The Fear That Kills (Repost)

By Marjorie Cohn, TruthOut.org
Posted on January 31, 2006, Printed on February 6, 2006

In a startling revelation, the former commander of Abu Ghraib prison testified that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, former senior U.S. military commander in Iraq, gave orders to cover up the cause of death for some female American soldiers serving in Iraq.

Last week, Col. Janis Karpinski told a panel of judges at the Commission of Inquiry for Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration in New York that several women had died of dehydration because they refused to drink liquids late in the day. They were afraid of being assaulted or even raped by male soldiers if they had to use the women's latrine after dark.

The latrine for female soldiers at Camp Victory wasn't located near their barracks, so they had to go outside if they needed to use the bathroom. "There were no lights near any of their facilities, so women were doubly easy targets in the dark of the night," Karpinski told retired U.S. Army Col. David Hackworth in a September 2004 interview.

It was there that male soldiers assaulted and raped women soldiers. So the women took matters into their own hands. They didn't drink in the late afternoon so they wouldn't have to urinate at night. They didn't get raped. But some died of dehydration in the desert heat, Karpinski said.

Karpinski testified that a surgeon for the coalition's joint task force said in a briefing that "women in fear of getting up in the hours of darkness to go out to the port-a-lets or the latrines were not drinking liquids after 3 or 4 in the afternoon, and in 120 degree heat or warmer, because there was no air-conditioning at most of the facilities, they were dying from dehydration in their sleep."

"And rather than make everybody aware of that -- because that's shocking, and as a leader if that's not shocking to you, then you're not much of a leader -- what they told the surgeon to do is don't brief those details anymore. And don't say specifically that they're women. You can provide that in a written report, but don't brief it in the open anymore."

For example, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, Sanchez's top deputy in Iraq, saw "dehydration" listed as the cause of death on the death certificate of a female master sergeant in September 2003. Under orders from Sanchez, he directed that the cause of death no longer be listed, Karpinski stated. The official explanation for this was to protect the women's privacy rights.

Sanchez's attitude was: "The women asked to be here, so now let them take what comes with the territory," Karpinski quoted him as saying. Karpinski told me that Sanchez, who was her boss, was very sensitive to the political ramifications of everything he did. She thinks it likely that when the information about the cause of these women's deaths was passed to the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld ordered that the details not be released. "That's how Rumsfeld works," she said.

"It was out of control," Karpinski told a group of students at Thomas Jefferson School of Law last October. There was an 800 number women could use to report sexual assaults. But no one had a phone, she added. And no one answered that number, which was based in the United States. Any woman who successfully connected to it would get a recording. Even after more than 83 incidents were reported during a six-month period in Iraq and Kuwait, the 24-hour rape hot line was still answered by a machine that told callers to leave a message.

"There were countless such situations all over the theater of operations -- Iraq and Kuwait -- because female soldiers didn't have a voice, individually or collectively," Karpinski told Hackworth. "Even as a general, I didn't have a voice with Sanchez, so I know what the soldiers were facing. Sanchez did not want to hear about female soldier requirements and/or issues."

Karpinski was the highest officer reprimanded for the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, although the details of interrogations were carefully hidden from her. Demoted from brigadier general to colonel, Karpinski feels she was chosen as a scapegoat because she was a female.

Sexual assault in the U.S. military has become a hot topic in the last few years, "not just because of the high number of rapes and other assaults, but also because of the tendency to cover up assaults and to harass or retaliate against women who report assaults," according to Kathy Gilberd, co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild's Military Law Task Force. This problem has become so acute that the Army has set up its own sexual assault web site.

In February 2004, Rumsfeld directed the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness to undertake a 90-day review of sexual assault policies. "Sexual assault will not be tolerated in the Department of Defense," Rumsfeld declared.

The 99-page report was issued in April 2004. It affirmed, "The chain of command is responsible for ensuring that policies and practices regarding crime prevention and security are in place for the safety of service members." The rates of reported alleged sexual assault were 69.1 and 70.0 per 100,000 uniformed service members in 2002 and 2003. Yet those rates were not directly comparable to rates reported by the Department of Justice, due to substantial differences in the definition of sexual assault.

Notably, the report found that low socio-cultural power (i.e., age, education, race/ethnicity, marital status) and low organizational power (i.e., pay grade and years of active duty service) were associated with an increased likelihood of both sexual assault and sexual harassment.

The Department of Defense announced a new policy on sexual assault prevention and response on Jan. 3, 2005. It was a reaction to media reports and public outrage about sexual assaults against women in the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan, and ongoing sexual assaults and cover-ups at the Air Force Academy in Colorado, Gilberd said. As a result, Congress demanded that the military review the problem, and the Defense Authorization Act of 2005 required a new policy be put in place by January 1.

The policy is a series of very brief "directive-type memoranda" for the secretaries of the military services from the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness. "Overall, the policy emphasizes that sexual assault harms military readiness, that education about sexual assault policy needs to be increased and repeated, and that improvements in response to sexual assaults are necessary to make victims more willing to report assaults," Gilberd notes. "Unfortunately," she added, "analysis of the issues is shallow, and the plans for addressing them are limited."

Commands can reject the complaints if they decide they aren't credible, and there is limited protection against retaliation against the women who come forward, according to Gilberd. "People who report assaults still face command disbelief, illegal efforts to protect the assaulters, informal harassment from assaulters, their friends or the command itself," she said.

But most shameful is Sanchez's cover-up of the dehydration deaths of women that occurred in Iraq. Sanchez is no stranger to outrageous military orders. He was heavily involved in the torture scandal that surfaced at Abu Ghraib. Sanchez approved the use of unmuzzled dogs and the insertion of prisoners head first into sleeping bags, after which they were tied with an electrical cord, and their mouths were covered. At least one person died as the result of the sleeping bag technique. Karpinski charges that Sanchez attempted to hide the torture after the hideous photographs became public.

Sanchez reportedly plans to retire soon, according to an article in the International Herald Tribune earlier this month. But Rumsfeld recently considered elevating the three-star general to a four-star. The Tribune also reported that Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, the Army's chief spokesman, said in an email message, "The Army leaders do have confidence in LTG Sanchez."

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/31584/

The Cartoonish State of the Media

By Rory O'Connor, AlterNet
Posted on February 4, 2006, Printed on February 6, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/31781/

When it comes to matters of free speech and sound journalism, it's getting increasingly difficult to determine who is worse: the present rulers of the United States or the Islamo-fascists they're now at war with. When they're not busy attacking one another, each side in the current conflict keeps busy attacking journalists (more already dead in Iraq than in the entire Vietnam era), journalism and the very concept of freedom of the press.

In the midst of the ongoing controversy over cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, and the pusillanimous reaction by scared outlets such as CNN and France Soir (of which more later), it was particularly sad to see U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld lobbing yet another round of verbal grenades at the media last week.

Claiming that press criticism has made "our people … chilled and reticent and uncomfortable," Rumsfeld resurrected the silly, shopworn shibboleth that the media will be to blame if the United States "loses" the global war on terrorism.

"We're not going to lose wars or battles out there. The only place we can lose is if the country loses its will," Rumsfeld said. "And the determinant of that is what is played in the media."

The terrorists, Rumsfeld noted, "manipulate and manage to influence what the media carries throughout the world. And they do it very successfully. They're good at it."

Meanwhile, U.S. military personnel "get penalized because there's bad press, there's bad news, someone doesn't like it, there's a congressional hearing, the newspaper has it on the front page because it's about the media, and the media likes to write about the media," Rumsfeld said. "How do we compete in this struggle in a way that can counter the ability of the enemy to lie, which we can't do, [and] the ability of the enemy to not have a free media criticizing them? You don't see much criticizing of them."

Rummy spoke just a few days after a Freedom of Information Act request by the redoubtable National Security Archive, a research institution based at George Washington University, compelled the release of the previously secret "Information Operations road map" he signed in 2003.

