affected the politics of this country in every way. Ask Gold Star mother Cindy Sheehan, who received a warm telephone call from Mrs. King while standing vigil outside George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford last August. If this was not a political act, then political acts do not exist.

    Politics belonged in that church on Tuesday. Period.

    A good deal of the humbug arising from the political statements at the funeral are based upon the fact that George W. Bush changed his schedule to appear at the event. Because he did this, the thinking goes, he should be above the pointed criticism he absorbed up on that stage. Smart money says he came to the funeral only to avoid the criticism he would have received had he not shown up with those three other presidents. Smart money likewise says he came to try and shore up his poll numbers with African Americans; his support among this constituency stands in the low single digits, well within the margin of error in any poll, suggesting his actual support among this group is zero. This is, however, an issue for another day.

    The central tenet of the civil rights movement has, is and will always be one simple truth: one must speak truth to power in order to affect change. This was the maxim by which Coretta Scott King lived her life, and the maxim by which her husband lived and ultimately died by. Had her funeral not involved speaking truth to power, the ceremony would have been incomplete. George W. Bush heard on Tuesday some hard truths that his fanatical insulation has to date spared him from. It may have been the healthiest moment this republic has absorbed in years.

    President Jimmy Carter, who has come to be one of the harshest critics of Mr. Bush, hurled fire across the stage over the deplorable administration response to Hurricane Katrina. "This commemorative ceremony this morning and this afternoon is not only to acknowledge the great contributions of Coretta and Martin, but to remind us that the struggle for equal rights is not over," said Carter. "We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, those who were most devastated by Katrina, to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans."

    Carter also took a moment to drop a brick over the recent revelations that the NSA has been spying on Americans, without court approval or warrants, at the behest of Mr. Bush. "It was difficult for them personally," said Carter, "with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the target of secret government wiretapping, other surveillance, and as you know, harassment from the FBI."

    By far, the harshest criticism came from Rev. Joseph Lowery, a King protégé, who spoke of Mrs. King's staunch opposition to the occupation of Iraq. "She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar," said Lowery. "We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew, and we knew, that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war, billions more, but no more for the poor."

    Would Coretta Scott King have approved of this? One can be certain that the woman who said "If American women would increase their voting turnout by ten percent, I think we would see an end to all of the budget cuts in programs benefiting women and children" would have certainly approved.

    This was a day for speaking truth to power, but it was more than that. Mr. Bush and his people have worked incredibly hard to keep this president from hearing anything that rubs against what he believes to be true. He speaks before hand-picked crowds of adoring supporters, never once seeing the face of someone who thinks he is running the nation into the ground. Millions upon millions of protesters have followed his every move, and yet it is almost certain he has never laid eyes upon a single one of them.

    On Tuesday, by his own design. George W. Bush was trapped like a rat on that stage. He was forced to listen to eloquent denunciations of his politics and his policies, perhaps for the first time since he took office. The effect upon him was clear; during the speeches delivered by Rev. Lowery and president Carter, Bush looked as if he was sucking on a particularly bitter lemon.

    When one speaks truth to power, especially arrogant power, that is usually the effect. Coretta Scott King would have approved.


    William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.

  ________

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SUPER BOWL POLICE STATE

Written by Kurt Nimmo
[Copyright (c) 2006 in the U.S.A. and
Internationally by Kurt Nimmo.
All rights are reserved.]

According to a Department of Perpetual War (formerly the Department of Defense) “news release,” NORAD “will contribute to security operations” during the Super Bowl in Detroit. “The aerospace command will fly Operation Noble Eagle air defense protection missions in the Detroit and Windsor, Ont., Canada area, officials said. Windsor is just across the Detroit River from Michigan. And NORAD has military assets from both Canada and the U.S,” explains the American Forces Press Service. “Operation Noble Eagle is a defense and civil support mission started after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to help protect the U.S. homeland.” In other words, the Pentagon is exploiting a premier gladiatorial event watched by millions of Americans in order to get folks accustomed to a “wider portfolio of missions,” as the Carlyle Group-influenced RAND corporation deems it, shorthand for ever-increasing militarization of society.

“The Pentagon has … shown a disturbing interest in high-tech surveillance of American citizens,” writes Gene Healy of Cato. “And key figures in the Bush administration and Congress have considered weakening the Posse Comitatus Act, the federal statute that limits the government’s ability to use the military for domestic police work.” In fact, the high tech militarization of the Super Bowl may be considered part of an effort by the Straussian neocons and NORAD to put a final nail in the coffin of the Posse Comitatus Act. “My view has been that Posse Comitatus will constantly be under review as we mature this command,” declared NORAD Gen. Ralph Eberhart in September, 2002. (For more on the infusion of high-tech into the “security” arrangements at the Super Bowl, see this article.)

“Constitutional authority gives the president and Congress the right to suspend Posse Comitatus during emergencies,” Juliette N. Kayyem and Steven E. Roberts, writing for National Defense Magazine, told us back in December, 2002. “The military services can freely participate in domestic operations with no legal consequences. In fact, following progressively sophisticated terrorism—highlighted by the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing—the armed forces increasingly supplement and assist local and federal law enforcement agencies in the operational, logistical, and technical aspects of anti-terrorism…. The military's anti-terror responsibilities during so-called ’special security events’ provide the best example of this role. It has become commonplace for the armed forces to help secure high-profile targets from terrorist attacks, such as the Super Bowl and presidential inaugurals.” It is a stretch, to say the least, to declare that the dead Osama bin Laden and his band of dour Muslim cave dwellers are capable of “progressively sophisticated terrorism,” for as we know, or should know if we pay attention, “sophisticated terrorism” is strictly in the province of state intelligence and military operations, as recently pointed out by General Leonid Ivashov, former Chief of Staff of the Russian armed forces.

