Meet the U.S.

[Anonymouse]

Anonyrat, grow up. OK, it's not my place to tell you that you belong in the drum-totting tribal societies of Africa where not only do you not have to worry about being subjected to "violence" for not paying taxes but you also don't have to worry about whether education should be free to everyone and all the rest of it or whether you own spears or not because everyone has them to poke each other, but I don't want "cute" posts in my thread any more than I want asswipe "do you endorse Palestinian suicide-bombers?"... If you want to talk about "government," please do so in another thread so I don't have to skip your off-topic (or any) posts in this one. And yes it is my thread and I want to keep it clean of juvenile rubbish. Oh you are so smart I can't possibly dream of understanding you. Skitter along now.

Listen nerfbrain, no one was talking to you, so kindly stick to posting articles. "Oh look at me I'm Stormeager aren't I unique because I am taking an anti-imperialist stance against the U.S. I'm a free thinker and I use my mind, I have 1746 posts full of hard hitting yet tender articles. Don't ruin my thread wah wah wah wah". Boo hooo. Yea yea, if you had bothered to read, it was Armat that forced me to go further off topic, but then again you're a snotty form of a poster, so you believe people have to bow before you in a very senseless thread that is essentially nothing but adding on to your post count by posting long articles of you're anti-imperialistic position. So what? Boo hoo, you're special. I suggest that you spend less time plotting the assassination of honest forum commentators, and more time actually reading, as opposed to just blind posting. Don't let this disturb your cycle of posting. Let's keep it moving.

[Stormig]

Listen nerfbrain, no one was talking to you, so kindly stick to posting articles. "Oh look at me I'm Stormeager aren't I unique because I am taking an anti-imperialist stance against the U.S. I'm a free thinker and I use my mind, I have 1746 posts full of hard hitting yet tender articles. Don't ruin my thread wah wah wah wah". Boo hooo. Yea yea, if you had bothered to read, it was Armat that forced me to go further off topic, but then again you're a snotty form of a poster, so you believe people have to bow before you in a very senseless thread that is essentially nothing but adding on to your post count by posting long articles of you're anti-imperialistic position. So what? Boo hoo, you're special. I suggest that you spend less time plotting the assassination of honest forum commentators, and more time actually reading, as opposed to just blind posting. Don't let this disturb your cycle of posting. Let's keep it moving.

Don't even go there about the number of my posts - you have nearly half as many within a mere couple of months, and with what, may I ask? Snotty and smutty posts - go clean up your own backyard first! I'd almost think that in real life you're probably a flasher, too - just love shocking people, don't you? And you're a pretty lame one for accusing me of blind posting. What a laugh, what a laugh. I get sore eyes from the reading I do, but no your posts are not among them, and to suggest I don't make posts of thought-out, original matter is all the more ludicrous. In case you didn't actually mean to say the latter as well, let this be pre-emptive strike.

Get this in your putrid head - I don't want pictures of gnomes and trolls in this thread because they're supposed to mean something several levels above my intelligence to some know-it-all smart-aleck who thinks he is playing "commentator" and I don't want bickering back and forth which you come with wherever you post and which would lead to the closing of the topic. Next time, instead of telling you off, I'll just plead a moderator to delete that sort of crap or move it elsewhere under "Anonyrat Junk Section" since you can't be expected the decency of respecting seriousness from as the only thing you have set out with has been to be contrarian to this, contrarian to that. Where I come from, that is called "nuisance." Obviously you have to get off of pissing off people HERE because you wouldn't have much to do among people just like yourself.

And don't even open your mouldy mouth about why I post on such a thread. I don't need to implore for your permission and approval let alone justify my reasons for maintaining a clean thread about any topic I want where people will read if they like and post if they have something to share and keep for future use as reference, properly. One can argue about the way a topic is handled, but to actually argue that it is handled for post count? Get out of our faces.

[Armat]

Anon

I am rather surprised how not so elegantly ,dogmatically you maintain certain aloof position on democracy without having the patience to think and read through about the subject.

First off when we discus democracy ,we discuss democracy not some ideological “you assume” bs.I don’t assume anything! My statements are based in reality. Frankly I graduated the stage of brainstorming long time ego about thinking “outside of box”

You assume that everyones interest ought to be the same, to be within the system, they cannot think outside of it, out of that rigid framework. I'm hardly an idealist, nor am I arguing for an idealism, I am merely arguing against political systems, a critique if you will, particularly of Democracy

.

Anon you want political anarchy,” free individual freedom” visit and live in Afghanistan. Perfect environment, people killing each other, robbing, raping as one whishes.

Let us assume all the Afghanis are super geniuses and all are disgusted by democracy and all want to live the way they whish. So in your “I am merely arguing against political systems” is hallow, shallow and without any base.

Political “rigid” frameworks ,laws, exists precisely because I don’t trust your freedom nor your religious fanaticism. This is why governments exists!!!

[Anonymouse]

Don't even go there about the number of my posts - you have nearly half as many within a mere couple of months, and with what, may I ask? Snotty and smutty posts - go clean up your own backyard first! I'd almost think that in real life you're probably a flasher, too - just love shocking people, don't you? And you're a pretty lame one for accusing me of blind posting. What a laugh, what a laugh. I get sore eyes from the reading I do, but no your posts are not among them, and to suggest I don't make posts of thought-out, original matter is all the more ludicrous. In case you didn't actually mean to say the latter as well, let this be pre-emptive strike.

Get this in your putrid head - I don't want pictures of gnomes and trolls in this thread because they're supposed to mean something several levels above my intelligence to some know-it-all smart-aleck who thinks he is playing "commentator" and I don't want bickering back and forth which you come with wherever you post and which would lead to the closing of the topic. Next time, instead of telling you off, I'll just plead a moderator to delete that sort of crap or move it elsewhere under "Anonyrat Junk Section" since you can't be expected the decency of respecting seriousness from as the only thing you have set out with has been to be contrarian to this, contrarian to that. Where I come from, that is called "nuisance." Obviously you have to get off of pissing off people HERE because you wouldn't have much to do among people just like yourself.

And don't even open your mouldy mouth about why I post on such a thread. I don't need to implore for your permission and approval let alone justify my reasons for maintaining a clean thread about any topic I want where people will read if they like and post if they have something to share and keep for future use as reference, properly. One can argue about the way a topic is handled, but to actually argue that it is handled for post count? Get out of our faces.

I hope you didn't exhaust your last three brain cells thinking of that putdown. What's the matter? Still, as insults go, it's short and to the point just like you and your forehead. And just when I think, "Surely, this person has obtained and encapsulates the limits of human arrogance", you had to go and push the boundary even further. Really, it's not your post count, it's how got to that by posting nothing but articles and arrogant little remarks. I am pleased that I have helped another dismal creature to cope with the vagaries of life. I assume that your appalling oversight in omitting my presence in this thread is due to your woeful amount of arrogance you swim in. You should start out with the crystal clear realization that you are a self centered Stormtrooper and from that it should be clear what you need to work on, because even making another 1747 posts is not going to make youre posting status improve anymore than trying to insult over the internet.

[Anonymouse]

Anon

I am rather surprised how not so elegantly ,dogmatically you maintain certain aloof position on democracy without having the patience to think and read through about the subject.

First off when we discus democracy ,we discuss democracy not some ideological “you assume” bs.I don’t assume anything! My statements are based in reality. Frankly I graduated the stage of brainstorming long time ego about thinking “outside of box”

.