The newly declassified 74-page document details the U.S. military's plans for "information dominance" -- from influencing public opinion through media to designing "computer network attack" weapons -- and notes that information is "critical to military success." The "road map" calls for a far-reaching overhaul of the military's ability to conduct information operations and electronic warfare.

The document was written to set out policy guidelines and establish the Pentagon's rationale for making information operations a "core" mission for the U.S. military. It says, "Information, always important in warfare, is now critical to military success and will only become more so in the foreseeable future."

The operations described in the document include a range of military activities, the most disturbing of which is the acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military's psychological operations, or psyops, is finding its way to the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.

"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads. "Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public."

The document's authors agree that American news media should not unwittingly broadcast military propaganda, and say, "Specific boundaries should be established," but don't bother to explain how.

But the National Security Archive calls this 'psyops' what it really is: propaganda planted overseas that will inevitably make its way back to the United States. "In this day and age it is impossible to prevent stories that are fed abroad as part of psychological operations propaganda from blowing back into the United States -- even though they were directed abroad," said Kristin Adair, a representative of the group.

The road map portrays the internet as the equivalent of an enemy weapons system. The slogan "fight the net" appears several times throughout the road map, and it forthrightly states, "Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will 'fight the net' as it would an enemy weapons system."

Despite the release of the "road map," the real direction of the Pentagon's information operations remains unclear. The document does, however, provide at least an inkling of the DOD's Info War planning -- and its global scale. It recommends, for example, that the United States should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum." In plain English, that means the U.S. military seeks the capability to knock out, among other things, every telephone and every networked computer on the planet.

While our fundamentally undemocratic defense secretary is busy blaming the media for his own repeated failures, fundamentalists on the other side of the world are in a tizzy over European media that have published cartoon drawings of Mohammad. Although the Islamo-fascists preface the Prophet's name with the standard phrase "peace be unto him," their protests have been typically far from peaceful, including a rampage in a building housing the Danish embassy in Jakarta, the seizure by Palestinian gunmen of an innocent German citizen, and a hand grenade thrown into the compound of the French Cultural Centre in Gaza -- not to mention the 25 death threats and thousands of hate messages sent to the editor of a Norwegian magazine that reprinted the cartoons.

Faced with the threat of such attacks, many in the media have courageously followed the example of the besieged Norwegian editor and supported the bedrock principle of free expression. But others have not, and instead have shamefully retreated. In Paris, the managing editor of the daily newspaper, France Soir, published the cartoons under the headline, "Yes, one has the right to caricature God" -- and was promptly fired. And CNN chose not to show the cartoons "in respect for Islam." It said nothing about concern for the commercial interests of its parent conglomerate Time Warner or respect for the Bill of Rights.

When it comes to the First Amendment, I'm a strict constructionist. Censorship is censorship, no matter what its provenance, and once you start down that slippery slope, there's no stopping. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, for example, was quoted by the state Anatolian news agency as saying the cartoons -- one depicting the founder of Islam wearing a turban resembling a bomb -- showed "There should be a limit to press freedom."

British Foreign Minister Jack Straw apparently concurs with that sentiment. Straw praised Britan's normally unfettered newspapers, which have so far refused to publish the cartoons, saying "I believe the republication of these cartoons has been unnecessary, it has been insensitive, it has been disrespectful and it has been wrong." He added, "I place on record my regard for the British media, which has shown considerable responsibility and sensitivity."

But Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen had it right when he said the issue has gone beyond a feud between Copenhagen and the Muslim world and is now centered on Western free speech versus taboos in Islam.

To which I can only add: "And taboos in the U.S. Department of Defense."

More of the controversial cartoons can be seen here: mediachannel.org

This and other articles by Rory O'Connor are available on his blog.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/31781/

A Credibility 'Gap' (Bushite total disregard for the truth and the law)

By Steve Benen, AlterNet
Posted on February 6, 2006, Printed on February 6, 2006

On the evening of Monday, Sept. 29, 2003, then-White House Chief Counsel Alberto Gonzales had a choice. He had just received formal notice from the Department of Justice that the White House was the subject of a criminal investigation as a result of White House officials' leaking the identity of an undercover CIA agent, Valerie Plame, as part of an effort to discredit her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Gonzales did not immediately alert the White House staff to the investigation, explaining the need to safeguard germane documents. Instead, he asked Justice Department lawyers if he could notify the staff in the morning. Because the call came in after 8:00 p.m. on a weekday, and most of the personnel had left the building, the attorneys agreed. Gonzales, before wrapping up his day, called White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card to notify him of the start of the probe. Twelve hours later, Gonzales informed his colleagues that they must "preserve all materials" relevant to the investigation.

For some of Bush's more imaginative critics, the 12-hour delay generates images of Card, Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby holding a late-night document-destruction party in the West Wing. Indeed, in questioning Gonzales' handling of the issue, Bob Schieffer, host of CBS's Face the Nation, noted that the half-day gap would have "give[n] people time to shred documents and do any number of things."

Imaginative, my butt! All one has to do is know the players and have lived through the Nixon and Reagan/Bush nightmares to know that shredding is a favorite Republican past-time. Can we spell, "Fawn Hall"

This delay took on renewed significance last week. The New York Daily News reported that Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the Plame scandal, told lawyers representing Libby that "many emails from [Vice President] Cheney's office at the time of the Plame leak in 2003 have been deleted contrary to White House policy." The computer system at the White House is supposed to automatically archive emails sent by the president and his aides. For reasons that are still unclear, these emails -- which may or may not be relevant to the Plame investigation -- were not preserved.

Does the phrase "18-minute-gap" ring a bell?

Could aides have used the 12-hour gap to conceal incriminating emails that pointed to staffers' role in exposing the identity of an undercover CIA agent? Prosecutors will no doubt explore this in some detail as the investigation continues, but it's important to note that political observers have understated the length of the delay itself -- by a factor of seven.

That's right! They had much more time for skullduggery than a mere 12 hours.

Indeed, the timeline of events over the five-day period between Friday, Sept. 26, 2003, and Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2003, highlights the fact that the 12-hour head start Gonzales gave Card is largely irrelevant. There was no reason for Card to call back Bush's top lieutenants to start concealing possible wrongdoing after the heads-up from Gonzales. If suppression was their plan, Rove, Libby and others could have begun covering their tracks several days in advance.

When Gonzales received formal notification about the investigation late on Monday, Sept. 29, the Justice Department was only making official what all of Washington already knew. A full three days before the counsel's office received notice, MSNBC reported that the CIA had directed the Justice Department to launch a criminal probe into the leak. In other words, White House aides with internet access learned on Friday night that they were being investigated but weren't told to start securing relevant materials until Tuesday morning, literally 84 hours later.

Good God, they could have burned Washington, D.C in that length of time, which is why we are amazed that Fitz has gotten as far as he has.

Perhaps, Bush supporters might argue, the MSNBC report went unnoticed at the White House. Maybe no one on the staff saw the report or any discussion of it on the many political websites that highlighted its significance at the time. Even assuming this is true, it's significantly harder for Bush aides to claim that they also missed a front-page article published in the Washington Post on Sunday, Sept. 28.

That would be an extremely naïve assumption in the first place, since we all know that the W.H. monitors news channels closer than they monitor Al; Qaeda

The Post's Mike Allen and Dana Priest explained, "At CIA Director George J. Tenet's request, the Justice Department is looking into an allegation that administration officials leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist, government sources said yesterday." The same article quoted a senior administration official saying that "two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of [undercover agent Plame]." Referring to the leak, the official told the Post, "Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge."

This front-page, above-the-fold article hit doorsteps in D.C. a full 48 hours before Gonzales instructed the staff to preserve materials relevant to the investigation. Considering the news about the investigation, and the provocative quotes from a top administration official, it stands to reason the article caught the attention of some White House employees.

As such, it strained credulity when Alberto Gonzales told a national television audience last summer that "no one [on the White House staff] knew about the investigation" until he received word from the Justice Department. Gonzales may have promptly called Card on the evening of Monday, Sept. 29, but neither Card nor anyone else in the West Wing needed word from the White House counsel's office to know that an investigation was under way. Like anyone with access to the national media that weekend, they learned about the probe days beforehand.