Nonetheless, Kayyem and Roberts write that “the likelihood of future terrorist acts comparable to those of September 11 suggests that military participation in national domestic security is here to stay. It would not be unreasonable to assume that there might be limited situations, such as an attack with weapons of mass destruction, when the military would need to expand its role from mere support to active deployment.”

This reveals a complete lack of historical understanding, since the “active deployment” of military forces in the “homeland” usually results in military dictatorship. James Madison and the framers of the Constitution understood the threat of standing armies well. “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty,” Madison wrote. “The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.” Bush, the cardboard cut-out of the Machiavellian Straussians, represents perfectly the “overgrown Executive” and the eventual enslavement of the people through gradual domestic use of the military.

Of course, the would-be slaves, by and large, remain blissfully unaware of their impending slavery. It is nothing short of a stroke of genius to mix police state imagery in with football imagery and thus make slavery palatable to the masses. I have no idea if there will be a “terrorist event” at the Super Bowl later this afternoon—really, it is not necessary, because more distant events can be exploited—for instance the latest installment of the Osama and al-Zawahri audio and video tapes and, more dramatically, the Muslim riots over cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammad. As for the latter, it is not inconceivable that this is a NATO orchestrated event designed to up the level of violence, as the “Venstre” (or so-called liberals) are out of power in Denmark and the Danish People’s Party with its strong anti-immigration policies are firmly entrenched. But then this is a subject for another blog entry down the road.

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Marjorie Cohn | Close Guantanamo Prison

Click here to go to t r u t h o u t ' s 'Marjorie Cohn' Page!    U.S. Force-Feeding Prisoners
    In Torture Camp

    By Marjorie Cohn
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective
    Monday, 20 February 2006
    [Copyright (c) 2006 in the
    U.S.A. and Internationally
    by t r u t h o u t (.org)
    and/or Marjorie Cohn.
    All rights reserved.]

    Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Commission reported that the violent force-feeding of detainees by the US military at its Guantanamo prison camp amounts to torture.

    More than a third of the prisoners held there have refused food to protest being held incommunicado for years with no hope of release. They have concluded that death could not be worse than the living hell they are enduring. Attorney Julia Tarver's client Abdul-Rahman told her "of his determination to die and said that, 'now, after four years in captivity, life and death are the same,'" Tarver wrote in a sworn declaration filed in federal district court.

    Yousef Al Shehri, another of Tarver's clients, was taken prisoner by the US military while he was still a juvenile. Both clients described being force-fed by the guards. Tarver wrote in her declaration: "Yousef was the second detainee to have an NG [nasal gastric] tube inserted into his nose and pushed all the way down his throat and into his stomach, a procedure which caused him great pain. Yousef was given no anesthesia or sedative for the procedure; instead, two soldiers restrained him -- one holding his chin while the other held him back by his hair, and a medical staff member forcefully inserted the tube in his nose and down his throat. Much blood came out of his nose. Yousef said he could not speak for two days after the procedure; he said he felt like a piece of metal was inside of him. He said he could not sleep because of the severe pain."

    When Yousef and others "vomited up blood, the soldiers mocked and cursed at them, and taunted them with statements like 'look what your religion has brought you,'" Tarver wrote.

    After two weeks of this treatment, the forced feeding stopped for five days. Then, guards began to insert larger, thicker tubes into the detainees' noses. "These large tubes," Tarver wrote, "the thickness of a finger, [Yousef] estimated -- were viewed by the detainees as objects of torture. They were forcibly shoved up the detainees' noses and down into their stomachs. Again, no anesthesia or sedative was provided to alleviate the obvious trauma of the procedure. When the tube was removed, it was even more painful, and blood came gushing out of him. He fainted, and several of the other detainees also lost consciousness. They were told that this tube would be inserted and removed twice a day every day until the hunger strike ended. Yousef described the pain as 'unbearable.'"

    Both of Tarver's clients independently identified physicians as participants in this procedure. "The guards took NG tubes from one detainee, and with no sanitization whatsoever, re-inserted it into the nose of a different detainee. When these tubes were re-inserted, the detainees could see the blood and stomach bile from other detainees remaining on the tubes," Tarver wrote in her declaration.

    The UN commission confirmed that "doctors and other health professionals are participating in force-feeding detainees." It cites the Declarations of Tokyo and Malta, the World Medical Association, and the American Medical Association, which prohibit doctors from participating in force-feeding a detainee, provided the detainee is capable of understanding the consequences of refusing food.

    International Committee of the Red Cross guidelines state: "Doctors should never be party to actual coercive feeding. Such actions can be considered a form of torture and under no circumstances should doctors participate in them on the pretext of saving the hunger striker's life."

    The Bush administration is force-feeding the hunger strikers for political reasons. If any of the Guantanamo prisoners dies as a result of the hunger strike, it would be embarrassing to the Bush administration, which claims it treats the detainees "humanely."

    The Human Rights Commission called on the US government to ensure that the authorities at Guantanamo Bay do not force-feed any detainee who is capable of forming a rational judgement and is aware of the consequences of refusing food. "The United States Government should invite independent health professionals to monitor hunger strikers, in a manner consistent with international ethical standards, throughout the hunger strike," the commission recommended.

    In its report, the commission also recommended that the US government "close the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities without further delay. Until the closure, and possible transfer of detainees to pre-trial detention facilities on United States territory, the Government should refrain from any practice amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

    The commission further said that "the United States Government should ensure that all allegations of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment are thoroughly investigated by an independent authority, and that all persons found to have perpetrated, ordered, tolerated or condoned such practices, up to the highest level of military and political command, are brought to justice."

    Not surprisingly, the Bush administration rejected the commission's report, saying that the rapporteurs who prepared it did not interview people at the prison camp. The commission relied on interviews with former detainees, public documents, media repots, lawyers and questions answered by the US government. The Bush administration invited the rapporteurs to visit the Guantanamo camp, but refused to allow them to speak with the prisoners.