Anon you want political anarchy,” free individual freedom” visit and live in Afghanistan. Perfect environment, people killing each other, robbing, raping as one whishes.

Let us assume all the Afghanis are super geniuses and all are disgusted by democracy and all want to live the way they whish. So in your “I am merely arguing against political systems” is hallow, shallow and without any base.

Political “rigid” frameworks ,laws, exists precisely because I don’t trust your freedom nor your religious fanaticism. This is why governments exists!!!

Maybe you should stop talking about this in Stormtroopers thread and move to the other thread in which we were talking about it originally, she might faint that the intellectual effort she put in this thread might be tarnished, thus I'll respond to this over there.

[Stormig]

Yaaaaaaaaawn, surprise me, bug-eye.

[Stormig]

World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org

 

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

 

WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East : Iraq

 

Protest planned over US killing of journalists in Iraq

By Harvey Thompson

14 February 2004

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

 

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has declared April 8—the anniversary of the attack by the US military on a Baghdad hotel filled with foreign journalists—a day of mourning and protest. The IFJ denounced the killing of journalists during the Iraq war and the “abject failure” of the Pentagon to adequately explain why the journalists died.

 

The unprovoked attack on the Palestine Hotel, where the journalists were staying, sparked outrage among journalists and media groups around the world. Two journalists, Taras Protsiuk working for Reuters and José Couso, a cameraman for the Spanish network Telecinco, were killed in the attack which occurred the day before Baghdad fell. US authorities claimed that troops had been fired on from the hotel. Although there was no evidence of this, a closed US investigation later cleared the military of any responsibility.

 

IFJ General Secretary Aidan White said, “The attack on the Palestine Hotel was a shameful incident made worse by US misinformation circulated after the event and the failure to take responsibility for this attack. The families and colleagues of the victims demand justice and a proper explanation about what happened.”

 

The IFJ’s renewed protest comes as Reuters news agency has criticised the US military’s investigation into the detention and treatment of its staff in Iraq in January this year, and the journalists are strongly backing the agency’s call for the US to withdraw statements suggesting, without evidence, that combatants posing as journalists had fired on US forces.

 

“These statements pose a serious threat to journalists everywhere,” said White. “They reflect the sense of impunity that exists within the US military that they can say what they like and do what they like when it comes to dealing with journalists, no matter what the consequences may be for the lives of our colleagues.”

 

The IFJ has published a detailed report, Justice Denied on the Road to Baghdad, outlining dissatisfaction within the journalistic profession about the failure of the US to properly investigate incidents in which seven journalists died during the war.

 

In addition to the Palestine Hotel deaths, journalists are also raising questions about the deaths of Tareq Ayyoub, a journalist killed during a US air-strike on the offices of Al-Jazeera in Baghdad; the deaths of British ITN reporter Terry Lloyd and his colleagues Fred Nérac and Hussein Osman, whose bodies are still missing, in a fire fight between US and Iraqi troops near Basra; and the shooting by US troops of Reuters cameramen Mazen Dana in August.

 

The Reuters complaint concerns the maltreatment of two journalists and their driver who were arrested and detained for 72 hours by US troops who mistook them for enemy combatants.

 

“The US investigation of the mistreatment of Reuters staff was predictably inadequate,” said White. “It fits in with the pattern of willful disregard of available evidence, a rush to exonerate US soldiers and their commanders, and a complete lack of seriousness over the complaints of journalists and media.”

 

“The impact of the US failure to take the rights of media staff seriously is felt around the world,” White added. “It undermines the campaign by press freedom groups to challenge impunity in the treatment of journalists and sends out an appalling signal to governments everywhere that the legitimate right to report freely, even in war zones, can be set aside to suit political and military convenience.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

Copyright 1998-2004

World Socialist Web Site

All rights reserved

[Stormig]

Secret US study raised possibility that weapons would not be found

Fri Feb 13, 3:34 AM ET Add Politics - AFP to My Yahoo!

 

 

 

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A classified US intelligence study done three months before the invasion of Iraq (news - web sites) predicted that weapons of mass destruction might never be found there, the USA Today newspaper said.

 

 

The newspaper said the study by a team of US intelligence analysts, military officers and Pentagon (news - web sites) civilians warned that US tactics, guerrilla warfare, looting and lying by Iraqi officials would undermine the search for banned Iraqi weapons.

 

 

The document was described to the daily by three high-ranking US intelligence officials. USA Today said it had also obtained portions of the study.

 

 

"Locating a program that ... has been driven by denial and deception imperatives is no small task," the paper quotes the December 2002 report as saying.

 

 

"Prolonged insecurity with factional violence and guerrilla forces still at large would be the worst outcome for finding Saddam's WMD arsenal."

 

 

Officials said the report went to the National Security Council but was not specifically shown to President George W. Bush (news - web sites), the paper said.

 

 

The findings diverge from pre-war statements by US officials saying that caches of banned weapons would be found in Iraq.

[Anonymouse]

Fight global warming!

 

---

Watch it please. --Sip

Edited February 14, 2004 by Seapahn

[Stormig]

Play as you go along...

 

 

President Revises Rationale For War

Sun Feb 8, 4:41 AM ET Add Top Stories - washingtonpost.com to My Yahoo!

 

 

By Dana Milbank, Washington Post Staff Writer

 

President Bush (news - web sites) and Vice President Cheney said yesterday that the war in Iraq (news - web sites) was justified because Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) could have made weapons of mass destruction.

 

 

• President Revises Rationale for War

• Pakistani Nuclear Ring Tied to Seven Nations

• Read all the Latest News About the 2004 Presidential Race

• Today in Photos

 

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

 

Search news on

washingtonpost.com

 

 

 

 

Latest headlines:

· Guerrilla Raid in Restive Iraq Town Leaves 22 Dead

Reuters - 11 minutes ago

· U.S. Seals Saddam's Final Hiding Place

AP - 12 minutes ago

· 23 Killed, Prisoners Freed in Iraqi Raid

AP - 15 minutes ago

Special Coverage

 

 

 

 

 

The new rationale offered by the president and vice president, significantly more modest than earlier statements about the deposed Iraqi president's capabilities, comes after government experts have said it is unlikely banned weapons will be found in Iraq and after Bush's naming Friday of a commission to examine faulty prewar intelligence.

 

 

"Saddam Hussein was dangerous, and I'm not just going to leave him in power and trust a madman," Bush said yesterday in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" that will be broadcast today. "He's a dangerous man. He had the ability to make weapons at the very minimum."

 

 

Cheney delivered a nearly identical message yesterday to a group of Republican donors in suburban Chicago. "We know that Saddam Hussein had the intent to arm his regime with weapons of mass destruction," he said. "And Saddam Hussein had something else -- he had a record of using weapons of mass destruction against his enemies and against his own people."

 

 

In the NBC interview, excerpts of which were released by the network, Bush also said the CIA (news - web sites) is "ably led" by its director, George J. Tenet, and that Tenet's job is "not at all" in jeopardy. Tenet, in a speech last week, defended the agency's Iraq intelligence. While he acknowledged flaws, he said the CIA did not argue that Hussein was a certain or imminent threat.

 

 

Before the invasion of Iraq 11 months ago, Bush and Cheney both argued that Iraq was an urgent threat to the United States, stating with certainty that Iraq had chemical and biological arms and had rebuilt a nuclear weapons program. "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised," Bush said in March 2003.