It's understandable that congressional Democrats and others have raised questions about whether Gonzales, now the attorney general, sat on the investigation for 12 hours in order to help give his colleagues in the White House time to cover up their alleged misdeeds. The more relevant question, however, is what those same Bush aides did with the 84-hour notice they received about the federal probe from news reports.

As many observers have noted, a great deal of damage can be done over that period of time. As Congressional Quarterly's Craig Crawford said on MSNBC in July, "[A]nybody who was worried about emails that they had written in the past on this topic had a lot of time to word-search it and delete it, if they wanted to." In light of the now-missing emails from the vice president's office from the relevant time period, Crawford's speculation seems almost prescient.

More like common sense, if you ask us.

The concern here has nothing to do with Fitzgerald's thorough investigation, but rather whether Fitzgerald's probe has had access to all the information to which it was entitled. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., one of several Senate Democrats commenting on this gap in 2003, said, "Every good prosecutor knows that any delay could give a culprit time to destroy the evidence." In this case, the alleged perpetrators wouldn't have had to rush.

Anyone with more that oatmeal for brains knows this!

The controversy is not entirely without precedent. During the Clinton presidency, thousands of emails went missing after they were improperly archived, prompting congressional Republicans and Independent Counsel Robert Ray to have minor conniptions. At the time, Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., launched hearings into the missing emails through the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee he chaired, exploring the possibility of a coverup.

In theory, congressional Republicans could also consider hearings to explore the missing emails from Cheney's office and the suspicious 84-hour gap. To date, however, GOP lawmakers have resisted any and all requests for hearings into the matter.

And they are, therefore, complicit in the crimes of the Bush administration, and they will be punished.

Hearings or not, the emails are unlikely to remain missing forever. Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation is ongoing, and prosecutors appear interested in the misplaced electronic correspondence and its possible role in the leak.

Steve Benen is a freelance writer and editor of The Carpetbagger Report.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/31796/

Connect the Dots: Alberto Gonzales Should be Under Investigation,

Not Overseeing Them

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

Many moons ago, when George W. Bush, was governor of Texas, Alberto Gonzales replaced James Baker as the Bush family consigliere.

Gonzales's most famous act of early loyalty was when he got Bush out of Texas jury duty, while he was serving as governor, because the jury screening form would have required Bush to disclose his prior arrest for drunken driving.

It was, as Claude Reins tells Humphrey Bogart in the classic film "Casablanca," the beginning of a wonderful relationship.

On February 6, Alberto Gonzales testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the un-Constitutional illegal wiretapping programming that he had a big hand in creating.

Gonzales will tell the Judiciary Committee that the program was entirely legal. He will be the loyal consigliere. He has no choice; he helped create the program.

According to the New York Times, even right wing whacko and infamous anti-Clinton cheerleader, former Congressman Bob Barr says, ''Clearly, people know his testimony reflects the same view as the White House counsel, and that it's not so much reflecting anything approaching an independent legal analysis. He's there as a lawyer for the president, as opposed to being an advocate for the Constitution and the laws of the country. It's a fine line, and I'm not so sure in his current capacity he has a great deal of credibility.''

''Nothing in Al Gonzales's public statements, legislative proposals or anything else suggests that this is an individual who operates outside of the political gyroscope of President Bush,'' said Bruce Fein, an associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration, according to the Times.

The Rovian media machine has once again bested those who would stand up for the Constitution by redefining illegal wiretapping as "terrorist surveillance." Only Russ Feingold shouted loudly enough in rebuttal to undercut the Orwellian phrasing that has echoed over the past two weeks.

Sure, Arlen Specter is getting some press for claiming that the wiretapping was probably illegal. But Specter is a snake in the grass.  He is a master at playing a public skeptic while setting up the White House for a victory for tyranny. In this case, Buzzflash suspects that Specter is setting the stage to either have Congress pass enabling legislation for Stasi like powers to be given to the White House or for the FISA Court to grant the same powers to Bush.

Then Specter will say, now that the White House is in compliance with the law, all is forgiven. (Specter is also the author of a "Patriot Act" provision that "would allow authorities to haul demonstrators at any 'special event of national significance' away to jail on felony charges if they are caught breaching a security perimeter."  So don't trust the dissembler for a moment.)

With the Supreme Court now packed by Busheviks, who is going to stop the continual slouching of America toward a Pinochet style state of dictatorship?

But here's the bottom line. The Democrats will question Gonzales hard, but what will they do in the end? That's the question.

Gonzales is the architect of the legal justification for torture -- and then claims he didn't authorize "torture," despite the disclosure of a White House Counsel document signed by him proving that he did.

Just last week, news stories re-emerged that Gonzales took no steps to prevent White House Staff from destroying e-mails and documents relating to the Valerie Plame outing until it was too late. Then he finally "warned" them to maintain all relevant documents after they had several days to shred and delete them.
Gonzales also played a likely role, as White House Counsel, in the removal of a career Department of Justice prosecutor who was close to indicting Abramoff on one of his White House connected lobbying efforts -- this one relating to Guam.

And guess what? Just a short time back the White House "promoted" the chief DOJ Abramoff prosecutor to a judgeship. It's clear that the White House wants to insulate the Abramoff prosecution from clear connections to the Bush Administration, right up to Rove, Bush and Gonzales.

36 Democratic senators politely called for a special prosecutor in the Abramoff case, because right now Gonzales is ultimately responsible for an investigation that probably includes himself. But, at the very least, Gonzales, as the Bush consigliere, is out to suppress the Abramoff illegal ties to the White House, not expose them.

We imagine that the same Bush-connection damage control is going on with the federal prosecution of Ken Lay and Tom DeLay. You know how it goes, you cut a deal with Abramoff, Lay and DeLay that if they don't rat out the White House, Gonzales will make sure that they get a lighter sentence, if not probation and a stiff fine.

And we could go on and on.

As Bush himself recently said, connect the dots. A second grader could do it.

Gonzales is acting as the consigliere for the Bush family, not as the U.S. Attorney General.

Our nation has been mobbed up with injustice at the highest position in the land entrusted with fairly administering justice.

If Bush comes out of this with congressional authority to conduct illegal wiretapping legally, the Democrats will just have put another nail in the coffin of the Constitution, so shortly after nearly sealing it with their failure to filibuster the Alito nomination.

For those Democrat senators who feel uncomfortable that they are being "put on the spot" to stand up for our laws, our Constitution and justice, we say that is what you were elected for.

Don't fail us, yet again.

Gonzales will, once again, be part of a scripted Republican show to sell the Bush drive for an imperial presidency approaching a dictatorship. Alberto will sell fear and the rebranding of illegal activity as "terrorist surveillance." Like Alito, he will come off as an earnest, likable guy.

The Republicans win at theater all the time. They know that image sells on television -- and television still is what molds the polls.

The Democrats better finally start learning how to draw down the curtain on the Bush drama of betrayal.

Because it's just about endgame, as a pall of darkness and betrayal settles on the land.

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

LINK

There Ought to Be a Law

Monday, February 6, 2006; Page A14

THE SENATE Judiciary Committee, which has summoned Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to testify today about the administration's warrantless wiretapping, is likely to focus on questions of its legality. Those are crucial. But so is the question of whether it's possible to rework the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to accommodate the program. In other words, is there a way to have this intelligence, to the extent that it is useful, and outside oversight, too? Unfortunately, President Bush has peremptorily dismissed suggestions that the law be rewritten, asserting that doing so would risk revealing secret capabilities.

Without knowing the contours of the program, it's difficult to assess that risk. But al Qaeda certainly is aware that U.S. intelligence agencies monitor various forms of communications. Given that, why does it make sense to decide -- even before trying -- that there's no way to update the law without tipping off terrorists?

Read On

 

Could it possibly be that it is not the terrorists that BushCo does not want tipped off?

