Meet the U.S.

[Stormig]

OK, I know I shouldn't pick on Bush alone, but...

 

W's Reality Gap

 

By Mark Green, AlterNet

February 20, 2004

 

George W. Bush is different, very different. Other presidents have misled, deceived, even lied. When Ike was asked his worst mistake, he candidly said, "The lie we told [about the U-2]." LBJ and the Gulf of Tonkin were examples of both deception and self-deception.

 

 

The problem today is not simply that "Bush is a liar." While only he knows whether he's intentionally saying untrue things, it is a provable fact that he says untrue things, again and again, on issues large and small, day in and day out. The problem is not "16 words" in last year's State of the Union but 160,000 words on stem cells, global warming, the "death tax," the Iraq-9/11 connection and the Saddam-al Qaeda connection, the rise of deficits, cuts to Americorps, the air in downtown Manhattan after 9/11. On and on. It is beyond controversy that W "has such a high regard for the truth," as Lincoln said of a rival, "that he uses it sparingly."

 

 

Why this penchant for falsehoods?

 

 

First, George W. Bush begins any policy consideration with three fundamental questions: What does the religious right want? What does big business want? What do the neo-conservatives want? If he has stood up to any of these core supporters in the past three years, examples don't come readily to mind. Convinced by political advisor Karl Rove that the way to a second term is to "activate the base," his policy process is more catechismic than empiric – instead of facts leading to conclusions, conclusions lead to "facts."

 

 

Second, he is openly uninterested in learning and reading – the Bushes "aren't serious, studious readers" he has said, also admitting that he now reads headlines, not articles. The point is not that he's stupid, only that he knew less about policy and the world as a presidential candidate than the average graduate student in government. Lacking Eisenhower's worldliness or JFK's intellect, however, Bush is prone to grab onto a politically useful intellectual framework like a life preserver and then not let go – whether it's Myron Magnet's sour interpretation of the 60s in "The Dream and the Nightmare" or Paul Wolfowitz's Pollyannaish analysis of the likely consequences of an American invasion of Iraq.

 

 

The result: the most radical, messianic and misleading presidency of modern times. Frankly, no one else comes close. It has gotten to the point that President Bush appears to believe that he can do almost anything if he says the opposite: hence "no child left behind," "clean skies law," "healthy forests," and "love the poor" are mantras repeated in the hope that he can bend reality to his will. Arthur Miller calls it "the power of audacity."

 

 

Bush himself in the past has aptly called the first Tuesday in November "Reality Day" because talk ends when there's a real result. So what happens on presidential "reality days" when the results are the opposite of his wishful assertions – when we find neither WMD nor cheering crowds in Iraq, when a surplus of $5 trillion becomes a deficit of $4 trillion, when there are so few stem cell lines for scientific research that scientists leave for London, when the ice caps melt due to global warming, when a Supreme Court of largely Republican appointees rules that affirmative action is not "quotas" but desirable – and when the populations of even our allies regard us as a "bungling bully" (in the phrase of the Financial Times).

 

 

When Presidents Reagan and Bush 41 were shown how their pie-in-the-sky economics were producing ruinous deficits, they enacted tax hikes to begin to correct the economy. Not Bush 43. Hearing only applause as he shuttles between his financial base to military bases – W retreats into messianic incompetence. "We don't second guess out of the White House," he announces, confusing stubbornness for strength; and he tells the G-8 leaders in 2001, "Look, I know what I believe and what I believe is right."

 

 

Whenever President Bush is now confronted with an unacceptable reality, he either changes the subject – is steroid use really more important than the environment? – or expresses confidence in his certainty. "I'm absolutely confident that..." he'll say, as if the issue is his determination rather than his conclusion. One is reminded of Igor in Young Frankenstein, who when asked about the foot-high hump on his back blithely answers, "What hump?"

 

 

This is not just a credibility gap but a reality gap. An empirically challenged and uninformed leader in denial and governing on a (right) wing and a prayer, however, is a big problem. What if Bush were president during the missiles of October – would he have been able to avoid a nuclear war? That he squandered a quarter trillion dollars and 4,000 American casualties attacking Iraq because al Qaeda in Afghanistan attacked us is not encouraging.

 

 

Just when they're needed, the usual mechanisms to bring a president to his senses are badly malfunctioning. A Congress of the same party now almost never holds adversarial hearings or holds him accountable, unlike how the Republican Congress treated Clinton. And with noteworthy exceptions, most of the media essentially gave him a pass on his eyebrow-raising military and business histories. The early and continuing storyline was that he was a charming guy who made up funny names for reporters and was no pompous prevaricator like his 2000 opponent. It was strange that, until the Niger-uranium fabrication, the media wrote far more about the spectacular deceptions of Jayson Blair than the more consequential deceptions of George W. Bush.

 

 

Of course, adding to his immunity is the understandable impulse to rally around a president during a crisis – a crisis the president regularly stokes as in his recent "State of Baghdad address" to the Congress. Or as commentator E.J. Dionne put it, W's slogan might as well be "the only thing we have to fear is the loss of fear itself."

 

 

So it comes down to November 2. If the public rewards W with a second term – and with no re-election contest to impose any possible moderating influence – then W's far-right impulses will be vindicated and corroborated. On that "reality day," which will prevail – Bush's certainty or our reality?

 

 

Mark Green, president of the New Democracy Project, is the author, with Eric Alterman, of The Book On Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America (Viking 2004).

[Stormig]

What Bush Did Wrong during the War

by Sheldon Richman, February 23, 2004

 

 

The brouhaha over what President Bush did or didn’t do in Alabama during the war in Vietnam misses the point. Even if he put in all the time required by the Air National Guard, the real question, which nearly everyone evades, is: what obligation did a young man have with respect to that war?

 

Every “respectable” politician must say (if he is to remain “respectable”) that when one’s country calls one to war, one goes. In 1968 men were being drafted and sent 10,000 miles from home to shoot Vietnamese, so it was said, to save Vietnam from communism. But there were legal ways to avoid the draft. You could go to college. After that you could go to graduate school. (That eventually became a less-sure out.)

 

Or you could join the National Guard. This is not a slur on the Guard. Its units are being sent to war today — regrettably. But during the Vietnam war, this was not so. Everyone my age (54) knew in the late 1960s that if you got into the Guard, you would not be sent to Vietnam. That’s why people joined — or tried to join. Not everyone could get in. You needed connections. A Bush in Texas, needless to say, had connections.

 

President Bush said he supported the war in Vietnam, although he thinks it was a mistake to let the politicians run it. (Reality check: Wars are waged by governments. Therefore, all wars are political, as Clausewitz taught us.) He supported it, but he opted out of volunteering to go even when he joined the Guard. Why? I suppose his reason was something like Vice President Cheney’s reason for taking student deferments from the draft: he had “other priorities.”

 

That’s okay, but I imagine all the other draftees did too. (As a potential draftee, I certainly did; luckily I was medically deferred.) What they didn’t have were connections or academic credentials. Too bad for them. Colin Powell, a Vietnam vet and now secretary of state, used to resent it that privileged kids were able to avoid Vietnam. He doesn’t talk that way now.