 

 

Bush said he would "visit" with the commission he named last week to investigate the Iraq intelligence but suggested that he would not testify before it. Asked about why the commission will not report until next March -- after the presidential election -- while a similar commission in Britain will operate much more quickly, Bush said: "We didn't want it to be hurried. This is a strategic look, kind of a big-picture look about the intelligence-gathering capacities of the United States of America."

 

 

While saying that "it's important this investigation take its time," Bush added that "there is going to be ample time for the American people to assess whether or not I made good calls" in ousting Hussein.

 

 

Bush addressed himself to relatives of the more than 500 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. "For the parents of the soldiers who have fallen who are listening, David Kay, the weapons inspector, came back and said, in many ways Iraq was more dangerous than we thought," he said. "We are in a war against these terrorists who could bring great harm to America, and I've asked these young ones to sacrifice for that."

 

 

Bush's appearance on the Sunday talk show, the first of his presidency, comes as new polls show declining public support for his leadership. A Newsweek poll released yesterday found that 48 percent of Americans approve of his performance in office, the lowest in three years. By 50 percent to 45 percent, respondents said they did not want to see him reelected.

 

 

Another poll, by the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey, found support for Bush at 64 percent after his State of the Union address Jan. 20, but plunged to 54 percent between Jan. 26 and Jan. 31 -- the time when Kay, the former chief U.S. weapons inspector, said weapons stocks were unlikely to be found in Iraq. Bush's approval rating stands at 56 percent in this poll.

 

 

Though Bush has been careful about acknowledging fault in the prewar intelligence, or his allegations against Hussein, he said in naming the commission Friday that Kay "stated that some prewar intelligence assessments by America and other nations about Iraq's weapons stockpiles have not been confirmed. We are determined to figure out why."

[Stormig]

Rumsfeld Plans Panel to Review Guantanamo

Fri Feb 13, 1:44 PM ET Add U.S. National - AP to My Yahoo!

 

 

 

MIAMI - Suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay will be allowed to appeal their detentions to a new panel that would determine if they are an ongoing threat to the United States, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday.

 

 

AFP/Pool/File Photo

 

Rumsfeld Plans Panel to Review Guantanamo

(AP Video)

 

 

 

The panel would hear cases annually to decide whether the suspects remain a threat or could be released, Rumsfeld said in remarks to the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce (news - web sites).

 

 

Rumsfeld said the United States was planning to hold many of the detainees "as long as necessary."

 

 

About 660 alleged al-Qaida and Taliban fighters captured in Afghanistan (news - web sites) and elsewhere after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are being held at the maximum-security prison at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, though none has been charged.

 

 

The United States says the prisoners are "enemy combatants," not prisoners of war, and can be tried by military tribunals. U.S. officials have said the lengthy detentions are vital to intelligence-gathering and that the information gleaned from prisoners has led to arrests around the world.

 

 

Human rights groups and some foreign governments have criticized the detainees' treatment and the lack of trials or access to lawyers.

 

 

The Supreme Court will decide this year whether the Guantanamo detainees can be held indefinitely without lawyers and hearings.

[Stormig]

Kay: Bush Should Fix Intelligence Process

Fri Feb 13, 9:19 AM ET Add White House - AP Cabinet & State to My Yahoo!

 

 

By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer

 

WASHINGTON - Former U.S. weapons inspector David Kay is advising President Bush (news - web sites) to acknowledge he was wrong about hidden storehouses of weapons in Iraq (news - web sites) and move ahead with overhauling the intelligence process.

 

 

AP Photo

 

 

Reuters

Slideshow: Iraq

 

 

 

 

 

Latest headlines:

· Guerrilla Raid in Restive Iraq Town Leaves 22 Dead

Reuters - 11 minutes ago

· U.S. Seals Saddam's Final Hiding Place

AP - 12 minutes ago

· 23 Killed, Prisoners Freed in Iraqi Raid

AP - 14 minutes ago

Special Coverage

 

 

 

 

 

In an Associated Press interview, Kay said the "serious burden of evidence" suggests Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) did not have caches of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons at the beginning of the Iraqi war, but was seriously engaged in developing missiles.

 

 

"You are better off if you acknowledge error and say we have learned from it and move ahead," Kay said in a 90-minute session Thursday with AP editors and reporters.

 

 

"I'm afraid if you don't acknowledge error, and everybody knows why you are afraid to acknowledge error, your political opponents will seize on it, the press will seize on it, and no one will give you credit," Kay said.

 

 

Since resigning last month, Kay has said repeatedly that U.S. intelligence was wrong in claiming that Saddam had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and advanced nuclear weapons programs. Those programs were the main justification for the Iraq war.

 

 

U.N. and U.S. searches have failed to find the weapons, and Bush has appointed a bipartisan commission to conduct an investigation. Democrats in the meantime are accusing the administration of misleading the American public.

 

 

Bush and other officials insist weapons still could be discovered. In an interview on NBC-TV's "Meet the Press" program last weekend, Bush said, "They could be hidden, they could have been transported to another country." Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has also said he believes weapons could still be uncovered.

 

 

Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) said this week he was surprised that the inspectors did not find the weapons in Iraq. "We presented what we believed the truth to be at the time," he told the House International Relations Committee.

 

 

Kay said satellites have shown a lot of traffic going from Iraq to Syria, but that U.S. investigators could not figure out what was being transported and "Syria wouldn't help."

 

 

"My only serious regret about the continued holding on to these hopes that eventually we will find it (weapons) is it allows us to avoid the hard steps necessary to reform the process," the former U.N. and International Atomic Energy Agency inspector said.

 

 

Kay stepped down from his role as CIA (news - web sites) adviser for the weapons search after the military diverted resources from the search to bolster security for troops and fight insurgents. He described a constant battle to keep his staff of 1,400, in which he initially prevailed but began to lose ground in the fall. He said he wasn't informed of the final changes until after the decision had been made.

 

 

Without flatly ruling out the weapons might turn up, Kay said his search was complicated by the fact that Iraqis quizzed about Saddam's weapons programs "will lie to you without embarrassment."

 

 

Despite the lack of weapons of mass destruction, Kay said, Iraq had an aggressive program to develop missiles assisted by foreign technology and scientists.

 

 

Some of the scientists eventually left the country but they still helped Saddam by transmitting information to Iraq electronically, he said.

 

 

"We have absolute evidence and proof," Kay said. But he declined to identify those who he said helped Iraq or their countries.

 

 

Kay also said "the dominance of analytical opinion" was that two trailers found in northern Iraq were meant to make hydrogen for balloons, not biological weapons. CIA Director George Tenet said last week that the issue was still under debate.

 

 

Part of the problem, Kay said, was that the trailers had never been used for anything and that their equipment was not well suited for either hydrogen or biological weapons production. Documents and testimony from Iraqis point strongly toward the hydrogen idea, he said.

 

 

Another issue was the discovery of thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes in Iraq. Before the war, Bush administration officials said those tubes were meant to be used in centrifuges to make nuclear bomb fuel out of uranium.

 

Although Tenet said the issue was still open, Kay said analysts have concluded Iraq had no active nuclear program.

 

"There's no substantial disagreement that there was no centrifuge program," Kay said.

 

The most likely explanation for the tubes, Kay said, is that they were to be used for artillery rockets.

 

Kay repeated statements that he did not believe analysts felt pressured to shape their reports to bolster the case for war, a claim made by some Democrats.