 

Come on people, for chrissake! Get a clue!

Joint Chiefs Wield Mighty Pen

Published on Sunday, February 5, 2006 by the Long Island, New York Newsday

by Les Payne

The men who command the armed forces of the world's lone superpower attacked a cartoonist who used his pen to depict their boss in a negative light in his newspaper. This infidel cartoonist, one Tom Toles, whose panel appeared in The Washington Post, rendered a graven image of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. It has long been accepted in the media that this infallible messenger of Bush-Cheney - known among the faithful as Prophet Rumsfeld - should be portrayed only in a light most positive. The offending cartoon of infidel Toles, first off, miscast the prophet as a physician with stethoscope. It widely accepted that the beloved one does not stoop to such normal methods for his blessed healing. Rumsfeld's powers come directly from on high, and "it is what it is." As with his syntax, so too is the prophet's analysis unmatched. When, by every other eye, post-invasion things fell apart early on the streets of Baghdad, the prophet looked at this "untidy" freedom and uttered, "Stuff happens." After rioting broke out in earnest, unexpected to everyone save the prophet, Rumsfeld dismissed it as the mere "pent-up feelings" of Iraqis adjusting to life without Saddam. As others dreaded these early signs of a terrible lack of post-invasion planning, prophet Rumsfeld knew better. "Free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things," he said on CNN. "They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen." The prophet spoke these words April 11, 2003. How blessed is his wisdom. It is this magnificence that the infidel Toles' cartoon dared caricature in physician's scrubs attending to a woefully bandaged U.S. soldier missing both arms and both legs. "I'm listing your condition as 'Battle Hardened'" are the words the infidel Toles put in the mouth of his "Dr. Rumsfeld." The idea issued from the defense secretary's response to a Pentagon study warning the war in Iraq might end up "breaking" the Army. In dismissing the warning, prophet Rumsfeld said instead the conflict is rendering the military "battle-hardened." Upon gazing at this cartoon of their maximum leader, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including chairman Gen. Peter Pace, went on blasphemy alert. How could they respond? Instead of the nuclear option, they settled for the mighty pen, in the first round at least. "While you or some of your readers may not agree with the war or its conduct," their letter to the cartoonist said in part, "we believe you owe the men and women and their families who so selflessly serve our country the decency to not make light of their tremendous physical sacrifices." Clever indeed! Whereas infidel Toles clearly attacked "Dr. Rumsfeld," these top military minds defended the quadruple-amputee soldier-patient. It is as if a nation attacked by a Saudi Arabian terrorist group based in Afghanistan would respond by attacking an Iraq that had nothing to do with the attack. As for the cartoon, in a response to The Washington Post, Toles flattered himself that the letter from the Joint Chiefs was "an understandable response." Toles told the Post that he had in mind "the catastrophic level of injuries the Army and members of the armed services have sustained. ... I thought my portrayal of it was a fair depiction of the reality of the situation. I certainly never intended it to be in any way a personal attack on, or a derogatory comment on, the service or sacrifice of American soldiers." It's a sure bet that the soldiers understood Toles' cartoon for the Rumsfeld attack it was. The chiefs likely understood it as well; they rushed down from the hills not to protect the soldiers but to defend their boss. Charges that the U.S. military is overstretched are credible, as well as suggestions that Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld never should have invaded Iraq and, having done so, should get out soonest. Meanwhile, danger lurks with the Bush bunch controlling the National Security Agency spy desk and the nuclear trigger. The American public must insist that the infidel Toles and the press he represents be protected. Otherwise, they might have to surrender not only press freedoms but what precious few civil liberties they have left. God, what a country! © 2006 Newsday Inc.

Snooping docs during Ford's administration released

WASHINGTON (AP) - An intense debate erupted during former U.S. president Gerald Ford's administration over the president's powers to eavesdrop without warrants to gather foreign intelligence, newly disclosed government documents revealed.

Former president George Bush, current Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice-President Dick Cheney are cited in the documents. The roughly 200 pages of historic records reflect a remarkably similar dispute between the White House and Congress fully three decades before President George W. Bush's acknowledgment he authorized wiretaps without warrants of some Americans in terrorism investigations.

"Yogi Berra was right: it's deja vu all over again," said Tom Blanton, executive director for the U.S. National Security Archives, a private research group that compiles collections of sensitive government documents.

"It's the same debate."

Senate judiciary committee hearings are scheduled to begin Monday on the question of Bush's authority to approve such wiretaps by the ultra-secretive National Security Agency without a judge's approval. A focus of the hearings is to determine whether the Bush administration's eavesdropping program violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a 1978 law with origins during Ford's presidency.

(Which shall consist of "testimony" by Little Alberto, who will, in essence, tell Congress that it is none of their damn business, and no, they cannot see any of the documents requested by the Judiciary committee or any other committee, for that matter. Bush is King, and if we don't like it, too bad.)

"We strongly believe it is unwise for the president to concede any lack of constitutional power to authorize electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes," wrote Robert Ingersoll, then deputy secretary of state, in a 1976 memorandum to Ford about the proposed bill on electronic surveillance.

(Wonder if they will all feel the same way when there is a Democrat in the White House?)

Former president Bush, then director of the CIA, wanted to ensure "no unnecessary diminution of collection of important foreign intelligence" under the proposal to require judges to approve terror wiretaps, said a March 1976 memorandum he wrote to the Justice Department. Bush also complained some major communications companies were unwilling to install government wiretaps without a judge's approval. Such a refusal "seriously affects the capabilities of the intelligence community," Bush wrote.

In another document, Jack Marsh, a White House adviser, outlined options for Ford over the wiretap legislation. Marsh alerted Ford to objections by Bush as CIA director and Rumsfeld, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft over the scope of a provision to require judicial oversight of wiretaps. At the time, Rumsfeld was defence secretary, Kissinger was secretary of state and Scowcroft was the White House national security adviser.

Some experts weren't surprised the cast of characters in this national debate remained largely unchanged over 30 years.

Read On

 

Hell...no one is surprised.... at least not anyone who has, even half-assed, been paying attention over the years.

 

Check out the cast of characters and you will find that many of them, especially the ones in the Ford administration, helped limit the damage of Watergate and Nixon; not to the country, but to their political party.

 

Colin Powell helped limit the chain-of-command damage during the My Lai investigation, helping make sure that the fall-out went no further than the scapegoat, Lt. Calley.

 

Now, take a shorter trip down memory-lane, to the Reagan/ Bush years. The Bush people worked more behind the scenes during Reagan, but just look who was on hand, once Poppy was elected for his White House tour. The same cast of characters; or, as you please, the usual suspects.

 

It is way past time to come down hard on these people. They have never really paid for any of their multiple crimes against this nation, which have only become worse and more bizarre under Bush, the son.

 

The accountability should not stop there either. The crimes they have committed against the global community, especially Iraq, demand justice. 