 

In my view, the problem back then was not that the rich and well-connected could get out of what is preciously called “service.” The problem was that the unrich and unconnected couldn’t. In other words, the problem (or one of them) was the draft. By any reasonable definition, the draft is slavery. It may be for only two years (if the draftee survives), but it is slavery nonetheless.

 

What about this alleged obligation to fight when your “country calls”? I have news for you: countries don’t call. Governments do. No wait; that’s still too abstract, too elevated. During the Vietnam war, it was Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon who were calling. Two corrupt political men were sending kids to kill and die in a jungle they’d never have gone to otherwise. (We shouldn’t let the pro-war members of Congress off the hook either. They could have stopped it.) If we’re going to de-romanticize war, we can start by getting clear about who does the calling.

 

Now we have a different question. Was a young man morally obligated to obey Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon when ordered off to war? I can’t see where this obligation would come from. Back then an 18-year-old couldn’t even vote. But even if he could, why would that impose an obligation to abandon his life on command?

 

The upshot is that no one should be faulted today for having avoided Vietnam, however he accomplished it. (Yes, that includes Bill Clinton.) Any society dedicated to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, if it is to have any integrity, must acknowledge that the draft was criminal and that avoidance was justified.

 

President Bush’s flaw lies not in having avoided Vietnam. It lies in his not saying forthrightly that he should not have had to face that necessity — and that no American should ever have to face such a necessity in the future.

 

Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation, author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of The Freeman magazine. Send him email.

[Stormig]

Indeed hope they face more than embarrassment...

 

 

 

WAR AND CRIME

February 5, 2004

 

by Joe Sobran

 

"It took us ten months to find Saddam Hussein,"

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed

Services Committee. "The reality is that the hole he was

found hiding in was large enough to hold enough

biological weapons to kill thousands of human beings."

 

Yes, and so is my basement, if it comes to that. So

until we've found and searched every last cavity in Iraq,

the "preemptive" war must be assumed to be justified?

 

"What we have learned so far has not proven Saddam

Hussein had what intelligence indicated and what we

believed he had," Rumsfeld added, "but it has also not

proven the opposite."

 

And what would Rumsfeld accept as proving the

opposite? We are left to wonder. He is setting up the

administration's case so that it's pretty well

unfalsifiable. It's an old trick.

 

CIA director George Tenet likewise says that

intelligence is rarely 100 per cent right or 100 per cent

wrong. All right, but the CIA has made some notable

goofs: it failed to predict the Iranian Revolution, which

toppled the shah, and it was still grossly overrating the

economic and military strength of the Soviet Union when

Communism collapsed. Yet these people, like astrologers,

keep expecting the public to take them seriously, no

matter how many blunders they commit.

 

The great Irish satirist Jonathan Swift once exposed

an astrologer by prophesying his death on a certain date.

When the date passed and the astrologer protested that he

was still alive, Swift, refusing to take his word for it,

puckishly accused his survivors of perpetrating a hoax.

The public roared with laughter.

 

That's one way to deal with a fraud. So how do we

deal with the Bush administration, whose "war on terror"

has descended to quibbles about where Saddam Hussein has

stuffed away his mythical arsenal? Rush Limbaugh,

George W. Bush's own dittohead, still parrots the

official line and says only "liberals" can doubt it. He's

out of touch. Plenty of us nonliberals don't believe it

either.

 

In fact, many of the neoconservative war nerds who

demanded military action against Iraq, Iran, Syria, and

other "rogue nations" (some were licking their chops at

the prospect of "World War IV") were griping that the CIA

was full of mushy libs who rejected clear evidence of

Saddam's world-class arsenal. Today they insist that arms

inspector David Kay's conclusion that that arsenal was

nonexistent somehow vindicates the case for the war!

One's head spins.

 

It wasn't the CIA that was pushing for war. The Bush

crowd and the neocons had hungered for it long before the

9/11 attacks gave them an excuse and a receptive public.

Bush cited the phantom arsenal as the urgent reason for

war, and he wasn't tentative about it; he never suggested

that his intelligence was less than 100 per cent certain.

On the contrary, he maintained that there was no doubt at

all.

 

Now that everyone but the dittoheads knows better,

even Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell have toned

down their hysterical claims about the arsenal, without

admitting that the whole war was misconceived. After all,

their jobs and reputations are at stake.

 

Not that they face any severe penalty for deceiving

the public and waging aggressive war. One little irony of

the drama is that Saddam is the only one facing a

Nuremberg-style trial, when he's the only one who may

have been telling the truth about those "weapons of mass

destruction."

 

For once the modus operandi of the modern state has

been starkly exposed. The Iraq war may join Vietnam and

Watergate in the liberal litany of government corruption.

In a way that would be a pity, because the recitation of

"Vietnam and Watergate" has, for a generation, invited us

to suppose that these were abnormal occurrences, when

they are quite typical, except that the machinations of

the perpetrators were eventually found out and put in

plain view.

 

It's naive to assume that the crimes that are

detected are the only ones committed. The lawless modern

state is a gigantic criminal operation, and any private

firm that was found to be running like the state would be

not only driven out of business, but prosecuted on many

counts. Bush & Co. should be grateful that they face

nothing worse than political embarrassment for their

crimes.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Read this column on-line at

"http://www.sobran.com/columns/2004/040205.shtml".

 

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Syndicate, www.griffnews.com. This column may not

be published in print or Internet publications

without express permission of Griffin Internet

Syndicate. You may forward it to interested

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[Stormig]

Where are Iraq's Pentagon papers?

By Daniel Ellsberg, 2/22/2004

 

AS MORE and more of our young men and women come home from Iraq crippled or in body bags this election season, Americans ask, with increasing urgency, "Why did we send our children to die in Iraq? Was this war necessary?" Indeed, Tim Russert asked the president precisely that on "Meet the Press" a few weeks ago: "In light of not finding the weapons of mass destruction, do you believe the war in Iraq is a war of choice or a war of necessity?"

 

President Bush replied "It's a war of necessity. . . . the man was a threat. . . . the evidence we have uncovered so far says we had no choice."

 

To the contrary. The evidence uncovered so far says that Saddam was not a threat, to us or his neighbors. Nor -- lacking any evidence of complicity in 9/11 or links to Al Qaeda -- was there a persuasive case that he would have been a significant threat even if he had possessed WMDs.

 

In order to bolster their arguments and gain congressional, public, and international support, high officials chose to conceal the fact that their belief in the existence of Iraqi WMDs was entirely inferential, reflecting flimsy evidence and testimony from sources whose reliability was highly controversial. This actual state of inadequate information, well known to the US and British intelligence community, was deliberately denied by the highest officials in repeated phrases such as, "we know . . . ," "bulletproof evidence," "beyond any doubt," "Saddam possesses. . . ," "British intelligence has learned," and "these are not assertions, these are facts." The euphemism for such descriptions of the strength of evidence favoring the need to go to war is "exaggeration." A more accurate term is "lies."

 

I've been here before. On my first full-time day of work as a high-level staff aide in the Pentagon, Aug. 4, 1964, I heard President Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara explain our first bombing raids against North Vietnam as a response to "unequivocal evidence" of an "unprovoked" attack on our destroyers "on routine patrol" in the Tonkin Gulf. Already that night I knew, along with many other Pentagon insiders, that each of these statements was a lie.