 

Asked whether analysts believed their findings had been distorted, Kay said: "Were some people uncomfortable about some of the rhetoric? I think the fair answer to that is `yes.'" He stressed that analysts are generally uncomfortable with any change to their wording, but understand that is the nature of politics.

 

"Politicians choose the best possible argument that will support the course of action they've decided on regardless of whether it's foreign policy or not," he said. "Is that cherry picking? That's the nature of the political process."

[Stormig]

Some clarifications... BTW - is Tarpinian an Armenian name?

 

 

Anti-war inquiry unrelated to terror

Probe focuses on unlawful entry at Camp Dodge

By JEFF ECKHOFF and MARK SIEBERT

 

02/10/2004

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

Federal officials Monday said a grand jury inquiry involving four peace activists and Drake University is not part of an anti-terrorism investigation.

 

U.S. Attorney Stephen Patrick O'Meara said late Monday that the investigation focuses on unlawful entry onto military property at Camp Dodge on Nov. 16, and whether plans were laid for that at a conference the day before at Drake.

 

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Suggestions that the investigation is related to the Patriot Act "are not accurate," O'Meara said.

 

O'Meara's statement and comments from the FBI broke nearly a week of silence from federal officials, who also slowed the investigation Monday, postponing grand jury testimony that had been scheduled for today.

 

FBI spokesman Jeff Tarpinian in Omaha also denied the investigation was part of a terror probe, and said federal officials might look into whether Polk County Sheriff's Deputy Jeff Warford identified himself inappropriately in delivering the subpoenas.

 

Last week, Warford served grand jury subpoenas on the peace activists and Drake officials.

 

Warford left behind at least two business cards identifying himself as a member of an FBI-Joint Terrorism Task Force - alarming those subpoenaed as well as other peace activists.

 

"There is no connection in this case with his duties - as far as being part of that task force - and this grand jury investigation," Tarpinian said.

 

Chief Sheriff's Deputy Bill Vaughn defended the longtime deputy, stressing that Warford never intended to intimidate anyone. "I think people's minds are racing just because of Jeff's business card," Vaughn said.

 

O'Meara, the U.S. attorney based in Des Moines, said the investigation focuses on an incident Nov. 16 when protesters trespassed at Camp Dodge, and not a demonstration about the same time at Iowa National Guard headquarters, which is publicly accessible.

 

Authorities are looking at possible criminal violations on Nov. 16 or "prior agreements to violate federal law." Twelve activists were arrested Nov. 16, most for trespassing. A Grinnell College librarian also was charged with assault after she allegedly kicked a sheriff's deputy during her arrest.

 

On Nov. 15, the four activists subpoenaed were among those at an anti-war conference at Drake.

 

Federal authorities last week ordered the university to turn over campus security records reflecting any observations of the conference, including "any records of persons in charge or control of the meeting and any records of attendees of the meeting."

 

That subpoena also requires the university to hand over membership information for the conference's host, the Drake chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

 

The investigation has alarmed peace activists in Iowa and around the country, who question whether the federal government is trying to silence dissent.

 

"We're very alarmed," said Bill Dobbs, spokesman for United for Peace and Justice, a coalition of roughly 600 anti-war groups. "I sure hope those subpoenas are quashed, and I hope there's an investigation into just how this happened."

 

O'Meara said his office does not prosecute people who are peacefully and lawfully engaged in rallies.

 

"The United States attorney emphasizes that the investigation regarding any attempted breach of the security fence at the Iowa National Guard Base is dangerous both to the person or persons attempting to breach the security fence, as well as a legitimately perceived danger to the base itself," he said.

 

Earlier Monday, O'Meara's office postponed court appearances for the four activists. They had been scheduled to appear before a grand jury today. All now have been told to appear on March 9.

 

"They've informed my attorney that this is a scheduling conflict," said Brian Terrell, who was subpoenaed along with Elton Davis, Patti McKee and Wendy Vasquez. "But of course what are they going to say? They're not going to publicize it if they're retreating, if that's what they're doing."

 

Lawyers say the government also has decided to move more slowly on a demand for Drake University records involving the anti-war conference.

 

Bruce Nestor, a Minneapolis attorney for the National Lawyers Guild, filed court papers Monday asking that government investigators be forced to explain what they're looking for and why Drake records are necessary.

 

"To the extent that the grand jury is being employed for the purposes of . . . intimidating and harassing supporters of the peace or anti-war movement, the grand jury has clearly overstepped its authority," Nestor wrote.

 

Drake University officials again declined to comment Monday. Sources say university employees since Thursday have been under a federal judge's sealed order that forbids them from talking about the subpoena.

 

A lawyer for Sally Frank, Drake's local contact for the National Lawyers Guild, filed court papers late Monday asking the judge to set aside an unspecified "Order of Nondisclosure." That request argues that the Thursday order was unconstitutional.

 

Peace activists said they intend to go ahead with a civil liberties demonstration planned for 12:15 p.m. today at the federal courthouse, 123 E. Walnut St. in Des Moines.

[THOTH]

Yaaaaaaaaawn, surprise me, bug-eye.

Don't hold your breath - its not possible - we've already seen the breadth of his act - and it isn't at all original, amusing or entertaining in any way....yeah yawn fer sure...

[bellthecat]

Really, it's not your post count, it's how got to that by posting nothing but articles and arrogant little remarks. .... You should start out with the crystal clear realization that you are a self centered Stormtrooper ...

Hmmm ..."stormtrooper" - ouch!

 

However, long long before you arrived she was much nicer, and more valuable, and more valued. Maybe those days will come again. Now is winter, but roses are perennial.

[angel4hope]

okay people lets not have another childish feud with name calling and blah blah blah...lets see where this started....

 

one person posts ideas different from the original poster...and everyone just hates on them---chill--seriously...there are enough bad things and hate in the world, now we have to bring it into the forum too? lets not point fingers and start off with he said she said, and act like mature adults and just get on with posts and if you dont like something you see posted--or dont agree with it-just state your own ideas...and be respectful of other's beliefs...and this cant be one sided--if each person learns how to respect another's opinions and beliefs and be able to debate or agrue in a mature manner and not get name calling and arrogance involved, then this would be a better place to post and we wouldnt have stupid problems.... take a joke as a joke--a lighthearted post as it is and stop the bi*chiness and attitude problems

[axel]

http://www.currentconcerns.ch/archive/20030102.php

[joseph parikian]

Q&A: Iraqi elections and power handover

The UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has announced that elections in Iraq before the handover date of 30 June are not feasible. But he also said that the handover of power should go ahead according to the current timetable. BBC News Online's world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds examines the issues:

 

Why has Mr Annan come out against early elections?

 

He was acting on a report from his Iraq trouble-shooter Lakhdar Brahimi who has just made an on the spot inspection.

 

The UN has concluded that it is not physically possible to hold elections in time for the handover by 30 June.

 

There are no proper voting lists and political parties have not had time to develop and campaign.

 

There will be no proper constitution by then. Security is another factor.

 

So Mr Annan agrees with the American-led Coalition Authority?

 

On this point, yes. The Coalition and the appointed Iraqi Governing Council - in an agreement on 15 November - said that elections to a full government should not take place until 2005 on the basis of a constitution drawn up earlier in the year.

 

In the meantime an interim government would be set up, chosen by a series of regional meetings or caucuses.

 

The Coalition asked the UN to make its own assessment in the hope that it would agree that early elections are not possible. This it has done.

 

Who had been calling for early elections?

 

The majority Shia population. Their view was put forward by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a powerful influence.