Mineral Levels in Meat and Milk Plummet Over 60 Years

Published on Thursday, February 2, 2006 by the Guardian / UK

· Study blames the decline on intensive farming · Food industry contests comparative methods

by Felicity Lawrence

The mineral content of milk and popular meats has fallen significantly in the past 60 years, according to a new analysis of government records of the chemical composition of everyday food. The research looked at government tables published in 1940, and again in 2002, in the nutritional bible, The Composition of Foods, to establish levels of important minerals in dairy products and meat before the second world war and today. The research, which is contested by the food and farming industry, found a marked decline in nutritional value during the period. The analysis is published in this month's Food magazine by the consumer watchdog the Food Commission. The levels of iron recorded in the average rump steak have dropped by 55%, while magnesium fell by 7%. Looking at 15 different meat items, the analysis found that the iron content had fallen on average by 47%. The iron content of milk had dropped by more than 60%, and by more than 50% for cream and eight different cheeses. Milk appears to have lost 2% of its calcium, and 21% of its magnesium too. Most cheeses showed a fall in magnesium and calcium levels. According to the analysis, cheddar provides 9% less calcium today, 38% less magnesium and 47% less iron, while parmesan shows the steepest drop in nutrients, with magnesium levels down by 70% and iron all gone compared with its content in the years up to 1940. The reseach was conducted by David Thomas, a chiropractor and nutritionist who prescribes and sells mineral supplements. He published an earlier historical analysis of the nutrient content of fruit and vegetables in 2000 which showed a similar decline in those foods. He attributes the loss of nutrients to intensive farming and industrial production. Academics in the US and Denmark have also reported signficant changes in the nutritional profile of modern foods. The Food Commission believes that changes in the methods of measuring the composition of food cannot account for the huge difference in nutrient content and has called for independent research on the effects of different farming methods. "Minerals are easy to detect and measure and have been since the 19th century. It is almost impossible that methods have changed so much that it would explain the huge difference between these figures," the Food Commission's director, Dr Tim Lobstein, said. "One of the key arguments is that today's agriculture does not allow the soil to enrich itself, but depends on chemical fertilisers that don't replace the wide variety of nutrients plants and humans need." Scientists at the University of Newcastle's agriculture school have looked at differences in the fat and vitamin composition of milk produced in different farming systems. "We know that the faster grass grows the more you dilute the uptake of trace elements," Gillian Butler, a researcher, said. Another explanation might be that in traditional farming, clover, which is higher in minerals than grass, also played a greater part in feeding animals. The director of the Italian parmesan consortium, Leo Bertozzi, said the figures were a puzzle. "Our methods of making cheese have not changed, but milk in 1940 was not the same as milk today. Today cows yield five to six times as many litres a day, and their feed is different, with cereals and soya added to hay. But I find these figures surprising," he said. The research has, however, been challenged by the food and farming industries which argue that the testing methods have changed. They also say that huge changes in the varieties grown and the ways in which food is transported and stored, make direct comparison difficult. The Food Standards Agency, which publishes The Composition of Food, agrees that using the government tables to make historical comparisons is problemmatic. "Any differences over time could be due to a wide variety of factors, including variety and breed, animal husbandry, growth, storage conditions, preparation and cooking methods as well as diferences in analytical methodology," it said in a statement. The Dairy Council said it believed that changes in farming practices and environmental factors would account for only a small reduction in mineral content. "It is more likely that the differences are due to improvements in analytical methods used to measure minerals in milk," its director, Judith Bryans, said. The Meat and Livestock Commission also attributed the decline in nutrients to better testing methods. "What goes in is what comes out, and the only signficant shift in beef production has been from hay to silage. If these figures were true we'd expect to see a lot of anaemic cows wondering around," Mike Attenborough, an MLC technical expert, said. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

Are Bush campaign loyalists moving to McCain?

By Richard Wolffe

Newsweek

Updated: 1:17 p.m. ET Feb. 5, 2006

Feb. 13, 2006 issue - The day after his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush was where he loves to be: campaigning onstage in Red State America. Not just any stage, but the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, where he was singing his grand new song about high-tech energy research and thousands of new math teachers. It was phase one in the selling of his agenda for 2006. Then it was on to Minnesota, where aides passed out a booklet titled "American Competitiveness Initiative." Next stops: New Mexico, and the presidential stomping ground of New Hampshire—battleground states in the 2004 election. It's all part of a month-long series of speeches pitching Bush's vision for the nation's future and his own political legacy. His confidants' hopes are high, likening the campaign to a new mission to put a man on the moon.

Read On

Powell's former chief of staff: 'I participated in a hoax'

In an interview that aired on PBS on Friday, Feb. 3, Colin Powell's former chief of staff claimed that the speech Powell made before the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, laying out a case for war with Iraq, included falsehoods of which Powell had never been made aware. He said, "My participation in that presentation at the UN constitutes the lowest point in my professional life. I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council."

Colonel (ret.) Lawrence Wilkerson, a veteran of the Vietnam War, served for many years as Powell's consultant and advisor. He stated in the interview that he was "intimately involved in the preparation of Secretary Powell for his five February 2003 presentation at the UN Security Council" and that neither CIA Director George Tenet nor the CIA analysts involved in furnishing Powell with the information on mobile biological laboratories that he would use in his speech gave any indication that there were disputes about the reliability of the informants who had supplied this information.

Wilkerson still sees this lapse as the result of a profound intelligence failure, saying, "I have to believe that. Otherwise I have to believe some rather nefarious things about some fairly highly placed people in the intelligence community and perhaps elsewhere."

Read On

 

Then you has better start believing the nefarious things about highly placed nefarious people, Col Wilkerson, because they are true, and it gets worse......

Rumsfeld's Hitler Analogy

Is desperation setting in, or just senility?

By DERRICK O'KEEFE

The only real surprise is that it took this long.

On Thursday, February 2, the U.S. government's senior hawk, Donald Rumsfeld, stooped to the Hitler 'analogy' in a show of his administration's increasing desperation at the consolidation of the Bolivarian Revolution and the rise of the Left in Latin America. The Secretary of Defense delivered the clumsy slur against the (repeatedly) democratically elected president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez:

"We've got Chavez in Venezuela with a lot of oil money. He's a person who was elected legally, just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally, and then consolidated power, and now is, of course, working closely with Fidel Castro and Mr. [Evo] Morales and others. It concerns me (1)."

Not to be outdone, his even more irrational fellow right-wing septuagenarian renewed his call for the United States to assassinate Chavez. This time using Fox News as his pulpit, Robertson added a half-hearted caveat to the death wish: "not now, but one day". The evangelist closed his comments with a racist boast, "until that [earlier] comment everybody thought Chavez was a fellow having to do with table grapes in California". To close the segment, co-host Sean Hannity concluded with this statement, agreeing with the thrust of Robertson's inciteful remarks:

"I think one thing we could say is, the world would be better off without him where he is, because he is a danger to the United States." (See the full interview transcript to believe it at MediaMatters.org).

It would be gratuitous to dwell on the absurdity of Rumsfeld's flailing and Robertson's fatwa. The more important point is to highlight the real political developments underlying the hysteria. There are a number of key aspects to Venezuela's political and social revolution that are currently haunting not only that South American country's economic elites, but their superiors in Washington, D.C. as well.

First, the Bolivarian Revolution is more entrenched politically and more strident ideologically than ever; Chavez has had his mandate confirmed on a number of occasions since his initial 1998 election, and is all but guaranteed a huge victory in the December 2006 presidential elections. A great number of social programs and investments, fuelled by high oil prices, are bringing tangible improvements to the poor majority in the country. In addition to this redistribution of wealth, increased political participation and grassroots organizing is pushing forward for a more radical transformation of society. And Chavez, especially in the past year, has been every more urgently calling for this process to lead to the development of 'socialism for the 21st century'.

Another extremely threatening consequence of the Bolivarian Revolution, from the point of view of imperial interests, is the way that its message is resonating across Latin America. The December 2005 landslide election of Evo Morales in Bolivia was just the most spectacular example of the recent trend in the region. Morales--also, by implication, ludicrously tarred with the Hitler brush in Rumsfeld's remarks--came to power after years of revolt by Bolivia's indigenous peoples and working class.

The Venezuelan experience stands as both an inspiration to social movements across Latin America and as a standard to which populist and Left leaders can be held accountable, as they inevitably face pressure from national elites and the transnational interests of capital.

Finally, Hugo Chavez has been hitting the United States government hard of late on the home front. This might even be the hardest pill to swallow for Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney et al. In September, for instance, the Venezuelan government's offer of aid was held up--and Cuba's offer of hundreds of doctors was ignored outright -- while the U.S. government failed to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. In subsequent months, Venezuela announced that CITGO--a wholly owned subsidiary of the country's PDVSA national oil company--would begin providing discounted heating oil to disadvantaged households in the United States. Last month, for instance, Venezuela agreed to give upwards of $5 million worth of heating oil to low-income, homeless and Native people in--of all places--the state of Maine (2). In this and other initiatives, Chavez is turning international solidarity on its head, and intervening on the side of the 'other America' within the United States. The new internationalism of the Bolivarian Revolution is not the kind of 'globalization' that the progenitors of that euphemism for neo-liberal capitalism had in mind.