    The overwhelming majority of the prisoners our government is holding at Guantanamo are not terrorists or jihadists. Many were picked up in Afghanistan and other countries and sold to the US military by bounty hunters. Of the roughly 500 men there, only 9 have been designated for trial on criminal charges.

    The US government's treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo is an international travesty and a national disgrace.



    Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, President-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. She writes a weekly column for t r u t h o u t.

  ________

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

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Read more of Marjorie Cohn's columns.

For background, see:
Marjorie Cohn | Bush Mouthpiece Defends Illegal Spying

Click here to go to t r u t h o u t ' s 'Marjorie Cohn' Page!    SPINNING FEAR
    (Bush Administration Redbating)

    By Marjorie Cohn
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective
    Monday, 13 February 2006
    [Copyright (c) 2006 in the
    U.S.A. and Internationally
    by t r u t h o u t (.org)
    and/or Marjorie Cohn.
    All rights reserved.]

The terror's in the room.
-- CBS Journalist Edward R. Murrow, "Good Night and Good Luck," 1954

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
-- President Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933

    During the 1950s, our government succumbed to the fear of Communism hyped by Senator Joseph McCarthy. People lost their jobs, lives were ruined, and many committed suicide in response to the "red scare." Fear pervaded every facet of life, leading neighbors to inform on one another. CBS newscaster Edward R. Murrow was one of the few journalists who had the courage to stand up to the fear-mongering and bring the truth to the American people. Describing the omnipresent fear that the government was fostering, Murrow told his colleagues, "The terror's in the room."

    It's deja vu with the Bush administration ensuring that terror is always in the room. Since September 11, 2001, George W. Bush has successfully manipulated the memory of the terrorist attacks to maintain power and mute effective criticism of his dangerous and illegal policies.

    Bush continues to exploit 9/11, and the media is complicit in the hype. Cable news stations keep us informed of an "elevated" terror alert level.

    The month after the 9/11 attacks, former Attorney General John Ashcroft rammed the USA Patriot Act through a Congress terrified of looking soft on terror. That same Congress had rejected many of the act's provisions months earlier because they threatened civil liberties.

    Ashcroft warned that criticism of the government's policies "only aids terrorists." His successor, Alberto Gonzales, told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, "We remain a nation at war."

    The war is in Iraq, created from whole cloth by George W. Bush. There were no terrorists in Iraq before Bush invaded that country, changed its regime and occupied its land. Now it is a breeding ground for terrorism.

    Hundreds of men are being held like animals, tortured and abused in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay. Only a handful of them have been charged with crimes. The despicable conditions there have caused many to participate in a hunger strike. Rather than suffer the embarrassment of dying prisoners, jailers have been violently force-feeding them. They tie the prisoners down and insert large, unsterilized tubes down their noses with no anesthesia. A new UN report calls it torture.

    Reports from Guantanamo and pictures of the torture of Iraqi prisoners by US forces at Abu Ghraib prison have also fanned the flames of anti-American sentiment.

    Bush calls his illegal domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency the "Terrorist Surveillance Program." Dick Cheney told PBS's Jim Lehrer that "this program has saved thousands of American lives." Yet there's no way to prove -- or disprove -- Cheney's claim.

    The Washington Post reported that, of the thousands of calls Bush's NSA program has intercepted, almost none relate to anything approximating terrorism.

    The hallmark of the Bush administration is secrecy. CIA Director Porter Goss wrote in a recent op-ed in the New York Times, "Disclosure of classified intelligence inhibits our ability to carry out our mission and protect the nation."

    Yet, as whistleblower Sibel Edmonds pointed out yesterday (See "Porter Goss's op-ed: Ignoturn per Ignotius!"), the 9/11 Commission concluded that only "publicity" could have prevented the attacks. Had Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed known the so-called 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui had been arrested, they would have called off the attacks. The 9/11 Commission sharply criticized the government for classifying too much information.

    In 2003, the Bush administration rescinded Clinton's rule that information should not be classified "if there is significant doubt" that releasing it would harm national security.

    The deputy undersecretary of defense for counterintelligence and security testified at a March 2005 Congressional hearing that 50 percent of the Pentagon's information was over-classified; the head of the Information Security Oversight Office said it was "even beyond 50 percent."

    When whistleblowers and leakers reveal information critical of Bush policies, the administration mounts an attack on the messenger. In response to the New York Times report on the NSA spying program, the government launched an investigation to determine who leaked the information to the Times. When Gonzales tried to turn criticism of the program into an assault on the leakers, Senator Patrick Leahy declared, "Thank god we have press that tell us what you're doing because you're not telling us."

    After the Times carried its report of the NSA program, some senators refused to vote to renew provisions of the Patriot Act that were due to expire on December 31, 2005. A last-minute compromise was cobbled together to extend those provisions for five weeks.

    Just as the five week period was about to run out, Bush announced with great fanfare that an October 2001 al Qaeda plan to attack the tallest building on the West Coast had been thwarted by an unnamed Southeast Asian country. Once again, we have no corroboration of the accuracy of Bush's claim. His past lies lead many to question the truthfulness of his report.

    Bush gave no credit to the NSA spying program. He most certainly would have if it had foiled the plot. The day after Bush's "revelation," Congress announced it had reached an agreement to make the Patriot Act permanent. Once again, the manipulation of fear succeeded in neutering the Congress.

    Another example of the Bush administration's selective revelations of its own secret information is the leaking of former CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to journalists. The leak was strategically designed to punish Plame's husband Joseph Wilson for blowing the whistle on the lies Bush used to bolster support for his impending invasion of Iraq. (See Jason Leopold's "Cheney Spearheaded Effort to Discredit Wilson.")