 

He argued that only elections would give credibility to the interim government.

 

Other groups in Iraq, notably the Sunnis and the Kurds, feared that elections without a constitution might give the Shias too much control.

 

Ayatollah Sistani did indicate however that he might be open to persuasion about a delay if the UN so argued.

 

Will the rest of the handover plan go ahead?

 

The handover date, the end of June, remains. However, plans for the selection of an interim government to take over from the Coalition are up in the air.

 

One idea is try to make the process more democratic in some way but nobody has agreed on how that might work.

 

Another is to extend the powers of the Iraqi Governing Council for the interim period and make the Council more representative.

 

The UN has not yet put forward its own ideas. It has been exploring the concept of bringing forward the full elections, which are due by the end of 2005, perhaps on the basis of Iraq's old constitution until a new one is drawn up.

 

What about drawing up a new constitution?

 

This is supposed to be done in 2005 after elections to a constitutional assembly.

 

But that timetable would be in doubt if full elections were brought forward from the end of the year. In the meantime a basic law is currently being written to guide the interim government.

 

There is already a row about this with the US Administrator Paul Bremer concerned that it might be based too much on Islamic law.

 

Why is there always such uncertainty?

 

Because of the volatile nature of the situation in Iraq.

 

This is not like it was in Germany and Japan after the Second World War when the populations accepted the occupation and worked towards a democratic framework over a period of several years.

 

In Iraq there is an insurgency and the differing population groups are competing for influence. What satisfies one group upsets another.

 

Everyone agrees on one thing. The sooner there is a handover the better.

 

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/worl...ast/3504751.stm

 

Published: 2004/02/19 19:12:38 GMT

 

© BBC MMIV

Edited February 19, 2004 by joseph parikian

[Stormig]

Rubbish:

 

http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-2-95-1749.jsp

 

 

Immanuel Kant and the Iraq war

Roger Scruton

19 - 2 - 2004

 

 

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant developed his thought in the era of global conflict sparked by the American and French Revolutions. His response was an appeal to enlightenment, law and reason. Two hundred years on, the distinguished English philosopher Roger Scruton asks: where would Kant’s principles lead him today?

 

 

 

 

 

 

The bicentenary of Immanuel Kant’s death occurred on 12 February 2004. The British media ignored the event, assuming that dead philosophers are of no significance compared with living celebrities. Even the Germans, who are naturally proud of their greatest philosopher, decided that Kant needs to be made relevant to contemporary issues if he is to be discussed. And the issue chosen was the war in Iraq: would Kant have approved of it?

 

The answer given by a range of commentators, from Antje Vollmer, vice-president of the Green party in the Bundestag (lower house of parliament), to Heiner Geissler, former secretary-general of the Christian Democrat Union, was ‘no’. Herfried Münkler, professor at Berlin’s Humboldt University and author of the influential book The New Wars, cited Kant’s idea of an “Order of Eternal Peace” to argue that he would have opposed intervention in the affairs of any other state.

 

Kant indeed believed that war can be legitimately embarked on only as a defensive measure, and that pre-emptive attack is not defence. However, circumstances have changed, and I can see good Kantian reasons for the view that the civilised world, faced with the dangers that now confront it, should take pre-emptive measures when dealing with rogue states like Saddam’s Iraq.

 

How are Kant’s ideas present in the modern world? Read in openDemocracy:

 

David Held, “Violence and justice in a global age” (September 2001)

 

David Held & Paul Hirst, “Globalisation: the argument of our time” (January 2002)

 

Roger Scruton, “Robert Nozick, anarcho-capitalist” (May 2002)

 

Frank Vibert, “The new cosmopolitanism” (March 2003)

 

Matthew d’Ancona, “Life gets serious” (March 2003)

 

 

 

Kant’s political philosophy was developed comparatively late in his life, when his intellectual powers were failing. It is therefore not often studied in depth. But if you start life with powers like Kant’s you can afford to lose a few of them. It is therefore regrettable that commentators focus on Perpetual Peace: a Philosophical Sketch (1795) – the most lucid of Kant’s political writings – to the exclusion of the detailed account of republican government contained in The Metaphysics of Morals (1797) and elsewhere.

 

A superficial reading of Perpetual Peace suggests that international law, administered by a “League of Nations”, would replace the need for belligerence, and endow each nation with a common interest in settling disputes by negotiation. Wars occur because nations exist in a state of nature vis-à-vis each other; by entering into a League, however, they advance towards a ‘world republic’, in which national interests are submerged in the common pursuit of legal order.

 

This interpretation, when taken together with Kant’s Enlightenment vision of a humanity guided by reason towards a universal secular morality, might impute two views to Kant. First, that Kant would never endorse war when there is still the possibility of negotiation; second, that he would always assign precedence to international law over national interest whenever the two conflict.

 

The contours of reason

 

There is always a danger, when reading Kant, of overlooking his profound critique of reason and its aims. Although he believed that reason is the distinguishing mark of the human condition, and although he upheld the Enlightenment view of our nature – as free beings guided by rational choice – Kant also believed that reason is prone to overreach itself. An example of this is when reason interprets a merely ‘regulative’ idea as a constitutive principle.

 

The idea of a world republic is just such a regulative idea. For Kant, it does not indicate a condition that can actually be achieved, but an ‘Ideal of Reason’ – an idea that we must bear in mind, by way of understanding the many ways in which mortal creatures inevitably fall short of it. The principal way in which we fall short is by failing to establish any kind of republic, even at the local level. And Kant is clear that a League of Nations can establish a genuine rule of law only if its members are also republics. Unless that condition is fulfilled, nations remain in the rivalrous state of nature.

 

In a republic, the people themselves are the authors of the laws that govern them, and no official can claim exemption. The members of a republic are not subjects but citizens, bound by reciprocal rights and duties and governed by representative institutions. Although Kant was suspicious of democracy and tolerant of constitutional monarchy, he nevertheless believed that free beings demand accountable government, and that nothing less could enable them to realise their potential.

 

Furthermore, we are commanded by reason to treat each rational being as an end and not as a means only. States in which this command is not obeyed by the rulers, or made impossible to be obeyed by anyone else, are states that violate the moral law. They also fail to conform to the version of the social contract that Kant derived from his vision of morality. Such states are intrinsically illegitimate, which means that their disappearance is good in itself, and the aim and desire of all rational beings.

 

This does not mean that the violent overthrow of despotism is justified, since violence has moral costs that may not easily be accepted. Although Kant was a passionate defender of the American and French Revolutions, and even inclined to turn a blind eye to the crimes of the Jacobins, news of the Terror and of the judicial murder of King Louis XVI horrified him as it horrified his contemporaries.

 

Nevertheless, the recourse to international law, he believed, presupposes that members of the League of Nations are republics. If they are not republics, but regard themselves as in a state of nature vis-à-vis other states, then it may be necessary to confront them with violence, in order to prevent them from imposing their will. Of course, the violence must be proportional to the threat, and its aim must be to bring about a lasting peace. But war conducted for the sake of peace was, for Kant as for his predecessors in the ‘just war’ tradition, a paradigm of legitimate belligerence.

 

Republic and despotism

 

Suppose, then, the following case. We are confronted with a state that is manifestly despotic, which is neither a republic nor a law-abiding member of the League of Nations, in which people are denied elementary rights and in which crimes are regularly committed by the ruling power. It is a manifest threat to peace, has invaded neighbouring states without cause, has committed genocide against its own minorities, and seems determined to advance its own interests, whatever the costs to others. The state nevertheless claims a voice in the League, endeavouring to influence policy and international law in order to perpetuate and enhance its power.