 

"Unequivocal"? I had personally read, 10 hours before our bombers were launched, a "Flash" cable from Captain Herrick, commanding the destroyers, which put in doubt all of his cables that had crossed my desk earlier that day reporting up to 21 torpedoes fired at his ships. Attributing the prior reports to "freak weather effects and an overeager sonarman," Herrick recommended that no further action be taken till there had been complete evaluation, including daylight reconnaissance.

 

Congress was given no hint of this recommendation (which his superiors ignored) or the uncertainties emphasized by Herrick, in the top secret testimony it received from McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk before it passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution three days later with only two dissenting votes. In hearings in February 1968, Senator J. William Fulbright said that if he had known of the Herrick cable alone, he would not have managed the Senate passage of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, "a great disservice to the Senate" which he regretted "more than anything I have ever done in my life."

 

He hadn't known of that cable because I, among many others, didn't tell him. I didn't dream of doing such a thing at the time; and if the thought had occurred to me, I'm sure I would have rejected it. Now I wish fervently that I had made those cables -- along with the rest of the contents of my safe in August 1964, demonstrating the equal falsity of the other statements about "unprovoked" attacks, "routine patrols," and "we seek no wider war" -- available to Congress and the electorate that same autumn, before the bombs had started falling. When I finally did so belatedly in 1971, former Senator Wayne Morse, who had cast one of the two dissenting votes in 1964, told me that if I had given him those documents at that time, "The Tonkin Gulf Resolution would never have gotten out of committee. And if it had been brought to a vote, it would never have passed." That's a heavy burden to bear.

 

However, just as Senators Byrd and Kennedy, the only two remaining in the Senate who voted for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, learned from an error they have regretted for almost 40 years and tried to warn their current colleagues against repeating it last fall, so can insiders such as I once was do better than I did then. Individuals inside government, from low-level clerks to Cabinet members, have the power -- to be sure, at the risk of their careers -- to tell the truth. There are surely drawers full of documents in Washington right now -- the Pentagon Papers of Iraq -- that, if leaked in bulk, would drastically alter the public discourse on whether we should have sent our children to kill and to die in Iraq, and more urgently, whether we should continue to do so.

 

I urge patriotic and conscientious Americans who have access to these documents, and who know it is wrong for their bosses to lie to the public about why we are in this war, to consider doing what I wish I had done in 1964 or early 1965, years earlier than I did: Go to Congress and the press; tell the truth, with documents. The personal risks are real, but a war's worth of lives are at stake.

 

Daniel Ellsberg is the author of "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers."

[Stormig]

Every Breath You Take

 

By Craig Aaron | 2.19.04 print | email | comment

 

 

 

 

 

On June 2, 1919, a bomber blew himself up on Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s doorstep. Neither the attacker nor his co-conspirators, who set off bombs in seven other cities that same hour, were identified. But after police found anarchist literature in the rubble, the Justice Department launched a massive roundup of foreign radicals.

 

The Palmer Raids—named after the attorney general but coordinated by a young bureaucrat named J. Edgar Hoover—detained as many as 10,000 alleged anarchists and Communists over the next year. Doing away with warrants and any semblance of due process, the government deported hundreds of non-citizens for radical beliefs or associations with supposedly seditious groups. Defending these excesses, Palmer said that when you’re “trying to protect the community against moral rats you sometimes get to thinking more of your trap’s effectiveness than of its lawful construction.”

 

Gripped with fear—two mail bombs had exploded the previous April and another 16 were discovered at the post office addressed to Supreme Court justices and senators—most Americans didn’t object to measures promising to protect them from bomb-throwing foreigners. Two days after the biggest raids in January 1920, the Washington Post editorialized, “There is no time to waste on hairsplitting over infringement of liberty.”

 

Despite the hysteria, none of those swept up in the dragnet were tied to the terrorist attacks. But the Palmer Raids established what Georgetown law professor David Cole calls “leitmotifs in the history of political repression in modern America.” The targets, Cole observes in his book Enemy Aliens, were people who “might pose a potential future threat,” not those who actually had committed crimes. All of the detainees were foreign nationals who didn’t enjoy the same protections as U.S. citizens. Officials pursued these individuals via immigration rather than criminal proceedings—denying them a public trial, counsel and the presumption of innocence. And the pretext for deporting these “radicals” was nothing more than “guilt by association,” with no evidence of any violent or criminal acts.

 

Sound familiar? The Palmer Raids bear an uncanny resemblance to the tactics used by the Bush administration to round up Arab and Muslim men after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The plot is almost identical, with John Ashcroft playing the Palmer role. As the attorney general told the Senate in December 2001: “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve.”

 

Yet in times of national crisis, the gaze of the government inevitably turns not toward those guilty of carrying out terrible crimes, but to innocent outsiders: racial and ethnic minorities, the poor, political dissidents and immigrants. And like Palmer and Hoover before them, there’s every indication that Ashcroft and Bush too will find themselves on the wrong side of history.

 

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

 

In Enemy Aliens, Cole dismantles the arguments put forward by Ashcroft and others to justify the crackdown on non-citizens. In a scholarly but never somnolent treatise, he shows that the trade-off between the liberties of foreign nationals and citizens is an illusory double standard—which is not only counterproductive to national security, but morally wrong and constitutionally suspect. “What we do to foreign nationals today,” Cole writes, “often paves the way for what will be done to American citizens tomorrow.”

 

This point is especially distressful considering how foreign nationals—particularly those of Arab or Muslim descent—have been treated post-9/11. From the fingerprinting of foreign visitors to the indefinite incarcerations and unremitting interrogations of the Ashcroft Raids, the war on terrorism has been waged mostly via anti-immigrant measures.

 

Cole estimates that 5,000 foreign nationals have been detained in the Ashcroft Raids, yet not one has been charged with involvement in the attacks on the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. (Remember that alleged co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested before the attack.) This doctrine of preventive detention appears to be a total failure. The Justice Department still refuses to release the official number of detainees, let alone their names, leading Cole to wonder whether the real concern about secrecy “may have been not that Al Qaeda would find out what was going on, but that the American people would find out.”

 

Harassing entire populations through abusive roundups and forced registration programs is no way to prevent terrorism. “If authorities have reason to believe there might be potential terrorists lurking in Arab and Muslim immigrant communities,” Cole argues, “it would make sense to work with the millions of law-abiding members of those communities to obtain their assistance in identifying potential threats.”

 

Instead, the administration continues to defend its prerogative to detain foreign nationals without due process and to expel them solely on the basis of political speech or guilt by association. What’s more, the president insists on the unimpeded right to declare any person at any time to be an “enemy combatant,” revoking constitutional rights at will.

 

It’s just a matter of time before the government’s invasive powers are extended to the citizenry. Already, the Patriot Act requires any institution or business to turn over records on individuals deemed relevant to a terrorism investigation. Authorities also have frozen the assets of a number of large Muslim charities—without a hearing or allegations of criminal conduct—simply because of their association with groups on the government’s blacklist.

 

Cole seems optimistic that the courts will curtail the excesses of the Bush administration. A recent string of court decisions already has called into question key provisions of the Patriot Act. This spring, the Supreme Court will decide whether the hundreds of foreign nationals held at Guantanamo have a right to challenge their detention in court. The justices also will consider whether—as in the case of American-born Taliban fighter Yasser Hamdi—U.S. citizens can be declared “enemy combatants” and imprisoned indefinitely. The case of Jose Padilla—the alleged “dirty bomber” captured not in Afghanistan but at O’Hare airport—almost certainly will be added to the docket. One only hopes that Cole’s superb book somehow finds its way into the Supreme Court’s inner sanctum.