    The most famous leaker in United States history is Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971. Those documents revealed the lies and hypocrisy of US policy in Southeast Asia. In 2003, Ellsberg told Salon writer Michelle Goldberg, "We're now in an aggressive, costly war. The White House had to lie about those policies to make them viable, and when you lie you have to keep the lies secret, you have to intimidate people who might be inclined to tell the truth, all that goes together. Why do they do it?" he asked rhetorically. "Wilson and I have no trouble knowing why they did it. They don't want people to act the way we do."

    Franklin D. Roosevelt assumed the mantle of President at the height of the Great Depression. People were broke, out of work, and afraid there might not be a next meal. Roosevelt told them, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." The people jumped on board with his New Deal, and pulled themselves out of the depression. FDR didn't exploit people's real fears. He courageously challenged them to face their fears and overcome them.

    The Bush administration continues to perfect the art of terrifying. Many in Congress live in fear of losing their seats if they appear soft on terrorism.

    But most Americans oppose Bush's illegal Iraq war and his secret spying program. The power to stop this war and the assault on our civil liberties rests in the hands of the people. Congress is reactive. It reacts to Bush's tactics of manipulation. But it will not be able to avoid reacting to an overwhelming call by the people to check the imperial executive.



    Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, President-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. She writes a weekly column for t r u t h o u t.

  ________

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

"Go to Original" links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted on TO may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the "Go to Original" links.

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Click here to go to Tom Engelhardt's 'TomDispatch.com'!     TOMGRAM: BUSHWHACKED
    IN BUSHWORLD
    "Beam Me Up, Scottie!"

    By Tom Engelhardt
    TomDispatch.com
    Sunday, 05 February 2006
    [Copyright (c) 2006 in the
    U.S.A. and Internationally
    by t r u t h o u t (.org),
    TomDispatch (.com) and/or
    Tom Engelhardt. All
    Rights Reserved.]

    Just in case you hadn't noticed, we're in a Bushworld too absurd for words. But that hasn't stopped this administration from yakking its collective head off.

    Over the last week: The President came out for an ethanol-powered globe -- that's corn on the cob to you, buddy -- while his Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld announced that our poor planet had somehow gotten more terroristically dangerous since George took the helm. (No fault of his, natch.) Last Tuesday night, of course, the Great Helmsman stood on the congressional deck of state -- perhaps confusing it with the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln (Didn't anyone hear me? Mission accomplished!) -- and declared that we were on nothing less than the "road to victory" in Iraq. (Unfortunately, the message seems not to have gotten through to Iraqis lining that road with IEDs, possibly due to power outages in that country.) Intelligence "Tsar" John Negroponte visited Congress to deliver the news that Earth was virtually swarming with terrorist groups which already had their hands on WMD. (Sleep well, Virginia.) At the same time, multitasking like mad, the administration continued its noble war on T-shirts; the Pentagon put political cartoonists on notice that the military high command wasn't going to take a pen jab lying down (no sir!); and KBR, one of two subsidiaries of the Halliburton Corporation (the other being the U.S. government), received an almost $400 million dollar contract to build emergency "detention facilities" in the homeland (after much practice at Guantanamo). Oh yes, and in their spare time, the President and his closest advisors happily continued to exercise another of those handy prerogatives of the Commander-in-Chief in wartime by essentially amending the Constitution to wipe out the odd check or balance.

    Am I going too fast for you? Then, take a breath, buckle on your seatbelt, put on your helmet, check your oxygen gauge, and then let me beam these stories up to you one at a time (along with a few other gems stored in the Mother Ship of my brain).

    George's Half-Step Program to Energy Independence: So this was the year that the President of Oil discovered we were "addicted" to the stuff and, worse yet, that it came from "unstable parts of the world" -- hold on a sec, while I fill my gas tank -- but he also came up with a solution! Thanks to his Advanced Energy Initiative, ethanol, essentially a corn product, would power us into the future along with hybrid car engines and the odd nuclear power plant. Twenty years from now, he assured us in his State of the Union Address, we more or less won't know the Middle East exists.

    Though our brush-cutting President did mention wood chips and switch grass, ethanol is essentially a corn product; and corn is our petroleum farm crop of choice, since growing it in quantity involves massive infusions of oil-based chemical fertilizer. So maybe we should consider George's ethanol-fix like one of those nicotine patches for cigarette smokers. Throw in some leftover radioactive waste from those nuclear plants his administration would love to hug into existence and it all made perfect sense to me... until the next day when an administration that had never heard of no-backsies took it all back. The President's suggestion about making 75% of Middle Eastern oil imports go away "was purely an example," insisted an embarrassed Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. And anyway, it turned out that none of it really mattered since, as Paul Krugman pointed out: "[T]he National Renewable Energy Laboratory is about to lay off staff because of budget cuts. 'A veteran researcher,' reports The New York Times, 'said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol.'" Of course, the President and his men generated enough wind last week to create a little extra power -- if only we'd put some money into alternative fuels.

    By the way, elsewhere in the world -- and yes, in case you didn't notice, there is an elsewhere -- King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia set off on his first trip outside the Middle East, perfectly timed to the President's desire to ditch the whole region. (And given what's happened to him there, you can't blame the guy, can you?) The Saudi king, in search of reliable allies, boarded his plane and promptly headed for... China. At his blog, The Dreyfuss Report, Robert Dreyfuss sums up administration oil planning in the Middle East thusly:

America's military effort to secure hegemony over the world's oil deposits in the Gulf looks like this: Iraq, a mess, governed by Iran-linked Shiites; Iran, angry once again at the Great Satan and looking toward Russia and China; and Saudi Arabia, the big enchilada, starting to learn to speak Chinese. Some hegemony.