 

Suppose also that there is a larger power, which is a republic anxious to spread republican government around the world, motivated perhaps by some version of the Ideal of Reason that Kant puts before us in Perpetual Peace.

 

Suppose that this larger power is confident that it can destroy the despotic state with only minimum harm to its people – less harm than they would suffer were the despotism to remain in place.

 

Suppose that, by doing this, there is hope of planting the seeds of republican government in an area of the globe where until now only despotism or empire have held sway.

 

Suppose that the republic goes to war intending not to possess the territory or resources of the despotic state, but with the intention of creating the conditions in which its people can decide for themselves on their form of government.

 

Suppose that its intention in doing so is to create the conditions of lasting peace in a region of the world where peace is constantly being jeopardised by tyrants and fanatics.

 

Suppose all this, then ask Immanuel Kant the question: would it be right for my hypothetical republic to go to war against my hypothetical despotism? He would be compelled by his own principles to say ‘yes’.

 

There is no question of having to prove the existence of weapons of mass destruction, or anything else beyond the known facts about the despotism’s past behaviour. The only question is the extent to which my hypothetical examples correspond to the actuality of Saddam’s Iraq and the actuality of the United States. I think the parallel is sufficiently close. The US is of course not a fully achieved republic in Kant’s sense – but as Kant would have been the first to admit, nothing created from the crooked timber of humanity is a fully achieved anything, still less an instance of what is, after all, an Ideal of Reason.

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright ©Roger Scruton 2004. Published by openDemocracy Ltd. Permission is granted to reproduce this article for personal, non-commercial use only. In order to circulate internally or use this material for teaching or other commercial purposes you will need to obtain an institutional subscription. To request further information on subscriptions for your organisation, please click here . Reproduction of this article is by arrangement only. openDemocracy articles are available for syndication. For press inquiries visit our Press area, or call +44 (0) 207 608 2000

[Stormig]

US lawyer sues over terror cases

 

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington

Thursday February 19, 2004

The Guardian

 

An American prosecutor has launched a lawsuit against the US attorney general, John Ashcroft, claiming that the justice department has mismanaged terrorist cases.

In an unusual move, Richard Convertino, the assistant US attorney for Detroit, has accused Mr Ashcroft of smearing him and putting an informant's life in jeopardy.

 

He claims Mr Ashcroft and justice department officials compromised a crucial intelligence source as part of a bureaucratic vendetta.

 

Mr Convertino says officials punished him for cooperating with a Senate investigation into failures in the war on terror by blowing the cover of an intelligence asset.

 

The informer fled the country after his name appeared in Detroit newspapers.

 

"To me, it's shocking," said Steven Kohn, Mr Convertino's lawyer. "They just didn't care about this source, or his safety, or the impact on the war on terror."

 

A justice department spokesman refused to comment yesterday.

 

This is the second time the Bush administration has been accused of compromising intelligence sources as retaliation against difficult government bureaucrats.

 

An investigation is under way into how a conservative commentator acquired the name of a CIA agent who was married to a diplomat who questioned the Bush administration's arguments for an invasion of Iraq.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/st...1151171,00.html

[joseph parikian]

Edited by Joseph Edited February 22, 2004 by joseph parikian

[Stormig]

How Camp Delta allowed US to avoid Geneva Convention

By Andrew Gumbel

20 February 2004

 

 

President Bush promised a "different kind of war" after the 11 September attacks, and no place on earth better illustrates quite how different than Camp X-Ray, the prison camp established on the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay.

 

It seemed extraordinary enough, back in late 2001, that detainees would be flown halfway around the world from the war in Afghanistan to the eastern tip of Cuba. But that was only the start of it. The hundreds of men, suspected members of either the Taliban or al-Qa'ida, were not to be regarded as conventional prisoners of war. Instead, the US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, told us, they were being categorised as "enemy combatants", subject neither to the Geneva Conventions nor to the purview of the US civilian court system.

 

In other words, they were subject to indefinite detention, without access to a lawyer, without the privilege of knowing why they were being held or what they were accused of. Even if they were to come to trial, they would appear before a military commission whose three-judge panel would have sole discretion to convict them and, if they so chose, to sentence them to death.

 

As the prisoner numbers increased - now believed to be about 675 - the arrangements at Guantanamo Bay provoked howls of protest from human rights lawyers and foreign governments, particularly those - like Britain - which had nationals inside the prison camp. A number of inmates, seeing not even a glimmer of hope for the future, have attempted suicide. At least 10 are believed to be children, kept in a separate section of the camp known as Camp Iguana.

 

At first, US authorities stonewalled on almost everything. The prisoners could not be identified, their value as intelligence sources could not be discussed, access to lawyers could not be permitted - all for reasons of national security, they said.

 

In December, a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that detainees must be granted access to legal counsel. The justices said Guantanamo Bay risked becoming a "legal black hole" from which there was no escape.

 

This has led to a flurry of other legal challenges, including a class-action suit against President George Bush and his administration seeking $1.1bn (£581m) in damages.

 

"Unlike earlier wars, the struggle against terrorism is potentially never-ending," a group of defence lawyers wrote in a recent brief. "The Constitution cannot countenance an open-ended presidential power, with no civilian review whatsoever, to try anyone the President deems subject to a military tribunal, whose rules and judges have been selected by the prosecuting authority itself."

 

Even before yesterday's announcement that five British prisoners were to be released, the Bush administration had softened its line; some of the men had their names released and were able to obtain lawyers, and at the end of January, three teenagers were released and returned to Afghanistan. Earlier this month, Mr Rumsfeld stated that inmates would be allowed to appeal against their detention to a special panel which would review their cases annually to determine whether they still posed a threat - or indeed, if they ever did.

 

RELEASES TO DATE

 

The US has released 87 detainees from the camp, most to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Four have been sent to Saudi Arabia under "continued detention."

 

Hamed Abderrahman Ahmad, 29, from Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta, was released in February. He is being charged by the Spanish High Court Judge Baltasar Garzon with having links to an al-Qa'ida cell in Spain.

 

Mohammad Sagheer, 51, is suing the US for $10.4m (£5.5m) in compensation for the "losses" he suffered. He was released in October 2002 after a year in prison.

 

Negotiations are under way for the release of 10 Sudanese detainees after two Sudanese captives were released last week.

 

Mohammed Ismail Agha, 15, was one of three teenagers released at the end of January. The US has freed more than 24 Afghans from Guantanamo.

 

Abdurahman Khadr, 20, a Canadian, was arrested in November 2001. He was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in early 2003 and released and sent to Afghanistan in July 2003. His brother Omar Khadr, 17, is still in Guantanamo.

 

Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane, a Danish man held since February 2002, is soon to be released. He will not face charges in Denmark.

[Stormig]

Famously on this day in 1898 French writer Emile Zola said 'J'accuse' to his government for anti-semitism and the wrongful imprisonment of Alfred Dreyfus. A controversial place, Guantanamo Bay was leased by Cuba to the United States forever on this day in 1903.

[Stormig]

World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org

 

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

 

WSWS : News & Analysis : North America

 

Pentagon institutionalises indefinite detention without trial at Guantanamo Bay

By Richard Phillips

23 February 2004

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

 

Notwithstanding the impending repatriation of five British detainees and one Danish prisoner incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay, the Bush administration has further undermined the basic legal and democratic rights of those held in the infamous military prison with the announcement of a new measure that will institutionalise the illegal detentions.