 

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

 

Where Cole considers the constitutional implications of the domestic war on terrorism, Christian Parenti is more concerned with the sociopolitical consequences of government control. In The Soft Cage, Parenti examines much of the same history as Cole, but he comes at the issue from a more theoretical and cultural perspective. Through this prism, “9/11 looks less like a seismic shift from freedom to tyranny and more like an aggressive and opportunistic acceleration of this country’s long, slow decline into the soft cage” of ubiquitous surveillance.

 

What made Parenti’s previous book, Lockdown America, stand out was its melding of radical political analysis with on-the-ground reporting. There’s less shoe-leather journalism in The Soft Cage. But armed with a journalist’s instincts and a well-thumbed copy of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, Parenti tracks the development of surveillance from the slave patrols to the modern digital revolution, in which “Americans have embraced their loss of privacy with patriotic vigor and pop-culture nonchalance.”

 

Parenti makes fine use of historical documents, digging up advertisements searching for runaway slaves and dusty ledgers filled with mug shots of Chinese immigrant “rogues.” He uncovers a pamphlet published in 1936 as part of an effort to fingerprint the entire population of Berkeley, California. In it, the Citizens Committee on Universal Registration in California declares, “Whoever so registers himself is proud of being identified with modern society and is willing to play the game according to the rules.”

 

The national drive for universal fingerprinting—started by (who else?) J. Edgar Hoover—was presented as a public safety issue. But Parenti argues its real purpose was controlling racial minorities, political dissidents and the poor. The claims that fingerprinting would reduce crime, prevent child kidnapping or help ID amnesia victims were implausible at best. The Berkeley police offered a more honest rationale: Fingerprinting would “bring about the identity of, and enable us to follow the movement and activities of, Communists, Anarchists and Radicals.”

 

Parenti seizes on Foucault’s notions of the “panopticon”—a circular prison dreamed up by the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, in which prisoners know they could always be watched and thus are forced to “internalize the gaze” of their captors. The panopticon is a metaphor for the modern state, the “perfect cage in which surveillance harnesses the captive to play the role of both ward and warden.” So it is that the state achieves much more power through surveillance than it ever could with brute force.

 

Following from Foucault, Parenti shows how technologies developed for different, even innocuous purposes expand to support a system of disciplinary control. As technology proliferated with the digital revolution, we gradually became more accepting of being under constant watch. Parenti explains: “The emerging architecture of the soft cage of total surveillance is perhaps most frightening because it is so mundane, decentralized and even convenient.”

 

Indeed, convenience is sold in exchange for personal information, tracking our taste preferences and travel plans. But along with credit cards, ATMs and automated tollbooths came “an unplanned, unexamined extension of state power and social discipline.” Those credit cards record purchases and movements. Most ATMs have surveillance cameras. “There are risks in social anonymity,” Parenti writes. “But the risks of omniscient and omnipotent state and corporate power are far worse.”

 

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

 

Parenti shows that the advance of surveillance technologies and the expansion of their reach can’t be separated from efforts to stifle dissent. The surveillance networks sprouting in major cities disproportionately target racial minorities; one recent study found blacks twice as likely as whites to be watched “for no obvious reason.” The closed-circuit cameras proliferating in schools, on street corners and outside government buildings are used by police to spy on political protesters. Today’s Pinkertons pack camcorders to intimidate striking workers. As Parenti notes, “surveillance has a politically chilling effect.”

 

Yet Parenti concludes that only “sustained protest” can establish limits on government and corporate surveillance. He discredits the idea that the innocent and law-abiding have nothing to worry about, arguing that privacy isn’t simply an individual “quality of life” issue. “The right to be let alone,” as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once defined it, is—or must become—a political issue as well.

 

There are a few hopeful signs that the public is beginning to recognize the fundamental threats to their inalienable rights. Popular outrage met John Poindexter’s data-mining schemes, thwarted efforts to institute a national ID card, and sunk Operation TIPS—which called on meter readers and letter carriers to spy on their neighbors. Dissenting voices have risen among librarians, conservatives like former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, and even Democrats, who started clapping during the State of the Union when Bush mentioned that “key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year.” Most remarkably the New York City Council recently joined dozens of other locales in repudiating the Patriot Act.

 

You can be sure John Ashcroft is closely monitoring these developments.

 

 

 

 

 

Craig Aaron writes a monthly column from Washington, where he is an investigative reporter for Public Citizen's Congress Watch and www.WhiteHouseForSale.org He is the former managing editor of In These Times and the editor of Appeal to Reason: 25 Years In These Times (Seven Stories Press). Now a senior editor of the magazine, his reporting, commentary and criticism also have appeared in The Progressive, TomPaine.com, The Memphis Flyer and other publications.

[Stormig]

Whoa!

 

 

 

 

Improve the CIA? Better to abolish it

 

Chalmers Johnson

Sunday, February 22, 2004

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Adm. Stansfield Turner, former director of central intelligence from 1977 to 1981, recommended in a New York Times op-ed earlier this month that U. S. intelligence operations could be improved by adding another layer of bureaucracy to what he admits is a flawed system of overlapping spy agencies, interagency rivalries and vested interests.

 

I have a better idea: Why don't we abolish the CIA and make public, as the Constitution requires, the billions spent by the intelligence agencies under the control of the Department of Defense so that Congress might have a fighting chance in doing oversight?

 

A few years ago, the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., suggested that we dismantle the agency that has so often produced catastrophically wrong national intelligence estimates. He was outraged by CIA calculations throughout the Reagan and elder Bush years that overstated the size of the Soviet economy by 50 percent and led our government into a weapons-spending spree that left us the world's largest debtor nation. According to President George W. Bush and his chief weapons inspector, David Kay, the agency has done it again, misleading the nation about the alleged menace posed by the ousted president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein.

 

Our intelligence apparatus has been flawed from the day it was created. Allegedly intended to prevent a surprise attack on our country comparable to the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor, the agency was supposed to be a central clearinghouse for intelligence collected by many different bodies throughout the government -- including the military services, the signals intercepts of the National Security Agency, counterespionage by the FBI, as well as its own efforts to recruit and run foreign agents.

 

But in fact, intelligence collecting and analysis would quickly become camouflage for a private secret army at the personal command of the president devoted to dirty tricks, covert overthrows of foreign governments and planting disinformation -- as well as efforts to counter similar operations by the Soviet Union.

 

According to an internal CIA history, the éminence grise of secret operations in the United States and founder of the CIA's predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, Maj. Gen. William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan "saw intelligence analysis as a convenient cover for subversive operations abroad." From our first covert overthrow of a foreign government, the ouster of the prime minister of Iran in 1953 in order to install the young shah Reza Pahlavi, the path to fame and success within the agency was in secret operations, not in writing intelligence estimates. That is certainly the pecking order I observed when I served as an outside consultant to the Office of National Estimates of the CIA from 1967 to 1973.