As if providing all that essential energy and disaster relief to so many citizens of the United States wasn't enough of a poke in the eye to the government in Washington, last week Hugo Chavez played host to the woman who has led the resurgence of the U.S. anti-war movement. Cindy Sheehan was among the honoured guests at the World Social Forum, held in Caracas January 24-29.

Along with over 60 000 participants, Sheehan resolved, among other things, to build huge rallies on March 18 of this year, the third anniversary of Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq. The Venezuelan president urged people in the United States and around the world to bring down the U.S. Empire, even offering a little career advice to Sheehan, the world's most famous activist against the Iraq war: "He said, 'why don't [you] run for president?'" (3)

And that, as much as anything, explains the murderous fury and ridiculous slander of Pat Robertson and Donald Rumsfeld alike.

Derrick O'Keefe is co-editor of Seven Oaks.

Notes

(1) February 3, 2005, 'Tit for tat: U.S. and Venezuela trade expulsions and slurs', CBC.ca.

(2) January 11, 2006, 'Maine, Venezuela reach oil deal', Portland Press Herald.

(3) January 30, 2006, 'Chavez backs Sheehan in new Bush protest', CNN.com.

LINK

The Bushites just hate for anyone else to have an opinion about anything.

"Lights Out in Tehran"

McCain Starts bombing run

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Senator John McCain is on track for another rhetorical bombing run. In Munich, he's been squaring up to Iran, gravely telling the allies that the military option can't be ruled out if diplomatic efforts fail to stop Iran developing a nuclear bomb: "Immediate UN Security Council action is required to impose multilateral sanctions, including a prohibition on investment, a travel ban, and asset freezes for government leaders and nuclear scientists."

"Every option must remain on the table," McCain said. "There's only one thing worse than military action, that is a nuclear armed Iran."

The senior senator for Arizona is, thus far, sparing the Iranians his riper bouts of pugilism, as when he bellowed for "lights out in Belgrade" and for NATO to "cream" the Serbs back at the close of the Nineties.

Perhaps Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has reminded McCain forcefully that McCain could be writing condolence letters to a lot more war widows in his home state if the Iranians want to remind Washington that it holds some high cards of its own. As Andrew Cockburn wrote here last week, in his piece "Bush's 130,000 Hostages". Iran recently hosted Moqtada al Sadr for a high profile visit, in the course of which he obligingly pledged that his militia, the Mahdi army, would retaliate for any American attack on Iran. His spokesman quoted him as telling his hosts "If any Islamic state, especially the Islamic Republic of Iran, is attacked, the Mahdi Army would fight inside and outside Iraq."

"This warning should be taken seriously, " Andrew wrote. "The Jaish al Mahdi, al Sadr's militia, has emerged as a formidable force since its formation in 2003. Fifteen months ago, in November 2004, when it was less well trained and equipped than today, this army held off a determined assault by US Marines for three weeks in Najaf."

Not long ago a top Republican from Illinois was confiding to a Democratic lobbyist in DC that that "the fix is in for McCain to be the nominee", but, as close scrutiny of his demeanor on tv confirms, there a questions about McCain's health. His face and mouth-movements suggest a stroke at some point in the recent past. In Washington, some speak of a cancer scare.

The pundits love McCain because of his grandstanding on soft money's baneful role in politics, thus garnering for himself a reputation for willingness to court the enmity of his colleagues.

In fact colleagues in the Senate regard McCain as a mere grandstander, as during the State of the Union last Tuesday when he clapped and wagged his head vigorously as Bush hailed Congress for working on earmark reform, because the federal budget has too many special interest projects."

What Chavez Gave Morales

Bright spot. Frank Bardacke tells me he read in his local paper down in Watsonville that at Evo Morales' investiture as president of Bolivia, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela gave him a portrait of Simon Bolivar made out of coca leaves. Folk art at its finest. Maybe Bush could still upstage Chavez by sending Morales a conceptual piece, in the form of a mirror, titled "Portrait of Bolivar (Before I Sneezed)".

 

Bush Blows Centaur Vote

Back at the start of the 1970s President Nixon made a determined bid to split his liberal opposition. His strategy was to present himself as an environmentalist, a friend of Mother Earth. He celebrated Earth Day, founded the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 and signed the Endangered Species Act in 1973. and in so doing proved himself a greener president than any since. Politically it didn't help him, at least in the short term. Watergate soon overwhelmed him, and the environmental movement displayed no appetite to defend their crusader.

Listening to Bush on Tuesday night, I wondered whether he was trying to play the same game. How many Greens today dreamed they would hear George Bush call for more investment in " revolutionary solar and wind technologies" , let alone "cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn but from wood chips, stalks, or switch grass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years".

Of course Bush has zero credibility on such issues, as Ralph Nader points out this weekend, here on this site. In his speech Bush also called for money to go into "zero emission" coal plants and into "clean, safe nuclear energy".

Bush's substantive policy proposals were a forlorn parade of ghosts: "energy independence", a souvenir of the Carter era of the 1970s, when Carter made a oint of wearing a sweater and the White House first ran, at least in part, on solar power. Ronald Reagan made it his first order of business, after taking up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 1981, to tear the solar panels down and ship them off to Unity College in Maine, where they're apparently still working, heating the cafeteria.

Bush has a solar set-up at his place in Crawford, and in his first term, without much fanfare, the National Park Service supervised the installation of a grid of 167 solar panels on the roof of a maintenance shed to deliver electricity to the White House landscape lighting and watering systems. Another solar installation has been helping to provide hot water. A third has been heating the water in the presidential pool.

Three or four years ago, in Santa Monica, I met the man who installed that solar system atop the Carter White House, though I forget his name. He was still angry. "It was Reagan's first act," he said, gnashing his teeth.

Bush's call to reduce US "dependence" on Middle Eastern oil by 75 per cent by 2025 has zero credibility.

His other proposals were equally remote from political reality, and sometimes comical. At one point he declared in ringing tones that "Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research--human cloning in all its forms ... creating or implanting embryos for experiments ... creating human-animal hybrids .."

"He just blew the centaur vote," I muttered to my dog Jasper, imagining the inevitable reaction from the president of the Chiron Society, deploring in hoarse terms an American president "pandering to the old Lapith-sponsored slurs on the centaur community."

I waited for the post-speech commentators to pick up on the human-animal hybrid ban, almost the only feature of interest in the entire speech, but they passed it by. Jay Leno finally picked up on the animal-human hybrid on Thursday night. He ran the relevant clip from the speech, (where Bush had muffed the phrase, saying huma...uh...animal-human hybrids), then cut to the Congressional audience, where they'd put a dog's head on some woman member and had the dog growl.

It seems that what Bush's "human-animal hybrids" ban actually referred to is low-level Frankenstein-lab stuff like injecting human DNA into pig's livers to make them more hospitable to transplants, not centaurs and the like. But I'm sure human-hippopotami are being plate-tested in the labs of General Foods, to ensure continued and profitable voracity in an American market were humans are at max capacity in bloating both themselves and the food industry's bottom line.

Hybrid cars, running on gasoline or electricity, are all the rage these days among the virtuous set, even though there are probably no end savings in terms of total energy inputs into manufacture, also in servicing and replacing those $4,000 batteries. A friend told me the other day that the net gain in efficiency--not relating to top speed or comfort -- of autos since the Model T is under ten per cent. A man in Chico rebuilds Model T engines and gets terrific efficiency out of those old four-cylinder engines.

Arc in Mystery Trip

The bulk of the president's speech was a series of defiant and sometimes incoherent raptures about the great tasks of American Empire. "Sometimes," Bush proclaimed, "it can seem that history is turning in a wide arc, toward an unknown shore". What did this arc portend? The answer came in a reprise of John Kennedy's famous call in 1961 for America "to shoulder any burden" in the cause of freedom. "Once again," cried Bush, " we accept the call of history to deliver the oppressed, and move this world toward peace."