 

On February 13, the Pentagon announced that it would establish “administrative review panels” to determine the future of the hundreds held in Guantanamo Bay. Pentagon spokesmen claimed that the three-member panels would act like a “quasi-parole board” and allow prisoners to plea their case for release. The status of the prisoners would be reviewed annually, spokesmen said.

 

The so-called “review panels” have nothing to do with granting any rights to detainees, most of whom have been held for more than two years without charge or access to lawyers or their families. To compare them to parole boards established to review the prison terms for convicted criminals is simply absurd. Rather, the new panels will simply make permanent the present arbitrary procedures under which hundreds of prisoners seized in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere are being held indefinitely in breach of international law.

 

As US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the Miami Chamber of Commerce on February 13, the Bush administration regards the ongoing detentions in Guantanamo Bay as a “security necessity” and some detainees might never be released. Rumsfeld said that although it was “unusual” to detain people without trial or lawyers “America was a nation at war” and “different rules [now] applied”. Criminal law was not appropriate to those jailed who were involved in acts of terror against America and could therefore be held for “as long as necessary”.

 

The “review panels”, which will be appointed by Rumsfeld and other senior Pentagon officials, are internal bodies with no independence whatsoever. They will include the same intelligence operatives and military interrogators, who grilled the prisoners. There is no right of appeal or guaranteed legal representations for prisoners brought before the panels. Nor are those charged and found not guilty of any alleged crimes by a US military tribunal, guaranteed release or repatriation.

 

As an unnamed senior Pentagon spokesman told the New York Times on February 13: “[W]hether a person is to be charged before a military commission is not the reason we’re holding them.” It was possible, the official continued, “that an individual could be convicted by a tribunal and serve a five-year sentence and then not be released if he were judged to be a danger.”

 

Center for Constitutional Rights president Michael Ratner, who is leading a US Supreme Court appeal for the Guantanamo Bay prisoners to be given legal hearings in American courts, immediately denounced the review panels and said he was stunned by Rumsfeld’s brazen defence of the illegal detentions.

 

“The idea that you could theoretically keep someone locked up forever under these circumstances is reprehensible,” he said. “It’s nothing to do with law as any person should understand it, at least since the Magna Carta,” he said. “How do you know without a trial that these people are even dangerous? It all depends on the military’s word.”

 

Amnesty International rejected White House claims that the panels constituted fair treatment for the detainees. “That is a sham,” William Schulz, Amnesty International US executive director, said. “It’s not justice to jail a man without charge for years, then offer him a chance to protest his innocence tarred by a presumption of guilt.”

 

Stephen Kenny, lawyer for David Hicks, one of the two Australians held in Guantanamo Bay and due to face a military trial on as yet unspecified charges, said the review panels were “a pitiful effort to give some show of a process” in the face of growing international criticism.

 

He called for Hicks’s immediate release and said there should have been independent hearings to determine whether detainees were prisoners of war or criminals. If they were POWs they should be treated under international conventions while criminals should be tried. Two years after being placed in Guantanamo Bay, Hicks had still not been formally charged with anything, he said.

 

Guantanamo Bay breaches the Geneva Conventions on the rights of POWs and is an international human rights scandal. Prisoners have no basic rights, no contact with the outside world, apart from heavily censored letters, and are subjected to interrogation by military and intelligence officers.

 

Over the last two years the Pentagon has increased the number of those held from just over 100 to approximately 660 prisoners. As well as hundreds of small metal cages and shipping containers used as cells, other jails have been built, including Camp Iguana, which is used to hold at least 10 prisoners under the age of 18.

 

Another jail, Camp Echo, is currently being built which will contain permanent interrogation rooms and cells for those defined as “pre-commission detainees”—those selected to face military tribunals. This solid-wall prison, which will be finished in the next five months, will hold at least 100 detainees.

 

When questioned at a Washington press briefing, Paul Butler, US deputy assistant secretary of defence for special operations, refused to provide any details on the most basic issues. He would not say if detainees brought before the new panels would have the right to a lawyer or to any form of legal appeal. When pressed he made clear that the final say would rest where it does at present—with the military and the Bush administration.

 

Like the new buildings being erected at Guantanamo Bay, the proposed panels simply confirm that what was initially established as a temporary measure following the US military intervention in Afghanistan is being transformed into a permanent concentration camp. The Bush administration is creating its own American gulag for arbitrary and indefinite incarceration not only of the existing detainees but those seized in any future wars of aggression.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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World Socialist Web Site

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[Stormig]

About a week until it is "300 days and no WMD" -

 

 

 

'Five Lies' Lives On

 

By Christopher Scheer, Robert Scheer and Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet

February 22, 2004

 

Editor's Note: This is a modified excerpt from the new edition of "The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq" by Robert Scheer, Christopher Scheer, and Lakshmi Chaudhry. The new edition includes an up-to-the-minute epilogue analyzing the series of important developments that have shaped the debate over post-war Iraq, and more importantly, the missing weapons of mass destruction. To buy the book, visit FiveLies.com.

 

 

On February 17, President Bush sought once again to extricate himself from the scandal that simply won't go away: the missing Iraqi WMD. "My administration looked at the intelligence and we saw a danger," he told thousands of U.S. soldiers at Fort Polk, Louisiana. "Members of Congress looked at the same intelligence, and they saw a danger. The United Nations Security Council looked at the intelligence and it saw a danger. We reached a reasonable conclusion that Saddam Hussein was a danger."

 

 

It's no surprise that the independent commission appointed by the president has been carefully instructed to only look into lapses in intelligence-gathering, and not at the ways in which the administration may have exaggerated or misused intelligence. Now that it has become clear that Saddam Hussein's fabled weapons programs simply "did not exist," as the outgoing chief weapons inspector David Kay put it, the White House is scrambling to cast its now exposed lies as the inevitable consequence of a massive intelligence failure. In other words, the flaw lay not in the "reasonable conclusion" of the administration, but the evidence it was based on.

 

 

Whatever the state of U.S. intelligence gathering, the Bush administration's sales pitch for the Iraq War relied on public displays of classified data to an unprecedented degree, a practice that has now come to haunt the White House. Scrutiny of the record since Bush assumed office shows a clear and disturbing pattern: the manipulation of intelligence data to fit the administration's preconceived theories to support a policy based on a political agenda rather than the facts at hand.

 

 

The practice, which far surpasses the usual political sleight-of-hand employed by previous administrations, was so pervasive as to alarm career intelligence analysts. "I believe the Bush administration did not provide an accurate picture to the American people of the military threat posed by Iraq. Most of it lies with the way senior officials misused the information they were provided," said Gregory Thielmann, a key whistleblower who was the former director of the State Departments Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) until September 2002. "This administration has had a faith-based intelligence attitude: 'We know the answers – give us the intelligence to support those answers, '" he said.

 

 

Remember the OSP?

 

 

Where Donald Rumsfeld went for his Iraq intelligence was to something called the Office of Special Plans that he himself had formed as a sort of personal intelligence agency. The day-to-day intelligence operations were run by ex-Cheney aide and former Navy officer William Luti, reporting to Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith, a former Reagan official. According to the Guardian, "The ideologically driven network functioned like a shadow government, much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail in a struggle with the State Department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war."