 

Since the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953, the CIA has engaged in similar disguised assaults on the governments of Guatemala (1954); the Congo (1960); Cuba (1961); Brazil (1964); Indonesia (1965); Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (1961-73); Greece (1967); Chile (1973); Afghanistan (1979 to the present); El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua (1980s); and Iraq (1991 to the present) -- to name only the most obvious cases. These operations have generated numerous terrorist attacks and other forms of retaliation -- what the CIA calls "blowback" -- against the United States by peoples on the receiving end. Because covert operations are secret from the people of the United States (if not their targets), when retaliation hits, as it did so spectacularly on Sept. 11, 2001, Americans do not have the information to put it into context or understand it.

 

As for the CIA's prewar intelligence on Iraq, the recently appointed commission of prestigious Americans to investigate its shortcomings is unlikely to be able to tell us anything we do not already know. Much of what now is clearly true could have been discovered by talking to experts perfectly willing to be on the public record or simply researched on the Internet. Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force colonel who taught for years at the National War College and who compiled a "net assessment" of how Iraq would look after a successful U.S. attack, predicted with devastating accuracy the chaos that ensued and did so on the basis of information freely available.

 

Who needs a CIA that so regularly underperforms in comparison to what is available on the open market? The high-security classifications of national intelligence estimates are not there to protect sources (no sources are ever mentioned in them), but to hide the incompetence and lack of serious effort that goes into producing them.

 

If Bush had appointed an investigative commission headed by Valerie Plame (the outed CIA wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson) and composed of such journalists as Seymour Hersh, Jim Fallows, Stephen Kinzer and Paul Krugman, its report would probably be worth reading. Short of that, I propose abolishing the agency and reducing our annual deficit by about $30 billion.

 

Chalmers Johnson is the author of "The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic" (Metropolitan, 2004) and "Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire" (Metropolitan, 2000).

[THOTH]

FYI

 

http://www.nrdc.org/news/newsDetails.asp?nID=1266

[ED]

Bush Administration Disowns Three Year-Old Agreement to Maintain Armenia, Azerbaijan Military Aid Parity

ASSISTANT SECRETARY ELIZABETH JONES DEFENDS 4 TO 1 MILITARY AID IMBALANCE IN FAVOR OF AZERBAIJAN; CLAIMS PARITY AGREEMENT NEVER EXISTED

 

WASHINGTON, DC--The Bush Administration, which, earlier this year proposed breaking its three-year old commitment to maintain parity in US military aid levels to Armenia and Azerbaijan, this week entirely disowned its agreement with Congress and the Armenian American community, claiming that such an arrangement has never existed, reported the Armenian National Committee Of America (ANCA).

 

The State Department outlined its new posture in response to questions directed to Secretary of State Colin Powell by Senator George Allen (R-VA) during a March 2 hearing of the Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Allen's question read, in part:

 

"As part of the 907 waiver, there was an agreement made between the Administration and Congress to continue ensuring military parity between Armenia and Azerbaijan. How does this budget request not undermine that understanding and not contradict the Administrations previously held position?"

 

Responding for Secretary Powell, Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Jones wrote:

 

"We do not have a policy that FMF funding levels for Armenia and Azerbaijan should be identical, but we are determined to ensure that our military assistance to these two countries does not alter the military balance between them. We are confident that increased FMF funding for Azerbaijan will not alter the military capability or offensive posture of Azerbaijan, nor will it perturb the military balance between it and Armenia in the Nagorno-Artsax conflict."

 

Assistant Secretary Jones' comments run contrary to the agreement to maintain equal military aid levels struck in late 2001 between the White House and Congress during negotiations over granting the President the authority to waive Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act. The agreement was shared with representatives of the Armenian American community during a February 21, 2002 meeting at the White House with National Security Council official Dan Fried and Presidential advisor Karl Rove.

 

In February of this year, as part of its FY 2005 budget, the Bush Administration proposed breaking the parity agreement by sending four times more Foreign Military Financing assistance to Azerbaijan ($8 million) than to Armenia ($2 million). The President's budget also includes a proposed $62 million allocation in economic aid to Armenia, a $13 million decrease from the $75 million approved by Congress as part of the FY 2004 aid bill.

 

"Our deep disappointment with the Administration's failure to honor its three-year old commitment to maintain military aid parity between Armenia and Azerbaijan was compounded this week by the news that a senior State Department official is now claiming that such an agreement never existed in the first place," said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. "This breach of faith--this disavowal of their own agreement--undermines the confidence of Armenian Americans in the willingness of the Bush Administration to maintain a balanced policy toward Armenia and the surrounding region."

 

In letters and briefing papers provided to Members of Congress, the ANCA has explained that breaking the parity agreement will tilt the regional military balance in favor of Azerbaijan, reward the Azerbaijani government's increasing violent calls for renewed aggression, and undermine the role of the United States as an impartial mediator of the Karabagh talks.

[Stormig]

Is this a good move for Bushy Baby before November?

[Anonymouse]

I don't know, but he should definitely read all the articles you've posted.

[Stormig]

Oh no, please, after you.

He should kick back, light a cigar and pour a glass of his favourite booze (oops!), and read your serious, well-thought-out posts. He might decide to make you his advisor for internal and external affairs.

[Armat]

Ed

This is no suprise.Bush family has invested in oil in Azerbaijan and senior Bush was happliy playing gulf with the father Aliev in his ranch.

Is anyone suprised that republican president soppurts corporate interests?

[Anonymouse]

Well, at least now I know America needs some serious changes, by golly, thanks to all the articles posted. I am now going to follow in the wise mans steps and post one of my own.

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

 

Report from Baghdad

Opening the Gates of Hell

By RAHUL MAHAJAN

 

Baghdad.

 

Before the Iraq war, at a meeting of the Arab League, Secretary General Amr Moussa famously said that a U.S. war on Iraq would "open the gates of hell."

 

In Iraq, those gates are yawning wider than they ever have before -- at least for the United States.

 

"Sunni and Shi'a are now one hand, together against the Americans," a man on the street in the mostly Shi'a slum of Shuala on the west side of Baghdad told me, as we conversed in the shadow of a burnt-out American tank transporter. Those sentiments were echoed at the local headquarters of Moqtada al-Sadr's organization, which had one day previously come under assault from U.S. forces.

 

And, indeed, everyone in the area agreed that when those forces were driven from Shuala, it was done by Sunni and Shi'a fighting together -- and by unorganized local inhabitants, not al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

 

Whether or not the resistance here grows to a scale that the United States cannot control -- and this is more in the hands of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani than of Paul Bremer or George Bush -- it is already clear that the events of the last ten days mark a critical turning point in the occupation of Iraq.

 

We're being told a convenient and self-serving story about those events. In that story, a few barbaric "isolated extremists" from the "Saddamist stronghold" of Falluja killed four contractors who were guarding food convoys in an act of unprovoked lawlessness. Moqtada al-Sadr is fighting the U.S. forces right now because, in the words of George Bush, he decided that "rather than allow democracy to flourish, he's going to exercise force."

 

The truth is rather different. Falluja, although heavily Sunni Arab, was hardly in Saddam's pocket. Its imams got into trouble for refusing to obey his orders to praise him personally during prayers. Many inhabitants were Salafists (Wahhabism is a subset of Salafism), a group singled out for political persecution by Saddam.