In substantive terms this means the war in Iraq which at least 60 per cent of the American people would like to see their troops quit in the near future. In rhetorical terms it meant fierce presidential invective against the government of Iran and the Hamas party in Palestine, both of them denounced by Bush as undemocratic even though their electoral credentials are stronger than his.

Rhetorical artifice prompted Bush to acknowledge the presence in the gallery, right behind the First Lady, of the parents and widow of Marine Staff Sergeant Dan Clay killed last month in Fallujah. The reality is that Bush's ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, is now deep in friendly negotiations with the leadership of the very Sunni insurgents who probably killed Sergeant Clay.

It was thus throughout the speech. Rhetoric and reality in America have drifted further apart than ever, and the people know it. Bush talked about a jobs boom in the US. The people know that Ford and GM between them are laying off 60,000 workers. They know that in Chicago 15,000 people lined up when Wal-Mart advertised 325 jobs. In Bush's six years in the White House America has lost about 16 per cent of its manufacturing jobs. The present jobs "boom" is mostly for waitresses and bartenders.

"We move forward--optimistic about our country, faithful to its cause, and confident of victories to come." That was the presidential rhetoric. The reality is that most Americans are depressed and pessimistic. Tax season is on us, and the rain here in the Pacific Northwest isn't helping either.

LINK

 

GW Bush should be made to apologize for using the words of JFK, which inspired a generation, in such a cynical fashion.

TIME.com: Bushites twisting science

Posted Sunday, Feb. 05, 2006

The 3 1/2-hr. conference call brought together nearly two dozen of the nation's best minds on the subject of air quality--and many of them were steamed. As the scientists of the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, they are rarely overruled on their recommendations about how the government should react to the latest and best research on the dangers of dirty air. Seven months ago, they warned the EPA in a letter that unless it made at least modest reductions in the amount of airborne soot, thousands of Americans would die prematurely each year. But last December, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, citing "the best available science," ignored their counsel. On the phone call last week, an exasperated Dr. James Crapo, professor of medicine at Denver's National Jewish Medical and Research Center, told his fellow scientists, "We need to write another letter and this time take a stronger stand."

Starting when he was a presidential candidate in 2000, George W. Bush has often assured voters that his policymaking would be guided by "sound science." Last week, in his State of the Union address, the President pointed to scientific research as the way to "lead the world in opportunity and innovation for decades to come." Yet growing numbers of researchers, both in and out of government, say their findings--on pollution, climate change, reproductive health, stem-cell research and other areas in which science often finds itself at odds with religious, ideological or corporate interests--are being discounted, distorted or quashed by Bush Administration appointees.

White House officials don't see that pattern of interference. "This Administration has been very supportive of science," Bush's science adviser and respected physicist John Marburger told TIME. "The President wants us to do it right, and doesn't want us to do things that contradict the laws of nature." But in the past two years, the Union of Concerned Scientists has collected the signatures of more than 8,000 scientists--including 49 Nobel laureates, 63 National Medal of Science recipients and 171 members of the National Academies--who accuse the Administration of an unprecedented level of political intrusion into their world. "There have always been isolated incidents where people have played politics with science," says Francesca Grifo, director of the group's Scientific Integrity Program. "What's new is its pervasive and systemic nature. We get calls every week from federal scientists reporting stuff to us."

Rarely, however, are they willing to put their jobs and their research grants at risk by going public with their complaints. That's why it was so remarkable when one of the government's leading experts on climate change, 29-year NASA veteran James Hansen, who is director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, charged on the front page of the New York Times that he has been muzzled by the agency. He accused the agency of demanding to review his lectures, papers and postings to the NASA website, as well as screen his media interviews.

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The State of the Union's Mystery Suspect

T-shirts, it turns out, aren't the only things that get you in trouble with the Capitol Police at the State of the Union address. Much has already been made of the fact that both anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan and Beverly Young, the wife of Republican Congressman Bill Young, were ejected from the speech for wearing shirts with political messages; in Sheehan's case, her t-shirt read "2,245 dead. How many more?", while Young was sporting a sweat shirt with the words, "Support the Troops-Defending Our Freedom." Both have denounced their treatment-and both have received apologies from the police.

      But on the same evening that President Bush was lauding democracy and freedom, there was one other person in attendance whose rights were infringed upon. The man, who did not want his identity revealed after the disturbing incident, was a personal guest of Florida Democrat Alcee Hastings. He is a prominent businessman from Broward County, Florida who works with the Department of Defense-and has a security clearance. After sitting in the gallery for the entire speech, he was surrounded by about ten law enforcement officers as he exited the chamber and whisked away to a room in the Capitol.

      For close to an hour the man, who was born in India but is an American citizen, was questioned by the Police, who thought he resembled someone on a Secret Service photo watch list, according to Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer. Eventually, the police realized it was a case of mistaken identity and let him go. Gainer has assured Hastings that the Capitol Police, Secret Service and FBI will investigate why the man was detained for so long, and try to "sharpen our procedures." But the man was "very, very scared" by the incident, says Fred Turner, a spokesperson for Hastings.  On Tuesday night, he told the congressman that the experience was "maybe just the price of being brown in America," Turner says.

      "He shouldn't have gone through the ringer as long as he did," Gainer says. "He did get caught up in the morass of Secret Service FBI, Capitol Police. Everybody was trying to figure out whether he was a threat. And he absolutely, unequivocally clearly was not." Gainer apologized to the man afterwards, only one of the many apologies he has had to make this week. He met with Congressman Young at least twice, as well as with Young's wife. "There is no prohibition against simply wearing a T-shirt that states your particular cause," Gainer stresses, taking full accountability for not providing clearer direction to his officers.

      Gainer says he will work with the House Sergeant at Arms to clarify the rules of the House of Representatives, and to ensure that officers have a better understanding of what constitutes a protest and demonstration. Before he finalizes the new rules, Gainer has asked his staff to look into previous arrests and ejections in the gallery to see what he can learn.  One of the first protests at a State of the Union speech occurred in 1916, when President Woodrow Wilson was speaking and a group of suffragettes sitting in the gallery unfurled a large yellow banner with the words, "Mr. President, what will you do for woman suffrage?" The Capitol Police prepared to arrest the women, but the chief doorkeeper ordered them to leave them alone. An assistant doorkeeper on the floor, however, did manage to pull the banner down. Compared to what happened at this week's speech, that almost seems civilized.

LINK

Britain defies US with funding to boost safe abortion services

Attempt to replace lost dollars after 'global gag'
· 70,000 died last year in backstreet operations

Sarah Boseley
Monday February 6, 2006
The Guardian

The British government will today publicly defy the United States by giving money for safe abortion services in developing countries to organisations that have been cut off from American funding.

Nearly 70,000 women and girls died last year because they went to back-street abortionists. Hundreds of thousands of others suffered serious injuries.

Critics of America's aid policy say some might have lived if the US had not withdrawn funding from clinics that provide safe services - or that simply tell women where to find them.

Good on the Brits; Read On

Fitz is back in the news, such as the news is, these days.

Ding-dong Norah O'Donnell (she can write?) was ever so helpful on this front this morning:

Fitzgerald's letter was responding to a request from Libby's lawyers for additional documents, e-mails and other correspondence the Libby team says is essential to mount a defense. Lawyers for Libby this week accused prosecutors of withholding evidence the defense team has sought.

But if one actually bothered to read Libby's Motion to Compel Discovery of Information Regarding News Reporters and Organizations (and here we feel adequately justified in jumping to the conclusion that this is beyond Norah's abilities), it is abundantly clear that Libby's request for documents relies on a complete misstatement of what Libby is actually charged with:

This motion concerns the defense's request for production of documents and information regarding three important issues in this case: what did the press know prior to June 14, 2003 about whether Valerie Plame Wilson worked at the CIA, from whom did they learn it, and with whom did they discuss it. This information is important for a number of reasons. Most significantly, it relates directly to the truth or falsity of two alleged false statements by Mr. Libby: (1) that Mr. Russert said "all the reporters knew" about Ms. Wilson's employment status; and (2) that Mr. Libby "had heard that other reporters were saying that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA."