 

 

The OSP amassed huge amounts of raw intelligence from "report officers" in the CIA's directorate of operations whose job it is to cull credible information from reports filed by agents around the world. Under pressure from Pentagon hawks, the officers became reluctant to discard any report, however farfetched, if it bolstered the administrations case for war.

 

 

John B. Judis and Spencer Ackerman revealed in a New Republic article published in June 2003 that there was "no consensus" within the U.S. intelligence community on the level of threat posed by Saddam. Judis and Ackerman reported, "The administration ignored, and even suppressed, disagreement within the intelligence agencies and pressured the CIA to reaffirm its preferred version of the Iraqi threat." Bush then would repeatedly deploy this misleading data to sell the war in his speeches.

 

 

A Pattern of Deception

 

 

There is no better example of the pattern of deception that has defined the administration's case for the war than its claim that Saddam Hussein possessed a well-established nuclear weapons program.

 

 

On Sept. 8, 2002, in a classic example of how easy it is for the White House to manipulate the media, and thus the public, the New York Times ran a story planted by the Bush administration. The front-page article, written by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon and headlined "U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts," informed Americans that, according to unnamed Bush officials, Iraq had repeatedly attempted to secretly purchase aluminum tubes "specially designed" for enriching uranium as part of a nuclear weapons program based on their "diameter, thickness, and other technical properties."

 

 

It was the ultimate advertorial: great placement, perfect message, excellent timing – all basically controlled by the advertiser but looking as if it came from "neutral" sources. From its August launch through its acceptance by Congress in October, the Bush marketing campaign for the war was perfectly executed, and the tubes revelation was a classic example.

 

 

By the time the truth that the attempted purchases were neither secret nor likely intended for nuclear uses was tracked down and exposed by whistle-blowers, journalists, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, it wouldn't matter, having already served dutifully as a scary totem in Bush speech after Bush speech. When its power did flag, it would simply be replaced by another shaky fact put into the rotation and foisted upon a compliant media. This leak-and-retreat tactic proved astonishingly effective up to and through the war.

 

 

One key to a president exploiting shaky yet convenient intelligence data is to always maintain deniability. Aiding and abetting this is the array of different intelligence agencies that the president has reporting to him – CIA, NSA, FBI, and sub-agencies of State, Defense, and so on – not to mention the information generated by allied nations' intelligence agencies that are passed along (more on that later). Combined, these agencies, each with its own strong institutional biases and rivalries, generates so much data that it is child's play for politicians (or reporters with good sources) to cherry-pick opinions that fit their policy platform (or story angle).

 

 

The Real Intelligence Failure

 

 

In an effort to control this kind of chicanery, the intelligence agencies are often required to pool their insights and evidence into overview documents to see whether or not there is a consensus as to their reliability. Relevant experts may also be called in, especially in a case like this where highly technical expertise was essential to separating fact from fiction.

 

 

When the experts looked at the tubes later cited by the White House, however, questions immediately arose over whether they were appropriate for centrifuges used in a nuclear reactor. Working under a blanket of enormous pressure coming from the White House, and especially the vice president, to find damning things regarding Iraq and nuclear weapons, a full-blown row soon broke out within the alphabet soup of U.S. intelligence agencies over this obscure issue.

 

 

For their part, CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency believed the tubes were similar to those used in Iraq's previous attempt to build nukes, while the State Department's INR and the Department of Energy were adamant that they were in fact much more appropriate for artillery shells. The division was made explicit in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate report on Saddam's pursuit of WMD, as the State Department experts insisted a sharply worded dissent be included in the overall report, controlled by the top dog in the intelligence "community," the CIA.

 

 

While the NIE cited "compelling evidence that Saddam is reconstituting a uranium enrichment effort for Baghdad's nuclear weapons program," the INR dissent (which was later dismissed by the White House as a footnote), stated explicitly "the tubes are not intended for use in Iraq's nuclear weapons program."

 

 

Meanwhile, British experts weighed in against the White House's interpretation and some CIA analysts also expressed doubts. The longer the tubes bounced around the intelligence community, the iffier it got as a piece of evidence affirming Iraq's threat to the world. Ultimately, however, the CIA, as the top intelligence agency, won out, forcing their analysis into the NIE, leading inevitably to the New York Times front-page headline trumpeting its scoop.

 

 

Role of the CIA

 

 

The CIA's complicity in this prototypical Bush bait and switch tactic can be clearly seen when looking back at the annual reports the agency delivered to Congress on the global proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

 

 

In its 1997 report, Iraq only warranted three paragraphs, to the effect that Baghdad possessed dual-use equipment that could be used for biological or chemical programs. There was no mention of a nuclear weapons program. By 2002, however, the Iraq section was seven times as long, and warned that "all intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons" and the country could produce a nuclear bomb "within a year" if it got its hands on weapons-grade material. The CIA also reported as late as 2001 that enforcement of the UN arms embargo on Iraq was "generally successful" – but this reference was dropped in the 2002 report sent to a White House that claimed the embargo wasn't working.

 

 

Why, then, had the reports become so shrill on the topic after Bush's inauguration, presenting the same intelligence with a completely different interpretation? After all, the CIA even had the same director under both Clinton and Bush.

 

 

"I'm afraid that the U.S. intelligence community, particularly the CIA . . . is sometimes quite sensitive to the political winds," Thielmann, formerly a senior intelligence official at the State Department, told Newsday.

 

 

Despite what David Kay may claim, a number of CIA officers clearly felt the brunt of the administration's desire for the "right" kind of intelligence. Vice President Cheney, in particular, made a number of personal trips to the agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to meet with low-level analysts who were reviewing the raw intelligence on Iraq. As one CIA official told the South African Mail and Guardian, "[He] sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here."

 

 

Other visitors to CIA headquarters representing the White House included Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, and ex-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who joined the Pentagon as a "consultant" after 9/11. "That would freak people out," a former CIA official told the New Republic.

 

 

The Mythic Consensus

 

 

While the Bush administration now claims otherwise, there was no consensus whatsoever over Saddam's weapons capabilities. The New Republic's investigation revealed many of the tube skeptics still hopping mad, incited by the continued use of the centrifuge claim. One intelligence analyst, who was part of the internal multi-agency tubes investigation, angrily – though anonymously – told the magazine known for its hawkish stances, "You had senior American officials like Condoleezza Rice saying the only use of this aluminum really is uranium centrifuges. She said that on television. And that's just a lie."

 

 

And Rice hadn't stopped there. After saying on the Sept. 8, 2002 Late Edition that the tubes "are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs," she then went on to brandish the ultimate image of twentieth century terror: "The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly [Hussein] can acquire nuclear weapons, but we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

 

 

And contrary to the president's claims that the UN shared his interpretation of Saddam's capabilities, the International Atomic Energy Agency was blunt in its assessment of the tubes. On Jan. 24, ElBaradei told the Washington Post, "It may be technically possible that the tubes could be used to enrich uranium, but you'd have to believe that Iraq deliberately ordered the wrong stock and intended to spend a great deal of time and money reworking each piece." And on Mar. 7, the IAEA stated its analysis quite clearly in its formal report to the United Nations, just two weeks before the war to "disarm Saddam Hussein" began.

 

 

The truth is that the White House continued to be hell-bent on supersizing our fear in the lead up to the war, turning an admittedly scary world into a chamber of horrors. And it used every weapon in its arsenal – from outright intimidation to skilful media manipulation – to achieve its goal. Claiming that this well-oiled campaign was instead a well-intentioned error is just the latest in a very long list of Bush lies.