 

In fact, during the war, Falluja was not a hotbed of resistance. Its turn to resistance started on April 28, when U.S. troops opened fire on a group of 100 to 200 peaceful protesters, killing 15. They claimed they were returning gunfire, but Human Rights Watch investigated and found that the bullet holes in the area were inconsistent with that story -- and, furthermore, every Iraqi witness maintained that the crowd was unarmed. Two days later, another three protesters were killed.

 

These incidents caused many people in the area to join the resistance, forming their own groups. Violence back and forth and frequent collective punishment measures levied on the twon quickly turned it into a place seething with anger against the occupation -- to an even greater degree than other places.

 

The most recent incident, in which four mercenaries from Blackwater Security, a company formed by ex-Navy Seals (Blackwater people are performing many of the same functions as soldiers in Iraq and do get involved in combat), did not arise in a vacuum. In fact, just the week before, U.S. Marines had mounted heavy raids on Fallujah, killing at least seven civilians, including a cameraman. Residents spoke of this as the reason for the attack on the Blackwater people and the gruesome spectacle that followed.

 

With the recent fighting in Falluja, cordoning off the city, in which 12 Marines, two other soldiers, and at least 66 Iraqis were killed, there is no chance to get off this track in the foreseeable future.

 

But, not satisfied with this massive problem with the Sunni, the CPA chose the same time to pick a fight with the Shi'a followers of Moqtada al-Sadr.

 

Whatever al-Sadr's views about democracy may be, Bush's claim that he started this violence to derail democracy is ridiculous. First of all, for all of al-Sadr's firebrand rhetoric, he and his followers had always stopped short of overt violence against the occupying forces. Second, the incident that precipitated this whole round of violence was the closing of his newspaper, al-Hawza, a blatantly undemocratic act. In fact, the paper was not closed for directly advocating violence, but simply for reporting one eyewitness claim that a supposed car bombing that killed numerous volunteers for the New Iraqi defense forces was actually done by plane (and therefore by the United States).

 

In general, there is no quicker way to get an Iraqi to laugh than to talk about how the United States is bringing freedom or democracy to the country. It's standard when talking about the latest problem the Americans cause, to say derisively, "This is the freedom." When I asked Rasool Gurawi, a spokesman at the al-Sadr office in Thawra, the slum of two million that is perhaps al-Sadr's strongest base of support, about Bush's claims, he said, "This is democracy? Attacking peaceful demonstrations? Killing people and destroying buildings?"

 

As the occupation simultaneously loses control in Basra, Najaf, Kerbala, Nasiriyah, Kufa, Kut, Diwaniyah, and in Thawra, Shuala, and Kadhimiyah in Baghdad, Bremer and Bush have backed off a little. Instead of wanting al-Sadr for his political role, they now say he is wanted in connection with the murder of Shi'a cleric Abdul Majid al-Khoei last April. And, indeed, one of the other precipitating factors in the recent violence was the arrest of Mustafa Yacoubi, a top Sadr aide, for the same killing. They even say it has nothing to do with them -- an Iraqi judge, acting independently, issued the warrant.

 

This explanation isn't getting very far with anyone here. It's already been revealed that the warrants were written long ago and have been sitting unused until the right time. In fact, claimed Gurawi, the Iraqi Minister of Justice proclaimed publicly that he had no information about Sadr's or Yacoubi's involvement with al-Khoei and that they were not wanted by the Iraqi government.

 

Whatever the case, the administration's militaristic response and hollow rhetoric cut no ice with any Iraqis here, and are certain simply to exacerbate a situation that has already spun out of control for the United States.

 

Although the situation with Fallujah seems to have been mostly happenstance (of the kind that was inevitable with the constant skirmishing), the signs seem to indicate that the move against al-Sadr's people was deliberately timed. If so, it was presumably an attempt to squeeze him out of the political sphere before the token "transfer of sovereignty" on June 30.

 

It has backfired in the way that anyone who reads the newspapers himself instead of having them explained to him by aides could have predicted. When three U.S. soldiers were killed in the Kadhimiyah district of Baghdad yesterday, that was a clear sign. Although al-Sadr supporters are probably a majority in Thawra and a very sizeable minority in Shuala, his influence had always been negligible in Kadhimiyah.

 

Even though the violence that has broken out is major news right now, in a sense it's not the real story. The killing of over 100 people in the last ten days is a tragedy, but so is everyday life under the occupation.

 

The people in the Shi'a slums of Baghdad who are now furiously resisting the Americans hate Saddam with a passion to this day. They suffered under his repression and they also suffered from neglect, especially under the sanctions -- scarce resources and repairs went to politically more favored areas. They expected great improvements when the United States took over.

 

Shaykh Sadun al-Shemary, a former member of the Iraqi army who participated in the 1991 uprising and now a spokesman for the al-Sadr organization in Shuala, told me, "Things are exactly the same as in Saddam's time -- maybe worse."

 

That is all you need to know about the occupation of Iraq.

[Anonymouse]

To the tune of “Don’t Blame Me,” Bush’s National Security Adviser claimed there was no silver bullet to stop 9/11.

 

By Regis T. Sabol

 

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice finally testified under oath before the 9/11 Commission Thursday. And what did we get? An attempt to filibuster commission members’ questions with variations on an old standard, “Don’t Blame Me.”

 

Rice also juggled a mélange of bureaucratic gobbledygook. She took great pains, for example, to parse the distinctions of historic briefings, warning briefings, and threat briefings. And she did so over and over and over and over. She used the same redundant technique in throwing around distinctions between tactical responses and strategic responses.

 

What Rice appeared incapable of giving was a yes or no answer to any question, even when a simple yes or no was called for. Here’s one good example of an exchange with Commissioner Richard Ben-Viniste:

 

BEN-VINISTE: Did you tell the president, at any time prior to August 6th, of the existence of al Qaida cells in the United States?

 

RICE: First, let me just make certain....

 

It went on like that for three hours. At one point Commissioner Bob Kerrey had enough of Rice’s roundabout responses. “Please don't filibuster me,” he admonished her. “It's not fair. It is not fair. I have been polite. I have been courteous. It is not fair to me.”

 

Speaking for an administration that touts the importance of individual responsibility, Rice’s testimony boiled down to this: Don’t blame us; blame the system.

 

Rice repeatedly attempted to excuse the greatest intelligence failure in the nation’s history by claiming that regulations prevented the FBI and the CIA from sharing information. She repeatedly referred to “systemic and structural” failures, another way of saying it was the system’s fault. “In hindsight, if anything might have helped stop 9/11, it would have been better information about threats inside the United States--something made very difficult by structural and legal impediments that prevented the collection and sharing of information by our law enforcement and intelligence agencies.”

 

And, yet again, we heard the same tired metaphor of not being able to connect the dots. “We weren’t able to connect the dots,” she said more times than I could count.

 

The Buck Stops Where?

 

Fortunately, Commissioner Timothy Roemer put Rice’s version of “Don’t Blame Me” into its proper perspective. “You're the national security advisor to the president of the United States,” Roemer pointed out. “The buck may stop with the president; the buck certainly goes directly through you as the principal advisor to the president on these issues. And it really seems to me that there were failures and mistakes, structural problems, all kinds of issues here leading up to September 11th that could have and should have been done better. Doesn't that beg that there should have been more accountability? That there should have been a resignation or two? That there should have been you or the president saying to the rest of the administration, somehow, somewhere, that this was not done well enough?”