    Encouraging Energy Independence in Iraq: In his State of the Union Address, the President once again invoked victory in discussing the war in Iraq -- "Fellow citizens, we are in this fight to win, and we are winning. (Applause.) The road of victory is the road that will take our troops home." At a taxpayer cost of at least $4.5 billion a month, the price of "victory" in Iraq is now (in case you're curious) an estimated $100,000 a minute. Strangely, though, the President never mentioned how Iraq, with staggering oil reserves, might actually aid his plan for American energy independence from the Middle East. Who remembers those three to five million barrels of oil that Paul Wolfowitz and other administration neocons once knew the Iraqis would be pumping in next to no time at all, giving them the wherewithal to pay for us for occupying them, setting up permanent bases on their territory, and (unlike ET) never going home. After all, as Wolfowitz put it way back in May 2003, Iraq "floats on a sea of oil." ("The oil revenue of that country could bring between 50 and 100 billion dollars over the course of the next two or three years. We're dealing with a country that could really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.")

    Well, in the years since our "cakewalk" invasion, oil production in Iraq has taken a slightly different turn. At about 2.5 million barrels a day in the final days of Saddam's rule, output nosedived by another 8% last year, reaching 1.5 million barrels a day, and is probably significantly below that now. In fact, it's been dropping faster than the President's polling numbers -- and last week, just as George was touting our coming victory in Iraq, rebels there mortared a major petroleum facility in Kirkuk, setting it ablaze, and hitting an important pipeline to Turkey. An Iraqi executive with the North Oil Co. called it the "most severe attack we have ever faced on an oil installation." So far, thanks to American "reconstruction" and insurgent sabotage, Baghdad has been liberated from all but a few hours a day of electricity. Soon, the whole country (and so the world) may be able to declare its independence from any significant amount of exportable Iraqi oil -- making it a model for energy independence on the planet.

    Oh, and while we're talking about Iraq, we Americans are a proud, traditionalist nation and one of our more regular traditions of recent years has been firing missiles into crowded streets, or small villages across those lands long labeled an "arc of instability," knocking off innocent civilians, including women and children. After each such incident, our military announces an investigation that fades into space and out of media memory without any spokesperson ever having to utter the words, "We're sorry." (That's a matter of principle!)

    On January 13, a Predator drone shot a Hellfire missile into a house in a Pakistani village near the Afghan border in a botched assassination attempt against al-Qaeda number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Of course, the requisite group of women and children was murdered in the process. Then, last Thursday, a U.S. helicopter, reportedly fired on by gunmen from a rooftop in Sadr City, the vast Shiite slum in Baghdad, sent one or more missiles into a crowded street, killing a 20 year old woman, Ikhlas Abdul-Hussein, and wounding a two-year old child. Admittedly, we haven't hit a wedding party -- a sub-specialty of our Air Force -- since 2004, but last week American soldiers did their best to make up for that oversight by extending another small tradition, shooting up the cars of diplomats in and around Baghdad. A trigger-happy gunner on an American convoy in that city's Green Zone riddled a vehicle ("with a Maple Leaf flag plastered to the windshield") occupied by a group of Canadian diplomats, including the Acting Ambassador. Miraculously, no one was hit. The Canadians, a sober lot, claimed they were driving slowly and at a careful distance from the convoy. The Americans insisted their car was overtaking the convoy at a rapid speed and that they had ignored warning hand-signals. The obligatory meaningless investigation is now underway, while "the Bush administration voiced regret but, so far, no official apology." (Canada, mind you, has just elected a conservative Prime Minister, friendly to Washington, but never saying sorry is a near-Constitutional matter and allies, after all, are only allies.)

    Meanwhile, from the news desk of the future -- but released this week -- the Pentagon has plans to create a new "Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron" under the ever-expanding U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM). Undoubtedly, in the never-ending search for victims, it will be tasked "to go boldly where no drone has gone before."

    Money Makes the World Go Boom! Here's a genuine surprise: In his new budget, the President, who last week declared himself boldly determined, as the Washington Post put it, to "constrain the massive entitlement programs for the elderly and the poor," and "carve money from Medicaid," is proposing a 5% rise in funds for the hapless Department of Homeland Confusion (er... Security), and another 5% rise for the Pentagon. The Pentagon's budget is slated to come in at a mere $439.3 billion, but here's the curious thing -- it includes no funds for the Afghan or Iraqi wars, minimally estimated at $120 billion next year. Makes sense, no? Who would put the costs of actual warfare in the budget of what was once the War Department before we spread our military across the globe and renamed it the Department of Defense?

    The Pentagon's just released Quadrennial Defense Review puts great weight on fighting the war on terror for eons to come and, in preparation, a series of weapons systems that have nothing to do with that "war" are getting infusions of extra funds. Following the sort of sacrificial behavior for which the Pentagon is well known, not a single major weapons system has even been modestly cut back. In other words, weapons-entitlement programs are alive and well in America. (As the insider Nelson Report pointed out recently: Since 2001, in current dollars, the Pentagon budget has experienced "a 41% increase, exclusive of the supplemental allocations for Iraq, Afghanistan, and the [Global War on Terror].")

    To celebrate their prospective good fortune, the six Chiefs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff pointedly launched... a letter-writing assault on a cartoonist. No kidding. As Paul Woodward of the War in Context website put it, this "24-star letter" was aimed at protesting a Tom Toles cartoon ("beyond tasteless") in the Washington Post that used an armless, legless soldier in a hospital bed to mock Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld for "breaking" the Army. You can only hope that the Chiefs are better at fighting a war than (mis)interpreting a cartoon.

    A small sartorial suggestion to head Chief, Gen. Peter Pace: I wouldn't put that "beyond tasteless" slogan on a T-shirt and wear it to an official do in Washington, given the endless T-shirt wars the Bush administration has been fighting for years at its campaign events nationwide. These burst out again in the galleries of the House of Representatives the night of the State of the Union. Police roughly arrested, handcuffed, and briefly charged Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq and a guest of Representative Lynn Woolsey of California, for wearing a T-shirt with the treasonous slogan, "2,245 Dead. How Many More?" They also ejected Beverly Young, wife of Republican Representative Bill Young of Florida, Chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, for wearing a T-shirt "bearing words of support for U.S. Troops." (Then again, if I remember my song lyrics correctly, isn't freedom just another word for nothing left to wear?)