Is this all they've got? If so Scooter is the one in the bear cage and Fitzgerald is the one with the stick. Scooter is not charged with lying to Tim Russert, he's charged with lying to the FBI and the grand jury about what was said during his conversation with Russert. Fitzgerald never took issue with the substantive truth of what Russert and Libby did or did not say to each other, only that Libby's account of the conversation was different than Russert's. And the evidence supports Russert's version.

Libby's lawyers claim:

 

Read On

Bush' latest venture, "Spies-R--Us" appears to be a bust

Unless, of course, Al Qaeda is not the intended target of the wiretaps.

Who does Karl Rove hate? Democrats, whom he blames for the downfall of his hero, tricky Dick. He probably hates old hippies and Vietnam Vets with long hair as well, but he has no time for them, really. At least, not yet...that we know of.

 

Who does Cheney hate? Democrats, Libruls and Journalists who are not on the White House payroll.

 

Who does the entire Bushite clan hate with a pathological furor; the press and, I would bet, the American people in general because we ousted Poppy for that obvious adulterer, Bill Clinton in '92.

 

Who does Bush try to ignore right out of existence; other than Kim Il whatever and that nutcase in Iran? Protesters, dissenters of all kinds. Whistle-blowers, when they are not whistling his tune. If they cannot be ignored, they are verbally and psychologically pummeled by the Rovian Smear Machine.

 

I would be willing to bet my next paycheck that every elected official and news media type in Washington are wondering what the president (Cheney, whoever) knows about them, and when he knew it?

 

I can remember when the people in Washington felt the same way about old J. Edgar.

NSA's Hunt for Terrorists Scrutinizes Thousands of Americans, but Most Are Later Cleared

By Barton Gellman, Dafna Linzer and Carol D. Leonnig

Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 5, 2006; Page A01

Intelligence officers who eavesdropped on thousands of Americans in overseas calls under authority from President Bush have dismissed nearly all of them as potential suspects after hearing nothing pertinent to a terrorist threat, according to accounts from current and former government officials and private-sector sources with knowledge of the technologies in use.

Bush has recently described the warrant-less operation as "terrorist surveillance" and summed it up by declaring that "if you're talking to a member of al Qaeda, we want to know why." But officials conversant with the program said a far more common question for eavesdroppers is whether, not why, a terrorist plotter is on either end of the call. The answer, they said, is usually no.

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Can the President Order a Killing on U.S. Soil?

 

Newsweek has a very interesting exclusive; all about whether or not Bush can now murder people, or have it done. In other words can he order up a hit, on someone he deems to be Al Qaeda.

 

Now, see? There is that word again. Al Qaeda. There is also the word, "terrorist."

 

I, for one, would like for Mr. Bush to enlighten us as to just what would cause him to consider someone Al Qaeda and/or a terrorist.

 

There is another word that makes me even more curious, since it gets bandied about regularly; "terrorist supporter." Presumably this would be someone who gives material support, shelter or otherwise, knowingly, helps a person blow up something or in some other way attack the U.S. or its interests. In other words, giving aid and comfort to the enemy, whoever the hell that is from day to day.

 

All kinds of people have been told, at one time or another, that they are giving aid and comfort to "the enemy," or that they may  be. They have been told to watch what they say. Senators and Congressional Representatives of the people have been told, essentially, to shut up about the president's policies because if they disagree, somehow that makes bin Laden happy, or more able to blow us all to kingdom-come or some such silliness.

 

I think we need these terms more clearly defined before we allow George W Bush to start ordering hits on people.

 

This is a guy who, as a child, blew up frogs with firecrackers, cherry bombs or whatever, just for the fun of it.

 

This is a man, who as Gov. of Texas, barely had time to read a case before denying stays of execution. As a matter of fact, he had Alberto give him a summary.

 

He mocked Carla Faye Tucker, who admittedly committed a horrendous crime, but who had had some kind of very genuine spiritual awakening, so that even the wardens at the person asked that her life be spared. Gov. Bush mocked her.

 

This is a man who deliberately deceived this nation into war, with over-the-top fear-mongering and calls for vengeance.

 

This is a man who breaks the law whenever he feels like it.

 

We definitely need a more clear definition of what these terms mean in the twisted mind of George W Bush and his equally twisted little gang of lawbreakers.

 

Can President Bush order, at some point, that protesters be mowed down in the street or taken off and imprisoned because their dissent from Bush illegal policies gave Osama a giggle? 

 

 

Why Congress won't get through to the NSA.

Yep, this is exactly what we have been afraid of.

 

This White House learned one thing and one thing only from Watergate and Iran/Contra.

 

Stonewall, stonewall, stonewall; lie, lie and keep on lying. Never, ever do something so stupid as give the congress anything they ask for, especially if the request comes as part of any investigation.  

 

Eventually, everyone will be so tired of it all that they will simply tune it all out.

 

Why not?

 

Hell, it works. This is how they, essentially, got away with Iran/Contra. Oh, yes...there were convictions, but Poppy Bush pardoned everyone.

 

They intend to batten down the hatches and ride it all out, hoping against hope that the ADHD public and the ADD media will move on to more important things, like the next sexy, murder of a white woman/girl, whatever.

 

 

Why Congress won't get through to the NSA.

By Patrick Radden Keefe
Posted Thursday, Feb. 2, 2006, at 6:30 PM ET

Today's news that the Justice Department refuses to furnish the Senate judiciary committee with its internal documents on the legality of President Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program is the first sign that congressional efforts to investigate the National Security Agency program are likely to dead-end. Administration officials and intelligence officers will refuse to provide the committee with further information on the mechanics of the NSA operation, and they probably cannot be compelled to do so. There's only one way the committee could succeed in obtaining a clear picture of what the NSA was up to: subpoenaing the CEOs of major American telecommunications companies. But that's a step the senators are probably not bold enough to take.

The precedent for these inquiries—the judiciary committee begins hearings on Monday, and the intelligence committee also plans an investigation—is the famous Church Committee, which revealed Vietnam-era abuses by the NSA and CIA and set in motion a series of widespread intelligence reforms that changed the way spies did business. The Church Committee actually succeeded in gleaning volumes of useful information. It also acted as a muscular congressional check on an out-of-control executive branch. By contrast, next week's hearings look to be the historical opposite. Unlikely to emerge is any comprehensive understanding of what precisely the NSA's program involved—how targeted it was, what grounds determined who should be listened to, and how long authorization to listen to specific individuals could last. All these questions have major, possibly decisive, legal implications. Answering them would shed light on the efficacy of the warrantless eavesdropping and the privacy violations that may have resulted from it. In failing to elicit new information, Congress will merely underline its own status as a compromised body with little oversight of America's spies, and no ability whatsoever to check executive excess.

The Church Committee investigation originated much as the current inquiry has. But it was not so easily rebuffed. The committee got und erway after Seymour Hersh's front-page New York Times story in December 1974 outlined a widespread CIA program to spy on civilian anti-war protesters during the Nixon years. The House and Senate each established investigative committees. The Senate's was led by Frank Church, D-Idaho, who intended to run for president the following year and embraced the national exposure and prestige of leading the charge. Before weighing in on the legality of the operations, the committee wisely sought to determine what precisely Nixon's intelligence agencies had done. Young congressional aides began knocking on doors around Washington, and in May 1975 the committee got a major break. It obtained a document known within the CIA as "the family jewels"—a ledger compiled by then CIA Director William Colby of all the legally questionable activities conducted by U.S. intelligence in recent years. It was quite a list: wiretapping journalists, administering LSD to a CIA scientist who later killed himself, attempting to assassinate Castro and other foreign leaders. It ran to 700 pages.

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