 

Roemer followed up these rhetorical questions by asking about the now notorious August 6, 2001 briefing at the Crawford Ranch, during which Bush was told something “really, really big” was going to happen. Why didn’t Bush call his “principals” (bureaucratic jargon for responsible cabinet members) together? The title of this “background memorandum,” by the way, was “Osama bin Laden Plans Attacks Inside the United States.” Let me repeat that key phrase, “Inside the United States.”

Condi’s response: “Once again, on the August 6th memorandum to the president, this was not threat-reporting about what was about to happen. This was an analytic piece that stood back and answered questions from the president. But as to the principals meetings…”

 

Let’s put this response in plain English. When the president was told that something “really, really big” was going to happen and the CIA learned that Osama bin Laden planned to attack the United States, itself, soon, and even though we already knew that Islamic extremists had tried to use commercial airliners in attacks and an Al Qaeda plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on January 1, 2000 had been foiled, we weren’t telling him the nation faced an imminent threat of attack; we were just giving him some background.

Perhaps if CIA Director George Tenet and Bush’s other advisors had used that kind of language, he might have understood the immediacy of the danger and taken some kind of action other than whacking bushes on his Crawford, Texas, ranch. Maybe he would have called all his top honchos in, asked specific questions, and given direct orders to the Pentagon, the Department of Transportation, the FAA, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and, most importantly, the FBI and CIA. But he didn’t.

 

Of course, Rice took great pains to praise her boss and our Fearless Leader for the bold steps he has taken to win the War on Terror. Here is what she had to say in her opening statement:

 

Occupying Iraq Made Us Safer--really?

 

“Because we acted in Iraq, Saddam Hussein will never again use weapons of mass destruction against his people or his neighbors, and we have convinced Libya to give up all its weapons-of-mass- destruction-related programs and materials. And as we attack the threat at its source, we are also addressing its roots. Thanks to the bravery and skill of our men and women in uniform, we have removed from power two of the world's most brutal regimes--sources of violence and fear and instability in the world's most dangerous region.

 

Today, along with many allies, we are helping the people of Iraq and Afghanistan to build free societies. And we are working with the people of the Middle East to spread the blessings of liberty and democracy as alternatives to instability and hatred and terror. This work is hard and it is dangerous, yet it is worthy of our effort and sacrifice. The defeat of terror and the success of freedom in those nations will serve the interests of our nation and inspire hope and encourage reform throughout the greater Middle East. In the aftermath of September 11th, those were the right choices for America to make--the only choices that can ensure the safety of our nation for decades to come.”

 

Excuse me, but has this woman been sleeping through her morning briefings, not watching television, or reading any newspapers? All hell has broken loose in Iraq. Marine and Army units are fighting Sunni and Shiite insurgents in at least eight cities. At last count, forty-one Americans have been killed in action in just the past five days. And no end to the uprising, now declared an intifada, appears in sight. Insurgents now control three Iraqi cities.

 

Fortunately, Bob Kerrey pointed out the obvious. Kerrey declared that “as somebody who supported the war in Iraq, I'm not going to get the national security adviser 30 feet away from me very often over the next 90 days, and I've got to tell you, I believe a number of things. I believe, first of all, that we underestimate that this war on terrorism is really a war against radical Islam. Terrorism is a tactic. It's not a war itself. Secondly, let me say that I don't think we understand how the Muslim world views us, and I'm terribly worried that the military tactics in Iraq are going to do a number of things, and they're all bad.

 

“I think we're going to end up with civil war if we continue down the military operation strategies that we have in place. I say that sincerely as someone that supported the war in the first place. Let me say, secondly, that I don't know how it could be otherwise, given the way that we're able to see these military operations, even the restrictions that are imposed upon the press, that this doesn't provide an opportunity for Al Qaida [sic] to have increasing success at recruiting people to attack the United States.

 

“It worries me. And I wanted to make that declaration. You needn't comment on it, but as I said, I'm not going to have an opportunity to talk to you this closely. And I wanted to tell you that I think the military operations are dangerously off track. And it's largely a U.S. Army--125,000 out of 145,000--largely a Christian army in a Muslim nation. So I take that on board for what it's worth.”

 

To put the matter succinctly, Rice’s long-winded testimony did not hide the fact that she and the Bush administration refuse to take responsibility for the catastrophe that happened on their watch and that our presence in Iraq has done nothing to win the “War on Terror.” If anything, it has exacerbated that war by creating new anti-American converts throughout the Middle East who have become our sworn enemies. That can’t possibly do us any good.

[Armat]

What a joke she was.I watched it on nightline and she looked like a fish outside the water.This also shows how stupid and incompitant our government is and forthermore how the neo-cons cooked up the whole Iraq affair to invade.

[Stormig]

Ah, I had been looking for this for sometime:

 

 

ICH: Continuing Slaughter, Kidnappings, US Rhetoric:

"That's not really a number I'm terribly interested in.": General Colin Powell, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, on being asked his assessment of Iraqi military and civilian casualties, April 1991

 

===

 

Lesley Stahl: "I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. & — and you know, is the price worth it?"

 

Madeline Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it."

 

Former U.N. Ambassador Madeline Albright, responding to reporter Lesley Stahl as to whether the over half a million Iraqi children killed by the UN sanctions against Iraq were "worth it." CBS May 11, 1996

 

===

 

"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's gonna happen? It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?": George W. Bush's mother Barbara on ABC/Good Morning America, March 18, 2003

 

===

 

WEB SITE: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

 

MIRROR HERE: http://informationclearinghouse.literati.org/

 

ARCHIVE: http://www.ymlp.com/pubarchive.php?feminine

[Accelerated]

Madeline Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it."

 

Former U.N. Ambassador Madeline Albright, responding to reporter Lesley Stahl as to whether the over half a million Iraqi children killed by the UN sanctions against Iraq were "worth it." CBS May 11, 1996

 

Yes, I've read this quote in a book before. Just goes to say that US policy never changed with the change in government (from Clinton to Bush), the only difference being the bluntness of the latter and not bothering with giving the Europeans a sense that they are also included in the decision making circle - essentially thats what the EU has been complaining about, not US policy, but the fact it is no longer consulted.