    While the Joint Chiefs face down a cartoonist and the administration fights its war on T-shirt terror, let me return to the subject of mega-money and entitlements for a moment. Last week, the President reassured Exxon Mobil Corporation, which had just announced record profits of $10.71 billion for the fourth quarter of 2005, that Americans should not expect any price breaks from a genuinely entitled winner while waiting for their future ethanol fix. "I think that basically the price is determined by the marketplace," he told the Associated Press, "and that's the way it should be."

    Hi-ho, Hi-ho, It's Off to the Longest War We Go: Language, what would the Bush administration do without it? One of John Wayne's famous lines was, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." And the Bush administration is actively of that linguistic school. Of course, when reality bites you in the you-know-what and you can't do a heck of a lot about it, what are you going to do but re-label your product? In this way, the "war on terror," aka, "the Global War on Terror," aka "GWOT," aka "World War IV," aka "the Global Struggle against Violent Extremism," has just become, by administration fiat, "the Longest War" (a phrase that's been hanging around unloved in Neocon Land for a long time, though it's now being attributed to former Centcom Commander John Abizaid. It's undoubtedly been chosen because the President's lovely global "war" has gone on remarkably... well, long.

    The phrase was on the President's lips last Tuesday night. It led off the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review, released last week. It was mentioned by various administration officials and promoted heavily by Donald Rumsfeld, who was also plugging a world in which, as Lolita Baldor of AP reported, "despite progress in fighting terrorism, the threat today may be greater than ever before because the available weapons are far more dangerous." In a speech at the National Press Club, subtly entitled, "The Long War," the Don touched all the bases. He compared Osama bin Laden to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin, and claimed we were in a "generational conflict" like the Cold War of which Iraq and Afghanistan were merely the "early battles." Meanwhile, across town, our intelligence tsar was assuring Congress that U.S. "intelligence reporting" -- why am I already losing confidence in this statement? -- "indicates that nearly 40 terrorist organizations, insurgencies, or cults have used, possessed, or expressed an interest in chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear agents or weapons." (Somewhere in all this, I think I can hear Karl Rove conducting a midterm election campaign based on the only card this administration still has in its hand: the fear of terrorism.)

    Still, I suspect "the Long War" will soon join the "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism" in the dust bin of history. In fact, on naming its terror war, the Bush administration could probably use a little help. How about the Scare-You-to-Death-Struggle-for-Global-Ethanol-Independence-and-Republican-Electoral-Victories War (or SYTDSFGEIAREVW)? If that doesn't work for you, the Nation magazine's Katrina van den Heuvel is ready to lend a hand. Having already published her hilarious The Dictionary of Republicanisms, she's now launching a contest to capture the essence of GWOT-ability (a little like guacamole) in a single, punchy name.

    Club Homeland Detention: Halliburton, the first corporation into Iraq, contractually speaking, and the biggest financial winner in the "reconstruction" sweepstakes for that deconstructed country, fortuitously also found itself perched right atop the list of post-Katrina New Orleans reconstruction contractors. Now, through its subsidiary KBR, known for building military bases to last, as well as Guantanamo's infamous "cages," Halliburton gets a shot at the real American thing -- actual emergency detention centers for "immigrants" -- or, hey, in a crisis, for whomever. The Army Corps of Engineers awarded it a contract last month -- though the story only oozed out this week -- worth up to $385 million (not including the near-obligatory overcharges) for, according to the New York Times, "an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space." It's those "new programs" that give special pause.

    They Fought the Law and the Law Lost: Finally, in the week that just was, our President and his top officials continued their vigorous efforts to rewrite the Constitution. They took up the National Security Agency warrantless spying, evidently had an unannounced constitutional convention in the White House, called on the peerless minds of various White House and justice department lawyers, asked the Attorney General (former White House Counsel, former General Counsel, and friend) Alberto Gonzales for his honest opinion, and then had the good sense to double check with lawyers at the NSA to make sure everything that agency had been doing was genuinely and legally below board and utterly constitutional. Finally, they turned the whole ball of wax over to Karl Rove, who recognized an election issue when he saw one, and next thing you knew, there was the President, at the State of the Union, insisting, as in some Avon ad, that al-Qaeda was calling and it was darn tootin' constitutional as all get out to listen in on what's conveniently been relabeled "a terrorist surveillance program" (no genuine citizens allowed to join!).

    I suppose, based on that unbelievably dreary textbook you had to read back in junior high civics class, you thought amending the Constitution took a two-thirds vote of each house of Congress and then passage by three-quarters of the states. Silly you! It only takes two-thirds of the President's brain, three-quarters of the Vice President's brain, and 100% of his Chief of Staff David Addington's brain; toss in the odd administration lawyer or two to check the fine print, and, as they say in one province of Canada (don't shoot!), Voilà!

    Now, unbuckle those straps, take that helmet off, and relax. It's a new week. Enjoy yourself!



    Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War. His novel, The Last Days of Publishing, has recently come out in paperback.

  ________

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

"Go to Original" links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted on TO may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the "Go to Original" links.

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|W|P|114038167945004944|W|P| |W|P|wolflegal@hotmail.com 2/14/2006 09:17:00 am|W|P| Wolf|W|P|

BUSH GETS (MORE THAN WELL-)DESERVED DRESSING DOWN AT KING FUNERAL

Written by Kurt Nimmo
[Copyright (c) 2006 in the U.S.A. and
Internationally by Kurt Nimmo.
All rights are reserved.]

It says something about our “democracy” when Bush can only face criticism in public as a side effect of his attendance at a funeral. Earlier today, the civil-rights leader Pastor Joseph Lowery managed to take Bush to task for his war crimes and pathological lies (or the lies programmed in his alcohol and coke damaged head by the Straussian neocons) during the funeral of Coretta Scott King. “We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there,” Lowery said, reading a poem. “But Coretta knew and we knew that there are weapons of misdirection right down here.” In response, Lowery received a two minute standing ovation.