[ED]

Not to long ago when in Europe poll was conducted of which nation is the most treat to worlds security, 65% of poles agreed #1 is Israel and # 2 was USA

 

in light of today’s Bush’s swift shift in policy to Israeli-Palestinian conflict, once more Bush (neocons) demonstrated USA is headed for being the most unlawful and arrogant nation in this world and the only nation who has so much bias stand when it comes interests of Israel. So called “road map for peace” made a sharp U turn to road map to WAR. For those who saw the press conference yesterday it was just sickening and outrageous, I don’t see how Palestinian question would ever be solve with this kind of approach. One thing for sure, the wave of suicide bombings will increase. Timing chouldent be much worst, by seeking Arab help when it comes to Iraq, this idiots are conducting exacly the oposit and counterproductive policy. and it's hard to belive, still, 55% of this population thinks Bush is doing a good job. unbalivable <_<

[gevo27]

Not to long ago when in Europe poll was conducted of which nation is the most treat to worlds security, 65% of poles agreed #1 is Israel and # 2 was USA

 

in light of today’s Bush’s swift shift in policy to Israeli-Palestinian conflict, once more Bush (neocons) demonstrated USA is headed for being the most unlawful and arrogant nation in this world and the only nation who has so much bias stand when it comes interests of Israel. So called “road map for peace” made a sharp U turn to road map to WAR. For those who saw the press conference yesterday it was just sickening and outrageous, I don’t see how Palestinian question would ever be solve with this kind of approach. One thing for sure, the wave of suicide bombings will increase. Timing chouldent be much worst, by seeking Arab help when it comes to Iraq, this idiots are conducting exacly the oposit and counterproductive policy. and it's hard to belive, still, 55% of this population thinks Bush is doing a good job. unbalivable <_<

well i hate to be the guy tht always points this out and sounds like a preacher.. but yt again this is prophecied in the Bible.. u see... all we need to do is watch how the plan prophecies are fulfilled... For this reason i am over the fact of watching the news.. There will be one man who will stand out, (i dont know when, hopefully int eh near future) that will have the solutions to everything that is a problem between the palestinians, the muslims and christians there on the ground war for the Holly temple.... It will be found that the actualy place where the christian holly temple is going to be built is not exctly where the muslim temple is.. and then things will continue on from there..

 

Well.. this was off on a slight tangent.. but i think if we look a the broad scope.. we will see that the Bible has said over 1800 years ago what will happend, and what has happened.... so for me its like watching a movie i know the end too..

[Stormig]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jun2004/arar-j03_prn.shtml

 

 

World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org

 

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

 

WSWS : News & Analysis : North America : Canada

 

Canada’s Arar inquiry prepares to whitewash intelligence establishment

By David Adelaide

3 June 2004

Back to screen version | Send this link by email | Email the author

 

Public hearings into the case of Maher Arar—a Canadian citizen who with the complicity of Canadian authorities fell victim to the US government’s practice of rendering persons to a third country so they can be subjected to torture—are set to begin this month. But the terms that the federal Liberal government and presiding Judge Dennis R. O’Connor have laid down for the public inquiry into the Arar affair indicate that its real purpose is to protect Canada’s security-intelligence establishment and bolster public confidence in the “war on terrorism,” which in Canada, as elsewhere, has been used to justify sweeping new powers for the state.

 

In September 2002, Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, was detained by US authorities while in transit through New York. He was then deported to Syria, where he was imprisoned for a year without charge and repeatedly tortured. Arar was one of a large number of terrorist suspects—news reports have spoken of several hundred—whom US officials “rendered” to Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and other countries known to practice torture so they could be interrogated without running afoul of US and international laws banning torture.

 

There is every indication that Canadian authorities were complicit in Arar’s ordeal. US officials have repeatedly said that it was their Canadian counterparts who first fingered Arar as a terrorist suspect. Paul Celluci, US ambassador to Canada, went so far as to say that Canadian authorities would not have been unhappy to see Arar deported to Syria since they lacked legal grounds to arrest and hold him in Canada.

 

During Arar’s imprisonment in Syria, Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) agents traveled to Damascus, so that they could be briefed on the confession the Syrian military had beaten out of Arar. Then, when his Syrian captors released Arar saying the US had failed to substantiate its claims that he is a terrorist, unidentified elements within Canada’s intelligence establishment released details of this forced confession to the media, in a desperate attempt to slander Arar and thereby justify their own actions.

 

The Liberal government initially resisted calls for a public inquiry, but changed its mind after a Royal Canadian Mounted Police raid on the home of an Ottawa Citizen journalist who reported the leaked “information” about Arar’s confession provoked a public outcry.

 

Having been forced to bend to public pressure for an inquiry, the Liberal government’s priority has now become ensuring that it does not countenance any consideration of the real context in which the persecution of Arar unfolded—an unprecedented assault on democratic rights carried out by Western governments in the name of combating terrorism. Instead, the terms of reference set down for the inquiry confine it to consideration of the role played by Canadian intelligence forces in the ordeal suffered by Maher Arar, and Maher Arar alone.

 

In a preliminary hearing, Judge O’Connor cited this narrow criterion in order to deny standing in the inquiry to several Syrian-Canadian men who had also been “rendered” to Syria, or whose relatives were rendered to Syria. With standing would have come funding and the right to question government officials.

 

One of the men denied standing, Ahmad Abou-El-Maati, underwent an ordeal that is directly tied up with Arar’s experience. According to the transcripts of the hearing to determine standing, El-Maati, a 39-year old Toronto truck driver, says that CSIS, the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), and the RCMP were harassing and spying on him from April 2001. A CSIS threat to block him sponsoring his Syrian wife to come to Canada led him to fly to Syria, where he was promptly arrested and jailed. While incarcerated, El-Maati was forced to confess to plotting to bomb Canada’s Parliament buildings, and in the process he falsely implicated Arar—which may well have been what led to Arar’s subsequent mistreatment at the hands of Canadian and US authorities.

 

El-Maati is still expected to be called as a witness during the inquiry. The two other men denied standing, Youssef Almalki and Muayyed Nureddin, are not. According to the Globe & Mail, El-Maati has denounced the inquiry as a cover-up and has filed a legal challenge after being denied standing.

 

When it came to the security and intelligence establishment, Judge O’Connor gave a much more liberal interpretation of the inquiry’s terms of reference. He ceded to an OPP request for standing in the Arar inquiry on the grounds that the OPP had participated in a national security task force with the RCMP. In the hearing on standing, counsel for the OPP emphasized their concern that information sharing between police forces not be jeopardized.

 

The inquiry’s restricted terms of reference and O’Connor’s selective interpretation of them reflect the government’s desire to placate the security-intelligence establishment which begrudges and fears any public scrutiny into its affairs, however limited and stage-managed. At the same time, it reveals the true goal of the inquiry—to establish a smoother, more efficient apparatus of repression. It should be recalled that the Mcdonald Commission into RCMP wrongdoing resulted in the government legalizing a whole number of illegal police practices and creating CSIS as a professional and more politically savvy spy service.

 

Unsurprisingly, the terms of reference established for the inquiry explicitly direct it to “take all steps necessary to prevent disclosure of information that, if it were disclosed to the public, would, in the opinion of the Commissioner, be injurious to international relations, national defence or national security...”

 

Before the public hearings begin there will be a series of in camera hearings with only government representatives and the judge present. In other words, the government is giving itself a free rein to conceal information damaging to itself, to its security and intelligence forces, or to its relationship with the US authorities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Copyright 1998-2004

World Socialist Web Site

All rights reserved

[Nakharar]

"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."-- George Bush

 

Should I be worried?

[Stormig]

What the hell is this?

 

http://www.drugpolicy.org/flash/felon/

[DominO123]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200409/s1209226.htm

 

I really pitty the Americans, poor them, I would not want to be in their place.

 

Poor you Azat.

[skhara]

What the hell is this?

 

http://www.drugpolicy.org/flash/felon/

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It's a campaign to give voting rights to pedophiles, rapists, murderes, and gansters.

[Stormig]

It's a campaign to give voting rights to pedophiles, rapists, murderes, and gansters.

style_images/master/snapback.png

You forgot morons.