As if to add insult to injury, former president Jimmy Carter lambasted the neocons for their authoritarian NSA snoop program, comparing it to the FBI’s surveillance of the civil rights leader. “It was difficult for them personally with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated, and they became the targets of secret government wiretapping and other surveillance,” said Carter.

No doubt, by this time tomorrow, “conservatives” (neocons) far and wide will take umbrage, outraged that somebody would dare criticize our ruler in public. I happened to catch a few seconds of Fox News on my way toward the computer. Michael Reagan, the neocon son of the dead president, expressed his anger in conversation with faux Fox “liberal” Alan Colmes. Reagan was upset over Carter’s comparison of the unconstitutional and illegal NSA snoop program to the surveillance carried out on King. Neocon cheerleaders such as Reagan, of course, want us to believe the NSA, at the behest of the Straussian neocons, are limiting the J. Edgar Hoover Memorial Vacuum Cleaner snoop program to “al-Qaeda” bad guys supposedly making phone calls when anybody with two or more brain cells to rub together realizes Bush and crew are using the criminal program to snoop thousands if not millions of Americans, especially those involved in activism against his Mafioso regime.

“No holds were barred,” William Sullivan, assistant director of the FBI’s Intelligence Division, testified before the Church Committee on the aggressive surveillance of King. “We have used [similar] techniques against Soviet agents. [The same methods were] brought home against any organization against which we were targeted. We did not differentiate. This is a rough, tough business.”

No doubt, as well, the Bush Straussians, utilizing the NSA and the FBI (and a grab bag of other federal agencies, including the Straussian infested Pentagon), believe subverting the Bill of Rights is “a rough, tough business.” In much the same way as the FBI surveilled and harassed King and his “Negro followers” (as Sullivan wrote Hoover in a memo dated January 8, 1964), the Straussian neocons are anxious to dig up as much dirt on their enemies as possible. “When the true facts concerning [King’s] activities are presented, such should be enough, if handled properly, to take him off his pedestal and to reduce him completely in influence,” Sullivan told his boss. “When this is done, and it can be and will be done, obviously much confusion will reign, particularly among the Negro people.” Of course, confusion did not “reign,” the civil rights movement grew in strength and intensity, and the government instead decided to have King assassinated.

The vicious Straussian neocons will likewise deal with their enemies as they mobilize against Phase Two (attack Iran) of the Master Plan to sow chaos and murder in the Muslim Middle East. Oliver North, working diligently from the basement of the Reagan White House, did not collaborate with FEMA to set up camps for illegal immigrants, but rather official enemies. And if you believe the CIA has established its flying torture circus of sadism strictly for Muslim goat herders and taxi drivers, you should think again. For the Straussians, there is no difference between Muslims and domestic opponents of the Bush administration.

|W|P|113993399766547567|W|P| |W|P|wolflegal@hotmail.com 2/09/2006 10:56:00 pm|W|P| Wolf|W|P|

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Read more of William Rivers Pitt's columns.

    

Click here to go to t r u t h o u t ' s 'William Rivers Pitt' Page!    TRAPPED LIKE A RAT
    (Bush Cornered with
    Criticism)

    By William Rivers Pitt
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective
    Thursday, 9 Feb. 2006
    [Copyright (c) 2006 in the
    U.S.A. and Internationally
    by t r u t h o u t (.org)
    and/or William Rivers
    Pitt. All rights reserved.]

    The funeral for civil rights leader Coretta Scott King on Tuesday was quite a sight to see. The depth of sadness in the room could not be overcome by the happiness that came with the celebration of her life and accomplishments. It was the measure of Mrs. King's impact upon our society that four presidents - Carter, Bush, Clinton and Bush - sat before her flower-draped casket and spoke of her life.

    And then, of course, the foolishness began. The nattering nabobs of network nonsense blithered into their cable news studios to deplore all the political statements that were served up before the appreciative crowd in that church. It was the Wellstone funeral all over again.

    Let's be clear. The life of Coretta Scott King was one that involved politics from every angle. Any lifelong struggle against poverty, racism and war is going to be a life immersed in politics. That is simply the way it is; because so many politicians and political ideologies center around statements and legislation that directly add to the burdens of the poor and minorities, any person choosing to fight poverty and racism is going to wind up dealing in politics.

    Gandhi was elected to no office in his entire lifetime, but every action he took involved politics. The same can be said for Martin Luther King Jr., who won no elections but changed politics in America forever. Coretta Scott King held no office, but her work affected the politics of this country in every way. Ask Gold Star mother Cindy Sheehan, who received a warm telephone call from Mrs. King while standing vigil outside George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford last August. If this was not a political act, then political acts do not exist.

    Politics belonged in that church on Tuesday. Period.

    A good deal of the humbug arising from the political statements at the funeral are based upon the fact that George W. Bush changed his schedule to appear at the event. Because he did this, the thinking goes, he should be above the pointed criticism he absorbed up on that stage. Smart money says he came to the funeral only to avoid the criticism he would have received had he not shown up with those three other presidents. Smart money likewise says he came to try and shore up his poll numbers with African Americans; his support among this constituency stands in the low single digits, well within the margin of error in any poll, suggesting his actual support among this group is zero. This is, however, an issue for another day.

    The central tenet of the civil rights movement has, is and will always be one simple truth: one must speak truth to power in order to affect change. This was the maxim by which Coretta Scott King lived her life, and the maxim by which her husband lived and ultimately died by. Had her funeral not involved speaking truth to power, the ceremony would have been incomplete. George W. Bush heard on Tuesday some hard truths that his fanatical insulation has to date spared him from. It may have been the healthiest moment this republic has absorbed in years.

    President Jimmy Carter, who has come to be one of the harshest critics of Mr. Bush, hurled fire across the stage over the deplorable administration response to Hurricane Katrina. "This commemorative ceremony this morning and this afternoon is not only to acknowledge the great contributions of Coretta and Martin, but to remind us that the struggle for equal rights is not over," said Carter. "We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, those who were most devastated by Katrina, to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans."

    Carter also took a moment to drop a brick over the recent revelations that the NSA has been spying on Americans, without court approval or warrants, at the behest of Mr. Bush. "It was difficult for them personally," said Carter, "with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the target of secret government wiretapping, other surveillance, and as you know, harassment from the FBI."

    By far, the harshest criticism came from Rev. Joseph Lowery, a King protégé, who spoke of Mrs. King's staunch opposition to the occupation of Iraq. "She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar," said Lowery. "We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew, and we knew, that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war, billions more, but no more for the poor."

    Would Coretta Scott King have approved of this? One can be certain that the woman who said "If American women would increase their voting turnout by ten percent, I think we would see an end to all of the budget cuts in programs benefiting women and children" would have certainly approved.

    This was a day for speaking truth to power, but it was more than that. Mr. Bush and his people have worked incredibly hard to keep this president from hearing anything that rubs against what he believes to be true. He speaks before hand-picked crowds of adoring supporters, never once seeing the face of someone who thinks he is running the nation into the ground. Millions upon millions of protesters have followed his every move, and yet it is almost certain he has never laid eyes upon a single one of them.

    On Tuesday, by his own design. George W. Bush was trapped like a rat on that stage. He was forced to listen to eloquent denunciations of his politics and his policies, perhaps for the first time since he took office. The effect upon him was clear; during the speeches delivered by Rev. Lowery and president Carter, Bush looked as if he was sucking on a particularly bitter lemon.

    When one speaks truth to power, especially arrogant power, that is usually the effect. Coretta Scott King would have approved.


    William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.

  ________

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SUPER BOWL POLICE STATE

Written by Kurt Nimmo
[Copyright (c) 2006 in the U.S.A. and
Internationally by Kurt Nimmo.
All rights are reserved.]

According to a Department of Perpetual War (formerly the Department of Defense) “news release,” NORAD “will contribute to security operations” during the Super Bowl in Detroit. “The aerospace command will fly Operation Noble Eagle air defense protection missions in the Detroit and Windsor, Ont., Canada area, officials said. Windsor is just across the Detroit River from Michigan. And NORAD has military assets from both Canada and the U.S,” explains the American Forces Press Service. “Operation Noble Eagle is a defense and civil support mission started after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to help protect the U.S. homeland.” In other words, the Pentagon is exploiting a premier gladiatorial event watched by millions of Americans in order to get folks accustomed to a “wider portfolio of missions,” as the Carlyle Group-influenced RAND corporation deems it, shorthand for ever-increasing militarization of society.

“The Pentagon has … shown a disturbing interest in high-tech surveillance of American citizens,” writes Gene Healy of Cato. “And key figures in the Bush administration and Congress have considered weakening the Posse Comitatus Act, the federal statute that limits the government’s ability to use the military for domestic police work.” In fact, the high tech militarization of the Super Bowl may be considered part of an effort by the Straussian neocons and NORAD to put a final nail in the coffin of the Posse Comitatus Act. “My view has been that Posse Comitatus will constantly be under review as we mature this command,” declared NORAD Gen. Ralph Eberhart in September, 2002. (For more on the infusion of high-tech into the “security” arrangements at the Super Bowl, see this article.)

“Constitutional authority gives the president and Congress the right to suspend Posse Comitatus during emergencies,” Juliette N. Kayyem and Steven E. Roberts, writing for National Defense Magazine, told us back in December, 2002. “The military services can freely participate in domestic operations with no legal consequences. In fact, following progressively sophisticated terrorism—highlighted by the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing—the armed forces increasingly supplement and assist local and federal law enforcement agencies in the operational, logistical, and technical aspects of anti-terrorism…. The military's anti-terror responsibilities during so-called ’special security events’ provide the best example of this role. It has become commonplace for the armed forces to help secure high-profile targets from terrorist attacks, such as the Super Bowl and presidential inaugurals.” It is a stretch, to say the least, to declare that the dead Osama bin Laden and his band of dour Muslim cave dwellers are capable of “progressively sophisticated terrorism,” for as we know, or should know if we pay attention, “sophisticated terrorism” is strictly in the province of state intelligence and military operations, as recently pointed out by General Leonid Ivashov, former Chief of Staff of the Russian armed forces.

Nonetheless, Kayyem and Roberts write that “the likelihood of future terrorist acts comparable to those of September 11 suggests that military participation in national domestic security is here to stay. It would not be unreasonable to assume that there might be limited situations, such as an attack with weapons of mass destruction, when the military would need to expand its role from mere support to active deployment.”

This reveals a complete lack of historical understanding, since the “active deployment” of military forces in the “homeland” usually results in military dictatorship. James Madison and the framers of the Constitution understood the threat of standing armies well. “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty,” Madison wrote. “The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.” Bush, the cardboard cut-out of the Machiavellian Straussians, represents perfectly the “overgrown Executive” and the eventual enslavement of the people through gradual domestic use of the military.

Of course, the would-be slaves, by and large, remain blissfully unaware of their impending slavery. It is nothing short of a stroke of genius to mix police state imagery in with football imagery and thus make slavery palatable to the masses. I have no idea if there will be a “terrorist event” at the Super Bowl later this afternoon—really, it is not necessary, because more distant events can be exploited—for instance the latest installment of the Osama and al-Zawahri audio and video tapes and, more dramatically, the Muslim riots over cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammad. As for the latter, it is not inconceivable that this is a NATO orchestrated event designed to up the level of violence, as the “Venstre” (or so-called liberals) are out of power in Denmark and the Danish People’s Party with its strong anti-immigration policies are firmly entrenched. But then this is a subject for another blog entry down the road.

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